Virtual Assistant Course for Complete Beginners!

1. Welcome & Introduction: Hi there. I want to start by welcoming you to this course. My name is Sadi Kumar, and I'm going to be your coach to this course. This course is designed for complete beginners to bachor Assistants. Even if you only know the word bachelor Assistants, but you don't really know anything about it and you don't have any skills, this course is going to teach you everything that you need to know in order to start working as a bacholor assistant. Going to start by understanding what is a Virtual Assistant? What are you going to be doing as a Virtual Assistant? And even what are the services that you shall offer to client? What skills shall you learn? How can you learn those skills? How can you actually pin the people that you are going to work for and get paid? We are going to cover everything so that even if you don't know anything, by the end of this course, you will have the confidence and the knowledge to get out there and start working as a Virtual Assistant. Thing I'm going to encourage you about is make sure to follow this course along and practice everything that I'm going to be showing you as we go. Don't wait until you finish the course, then you start taking action because it is going to be a lot easier for you to implement, take action and do things right if you implement it as soon as you learn. If you wait until you go through the course, you finish everything, then it might be easy for you to forget something. Again, thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. 2. What is a Virtual Assistant?: In this lesson, we are going to understand who is a Virtual Assistant. If you start talking as a Virtual Assistant, what makes you a Virtual Assistant? Well, generally, a Virtual Assistant is someone who offers services to client in a recurring basis. A Virtual Assistant offers services pick services specific services and offer to client on a continuous basis. This is the difference between a Virtual Assistant and a freelancer and also the difference between a Virtual Assistant and a full time employee. Let's start by looking at the difference between a Virtual Assistant and a full time employee. Lot of Virtual Assistant, especially general Virtual Assistant, offer services similar to if someone hire you to be their general administrative assistant. If someone hire you to go to their office and work as a personal assistant or administrative assistant, the type of services the type of work that you are going to be doing for them is going to be a lot similar to what you are going to be doing for client as a general Virtual Assistant. But the main difference is if you are a Virtual Assistant, you are going to be doing things that doesn't require you to be in a specific physical location. A Virtual Assistant is a freelancer, but not all freelancers are Virtual Assistant. But all virtual assistants are freelancers because when someone hire you as a Virtual Assistant, they hire you as a subcontractor as an individual freelancer. You are going to be working for them and you can work for other people also. When someone hire a Virtual Assistant, they generally don't expect the Virtual Assistant to work only for them. You can work for them for 2 hours today and you can work for another client for 2 hours. You can work for another client later. As a Virtual Assistant, you can have multiple client that you work for at once. Whereas if you are working full time for an employee for a company, you are going to be working only for that company. You can have side hustles, but you can only have one full time job. And if you are a Virtual Assistant, you are going to be working for client continuously. Whereas if you are a freelancer, you are going to be offering one up services to client. For example, if you are only doing something like data entry, working with Microsoft Excel, you might be a data entry prelancer not a Virtual Assistant. If you are a data entry prelancer, it means if someone have a business and they have one something one task that they need someone to help them do it because maybe it takes a lot of time and they don't have the time to do it and they don't have someone on their team to do it. They can hire you once to do that thing and they will pay you and you go you away after you complete the task. But if you are a Virtual Assistant, you are going to be working for weekly, monthly, bi weekly, they are going to be paying you based on the number of hours that you work for them. So this is the general understanding of what a Virtual Assistant is. You as a Virtual Assistant, you are going to choose what you do for client. You will choose specific services, and you say, This is what I can do for you. And if a client hire you, you are going to have an agreement of how many hours you can work for them. You are going to be working for them for maybe 10 hours per week, you are going to work for 10 hours per week, and you are going to have an agreement of how much you are going to be charging per hour. If your rate is $10 per hour, and you work for them for 10 hours per week, then at the end of every week, you are going to submit an invoice, and they are going to pay you based on the agreement that you have with them. And you can work for multiple client at the same time, depending on your own ability and depending on your own capability to work for multiple people. This is what a Virtual Assistant is and what a Virtual Assistant do. In the next lesson, we are going to look at, why do business owners hire Virtual Assistant instead of hiring, let's say, a full time employee. So I'm going to see you in the next. 3. Why businesses hire Virtual Assistants: In this lesson, we are going to look at why do business owners hire a virtual assistant instead of hiring maybe a full time employee? Well, one of the main reasons why business owners hire virtual assistant is is cost efficient for them. It's more affordable in most cases to hire a virtual assistant than to hire a full time employee. And in most cases, a general virtual assistant, especially is someone who is going to be doing things that doesn't require too much knowledge and too much expertise. And so for that reason, it's very easy for clients to just hire someone who can do all of those things. And they can pay you only for what you do for them. Because look at it this way. If someone hire a full time employee to be their general administrative assistant, they are going to have to provide working tools for that employee. They are going to have to provide a computer, access to Internet, a place that the employee is going to sit and work, and they might have to provide some benefit, some employment benefit. But if they hire a virtual assistant, all they are going to just pay the virtual assistant is hourly rate of that virtual assistant. The virtual assistant is going to provide their own working tools. They're on computer, they're on access to Internet. On working location, and the employer doesn't have to give you any full time employment benefit. And that is the main reason why most new business owners and small enterprinurs, for the first to hire a birtuol assistant because it's cost effective. And another reason is if someone just started their business and their business is in the early stage, so they are not making enough money. If they live in certain countries like US, maybe they don't have enough money. They don't make enough money in the business to hire a full time employee with all the benefit and the actual minimum wage of that country. And so for that reason, it is going to be cost efficient for them. They can hire someone outside of the country, and they will be able to pay that person, and they will be able to get their job done. And so this is one of the main reasons why the client pipi to hire virtual assistant instead of hiring a full time and the next lesson we are going to look at is actual benefit of being a virtual assistant for you compared to having a full time employment. I'm going to see you in the next. 4. The benefits of being a Virtual Assistant: So in this lesson, we are going to look at the benefit of being a bachelor assistant compared to getting a full time job. Well, there are three main benefit of being a bachelor assistant, and the first one is freedom. If you work as a virtual assistant, you have a lot of freedom to choose how you work to choose what you do and to choose even the days and the time that you work. Me as a Virtual Assistant, I'm working with multiple clients, and I have the right and I have the freedom to choose when I work. For example, this morning, I did some work earlier before I started recording this video, and after I finish recording these videos, I'm going to do more work at the end of the day. So this is how I structure my time. I can do my work whenever I want to do my work. I don't have to dress up to go to work. I don't have to do anything. If I want to work, if I just want to start work, I just sit right here or anywhere else. I can sit down there and hold my legs and put my computer on my left and start working there. And another main benefit of being a virtual assistant is you don't have to do something you don't want to do. As avirtual assistant, decide on the services that you want to offer to client. If you have a list of maybe ten services that you are offering to client, those are the services you are offering. If if a client wants you to do something that you don't want to do, you are going to say, No, I am not offering that kind of service. For example, I do not offer any service that require me to be on a phone call with client, always customers, always anyone else. If I'm working on your business, and if you are lead generation require someone to call leads, I'm not your guy. I'm not going to be calling leads, and I have the freedom to choose this, whereas if someone hire me to work for them, anything that they want me to do it fits the job description, I'm going to have to do it for them. So freedom is one of the major benefit of being a bachor assistant. And another major benefit is earning potential. As a Virtual Assistant, really, if you know what you are doing, you have the knowledge, you have the skills, you build credibility. It is going to be very hard for you to find one company that can hire you full time and pay you as much money as you can make as a Virtual Assistant. I know this can depend on where you live, but no matter where you live, really, if you build up your skills and you build up your credibility, you can work for three or more than three clients at the same time depending on how many hours you are willing to sell, and you can charge based on your level of experience. And that will make it very hard for you to find one company that can pay you as much as Virtual Assistance can pay you. So earning potential is really very big for me. And another main benefit of being a virtual assistant is flexibility, which did tie into freedom and flexibility. But as a virtual assistant, I can choose to work anywhere I want to work. If you are a Virtual Assistant and you need to travel tomorrow, let's say tomorrow is Monday and you have a reason that you really need to travel. You are working for a company as a full time employee, you are going to have to get permission. If the permission get denied, then you have a problem. But as a virtual assistant, I can just plan my travel, I can leave in the morning, go to wherever I want to go, and I can do my work from there. I don't have to ask permission from anyone. Freedom, flexibility, and earning potential, these are the three main benefit of being a Virtual Assistant over being an employee for your company. In the next lesson, we are going to look at some of the misconceptions of being a Virtual Assistant. I'm going to see you. 5. Common misconceptions about Virtual Assistance: In this lesson, we are going to look at some of the misconceptions of being a bachelor assistant. And the first thing that I'm going to address is you need high level of skills, high level of computer or Internet skills in order to succeed. That is really not true because just look at it this way. If someone hire you if a company hire you to be an administrative assistant, is that a job you can handle? If that is a job you can handle, then you can become a virtual assistant. Because in most cases, especially general virtual assistant, client are not looking for someone who have a specific expertise in something. Client are just looking for someone to help save them time, and that is why all you need in order to succeed as a virtual assistant is basic knowledge of computer operations. If you have this, then you have all the skills you need to start working as a virtual assistant. Of course, there are some areas of virtual assistant that is going to require specialization. For example, if you want to be a bookkeeping assistant, then you do need to have the skills in that area. If you want to be maybe if you want to offer website management, then you need to know how website works, you need to know how to manage website. If you want to be maybe if you want to choose a specific niche, then you need to know the ins and out of that niche. But apart from that, if you want to be a general virtual assistant, all you really need is basic knowledge of computer operation and how to browser Internet. If you have this, then you can start virtual assistance. Even if you want to specialize later on, can start as a general BA and you can specialize later on, but you don't need any expertise in anything in order to start virtual assistant. And the next misconception is, if you are in Africa or if you don't live in the US, UK, or Canada, you are not going to get hired. That is really not true. I live in Nigeria, and I started my career as a virtual assistant in Nigeria. I never went anywhere, and I work with clients from all over the world. And I know many people who are working as a virtual assistant right here in Nigeria, Kenya, and other African countries who are also working with clients from all over the world. So you don't have to be in a specific country. Order to succeed as a bachelor assistant and you don't need to be in a specific country in order to work for a client in that country. You can live anywhere and work for client anywhere in the world. The next misconception is you need to have a certain level of education in order to succeed. That is totally not true. I get comments and questions from many people asking me, I don't have a degree or I don't have this, I don't have that. You already don't need any qualification in order to become a bachelor assistant. My highest level of education is college diploma and I cannot remember even one single time when a client asks me for my educational background. All client care about is what you can do for them. So you don't need any educational qualification, any academic qualification in order to really succeed and fine client as a virtual assistant. And another thing is you have to be young in order to do virtual assistant. This totally not true. I received this question from a few people also that are over 50, and they think you have to be young and energetic and 30-year-old below 30 in order to succeed. That is really not the case. I know a few people who are really above 40 that are working as a virtual assistant and finding client as virtual assistants. So all you need is just the capability to do the work for client and the ability to prop to clients that you can do the work for them, and that is going to help you succeed as a virtual assistant. In the next lesson, we are going to start looking at the different types of virtual assistant. I'm going to see you in the next one. 6. General Administrative Virtual Assistance: So the first type of Virtual Assistant we are going to look at is a general Virtual Assistant, general administrative batal Assistant. A general Virtual