It’s past the middle of October, and because I always do my goal setting in November each year, I thought it’s a good time to share with you what I have learned to be the top 10 virtual assistant skills that will be most in demand in 2018.
It worked to my advantage because I basically had no competition. Clients were mostly from the US and Canada, and the virtual assistants back then were the locals, meaning the empowered American and Canadian women who started this revolution of working from home. Offshore VAs like myself were very few. And independents like myself were just a handful. Most of the virtual workers I came across with during those days were actually working for companies. Companies find the clients, and they just assign projects to the virtual workers.
In my case, I ventured on my own. I went to Craigslist and scoured through the ads. I built my own website (a hideous one, I have to admit, because I did that at the time that I really had no technical experience), and sold myself to clients based on my corporate experience, my command of the English language, my passion for learning, my get-it-done attitude, and my sense of humor.
Today, the Philippines is one of the top sources of virtual workers, and the community of virtual assistants is growing exponentially. Workshops are happening almost every week, offered by just about anyone who has a working knowledge on the topic. There are even enterprising ones who offer workshops based on theory, without any hands-on experience at all.
The surge of the virtual assistant population is understandable. More and more people are opting to work from home. Mostly mothers who want to spend more time raising their children, and those who are just tired of battling traffic every day.
What this population growth means is that competition is getting stiffer, and the only way to stay in the game is to keep up with what the market demands.
The virtual assistance niche has been going through some shifts in the past years. When I started out, I was a general VA. Then came the time that I felt that the market was focusing more on specialized skills. Specialized niches pay more, and less stressful. While I continued to offer my services as a general VA, I spent time, money and effort on mastering a niche, and carved out some time from my daily schedule to allow myself to offer shopping cart set up as a project-based service.
Late last year, there was another shift. Clients now look for virtual assistants who can do multiple specialized niches. Say hello to the versatile virtual assistant.
So now, if one has to take on a client who has an online shopping cart, the virtual assistant has to know how to manage the website, manage the shopping cart, write and edit the copy of product description and site content, provide customer service support, edit graphics, manage social media… the list goes on.
Clients, especially the small business owners, are looking for people who can do it all, or at the very least, not afraid to learn every aspect of the business and be part of the operations. As a virtual assistant, these small business owners are my ideal clients, because there is an opportunity to grow.
In the workshop I recently attended, I learned that these virtual assistant skills are what will be most in demand in 2018.
Project Management Skills
Systems Thinking Skills
Online Community Management
Online Marketing Funnels
Writing & Editing Skills
Content Production & Marketing
Multimedia Editing Skills
Online Events Management
Marketing Technology
Website Management
Presently, I’ve been doing a lot of systems thinking, website management, project management, and writing and editing. What I would really love to learn are multimedia editing and marketing technology. I know how to do online community management because I’ve done a little bit of that before, but it’s not something that I would like to offer as a service. I also know content production, but I would like to focus my effort on that towards my own business, not the clients’. 🙂
So how about you? Are you ready for 2018?
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post? Please leave a reply below, or post them on my Facebook Page.
This is going to be a self-serving post, but please bear with me.
I call myself a business coach. No formal certificates to go with the claim, just me and my accomplishments as an entrepreneur, and the knowledge gained from the online courses I paid hard-earned money for just so I could learn how to organize my thoughts and processes and put them together in a coherent order.
I started out as a Virtual Assistant, and I have since registered my VA service as a business. So I’m a taxpayer, and still running my business from the four corners of our humble home, together with my husband.
Being an autodidact helped, so it was not long before I was also offering services outside of virtual assistance, like web hosting, website set up, theme customization, and online shopping cart set up.
Virtual assistance is a lifestyle. Some days I plan how our family will spend the day according to my workload, and some days I plan my workload depending on our family activities. Same thing with house chores. Like I can forget about house chores when I have deadlines. Or I can do house chores all day when I know that items in my inbox are not due in the next twelve hours.
Then came the time that I decided to take up a hobby. Because really, working from home can be draining. I needed a reset. And there were thousands of pesos worth of yarns in the house that were untouched. So I decided to take up crochet. And I was hooked, pun intended.
But a hobby costs money. And people who know me know that I’m big on financial management. I always make sure that I’m not spending more than we can afford. So I created another opportunity for me. I started selling my finished projects, and in a few months, I registered another business. So I now have a second TIN, ending in 001.
