How to Become A Virtual Assistant and Work From Anywhere with Digital Nomad Kit founder Hannah Dixon

In part two of our interview with Hannah Dixon, we welcome back Hannah Dixon, a queer, British-American digital nomad currently based in Mexico. In this episode, we discuss her journey to becoming the founder of Digital Nomad Kit and her Virtual Excellence Academy - and why becoming a Virtual Assistant is a way for people to gain location independence and live anywhere. 

With a background in virtual assistance, she has successfully trained 30,000 people in 150 countries and transitioned to a focus on teaching and recruitment. 

Hannah has also recently founded Rainbow Remote, an initiative celebrating queer people in business and entrepreneurship, and she is dedicated to building inclusive communities and supporting individuals in living flexible, location-independent lives.

Below are the key takeaways from this episode:

• Entrepreneurial Freedom: Dixon emphasized the freedom to change various aspects of life that entrepreneurship provides.
• Community Building Challenges: She discussed the difficulties of building an online community on LinkedIn and is considering a return to Facebook for better engagement.
• Virtual Assistant Training: Through Digital Nomad Kit, Hannah has trained over 30,000 virtual assistants globally, highlighting the benefits of remote work.

Hannah Dixon

Instagram: @digitalnomadkit
LinkedIn: Hannah Dixon
Digital Nomad Kit Website 

Rainbow Relocation Strategies

The Adventure Calls podcast is brought to you by Rainbow Relocation Strategies, the first and only LGBTQ+ centered company focused on creating your international relocation strategy for when you're ready to move abroad.

Rainbow Relocation Website
Instagram: @rainbowrelo

Jessica Drucker can be found online at:

Jessicadrucker.com
Book: How To Move Abroad
Shop: JessicaDrucker.com/Shop

The Adventure Calls podcast is a bi-weekly podcast that seeks to empower queer folks to move, live and thrive abroad with interviews with relocation experts, queer expats who have successfully relocated and other organizations that give a lens on the LGBTQ+ experience in the world.

