Business
This week we continue on our venture exploring side hustles. This one can be a great fit for many as there are so many ways to make becoming a Virtual Assistant (VA) work for you. Today we interview someone that today makes a six-figure income in being a VA. We start off with a lot of fun with the normal banter between Cassie and Alex – you’ve just got to listen in to join the fun! PLUS, Alex (our guest – not your lovable host) was expecting during the recording of our podcast, not knowing whether at any moment she would need to be rushed to the hospital to have her baby. The next morning she had her beautiful baby girl. Coming on our show helps get the delivery going and in this case just a few short hours after recording. We don’t expect that record to be beat any time soon. ? This is quite appropriate as this is why being a VA is such a perfect fit for Alex! She is able to work on her schedule, in the comforts (if you can call pregnancy comfortable) of her own home, and adjust as needed! What a perfect fix and introduction to her speaking on her side hustle (which became her full time gig). Alex starts off sharing with us what a VA is. A VA is someone that can virtually assist you with your business, including book keeping, data entry, anything that a virtual assistant can do. If you are good with computers and able to pick up new skills, this could be a perfect fit for you. This is not only a great fit for someone that wants to be a VA, but other small business owners that need help with their own businesses. When you start a virtual business, sometimes you just want to focus on your passion and business goals. As such, having a VA assist you with some of those tasks that you don’t have time for (or where your time might be spent better elsewhere) can help make your own business even more successful. In our world today we have such amazing opportunities at our fingertips. All businesses have some sort of online presence, so no matter the skills you offer (think outside the box – there is someone out there that needs the skills that you can provide), this can be a great fit. Plus, don’t think that having a side hustle means you have to deliver pizzas, working some part time job where you make almost nothing and live off tips. We often limit ourselves so much because we put ourselves in a box, but in the online world there are so many amazing ways you can make money. Alex shares with us how you can go out and find clients. There are so many answers on this question so we won’t go into all of it here. But Facebook Groups are a great place to start as there are many groups setup for businesses looking for VAs to offer their services. She talks through a number of those options with us. There’s some great nuggets in this interview. We hear how Alex was able to grow and hone her skills as a VA and find very specific skills that she is passionate about and use those to form a new business. In other words, because as a VA she was able to explore all the different skills she was performing for a number of businesses, she grew those skills until she was able to determine “what she wanted to be when she grew up” and learned many of those skills on the job as a VA. What a great way to start and then create a new business – all based on those skills learned while she was a VA. She shares with us where she started as far as her income, earning about $1,000 her first month. Just eighteen months later she was earning at the level of six figures. Alex (the host) then works through the numbers how this income increase is so much greater than our 2% increase each month we work towards. But this is a perfect example of how we share that the desired 2% increase in income each month is just a goal with the potential for earning so much more becoming a reality! Alex (our guest) then shares her biggest piece of advice. “Just start.” There are so many people that want to start something but don’t because they wait for everything to be perfect. Find a few services you are passionate about and it will go from there. She then shares how she has put together a “business in a box” called Virtual Assistant Jumpstart. This is a seven-module course on everything you might need to get your own VA business off the ground. The topics cover everything from deciding what services you want to offer, to how much you should charge and even what payment processing platform you should use. She has learned so much and is so passionate about the whole world of things you can do from home so she put together a business to help others do the same thing! Alex provided all our listeners (and readers) a special coupon code to get $100 off her course (use code THRIFTY100). You’ll need to go through this link to her Virtual Assistant Jumpstart course to get that discount. This is not sugar coated but simple actionable steps to get you started as a Virtual Assistant...and more! The 2% Money Saving Tip There are so many ways you can cut your budget – and especially in the area of food. Cassie shares this tip on how she makes five meals out of one rotisserie chicken. And yes, this works for large families as well. Cassie goes the extra step to buy organic, whole chickens in an instant pot with the goal of the five freezer meals and making her own bone broth as well. Check out our resources below for all the links. Resources Mentioned In This Podcast: Thank you so much to our guest, Alex, for sharing your course Virtual Assistant Jumpstart (aka, her “business in a box”) to our listeners. We encourage you to check it out by clicking here to view her course and use code THRIFTY100 to take $100 off! To read more about why we talk about “2%” whether we’re talking about earning extra income or cutting our budget, we encourage you to check out our book, The 2% Rule To Get Debt Free Fast: An Innovative To Pay Off Your Loans For Good (learn more about our story here as well) and accompanying workbook to help you put those tips into action. As promised, here’s Cassie’s tip on how she makes a rotisserie chicken stretch over five meals for a family of eight! As promised, she also shares how she cooks a whole chicken perfectly in her Instant Pot with the added tip on how she cooks two whole chickens in her Instant Pot as well. Finally while we were searching through our posts, we found this Instant Pot recipe converter that we thought you might find helpful too. Finally make sure to check out this week's show notes where we break these tips down and give you exactly what you need to get started. Plus you'll want to check those show notes as they give you links to all the resources we discussed on this show. :)