Assistant is someone who offer general services to client, and general services include all the services you are going to offer to someone if they hire you to be their personal assistant. That includes something like data entry, data entry, working with Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Google Sheet, PowerPoint, PDFs, sending and receiving emails that tie into email management. And do calendar management where you manage your client availability and you manage your client bookings. So general administrative assistant, general Virtual Assistant is someone who is offering general services to client. If you choose to become a general Virtual Assistant, you are not going to pick some specific area of specialization. You are not going to specialize as maybe a real estate Virtual Assistant. You are not going to specialize as maybe a medical Virtual Assistant. You are not going to specialize as a technical Virtual Assistant. You are just a general BE. And if someone is looking for a personal assistant, they are going to hire you. One of the main benefit of starting as a general Virtual Assistant is most times when a client want to hire a general BA, they are not looking for someone who have an expertise in something. They are looking for someone to help save them time. So if they hire you to be their general BA, all the things they are going to pass onto you, all the task that they are going to assign it to you are going to be in a basic level, are going to be things that are not going to be hard for you to learn. In most cases when someone hire to be their generally BA, if they already have a business, they are running a business. In most cases they have office standard operating procedure. So if they ask you to do something that you don't really know how to do, if they have an SOP, SOP is like a tutorial, like a step by step guideline on how to do something. So if they give it to you, you can simply follow the guideline, follow the SOP, and execute any task that they want you to take care of them. So the main benefit of being a general BAS client are not expecting you to be an expert. Because you are a general BA, but if you choose to become a specialized Virtual Assistant, then client are going to expect you to be specialized, to be an expert in that special area that you choose. And in most cases, a specialized Virtual Assistant is going to charge higher than a general BE, because if you specialize, you are an expert, so you can charge higher. But if you are just getting started with no experience and no really real expertise to be to be an expert, a professional in something, starting as a general BA might be the best option for in the next lesson, we are going to go over specialized BA in more detail so that you have a better understanding. So I'm going to see you. 7. Specialized VAs (social media, bookkeeping, etc.): So in this lesson, we are going to look at a specialized Virtual Assistant. A specialized Virtual Assistant is a Virtual Assistant who choose a specific area of specialization. I will give you an example. If I want to become a Virtual Assistant, but I want to offer only social media services, then that will make me a social media Virtual Assistant. And in order for me to be a social media Virtual Assistant, I need to know how all the social media platforms work. I need to know how to work with Instagram, Presbook, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, all the popular social media account. I need to know how to schedule post. I need to know how to build engagement. I need to know how to manage online communities, social media groups and communities. So this is one area of specialization. If I want to become a customer service Virtual Assistant, then I'm going to work for someone who need a customer service, maybe someone who have an e commerce business, maybe someone who have a software as a service business, someone who really have clients and customers who need customer service. And if I am a customer VA, the job is to just you hire me to be your customers representative. I can be a bookkeeping assistant. If I am operating bookkeeping services, then I'm going to work for someone, maybe an accounting firm. Those are going to be my client. So specializing in one area is not a niche. There is a different between choosing a niche and choosing a specialization. If you choose a specialization, you specialize in one area, then you are going to be operating services that has to do with one specific area of work. That is a good example of customer service, bookkeeping, social media, website management, and maintenance. So there are many things. In the next lesson, we are going to look at a niche bachelor assistant. A bachor assistant who choose a niche. So I'm going to see you in the next one. 8. Niche focused VAs (real estate, e commerce, etc.): In this lesson, we are going to look at a niche pocus Virtual Assistant, meaning a barchal assistant who choose a niche. So what does it mean to choose a niche? Let me give you an example. If you start Virtual Assistant, but you said you are only going to work for real estate agent, then your niche is real estate bachelor Assistant. If you want to only work for maybe online coaches, then that is your niche. Choosing a niche means you choose a specific group of people and you are operating your services to them. If you choose a specific group of people and you want to offer your services to them, then you are going to have to learn all the things that those kind of people need. A good example is if you want to offer your services only to maybe online coaches, then you need to know how to set up an online course, maybe in Kaja B or Kata new Zeller platforms like this, you need to know how to maybe create a lead magnet. Need to know how to set up email marketing campaigns. You need to know how to maybe create lead pum, how you can collect information from leads. You need to know maybe how to work with CRM. If you want to be a real state Virtual Assistant, if you choose real state S and niche, then you are going to have to learn how to use a property listing website like Zero. You might have to learn how to use a platform like go high level CRM platform. You are going to have to learn how to use a phone number platforms. You might need to learn how to use print gene for sending letters and postcards to potential homeseers. If you choose a niche, it means you choose specific group of people that you are going to offer your services to them. And if you do that, then you have to learn and have the skills that those kind of people need. The difference between niche and specialization is if you choose a specialization, then you are choosing a Serbs to focus on. But if you choose a niche, then you are choosing the people to focus on. If you choose if you choose a real estate niche, then you are going to learn all the things that real estate investors need. But if you choose a specialization of maybe social media, then you are going to learn how to work with all the social media platforms. So those are the differences between general BA, specialized Virtual Assistant, and a niche pocus Virtual Assistant. Next lesson we are going to look at, how can you choose your own path? What should you start with as a beginner to Virtual Assistance? I'm going to see you there. 9. How to choose your VA path as a beginner: So in this lesson, we are going to look at how can you choose the right area to pocus on as a beginner to virtual assistants? We previously talked about a general Bator assistant, specialized virtual assistant, and a niche pocus virtual assistant. So shall you start as a general BA or choose a specialization area of specialization or choose a niche? Well, let's look at the pros and cons. If you choose to become a general virtual assistant, then client are not expecting you to be an expert. So you just need to learn the basic level of skills. You just need to have basic level of skills in order to start offering new services to client. All you really need in order to start offering new services to client as a general virtual assistant is general knowledge of computer operation and how to use the Internet. So if you ask yourself, if someone hire you if a company hire you to be a personal assistant or administrative assistant, can you do that? The answer is yes, then you can become a general bachelor assistant. If you are a complete beginner, it's very easy for you to start as a general bachelor assistant. Because if you choose an area of specialization or if you choose a niche, then if you choose area of specialization, client are going to expect you to be an expert, and in most cases, if client want to hire someone with an area of specialization, they want someone with proof of knowing what they are doing. And if you are just getting started with no previous client experience with no previous testimonials and reviews, it's going to be very hard for you to get hired as a specialized virtual assistant, and it's even harder for you to learn their skills really, because if you really want to be specialized, you really have to have a high level of understanding of what you are choosing to specialize on. And if you choose to be a niche virtual assistant, might not really know what to learn in order to be a niche virtual assistant. If you are a complete beginner, let's say, and you want to start opening your services, maybe to real estate agent. If you are a complete beginner, you might really not able know all the things that you should learn in order to be a real estate virtual assistant. So in most cases, if you are just getting started with no previous experience, it is going to be easier and better for you to get started as a general virtual assistant. You pick all the services, all the tools and systems that you need to learn in order to offer general assistant. You learn those, you start opening your services as a general BE. When you pine some one or two client, you learn how to work with client, you get some pure reviews and testimonials. Then if you want to choose an area of specialization or if you want to choose a niche, then it will be a good idea. That might be a time for you to do. But in the early stage, start as a general BA. I do understand one thing also. It is a little more challenging to pine client as a general BA because everyone who start, most people who start start as a general BA. So there is a lot more competition if you start as a general BE. But really, that is where you are going to have to start if you are a complete beginner because starting with an area of specialization, it is going to be harder for you. Even though it is going to be easier for a specialized BA or a real estate BA to pine client, it's going to be harder for you because you don't have the right skills. If I am a real estate agent and I decided I need a virtual assistant and I just post a job and I'm just looking for a virtual assistant. I don't know much about virtual assistant. If you apply and I check your proposal, I check your portfolio and you are a general virtual assistant. But someone sent me their portfolio and proposal and they are a real estate virtual assistant. I am a real estate agent, I will be more interested in hiring that one who is a real estate virtual assistant. That is the way that a specialized BOO NH focus BA is going to pine client faster than a general BA. But if you are getting started with limited knowledge and understanding and experience, you are going to not be able to compete with people who are in that specialized area. And that is why in most cases, it is a good idea to start as a general virtual assistant. When you learn everything and you start working for client, then you can decide on your own if you want to choose an area of specialization or a niche. In the next lesson, we are going to look at the most in demand services that general virtual assistant are offering so that you will know exactly the type of services that you can start offering to client. I'm going to see you in the next one. 10. Most in demand VA services: So in this lesson, we are going to look at some of the most in demand services that you can start offering to client as a virtual assistant. You start working as a virtual assistant, you are going to have to start by picking and choosing the services that you want to offer to client. If you choose the services that are in demand, then you have a higher chance of getting hired. But if you choose a service that is no longer in demand, nobody really need the service anymore, then you are going to have a hard time. A good example is if you choose to offer service like transcription, few years ago, it is a good service to offer. It's very good like data entering. Many people need someone to do transcription for them. But with the rise of AI and new tools, transscription service nearly died because there are so many tools that can transcribe video, audio, anything within seconds. And so that is why it's important to start by choosing the most in demand services that you want to start offering to client as a virtual assistant. Going to give you a list of some services that you can go through and it can help you have a starting point. And remember, you don't need to choose all of these services and start offering to client. You can choose a few of these services, especially if you are a complete beginner with very limited knowledge and skills, it's better to choose a few of these services, learn, be very good at those services, and you start offering to client. Eventually, you can learn new things and add, but don't try to offer everything. And another thing I'm going to caution you is don't offer one or two things. Operating one or two things is going to make it harder for you to get hired, especially as a virtual assistant. If you are a freelancer, you can oper one thing. Great. You can offer video editing as a freelancer. You can do graphic design as a freelancer. But as a virtual assistant, operating one thing is going to limit your KV, is going to limit your potential. Let me give you an example. If someone is looking to hire a virtual assistant, don't really need someone to do only data entry work for them. And if data entry is the only thing that you know how to do, then you are going to be limited. You are going to see so many job postings that you will not be capable to do the job. And so that is why it's important to have a good number of services that you can offer to client. And one thing that you should also keep in mind is no matter the type of services that you choose to offer to client, it's very important to learn at least the basics of camber. The basics of graphic design with camber. Even if you don't want to offer graphic design services to client, it's very important to learn Cam the main reason is even for yourself when we get to the stage of packaging yourself as a virtual assistant and start looking for client, you are going to need to be able to create a packaging for yourself, create a branding for yourself that is going to be professional and when potential client to look at you, no matter where they find you, they are going to look at you and see that you are a professional. Let me give you an example. If you create a link in account in order to make that link in account professional, you are going to need a banner, a profile image, and maybe some post. If you have zero knowledge of how to create graphics, you will not be able to create even the banner that you can add in your Link in profile. If you create your portfolio. If you have zero knowledge of graphic design, you are not going to be able to write arrange things in your portfolio that potential client can look at and find interesting. So these are some things that you should keep in mind before we even get to these things, don't choose one service. Choose a few services. This is going to help you pine client. And no matter what you choose, always