Episode 261: Side Hustle Face Off: Direct Sales Versus Becoming a Virtual Assistant

Full Episode Transcription:

Arianna Vernier: Hey y’all, welcome back to another episode here on the Virtual Assistant Mama podcast. Before we jump into today’s topic, I just want to read you a quick review from Apple Podcasts. Review says, “I’ve been listening for a while to your podcast and I’m ready to jump into leaving the classroom and becoming a virtual assistant. I love how relatable and honest you are. I really enjoy how you bring God into your podcast and give glory to him.” Thank you so much. Friend, thank you for leaving this review on the podcast. It just makes my heart so happy. And if you’re a listener, you’ve been here for a few episodes now or a long time, It would bless me so, so big if you go and leave a review on the podcast. It is the number one way that this podcast can grow, reach more people, get new amazing guests on the show. Having those podcast reviews just helps so much.

Arianna Vernier: And as a thank you to you, I do have a free gift for you when you leave a review on the show. All you have to do is go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever, go to the Leave a Review section under our podcast name, Virtual Assistant Mama, click the five stars, write a couple sentences about how this podcast has blessed you, what it’s taught you anything you’re loving about it. Before you hit submit take a screenshot of that review and then submit it and then send that screenshot to podcast@virtualassistantmama.com And when you do that, I will give you a code to get the Virtual Assistant Toolkit absolutely free. This is going to give you those foundational pieces you need to know to become a virtual assistant, and I’m going to give that to you as a free “thank you” for leaving that review and taking the time to do so.

Arianna Vernier: All right. Today’s episode, we’re going to have a bit of a side hustle face off. I want to give you a battle here between the direct sales world versus the virtual assistant world. Now, I was in direct sales for three years. If y’all have heard of Jamberry, they were like a nail wrap company. I did that in college for three years and I honestly never made that much at all. I think in those three years I probably made, I don’t know, around two grand total. If that. And you can absolutely make that and way more as a virtual assistant in one month. Okay. So that’s just kind of a preview of how this battle is going to go, but let’s just go ahead and dive into it.

Arianna Vernier: So let’s start with direct sales. The benefits of being in direct sales are that you get to sell a product that a lot of people kind of already believe in. A lot of people are interested in that product already. Maybe they’re already buying it from somebody else. They’ve heard about it through somebody else. So when you reach new people who haven’t yet tried it, there’s already that trust factor because Other people know, like, and trust that product and you don’t have to sell them as much on it since they might have already heard about it. Another really good benefit of direct sales is that a lot of the marketing materials are already done for you. Like you can get them from your upline or the company itself and then just re-share them on your Facebook pages or Instagram or wherever. They’re already done for you. Now, the cons of a direct sales business is that it’s not really your own business. You’re still stuck with what the company itself decides to make. If they discontinue your favorite product or they go out of business, you’re stuck. Okay? If the company completely goes under, which Jamberry kind of did, you completely lose your income and your customers and you don’t really have anything else that you can offer to them outside of that company. Now, another thing is that a lot of customers are needed just to make a decent income, and typically you want those customers to be recurring because if they’re not, then you just have to keep chasing down new customers and that can get really time consuming and overwhelming and hard to do. You also rely on other people to help you make more money. You’re relying on your downline to hit their goals, so that’ll help you hit your goals to make more money, and it’s just a lot of relying on other people, which, yeah, it’s good to rely on people sometimes, but when it comes to your income, it’s a little bit better if you don’t have to rely on as many, which you do have to do as a direct sales person.

Arianna Vernier: All right, let’s jump into the benefits of becoming a virtual assistant. Probably the biggest benefit is that it is your own business. You have full control of your pay, how many hours you work, the services you get to offer, you get to pick what you love, and if you end up not liking it, you can pivot. You have full control and typically as a virtual assistant, you have multiple clients at one time, so you’re never down to zero income. Even if you lose one client, you typically still have a handful more. And so you have that buffer, that income still coming in to help you while you’re taking some time to find another client to replace the one that left. You also really only need like three to five clients to be able to Replace your income. It doesn’t take a whole lot as long as you’re charging Well, it doesn’t take a whole lot of clients to Make that income and if you’re not charging enough, it’s a topic for a different episode All right kind of rolling off of one of the negatives of direct sales One of the positives of virtual assistant is that you can rely on yourself for making your income and not others Like yeah, you do have to get clients to say yes to hiring you But you can apply to As many jobs as you want, you don’t have somebody else working for you that’s holding you back from making income.

Arianna Vernier: Some of the cons of becoming a virtual assistant is that it does have a little more work up front to get going. You have to learn the service you want to offer. You have to figure out How to get your business set up and all of those things. You do have to create your own marketing plan to get your name out there, get your services, and what you offer out there. So that does take a little bit more time. You have to create your own social media posts and things like that. You can always set up a game plan and templates to help you reduce the amount of time that takes. One other con of virtual assistance is that you do need to build up that trust in others. They have to be able to trust you, see that you’re actually going to provide the service that they are paying you to do. And sometimes that just takes time, that just sometimes takes a step of faith from the client, but it is absolutely possible. Every new virtual assistant Gets that first client that takes a leap of faith in them But then it just spirals from there because once you have that first one You’ve got that trust starting to build and it’s a lot easier to get the second the third and so on Alright, if you are curious about the virtual assistant world and you’re just wondering if it could be a good fit for you I really encourage you to come and sign up for our free workshop happening in just a couple weeks on January 11th It’s called the number one way to start working from home.

Arianna Vernier: If you didn’t already guess It’s about becoming a virtual assistant. I’ll be covering the five P’s to help you become a successful and profitable virtual assistant. It’s going to be so much value for you. Even if you can’t make it live as long as you’re registered you’ll get a link for the replay once it’s over and I just can’t wait to pour into y’all So you can go register for that at ariannavernier.com/free-workshop or find the link in the show notes So I hope this episode helped you kind of figure out which path you’re wanting to go down. If you want me to do any other side hustle battles pitting virtual assistants against anything else, let me know. You can give me some suggestions over in our Facebook community, facebook.com/groups/virtualassistantmama, and I’m happy to do some more episodes like this. All right, y’all, I love you so much, and we will see you next time.