Transcript

0:11

Welcome to the Adventure Calls podcast, where we empower queer folks and their families to move, live, and thrive Abroad. And Move importantly, to follow your call to adventure. This is part 2 of a 2 part series with Hannah Dixon. Hannah is a queer, British American digital nomad who's currently based in Mexico. She's lived in Thailand, Italy, and traveled to over 60 countries as a nomad. Now, if you haven't listened to part 1 where we get into that part of her story, go back and listen for that information on how Hannah acquired residency in Americans, and how she's been able to sustain life as a nomad and an entrepreneur for 16 years. In part 2, you're gonna learn about her company, the Digital Nomad Kit, and the Virtual Excellence Academy, a program for over 30, 000 virtual assistants worldwide. Becoming a virtual assistant is 1 way that you can become an entrepreneur, and you're supporting the work of others, but you are becoming an entrepreneur, which means you can truly work remotely from anywhere, and this is really a key to moving abroad. Now, some people have a career that can take them abroad. Some people work for a multi national corporation that can help them move abroad. Some people have a large amount of funds that can get them a golden visa to become a resident abroad by buying property, some people have a career in a highly skilled area that is attractive to other countries, like a nurse, or a teacher, or an engineer, and there are visas that are available. But for some of us, we don't have any of those, and that's fine. There are other ways to relocate. 1 of those ways is to become an entrepreneur and work for yourself, and 1 of those ways is to become a virtual assistant. Right now, we're picking up right where we left off at the end of part 1, moving into the second half of our conversation with Hannah Dixon from the Virtual Excellence Academy. So you're living in Mexico now, and you said you run your own business. So I would like to start asking you a little bit about what you do because so when you're younger and you're, like, woofing or house sitting or whatever you're whatever you're doing and, like, in exchange for food, room and board, essentially. Like we said, like, money just came in and out, but it wasn't something that you thought about. Then you sort of realized, like, I can't even buy something nice to wear to this party. So how did you decide like, what was the process of forming your own company? And, like, can we kick off by just saying, like, what is it that you do now? Like, what do you run? And can you talk about that a little bit? And then how did you get there? Sure. I run a company called Digital Name Out Kit where we're training virtual assistants and freelancers. Jess, essentially, working online in a self employed manner from anywhere. And we also run recruitment service connecting, clients who wanna work with these trained people. So that's, in a nutshell, what I do. Getting here wasn't necessarily something I planned or, like, had mapped out in any way. I found myself in that situation in Italy, realized I needed to make some money, had absolutely 0 in my bank account, had to ask someone to get me a flight back to London, And I was gonna get a job and do what everyone had been telling me to do for so long which is get a real job. Like, come back to reality. Yeah. Go back to to, something like that. So I went back to England and I got a job in a bar. And, I entered the dating pool, and I met somebody who worked online. Uh-huh. And that was the big turnaround for me. I was like, hold on a second. Wait, wait. You work from home? I need your laptop. Okay. This is a thing. I need to know everything. Tell me everything you know. Mhmm. And she did very graciously. We ended up having a relationship together for quite some time, and we started a company together. She was doing SEO and web development. I did not know what the hell that meant at the time, but I was like, hey, I'll do your emails. Like, I'll respond to the customers, and Call like, we were Twitter was huge back then, so we were like getting our clients on Twitter. I was like, I'll manage the Twitter account. I'll do the emails. And then I found that her clients didn't just want web development and SEO, they wanted social media management. They wanted someone to manage their inboxes. So I was kinda just picking stuff up, and it wasn't until probably a few months into it that I was on a call with a client, and she referred to me as her virtual assistant. I was like, there's a name for this. Mhmm. This is cool. Vocabulary matters. Having the vocabulary to to name yourself, it really matters. Totally. Because people used to be like, what do you do? I'm like, oh, just some stuff online. Yeah. I don't know. All kinds of things. So that was the the big sort of turnaround for me. I was like, oh, there's a name for this. This is cool. I started a Facebook group at the time because I also came became aware of the word digital nomad. I was like, oh, that's a thing to, people who travel and work online. And at that time when you would Google digital nomad, there was, 1 demographic that kinda dominated that scene. Dudes. Dudes in Chiang Mai bragging about living on $300 a month. Yes. I used to hang out with all of them because that's when I was a digital nomad in Chiang Mai. Yep. I know them all. Yep. And I was just like, there's to be other people doing this. Like, where are the queer people? Where are the people of color? Where are the women? Just like, where are the women? And so I Strategies a Facebook group, and that Facebook group was kinda just to meet people and it took off really quickly, and I was sharing about my journey as a virtual assistant in there. And I had queer big ish success, And I had pretty big ish Jess. I would say within a fairly short period of time within the 1st year, I was earning between $5, 101, 000 a month. From the community