Shannon Mattern: Two one, Gina, thank you so much for being here for the Side Hustle To Self-Employed Summit. I'm so excited to ask you all of the things that I know everybody watching wants to know about how to start a virtual assistant business. So you help people start and grow a VA business from scratch. In 30 days, you have amazing free resources on your website to help people jumpstart that you and I have talked extensively on my podcast, which I'll link all of those interviews up below this training about just why there's never been a better time to start a virtual assistant business. There are people watching this interview right now who really want to do it. They desperately want to leave corporate. They want to work for themselves, but they're scared to take the leap. They think they can't do it. They think the market's too saturated. They can't possibly charge enough. What do you say to those people?

Gina Horkey: Baloney! Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to dive into this conversation. That is kind of one of those loaded questions where we can really break it down into a lot of different areas. But one of the things that I'm most excited about because we spent the end of 2020 completely revamping our business. We've been teaching online for about seven years and we know how successful people can be by putting themselves out there, taking that leap and starting a services based business online. Not only can they be successful, they can increase the happiness factor in their life when it comes to flexibility and earning more money and all of these things. So as a part of kind of this revamp that we did, we took a step back and one of our initial free offerings is 275+ services that you can offer as a virtual assistant and get paid for.

Gina Horkey: And so not only is there this list of that, it's very beautiful and categorized into kind of five specialty areas, but we have a workbook component to go alongside it. So there's like a, self-assessment where you can take a look at your own unique history. So there's the list that you're going to make your way through. And I always suggest getting a couple of different colored highlighters and maybe even Sharpies because highlighters are things that you're like, Ooh, yeah, I know how to do this. And then there's another color highlighter that's like, I don't know how to do that, but it sounds so interesting. I can't wait to get my hands on it. And then the Sharpies are like permanent, right? They're like we're Xing out that thing cause even if I got paid well to do it, you can't pay me enough. And then there are the things that are like, Hmm, I don't know how to do that

Gina Horkey: and I'm really not interested in learning more about it. So that's the kind of the starting of the exercise to even just figure out if offering services online is right for you. A lot of people get stuck on what would I offer to clients and then how do I find clients? And we answer all of those questions. But starting with what services to offer is super helpful. So again, there's the list, there's taking the skills inventory and then we help you to delve into your own background too. It's helpful if you have, you know, an updated resume on hand or if you could just have the time and space to really answer these probing questions that we can dig into both your career history, but also your life history. Because one of the things that we get concerns or questions around is, Hey, you know, I have been a stay at home mom for the last like decade or I'm in college right now. And I haven't really had a real job yet, but this sounds super interesting. And we can help all of those people, which is fun.

Shannon Mattern: I love that because I think that, I think that people kind of just get a little bit of a tunnel vision sometimes when they've maybe worked in a certain job for a long time, like one, you know, there's the tunnel vision person who's like been in corporate for forever and it's just kind of burnt out and thinking that like, no one else would hire them to go do this specific thing at this company anywhere else. I'm stuck in this dead end job. And, you know, in addition to the person that's like, I haven't even been in the workforce for the past 10 years. Or like you said, the college student who's like, I haven't ever had a real job. It doesn't mean that you don't have so many skills that are so valuable that people would pay for. Gina's just getting you thinking in a totally new way about all of those things that you already, like you do, they're complete second nature to you, but you don't even think twice that like somebody else would ever want you to do that for them. So yeah.

Gina Horkey: How about adding value to your client's lives? And that comes in a few different forms. So clients are looking to satisfy a few different goals. One of them might be taking things off their plate so they can focus on what it is that they do best in the marketplace. So they're known for their thing, whether it's a service that they provide a product that they create. I mean, it could even be content marketing for people that run successful blogs online that are influencers or affiliate marketers or whatever the case may be. So one is to free them up so that they need to, can do more of the stuff that uniquely needs to be done by them. Another thing is to free them up so that they might get to spend more time at home with their own family or God forbid on hobbies. So they can scale their business by delegating out things to you at a certain rate, and then hopefully make more money in the process and increase even their profitability while working less, which is a win-win scenario. For sure.

Shannon Mattern: Absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about boundaries, you know, when you're working for clients and you're a side hustler, you have a day job. You're probably also a parent, like a lot of the people here you're working full time. Now you have clients that also you are working for. How do you recommend people set and hold boundaries with their clients so that things don't start to kind of bleed into each other and create problems for you?