keep in mind, you need to learn at least the basics of graphic design with camber. These are going to help you package yourself right. Okay, now that we get that out of the way, we are going to get started with the most in demand services that you can start operating as a virtual assistant. And the first service that we are going to look at is inbox management or email management, it's the same thing. Email management is just a process of managing someone's email. Even I myself, I just make YouTube videos, and I'm a bartor assistant, but almost every single day, just yesterday, I had a little fever. I didn't check my email for two half hours. And when I check my email within just 2 hours, I had so many emails that I have to go through. Now, imagine if it's something someone like a four fouler figure or someone who have a big e commerce business where they are receiving emails from customers, from suppliers. So inbox management is something that many business owners need help with because it's easy to do, but it takes time. And so inbox management is one of the services that we can start opening to client because it is in constant demand among virtual assistant services. And the next thing is calendar management. Calendar management is very similar to email management in terms of the demand because many people use online calendar, Jimel, Google calendar, Yahoo Outlook calendar, calendar booking software. So there are many calendar tools and booking software. And people who let me give you an example, people who have a podcast. If they want someone to book to book and be a guest in their show, they are going to give them a link to book in their calendar. If someone a consultation business, and they are promoting their business. If someone want to have a consultation with them, they are going to go to their calendar and book an appointment. So many business owners have a lot of things going on in their calendar, and that is why they need someone to help them manage their calendar, keep them organized, and make sure they are not missing any deadline. And next thing is data entry. Data entry is something that most businesses need at least at some point. Most businesses need data entry work. And all you need to do in order to be good at data entry is just learn how to use Google Sheet and Microsoft Excel. If you know how to do this and you have some typing speed, you are going to be good at data entry. Other in demand service is travel arrangement. If you work in a team where you have exccer tips, you have people traveling in a regular basis, then you are going to be the one planning the travel, booking flight ticket, booking hotels, arranging everything that has to do with that travel. Customer support is another in demand service, even with the right of AI, human customer support is still needed, and I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. And people who have e commerce business, people who have a coaching business, people who have consultation business. A lot of a lot of businesses need a customer support assistance. Whether that is an email customer support assistant or live chat assistance or phone call assistant, it just depends. Another one is social media management. Social media management is one of those skills that if you learn social media management, you can even do it alone. I know I said, it's not a good idea to be to choose one service. But if you choose social media management and you become very good at content scheduling, content creation, maybe content marketing, social media, content marketing, there are so many things in social media management. So if you choose social media management as a virtual assistant along with other services, then you are going to be doing only social media management. In most cases, you are not going to be doing social media marketing, and in many cases, you are not even going to be doing social media content creation. Another one is content creation support. Let me give you an example. I make YouTube videos. I make many YouTube videos, and I'm making discourse videos. So I have an assistant that helped me organize my content plan. I have a content calendar. If you work as a content assistant, when I have an idea of a content, I can just write it in a Google Sheet and you can take the content ideas that I just have random content ideas. Do a Qd research, make it a good title, and arrange it in my content calendar. When I'm ready to record, I just pick one of the topics that I have in my content calendar. I record. When I finish, I upload it to maybe a Google Drive folder. And you as my content assistant, you can take that content, check it out, send it to video editor, maybe create a plan of how to packaging plan, how to design the right terminal for that. So content assistance is something that you are going to be helping in a lot of areas with content creation. And in most cases, you are going to succeed a content assistant if you have the knowledge of content creation. It doesn't have to be video even though with write of AI really blogging is nearly dead, but if you have knowledge of content creation, you can easily become your content assistant. Another service that is in constant demand is project management. Project management is just where you manage project, right? If you maybe manage my project, if you are my project manager, you are going to make sure that if we have a schedule that maybe I will publish a video next Monday, you have to make sure I record the video in the right time. When I finish recording the video, you will be responsible to send it to the video editor to have the video editor edit the video. You will be responsible to make sure the content assistant create maybe a packaging guideline for the video so that we give it to the graphic designer to create the tubinel for it. You will be responsible to make sure all of these people deliver the work in the right time and schedule the video, make sure it go live on Monday. Project manager work with a team to make sure all the team members deliver the work at the right time within the right budget, and you can use tools like Trello, Cleek, Asana, any project management tools to make sure project is getting done in the right time in the right order. So these are just some of the most in demand services that you can choose from and start operating as a virtual assistant. What I want you to do right now is just sit down, take a pen and paper, sit down. Do not skip this step and just write down a list of ten to ten to two up or to 15 services. Let's say ten to 15 services that virtual assistant offer. Take a list of all the ones I mentioned, and do a search, do a research on Google, exchange GPT, do a search on YouTube, and come up with a list of ten or 15 services a virtual assistant Ofer. Make a list and just decide which ones you want to offer to client based on how difficult it is for you to learn each one and based on your own interest on what you want to do. And after you do this, in the next lesson, I'm going to help you narrow it down to the most common services and simpler services that you can start operating as a virtual assistant. So I'm going to see you in the next one. 11. Starter services for beginners: In this lesson, we are going to look at the starter services that you can choose from and start offering as a virtual assistant. And the first service that I'm going to advise you start with is data entry. And the main reason is data entry has to do with Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel. And if you are to work as a virtual assistant, you have to know how to use these tools, Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel. I like the same thing. If you know how to use one, you know how to use the other one. And that is why I recommend you start to use data Entery because you just have to learn how to use Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel. And if you have to learn it, then you might as well just offer data entry work. And the next service that I'm going to recommend you learn also is email management. Learning how to use an email is a must also as a virtual assistant because you are going to have to be working with emails. I read people's email sometimes. Sometimes people send me a cold email, called outreach email or even some questions. And when I look at the email, the way the heading is written, and the way the email is written, the email body is written, it's clear to me that that person is not used to using email. And if that is the case for you, you really need to learn how to use email properly, and that is why learning how to do email management is very important because it is going to help you as a virtual assistant. Even if you didn't offer it to client, it is going to really help you. Learning email management is something that you really need to know how to. Another thing that I'm going to advise you strongly to learn is social media management. You don't have to learn social media marketing, but it's very important to learn social media management because at least if you learn social media management, you'll know how to manage groups online social media communities. You will know how to respond to DMs. You will know how to process member request in maybe Facebook groups or other social media groups. Same thing with data entry. The things that you have to learn in order to do data entry is going to help you even outside of data entry and the same thing with email management. So that is why these three services, I think I believe are the most you need to learn how to offer these services to clients because they are going to help you as a virtual assistant. And one important thing that I mentioned in the previous lesson, you need to learn at least the basics of camber. You just need to learn it because in many cases, you are going to find it very helpful and handy. If you don't know how to use camber, it's going to be very hard for you to package yourself right and present to yourself in an interesting way that potentially a client will even want to talk to you. And if you are watching this course as part of maybe a master reh program, then you have access to all of these courses. So that is not going to be a problem. In the next lesson, we are going to look at how you can start expanding to other services after you learn these basic services that you are going to start with. So I'm going to see you in the next one. 12. How to expand into specialized services over time: In this lesson, we are going to see how you can start expanding into more specialized services. You already learn the basic services like data entry, email management, basic social media management. You know how to use Camber and probably you learn other services so that we have at least eight services that we are offering to client. If you want to start specializing, you want to choose area of specialization. Going to do it based on what you can do best. If you learn all of these basic starter services and you start looking for client, in fact, this stage is not something that you are going to do now, but just keep it in mind. You learn the basic services, you start opening to client. You are going to start specialization after you figure out what you want to do most and what you are very good at. Example, when I started freelancing, I quickly figured out that I really enjoy web design. I like web design, and that is why I specialized in website design. But when I just start freelancing, I don't even know anything about freelancing. So I have to do a research, do this, do that. And whatever I can do at the time, the easiest thing is what I'm going to choose. And that is why the easiest ts is what you are going to choose right now. But if you start your work and you figure out you really enjoy social media management, you can focus on improving your skills. You will focus on learning how to create great social media content. You will focus on learning how to maybe create social media content plan so that you can specialize as a content as a social media management virtual assistant. If you figured you really like working with emails. You like managing email account, then you can try to specialize as an email manager. You can specialize as an inbox manager. But in the beginning and in this early stage, you don't need to specialize. Choose the beginner services, services that are easy to learn and you start opening to client, you will start to specialize only after you already learn the basic ones. You are good at them, and you figure out on your own what you are more good at and what you want to do long term. So this is how you can start specializing to a more niche poker services. And in the next lesson, we are going to look at some of the most important soft skills that you should Develo of that can help you succeed as a virtual assistant. So I'm going to see you 13. Core soft skills: So in this lesson, we are going to look at some of the core soft skills that you need to succeed as a virtual assistant. And the first one is patience. If you are to succeed as a virtual assistant, you really need to be patient because if you are not patient enough, then there are so many challenges. The first one is you are going to give up. If you are not patient enough, you are easily going to give up because it is going to take time to find a client. If you are not patient, you are going to easily start struggling with clients. Even after you find the client, the client can start giving you a hard time. If you are not patient enough, you are easily going to have a problem with the client, get a bad star review, bad client review, which is going to affect your profile in a significant way. If you are not patient enough, it is really just not going to work. So as a virtual assistant, you need to develop patients. Another soft skill unit is adaptability. You need to be able to adapt. Changes are happening all the time. You need to be willing and ready to adapt. I started my online career as a freelancer. When freelancing stopped working for me, I decided to switch to virtual assistants. Are so many times when I will be working for a client. So changes will happen in the client business, and if I want to continue working for that client, I have to adapt to that change. There is AI coming right now. AI is changing so many things. If you are not adapting to change, you are going to be left behind. A few years ago, there are many freelancers who are offering transcription services to client. Transcription is dead now. So if you don't adapt to change and learn other skills and transition, then you are going to be left behind. Another very important skill you need is ability to learn. You need to be able to learn new things because as a virtual assistant, you are going to be coming across things that you don't know how to do on a continuous basis. If you are not willing to learn, it is just not going to work. Another thing you need is also time management. As a virtual assistant, you might be working for multiple client at the same time. If you don't have the right time management skills, you are easily going to get overwhelmed without achieving anything. One last important thing that we need is problem solving skills. You need to be able to figure out how to solve problems when they arise. You are working for client, sometimes you will be working for client who doesn't even know what you are doing, they know exactly what you are doing, but they don't know how to do maybe how to work with the software that you are working with. So if a problem happen, if you cannot think and figure out how to solve the problem, you are probably not going to last because anytime a problem happen, you have to take it to your client and the client have to work on finding someone to solve the problem, you are easily going to get replaced. And if any little problem that comes up, you have to take it to your client and the client has to solve it for then you are easily also going to get replaced. So you need a problem solving mindset and ability if you had to succeed as a virtual assistant. In the next lesson, we are going to look at the digital skills that you need to succeed as a virtual assistant. I'm going to see you there. 