Joanne Salmon is a virtual PA working in Essex and enlisted Blue Cactus Digital’ support to help her get her new business off the ground. Six months in, her business is flying and she’s almost at the stage where she can quit her day job to focus on her virtual PA business full time.
Tell me about your business
I help legal consultants and freelancers achieve time to focus on their business by virtually managing their admin, diaries, events, marketing, organisation and document production. I specialise in helping those in the legal sector but also support a small number of sole traders.
What drives you, why do you do what you do? What triggered you to start your business?
My drive is seeing my kids grow up. I started my VA business so that I had more control and flexibility in my life. I loved working as a PA but it didn’t give me the flexibility to work around school runs and school holidays. Being a PA is my passion and I love everything about what the work entails – organising, helping people, building new relationships and being relied on.
I am also very ambitious, I always have been, and I could never really get to where I wanted to be as an employed PA mainly because of the glass ceiling associated with administrative work and flexible hours for working mothers.
Where do you want to be in six month, one year and five years?
My business is only 6 months old and so within the next six months (my first full year in business) my goal is to replace my old full time income, which I am well on the way to achieving.
Within the next 12 months the goal is to have a team of 2 PAs working alongside me and within 5 years the goal is to have a large network of Virtual PAs, who I have trained personally, working alongside me and my clients.
What is your main marketing struggle?
Having the time to focus on my own social media and networking to find new clients and at the outset finding where my ideal client was hanging out online.
How has Blue Cactus Digital helped you build your business?
Blue Cactus Digital helped me at the very beginning of my business with marketing strategies, gave me the idea to blog every month, use LinkedIn and Twitter and to find a hashtag to use on all my posts. It also gave me some advice on SEO and how to build up my search ranking, using Google Local to attract local business people in search and ways to get my website higher up Google rankings.
I’ve also attended Blue Cactus Digital’ Mailchimp course where I can away brimming with ideas about how to better use email marketing for myself and my clients.
By working on monthly blogs, being present and relevant on social media and looking at ways to better use my website, I feel confident I’ll son be able to be a fully-fledged entrepreneur myself!
