Melissa Smith is the Founder & CEO of the Association of Virtual Assistants & The PVA (The Personal Virtual Assistant), a firm that matches clients with the right virtual assistants.
Melissa is also the best-selling author of two books, Hire the Right Virtual Assistant: How the Right VA Will Make Your Life Easier, Create Time, and Make You More Money and Become A Successful Virtual Assistant: Learn the Business Side & Ditch 9 to 5 which is an integral part of the College of Western Idaho Administrative Specialist Program curriculum. Additionally, she mentors for Remote-how Academy, the first global, online education and individual certification program about remote work and is a passionate teacher and consultant for those looking to grow their business remotely.
In 2013, Melissa began working remotely, and in 2017, became location independent. This transition gave her a newfound sense of freedom, affording her the opportunity to travel to 16 countries in 12 months, all while running successful virtual businesses.
Drawing from her experience while working on five different continents and numerous time zones, Melissa truly understands the challenges of running a virtual business and uses her knowledge to serve clients all over the world. She knows firsthand how and where to get the best work done and she passes her insight on to her clients so that they can create the life they love – on their own terms.
Melissa has been featured by ABC News, Forbes, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. News & World Report, & Thrive Global.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up writing a book?
My background was in executive assisting before I became a virtual assistant. Since I was young, I loved to write, but never enjoyed fiction writing in school. In fact, I didn’t remember until just recently that I loved to write book reports. Since I didn’t excel in any of the creative writing classes I thought I wasn’t a good writer and very early on started to think about how I could write but not share it with anyone. I’ve never had a love for fiction writing or fiction books. Instead, I turned to journaling as my form of writing and was a closet writer for the majority of my life.
The thought of having someone read what I wrote sent me into a true anxiety attack. That’s not an exaggeration. As an adult I found that I really enjoyed what I referred to as “better me” books. I didn’t like the term “self-help” and most of them didn’t fall into this category anyhow. I would never refer to a book on parenting as self-help or even parenting. It was a book written to make me a better parent, so I came up with the term “better me” books. When someone asked what I was reading I would tell them, “A book to help me be a better (fill in the blank)”.
Fast forward to my virtual assistant career, I was immersing myself in business books and my clients were individuals who wanted to write a book. I specialized in managing the book launch process for them. Soon my clients started asking me when I would be writing my own book. I literally laughed out loud. I asked them, “What would I write about?” They all said something along the lines of, “You know, how you find people virtual assistants.” This was in 2015.
In January 2016 I decided I was going to write a book. I had already been writing a lot of blogs on the subject, so it wasn’t like I didn’t have anything to start with. I hired a book coach (because I take my own advice!) and in May 2016 I released my first book and then took a wonderful trip to South of France for 11 days as part of my celebration.
Once I wrote one book, I knew there would be more. I released my second book in January 2018. I revised my first book and re-released it in March 2019. I’ll be writing another book this year.
What do you hope your readers take away from this book?
Just what I promise, the ability to hire the right virtual assistant. There are many ways to hire the virtual assistant and most of them are wrong. Most of the books written on the subject were also not written by someone who has a background in executive or virtual assisting which has always baffled me. Maybe they’ve hired VAs in their lifetime but that doesn’t make them the expert. I’ve bought and sold a few houses in my lifetime. It doesn’t mean that I’m now qualified to write a book on buying and selling houses.
When hiring a VA you still need to hire for your company culture, emotional intelligence, and the right VA fit. This takes a virtual like myself, both a VA and an entrepreneur to get it right.
What are the top three tools you are currently using to write, publish, and promote your books?
Most of my clients are surprised to learn that I don’t use a lot of tools to write, publish, or promote my books. Less is more. So much of the software out there really holds the client back as they end up spending unnecessary time learning to use it and get caught up in all the bells and whistles.
When it comes to writing a book there is no greater tool than your calendar. Blocking off time to write and meeting your deadlines. Many people will start writing a book, but few will finish because they didn’t block off time and hold themselves accountable to it. Those who do write a complete first draft and never publish are serial editors. Self-editing is where books go to die.
Along with your calendar, get a coach or an accountability partner (someone who will truly hold you accountable), hire an editor, a book cover artist, and plan to publish on Amazon unless you’re going to market fiercely yourself. Some individuals have real reasons for not being on Amazon, but for the majority it’s a must.
What were the top three mistakes you made publishing your book what did you learn from them?
Fortunately, since I hired an experienced and trusted coach, I didn’t make many of the most common mistakes that authors make. Had I not hired a coach I can guarantee I wouldn’t be speaking with you today because the mistakes would have been too many to list!
Here are the most common mistakes people make when publishing a book:
Being too broad/generic – don’t think in terms of readers – think about a single reader. One person at a time is going to read your book. This is your chance to speak to that person directly.
Going what I call “dark” before your release. There is a lot that goes into writing a book and it’s really common for authors to dive deep into reading, stop communicating with their audience (even friends and family) and then come out of the blue to release to an audience or following they haven’t brought along with them on the journey. You must engage your audience and following throughout the entire process.