14. Essential digital skills: In this lesson, we are going to look at the digital skills that you need to succeed as a virtual assistant. And the first skill that we need is normal computer operation. You don't need to be an expert in anything in your computer, but you do need to know how to open your computer, turn it on, type on a keyboard, open a browser, and do all of these basic things. You do need to know this because if you never open your computer, you never use a computer in your life. If I just tell you, can you go to YouTube and find a tutorial on project management? Not be able to even do it on a computer. You can only do it on your mobile phone. And if you cannot do it on a computer, then you cannot do it because you cannot do project management on your mobile phone. So that is why knowing how to use a computer is a skill that you need. And the next thing is Internet browsing. You need to know how to browse the Internet. If you only know how to browse the Internet on your mobile phone, then what you need to do is the next time you want to do anything on your mobile phone, just keep your mobile phone and try to do it in your computer. It will be uncomfortable, but this will teach you how to browse the Internet in your computer. If I tell you, let me x you now. If I tell you you access Google Poms? Can you just do it in your computer? If you cannot do it, can you just try if you don't know how to access Google Pom? If you can't try it and just figure out how to do it, then you know how to browse the Internet. But if you don't know how to browse the Internet on your computer, you'll see how where you can just open your browser, go to Google or a search Bar and tap type Google Perm. Whatever comes up in the search result, you will be able to find Google Perm. So knowing how to do this basic Internet browsing in your computer is something that you really need. And the next thing that you need in order to succeed is hyphen speed and accuracy. You need to have a good type in speed and accuracy in order to succeed, especially if you want to upper services like data entry because data entry involve typing a lot of data from multiple sources. So you need type in speed and accuracy. And typing speed is very easy, really. You don't have typing speed now, it just means you haven't been typing many things. The more you type, the faster you are going to become a type in and the more accurate your typing is going to be. All the digital skills that you really need is basic knowledge of computer operation, how to browse the Internet, type in speed and accuracy. The next lesson we are going to learn about is a free and ahodable resources that you can use in order to learn all of these things without overwhelming help. I'm going to see you in the next one. 15. Free and affordable resources to learn these skill: Where can you learn all of these soft skills and digital skills in order to work and succeed as a bachor assistant? Well, the first place really is going to be YouTube. I know the main problem with YouTube is getting overwhelmed and lack of trust. These are the two main problems of YouTube. And in order to not get overwhelmed, what you just need to do is pint someone you understand and stick with them. If you want to learn all the maybe soft skills like time management, problem solving, this kind of soft skills, go to YouTube and try to find someone who focuses on that. I'm sure there is. There are people who focuses on teaching these soft skills. You are going to have to go through so many people before you will be able to find someone you will understand. And when you pin someone you understand, you stick with them. I teach data entry on YouTube, and many people who pine my YouTube channel learn all their data entry things on my channel because you understand my teaching on data entry, and that is just what you need to do. If you want to stick with YouTube, then in order to avoid getting overwhelmed, don't jump from one teacher to another. Someone you understand and stick with them. And in order for you to understand who you can trust, it's just really if they can teach you something that you can try and you see it works for you. If someone can teach you something and you can try implementing it and it works for you, then you can trust them. But if they can only teach you some theory and if you want to learn the real things, you have to join their program. You have to pay for their courses, then you probably need to stay away from them. So pin someone who can teach you and who you can understand on YouTube. This is the best way. This is the most easiest way, really. Most of the skills that I have, I learn on YouTube for free, but you just have to be able to pin someone who you can understand without getting overwhelmed and you have to find someone you can trust. And the next reliable place you can go in order to learn all of these skills is online course platforms. I use Skillshare and UDM a lot. And if you go to UDM and Skillshare, you are going to find courses in all of these areas that are going to take you step by step from beginning to end. So if you can afford ECOS, it might just be a good idea to go to UDM or Skillshare and find echos and buy the course, go to the course and learn all of these things. If you go with UDM, UDM offer a lifetime access to courses, but you have to pay for each course. If you open a course maybe on productivity on UDM, you have to buy that course, pay one time people the course, and you will have lifetime access to the course. But if you join Skillshare, you can pay a monthly payment. When you pay one monthly payment, you can have access to all the courses on the platform. So all you just need to do is just check them out and see which one works best for you. But my own personal advice, you don't really need to go to UDM or Skillshare or any other except if you can really afford it. If you cannot afford it, you really don't need it. I never really buy a course until I started making money as a freelancer. So all of these things you can totally learn on YouTube for free, but you just have to spend enough time into finding the right people that you can learn from. So in the next lesson, we are going to start getting into packaging so that you can package yourself and start presenting yourself to potential client. So I'm going to see you. 16. Creating a simple but professional online presence: So in this lesson, we are going to start creating your online presence. And the first thing that I want you to keep in mind is we are not going to use a medio carmine set. We are going to create an online presence that is propional and that is going to be properional to your potential client. The first thing that you will get when building your online presence is a propional headshot. And I don't want you to just check your mobile phone and check all your pictures and find one and say, Yeah, this will work. That's a medio carmine set and we don't want to do that. We need a propional headshot. This is an example of a propial headshot. And this right here is an example of not a operational headshot. So we won't get a professional headshot. You don't have to be wearing a suit or anything, but if you check your mobile phone, your computer and you don't have a propial headshot that clearly show you a smiling face, then we need to take a propial headshot. Just get ready and take 50 pictures. 050 pictures, we will probably get one that will do. Despite seeing this all the time, I finished teaching someone how to create their portfolio. I emphasize the importance of having a professional headshot. But the first thing use a wedding picture. They wearing a wedding, and they take a picture in a wedding place and they use that at their headshot. That's not going to work. That is the mindset, this will work. We want to avoid that. And when you get this proponal headshot, it is what we are going to use for anything, for everything. If you are creating an account on a Brilliant sample platform, it is going to be your proper fixture. If you are creating a website, it's going to be your main feature. If you are creating a FDA portfolio, it's going to be your main feature. So right now if you don't have a propesial headshot, you need to go and take a propial headshot. The next thing that we need after getting a propesional headshot is your title, a subtitle. And a description of US CL. And for this, we are going to use the help of ChRGPT. I'm going to show you how we can use Char GPT to create your own title, subtitle and description. Let me share my screen so we can see how it works. So before I go to Chart GPT, I wrote this prompt. I am a beginner to virtual assistance. I am creating the basics for my online praises. The services I'm offering to client are general administrative support services, which include data entry, email management, calendar management, and social media management. Since I am a beginner with no previous experience, I want to focus on the benefit I'm offering to client, which is efficiency and time saving. I said this because if I didn't mention this, ChRGPT is going to focus on giving me title and description that is going to be a little too generic or something that is going to be better if you have some experience, if you have some previous experience. But since we don't have work experience, want to focus on the actual benefit that we are going to provide to client. And in this case, I choose efficiency and time saving. You can choose anything else. You can choose accuracy. You can choose anything. You can just think of the main benefit that you are offering to client and you can make it the focus of your online presence. Then I said, Can you help me write a good title? Sb title and a description that I can use across all my online portfolios, make efficiency and time saving the focus. What you need to do is you can replace data entry, email management with any other services you are offering. You can include as many services as you are offering to client. And if you want, you can change efficiency and time saving to something else that you want to focus on. When you make the adjustment, we are going to copy it and I'm going to put it to Charge GPT and we can see what we will get. So right out of the gate, this will work. You see a patient bachor assistant helping you save time and stay organized. This will totally work. I like it. Steam the line will support for busy professionals from data entry to social media management. This will also work, but of course, you can go ahead and adjust and make some changes. And the description is also right. So you see especially this last line, let me take care of the details so you can focus on growth. So this will work, absolutely. What I'm going to do is I can simply copy this and I can come to Google Doc. I can create a new Google Doc. I can rename it to my online presence, something like this. And I can simply past it here. And right now I have my title, my subtitle, and my description. This is something that I'm going to be using on a continuous basis. If I hype it right here on this Google Doc, anytime that I'm creating a portfolio, I'm creating an account somewhere else. Whatever I am doing, I can just come back to this Google Doc. I can copy this and I'm going to be able to use it. And over time, you are going to be able to make changes and improve this title description based on your own experiences and based on what you learn in the process. So what I want you to do right now is get your professional headshot. Make a list of the services you are offering to client, choose your poker as a pocus benefit that you are offering to client and use your on prompt, go to HIGPT and get your title, your subtitle, and your description. In the upcoming lessons, we are going to see how you can actually create your own portfolio, your on Virtual Assistant portfolio. But in the next lesson, I'm going to show you some tools that you can use to make your work easier and better as a virtual assistant. So I'm going to see you in the next one. 17. Tools to organize your work: In this lesson, we are going to look at some of the tools that you can use to organize your work and make your work easier and better. And the first thing is working with multiple client, you are going to have multiple projects. And if you didn't organize your project in an easier way for you to plow and implement, you can easily lost all the time without achieving much. And that is why it's very first thing that you should do is learn how to use a project management tool. The best tool that I recommend, if you are a complete beginner, you have never work you have never done any project management thing, learn Tre. That is the best tool to start. If you start working with Terrell, you can go in every single morning. That is exactly what I do. I use Click O now, but I started with Terrellu. And every single morning when you walk off and you are ready to start your work, you can go and open you a trailer board, and you can see all the list. You can create different list. Each list will have the list of client the list of task that you are handling for one client. Or you can even create each board separate board for each client. And every morning, you can go in and look at all the task and everything that is in the board and in the list. And if you have maybe three client, you see what are the task that you need to complete for this client today? What are the tasks that you need to complete for this client today so that you know exactly the workload that you have this day. And you will be able to organize the day. Maybe you start with this client in the morning and you will look for that client in the afternoon and you can look for that client in the evening. You know exactly the hours that you have, and you know exactly time that you need to complete each task. So the first tool that you need to learn how to use is project management tool, and I recommend you start with Terrell because tell is very basic. It's very easy to learn Trello. If you don't know anything about Telo, you have never used Trail previously. All you need to do is simply have a pool tutorial on it. So you just need to go to my channel, my YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and search Sadi humor. You will pin my YouTube channel, and you search Trello inside my YouTube channel. When you search Trello or if you search project management, you will be able to find my Pol tutorial. And if you are watching this in Master rehab program, I will put the video somewhere in this week program so that you'll be able to watch as a pool tutorial and learn how to use Tri lop project management. So project management is the first thing that you need to learn in order to be able to manage your work as a virtual assistant. Not get overwhelmed with too many clients, and you don't need to pay Trail or even Click Of. I am using Trello and Click Of all of them right now, and I have never paid for any one of them, so you don't have to pay. The free versions are all you really need. And the next tool that you need is Google Drive or Dropbox. I use both, but I really like Google Drive better because Google Drive is going to give you, I think, 15 gigabyte of free storage, even though that include your Gmail emails that are coming in, but there's really nothing. 