What makes Virtual Assistance different than so many other online businesses?

When I started my Virtual Assistant business in late 2021, online platforms were congested with MLMs and affiliate marketing due to financial need caused by the pandemic. People not only needed extra income, however, they simply needed work - as so many found themselves without a job or a business. 

Since then I’ve seen ads for one online business or another every single time I go online. 

So what makes what I do any different? Why should you, in particular, be interested in starting a Virtual Assistant business?

Let’s look at my situation in the beginning:

→ I was in a toxic relationship that was bound to end

→ I was a stay at home mom, with no income and plenty of debt

→ I lived remote, childcare was crazy expensive and actual jobs were few and far between

→ I refused to go back to the job I had before maternity leave

→ I’m a creative + inventive person and I really needed something in my life that allowed me to explore that

So I feel like I checked a lot of boxes. I was a mom with responsibilities, I needed an income, but I needed something that was on my terms so that I could get out of debt, be there for my kiddo and enjoy what I was doing. 

What struck me about being a Virtual Assistant was that I could decide who I worked with. Everything about my work was on my terms, I was in full control of my schedule and what services I offered my clients. 

I had interest in a lot of things and being able to work with clients from different industries and do different things daily … that’s what I wanted. 

So how do you go about starting your own Virtual Assistant business?

For starters, you don’t need to spend money to get your first clients. 

It’s important to decide first if you’re going to select a niche. That can be a specific task, or range of tasks, that you want to do; or it can be a particular kind of client. 

Examples of this could be: 

→ social media management

→ working with love coaches

You could even go a step further and niche down to doing social media management for love coaches. 

As you can imagine, if you choose not to niche down, the doors are open wide for opportunities to work with clients. 

So you’ve decided to niche down, or not to niche down. Now what?

In my opinion, the next step needs to be to decide where you need to show up. Are you more comfortable on Instagram? LinkedIn? YouTube? 

Whichever platform you prefer, is it also a platform where your potential clients are showing up? 

Networking is key! You’re going to want to optimize your profile, connect with people and talk about what you do. You can post content, sure, that would be great, but more importantly it’s how you’re reaching people. 

With a clean and clear profile, you can start connecting with business owners who are likely to need the same services you want to offer to them. 

It doesn’t have to be complicated but it does take a willingness to try, to learn and to take constructive criticism. 

If you’d like to learn more about my process when I started my business and how I connected with clients and onboarded them, check out the next live webinar that I’m hosting: www.everyday-va.com/webinar