Not preparing a manageable marketing calendar. People usually fall into two categories, a) love marketing and would rather focus on marketing than writing or b) hate marketing and just want to write the book and be done with it. Whatever category you fall into you need to think about making marketing manageable and keeping it consistent. There is the launch marketing process and the ongoing book marketing process, and the latter never goes away.
When will you consider your book a success?
I considered my books a success when they hit bestselling status. Looking back, that was trivial. Now it’s much more of a success for me when the reader sends me an email of how my book changed their life. That’s an awesome feeling!
Hire the Right VA – The field of virtual assistants (VAs) is growing rapidly. But it lacks specific industry standards. This means people who are looking to hire a VA don’t know where to turn or from whom to take advice and direction. This book is the new trusted industry standard when it comes to hiring the right virtual assistant.
Become A Successful Virtual Assistant – I have worked with, consulted, and surveyed hundreds of people who have transitioned from admins to VAs. This is the most complete book on how to succeed in business as a VA, how to learn the business side of business and ditch the 9 to 5. I guide you through a carefully mapped out process with a proven track record.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Writing a book forced me to face my biggest fears and those were challenges I had to overcome. I feared being laughed at. I feared rejection. I feared awful reviews. Without my book coach I could have never finished the book.
To give you an example of how strong the fear was, I literally fled the country. Yes, I booked a trip to the South of France as a celebration but there was also a part of me that thought if I’m going to be miserable, rejected, and laughed at, I’m going to be all these things in France.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before publishing your book?
I wish I had known there would be a surprise waiting for me. It’s something people don’t talk about. When you publish a book, you’ll no doubt be successful simply because you’ve done what many have wanted to do their entire lives but never faced their fears and challenges to actually get it done. What’s waiting for you on the other side of publishing is a surprise that you could have never imagined and something that truly made the process all worthwhile.
When I released my first book, I had no idea that virtual assistants would be reaching out to me for assistance, consulting, and even to thank me for writing the book. Many said they were going to keep it on their shelves. I was absolutely shocked. I didn’t write the book for VAs, I wrote it for the clients. However, now I had a great group of like-minded VAs who I could add to my network when I was matching clients. I had a new income stream. Most importantly, I had massive validation from my peers, not just my clients.
The most important thing you must do is include your audience and potential readers in the process. Consider this your behind the scenes look. Don’t go dark and then suddenly appear to people who now forgot you existed.
- Announce you are writing a book and a projected release date.
- Let your audience know of the topics you’re going to discuss and ask if they have any suggestions on what they think should be covered
- Send progress reports; Create polls for the title and book cover to see what resonates most (you’ll be surprised!)
- Once it’s off to the editor ask for reviewers and a launch team
- Create swipe copy that will easily allow your launch team to share
- Create a countdown to release
- Follow-up with your team regularly with goals of downloads and purchases and be sure to update them
- Create book videos to share on social media sites
- Follow-up to make sure when the book goes live the team submits their review
Many people make elaborate plans to market, and that’s fine if you have the money to hire a team, but you still have to do your own grassroots efforts. Also, with marketing it never ends. Don’t expect to do one launch and then never promote your book again. Create a marketing plan that you will be able to keep up with consistently.
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
There’s nothing I would do differently. I learned a lot over the years and if I changed anything, I would miss out on all the serendipitous moments I could have never planned. I wouldn’t be able to relate to others and see their perspective when it comes to struggles. Nor would I have understood what it means and how impactful it is to celebrate someone else’s accomplishments. Life and work aren’t always easy, but they are the best teachers if you allow them to be.
If you’re not following Dorie Clark you need to be! She has several books and all of them are incredible. If I had to choose just one, I would suggest, Reinventing You because of its relevance to everyone and not a particular workforce. Dorie also has a great online course, Recognized Expert that I was fortunate to participate in as a pilot member.
If you only had $1000 dollars to promote a new book, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would pay myself and market it. No one is going to market a book like you. If you’re not the best marketer of your own book something is not right.
Start writing, with a deadline in mind, and don’t edit at the same time! For books that don’t require extensive amounts of research, data, and case studies (and sometimes that doesn’t even matter) there is no reason you can’t write a book in 30 days. When it comes to writing and setting a deadline keep in mind Parkinson’s Law which states that the amount of time you give yourself to do something is the amount of time it takes.
Editing is where books go to die. If you are writing and editing at the same time you’ll never finish. Write out your first draft in 30 days. Repeat after me, it’s just the first draft and there is no need to edit until I’m done!
The longer you delay the longer you delay the surprise that is waiting for you.
What is your favorite quote?
“Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.”
– George Addair
How can we get in touch with you?
You can email me at melissa@thepva.com. I live on LinkedIn and you can look me up by typing in Melissa Smith, The PVA. You’ll find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram but I don’t hang out there much.
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