Summary
Now you know the questions to ask to create your ideal client avatar. Not everyone is your ideal client. While you could work for anyone, you won’t want to nor will all clients value you.
You know how to use your knowledge of your ideal client to gain clients. Knowing what is important to your future clients, how you can associate with them, and what you already have in common will position you to work with those you were meant to work with.
You’ve discovered what your deal breakers are and how they will damage your business. Knowing who your deal breakers are is instrumental and will help you to avoid many pitfalls. It will also help you get into the proper frame of mind of a business owner.
With the knowledge of who your ideal client is, how to gain them, and the deals you won’t break in business, we can move on to chapter 2: Finding Your Niche and Monetizing.
CHAPTER 2
Step 2: Finding Your Niche and Monetizing
I’ve grown my business in several areas, but I wouldn’t still be in business if I didn’t niche when I first started. All the opportunities I’ve had resulted from the first opportunity to make money in my niche. Before that, my clients were piecemeal and I went through feast and famine cycles. Now my niche is education, something too broad to have begun with. Being broad is being bland, and I love what Pia Silva says about being bland—“Bland is not a flavor.”
One of my least favorite sayings is “fail fast.” For years I didn’t understand the idea behind it. Why would anyone want to fail? Is it really necessary to fail? I was not a good student and the verbiage took me right back to school. I hated it. Failing, to me, was basically the worst thing in the world. Then I read a book called Creativity Inc., written by Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar. He described failing fast in a completely new way which actually made sense to me—The idea of failing fast is so that you don’t become married to it.
This is really great advice because not all of your niching ideas will work. Not all of my ideas worked, and some still don’t. Not everything worked out the way I planned. But the longer I held on to my ideas before I tried to learn if they would work, the more married I became to them. The consequence was that it hurt more when the ideas didn’t work. If your idea does work, you’ll kick yourself for not trying it sooner. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t hurt as badly and it’s much easier to shake it off. All that time, effort, and energy can take a lot out of you.
Don’t confuse quitting the services you offer with quitting your business. You’re heading down a new, unmarked path. Don’t be afraid to get off the current trail or stop to regroup and assess the situation. This is actually a best practice. As long as you’re in business, you’ll always be tweaking your model, brand, and services. What works today might not work tomorrow. Your clients may be the same, their needs may change, you may change, your desires may change. Everything is constantly evolving. Stay present in your business.
Fun fact: Did you know that Pixar’s widely famous movie Inside Out was once a failed idea? It’s true!
As you begin thinking about choosing your niche, consider talking to people about your ideas. A common thing I hear is, “I wanted to do XYZ, but I was told it’s not scalable.” In the beginning, don’t worry about being scalable. Your first order of business as a business owner is to make money. You can find a way to scale later. Right now scaling is the least of your worries. Grow first, scale later. If you’re not even close to client capacity, having a solid income coming in every month, and identifying your ideal client, there is nothing to scale.
Once you figure out how the money’s coming in, you also need to have a system to replicate. Whether you want to change your ideal client, change your services, or business model, it all starts from figuring out where the money is coming in—your ideal client and ideal services will lead you to your niche.
Do the One Thing That Matters Most
You could have an excellent business full of value, but to the wrong person it makes no sense. Instead of selling umbrellas to those caught in the rain while wearing their brand-new suede shoes, you’re trying to sell discounted umbrellas to people on a Sunday stroll in the park. It really comes down to not only bringing in more clients but being able to make better decisions about who your clients are and how they serve as a win-win for both your business and theirs.
As service providers, finding our area of focus is often called niching. Do you have to niche to become successful? No, not necessarily. Is it the fastest way to make money and get clients? Yes, absolutely. So many struggling virtual assistants have told me that besides not having an ideal client, their biggest problem is they don’t know which service matters most to their clients. The process seems counterintuitive to them. Yet if you want more clients and to make more money, this is how you do it.
Keep in mind that VA businesses are no different from other businesses when it comes to building a successful business model. Nordstrom started as a shoe store. Amazon started as on online bookstore. Google started as a search engine. Where you begin is the start; it’s not the end. Your goal is to learn how to make money every single month.
Why is this so important? Because if you are stressed over a lack of money, you cannot think clearly and you will no doubt miss out on opportunities right before your eyes. Why can it feel so hard? Because the process is not linear. You won’t find the answers on an organizational chart.
When I arrived in Thailand in October 2017, it was after many hours of traveling, delayed flights, rescheduled flights, lost luggage, lack of sleep, and a lot of frustration. I wasn’t able to take a hot shower for the first three days. Plus, I immediately began working graveyard shift hours. You could definitely say there were a lot of stressful things happening all at once.
