Create services that sell | Becoming a Virtual Assistant

1. Intro to how to create services that sell : Hi, Welcome to create services that cell becoming a virtual assistant. My name is Donna and I've been a virtual assistant for about four years. So I'm just going to cover off how to create services that are going to be what the clients are looking for. In this course, we're going to cover a number of topics that I hope are going to be very useful to you. So first of all, we're going to define what a virtual system is. You might be very new to the industry. This will just going to dumb it down basically as to what it is a verges stone is and what they do. Then we're going to look at the most in-demand virtual assistant skills of this year. So we're gonna go into a little bit of depth into each of those, just so that it can help you in determining what path you want to take. It gives you an idea basically. Then we're going to look at identifying your niche. So you've probably heard the term niche. It might not, might not have heard it. But it's a term that's used quite a lot in Dutch Resistance industry. Basically, we're just going to look at how are we going to define your niche? Basically what it is? Is it important? The next lesson after that is who your ideal clients are. So you need to define who you actually want to work with at the end of the day. Like who actually gets you up in the morning and go yet, I'm really excited to walk. I have you've got clients that you don't feel stressed about. Your clients, that you know exactly what you're doing. You've got good communication, those types of clients. So we're going to look at the types of questioning need to find out where to find your answers and where to research this basically. Then we're going to look at pricing your services. So we're going to look at hourly and packages and basically how to define them. Then we're going to look at building a virtual assistant service package. So we're going to look at the types of tasks, how to parse things. And I've provided an example of that as well. Then finally, what makes a good virtual assistant? So these are just gonna be the key soft skills that you can eat. It's actually really good insight as well. So e.g. if there's an area that is covered in the lesson, you really aren't great at it, or you didn't really know who you're struggling with that. Then there are other avenues that you can take. You can look at learning, but it gives you an idea of what you should be looking for basically. And then finally, your project is a booklet to download, which is basically something that you need to sit and fill out. And it will basically cover everything in this lesson's own, all these lessons basically. So it's going to help you define the tasks that you do, the packaging, pricing, all of that. So you basically just be going through everything that I've covered in this lesson. So hopefully it'll be really useful. So let's get started. 2. What is a Virtual Assistant : Hi. In this lesson we're going to look at what a virtual assistant is. To define a virtual system. It is someone who's going to support your business remotely and are usually part-time. So this is just the general overall of what virtual system is able to do and how it works. A lot of virtual systems will work part-time, but you will find those opportunities to work full-time. For some businesses. Most of the stuff that you do will be remote. It depends on where you live as well. So if you are virtual system for some are quite local than might want to meet up in person, that type of thing, but that's all depending on where you find clients. So what does a virtual student do? They do massive range of jobs and tasks for businesses. So the sort of typical sort of task you see in a normal business. So you look admin, bookkeeping, pestle assistance, customer service, data entry, social media management, content management and research. Phase, a tiny part of what they can do, but these are the main sort of roles currently that people are interested in for that business. Because these are the ones that take a lot of time out of the business and out of the owners of these businesses. So these are some of the tasks that they'll try and pass onto somebody else. So a little bit about each of them. So admin work will tend to include scheduling meetings, booking, traveling arrangements, e-mail much management, and from the bones, organizing Kansas. So general admin stuff for the business. Bookkeeping includes tasks that we'll do with finance, managing budgets, tracking expenses, so little corner font, financing, bits. That is easy to outsource to somebody else like a virtual system. We've got personal assistance, so they will organize all the little tiny tasks such as booking holidays, managing your life, basically organising your counters, buying gifts, that type of thing, so that they're there to kind of walk around you and what you can eat. This is quite good role for some higher-up businesses that don't really have a lot of time. They can manage what they're doing, but their personal life, they need that help. Pas are quite useful. Customer service. So you can totally do this from home. So this could be managing phone calls, emails, chats, that type of thing. But you are the first point of contact when it comes to customer service. This is quite an important one. A lot of businesses needs that good customer service experience for the customers. But you are basically the first point of contact. Data entry. This is quite a common one. A lot of businesses outsource this kind of thing because it takes a lot of time. It's very positive role, but it might not necessarily need it. For a full-time person. Virtual assistant, this is quite a good role for them. Social media management. So this is such a huge popular thing with everything going online lately. Since the pandemic and everything like that, it's been hit. A lot of businesses are pushing for social media. This is how people are starting to buy from it. They're engaging more on social. It's a way to drive traffic to their website. So they will employ somebody to take on this responsibility. It's a huge area at the minute. And majority of the time it is part-time because it's not it's not seen as a full-time position, just purely for the fact that you can fit in a lot of content and