on Facebook or from the VA work? From the VA work. Yeah. Wow. And people and I was talking about, like, what was happening for Move, and people were asking me like, how are you doing this? You know, I've been trying to do this for a while. I'm struggling, blah blah blah. And I had no intention of teaching. That was never on my radar, but enough people were asking me that. I was like, maybe I'll just throw like a free event on just telling everything I know or everything I've done. And I threw to a free 5 day challenge, which I still run to this day. It's changed a lot since then. But each day of the challenge, that first time I ran it, I told people what I thought they should do next. Like like on like Jess on the day. Like, here's okay. That's what we did yesterday. Here's what we should do. I made it up on on the day. And at the end of the week, people were landing gigs all over the place, and I was like, oh, this stuff works. I'm quite good at this, and people are like, oh, you've got such a natural flair for teaching. I'm like, interesting. Long story short, that then turned into I've trained 30, 000 people now in a 150 countries, and I Move from doing virtual assistant work after about 3 years into just training now and and recruitment. But, yeah, that's that's my story in a nutshell. None of it was none of it was planned, but I feel like that's my whole life. Absolutely. Yeah. But but because of the way your life is, you can be flexible and nimble and say, hey, this is working. I'm gonna dig into this. You know? Yeah. For sure. And you could also fight the man and say, I'm not gonna get I'm not gonna stay in this day job. I actually really want to do this. And you followed that instinct too, you know? Yeah. Totally. Yeah. If you had been like in the trenches since you were 18 Jess, like, working, you wouldn't have thought, oh, I'll just I'll just do this, you know? Yeah. For sure. And I feel like the travel that that kinda really does expand your potential, like your ideas about what's possible. But you know what else it does? It helps you meet a ton of people who also live alternative lives. Yes. And I think if you don't meet those people, you don't realize how many people are not doing the thing everyone says you should do. Mhmm. Yeah. It's who you surround yourself with, isn't it? Jess. Totally. Okay. And so, first of all, moving. And congratulations to you, like, training 30, 000 people in a 100 and fit whatever, 50 or 80 countries, you said, is just absolutely incredible. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your opinion on this. But, like, I think that VA work, remote work in general, is such an important area of work for queer people as well. Mhmm. You know, just not having to deal with, like, you know, the day to day paper cuts that happen over the water cooler and Jess, like, dealing with people in the office. Who who are your clients? Who is your demographic? And do you work with a lot of queer folks? I to. And III never know how to answer this question because I've never necessarily, like, defined who I work with, but by just being Move, I Jess. I have attracted a very large queer audience, a very large neurodivergent audience, and those are my people. I feel like my my business is very much me, like it's a it's a personal brand, and so that's how people come into my world, And so if they resonate with me, those tend to be my people. Anybody who kinda feels that they don't fit in other business spaces tend to come my way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it but but it makes perfect sense because a lot of the digital nomad conversation, it has changed, I guess, now. I mean, just because, like It has. You've got, like, corporate CEOs talking about digital nomadism now, which is hilarious to me. Right? It's so different than than it used to be. And in a way, it's it's kind of good. But in another way, yeah, it's, like, really silly to hear it coming out of their mouths. Especially, they're making it sound like they discovered something. Thank you. It's like football. You guys used to roll your eyes at me in 2012 when I called myself a digital nomad. But thanks. Exactly. Yeah. Anyway, so but I think I think for for queer folks, it's, like, so important because yeah. Because you, you know, you can be in these spaces without having to, like, deal with, like, all the other types of discrimination that happen on a day to day basis. But you don't specifically like seek seek them out there Jess that you're sort of like a beacon for for that. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, on my website, we have our values and stuff and, you know, we talk about that. So people are gonna either vibe with it or not. So it tends to attract a lot of queer queer. And for me, I think, like you said, it is really important. I think this particular type of work is important because not only do you get to not have to worry about who you are, you get to celebrate that if anything. The clients you work with are also gonna be like that. Like you get to be you, like it's not they Move to put on a show. You don't have to put on a mask to show up and be a virtual assistant. In fact, I encourage people to be a 100% themselves because then you're gonna get to work with people who literally love who you are, not just what you to. And I think that is 1 of the most powerful things when you're going into a job even if it's, you know, a company that you really align align with the values. So we're gonna be Move somebody you don't like. There's always gonna be somebody who doesn't like you. There's always gonna be it's always that I hate this. Always these issues. And even if this is just small, like, niggling issues, you don't have to worry about that when you're a VA. You can just be like, I don't wanna work with you. I wanna choose someone else. Like, you have that power to make decisions for yourself. What's a VA, by the way, for those