Mama, I know you want to work from home, but wfh jobs and growing your own online business are NOT the same.
In this episode we are diving into what it means to work from home and the major differences between wfh jobs running your own virtual assistant (VA) business.
Spoiler alert, growing your VA business is the way to go! I’m highlighting the benefits of being your own boss, the flexibility and control it offers you as a mom, the unlimited income potential, and the ability to pivot and grow your business.
Let’s connect on Instagram! I’m @melyssamunday and @mamasmakingmore.
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Hey yo mama! Are you searching for a way to make money while still having the flexibility to be present for your littles (or busy bigs)? Whether you are looking for full time income or a side hustle, let’s dive into the world of work-from-home jobs and owning your own online service-based business. If you are on the fence between becoming an employee or growing your VA business, keep reading.
Employment vs. Entrepreneurship: Embrace Your Inner Boss Mom!
- Picture this: You’re sitting at your home office, calling the shots, and making things happen. Sounds amazing, right? With a work-from-home job, you’re an employee, bound by someone else’s rules. But when you own your own online virtual assisting business, you are the boss! You get to set the direction, make decisions, and shape your business according to your vision. It’s your time to shine!
Income Potential: Say Goodbye to Fixed Salaries, Hello Unlimited Earning Power!
- In a traditional work-from-home job, you often have a fixed hourly rate or salary, like a predictable monthly treat. But with your own online service-based business, the sky’s the limit! The higher your rate, the more clients you attract, and the greater the value you provide, the more money you can make. It’s like having an all-you-can-eat buffet of earnings. Who wants crumbs when you can have the whole feast?
Want to learn more about starting your VA Business? Grab my Quickstart Guide to Build Your VA Business now!
Embracing Risks: Dare to Take Charge of Your Destiny!
- Yes, starting your own online service-based business comes with risks, but guess what? So does every great adventure! As a mompreneur, you’re not afraid to take the plunge and embrace the challenges. You’re the captain of your ship, and you have the power to steer it towards success. The freedom and satisfaction that come with building something of your own are immeasurable. So go on mama, embrace the risk, and reap the rewards!
Scaling for Success: From Small Beginnings to Monumental Growth!
- Work-from-home jobs may offer some growth opportunities, but they often have limitations. However, as a VA with your own online business, the potential for expansion and scalability is enormous! You can widen your client base, hire talented individuals, and explore new avenues to grow your business. It’s like watching your little seedling bloom into a magnificent tree. The sky’s the limit!
The Art of Flexibility: Mastering the Work-Life Symphony!
- Flexibility is the magical ingredient that moms crave. While work-from-home jobs can provide some flexibility, they still require you to adhere to set schedules. But as a VA with your online business, you become the conductor of your own work-life symphony! You can set your own hours, allowing you to attend school events, snuggle up for storytime, and savor those precious moments with your kids. Work when it suits you, and enjoy the freedom to be present for your little ones.
Get on the waitlist for the VA Business Builder Program (and get a special VIP rate) when it launches.
Becoming a Multi-Talented Supermom: Unleash Your Superpowers!
- In a work-from-home job, you often have a defined role and limited responsibilities. But as a VA, you get to unleash your full superpowers! You become a master of your craft, a marketing maven, a finance guru, a customer service extraordinaire, and an overall boss mom. Your diverse skill set and expertise will be put to good use as you navigate the exciting world of entrepreneurship.
Which option sounds better to you? It’s time to make money, have the flexibility you desire, and be there for your precious little ones. Say goodbye to mundane work-from-home jobs and embrace the exciting world of growing your online business.
Are we Insta friends?! I LOVE connecting there, voice DMs are super fun! I’m @melyssamunday and @mamasmakingmore.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Melyssa: Hey, hello. How the heck are you? Mamas? Welcome to another episode of the Mamas Making More podcast. I am coming to you live from my closet today. You know, entrepreneurship is all about figuring things out and experimenting. I sometimes record in my office, but it’s not ideal because I have one wall is open in my office. And so I don’t think it always sounds the best. And my husband lately has been coming home for lunch during his workday. And he’s a driver, so he’s not often able to text me or phone me to let me know he’s coming home. It’s always all different times. So today I was like, you know what, I’m just going to start out in the closet. I’m going to just do my thing. If he comes home, then that way he’s not interrupting and feeling like he has to be quiet. So it is what it is. But coming to you from my lovely closet.
