What Does a Virtual Assistant Actually Do? (And Why You’re More Qualified Than You Think)

Jul 24

You don't need to be a tech genius, have a fancy resume, or know all the ins and outs of the Instagram algorithm in order to be a successful virtual assistant. In fact, there are people out there right now with fewer skills and less experience than you making money from home as a VA. What a virtual assistant actually does is one of the biggest questions that I get. Whether it's in my DMs, when it's in an email, if it's in the Monetize Your Skills Challenge, when people hear the podcast, read the blog, and they're interested in becoming a VA, but they're like, what the heck does a VA actually do? And can I do that? Do I actually have the skills? And the answer is yes, but I want to dive into that more so that you can see actual, tangible examples. We have people who go through our program with all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of skills, all kinds of experience, and I want you to know that it is so possible for you.

When it comes to being a virtual assistant, the first thing I want you to think about is when you're looking at your skills. One of the greatest things about becoming a virtual assistant is that you can use those skills and actually get paid for them. If you haven't taken the Discover Your Money Making Skillset quiz, I'm going to link that here for you because you have to take it. I have to know what your results are. It's going to help you so much in uncovering what we're talking about today. You have different skills, and there are categories of hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are things like teachable technical skills that can be measured. That can look like how to manage an email inbox, using Canva or social media, data entry and spreadsheets, knowing how to utilize different customer service software. Tangible, teachable, technical skills that can be measured. Those are hard skills. Now, soft skills are things that are not as easy to measure. A lot of them are actually your natural strengths and what make you great at the things that you do, even if you don't realize it. Examples of this might be like you're highly organized, you're really great at communicating, you're able to solve problems quickly, you are someone who just figures it out, you pay really close attention to details, etc. There are the hard skills that, like I said, are teachable. They're technical. They can be measured. Then there are things that might be natural strengths of yours, things that you've learned over time, but you do them really well. It's not something that can really be measured. It's just a part of who you are. It might be a strong personality trait of yours.

What people get wrong when it comes to becoming a virtual assistant is that your soft skills are actually more important and make you more desirable than your hard skills do. One piece of advice that I give people who come to me and say, I'm looking to hire a VA. What does that look like? How can I do that? We actually have a network for the gals who go through Beginner to Booked VA, and they're in our VA network. They can get connected with people who are looking for virtual assistants. One of the things people ask me when they go to hire a VA is, what should I be looking for? How do I do this? I've never done this before. One of my biggest tips is a quote I heard before that stuck with me is, “Hire for the heart, train the hands”. You want to be the virtual assistant that you're just the person that people know that they want in their business, and they know that they can teach you whatever they need to teach you. That is what most people, when they are hiring a VA are looking for. That's what it's all about. Your role as a virtual assistant is to assist. You're supporting the business owner. You're not running the show. Part of that is being able to learn different things. As a business owner, when I'm hiring VAs or I'm hiring people to support my business and the recommendation that I give other people who are looking to hire a VA, is don't get so focused on what their hard skills are and if they have experience in X platform or whatever, because you can show them how to do the thing that you want them to do. I actually tell people that if you can show a VA or you can show someone how to do a task in a one to 10-minute video, then you can delegate that to a VA. This kind of goes into SOPs or standard operating procedures, and how as a virtual assistant, your clients are going to give you those, or they should. If you're a client or someone looking to hire a VA listening to this, this is a tip for you. You should have a process that you are going to hand off to your VA for them to take over. That's the role of a VA. As a virtual assistant, it doesn't really matter if you have experience in all these different platforms and all these different things, because your client is going to tell you exactly how they want you to execute that. I'm going to give you some examples.

First, I want you to think of your favorite recipe. It might be a chili recipe or a salad kind of recipe. It might be a lasagna, whatever it might be. You had a recipe that you started out with that you followed to a T, most likely, okay? Then, over time, you got better and better at doing that recipe. Now you can pretty much do it from the heart. You don't have to look at the recipe anymore. That's how I am with a 15-minute chili recipe that I make at least once a week. When I first started making it, I had to follow it to a T. Now I know exactly what ingredients. I can rattle them off to you. I know exactly how long it's going to take to cook. I know what I need to get from the store. I know the process and the order in which everything needs to be added. And we're good. So that is basically like a life SOP. Recipes to a dish that we're making for our families is the same thing as an SOP that your client is going to give you. At first, they're going to give you essentially a recipe to create or do a task for them. Then over time, you're going to catch on really quickly. Your role as a VA is to take over those processes.

