How Riya Jain Makes $8k/Month as a Virtual Assistant and Helping Companies Focus on Core Tasks

What do you do when your family falls on hard times? If you’re Riya Jain, you start your own company. Riya, inspired to help support her mother and younger siblings, created a virtual assistant company, Namo Padmavati. 

Four years later, after learning multiple skills, failing and picking herself up again, and a lot of trial and error, she’s making around $8k per month. Today she’s not only supporting her family, but she’s also empowering local women by employing them in her company and helping them support their own families.

Keep reading to learn more about:

• Why she created her virtual assistance company
• How much money she's earning
• Her most successful marketing strategies
• How she creates content
• Her favorite resources and tools
• The biggest challenge she's faced
• Her most important accomplishment to date
• Her main mistake
• The advice she would give to other entrepreneurs

Meet Riya Jain

I’m Riya, I'm 25 years old and the founder of Namo Padmavati and Parshav Group. I started Namo Padmavati, a virtual assistance service company when I was 20. 

Soon after, I started Parshav Group, a company that provides LinkedIn training to individuals and corporations. Growing up, I was not the most ambitious. But as circumstances would have it, I had to become an active participant and start a business. Before starting my own business, I worked as an operations manager at a fast-growing SEO company. 

I live with my family in India. I also have two dogs I love to bits. More than anything, I believe I'm an ambitious learner. That's how I'd like to be defined. I'm always on the hunt to learn. Everything else comes later.

Why She Created Namo Padmavati

I was never the one with big dreams or hustling on my mind. But I was suddenly dislodged from my comfort zone after my parents’ separation, which made me do this. 

My parents separated, and I was the oldest child. I had to support my single mother and my younger siblings. Necessity is the mother of inventions. My mom’s unbridled faith and support helped me get where I am today. She and I would stay up late into the night. She would be my source of support when I didn’t have any clients. She'd help me prep and push me before getting on client calls. 

I was offering virtual assistance services and slowly learned I was good with lead generation. As I grew, I hired one person, which led to hiring more, and now I’ve built a passionate team and trained them. 

All of us now work towards a single goal—helping small and big businesses with all their non-core work like data entry, customer support, transcriptions, project management, marketing, list building, etc.

This way, entrepreneurs only work on what they’re good at and can get a few extra hours to spend with family. Plus, entrepreneurs can save more! No office expenses, infrastructure expenses, no full-time commitments, or anything. They only pay us for the work done!

Another thing that struck me was seeing what it takes to run a business. After getting my first client as a VA, I learned the impact and value that virtual assistants can bring, especially to small businesses and solopreneurs. That’s why I’ve tried to make my services as affordable as possible.

My goal is to provide value and be a virtual backbone. The client stories I’ve heard fulfill me like nothing else. And Namo Padmavati means growing through the dirt, grit, and dust. That's what I've done and what I believe in.

How Much Money Riya Jain is Earning

I’ve developed multiple income streams. While I understand this isn’t possible for many salaried professionals and parents, I firmly believe that everyone should have multiple clients and income streams. It has become a necessity with the rising cost of living, and I try to do the best I can to support my team in that way. 

My mantra as a business owner has been to keep learning. I’ve always tried to say “yes” to every good opportunity I’ve gotten and learned things to give my best! I run a virtual assistance company where we provide support with all non-core work. 

Additionally, I specialize in LinkedIn B2B lead generation and train business owners and corporations. I get to choose new adventures every day! But these income streams have taken plenty of time and learning.

I have also partnered with companies and provided them with bulk human resources so they can save costs and get professionals working for them. Right now, I’m making around $7-$9k per month, and I have a team of 15. As a business owner, you can never earn stagnant revenue. There are months I’m earning $10k, and then there are months I earn just $5-6k. It depends on the projects and clients’ needs.

Her Top Marketing Strategy

My number #1 strategy has to be to meet the consumer where they are. Make things valuable and accessible. Understanding which platform works and how content should be tailored for that platform is perhaps the thing that will save a lot of time and effort and bring the desired results. 

A few more go-to marketing strategies are video, text testimonies, and word of mouth. I couldn’t have grown my business without credibility. For video testimonies, I reach out to my clients. That's the only way to get what you want- I ask them if they can provide me with a video testimony so I can build credibility. That’s all - an honest conversation.

