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Hi, and welcome to The Business of Being a Virtual Assistant. I’m your host, Tiffany Parson. Thank you so much for listening or watching to today’s episode.
I want to talk to you about making the decision to win. Have you set goals for yourself for this year and you decided to succeed in those goals? You made the decision to win. Are there other goals you set for yourself and you haven’t decided to win? You’ve allowed yourself to coast and you know it. Let’s talk about that.
Winning, first of all, is going to look different for every single one of us. In terms of this episode, when I’m talking about winning, I mean whatever the end result of your goal is, whatever the success at the end is. That is the win. It could be as simple as starting a podcast, writing a blog post, posting regularly on social media. It could be a simple as getting started in your virtual assistant business. Those are goals that you may have set for yourself and achieving that, being consistent with that is your win.
Now, the question is have you decided that you’re going to win?
I’m going to give you some examples of what it looks like when we make the decision to win. Now, I’m not condoning gambling or playing the lottery or anything like that, but I thought it would be a good illustration that we can relate to as far as how it is when you make up in your mind that you’re going to win, and you keep going after the win again and again.
Years ago, I used to live in Dallas, Texas. Before I moved there, I was in North Carolina, and at that time the lottery was not legal in North Carolina. But when I moved to Dallas, Texas it was legal and it was the thing, and every single week my coworkers would have this, you know, they put together all their money and have a big pool and play the lottery.
Well, I was the new kid and didn’t really understand. I was new to the whole lottery thing. But I watched this process every single week and they were determined to win. Every single week, they’d pool the money together, have the pool, decide who was going to get it, who was going to collect the money, who was going to go get the tickets, and they continued to go after the win over and over and over again.
Now, I don’t know, they never hit it really big, but every now and again they’d get a hit. But that may be you as well. Maybe you play the lottery and you’re determined at some point I am going to win. Well, now we have the lottery in North Carolina and so I’m sure there are people now here in my state (I’m back in North Carolina) that they are determined I am going to win this lottery, especially when it’s like a Mega win, a Powerball or Mega win, whatever it’s called. But people continue to go after it again and again because they have decided they’re going to win.
Win or lose, they continue going after the win, and that’s the kind of determination we need to accomplish not just our professional goals, but our life goals as well. We have to decide that we’re going to win, and no matter what the results are, if we lose, we still continue going after the win because we’ve decided.
Now, if you’ve ever played a sport – when I was in high school, I cheered. We would have competitions, and of course, your squad decides, hey, we’re going to win, and we continue to go enter into different competitions, making decision we’re going to win. When we didn’t win, we worked harder so we could win the next time.
Well, maybe you were actually on the sports team. You played football. You did track. You did basketball, tennis, soccer, baseball, whatever it was. But every single week with your team, your goal was to win and you go after the win. Whether you lost the game or you won the game, you were going after the next win. That’s just another example about when we make the decision to win, we continue to go after it.
Now, I noticed a downfall for me personally when it comes to my direct selling business. Every single month there are incentives and I talk myself out of winning the incentive because I know what all is involved. I have been making up in my mind that I’m not going to win it, so I don’t go for it, and that is insane, I know. I am focused on other areas of my business. When it comes to my virtual assistant business, when it comes to my marriage, when it comes to things that I need to do, I’m focused. I made the decision to win in those areas and work towards that every single day.
But this is one area I have won before in the past. Years ago, in my late 20s I used to do art shows and had fun with it, made sales, won free trips and bonuses and all that stuff, and now a little later in life [laughs] I have psyched myself out of this, and it’s like this is crazy, like I’m a winner. Why have I decided not to win in this area?
Then, I thought about you and the podcast and how this must be what it’s kind of like when you haven’t decided to win in your virtual assistant business, meaning you haven’t gotten out of the gate with whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing, whether it’s a new skill, whether it’s bringing on subcontractors, whether it’s adding on more clients, whether it’s doing more marketing, whether it’s doing more writing with your blog or social media or whatever the case may be. Maybe it’s locally, letting people in your local area know that you’re around; you provide this service. But because you have not decided to win, those steps have not been made.
I’m challenging us today in this podcast episode to make the decision to win.
Think back on the last time you know in your mind you said, “I’m going to win this thing,” and you went after it with all your might, with everything that you had and you won, or maybe you went after it with all you had and you didn’t win, but you walked away with lessons learned, with seeing how much you could accomplish and realize, you know what, I did the doggone thing, whether I won the ultimate prize or not. You won the win and that you did go after it with everything that you had in you.