15 gigabyte of space is enough really for you to do your work if you are not saving some large pile but if you use Dropbox, Dropbox are going to give you I think two gigabyte of storage if you are in the free version. So really, Google Drive is even the ESOP you use Ipine Google Drive to be the best. So you can especially if you are working for client, multiple client and each one have some piles that you are using on a continuous basis, you can create one folder in Google Drive, and you can name it my client. And inside each folder, you can create different folders with names of each of your client. And inside each folder, you can put any asset that you are working with continuously for your client. Next tool that you are going to need is a time traking tool. If you are working for client as a virtual assistant, you are working per hour as an hourly basis, and you are charging client based on the hours that you work for them. And so for this reason, you need a time tracking tool. The tool that I use for years is Ckifi. It works the best. I think it does one thing and it does that one thing best, which is trikingT. When you are ready to start working for a client, you simply write the name of the task that you are doing for the client. You click start time. And you leave the browser window, you go ahead and do your work. When you finish your work, you come back to clockify and you click Stop, you stop the time and the time is going to be saved. At the end of the week, you can export a report of all the work that you do for the client and you can send it to the client, including your invoice, and the client will be able to pay you. The next thing that you are going to need is an invoicing software. You can use a cama. You can use Camber and create a PDF invoice. Every week, you can simply go to the pile, edit it in a cama and send it to your client. But the most efficient tool that I find is Zoho Zoho books. I free use. I have never paid for the free for any premium feature of Zoho. All I use is a free one. You create your client with all the information. Bleek, you can send them their invoice and you can track their payment. And the payment software that you use is going to depend on where you are located. If PayFL is accepted where you live, maybe might be the best option for you. But where I live, but Stripe and paper are not available. So I am using pioneer, Scrill grey. But these three options work great for me. I never had any issue with all of them. So depending on where you live, I'm very confident one of these three pioneers krill or Grey are going to work for you. So these are some of the tools that can help you work better and more efficient as a virtual assistant. In the next lesson, we are going to talk about setting you a rate, setting you hourly rate. So I'm going to see you. 18. Setting your rates as a beginner: In this lesson, we are going to look at how can you set your rate? How much can you charge as a beginner to virtual assistants? The very first hourly rate I charge, if I'm not mistaken, is $80 per hour. And when I started when I charge $8 per hour, I was new to Pyber. I had a few Five Star reviews. I think I had about 65 Star reviews on Pyber when I decided to switch to virtual assistance, and I started charging $1 per hour. So my main advice for you is when setting you a rate, do not go for the lowest price because charging the lowest price is not always good, the best idea. When I first started freelancing on prelancer.com, I did that. I charged the lowest price, and I work with six client on prelancer.com, and I ended up never withdrawing any money out of the platform, and I ended up with three bad reviews out of six. So it's not really a good idea. Most clients who are looking for a reliable virtual assistant, they are not looking for the lowest price. They are looking for someone who can do the job right, and that should be your pocus. Your pocus should be to pine client who their focus is more on finding who can do the job right, not finding someone who is the chiefest, and you shall present yourself as someone who is capable of doing the job right, not someone who is charging the lowest price. Because in many cases, if you find a reliable client and you charge the lowest ridiculous amount of ridiculously low price, the client will even feel uncomfortable with the quality of work that you can deliver. Instead of charging the lowest price, focus on presenting yourself as someone reliable enough to do the job right. I think about a year ago, I had a meeting someone an interview, and the first asked me, I'm having an interview with three more bachelor assistant, and all of them, their rate is in one digit, meaning below $10. What is different? What's the difference between you and them? And my answer to that person is, well, if you hire me, you have the confidence and the fear of my knowing I will do the job right, and you know I will do the job right. And instead of charging the lowest price and having dozen of client, I prefer to charge a premium price that I am comfortable with so that I focus on doing your job right. And that is my response to that person. And the person did end up hiring me, even though the person told me that he is interviewing other people whose their rate is below $10, and my rate at the time was $18, and the person ended up paying me $18 per hour to do the work for them. So charging the lowest price is not always the best idea. The best idea is to present yourself as someone reliable and someone who can do the job right. And if you are operating general administrative services like data entry, email management, calendar management, you should expect to charge lower than someone who is operating maybe a high level services, something like website management and maintenance, someone who is operating something like website design, someone who is operating something like accounting. So these are some high level services. So if you are operating general administrative services, you should expect to charge lower. And my advice is if you are starting with administrative services, start with anything around seven to $9. Do not go below $7 because you will see so many people charging $5 even less than that. And you don't want to just be among those people. Start with $7. My advice seven to $9, depending on how compatible you are and how confident you are on your own skill, start with $7 $80 or $9 and try as much as possible to be capable of doing a good job so that you can present yourself as someone who can do the job right. And when we get to the part of applying for jobs, I'm going to show you how you can probe the client that you can do the job right for them. And in the next lesson, we are going to start by looking at how can you identify your target client? So I'm going to see you in the next one. 19. How to identify your target clients: In this lesson, we are going to look at how can you identify your target client? You target client are the people who are going to benefit from your services. So how can you identify those kind of people? The first step is look at the list of services you are offering and write a list of anyone who you believe is going to benefit from those services. Example, if you are offering the general services, then real estate agents are going to benefit from your services because real estate agents work with properties, searching for properties, reaching out to home owners. So data entry service is going to benefit them. Ecommerce business owners. Ecommerce business owners need customer support. They need data entry work. They need some management services. They need some pile organizations, people who have HR consultation business, people who are hiring, their job is just to hire for companies and entrepreneurs. Are going to benefit from me services because they are posting job postings every week or every month or every two weeks, and they are receiving hundreds of job applications. And they need someone to help them go to job applications every day to remove people who are clearly not of the job and create a better list of people who might be right for the job. Then the person who is the consultant, then they can take a look at the people who are more likely to be the right people of the job. So HR consultant are going to be the target client, people who have an agency, virtual assistant agency. Currently, I work for someone with a virtual assistant agency, and if someone have a virtual assistant agency, then they are hiring multiple virtual assistant to work with them. People give them work and they give it to their virtual assistant to take care of. So these are some examples of people who will benefit from your services. What you just need to do is just look at the list of your services and take down create a list of all the people who are going to benefit from your work. If you are in doubt, you can take the list of your services, the services you are offering, go to HR GPT. And ask JAGPT who are the best people who are going to benefit from these services. And HRPT is going to help you identify those people. And when you identify these people clearly, the next thing that we need to know is where can you pine those people. We are going to go into that in more detail, but the first place that we can pin these people is where they go when they want to hire a virtual assistant. A, most people who if they want to hire virtual assistant, they go to a Preansen platform. So this is the first place that your potential client hang out in. And the second place is social media. Let's take an example of real estate agent. If you are target client, a real estate agent, you go to Facebook and search for real estate agent. You are going to find many groups that agent a real estate agent hang out in. If you are target audience, or maybe content creators. Search for Pacebook groups that YouTube content creators hang out in. You are going to see post every single day. People who have YouTube channels, they need help with their tuminels. They need help with their content idea. They need help with their content research. So go to Presbook and search for groups that you are potentially client hang out in. Those are the places that you also need to be. You don't need to join groups and start spaming groups with post. If you are in the groups in the communities where you are potentially a client hang out in, the opportunities will present themselves. If I find a client once in Click PonnLs Facebook group, and I'm in the group not for the purpose of finding client. I'm in the group because I'm working with Keliic Poneel for a client and if there is any issue with Kelle Poneel, I will be able to see it in the group, and if someone find a resolution, I will be able to see it too. And on multiple occasions, you are going to see someone who have a challenge in Cali Poll. They will post about it and they will ask if anyone can help them with their challenge. And if you know you have the skills, you can do it. You can send them a message, and it can end up being a client for you. So Pine Dos groups, and these are places you need to be. Another place that you need to be is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is great for virtual assistant. Many virtual assistant build their entire career on LinkedIn. So you need to create your account on Link IN, professional account on LinkedIn, and connect with people who are going to be in your cycle, people who are in the same position as you are and people who can be your potential employees. Remember you already create your title, you are subtitle and you are description. So when you are building your account on LinkedIn, that is going to be your guide. That is what you are going to use to build your account. If you are creating your account on Facebook that you are going to use to join groups, these are going to be in your biosection so that anyone look at your account, look at your profile. Are going to see and understand what you do. And one problem you are going to have is lack of confidence. If you are just getting started, even though you learn all the things you need to learn, if you never work or anyone, you are going to have an issue with lack of confidence, and that is what we are going to talk about in the next lesson. So I'm going to see you. 20. Building confidence when you have “no experience": So lack of confidence is something that is going to really hurt you when you start looking for client, because even if you have the skills, you do practice, you know you can do the job. If you never work for client, you are going to be a little bit upraid that you don't know what you are doing, and that can easily show when you are reaching out to client. And that is where what you need to do in order to piece the lack of confidence issue is, understand the first thing is no matter what you do in life, you are going to have to go through practice in order to be better at it. And in most cases, even if you know little, you probably know more than the client you are going to work for. If you are not, if you are afraid you don't know how to use Google Sheet enough maybe, then that means you have to practice more. So learn practice as much as you can. If you practice, you create samples. Then you clearly have the knowledge to do the work. And if you practice enough, you probably know how to use Google Sheet more than the client that you are going to work for. And if that is the case, then you don't have to really worry about competence. Even if you don't know more than the person that you are going to work for, what really matter is you can do the job and can you really do the job? If you are having problems, lack of confidence, the main reason that is going to cause it is probably lack of enough practice. You can simply go to Upwork and search for jobs. When you search for jobs in the field that you want to work for, read the job description and ask yourself, can you do that work? If you can do that work, great. If you are not sure, do the job, try practice without even talking to the client. Copies job description, go to HGPT and give it to HGPT and ask GGPT to make it into a simple step by step job description that you can use to practice your skills. And CHGPT can even give you sample data that you can work with. So you can get that practice as much as possible until you feel confident enough to do the work. Because if you don't build this confidence, then it can easily show when you are talking to client. And if you are not confident enough and the client can see that you are not compident you can do the job, then the client cannot feel confident in hiring you. And in the next lesson, we are going to see how you can understand job descriptions and client expectations well. So I'm going to see you in the next one. 21. Understanding job posts & client expectations: In this lesson, we are going to talk about understanding job posting and client expectations, which is key to getting hired. One thing I want you to understand is it's hard for client also to hire as the right virtual assistant. They have to go through dozens of proposals, dozens of applications before they find the right one. And so that is why if you understand job postings and client expectation, it is going to help you position your application as the right pit of the job. This is very important. If you understand the job posting, you are always going to be the person who doesn't understand the job posting. And that is why you shouldn't rush. Being the first to apply for a job is in most cases, is not really going to help you. What is going to help you is applying for the job, the right way, and you can only apply for the job right way if you understand the job posting. So when you see a job, whenever you come across a job posting or if you are searching for jobs on Upwork or on any platform, or even if you find the job posting or LinkedIn, put in all the time you need to read the entire job description. No matter how long it is, read through the entire job description and understand the job description and understand what the client want. And there are obvious things that you shall put out of the way before you even think about applying for the