creating and stuff. This base of probably eight to 12 h a week. And if you're smart, it could be a lot less. Or if the company is very small, then there might be a lot, lot less time from you. All depends on the size of the business, what the products are, what the services are as to how much content for social media. Content management. So this is quite similar to social media because you're creating content, but this is about looking at other things. So this will be about driving traffic to the website. So you look at creating blogs, maybe PDF resources, looking at ways to increase brand awareness. You will just basically trying to get the business more business basically. So that's what this role is about as quite a popular one anyway, minute. What with everything going online, this is very, very important. And finally, the last row we're going to look at is research. So every business, if they're going to look to grow and become successful, we'll look at research. Research is so important in kinda anything that you do like social media. So same, you research a lot of the stuff that you're going to be creating content for. You're going to look at competitors. With business. You're going to look at other businesses, figure out what kind of things that are working well for them, how you can integrate it into what your businesses. You will outsource this to somebody else to do so you're looking at Competitor analysis, look at the market. But this is not necessarily like a full-time role. So this is why virtual assistants take on this responsibility. It's because it's not always needed. It might be needed. You might need a researcher for say, a month. You might need to kinda do it ongoing, but probably once a month or a couple of hours each week, that type of thing. This kind of VA will probably not have a lot of hours depending on the size of the business. If it's a bigger business than or more hours, a lot of times dedicated. Or if it's a startup, you might find that you are doing quite a lot of research. But this is one of the probably more interesting ones as well. So, yeah, these are all the areas for virtual assistant doc quite popular at the minute. They see what a photosystem does. 3. In demand VA skills: In this lesson, we're going to look at in demand virtual system skills. So the top ones currently in 2022. The first one I'm going to cover is content creation. This is actually a really big on social media and websites are a huge way for business to be found, to be Mehmed. Therefore, there was a huge need for content creators. You probably heard the term more in the last couple of years. Then you would have heard probably say 510 years ago, that wasn't really popular term, but it is now the demand for new content. So out there you probably heard social media. People are always talking about new things. I found this or Pinterest I was on this are all did you see that? It is because there's always new content being created. To succeed as a virtual assistant with this particular skill set. You don't need to have any phone call qualifications or anything, but you need to cut the skills. So e.g. having a graphic design background is pretty good. Or even being creative or knowing what works for your audience is really important. Experiencing copywriting is another one. Because a lot of the time you can be working on social media, e.g. typos or a big no-no. If you can avoid them unless you're intentionally do, of course. But it's really important to kinda appeal to your audience. So you're going to have to write for different audiences at times. So having good cop skills, it copywriting skills is really important. And having a good knowledge of each other social media platforms, because they're all different. So you are going to be writing differently. They're all going to be different things that you've saved from a Twitter, which is 280 characters, to say an Instagram where you can write lots and lots. So they're very different. So it's content creation. Another one that's becoming popular is paid traffic ad managers. So many businesses are choosing to use paid ads on social media now. And Google, it's just a different way of marketing. Years ago, it probably would have been like magazines. They still do it now, but not as much. But this has become quite popular thing. When it comes to add management. A lot of companies see this is a huge asset and it's a very specialist skills while, because you won't be just putting ads out there. You'd be like researching things, working out what ads were doing, AB testing. So there's a lot more in the background. But if you've got this special skill, a lot of businesses are looking for it. So it might be something you might be interested in. Pinterest myalgia is another big thing. This is becoming a very popular one for years now. Not many people know it to be honest, but Pinterest is a growing platform. It's really useful for many businesses and it's a great way if your business to be found on Google helps gory traffic create leads coming out she every popular platform to use. So if you ever go on Google and you're typing something, go to images. Often, you'll find something links to Pinterest. A lot of the time. It does work, so it's actually really useful, but it's becoming more and more used in businesses when they never used to. It doesn't need to be product-based. It can be services. But it's really useful for virtual system to kind of get into this. You can emit understand SEO, have a good graphic design. Sort of understanding newly, or if you're quite creative, or if you really, you can use some templates, but you adapt them quite well. It's really good avenue to get into. It does require dedicated time planning. Pinterest have the renewals as well. So if you put out the same generic staff, your account can be suspended. So understanding those rules, whereas at the other platforms you don't really have that kind of guidelines as such. So pinterest has got his own sort of governance. So having an understanding that's pretty important. Another one, social media management. Yeah, this is, this has been covered in Pinterest and content creation, but this is kind of an overview. Actually creating the content scheduling regular day, coming up with brand new ideas, looking at past posts, engagement with your followers and kind of growing account. So