How can you transition, a.k.a. “ditch” your existing office job or corporate career, without going broke or losing your mind? There are 5 KEY steps that can transition you out of a job that just isn’t working for you anymore and propel you into a remote career earning over $10k+/mo.
Your first goal is just to be able to replace your existing income with online remote job opportunities, and your second goal then quickly becomes how to take your earning potential to the next level… but how?
You probably already have some skills: maybe you were a Project Manager, Product Manager, Web Designer or you’ve created online courses, or you were a teacher. If you have done any of these types of jobs or other similar ones, then you already have transferrable skills!
If you do not have any skills and still want to work online, the best place to start is with our program for beginners, 90 Day Virtual Assistant.
It’s a skills-based training program where we help you to get your first clients, your first internships, your first LEGIT online job.
BUT, that’s not what I’m talking about today in this blog post.
For people like you, who already have skills, but just have no idea how to get started online, I have a program that will show you the way — a roadmap to propel you on your online work journey.
Maybe, you currently earn REALLY good money in your day job, and you can’t find any remote jobs that will pay equal to what you are making right now. Or, ideally, you want a job that would pay you more money than what you are currently making but, again, you aren’t able to find those jobs on your own.
No worries! Here is my 5 step roadmap to ditching that corporate job and making your way to $10K+/months working online (using skills you already have!).
My name is Esther Inman, and I was sitting where you are now, 7 years ago, when I decided to take the leap and make the jump to working online. I had to make it work to support my family.
Now I’m here to show you how you can do the same in a legit way. This is not a ‘make money quick’ or ‘sell things to your family’ type of scam — instead, we use your existing online skills to build legit, scalable remote incomes, offering services that you charge either hourly or per-project for.
So let’s dive right into it.
Step 1: Assess Your Skills
Whatever your skills from your current job, or from before you were a stay-at-home mom or even an old job, you already have some skills.
Do a deep assessment.
- Can you create stunning presentations or do comprehensive research?
- Are you really, really good at writing?
- Maybe you’re super organized and an efficiency expert or you know how to work with CRMs and proprietary software programs?
Get specific about the skills you can offer. I highly recommend pulling out a piece of paper, sitting down for 20-30 minutes and making a full list of every skill you are able to offer.
If you don’t have any skills yet, then you need to check out our 90 Day VA program here first.
Step 2: Package Your Skills
Tailor your skills to create clear packages that match up to the needs of your ideal client including what they would need help with or need help with solving.
Pretend you are talking to your dream client for the first time.
What would they need to hear from you in order to say “Ooh, she sounds amazing. I want to hire her!”?
Then start to put your packages together in that way. For example:
- Could you package your writing skills and your graphic design skills to help people create blog content and social media promotional graphics to go along with it?
- Could you create a service to help people systematize their service and set up their CRM?
- Could you offer your account management skills as a monthly retainer to an online business that has 10+ clients?
A big part of this process is also determining your pricing. Pricing is key and can be tricky in the beginning. It will require some trial and error.
Be sure to add in all your costs for time, meetings, taxes, insurance, any required equipment, etc., and then figure out how much money you want to make after paying all that. AND be sure to consider whether your clients can afford it; will that pricing work in the market? It’s a lot to consider!
If you’re looking for a comprehensive pricing guide, you can check out ours here where we go into much more detail and give you a free hourly rate calculator!
If you’re looking for more help with your packages and pricing, I can help you with ALL of that. I run a bi-weekly group coaching program called PROPEL that actually takes you step-by-step through this process to help you figure it all out. In addition to bi-weekly group coaching calls, Propel also has 6 modules of course content to take you through the process from start to finish.
I created Propel because I couldn’t find a program to help me scale from working 1-on-1 with clients into an agency because nothing existed in the marketplace.
I searched and searched and couldn’t find anything, all the while asking myself, “How do I grow my business? How can I make more money?” So I created Propel to fill that gap in the market. You can check out our Propel program syllabus here.
Step 3: Create a Consistent Work Pipeline
In order to make this sustainable, you will need to create a consistent pipeline of clients.
This could look something like this: you could work part-time for a company and then fill the remainder of your time with projects from 1, 2, or more clients, or you could work wholly as an independent contractor with only projects for a number of clients.
The working world is evolving and now, in the U.S., employers are hiring a higher percentage of contractors for remote work vs. regular employees and this trend is only expected to grow exponentially.
In fact, according to Buffer, 90 percent of current remote workers plan on working remotely for the rest of their careers.
