
15 Reasons To Become A Virtual Assistant Mom
Personally, I think there is so many more than just 15 reasons to become a virtual assistant mom than I’ve listed below, but these are the main ones. Each person has their own reasons why they would like to become a virtual assistant, and I’d love it if you can add those in the comments below!
These numbers are in no particular order, except for the first one, because for me the most important part of becoming a virtual assistant meant being home with my kids. So that’s where I’ll start the count.
#1. Being Able To Work From Home And Raise My Kids
There are not many careers that support raising your own children. In fact, more and more moms are havings to go out of the home after having children just to help support the family financially as the cost of everything rises.
My number 1 reason for building a virtual assistant business was my kids. I didn’t want a daycare raising them. I had originally gone to college to get my Early Childcare Educator Certificate and worked at daycares. I know all too well that some daycares, or workers at the daycares are not who I want raising my children or talking to them like I would never talk to them.
I am guessing that all the momma’s reading this would agree that their number 1 reason for wanting to become a virtual assistant and start their own business would be their children as well.
#2. An Income You Can Live On
Whether you are a single mom that needs to make enough to pay for everything, or you just want to help support your family and pay a few bills, this business can provide a little or a lot of income.
Although virtual assistant businesses can be a bit unsteady in the beginning while you find your rockstar clients, after that it is pretty steady and reliable as long as you keep providing the work for your clients. I saw a post that said the average VA in the US makes around $39,000 a year. That might not be super awesome, but that’s the average. Many VA’s bring in much more, depends on what services you offer and how much hours you want to work. But that average a single mom can survive on in most areas.
If you want to travel often with your family, become a virtual assistant because you can do it from anywhere in the world, pretty much. As long as your hotel, campsite, or resort has wifi.
I started at $20 an hour and worked up to $25 an hour and now work at $30 an hour in most of my packages. You can set your own rate. Some services in high demand that not many VA’s are doing you can charge more for like, $50-60 an hour. Really, the sky is the limit at what you can make in your business.
Once you find you have too much work you can scale your business up and high subcontractors to do some of your clients work, you pay them $15-20 an hour and you still charge your client the $25-30 an hour and get the difference from what you pay your subcontractor.
#3. No More Daycare Fees or Babysitter Costs
No more missing school concerts, or having to find a babysitter at home or take time off work when the kids are sick for a week or more. School breaks like spring break, winter break and that long summer break you get to spend time doing fun stuff with your children instead of sending them to daycares or summer camps. Think of all the money you’ll save just in daycare fees by staying home with the kids.
I don’t know about your kids, but mine seem to catch every virus and flu that they come in contact with at school. This year they were sick from Christmas until March. They just kept giving it to each other one after the other like a damn horror story. That’s almost 2 months of babysitter fees I would have had to fork out, let alone trying to find a babysitter for that long that would come to my house. AND then I caught it and could hardly move for 2 weeks straight. Good thing I can do my client work from my bed and laying on the couch. Clients are usually very supportive if you are too ill to work for a couple days. They know even VA’s get sick from time to time.
#4. You Still Get To Communicate With People
Being a stay at home mom can be isolating and lonely. But if you are working as a virtual assistant you have communication with clients often by phone or video chat and email. So it doesn’t feel so lonely. I am also on social media a lot for my work chatting with people about client services and so on. It might just be online, but I feel it’s better than no communication at all. For an introvert like myself, I rather like the online communication than face to face for the most part.
I still try to get out of the house once or twice a week to visit with actual real-life adults. haha I found some vegan potlucks to go to each weekend and I meet so many nice people there and now that I have been going for a few months I can recognize half the people and have made some nice friends. It is also a great place to network my business, because everyone’s first 5 questions when you first meet is, “what do you do.” I tell them I run my own Social Media Management business. Then they are usually intrigued and ask more about it. I have signed on a couple clients that way.
#5. Virtual Assistant Work Is Satisfying and Rewarding
I have had many businesses over my 38 years. I started a cake making business which I did for a year. It was fun but so time-consuming and people didn’t want to pay what your time is worth, so it took me 7 hours to make a 3 layer cake with fondant and icing and decorations. No one wants to pay $200 for a cake. I would sell them for $100 and people would still complain and try to barter the price. It was not satisfying for me.
