Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
This episode is the second in a series of four episodes that I want to share with you as a lead up to my 50K VA Group Coaching program that is launching next month. Missed episode 1? Tune in to it here!
Today I want to talk about the essential skills that every 50K VA (and beyond) needs to have.
Today’s Quote: The only way to do great work is to love what you do. — Steve Jobs
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
What essential skills does a VA need to have to earn 50K a year or more?
As I said, I’m going to be launching my 50K VA program next month, and this series is to help you decide if building a 50K business is for you. Yes, of course you can scale beyond 50K with the program, but if you aren’t consistently earning over $1,000 a week right now, that’s where we start. And plus, 50K VA rhymes, so that’s why I call it that!
So, for your 50K business skills, you might think I’m going to say social media or other specialized skills, but that’s not what this episode is about.
What you do for your clients should be what you excel at.
Taking a social media course doesn’t make you a social media expert.
When clients pay top dollar for a specialist, they want someone who has training (if necessary) and experience. Proof that they are worth what they are charging.
But it’s not just what you do for them that you need to master. Soft skills are equally important – and often forgotten. We’ll talk about that too.
Here’s an interesting statistic: according to a report by Upwork, 70% of freelancers (that includes us) who continuously upgrade their skills report higher client satisfaction and increased earnings.
There is something about a VA who upgrades their skills as a business person, who invests time and money in networking and events, and who look to raise their rates and work with high level clients – that makes you naturally appear like a more serious business person.
Not like the VA who just wants to work a few hours a week to earn grocery money.
Now don’t get me wrong – there is NOTHING wrong with that VA. That was me for a long time.
I knew I needed to earn $600 a month when I first started my VA business, and that would cover my part of the household stuff. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I had a newborn and that was my job.
I was saving money by not having a second car, not commuting to work, not putting my son in daycare, and not paying for lunches every day. What I needed from my VA business was perfect for me.
BUT then when he got old enough that he wasn’t napping all day, and I got bored 🙂 I wanted to grow my business.
So I had to do the things I’m talking about today.
Higher rates, working more, more specialized skills, better clients, more consistent income.
Consistently improving technical and soft skills is the key to attracting and retaining the high paying clients that you need to build your 50K business.
Why is it important to develop the essential skills I’m going to cover today?
Because they make up the foundation of what your business is – why it is better than the VA beside you.
You become a better business owner, a better VA, and you will attract premium clients and manage your business effectively.
When you develop competence, your confidence becomes so much more apparent. Talking with clients about how you can help them is easy.
When you demonstrate professionalism, clients see it. High level clients seek out VAs who can handle all the balls they have in the air, without micro managing them.
When you showcase your essential technical and soft skills, you position yourself as a capable and reliable VA who can deliver what they promise.
I will categorize your essential skills into two categories today: technical skills and soft skills.
Core Technical Skills
Prepare to master the key technical skills that your niche needs. Specialization can’t always happen when you first start your VA business – trying to sell a service that you don’t have any experience actually can be really hard.
You are already learning to be a business owner and have business conversations with people.
Once you master that, though, the field is wide open.
Master – and I do mean master – the technical skills your people need in their business, and you will have clients coming out of the woodwork to work with you.
When you master a service, it not only enhances the quality of your work but it also boosts your confidence, and a confident VA can take on the higher level clients .. can attend the high level events where their ideal clients are also going… can invest in their business to keep getting better.
I have travelled to a number of conferences where my clients and their colleagues were going. It cost me money – $1500 each time – but when I came away with clients that were paying me $750 or $1200 a month, it was well worth the investment.
So what are the core technical skills I think you need?
Project Management
Many VAs help clients by managing their to do list. It’s a start.
But being able to coordinate projects and keep them moving, keep them on budget and on deadline, is a different skill than that.
We need to be able to allow for the proper lead times when we are working with other contractors. I remember helping one of my clients do a complete rebrand, and I had to coordinate the photographer, the graphics people, the website designer, and everyone else. Do you know that website people are very slow? Every one of the ones I worked with took forever to turn projects around. When you are managing a project for a client, you have to be able to handle things when they are moving at a snail’s pace and get the team moving forward. That’s high level.
You have to be good at time management and managing deadlines, and making sure that all the balls stay in the air. When I would organize live events or virtual conferences, there were so many details. I did a lot of them myself, but I also had a team of subcontractors that did various parts for me. Being able to get help to do what you need to do moves projects along too.
