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TBBVA Top Episodes of 2021:
- TBBVA 200 – The Gift of Time
- TBBVA 190 – 5 Things I Wish I Had Known Before Starting My Virtual Assistant Business
- TBBVA 191 – Getting Organized
- TBBVA 193 – 5 Questions to Answer Before Your Next Discovery Call
- TBBVA 195 – How Do You Know An Activity Is Income Generating?
- TBBVA 199 – Mistakes Happen
- TBBVA 194 – 3 Things To Remember When Working With New Clients
- TBBVA 198 – A True Conversation About Why You’re Here and What It Will Take to Stay
Links Referenced:
On Video:
In Words:
Hi and welcome to The Business of Being a Virtual Assistant. I’m your host, Tiffany Parson and you’re watching and listening to episode number 2-10. Welcome back everyone! And if this is your very first time listening to the podcast, welcome welcome!
Thank you so much again for watching and listening in this episode! I am sharing with you the top episodes of 2021 and also we’re gonna talk about the mind of an owner.
Real quick, to give you the rundown on the top episodes of 2021:
It looks like the last half of the year, got the most listens of the whole year.
The number one episode was the Episode 200, The Gift of Time.
You guys really liked The Gift of Time. I looked at the numbers from Facebook, Youtube, iTunes, Stitcher. And I’m, I’m missing one, the website, those come from Libsyn. Anyway, I’m gonna put all of these links in the show notes so you can see what the top episodes were and link them up.
Those of you that are just joining for the first time or you’re just curious, I want to go back and re-listen or see what they are. They’ll be all linked up for you. I think this is the first time at least in a long time that I’ve given the top episodes for the year. I have to remember to start doing this at the end of our year, every year.
The second one was 5 Things I Wish I Had Known Before Starting My Virtual Assistant Business.
The third one was Getting Organized
The fourth one, 5 Questions to Answer Before Your Next Discovery Call
And the fifth one How Do You Know An Activity Is Income Generating?
Something I learned about the community is that most of you are listening to the podcast versus watching on YouTube. Of course we do have those who watch on YouTube but the majority of you are listening to the podcast.
Thank you so much for taking me along. If I am on your commute or at the gym or at home. I’m happy to hang out with you and share some of my insights about being a virtual assistant and the business of it. I focus on the business of being a virtual assistant because most of us were employees or are employees.
When we get into building our virtual assistant business because we are helping other people, we tend to still be in employee mode as opposed to owner mode. And I wanted to make sure that I was building a community of owners. And this is why the podcast is named that. This is why I stressed it so much when I first started in the industry.
A lot of resources and information, I was finding about virtual assistance was coming from a standpoint of being an employee, someone hiring you, getting a job stuff like that, as far as, you know, being someone’s VA not focused on the ownership part of it.
In today’s episode, I want to talk to you about what is the mind of an owner? Someone that owns something. And I want you to think if you own your home, you own your business, like in your mind, you have taken ownership.
You could own something on paper, but once you take ownership of it, one of the first things we do, when we take ownership is we know that at the end of the day we are responsible.
It’s not about whose fault something is or who put in the effort, at the end of the day, we, as the owner are responsible.
It’s just like if something happens at your house and you know, there’s an accident or whatever, it doesn’t matter who caused it. They’re looking at the owner, right?
If in our business, if something goes well, if something goes bad, they’re looking at the owner, right? We’re responsible.
When we’re at work, they’re not looking at the owner of the company. They’re looking at the team. They’re not even looking at the manager, they’re not looking at the supervisor, they’re looking at the team. Whose responsibility was it to do this. And that’s how it goes when you’re an employee vs owner. We’re taking ownership of it.
The second thing is, owners don’t have to be motivated to do for their own.
No one has to motivate you to do something that needs to be done in your home, for your car. No one has to motivate you for that. You know, it has to be done or something you want to add to it and so you get the resources and you do it, you make it happen.
Nobody has to keep pushing you and encouraging you to, you know, do that. So you want to, I’m trying to think, oh, so you want to paint or redecorate, nobody has to encourage you.
“Come on, let’s do it. Let’s re-decorate, let’s go pick out your colors.” You don’t need someone from the outside to help motivate. You know, you’re excited to look at it. You know, you’re going on Pinterest, you’re watching a HGTV, you’re going to Lowe’s, Home Depot. You’re getting ideas from everywhere to redecorate in your home
For your business, you know you want to build it. You want more clients, you want to make some changes, you want to increase your rates. No one has to motivate an owner of the business to make these changes. They’re wanting to do it, they’re ready to do it.
It may be a situation where you’re looking for time and resources but the motivation behind it is there when you wake up in the morning.
No one has to say “okay, well today”, let’s say in your home. I like to use the home example because we all live somewhere right? And you take ownership of your home even if you’re renting it’s yours, right? You’re paying for it. You take pride in it.
Nobody has to motivate you to or give you the schedule for the day. “Okay, today you’re gonna wash dishes and do laundry. We’re gonna do some vacuuming. You know lay out your clothes for the day, take a shower.”
