We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hope Manuel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hope , appreciate you joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later
I feel my business was started at the perfect time. I have been working as a Virtual Assistant since 2018, but I didn’t make it a business until 2020. I’ve worn pretty much every hat there is in the Marketing & Communication field, but felt like I was just being bounced around. I found myself with a moment of clarity that I think we all found in 2020 and decided to take control of my life. I felt the pandemic was the best time to take inventory of what I could control in my life.
Starting my business earlier wouldn’t have worked because I didn’t have a dedicated workspace, I didn’t have the desire to run a business and the moment things got difficult; I would have quit. I also, didn’t realize other people were paying for “virtual assistants.” I didn’t know being a virtual assistant was a job.
Starting my business later would probably get in the way of my family goals. Having babies, a husband and home , but starting a business isn’t impossible. I just wasn’t interested in trying to juggle all that at once. People do it everyday, but it’s never been my plan to do that.
Hope , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a black woman, music lover, hard worker, and excellent friend who always seeking a good laugh. While wandering this world by faith and not by sight.
The virtual assistant business kinda bumped into me. I held various jobs in high school, college and after which gave me quite a few varying skills. There was a snow day in 2018. I was working as an Executive Assistant and Office Manager at the time. My workplace was closed, but I still had things to do. I opened my laptop and to see how much I could get done from home and realized I could do about 95% of it from my bed. At the time I knew I loved the concept, but thought who in the world is going to let me do that? I resigned from that position a few month later, but I offered to still work part time from my home.
Almost a year after that my cousin recommended a client of hers who needed an assistant and business took off after that.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
The best source and sole source of new clients for Manuel Virtual Assistance has been word of mouth. I have never advertised or searched for clients. Thank God! A lot of business owners are trusting people they have never met with their livelihood. Which sounds a little crazy, but I am proud of the fact that I am someone they can trust. Being someone’s assistant whether you are a personal assistant, office assistant executive assistant or virtual assistant requires a bit of a personal relationship with your clients. As a business owner the 1st person you call when your business world is falling apart is your assistant. You call them to help you put things back together. I think what helps me build that relationship is how I execution their tasks. I take care of their businesses like they are my own. If I think something is too expensive, I’m looking for a better price. If I don’t think that particular image of my client is being used on the right marketing material, I let them know.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I was always taught that education and hard work were the keys to success. If I went to college and worked hard I will get a good paying job with nice benefits when I graduated. Ummm is there an expiration date on that? That probably didn’t happen for about 10 years after undergrad.
I learned roughly 5 years after undergrad working hard and graduating college was not going to get me the life I wanted on a silver platter. It didn’t even give the life that paid for college debt and my bills. Virtual assisting filled in that gap for me.
I realized that college gave me the credibility (and some skills), but the hard work and realization that I was going to MAKE things happen for myself instead of letting things happen to me was where my life started to shift. As I got older and bumped my head I began taking a few risks because honestly, I felt like I had probably been through worse than what was on the other side of the chance.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.manuelva.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manuelvirtualassistance/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ManuelVirtualAssistance/
Image Credits
Kalida Williams Photography