can you work as a VA without any prior experience the short answer is yep welcome to the channel I'm Erin I'm a virtual assistant coach where I give you tips tools and tutorials to help you make the best virtual assistant you can be to be a VA you do not need any prior experience you just need to plan ahead and make sure that you have some of the more necessary skills and traits that will help make you be a better ba here are the workplace Essentials that I think you need at minimum number one would
be a laptop or desktop computer I recommend working on a laptop and not your phone or not even an iPad tablets can be hard phones are downright impossible that's because clients are going to be sending you multiple to Do's across multiple emails and it can be hard to switch between programs apps email accounts it will get downright infuriating if you have to write 40 emails a day on a phone but your laptop doesn't need to be a three thousand dollar Mac it can be a 200 PC it can be something that just connects to the
internet is not going to die on you any second now and something that allows you to basically access the internet and save your work I mean really the bar for entry is so low typically you're going to be on Google researching things or answering emails and if you have the capability of doing those two things you're already on the right start Tech stuff aside there are pretty much eight basic skills that every virtual assistant needs number one skill that you need is being tech savvy I'm not saying that you have to be an I.T specialist
I don't need you to know how to like write your own code but you do need to know how to basically troubleshoot your own stuff so if your internet goes out one day do you have a backup plan is there a library or a cafe you could go to or better yet do you know how to reset your router number two it helps if you are familiar with either the Google Suite or Microsoft Word so if your clients are using Excel or word or Outlook it helps to be familiar with those tools the free version
of the Microsoft Suite by the way is the Google Suite so Microsoft has Microsoft Word Google has a free version of a word called Google Docs where Microsoft has Excel Google has a free version called Google Sheets these are just some things that you can familiarize yourself with so that you have a basic understanding for things like how to format Word documents that your client might send you how to format Excel how to put them into different rows or columns or how to label different things so something like that is really helpful because at bare
minimum these are some very basic office admin type tools that people are using nowadays must have skill number three good written and verbal communication skills when you work as a VA it means that you are 100 communicating with your clients remotely some of your communication with your client will be synchronous which means live in real time that could mean that you and your client are emailing each other back and forth in the moment you're both online you're sending back and forth emails or you get on a zoom chat and you guys are talking face to
face but some of that communication will be asynchronous that means they're happening at different times this is especially true if you're a virtual assistant somewhere other than your client in the world so let's say you're a virtual assistant living in Austria your clients might be in New York City you're going to have a lot of async communication and that's because your eight hour or six hours ahead of your clients something to keep in mind especially for written communication is that it's really important that you are very clear about what it is that you're working on
what you need from your client things that are holding you up or preventing you from finishing a task or maybe um things that you have done or or you know if a client says to you work on XYZ for me even just sending them a simple email confirming that you received the task is very important having these strong communication skills so that your client always feels like your being proactive that you're online that you're at least responding to tasks that they get these are this is a bare minimum a super essential skill because if you're
the type of va that doesn't respond to emails quickly um for example if a client sends you something like hey I need a flight to New York next week can you send me some options and then you don't respond for two days your client's going to be mad because they're not going to know are you working at all are you offline did you quit like they can't see you they can't walk over to your desk in person so you need to be able to communicate effectively that you received a task you're working on it you'll
turn it around in the next three days must have skill number four time management skills you only have so many hours during the work day you need to make sure that you're using each and all of those hours as efficiently as possible this is especially true if you grow your business to five six seven ten clients so let's say you have 10 clients who are now sending you tasks on a Monday and everybody needs these tests done by the end of the day you need to have strong enough skills that you can assess pretty quickly
who you need to assist first what tasks are the most pressing which ones have to get done immediately and which ones can wait a little bit or which ones can maybe be done at the end of your day and you also need to make sure that you kind of better understand how to allot time to certain things so I'm going to link to a video up here about one of my favorite skills for time management which is time blocking make sure you check that one out after this video tip number five you need to be
an organized person you now have 10 clients and everybody is just throwing tasks at you it's a busy Monday they're sending you tasks on the phone they're sending you tests by text they're calling you they're sending you emails oh it happens sometimes but if you don't have a good organizational system a lot of those tasks you're going to forget about and they're going to fall off and your clients are going to be unhappy so you need to have some sort of system I don't care if it's a pen and paper I don't care if it's
a Post-It note I don't care if it's a word doc or I don't care if it's a system like Asana you need to have a system that works for you that makes sense to you that feels good to you where you can write down the tasks that you have for each day and write down when they're due again I've got something popping up here about some organizational tools that I really like so make sure you're checking those out as well tip number six you need to be a self-starter when you work by yourself if you
are not disciplined enough to like get up get out of bed check your emails work on your own time like nobody is standing over your shoulder nobody is indicating that you have to get something done remote work is so unique and that you're not driving to an office there's no clear start time or end time you need to to be the person who's really good at self-starting without supervision so let's just say for example those same 10 clients I'll tell you we have a task for you to do but it's not due until next week
if you're not a self-starter you might be tempted to not work on any of them that first day if you're like I have seven days to get all ten these things done I'm golden if you're a procrastinator and all of a sudden a week goes by you haven't worked on anything and then you realize uh that unfortunately the next day you have 10 tasks due that's not going to make for a happy freelancer you're not going to enjoy your business you're going to be stressed all the time it's a proactivity and being able to self-start
being able to know how to hop on projects in a timely manner it's definitely a skill you have to have all right number seven I'm gonna call coachability this is particularly important for new virtual assistants you as a new VA you're not going to know everything you're going to learn a lot of these tasks you're going to learn how to create your own systems you're going to learn a ton of stuff on the job but if you're the type of person who's not open to feedback like let's say for example a client gives you some
feedback about how something could be better and you just like emotionally shut down that's going to be very hard because feedback is essential for making you a better freelancer or if in terms of coachability if you have no interest in learning how to make your skills better if you have no interest in learning new skills that will keep you competitive in the long run this is kind of an essential skill you need for your business and that's because niches change over the years last but not least is flexibility being able to adapt to changes on
the Fly day to day is probably one of the most important skills you can have if you are the type of person that's so rigid that if something like a big task for example a big project falls into your lap last minute and it's urgent if you're somebody who can't handle that and you're like nope I have a system I have everything mapped out I cannot possibly take the surgeon task that's a problem because you need to be able to be flexible enough in your day and understand that sometimes urgent tasks pop up and you
have to hop on those first but still find the time to do the other tasks you promised to your clients being flexible being adaptable learning things on the Fly these are all very important to being a VA and if all of this is sounding less like just admin and more like owning your own business that's because as a VA you are your own business owner you have to be adaptable you have to be open to learning new skills you have to be open to learning new ways to Market your own business you have to be
you have to be a self-starter you have to be really good at communication these are all things that as a VA are not only going to serve you well for your clients but serve you well for your own business and if you are the type of person that's super organized you're a go-getter you love learning new things about your business every day you're super flexible you love things on the Fly you love things that change day to day then virtual assistants sounds like a pretty good career for you again this video is all about can
you be a VA without previous experience and if you've been paying attention this video if you've been taking notes to the must-have skills if you are missing any of those skills or you think shoot I really need to tighten up some of those skills now is the time to do that before you find your first client as always if you're looking for more training really really the details about how to get started check out my courses on my website I've got everything there you need to get started from A to Z thank you guys for
watching this week's video it was a doozy and I will see you guys on the next one
