Episode 271: 4 Things I did to Quit Teaching and Replace My Income Quickly as a Virtual Assistant

Full Episode Transcription:

[00:00:00] Arianna Vernier: All right. Before we dive into today’s episode for y’all, I want to go ahead and quickly read you one of the reviews for the virtual assistant mama podcast. The review says, I’ve been binge listening since I found the virtual assistant on my podcast. Ariana is so knowledgeable and relatable. This podcast is such a valuable resource in getting started as a virtual assistant. You guys, I just want you to know that every time somebody leaves a review, it makes my heart so happy. And reviews are the number one way that Apple, Spotify, wherever you’re listening. We’ll know that this podcast is worth showing to other moms, teachers, just women in general, just like you who have the stream of working from home as a virtual assistant. So it would bless me so incredibly big if you’ve listened to one episode or two, or you’ve binged the whole podcast, if you would take a minute to leave me a five star review. If you do so, you will get a free gift from me. All you have to do is go to Apple podcasts, type in the virtual assistant mama podcast, or you can do it from Spotify, scroll down to the leave review section, click the five stars, write a couple of sentences. And then before you hit submit, take a screenshot of that review. Then go ahead and hit submit and email that review to me. If you hit submit first, your review is going to disappear and it usually takes a couple days to actually show up on whatever platform you’re reviewing on. So that’s why I say take a screenshot first so you can send it to me and then I will send you a code to get my virtual assistant toolkit for completely free.

[00:01:50] Arianna Vernier: Okay, so this is the foundational steps you need to take to get your virtual assistant business up and running and you can get this for absolutely free as a thank you for helping me reach even more amazing listeners just like you here on the show. So take a minute to do that. Pause the episode if needed. I would be so incredibly grateful. Alright, in this episode, I’m going to share with you four things that I did in order to quit teaching and replace my income quickly as a virtual assistant. If you guys haven’t heard my story before, I’ve got it here on the podcast. Not sure exactly which episode, but I’ve definitely shared my story multiple times about how I was able to quit teaching. And then found out about the virtual assistant world the day that I went into labor and just hit the ground running and replaced my income within six months. Okay, with my newborn daughter by my side, just pouring into her and growing this business at the same time. So let’s break down the four things that I really focused on when I did this.

[00:02:53] Arianna Vernier: Number one is I niched down pretty quickly. At first, I started by offering just any service I could offer, any service I could figure out how to do on my own, I would offer it because I wanted any client to hire me and I wanted to work for anybody that was willing to pay me. But, I very quickly realized that some of the services that I was offering were not a good fit for me. They just didn’t light me up, they were very draining on me, they took way too much time, and it just wasn’t worth offering that just in exchange for some money. So I quickly realized that I really loved website and branding design, that was my passion, and so I very quickly niched down into just offering that specific service. So the quicker that you can niche into one specific service, the quicker you can get known as the go to for that service. So it’s okay to start kind of broad with offering a variety of services while you figure out what you really like to do. But then once you find that service, niche down and only offer that because you’re going to be a lot less confusing for one if people know you’re the go to for one specific service and not just a jack of all trades with offering all of them. But two, it’s just going to make your life so much simpler and allow you to do services that you actually like to do. Right, the second thing that I did to be able to quit teaching and replace my income quickly is that I focused on the money.

[00:04:25] Arianna Vernier: Making tasks in my business. I wasn’t wasting time, you know, trying to learn 10 million different things and not actually implement them. I was going out there. I was applying for as many jobs as I could a week. I was setting aside dedicated time to apply for positions, to get people on discovery calls, to do those tasks that would actually lead to a client saying yes to me. Okay, so you have to focus on the tasks that are going to actually get those clients to agree to work with you. If you’re creating social media posts, like, yeah, that’s fine to a point, but some of us get so focused making social media posts we’re no longer going and actually looking at the jobs that people are posting saying, hey, we need somebody. And you’re just hope making social media posts, hoping businesses will see that. So again, just focus on applying for as many jobs as you can that are in the niche that you choose. And some of them will say yes, not everyone’s going to say yes, but some of them will. So it’s kind of about quantity here. You have to be willing to do the work to apply. And just keep chugging along until you get those yeses. And if you don’t already know, applying doesn’t take that long most of the time. It just requires comment on a post saying, Hey, I can absolutely help you with this. Here’s how my packages can help you.

[00:05:51] Arianna Vernier: If you want to schedule a free call with me, here’s the link, or shoot me a message, or whatever. Okay, but you have to focus on the tasks that are actually going to get you clients. Alright, the third thing that I did when I quit teaching and replaced my income quickly and something that was very hard for me and I am still actively doing is working on overcoming perfection. I know a lot of us just have this tendency to not want to put anything out into the world unless we see it as perfect, but the problem is is that nothing is ever perfect. We’re always going to be like way too critical of whatever we create ourselves and we’re better off just getting what we’ve done out there and putting it out there and letting people see it so that they can hire us instead of holding back and not actually landing clients and having to give up because you’re just wasting time if you’re not landing clients. So you have to overcome that perfection and focus on being done, not perfect. Alright, the fourth thing that I did to quit teaching and replace my income as a virtual assistant is that I built connections. I was always going into the Facebook groups and answering people’s questions whenever I could and connecting with other business owners who might refer me to somebody and I could refer them to somebody if they offered a service that I didn’t offer. And just started really connecting with people to become known in this space. So if you can just take a little bit of time each week to build connections with people. It’s not going to happen right away, but you will see the fruit of your labor just a little bit down the road. All right. So I hope this episode helped you figure out what you can really focus on when you’re trying to replace your income as a virtual assistant.

[00:07:38] Arianna Vernier: As always, if you have any questions, you can always DM me on Instagram at ariana.vernier. You can also grab the free workshop to learn more about becoming a virtual assistant and get yourself set up on the path to do it quickly. You can find that at ariannavernier.com/free-workshop, and just binge all the resources, binge this podcast, and you will be able to hit the ground running faster than you think. We love you all so much, and we will see you in the next episode.