Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS | More
Links Referenced:
Tweetables:
When working your own business, you have to figure out how you will handle things like being sick. #vatip 
Gotta Tweet!
If you’re at the research point, it’s time to dive in and start digging for your first client. #vatip Gotta Tweet!
Find out if it’s time to switch gears, do another service, or add more team members. #vatip Gotta Tweet!
On Video:
In Words:
Hi and welcome to The Business of Being a Virtual Assistant. I’m your virtual co-worker and your host, Tiffany Parson. You’re watching and listening to episode number 122.
Now, there are two topics I want to talk to you about on this episode and the first – I don’t know if you follow me on Facebook. Hopefully, you do. I’m there every single day where you can connect with me. But I posted a picture a few days ago of my eye. I woke up with a little blood in my eye. I don’t know if you can see it here or not. Of course, I know if you’re listening, you can’t see it.
But I posted a picture there, and the day that this happened, I continued to work. But something funny came to my mind and that’s how when I used to work in corporate, if something like that happened, I woke up and there was blood in my eye, I would have called out sick. I would have. I would have called out sick because that was the perfect excuse, and just chilled all day.
Now, that’s the difference between having an employee mindset versus owning your own business.
Now, as a business owner, I serve clients every single day and I know, yes, if I was truly, truly sick, my clients, if I let them know that I was sick, they would be fine. But here’s the deal. I have been really, really, really sick before and after I got really, really sick, I stopped calling out sick from work. Not that I would do it all the time. But really, bottom line, I was just looking for a reason not to go to work because I hated it.
I wanted to be home. I wanted to do something for myself. Well, now that I do and have been since 2008, I have not had a sick day. There’s no reason. I’m home all day working with clients and it’s not a straight, you know, nine to five like you would in your regular office job. I work throughout the day, stopping as I need to, on client projects, right.
So what’s the point of taking a sick day? Plus, I’m not sick. My head is fine. There’s no pain. The eyeball is good, and I checked with WebMD to make sure everything is okay. So the eye will heal itself in a couple weeks it said. Hopefully, it will be a few days and not two weeks.
But, yeah, it got me thinking about how I normally would handle things. I can remember, you know, you have a sinus pressure or a slight headache, I mean, anything. I need to be a little late to work or I won’t be there or whatever. Now, that I’m talking about my eye, it feels like something just dropped in my eye. Anyway, I’ll try not to let that annoy me. All right, so that’s the deal.
So when you’re working your own business, you have to figure out how will you handle things. Yes, you need your rest. But at the same time, do you need your rest for the full workday, whatever your normal workday would look like? Like let’s use the corporate job as an example. If it’s an eight full hours, do you need a whole eight hours to get your rest, or can you do a mix of both? I would guess in most situations, unless you’re at the hospital, you can do a mix of both.
Now, I’m not telling you what to do with your business. I just know how I handle mine. It’s rare that I get sick. Plus, I’m not around a whole lot of germy people anyway. I tell you, when my husband and I go out, if somebody is coughing or something like that, I can’t wait to get home to take some cold medicine just in case for a little, you know, blocking it just in case. Try to be proactive because I’m not around that a whole lot.
But anyway, something to think about, how you handle something as simple as what would have normally been a sick day as an employee, as a business owner and what does that look like. Now, what I will make sure I do is get into bed early and try not to have as much as screen time, because I go from one screen to the other, from my computer to my phone, back to the computer, back to the phone, maybe on the Kindle and different things like that. So I am going to try to have a little less screen time.
All right, so if you have questions about that, let me know how would you even, you know, handle that? Is it something you’ve even thought about. You may not have even thought about it. What would you do? What would you do if you did have – woke up and had a migraine? Would you email all of your clients or would you work around it?
It really depends on deadlines. If you don’t have a deadline that day, if there isn’t anything that absolutely must get done that day, then guess what? Work at the pace that you can work, whatever that is. If it’s two or three hours, do that. If it’s one hour, do that. You’ll be surprised. I promise you, you’ll be surprised how much time you won’t need unless you’ve just been running yourself raggedy and hopefully you haven’t.
Now, I got this new book in the mail just today and I thought it would be perfect just to share with you what I’m reading, and I’ll start doing that. Normally, I’ll order books on Kindle, but this was a book I wanted to have in hand. Once I read it, have it on the shelf, and you may already have it on your shelf. It’s called The Dip by Seth Godin.
