Episode 264: Want to Quit Your 9-5 This Year? Here’s How!

Full Episode Transcription:

Arianna Vernier: You guys, can you believe that this is the first episode of 2024? We’ve got a new year, which January just always means setting big goals for our future and chasing after those goals. I’m not about, you know, the January hype of setting goals and then you forgot what they were by February. No, we are very intentional. over here on the virtual assistant mama podcast about setting goals that you can actually accomplish. So if your big goal this year is to quit your nine to five and replace your income, then I’m going to help you do that. Okay. In this episode, I’m going to share three steps that you can take to backwards design and figure out what little steps you need to take along the way to hit those big goals. So let’s just go ahead and jump right in.

Arianna Vernier: Step number one, obviously you got to figure out what your goal is. So, most people, their first goal with becoming a virtual assistant is to replace their, sorry, income from their 9 to 5. So, I want you on a piece of paper. If you need to pause this episode and grab a piece of paper and a pen, that’s fine. But on a piece of paper, write down what your income goal is. Write it down, keep it somewhere, keep this paper somewhere where you can make sure that you’re going to review it so you don’t forget what that goal is. Okay? So step number one, it’s pretty easy. Just write down what your income goal actually is.

Arianna Vernier: Step number two is to divide that number, that income goal you just wrote down. Divide that by 12 to figure out what your monthly goal income is. So for example, my teaching income was about 52,000 a year. So that’s what I would’ve written down for step number one, what my income goal was. And then step number two, I would divide that 52,000 a year by 12 to get my monthly goal, which let me bust out my calculator real quick, was about 4.3. $4,000 a month. So let’s average that to like $4,000 a month. Okay. So that would tell me that I need to get enough clients to make $4,000 a month in order to hit that income goal that I set. Okay. So that’s kind of, you know, a segue into step number three is you have to figure out then how many clients you would need to hit that monthly goal.

Arianna Vernier: So if I’m charging $1,000 a month for a package of services that I offer, then I only need four clients to hit that $4,000 a month goal. Now, if you are charging too low and you find out that you would need something like 15 clients a month or even 10 clients a month to hit that goal. That is too much. You’re going to have too much on your plate and you’re going to be drowning. And I don’t want you to do that when you’re already probably leaving your nine to five because you’re not happy there. I don’t want you drowning with too much on your plate and having to have too many clients to hit your goals. So if you figure out that you need. Way too many clients and that just means that you need to raise your prices You either need to raise your hourly prices or bonus tip It is much much easier if you just offer package rates instead of hourly rates So with packages You still give, you still take an estimate of how long it’s going to take you to accomplish the tasks in that package.

Arianna Vernier: But then you add a bonus fee on top for being experienced in that service, for helping your clients by taking that off their plate, and all of that. So you’re not just charging hourly, you’re charging a package rate, and built in there is your fee for your experience, how you’re helping your clients grow their business, etc. Another bonus of packages is that it’s not time specific. With hourly rates, when you set your hours, When your client pays for a set of hours, that means you have to keep track of your time and it’s just very time specific and it’s overwhelming to track your time all the time. But with packages, again, you don’t have to track that time. You might do it at first just to make sure like you’re actually estimating correctly on how long it’s going to take you, but you’ll Get in your mind of how long a task will take you pretty quickly. And then you really don’t have to keep track of your time at all. With packages, you just have a really clear laid out list of exactly what you offer in a package, what the price is.

Arianna Vernier: You don’t ever have to worry about tracking your time again. You can start charging more premium prices. And then when you switch to packages, you’re no longer charging time for money. You are charging money for how you can impact somebody’s business. Okay, so I highly, highly recommend switching to packages or even if you haven’t started your virtual assistant business yet, just start with package pricing right from the get go.

Arianna Vernier: Alright, I wanted to share with you guys my word for this year. For 2024, I do this every year, and I encourage you guys to pick a word that you want your year to represent as well. So, my word for the year is phosphor. I really prayed about it, and God just kind of, you know, pushed this word into my mind. So, my word for the year is prosper. I would absolutely love it if you would come and share what your word for the year is in our free Facebook community. You can find that at facebook.com/groups/virtualassistantmama. Just post in there. My word for the year is this and I would love to celebrate with you and I want to hold you accountable to do this. So this is your homework. Two things from this episode, tell me your word of the year and tell me what your income goals are. If you don’t want to share the specific number, you can just share a range, but I just want to hold you accountable to do this because it is so, so, so important. As I’ve shared here before, I did this process last year and that’s how I was able to hit my goals in 2023 and that’s how I’m going to hit my goals again here in 2024.

Arianna Vernier: So come share in the Facebook group so I can celebrate and cheer you on. I would be so, so, so excited to see what your goals are. And last but not least, I want to invite you to sign up for our free workshop we have coming up next Thursday, January 11th. It’s called the number one way to start working from home. If you have it in your heart to become a virtual assistant and you want to figure out what services you can offer, where to find paying clients, what are the first few things you need to do in your business, this free workshop is absolutely for you. You’re going to learn exactly how you can replace your income from home with your babies by your side and finally pay off that debt and take those dream family vacations.

Arianna Vernier: So make sure to go register for the free workshop at ariannavernier.com/free-workshop, or as always you can find that link in the show notes. All right, y’all I hope that this episode blessed you. I hope you had a beautiful Christmas and New Year’s and spent so much quality time with family and friends. I love you so much, and we will see you in the next episode.