Archives for March 2018

Why Being Different is a Good Thing When You’re a Virtual Assistant

March 29, 2018 By Alicia Jay Leave a Comment

There is a concern that I hear a lot from virtual assistants:

“I see so many virtual assistants out there right now. Why would someone want to work with ME?”

Yes, our industry is becoming more and more popular every day. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for you.

So, how do you make your OWN way?

Remember that no one else is exactly like you.

No one has your exact background, history and experiences. No one does things exactly like you do, talks like you or thinks like you.

Some of these things that make you, YOU, are the very things that will help you to stand out among other virtual assistants.

Yes, being different is a good thing in this industry.

It’s also another reason that I always recommend narrowing down the skills that you offer and the market that you serve.

That piece right there will help you stand out.

If you’re still working on figuring out your USP, unique selling proposition then, click here to check out my guest post at Work at Home Success.

What’s stopping you from creating the virtual assistant business that you want?

March 21, 2018 By Alicia Jay 2 Comments

There are a lot of things that can stop us from creating the life that we really want—from creating the virtual assistant business that we really want.

But it’s mostly about us getting in our own way.

Check out today’s video where I touch on the 4 most common stumbling blocks, and how to work past them (transcript below):

Full transcript:

It’s Alicia here at New VA Advice. I have a message that I want to share with you today. It all started with an important question that I asked myself.

Here was my important question:

“Is my hair good enough for video today?”

Yes, I’m not lying. That was my important question today.

Why am I sharing this?

Because these are the things that we do to ourselves.

Let me give you an idea of the kind of person that I was before I owned a business and got on video.

I was pretty smart in school, but I was very self-conscious. The teacher would ask a question in class. If you knew the answer, you would raise your hand. You wanted her to call on you so that you could give the answer. Even if I was 99.9% sure that I knew the answer, I wouldn’t raise my hand because I was afraid. That would mean that people might look at me. People would hear my voice. I would have to talk. People would pay attention to that. I couldn’t have that.

Remember in school when you had to give an oral report? Everyone would be assigned a subject. You’d have a day where you had to go up in front of the class and give your report to everyone. The anxiety that I had leading up to the days when my report was due was horrible. I never enjoyed getting up in front of people. I just wanted to melt into the floor.

Maybe you can relate to that.

How did I go from that to doing video, especially live video, which can be very intimidating?

It wasn’t an overnight thing. It was one step at a time. I didn’t start with live video. I did some voice recordings. I did screensharing videos. I did things that were very scripted. Then I was interviewed by people. Eventually, I moved on to video.

What I realized was that the message that I’m delivering is more important than:

What my hair looks like
If I’m at the perfect weight
If my makeup is just right

It’s more important that I show up, and show you that a real person just like you can create a business and love it.

I want to encourage, educate and empower people. That’s way more important than what my hair looks like.

Let’s talk about you.

What is holding you back from creating the service-based business that you want?

I know that there are things you want.

You want time freedom.

You want financial freedom.

What things do you say to yourself that hold you back from taking the steps that you need to take?

Let’s talk about some of the common ones.

Common reason #1:

“I don’t have the skills that I need.”

A lot of people don’t realize that the skills they already posses are something that someone would pay for. Often, it’s the things that you’re naturally good at. It’s easy for you. You might feel like, if it’s too easy, someone won’t pay you to do that. Well, it doesn’t come easy to everyone. Even if it does come easy to them, it might not be something that’s in their wheelhouse. They would much rather pay someone else to do it.

First, you need to asses the skills that you have. It’s possible that you could turn them into services that someone will pay you for.

If you need to advance your skills, there are a lot of really great ways. You can take a course online for just one skill. You’re not paying thousands of dollars and signing up for a semester of college. You can just take an online course. There are free ones out there to get you started. There are paid ones at lower price points.

Click here for an article that will help you evaluate your current skills and learn more about training programs.

When I started, I made a list of my skills. One that I wanted to add, but didn’t have any experience in, was general transcription. I saw the potential there. I had never done it before. I saved up my money and bought an ecourse. I think it was $37 at the time.

