Why Starting with Services is the FASTEST Way to Leave Your 9-5 with Abbey Ashley

PodcastScaling

Sep 23

Episode 885: Show Notes

Today on the Strategy Hour Podcast, Abbey Ashley joins me again to discuss how to leave your nine-to-five as quickly as possible. In 2015, Abbey was pregnant with her second child and drowning in financial responsibility. After trying all sorts of businesses, she realized how many business owners need help and decided to try to make a business out of helping them. She started her own virtual assistant business, grew it quickly, and replaced her full-time income. Now she has trained thousands of people on how to do the same and she has a community of over 130 000 virtual assistants that she coaches and mentors along the way. In this conversation, she is going to share how you can start selling services and grow your business fast so that you can replace your nine-to-five income with it.

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How to Make the Transition from Working 9-5 to Selling Services

Starting with services is such an incredible model to start off with when you are looking to leave your nine-to-five. Abbey believes that the best way to replace your income is simply by having a good plan. Having a roadmap makes it so much easier to get started because it means that you only need to muster up enough courage to execute one step of your plan at a time. Step one could be deciding on what kind of service you’re going to sell. In order to do that, it’s important to do a skills assessment for yourself. Figure out what you’re good at. You don’t necessarily need to go and get more qualifications. If you have certain skills that can be helpful for someone, you can just get started! You will hold yourself back if you try to learn new skills instead of just starting with something you already know how to do.

Just Get Yourself Out There!

There is so much information in the online space and a lot of it is for people at different stages of their business. Abbey is a big fan of not niching down too much at the start of your business. There is intense pressure to niche down because that’s where you’re told the riches are right? Well, not at first! When you’re first getting started with services online, you should start with what you know and allow your niche to be the fact that you work with small business owners. Of course, eventually, you want to hone in on a specific industry but Abbey wants you to see that as step two of starting your business. Step one is simply to start. Abbey teaches her students to start more generally and do hourly payment options for clients and as a next step, then you can start creating packages. Abbey doesn’t want you to worry about a specific niche and instead, just get yourself out there!

How to Secure Your First Few Clients

Abbey and I both started reaching out to get our first few clients by reaching out to all our friends and acquaintances and telling them what we were doing. All you need to do is tell the people who love you about your exciting new venture! It’s so important to realize who is in your circle and how much they can do for you. Once you’ve exhausted all your options within your core network, it’s important to reach out more! You can try to meet people through live networking events and conferences to get in front of your ideal client. Online platforms are also incredible ways to meet potential clients. Abbey also stresses the importance of quality over quantity whenever it comes to doing any online proposals! Lastly, you can try the high-end client outreach method which is basically finding your dream client and crafting a proposal to send to them!

When to Start Building Your Audience

One thing Abbey wants you to know is that when you get started selling services, you shouldn’t focus on trying to grow an online presence at the same time. The more things you try to do, the less effort you can give to each of those things so it’s important to focus on reaching your first goal, whatever that is! Once you’ve done that, you can start building an audience. However, she also wants you to know that one of the best things she ever did for her business was starting to build an email list early. Now this may sound contradictory but stay with me; think of your main job as selling your services and your side hustle as growing your email list and over time, that may shift! You can choose to play either the long-term or short-term game but what is most impressive is to try to marry the two! Abbey wants you to focus on your short-term goals first and then, once you have replaced your income with the clients you have, start moving towards a long-term strategy.

Knowing When to Leave Your 9-5 and Prioritize Your Business Full-Time

Yes, this seems big and scary and overwhelming but like anything of that nature, all you can do is go at it with the plan. The best plan is to decide when you are going to give in your notice at the company you work for. When you do that is entirely dependent on your personal circumstances but having a three to six-month buffer in your savings account is a great thing to have as you quit your job. If Abbey were to start again now, she would start offering services while working her nine-to-five and place all of the money she earned from those services into a savings account to create a nest egg for her big ‘quitting date’. She would also potentially lower her cost of living for a period of time so that she could build her business. If you are trying to replace your income while working a full-time job, there is going to be a season where everything feels really heavy, so decide on your goal, make it time-bound, and get there as fast as you can. If we can do it, you can do it too! If you want to be part of The Virtual Savvy Community, be sure to check it out today!

Quote This

“Just tell the people who love you about things that you’re excited about!”

—Abbey Ashley

Highlights

How to Make the Transition from Working 9-5 to Selling Services [0:07:58]
Just Get Yourself Out There [0:15:05]
How to Secure Your First Few Clients [0:22:16]
When to Start Building Your Audience [0:33:12]
Knowing When to Leave Your 9-5 and Prioritize Your Business Full-Time [0:38:57]

OUR GUEST:

Abbey Ashley

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Abbey Ashley is an influential online educator and successful entrepreneur in the work-from-home space. She launched her journey in 2015 as a virtual assistant using a secondhand laptop from Craigslist. Since then, Abbey has grown her company into a multi-seven-figure business, generating over $3 million in annual revenue. As the CEO of her fully remote team, she has mastered the art of scaling a business. Through her platform, The Virtual Savvy, Abbey offers free content and paid programs designed to help others start, grow, and scale their virtual assistant businesses. Her "value first" approach has empowered thousands of aspiring virtual assistants to find success in the rapidly growing remote work industry. Abbey is an expert in topics such as building a freelance business, finding VA clients, and turning side hustles into full-time careers. She also shares insights on entrepreneurship, business growth strategies, and the importance of company values and systems. Abbey’s journey from a bootstrapped startup to a thriving enterprise showcases her dedication to helping others achieve their own version of success.