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Referenced Links:
- Upwork
- 15 Known Secrets to Getting Started as a Virtual Assistant
- 21 Day Webinar Challenge
- VAVS
- Udemy
- AWeber
- MailChimp
- GetResponse
- iContact
Tweetables:
Don’t give your asset to someone else. #vatip 
Gotta Tweet!
Being afraid of losing a client is an employee mentality. #vatipGotta Tweet!
It’s okay to turn things down. You don’t have to do everything. #vatip Gotta Tweet!
In Words:
Hello virtual assistants, welcome, welcome, welcome. You are listening to episode number 40. We are just moving right along with our episode series. This is just awesome. Just when I think I have run out of content, there’s nothing else, different things come up, which I’m excited about. There’s so much stuff I want to share with you. I won’t do it all in this one episode. Just know they are going to continue to come because the information continues to flow.
At the beginning of last week’s episode, I said, oh, I’m going to share some announcements, what’s going on, and I got to talking and did not share any announcements. I’m just going to start right away with that and then we’ll get into the content.
We are in our first few days of December and this is the final month of the year. I don’t know about you, but this is when I start reflecting on what all have I done this year? Did I accomplish everything that I wanted to accomplish? In other words, did I go for it? Did I take a chance on everything that I wanted to take a chance on?
I also look at is there something or someone that I don’t want to take into the New Year with me, so kind of do a client evaluation, and if you work with subcontractors, a subcontractor evaluation. Sometimes we kind of hold onto things when we should let them go, and this is a good move to do some letting go.
Okay, so what’s happening behind the scenes? We wrapped up the 21 Day Challenge for Upwork, which went very, very well. We’re going to do that again. It was just good interaction in the group. We did it all in a Facebook group, and so I’ll be bringing the 21 Day Upwork Challenge back again in 2016.
Right now, we’ve started the 21 Day Webinar Challenge. If you are not on my VIP email list, you’re missing out on some good information. That list, they are the first ones to find out about information like this. My podcast listeners, sometimes you’re hearing about things after the fact. If you’re listening to this and you’re hearing about the 21 Day Webinar Challenge, it’s happening right now. It started December 1st and we’re going to go to December 21st like right before Christmas.
If you want to know more information about that, go to TiffanyParson.com and click on Events and that will lead you to where to go to get more information. While you’re there, go ahead and sign up for the VIP list. If you get the 15 Known Secrets to Getting Started as a Virtual Assistant, that automatically puts you on the VIP list. Plus you get that free e-report, which is some great training for you. But you want to be one of the first to find out what is happening, so get on board with that.
I started this 21 Day Webinar Challenge as a result of the training that I did with the VAVS, which is the virtual assistant virtual summit. My training was on how virtual assistants can use webinars for their business. That went really well and the challenge is about putting things into action and working out some of the more challenging parts or parts that may be challenging to some, which is the tools, which is getting comfortable with speaking virtually. All of that is being tackled in this 21 Day Webinar Challenge. The challenge will, of course, happen again next year in 2016.
I’m kind of changing the whole format of training. Oh, oh, oh, oh, I almost forgot so I’m like, oh, getting excited. I’m remembering my announcements. My Udemy course is live. It’s called Make $800 a Month Providing WordPress Content Management Services. There will be a link in the show notes, and if you can’t wait go to TiffanyParson.com and click on Courses and that will get you to my Udemy course. So kind of breaking things up, doing courses on Udemy and then doing challenges where there’s interaction.
Sometimes we take courses online and we have great intentions. We listen, but we don’t put any action behind it. So if there’s no one there to push, we won’t do it. I’m just as guilty of that, but what I found is that challenges help me to reach out and do the things that I want to do.
Even with this course on Udemy, I think it might have been at the beginning of the year I was going to do a course, and I started it and got set up on there and approved as a premium instructor and everything and didn’t go all the way through. You know, things come up, which is crazy because things are always going to come up. The things that we really want, it doesn’t matter if things come up. We have to consciously do it. It’s not something that subconsciously happens just because you want it. We have to go after it and keep going.
Well, they came up with a Black Friday Challenge and that is what got me going. It’s like I want to participate. I want to do this. I want to do it with other instructors, and so it went really, really well, and that sparked in me the whole challenge for virtual assistants in different things and how we end up with the 21 Day Upwork Challenge and the 21 Day Webinar Challenge and there will be some other challenges in the future as well, all that in 2016.
Anyway, those are all of the Virtual Hired Hand, Tiffany Parson announcements.
What I want to talk to you specifically about is training other virtual assistants. Now, we’re kind of in an interesting spot. You may be working with a client that has a virtual team, so different people do different things. At some point, you may be called on to train somebody new coming on to the team. There’s a time when that’s okay and there’s a time when that’s not okay and I’m going to give you both situations so that you can understand where that puts you when you train in both scenarios.
When is it okay to train a new VA coming on?
If there is a service you offer exclusively to a client, you don’t provide it for anyone else. It may be a service that you don’t even advertise. It’s just because of a special relationship you have with a client. You may have started doing a particular thing. A new VA is coming on for whatever reason and they want you to train and it’s specific to their thing, and again, it’s not something you provide to any of your other clients. It’s not advertised. You don’t promote it. You just do for this one and that’s it. That’s when it’s okay.
The flip side of that, and you may have already found yourself in this position. Let’s say you do newsletters for a client. It doesn’t matter whether it’s AWeber, MailChimp, GetResponse, iContact. It doesn’t matter. You do their enewsletters or ezine, whatever they call them. You do that for them, and they are bringing someone new on the team. It may be a situation where it could be a transition. Maybe you’re moving on to something else and they get somebody new and now they want you to train the new person. This is when it is not okay.