Millennials don’t want to go into the office and work a typical 9-5 job, they all want flexibility and companies are hiring more and more remote teams both in the U.S and Internationally.
Step 4: Create a High-End Proposal Process
The GOAL here is that if you want to charge higher prices, then you need to have higher-end clients. You need a really clean, nice way for clients to find you and to find out more about your offers (and remember, you’ve tailored them just for your target market). You want them to see your offers and say, “Ooh, I like her, I can’t wait to hire her!”
You want them to book a consultation with you so then you can close your services on the call. You have to make sure it’s a clean process.
I always say “High-end clients need high-end proposals and high-end processes.” Some great software tools to help you with this are Dubsado, 17Hats, And.co, and Clickfunnels.
Step 5: Charge more per hour or expand your offering & your team
The truth is that there are only 3 ways to get to $10k+/months. The first way is to charge more money per hour until you reach a ceiling or the maximum hours you will work per week but there are only so many hours in the week.
The second way is to expand your offering and your team. Here’s a great example: let’s say you only code websites, but your clients require more services, such as app creation. You risk losing out on projects if you can’t help them build their app, even when they would love to work with you. You can then hire people, aka subcontractors, to handle the app creation in order to be able to offer bigger packages.
Essentially, you would be starting an agency.
The third way is to create digital products, such as an online course, a downloadable product, a membership site, or any other scalable form of passive income.
These are the only 3 ways to reach over $10k+/month: increase your hourly rate and working more hours, scaling up a team, or creating a digital product.
To be honest, it takes time and is a process to get there. You have to be able to know what to do and how to do it. AND you have to have somebody who has actually done it before to show you the best and fastest roadmap. It legitimately takes 3 – 5 years to build a constant project based pipeline, and as I said before, Propel may be able to help with that.
And finally, I have a bonus # 6 secret step for you to consider… your mindset. Your mindset is holding you back, either subconsciously or overtly.
Growing your business is 50% work effort and 50% mindset. 50% is just doing the work of growing your team, putting packages together, marketing, and 50% is what’s going on in your head & in your soul that you need to work through.
There is no program for that and things will run through your head, like maybe you’re thinking you are not worth it, or that you’re only attracting asshole clients, and you’re wondering why you’re always attracting such difficult people.
It’s something YOU are doing. You are setting yourself up for failure. You will have issues come up and that’s why we have bi-weekly calls in Propel to help you with all of it. So much of this is your mindset.
If any of the above sounds interesting and resonates with where you currently are in your business, take a peek at Propel! I literally only made it because there was a hole in the marketplace, and I didn’t find anyone else offering the things my more-advanced audience was looking for.
There are so many courses to give you online skills, for example, our 90 Day VA program, but when it comes to scaling and growing a team for online based business service companies, there was NOTHING. That’s why I made Propel.
I put the program modules together in the order of the exact steps I went through to get to my $10k+/months. I always try to be transparent and I’ll share with you that the most I’ve made in one month is $70k and the biggest agency project I have landed was worth $20k.
It is totally feasible, totally real, and you can do it, too!
BUT you need a roadmap to get there, I can give you that map. Check out Propel (Propel is an application-only program) and see if it’s right for you.
If it’s something you are thinking about, check out the application page above and book a free interview with me. You don’t want to miss out when you could already be working online using your existing skills to work with clients you love!
If you are ready to grow a team, multiple streams of income, or just simply enjoy why you got into this to begin with… then you are going to need some help.
Classic signs you’ll notice if Propel is right for you…
- You hate your client work… or a bunch of it and have no idea why
- You are still in a normal day job and really struggling to transition financially and time wise
- You are just so time poor, it’s painful. Sleep? What sleep? WORK FROM HOME. PAY BILLS. SLEEP. REPEAT (uhhhhhh… isn’t this the job you quit??? Back in the cycle again?!)
- You want to build something BIGGER then just client work…you have ideas for a course…a product…building a brand…but aren’t really sure how to do it all (and want a community of support)
Feel familiar?
Girl – I know, that’s why I made this dang thing!
Only you will know if you are ready to apply or not, but at least check out the program details HERE to see if it makes sense for you to submit an application!
Vickie Self is a virtual assistant here who can help you get your business organized, increase your reach, and sales, so you can focus on your clients. When she’s not helping business owners maximize their time, she loves to dance Zouk, Bachata, and Salsa while traveling to other countries. She’s a member of the 90 Day VA and assists with everything from PR, Digital Marketing, & Social Media Mgmt to Travel Planning and Email Mgmt. To see all the services she offers and how she can help you, check out her Facebook Virtual Vickie business page here.
