Real Happy Mom

Practical tips and encouragement for moms

How to Start Your Own Business as a VA – And Work From Home Permanently

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Have you ever thought about working from home, but you don’t know where to start?

Maybe it’s time to consider being a VA. A VA (virtual assistant) is someone who works independently to help clients from anything to email marketing to social media management and graphic design.

If you are looking for a way to work from home, check out this episode with Ester. She breaks down the skills needed to become a VA, how to tell the spammy jobs from the real ones, and how to establish their own VA business.

Listen to this episode to learn how you can start your VA business and work from home permanently.

How to start your own business as a VA and work from home permanently

About Esther

Esther quit her corporate America job 6 years ago when she realized it wasn’t suitable for a military wife and Mom life. She started working from home as a virtual assistant and couldn’t believe this simple low entry-level virtual career was completely unknown by other military wives, Moms, or travel lovers.

After taking her agency to 6 figures, she’s helped over 4,000 women work online as virtual assistants around the world with her program 90 Day VA.

After living abroad as a full-time digital nomad for 3 years in Bali, Esther now lives in Asheville, NC with her 9-year-old son and veteran husband.

Connect with Esther

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Transcript of this episode

Real Happy Mom 0:07
You are listening to the Real Happy Mom podcast, the weekly podcast for busy working moms to get inspiration encouragement and practical tips for this journey comp motherhood. My name is Tony and and you are listening to Episode 155. Well Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Real Happy Mom Podcast. I am super excited to have you listening today. I hope and pray that you are having a great day great week. If you are not just trust me on this one in this part guys is going to help you to see things a little bit differently, especially if you’ve been thinking about becoming a VA or just starting a business of your own. Now if you’re thinking what is a va, a va is a virtual assistant. And in this episode, I have my friend here Esther and men who is going to be talking to us all about how you can get started with your own business as a VA and work from home if that is something that you’re looking forward to doing. Because I’ll be honest with you, since the pandemic this whole work from home life has definitely been a little bit more attractive, especially if you’re one of those people like me who don’t really like to get dressed up or put on some really nice clothes and just want to stay in the comfort of your own home or you may be on the other side where you just want a little extra income and that is totally fine too. So this is definitely the episode for you if you are in either one of those camps or in between so in this episode, Esther is going to be sharing with us what a VA is, what they do, how you can get started as a virtual assistant. Also some of the things to be looking for when you are starting becoming a VA and some little nuances with being an employee versus a contractor because that is something that did come up and I know a lot of times especially when it comes to taxes things can get a little bit complicated and a little bit kind of hairy there so she definitely gives us some confidence and assures us that you know things are a okay if you are a contractor and wanting to get started as a VA actually shows what those you know how much you can be making and how to even get started even if you do have some skill sets that you’re like toniann like I’m already down with this whole VA thing like I’m ready to get started like where do I go to post you know, an ad or to even look for a job posting, she shares with us some resources on how you can get started and I promise you is definitely something that you want to jump into. So definitely listen to this full episode it is a very good one filled with lots of information. But before we jump into this episode really quick you know I got to talk to you about the Facebook group. If you’re like Tony and I don’t know what you’re talking about girlfriend, listen you definitely want to join me over there in the Facebook group the Real Happy Mom Facebook community over here we’ll be having the after party where we’ll be talking a little bit more about some of the episodes that are going on here on the podcast as well as getting some more of that inspiration encouragement that we all need because this mom life can be a little bit difficult So join me over there and get all of this goodness and also take part in the monthly Trello trainings now this is a monthly training there I’ll be doing where I can show you how to use Trello which is a project management tool to help with making life so much easier simple. organize all of the good things So join me over at Real Happy Mom comm slash community so you can be a part of this free Facebook community. Okay, Real Happy Mom comm slash community join me over there. Alright, now that we have that out of the way, let’s go ahead and jump on into this week’s episode.

Real Happy Mom 3:54
Alrighty, welcome to the podcast. I’m excited to have you.

Esther 3:58
I am excited to be here. Yes, yes,

Real Happy Mom 4:00
this is a fun topic that I love talking about which is all about being a VA getting started being a VA and all that fun stuff. But before we jump into our topic today, I wanted you to share a little bit about you and what you do.

