^{This transcription was automatically generated. Please excuse grammatical errors.}

Laura Nicole: 00:02

Welcome to Your Virtual Assistant Coach, the podcast for moms who want to make money from home on their own terms. I'm your host, Laura Nicole, a successful six-figure earning VA and coach who replaced my college professor salary in just five months back in 2020 after my daughter was born, and I have never looked back. I'm here to help you build a profitable, flexible VA business that fits into your family's lives so you no longer feel like you're living just to work. Let's dive in. 

Laura Nicole: 00:33

Somewhere along the way, saying I have eight VA clients or I have 10 VA clients became this like brag in the VA world. And I just want to make it very clear that that is not a flex. Okay. It's not a flex to be quote booked and busy. Okay. That's actually a red flag that all that VA is doing is hustling her ass off and running around like a chicken with her head cut off pretty much every day. Okay.

Laura Nicole: 01:05

 Having more clients does not mean having success. Especially because I know that you're here listening to this podcast because your version of success is being able to have more time with your family, to have less stress when it comes to your work, right? To get to have those things while still making good money and feeling appreciated by your clients. It is literally impossible to enjoy your work, to do a good job, to not feel stressed and like you're pulled in a million different directions if you're just trying to stack your client count as high as you possibly can. At that point, all you're doing is trading one stress, one frustrating job, one thing that's burning you out for another. We're not actually getting time freedom or flexibility. And that's the goal. Okay. So today we are going to bust the myth on why having more clients is not a status symbol. It is not a flex. I take that back. I had said when I started this that I don't know why, or somewhere along the way, right? But I know why. Because we live in such a fucking hustle culture that we have been trained, especially as women, and to internalize the idea that more equals better, right? More equals success, more equals worthiness of making the money or having the things. 

Laura Nicole: 02:40

But client count truly, truly is a vanity metric. And there's actually a cost to having too many clients on your roster because you literally cannot do good work for eight different clients at a time. If you are trying to manage eight different clients, eight different businesses, eight different email inboxes, eight different return policies, eight different community groups, whatever it might be, you literally are just stuck bopping back and forth all day long, probably always feeling behind because your to-do list will quite literally never be caught up because there will always be something new for one of those eight clients. You will have no breathing room, you will never fully get to unplug, and you simply just will not be able to give 100% work to any of your clients. You're putting yourself in a situation if you have too many clients. And listen, to have north of four or five clients means that those clients are probably getting very minimal work from you, right? You're probably doing very minimal hours for all of those people to reach an income goal or an hour goal that you are striving for. But when you reach that income goal or that working 40 hours as a VA goal in this way, literally all you're doing is trading chaos for chaos. But what actually is a flex? What actually is like a oh my God, she's got her together. She's killing it out there. 

Laura Nicole: 04:19

The real flex is having two or three super, super aligned clients and having them set on predictable monthly retainers. You know what work you're doing for them, you know when you're doing it, you know what their expectations are for you, you know their business inside and out. You know what money is coming in the door, you know when you're gonna get new tasks, you know when you guys are gonna have another conversation about shifting your rate and adding responsibilities. You're able to actually set clear boundaries around communication and around your working hours because you're not trying to split your attention like a freaking octopus in eight different directions. When you take the time to really find these aligned clients that you can work with long term and you can grow with them instead of trying to piecemeal all these teeny tiny little crappy projects together and being stuck in hustle mode all the time, finding those aligned clients and creating predictable income that is the flex as a virtual assistant. And I, that is a hill I will die on. You can have fewer clients and better pay and more peace of mind. Like you can maintain your sanity, you can actually get out of this what I know you're looking to get out of it, which is more time with your kids. The ability to actually make your day look like what you want it to, not be checking your messages every five seconds because you know that one of eight clients is probably reaching out to you for something. When you think about being successful as a virtual assistant, it is not about how many people you serve. It truly is about how well the income that you're creating by doing this work is supporting your life and is supporting your motherhood and the way you get to show up with your family and prioritize the things in your days that actually feel in your core like the most important thing to you. I have women ask me all the time, well, how many clients do you work with?

Laura Nicole: 06:25

 I never carry more than three clients at once. I never have. In the six years I have been a virtual assistant, three is my absolute max. And it's because if I go past that boundary, there's no way that I'm maintaining the work-life balance that I want to maintain that was the reason I started doing this in the first place. And some people look at me with a side eye and maybe are a little skeptical of like, hey, how have you made the money that you've made if you've only carried two or three clients at a time, right? Like that doesn't seem to make sense. The math isn't mathing. But the math does math because I find clients who I'm aligned with who pay me really, really well to do the work and support them in their business. And I find those clients that I am aligned with and I am passionate about their business. And I'm super excited to show up for them and pour my time and effort and energy and my best work into their business. And they reward me for that. They reward me for that in terms of more responsibilities, which equals more hours, which equals a higher rate. Bonuses when a launch goes really well that I supported them in, end of year bonuses because they appreciate me, because we actually get along on a human level, right? Like there is so much to be said for being picky about the clients that you work with. Do not just take any client who wants you for three hours a week because you just want a client. Like, that is not going to get you what you want out of this. As moms, the very last thing that we need is more craziness that's disguised as flexibility, right? 

Laura Nicole: 08:08

The burnout that you are experiencing if you are working a current job that you're like, Laura, I need out of this immediately. That burnout isn't gonna disappear just because you work from home if you choose to go about it in a way that causes you to still be stressed and pulled in a million different directions. So I'm gonna say it one last time to bust this myth once and for all, having a giant client roster is not a flex. Having a curated client roster, that is the flex. I know that the next thing you're probably thinking, because this is the question I tend to get next in conversation with women, is okay, Laura, but how in the world do I find those people? How do I figure out who that type of client is for me? And then where do I find them and how do I talk to them? Like that sounds really hard. It feels like I'd be finding a needle in a haystack. And it really is not hard, I promise, when you're able to go out and network with a plan and go out and spend your time very intentionally finding those people on social platforms and engaging with them in an authentic, genuine conversation. It actually is really not hard because those conversations are enjoyable as is. And then it's a natural flow to the conversation of how things could look if we were to work together. That's actually exactly what I teach you to do inside of my mini course, the client magnet method, which is like one of my favorite things that I have ever created. It is so full of very, very tangible advice of how to figure out who your idle client is, how to network with them across all platforms, how to create a solution-oriented pitch for them. And it works. It

Laura Nicole: 10:02

 freaking works. I have seen it work for hundreds of women over and over again. They get clear on who their client is, and then they implement the 15-minute networking method that I teach you inside of the client magnet method so that you don't have to spend hours and hours networking. You can go on in 15-minute pockets of time and be very intentional about who you're starting conversations with because you know in your brain that you are going to create this curated list of two to three really, really quality clients because that is what is going to create success for you in this space of being a VA and making money from home. If you want to check out that client magnet method, it is linked in the show notes. I highly recommend it. Again, I'm obviously biased, but it's one of my favorite things I've ever created. 

Laura Nicole: 10:55

So pop in, check it out, and you can become a client magnet. Thanks for hanging out with me today on your virtual assistant coach. If you love this episode, be sure to share it with your best friend, your sister, or even your favorite coworker who you know wants to start making a flexible income. I'll see you all next time.