Gina Horkey: Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things that we should unpack here. One is the whole kind of mystery around work-life balance, I would like to throw that term out there. And my favorite kind of answer or summation of that kind of problem, and the answer to that is Dave Ramsey talked about it a long time ago and he talked about, you know, there's not work and then life, like all of it is your life. It's just that sometimes your career or your job might command a little bit more from you. And sometimes your home life is going to command more of you. And we'd all love to compartmentalize things in these perfect little boxes. And we try with our schedules and there's lots of productivity tips that we talk about in our program as well. But I think the biggest thing is taking a look at kind of, and I know this is another question you're going to ask me, but what are our longterm visions or goals for this business?

Gina Horkey: And then where am I at right now? So a lot of people will ask, well, how many hours a week do I need in order to get started? My answer has, been further kind of defined over the years of at least five. Ten would be great, but I think you need a solid five hours a week, which could be an extra hour, Monday through Friday, or maybe a Saturday afternoon, whatever works for you and your family and your schedule to be able to chip away at kind of your to-do lists and these foundational elements of getting yourself started. And then you need to have at least five hours to work with a client in order to make any real money, right? So let's say you're charging $30 an hour, which isn't uncommon.

Gina Horkey: Times that by five, there's $150

Gina Horkey: in that five-hour window that you can hopefully create for extra income into your household, multiply that by four weeks in your month. And you're up to $600 extra dollars. That's not a horrible start for such a short time kind of gig and side hustle. So some people are fine staying there. Like we have students that are, you know, parents and they're doing the distance learning thing right now and they have a full plate. And so to increase their income by a bit, to help them to accomplish some of their family's goals is awesome. We have other people that want to make a full-time career out of this and they want to work 40 hours, or maybe they want to work more than that because they're just in hustle mode for a very specific financial goal for their own lives, buying their first house, paying off student loan debt.

Gina Horkey: What have you, we've seen it all. And then there's lots of people that are in the middle. So maybe they have 20 hours and they want to make a really nice side part-time income. But for those that are kind of working their way towards maybe a career change, and they're starting in the best way that you should, which is by maintaining your day job and starting as a side hustle so that you can validate that this all works and it takes time to ramp up and to find the right clients and to even know what to charge and then increase your rates and all that good stuff later. So start, and then build off of that. I would try to designate certain times that you have available in your schedule each week for your business. And this is to first get it started. And then again, to do the client work once you've landed your first or second client.

Gina Horkey: So I think where this becomes problematic is that sometimes we bite off more than we can chew. So we want to go full board. We're so excited and we try to do 20 hours of work in 10 hours or 10 hours of work in five hours. So be real honest with yourself and look at your own availability and then build in buffer when you can, because stuff is going to pop up. The kid is going to get sick. You're going to sprain your ankle. Like whatever the case may be, stuff happens. And so you can do this on a week by week basis too. Again, we'd love to have everything kind of planned and set in stone. At least those that are type a like me. But maybe just take a look at one week at a time and say, okay, here's really where my availability sits.

Gina Horkey: Here are things that maybe I'm going to trade doing this week, like bingeing on Emily in Paris or something on Netflix, which was great by the way, I loved it. You know, or, you know, don't trade your workout routine. I think that's real. Self-care. Try and get that quality time in with your family. But how I worked for me, I guess, to give you an example, is I, in 2014 was working at 4:30 in the morning on the couch in my basement. So when people, I love to tell this story because a) I had no overhead really to get started. I used our old laptop. We had crappy wifi that worked well enough at the time. It has since improved hallelujah. And obviously I didn't have an office space if I was working down in our basement, I had a 10 month old and then our children are like 19 months apart.

Gina Horkey: So two and a half or whatever his age would have been at that time. And then my husband, and luckily he was a stay at home dad, but I would get up early so that I had that quiet, interrupted, uninterrupted time for the rest of the family. And then I would go and nurse my daughter, and then I would get in the shower. And then I would go to my day job. I worked better in the morning, which is why I chose that time. I have other students that are total night owls and they'll put their kids to bed and then they'll crank out two or three hours of work if that's what works for them. One other thing that I did that was really helpful and I think is overlooked is I negotiated a four day workweek with my office. So I think I did nine hours a day.

Gina Horkey: So I didn't work a full 40 hour work week, but because I worked nine instead of eight hours, it was close enough to full-time where both of us were getting what we wanted. And technically I was self-employed at that time too. So you know, I could do whatever I want, but I still wanted to have that contract, you know, the money coming in and all that good stuff. I was basically like a salaried employee, but on... long story. Anyways. Yeah, so that's, that's one of the things that you can do is once you hit that first kind of milestone or tipping point, is there the possibility to negotiate a four-day work week in your office or even go part-time and then eventually there's going to be your other tipping point where you're going to have to decide, am I ready to take the leap and put in your notice with your day job and take this full time? Do you want to explore that for a minute? Because that can be kind of a confusing time for people too, like, how do I manage the financial aspects?