this is another huge part. A lot more businesses, small businesses are choosing to do social media management now. They never used to, but there are now seeing the benefits that other businesses are getting. The traffic going to the website bit more. They getting found easier on Google, that type of thing. So they're now understanding that this is really important aspect of the business to be a virtual assistant. And this is important to understand the social media platforms. Writing good copy. And basically understanding how to grow the following Pi channel basically does a really good app and need to get into e-mail marketing. As social media has grown. So as email marketing, even though many believed it would die out, but it's actually one of the strongest communication tools out there. Email marketing platforms have become more automated. But having good knowledge of your target audience, content that will encourage people to open. And having an email strategy is a skill that takes a lot of time to learn. This is actually a really, really high in demand thing minute. Because a lot of what you can do is linked to social, e.g. a lot of your social can encourage you to sign up for email marketing or on your website, you might have a little pop-up. People sign up to e-mails your latest news. You'll find as well on certain channels you can have newsletters and there's so many avenues just kind of help point to email marketing. It just takes time and a strategy to build up. But once you've kinda hooked people into those emails, people kinda go, yeah, this is a really interesting e-mail to open. So I signed up e.g. social media ones are the latest trends and things and I get them. I have, I'm really looking forward to open them because they're full of information that I'm interested in. So this is really important for businesses that have a lot of information, have a lot of content to give to their followers. Basically, this is actually really important for virtuous is done. Knowing the e-mail marketing sauces that rather the softwares you can use. Mailchimp is important. And maybe doing some courses in email marketing specifically will help understand how it works. Basically how to build up that e-mail marketing list. But like I said, is really important for a lot of businesses, even small ones, to try and build this up. Executive assistants, as many organizations are now working remotely. I think most people are enjoying it now. There has been a huge need for virtual executives and that's risen over probably the last 23 years. So basically what they do is they specialize in helping the bosses of the company to be the best, to help encourage, be effective. Basically being their support throughout. Growing a business is a particularly hard role. You've got to be really resourceful, organized, be able to stay calm under pressure, have a good judgment. Basically, you can be juggling a lot of things, but you will therefore the CEO of a company or a manager of a company. So you're gonna be basically help managing their life basically and that load and making sure that there inefficient in the job. So you might organize their calendars, you might organize their emails, take cools, base basically you'll basically the buffer before them. So you're basically making sure the stuff that's relevant, It's going to them and the stuff that's not so much is kinda like put to the side for another day kind of thing. So basically, we'll really important for the managers. So this is very, very popular role. Having some experience as an executive assistant can be useful or PA, or having customer service kind of background is very useful in this particular row because all those skills you can take from them and put into this. But yeah, this is very so of up and coming is continuing to rise like most of the ones I've discussed that all risen in the last few years. The final one we're going to look at is bookkeeping. Virtual assistant. Bookkeeping has become very hot commodity with many, many visits. This is just because a lot of them are figure, figuring out like, I don't really need to hire full-time accountants. So say e.g. your small, small, small company, you don't necessarily lead a full-time accountants. So it's kinda like throwing money down the toilet basically. And you're, maybe you're not familiar with accounting software and it's one of those areas where you're like, Oh, I'm not really sure what to do. Virtual system. The same bookkeeping is seen as a really good popular thing. It's because they can save the company money. They're flexible. They could be you could hire them for, say, the end of each month for a few hours or a couple of hours per week can be quite flexible with that kind of suits businesses a lot better than hiring a full-time accountant. So that's why people are choosing to do it. It's also good as well as if they end up picking a walk-up, they can increase the hours for the bookkeeper, that kind of thing. So there is a lot of scope for it. So this is another one that's grown quite a lot. I think a lot of business nowadays are choosing to look for assistance and people with certain skills that they can bring in, but they don't need them full-time just because the business aid doesn't need it, or they're looking to save money. Or they just liked the flexibility of having somebody manage something that they don't need to worry about. So these are the main ones currently that have been up and coming. If you're interested in them, I would advise just kinda going out that having to look into learning more about each of them or one particular on. So if you look at bookkeeping, e.g. try and build up your skills in them. Maybe try and get some experience. Maybe go actually stay, sit with someone who's a bookkeeper or speak to other people or do some courses. They are very good roles to get into if you're interested in them. So hopefully this provided some insights into the top ones. Maybe it's helped you realize how important you might find. You've already got skills and some ones and want to learn more. That's great. So go out there and do some research. 