job. Let me give you an example. There are many times you'll see a job posting, and if you read the job posting, if it is on up work, if you scroll down to the bottom of the job posting and you look at the client requirement, you are going to see that the client is looking to hire a virtual assistant only in a specific country. Maybe they only want to hire a virtual assistant in the US, or they only want to hire a virtual assistant in the UK. So if there is this specific requirement, if you are not in that country, then it doesn't make any sense to do anything else. That job posting is not for you. You are not the right bit. And sometimes you will see a client is looking for someone who speaks specific language. If the client is looking for a virtual assistant who understand English and Mandarin and you don't understand mandarin, then clearly the job is not for you. So this is the first thing that you shall put out of the way. Before you even consider applying for the job, when you open any job posting, make sure you look for specific requirement, key requirement of the job. And make sure you met those requirements before you even go ahead and do anything else. Personally, this is what I do, especially on up work when I open a job posting, before I apply to the job, before I ever read the job posting, I start by scrolling down to the bottom and look at the requirement. If I meet those requirement, then I'm going to scroll up and read the job description. But if I didn't meet those, I'm going to go away because that job is not for me. So this is something you should really understand. Applying to jobs that you are not the right fit is just going to be a waste of time because remember the client has options. Are dozens of people who are already applying to the same job that you want to apply to. So if you don't meet the clientele requirement, it doesn't make any sense for the client to even consider you. No matter how excited you are about the job, no matter how good you like the title of the job, no matter how excited you are about the company, make sure you read the job description from A to Z. You understand the job description, you make sure you can do the job, and you make sure you meet all the client requirement. This is key. When you understand this, then we are going to move to the expectations. And most times, if a client, especially if a client is thorough, in a job description, they are going to outline their expectations. Maybe they are looking for someone who can work for them full time. Can you work full time? If you cannot work full time, then the job is also not for you. Maybe they are looking for someone who will work for them maybe 10 hours per week. Is that good for you? Ask yourself, maybe they are looking for someone who can work in specific time zone. Many times a client will post a job and they are okay with hiring client from any country, but you have to be able to work in their time zone. And if the client mention that, can you work in their time zone? If you can, then great. That is an expectation. Client expect you to work in their time zone. The next thing is the budget. You know what your hourly rate is. If the client mentioned the hourly rate that they are willing to pay, are you compatible with that? And this all tie into understanding the job description. If you understand the job description, you are going to understand what they need, exactly what they need, and you are going to know if you are the right people for the job, and you are also going to know if you can meet their expectations. So this is really something that you should take note of, keep it in your mind. Understand a job description before you apply for the job and understand the client expectation. Understand what the client expects from you before you send your proposal to the client. This is the only way that is going to limit your number of wasted proposals. In the next lesson, we are going to look at how can you ever write a proposal that will stand out and I'm going to give you some examples. I'm going to see you in the next one. 22. How to write proposals that stand out: In this lesson, we are going to learn about writing an effective proposal that is going to stand out. How can you write a proposal that will stand out? Because whenever you pine a job, no matter where you pin the job, there are probably a dozen other virtual assistant applying for the job. So how can you write a proposal that will stand out? Before I share my screen I show you example, going to list out some things that you shall avoid. And the first thing that you shall avoid doing is copying a job description, giving it to CHGPT and asks it to write you a proposal. If you do this, your proposal is going to be generic because most people who are not willing to put an effort into applying for jobs the right way, they are doing that, and that clearly show. There is one time when I am looking to hire someone and I post the job on up work among the people who sent me a proposal, and the proposal already even still has the placeholder text like Dear bracket hiring manager. I wish to apply for bracket position name, something like this. So you see this is a proposal with zero effort. It just doesn't matter how capable that virtual assistant is. The virtual assistant is not going to get hired, it's not going to get the job. This is something you must avoid if you want to get hired. Don't just copy your job description and give it to Char GPT and ask it to just write you a proposal and you copy and paste without even going to do the proposal and making some adjustment. Another thing that you should really keep in mind is before you write a proposal, make sure you understand the job description and you take note of the key things that the employer is focused on what the employer is looking to achieve. This is going to help you write a proposal that will stand out. Another thing that you should keep in mind is be willing to go the extra mile. What I mean by be willing to go the extra mile is if you really want to stand out, you have to be willing to do more than others. You have to be willing to do more than the other people who send their proposal. If, for example, you are applying for the job and the job requires someone to manage social media account of a company, or if it requires something to do with graphics. You if you search, you see the name of the company maybe in the job description, and you take the company you search on Google, you pine the company website and you check their social media account, and maybe you pine their graphics are not that good and you can do better. You can take some of their social media graphics, and you can recreate them and make them better, create better versions of them, and you can include them in your proposal. You can say, Hey, this is a sample that I created for you, and that way, they can clearly see your skills. They can clearly see that you have the capability to do that thing because you show them an example. If it has something to do with video editing. If you are going to be maybe assisting them with podcast for production or something like that. You can check their YouTube channel, pin their YouTube channel, and take some of their videos. You don't have to ask for permission. You just take their YouTube videos, even a short edit. You can take them and edit maybe a 1 minute pticle video. Do edit it as best as you can, and you can include a link to it in the description in your proposal. And you can mention it this is a sample that I created for you. And if they click, take a look at the sample if they like it, they are really going to want to talk to you, and this is something that most people are not doing. If you are willing to do something like that to go the extra mile, then you are easily going to stand out. Even if the job only require you to use Google Sheet, they give an example of what they want you to be doing for them. You can take that specific example. You can take the job description they give you and you can create a Google Sheet pile with columns and rows similar to what they will be interested in working with in your proposal, we can share a BU link that they can click and take a look at the Google Sheet that you created, and they will clearly see you Google Sheet skills. So even if you have zero previous experience, doing something like this can clearly prove to the potential client that you know what you are doing and that you can do the job. And that is the goal. When you are just getting started, you don't have anything that will prove to the potential client that you know what you are doing. So if you can take an example of something that they have and you make a better version of it, or if you can create a sample of the work and you send it to them, this will clearly separate you from the competition. This exact thing happened with the last video editor that I hired. The video editor shared his secret in his proposal, and he showed me his editing process, and none of the other people who sent me their proposal did that. And I ended up hiring that person, and that should be your main goal. Do more than what others are doing so that you will stand out. You don't have to be the first one to send you a proposal. You just have to have the most effective proposal. And something you should really keep in mind is, I think almost any type of service you are offering to client, you can find a way to create a sample that is going to prop to them. You know what you are doing. What you simply need to do is be creative. This is where problem solving mindset come into place. If you think about the services that you want to start offering to client and you think, no sample can be created with that kind of service. That is a problem. Practice your problem solving mindset and think about how can we solve that problem? How can you create a sample that is going to prove to them you know what we are doing, even though it is going to be challenging to create a sample. This is something that if you really learn and you implement it with every job posting that we apply to, is really going to be a matter of time before you get hired because you are going to be able to stand out. Now I'm going to share my securing and show you a sample job on Upwork and I'm going to write a proposal so that you can see exactly what I'm so this is an example of a job I just pound on up work. I just search for petual assistant and I found this job. They are looking for podcast Production assistant, and they are looking for someone long term, and they are doing AI interview shows. And I did the first thing I always do, which is I scroll down to the bottom and see all their requirement. Want my job success to be at least 90. I passed rising talent, past English label, fluency, past. So I meet all of these qualifications. And if I come down here, they have one more question, describe your recent experience. This is something that most people ask. And this is a budget. It is within my maybe five to ten bucks. And the next thing I did is I read the job description and I understand that they are looking for someone to help them with podcast production, and they are looking for someone who know how to use software descript and they need someone who have attention to detail. And after going through and reading the entire job description, I wrote this proposal. And this is what I advise you to do. You read the job disk corruption, understand it first, then you write the proposal without even going to Char GPT. We are going to go to Char GPT after, but first we write the proposal. And I start by Hello. If they mention their company name or the first mention their name, you can say hello and add their name. This case, they didn't so I just said hello, I have gone to lose job description you provided, I understand your requirement, and I am highly interested in joining your team as podcast production assistant. I have a professional level of knowledge of using descript for audio and video editing. This is something that even if you don't have experience using the tool, can watch some YouTube videos and understand how it works. If you practice, you learn things, you watch YouTube videos and practice with tutorials, then your mind is used to learning using tutorials. Learning a tool or a software is not going to be that challenging. Even if you really don't know much about it, you can watch a few YouTube videos and learn about it and also using some of its advanced EI pictures for podcast editing. Mentioned this using some of it is advanced AI features, p podcast editing because they have an AI, AEI podcast shoe. They are definitely interested in EI. And since the software descript he some AI features, it's good to mention that this is going to catch their attention. The next thing is I have a high attention to detail. Remember, I noticed one of the pokers of their job posting is attention to detail. I mentioned it, I have a high attention to detail with Strong video and audio editing experience. Addition to Dcrypt, I have the knowledge of audio editing with audacity and video editing with cap code. I mentioned these other tools to support to support my experience, my knowledge of audio and video editing. Because if I only mentioned that I know how to use Dcrypt, maybe I don't really know that much. But when I mention other tools, other similar tools that I have the knowledge of, then that will show them that here, I do have some experience and knowledge in that area. And this next part is super important. Here is an example of an audio podcast I edited. This is something that obviously you don't have it, right? You don't have a sample work if you never have one. And this comes down to creating work samples, which is something I talk about always in creating a portfolio. Since you cannot you probably cannot find an unedited version of the audio to edit, what I suggest you do is find some sample audio. Search online for sample audio, search on even AX tools like 11 laps. There are so many AI tools that can give you sample audio that you can edit and practice your skill. This comes down to research. I'm not going to tell you go this place and search that because doing the research is also a skill in itself. Do some research, find some sample audio and edit. You can edit with the script, since that is a tool that they are focused on. And the next one is this is an example of a video I edited in Capcod is even easier. You can find any video on the Internet that is not edited on edited video, and you can go to the software that you are comfortable with, and you can edit the video, add some text, add some captions, do something with it and make it interesting, and you can upload it to maybe Google Drive, and you add the Bulink here so that they can click and take a look at the example. This is what is going to help you really be a fat. This is what is going to help you stand out. So whenever you are writing a proposal, find a way to include some work samples. If you can create a work sample that is specific for the client, that is the best. But if you cannot, then you can include any work sample that is relevant to the job description. In this case, I don't know the name of the company, so I cannot find them. Since I cannot find them, I cannot create the samples for them. But in that case, I can add samples relevant to the job description that is added. And the next part is I am a past learner and always looking for ways to improve my knowledge and skills, especially with EI. I am looking for opportunity to meet with you in an interview to learn more about your podcast and how my skills and experience will improve your podcast production. Thank you for your time. I always close with asking them for an interview because you are a virtual assistant, not a freelancer. In most cases, you cannot get the job without an interview. So it's better to ask for an interview in the closing