I took my time and did some research. I made sure it was something that I really wanted, that it made sense with how I like to work, what I’m good at, and that someone would pay for. I thought about the market that I wanted to work with. Then I researched where I could learn this material without spending a lot of money.

I found this ecourse and then did some research on it. I researched the person who wrote the ecourse as well as reviews of the ecourse. It’s not hard to do online. You can Google anything and find reviews. You can Google the person’s name with the word “scam” to see what comes up. I did this for the person who wrote the ecourse, who is now a lifelong online friend. At the time, I Googled her. I wanted to know if this was real.

Don’t let the whole skills thing hold you back. There may be something you can offer right now and something else you can be learning on the side.

Common reason #2:

“I’m not good at tech.”

I wasn’t good at tech either. I didn’t know the first thing about making a website. I had never done it before. I didn’t know what WordPress was. I started investigating and learned what I could. I figured out that I really wanted a website to start my business so that I would have a home base online. WordPress seemed like the way to go after my research.

Click here for more info on having a VA website.

What was I going to do? I didn’t know how to code. I didn’t know how to create a website. I had no idea what I was doing. I reached out to my contacts. I have a friend who is a realtor. He built his website using WordPress. He came over one afternoon to show me some of the basics.

Was that whole process easy? No. I had to reach out. No one just handed it to me. I had to call him. We talked about it. He came over. I had a newborn at the time. My baby was there in his bouncy seat. I was trying to pay attention to the baby while my friend was teaching me WordPress. But I did it. I figured out a way to get it done because I wanted it.

Common reason #3:

“I don’t have enough money to get started.”

I hear this one all the time. I didn’t have any money to start my business because of the position that I was in. I was laid off and pregnant. I wasn’t planning on starting a business at that time.

Side note: I’m not telling you that you should quit your job and start a business today. If you do have a full-time job right now, even if you hate it, keep it for a while and build up a nest egg. Then you can use that money to build your business.

I didn’t have the money, so I had to be smart. I had to look at what was available to me. You have so many things at your disposal now online that didn’t exist before. There are ways to learn things. Think about the connections that you have. Does anyone owe you a favor for something that you could call in? Maybe they have a skill that they could teach you.

Click here to learn how to start your business on a budget.

Just get what you need. You don’t need all the bells and whistles to start your business. I didn’t have all the fancy things. Look at my videos. I don’t have a hair and makeup person. I don’t have a studio. All of those things are awesome. I love watching videos of people who have all of that. I’m sitting here in my dining room, but I’m doing it.

I’m providing something that’s important to someone. I’m helping someone. You have skills that can help someone, too. Don’t let the money thing get in the way.

Maybe you need to pick up a side job or part-time job.

Click here for an article with side job suggestions.

Start with where you’re at. You don’t need to start with bells and whistles to be successful.

Common reason #4

“I don’t have the time to start a business.”

People make time for what is important to them.

Think about what’s important to you. Are there little pockets of time where you can fit in working on your business? I’m not saying that it’s going to be easy. I’m not saying that you won’t be busy.

I had a brand-new baby. I was nursing. My husband works 12-hour shifts. I wasn’t brining in other income. It wasn’t simple, but I figured out a schedule that worked for me. I made it important.

I made it a priority and fit in time to do it.

Maybe you get a lunch break at work. You can hop on your computer and work on your business. You can cut out some TV watching time and social media time. That takes up a lot more time in your day than you think. Even if you took a half hour to 45 minutes of that time and used it to work on building your business, you will be further along.

It’s all about that one next small step that you can take.

That’s how it happens. No one is an overnight success. I don’t want you to strive for that. I want you to think about what’s holding you back from doing this and see how you can break through that. Take one step towards what you want.

You don’t need a perfect website. Some people start without one. You’re going to play with it forever. There are so many tweaks you can make. There is always something to do to your website. That’s not the important part. Just put it up there. Put words on the page. Make the page live.

You don’t need perfect hair to talk to potential clients. Just start making connections. Be real. Be genuine. Build relationships. Everything that I teach is about using a relationship marketing strategy. You can do that without a ton of money. That’s how I built my VA business. I didn’t have money for ads and fancy marketing techniques. It’s about building relationships and being real.