4. Identify your niche : In this lesson, we're going to look at identifying your niche as a new virtual system. You've probably heard about niches and how that is focused on defining one area only. And if you don't, you won't find work as easy. But this isn't true. It's always good to have a niche or two to show that you're an expert in this. And then it helps you to find your clients and find the ideal people they want to work with. So first of all, what is a niche? To sum up, a niche is an area of expertise that you know how to do. And a good app if you've been employed for me is being in different roles. You've probably picked up multiple niches. Generally people try and niche it down to probably like one or two key areas so that they can reach their ideal target audience. Having a niche is really good for your business. And these are a few reasons why, you know how to do the job. You probably had loosen those years experience in doing it. So the jobs pretty easy to understand how long a task will take. This is actually really important when it comes to pricing your packages and stuff so that you're not under selling yourself. So knowing how to do that is really important. You're able to provide quotes that are more accurate. So if people are asking for bespoke work, then you can do that. You can make it more accurate than possible. Your potential clients will be confident in your skill sets. That fact, they'll probably look at your portfolio and stuff and they might look at Europe, like the industries you've been involved in. It shows that you have the particular skills that they're looking for and you have experienced in what they do. So it can come across to potential clients really well. Another thing is you can offer guidance and advice to clients that they may not have thought of. So it's always nice to work in something that you know and you're familiar with. There might be e.g. if you're a social media manager and you've got quite a lot experiencing this, you might be able to provide better guidance to say small businesses and things that probably hadn't even thought about some of the things that you're offering. But it helps grow a business in town, can give you more business yourself. So it is kind of like a bit of a loop the more you help them or they'll help you. So it's quite useful. You will also become a virtual assistant go-to in that specific area. So e.g. you may find that you build your website, you build up your social media following and things like that. You're providing advice, tips. You might be doing YouTube videos, that type of thing, all in specific area. And this is what draws a lot of people in. Some clients will be like, Oh, well I saw your YouTube video and you know what, you are actually making lot of sense. You show your expertise. They're more likely to go to you because they can see that you're an expert in that field. Finally, the last reason is you'll be seen as a valuable assets for your skillset. Basically. If you can show that you're really good at something, then the more likely want to keep you around a lot longer, so long time they might be thinking potentially, grow your role potentially. So it's always a really good thing to niche down if you can. I said, nice Grandma. How to work out your actual virtual assistant niche. So don't worry, unless you haven't worked before, you will have at least one area of expertise. A niche will fall under three main categories, tasks, people, and industry. So here are a few examples of the categories that these are to do with e.g. tasks you can do. So think about things you can do and start writing them down. So e.g. we've got webpages, social media minutes, admin, project management, and plus this so many more, but these are generally different ones basically. Take some time, write down all the tasks you can do. Then we'll go on to the types of people you want to work with. So you've got coaches, other marketers. They would need extra support. Managers, consultants, directors training is agencies that the list is endless. There are so many people out there. But you're thinking more of the high-end of people. The people who have control of the businesses themselves can make those sorts of decisions when it comes to hiring outside of the company, they scream. Lastly, the other sector. So if you need to think brightest, introduce, you want to work in education, health care, events, finance, customer service are just a few. At some point, you may have multiple jobs. She may have had some experience in some of these industries, which is brain works for you. But it's also an opportunity for you to figure out what kind of industry you are interested in. So you might find that you really enjoyed one industry more than another. So it's worthwhile just trying to figure out which industries actually get your interest. More trust you have more passionate, you have new job, and the more likely you'll stay in doing it, and it will help grow it as well. So here's just an example of what a niche mentioning it down basically, e.g. you may be an expert in social media who likes to work coaches in the healthcare industry. That is basically a niche. That's all it is. It's just defining what tasks you do. Who with, um, where. Once you understand this, it'd be easy to promote yourself as well. So you can start targeting coaches, healthcare industries, CEOs, managers, consultants in the healthcare industry, various types of coaches as well. You can look into those types of things that connections, and then you can grow from that. And finally, overall, initially something you, you know how to do and you're good at. So you're going to enjoy your work because you're good at it and you love what you do. So don't feel like you have to niche down to one thing. By the way, you can do multiple things. But it just, it all it is is just you can target your your advertising and everything like that. If you just have one. But if you have multiple, then you've just got to think how you can interlink them sometimes. Like e.g. if you have a website, you might just have a separate page for each one with separate portfolio for each, different pricing for certain things. And maybe you might be sharing your expertise a bit differently, but probably no more than three niches and say, if you're going to do it to work with me personally, I have two. Social media and I have Pinterest, which on my main tube. And they've been there for a while as well. There are two big areas I work in. I find it a lot easier to concentrate, promoting both of them because I can just target