listening who are just like, what are they talking about? What is actually a virtual assistant? Because it sounds maybe like there's not enough work, but you're you're talking about, like, there's so much that, like, if you don't like this client, you can just find another client. To, obviously, there's a lot of VA work. So what is it? And talk a little bit about it. Semantics aside, it's, essentially somebody who works online in a freelance fashion offering either admin, creative, or technical solutions to entrepreneurs or service providers or big organizations even. And you can have crossover, so you could work in any 1 of those buckets. But yeah, ultimately, it's kinda like an office assistant that does a lot more stuff than an office assistant would do and completely virtually from anywhere. I think that's 1 of the benefits to is it's from anywhere unlike a lot of remote jobs that are remote Jess, or remote in this region, or remote Yeah. These countries only, or remote, but these time zones still, you can really work from anywhere. So that that for me also is a big benefit, but, Jess, it's ultimately an independent remote worker who supports businesses of tech creative or admin tasks. And these are these jobs are plentiful. They are plentiful. And I think it's the switch is thinking like they're not really jobs. It's like opportunities that you can proactively go and find for yourself, and that's kind of how we train people. So while there are job opportunities coming in on the recruitment side, it's also you're a business owner now. Right? So you're marketing yourself. You're talking to people. You're, you know, you're doing all the networking that you need to do in order to sustain that business. You're not just like applying for jobs and sitting back and hoping to hear from somebody. Like, there is a very much a proactive element to being a VA. You become an entrepreneur at that point. So it comes with all the the pros and the cons of that. For me, the pros outweigh the cons, and that's a personal decision for many people. You know, for people who because I have a lot of clients who they wanna move Abroad. They wanna live somewhere else. They don't even like the job that they're doing now. So they're happy to give that up. But the idea of, okay, so we wanna move, for example, to Mexico. Now I have to, like, get a job in Mexico. Yeah. No. Not anymore. Yes. Before, you would've, like, you know, back when I first started, I got a teaching a job teaching English in Guatemala. Like, that's what you did. You know? Yeah. But now you can be a virtual assistant. You can it can take a lot of the pressure off your day to day. Mhmm. Because, you know, a lot of people are you know, a lot of my clients, for example, are, like, executive level or whatever, and they're they don't want that and they don't need that anymore, but they obviously need income. But taking on remote jobs where you're the entrepreneur gives you the freedom and also allows you to move to Mexico or wherever. Yeah. For sure. And back to what you're saying about, you know, how many jobs there are, like, I think 1 of the big things, 1 of the big benefits of the pandemic was that people became aware of remote work, and then that extended to the freelance world as well. And so, I'm getting now on the recruitment side. We used to get like solopreneurs or life coaches or whatever, you know, individual doctors coming and wanting a VA. Now we've got big corporations coming to plus, or we've got, you know, corporate executives coming to us saying, like, I need an online PA, like, or just all kinds of different people that we didn't have coming in before. So not only is it opened up because there's more people aware of it, but on the other side, being an entrepreneur, you get to really like choose, and I'm gonna say it the American way, a niche. I say niche, but you get to choose a niche that makes sense for you, and I always think that people get really intimidated by doing that because they're like, well, I'm limiting myself, aren't I? But I like to say that, like, you don't need to niche by like, a particular industry or a particular service you offer. You can also niche by values, which I think is super awesome for the queer community to do as well. So I'm like, I don't wanna work with people unless you care about the environment. Like, that's that's that's my thing. Or I only work with people who are dedicated to uplifting marginalized voices, for example. So you can have like, you can niche by values which means means that you can still work with a broad range of different types of people doing different types of things. If you really like variety, that's awesome. Or you can say, I create websites for restaurants, like, you can be really specific. And so, I think that's the thing. It's like you're you're creating a space for yourself so that while there's opportunities on 1 hand, you're also creating opportunities by making a space for yourself with a unique offering. And, ultimately, it comes down to the Yeah Yeah. I mean, there's lots of different strategies, but yeah. Well, and I'm sure you talk about all of them in your community. Can we talk a little bit about your community? I'm so impressed with the community that you've built. Oh, thank you. As I said, I've done my stocking. But I'm just so impressed that can you talk a little bit about what is it? VEA? Is that what it's called? The VEA. So the VEA is our paid program, the Virtual Excellence Academy. Used to be called the VA starter kit for many years, but then I was like, this is so big. This is not a starter kit. Yeah. Okay. An academy. Yeah. I mean, that that is our paid program. We have a community that's run with that. 1 of the things that I really like about the community aspect, for me, everything I do is about community. So I started, you know, sharing in that group all those years ago and that's what blossomed into what I have now. Then