I’m known in the VA community because I’ve been conducting workshops on how to become a VA since 2013. So when I came out with my crafts business, people have been inquiring if I also have workshops on how to launch a crafts business. That’s how Hobbies to Business came to life.
I’m a results-oriented person, and after doing the classroom workshops for three years, I felt that I was not seeing my desired results, that of seeing my finishers soar in the VA niche.
Paying for a workshop in a classroom setting means an attendee gets what all the other attendees get. That is good up to a point where you get the general idea of what works and what does not. But when one factors in the circumstances of an individual, the general idea may not work anymore.
So I decided to switch to one-on-one coaching. I felt that creating a plan tailored fit for a particular person will give more bang for the buck.
But why coaching? Why not just mentor?
Uhmmmm… Because I also have a family to support. And creating a plan takes time. Time that I should put to use in putting food on the table, providing for the needs of our children, preparing for our retirement, and on a good day, resting.
Not to mention earning back the thousands of dollars that I spent (and still spending) on learning all the things that I could not learn for free.
And this is why my coaching is not free. Of course, I still mentor when the coaching period is over.
The big question now is: Do you want need to be coached by me?
And why do you need a business coach anyway?
Here are eight reasons why.
You need help getting started.
You have the skills, the qualifications, and the time to be a VA, but you don’t know how to get yourself out there. You don’t know how to find clients, or better yet, you don’t know what type of clients will be the best fit for you. A business coach who has been there and done that can steer you to the right direction.
You need a push to the next level.
Most people I know launch into the virtual assistance niche and just stay there. Three, four years into the niche, and they are still chasing clients, instead of having clients chase them. A business coach can guide you how you can move up to the next level. Just let me know your goals, and I can help you create the steps to reach them.
You are stuck.
You can get to a point where you get antsy where you’re at. You’ll feel tired and may even feel like giving up and start on another path. Or you can be just bored with the repetitive motions you go through each day. A business coach is someone you can discuss your thoughts with and help you find clarity to get you moving forward.
You have a “shiny object syndrome.”
I know this because I’ve been there. I would see social media posts of what other virtual assistants are doing, and I’d think, hey, I want to do that, too. When this happens, I lose focus of where I’m at. That is a dangerous attitude to have, and fortunately, I caught it early and was able to avoid doing it again. As your business coach, I can help you steer clear of this issue.
You need to have more balance.
You may find yourself working more and more for the success of your business and neglecting your family, or it can be that you’re spending more time with family that you don’t have enough time to spend on your business to make it successful. An experienced business coach can help you achieve a lifestyle that will allow you to enjoy both family and business. And throw in a hobby into the mix, too!
You need to find your purpose.
If you got into the virtual assistance business without knowing your “why” yet, a good business coach can help you find at least three of them. Knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing will allow you to focus on your unique selling proposition and identify your target audience.
You need a sound action plan.
Every business needs one. A business coach won’t make it for you, but they can help you narrow down what is essential and what is not, making your plan easy to implement. Because really, a great action plan is nothing if you cannot implement it.
You need accountability.
A virtual assistant is not an employee. A virtual assistant runs an independent business so there’s no one looking over your shoulder to see if what you’re doing matches your goals. Having someone to call you out when necessary is crucial to the success of a business.
You need a cheerleader and a friend.
That’s actually number 9, and I only said 8. But who’s counting? And yes, personal experience says we VAs need a friend. Working from home can be lonely. Lucky for me, I got to hire my husband, so I have an officemate to have coffee breaks with. Or give me a massage. And then there are days when I give my daughter a project, so I have someone to “bully” in the office. But some of us don’t have the perks I have.
I told you this post is self-serving. But only if you will hire me as your business coach. If not, then this is just another one of those informative posts that I put out there for my readers.
All 8 of them.
And if today is your first time to visit my blog, I thank you and welcome you with open arms. And I hope you’ll come back.
Have you ever tried to start something knowing full well that any mistake you commit may result to irreversible damage?
Yesterday, I did exactly that.
I migrated one of my personal sites from one hosting to another, with zero previous knowledge of how to do it, relying on the little knowledge I have of how the cPanel works, and fully aware that one single letter I add or delete from the code will break my site and be gone forever.