The first days after my arrival, I went out in the late evenings in search of food and coffee. I found nothing satisfying and ended up eating awful instant soup cups from 7-Eleven. I walked what seemed like forever at 1 o’clock in the morning to a 24-hour coffee shop for my first cup of hot coffee. While I was full and caffeinated, I was not at all satisfied. I would have paid just about any price for a decent meal.
On my third day, the hot water had finally been fixed and nothing felt as good as taking a hot shower. I went out during the day and suddenly my eyes were opened to everything around me. On those first nights, I had walked by no less than six coffee shops, and there were three 24-hour coffee places closer than the one I had gone to. Food was plentiful and the number of options was almost overwhelming. In my defense, one day many shops were closed due to a national holiday. However, I didn’t even notice what I was passing by. I didn’t see what was staring at me. I literally didn’t see the restaurant signs. How could this be?
When we miss the fundamental basics of our life, our vision is clouded. As the saying goes, “Money isn’t everything, but it’s right up there with breathing.” In this particular case, the hot shower I missed was my currency. Without it I didn’t feel comfortable going out during the day. I didn’t feel like myself. It was as if I was carrying around days of baggage and travel that a cold shower couldn’t remove.
When you have money issues and worries, you can miss opportunities and signs right in front of you. We make our lives harder than they need to be, and the obvious goes unnoticed. My goal is to get you making money as quickly as possible. Niching and knowing how to monetize is the answer.
Are You Struggling to Figure Out Which VA Services to Offer?
One of the most common questions virtual assistants ask is “Which services should I offer?” It’s hard to narrow down because chances are you have many skills that are desirable to potential clients. This is especially difficult if you come from an executive assistant background. You’d get fired for doing less, let alone doing just one thing, no matter how well you did it. Remember, EAs and VAs are not the same. They are like cousins. What worked for you as an executive assistant will work against you as a virtual assistan
t.
The more services you offer, the more likely you are to confuse your potential clients. Your clients have the same issues as you. They will get busy, stressed, pulled in many different directions. When they look over your long list of services, they won’t be able to process the information and are very likely to miss the one thing you could do that would benefit them the most.
More importantly, if you offer too many services you will be pulled in different directions without mastering a certain field. It’s no longer just about the work. You’re also a business owner so you need to act like one. Mastering a specific field is how you become known, how you get referrals and gain more clients. When you are known in your area of expertise, you can learn to duplicate your systems, diversify the way you earn income, and charge higher rates because you know the return on your client’s investment.
One of the most common reasons VAs don’t want to niche is because they are afraid of becoming bored. When niching is done right, you won’t have to worry about this. However, in the beginning it is easy to do it wrong because we think in terms of our duties, not our strengths. When you work in your strengths, you’ll be using a lot of your talents and abilities. Don’t worry about becoming bored. This isn’t your business model forever. When the time is right, you can expand your services and clientele. Niching is for now, not forever.
If you can’t monetize with one service, you can’t do it with two, three, or four. When you offer that many to begin with you won’t know what works and what doesn’t. We all love what we do, but love doesn’t put food on the table or keep a roof over our heads. My goal is to get you to your first client and then work on creating a thriving business. We’ll spend more time in chapter 7 learning how to grow your business. That’s where we get to create magic together, and it’s my favorite part of consulting with VAs!
To find the right answers, you need to ask yourself the right questions. Here are five questions to ask yourself. Remember niching isn’t only about the actual services you’ll offer. It’s also about the unique market you’ll be serving.
What do you love AND what gives you energy? You’re going to be doing it for a living. Every. Single. Day. It’s not only about loving the work. You should find energy from it as well. If not, even if you love what you do, you will get burned out very quickly.
What comes naturally to you? When you think about this question, don’t limit yourself to your business life. Think about your personal life as well. Don’t dismiss something because it is easy for you. That is a huge mistake! What is easy for you is often very difficult for someone else.
What do you dislike? Inspiration can come from need, but it can also come from frustration. Is there a product or service you want to offer because what is currently available is subpar? Do you think you can do something better or for a greater good? Is there no one addressing your specific needs? Remember you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Slight changes can cause huge shifts.
Are you part of a niche market already? Oftentimes you may look outside yourself while the answer you’re looking for, is in fact, you. What unique qualities do you possess? What groups are you a part of that you can tap into? Do others ask you questions about certain topics or markets because they consider you the expert? Use all these things to your advantage.
What do you believe in? When you believe in something, you exude passion and excitement. It’s undeniable to those around you and they want to jump on your train.
Are you beginning to see a non-linear path? Finding your niche isn’t meant to be difficult, although it can feel that way! It is tapping into the person you already are, simply doing less and getting paid more! That is why it is so difficult. Our natural instinct is to be all things to all people, and that won’t get you anywhere but frustrated and burned out.
