My Virtual Sidekick | Management, Marketing & More | Raven Howard

Many virtual assistants and other service based professionals ask me, “How did you make the transition from an internet marketing virtual assistant to an online business manager?”

My answer is because I wanted to.  As a virtual assistant, my goal was to go from doing menial tasks for a client to growing into larger roles with them. I dug it when a client gave me a complete overview of what needed to be done and trusted that I could make it happen.

But there was a dark side to this, too. I began to work longer and longer hours because I was getting paid a basic virtual assistant rate (read under-paid! to do more and more for each of my clients.  If I brought up raising my monthly retainer with my client, they’d stated they weren’t ready for an online business manager. But they sure appreciated all my expert help and would really love it if we could just continue on ‘as is’ and talk about it later.
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This past August I began working with my first Online Business Manger client. The business owner was seeking a true OBM to manage her business since her husband was leaving the company.

I fell in love.

Finally I was working with a client that was a perfect match for the skills that I wanted to leverage and though YES I do, do VA work for this client, the majority of the tasks were management related.

I compared this client to my others and noticed these differences:

• My OBM client is a successful business owner with a powerful formula for success that she is looking to finesse for more profit.
• She is committed to her online business, which means this wasn’t a hobby or something she was dabbling in.
• Nor had she jumped on the self-employed bandwagon and looking for help in figuring out what in the heck she was going to sell.
• She had a coach.
• Basically she wasn’t in startup mode and my day with her was challenging.

It was a shift from, “How do we start this, Raven, to “how can we improve this, how can we make this more efficient, effective, power and profitable?”

OH YEAH—MORE OF THIS PLEASE!
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This year I have moderated over 50 GoToWebinar events for business owners who want to only deliver their webinars and have me handle:

• setting up the events
• moderating the questions
• answering technical emails
• recording the presentation
• editing and producing the video

I thoroughly enjoy assisting business women on these calls because it gives me the opportunity to learn more about them, more about their market, their pain points and not-to-mention I get to sit in while they teach their audience something fabulous!

However, I was experiencing one non-to-glamorous aspect of handling the technical aspects of the recordings. The rendering of the files. Ooowee!
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