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Student Success Story: Sarah Bowman

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Sarah Bowman Colorado Virtual Assistant

Name: Sarah Bowman
Short bio: SAH Wife and mom of one (plus a dingo) turned kickass virtual assistant
Location: Pueblo West, Colorado (USA)
Website: www.Sarahbowmanva.com
Date hired by first client: 3/7/18
Return on course investment:3/7/18
Average hours worked per week: 20-25
Average monthly income: $1200
Services offered: Social media management, Course/membership site and community management, general administrative services, customer service

Hi Sarah. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Hi, I’m Sarah Bowman from southern Colorado! I am a married mama of one precocious little girl and a dingo with a larger-than-life personality.

I enjoy spending time with my family outdoors and Netflix binging with my husband at night. In my spare time I enjoy crafting and making Target runs.

I graduated from Colorado State University-Pueblo with a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration where I majored in management and minored in marketing. While in college, I fell in love with marketing and knew it was my passion.

After becoming a mom in 2016, I decided it was time to follow my dream of becoming a marketer. I wanted to continue to stay home with my daughter, so I turned to virtual work.

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5 Ways Freelancers Can Make the Best of a Slow Summer

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If you were to ask other freelancers what’s the hardest thing about working for themselves, you’ll probably hear this answer more than once: the ebbs and flows of freelance life. And that becomes even more obvious during the summer months, when clients are usually on vacation and business slows down significantly.

Lauren’s here to share that summer months aren’t all doom and gloom. It could actually be a good time to focus on growing your business. Here are five ways you can make the best of slow summer months. 

I love the flexibility I have with my business in June, July, and even August, but a lot of freelancers dread the summer slowdown. When you need consistent income, it’s easy to get discouraged.

The trick is to have a plan and use the extra time to your advantage. Here are a few ways I make the best of slower months

1. Provide More Value to Existing Clients

One of the easiest ways to raise your income is to become more valuable to your current clients.

The client is not always the best judge of what they need. Their business may slow down in the summer so they request less work from you, but the reality for most businesses is that they have a backlog of things they need or want to get done. Website updates, overhauling systems and processes, clearing out their inboxes, and optimizing content are often tasks that get put on the back burner.

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How to Get Testimonials for Your Freelance Business

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Posting on social media, attending, in-person networking events, sending one cold pitch after another – there is so much pressure to constantly promote our business. After all, how else are potential clients going find out that we exist?

The most obvious response here is: from other satisfied clients who are already happy with our work. There’s nothing better than an endorsement from someone who had already benefited from your services.

A simple way to facilitate this is to get testimonials for your website.

Here’s how Rob, a freelance writer and virtual assistant, asks for testimonials.

As business owners wearing a lot of hats, we’re constantly under pressure to learn new things. Because time is such a limited resource, we tend to learn a lot of these things on-the-go — how to pitch and get clients, how to invoice, how to manage our inbox when the overwhelm takes over.

But there’s something that we don’t often talk about — once a freelance project is over, how do we get testimonials? And why should we even bother?

Let’s delve deeper into this topic.

What’s a testimonial?

Testimonials can help show prospects that other clients, both past and present, like your work. It also shows that they’re not afraid to endorse you publicly!

Think of it as a recommendation. You do the work for a client, they love what you’ve done for them and give you a glowing recommendation for you to use on your website.

Sounds simple enough, right? Well, it can be easy if you put some effort into setting up a process for getting testimonials.

There are a few things to keep in mind when looking for these bits of business help, such as when to ask, how to ask and what to do if you get a “no.”

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How to Completely Rebrand Your Website This Summer

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How to Rebrand Your Website

What can you do if business is slow in the summer?

First order of business, take a much-needed vacation and some self-care time.

Once you’re all refreshed and rejuvenated, it’s time to have a closer look at how you can work on your business. And a doable project that we’ve all put on the back burner once or twice is the website redesign.

Here’s Corrie Alexander’s advice on how to use the slow months to rebrand your website.

Take it away, Corrie!

When I launched my freelance writing business in April 2016, my first website was mostly just a personal blog and a place to put my writing samples. At the time, the site served its purpose and helped me secure my first paying clients.

But as my aspirations for the business grew, my website’s brand – or lack thereof – became a problem. I decided that rebranding my website was the only way to continue growing.

It turned out to be a lot of work, but totally worth the effort.

If you’re thinking it’s time to rebrand your website, these slower summer months are the perfect time to take the plunge.

Here are the steps that worked for me:

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Student Success Story: Carrie Serres

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We’re back with another post in the Student Success Stories series.

Why are we doing this? Glad you asked!

It’s because we want to feature people who took Gina’s 30 Days or Less courses and actually got serious about working on their freelance career. Every story in the series is a little bit different from the others. That’s because they’re real journeys, and everyone is on a different path.

