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Hi and welcome to The Business of Being a Virtual Assistant. I’m your host and virtual co-worker, Tiffany Parson. You’re listening to and watching episode number 133.
Now, if you are regular listener, then you know it’s been a couple weeks since I have done a recording, and when I tell you I missed you, I missed you. I miss recording. It’s like I’m just unsettled until I do the things that I know I’m supposed to do.
So I gave myself a restricted time, and this is how I did it. I just, you know, my battery is low on my phone and I record on my iPhone and I also am recording the audio on my computer. So, for me, sometimes I just need to put myself in a tight spot so I can go ahead and get it done because it’s easy to overthink.
Are you an overthinker? It’s very easy to overthink, overthink what to share, what to talk about. What do people care about?
You know what? I have to just keep reminding myself, if we’re virtual coworkers, if we were in the same office and I’m learning something, I share with you. I’ve been in the office for over ten years. Maybe this is your first year or you’ve been around for three years or five years or what have you. But either way, we can come together and just talk, and so that is what this episode is. I’m just going to catch you up on what is going on.
The other day, I got invited on Upwork to do this project where it was an interview. The guy, he was doing some research for his Ph.D. program and his, you know, paper is going to be all about freelancers and the whole gig economy and things like that. So for 30 minutes, I got a chance to just talk to him about freelancing. He’s asking me questions and it was so much fun. I just could have talked to him forever. Why? Because we all like to talk about ourselves, right?
This is what I share with him, you know, how it all got started back in 2008. I was reminiscing on my first project, the things that stood out, my very first project, my first regular clients, the first client that referred me to someone outside of Elance, because Upwork was Elance when I first started. It was just cool walking down memory lane and remembering that in 2008 it was not a thing for us to be doing video or even, you know, audio like mp3 stuff.
Because I remember a project I had where I had to record myself saying daily affirmations on a CD and send it to the client. That was the project, to read the affirmations, burn it to a CD, and send it to them, to him. Because, I don’t know, we didn’t think about sending the mp3 file. I guess, at that point, 2008, I’m not really sure if there were a lot of mp3 players. Was iPod even around? I think, yeah, iPods were around, but I don’t know. It wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t common.
So, anyway, just going down memory lane and just talking about that, talking about the changes that have happened with the merger between Elance and oDesk and now, you know, it’s become Upwork. You know, some people are frustrated with the whole rating system. But for me, I find the majority of my clients off of Upwork.
I started with Upwork. It is still the number one place that I recommend for brand new virtual assistants to start because a lot of people are there that are looking for someone to do something for them, and that’s the best place to go. It’s just that now we have more avenues to get clients. Now, we’ve got social marketing. Now, we’ve got email marketing, more networking locally, and meetups and different things like that.
I do most of my things online because, you know, that’s where I get excited. I’ve gone out locally to do networking, things like that. But I always revert back to, you know, going online and doing things that way, and word of mouth. A lot of clients refer as well. Now, you don’t want your business to be 100 percent world of mouth because now you’re sitting around waiting and depending on someone to say something really good about you so that you get more clients.
We have to always be marketing ourselves in some way.
I keep a profile on Upwork because I like to test and make sure what I’m sharing in my 21 Day Upwork Challenge Guide is still relevant, and as things change, that will be updated as well. If you’ve ever gotten that guide, if you’ve ever purchased it, it will be updated regularly as things change. So far so good. No changes and things are still happening, still getting jobs on Upwork, still hearing from you, those of you that are actually utilizing the guide.
Now, if you bought the guide and it’s just sitting there, what good is that? You bought it for a reason. At least put it to work so you can get your money back, right. I’m all about if you purchase a course, you purchase an eBook, whatever it is, if you put your money into it, do the action steps so that you get the value back. You get the money back so at least you can say, well, at least, you know, I did get my money back for that, right. It will be the best investment.
If you haven’t gotten the 21 Day Upwork Challenge Guide, make sure you do that. Go to TiffanyParson.com. You’ll find it there. If you have any questions for me, be sure to, if you’re watching on YouTube, put your comment below. If you’re listening to me, come on over to Facebook. That’s probably the easiest place to find me, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, @TiffanyDParson. On Facebook, if you look up Facebook.com/TiffanyParsonBiz, it will take you right to my Facebook page and you’ll find me there. I’m on social media every single day busy with client work. But if I see you, I will respond to you. I will answer your question.
What has been going on? I have been onboarding new clients, getting everybody situated. I switched to a model where I want to talk to my clients first. For a long time, it was just communication over email to get things started and most of the people were okay with that. But now, it’s like I want to dive a little deeper into my client’s business, other than just, oh, we’ll schedule your social media or, oh, we’ll do your podcast or, oh, we’ll help set up your funnel.
