Key resources that helped my Virtual Assistant business thrive the Easy Way

Here are the resources that helped my VA business thrive the Easy Way over the past 8 years ❤️

NOTE: This post contains affiliate links – which means I’m recommending products and services I’ve used and love, and if you purchase any of those, I might receive a small commission, at no extra cost for you. I hope this list would be resourceful to you!

(bonus at the end of this page: my game-changer helper for upgrading my services)

1. Website

First things first – you will definitely need your website, sooner or later 🙂

Here’s my recommended stack, and here we have 2 options, depending on what you’re looking for.

Stack #1: The Pro Sleek Quality with Flexibility of WordPress 💎 Pack

This is what I’ve seen work best over the past 8 years.

What it contains:

WPX Hosting: The best hosting provider I’ve seen in action – and I’ve seen many of them in my clients tech stacks over the last 8 years.
- They do managed WordPress hosting, they’re available 24/7 on chat support (humans!), and blazingly fast with their own CDN network and powerful setup!
- Plus free malware scanning and removal (so you don’t have to worry about that).
- And they do free expert migration from your old hosting to your new hosting at WPX.
Theme/Page builder: Breakdance!
- Now you might’ve not expected this one, but after working with sooo many popular page builders all these years, I have fallen in love with Breakdance and I’m not looking back!
- Everything I’ve wished other themes and page builders had – Breakdance already has.
- I use it on my own website and have also been using it on my client’s websites.
- It’s fast, lightweight (good for SEO), and it’s simple enough to get your site up and running in hours, while advanced enough (more than enough! 😄) to bring amazing web design to life and give you the pro web development experience you could be looking for!
And last but not the least – nothing without a domain – and I’m recommending Namecheap for searching and purchasing your business domain.

Stack #2: The Just Get Me Started Fast, on a Budget and Easy 🚀 Pack

What it contains:

Brizy Cloud: for hosting and creating your site suuuuuper fast, with modern predesigned templates and sections you can play with and great loading speed (it’s on cloud!)!
- No WordPress installations needed, you got everything right there and it’s super easy to get your site up and running.
Domain (recommended, but not required to get you started!) – and here I recommend Namecheap.

2. Email Service Provider

For growing your email list and sending automated but personalized emails, I recommend MailerLite.

It’s straightforward to use, feature rich, and they have a free plan for up to 1000 subscribers at the moment of writing this, which is especially good when you’re starting out. 🍀

3. Client and Project Management, Time Tracking, Invoicing, Accepting Payments – the jack of all trades of my admin 😃

All in one: Paymo

Paymo allows me to do everything I need in one place when it comes to: admin, client management, project management, time tracking, sharing time reports, collaborating, invoicing, recurring automatic invoices as well, AND accepting online payments!

It even has a retainer project system built with tracking how many hours are spent/left and invoicing.

But even if you don’t do retainers right from the start, the pay-as-you-go (or bill-as-you-go) per hour is so seamless, it takes me a few clicks to pull the billable time tracked from any time range in the invoice.

Plus their invoices are beautiful!

4. Super easy screen recording

Berrycast

Super-easy screen recording when you need to provide a quick tutorial, or request feedback, especially when so many times it’s much easier and convenient to just show and tell what you mean, rather than typing out a long email to your client.

My clients have shown to LOVE this, as it helps clear, fast and effective communication.

5. Focus

This is gold, if you ask me – and it’s Brain.fm. Especially when you’re tight on schedule, while kids are doing kids business in the background, I’d listen to Brain.fm and it would really help me get into the zone within like 10 minutes max!

6. Scheduling Calls

Suuuper simple, especially for starters is using the Appointment Scheduling with Google Calendar.

Appointment scheduling with Google Calendar

It’s so simple and straightforward (we all have a google calendar, right? 😉 ) and it has a free tier.

On another hand – if you already use Google Workspace products and pay for it (i.e. additional storage for your business and/or your domain name email address) – then the scheduler is also included with the additional ‘pro’ features included.

Especially on discovery calls, I’ve found that it’s always been helpful for my potential clients to actually see me, so if you’re not too shy, I recommend showing up on a video call and using Zoom for a polished and professional video discovery call experience.

An alternative to Zoom you could use here is Google Meet, but I’d personally always pick Zoom first.

7. Contracts

Dropbox Sign (ex HelloSign): Always legally protect yourself!

8. Bonus: my game-changer helper for upgrading my services 😊

This is AppSumo! It’s full of lifetime deals, and I’ve grabbed some really helpful for upgrading my services.

Some of those deals were:

Elfsight (all kinds of widgets for handling tricky web requests from clients to add something that isn’t possible out-of-the-box by their theme or platform, without coding),
BrandMentions (for getting notified when someone mentions your client on the internet – useful for responding to questions, reviews and similar),
Berrycast for me, for screen recording and easy video sharing with clients,
WP Reset, LoginPress, BotStar, etc.

Some of these have made a difference for my clients at no extra cost for them or for me (except for the lifetime deal price I paid once), they absolutely loved those solutions and it was so worth it!

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