video credited to: Lydia Senn via youtube
image edited on canva
How to become a virtual assistant
To be a virtual assistant is fun. You will have the freedom of working from any part of the world, from the comfort of your home. The life and journey of any virtual assistant are not and cannot always be fairies and unicorns, there are always storms and calms between them.
If you are really thinking of setting up shop as a virtual assistant, then read on. As Nigeria is evolving and meeting up with the world, so also should you choose to evolve and offer service from the comfort of your home.
But first who is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant is generally self-employed and provide professional administrative, technical or creative (social) assistance to clients remotely from a home office
The first step to becoming a virtual assistant in Nigeria is
Don’t listen to people opinions
Nigeria is evolving. This means innovations, new ideas, and better ways of doing things. In amidst all the happenings around you, there are exists a group of colleagues, friends and worst case scenarios family members whose job description is to negate your effort in trying to achieve your dreams.
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These group of people will make all kinds of suggestions, all kinds of remarks and also point you in the wrong direction. They will never make creative criticism to your dreams rather deter you from realizing them. It is time to close your ears, be blind and remain steadfast to set up shop as a virtual assistant to achieve your dreams.
Research and prepare to become a virtual assistant
There is this saying in Nigeria ”Nothing good comes easy”, to become a virtual assistant, you need to get into research at the beginning of setting up shop. First off, visit similar virtual assistant shops like yours, understand how to manage clients and how to discover new clients, how to deliver assistant without getting the client angry or pissed of.
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It is important to know what kind of a virtual assistant you want to become at the word GO! Set up shop to suit your own area of expertise, your circumstance, your wants and your needs. Set a virtual assistant shop that applies to you and what you really want to achieve. Be unique when setting up shop
Look at your savings before becoming a virtual assistant
I’m a big fan of side hustle in life. So before freelancing or taking virtual assistant as a full-time job kindly consider by Looking at your savings. There isn’t any savings benchmark of becoming a virtual assistant but setting up an online business for self especially is now easy with the Ease of doing business in Nigeria. The truth is, it will take time to start getting clients’.
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So, if you are thinking of quitting your day job, your primary source of income, think again! Start by outsourcing client, and maintaining your primary source of income until you have a good client-based.
It is not an excuse to let go of your primary source of income, not an excuse to stop looking for ways to achieve your dreams, not a reason enough not to hustle other ways of realizing your set goals, the worst that can ever happen here is IT WILL TAKE A WHILE!
Branding and packaging yourself
Therefore after deciding, your company name, the design of your site, the location of the site, the logo, the demography of customers, the reach of your business, the social profiles relating or representing you, comes branding and packaging.
As a virtual assistant, there is a need for branding and packaging yourself, assign to yourself a unique identity that makes you different from all another virtual assistant online. Ensuring your unique identity is been protected from damage, low-quality standard, bad reputation, identity theft, all has to do with packaging. To become competitive and progressive as a virtual assistant, becoming unique is the keyword definition.
Rely on your area of strength
There is no point in trying to specialize in everything, I would suggest you specialized in a single field and rely on your area of strength to become a productive virtual assistant.
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Identify what is your strength and stick with it, offer services in your area of expertise. Find a niche that applies to you, because there is no point in running around and becoming jack of all trade and the master of none
It does not speak well of you. There is no point in becoming a virtual assistant if you end up moving from one niche to another.
How to charge your client and have them remain your client
Speaking from Nigeria’s point of view, you need to go easy when charging your clients as a virtual assistant. You may charge per hour, you could charge by time taking for the tasked to be done, (less than an hour) or charged by the quality of tasked and urgency. To set up shop, let
Rely on the level of your expertise and know that your area of strength would either make-you-or-break-you (MY-O-BY), keep your charges on the minimum and give out quality over quantity to grow client based online working solutions.
Keep it simple and learn
I would rather keep it simple and learn than think high of myself and fail at getting customers, money and also opening new ways to explore the depths of Nigeria financial abyss.
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I cannot stress enough, the depths of Nigerian financial abyss. Start every day of your life with the ideology of I want to learn a new thing today! Don’t just stick to learning only in the virtual assistant niche, but also keep up with new technologies, innovations and valuable skills to become relevant in these times.
You don’t have to be Batman, bold, strong and intelligent, or wonder-woman, with the strength of the old gods, the Flash with speed force at your disposal, just have a better understanding, that for any virtual assistant, keeping it simple and learning is his priority towards achieving and living his dreams.
On a conclusive note
Though setting up shop as a virtual assistant is a promising career, we should consider the challenges in pursuit of our dreams. We can do this by turning a blind eye, ignoring destructive criticism and to remain steadfast to relying on our strength for branding and packaging ourselves to the actualization of our dreams as virtual assistant.
video credits: Laura Pennington- Freelance Freedom via youtube
