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Links Referenced:
- Instagram: @tiffanydparson
- Upwork
- 21 Day Upwork Challenge Guide
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What frustrates me is people not believing that it will work for them. #vatip 
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Whatever the result is, you’ll be able to learn from it. #vatip Gotta Tweet!
Don’t worry about will this work for me. Go see. #vatip Gotta Tweet!
On Video:
In Words:
Hi and welcome to The Business of Being a Virtual Assistant. I’m your host, Tiffany parson, and this is episode number 114. Today, I want to talk to talk to you about the one thing that I see every single day that frustrates me the most.
Now, if you watched or listened to last week’s episode, I talked about a documentary that I watched, and I enjoy watching documentaries. They’re like my favorite things. I love to learn about real people, biographies, documentaries. Every Friday on Instagram I share my Friday flick, so check it out – Instagram. My Instagram is @tiffanydparson, so check that out.
Let me start with a story, something I saw on TV. There’s a show called Million Dollar Listing NY. You may have seen it. It is a reality show about some real estate agents in New York, and you pretty much follow them a little bit in their life, but mostly how they get deals and sell various apartments and real estate in New York. Now, this one particular episode struck me. It was like a lightbulb moment when I heard it, and it’s related to the thing that frustrates me every single day.
What frustrates me is people not believing that it will work for them.
Whatever the “it” is, and because I work online, just like you in your business, the “it” is the online space. People think it won’t work for them for whatever reason. Even starting a virtual assistant business, people think it won’t work for them.
I want you to start approaching this like a scientist. Scientists go into the laboratory to see what will happen. They have a theory about what might happen, a hypothesis, if I’m remembering all my terms correctly from science class. Science was like not my favorite class. Biology, physics, not my favorite classes. But I think it’s a hypothesis is what we started out with. What do you think is going to happen? That’s what it is. It’s not a theory, hypothesis. What do you think is going to happen?
Then you go into the laboratory, you do your thing, and see what happens. Does what you thought was going to happen, is that what happened? If it matches up, great, and if it doesn’t, even better because now you know what to do better because you learn what didn’t work out. So you try something else, or maybe the result you got was better than what you expected.
Okay, back to the story about Million Dollar Listing. These two agents had to work together. They were from two different companies, but the clients wanted them to work together. They had to work together and they were thinking of different ideas and how they were going to do the open house.
It was a lady and a man. The lady wanted to have the open house like at 8:00 on a Wednesday morning. The guy, he was younger, and he’s like, “Oh, my crowd is probably not going to get up that early. I don’t know.” But guess what she said? “Let’s see what happens and if it doesn’t work out we’ll do something else.”
She said that. I don’t know, it struck a chord with me. I was like, duh, ping, lightbulb moment. She wasn’t stressed about it. She didn’t panic about it. She didn’t overthink. She’s like, “Well, let’s give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, hey, we’ll do something else.” Guess what? They did it. They gave it a shot and it worked out.
Believe that it’s going to work out. It might not always work out how you think it is, but whatever the result is, you’ll be able to learn from it.
So we approach it in this way. Let’s give it a shot and see what happens. Approach it like a scientist. I think this is what’s going to happen. But let’s go into the laboratory, do a little something-something, and see what our result is and learn from the result. Even if you get what you thought you were going to get, you can learn from that result.
Why are we afraid that the result is going to be different from what we envisioned in our mind? Why?
So you want to start a virtual assistant business and you’ve heard me say over and over again set up a profile on Upwork. So you set up a profile on Upwork and stopped. Okay, well, that’s a quick way to not get clients [laughs] if you have not and you don’t know anybody. You have to do something after that. You have to submit your proposals, right, so that you can get a client.
Your hypothesis in this case would be, okay, once I set up my profile and send out my proposals, I’m going to get a client. So you send out proposal after proposal after proposal and see what happens. Sending out your proposals is like your laboratory. It’s like, okay, let me try a little bit of this, try a little bit of that. Submit it. See what happens. Go to the next one, same thing. Do a little of this. See what happens.
For those of you with the 21 Day Challenge Guide, you essentially have a map. It’s not set in concrete, but it’s better than a blank sheet of paper. It gets you started so you can have something to refer to. It’s like a map. You have the guide and you can look at it. Okay, day 1, day 2, day 3, all the way to 21. You can do them in 21 days individually, or if you’re just a go-getter, overambitious, or you’re so sick and tired of what you’ve been doing and you’ve been sitting on the sidelines for way too long and you’re like forget it, I’m going to absorb all of this in a weekend, and it can be done.