we have the private members community and that's where I call most of my attention now. And so, for me, it was always Abroad, I don't want the community to feel like I'm like the leader and everybody has to listen to me. Mhmm. I wanted people to take ownership of this space and, like, and use it in the way that they wanna use it and put into action the things they wanna see happening in there. So we have, like, really cool initiatives in there. We have the presidency. I saw that. What does that mean? Someone can be the president for 8 weeks or something? Jess. So for 3 times a year, we have president Nicole right now. Shout out to her. She's doing a great job. Where people can come in and take charge of the community and and literally do whatever they wanna do with it within reason, of course. But like, we've had people do fitness challenges. We've had people do book clubs. We've had people do drink and draw sessions. We've had people come in and talk about video editing on their area of expertise. And so for me, 1, it relieves the pressure for me to feel like I have to do everything because I don't know everything. Number 1, like, I not claiming to be an expert on everything. We have a lot of experts in there. And 2, it really empowers people to take, you know, more control of their direction and who who they wanna be in the business world because that becomes their network. Right? But I think the most important thing for me about the community was that I don't charge for this community. This is like if you buy the course, you have access to my inner world forever, like, forever. That's that's the promise. And for me, I always wanted it that way because I don't want there to be any pressure to people having this space. Like, it was so important for me to have spaces like this, and I think that this particular space, and I I think it, but I don't think it's just me. I think the people also think this. So, hopefully, I'm speaking well on their part as call, but it is a really really really diverse and also very safe and inclusive space where people genuinely do feel like they belong, and I think that is the thing that sets it apart from other business spaces that I've been in or that they've been in. A lot of people will come from other spaces and say, oh, like things were going okay, but then I came here and things are thriving because I'm in a community that actually gives a shit about who I am and and how I can be who I am in my business. I think a lot of business type coaches will sort of leave that stuff to the side. They don't care. They're just like do this and do that and do this and do that and niche and blah blah blah. And when they come into to world, I'm like, okay, like, who are you? What are you bringing to the table? And like call of it, all the good, all the bad, let's see what we can create from it. And I think that's something that our community does together as we collectively lift each other up no matter what our background or circumstances, and I and I love that about that community. It does it for me to. So, yeah. It's pretty cool. It's cool crew of people, and there's always meet ups like in person, online, every week, like, obviously, pictures of people together like, hey, we're in Uganda this week, or hey, we're in Thailand or Berlin. Right. And I just post pictures and I'm like, this is so cool. We actually have a world map now where people can just put where they are, and then people are just meeting all over the place. So while it's not like a paid community that loads of people know about it, it's like this inner circle of this, like, web of people that, like, we we know about it, and that's what matters. And that's what matters. What is Rainbow Remote? That is a new endeavor. The name is just very similar to Rainbow Relocation, so I just thought, like, what is that? How how is it similar and different? The idea that I had for Rainbow Remote was to run a conference, and I still plan to do that because I've been to I I stopped going to conferences a few years ago and then obviously the pandemic and blah blah blah. And actually, I had I was like getting this like blossoming speaking career, and then I had a really bad experience and was like, I don't wanna speak anymore. Mhmm. And I'm trying to turn that around. So for me, I started attending a lot more conferences in the last couple of years, mostly to see what's out there and find communities where I feel like maybe I'd wanna speak or be more a part of, and WITS was great for that because I just met so many cool people, including yourself. WITS is the Women in Travel Summit. Shout out to Beth and her crew. Awesome. Awesome conference, summit. And, yeah, for me, I I just saw this gap. There's this gap where there's just not enough celebration of queer people in business and entrepreneurship. And while it exists to a degree, I really believe that it would be cool to have a platform for that specifically. I went to Nomadness, which is for BIPOC travelers. Yep. Latino Travel Jess is being put on by my friend Jess, and I'm like, you know what? There's this you know what? People are doing it. I can do it to. Like Yeah. I I totally agree with you. And I just I think my fear for it, because it's very new. It's a very new thing. I started the community on LinkedIn, which I'm finding is much harder to build community than, Facebook when it comes to groups. Mhmm. So I think we're gonna move back over there. I'm just concerned that, like, where where are all the queers? I can't, like, because I'm not seeing them at the events in wild numbers. So my hope for the community was to attract them in, and then would put on a conference together, and we'd be, you know, the people that are on the Strategies. So Yeah. We should talk offline because we should have some ideas about that in terms of community. But, no, for sure. I mean, I but I think that you're also right, but I also think that it's so