If they are contracting with another virtual assistant, the virtual assistant coming on board should have the skills to do what they’ve contracted them to do. It is not your obligation, nor should it be expected for you to train their new virtual assistant.
Now, on a job you train somebody new that comes to the team. They may have somebody sit with you and watch, totally different on the job. You kind of have to surrender to the job. But for your virtual assistant business, the services you provide to all your clients, say you’re doing newsletters for all of your clients. You can’t give your moneymaker to somebody new because a client hired someone who is not skilled at that task. Make sense?
Let’s say you do graphics. You do their Instagram graphics and now they want you to show somebody else how to do Instagram graphics. No, no, no. The answer is no, I cannot do that. However you want to say that in a professional way. You don’t give your bread and butter to somebody else unless you’re holding a training class and you have a lot of people. You get it. That’s totally different.
Do not feel like you have to train somebody new because the client asked. Remember, you are a business owner.
If you are going to a new dentist, would you have the old dentist call the new dentist and tell them how to clean your teeth? Even if you have a special situation with your teeth, do they tell them how to fix it? No. They’ll send your records because those are exclusive to you, but they don’t give them instructions on how to set up the x-ray machine and what tools to use and all that stuff, right? That’s crazy. In fact, you wouldn’t even go to a dentist that had to be told how to do what dentists do.
If you were going to a new hairstylist, would you have the old hairstylist contact the new hairstylist to tell the new hairstylist how to do your hair? That is a huge red flag. That means they don’t know what they’re doing. They are supposed to be the professionals. They are supposed to already know what to do. Same scenario for us, so if you’re ever asked to train somebody new, consider the situation.
Remember, if it’s something exclusive to that client, you only provide it for that client. It might be something that client taught you that’s exclusive to them, meaning you don’t plan to offer it to anyone else, okay. Sometimes something could seem like it’s exclusive, but it’s not if you plan to offer the service to someone else. If it’s theirs, meaning the reason why you even do it in the first place is because they asked.
Maybe it’s transcriptions and you don’t plan to offer transcriptions to anybody. You’re pretty much doing it because you like this client, you enjoy working with them, and you want to do it, but you don’t plan to offer it as a service worldwide. In that case, you could train somebody. Or maybe they’re using a tool like, I’m trying to think, some type of email system and you don’t plan to offer that to anyone and so you show them how that works, totally, totally different.
I’ve heard situations where VAs were asked to provide all of their tools, like their system of how they accomplished something for a client, and give it to the new VA. No. That’s not how it works. If you’ve created a routine, a strategy for getting things done for your client, that does not belong to them. That is you as result of them providing the service for you.
If you hired an accountant to do your taxes and say you were getting a new accountant. The old one would not call and give instructions to the new one. The new one has to start over as though it never happened. That’s probably one of the reasons why a lot of clients, if they like what you’re providing with them, they stick with you because it’s hard starting with someone new because it’s starting all over. It’s building a whole new relationship. It’s retraining all over again.
Don’t give your asset to someone else.
That’s the biggest key for today, I just want to share with you, and again, keep in mind what those differences are. If it’s something that you’re providing as a service to all of your clients, it does not belong exclusively to the one, so you can’t give it to someone new.
If they’ve hired somebody on to do MailChimp, that person should be able to do MailChimp without you training them. Now, you of course may have to give a password or…you know what, all of that should be on the client. If you all’s contract has ended, all that information should be coming from the client, not from you. You shouldn’t have any interaction with the new virtual assistant. It doesn’t work that way.
You are a business owner and not an employee. Because we are providing services, sometimes those lines get blurred and it’s our fault because we put ourselves in a position to be looked at as an employee.
This makes me think about something else I wasn’t even planning on going into, but maybe it’s a piggyback from last week about being okay to say “no,” to decline on something. A client recently asked me to oversee a project and I oversee projects with my team. I don’t oversee projects with other people’s teams, and so that’s something I said, “No, I’m not interested in overseeing.”
You have to be willing to be strong and firm and professional.
Remember, you are a business, and not being desperate for the money. The money will come. I think that’s where a lot of it comes from is the fear of losing a client and it’s like so what. So what. You got get you somebody else. You should always be marketing your business. You should always be putting yourself out there anyway. Being afraid of losing a client is an employee mentality. Oh, I’m afraid of losing my job. It’s an employee mentality.
As a business owner, you own a business. One client should not be the end all, be all of your business. One client should not be 80 percent of your business, and you work at not making that so. You work at not making that so. When you’re starting out, you’re building, so you may have one or two clients. But you continue to build until it gets to a comfortable point for you.
I think I’ve talked about this in a past episode, I can’t remember, about working for one client versus many clients. I’m just an advocate for working for many clients instead of being exclusive, meaning you only work with that one client. It puts you in a position of being an employee contractor versus a true contractor, a true business owner.
Always be on the lookout for new clients, always be marketing your business, and treat your business like a business. You can say “no.” You can decline. You can turn things down. It’s okay, and you don’t have to do everything. You don’t have to train new team members. You don’t. If it’s your regular services, what are you doing? Don’t do that. Don’t do that.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you like what you heard, stay tuned. We’ll be back. Tell me what’s going on with you. Come on over the Facebook page: facebook.com/tiffanyparsonbiz, or if you prefer a little shorter message, come on over to Twitter: @tiffanydparson.
See you next time.
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