Hey hey mommas! My name is Kathryn, if you haven’t read my about me page head on over there after you read this, it just goes into more detail about who I am. I am a 40-year-old mom of 4 amazing children. I started my VA business 4 years ago and it has been growing steadily since then.

This is my VA journey post on how I become a VA mom. I thought that it might help you to see how another mom did it if you are thinking of starting a business in Virtual Assistance.

It was kind of funny because I was taking blogging courses with high hopes I would be one of those “made it big” bloggers that go around posting their amazing income monthly as it rose to 5 figures a month just for writing in their blog.

I had no idea how many hours these bloggers actually worked to get to that point and the painstaking amount of learning. I took a few different courses, some free and some worth a couple hundred. The best one I found on blogging was Start A Mom Blog because it took you from knowing nothing to being able to get that blog off the ground and going within a few weeks or sooner.

I loved her business so much that I tried modeled this Become A VA Mom business after it a bit. I really wanted to engage with other moms, that might not want to blog but still start a business online. I love how open and easy to communicate Suzi at Start A Mom Blog was with her audience and I wanted that with other moms that were VA’s so I had something to relate to them.

Anyways, so after taking Suzi’s blogging course I started a blog and I loved the setup part but not the writing every day or every week part, and finding affiliates and learning keywords and finding traffic, and so on. I remember actually emailing Suzi and just saying I loved her blog course but wasn’t making money and it was a stress on our family finances and we were having trouble and so on. She personally wrote me back and replied to me. She suggested researching VA work and try that to get money while I built up my blog.

After researching VA work I decided to ditch my blog and start a business doing Virtual Assistant work and specializing in Social media management. So I took course after course about Virtual Assistant work and services and setting up that business and how to support other business social media accounts. So another couple of months went by and I still wasn’t making any money and had spent a bunch more hours on a new direction and business, other than blogging.

I wanted a business I could tangibly see that my hours of work I was getting paid for. I spent hours on my blog posts and designing my blog and didn’t see any return. I was impatient mind you. There were tons of success stories from bloggers that have taken her course and made money within a few months, but I just couldn’t wait that long. I was super impatient to make money from online work.

The information I learned from the blogging courses helped so much in my VA business that I am absolutely happy I took those courses and they were not a waste of money at all. I was able to offer blogging services, content writing, SEO, keyword research, etc. in my VA services. I also offered WordPress design because I loved setting up blogs and websites. Things I enjoyed doing I offered in my new business.

Starting a VA business is so scary. Putting yourself out there can be intimidating and hard. I felt like I wasn’t worthy to be paid for what most people could do themselves. I slowly learned that even though business owners can do the work themselves, they just don’t have the time to do all the tasks it takes to run a growing business. When I realized that I was helping them with their to-do lists and not needing to know more than them most of the time, then I felt a bit better.

I offered my services for free to two businesses to get experience and build my portfolio and testimonials. This made me feel more confident when I went out to promote my services to paying clients.

I also applied for an intern position where I knew that the business understood I was just starting out and they would help get me more experience. This was a free internship, which I don’t recommend to anyone as I learned its pretty illegal. But I did learn a TON of different aspects of a business. I started out as a Social media manager and ended up wearing many hats in that start-up business. I also learned sales and marketing, setting up customer CRM systems, SEO on their website, customer service management, setting up a customer service system like zendesk to offer ticketed replies and manage large-scale incoming emails, and much more.

This internship turned into a paid position with the magazine company. I am no longer with them but it was a great startup position. After that, I easily obtained new clients through Facebook and other remote job sites.

About a year into my business I was sitting at my dining room table homeschooling my child and just had this amazing feeling of happiness and satisfaction that I can support myself, be home with my kids, homeschool, and make enough to pay all my bills! I wanted to teach other moms how they can also have this “Dream life.” Well, what I consider my dream life. Each person has their own ideas on what their dream life would be like.

Some want to travel non-stop and explore the whole world, which you can also do as a VA mom as long as your hotels have wifi. Some people dream of working with big corporations and climbing that ladder to the top, although those people probably wouldn’t be reading this post.

Then there are other moms that share my dream of running their own business and being able to stay home and work around school concerts, and field trips and all the sick day’s kids have, and all the Pro-D days and spring break, winter break and summer break they have! It’s almost impossible to actually have a career if you are a single mom and you have more than 1 child with all those days off without spending thousands on daycare.

But like me at the beginning, most moms don’t know where to start or how to get clients and then there’s contracts and invoices etc, it’s enough to make a steady mom dizzy trying to figure out how to start and where to go. I have been through it and I want to create a blog (those courses will finally pay off for my own blog) that gives other moms free resources to start their own VA mom business. I will be working hard on a course as well, but want to keep it a reasonable price so moms having a hard time can still take it. I will post when that is complete.

SO that is the story of how I started out. Nothing fancy just lots and lots of learning and going out there and making it happen. If you dream of starting a VA business I am here for you and can steer you in the right direction.

Let’s be friends! Follow me on my social media accounts to keep up to date with all the business and mom crap I do, and any offers, courses, or free ebooks I complete. 🙂

If you found this post interesting, please do me a favour and share it on your social media so other moms can find it as well. Thanks!

Mom Hugs!

Kathryn