No, I want to – I learned that I can be more of a help if I know more about their business, and for most people, it’s easier for them to talk it out what they’re doing with their business, what their goals are, what they’re looking to do, and where they see they need the help. Where are the holes?
I’ve been doing Zoom meetings with clients, those that are interested in the service, before they’re actually paid clients, and after they’re paid clients. I’ve added strategy sessions to all of my packages. We do that first so I can really dive in and learn more about them and see where I can help.
If I see there’s a situation where, say, somebody is brand new. They are interested in our packages. They set up a get acquainted call and it’s not something that I can help them with, or you know, where they think they should start is not the best place to reach their goal. I’m honest with them. I let them know that up front.
I want to help people that are actually doing something with what I’m doing. For example, if I set up a website for a client, I like to see them using it. I go back to see are they blogging? Are they doing newsletters? You know, I go back to see are they using what we created together? If not, it’s a little disappointing because it’s like just sitting there. Nobody knows about it. But if they’re working it, even if they’ve tweaked it, I mean, I’m just it gets me excited to see that it’s still being utilized.
That’s kind of the whole point with the switch and, you know, talking to my clients face to face. It also helps me to get to know them as a person and for them to get to know me as a person. Yeah, we’re virtual. We’re not in the same place. But I’m finding that having that connection will just, you know, face to face via video is huge. It makes a huge difference.
I can hear their voice now in their emails. Whereas, before, I was giving them a voice because I hadn’t heard their voice. Some, I had. Some, I hadn’t. But now, everybody that comes through my virtual doors, I will know their voice because we have talked. I will have heard their voice, so that’s something exciting and it’s a huge change and I look forward to, you know, being able to make that connection with clients.
You may want to incorporate that in your business as you’re doing your discovery calls, or whatever you like to call them, is to do it face to face using Zoom or Skype.
You know, I like to use Zoom because I can record it. This way, I don’t have to focus on every single detail and writing notes. I’m visual so I still take notes and draw pictures and stuff while we’re talking. But I also know I have the recording as a backup for me. I like that it records. You can get the audio, the video, what have you. You know, and Zoom has got the free option and then the paid option so you can do either one. That makes it really, really cool.
It’s an easy tool and they can dial up or do face to face. It works both ways just depending on, you know, what they want. They may not want to do the whole face to face. But so far so good. Everybody has wanted to do face to face and it’s worked out lovely. I’ve had clients that have never used Zoom before and so this gives them an introduction to a new tool that they can use down the road for their own webinars. So plus, plus, win, win for both sides.
There was something else I wanted to make sure that I share with you. Oh, get this. I just did Instagram Live for the very first time, literally before I got on to record this podcast. I’ve done Facebook Live. I’ve done live webinars. You know, okay, it’s live video. It was cool. It was fine. But for some reason, Instagram Live just had me sweating bullets, man. I wasn’t even on the camera. I was doing some nail videos so you couldn’t even see me. But for some reason, I was just sweating.
But I had so much fun. It was such a rush afterwards. I can’t wait to do it again. I plan to do it again. I’m just learning what to do with the archive of that Instagram Live. As I learn what I’ll do with it, I’ll share it with you on the podcast.
If you’ve got questions about anything I’ve shared with you or something that you would like to learn more about, something that I haven’t talked about, let me know.
Now, there is, so to speak, an insider’s circle for the virtual assistant business owners. It’s called Virtual Assistant Business Owners Circle. There, you get exclusive training just for those in the program on how to build your business, how to get more clients. We’re taking a deeper look at the business side as well as the skills. What happens is you learn a new skill and that works for your business as well as servicing clients.
This month, our focus is on keyword research, SEO, affiliate marketing, and we’re doing a little intro to the free offer. It kind of all ties in together, because with the keyword research, we’ll be able to research what people are looking for in regards to us and be able to tailor a free offer based on that.
Then it just so happened last month I was getting affiliate checks and I mentioned it on the training and thought, oh, I needed to just share this with you and so I gave a few tips on that as well. But that’s the focus this month.
If you’re interested in being a part of the Virtual Assistant Business Owners Circle, go to TiffanyParson.com/VABOC. V as in Victor A-B-O-C.
All right, I’m going to sign off. You guys are wonderful. I appreciate you so much for being a regular listener. If you’re a first-time listener, thank you so much for joining. I’m excited for your virtual assistant business owner’s journey.
You have a wonderful and fabulous day.
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