The process of niching can seem difficult because you have to drill down and discover not only what you’re good at, why you enjoy it, and who is going to pay for it, but then you have to learn how to explain it. Again, this is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. We frequently overlook our unique niches because we do these things naturally and without thinking. We take our skills for granted.
My own story took more than a year to be revealed. When I stumbled across it, all of a sudden it made perfect sense. I felt like I was searching to find the needle in a haystack. In the middle of a hayfield. While suffering from hay fever. With no medicine to cure me or at least to dull the agony.
On the other side of my story, it became painfully obvious to me. When people ask me about how I got started, the yearlong journey turned into a five-minute story that rolled off my tongue. Often VAs will tell me, “Wow, that’s really great! You’ve done a lot!” Sure. Now. When I was going through the process, I wasn’t able to see things as clearly. I was trying to follow an upward flow when it was the rabbit trails that did me the most good.
Working with my business coach, I had fought some fierce battles as she kept telling me to go deeper. I did everything on the surface. On the surface is where we get to see our work. We package it up all nice and pretty and have something to show for our efforts. Forget about yourself as a VA. Think about yourself separate from your work. Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? You’re on the other side of the table now. This is how your clients think. They have to go through the same processes. Going through it yourself will benefit not only your business but theirs as well.
Now take the answers from those five questions you just answered and decide what you would like to be known for. Calling yourself a virtual assistant does not provide who you serve with what types of services you offer. It only tells people how you’ll be serving them. So the real question becomes “What do you want to be known for?”
When thinking about your clients, remember they need and want specific things for their businesses. They’re not comparing apples to apples or even apples to oranges when they’re looking to hire a VA. No, they’re choosing you from the entire fruit stand. What are you so known for that your potential clients know to choose you the moment they see you? Remember, they’re busy and will gravitate toward the shiny object.
The virtual assistance world could be called a crowded market. However, when you know who is going to choose you and why, it begins to get less crowded. When you can nail down the experience, the crowd is gone. When you can shine, you get picked out of the crowd.
Complete this sentence: You are the VA who _________ (fill in the blank) for the client who___________ (fill in the blank). From here all your other questions will be answered, such as.
Who needs it?
Why do they need it?
Who will value what you’re known for?
Who will pay for it?
You must be willing to get specific. Saying you want to be known for being the best VA in the world is pretty hard, especially since we don’t have any type of competition to prove it. Being known for providing the best customer service is too vague because no one knows what that service is.
You may not know what you want to be known for yet. And that’s okay. I didn’t either. So start by listing everything you’re good at. EVERYTHING. This will cause you to overlook the “whys” and “hows” of your career. Aim to make a list of 100 things. If you can think of more, keep going. What might seem insignificant can lead you to understanding yourself better and in a way you never considered before. I promise you’ll discover a pattern. Then you’ll figure out how to connect the dots to create the lifestyle you want. Suddenly you’ll find yourself staring at things you’ve overlooked for years.
To get to this place even faster, enlist the help of everyone you know, everyone you’ve worked for. They don’t even have to be your closest friends. In fact, someone you had a casual conversation with at soccer practice or at a volunteer event might have a first impression of you that’s completely separate of your longtime friends who have watched you grow over the years.
To better understand how this proce
ss might look, let me share my story with you. I had positioned myself as an executive virtual assistant, but there was a major flaw in my plan. Most people don’t know what that is or what that means. Promoting yourself as “saving time” (this is the biggest one among VAs, and I might have been the biggest offender) isn’t specific enough. Everything and everyone claims to do this.
Partly on the right track, I sought out what made me happy and excited me—calendar management—but that turned out to be a superficial answer. I was competing against apps and other electronic tools, which I was happy to do. The clients who could have benefitted the most from what I was offering didn’t hire me. What was worse, I couldn’t even give my services away. It was a crushing blow.
So I drilled down to figure out why my calendar management skills are so useful—it’s because I can make a person’s life easier, filling in their business, personal, and family goals and commitments. I could forecast the future, plan for delays, and find others to take over when necessary to keep moving forward. Because I managed my supervisors’ calendars successfully, they could begin projects they wanted to but never had the time for.
I realized that because I could manage calendars well, that made me a “productivity expert.” This led me to remove “assistant” from my title. But being a productivity expert wasn’t right because that meant I was trying to teach the wrong people to be productive. I don’t believe my clients should be productive in the same manner that I was as an assistant.
At this point I hit a wall. How could I always get a 9 to 5 job and be in demand, but now I couldn’t sell my services? I was frustrated, upset, discouraged, and wondering how long I could go on like this financially. How long could I stand being miserable without work? Then I got a message from a gentleman on LinkedIn. He wanted to speak to me about working together.
Become A Successful Virtual Assistant Page 4