Episode 245: – How I Made $5,500 in 7 Days of Work as a Virtual Assistant

Full Episode Transcription:

[00:00:00] Hey friends, I want to share something super fun with you in today’s episode. I recently almost doubled my teaching income and was only working on projects for my clients seven days total out of the month. So in this episode, I’m going to walk you through exactly how I was able to do that. The way that I have decided to structure my business is doing what I call VIP Intensives, or another word for that is called VIP Days. So what this is, is basically you provide a service for your clients in a short amount of time, and you spend those VIP Days focusing solely on that client’s project. This allows them to move on to other tasks in their business faster, and you’re able to spend less time working. So the biggest benefit of this, I think, is that you’re able to only work a few days out of the month and make a very good amount of income, especially if you’re still in your nine to five with these two projects that I did one project was three days long.

[00:01:10] The other was four days long. I made $5, 500 Just working on those projects for seven days. Now, let’s just go to show you what’s possible, but I want to walk you through what this really looks like. When you do a VIP day, I do not just want you to charge hourly. And just charge them for, you know, seven hours of work. That’s not what this is. You are charging premium prices for your VIP days because you’re focusing solely on your client during those days. You’re busting out a huge project for them that’s going to allow them to generate more income. It’s going to allow them to connect with more people. It’s going to…

[00:01:55] Just take a big thing off of their to-do list, so you need to be pricing accordingly. You do charge very high prices for VIP days. Now, I’m a website designer, so obviously website design works, blends itself really well to VIP days. But some other virtual assistant services that lend themselves well to VIP days are social media management. Like you could plan out your client’s whole social media content, get it all created, get it all scheduled in like a day, and charge, I don’t know, a thousand dollars for that. You could do the same thing with Pinterest management. You could do the same thing with copywriting, podcast management. There are seriously so many services that you can create VIP days for your clients with. Now, typically the structure of these VIP days, they can be anywhere from just one VIP day to get a project done, up to like a week. Mine are typically three to five days. It takes me three days to build out like a basic site, and up to five days if I’m building out Like a course on their website for them as well like a membership back end platform or Like if they have a ton of products they’re selling it’ll take me a couple extra days So we’ll bump it up to the five days if I’m having to like Create their shop and add all their products and all that Now let me give you an example of what it would look like if you did a copywriting VIP day for your client setting up their entire email sequence.

[00:03:31] I would not charge any less than a thousand dollars for this. Again, that’s one day of copywriting setting up, you know, all of their emails for the month or even just a whole Flow of emails for like their freebie and then you keep like they keep automatically sending emails Over the next couple weeks you could get that all set up and automated for your client So yeah, I wouldn’t charge any less than a thousand dollars for this And then if you sold three of these per month, that’s three thousand dollars for three days of work So I just want you to be brainstorming what this could look like with the service that you’re wanting to offer Let me walk you through how I personally run my VIP days. I always have my clients pay 50 percent upfront to reserve their spot on my calendar. This gets them that definite pricing. My pricing’s not going to change once they’ve made that deposit. And that allows them to pick what days on my calendar they want to have their project done. I’ll send them my scheduling link.

[00:04:37] And they will pick which of my open availability days they are going to be available. So once they’ve paid the invoice and signed the contract, I send them a welcome email with a description of how the days are going to work, how we’re going to communicate on those days, a form to fill out with all of the website strategy questions, login info, all of that. And then I also give them links to schedule their kickoff call with me, which is typically 30 minutes. And then, Also link to schedule their actual VIP days. So on the kickoff call, we just kind of went through the form I had them fill out. I answer any questions for them. I show them how to get their homework to me.