Shannon Mattern: Absolutely. And I think one of the reasons why I love talking to you so much is because our stories are so like in tandem, I did the exact same thing. I was like early bird. I would get up. I would work for a few hours before work. And it was like the best time for me personally, because nobody needs anything from you. You don't have clients like asking you for anything. Like, it's just like that quiet time. You can really like knock stuff out, distraction free so much faster. And I was a total early bird, the same way as you. And, you know, just even just one more thing about boundaries. And then I'd love to talk about like, what, what does it look like to make the transition? I just think being really clear with your clients upfront, as far as like, what is, what's this look like when you know I'm doing something for you and what is the expected turnaround time like having all of that really established so that you're not like at work and getting text messages and feeling like you have to respond, like being really clear on like, here's how we communicate.

Shannon Mattern: Here's how, you know, work as assigned. Here's when this will be completed. Like that type of stuff. Like you get to decide as the service provider and it behooves you to decide and tell your clients how that's going to go.

Gina Horkey: And you should outline that upfront. You know, when it comes to the types of clients that you take on, if you're working a full-time job and you're really not going to be available during the day, first of all, respect your employer, respecting the kind of employment agreement that you have. Check into that ahead of time, because you don't want to be abusing your day job that is paying you a regular wage. And it's something that you need at this time, as you're trying to get your business off the ground. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to disclose that you're trying to build a business on the side. Again, check your employment contract though. So you're not violating anything if you have one. But you do need to keep it outside of the workplace. So that's why I would get up in the morning. And then I would, you know, do some email and communication back and forth with clients in the evening.

Gina Horkey: And then I had a lunch break as well. And then, you know, once I went to four day work weeks, I had Friday Saturdays and Sundays. So we get this question a lot. Like, do I have to tell clients that I have a full-time job? No, but if they straight up ask you, you have to be honest, like that's, you don't want it to be dishonest and start your relationship off with a lie. So then it also comes down to what types of gigs are you going to take on, what services are you going to offer that you're not necessarily available nine to five. Now, I haven't found that it's really that big of a deal, unless you were manning like a virtual phone, which is not very common or a chat, which would be more common. And again, you just don't want to abuse your day job by replying with the side hustle, job chat while you're trying to do your regular work.

Gina Horkey: Right. So I actually did do customer service and email management. However, I just did it before I started my Workday popped in at lunch, and then I would do it at the end of my Workday as well. So it was separate from the day job, but I was still available enough to be able to do this quick turnaround. And I think that's important if you're doing that type of role or offering those types of services. I also think it's important when it comes to client communication, whether it is people that you're prospecting to. So you're asking them to hire you, but you haven't gotten hired yet, or clients that have already hired you, that you're conducting services and work for. 24 -48 hour business turnaround time max, but try to get back to people within a 24 hour period of time. And I just feel like the way that we communicate most of the time these days, it's not that urgent.

Gina Horkey: And if they do have something urgent that you weren't expecting, then have a way for them to get in contact with you. But then if they're abusing it, you need to check them and say, Hey, like, why don't we handle it this way? Or could you save up your thoughts for the end of the day and send me an email or until the end of the week, and then send me an email for that non-urgent type of stuff. And then we can look at how do we fit that into our workload for next week. So that's one way to set boundaries is that if you do have availability for communication at certain times during the day, you can let them know that you can put that into like a clearly constructed email and onboarding agreement. Or if you have a contract that you're using for a client, I would do that. Make sure to set expectations around turnaround time when it comes to actual client deliverables.

Gina Horkey: And then there's another kind of fishy thing that's called scope creep that I love to address too. You haven't heard that term. It's basically where a client unintentionally, for the most part, sometimes intentionally we'll continue to add work to your plate, but they're not offering to pay you anymore. And we're not, we haven't yet gotten into pay. So you can charge on an hourly basis. You could charge per package pricing, or even what's called like a retainer model. If you're in a package pricing or retainer model environment, if clients are asking you to do more work, but they're not offering to pay you more, you need to address that very quickly because what could happen is they just add more, add more, add more, you're trying to be helpful and liked, right? And so you're like, sure, I can do that. Yeah. Why not? I can do it all I can learn it all, I got you. But then your hourly equivalent is going down at a steady rate. They're happy because they're getting more and more stuff for you, but you're starting to get resentful and you're not making what you should be either. Have you had some experience with scope creep yourself,