paragraph to ask than to just ask for the job. You see, if you look at this proposal, it is not too long. It's not too long that the client will feel like they have this job to do. So you make it easier for them to read and understand what you write without making it a huge block of paragraphs. The next thing I will do after I finish writing this, I can simply copy it. Click and copy and then I'm going to come to Chat GPT. What I normally do is I'm confident with my proposal. So I don't really use ChaGPT to change anything. I use CharGPT to proper it just to avoid making any grammatical error. And what I do is I can say is this English collect, this and I will past the proposal I write and CharPT is going to proporate it. In some cases, CharPT is going to make some adjustment, and I can read and I will see if the adjustment harGPT made, I'm okay with the adjustment. But if CharGPTge make some significant changes and it doesn't sound like me like this best regards UNM, I don't include this in my proposal. I just don't include it. So if I read and I don't charge how Char GPT rewrite it, I can say, can you just can you give me the original version? You see, I said, can you give me the original version with only grammar arrow pixes? And Char GPT will give me my original version. But this is the exact one I give to harGPT but Char GPT only adjust any place where I have maybe a typing arrow or a grammatical error, and I can copy my proposal. Then I will come to the job posting, click Apply, and I'm going to send my proposal. So this is how I normally write any proposal that I send to client. And this is something you see. The process of doing this is not past really not passed. But remember when someone posts edge off, they are not hiring within 20 minutes, most of the time. Most times when someone post edge of, they let it stay maybe for at least 24 hours before they check and short list candidate. So don't worry about being the first who send you a proposal. Worry about being the one who send the most effective proposal. In the next lesson, we are going to start looking at Where can you find the client as the beginner to virtual assistant. So I'm going to see you in the next one. 23. Platforms for beginners: So in this lesson, we are going to look at the best freelancing platforms for beginners to Brtual assistant. I always advise beginners to virtual assistance to start with pre Lansing platforms. And the main reason is most people when they want to hire virtual assistants, they go to pre Lansing platforms. And I know there are other strategies, but this is really the first place I advise beginners to get started with. Are three major pre lancing platforms at least for batal assistant, and they are Upwork fiber and prelancer.com. I tried all of them, and you can try all of them and picker the one you like the best. But the thing is these platforms make changes on a regular basis. Every month they make some changes, and sometimes when one platform makes some changes, it will be the best for beginners and sometimes another platform will make some changes, and that platform will be the best for beginners. I will give you an example. When I started, PybA really was the best place for beginners to get started because it's easiest place for beginners to find client. The reason is Pybar have a future at that time called buyer request. What that means is when someone want to hire a virtual assistant or a freelancer, can go to Pybar and they will post a job similar to upwork and you a virtual assistant or a pretenca, you can check the buyer request tab and you will see all the jobs that are posted that day that are relevant to the skills and services you are offering, and you can write your proposal and you can send it to client. What makes this the best is you can do this entirely for free. At the time, if you want to send proposals on Opok, you have to buy connect. If you want to send proposals on prelancer.com, you have to be in their paid membership. You can send, I think, very few number of proposals on prelnsa.com if you are not in their paid membership and you won't stand a chance. So that is what makes Pybar at the time the best place for beginners because you can send many proposals every day proper free of charge. But sometime ago, I think about over two years ago, Pybar get rid of that. They remove that buyer request thing. So the only way for you to get it discovered is you create your gig, which is a package when you create your package. If maybe I am a client, I want to hire a virtual assistant. I go to Pyber, I search for virtual assistant, or I search for administrative virtual assistant, and a search result will come up with packages from virtual assistant, and I will check and find the one I like, and then I will start communicating with them. And when they did that, it became close to impossible for complete beginners to get hired because if I go to Biber, I want to hire a virtual assistant, I search for virtual assistant. I'm going to see many virtual assistant that are top rated. Level two and Level one. So if you are in level zero, new seller level with nothing to show that no previous experience, zero client style views, then I won't have really many reasons to contact you to talk to you. And so that killed really in terms of a complete beginner, Bybi became really close to unusable. You can create your packages, but you are not going to get discovered. But they made other changes. I think less than two years ago, they made some changes. They introduced buyer brief. Which is a little bit similar to buyer request, but they didn't open it to everyone, so it is still challenging. That is why really currently the best place for beginners is upwork. The only downside of upwork is you have to pay to flee. You have to pay to buy connect in order to be able to apply to jobs. For that reason, it can be a bad if you really have no money to buy connect. But if you can afford to buy connect, then you know that most people who are going to send proposals are going to be serious because they use their own money to buy connect. Whereas, if it is free to send proposals on up work, if you see a job with 50 proposals on upwork now, all of those 50 people pay to apply for the job. What if it is spree? Maybe 300 people will have applied for the job. So that is why it is a bad thing if you have no money at all to apply for the job. But if you have the money to buy connect and apply for jobs, it can even be better than when it is free, because the level of competition is going to be a little less, and the level of overwhelm for the client also is going to be very low. And prelancer.com, really, I didn't enjoy working with prelancer.com because it just takes too much of my time, the way they set it up, the way the jobs will appear and apply for the jobs. I became way too overwhelmed when I use prelancer.com. And that is why I don't advise using prelancer.com simply because I don't personally, I don't have good experience with it, but I advise beginners to start with these three platforms. Create your account on Upwork, create your account on fiber, create your account on freelancer.com, try all of them and find the one that works best for you. Just keep in mind that upwork will give you the best chance because if you create your account on fiber today, you can create gigs, which are packages and you will have to wait for potential client to find you you are lucky and Pybar allow you to have access to BIFs, then you can check everyoay and see if they send you any BEP and you can apply for jobs. Otherwise, you are going to have to wait for client to contact you. But if you are on Upwork, if you can afford to buy Connect, then every day you can search for jobs that you have a good chance of getting the jobs and we can send you a proposals. And I have tutorial on how to create an account on Pyber and Upwork. I have also tutorial on how to create your gigs on Pyber. So all you need to do is simply to my channel, go to my channel on YouTube, search Sadik Umer on YouTube, go to my channel and search for Opok tutorial or Bible tutorial, and you'll find step by step tutorials that you can upload to create your account. And if you are watching this course as part of BM Master RhopPgram, I'm going to add links to those tutorials in the description somewhere on this page so that you'll have access to. One thing also you shoul keep in mind is I advise beginners to always use Polansing platforms, but I also advise beginners to not use only Plansing platforms because they have too many challenges, and that is why in the next lesson, we are going to talk about networking strategies that can help you get hired. So I'm going to see you in the next one. 24. Networking strategies: In this lesson, we are going to talk about networking Strategs as a virtual assistant. I know many virtual assistant who build their entire virtual assistant career without ever using a freelancing platform. They do it entirely based on their network by building their network. And this is something that you'll hear a lot if you listen to virtual assistant coaches in the US UK, you will hear their first advice is to use your family and friends, start with your family and friends to get your first client. I do not advise this because if you live in where I live and other Applican countries, that is probably not going to be an option. This is surely an option that you can try if it is available to you. But when we come to networking strategies, what is the best way that you can network with other people? In my own experience is social media. I pine many clients in Facebook groups sometimes without looking for the client. Let me give you one example. I am in one Facebook groups Facebook group for virtual assistant. I think the name of the Facebook group is virtual Sabi. And in that Facebook groups, I work for a client sometime and I build their website and they really like what I do for them. They like the website. They gave me an extra $100. So that made me happy, and I took a screenshot of the message that the client sent to me, and I post it in the group, and I tag it when I share the win. I'm happy. I work for the client and the client is happy, and Evan gave me a bonus. I just post it purely because I'm happy and I just like to share it with other people because the group is all virtual assistant. And it turns out someone who have a web design agency is in the group, and she saw my post, she check out my Facebook profile, and she sent me a message and asked me if I can build website for her. I agree she is in Canada. I agree and she started giving me some jobs. Whenever she help some web design project more than she and her team can handle, she will outsource some to me, and I will work for her and she pay me. I do that for her for a very long time. And I p a client, one client also in even a coaching group. I joined one coaching group. I think the I start of society is the name of the coaching group. And in the group, I redesigned my website and I post it and ask for Pidbck. Someone go through my website, and she really like my website. She asked me did I built it? I said, Yes, I did. She asked me if I can build her website. I said, Yes, and she pay me and I end up building her website. So Ipine client in many places like this just by networking with other people. And that is why the main advice that I will give you is you have to really be in the game, be inside the game, really. Everyone use social media. We use Facebook Instagram. Make sure you are profiled. No matter where people find you, they know what you do, they know who you are, and they know clearly what you do. Because even if you make a post in a group and someone look at your post and check your profile, they are immediately going to know what you do. If you make a comment on any post, if someone check your profile, they are immediately going to know what you do. So build up your online presence on all your social media profiles, Presbook, Instagram, LinkedIn. And if you use AzAp platforms in a way that when someone take one look at your profile, they are going to know what you do. And the next thing is be active. Don't simply create your profile on social media and just go ahead in your on business. Join groups relevant to what you do. Being in groups where people are talking about what you do is going to help you have more knowledge in the industry, no of any changes that are coming in the industry, and just really connect and build up your network and try as much as possible to be help. This is going to help you get known in the industry, in the communities that you are in. And if you are known as someone who do X and X and someone who have knowledge and experience in X and X, when someone have a problem, they are going to want to talk to you. So this is my advice to you. Building your connection is really very important. And the only way that you are going to build your connection is have professional or learn lessons and be as helpable as possible and be engaged. Don't be silent, engage with other people and share your ideas and be helpable whenever someone needs some help. So now we talk about freelancing platforms. We talk about networking strategies. The next lesson, we are going to talk about cold outreach. So I'm going to see you in the next one. 25. Pitching clients directly: So in this lesson, we are going to talk about pitching a client directly, which is called outreach. What this means is you reach out to potential client before they express interest in hiring a virtual assistant. You reach out to people and introduce yourself, introduce what you do, and let them know how you can help them. There are many ways to do this. And if you do it the wrong way, then your emails or your messages are going to end up in spam and nobody is going to ever responds to you. I received so many called outreach emails, and a lot of them went straight to my spam folder and you want to avoid this. The first step in doing this right is have a professional online presence so that when you contact someone, if they check you out, they are going to clearly see that you are a real person, and yes, you can do what you said you can do for them. You can do that by having a professional Facebook profile, professional LinkedIn account, and a probational Instagram account, and you have a probational email. By professional email, I don't mean to have a domain name with maybe Sadik at Sadik umer.com. That is not what I mean. You can surely use your Gmail account, but just make sure you use a professional Gmail account. For example, instead of using Sadik 1278 9pour@gmail.com, it's better to use Sadik Umer v@gmail.com. This is more clean and professional. So if you have if your GML is clean and professional, are good to go. It is not, maybe you need to redesign it, maybe you need to create a new one. When you prefer, you have your social presence right, you have your email clean and professional. The next thing is identify the right people to reach out to. Do not never reach out to someone who will not benefit from your services. You remember previously, we create a list of services that you are going to be offering to client and you identify the type of people that will benefit from those services. Now is the time to start reaching out to them. And how can you reach out to those people? Or before we even get to reaching out to them. Let's say you are operating data entry service maybe is a major part of your services. And we know clearly people who have HR consultation business are going to benefit from your service. And how can you find those kind of people? There are so many places to find this kind of people. You can find them on LinkedIn. You can find them on Google. You can find them on Instagram. You can find them on Facebook. All you need to do is spend some time into doing internaty research. Search in all of these places for people who have