[00:00:49] Melyssa: In today’s episode, I wanted to talk to you about the differences between entrepreneurship and a job. And I know that might sound a little obvious, [00:01:00] but what I see a lot, especially on Facebook in Facebook groups, I see moms all the time that want to work from home. And so they’re constantly asking for work from home jobs. What’s a remote job. What’s a work from home job. And I think that they often don’t know that starting their own business as an option. And I think that they’re often confused when I do present the option of, Hey, have you considered becoming a virtual assistant? They asked me, well, are you hiring?
[00:01:28] Melyssa: I really would like this podcast, this episode today to help educate about the difference between having a job and a business and some of the benefits of having a business and the fact that it’s okay if this entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone, it, it is difficult to put yourself out there and to put the work into your own business. It’s not easy peasy, lemon squeezy, but the rewards are so amazing. So I really want to share with you the [00:02:00] differences, the main differences between the two and why entrepreneurship can be so beneficial to moms.
[00:02:06] Melyssa: So let’s hop on in here. The first thing I just want to clarify is that employment is employment. So you are working for an employer you’re working at their discretion. You are hired by them. You are told how much money that you are making. You’re told when you’re working. And all of that good stuff. So whether there’s benefits or not benefits or anything that comes with that company culture.
[00:02:32] Melyssa: Even if you are working from home as a remote employee, you are still an employee and you are most likely an at-will employee. So the difference then with entrepreneurship and having your own VA business, your virtual assisting business is that you are your own boss. You are your own business.
[00:02:51] Melyssa: So that’s the core huge difference is that when I see moms asking how can I work from home? There’s a really [00:03:00] big distinction between working from home for a company, working remotely for them and working in your own business, building your own business, creating this business and growing your own business. That’s a very big difference. So that’s a very first thing I wanted to touch on.
[00:03:16] Melyssa: The second thing is independence and control are very different between the two. As an employee, you are working from home. You may exclusively work from home. You may have to go into an office and check in that all depends, but you don’t really have control of the shape of the business. The direction of the business, the direction of the work that you’re doing. Whereas if you have your own company, your own VA business. You have a lot more independence to control the things, to control the growth of your company, to decide what clients you’re going to work with to decide what services you’re going to be providing to decide absolutely everything about your business.
[00:03:59] Melyssa: The control [00:04:00] that you have in your own online business, your own virtual assisting business, whether this is a full-time business or a side hustle, you have the control of the offerings, the marketing, your pricing, whether to change your pricing, whether to increase your pricing and just that overall direction of the business as a whole.
[00:04:19] Melyssa: One more thing with the independence versus the control of your own business. I have talked to women, to moms who have had online, remote jobs, remote employee positions, and they really often don’t allow you to actually be flexible and to be present for your kids. Many of the work from home positions are customer service space. So you’re on the phone. You can’t really have your kids in the background making noise.
[00:04:46] Melyssa: Sometimes the job requires you to have your video on. So you’re being recorded and monitored the entire time. I don’t know about you. That makes me feel not fabulous. I don’t think I would love feeling like I was being watched. So a lot of [00:05:00] those jobs, even though they’re work from home, it can be misleading to work from home because you may not have the ability to be present and to be available, to help actually care for your children. As you could with your own online VA business.
[00:05:14] Melyssa: Now when you’re an employee of a company. Even if you are a work from home employee, you are likely either a fixed salary or a fixed hourly rate. This is not to say this is your rate forever and ever, but it’s likely that that’s your rate for the foreseeable future. Maybe there steps where you can get promoted or to get an increase in your salary.