Shannon Mattern: A thousand percent as a web designer, you, everything you describe is, you know what, somebody starting out, who doesn't know, who doesn't have support, who doesn't have guidance, who's really trying to wing it and go it alone experiences, without a coach or a mentor to help them like, like established, to say, Hey, this is, this is what to expect. This is how to run this business. And when you try to go it alone, you run into all of these situations that you're describing, and then you have to kind of dig yourself out of them. Whereas,, so I learned the hard way. It sounds like you learned the hard way. We both try to help our, you know, niches. I work with specifically web designers, you work with virtual assistants to prevent all of this from happening so that they can get to that point. Like we were discussing earlier that like, it becomes profitable enough that they can quit. Right. You know, so that you don't fizzle out and burn out and just decide this whole thing wasn't for me, it didn't work. I was overworking ,undercharging. Let's just give up on the whole idea and go back to corporate and pretend like I never did it. Like, that's the last thing we want for you guys.

Gina Horkey: That is also on you. Yes. It's not on your client. And I think when you become resentful of a client too, you need to take ownership of your part in that, because they're just going about their day and their business as usual, most of the time, they're not thinking about how asking you to do another task, affects your relationship and the amount that they pay you. It doesn't even cross their radar. I do, with the virtual assistant that I work with, but that's because this is the industry that I'm in. Right. And so I'm very careful about that and want to make sure it's a win-win situation for everyone because I also want them to be loyal and long-term if that's what I'm hiring them for. So I think that for the most part, that's why I said that it was inadvertently on your client's behalf, that they were assigning more and not offering to pay you more.

Gina Horkey: I think most people are good. I think most people are honest and not looking to kind of milk you for all that you're worth, but you just need to be a little bit bold and confident and say, and this is, we actually have a script for this in our material where it's like, I would love to do that. Do you anticipate that this is going to be like an ongoing thing? Or is this like a one-off deal? And then if it is a one-off deal and it's going to take you 15 minutes or something like that, you know, every once in a while throw them a comp, for the happiness and satisfaction of your relationship. But if it's going to be an ongoing thing, that's your clue then to be like, okay, how do you want to address this with our current compensation structure? And none of that is accusatory.

Gina Horkey: It's all very like, this is a problem and let's solve it together. Let's work together. And one other point that I want to make before we move on on this subject is I think that oftentimes a newer virtual assistant will come into the relationship thinking that they are an employee, that their client is up here and has all power and that they're down here and they're just like a worker bee. And that's not true. You guys are both coming together and kind of this equal relationship where how we define a virtual assistant is somebody that trades their time or their services in exchange for pay from a client that needed, needs those services from afar. So you can be working from the comfort of your own home while you're on the beach. It's not really recommended people like dream of working on the beach, but there's sand and wind and sun. And it doesn't usually work out all that well. But yeah, like it is like an equal relationship where you each have something the other party wants and it's not like a boss and employee environment, or it shouldn't be. It's, here's some needs and some problems. How can I be the one that helps you to solve them? And in that process, you're going to be compensated for your time or the services you're providing.

Shannon Mattern: Yeah. I think that, that is, that the employee to entrepreneur mindset is, is definitely, it was, for me, at least it was, it was a transition that I had to, had to make over time. So speaking of that employee to entrepreneur mindset, you know, you're, we're at the point where we have, you know, we're bringing in consistent income, we've kind of got our systems down, we're ready to like make this leap or we're thinking we're ready. What are some things that we need to consider when it's time to leave the day job?

Gina Horkey: Yeah. If that is your goal, the best thing that you can do for yourself, for your business, for your family is to take any money that you earn from your side hustle and sack it away as if you never earned it in the first place, because you can create this safety net, this, you know, savings account that will provide what's called a runway. Once you're ready to take your business Full-time. So most people aren't able to replace their day job income while working a part time VA gig. Some people do because they're not maybe earning a lot over here in the first place, or they've really specialized really quickly and come into some really in-demand services and clients that are willing to pay that. So it does happen. But like, let's say you're working 20 hours a week on your VA business and you work 40 hours a week at your day job, you make 50 grand over here.

Gina Horkey: Well, it can be a little hard to bring in an extra 50 grand in just 20 hours a week. So hopefully that part makes sense. So again, if you sock it away, you've got this kind of nest egg, the savings they call it, it's being built up. Then you just have to get to that tipping point where you don't have any other time in order to exchange for pay. You've raised your rates. You've kind of specialized as much as you can at this point, before you say goodbye to the day job. So we mentioned this earlier. One solution, if your employment situation is open to it, would be going from full-time down to some sort of part-time equivalent five days to four days, five days to three days, five days to two days, whatever the case may be. If that's an option for you, I would say, go for it.

