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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 no. 205! Now I’m gonna go ahead and let you guys know I’m recording this: I have some stuff I want to talk to you about today and it’s gonna be hard, might be stepping on your toes a little bit because we got to review what happened in your business in 2021.
But before I get into that, I just want you to know I’ve been doing a lot of “people-ing” which means in person. All my introvert friends, you get what I’m saying. This is why I love virtual business so-so much because it allows me to feel like I’m around people without actually being in the room with the people. Right? So anyway *laughter* I just wanted to share that with you.
Okay, let’s look at your business. You’re gonna need a pen and paper. I’m gonna tell you right now, you’re gonna want to write this down. You’re going to want to write the questions down and you can go back later and answer them. If you’re driving in the car, do not pull out pen and paper and try to write and listen to this and drive all at the same time. Make sure you save it and come on back and get the notes when you can get to a stable location. Okay! Let’s look at your numbers. I want to talk about your numbers first. From money to social media. So let’s look at–let’s do money first. So I want you to log into every account that you receive money. Whether it’s Paypal, you are using Wave, Freshbooks, Quickbooks, um, what other ways? I don’t know. You might be doing Cashapp, your bank account–all the different places that money has come in and I want you, for your virtual assistant business of course: um so you’re gonna total that up so you can see how much you’ve made in 2021 as of the time you’re listening to this podcast. All of December, we are getting ready for the new year. 2021 is done. We’re getting ready for the new year. That’s what we’re doing. Okay? All right. So look at all your numbers there. Then, I want you to look at how many clients did you serve in 2021? If you are invoicing your clients then you can see how many received an invoice and calculate it that way: how many clients you served, paying clients that you served in 2021. Uh you might need to also go look on Upwork as well, if you’re using Upwork or Fiverr or some other system where clients are coming through and they’re not coming direct to you. Um to make a list. So those are the first two numbers: your income and how many clients did you serve this year. Then, I want you to look at where they’re coming from. How are they finding out about you? Is it because you sent out a wonderful email and they replied and wanted your service? Is it because you do such amazing posting on social media, they’re responding that way. Is it amazing blog post? How–where are they coming from? How do they find you? Is it organic or is it paid? Is it virtual or is it in person? In those categories I want you to narrow it down even more and get specific. So if it was in person, where? Was it a networking event? Which networking event? It was a speaking engagement? Which speaking engagement? If they just stumbled upon you through a Google search, you want to know that. If they stumbled upon you because they were searching on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever you want to know that. That particular question may be a question that you don’t know the answer to. If you served 50 clients this year, but you have no idea where half of them came from then, you know, in 2022 you want to ask everyone that comes through your doors, how they found out about you. This is important. This is how you know, your efforts are working. Unlike a billboard, you can put up a billboard on the side of the highway but you don’t know where those people came from unless they said, Oh! I saw your billboard on I-77 and I decided to give you a call. That’s gonna be rare because we see billboards so much we may forget where it came from. But, if we were–saw you at a Facebook group, we may remember Oh! We’re in the business Facebook group together and that’s how I found you. A lot of times when people send you an inquiry, they will let you know how they found you. Many of you have contacted me on Facebook and sent me a message or you’ll post on the page and you’ll let me know, I was searching for virtual assistance and I found you. It’s important that you know how your clients are finding you so again, you know your efforts are working. If you’re doing paid ads, it’s automatically built in tracking so you know where the people are coming from. It’s important that you look at that data as well.
Let’s look at social media numbers. So look at how many people are on your Facebook page, how many people are on your instagram, your LinkedIn–everywhere that you post on a regular basis. I want you to look at those numbers–write it down. Write it down. I’m saying look but I really mean write. Write it down! Write it down! Write it down! If you’re just getting started [and] you never even thought to keep track of these numbers, this will give you a starting point. For every client that we serve when we’re doing social media and we’re doing the analytics, we have to have a starting month. We have to have something to reference later. So this will be, you know, you’re starting time so you’ll know. If you’ve never done this in the past, 2021 will be your starting year: you’ll know what the base is. So you can see how you’ve progressed. If you wrote down how much you made and how many clients you served in 2020, then you can compare 2020 and 21 to see what it looks like. You’ll at least be able to compare 2020, I mean 2021 with 2022. Okay, so you’re gonna write down all your social media numbers: you’re starting points to see where you are.
