The Skills & Experience You Need To Be A Health VA
Curious about working as a virtual assistant in the health industry, but worried you don’t have the skills or experience?
This is an incredibly common question, particularly for student practitioners. They are interested in getting into the profession and making connections before they graduate (not to mention make some money!), but worry they don’t have enough knowledge in the health world yet.
That’s why I thought I’d share the top things you need to know about being a health VA when it comes to skills and experience.
5 Must-Knows Around What You Need To Be A Health VA
You have what you need to get started right now!
Yep, you read that right - wherever you’re starting is good enough to start a business as a health VA.
You don’t have to be the expert in everything VA-related, or even in your area of service. In fact, you just need to know how to do something (ie your service) and have the time free to do it on behalf of someone else.
Am I a perfect writer, newsletter writer, social media scheduler? Heck no.
But can I do it for someone else who doesn’t have the time to do those tasks because they have a million other things to do? I sure can - that’s how my business was created in the first place.
You don’t need to have a certain level of education or progress into your studies
Another big question I get from the students goes along the lines of:
“But Sam, I’m not in clinic yet - does that mean I won’t have anything to offer?”
or
“But Sam, I only just started my degree in nutrition/naturopathy/etc this semester… surely health practitioners and businesses won’t want to hire me?'“
Au contraire, my darling ones - the fact that you are studying health makes you a far more attractive option as a VA!
Even if you’ve just signed up for a course or degree in health, you already have an advantage over general VAs. You likely:
Have some understanding of health regulations e.g. you can’t claim to cure conditions
Get that practitioners want to help people, not press on their pain points to push them into a sale
Have your own (or seen loved ones struggle with) health concerns that give you a deeper understanding of how critical health is
Will continue to educate yourself in the field of health - just like practitioners do, because a good percentage of us are total learning nerds!
All of this adds up to why health professionals are BEGGING for more VAs with a similar health background!
The skills you have right now are a great point to kick off
Yes, I give you full permission to start your VA work right now - with what you have.
Wanna know a secret?
When I started out, I didn’t have any formal qualifications, training, anything like that. Obviously I had my nutrition qualification, but there was nada in terms of blogging, social media, marketing, any of the services I offered!
And guess what? I still booked my services out!
To be honest, I still have no formal qualifications - although from time to time I get distracted by post-grad options because again, learning nerd. But what I have done is spent a good chunk of time over the past 5 years growing my skills.
I’ve done courses, I’ve researched, I’ve read blogs and listened to podcasts… basically, I continue to become more of an expert in my area of service!
But if I’d waited until I did all of those things before I started my business, I wouldn’t have started it. Not to mention, I would have lost a few hundred thousand $$ in income over those years thanks to my hesitation!
You can add to your toolbelt as you go
The upside of #3 is this - you can always grow your skills and add to them while you’re working.
For example, I started off writing blogs for practitioners. But when I wrote those earlier blogs, I didn’t really know much about SEO or readability. And I definitely didn’t know much about adding a call to action!
But over time, I taught myself – through tools, blogs, and other resources. Now I can say that the blogs I write for clients are optimised for SEO and readability, and that also allows me to charge a premium fee!
You can do exactly the same. Start offering what you already know how to do. Then learn more, add services or uplevel current services, and raise your prices accordingly!
At the end of the day, if you’re saving a practitioner time, you’re saving them money
And keep in mind - this is true no matter what your rate is. My VIP clients currently pay me between $8K-$14K per year. But in return, I free up 5, 10, 20+ hours per week based on how long it would take if they had to do those tasks themselves.
And given the practitioners I work with, they can take that time and create a program, a course, a mentoring option that covers the cost of my fee in a single launch!
Your role as a health VA - no matter what your service is - is to:
Free up a business owner’s time so they’re not stuck doing tasks that fall outside of their zone of genius
Help them to build a more successful business (and in the process, make more money)
Hopefully by now, you understand that you do have exactly what it takes - and all that’s left is to take action and put yourself out there!
Wondering if you have what it takes to start working as a health virtual assistant?
If you love the idea of:
Building a thriving biz as a health virtual assistant (including writing, social media, design, systems, admin, and more...)
Making money from the comfort of your home, your bed, your favourite cafe or even a tropical island resort (wherever you like, really!)
Pricing yourself in that sweet spot of client-friendly but not hitting burnout
Standing out from the crowd so you can work with the people you admire the most
Having the freedom to live your life and not be glued to your work 24/7...
then 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗚𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗧𝗼 𝗕𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔 𝗥𝗼𝗰𝗸𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗩𝗔 is what you want to get your hot lil hands on!
In this FREE guide, I share exactly what you need to land your first paying clients as a health VA.