Click here to learn my relationship marketing strategy.

How can you help someone? That’s really what you’re doing. You’re providing a service that’s going to help someone. How can you build relationships? You have a lot of free tools at your disposal online to do that. Take advantage of it.

Stop worrying about the perfect website. Stop worrying about the perfect hair. Remember that people need you. You have something valuable to offer. People will pay you for that.

You deserve this life that you want, whatever it means for you. Why not you?

Think about what’s holding you back.

What’s one step that you can take to push through that and move forward?

5 Tips for Getting Things DONE in Your Virtual Assistant Business

March 13, 2018 By Alicia Jay Leave a Comment

Sometimes when we have things we’d like to get done in our VA businesses, we get sidetracked.

You start out with good intentions.

You know it’s something important to finish.

But somehow things go wrong. You get overwhelmed with everything that’s involved or distracted with something else.

Here are my 5 best tips on how to get things done.

–1. Be really clear about the project you’d like to finish.

Make it something specific. For example, saying that you want to set up your virtual assistant business is too general. Choose one thing that will help you to make that happen. Let’s say that you’ve decided you want to create a website for your VA business. That would be a good, specific project.

–2. Know why the project is important.

Take a minute to define this. What will you gain by finishing this project? Write it down. Sometimes just seeing this on paper, and referring to it when you get distracted, will help you to keep moving forward.

In our “create a website” example, you might write down that you want to finish this project so that you have a home base online. Having a website will help people to find you, and get to know, like and trust you. It will be a place to make it clear the services that you offer and the people you help while showcasing your skills.

–3. What does “finished” look like to you?

This one is simple but important. You need to define your end result so that you know when you’ve completed the task. Your project needs a stop point. It could simply be that your website is fully complete with all pages finished, and the site is now live.

–4. Break it down.

The next tip is to list all of the tasks you’ll need to do in order to complete this project. Take some time and list every task involved in completing your project. The smaller you break down these things, the better.

If your goal was to create your website, some of those tasks might be to make a list of pages you need, outline each page, decide on colors and fonts, have a logo created, purchase a domain name and sign up for a hosting account.

–5. Schedule it.

This last tip, in my opinion, is the most important one of all. Now that you have your task list, assign a date to each to-do item. When scheduling, be realistic about the time it will take you to complete each task. Get it on your calendar, however that looks for you. You might schedule everything in Google calendar, write it into your daily planner or mark it out on a whiteboard calendar.

You can use and repeat this process for any project you’d like to complete in your business. It will help keep you on track and finish what you started.

Speaking of that, I’m hosting the Finish What You Started Challenge in the Marketing Mastermind for the month of March 2018. We’re going through these exact steps together as a group. Each group member is choosing a project they’d like to complete.

If you’d like help and support, and a chance to go through this process with me so that you can get things DONE in your VA business, join us!

Sign up here for the Marketing Mastermind:
https://www.newvaadvice.com/marketing-mastermind/

Tired of Trying “all the things” to Get Clients?

March 1, 2018 By Alicia Jay Leave a Comment

Do you feel like you’ve been trying “all the things” when it comes to marketing your VA business, but you’re just not getting clients?

I went through the SAME thing in my VA business.

But then I learned some key insights that helped me turn this around and start working with clients that I loved.

Check out the details in this 8-minute video (or read the transcript below):

Full Transcript:

Hey, it’s Alicia at New VA Advice. Today, I want to have a heart to heart with you about your marketing.

I want you to be honest with me:

Right now, do you feel like you are trying “all the things” in order to get clients?

If the answer is “yes” I know how that feels.

When I started my VA business, I was definitely trying all the things to market. I didn’t have experience in this world. I wasn’t sure what I would need to do to market and get clients, whether it should be online, offline or how to go about it. I didn’t really know.

I would research things. If someone said, “Try this method. It’s the best ever,” I would try it.

Then someone else said, “You should try this.” I would try it.

“Get engagement on your Facebook page.” I would do that.

“Find people on LinkedIn.” I thought I should do that.

“No, you should blog.” Okay, I’ll do that, too.

I was everywhere.

I was trying all the things.

