Working Military Mom Finds Success Working Virtually

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

In today's story, a working mom and military wife becomes a virtual assistant, then hires a team of virtual assistants, and then transitions, second time, to helping other people learn how to do this kind of work. Last year she earned $158,000 doing this and is on track for $200,000 in 2019. Before we dive in, let's talk about qualifications. One of the wonderful things about the world of online work is that no one really cares about traditional qualifications. It doesn't mean that qualifications don't matter.

Whenever you hire someone to do something, you want to know that they're able to do it well. But what I mean is that ability can be demonstrated in a variety of ways. So it's not so much about having a degree in something or having this kind of formal training. If you have that, that's great. And if it's relevant to your field, wonderful.

But if not, it doesn't necessarily mean you can't do something. Unless we're talking about something like dentistry, in which case you probably actually want to go through the traditional path for that. But just to use myself and this podcast as an example, Side Hustle School. If I, Chris Guillipo, can show you how to start a project that makes money, therefore making your life better, which is our whole point, that's why we do this. Do you care that I'm a high school dropout?

If you don't know much about me, then you probably don't know that. And you might not even care. That's kind of the point. It's not that relevant to what I'm trying to show you here on the show. And it's totally true that I am a high school dropout, but at the same time, I also went on to earn a master's degree in international studies, among other things.

And just as I would say, you don't care about me being a high school dropout, you probably also don't care about the master's degree in international studies. It doesn't really matter one way or another, because if you're here to listen to Side Hustle School, I think the question you're asking is, does this make my life better? And if it does, then great. We're helping you. You're going to keep listening.

You're going to keep being engaged. So I'll give you that example as a little bit of a segue to the episode, but I'm going to come back around at the end just to talk a bit more about qualifications, because I think a lot of people get this wrong. Okay, so I'm going to talk about it as it relates to your business ideas at the end. But of course, first we have the story. And here is a shout out to our sponsor.

Seven years ago, Esther Inman dreamed of having a career that allowed her to work from home, wherever home might be. At the time, her husband was in the Marines, and they lived with her two-year-old son in San Diego. Esther was supremely unhappy trying to juggle her corporate day job and software management with being a mom and military wife. A typical workday consisted of dropping off her son at daycare at 7 a.m., then catching the train for her one-hour commute to work. After work, she would pick him up after 6 p.m., and he would only have an hour for dinner, bath, and bedtime.

Her husband was often deployed overseas or working nights, so she had little help on the home front. Families were spent running errands and doing household chores. Esther realized this was not a life she wanted for herself or her son. She just couldn't do it anymore, so she quit her corporate job. Needing to replace her income ASAP, she took what she thought was her dream job, but that dream job involved a lot of work travel, and her husband was deployed at the time.

This meant that their son had to stay with family for weeks. She twirled at the job for a year before realizing it wasn't the answer either. She then decided to try her hand at being a VA, or virtual assistant. She lighted her first gig in the VA world through a posting on Craigslist. The job was working for an online course creation agency, and Esther was chosen out of 300 applicants.

What made her stand out? Well, first, she made a modern-style resume using a tool called Canva, which included a picture of herself. She also made and included a brief video. But mostly, she just followed directions. Her posting had a few requirements, such as asking specific questions for each applicant to answer.

This is commonly used in job postings to help filter out candidates. It not only ensures that people are reading the post in its entirety, it also shows that prospects can follow directions. One requirement was to call a number and leave a message about why she was a good candidate for the job. It turned out that only three of 300 applicants bothered to do this properly. Gotta read those directions, people.

Tasks for that first job included data entry, writing emails, proofreading, creating slides, and the list goes on. One of the best things about being a VA is that you can do virtually any type of work based on your skills, previous experience, and interests. There's no need for formal education. There are also many job opportunities, and many online businesses want a VA to work long-term, not just on one-time projects. Although business owners usually like to hire assistants for the long haul, Esther quickly learned that it's important to have a diverse skill set.

This is to make sure you can help with the many things entrepreneurs need help with. It's also to your advantage to have multiple clients. So if one client cuts you from their team, it's not the end of the world, because you have plenty of other work. One tactic Esther used to ensure her virtual success was to ask for referrals. She also learned to market herself by joining Facebook groups where she knew her target market would be, especially female entrepreneur groups.

She accepted all friend requests and talked to everyone. If she was allowed, she would post promotional graphics about her service. Everyone there needs a good VA. She would often become the go-to person in those groups about all things VA, just by being helpful and being willing to answer questions. When she started working as a VA seven years ago, Esther charged $20 an hour with a minimum of 30 hours per week, and she would often have the opportunity to work a lot more.

Good VA's are hard to find. Within about a year, she raised her rates to $35 to $50 an hour, and she was soon so booked out she had to hire help. Her business then evolved into a virtual assistant agency. For several years, she led a team of 12, primarily building online courses for clients. Here's the second transition.

As that VA business grew into an agency, Esther had so many people asking her how to work online that she began mentoring and helping other women become VA's as well. From there, she developed her own VA training program. For four years, she ran both her agency and the training program, but eventually she became burnout. Over the past year, she transitioned into running her VA training programs full-time. And in that year, 2018, her business made $158,000.

This year, she's on track to cross $200,000. Now able to travel the world at any time, Esther and her family call the island of Bali home. Being an influencer in the remote work movement, having an army of women working online and saying no more to the old corporate ways is her next ambitious goal. All right, so let's get back to qualifications. Does this make someone's life better?

That is the question you need to ask and answer when you're trying to figure out, okay, what is the service that I'm going to offer? Now here's a quote directly from Esther, which totally supports what I was saying about how qualifications, you know, you can have them in a few different ways. She said another great part about the online space is how quickly your income and what you charge can grow. It's not about what degrees, years of experience or certificates you have. Nobody cares.

They care about what you've done. So in six months, you can double your rates and work with higher end clients. It's amazing. It is amazing. And it also makes sense, right?

You know, we care about what someone has done when we're hiring a freelancer, which even larger companies are increasingly doing these days. So with that understanding in mind, here's the question. What are you qualified for? What is your authority? If those qualifications are academic or based on years of experience, that's great.

But those are not the only approaches, not the only avenues. If you have skills, if you can demonstrate that you have skills, if you have knowledge, if you have advanced technical knowledge or some other kind of specialized knowledge that not everyone has, chances are you are qualified to do something, you are qualified to provide some kind of service. And that's why as I tell you all these different stories, some of these stories are about products that people are making, but a lot of them are about services. And that's essentially just kind of looking at yourself and saying, what are my qualifications? How can I then package that in a way that people will pay for it?

So I will leave you with that today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. The show notes are at sidestalescool.com/859. Come and check out what Esther is doing, along with anything else I mentioned in the episode. And of course, come back tomorrow.

Much more is on the way with episode 860 and beyond. Thanks so much. My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School.