important for the reasons that I was saying before about the queer community, especially working remotely and being able to feel more comfortable in being who you are and everything. So I think it's actually, like, super important. I know, you know, lesbians who tech is I I think that you know Yeah. Lesbians who tech and Leanne and Stephanie. I saw I know you work with you worked with Kit, who I also know through that whole world as call. Oh, dude. From 77. Yep. Yep. So we I noticed we know quite a lot of the same people actually. Interesting. But I definitely think that that space is needed and necessary. So so kudos to you, and definitely please build that out. Yeah. We I'm I'm hoping for next year. Let let's see. You're doing that? No promises, but I'm you know what? I was like, I don't want this to live in my head anymore. I'm just gonna put it out there, and things will start happening because people will start having conversations with me, and I'll be able to get ideas and Mhmm. For me, I'm just gonna to now. Exactly. Or I would just be out there. Yeah. No. For sure. Man, if I could get everything out of my head, that would just be the dream. My goodness. I would be ruling the world at this point, I tell you what. Okay. So just really quick, I wanna ask you well, not really quick, actually. This is sort of like my last question to you, but it might be a big question. But, you know, as someone who has been experiencing really interesting levels of freedom in her life for a very long time, what does freedom in terms of a lifestyle mean to you? And, like, how would you describe freedom in your life? And what do you seek when you look for freedom? The ability to change my environment, who I am, how I present, who I hang around with, what I do in my work. I think it's the ability to change because I hate feeling fixed. And I feel like a lot of people probably feel that way. Like we don't get this like we don't give ourselves this permission to be someone different from 1 day to another. And I think that there's so much more to us as human beings than like a job that we have at 50 years, and that's who we are, you know? And for me, yeah, freedom is getting to be who I am and everything that I do even when that changes. Yeah, I think that's probably it. Like right now, I'm here in Mexico, but I'm like, who knows it forever? And like, I will never commit to that because I don't know what's gonna happen. And knowing that I can change that is the feeling of freedom that I Move, and knowing that my business is going to evolve, and how I work is going to evolve. And that for me is just like, again, another feeling of just like I'm I'm free to do whatever I wanna do whenever I wanna do it in whatever iteration my being is in that moment, you know? So, yeah, that's probably what I would say. And I think that virtual assistance is great for that too because you can change your services, your offers, who you wanna work with, where you wanna work from, change what you call yourself, be a copywriter, be a web designer, whatever. You know, like, you can change that, and, actually, 1 of the biggest benefits is that, for me, is that when you are an entrepreneur, your network is your network forever now. So, like, when I when I when I worked in fashion, I did a great job there. I made loads of contacts. I was like, I had, Jude Law's address and Madonna's address and like, you know Oh, that's you name dropping at the end of the episode. Yeah. No. It was it was cool. Like, I I hated it over time, but it was cool if you like that kind of thing. Right. And when I left, I was not allowed to take those contacts with Move, which I had built those connections with that company and with me being like the person that was important, Couldn't take that with me. That's right. Now, as an entrepreneur, your audience, your network, your people, they support you for the rest of your career forever. And that for me is also freeing because all these different people open different doors for you, and you can do the same for them. So for me, there's also that aspect of just the freedom and entrepreneurship as well. Amazing. Excellent answer. I'm gonna put that on a t shirt or something, you know, but it's true. Freedom is the ability to change when you want to. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's awesome. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thanks. You are. Thanks for having me. Inspirational, aspirational, interesting. Thank you so much for being so open and honest and everything. Where can people find you? Where do you wanna send people who who listen to this? At digital know my kit on Instagram is good, or my name, Hannah Dixon, LinkedIn, or my website, digital know my kit. Digital know my kit, you'll find me. Just put that in. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much again. Honestly, thanks so much for for today. Thanks for having me. Bye. Alright. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Adventure Calls podcast. If you like what you heard, please open up your podcast app and give the show a rating and leave a review, so we can empower more and more people on their journey to move, live, and thrive abroad. This is an entirely queer created and queer owned podcast. I'm your host, Jess Drucker, founder of Rainbow Relocation, and the entire purpose of my company is to help you with the end to end relocation from figuring out where you should relocate, what your true why is for wanting to move abroad, and then all the way through to making sure that every item on your checklist gets ticked, and you're living abroad within the next year. So if you know someone who's LGBTQ or an ally and looking to move abroad, maybe to Mexico, maybe in general, send them the show. Help spread the word, or even send them to my website, rainbowrelo.com. Thank you so much for listening and preparing, so that you can take action for when your adventure calls.