Today I am talking about building a service based business. I’m taking you behind the scenes of my virtual support agency. Learn how I found my niche, different types of projects and services and the possible hurdles that come with running a business as a Spoonie. There are so many possibilities to the services you can offer and the clients you can work with, and this episode will help you brainstorm ideas on how your business can look.
Here’s what we discussed in today’s episode:
- Service providers are still needed in the wake of COVID-19.
- Why choose freelancer life?
- Behind the scenes of my business now and then.
- Building a business model that fits my life
Can’t Listen? Here’s the transcript:
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Spooniepreneur Podcast. I’m Nicole Neer, an online business manager living with fibromyalgia and bipolar disorder.
On this podcast, I’m going behind the scenes in my business and talking to other Spooniepreneurs to get real about what it looks like to be an entrepreneur living with chronic illness, to inspire you to start the business of your dreams no matter what life throws your way.
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Spooniepreneur podcast. So, today I want to take you behind the scenes in my business to talk about something that has been coming up a lot for me which is why I think that being a done for you service provider is a really, really great fit for this moment that we’re in collectively as a nation, certainly in the US but also around the world. And why I also think that being a done for you service provider is a great option for people living with chronic illness.
One of the things that I’ve experienced in the middle of this pandemic is that so many people still need support with their businesses. They need people to edit their podcasts because people are listening to podcasts more than ever. They need people to help with their client care. They need people to manage their social media marketing. All of those things keep going and they’re really essential parts of a business. And one thing that I also see is that there’s a whole group of people who are working from home for the first time and really understanding why this is an amazing thing. And I think that more people are going to want to launch online businesses of their own. And it’s incredibly easy to start up working as a done for you service provider, very quickly with just the knowledge in your brain and a laptop.
So I run a blog called the Resilient Virtual Assistant. And over there, I teach people living with chronic illness, how to build service-based businesses that work for them. And so when I say done-for-you service provider, I’m meaning virtual assistants, online business managers, graphic designers, copywriters, online course support pros, video editors. It’s really anything where you are providing a service, business to business, helping small businesses and entrepreneurs keep things going on the back end of their businesses.
And one of the most commonly asked questions I get is: Why choose freelancer life? Why choose to be part of this gig economy? Because when you’re on the outside looking in, it can look really like an uncertain thing. It can feel really scary because sometimes the income is feast or famine and there’s so much writing on every client you have that it can seem like you’re always one step away from disaster. And the short answer that I give is that I love working in this field really because it is so versatile. And I thought it would be helpful if I took you behind the scenes of my agency and I talked about the different ways that we interact with clients and some of the modifications that I’ve made in my business to really accommodate my illness.
So my agency is a virtual support agency. Primarily, we provide help with content marketing, which includes podcasts, blog posts, social media marketing, and all of those things. I also work as an online business manager and I support online course creators in helping build their online courses. And before I branched out into all of these things, I was a virtual assistant on and off for four years. In that time I really learned that one of the most important things you can do is to get clear about how you want to work with clients.
Because my background is in social work, I knew very early on that I wanted to work with service-based businesses. I’ve worked with realtors and photographers and digital course businesses, but I really love working with coaches the most. I didn’t know that I preferred working with coaches until about two years into my business, and quite honestly it was because I started working with a coach who ticked all the boxes for my ideal client. She serves her clients in such an authentic way. She had a healthy work-life balance and she was really supportive of me whenever I needed to take time to rest or to go to appointments. But most importantly, this client really allowed me to grow with her. I was able to learn new skills like podcast production just by working with her. If I said, “I don’t know how to do that, but I think I can learn how,” she always said, “Yes, do it. Let’s figure it out.” And it literally transformed my business.
When you’re going to start a business, there’s a lot out there about how you need to find your niche. You need to find that ideal client, identify them and only work with that person. And while I think that’s really solid advice, I also know that for me personally, especially balancing my health issues, it was really important to figure out all the ways that I didn’t like working with clients, to figure out what I really liked. And so for me, that initial niche was really working with service-based businesses. I wanted to be helping people who helped people. And I knew the services that I provided, for example, early on I did social media management and that’s what I did. And in that way, I niched down. And I think it’s important to go there, but I also think too many people get stuck in the minutia of, “Well I have to know who my ideal client is and I have to know my niche and I have to have this business plan and I have to have all the pretty graphics for my social media.” And the truth is that all you have to do is just get started. So if finding your niche is really hard at first, don’t let that stop you from going out there and finding clients.
