Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today I want to talk about simplifying business by looking at it through another lens – your everyday life.
Today’s Quote: I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress. – Mark Zuckerberg
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
So many Virtual Assistants make business too hard.
We start by thinking we have to be someone else – a business person.
Someone who speaks a certain way, who learns certain things, who does certain things.
But I remind VAs every day that we are service business professionals.
And that means that our product is ourselves.
Us. So why would we need to be anything other than ourselves?
First of all, it’s hard to try to be someone else. It’s often not even natural.
And second, it can make it really hard to build our confidence – and make decisions. How can we know for sure that something is right for us if we are trying to make a decision to fit someone else?
That’s why today I want to shift your mindset a little bit – maybe a lot – and talk about how to take business lessons from life.
Real life.
Things we do every day.
Why?
Because when you realize that you are perfectly capable of being a business person because you do it every day in other places in your life, you will find that YOU is enough for your clients.
I’ve got five tips for you today that I hope will help you see just how amazing you already are at business!
Grocery Shopping versus Business Budgeting
What do these two things have to do with business?
Everything actually.
What do we need to do with grocery shopping? We need to figure out what we need – and what we want – and we need to know what our budget is.
You do this on a weekly basis, I’d guess. I know I do.
I try to plan ahead to figure out things we need on a regular basis, and I watch for them to go on sale. If they aren’t on sale I get them anyway but being able to plan within your budget is something we all do, or should be doing, all the time.
Understanding that something like grocery shopping that we do every day is very much like budgeting in our VA business, is an everyday lesson that is worth learning.
If you think you can’t budget properly in your business because you have no experience doing it, you can. You have probably been doing something similar (grocery shopping) for many years. You have SO much experience!
Look at the expenses you have for your VA business in a similar way that you stock your pantry – what do you absolutely need, what do you need sometimes, what do you just like, and what can you get rid of or stop buying?
View your VA business budget like your household grocery budget and you will be able to make sound decisions about where to spend your money.
Building a business requires some outlay of cash on a regular basis – your expenses. If you constantly think you don’t have enough money to spend on what you need to keep your VA business pantry stocked, you may find yourself either not having enough of the basics, or stuck buying things at the regular price because you are not planning for what you need with enough time to seek out a better (or sale) price for it.
Make sense? I hope so – this is meant to simplify the way you think about things.
Cooking versus Project Management
Now before you jump up and tell me that you aren’t a good cook, I want to say that even if you aren’t good at cooking, you can still understand how it works – or how it’s supposed to work! 🙂
So this should still help!
Cooking a meal requires some planning, coordination and execution. We decide what the meal will be, we create or figure out the steps that we need to take to make it, and then we follow them to make the recipe. Right?
What do we call that in the business world? Project management!
Project management is a business skill that we often need to use – especially as Virtual Assistant, if we are the one who is keeping all the balls in the air for our clients.
But it’s also something that we need to use in our own business.
We need to plan our goals, our schedule, our money, everything.
And it can all be done in the same way that we approach cooking in every day life.
We want to do things that we like, or love. Much like the foods we prepare for ourselves and our family.
We want to figure out the simplest steps to create what we want. In cooking that could be buying pre-prepped items like chopped garlic or premade chicken stock. It might be using an Instant Pot instead of the stovetop. You get the idea. There are shortcuts all around us in every day life that we can also mirror in business.
Cooking also shows us the importance of time management – when we are trying to get everything together on the same plate so that our meal is hot, what do we do? We look at prep and cook times and we plan accordingly. And of course we put the oven on low to keep certain things warm while we finish up other stuff.
Same with your VA business. We need to set up lead times according to our deadlines and how long things take to do.
It’s all the same type of skill, just used for something different. Look at your project management and task completion and even goal setting and strategy in the same way as you look at preparing a meal.
If you don’t know the ingredients you need, figure it out. If you don’t know the steps you need to take, research those. If you don’t get it quite right the first time, figure out what you did wrong and write it down so you don’t do it again.
Same. Same.
Fun, eh? Let’s keep going.
Gardening versus Patience
One of the things that we really need to exercise in business is patience.
Whether it’s getting started, growing, changing, or reaching a lofty goal, we need to make sure that we are not setting our expectations too high.
Here’s an example of what I mean: we join a Facebook group with the intention of networking with people and finding clients. And then we get frustrated that we don’t get a client in the first week. Or we get in trouble for self promotion. Or we find that the group is a dud.
While I don’t want you to wait months to get any of that working, you have to have realistic expectations – around timing and how relationships work. And that often takes patience.
An every day comparison to something that requires similar patience is gardening.
Gardening is one of those things that, especially since the pandemic, everyone wants to do.
But you can’t make a plant grow faster, or bear fruit faster. You have to wait.