This month we’re featuring Carrie Serres, a business pro who is building a virtual assistant business in order to be able to be work from home and spend more time with her family. 

Here’s what Carrie learned about putting yourself out there when you’re getting started.

Name: Carrie Serres
Website: yourvirtualassociate.com
Course enrollment date: November 2015
Business launch date: November 2015
Date hired by first client: August 2016
Hours worked per week: I was working 5 hours in the beginning. Now it’s around 30.
Average monthly income: $2500-$3000
Top three services: Website maintenance, email assistance, customer outreach, marketing

Hi, Carrie. Please tell us a bit about yourself.

I’m a stay at home mom who needs to make money from home in order to be a stay at home mom!

How did you decide to start working online?

I was already doing something similar (answering email for a friend’s business), and I came across Gina’s VA course and realized that what I was doing was a “thing.”

So I decided to take her course to learn more about what services I could offer. Turns out there was a lot I could offer, and I’ve learned more since.

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Have to Work on Vacation? Here’s How to Master the Workcation If You’re a Freelancer

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Work on Vacation Freelancer

If you’re a freelancer or run your own business, working on vacation might seem like a necessary evil. The problem is that when you’re trying to combine the two, neither of them comes out right: the quality of your work suffers, PLUS you don’t get to enjoy a much-needed vacation. And after all, you’ve started working for yourself because you need more flexibility, not less.

Hailey Thomas is joining us today to explain that this doesn’t have to be a lose-lose scenario. Here’s how Hailey plans her work around her vacation, and why working a maximum of 90 minutes a day (and not every day) is the way to go when you’re trying to relax away from home.

Working while on vacation gets a bad wrap. And honestly, I get it. If you’ve ever spent any time in the corporate setting, there’s a very distinct line between work and play; rest and productivity.

Usually, mixing work and pleasure stirs feelings of angst and guilt.

And that mindset is hard to shake loose once you begin the sweet adventure of working for yourself. It’s hard to put on the boss’s hat and indeed create the lifestyle that lets you serve your clients while also helping yourself and your family.

Enough of that, I say! I think pleasure and productivity don’t have to be exclusive anymore! I challenge the idea that work and vacation should always be separate and that you can’t experience both together well.

Today we’re talking about how to flourish while vacationing and working in a way that you won’t leave you feeling guilty, overextended, and exhausted.

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How to Stay Focused When You’re Traveling and Working Remotely

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We’re getting deep in summer mode around here. That doesn’t mean that work needs to stop, but neither does the fun. Last week, Lisa Rollins shared how to work when your children have the summer off. Today, we’re welcoming another summer scenario: staying productive while you’re traveling and working remotely. Caroline Peterson is a pro at traipsing around the world while growing her freelance business, and she’s here to teach us how to balance work and travel.

Take it away, Caroline!

The beauty of working remotely is the freedom it provides.

From setting your own schedule to working in cute cafes, and taking lunch breaks by the pool–it’s great! Oh, if only it were all that glamorous, right? Mix in traveling for a work trip, vacation or, heck, even visiting family and then … things can get a bit trickier.

The demands of traveling, especially overseas like I do, can be quite taxing both mentally and physically. Sometimes the last thing I want to do is open my laptop once I arrive to my destination.

Just this last year alone, I’ve been to seven countries and traveled domestically to four different states to visit family. I often feel pulled in a million different directions from wanting to do the tourist things and spend time with family to knowing I’ve got deadlines to meet, clients to pitch and content to write.

Travel, much like my mantra to life, is all about balance.

I have found that allowing myself some fun, while also maintaining my business obligations, yields a much better success rate and leads to a more fulfilled work/life balance. And who doesn’t want that?

These are some of my tips after a few years of trial and error.

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5 Ways to Stay Productive in the Summer (When the Kids are at Home)

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Stay productive at work in the summer with kids at home

Ahh, summer’s here. The cold cocktails on the back porch, the morning pool time, the gardening. All of these temptations that you can’t wait to get to. If only your kids would leave you alone to get some work done for your clients first.

Lisa Rollins is a virtual assistant and a mom who has found a way to still stay productive when her kids are home on their summer break. Here are Lisa’s tips!

Ah, summer … I have been waiting all spring for the long days and warm sunshine. I ease my way out of bed, happy to see the sun streaming through my windows. It should be a great day to work and really get some things checked off my list, complete my virtual meeting with my new client, and get my billing done for the month … and maybe even eat lunch outside.

Then I remember: today is the first day of my kids’ summer break.

They will be home with me ALL. DAY. LONG.

I love my children, but how am I possibly going to get any work done with them around?

How am I going to manage without spending thousands on childcare?

How am I going to manage to work and be a good parent at the same time?

Can you relate? Here are five solutions that I have used to get work done and not neglect my kids or have them vegged out on technology all day long.

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