Here's the thing: I've been working with business owners for over three years in some support capacity, whether it's been a VA, an online business manager, or a social media strategist and manager. Right now, I am the ops and marketing assistant for one of my clients. No matter if I were to take on a client right now as a VA, I would have a lot of experience in lots of different systems. I've been in a lot of different systems, not only for my business, but for other people's businesses. I would still ask for their process and their recorded SOP on how they want me to execute. Because here's the deal. You can have two clients that use the same system, and they want you to do the same task, but how they want you to execute it is going to be different. They are going to have to tell you and show you how they want that done. This is why the hard skills aren't as important as the soft skills. The soft skills, like being able to learn quickly, being able to problem solve, being able to kind of figure things out if they don't go how you expect them to, being able to communicate effectively, all of these things are way more important than if you have experience in X system. Because, to be honest, there are a million systems out there, and you will not find a virtual assistant who has experience with all of them. If people are too hyper-focused on, “I'm going to hire an assistant that has experience in these things”, they are going to do themselves a disservice because they might hire someone who might have experience in those things, but they're not a good fit for their team. This is what I see people shifting away from is people know they can teach them how to do the thing they want them to do, but they want to make sure it's a good fit for their team. Make sure it's a good fit for their business. Make sure their personalities mesh really well. Make sure that maybe if they’re someone who's not very detail-oriented or not as organized, they want to hire someone who has those strengths so that they can help them be that way. That's actually something I did when I hired my VA. I think that's something really important, and it should be really encouraging for you because that is what I mean when I say you can get started using the skills you already have. You already have so many skills that people want to pay you for. Time and time again, I see this. I see multiple leads come through our network a week, looking for VAs, and every time I see them, I'm like, wow, so many gals in this program, so many gals that have graduated, so many gals in this group could do this because they have the soft skills that are required.

Now, the next point that I wanna make is talking about how those skills you have actually can translate into specific services and tasks for clients. On Instagram, a couple of months ago, I posted a question box and I said, what is your profession, or what's your background in? I'm gonna give you specific examples on how you can use the skills that you use in your profession to help clients, and what people are actually hiring people for. I pulled three of those. There are so many more. I actually have a post on my Instagram with even more examples if you want to go check that out. A couple of examples. We're going to start with a teacher because I'm a former teacher. I know we have a lot of teachers who become VAs who go through our program. You communicating with parents, staff, students, etc, translates so well. You are able to do email management, do customer and client communication, help with follow-ups, help with answering questions, and do the customer support side of things. Your ability to do grading and tracking progress, managing learning plans, and all that good stuff is perfect for data collection and entry for business owners. Proofreading, updating websites, or other documents for your client. These things are so needed. People are hiring for them every single day. Also, if you're a teacher that creates resources for lessons, anchor charts, you have experience creating worksheets, or TPT, or whatever that might be, you can be very valuable in in creating visuals for clients' graphics for social media, helping them create workbooks for their clients, helping them create any kind of graphics or visuals that they need for their business. Those are just a couple of examples. You see how the skills translate. Just because you're a teacher and you have these skills, teachers have so many skills. I think a lot of times, at least when I was a teacher or when I was looking to make money from home, or I was trying to figure out something I wanted to do with my career, I was like, okay, but I've only ever been a teacher. How do I translate these skills into something else? Sometimes we get tunnel vision, but there are so many skills that you learn that can be translated, and you can really hone in on your strengths, which is what is so cool.