Maybe it’s not even related to your virtual assistant business. Maybe it’s related to getting out of debt or weight loss or getting a new home or car or whatever the case may be. It’s time we all make the decision to win. What is the win for you at the end? What is that win?
Usually, one win builds on another. There will be something else and something else. But the whole point of it, just like with a sports team, is for us to continue going after the win, not necessarily being so caught up into the result like, oh, shucks, I lost. No, the win is even the movement, the going forward, going after the thing that we set our sights on and what we learn along the way.
When I was in corporate, one of my jobs, I worked at this healthcare consulting company and they wanted us to dive into the company’s core values, so they did this whole contest where you could win different prizes. This was around the time when iPods first came out, and I decided to win the iPod. When they announced the contest, I was like I’m going to win the iPod, and I set my sights on it and made the decision to win.
Guess what? I won the iPod, and it wasn’t a raffle ticket or anything like that. We had to give a speech. We had to pick a core value, give the definition of the core value and give a speech in front of a group of people to compete for whatever the prize was. I made up in my mind I was going to win this iPod and I won it. That is a time I clearly remember that I set out at the very beginning, saw a thing, decided I was going to win it, and won it in the end.
Now, with my virtual assistant business, I didn’t know it would be a virtual assistant business. What I knew is that I wanted to work from home, and when opportunity presented itself and the opportunity was not in the form of a client requesting my services. Opportunity was a blog post that I read and the lady in the post said that her friend used this website and was making money doing different freelance projects. Because I knew I wanted to work from home, that was an opportunity. I clicked on the link and investigated what it was, and the next thing you know I was on Elance. I set up a profile. A couple weeks later, I had my very first client.
Sometimes opportunity is not the actual final win, whatever the win is. It’s the opportunity to get to the win, right?
If your goal is to get out of debt, what would an opportunity look like? Is that getting started on Upwork in your virtual assistant business? Is that taking on additional clients because you’re already set up? What does it look like for you? It’s going to be different for everybody, but those are a part of the steps once you’ve decided to win.
See, once we’ve made the decision to win, then we start seeing opportunities where we can step in there and walk closer and closer to everything that we want to accomplish because we’ve already set the tone in our mind. We’ve made the decision I’m going to win.
Let’s say if weight loss is your thing. You have a goal, or maybe the goal is not even weight loss, but just to change your eating habits. You know your eating habits are bad. I’ll use myself. I would skip meals just because it was easier not to have to think about it. I work from home. I’m really involved. I didn’t want to stop, or I’d stop and it’s just too much to think about what to eat, where to go, all this stuff.
Then, I made the decision I’m going to win in this area because this is silly. I should be eating. I know I should have at least three meals a day. I made the decision I’m going to win and what I did, instead of sitting around waiting on the opportunity, no, I started digging around and researching. There has got to be a service, something where they provide the food, here it is, and you eat it. There are all different systems where you can order and you have to cook the meals and all this stuff. I had investigated those. I looked into just having groceries delivered to my house.
Then, the next thing you know I learned about Clean Eatz on Facebook and they are a service where they’ll send you a menu every Thursday. You tell them what you want your order to be for the following week. You pick it up on Monday. Voilà, there’s your food. It is a healthy proportion of food. It is healthy food. It’s good, and I don’t have to think. I just pull it out of our refrigerator, put it on a plate, heat it up, and there’s my lunch. Problem solved. I made the decision to win my battle of skipping meals, so there we have it.
The whole point of today is it’s time for you to decide to win, whether that’s in your business, your home life, personally for yourself. Whatever it is and whatever area it is, it’s time you be specific and decide you’re going to win. Can’t be so generic. If you say “home life,” be specific about what that means. If it’s finances, be specific about what that means because that may be savings related versus getting out of debt related.
Be specific with yourself in the area that you’re going to decide to win.
Once you’ve made up in your mind I’m going to win, it’s time to be on the lookout for the opportunities that present themselves. The opportunities won’t always fall in your lap. It may be a matter of getting on your best friend Google and doing a little research because now you’re open to the steps, the actions that it takes to get you closer and closer to your win.
I wish you all the best in your success in whatever area it is that you need to win. It’s time we turn the clock and change things around from being just coasting along to actually moving, getting into action, and reaching the successes that we know we deserve because we work hard and are going to go after them every single day.
I want to hear from you about today’s episode. Let me know if you have a question, how this impacted you. Whatever it is, I want you to post in the comments, either below if you’re watching on YouTube or come on over to my Facebook page if you’re listening to today’s episode.
Thank you so much for your time. It is time we make the decision to win.
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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