I have my partner and dear friend, Jennyfer Tan, known to most people as The Techie Mom, who does all migration and technical stuff for me. But with the influx of hacking and phishing alerts we’ve been getting on our hosted sites, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the cPanel. And while there, I got to thinking, why not try something I’ve never done before?
Let me just say here that I’ve been managing WordPress websites for years, and I have built all my personal and business sites by myself, so as far as the WordPress dashboard is concerned, I’m a pro.
Site migration is a totally different story.
Backing Up and Exporting
Sunday is usually a slow day for me. I do most of my side hustles over the weekend. And while I was waiting for feedback on the salon website I’m setting up, I decided to try migrating one of my WordPress sites from where it is now to the new hosting that I have recently purchased for this blog. This has been part of my plan of getting all my ducks in a row. All my sites under one hosting account.
Backing up the site was completed without any problem. Same thing with the export. I was feeling really good with myself!
Creating the new database and installing WordPress
Next thing I did was add the domain to the hosting. This is also another process that I have perfected over the years, since I do offer web hosting. So adding the domain to host, installing WordPress and pointing the domain to the server is easy peasy. But this process of migration is a bit tricky. The site I was going to migrate is live. So I need to create a temporary URL within the hosting so I can migrate the site there, test if it’s working, before I point the domain to the new server. This way, the site will remain live where it is while I’m migrating.
And if I ever mess it up, the site will still be intact where it is.
The tricky part is that… while I am used to creating a temporary URL for about-to-be migrated sites, I could not find a way to do that with this new hosting. So I went ahead and installed WordPress to the subdomain.
And kept my fingers crossed that I would be able to figure out later how to switch that URL to the actual site address.
Uploading the exported files to the new server
The upload, just like the export, went without any problem at all.
Then it was time to test the link.
As expected, the URL that was showing was the exact WordPress Address URL. That is not what we want to see. What we want is the Site Address URL, so I went to WP dashboard > Settings > General, and changed the site address URL to just the domain URL, not the subdomain.
That worked, but something’s not right with the site. When I try to display the site using just the domain, some weird characters were appearing instead of symbols. Like the dropdown arrows on the main menu were appearing as numbers, and the icons of my social media links were appearing as weird squares.
Okay, so this is the part where I’m actually kicking myself for not taking some screenshots so I could show what I’m talking about. But I didn’t actually plan of blogging about the experience, so there.
The hunt for the correct code
I’m not a techie person, and codes and I have never been formally introduced.
But I do have a good head on my shoulders, so I did what any thinking person should do.
Google!
I found exactly what I need from this site. But the solution given made me pause a bit.
The code has to be added to the .htaccess file.
And do you know that the .htaccess file is a hidden file? It is hidden for a reason. The reason being so that nobody who has no business touching it will touch it.
And being non-techie qualifies me as a person who has no business touching it.
But I am determined! I can do this! So I unhid the file and clicked on edit.
Breathe in… breathe out…
Pasted the code at the end of the script, and here is the migrated site now. If you click on the photo you can actually go and visit the site.
There are still a number of pages in draft mode. I have been working on this site on and off in the past years. This site is what I use for all my affiliate activities. There are a few Amazon pages not shown on the menu, coz they are for customers’ private shopping.
WAHM-preneur Marketplace
I’m calling it that because my goal is to make it a platform where WAHM-preneurs can meet and support each other. I have a few businesses already listed. And I’d like to encourage you, to list your business, be it a product or a service, here. Listing is free. Just your business name, a short description of what your business is about, and a link to your site or social media profile.
Banner ads on the sidebar, footer, and within blog posts are also welcome for a minimal fee. Just to fund the site’s maintenance. Please message me for details.
I also welcome guest posts just like the article already featured, How to Make Mango Puree. That article was written by a friend from an advocacy group I’m a part of. I welcome articles that will also inspire others to start something.
Start Where You Are, Use What You Have, Do What You Can
Wherever you are, whatever you have, whatever you do, you have the power to start something.
DISCLAIMER: While I do encourage anything DIY, technical stuff is something that I would personally leave to the experts. Especially if the site is more that 500MB. 🙂
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post? Please leave me a message, or post them at my Facebook Page.
You don’t have anyone to go to when you have questions about something. You don’t have a colleague that you can rant with when you’re not happy with a project. You can just easily miss new technologies being introduced in the market because you don’t have time to check. There may be new ways of doing things that you have not heard about because you are all caught up in your own space. You can find yourself lost on how to deal with clients on a variety of situations that arise. When you network with other WAHMs, you address all these things, and more.