Gina Horkey: Cause it's just extra security. Plus you get a taste of working for yourself, but it's contained still, and you still have like the structure of your day job. So I think it can be a really healthy thing for a lot of people. Now, it's not going to be an option for everybody though. So there might be just the choice of, I keep doing this as a side hustle or I quit my day job. And so I like to have a little bit of a plan going into that scenario. And so what I did in addition to having some cash reserves set aside, I was a 100% sole breadwinner for our family. So it was a big leap for me. And so I had cash in my pocket, which gave me some confidence. And then I kind of wrote like a transitional plan that I pitched to my employer.

Gina Horkey: And what actually ended up happening is I helped to find and train my replacement, which was a wonderful gift that I was able to give to my boss and kind of the, the company that I worked as a part of. So not only was I leaving, but I was like ensuring that they would be taken care of after I was gone, that created an opportunity for me to do some contract work for them because the person that they hired, wasn't able to write financial plans. My previous career was in personal finance. I was a licensed advisor. And so I kept doing that for them for like $500 a month. It only lasted about six months, but $500 a month in revenue that I hadn't booked in my regular VA business was huge at that time. And it just allowed me again to have even more confidence going from like that security of a full-time job into this world of self-employment.

Gina Horkey: So if you're able to either steadily decrease your involvement with your employer, or have some sort of transitional plan where again, you're not burning bridges and you're helping them leaving them in a better situation than how you found them. There might be that possibility also for some contract work, I've seen that with some of my other clients, or I've seen them get offered like a huge pay raise to stick around, like there's a lot of different things that can come out of that side of it. If you kind of bring your best to the table as you're parting ways.

Shannon Mattern: Well, that's exactly what happened to me. That's exactly what happened to me. So I transitioned to, well, first one of the things I did not do the runway because I wasn't the sole breadwinner, but I did pay off all of our debt. So I took the money. That's super helpful. Cause you lower your monthly expenses. That's exactly what I did. I was like, you know what, like what I have to bring in a minimum baseline gets a lot lower for debt-free. So you've mentioned Dave Ramsey earlier, and that's what we did. I was like, I am hammering down on this. We're going to be debt free. We're going to have like the minimum, most minimum household expenses. And then I, I would not recommend doing this, but I burnt myself out like working max a full-time job outside of my full-time job to replace the income. So I could just slide right on over. I mean,

Gina Horkey: Again, the runway, I call it a tipping point. You mentioned burnout tipping point, just reframes it into a little bit more positive of a light, but it's basically the same thing. You can't sustain that activity for very much longer. Something has to give.

Shannon Mattern: Absolutely. And I love, love, love how you're like, let's make this a, like a great experience for our employer. Let's make sure that we are leaving on good terms. Like all, all of that can just benefit you in so many ways. I did the same thing. I negotiated down to, I didn't do four days a week, but I'd take off like one day, every two weeks. And that would just be like my day. So

Gina Horkey: Vacation time. So if you have perks like that sick days and vacation, that's a great way to free up some time strategically and use up those days before you take the leap too, I love that.

Shannon Mattern: Oh yeah. I mean, I think there's something to be said about being an amazing employee while you have a day job, that's going to benefit your side hustle so, so much, so I love that. I have just one, just a couple more questions for you. What are some of the biggest differences, you've been doing this for seven years? What are some of the biggest differences you see between people who are successful in creating a profitable VA business that puts them on, you know, their path to whatever their goals are. It doesn't have to be quitting. You know, that they're fulfilled by and people who don't reach their goals.

Gina Horkey: I think the secret ends up being mindset, which probably those tuning in are like "mer mer" but we're learning more about mindset. There's a book with that actual name by Carol Dweck that I'm reading right now. And it's so powerful because not only can it apply to like this area of your life, it can apply to my parenting skills and how I interact with people. It's basically taking kind of ownership of the way that you think about your life and what is happening to you and how you react to life circumstances and to other people. And if you have a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset, so a growth mindset is going to look at this as an experiment as this kind of fun, new adventure. And it's not like this pass or fail, succeed, or quit type of scenario. It's Hey, I'm going to like invest in this journey and I'm going to let the outcome be a little bit intangible.