HR consultation business. Don't search for people who have HR consultation business. What you should think about is if someone want to hire a HR consultant, what will they do? Let's say right now I want to hire a HR consultant. I will probably go to Google and search for HR consultations maybe in my state or HR consultations or a portable HR consultant, something like this. This is what you should also do. Get in the fit of their client, and this will help you pin them. You will pin their website, read their website, understand what they do clearly, and this will help you know exactly what to see when you are reaching out to them. So at this level, you can create a Google spreadsheet. You can do your Intent research and have a list of all the potential client that you want to reach out to with their email addresses, their name, and their website. When you create your big list, then you can start reaching out to them. There are many different ways to reach out to potential client. The first place is through social media. If they are active on Instagram or on Facebook or any other platform, one thing you shall avoid is if they have a huge number of polloing on social media platforms, you are probably not going to be able to reach them because if someone have 100,000 plows on Instagram, if you send them a message ADM, are most likely not going to see it. Their virtual assistant is going to see it because most likely they already have an assistant or a virtual assistant and you want to avoid that. Don't try to reach out to people who have large number of poloing, find people who they have their medium sized business and they are running their business, and social media is not their pokers. If you are reaching out to them in social media, what works best in social media, D, social media, DM reaching out is start by a simple greeting message, and if they respond, then you can mop onto introducing RSL. And the best way to introduce RSL in social media is use a direct video. Instead of writing a message, take your mobile phone, open a SLP camera, and record a short video. Your goal is to invite them to have a call with you. And the best way for them to respond is if you do it, be a video. You open a SLP camera, say hello, and we record your video, a very short video, introduce yourself and let them know what you do. And let them know you have some ideas you would like to communicate with them and ask them if they are offen to a quick chat, a quick 15 minutes chat. If they say yes, then you can meet or B zoom. This is the best way because on social media, many people are sending messages, and some people but not even real people. Doing this will help them see you as a human. And if you are reaching out to them via email, then you can make your email a lot like a proposal. You remember when when we write a proposal previously, if you are reaching out via email, make sure in the first initial email that you send to them, you include everything that they would like to ask you. You don't need to start with a greeting and wait for them to respond in an email because it's harder for people to respond to emails. So if you are sending them an email, make it like a proposal. You say hello, you introduce yourself, let them know what you do and include some samples to your work and ask them if they need any help and ask them if they want to have a call with you, how you can help them save time or be more efficient. So definitely called outreach is harder than using preancing platforms or building your network or reaching out to people in your network because called outreach, most people are not going to respond because you don't know what exactly is going on in their business. Maybe it's not the right time for them. Maybe they already have obtual assistant working for them. So with called outreach, you have to really be willing to do it consistently. You have to be willing to listen to rejections because most people are going to ignore your emails. Some people are even going to reject your emails in a very rude way. So you have to be ready for that. I personally really never put an effort into called outreach because I am able to build my career using pre ilancing platforms and networking strategies. So I called outreach is something that is not really for you. It's totally okay. You can do without it. But if you really want to give it a shot, be willing to do it for a long time and be willing to send a large number of emails before you get a positive response. And once you get a response, whether via freelancing platforms or direct outreach or through your network, you are going to need to have an interview, and that is why in the next lesson, we are going to talk about how you can prepare for an interview. So I'm going to see you in the next one. 26. How to prepare for client interviews: In this lesson, we are going to look at how can you prepare for an interview? When you are sending proposals, you are applying to jobs, when you receive a response, the next step is interview, and you are having an online interview, so you really need to be fully fared. And that interview is going to be your first impression. The client is going to have the first impression when you meet in the interview, and that is why you really need to prepare. And the first thing that you should do is if you never had done an online interview, practice. Get your friend or anyone else and practice doing an online interview before you meet with the client. If you are meeting Beer Zoom or Google MIT, install Zoom on your computer or if you are using Google MT, then open it in your browser and do a test. Do a test meeting with someone just so that you see the interface and you see how apotin works. In order to do the interview, you need a micropon where you are going to speak with and you need an earfice that you are going to listen and you need a way for them to see you, meaning a camera, you don't need to have a micropon. If you have a good earfis like this Oh, my hand will not reach, but if you just have a good headphone that has a bomb mic, that is going to be great. If you don't have it, no matter what ERPs you have that will be, okay, if you make a pon calls and ERPs, if people can hear you and you can hear them, it will probably be good enough for you to do your client meetings, but make sure to test bef the time of the interview. When it comes to camera, if your computer have a good camera, great. You can use your computer's camera to have your interview. But if your computer is bad, you can even use your mobile phone. You can install a Zoom on your mobile phone. If you have a good mobile phone with good camera, install it on your mobile phone and do a test meeting to make sure everything works. So many times I use my mobile phone for client meetings before I buy a good webcam. So this is another option. And one thing is Internet. It's going to be very bad. If you have a very weak Internet and during client meetings, the Internet just goes off. If you can get even an Internet MIPI something small like this, it will be great. If you cannot get it, make sure to go where there is there is good Internet connection because some places have better Internet than some places. If where you live, you know you have very bad Internet connection, try to find a better place that you can have your interview in. Another thing you should keep in mind is you need to give your potential client a good first impression of you. And that include being early. Make sure you join the meeting at least pipe minute before the time. If you are supposed to meet the client at 10:00 A.M. Be there at 9:55 A.M. So that in case there is any other issue, you will be able to resolve it before the client start the meeting. So be at least pipe minute early and make sure you are in a place where it is quiet. There are no other people running around in the background and it is just not too noisy. Don't need to be in a professional office background. You can just have a plain wall background, but just make sure that the place is quiet so that it's not too noisy and there are no too many people doing random things in your background. This is very important. So what you should keep in mind is the first thing, do a test meeting. For the time of the meeting, at least a day people do a test meeting with someone to just learn how it works, especially if you have never done an online meeting. The second thing is, make sure you are in a place where there is good Internet connection. And the next thing is make sure you have a good source of audio where people can hear you and you can hear them also. If your computer doesn't have a good camera, you can use your mobile phone to do your client meetings, but just make sure you do a test so that e bulletin is good. And in the next lesson, we are going to talk about setting client expectations after you get the job. So I'm going to see you 27. Setting client expectations from day one: This lesson, we are going to talk about setting client expectations from day one so that you avoid having problem with the client later on. As soon as you get the job, you start working for the client. Make sure the first thing, make sure you make it clear to them your availability when you are available, when they shall expect you to respond. When you start working for them, if you are supposed to work for them, maybe for 3 hours every day, make sure you are clear to them you are available from this time to that time. And if they talk to you outside of the time frame, they should not expect you to respond instantly. This is important because I previously worked for someone who expect me to be available 247. Their time zone is totally different with my time zone and I understand. And even the time zone that I do my work align almost perfectally with their time zone. But to my surprise, in the morning where I live, it's like 2:00 A.M. Where the client lives. But sometimes at around that time, the client will send me a message and will expect me to respond. So some client will try to make their work your entire life. And if you don't make clear expectations from Day one, they are going to find reasons to give you bad review to terminate your contract and just end up having an unpleasant experience. So from Day one, make it clear to them. You are available from this time to that time. And depending on what you agree initially, make sure that you are clear to them that you are going to work for them for X amount of hours at this rate. If you agree you are going to work for them for $10 per hour, it is clear. You are not going to do anything outside of the hours that you tag for them. And another thing is if you have a specific tax that you are going to do for them, make sure you do those tax specific tax for them. Without doing anything outside of what you are supposed to be doing for them. Let me just give you one example. If someone hire you to be the administrative assist their administrative assistant. Administrative assistance is not stressful if you know exactly what you are doing. IPs they suddenly ask you to do cold calling for them. Cold calling is a stressful job. So it's something that is totally outside of the work that you agree to do for them, and maybe they shall pay you more per hour. If you are to do or something like cold calling for them. So make sure you set clear expectations. And when the client present something that is outside of what you agree on, you immediately mention it to them. You make them aware of it because if you look away, okay it's nothing, maybe just look away from it. Before you know it, before you know it, problems will add up and the client is going to be the relationship is just not going to last. So make sure you set clear expectations of the time that you are available, and if a client talk to you outside of the time frame, they should not expect you to respond immediately and be clear about the type of work that you are doing for them so that if they ask for something outside of that scoff, you are easily going to be able to call them out on it. If you agree on a specific hourly rate, they are not going to pay you anything less and if you agree, they are going to pay you ending up each week or ending up each month, make sure they pay you on that time without having any issue. If one problem happened, make sure you resolve it instantly because if you just look away, problems will add up and the relationship is not going to work. In the next lesson, we are going to talk about building long term relationship and how you can use it to your advantage. I'm going to see you there. 28. Building long term client relationships: So in this lesson, we are going to talk about building long term relationship with client. This is the most important thing, really, at least for me in Virtual Assistance because I really hate working for new people all the time. So when I start working for someone, I really want to work for them long term until I have a reason to stop working for them. If I just look at the job description and I apply for a job and I'm having an interview with a client, and I notice that be the job will only last two weeks. I am most probably not going to take the job because to me, building long term relationship is important because if I build long term relationship, I know I don't have a headache of finding new client all the time, and you can easily get perils from a client if we build a long term relationship with them. So to me, really building this long term relationship is even more important than the money I get initially. I will give you one example. I have a client who I am currently working for. The client I'm working for them as a Virtual Assistant, but the client figured out that I can build website. And so the client have a business, a coaching business, we have an agreement with the client when all new student that join their program, if they need a website, the client recommend me to their student. So I ended up getting at least three new web design client every month without ever sending any proposal. And that is one of the advantages of building long term relationship to me. And I have so many clients that I work for. Some of them I work on building their website. And since building a website is a one time t, will ask me if I'm available to work for them as a Virtual Assistant. And if I am not available, I will easily recommend them to someone. So this really help me have a steady stream of client so that I don't even need to send a proposal, and this should really be your focus. Whenever you pine a new client, make sure you work as much as possible in building a long, good term relationship with them so that first, you don't have to find a new client all the time. And second, will be even willing to help you make more money. They will be willing to give you more opportunities that will make you money, and they will be easily happy to recommend you to anyone that here who is looking to hire batal assistant. And this brings us to the end of this course. But there is one thing that I'm going to leave you with finding you a first client very hard and challenging. If it is easy, it will not be valuable, but new people are finding client every single day, which means you can find client if you never give up. So be willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. If you are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed, then no matter what challenge come your way, you will be able to figure out how you can overcome that challenge. That is what helped me succeed in many things. If giving up is not part of the equation for you, then no matter what challenge come up, you are going to get into problem solving mindset and you are going to be able to figure out a solution for the problem. And if you do this, it might take time, but you are eventually going to succeed. I wish you all the best, and I wish to see you in another course. Bye for now.