specific people looking for those services. So it's worth having some time to yourself, write it down the types if you want to work with what tasks you knew and what industries you might be interested in. 5. Who your ideal clients are : In this last time we're going to look at who your ideal clients are. An ideal client is someone who not only needs your services, but all sorts of joy to work with someone. You know, you get on all the time that you love. What you do is so important to know who your ideal client is. As it works out who you want to work with. You can figure out what print services. So if you know who your ideal time is, e.g. you love working with vets, e.g. then you know how to target your audience. You can start looking at different Facebook groups. You can use different keywords. So knowing that makes sense, It's also really important to know this as well because you can write your copy on your website targeted for them. You could have like puppies everywhere. You can fashion it in a way that makes it stand out to vet. So knowing your ideal client is really important. So hard to figure out who your ideal client is. Well, fighting our ideal client takes a lot of guesswork and thinking from a cost perspective. So I love the time you're not gonna get this spot on to be honest, but there are a few questions you can ask yourself, e.g. how old are they? So think about the age group. It doesn't need to be like they need to be 25. It could be between say, 25.40. Just having a general idea of how old they are will help because you, when you write emotional stuff, you know, you can wet it a bit differently to somebody who's younger. So the wording could be a lot different. So knowing how old they are really important, what's the personality like? So a very professional, do you want them to be quiet, bubbly? She want them to like, I like quite good at just giving you whatever you need to do. So personality wise, it, or they're going to clash with you, or are they going to be really, really fun to work with? Then you got to think about, are they single, married? It's not too much. You don't really need that much. Kids or pets. So this could be e.g. five kids. It might, you might find that if it's a very, very small business, there might be times where they asked you to do a little bit more because they've got to take the dog to the vet or they've got kids, you know, school runs or your hours could be around that. So there are key things that you'll understand from asking yourself these questions. So the next one is, where do they live? What kind of hobbies do they have? What industries do they work in? What is the yearly income? What sort of social media platforms do they use? These just a few questions. Just give you an overview basically of what you're looking for from an ideal client. So have a think about these types of questions and write down your answers to these. It will actually give you an overview of what looking for when it comes to a client. So it could actually give you the ideas of are actually they live in this area. And then you start looking into that area and it can lead to find potential clients that you actually enjoy working with. So just ask yourself these questions. I've given you a bunch of questions and then you're probably thinking, how do I actually get the answers for these questions? Because I could just guess it. You could guess them and a lot of time you could you could guess and magically and you might be like half right spot on. I mean, it's a good idea to do as well, but you can actually look for answers online. You've probably got a general overview of what you're looking for. Basically the minute you can actually just go online and a great ideas to go to social media accounts. So e.g. if you will continue with the example. If you realize looking for that, e.g. in the UK, you could sort of look for keywords and social media. You can look Facebook, you can look at groups, things like that, and delve into their profiles and their pages. Even personal accounts as well can give you really good oversight. What people are looking for. You might find out there could be a good opening as well. There might be like home really circling this week or something, but you could direct message and by the way, you do now for these services. So it could be that you find what you're looking for. So that's one way you could reach out. Just friends in the message shows a bunch of people and ask questions, e.g. you could ask them. What do you got sort of task would you give over to a virtual assistant? Just finding out what tasks that people would be willing to part with them or make them think, Oh, actually, I could do with this out. So it's another avenue. Without realizing it, you could actually pick up a client. So all these kind of walk in favor, you never know who you can talk to. So it's important to reach out to as many people as you can. But yeah, that's one way of doing it. Some people do it, some people just rather do. But the snoop on people's accounts, debit a. Guesswork, but they sent the toilet. Q. Or you could do surveys as well as one option or polls, you can do say on LinkedIn or another way. You could gradually just do like key questions and see what answers of people on your LinkedIn profile are going to get back that can provide a bit of insight. Then the final one is guesswork. So like I said, you could do a bit of guessing from your perspective of what you're looking for and kinda run with it and see what happens. You could just guess and then say six months down the line, you're not really finding what you're looking for, then you could do that research. But it's entirely up to you. You're just looking for general idea of who your dream clients is. You're looking for somebody in an industry that you find interesting. You find in people with the same personality or somebody that seems sort of balanced with you in a way you can work for. So hopefully this has given you some ideas and it's giving you some perspective on what to do and how to look for your ideal clients. But at the end of the day you will find them probably just randomly through another person. Or you might come across them when they message you, e.g. that go on your website and ago actually every need that help. It can happen a number of ways. But these are just practical ways of trying to find them yourself. 