Esther 4:15
Sure, so I started about seven years ago, I was working in corporate and I was a former teacher transition to working in corporate I thought that I was you know doing my dream job making all this money I got to travel a little bit for work, it was so fun. But I was also a military spouse and I had a while he was three about three at the time you’re old. And you know quickly realized that this was not the dream. Doesn’t matter how much money you were making when you never get to see your family. When my husband was gone. He was active duty Marine Corps so he was just gone all the time. And so I was solo parenting pretty much so that means every time my kiddo was sick, which was all the time I was somehow in charge of it and I only got you know, two weeks PTO per year. So it was just not sustainable. I was very, very unhappy. And so I quit my job. And my husband was very supportive. He was like, we will figure it out, you are so miserable. I was literally like crying every day and needed to be on medication, it was really bad. And so like, I support you, we will figure it out, we’ll make it work. And we did after about three months, I got my first virtual assistant job, believe it or not from Craigslist. And I loved it. I was making so much money. And they kept just referring me to more and more people because it was an agency. So they had clients that they were doing specific work for, they’re building them online courses, but they had you know, these people still had other virtual assistant work they needed done too. So they would hire me to do other stuff. And then they would refer people. So anyway, my, my career was just growing like crazy. I didn’t even look at it like a business. I mean, I was working as much as I possibly wanted to, and making almost the exact same that I was making in corporate because I didn’t have to pay for daycare anymore. So I was like, well, this is great. I had to work around my kiddos, schedule and make all this money. And I really enjoyed what I did. It was really fun. And I was like, Okay, I have too much work. Now I can’t do this anymore. I’m gonna start saying no to people. Hey, Mom, friend, hey, military, spouse, friend, do you want to be a virtual assistant here, I can give you this work? What’s a virtual assistant? What are you talking about? What do you do? I don’t, I don’t know how you make money like that. They all were still trying to make money, doing direct sales, network marketing, selling things. And that’s fine if you want to do that. But they weren’t really making any money from it. They didn’t really enjoy it. And I was like, Are you serious? Like, this is easy stuff, you can learn it. So like, hey, let me see if I can find a training for you. There was no trainings out there back then for virtual assistants, no trainings on the skills that people were really actively hiring me for. So I just started mentoring a couple of girls, it was two moms and just just a regular military spouse. But all of them were from my local base. And so they’re all mill suppose. And I just thought, every week we’ll meet, I’ll teach you guys what I know. And then I can start referring you work. We did this for about three months. And I just recorded everything I did. Because I was like, I don’t know, maybe someday I’ll turn this into something, I don’t know. I just recorded everything I did. And then at the end of it, they were like, Oh my gosh, Esther, this completely changed my life. I was like, but I just thought I was gonna, you know, refre jobs. He said, I had no idea that I could make money flexibly around my husband and my family schedule. But more than that, that I could have an identity that wasn’t connected to my spouse, because when you’re in the military, it’s all about them. And they’re like, I have my own thing that I do. And I love it. And I can do it around all the stuff we have going on for him or for the ones who had children. And I was like, Oh, so it went a lot deeper and was a lot more than just, oh, I want to be able to make money from home. It’s like no, it’s like a whole life change for them. And so they’re like, you have to do this for more people. So then I started taking on a little bit bigger groups, I took the recordings, I beefed him up, made him nice, put it into a course portal, I started a Facebook group, and I was like, Hey, I have this class, but he wants to take it. And then I can refer you jobs. And that was the beginning. And I ended up now I have almost five, I actually have 5000 students, probably more than that now. And I was able to continue grew my own virtual assistant business and grew that into an agency, I was building online courses. And like his teaching background and corporate background, so I merged it all together. I had my own agency, I took that to six figures at a team of 12 working for me. And then my courses for my virtual assistants, it was just growing so much, you know, 1000s of students were were joining. And we were still referring them jobs, helping them get work, we started our own agency of kind of placing our students with companies. And so that grew. And I ended up having to close my online course agency to focus 100% on that, and now I have a team that supports that. So that is my journey. And through all of that, we moved to Bali and travelled the world. We were there for three years, we just moved recently back to America, due to the pandemic, my husband had a slew of mental health issues. And my income was kind of able to keep me and my son afloat while he was taking care of himself. So it has been quite a journey.

