Meet Jessica Thomas

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jessica Thomas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jessica below.

Jessica, so glad you were able to set aside some time for us today. We’ve always admired not just your journey and success, but also the seemingly high levels of self-discipline that you seem to have mastered and so maybe we can start by chatting about how you developed it or where it comes from?
My self-discipline largely comes from being raised in a single-parent home. My mom had to provide for our household so that we could have a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. Even on those days when the weather was bad, or she wasn’t feeling well, she still had to make her way to work to make things happen for us. Therefore, I learned early on that you can’t rely on motivation alone to get things done or wait for someone to tell you what you need to do.

I think having older siblings helped me, too. I was a kid when they were navigating their teenage and young adult years, so I witnessed them taking care of whatever responsibilities they had. It made me want to mature so I could be like them. Plus, one of my brothers would tell me things like, “If you get all A’s, I’ll buy you a Nintendo 64”, so having that goal in mind, I’d get to work. I didn’t have to be told to do my homework with a prize like that in front of me. Even today, I try to set goals for myself that excite me enough to keep going even when I run into obstacles along the way.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I’ve owned a virtual assistant agency (Imperative Concierge Services) for over eight years now. We help scaling businesses seamlessly delegate their to-dos to top-tier virtual professionals. What’s special about what I do is witnessing the business owners who come to me overwhelmed, who later become overjoyed once aligned with a virtual assistant. They go from doing everything by themselves in their business to being able to do less, all while gaining more.

Our company vision is to change the narrative surrounding entrepreneurship and the do-it-all-yourself mindset. We want a future where entrepreneurs can work smart and strategically and achieve scalability without the burnout.

I’m also a Virtual Assistant Advisor, where I give new, aspiring, and experienced VAs advice so they can confidently launch and grow their business. The virtual assistant industry has a ton of coaches today, so I decided to create my own lane and become the first Virtual Assistant Advisor.

Coaches are great at providing an ongoing, structured, and supportive environment that helps people achieve their desired goals. However, I’m who a VA could come to when they need targeted advice from an expert who’s faced the many ups and downs associated with running a virtual assistant agency. I can suggest what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why because I’ve likely experienced the challenge that someone is trying to overcome. People meet with me as needed to get specific feedback about a particular VA business problem.

I also recently published an eBook titled “The Virtual Assistant Tell All: The Pivotal Guide For Building A Thriving VA Business.” In 300+ pages, I explain everything from branding and selecting business structures to finding clients and getting paid. I tried to think of everything that would’ve been helpful to me during those first few years of launching and growing my VA business.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I’d have to say these three qualities have helped me the most: my listening/people skills, resilience, and process improvement knowledge.

If you’re new to entrepreneurship, I’d say practice listening to understand and not just to respond. People want to feel heard and acknowledged. Good people skills will help you whether you’re working with clients, vendors, or employees. There are a lot of businesses out there that offer great products/services, but they struggle to grow because they don’t know how to understand and interact with people. I’d recommend reading “How To Win Friends & Influence People” by Dale Carnegie to improve this skill.

Resilience is also important because you’ll be knocked down a lot. Many people talk about how great entrepreneurship is but fail to explain how often you’ll be told no or how likely it is that you’ll try something that just doesn’t work out. Resilience helps you stay in the game and pivot. The best way to develop this is by taking action and learning from the obstacles.

Process improvement is when you evaluate your business processes and identify how they could be more effective and efficient. While you don’t need to be an expert, you should at least look at your processes quarterly and determine if there’s a better way to do something. You’d be surprised how easy it is to overspend on business software and redundant steps!

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I sure am! I genuinely believe that we can do so much more together. I’d love to collaborate with other virtual assistants. I recognize that my VA Agency can’t do everything, and certain projects may not be in our wheelhouse. I genuinely want the best for the busy professionals who contact my company needing assistance, so if we can’t do something, I have no problem referring them to a virtual assistant who can. If you’re a virtual assistant, feel free to email me directly at [email protected] to connect!

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