After that I decided to make tutus and sold them at the farmer’s markets, also didn’t find the time it was worth the returned income. Then I opened a city-licensed family daycare. I did that for 5 years and loved it for the most part. It was hard on the nerves having 7 children running around 5 days a week, and hard on the furniture. I eventually decided to change careers to an online business.
I tried many MLM type businesses like PartyLite, Mary Kay, Avon, Beachbody, etc but I didn’t get enough signups. I wasn’t good at trying to push sales on people.
That’s why it’s so great to become a virtual assistant mom! You don’t have to push anything on anyone. You answer peoples posts when they need a VA and you apply for positions people are filling. They want you to work for them!
It is soooo stinking satisfying and rewarding when your clients thank you for making their life easier and less stressful! I have heard it many times. It’s great!
#6. Continue To Have A Career
If you were working in a career before becoming a mom, you can continue having one after from home. Many virtual assistants take what they learned from their careers and provide those or similar services from home for clients that need it.
I know moms that worked in construction, but after having kids decided to start a virtual business working with construction businesses doing data entry, bookkeeping, job research etc. They took their construction business knowledge and made a career at home.
You don’t have to give up working or having a career just because you want to stay home. Become a virtual assistant and you can have it all my dear momma!
#7. The Ability To Choose Who You Work With
This is a great pro to running your own business. For the most part, you get to choose who you work with. If you are not getting along with a client you can fire them and find a new one.
That might seem too simple, but it really isn’t. If a client turns nasty, demanding, unsupportive or unappreciative, then you don’t need to keep working with them for any longer.
Not like a traditional career where if you hate your boss usually its tough luck or try to find another position somewhere else. Then there’s the two weeks or a month notice you have to give and awkwardly still work with someone that stresses you out so much you had to quit.
With your own online business you can put in your contract, I have it in mine, that either party can terminate the contract immediately for any reason, especially if the client and assistant work becomes stressful, not paying on time, rude or abusive language or behavior, etc. you can stick anything in your contract because you are the boss of your business and get to decide who you work with.
#8. You Get To Pick Your Own Work Hours
I love this ability to choose my own work hours! It’s great! I do tell my clients I can be reached by email or whatever communication services we are using between certain hours, then I have my none work hours on my contract as well. Most virtual assistants don’t work weekends or certain days of the week, you can put that all in the contract so they know when they sign up to work for you. Some only work evenings and some mornings. Most clients don’t care when you get the work done, they just care it gets done when it needs to and isn’t late.
I work around my homeschooling morning hours and the kid’s school stuff, and homeschool group meetups and school drop offs and pick up (I have a couple in school and a couple home schooled-long story) and around bedtimes and I never work Sundays. I do 3 hours of work time on Saturdays to communicate with clients if they need to, but most don’t work weekends either so I hardly hear from anyone. So when you become a virtual assistant you can create your own schedule and work when you want to.
#9 You Get To Do A Variety Of Tasks
I realize that everyone is different, and there may be people that enjoy doing the same thing day in and day out, but that’s not me. I enjoy doing a variety of tasks daily and learning something new at least once a month.
When you become a virtual assistant you will be asked to do a variety of services from checking emails, replying, setting up email marketing, posting on social media accounts, making graphics in Canva, writing content on blogs, helping set up website pages, keeping track of website and social media stats, and much more.
Most of your clients will need you to do a few different things, but do them every week. So you will know what is expected of you each week but its a bunch of stuff and not the same thing every day, so you won’t get bored of being a virtual assistant.
#10. Offer Services You Already Know Or Learn New Ones
You can take what you already know how to do and niche your business down to offer just those services. Like if you know construction, offer construction services. Or if you were a receptionist or secretary offer those services from home.
Or you can go out and learn new services you want to offer. Like social media management, but taking online courses. Some even offer certificates you can put onto your business website.