[00:05:35] Melyssa: But it’s not, guaranteed at all. On the flip side, if you have your own online business, your income potential, really, there is no cap to that. You may start in the business, offering a certain hourly rate or a certain package price for your services. And you are not married to those rates. As you gain experience, you absolutely should be increasing your rates, [00:06:00] whether it’s the hourly rate or the package rate, as you become more of an expert and you are doing the job faster and you become more in demand. Your rate needs to reflect that demand. So you’re able to bump that up and really there’s no cap on that. I’ve seen virtual assistants who, especially on the tech side or when you move over into more of the online business manager side, the sky really is the limit to how high your income can be.
[00:06:28] Melyssa: So scalability and growth potential is actually something I touched on last week. In that episode, episode 13, I talked about the difference between a service based business and a product based business. And one of the big differences there is that scalability and that growth potential. And again, in this situation, when we are talking about a work from home job versus your own online business, where you’re working out of your home, you have a much greater potential to scale that business, to grow that business as [00:07:00] the business owner. If you are an employee, again, you’re at their discretion and you likely don’t have much control over the growth of the company as a whole. That’s a really great benefit to having your own business as really just being able to scale that business. And again, when I say that you can have your, online VA business as a full-time gig, I don’t mean 40 hours a week.
[00:07:22] Melyssa: I mean that as your main income source. I certainly don’t work 40 hours a week. I don’t recommend it for moms. It can be so hard. But again, it can be your full-time income or it can be a side hustle. Maybe you do have a nine to five, and you’re trying to transition out of that. Or you just want a little bit of a cushion. And you want this to be more of a side hustle. You can kind of have that growth cap so that you’re not having an explosion of work to do in addition to your nine to five, although if you find that happening, I would highly suggest considering going into that business in that full-time capacity and [00:08:00] replacing that nine to five income so that you do have that greater flexibility and ability to be with your family.
[00:08:05] Melyssa: Now another thing that is similar to what I talked about, again, in last week’s episode, episode 13, the service versus product based businesses is a similar comparison between the work from home job and your online VA business is that you have a greater ability to increase your skillset and your experience and pivot in your business to the areas that you want to be working on, the work that you enjoy doing more, the services that you enjoy providing, whereas at your work from home job, you likely are hired for a specific position doing specific tasks. And it’s not as likely that you can say, well, I’m not really enjoying doing this much anymore. I’d rather be doing something that this other person does. It’s not something that I have worked from home job is, is likely to be very open to, whereas again, if you’re finding that you really don’t enjoy the work that you are doing in your VA business, maybe [00:09:00] you are a VA that starts as a general VA, and then you decide, Hey, I really want to start working on setting up software for my clients.
[00:09:08] Melyssa: You can easily pivot your business as an online VA. As opposed to being that work from home employee.
[00:09:15] Melyssa: Those were some comparisons. With having our own VA business, having your own online business the growth potential, the rate potential, the income potential and just that flexibility and that ability to really make sure that you’re available for your kids at the drop of a hat is not something that a, work from home employment type of position is very conducive to. As opposed to the VA business where you can kind of really, really have a very flexible schedule. That’s probably the hugest perk for me.
[00:09:48] Melyssa: I’m able to drop everything and go to a doctor’s appointment last minute if I need to, with my kids, if their schedule changes and they need a chaperone on a field trip, I am likely to be able to just drop my [00:10:00] things and go . I have the ability because most of my work is not super time sensitive to really be flexible and sometimes that might mean that i have to work a little bit on a weekend or work a little bit in an evening to make up for the work that i didn’t complete during normal business hours when my kids are at school .But the benefit of being available for my kids and there for them far outweighs Any of the negatives there for me.
[00:10:30] Melyssa: i hope some of these things resonated with you if you have any questions about the difference between a work from home job or a va business and you want to send me a dm i love voice on instagram @melyssamunday or @mamasmakingmore. I love talking to you guys and i also love figuring out how I can help you in your journey so drop me a dm and tell me what you’re dreaming about doing and let’s chat about options for you.[00:11:00]
[00:11:00] Melyssa: That’s all I have for this episode I will catch you in the next one