Namo Padmavati - virtual assistance services to clients

Namo Padmavati – virtual assistance services to clients

My company Namo Padmavati provides virtual assistance services to clients based in the US. We provide database building, research assistance, social media management, organic lead generation, real estate assistance, and a whole lot more. 

Founder and the journey starting out:

I would have to call myself an accidental virtual assistant and digital marketer. I didn’t ambitiously map out my journey when I started out. I went from a carefree girl to working full-time. 

My parents separated when I was 18 and all my comfort slipped away then and there. As the oldest child, I had siblings and my mother to look after. 

So reluctantly, unwillingly, I had to step into the swamp of being a full-time working individual early on in my life. I worked at my uncle’s company for a while and then used Upwork and LinkedIn to offer my virtual assistance services. 

I soon started hiring people to aid me with the business and now my younger sister has joined my company as the chief operating officer. There were many challenges starting out. My formal education took a back seat owing to the need to sustain my family. I don’t have many qualms about that looking back. 

But I had to learn everything from scratch, build everything from scratch. There’s very little that formal education helped me with in teaching about the field I was about to venture into. All my learning was from online courses and YouTube. Learning and practicing real time is how it works. 

As a woman, with all the odds stacked against you, it is difficult to carve your space. Aside from general disbelief from your close ones, there’s micro-aggression and sexism that perhaps every woman encounters whether she is an employee or an entrepreneur. In India, the situation is more complex and entrenched than it is in a western nation. Among many communities, women’s working is still a rarity, let alone choosing to be an entrepreneur.

There’s always deep-rooted patriarchal notions you encounter and unwittingly internalize that can limit you. More than anything, for me the challenge was to believe in myself and persist when all markers of growth were close to zero. No clients, sleepless nights, stressful days, and emotional turmoil of family separation. 

But with unconditional support from my mother and sisters, I persisted.

Before anything, you need to believe that you can and will persist. Once you take that option of quitting, you redirect all your focus towards staying afloat. 

For all these and many more reasons, my company, Namo Padmavati, is largely women run with 80% women employees. My aim is to empower more Indian women and help them gain financial independence.

Challenges in my industry:

As with any industry, there are always challenges. My first ever challenge was, unsurprisingly, finding a steady stream of clients. I made the best of what I had but there was certainly a lot of trial and error involved. Starting out, there’s naivete you’ll have to overcome like undercharging yourself, trusting a client and then finding out that they’ve ghosted you, hiring the wrong people, mismanaging finances, romanticizing what entrepreneurship or running your own business should look like. 

Fortunately for me these lessons came early and I was receptive to them. But such failings always came around every once in a while. 

There are a few challenges that my business and virtual assistants in India are facing. 

One of the first ones is finding the right clients who you can serve and who would be benefitted from my services. For me, my ethics and providing value is non-negotiable. I am always honest with my clients about deliverables and our mutual expectations. 

Another major challenge my business faces is the perception that the potential first world clients have about Indians. There’s a perception that Indians are spammers and scammers or that they somehow lack the requisite communication skills and other administrative acumen needed to serve native English speakers. That’s certainly not true. My clients would readily vouch for me and debunk this. My team and I have served clients largely based in the US and they have nothing but good things to say. I’ve gotten plenty of clients through referrals and word of mouth. 

There’s a consensus that virtual assistants based in the Philippines are better equipped to serve US based clients. Whereas, Indian virtual assistants can provide the same or better services for an extremely affordable price. I am certain virtual assistants based in the Philippines are amazing, but Indian VAs are top-notch too. 

Pandemic has been another for almost all businesses alike. Finding clients in a time of sickness, losses, and lay-offs was certainly bound to be challenging. Staying afloat financially was a challenge. My home-based office too needed to be rethought with ongoing lockdown. 

A whole other challenge was finding the right employees. I’ve hired and fired many amazing and talented people because there was a grave mismatch between my requirements and what they provided.

Opportunities in my field:

I believe the VA boom is here to stay. Pandemic has really driven home the point that remote work can be just as good if not better than in-office/ on-site work. It’s a plus in every way you look at it. Small business owners and solo-entrepreneurs can now get an expert helping hand through a remote employee at a fraction of the cost that they would have to pay an in-house employee. VA services are even more cost effective when the remote employee is from countries like India or Bangladesh. 

Despite the ongoing recession in America, there remains an opportunity for virtual assistants from India. Small business owners in the US can still avail services from Indian VAs. The beauty of my field is that it is easy to get started even with very few skills. But refining your skillset is imperative if you want to be the top 1% in your industry. 

I started out providing basic services but now we provide a lot more services, including complete digital marketing and social media management. Going from a one-person business to a full-time team can’t happen without consistent upskilling and getting out of your comfort zone. 

Advice to other business:

As a virtual assistant agency, we mostly work with small and medium sized businesses. I’ve learnt so much from my clients’ businesses and my own alike. 

My advice to any new business is to invest in learning and delivering the best that you can. Underpromise and overdeliver really should be the key as an individual or a business. 

Remove all the romanticised, social media-led notions you have of entrepreneurship. Starting out you are your own boss, employee, assistant, manager, motivator and a whole lot more. And you will have to do this on and off even with your own team. Hire someone to scale and focus on what you do best. Being a virtual assistant really teaches you a lot about outsourcing and the importance of it. 

You don’t need a fancy office with a grand skyline to be successful. Oftentimes that is nothing what life looks like for most entrepreneurs and businesses. Cut down on any overhead costs. You can operate from a dingy office, wearing your PJs, and with only one to four people to help you. There’s no right or wrong here, just some trial and error. 

Know who you can and cannot hire to aid you. Ensure that they understand your vision and are on the same page as you. A little bit of training for your employees goes a long way.

Get more testimonials from your client to help establish credibility. It’s completely okay to charge less starting out. There’s no overnight six-figure income formula. It all takes time. 

As cliche as this sounds, above everything it all starts with your mindset, so persist and trust that you can get there. Don’t wait for the right time. There’ll never be a perfect time. It starts today. It starts now.

 

Anastasia Filipenko

Anastasia Filipenko is a health and wellness psychologist, dermatolist and a freelance writer. She frequently covers beauty and skincare, food trends and nutrition, health and fitness and relationships. When she's not trying out new skincare products, you'll find her taking a cycling class, doing yoga, reading in the park, or trying a new recipe.

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