Real Happy Mom 9:14
Yes, definitely. And you share this story. And I’m just like here with all of these questions. So like bumbling over, like, where do I start? But I guess the first question is like, what do you need to even get started as a VA because I know a lot of people hear about, you know, becoming a virtual assistant. And they’re like, Well, what do I do? Like, how do I get started? Like, do I need a degree like, do I need training? Like, what would you say, for someone who’s thinking about it or have heard about it, but they don’t even know where to get started?

Esther 9:45
Yeah, so I always say you certainly do not need a degree you don’t need any kind of certificates or anything. Unless you don’t really have skills in a certain area then you might want to have a certificate to show that like hey, I do know how to do social media management, even though I don’t have a job that’s related to that on my resume, that will suffice that people that’s all people care about, they don’t care about your degree. And honestly, they don’t even care that much about specific work experience sounds crazy, they will be very happy if you take a course. And or if you do a internship or you have something in your portfolio, that like a Google Drive can be a portfolio that reflects that you know how to do the job. So that’s the first thing I like to tell people just to kind of level the playing field is like, being a virtual assistant is such a great way to start. Because it’s very, like low barrier to entry, like anybody can really get going. Now there’s different gonna be different levels. So let’s say you don’t have a lot of skills yet, you might only be able to offer email, responding email, maybe organizing somebody’s Google Drive, maybe helping them with meetings, and planning and responding to maybe you’re coordinating their podcasts or like just stuff that anybody off the street could do. However, the pay for that isn’t going to be great. It’s gonna be like 15 to 20 per hour, where you start making the good money is if you start to learn some of the top skills that people are hiring for. And so that would be things like writing a blog, and a business owners voice, making social media graphics and captions that sound like them, knowing how to post them to the different platforms, knowing how to do stuff on Pinterest, maybe knowing how to edit audio or video, maybe knowing how to write show notes for a podcast, like all the pieces that need to happen, for online businesses to run, it could be bookkeeping, all these things that online businesses need to know. And if you know how to do that stuff, that’s all that they care about. They don’t care that you have years and years of experience, or that you have a degree, they don’t care as long as you actually know how to do those things. Because all they really need is help. So I always tell people, what are the job skills that you’re seeing in the virtual assistant job positions that you need to learn and get some practice and experience doing either, like I said, in the course an internship, building your portfolio, lots of different ways to do that.

Real Happy Mom 12:03
Yes, this is all really good stuff. Because I’m sitting over here, my wheels turning, so I’m just thinking about a couple of different people who have some really great skill sets. But I know they’re probably like, Whoa, you know, I think I know a little bit about photography, or I think I know a little bit about writing and I can get started but you know, the flexibility part, like how flexible Can this be like is this something that we can work into our schedule? Is it a set schedule, like what have you found in, especially the other women that you’ve worked with, as far as making it work for their schedule already, especially for those moms who are already you know, working a nine to five,

Esther 12:40
this is my favorite part about being a virtual assistant. So being virtual isn’t is a very interesting thing, because it’s not a employee type of role. But it’s also where you have you know, set hours whether you’re working remotely or you’re working in an office, or wherever you set hours and you know, show the boss you know, show up, but it’s also not like this freelance type thing where one month I have five graphic design projects, the next month, I have one, it’s really not like that either. It’s really this kind of in between, where you’re an asset to the business, like you’re helping them with something every single month, and they need you every month. So they’re gonna pay you every month for a chunk of hours or for a chunk of tasks or projects every single month. Very rarely Is there something that’s going to be short term and project based. Now, there are some positions that are, you know, part time or full time with more set hours, but it’s rare. Those typically are around customer service, or when you start to move into project management type of stuff, because they need you to be available to answer in a reasonable time or be available for meetings. But for the most part, mostly 75% of jobs are flex time, that’s a great thing. And it’s also as many or as little hours as you want. So like for my team, this is for pretty much everybody on my team. I have a team of about 12 right now. And I don’t care when they work it just as long as their stuff gets done within 24 hours. And I Monday through Friday, and I have somebody who and they know all the things ahead of time. So very rarely do I have anything last minute they typically have two to a week’s notice because most of the stuff is routine. That’s another great thing is like you know that you have these five social media posts to do and you know that you have to do this bookkeeping thing every month, same thing or every week is the same thing. So you can do it whenever you want. They don’t care as long as you get it done. And then the other great thing is I have people on my team that work for five hours a week. I have people on my team that work for 30 hours a week. So it really depends on what the company and the business owner needs for you to do. But they’re very very flexible and I worked when I was a VA I worked from my from the park because I just could tethered to my cell phone and I could do you work on the phone or on my laptop. I would work from the car when I’m waiting for my son do tutoring. Now I still do that even now. So it’s amazing how much you’re able to fit in from the library during storytime. Like that. I got real creative because my son was home with me full time in the beginning before I could get him enrolled in preschool. And I got real creative and it was perfectly fine. I was able to work like 30 to 40 hours a week. It was amazing.