You can find the 21 Day Challenge Guide on my website: TiffanyParson.com. Look for it there. 21 Day Upwork Challenge Guide to get you through. That is all a part of your laboratory. That would be a resource in your laboratory to go and see what happens. You’ll be surprised.
If you don’t get a client, guess what? That is a result. Now, you can go back. Check what you did. Look at your project – your proposal. I’m thinking about the science project. Look at your proposal. What did you do? What did you submit? It might not even be what you said. It might be something on the client’s end. You just don’t know, right?
But you keep going, you keep trying, and you see what happens.
I know you’ve heard the Yoda quote, “There is no try. Do.” When I say try and see what happens, do like a scientist. The doing is actually putting your stuff out there. It’s actually submitting your proposals. That’s your doing.
You have no control what happens on the other end. You have no control over the response. Just like in physics when you mix two chemicals, we have control over which chemicals we choose to mix, but how they respond has nothing to do with us except for the fact that we put A and B together, right.
Anyway, that’s my quick thing. It frustrates me every single day when this question comes up. “Will it work for me?” “Well, I don’t know.” “I’m not sure.” Go see. You’re wondering how you get started? Go see. Upwork – a lot of people have been told, “Go to Upwork. Find you somebody there. Find you somebody there.” I’ve been telling you go to Upwork. Clients are waiting for you. They’re looking for you. They’re over there.
Don’t worry about will this work for me. Go see. Start approaching things like a scientist. That’s everything, not just with your virtual assistant business, everything. If there’s like a craft project that you’ve been wanting to try, go see. If you’ve been wanting to paint something, paint it. Go see. Go see. Go see. If there’s a class that you’ve been wanting to take, go see.
I’ll give you this really old story because it was the first time that I realized if you put your mind to something, you can do it, and I’m sure you’ve heard that. I don’t know whose original quote that is. But if I go way, way, way, way, way, way back, and the memory flashed when I said something, and that is in middle school I wanted to cheer. The requirement was that you had to, you know, in your audition or tryouts, you had to do a cartwheel and a split. I didn’t know how to do a split. You know, when you’re doing pee wee cheerleading, we just didn’t do splits.
But the tryouts, I think we started our training at the beginning of the week. Tryouts were going to be on Friday. You had five days, and looking at it like that it was like you really needed to know how to do a split already. But when I learned that on Monday, I went home and I practiced, practiced, practiced every single day until I learned how to do a split.
Now, here’s the kicker. I learned how to do a split on one side so with – I think it’s whatever leg. In other words, I can do a split with the right leg as the lead leg and the other one, you know, left in the back. It’s been so long I can’t remember which one it was because it’s been a minute since I’ve done a split.
But anyway, point is I learned enough for what I needed to get on the squad. They didn’t say you had to do a split on the right and the left side. They just said you needed to know how to do a split.
Guess what? Sometimes we overthink things. We think we have to have more than what we actually need. (I think I accidentally hit something.) We think we need to do more than what we actually need. When it’s just asking for the capability of, not in all different ways.
So was able to do it on one side and thankfully they didn’t need the other side. But I didn’t even ask. I didn’t ask that question. I didn’t ask, “Do I need to do a split on the right and the left side?” Sometimes our questions – some questions don’t even need to be asked.
Go see. Go do it. See what happens.
Anyway, I hope that helps and encourages you. If anything, you don’t know all the answers until you go find out. You can analyze it in your head. You can calculate. You can put out charts. You can envision if I do this many proposals, I’ll get this many clients. But you will never know until you put something out there. It’s the only way.
Let’s stop believing and thinking that’s for somebody else, not for me. No.
If you think way back, you know, it’s not like virtual assistant was on the career list in the college career office. No, they didn’t have it on the list. It was not there [laughs]. It was not there, right, because it didn’t exist. If it did, nobody knew. It didn’t have a name yet. It’s new. It’s a new industry. We’re still learning even after all this time. You know, what is it? I’m going on 9 years and there’s been some people that’s been in industry for longer, 15 years, 20 years.
It’s still new because people are still asking what is a virtual assistant? People are still to this day, today, still trying to understand what it is. Go show them what it is. Submit your stuff. Don’t be afraid of the results. You know what your hypothesis is. Now, go see if it’s true.
Thanks so much for listening and watching the podcast. I hope you have a wonderful and fabulous day.
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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