6. Pricing your services: So in this lesson we're going to look at pricing your services. This is a bit of a tricky one, but we're going to look into how to price your services hourly packages. So first of all, pricing is a bit of a tricky challenge, but it's a very important one as a virtual assistant. So if you post something too high, you might find people but put off too low and you won't make a profit and you're selling yourself short. So let's just trying to find that balance. So when establishing your pricing, here are some factors to look out, to. Think about. How long does it take me to do a task? So write down next time you have to do one. How long it actually took you. What is your level of expertise? So e.g. if you're new, you might price to sell something at the lower end. But if you've had, say, four or five years experience in something, you might find that your pricing is a little bit more, but you can present that to clients. Is that when you're looking at potential clients, you can say, well, I've got four or five years experience. They'll understand what that pricing has come from because they're paying for that for five years. Expertise. Also, you kinda go look at what your business costs are. So e.g. if you've had to buy a new laptop, any software, use the e.g. as a graphic designer, you might tend to use Illustrator or Photoshop. So the licensing for that. If there's any other sort of little things that you need to do your job and run your business, then take that into account as well. You also need to think about the additional costs to perform some of the services for clients. So e.g. if you offer a service, but this is specific software, you need to do it. Take that into account as well. So add that onto your pricing as well for them in particular. An easy approach to working now, what to charge your clients is to think about how long it takes to do the task and then walk out your hourly rate. So your hourly rate as a virtual assistant in UK will probably be, be, on average is about 25 pounds. If you've got a few more years, you can probably go up to 35 to 40. Some people even go up to 50 depending on what special skills you do to try and work out from there. So it all depends on you. So the next thing you need to consider, are you going to go for an hourly rate or are you gonna do packages? So I'm just kinda go through a few benefits of both. So it's a very important decisions aside, you can however offer both, or you can do lean to one or the other, but that's entirely up to you. So first of all, the benefits of an hourly rate is how much exactly you're getting paid. So you can lock down 5 h, you know, those 5 h, you're getting this right rate and you know exactly how much to expect. So there's no hidden surprises when it comes to your work. You will find that as an hourly rate, you might do a range of tasks. You might be able to do different things each day, which is quite nice compared to a package which might be certain certain skills, that type of thing. And hourly rate as well, might mean that you're more available to more clients, e.g. so if you work 40 h in a week, you can block those hours are for different clients and they'll know how many hours you can perform each week. So that's sort of the benefits of an hourly rates. So F is a packaging. Well, you get to control what you offer. So this way you can put in five key things that you're going to do in those packages. And that's what the clients get. Those five things you don't need to worry about. Not stress of a new activity or a task that somebody wants. You know exactly what you're going to be doing. You can also focus on streamlining your services. So if you're in social media management, you could focus on say, three platforms and everything is, these packages are focused on those three platforms. So you can streamline a bit more basically, horizontally. It can be varied sort of tasks that you can handle. For some businesses, it's a really straightforward approach in that it's easier for businesses to go on and go. Yeah, this is what we need. Whereas if you do hourly, they might not understand what they actually do need. Whereas the package is they're black and white. I do this, this, this, this. And they're like, Yeah, okay, that's what I need. The other thing is as well, some businesses don't realize they need to do certain things. So e.g. if you're doing Instagram posts and in the package you offer. So e.g. hashtag research. So you're going to be performing what works, what doesn't really go into in depth to make sure the hashtags are actually working. They may not have thought of that. And I think we're actually, we've been doing Instagram for you. It's not really getting anywhere. Whereas this kind of added extra that it's working and it's actually reaching out or ideal audience. It's something that they might be like that is actually really good. So it kinda opens some avenues as well for the businesses to grow their businesses by offering these teeny tiny things, they don't even do. Also a packages as well, you might find that it's more stable because e.g. the packages that you refer exactly what they want. They might be e.g. hourly, that can be a little bit more like I need you for 5 h this week, the following week it could change, whereas packages is very consistent. Every month, you're gonna do this schedule. Every month you're going to do this. I'm finding it's a lot long time. It's better for your business. For me as a virtual assistant, I find packages work really well with my clients. I've had them for two to three years are really great. I have a couple of clients, but not many. And it varies in workload. So it's entirely up to you. The services you choose to offer. And your pricing structure is actually just determined by how busy you actually are, how stressed you can get. So some people can deal with stress, some people come and how much money you need to make. So besides working out the hourly all packages, you need to determine how these sort of packages or the parsing is going to work for you. So Packages could work in the way that, you know, at the end of the month you're going to spend a few hours. So on people's schedules off for the following month, you know, what's going on. Whereas hourly you might have work that comes in the day before, all