What is a Virtual Assistant - My Story

The average office environment has been changing a lot in the past few years. I think that during CoVid many of us realized what has been working isn't going to continue to work for us anymore. This is the story of how I started working for myself as a virtual assistant.

My Beginning

I started my business in 2019 after I graduated from college with my Bachelor's degree in Business Administration. I was working as an Administrative Assistant in a government capacity and handled normally day-to-day actives for my workplace. At that moment in time I was scared to take the leap and pursue this dream. I figured, I went through the classes, it can't be that hard, can it? My degree was focused on marketing and normal operations of a business, I also had about 5 years of experience. I had also taken a lot of accounting classes, so I figured that is where I would start; as a virtual bookkeeper. I signed up for QuickBooks and received their Pro Advisor certificate and was officially open for business. Now what? As a marketing major I know how to brand, how to evaluate customers and do studies, I even knew things like gorilla marketing or direct mail marketing, but as an unexperienced bookkeeper where would I start. So I did nothing other than file end of year forms and my business practically died.

Trials & Errors of Business

The start of CoVid was a bit eye opening for me, as I'm sure it was for most. I was able to experience what it was like to work from home, and get an idea of what it meant to be a virtual assistant. I had a full time job at the time, they just moved me to working from home 4 days of the week. I would go to the office once a week to get mail, scan in documents, and enter the invoices for that week to be paid. The rest of the time I worked from home answering emails, taking phone calls, attending zoom meetings, and filing paperwork for our customers. I had this idea that maybe I could once again try this business thing out. I had found a class online about how to become a virtual assistant and I figured that I had learned most of the business aspects of how to run a business, I had worked in business, and all I needed was a little bit of help on how to push it online and find customers. I paid for the class and was completely devastated, it taught me nothing that I didn't already know. This class did offer a job board on Facebook where job leads would be posted and I tried to negotiate with myself and say that was the benefit for paying for the class. I applied to jobs off the job board but still wasn't completely comfortable in how to market myself for this new role, that I had technically never done before. I was turned down constantly for the silliest things. I was told things like:

"You have never ran a blog, I just feel like you wouldn't be able to help me."

"Do you even know how to do data entry?"

"Based on what you submitted, we don't feel like you have the skills necessary to perform the work required."

Um... what? I worked at a data entry company where we were required to enter around 150 documents a day and I learned how to double that work in 3 months. I had been an administrative assistant since 2014, I could type at 65 words per minute with zero errors, I had a degree in business with a minor in marketing, and I had created and managed social media pages and websites since 2016. What were they talking about? Had they even read the resume I sent them?

"I slowly started gaining confidence in myself and revised my resume, built a website, designed business cards. I began to start talking about my business, because if you don't promote yourself and you don't trust yourself; no one else will."

Acceptance

I started accepting the fact that "No" doesn't mean that you are wrong, pursuing your dream is bad, or that they don't like you as a person, it is simply that they don't need that service at this time. I began to not take it as personally and continued to apply for as many positions I could. I even would reach out to positions that weren't listed as remote, or virtual just because. If you never ask the answer will always be no. In this practice I did find success, it was slow but it came with consistency and the passion to keep trying. Through this practice I have met many people that have assisted in my growth and the growth of my business. As I mentioned, I started with the idea of offering bookkeeping services and this grew to other services as I learned. I was able to work with a mother out of California who just wanted some simple data and website links to be entered into a spread sheet so they could keep track of the data.

"My dream is coming true, even as I write this."

Through an odd connection of fate I met a business owner out of Syracuse New York looking for a bookkeeper where I learned about medial billing and how to communicate with owners that are different from myself. I grew in this realm by meeting a few other business owners of many different fields and bookkeeping events that I wasn't sure of so I had to push myself to grow more and learn even more. I then grew my business on social media because I wanted to be able to use that marketing degree and offer services in social media management. I started with Facebook and grew into instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest; and I don't plan on stopping their. At the beginning of 2023 I found another educational class that taught individuals how to pursue their dream of becoming a virtual assistant. This one actually was very informational. It helped me figure out what kind of services I wanted to offer and how to offer them. Even though at this point I knew many things about invoicing and taxes but this class will also teach members how to do that themselves. For those of you that would like to take a bit of a short cut to become a virtual assistant I would highly suggest signing up for this class: Virtual Savvy.

Then in 2023 at the lowest point of my in-person professional career I was able to land my first position working as an actual virtual assistant. After years of working in government I was poached by a small municipality in the State of Washington and was quickly promoted to a Deputy Clerk/Treasurer. After spending countless hours, working through lunches, staying late, and reaching out to many professionals to build a better system to do the work I was doing, I was fired. I felt as if all the wind was blown out of my sails and I was left to drown in the ocean I was trying to sail on. I will take the blame on what I wasn't able to finish and I felt as if I couldn't ask for help, however this process was exhausting. At this time I was also building my business working mostly as a bookkeeping professional and this City said upon my exit,"Maybe you just aren't really good at Accounting, maybe you should find a job doing something that you are better at." How was I supposed to continue working as a bookkeeper if I could even make it as a Treasurer. Even thought this was a huge hit to my ego I continue to take classes to make sure I am good at what I do. Then I was hired by a team that worked with a motivational speaker who lives in Europe. I have been able to start working on growing as a social media marketer and will move on to help manage their email inboxes. My dream is coming true, even as I write this.

Believe in Yourself

I haven't been able to work full time in my own business yet, and I believe that there will be a day in the future that I will be able to work full time remotely. Perhaps even hire a team of dedicated employees to help me. I have seen so much professional growth and personal growth since 2019, and I am so proud of the person that I am becoming. If this is your dream I hope that you believe in yourself long enough to see if it what you truly want. If you are ever interested in learning more I hope you will reach out to me or you can check out the system I used that finally built up my ego enough to pursue this passion further: Click Here!