Social Media Management
Yeah, I know, I told you that you don’t need to learn social media to specialize your skills or services.
But it is one of the things that high level clients need help with all the time. When they are doing launches or filling programs or hosting events, they need to get the word out.
The cool thing is that the need for the social media support becomes so much clearer when you are also managing their projects.
If a client is just looking for one to one clients of their own, they might not be doing that much social media. So they might need a solid strategy that will help them to gain visibility, become the sought after expert in their field.
That might be out of your scope of experience, which is fine.
But when you are working with high level clients who are promoting specific things all year, that’s easy!
You can create their content, repurpose it, schedule it, do analytics, and it’s related to the projects you are already managing for them.
How many people saw the 10 posts about the upcoming event? How much interaction was there on them? How many signups?
When social media goes beyond the regular ‘here’s who I am and here are all the services I offer’, social media management is an essential skills that you need as a VA.
Specialized VA Service Skills
Of course an important way to become the go to girl for your clients is to specialize in an essential service like email marketing, bookkeeping, graphic design, and so on).
Not every VA is creative, or good with numbers, or good with detail oriented work. Not everyone who starts their own business is either.
The difference between us is that we are support professionals, so we can learn those things – they are a good thing to add to our toolbox. Our clients don’t necessarily need to learn to do them well because their specialty is something completely different.
And of course when you have premium clients, you can also afford to invest in learning and keeping on top of industry trends that are important for your clients’ businesses. And you become an expert at their stuff too!
Essential Soft Skills
A study by LinkedIn Learning found that 92% of talent professionals and hiring managers say that soft skills are just as important, if not more important, than hard skills.
92% ladies!
I often hear clients say they want to work with a new VA that they can grow with. I hear VAs say the same thing.
And there is nothing wrong with learning on the job and getting better at what you do.
So if you have a few essential soft skills, you can learn the tech, right?
Yes you can. I’ve learned everything I know while on the job.
Soft skills can make or break you as a VA – and they are crucial for a VA to have to reach the 50K income level.
I’ll cover what I think are the most important three today: communication, time management and client relationships.
Communication
When any VA comes to me and asks me what they need to do to be a great VA (a ridiculously good one, as a matter of fact) – I tell them to master the skill of communication.
Clear communication helps you work better with clients in so many ways. It keeps meetings short, it helps with your efficiency and time management, it helps you build a great relationship with your clients, it helps you position yourself better in networking conversations.
Communicating clearly is, I think, THE most important quality or skill a business owner should possess. And second is the thing they do for their clients.
How can you learn to communicate better? You have to critique yourself, or have someone else do it for you.
Practice active listening – when you are in conversation with someone, take a beat after they finish talking. Really consider what they said, and then respond accordingly. I got told that I didn’t active listen by the HR lady for one of my clients. I was a contractor so she wasn’t really my HR lady but she tried to be.
She told me that when someone was talking, I wouldn’t be listening (or maybe I was) but that I was formulating my response in my head before they even finished talking. And then as soon as they finished I would start talking. She taught me that was not active listening, and said that I would get better conversations if I would just slow down and take that beat. It works – and you should be doing it too.
Time Management
Time is money for VAs and clients, so you have to make the best effort to use both efficiently.
Time management is the second thing that I tell VAs they have to master to build a 50K business and beyond.
Whatever your system is, make sure you are following it closely and doing things are efficiently as possible.
Work pace is something that isn’t really brought up in a corporate job – we have so much time to do things – especially if you work with the government LOL), and we generally don’t rush to get things done. It can be a big change to all of a sudden have to increase your work pace so the client doesn’t blow their budget working with you
If you aren’t good at time management, get good at it. Take training, use techniques like Pomodoro or time blocking. There are so many ways to learn to manage your time better – you have to find something that works for your work style.
Client Relationships
The last soft skill you must master to become a 50K VA is your relationships with your clients.
Building strong ones takes things like communication, respect, understanding, flexibility.
I see VAs getting upset in the VA groups about how their client talked to them or handled something with them. That’s soft, but it’s not a soft skill.
Don’t bitch about your clients online. Ever.
If you have a communication problem with them, fix it.
If you have a money issue with them, talk to them about it.
If you have an issue with them micromanaging your tasks, change how your work with them so they don’t have to wonder all day long if you are working on their stuff. When clients feel the need to ask, it’s often because you aren’t communicating well enough with them, or not using a project management system that they can pop into to see project statuses.