that day and goes, Can you do this now kind of thing? But that might not fit in with what you're doing. You might find like myself, I work full-time on our virtual assistant, so it's not always I'm not flexible. So you can go to tell and what you wanna do. But you have to realize nothing is final. So if you set up your business and you find that you do all these packaging services, structures and things like that, offering this, that and everything, you might not find that it doesn't work like if your clients aren't interested in them. But when you start promoting hourly, there might be, oh, yeah, okay, That works German. So you can change your business the way that suits you at the end of the day. So when it comes to pricing, take some time to think about all the points we've discussed. Write down everything, write down how you structure them, what your hourly rate would be. So it helps with your packages side of things. If you want to go that way and work out how many hours you can give each week so it can help make your decision for you. So hopefully this is helpful and get writing. 7. Build a Virtual Assistant service package : In this lesson, we're going to look at build a virtual system service package. So what package offers is a specific service or tasks that you'll be doing at a fixed price timeframe of your choosing. So usually, an example is you'll offer social media subsidies for say, 100 pound a month. So that's all three combined and that's basically what your package is about. So it's a good thing for your clients as well. In fact, that they know exactly what they're getting in your packages. They know exactly how much everything is per month is the same as you. You're not sure how to get started with this, so we're just going to go through a few steps. So first of all, you need to discover your talents and your skills. So first of all, open notebook and write down all the things you're good at. The things that you'd like to do, and any skills you've learned from previous roles. So you're just writing down the things that you can do. Then you need to define that into the things that you like and then sort of narrow it down so if you find that you're really interested but admin side of things and you can offer say, five or six services. That's great. Keep them down written down in your notebook because we're going to need them later on. The next step is to find out what your client's needs. So if you already have clients, great. What you could do is you can write down all the tasks you currently do for them so you know exactly the types of tasks that they want. But if you're very new to it, it is often difficult just to figure out what you actually want. So this is the time where you need to do some research and fewer ideas is you could do a poll. So you've got social media, say e.g. you can do a poll on LinkedIn because loads of businesses on this. So you could do a quick poll and see what people are interested in. You can direct message certain businesses. You could do surveys if you've gotten large enough follow. Or you can join some virtual assistant groups, which is what I've done. Virtual assistant groups of gray in the fact that you can throw out questions and people come back to you with what they've experienced. Because if you're very new, that extra support will help you understand what you want to be doing and sort of pricing and things like that. And it's a good research tool. Basically, sign up to some virtual system groups through Facebook app, see tons out there, and see what you find out. But then today you are going to be guessing roughly what you want to be doing because you've got sensors skills. You can either adapt these to your clients or they can adapt to you a little bit. But whatever skills you offer, clients are going to want them anyway. The third step in this is figuring out your pricing. This is one of the most challenging aspects of setting up your packages, is figuring out how much to charge people. An easy way to look at it is to kinda look at the tasks you doing, break them down and work out how long it takes to do the tasks. So e.g. I. Do social media a lot. So I'd break down how long it takes me to create the artwork and the caption per, per design and then work it out from there, and then figure out the pricing from there. But you also need to figure out your hourly rate. So typically in the UK at the average is about 25 pounds. So you can roughly work on that. If you're fairly new. Anything 25 or that seemed quite a lot because I'm not actually an x-bar, then you can lower it, but don't lower it so much the Yukon of selling yourself short. So you just need to think about that. You just need to take your time just to figure out what sort of pricing you think is acceptable. So here's an example. So in this package, it's a Silver Package for content creation. You creating full social media posts a week for Facebook hashtag research, scheduling will oppose. And 1,000 word blog a month for a package of 400 pound. So basically you're trying to set out the easiest ways to do it is bullet points anyway, is to show what services you're going to be offering, what you're going to give people in a nice, clean, clear way. So this is an example of doing that. So, yeah, so in this lesson, I hope this has given you a bit of an oversight and how to price your packaging. What I would recommend is taking the time just to research. Have a look at other virtual assistants in your area. Once you've decided what you're leaning towards, the types of substances they're offering, the types of packaging. Even throw it into a virtual assistant group. Going, what do you think to this? Do you think this is a good balance? Do you think it's good pricing? And see what people have to say? But it's just getting out there as much as possible and doing research is going to help you give you the answers that you need. 8. What makes a good Virtual Assistant: In this lesson, we're going to look at what makes a good visual system. There are many things, traits, skills, and experience that can make you a good virtual system. First of all, reliability is really important. Clients need to know that as a virtual assistant, you're reliable in green, all the tasks they give you, they feel that they can trust you because they know that you're going to deliver what you set out