Episode 279: 10 Ways to Gain Momentum in Your Virtual Assistant Business

Full Episode Transcription:

[00:00:00] Are you struggling to build momentum in your virtual assistant business? In this episode, I want to walk you through really 10 ways that you can start to gain that momentum and keep it moving. So let’s just go ahead and jump right in. Number one, the first way to gain momentum in your virtual assistant business is to set clear goals for yourself. You have to define What you’re working towards. If you haven’t established what you’re working towards in your work, then how are you going to be able to track that momentum? So really, you need to have a direction that you are guiding your momentum towards. So if you start by writing down the reasons that you are working on your virtual assistant business, the reasons that you’re doing what you’re doing every day, that will help you in figuring out exactly what you’re working towards.

[00:01:02] And then you can break those goals down into smaller, bite sized tasks that You can slowly chip away at, and you will be so surprised by how quickly you can accomplish a huge goal if you’re just doing these small bite sized tasks that are working you towards that goal. Okay, so the second way to start building that momentum is really to establish routines. So, this is really three to five things that you do consistently, maybe together, that like one thing that you do triggers the next thing, and then triggers the next thing, and it’s something that you don’t even fully have to think about anymore. You just do it, it doesn’t take a lot of brain power, and then you just do it over and over again, and just be consistent. When you have these routines, it’s so much easier for your brain to get into the mode that you need it to be in because your brain is used to what it looks like to be in that mode. Okay, so having routines in place that maybe you don’t do every day, but three times a week, five times a week, something that’s consistent that you can get into a rhythm with.

[00:02:19] The third way that you can gain momentum in your business is to really prioritize your tasks. You want to organize your tasks from the most important tasks, the ones that are going to move your business forward, to the least important. So what you can do is you can kind of brain dump out all the tasks you want to do. Let’s just say for the next week, and then you can prioritize them by how important they are. You can do the most important tasks. You can write a one next to them, maybe the least important tasks. You can write a three next to them. And then the ones kind of in the middle, you can write a two. And then when you actually sit down to work on your business. Get the ones done first, then get the twos done. And then if you have any time left over, those threes are like the icing on the cake. They’re the things that could be moved to next week, next month, whatever, they wouldn’t really matter. But that, those ones, and even some of those twos, are the things that are actually going to move your business forward. Okay? Next, the fourth thing that’s really going to help you build momentum in your business, is being efficient with Time blocking. You need to know exactly how much time you have. In your week to dedicate to your business and how you can consistently show up in that time. Now, I’m not saying if you, you know, time blackout and you figure out that you have two hours to work on Monday, but then a kiddo gets sick, we don’t have to scrap the whole week.

[00:03:56] We can move things around and figure out where else we could fit that time or maybe if your kid’s more their priority. That’s okay for that week to show up again, ready to go the next week, but time blocking is so helpful for you to really see where am I going to be able to show up in my business? How much time am I going to be able to give to my business every single week? Because if you just keep it in your brain, it’s a lot harder to keep track of with all the 10 million other things we have going on in our brain every single day. Okay, now, number five kind of ties into number four, and it’s setting up a business workflow. So when you do your time blocking for number four, and you figure out when you’re going to work. Well, when you actually sit down to work, you need to know what you’re working on. So you need to have a business workflow in place so that when you sit down to work, you go into that specific day and you have your tasks already there that tells you what you need to get done. So I do have a free weekly planner that will help you get this started.

[00:05:01] You can find that at ariannavernier.com/free-weekly-planner, or you can find that link in the show notes. All right, the sixth way that you can build momentum in your business is to build out a project plan for your clients that you can really repurpose for every client. Now if you’re offering 10 million different services and you’re doing 10 million different things for every single client, this is going to be hard to do. But if you listen to me and you niche down into one, maybe two specific services that you offer, and you’re doing Mostly the same thing for every client with just like a few tweaks here and there to make it custom for what they need, then you should be able to follow a pretty similar, consistent project plan that you can already have mapped out. So what I’ve done for my business, I build websites for people. So I have a project plan in Asana, A S A N A. That I just duplicate for every new client and then sometimes my clients have like a different kind of page that they need on their site. But every one of my clients is gonna need a homepage build. Pretty much every client needs an about page. Pretty much every client needs a blog page or whatever. Some clients don’t need a shop setup. So when I create a project plan for clients who do need a shop, I’ll just add those tasks in. But like, they’re all going to need the same settings set up on their website.