And in the meantime there are many things you need to do to nurture it.
The right temperature, the right light, the right moisture, and the right pruning are all important to help that plant grow in the best way it can.
Your business networking is the same. You need to find the right people, in the right place, say the right things, and still tweak those conversations and follow up so that you nurture that person and that relationship.
Doing both of these things also requires consistent effort, a willingness to learn – and also the confidence to adapt when necessary.
Finally, delayed gratification is a big part of gardening. We wait months to harvest what we are growing – but because we are looking at it every day we can monitor its progress.
This is also good advice when you are talking about building your VA business.
Don’t just network when you are looking for a VA client.
Don’t just post in a Facebook group when you feel like it.
Don’t just analyze your expenses when you are having a lean month.
Keep an eye on all of these things, just like a garden.
Nurture it and grow it, and it will produce the best yield for you every season.
Okay so if you don’t shop, cook or garden (ha ha), maybe you can relate to sports!
Sports versus Team Dynamics
Whether you are working with just your client, or a team, it’s important to master the skill of teamwork to be successful in your VA business.
What do we need to be a team player? We need to communicate well. We need to collaborate well, buy into the plan, implement the plan effectively, be willing to learn and grow.
Teamwork is so important when you are a VA. You are a service professional who is providing support to a client in order for them to run their business smoothly, or grow it effectively.
They are relying on you to help them with certain things, and do it from a distance.
So communication and a good plan is very important.
Sometimes we also need to take on a leadership role. If you are a proactive VA, you will take charge of the projects that your clients have going. Maybe that means coordinating with other people, or just managing a lot of tasks.
Either way, leadership is important – and can help you build a solid role for yourself on your client’s team.
Just like in a sport, you might be a key player that becomes indispensable.
Maybe the quarterback, or maybe the receiver.
And in sports too, communication is key. Everyone has to be on the same page, and communication is a very important factor.
In my beloved hockey, the game moves so quickly and there are so many moving parts – line changes, different teams, different cities, different ice conditions. You have to think quickly and make fast decisions, but you also have to work from a playbook so that you aren’t just all doing what you think is right in the moment. Because it’s a team game, not an individual game. One guy might score a goal, but it takes the team to win the game.
Exactly the same as your VA services. We need our clients to do what we do. We need to work with them to make sure that we have all of the plans and action steps in place to get where we want to go.
Give yourself the best advantage to be a great team player by communicating well, keeping things organized and on deadline. Collaboration is easy when everyone is clear on the goals and the steps to achieve them!
What do you think?? Cool list, eh?
I’m always looking for ways to help you understand how simple it is to run a successful Virtual Assistant business.
And always trying to remind you of how much you already know how to do.
Confidence is a big issue with VAs. The lack of it, I mean.
We think we don’t know enough.
We think we aren’t making the right decisions.
We think we aren’t the right person to do this or that.
There is always someone better, or so we think.
When we look at things from another perspective like our everyday situations, we can view ourselves in a much brighter light.
We can see that we already do so many of these things every single day – and we don’t even realize it.
I always tell VAs that decision making is simple – you decide what time to get up, what to wear, when to brush your teeth, what to eat, when your car needs gas, when you should leave to arrive at a destination on time, when to charge your phone … and so on.
We make a million decisions a day. And we move forward.
That’s what you need to do for your business too.
Recognize just how good you are – how valuable you are – and then make the decisions necessary to move yourself forward. One step at at time.
Do You Need Help?
If you are ready to take a step forward (or many steps forward, actually!), that’s where I come in. I am here for one reason – to help you become a ridiculously good VA.
I have helped hundreds of VAs who are stuck get moving through private coaching, group coaching, and live and self study trainings. If you want to talk about how we can work together, let’s connect on a Cut to the Chase call. You can book yours at YourVAMentor.com/chase
Thanks for tuning in this week! I’ll see you next time!
What You Need to Do Next:
Let’s work together privately to get you to your really big goal. It’s the fastest way to get results and we can start right away. Learn more about private coaching here.
The Virtual Circle (TVC) is a monthly mastermind group for Virtual Assistants just like you. We get together 3 times a month for group Zoom sessions to talk about what you are struggling with, working on, or celebrating. It’s a close knit community of your VA colleagues that provides the best kind of support for your VA business. Learn more about TVC here.
My self study program Getting Started as a VA can help you get your VA business started easily and quickly too. You can sign up right away and be on your way to getting clients by the end of the program, with all the right foundations in place. Check out the program here.
Click here for more tips to help you with your productivity and time management in your Virtual Assistant business.
Reach out to me if you need to talk about where you are stuck and what the right option might be to get you moving. It’s literally all I’m here to do is help you get to where you want to go. Book a complimentary Cut to the Chase call with me here.