Gina Horkey: Like we're still going to set goals and milestones and measure metrics and things like that, but we're not going to be so tied to that end goal at that specific time that it's going to ruin the rest of our journey, where if one misstep happens and we got to throw it all away. Instead let's again, look at it as an adventure and really an experiment so that we can test out what might work for us to reach that level of success and how we've determined that for our lives. And I think if you can break down and understand the difference between a fixed and a growth mindset and adopt the exercises and the traits of a growth minded individual, that you will have an easy time succeeding and you'll have a lot more fun along the way as well. The other thing would be that you have to be willing to put yourself out there.

Gina Horkey: So as a virtual assistant, anybody offering services online, you know, a web designer in our definition is technically a virtual assistant. They've just specialized, right? Freelance writer, same thing. Like writers are not going to call themselves virtual assistants because they just, I don't know, there's some stereotypes that have to do with kind of the label and stuff like that. But to clear it up for everyone that's tuning in as a virtual assistant, you can command top tier rates for specialized services. So when I was working, doing customer service and email management, which some people would consider like a lowly kind of admin task, I was actually making over a hundred dollars an hour based on the deal that I struck with these clients and the value that I was bringing to the table. I can unpack that part another time. But being growth minded and then putting yourself out there is what I wanted to expand on.

Gina Horkey: So, you know, we were talking about having five or maybe ten hours a week to get started. So somebody that joins our program, like first and foremost, you need to ingest the material and then do the homework that we've associated with it because we don't want to teach in a theory environment. Instead, we'd like you to take practical action and then kind of build on these action steps over time. So when you leave our VA foundations course, which is the first part of your journey, that you've launched your business, and hopefully you've landed at least your first client, right? And it's all these small actions that build on one another. But if you're not going to take action and you just want to read and consume all the staff, we're not right for you. This business isn't right for you. You have to be willing to execute and a big part of execution for somebody that's building a business selling services is by putting yourself out there by prospecting, by asking to be hired.

Gina Horkey: And so what we tell people is that after you've consumed and taken action on the things, once you finished like the foundations course or gotten to a certain point about 90% of your available time should be spent marketing, which is scary to a lot of people, but guess what? The hardest pitch or inquiry to be hired or application, however you want to define it is the first one. And then it gets easier from there. And again, if you have this growth mindset and you're experimenting, you're not tied to any individual outcome, then it's freeing because you're just like, okay, here's a potential opportunity. I am going to tell the universe that I am available for it by taking this action and letting this person know that I would like the job and here's why I'm qualified or what I could bring to the table.

Gina Horkey: And again, in our system and our VA Foundations course, we actually give you templates for all of these things to make it super turnkey and easy for you. But yeah, if you're willing to invest the beginning stages after you've learned your foundational content and putting yourself out there for hire, then there's no, like you can't really fail, especially if you're using different resources at your disposal to request feedback and get better at what it is that you're doing. But yeah, I mean, there's so many different stories and it's fun because again, like we have people that are just trying to supplement their income as a stay at home parent, or maybe they're a recent retiree and they're looking for like some purpose in their life or to increase their retirement income. We've got the career changers. We also have like military spouses that have to move every few years. Like this type of work is great for them, but going back to being growth minded and an entrepreneur, which you had kind of defined earlier, you, you are a business owner, so maybe you don't want to build this big products business, but you're still a business owner when it comes to, I have three, five, ten clients that I am working with and getting paid by to do these certain things. And so you have to take some different kind of ownership and responsibility over your role as a business owner versus an employee mindset.

Shannon Mattern: I love that. And I couldn't agree more that there, that, that you have to not make it all about you. You know, it's like, I think that that's one of the things that keeps people from putting themselves out there is because they make a client's yes or a no, like a referendum on their self-worth or their skillset or their value in the marketplace. And what I, you know, what I try to remember when I put myself out there for opportunities and, and things like that, or just throughout the years, is that like, you know, I am, my only job is to let you know how I can help you. You know? And ultimately the more times I let people know that I am available to help them with these specific things, the more likely I am to get someone to take me up on it.

Shannon Mattern: It has nothing to do with my value as a person, if it's not good fit, none of that. And so when you can stop making it all about you and being so worried about what people think and just come at it from, like you said, like, make yourself available, put, put yourself out there. It just becomes, I feel like less scary. It's still going to be scary the first time. I I'm sure you've made a million pitches and your hands probably still sweat. Sometimes I know mine do. And you know, but it's, it's just so worth it. Like you said, for all of the different types of people that you guys help for all the different kinds of goals that you have, there's nothing like working with somebody like you and your team who has done this for so many years, seen that probably thousands, I would imagine, of people through the process. And you're like, here's exactly what to do. Here's exactly what to say. Here, we've done the work for you. All you have to do is take this, that we've done for you and go take action on it. And if you continue to take action, you know, with these expert resources, tools, and templates, like how could you not be successful?