One unique approach I like is personalization and consumer segmentation, which is still an aspect where I don’t see enough happening. Segmenting consumers and then personalizing outreach to address their specific problems is imperative to getting conversions.

The Importance of SEO for Riya Jain

SEO is evergreen. It’s important to any online business. Who wants to pay money when you can rank for free? It helps build long-term equity. 

My SEO strategy is to cater blog content to the audience in a way that works for them and provides 99.999% value. I’ve invested time in SEO, and I continue to do so. It’s about serving the end user. 

The most uncomplicated way to go about it is to think of the end user rather than a search engine. A good question to ask is, “Who is this serving first? A user or a crawler?” 

Provide value-driven content in the form of video, webinar, blogs, PDFs, etc. Nobody cares about how your website looks. The two most important things people are looking for are the website's speed and content.

Link Building

Link building is important, but only if it’s done correctly. I see people who do it just to put their link on a 3rd party website. I think having fewer backlinks but quality ones is a better approach. I'm on all the 3rd party sites that actually recognize my business industry, and I do interviews like this to get a valuable backlink.

Riya Jain’s Content Creation Process

My content strategy is to provide value, value, and value. I’m 1000% transparent; I can’t hide my strategies. If I share exactly what I do, people will either do it themselves or hire me to get it done. I’m okay with either because, in the end, I’m here to grow and help people grow.

Knowing your “why” is always important to make your audience believe in what you're saying.

Her Keyword Research Process

My process is to make a list of everything my business can do and then research on the relevant platforms and use Google’s keyword planner to see search volume and relevancy. Then I research related search terms, and then I write the content.

Achieving Current Revenue Levels

If I had to consider the complete timeline, it took me 4 years to get my business where it is today. But of course, there was a long period of hitting a plateau. I think the first few years are very crucial. Had I given it more time, I’d have seen much more growth. 

Last year, I put my foot down and decided to evaluate everything I’ve done with my business. When you become an entrepreneur at a very young age, you feel like you're missing out on a lot of fun (which is sort of true), and with that comes the feeling that you owe it to your youth to have fun. And you should certainly have fun. But I think I went overboard at times. I was young and lacked business acumen or a guru to guide me, but I found balance without losing too much, so that's been good.

Introspecting and deep thinking about where you've come, how far you want to go, and setting realistic yearly goals really helps. It makes the abstract defined. It was only by evaluation that I saw the larger picture. 

And once I saw the bigger picture, I did things differently. Last year was great because I took things more seriously. I also focused on networking and building connections. A great byproduct of that is getting some business out of it. 

Riya Jain's Favorite Resources

There are plenty of resources out there. It's important to filter and find what the world is for you. Watching and reading a ton will help you learn what’s fresh and sound advice versus what is repackaged copy. Not all good advice will work, and sometimes even largely accepted solutions might work. The tricks of the trade ride different winds at different times.

I have my own podcast, YouTube channel, and my LinkedIn, where I try to share as much honest value as possible. That being said, I wouldn't call myself an expert! I believe the best learning comes from trying and failing. 

But certainly, there are tons of resources to check out. A book I recommend to every entrepreneur is The Personal MBA. At the core, you need to know how to run a business. Fundamentals are always important. Also, read Philip Kotler to learn about marketing.

Besides that, I believe an entrepreneur needs to be a good orator/communicator to lead a team. If you don't believe in yourself and convince your core people about your vision, you can't run for very long. Working on communication skills and other soft skills will always be very important.

Her Top Three Tools

If I could say LinkedIn thrice, I'd say it. You can form such meaningful and enriching connections. I feel LinkedIn is a highly underutilized platform. I've made many connections through LinkedIn and gotten a lot of clients, both for myself and my clients. Every business owner should be using it!

Marketplaces are highly saturated. But I'd have to give credit where credit is due: I've used UpWork to get clients, which has worked great for me.

The other tool I use often and cannot live without has to be Trello. Good project management is always important, and I can see that change in my productivity. 

And in general, I'm a fan of automation and creating systems that work for me. So setting up automated thank you emails, Google forms, Calendly links, LastPass, and any other sort of filtering is my favorite way to save time. Time is money, and automation helps you save so much time without letting your leads go cold. 

