You will tell me: what's the difference?
There is a big difference between just working from home and starting your own business as a virtual assistant.
Our online business is like a shop.
It is a virtual shop, of course, and requires minor investments, but it is our shop, our showcase.
Just as it isn’t enough to open a physical store and hope that customers flock to the entrance, in the same way it isn’t enough to have a nice site to receive an avalanche of requests for quotes.
It is necessary to invest in resources, time, energy, in training, updating, promotion and networking regularly. Are you willing to do it?
Are you willing to deal with bureaucracy, privacy policy, contracts, etc.?
When we started, we had more than 10 years of working as an employee behind a desk. We felt the need to create something of our own, which would give us more satisfaction and motivation and which would allow us to manage our time independently. We followed the path of virtual assistance and we’re happy with it.
But we realized how different it is (for better or for worse) from the working world in which we’ve been immersed for so many years.
Starting your own business is not just "changing jobs". It is much more. It also changes your way of thinking, of managing your days, and your family.
If you are approaching this profession or you think it might be for you, we invite you to do some reflections to avoid false expectations. Especially if you have never run a self-employed business, you may find it difficult to "settle down" in your new role as your own entrepreneur. It is feasible, of course, but it is not simple. Better to start well-informed!
Are you aware of what it means to start your own business? Do you have the right attitude, or are you willing to work on improving it?
Working on our own means: great motivation, personal satisfaction, flexibility, time management.
But it also means: evenings (or Sundays) on the PC, difficult moments, both from an economic and moral point of view, errors to be fixed, etc. We’ve no one above me to turn to. It is I who must decide, hoping each time to make the right choice and eventually to remedy it.
Initially the biggest difficulty was not the bureaucracy, taxation or the need to increase and update my skills. The most difficult aspect was just changing my mental attitude to acquire an entrepreneurial mentality.
When you work as an employee, no matter how much you may have achieved a great deal of autonomy in your position, you often follow management guidelines. In most cases, you do the work, but big decisions are made elsewhere. You don’t have control over the company’s investment or growth strategy. When you work on your own, you are the one who makes the decisions.
It is you who must always study new ways to create, propose, find customers, etc. This is great and exciting for some, but others are afraid of it, or just don’t want to deal with it. They would like to be able to close the office door at the end of the day and devote themselves entirely to something else.
The virtual assistant profession offers you a lot of flexibility, and this is truly priceless. But there are those who work as an employee all their life and are happy and satisfied. And that’s fine. One thing or another is not better. We are not all the same (thankfully).
Not everyone is driven by the same motivations, not everyone wants the same things. Are you able to economically face the initial months? The good thing is that to start a virtual support business you need a computer and a good internet connection. If you were to rent a place to work, the initial investment would be much greater. But there are still costs to be incurred: accountant, taxes, etc.
There are those who find customers after a week from the start of the business, and others after months. As in other business, getting started can be difficult, sometimes it takes years to get “up and running”. We all wish we could immediately find as many customers as we want, but realistically it might not. Do you have a way to support yourself and possibly your family?
Don’t give up
“There’s a lot of competition, I cannot find customers, no one is interested in my services, the others are better than me, etc.” These thoughts will be normal, just be prepared to face them, process them, and move on. If you let yourself down at the first difficulty by blaming the economic crisis, competition, taxes, etc., it all becomes difficult to bear.
At AdminHelpSV we all left a permanent and well-paid job to start this business. And we’d do it again! We love this profession very much, it gives us great opportunities for personal and professional growth and we’d never go back.
But sometimes we realize that the strong desire to “work from home” pushes us to underestimate all aspects of “setting up your own business”. We need to reflect on the pros and cons and understand if we are willing to accept those “cons”.
We are willing to do it, how about you? We’d love to read your opinion, leave a comment.