Gina Horkey: Yeah. And that's what we've really been concentrating on. Again, at the end of 2020 was revamping kind of our business to make sure that we can help you not only start a virtual assistant business from scratch, but we can help you to build it, even introducing you to clients and then scale via specialization or launching into an agency format or something like that. Like there's a lot of different paths to success when it comes to building a virtual assistant business. And probably one of the things that filled my bucket the most is hearing when people have met their goal of either like paying down a debt or leaving a soul sucking nine to five behind. But then also we've become this go-to resource for entrepreneurs and people in our space to find a quality, or we like to call it kick virtual assistant. So we've had over 500 business owners in the last couple of years alone, just come and look to hire one of our graduates, which is awesome. And then we've actually figured out how we want to continue to do that and get even more people coming our way by word of mouth, because that's really what it ends up being. And then also taking a look at all of the available kind of gigs on the internet and vet them to our best ability to put them in front of our audience as well. So that literally we can help you to find clients, get hired, get paid.

Shannon Mattern: I love it. You're setting people up for success, in every like, aspect or facet of what, what it could look like. So I, I there's, you know, you don't have to go it alone if you're starting a side hustle and you were, you know, watching this, like it's so much easier if you don't try to go it alone and you will go farther faster. So what else would you like our side hustlers to know about your company? What it takes to run a successful VA business? Anything that you'd like to leave them with?

Gina Horkey: Ooh, that's a good question. Yeah, man. Big. Wow. I think that if it's something that you're interested in, you just have to figure out what that first step looks like for you. So I know we'll link to a few different resources underneath this video. The first one would be what I mentioned earlier, which is our kind of list of 275+ services. So the biggest risk you're taking there is trusting us with your email address and we won't spam you. And then also like you can literally carve out a 20 minute chunk of time. And if you don't have that amount of time, again, this is probably just not the right business for you. And then another really small step that we can help you to take. We have this course called Jumpstart, Your Virtual Assistant Business mini course. And so it just takes that exercise a little bit further. There's four steps and choosing services is one of them another has to do with how much to charge, which is amazing, right?

Gina Horkey: Like that's a huge question. So that we ask for $19 whole dollars and an hour of your time in order to sit through this mini course and, and figure out, okay, do I really want to do this? Or did I consider it, but cross it off of my list of experimentation possible outcomes of, of career kind of options. And then for those that have determined that starting a virtual assistant business is right for them. And they would like to have us come alongside of them. We have what's called the Fully Booked VA System, because that's our goal for you is not only to start this virtual assistant business, but we want to see you get paid and get paid well and becoming fully booked in the process. And so there's a visual graphic that goes along with this, that, that, again, the link will, will be provided for, but it's really starting and meeting you where you're at.

Gina Horkey: So most people that come to us haven't started a virtual assistant business. We do have folks that have, and they're not fully booked. They're not earning what they're looking to do. And so we have this VA Foundations Course, which is 12 modules of setting up that business foundation. Again, our goal is to help you to leave with at least having landed one client, because we have multiple marketing tactics and templates and all of that good stuff to help you out with, but running side by side, with that as the support side of things, which is our fully or FB VA, Fully Booked VA community, and it's all in one place. So we've done all of us research based on how we've been able to support our students in the past, and then all the tools that exist now. Cause there's more than ever before.

Gina Horkey: And we figured out the right fit where we can keep it all in one place. So you can't get distracted by Facebook and by all these different alerts and things like that, if you're logged into kind of your student portal, so you can, you know, be going through the VA Foundations course. And if you have a question, then you've got this community here available to ask those questions to. We also have weekly live office hours and we'll do some specialized training in there on a regular basis as well. And then once you've completed that foundational course, we're going to certify you as a virtual assistant. So we used to just offer a Certificate of Completion, but now we're ready to put our stamp of approval on you and actually certify you as a Horkey Handbook Virtual Assistant. The next thing that you unlock after passing that final exam from the Foundations course in addition to the certification is the access to the client leads.