And I know one of the things that I was really hesitant to do at first was to work with long term clients. So when I started my business, I really focused on project-based work. And so this means that I helped online business owners with one time projects. I would help them create their social media marketing campaigns, I would help them set up their social media schedulers, give them templates and show them how to do marketing and then I would let them go. Or I would come in and I would help support just during their launches.
And it was amazing to find my footing in that way because I could take on as much or as little work as I felt like I could do in that moment without that fear of having to let clients go because I didn’t have the spoons to serve them. And I think it’s really important to acknowledge that fear because when you’re living with a chronic illness you know that you don’t know what tomorrow holds. And I think, I say it over and over again, but when we’re entrepreneurs living with chronic illness, the rest of the world is kind of catching up with us, because we have always understood that tomorrow may be completely different than today. And so I think it’s important that you acknowledge there is a fear of what happens if I’m not able to show up for my clients. What happens if I am a solopreneur in this done-for-you service business and my health gives out in the middle of a launch.
And the truth is, and I wish I could say differently, but the truth is that that will happen. I’ve been doing this for years and I will be honest with you that this happened to me within the last few months. It’s not something that goes away with time. It’s something that you will consistently have to navigate in your business. So that fear of working with clients long term was there. It is always there. But I think getting my feet wet and working with clients on a project by project basis was a good way to start.
And I still do some of this project work in my agency but what you’ll find very quickly is when you think of these stereotypes of what it’s like to be a freelancer, a project work tends to be feast or famine. So you will have like several projects come in at once and then you’ll wrap them up and you’ll go, “Okay, where’s the next project?” And it might be a little while before you’re able to land that project and it takes a little bit of time for those word of mouth referrals to start coming in and people to start referring you to their friends, and it can just feel really difficult and they can add a lot of stress if you don’t have some recurring income coming in as well.
Another reality of working on projects is that you do have to spend a lot of time marketing your services. And projects tend to be more high energy. For example, if you’re coming in and supporting somebody with a launch, those are long hours. Things have to be done right away. And it can take up a lot of physical and mental energy to work in that way.
And I found that a lot of these clients, when I was working on a project basis, they expected me to be available 24/7, and I consistently was stressed about finding my next project so that I could pay my bills. So eventually I learned to be selective about the projects I chose so I could build relationships with the type of business owners that I wanted a long term relationship with.
So for example, very early on, I became an expert working in Kajabi, which is an online course platform and you can build custom websites and email marketing in there as well. I’m still obsessed with Kajabi–I love it. And I took a project with a coach setting up an online course for her and then we clicked so well that by the end of the project I was her ongoing VA and now I am her online business manager.
So by cultivating relationships with everybody that you’re coming into contact with, you’re really able to grow along with people’s businesses. It’s kind of like I love working with people on a project and then moving into one on one work with them because I can see energetically if they’re a fit for my business. If they are a really needy client, if I feel like our personalities aren’t jiving, it’s very easy for me to say, “This was great working with you on this project. I wish you best in the future.”
Having a successful done-for-you service business, it’s as much about the type of clients that you’re working with as it is about the services that you provide. And one of the biggest stories that people tell themselves is that they don’t have the skills they need to be successful. And what’s so great about being a done for you service provider is that there’s so many ways to show up and serve clients. You can be a social media manager or you can focus on digital marketing strategy. You can show up and manage client care inboxes and billing issues and you can learn tech systems and become a tech specialist or if you’ve got professional skills as a copywriter or a graphic designer, you can do those in a freelance setting. You don’t have to have a business degree, you don’t have to have an MBA, you don’t have to have a graphic design background, you don’t have to have a marketing degree to do any of these tasks.
What is amazing about almost every single online entrepreneur I know is that many of us are self-taught. We are taking skills that we’ve learned in many different jobs and we’re able to apply them in a unique way to our businesses without having the actual education.
So personally, for example, I tend to stay away from client care tasks like running a support inbox or keeping track of somebody’s schedule, because this really means that I need to show up at a consistent time each day and means that I have to have the capacity to drop whatever I’m doing in the moment to put out any fires, especially when you’re managing billing issues. And this can take a lot of mental and physical energy. For me, it’s just not my zone of genius. And so I feel drained when I’m in these roles. It can also be really stressful during times when my symptoms are flaring or during moments when I have lots of doctor’s appointments, trying to balance all of that. On every team that I work with, I always make sure there is someone else handling this piece because I know it’s not a good fit for me.
So another thing that I would really challenge you to do is to figure out, as you’re doing these projects, as you’re working with clients, figure out what you are best at and what you love doing, what you will always show up to do, the first thing that you tackle in your to-do list. That’s your zone of genius. And you may be good at something else. I can answer support emails and the support box, but it’s not what I love doing. It’s not what I’m great at. I am just proficient at it. And you should try to be working in your zone of genius instead of your zone of excellence or your zone of proficiency. Because for me, my health is up and down, I thrive on working with clients and projects that allow me to work when I have the energy.