Building strong client relationships is essential to your success as a VA.
You want to perfect things like your onboarding process, your professionalism, your communication, your response times, your clarity, your project updates.
So many things that you can do to manage and exceed their expectations.
Providing excellent customer service is also key. When someone spends their money on YOU, you want to make sure they feel valued.
These are the essential skills you need to be a 50K VA.
i was a 50K VA and beyond when I was only doing VA work and it made so many things go well for me.
My reputation was stellar.
I was organized and detailed.
I got referrals all the time and my clients were on a waiting list.
I commanded high rates from my clients, because I delivered on what I promised and then some.
If you want to be a 50K VA (or beyond), master this stuff. All of it. And more.
It’s not hard. And it will make all the difference in your VA business.
Keep learning.
To stay competitive you should always be learning. Technology changes – and whether you provide techy services or not, working virtually uses technology. Keep up on it, and make changes when you need to, to stay on top of things to provide your clients with the best service you can.
You don’t necessarily need certifications in stuff to offer high level services – but you do have to confidently talk about them, and market them to your clients. You have to walk the walk.
Professional development is key. And investing in your business is too. Find the programs and the groups and the support and advice you need to keep growing.
You need support and guidance to go somewhere you haven’t been before.
This is why I do what I do now. I still have some VA clients, but I focus on helping VAs just like you get to where I got and beyond as a VA.
Let’s revisit the quote from today: You gotta love what you do.
We are in this for the long haul, guys, and you can’t do that if you don’t like what you are doing all day long.
Let’s build you that 50K VA business – by improving your technical skills and your soft skills.
That’s some of what we will cover in the 50K VA program. I will show you how to uplevel your professionalism, marketing, communication and so much more.
I’m going to leave it here for today but don’t miss the next episode in this series when we talk about, “Building a High-Value Clientele as a 50K VA”.
If you want more information about the program, drop me a PM. I’ll share more info in the coming weeks across all of my social channels, but I’m available to answer any questions you have right now too.
Your skills are the most essential piece of your VA business. You need to focus on what you are putting out there for your clients, so that your client list grows along with your experience.
Thank you again for trusting me to teach you and to guide you. I truly love to be here for you every week.
If I could ask you a favour – to subscribe to the podcast or leave me a review if you haven’t already. That’s something I should say every week and I never really do. But it matters and it will make sure that I know you are finding value in what I create just for you every week.
Do You Need Help?
If you are looking to build the kind of business I’m talking about – a 50K and beyond VA business, that’s where I can help. I am here to help you become a ridiculously good VA.
I have helped hundreds of VAs who are stuck get moving through private coaching, group coaching, and live and self study trainings. If you want to talk about how we can work together, let’s connect on a Cut to the Chase call. You can book yours at YourVAMentor.com/chase
Thanks for tuning in this week! I’ll see you next time!
What You Need to Do Next:
PRIVATE COACHING: Let’s work together privately to get you to your really big goal. It’s the fastest way to get results and we can start right away. Learn more about private coaching here.
GROUP COACHING MASTERMIND: The Virtual Circle is a group coaching mastermind option that costs less than private coaching, and can help you achieve the goals you set for yourself. . Check it out here: The Virtual Circle Group Coaching Mastermind for Virtual Assistants . We’d love to have you join us!
50K VA GROUP COACHING PROGRAM: If you have been struggling to build your VA business, get in on this live coaching program where we will help you create the framework for a business that can earn you 50K a year and beyond. LAUNCHING FALL 2024, stay tuned!
MONTHLY EMAIL MEMBERSHIP: I also have a brand new low-cost monthly membership program that will help you build your VA business – and it doesn’t require you to be on social media! It’s an email membership that I call The Virtual Toolkit! Every Monday morning you’ll receive a lesson and a downloadable resource in your inbox, that you can use to take a step further in your VA business. Get more details and sign up here now!
SELF STUDY PROGRAM: My self study program Getting Started as a VA can help you get your VA business started easily and quickly too. You can sign up right away and be on your way to getting clients by the end of the program, with all the right foundations in place. Check out the program here.
COMPLIMENTARY CONSULT: Reach out to me if you need to talk about where you are stuck and what the right option might be to get you moving. It’s literally all I’m here to do is help you get to where you want to go. Book a complimentary Cut to the Chase call with me here.