How do you develop a niche for your virtual assistant business?
Kathie who writes Virtual Assistant, the Blog confirmed my suspicion… it’s by accident or providence if you will. Call it Seredipity…you get a “break” that you like, is profitable, and nobody else seems to fill so you start getting more business until, suddenly, that’s your speciality.
She landed one job, and her good performance brought other work in the field to her.
She, herself, was finally able to drop the things she did for money but didn’t really like by building on a core business that seemed to “drop in her lap”. That business was association management and handling arrangements for Public Speakers. What she hated was bookkeeping.
I heard precisely the same thing Tuesday about a lady who at the dawn of the personal computer boom had a “secretary for a day business”. It morphed into a desktop publishing business and today is a highly specialized transcription business.
It started with a University in Minnesota asking this secretary in Tennessee to transcribe lectures for publication. And the chain of word of mouth referrals went from there. That’s really all she does now thanks to high speed internet and wav files.
She found something she loved by “accident” and built it up through referrals until it’s now an “untouchable niche” with no competition for her and steady business unlike all the people fighting to enter more defined and competitive markets like “court reporting.”
—
Recommended Resource: How To Start Your Own Virtual Assistant Business
Shai on November 2nd, 2006 at 3:49 pm
I can understand that because I hated crunching numbers all day. I didn’t mind it when I had other things to do. No matter what business you get into there will always be a certain amount of number crunching to do. But as long as you are doing something you love that is all that matters.
Kathie Thomas on November 3rd, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Nice to see your article here. Just would like to add, that although finding what you love can happen by ‘accident’, in actual fact it’s more like trial and error. Just trying lots and lots of things and being willing to try them, until you do find something you really enjoy doing - and then concentrate on that particular thing. I think you confirmed that by your sentence above about landing the job, doing a good performance and attracting more work of that type.