Are You Ready to Become a Virtual Assistant? 5 Questions to Ask Yourself

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Two reasons for a virtual assistant’s survival and success are education/skill level and the motivation to become a virtual assistant.

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How can you make sure you are one of the successful virtual assistants? Ask yourself these five questions:

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1. Are You Really Ready?

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Have you prepared yourself mentally to be a business owner, rather than just an employee at a job? As a business owner, you will be the one making decisions about what services you will provide, the types of clients you will work with, the hours you will work, and the office equipment and supplies you will buy.

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Having this kind of freedom and control is one reason many virtual assistants decide to start a home business. This can also be stressful for new VAs because, when you are starting out, there may be a long list of decisions to be made and questions you need answers to.

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Starting out as a business owner, you will need to wear many hats in your own business, including administrative, marketing your business, securing contracts, and financial organization.

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As you transition from an employee-type mindset to a business owner mindset, you will need to prepare your family and friends for your change in lifestyle because it will be much easier if they are supportive of your goals from the start.

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2. What is Your Niche or Target Market?

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Have you researched and identified your niche or target market? One reason that many virtual assistants fail is that they don’t take the time to do thorough research to determine who they want to work for. If you know who your ideal client is, it will be easier for you to find them, market your services to them, and provide the best possible service to them.

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3. What is Your Business Plan?

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Having a plan of action is one important factor to the success of your virtual assistant business. What services do you want to start out providing? Do you want to work full time or part time? Will you will work by yourself or partner with other VAs in some manner? Do you want to find and hire clients directly, or subcontract from established VAs? What is your starting financial goal to meet your budget? By planning all of these things ahead of time, you can keep focused and balanced, both time-wise and financially.

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4. Who Will You Turn to For Advice?

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As a new virtual assistant, it’s almost guaranteed that at some point you will need support and advice. No matter how much previous on-the-job work experience you may have and planning you do, you will encounter unexpected challenges. How will you handle this and who will you turn to for advice?

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Don’t be afraid to ask for help. You don’t have to struggle and become stuck. The last thing you want or need is for your business to shut down because you don’t get the help you need.

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Many successful VAs and entrepreneurs have a mentor or business coach to support them and guide them in growing their business so that they don’t lose momentum and they continue to succeed.

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This is not considered an expense, but a valuable investment and strategy in your long-term business growth and success.

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5. How Motivated Are You to Succeed?

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To be successful as a virtual assistant and business owner, you must be motivated. This is not a good career choice for the lazy or undisciplined entrepreneur.

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You must be willing to keep pushing and striving, even when progress seems slow and you feel discouraged.

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You must be innovative and put strategies in place that will set you up for success and business growth.

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You get out of it what you put into it, both in time and money. You must be committed to reinvesting into your own business to develop your skills, and keep up with changes in technology and internet trends.

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You must put the time into learning as much as you can, absorbing as much information as you can, and developing your business so that you can market it in such a way that it stands out to your ideal clients.

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Now that you’ve asked yourself these five questions, you can ask yourself the most important question again:  Are you ready to become a virtual assistant?

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If you are ready, my Getting Started As a Virtual Assistant course will be starting again soon. If you would like to be the first to find out when it’s starting, enter your name and email in the box below. As soon as I’m ready to open the doors, I’ll send you all of the details about the training!

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Getting Started As a Virtual Assistant Course
Enter your name & email to be the first to know when this course is starting!

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