Let me share with you what I think are the top ways you will thrive when you reach out and leave your comfort zone.
1. You’ll find joint venture partners
One of the ways that you can grow as a WAHM is to join forces with other WAHMs as joint venture partners. This is exactly what I did back in 2013, when I partnered with The Techie Mom. Her strength is my weakness, her weakness my strength, so we joined forces. We offered a workshop together and we offered complementary services.
Having a partner means you can plan to host events together, do a course together, start a membership site together and so many more things that you may not have ever seen yourself doing on your own. The best way to find a partner is to network with other WAHMs and look for someone whose strengths are your weaknesses, and vice versa.
2. You’ll find friends
When you are an employee working in a normal office environment, you usually form close friendships with co-workers. The reason is, you’re with them eight or more hours a day, five to six days a week. There is little time to make friends outside of the office anymore. But when you work at home, it’s even harder. If you are like me, then most likely, you hardly leave your house, so when do you find time to be with people and make friends? When working online, you’ll have more in common with other online workers and you can share your wins and losses with them just like you would at work in a way that you both understand. This will make you be happier where you are at.
3. You’ll feel less lonely
The number one grievance of many who try to start a WAHM career is they feel isolated and lonely. You can be the world’s most introvert introvert (if there ever is someone like that), and still there will be moments that you will want to have someone to talk to. Finding other WAHMs online to chat with is a great way to avoid this feeling. You can join Facebook Groups, WAHM Forums, and other types of online communities, and if you participate, you’ll always have them when you need them.
4. You’ll stay on top of new trends
An awesome part of networking with other online workers is that it helps you stay on top of what works best in the industry you’re in. One thing that helped me succeed is my ability to set up systems and procedures. If you are within my network, it is most likely that I have shared with you these systems. What I’m saying here is…The successful WAHMs who started before you already have it worked out. You can learn from them. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just network, and you’ll find gems along the way.
5. You’ll get referrals
You might think that networking with your fellow WAHMs is networking with your competitors. In some cases, that is true. But not all WAHMs are in the same niche as you. That means many people can be sources of referrals for you and vice versa. To get more referrals, give more referrals.
6. You’ll be more inspired
I do hope you are the kind of person who celebrates other people’s success. I am. I do. I use the triumphs of other WAHMs as my inspiration to do better, my motivation to work harder. Because I know they did not get to where they are by being complacent. They work hard, and so do I.
7. They’ll help you
People, for the most part, do like helping each other and seeing others succeed. I know I do. And this is especially true in the WAHM communities I’ve been fortunate to be in. We’re a a sisterhood of WAHMs who “get” each other, and we do like it when we see our friends succeed and bring their respective businesses to where they want it to go. My advice is, get an accountability partner. Or a mentor, if you will. Someone you will be comfortable to share ideas with, and brainstorm and remind each other of your respective goals and help each other achieve them faster.
8. You can build an expert status in your chosen niche
When you are in a community of WAHMs and you sincerely try to help, younger and less experienced WAHMs will look up to you. Those people you help will pass that information to others, and you can build a real reputation as an expert within your niche.
Networking with colleagues is all about building relationships. A business relationship can lead to a real friendship. Having friends in the industry can help you get through the toughest of times, and celebrate the best of times. These connections can make all the difference in how you’ll achieve success in your journey as a WAHM.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
Please leave me a message, or post them at my Facebook Page.
If you are following me on Facebook, you must have noticed the number of times I’ve posted an inbox zero status. Thanks to FollowUpThen, inbox zero is now more a way of life than an occasional achievement.
As a virtual assistant, I receive an average of a hundred emails daily. And those are just for my main client in my VA business. I’m not even counting the emails for my side hustles.
My inbox is pretty organized. I have folders according to recipients so I know which ones to attend to as soon as I log in. I have folders according to events that I’m organizing for the client, so I know where to look for expenses that need to be reimbursed or where to look for communication threads should there be a time that they need me to look for references. I have folders according to contact category, like affiliates, consult clients, coaching clients, podcast guests and suppliers.
But the challenge has been in keeping track of email threads. Not all people are prompt responders. Some would really require several follow-ups before they would respond. And with the sheer volume of emails that flow through my inbox every single day, some would tend to fall through the cracks. These are few and far between, but yes, there have been times that a scheduled consult would be due the next day, only to realize that the client has not replied to confirm the call.