[00:05:20] And their homework is typically like their written website content and any photos they want on the site. site. So I’ll show them exactly where to give me all that. Typically I use Asana for like my project management tool where they can see what tasks are assigned to them and the due dates. And then I also have a Google folder, which is where they’ll upload all the photos and their written content. So we talked about that on the kickoff call. Again, it’s about 30 minutes long, and then typically the VIP days are about two weeks after the kickoff call, because that gives them the time to get their homework of the written content and the photos done and to me. Now, if they don’t get that content ready by their VIP days, I do charge a fee to reschedule because I’m holding those days for them. And if they don’t get it done in time, then that prevented me from being able to. Work with any other clients, so I do charge a fee if they’re not ready in time now The remaining balance on their invoice is typically due the second day of the VIP day So like I said, my projects are typically like three to five days long I usually have that remaining 50 percent on the invoice due the second VIP day Okay, so I’m paid way before the end of the project, you never get paid at the end, because then you’re trying to chase people down.

[00:06:42] On the actual VIP days, my clients aren’t on Zoom with me all day or anything crazy like that. I just utilize an app called Voxer, V O X E R, to keep them. Data on what I’m working on voice note them if I have any questions as I’m working and they just have to be available to respond fairly quickly to any questions. I have that way. I’m not held up on a project and on a spot in the project and not able to move forward. So again, they don’t have to be on zoom with me, but they do just have to have their phone near them and their sound on so they know when I’ve sent them a message. I’ll also let them know when it’s time to complete revisions on a page.

[00:07:22] I’ll send them a page that I finished designing, they’ll make their revisions, they’ll let me know what they are, I’ll make those changes, I’ll send it back for another set of revisions, they’ll give me that list, I’ll make those revisions, and then that page is done, and I move on to the next page. So they get two sets of revisions to her page. So let me just walk you through what a three day project would look like on day one of their project. That’s what I’m focusing on their branding if they need help with that and also the website settings. So it does take me quite a while to get all of the tech back end parts of the site set up.

[00:07:59] Like installing plugins and just getting all the general website settings installed. I do also, on the first day, like to at least get the homepage design done and off for the first set of revisions. That way, that evening, my client can Make that list of first revisions and on the second day I can jump into getting those first revisions done, send it off for second revision, get that second revision done. And then once the home page is built, that one always takes the longest, but once that Is done, the other pages fly by because we’re using similar design elements from the home page in all the other pages to keep the design cohesive. So the home page typically takes like a day, a day and a half to get done, and then all the other pages will fly by.

[00:08:56] Like my clients are always astounded by how many pages I’m sending them on the second and third days. So, by the end of that third day, I’m recording a tutorial video teaching them how to maintain their site, how to make updates if they want to. I do offer website maintenance packages to them, like, ongoing, month to month, if they want that, but if they don’t, I give them that tutorial video teaching them how to make changes on their own, so they don’t feel like they’re going to break their site. When the design is all done, I have them give me a testimonial, I have a form I send for that. And then I send them the tutorial video, I send them a launch graphic that they can put on their social media announcing their new site, and then I just send them any instructions like, how to log into different platforms I might have set up for them, or whatever.

[00:09:52] Now, an important note about VIP days, I do not recommend offering these until you have a few projects under your belt. You need to have systems in place so that it goes quickly and smoothly, because if you’re still trying to learn a platform, you’re not going to be able to get it done that fast. Now, you don’t need to know 100 percent of the platform. I learn something new on every single project I do, but you do need to have, like, a pretty good level of comfort with whatever systems you’re using. Now, I teach you how to structure VIP days in the Scaling Virtual Assistant Mastermind. I walk you through it hand in hand, figure out how best to format it for the service you’re offering.

[00:10:36] So if that’s something that you are interested in, If you’re interested in doing, if you’re already a virtual assistant and you want to be able to only work a couple days a week, come and submit your application to the Scaling Virtual Assistant Mastermind. You can find all the info for it at ariannavernier.com/mastermind. Get your application in. I’m reviewing them all the time, so you will hear back from me ASAP. Alright. If you have any questions about how I structure these VIP days and want me to go a little more in depth on something, let me know. I would love to help you. You can go and drop those questions in our free Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/virtualassistantmama. Can’t wait to hear from y’all. Let me know if you have any questions and we will see you back here on the next episode.