Here is a list of some services you can offer, but there is sooo much more:
- Administration
- Social Media Management
- Proofreading and editing
- Research
- Word-processing
- Spreadsheets
- Data entry
- Database management
- Bookkeeping
- Graphic design
- Event planning
- Data processing/data management
- Marketing services
- Proposal Writer
- Business/employee communications
- Calendar management
- Summit Event Managers
#10. Always Something To Learn
I am an avid learner of things, anything really. I love to learn. I think if college was free I’d take as many courses as I could pack into my tiny brain.
When you become a virtual assistant you constantly have the opportunity to learn my systems, programs, skills, and services if you want to. All you have to do is sign up for a system that most people use but you have never used it, go to the support or help files and read it and learn what you can. There is also the trusted Youtube to learn pretty much anything.
If you have clients and see they use a particular system or program you have never used, you can reach out and let them know you are interested in learning it and more times than not they will be happy to let you poke around in it and try some things out. If you learn it they may be able to give you some tasks to do for them in it. Win win.
#11. You Get To Use Your Brain
Being a stay at home mom can make you feel a bit duh sometimes. You know that whole mom brain that starts when you are pregnant and you think you are losing your shit when you put the milk in the cupboard instead of the fridge.
Well, when you become a virtual assistant it gives you the opportunity to feel smart again, to exercise that brain power you used to have before giving it all to your child.
It makes me not feel so much like I am ONLY a mom, I am a career mom and do things with my brain for at least a few hours a day that doesn’t involve just mom stuff.
#12. Save On Commuting Costs And Time
If you live in a big city, or even a little city, travel to and from work is time-consuming and costly if you drive or have to pay for a bus pass monthly.
City transit is no fun, I don’t care who you are if you say you enjoy being packed into a bus or Skytrain/subway you are lying, my friend! No one likes that they just do it to get to work.
When you become a virtual assistant at home, it means no more strangers rubbing against you on the bus, or filling your gas tank every couple days to drive across town and spend hours commuting to a job you don’t really love anyway.
#13. No More Office Politics
OMG, seriously with the office politics?! Every job has them and they drive me crazy. Is this jr. high all over again? I can’t stand the shit that goes on at some places. Like talking behind peoples backs about them, gossip, bullying, sucking up to bosses to get raises and whatever else goes on behind those closed doors… I am so done and will be happy to never have to deal with them again! Have you ever had to deal with crazy office politics in any of your jobs? Let me know what was the worst below in the comments. It will be interesting to hear what you moms have had to deal with!
#14. Being A Business Role Model For Your Children
Even if your children are still small they catch on to some things still. Like mommy is home but has work time. As they grow older they may ask questions about your business and how you started it. They may also have an entrepreneur spirit and you can help fuel that by being a positive role model and business leader to them.
You can teach them business skills in a fun way if they show interest. Get them to help with sorting invoices or explain what type of work you do.
For older teens, you might even be able to employ them to do the easy VA tasks from some of your clients and take some tasks off your own plate.
#15. You Have Time For The Fun Stuff
You can play board games with your kids in the middle of the day or in the evening. You can make crafts and go on hikes or to the park whenever you want. You get to choose when you take a break from your VA work so you don’t miss out on the fun stuff that being a kid is all about.
It’s sad when I hear moms say they missed their kid’s childhood and it was gone in the blink of an eye because they had to work to bring in money. Going away from your kids for 8-9 hours a day is hard. Very hard, I have had to do it a few times between trying out different business ideas I didn’t like or didn’t work. So I get it all too well. That guilty mom feeling of dropping a crying baby off at a daycare, or missing their concert or school event because I couldn’t get out of work. Broke my heart! I am so passionate about helping moms become a virtual assistant so they can start their own business and not miss any more of their child’s childhood.
Alright, so that is my list of 15 reasons to become a virtual assistant mom. I hope they helped you if you are in the VA research process. It truly is a great business to start, and so easy. Hardly any upfront costs.
Also, check out my Free Guide To Become A VA Mom.
Let me know what number would be the reason you decided to start a VA business.
Mom Hugs!