Real Happy Mom 15:13
Nice, nice. Yeah, like I was just thinking, like, there’s so many little pockets of time where we’re kind of either doing the Hurry up and wait, that’s a popular term in the in the military. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about that. Yeah, a lot of Hurry up and wait, I’m so I’m just thinking, like, that’s a lot of the time that we could be, you know, using those pockets of time to get some things done. So I definitely see how this could be something very flexible, especially for someone, like I said, who’s working a full time job or as a military spouse. But I’m also thinking about people who are traveling, or those military spouses who are like, you know, like, I’m not in a set location, like, you know, this year, we may be in the states next year, we may be in South Korea, like, things are always changing. So I’m not going to be in a set location. So what would you say? For those months, in particular, who are thinking like, you know, I don’t know if this is for me, because I move around a lot like, is this gonna work.

Esther 16:05
Um, so the only thing you have to consider if you move around a lot, is if you’re getting jobs that have our requirements. So and again, there’s not a lot of them, like I said, so like, for my company, it’s very typical, what you would see for other companies, and I just the reason I keep mentioning because I just have done a round of hiring, I just hired two people. So I’m very top of mind hiring. And I have hired not only for my own team, but we also play students with companies every single month, like three to five every month, at least. And so I’m very familiar with, you know, consulting with companies to help them create their job posting and what kind of position they want, and what’s really normal. And what you’ll see is it’s like, you need to be available for some meetings Monday through Friday during European working hours are like during us hours. But otherwise, they don’t really care. As long as you can be available for some meetings throughout the week, then that’s fine. Or you have to look for the ones that are more customer service based. And they’re like, we need somebody who is on and responding nine to five Monday through Friday in a US timezone. And they might not even care the timezone. So those are the things that are that are more hour specific. And then the only other thing you have to think about too is if it’s going to be an employee role, not a contractor, then they do sometimes have a state requirement. But it only matters that you have like some kind of residency status in that state and that you’re putting your taxes through that state. They don’t really care where you’re actually living. So this is another misconception. I was very big in the digital nomad community, because I was traveling for three years. And I get a lot of questions about this. They’re like, I don’t know what to do. I’m living in Costa Rica, and I can’t qualify for any of these us jobs because they want people that are in these certain states. And I’m like, Well, what state do you pay taxes in and that you’re registered in? Oh, yeah, I have residency in like Texas. So I’m like, well, then you qualify, they don’t care where you’re actually at, and you’re in the same timezone pretty much. So it doesn’t really matter. It’s none of their business, you’re not putting your address on anything. So that’s really the only kinds of things that you have to take into account.

Real Happy Mom 18:06
Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Now, I know you brought up the employee versus contractor, is there anything else we need to keep in mind when we’re looking at job postings that may either say that you are an employee versus being a contractor? When you’re a BA?