Gina Horkey: So again, in the Foundational material, we teach you some prospecting strategies that you can go out and land your first client with, but then once you're certified, we're more than happy to introduce you to clients that come our way. And again, give you kind of the best of the best roundup of, of different internet gigs that exist. And then we have what are called Skills Courses to help you take your first steps into what's called specialization. So a lot of people will start as a virtual assistant as a generalist, they'll select a few of those services that they already know how to do or can easily learn and translate their existing skillset into offering. And then we kind of bridge that gap between what we know clients are coming to us looking to hire for and teaching those skills through these skills courses. And those are all do it yourself,

Gina Horkey: self-paced kind of material that you can dip your toe in. And it's like reading a book these days. If you look at our email management course or the project management course or a freelance writing one, and you start to get into it and you're like, meh, this isn't for me, there's no requirement that you have to finish it and you can always come back to it or pick your way through different pieces of it that sound the most interesting, but there's no requirements to it at all. We just want that to be a resource available for you when you're ready for it. And then Phase Two of this entire program, which is 100% brand new is going to be our specialization tracks. So there's five of them right now. It would be customer service and admin. We have content marketing, tech and automation, social media management and community management.

Gina Horkey: And then kind of an advanced marketing side of things, which a lot of business owners they need help with, right? They all want more clients or to better serve their clients and things like that. And so each of those tracks you can select one of and, and we'll figure out how you can change tracks and change your mind. Cause all of this is so flexible. But they'll be led by an expert, by a moderator. And we're going to ask people like you to come in and do specialized training so that people can learn like a mini skill set within their track to add to their tool box. And it'll be like a no pitch environment where the person that's training them, if they're not on our team, they're not going to ask you to invest in anything else. They're just going to gift you with their knowledge on a very specific topic and show you how you can parlay that knowledge into a service that you get to charge for pretty after you're done with it training, which is super exciting.

Gina Horkey: So we're stoked about it. You know, before you were talking about just letting people know how you can help them, that's how I'm sharing with you right now. How we can help you if you feel like we're the right fit. But I'm at the point in our business where, you know, like if I'm not the right fit for you, you're not gonna hurt my feelings. If this isn't the right time for you or the right kind of path for you to go down, that's cool. This is all for you to kind of decide for yourself. But if you do decide we're the right fit, virtual assistant is the thing that you want to do, I feel like we're the best resource out there. And to toot my own horn just a little, I've been asked to teach on the college level on the accredited college level, meaning that if you took this certificate program through this specific institution, which is a lot of the same content that we teach on our own, that it actually can build towards like a bachelor's degree, for example. And you know, that was not something I anticipated in this journey whatsoever. I feel like it's a huge privilege, but what I get excited about is not only does it increase, I feel like my credibility becoming a professor, but more important than that is that the industry and the marketplace, the advanced education system is recognizing there's a need for this. This is an opportunity area and they're starting to get involved, which means you can do it too.

Shannon Mattern: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I think that if you are here at this summit and you're watching this presentation and you are even thinking maybe, just might, this could be the thing that you want to explore go check out the Gina's website. I have it linked below this video. She's going to help you figure out fully more in depth if this is the right next move for you. But I mean, I can attest as a business owner, just being in, you know, in communities with other business owners, people need excellent, loyal ,well-trained virtual assistants. Yes. That are going to be like with them for the long haul. They need that. You're you're needed. So don't think that like there's too many, you know, .there's not like there's, there's going, there is a need. Now there's going to be a need the needs, just going to keep growing. And like I keep saying, you will go farther faster if you don't try to do it yourself,

Gina Horkey: Coming full circle, you never know what other opportunities it's going to lead to. So you might start a virtual assistant business and offer services for the rest of your career. But guess what? You might start a virtual assistant business and then start something completely different based on learning different opportunities or being asked or given an opportunity. I mean, that's like me and the college thing like that, wasn't something I pursued, but because of all this other action I'd taken and being open to things that it did come my way and we're in partnership right now to bring it to fruition, which is really, really exciting. So it's not the end. And that's what I also really love about our new system is again, we can start, we can help you to build and really fill that client roster. And we get to help you to scale by either specializing and increasing your rates or by transitioning into like that agency model so that you have a team of people working for you and you don't have to trade your own time for pay any more. And that's just the start because you don't know again where it can lead you so pleasure to be with your audience during this time. Happy to take some questions. If anybody has them. Otherwise, the simplest thing that you can do next, if it's an inkling of interest is just download the list of services and then, you know, take that 20 minutes to figure out what's realistic for you to even start offering right now because you already have those skills. And then we can take you the rest of the way if you want us to.

Shannon Mattern: Awesome. Well, Gina, it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for being part of our summit and everyone, I will link up all of the goodness below this video. So stop what you're doing now and go check it out. So thank you.

Gina Horkey: Bye guys.