The fix that I creatively used was to mark emails needing follow up as unread, star them, so that they all go to one folder, and because they are unread, they stay at the top of my inbox for me to see each time I log in, as a reminder that I have to send a follow up.
Another tool I used was the mighty pen and paper technique with post-it notes and my daily planner.
But that was stressful! Not to mention time-consuming. And messy.
Imagine having, say, ten clients who do not check their e-mail everyday. That’s an additional ten unread emails to the new hundred that I get each day. Or having to write the same reminder on the pages of my planner each time I turn the page to another day.
Then I found FollowUpThen.
Not only was I able to clear out my inbox, I’ve also been able to keep my planner almost blank. No more writing down notes to myself. I just keep my task list in my e-mail, and they pop up at the time that I need to be reminded.
Another fun feature is that when I send an action item to my client, I’m also able to remind him when he forgets to respond. 🙂
If this is the first time you are reading about FollowUpThen, go ahead and check out all the cool features at their site.
You can use it for free, and you can set-up up to 50 reminders in a month. Or subscribe to a monthly plan (as I did) so you can set up as many reminders and tasks as you need. And what’s really cool is that you only need to subscribe to one plan, and you can link your other email addresses to it.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post? Please leave me a message, or post them at my Facebook Page.
In 11 days, I’ll be conducting the second run of my#hobbiestobusiness workshop. A workshop on making money out of a hobby, which I conducted for the first time in August 2016.
Last night, as I was cleaning up my digital folders, I came across an old photo. The one where it all started. My first crochet project.
From this sampling of stitches that was made into a purse and several failed attempts to hand-knit, to creating a brand and registering as a business, I can proudly say that I’ve come a long way. The flower button in the photo was not by me, but something that my daughter – the one who inspired me to start crocheting – made for me, just so I could post a finished project. This was in May 2015.
After that simple purse, I went ahead and made myself a tablet pouch. I was able to start and almost finished it while lining up for my daughter’s enrollment at De La Salle. This was still in May 2015.
To practice, I made this ribbed scarf for my dear friend in Canada, and proudly posted it on my social media accounts.
From then on, inquiries started to come in. And I started accepting orders. Scarf in the photo below was my first official order, but alas, I could not charge for it, because I got the pattern from a site that expressly states that projects from the pattern cannot be sold. So I just asked for reimbursement of the cost of yarn used and the shipping fee.
I bought the domain name for another purpose, but when I started crocheting, I just went ahead and set up the site.
The project that followed was a simple scarf. I got two skeins of yarns from my daughter’s collection from Gantsilyo Guru. I used the stitch that I was most comfortable with, the mighty DC, and used the redundant stitching to practice my tension. I was able to sell this scarf to a friend, and she ordered one more. I made her a two-toned infinity scarf, which I named after her. 🙂
And this Minimalist Scarf for men. For this one, I used the awesome SC all throughout, 7.5 inches wide, 72 inches long. I was really making money out of my hobby!
Turns out, men dig scarves, as I received 4 more orders of that Minimalist Scarf afterwards. I was on a roll!
Everything just got better from there. I have since graduated to making projects using multistrand yarns (which is really a challenge for a newbie crocheter) and have sold a number of lacy projects in the past months and several more on queue.
I registered the business in July 2016, and got verified by Facebook just a few months after that.
My story can be your story, too.
You may have a hobby that is actually sucking up a portion of your family budget, so why not make it self-sufficient? Or better yet, turn it into a business, just like I did.
Or you may have a skill that could be income-generating, but have been doing for friends and family for free. Like organizing events, scheduling travels, designing invitations… Those are skills that properly packaged, can be launched into a business.
The challenge is where and how to start. And this is where I can help you.
It has not been easy for me. I learned to crochet at the time that there are about a thousand crocheters competing for projects already. The industry is filled with skilled crocheters and artists, and neither of those descriptions aptly apply to me.
What I did have was a process. That was is my skill. I know how to build a personal brand, and I used that to build my own following that is not based on quantity, but on quality.
Join me on January 21 and find out how you, too, can earn by doing what you love, and create a brand with who you are.
And of course, the learning will not end on that day. All attendees of the workshop – past and future – will become members of the Hobbies to Business Community that we already have on Facebook, where like-minded individuals get to lend support to each other.
