How We Work: Onboarding New Military Spouse Virtual Assistants

By deliberate and thoughtful design, Freedom Makers Virtual Service is a different sort of virtual assistant agency.

Our founder, Air Force veteran Laura Renner, worked for nearly twenty years, dealing directly with people in foreign and public relations, education, and human resources. Throughout her professional experiences and business ownerships, she has studied people – what drives and inspires us, what connections last and which ones fail, and what helps people achieve their goals and reach their potential. 

THE HUMAN FACTOR

Laura created Freedom Makers Virtual Services to connect entrepreneurs with talented, skilled military spouse professionals. We have found that innovative, energetic, and tenacious small business owners paired with resilient, resourceful, and qualified military spouses lead to uniquely rewarding professional relationships.

With the goal of growing and strengthening the small business ecosphere while providing military spouses with flexible, rewarding work opportunities, Laura set out to change how remote teams are built.

Rather than build a competitor to other virtual assistant staffing agencies, Laura structured Freedom Makers Virtual Services around what freedom represents. On the virtual assistant side, military spouses who find work through FMVS have the freedom to choose their clients, their working hours, and the amount of time they will work each week. Military spouses who become Freedom Makers also have the freedom to take their work with them when the military reassigns their family to a new duty station, and they have the freedom to grow their careers as they see fit.

On the client side, small business owners who engage with us experience freedom from stress and the daily, mundane, and tedious tasks that steal valuable hours from each day. They find they have the freedom to work ON their businesses rather than spending all their time working IN their business. 

Freedom also comes to our clients by reducing the commitment or financial burden they might find encumbering. We do not require clients to buy a set amount of hours or commit to a budget when they find a Freedom Maker through us. We understand that small business budgets fluctuate, and the amount of work and income ebbs and flows. We provide the freedom for clients to use our services as much or as little as they need.

FINDING SUCCESS

Our business model works. 

Now in business for over seven years, Freedom Makers Virtual Services experienced over 200% growth in 2021! In the 3rd quarter of 2021 alone, we gained 40 new clients, and our Freedom Makers worked over 4500 hours.

To support the influx of new clients, we brought over 100 well-qualified, eager, and ready-to-work military spouse virtual assistants into our community during 2021… and we have already onboarded over 120 new Freedom Makers in just the first six months of 2022!

The process of onboarding new military spouse virtual assistants is a critical one, honed over years of practice, trial and error, and key data gathering. Which combination of skills and experience makes the best virtual assistants? Which platforms do our Freedom Makers use most often? How much of a difference do in-house training opportunities make in the success found by our virtual assistants? How can we ensure our Freedom Makers uphold our values and feel fulfilled in their work? 

Fortunately, the pool of talented and capable military spouses is deep and wide. 

WHO ARE MILITARY SPOUSES?

According to a 2019 Military One Source report, there are approximately 605,000 spouses of active-duty members of the armed forces. Of those, 90 percent are women, with an average age of 31.6 years old.

Research and our first-hand knowledge show that military spouses are highly educated individuals with a wide range of professional experience. Over 33% of all military spouses have four-year college degrees. That is about 10% higher than their civilian counterparts. 

Yet, according to the findings in a 2020 Military Lifestyle Family Survey conducted by Blue Star Families, the unemployment rate of active-duty spouses is nearly seven times higher than that of similar civilian peers. 

Depressed local labor markets in the areas where the military maintains bases, lack of access to career opportunities spouses have trained for, and reported discrimination leads to underemployment. Underemployment is defined as the condition in which people in a labor force are employed at jobs inadequate for their training, experience, or economic needs. Think about a paralegal, television producer, or museum curator accepting a job that does not take advantage of their experience, advance their career aspirations, or pay them a salary equivalent to the training they’ve acquired. The only jobs available to them are ones below their capability level.

Military families do not choose where the active duty member is stationed.

Due to these factors and others, military spouses often have significant gaps in their resumes or have seemingly wandering career paths. But military spouses are, on the whole, determined, resilient, and proactive. They remain steady and consistent even in a state of constant change. Complicated defense department acronyms and plans that change as quickly as they are made, dangerous deployments that take an emotional and psychological toll… military spouses are well equipped to persevere and thrive in the dynamic and fluid work environments small businesses often experience.

These multi-tasking ninjas make up our virtual assistant community.

WHAT DO WE LOOK FOR IN OUR MILITARY SPOUSE VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS

When bringing on a military spouse or veteran to be a Freedom Maker, we do not ask them to provide resumes when seeking to join our team because we understand a single sheet of paper can’t accurately paint the picture of what that spouse is capable of. A gappy, divergent resume does not tell the whole story! Instead, the military spouses most likely to succeed as virtual assistants with Freedom Makers Virtual Services have a special and specific mix of tangible and intangible attributes. Time and experience have shown us that certain characteristics prove critical when speaking with military spouses interested in becoming virtual assistants.

