Episode 327: What Does It Actually Take to Become a Virtual Assistant?

Full Episode Transcription:

Arianna Vernier: I had somebody recently ask me what it actually takes to become a virtual assistant. What do they need to know beforehand and all the things. So in today’s episode, I just wanted to answer that question. What does it actually take to become a virtual assistant? There is absolutely no previous training required if you want to jump into the virtual assistant world. There’s just a few basic skills that will help to set you apart and to help you do well in this area, but you don’t need like tons of experience or training in order to do it. So the three skills that you should have at least some understanding of is one being organized because you are running your own business as a virtual assistant. You are a business owner and you’re doing services for other businesses. And typically you have like a small handful of clients that you’re working with.

So you need to be able to be organized and make sure that you’re spacing out the work. In the best way that fits your schedule, making sure you’re hitting deadlines for your clients and making sure you have all of their info saved. So when you sit down to work for them, you can easily access what you need to, to get your work done and all of that. So being organized is really helpful. You guys know I talk about Trello all the time. That’s what I use to keep my client work organized. And if you want my weekly planner that I use in Trello, you can go to ariannavernier.com/free-weekly-planner, and grab that there. And that’ll set you off on a great foot.

All right, the second skill you need to have in order to become a virtual assistant is you need to be like decently good with a computer. You don’t have to just be this amazing techie person, but you need to be able to navigate simple programs on the computer. Word, email, some social media, whether you’re doing social media for clients or doing your own to reach more clients. Need to have an understanding of how social media works. And just simple things like that, be able to figure out how to send a contract, even if you don’t know how to do it yet, like having an understanding of knowing what to search to be able to get a contract sent, an invoice sent, things like that, figuring out what program you want to use for that, whatever you need to have those skills. So just the ability to figure things out on a computer, even if you don’t already know them. Right. I’m going to set you apart because if you have that ability to figure things out, you’re going to be able to offer whatever service you want to offer. The third skill you need to have prior to becoming a virtual assistant is just some level of customer service. You don’t have to have. had a job in customer service previously, but you need to understand like how to keep clients happy, how to keep their clients and customers happy if you’re helping them with those issues and just being respectful and professional. Is going to set you apart. So again, just knowing how to be respectful and professional to these potential clients is really going to help you to stand out and land more clients.

So real quick, let me recap those three skills you need to have at least somewhat in place before you become a virtual assistant. Number one, you need to be somewhat organized. Number two, good with a computer. You can figure things out even if you don’t know how to do them yet. You can search your computer, search the internet to figure it out. And number three is pretty good at customer service. Now, if you really want to dive into the virtual assistant world and you want like a roadmap for how to get there, I’m going to invite you to my free workshop where I teach you the five P’s to become a successful and profitable virtual assistant. So you can register for that at ariannavernier.com/free-workshop, or you can find that link in the show notes. All right, y’all. Thank you so much for listening to this episode and we will see you next time.