It’s a small book. There are only – how many pages? I don’t even think it’s 100 pages. Let’s see. How many pages? Not even 100. It’s 76 pages. So this will be read – I’m not going to say by tonight. Because, again, I’m going to try to rest my eyes. But by the time I start reading it, I know I won’t want to stop.
What it’s about? It’s about helping you identify when to quit and when to stick. Is that something that you’ve been dealing with either in your business or your personal life? Are there things that you have been working on or dabbling in and you’re not sure if you should move forward or should you quit? This is going to help and I’m excited to read it. I can’t wait to read it.
I was, you know, reading the summary along the edges of it and the first thing I notice, it says, “The old saying is wrong.” You know, the saying we always hear is that, “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” Well, Seth Godin said that is actually wrong. He says, “Winners do quit and quitters do win.” So this book is going to help you know when to quit and when to stick.
Have you ever quit something and felt so glad once it was done, once you quit and walked away?
You didn’t have to think about it or you didn’t have to feel the pressure of it. The flip side of that is there may be something that you’re wanting to stop doing, but you’re right at that point where you’re almost to your goal.
Have you seen that picture where it’s like a miner and he’s in a cave and he’s, you know, digging, digging, and one view – I think it’s two different men digging, digging, and he’s very close to the diamonds. But he decides to walk away. He quits too soon. The diamonds are right there.
So the next person that comes along, guess what, find it right away because he dug the path. He was almost there, and sometimes that’s the sticking point where you’re like not sure. Should I keep going? Am I almost there? Am I almost there?
So I’m not sure how much digging you’ve been doing in regards to your VA business, in regards to getting it off the ground. Most of the people I’ve been hearing from are just getting started or they’re just researching, just thinking about it. So you can’t really decide to quit something you haven’t started.
If you’re at the research point, you’re thinking about it point, it’s time to dive in and start digging for your first client. Start finding where they are.
Now, to my VA business owners that have been in their business for a while, maybe it’s a service that you’ve been providing and it’s not fun anymore and you’re wondering is it because of the opportunities, the different projects, the clients that I’ve had? What is it? Is it something that I’m supposed to stop?
This book is going to give us some tips on that. I can’t give you my full opinion on the book because I haven’t read it yet, but will do that in the next episode. I did jot down a few things that stood out. It says, “Quit fast. Quit often. Quit without guilt. Quit without guilt.”
I’m going to tell you an old, old story. I tried to think of something that I wanted to quit and I kind of stuck it out for a little bit. Because, usually, I try to think about things at the beginning before I even start. But I can think of like being in college and being overzealous and taking a million classes because I was used to doing that in high school. So trying to have that some schedule where you have classes from 8:00 to 3:00, being overly ambitious and it was crazy.
I had to drop some stuff so I could have a reasonable schedule. Doing that, dropping those classes, at first you think, well, is this going to affect me graduating in four years because I’m not sticking around for a fifth year. But I quit it anyway. Actually, one of the classes quit me because it just – it was smart for me to drop it off before the grades came out.
Anyway, so this book is going to inspire us hang tough or have the courage to quit and be number one at something else. I really, really like that a lot, so I’m looking forward to seeing what this book has to offer. Like I said, it’s a quick one, 76 pages.
All right, so this episode number 122. I really want to get your feedback in regards to how you plan to handle sick days in your virtual assistant business or how you’re already handling it.
Also, if you’re at the point where you’re not sure if you should quit something or you should move forward, let me know if you’ll be reading The Dip with me. We’ll talk about this in more detail on episode 123. So get to reading. You can probably go grab the Kindle version. If you’re Amazon Prime, you can probably get it in two days and have it right there.
So anyway, let me know. I’m on Facebook every day. You can post your question over there or on YouTube. If you’re watching this video on YouTube, post your questions in the comments. I get a notification every time you comment and I will answer there.
Also, if you have been listening to the podcast for a while, I would love to get your review on iTunes. I don’t ask for reviews often, but I think it will help if people are searching for virtual assistants and they’re, you know, searching through podcasts and they come upon this one, if there’s some reviews there. I haven’t checked, so I’ll have to check to see if we have any. But if not, if you haven’t posted yours, please be sure to post there. We’re getting new listeners every single day and I am excited to have you along on this journey.
Those of you that are just getting started, all the best to you and your business. Those of you who have been in it for a while, hang tough or get to reading and find out if it’s time to switch gears, do another service, add more team members. You know how it goes. You’ve been in this for a while.
So you have a wonderful and fabulous day.
[…] Episode 122: Is it Really a Sick Day? […]