The next one is a registered nurse. If you're an RN or you're in healthcare, hopefully you can relate to this, but this was someone who put that they were a nurse, and this is what I came up with. You are managing multiple patients, you have shift handoffs, and you're juggling tasks simultaneously which makes you such a great VA for supporting multiple clients, juggling projects without missing deadlines, like project management. Nurses are doing project management every single day. So are teachers. So are people in corporate. You just might not call it that. It might not look like how project management looks for a client, but it's something that you very much are doing every single day. Nurses also make decisions really quickly in urgent situations. So translating that into being a VA, it's not nearly as dire, but troubleshooting tech issues, managing time-sensitive tasks, being able to perform under pressure, maybe your client's in a launch and you got to do some things to help troubleshoot the launch, whatever that might be. Nurses and teachers, this is really the case for a lot of people, constantly adjusting to new information while staying organized. New things come up, you're constantly having to adjust and pivot while staying organized and keeping your head on straight. This is so valuable for VAs because let's be honest, we business owners can change our minds a lot. We might do something one way and then we want to do it another way, and we need our team to keep up and be able to stay organized while also shifting. This is super, super helpful because you can pivot and adjust as needed.

One more example. We have an insurance account manager. I had to look up the role of an insurance account manager because I don't know of anyone except this one person, who is an insurance account manager. This is what I came up with. One of the roles of an account manager for insurance is updating records, processing forms, and managing compliance. That is so valuable as a VA because you can help with data entry, you can help with file management, inbox organization, and general behind-the-scenes support. Managing compliance, I think of when we have clients who are course creators or have memberships. If people's payments fail, making sure that you're following up and letting them know that they need to change their card information or whatever that might be. Another thing that insurance account managers do is they manage renewals and policy updates, client questions, and client retention. That is another huge bonus that you can offer your clients is helping them with client onboarding. Helping them update their client or customer relationship manager, doing follow-ups, and providing customer support. Again, your client is going to show you and tell you exactly how they want this done. This is stuff that people are looking for. They have all these leads coming in, and they can't manage them all and here's how they want them to be managed. Here's the process. Here are some email templates, and they are delegating to their virtual assistant. That's how you can step in and support them. So freaking cool. I hope you see that you have so many of these skills, and I wish I could just go on and on about those of you who are in different careers, but we would be here all day.

The final point that I really want to drive home is that you truly can start with what you have right now. Start with where you're at and develop your skills over time. You are going to learn so much by doing. I honestly think that the best learning comes from doing. I learned so much when I first started as a VA, and I had no experience. I think I had like a little bit of experience in one system that a client was using, and it's because I had used it for my own business in the past. But every other system, I didn't even know what it was. I had never even heard of it. But because your clients are giving you the SOPs, they're giving you the recipe for how they want the task executed, you can pick it up pretty quickly. You are going to be able to do that while also learning how to do the process even faster. Maybe learning how to make the systems a little bit more seamless. You're going to learn and navigate your way around different systems. You're going to learn so quickly.

Multiple people have gone through our Beginner to Booked VA program who were teachers, corporate, etc, and didn't have a background in these systems that most online business owners use. Now they actually specialize in those systems. They're actually doing build-outs for these different systems for clients because they learned so much by actually helping clients and just getting in the weeds with it that they are now a specialist in that area. That is so possible for you, but only if you start. You have to push fear aside and push all the resistances and hesitations that you might be feeling, and just start, or else you're never going to continue to grow and be able to see the fruits of what would happen if you started.

So step number one, I want you to make sure you take that quiz. It's our free Discover Your Money Making Skillset quiz that is going to help you get a little bit of an idea of where you are, what kind of skills you have, and how that translates to other business owners and supporting them. Then number two is that if you are ready to get started, you can check out Beginner to Booked to VA. which is our signature program. What's really awesome is that we have added a new enrollment option. Typically, we run this program live four times a year, but we added an option for self-study. What that means for you is that you can get started today. You can literally sign up today. You can learn exactly how to start your business from the ground zero. No idea how to even get started. Beginner level, right? That's why it's called Beginner to Booked VA. You can get started today and learn how to start booking clients. You don't have to wait until the live cohort. What's really cool is that if you do the self-study and then you decide in the future, when we are running a live cohort, you can upgrade.

Okay, I will see you back here next time, and I just want you to know that I'm rooting for you. Have a great week. Bye!