Let’s talk about how to create services that clients will actually pay you for, time and time again. From experience, I have seen that most new virtual assistants create a laundry long list of services.

Services like customer service, project management, calendar management, spreadsheet creation, social media management, website management, and I can go on and on. It’s good to list everything you know how to do, but our goal is to constrict that list to the things you are an expert at.

Why is it important?

When I was working as an administrative assistant I did a lot of things during my work week. Some things I was an expert at and some things that I wasn’t quite good, but I was required to do them part of my job description.

What I think is important is to write down the skills on a piece of paper. Don’t leave anything out. If you’re amazing at cooking, you should write that down. Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this.

The idea here is to offload all of these skills from your head onto paper so you can see in black and white the skills you’ve acquired over the years.

Once you have written out all the skills you have, you should write down all of the knowledge you have acquired over your lifetime. Think about college degrees, languages you speak, workshops, and courses you have taken.

Next, I suggest you write down the things that you’re known for in your circle of friends and colleagues.

What do people who know you think you’re amazing for?

For me, my friends think I am a wizard in WordPress support and time management. Perhaps, your friends think you’re one of the best event organizers they have ever met. Whatever it is, write it down.

Let’s go back to your skills. Let’s say you wrote down cooking. I suggest you to get everything out of your head and onto paper because once you have everything there you can start thrashing that list.

Take a fat red marker (it can be blue, pink, or yellow) and cross out every single thing you hate doing. Go ahead. Do it, it will feel good.

The last thing you want to do as a virtual assistant is to do work you don’t enjoy.

Even if you’re an expert at these things – get rid of it. Once you’ve crossed out everything that you hate doing, you should to circle with a blue marker everything you love doing. Now, take a separate piece of paper and write at the very top “core services”. From the list of skills, pick your top five.

Out of those five services, do some research. Will people pay you for these services? Just because you love doing something and think it’s useful doesn’t mean the market will and it’s better for you to do the work figuring this out now. Because if you don’t do this now, you will have a hard go of things.

The services you offer should be services that people really need right now and will pay you for.

You need to have at least three to five core services that you can actually make money from. Don’t freak out about narrowing down your services to just a few core services. This is a smart strategy, because the more you offer, the more confused your prospect is. When a client is confused about how they can use your services, you have lost them.

Remember, they are looking for someone to solve some of their burning problems. If they are confused with trying to figure out how you can help them because you have so much to offer, will not cooperate with you. That means you’re not making money and that’s not an option.

You should have three to five profitable core services on your list.

But what is a profitable service? Well, that depends on some factors. Let’s talk about that more because, without a profitable service to offer, you’ve got yourself a hobby, not a business.

These are the services that you will market on your list. Even better if you can narrow down the services to just two services.

Why? Because you want to become known for something and you can’t become known for something if you offer everything.

Once you have someone as a client you can open up the curtain and show them all the services that you’re amazing at, but for now, keep it simple and focus on just a few services:

• Document creation
• Customer service
• Calendar management
• Event planning
• Email marketing
• WordPress website management
• Social media marketing
• Project management
• Graphic Design

Don’t be down in if you don’t feel that you can do any of the above. All we were beginners once.

If you’re not willing to invest in yourself and learn more skills and add to your knowledge base, you’re not going to be successful.

The most successful VAs stay up-to-date on the latest software and technology to help them run their business and their client’s business and it’s no different in other fields. Doctors have to go to continuing education courses each year. So do VAs.

Now that you have figured out what your marketable core services are let’s start figuring out who you will market these services too. It’s going to be fun, but it will require a lot of work on your part.