Start With the People You Know

When you’re just getting started as a Virtual Assistant, it’s hard to imagine where your first clients are going to come from. You might be looking for opportunities on Facebook, LinkedIn or job posting websites, but not hitting the jackpot like you were hoping. I have some good news on this topic – your best clients are going to be people you already know or referrals, so the best way to get clients is to spread the word yourself.  In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll show how to send an email announcement to everyone you know.

Transcript

Hi everybody, I'm Belinda Wasser, also known as RocketGirl. Today, we're going to talk about starting with the people that you know.

Let me tell you what I mean by that. What happens often is virtual assistants, and frankly my clients as well, will come to me and say, "I want to get more clients. How can I do that?" They'll ask me about LinkedIn, Facebook, other social media, and there's lots of different questions. They'll ask me, "Where should I network? Who should I meet?"

What I always ask them is, "How are you staying in touch with the people you already know?" Because that's going to be your most valuable referral source, absolutely. Do a newsletter, network, do all of those things, but start here first and started here now, and this is something you can do right away. 

The first thing that you want to do to get new clients and to get your business going is to create a list of all of your contacts. We're going to get into the details of this a little bit more in a minute, but either get them into something like MailChimp, ConvertKit, Constant Contact, whatever the tool is that you're using. Get them all in one place. An Excel spreadsheet is great because then you can import them right into MailChimp or some other application.

Then, what I want you to do is send an announcement to everyone you know. Just send an announcement. It's very simple. I feel like so often VA's are kind of hiding under a rock. They've got their office set up and they've got all this software and they're ready to go, but the people around them don't even know what they're up to. They're waiting for some outside source, like LinkedIn, to send them clients when really all of my clients are referrals and they're the best.

Now, I'm sort of beating this drum because you wouldn't think that right now I would be having lots of new clients. But in fact, in the last two weeks, I've had eight people sign up to work with me on top of my already full practice. There's plenty of work out there. I have two more meetings this week for people who would like to get started with me. There's really no shortage and all I do, all I did, to get started is to let the people who I know, know what I'm up to.

Here's an example of the texts that you can send out in MailChimp. "I'm thrilled to announce the launch of my Virtual Assistant business, RocketGirl Solutions. I specialize in providing... " Then fill in the blank, "office admin support for small businesses. I hope you'll check out my website and let me know what you think."

If you don't have a website, you can still do this. Send them to your LinkedIn profile, send them to your Facebook business page, but make sure that wherever you're sending them to learn more about you is in tip-top shape. A great headshot, up-to-date information, contact information, make sure that all of those things are in order and you will start getting clients before you know it.

All right, so I wanted to tell you quickly about something exciting that's going on for me that I want to offer to you, which is the VA Connection VIP Club. I'm offering founding membership. It's been open for a couple of weeks and it's closing Friday at midnight on May 15th. I've got some unbelievable bonuses, including my RocketGirl Debit Card Course, which I've been talking about for a long time, and it's finally here and ready to go. For the founding members, they'll be getting that free along with tons and tons of other information and trainings, lots and lots of trainings.

Check it out. You can look at this bit.ly link, bit.ly/TVACCLUB, The VA Connection Club, and I hope to see you over there.

For today, thank you for coming. It's been great to see you all. Have a great rest of your day and until next time, bye-bye.