I was trying so hard, but I wasn’t getting clients from doing all of that.

What I learned is that, there are a lot of different marketing methods out there, but what works for each person is different.

Your business is unique. What works for you might not work for someone else. That’s what I had to figure out for myself.

It depends on your services and your market. There will be a unique combination that works for you.

Once I figured out that combination for myself–what worked best for me, my business and style, my potential clients–and I was consistent about it, things changed and I did start getting clients.

That was a big deal for me.

The people in my Marketing Mastermind groups felt the same way. They were trying all the things. They didn’t feel focused. They weren’t getting the results that they wanted.

They came into the Marketing Mastermind, and then they learned.

Each person got a marketing plan. We created it together, tailored specifically for them. Then they worked that plan and got support in the group.

Let me give you some examples:

Example #1:

One group member got clearer on her target market. In turn, she was able to think like them, figure out where to find them, and then connect with them at those places. Then she started getting clients.

Example #2:

Another group member realized that she needed a combination of offline and online marketing methods. That’s what worked best for her, with the services that she offered and the market that she wanted to reach. Once she figured out a good combination and was consistent with it, she is now constantly making connections, getting new leads and getting clients from that.

Example #3:

Another group member found her groove by posting online challenges and utilizing list building. She’s really connecting with potential clients now. She’s engaging with these people and building relationships. They’re interested in what she has to offer.

You don’t just have to take my word for it.

You can click here to watch some testimonial videos.

You’ll see what group members have to say and how they feel their business has changed and grown, and that they’ve gotten clients from being part of this group.

You can see from these examples that different things work for different people. It’s different for everyone.

If you are tired of trying all the things, doing this on your own, and jumping from place to place to figure this out, I invite you to click here and join us in one of the Marketing Mastermind groups.

We’ll get focused. We’ll do it together.

When you sign up, you get a private call with me first. We go over where you’re at and where you want to be in your business. Together, we create an initial marketing plan that makes sense for you. It’s not just, “Read this book and figure it out.” We will do this together and figure out what’s going to work best for you.

We make that plan together. Then you use the Marketing Mastermind to work that plan. You get a private resources page that gives you all the products that I’ve created on marketing your business. I will specifically tell you if there are certain parts that apply to you and what you’re doing. You’re not left with, “Here, read this book.”

The biggest part of the Marketing Mastermind groups—the thing that people tell me they get the most out of—is our live calls. We get on the phone as a group twice a month for a live call. It can be a game changer for you.

This is your chance to get on and tell us, “Here’s what I’m up to.” You are held accountable for what you’ve been doing. This is your chance to ask questions and get guidance from me on the call. You get support from your other group members.

Right now, you have two options. We have two groups running. There is a weekday call time available at 1:00 PM Eastern. There is also a weeknight call time available at 9:00 PM Eastern. You pick which group fits your schedule best.

We also have a private Facebook group. In between the calls, it’s a good place to come in and ask questions. It’s a great place to get feedback. Members come in all the time, show us what they’re working on and ask for feedback. They get great support from myself and other group members. Maybe they’re making a sales page, working on their services page, drafting an email or trying to figure out how to handle a particular situation. They get support with those things within the Facebook group.

The other cool thing is that this is a crazy-affordable monthly rate. There is no minimum number of months to join. Stay as long as you want and get the support that you need.

Find out more here:

https://www.newvaadvice.com/marketing-mastermind/

Who is this best for?

This is good for you if you’ve done some of the basic foundational business building pieces already, like figuring out the legalities, choosing a business name and coming up with your services.

If you’re at the point where you have those things in place and you are ready to market and get clients—but you’re not feeling focused, and you’re not sure what will work—then this is what the Marketing Mastermind is for.

You get the support you need. It’s affordable. You get to move forward and start getting clients that you like to work with.

I invite you to think about this, and what it would mean for you and your business to stop doing all the things, taking advice from here, there and everywhere. You’ll really focus, talk to people who have done this before, and be supported by other members who are going through the same thing. You’ll make a marketing plan that’s just for you and then start working that plan.

Start getting clients that you really like to work with.

Start creating the business that you’ve been wanting—a business that you love.

Sign up today: