Episode 273: Behind the Curtain of My Business Journey – Part 1 // How I Took the First Step to Becoming a Virtual Assistant with Very Little Time

Full Episode Transcription:

[00:00:00] Hey friend, welcome back to the Virtual Assistant Mama podcast. In this episode, we’re going to be starting a three part series, taking you behind the curtain of my business journey as a virtual assistant. So in this episode, I just kind of want to walk you through how I got into the virtual assistant world and how I started building my business with very little time. I had a newborn by my side, which we’ll get into. So I did not have a lot of time to do this. And I know that a lot of you feel the same. You have a lot of things going on in your life. You don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to it. So I just want to kind of share that it’s possible even with just a little bit of time.

[00:00:45] So I mentioned a few times in this podcast that I was previously a teacher. I taught first grade for one year, kindergarten for two years, and I always grew up knowing that I was going to go to school for teaching. That’s what I thought I was going to be for, you know, my whole entire career. But more than that, even, I knew that I wanted to be a mom. When I was little, I was always playing house, pushing my little babies around in a stroller, probably older than most of my friends who were still playing with babies. I still was. But I just really knew that I wanted to be around little ones and I wanted to be a mom more than anything. So, once I actually got into teaching, I actually moved across the country for my teaching degree.

[00:01:36] I was in Michigan. I moved down to Texas to work at the school that I taught at. And, very quickly, I realized this is not what I was envisioning. Like, I know a lot of people say that, and you hear that a lot these days, just with all of the extra expectations placed on teachers shoulders, but I think it doesn’t really hit you, or you think that’s not going to happen to you until you get there and you’re like, everybody was kind of right. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some, Teachers who are just like meant to be in the classroom and they absolutely love it. Even with its difficulties and challenges, they know that’s where they’re meant to be. And that is great. And I totally support teachers who feel that way, but I was not one of those people. Once I got in, I realized, you know, this is not going to allow me to be the present mom that I always wanted to be. And that was my number one priority. I didn’t want to be coming home exhausted to my own kids every day. After dealing with 25 other little ones, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to just be present, be patient. I was probably going to end up, you know, just losing my patience on my kiddos more often than not. I just knew myself and that I wasn’t going to be able to. Do that long term. So my first three years teaching I didn’t have any kids yet But the third year I got pregnant and so my husband and I Were talking a lot and actually one of our biggest fights was about him saying that I couldn’t be a stay at home Mom, and when he first said that like I was just heartbroken and this was even before I was pregnant But I was heartbroken because I knew that teaching wasn’t something I wanted to do long term. I didn’t know what else to do that would allow me to be home with my kiddos, and I was just, like, devastated. And I knew deep down that, like, yeah, we needed that income that I was providing to be able to pay off our student loans and take all the vacations we want to take and all that. But it just, like, Trying to broke my heart that he like actually made my fears that I wouldn’t be able to make that happen a reality. And so that was a pretty big fight. He’s okay with me sharing that so that’s fine Then when I got pregnant with my daughter that third year teaching we sat down and we talked about Like what daycare costs were going to be for a newborn and just all of the costs associated with, you know, me being teaching and her being in daycare full time, I was probably going to be making maybe 50 percent of my income after paying for daycare, if not less. We decided that I was going to be able to take the first year of my daughter’s life off from teaching, but the plan was that I was going to end up going back at the end of that first year of her life. And then during that year that I was off, the plan was for me to either nanny or do grocery delivery, something that I could take her with me to do, and that I could still make like a little bit of income to help us just with some of like our basic small bills, but it probably wouldn’t have even compared to my teaching income, but actually, I didn’t even have to worry about doing any of that because yeah, God’s timing. It’s the best timing. You guys know I say that all the time and the day that I went into labor like I went into labor at night, but earlier that day I Heard about the term virtual assistant and thinking back. I think I actually saw that term like a while before that on Pinterest, but it never really registered with me. But that day that I went into labor, I saw that term and I’m like, what is this? Can I actually do this? Like, is this direct sales? Because I tried that for three years when I was in college and never really made anything. Didn’t want to go down that route again, so I was like, is virtual assistant like that?