Nobody is pushing you to do that. You wake up in the morning. You know what you’re gonna do and you just go for it.
Some things you’re more excited about, some things you’re not so excited about but you’re doing it, you’re ready. You’re going for it.
As a business owner for your virtual assistant business, no one should have to tell you when you head into your office. “Okay, here’s what’s on the schedule for today. Today we’re going to email clients. We’re gonna check inquiries. We’re going to write our blog posts. We’re gonna do this.”
No one is going down a list for you. You are in charge. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a team of one or a team of many. You’re the owner, you’re in charge.
You have the to do list. You wrote the to do list. It’s all on you. It goes back to you being the one who’s responsible.
That’s one of the differences in being the owner of your business vs sitting back and being an employee and waiting.
Your clients, they do outsource to us, they hire us for their projects. We set deadlines for ourselves. Clients may have anticipated deadlines for us. We let them know if this is something that can be reached or not.
As the owner, you don’t always accept what’s given.
If a client is like, oh, I need something tomorrow, you know what’s on the books for tomorrow? You know what things you’re working on already. Most situations clients are going to ask, is this something that can be done by tomorrow and then give it to you to let them know yes or no.
They may want it done tomorrow, but is that doable? Might not be realistic?
You’re the owner let them know. They have no idea. Not only do they have no idea what’s involved, they have no idea what else you have going on.
This makes me think about and I know this is gonna go off topic, but it’s okay.
Some clients you may find, don’t realize that you work with other clients or some clients may I want you to be exclusive to them because they don’t want their project to be, you know, put off because you’ve got other things to do.
How many of you know, exclusivity cost?
It costs to be exclusive to them because there’s risk involved.
When you’re exclusive to one, the one could decide, well we’re gonna go a different way and do something else so we won’t need the services that you’re offering for us anymore. So there’s high, high risk in being exclusive. Which means there’s a high, high price, a high, high rate clients would have to pay for you to be exclusive.
So if you ever, you know are in a situation and clients like well you know, how many other clients do you work with? (this and that), you don’t ask your accountant how many other clients you work with? You don’t ask your doctor, how many other patients he sees? You don’t ask other business owners, professionals, how many people they see?
Why does it matter? What is it that you’re looking for?
Anyway…maybe someone’s dealing with that right now. But just know there’s a high risk, high costs for exclusivity.
So anyway, when they’re asking you can you meet certain deadlines, you respond in a way, Yes based on, you know what we have going on yes or no.
And if the answer is No, let them know when. You know, don’t make them have to pry it out of you, okay? You said No, when? You know you go ahead and include that anyway.
The last thing and a very important thing that I want to talk about in the mind of an owner is that an owner will see it through until the end.
What that looks like is that you’re going to exhaust all options, all possibilities.
You’re going to do everything you can to build to get them things moving in the direction you wanted to go before you throw in the towel, before you switch things up. You’re gonna do everything possible.
And going back to the first thing I said about taking responsibility. We know the things we have done and the things we haven’t done, we take responsibility for that. We know, okay, I need to do more of this because I want to see this all the way through to the end. It also goes back to #2.
We don’t need that outside motivation because we want to see it through all the way to the end. Not giving up, continuing to push, continuing to move, continuing to go forward. Maybe shaking a little bit, but still moving forward and persevering through it as a virtual assistant.
We’re gonna work with a lot of different personalities, work ethics, different styles and ways and how people like to do things. As the owner, you’re in charge of your side and how you like to do things and your clients are gonna be looking to you for that guidance.
You don’t want the client that wants to control everything including you. Those are red flags. And you’ll see those red flags in discovery calls. That’s why discovery calls are very important. You’ll see those red flags, you set the tone for your business. You’re responsible for it all.
You don’t need any motivation from the outside because you got this, you’re the owner. It’s nice but it’s not needed and you’re gonna push and persevere press through it, seeing it all the way through to the end.
You have goals that you’ve set for this year and you’re gonna see those all the way through to the to the end. Doing everything in your power that you can to get your business to where you want to be.
This is the end of our episode.
I want to thank you so much for listening! I know most of you are listening and for those who are watching, thank you! So the thank you so much for watching as well.
I appreciate you guys. You have no idea. You all keep me going every single week in doing the podcast. I get excited about it. You don’t even know that you’re a part of my internal motivation because I know that you’re out there and you’re listening and continue to listen. Thank you so much!
I’d love to hear your comments and your feedback. You can post your comments on Facebook. Go to facebook.com/tbbva. That stands for tThe Business of Being a Virtual Assistant.
If you like to be kept in the know about what’s going on this year. If you want to be one of the first ones to know when episodes are released, be sure to join our V. I. P. Email list. You can text the number 33777 and you want to text the word “VAStart” that will get you added to the list.
Head to tiffany parson dot com and you will be able to get added that way, click on ‘Training’ and you’ll see the free resource and get you get added to the V. I. P. list that way. I thank you so much.
Evidently I didn’t drink enough water before I started the podcast where I’m stumbling over my words. But anyway, I’m gonna get some water. You guys have a wonderful and fabulous weekend! I’ll see you next time.
Much love,
Tiffany
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