Virtual assistants, online business managers, graphic designers, copywriters are independent contractors in the US which means that the client can’t dictate when you do the work as long as you are meeting your deadlines. And it is such a relief to know that I can take a nap in the afternoon when I need it or I can take time to go to the doctor without having to worry about how much sick time I have left or when I’ll make up all the time that I lost. I literally have built my business to work around my life.
But the number one reason that I think being a done-for-you service provider is such an amazing fit when you’re living with chronic illness is because you can make enough money to pay the bills without working full time. I don’t think that any job is 100% recession-proof, but I do know that virtual assistants are in high demand now and will continue to be in high demand because many business owners are learning that they can outsource tasks to virtual workers for a fraction of what they would pay an executive assistant or a marketing consultant who worked out of their office.
And this is true now, but especially businesses are working virtually now more than ever before and they’re coming to realize just how much can be done even when you’re working from home. One of the first things that happens, unfortunately when we’re in an economic downturn, is that people are looking for ways to cut costs. And they’re going to start cutting costs with some of that administrative support and they’re going to see that they can outsource that to done-for-you service providers like virtual assistants, which I think makes us a good business to be in no matter what’s going on with the economy.
And so even though there are more VA’s now than ever before, I’ve heard some people say that the market is becoming saturated. I truly believe that if you are a rockstar VA, if you are an amazing graphic designer, if you are on your game, you are going to be guaranteed steady work just from word of mouth referrals. Because the thing is is that if one person knows that you’re great, knows the services that you provide, knows that you over-communicate, that you over-deliver, they’re going to refer you to other people.
When I was starting out with my agency, I literally didn’t promote my services for over a year and I had steady referrals coming in each month, every month my business grew just from word of mouth referrals. And for the first 18 months of my business, I worked 20 to 30 hours a week. On average, I had four clients at a time with frequent projects thrown in there as well, and really as I became better at managing my time and energy, I was able to start working 30, 35 hours a week, which was really, really stressful. And I started having more referrals coming in than I had hours in the week.
And that was the moment when I decided to create an agency and to start working with an amazing team of subcontractors to help me out so that I could go back to working 25 hours a week, which is really my sweet spot. And right now, our agency serves a dozen clients. We made six figures last year. We’re projected to make that this year and I work part-time while managing my health issues.
This is been a complete gamechanger for me. It’s allowed me to have the time that I need to care for myself while making more money than I ever did in the stressful job that I had to leave when I got sick. And that’s why I spend so much time teaching others to build their own done-for-you service provider business because I know that it’s possible to be successful and not hustle all the time. It’s possible to make money while working full time. And being a virtual assistant, being a graphic designer, being a copywriter, it’s an amazing way to accomplish this.
But I also know how overwhelming it can feel to start a business or scale a business. There are all these questions that go through our heads. We’re thinking, well, who am I going to serve? How am I going to serve them? How am I going to find them? How am I going to market to them? What are my long term goals? What’s the business plan for all of this? What do I do when I can’t show up for my clients or I’m struggling to run my business, what do I do when it’s time to scale? There are so many concerns that ping through our brain when we’re trying to fall asleep at night.
So that’s why I’ve started offering 60 minutes Spooniepreneurs strategy sessions. Yeah, you heard me right. 60 minutes to pick my brain about what’s going on in your business and how you’re balancing your chronic health issues and your business.
So a great example of this is I just spoke with somebody who was really struggling with how to maintain boundaries in her business. She was getting clients but she was feeling really overwhelmed and really worried that she wasn’t going to be able to keep up with the expectations of her client. They were wanting to call her at all hours, expecting her to pop in, evenings, weekends, to answer emails or to do tasks. And we really stepped her through how to set boundaries and I gave her an amazing tool to use in her business, which is a welcome packet that I use with my clients to set those expectations right up front. And she walked away with a plan for what to do over the next 30 days to address this in her business.
So if this is something that you’re interested in, I am going to pop a link in the show notes so you can check out more information, but you can also shoot me a DM. You can find me on Instagram @theresilientVA.
So I hope all this was helpful for you and I hope that you are staying healthy and taking exquisite care of yourself right now. We’ll talk soon.
Thank you so much for listening to the Spooniepreneur podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, recommend, rate and review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. To find show notes and to get connected to our community of Spooniepreneurs, Go to http://www.theresilientva.com. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.