Esther 18:22
Oh, yeah, there’s lots and I have resources on this that go more in depth, if anybody wants to connect with me and ask on Instagram, my handle is Esther underscore admin. So shoot me a message if this is just like the tip of the iceberg. But essentially, contractor versus employee is very different people get freaked out about being not an employee, like oh, my gosh, I’m a contractor, I got to do my own taxes. Well, there’s a lot to be said for this. First of all, you don’t really have to worry about taxes until you’re making more than like, $400 a month, I mean, $400 a year. So if you just want to get started and kind of dip your toe and get going, you can and then you can figure out the tax thing later. So just get started. Number two is if you’re married, or like in some kind of partnership, where you guys share the taxes, you know how normally your person or you as an employee would get this big tax refund because you overpaid. Which by the way, you’d never want a refund because the government that meant the government has been holding your money for you and you did not get paid interest, nor did you get to have money. So it’s don’t refunds are not a good thing. But typically, for me, when my husband was active duty, and I was a virtual assistant, I was making anywhere between Gosh, like two to $5,000 a month it depended on them up. Because I had a husband who was paying extra in taxes, it just basically cancelled out the refund. So I just didn’t get a refund this year and I don’t care and it was totally fine. I never owed anything. And so this is one that people freak out about, but it’s like it’s really fine. Also, the great thing about being a contractor even though you don’t, you know get your taxes automatically taken out of your paycheck. That’s really the biggest difference between a contractor employee But the great thing is that as a contractor, you get to have all kinds of expenses, which means any trips that you take that you can have a business, something to do with your work to do like, I will do meetups with students or I will do consultations, or I will do things around like, Hey, we want to go see our family in Maine, let’s pair that with a business thing. And now I can write off the entire trip, I don’t have to pay taxes on the entire trip. For me and my husband, cuz my husband does photography for my business. And we’re all sharing a hotel room anyway. So like, you can see how these kinds of expenses can build up courses that you’re going to take software that you’re going to use gas mileage to take your tax forms to the post office, there’s a lot of things and a lot of them are reoccurring. So it’s not like Oh, God, I have to track all this stuff. It’s like no, every single month, I pay a subscription to this female entrepreneur group that I’m in. And so that’s a really easy thing for me to tax at tax time. At the end of the year, I know I paid $20 a month times 12 months, boom, done. That’s my expense. I have the receipts all in my email, I’m good. So you can make it much easier when you’re just getting started. You don’t have to, like freak out and sign up for QuickBooks and set up this whole thing. And it’s all stressful. It doesn’t have to be that way. Especially when you’re just getting started.

Real Happy Mom 21:16
Yes, I love it, love it. And I like how you broke it down there too, because I know the taxes that is the part that gets me every time cuz I do not like own Uncle Sam anti money. So I’m definitely glad to hear about all of that. Yeah.

Esther 21:29
And I think once you get and you are making great money and the taxes become more complicated, you can cross that bridge when you get there, because you’ll have more knowledge. And honestly, you can hire somebody to do it all for you. And that is also an expense. So like I have a bookkeeper and I have a CPA, and they do all of this stuff. For me, I don’t worry about it at all. And I didn’t have to start doing that though. Until it made sense for my business, I think until I was making maybe 60k or more a year, everything below that I was able to do on TurboTax by myself like it was fine. It was not a big deal.

Real Happy Mom 22:03
Gotcha. Gotcha. Now speaking of money. Now I know there are some people that are like, Oh, I you know, I don’t know, VA work is for me, because I want to make more than you know, $200 a month. So I’m just wondering, like, how much money can you make as a VA.

Esther 22:19
So when you’re starting as a virtual assistant, a lot of the virtual assistant type tasks that I’ve kind of mentioned, they do max out around, I would say 25, maybe 30 per hour. And that’s again, a contractor rate, I don’t know what the employee amount would be. Because it’s just like, it’s not so easy, like someone off the street can’t do it. But it’s not as difficult as making a strategy for a new business launch. I mean, for a new product launch, and writing emails to go with the product launch and graphic design customer. Like that stuff is more complicated. And so but the great thing is you can start as a virtual assistant, either within a company or with multiple clients, and you can learn things on the job, you can take more advanced courses, you can practice those skills with those business owners that you’re working for. And then within six to 12 to two years, you can start very quickly moving up to the 30 4050 US dollars per hour. I mean people I know after the two year mark, they charged about 60 per hour. And then if you want to do more like technical fancy things with marketing or with tech stuff, you can even get up to 100 $200 per hour. So it’s just the starting point. It’s a great starting point. And for a lot of people like 2025 and ours and it’s amazing. And so they’re really happy with that. But if you’re kind of like, Oh, I don’t know if that’s a long term solution for me, then just know that it’s kind of just a starting point. And then once you get an expertise that you really enjoy, you can really hone in on that get more skills, get more practice, and then keep increasing your rates.