We look for a few specific things: past work experience, have they worked with a small business, have they worked in an administrative role, their level of education, and if they have ever worked remotely. We look for a positive, motivated attitude and a willingness to learn. 

If a military spouse presents as less strong in an area, we will counsel them during their onboarding call to work on strengthening that skill. For example, if someone has worked in person as an office administrator or assistant, we will point them to online platforms like Hubspot, Asana , Trello, etc., so they can learn those cloud-based technologies. Training there on their own time will allow them to easily transfer those administrative and organizational skills into remote assistance and support for our small business clients. 

We also offer monthly training sessions covering how to be a successful Freedom Maker and carve your niche as a virtual assistant. One of those repeating events is our monthly social media training. This seminar is conducted live by our FMVS marketing team and reviews how to manage content creation, social media strategies, blog writing, and newsletter outreach for a client. We also offer mentoring and coaching programs that further assist our Freedom Makers as they hone their virtual assistant skillset.

Our monthly newsletter that goes out to all onboarded Freedom Makers provides recommended virtual assistant training and updates on virtual assistants’ latest and greatest tools. And our internal private community is rich with ideas, “how-to’s,” and best practices that our Freedom Makers share with one another.

Additionally, all onboarded military spouse virtual assistants are asked to fill out a detailed profile within which they can explain their skills, showcase their platform expertise and encapsulate who they are. This profile helps the Freedom Maker Success Management team get to know each Freedom Maker and understand where their strengths lay. It also allows Freedom Makers new to the community to get a sense of what platforms they can train on to become more competitive for client opportunities.

Because all our Freedom Maker virtual assistants file 1099 tax forms, each is free to select and apply for the opportunities they are interested in and feel qualified for. The internal team at FMVS then decides which Freedom Makers to put forward to the client. Factors considered are the submitted form specific to the opportunity, their online profile, CRM notes on past performance, and internal team feedback. It is a multifaceted vetting approach that ensures the correct Freedom Makers are put forward for client selection calls.

Once the Freedom Maker and the client start working together, we have a success management team for both the Freedom Maker and the client. Each will receive check-ins to see how things are going. This is a chance for them to ask questions or let us know when something is off. If a relationship is rocky or having an issue with communication, the success managers will step in and help get things back on track. The kick-off call is also crucial to ensuring the relationship gets started on the right foot.

ALWAYS STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE

The special sauce of our agency is in the pairing between a client and a virtual assistant.

At Freedom Makers Virtual Services, we aim for both the client and the Freedom Maker to experience a “click.” 

The “click” is experienced by a virtual assistant when they feel they fully understand what is expected of them and know they can contribute their whole skill set to their client. They feel empowered to deliver their work and are confident that any questions or concerns will be addressed quickly and respectfully. A virtual assistant experiences the “click” when they quickly feel like a valuable team member and know they are contributing to their client’s success.

The client experiences the “click” when their virtual assistant quickly begins to make their life easier. The virtual assistant seamlessly fits in with the energy and environment of their business and begins delivering work in a timely and consistent manner. The client finds they can rely on their Freedom Maker and begins to lean on them for the success of their business. 

This leads to an extraordinary sense of relief and confidence that the outsourced work is being handled beautifully by a professional who is eager and excited for the opportunity to be a part of your team. 

Everyone knows a “click” when they experience it! 

WE SET THE STAGE FOR THE CLICK WITH OUR FMVS ETHOS

Half of the “click” equation is brought to the relationship by the Freedom Maker. This is why we start introducing our new Freedom Makers to our guiding principles, values, and approach from the beginning – before they even enter the community! 

Our onboarding videos introduce military spouses and veteran virtual assistants to who we are and what we value. They learn about what makes FMVS unique and begin to understand how passionately we feel about the principles guiding us. 

We ask that new Freedom Makers read, understand, and accept our stated ethos. In this way, we endeavor to be clear about our expectations from the start. We do expect our Freedom Maker virtual assistants to join us wholeheartedly in our strive for excellence. Reminders of what our community stands for and how we expect to be represented continue during the onboarding meeting, throughout all follow-up communications, and are reiterated during our monthly training opportunities. We constantly repeat our guiding principles and will use them in conversations with Freedom Makers if expectations are unmet.

We attribute our growth and enduring success to the special attention we pay when bringing new military spouses into our community. We work hard to seek out candidates we believe will be successful. We encourage their growth and provide resources for them to explore. We then take care to nurture the relationship they develop with their client, so they feel like they are contributing to their client’s success.

Our passion for the communities we serve is strengthened by our deep understanding of the human factors that contribute to successful working relationships and dynamic remote teams. 

We know we are doing something right when our clients refer their friends and colleagues to us.

And we know we are doing something right when our Freedom Makers find success and meaningful work through us. When a new military spouse comes to us on the recommendation of a thriving Freedom Maker, we know we are connecting with our core community and making the impact and excellence we strive for.