Finding your niche as a Virtual Assistant

Finding a niche is KEY to growing your Virtual Assistant business. 

But it’s not going to make or break it.

You may hear VA coaches tell you to find your niche right away and that advice can be detrimental to many women getting started. Here is why:

Coming up with a niche gets some women stuck and so…they just never start.

So here is my take on finding a niche…

Finding a niche IS important but it doesn’t have to come before finding your first client.

You CAN find clients without a niche. And it doesn’t have to be harder to do so without one.

When you’re networking and prospecting clients in FB groups, your personal network, etc… focus first on providing excellent support. Focus on meeting whatever needs are in front of you and adding value to the clients in front of you. 

Finding prospective clients is not hard. But it takes effort to start and build a relationship with them. THIS is why having a niche is so important. Because it gets easier when you are targeting your ideal client.

But how do you know who your ideal client is when you’ve never worked in this world? 

I could tell you to imagine the type of work you’d like to do and the type of space you’d like to work in but sometimes, you really just don’t know yet. And that’s okay.
On the other hand, you may know right out of the gate that you want to work with clients in the beauty industry, or maybe you’d like to work with mom influencers or business coaches. Or maybe you were a dental assistant before entering the Virtual Assistant world and you want to stay in the medical industry so you focus on dental offices or even virtual therapists. 

Definitely think through what your experience is, your hobbies, interests, what type of tasks you enjoy doing…

But if you just don’t know what your niche could be, don’t sweat it. Get your first client or two and then you can gain clarity around the type of tasks you enjoy, the industries that interest you…even the personalities you enjoy working with most.

All of this can adapt but here is why waiting, if you don’t know what niche you want to be in…is so important:

If you settle on a niche you aren’t really in love with, you can put yourself in a box.

Maybe you go with being a social media manager for dental offices but a year in and you hate it. But you built up your social community around this niche, so what do you do? Either you power through it or start over.

Now, there could be benefits to building a community around a niche and realizing you want to go a different route… You could find someone to run your niched-down business for you and subcontract the workout. Have a passive income while you pursue something you’re more passionate about, sure. Especially if you found what worked for you the first go-round, you can replicate the process for the next one.

Generally speaking, though, what happens is if you choose a niche you aren’t really into, you aren’t successful. Because it all takes consistency and work to be successful and if you aren’t really into what you’re working for, it’s easier to give up.

This is why my suggestion is to Marie Kondo the niche decision. If you can think of a niche within the first steps of starting your VA business and you know you’re excited by it, then run with it. If you can’t, don’t let it keep you from moving forward because you can lock it in anytime. 

The most important part of starting your VA business is to keep moving. Stopping too long will get you stuck!

Want to chat through this topic more?