Real Happy Mom 23:53
Gotcha, gotcha. Now I’m I I’m feeling pretty good here. Now you got me feeling really nice about this. But thinking about them, the moms especially like I said, the moms that are working the nine to five, because those are the moms that typically are listening here. And I’m just thinking about the work life balance, especially if we’re trying to get things started. So I’m just wondering what ways do you make sure that you have balance between work and home life, especially when you’re getting started as a va?

Esther 24:22
Yeah, so it’s funny you mention that because I’m actually doing my own series on my podcast exactly about that. My podcast is called helped me work online so you can find it wherever podcasts are. And I’m doing exactly a series on work life balance, because I had so many people asking me about that. Now, it’s I take it with a grain of salt, because some people are crazy, like me, and they’re really happy to work 40 plus hours a week around their kids schedule, and they’re like, this is great. I love this. Then there’s other people who are like, Oh, god, that’s too much for me. I can’t know it. So it really depends kind of on your personality. And I think too, you know, it was just me and my son for the most part. My husband wasn’t really Around, like I said he was active duty was hardly ever there. And so I could kind of finagle my schedule however I wanted. And I didn’t have so many things pulling at me. Now if you have more than one child, you have a special needs child, you have mental health issues or physical health issues, you’re caring for a spouse with, like, if you have more things going on, then you might not be able to have your schedule look like what somebody else is does, and there’s no need to compare there, you have to figure out what works for you, when you have a newborn, the style of work they’re able to do is gonna be very or not do, it’s gonna be very different from when your kid is 10. So I started when my son was three, it looks very different from how he is now when he’s 10, I literally could not talk to him all day, and he would be fine. And now I’m about to have another baby in November. And I’m like, Alright, we got to cut down on work, I’m taking how many months off, when I go back, I’m not going to be doing all this, like it’s just you go through different seasons. So I just like to say that because I think sometimes we can think that we can do all these things. But it’s just not realistic. And I also don’t want people to compare themselves to others who are in different places in their life, or different stages or different things. So you have to make it work for you. But what I tell people is, is, first of all, get your family, your spouse, your partner, whoever on board, and say, we got moms here. So I’m talking about Mama’s mommy is wanting to work some more outside of work, because here’s my goals, I want to be able to save up for vacation, I want to be able to quit my job, eventually, whatever these things are, get them get their buy in on it. And say so that means on Monday and Wednesdays after work, mom is off duty, I’m taking three hours, and I’m going to whatever it is you’re doing, you’re gonna take a course you’re going to work on your portfolio, you have an internship, you’re going to apply for jobs, your whatever the thing is, and dad or partner spouse, babysitter is going to cook dinner and put you guys to bed, or they’re going to do this afternoon thing with you whatever. So you have defined in your schedule where you can fit in what you need to do, whether it’s getting actually doing the work on the side hustle. So you can grow it into full time, or it’s just getting things kicked off with a course or a certification program or whatever. And you have to get their buy in and have them be part of and supporting you. So I did this when I was starting because you know, I was trying to work on my son’s schedule for about the first six months. And so Saturday mornings, my husband and my son would hang out. And that was a great time for me to get a bunch of work done, I would get up early, and I would get a bunch of work done. And my son and my husband were just kind of barely waking up kind of just watching TV doing whatever. And that worked out perfectly for us. So just as an example of how you can find it to work for your family and getting them to support you and having like tangible goals. So it’s like it’s not gonna be like this forever. It’s just like this for how long what’s the goal that we’re trying to achieve?

Real Happy Mom 27:48
Yes, Love it. Love it, love it. Now, the last thing I’m just thinking about here too is like okay, we’ve we’ve got the buy in from the family, we know what we’re going to do. We’re going to get started now Where are we going to be applying for jobs or looking for jobs? Like where would you say is a good place to start? I know you mentioned you, you started on Craigslist, but I didn’t know if there’s any other places you should start to look for when we’re getting started with working.