to do, which is really important. Another aspect is being resourceful. So virtual assistants, e.g. if you're a social media one, being resourceful is really important in that aspect because there might be things that crop up that you like, Oh, your clients not aware of. And if you present the myth, I think, you know, actually that was a really good idea that we didn't pick up on. It just shows you a kind of going the extra mile with them. Sometimes. It's also really important. Some clients you may find they have last-minute issues that crop up or a task very time-sensitive, you going out of your way. It's actually really appreciated by a lot of clients when handling these aspects. It's also a good thing as well. Keeps the relationship going longer as well, because they remember that time, Once upon a time that you helped them out when they needed it, they might sort of the company's growing. They might give you more responsibility, which is really good in growing your business as well. Communication, this has got to be one of the most key things. Key skills that you need to have is so important to be able to do this as it can create a positive experience for both of you. So you need to figure out your method of communication. Some clients, I work with, emails, some Whatsapp, some messenger, some will use other online tools and things. With updating tasks and things, you just need to figure out what works for you and your client. Once you establish that. That's it. You can medication can be really smooth. Nothing will get missed. So it's really important skill to have and to learn about. Next one is creativity. A lot of businesses struggled with creativity. So this isn't for every virtual systems is probably more content creators, social media managers. What types of roles as a virtual extend the economy to have this sort of skill. Because you'll be designing a lot of the stuff that the businesses want. Social media banners, newsletters, union, a marketing or business. So having creativity is important. Also, you've kindergarten patients with that when it comes to it, because some clients don't really get creativity very well. They might have something in their mind telling you what they want when you produce it and then get back, you might find that they have something else entirely in their mind. There is a level of patients when it comes to creativity, especially when starting out with new businesses. It's just trying to find out the style and what they had in mind. But yeah, it's really important for probably the main sort of design marketing and social media roles. So good time management is another aspect of assistance. Need to know how to manage their time. So don't miss any important deadlines. How you do this is entirely up to you. A lot of virtual assistance. And how planners with set out times and things like that with their daily routines. Some people have Calendar updates and things like reminds us all the time. Some use online tools that sets out tasks for them and things like that. But it's all about learning what works for you at the end of the day, I can tell you how I do it, but you might find a completely different way of doing it and it works for you. So have a look around and figure out what works for you. Another thing is being organized that kinda ties in with good time management as well. So being organized is always useful so you can stay on top of things. It's about bit like time management. The more organized you are with your task, you didn't know, the better you are with your time management. So these are two key skills to be able to learn to do. You might find that you're not great with this straight away, but there are ways to learn about as well. So you can always have a look at online blogs, looking at actual, like quick courses and things. Maybe you just type in organization and virtual assistants into Google. See what comes up if you just need a little bit of a nudge on how to kinda help manage your time if you're really new to being a virtual system. Now, everyone's learning the skill straight away, so don't worry. The lat last two, self-motivated has to be the second top virtual assistant skill that you need to do to be really good at what you're doing. This is just because as a virtual assistant you wiped from home. Primarily. You're going to be going out. You won't be having managers talking to you all the time. You won't be in an office environment which is very different from being home. So it requires a lot of discipline and motivation from you. So by having irregular routine, it can actually help motive motivated throughout the day. So you might find that you might organize your time and e.g. the first hour of every day you might look at emails. The second hour might be doing some social media posts, and the next one could be something else. Maybe having a bit of a routine can help with be self-motivated. But it is something that'll take time to learn. If you're not used to, working from home is something you will learn to adapt to. The final one. Detail oriented. Virtual systems must be detail oriented so that they can catch any mistakes before it goes online. Any other way, e.g. email marketing, any other channels. Basically, typos can compromise a company's professional image. You know, when you can look on Instagram or you look on anything and there's a spelling error, that kind of level of trust goes back, doesn't it? You kind of just saying, oh, we do. I trust this company because there's a few spelling errors. That's the impression people get. So that's why you need to be detail oriented. It's the same like e.g. if you're a finance special system, yours is all going to be about numbers. So if you are off by a decimal, then you might find that your, all your finance documents are wrong. So having been detail-oriented, so important. But yeah, these are also the general tops skills and traits that you need to be a good virtual assistant. But like I said, a lot of them you pick up, you will learn, you will adapt if you don't. There are ways to learn these new skills that you haven't had to do before. So don't worry, you could do some research. If you feel like any of these down, you're like, Oh, we're not like that. Just to see if there's ways to help you learn those skills. But hopefully this has helped. In your journey as a virtual system.