Riya Jain’s Biggest Challenge

There are so many challenges for everyone, of course. No entrepreneur is immune to them. A challenge early on, of course, was customer acquisition. In a business like mine, there's no predictability. 

Some months you make $10k, and some months you’re making $5k to $6k. That was a huge challenge early on, and it still is from time to time. The business is just like freelancing but with a bigger team. 

Another huge challenge has been hiring and firing. I hate firing, but as a business owner, you gotta do what you gotta do. It has been such a challenge that I think not many talk about it. 

I hired many people in my first few years as an entrepreneur. Sometimes it was just bad judgment on my end. I've hired a ton of talented individuals who simply could not understand what I do and my vision. Firing is very difficult when you're someone who really cares about a person, but in the end, I've had to let many people go. 

My mantra now is to hire people with the zeal and willingness to learn. If someone's trainable and gets my vision, I'm happy to hire them and walk the path of growth with them. 

Her Most Important Accomplishment

I've learned to try and celebrate every small victory. For me, going from being an unambitious and unaware person to building a business and a team of 15 people is a really big accomplishment. It's not something I could've ever conceived.

I worked from my home office, and half of my team worked remotely. Now I have a small dedicated office, and we all work there. I'm so proud of that.

I have a team with 90% women, and I never see qualifications or experience before I hire. My goal is just to know their values and vision. I am so happy I can take care of my team/their families, and giving amazing ladies this opportunity makes me very happy.

Other than that, the very fact that I could sustain my family and become the provider for my family after my parents separated has been a huge achievement. 

Since then, I've adopted two dogs, and it’s only because of my financial stability that I've been able to do this. I have bigger plans. I want to adopt more stray dogs and start an animal shelter. But knowing my people and my pets are safe and happy feels like the biggest accomplishment.

What She Wishes She Knew When She Started

I wish more people knew about the instability, stress, and lack of proper work-life balance that comes with being a business owner. 

Most of us, including me, get caught up in the romantic notions of having a business email, domain, being your own boss, etc.. Still, once the infatuation is over, you see the sticky situation you will be in for a really long time.

Besides that, I would say don't wait for the perfect time. Just start. Start with what you have and what you know, and learn as you go. I'd waited and declined great offers because I didn't think I was “there” yet, but you'll never be “there.” Start and improvise.

Her MAIN Mistake

Not taking care of your finances is probably the biggest mistake both salaried professionals and business owners make! Whatever your job is, you need an emergency fund, sit with that excel to create a budget, and save and invest.

I made the mistake of not separating my personal and business expenditures. It's a mistake that works like rot. You ignore it, but it catches up to you in no time and soon takes over the entire basement. 

Being frugal with expenses will save you when nothing else can. Frugality is a good habit to develop as an entrepreneur. Live like a student if you want to build an empire.

Riya Jain's Advice for Other Entrepreneurs

I think, as an entrepreneur, I feel really protective towards other entrepreneurs and those who have ambitious plans. Entrepreneurship has its pros and cons. If you want structure and time to log off from work, entrepreneurship is really not for you. At least for the first few years, there will be no work-life balance.

Having a business is akin to being a parent. Most parents don't have the liberty to retire from parenting after 5 pm. Your business is your baby. At first, you won't have predictable work hours or the semblance of a routine. It will be unregulated, messy, and with lots of trial and error. The stakes are high.

This isn't to deter anyone from running a business, it's simply to give a realistic picture. Whether having a job and running your startup as a side hustle or doing it full time, the first few years are about a lot of hours and time. Give your best during the first five years. That commitment is everything.

Her Hiring Strategy

Other than that, I have a hiring strategy that has only worked well for me so far, and I know it will do well for others too.

Focus on the first ten hires. Hire the right people. People who are smarter than you, people who get your vision, people who are loyal, people who are willing to learn. 

As your team expands, you'll only be able to manage so many people. Your influence as the founder will be there, but it will not be overt. So you need people who can internalize your vision, who will be a good influence and set good examples for those they lead under them.

If the first ten hires go wrong, it's a domino effect that will take everyone along and reach the last one on the block. But this is not a one-way street. Your company culture is of supreme importance. 

I'm not better than them just because I've employed them. And if you are always better than everyone you've hired, you've got the wrong bunch of people. If you want your company to grow, hire people who are better than you, who can challenge you, who are willing to learn, and who can disagree with you when the time comes. 

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