Esther 28:12
Yeah, I don’t know Craigslist is still a good spot either. You could try I don’t know I haven’t been on there in a long time. I have a Facebook group and we post jobs every single day. We don’t just post VA does. We post all different kinds of Remote Jobs on there for all different kinds of levels. So it’s great if you don’t really have a lot of skills and you don’t really have a lot of money to invest in skills training yet, but you were like I need to earn something from home we have options for those kinds of people to my Facebook group is called work from home jobs and remote work resources. That’s what it’s called. You can also like I said DM me on Instagram and get the link for me because I just feel like whenever I’ve tried to search things on Facebook for like search in the groups, like a million things come up. But also With that being said, there’s lots of virtual assistant and remote job groups on Facebook that post great jobs and that could be a great place to look. And then I send the email out every Friday and it has all kinds of remote work support for you and it has those jobs in there too. So definitely you want to be on my email list. And then I would say another place if you want to find you know specifically virtual assistant jobs is a company called profit factory. They they have tons I think they’re an agency that places vas and they have lots of different jobs. Another one, especially for my military spouses out there is called Instant teams and they have all different kinds of admin type of jobs on there as well. And then the last one I would tell you is called boldly Bo LD l why they have lots of VA jobs too. Now those they do need you to have quite a few years of experience but it can be like in an office or an executive assistant or type of role to in order to work for them because they I think they were Pretty high end clients. So that’s a great. So those are all great options to get you started.

Real Happy Mom 30:04
Awesome, awesome. And I will be sure to include all of those links in the show notes. Those are some really, really good resources to get started with So, so thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Esther 30:14
Yeah, you’re welcome. And like I said, even if it’s just to look at what people are hiring for, and then get an idea of what you want to get training in and learn that they can all just be really great places to start.

Real Happy Mom 30:24
Yes, definitely. Definitely. Now, if we are sorry, I’m gonna cut that part out. So before we sign off, I just wanted you to share either a motivational quote words of encouragement first real happy moms,

Esther 30:38
huh? Yeah. One of my favorite ones to share I got I was going through a very, very dark time in my life. I think I mentioned earlier that my husband after we got out of the Marine Corps had a very serious mental health breakdown wasn’t due to PTSD, it was due to traumatic brain injury TBI, which is also very common. And we like our entire life fell apart, and it was really horrible. Luckily, due to my income, we were able to stay afloat, but it was a really, really ugly time. And so I always like to speak to people that are listening in or maybe going through their own ugly time. It could be that you’re dealing with an illness, it could be something with your children, it could be a family member, whatever is going on. And it could be financially I mean, there’s so much that happens in life. And the quote that I really loved was God weaves a masterpiece out of the threads of our despair and so even if you don’t believe in God even if you believe in the universe or whatever, I think that is the most beautiful picture and I literally imagined like a tapestry of all these different threads of difficult things that I had gone through or that you’ve gone through and how it created this beautiful picture in the end and so holding on to that hope even when you don’t feel like it really has helped me get through some tough times and so I always like to share that yes I

Real Happy Mom 31:55
love that love it love it now so I know you mentioned it already but we can be me but tell us where we can find you online if we want to connect with you learn more about you and hear more of what you’ve got.

Esther 32:06
Yeah so my website is virtual assistant internship calm and you on there can find my program it’s called 90 day VA program to help you get your resume going find jobs cover letter the whole thing for the remote industry it’s only $27 it’s practically free and I have a virtual summit on there that’s free that is shows showcases 15 different online jobs in case you’re not really sure what you want to do so tons and tons of resources and that’s on virtual assistant internship calm and I did you can connect with me on instagram too. It’s Esther underscore admin I post on stories like every single day on there and I’m pregnant and I really cute dogs so I mean even if you don’t want to come for the remote work resources it’s still a good time.

Real Happy Mom 32:50
Yes, definitely. And again, I’ll make sure to have all those links in the show notes so Esther thank you so much again for coming on and sharing all this with us this has been so helpful and I am so appreciative so thank you thank you.

Esther 33:04
Thank you for having me and I look forward to connecting with some of your listeners shoot me a DM and say I heard you on this podcast I would love to chat.

Real Happy Mom 33:11
Yes. Now that does it for this episode of the Real Happy Mom podcast to find the links in the show notes head over to Real Happy Mom comm slash 155 and there you’ll find the links as well as some other resources that may be helpful to you. Now if you have found this episode helpful do me a favor and leave a five star rating and review this helps me out so much. And it’s pretty much like when you’re going on Google and looking at the reviews at where you’re going to go to next you want to go to the one with the good reviews and as many stars as possible and the same thing goes for the podcast. So you leave in this five star rating review helps me out more than you know. And I’d appreciate it so so much. Now that’s it for this episode. Make sure you stay tuned for next week for another full episode. Take care and with that said love

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