[00:05:50] And I very quickly learned, no, it’s your own business. You offer services to businesses. There’s no like, you know, multi level tier or anything like that. So I was like, I think I could do this. I have no experience in any of these services. But I know that I can figure it out. I had that determination to be home with my daughter and I wanted something that would allow me to work from home with her while still providing an income for our family. So we very quickly learned that being a virtual assistant would allow me to do that. I would not have to work 40 hours a week. I would be able to set my own schedule and work around her naps and just like, maybe waking up a little bit earlier than her in the morning to work, staying up a little bit later after she went to bed.

[00:06:39] I just worked in any socket of time. That she was, like, occupied or napping or whatever, I made it work because I was so, so, so determined to make this the reality that I would be able to work from home and be that present mom I always wanted to be and witness all of her firsts, which I did. I saw her first smile, her first laugh, her first steps, her first crawl. I was there for every single one, and I would not have been there for most of those if I still had been teaching, okay? So, as soon as I found out about that virtual assistant world, I just dove in, I started learning everything I could. Every time I was nursing, I was also like, listening to podcasts, just learning what I could about this world. Within one month, like one month after I had my daughter, I had already landed my first client. I started out really offering pretty much every service that I could, working with any client I could, learning as much as I could, but with my daughter by my side, I only worked about 15 to 20 hours a week, again, during nap time, doing power hours in the morning or at night, and then one evening a week, my husband would like kind of take over from it.

[00:07:58] Dinner time to bedtime and I would go up in our office and get a solid chunk of time working up there. So that was really how I was able to find those pockets of time to work. But like I said, I Really was just working with any client who was I was willing to hire me and train me because like I said, I didn’t know how to do a lot of these things, but I had that willingness to learn a lot of the services I was able to teach myself just by watching YouTube videos and figuring things out there. And I very quickly realized that I didn’t love doing what I thought I was going to love doing. I started going down the route of being a social media manager. And it wasn’t lighting me up as much as I thought it was going to, and it was kind of, honestly, dragging me down more than I expected. And so, I quickly started to realize, okay, if I am going to continue down this path, then I need to find what service is going to light me up to do every single day. Because I didn’t want to end up in the same situation. When I was feeling burnt out with my job, I didn’t want to feel like I felt when I was a teacher. So, I actually kind of fell into web design, which is what I now offer for my main service. Because I watched a YouTube tutorial to build my own website to promote, like, my services to potential clients.

[00:09:31] And then after building my site, I was like, this is So much fun. Let me see if somebody, somebody would hire me to do this for them. Very quickly landed a client to build a website for. And just kind of really started letting my social media management clients go and transitioned into the full time website designer role. So probably about the first four months of my business, I was just doing like, like I said, every service I could. Most social media management. But again, just not feeling super lit up and working a lot, trying to make it happy. You know, when you do something that you don’t necessarily love and it takes way longer, but then if you do something you love, it goes a lot faster because you’re good at it. You’re in your zone. That’s how I felt with website design, social media management. I didn’t love, so it took me way longer than it needed to. So I was not able to take on as many clients because I had to spend more time on that work. But with website design, I could take on multiple clients at once doing different websites for each because I felt like I was in my zone in that role.

[00:10:49] So within The first three months when I was a social media manager / more general VA, I was able to replace half of my teaching income. So again, three months, I was probably making, um, close to 1500 to 2000 a month in that role. And then when I shifted more into website design, I was then About between four, four months is when I started doing website design. Six months is when I was like, nope. This is what I’m officially doing. I’m not doing social media management anymore. And within that six months, I had fully replaced my teaching income. Again, with my newborn daughter by my side at this point, she’s like six months old. So she’s not napping nearly as much. But we were still making it work. I was able to be home with her and be present and That was literally all that I could have ever asked for so this all goes to say that God has a plan that we don’t expect I did not expect to fall into this role, and we just have to take that leap of faith when we get that nudge and we hear that.

[00:12:00] Something’s a possibility and we’re questioning when I do this, just take a step and see, don’t keep twirling your thumb sitting there wondering if you can just click on a step and see. Okay, so I just wanted to share that story with you guys to encourage you. You can absolutely do this. Okay, you just have to set your mind to it. So like I said, this episode is just part one of this series, like how I really got into becoming a virtual assistant and how I did it with very little time with a little baby by my side all the time. Next in part two of this series, I’m going to be sharing the three things that I really buckled down on in order to build my virtual assistant business to the point that I wanted it to get to without sacrificing time with my family. So make sure you come back next Tuesday to hear that episode. And I cannot wait to see you back here real soon.