[00:06:36] They’re all going to need SEO set up. All of that stays pretty much the same. And so I have those tasks already in my project plan. And then I just tweak it a little bit for each client, but I’m not reinventing the wheel on, well, why do I build a website from scratch for this client? I’ll have a whole process that I go through. So you need to do this for your clients, for the services that you offer them as well. All right. The seventh thing you need to do to build momentum in your virtual assistant business is to set boundaries. Now, you might be thinking, what is setting boundaries have to do with gaining momentum? When you struggle with boundaries, you might find yourself saying yes to the wrong things, or you might say no to the right things. So. You want to make sure that you have boundaries in place that allows you to prioritize the things in your life that really matter. So if you have kiddos and they’re the most important thing, you want to make sure you have clients who respect your boundaries on when you’re working and when you’re not.

[00:07:37] And the fact that you’re taking weekends off and you’re not going to respond to them on the weekends. That is having boundaries that’s going to allow you to be the present mom you want to be, to be the person that you want to be outside of your job. So that when you do show up to work for those virtual assistant clients, you are present, you are focused, you’ve had your time to yourself, and you are ready to help them and build that momentum. All right, number eight is self care. So self care is just really going to help you prioritize yourself and just even just dedicating 15 minutes to yourself. A day helps to make sure that you’re focused on yourself, your hobbies, your interests, your personal growth, something that’s engaging to you. I can even just be reading a book for 15 minutes, you know, doing your Bible time, which you definitely should be doing, but it’s one of those foundational parts of your day.

[00:08:38] That’s going to help you sustain your momentum longer because you’re not going to be getting burnt out. Okay. All right. The ninth thing that you can do to really build momentum in your virtual assistant business is to continually re evaluate. So you want to go back and re evaluate your business periodically. Take a look at your routines and see if you can improve your productivity in any of those routines. Look at different areas, collect data in different areas, and see what needs to change. So if you don’t consistently re evaluate, I’d say like once a quarter, so once every three months in the year, you should be okay. You’re not going to be able to see where you’re growing, what’s working, what’s not working. So you need to take a look at all of that. And then the last and final thing that you can do to really build momentum in your virtual assistant business is to celebrate your achievements. Now, this is not easy. This does not come natural to a lot of us. It’s honestly one of the hardest things to do sometimes. It’s cool that like other people might get excited about your achievements in your business, but you need to actually celebrate those achievements yourself. Okay, you need to take time to give yourself a pat on the back and To, you know, go out and shop a little bit, take a day to yourself to celebrate when you land a new client or when you complete a big project or just anything, anything big or little, no matter what it is, celebrating yourself is going to help you feel more encouraged, which allows you to continue to build that momentum.

[00:10:22] Okay. So real quick, let me just recap these 10 ways that are going to help you gain momentum in your virtual assistant business. Number one is to set clear goals. Two is establish routines. Three is prioritize your tasks. Four is consistently time block. Five is set up a business workflow. Six is build out your client project plan. Seven is set boundaries. Eight is self care. Nine is re-evaluate, and ten is celebrate achievement. Alright, now, if you need help in your virtual assistant business, maybe you’re not exactly sure what you need to be working on, or maybe you’re still curious about whether becoming a virtual assistant would be a good fit for you, I encourage you to come and check out the free workshop, the number one way to start working from home. You can find all of the registration information for it at ariannavernier.com/free-workshop. You can also find that link in the show notes. I’m going to break down for you the five Ps that you need to have in place in order to become a successful virtual assistant. So go get registered for that. It’s completely free. Again, that’s ariannavernier.com/free-workshop. And I can’t wait to see you there.