Now I want you to ask yourself this question: Did I show up everywhere I intended to show up and did I show up as frequently as I intended to show up? If you didn’t catch that question, just rewind it and get it all back. So write the answer to that question. You are evaluating yourself. This is your year-end review for your virtual assistant business. Now, if this is the very first time you’ve ever heard this podcast. First of all, thank you so much for watching and for listening. I appreciate you so much! It is just an honor to have you to be a part of the show. I thank you tremendously! There’s a mix of listeners here. We’ve got listeners that are just getting started in their virtual assistant business and we’ve got some that have been in their business for a while. It doesn’t matter whether you’re just getting started or you’re transitioning. There is something for everyone here!
Now as you are doing your year-end review for your virtual assistant business, some of you may be saying, Well Tiffany, I just found you, I am just getting started. I have no clue what I want to provide as a service. And I understand that completely. You can start with what you already know or you can start and build on a skill that you think you might have. But maybe you need to tweak it, maybe you need to prove it a little more. Our sponsor for today’s podcast is called the GT Boot Camp and what this is is a general transcription boot camp. She teaches everything from how to get started, how to do the transcriptions, how to do templates, how to set your price, how to find clients–I mean, she covers everything! The reason why transcripts are important is because they put the words to audio and video. They give words to audio and video. You may have clients that are great at speaking but they’re horrible at writing. If they had to sit down and write on a blank sheet of paper, they wouldn’t be able to do it, but if they are able to just record whether it’s just a quick voice-notes or video, they would have no problems giving words. Imagine being able to transcribe that information and create articles and books and whatever else they needed just for that transcription. This is what the GT Boot Camp is gonna help you learn how to do. Now this program is a 2-4 month program on average. It just depends on how much time you have. It’s an online program: you’re going to get the course, worksheets, cheat sheets, templates, practice audios, interactive answer keys, a foot pedal, software, headphones, books, one-on-one coaching, weekly Q&A calls, private Facebook group–I mean on and on. Ginger is excellent! She gives you everything you need to know! If you’re wondering like, how long would this even take, you’re saying it’s gonna be 2-4 months?! So think of it in terms of like 1-3 hours a day, depending on how much time you have to put in it. Obviously, the more time you have, the less time it takes you to complete the course. But you can get the complete details by going to tiffanyparson.com/transcription and learn more about the GT Boot Camp. Again, that’s tiffanyparson.com/transcription
All right. So now that you guys have your front numbers, you got your money, you know how many people are following all your different social media platforms, you also know how many clients you served and you may or may not know where they all come from: what else do we need to look at? So we need to take an internal look at ourselves. I want you to think about a typical week in your business and look at what are the days that you are most energized and what are the days that you are least energized? This is important. Write it down! I’m most energized on Mondays, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, Friday, Saturday–whatever your time is. And then not only the day of the week are you most energized, but what time of day are you the most energized? Are you the most energized in the morning, in the afternoon or in the evening? This is important! And if you are not sure, then I want you to look at the next week and look at where you are and when you’re like, I’m ready to go–most energized.
This is where people like, I’m a morning person–I’m a night owl. You know that kind of thing. This is how you’re gonna figure out what’s best for you. This is going to help you plan all of the answers to these questions/are going to help you plan 2022. We’re going to talk about 2022 in the next episode. The next few episodes, we’re gonna be planning 2022. If you’re wondering about, you know, what to do for the holiday, we talked about that in the last episode. Episode 204–about How To Stay Focused During the Holiday Season. So you can go back and listen to Episode no. 204.
All this month, we are getting set for 2022. All right, so let’s talk about time wasters. You know where you’re wasting your time. You know if they’re groups on Facebook that you’re wasting your time. You know if there’re email lists you’re on, that’s just wasting your time. It’s those emails that you look at and you never open. It’s those groups that you see that you never go into. Or it’s the groups that you’re in that you’re spending way too much time on but it’s not benefiting your virtual assistant business. How do you separate that–your personal time and your business time? Right! That goes back to the days that you are most energized, most focused versus the times when you’re not. It’s important to note when that is so you can separate business and personal. And again, that goes a little bit into planning for 2022. We won’t talk about this so much. This is just about, again, your year-end review. Years ago when I was in corporate, we had/would have to do year-end reviews and this is where we had to evaluate ourselves [and] somewhat our managers *laughter* it was on there, but they didn’t want the honest feedback! But anyway, we had to evaluate yourself. And so this is just looking at all of 2021. This is not about your goals, it’s not about what your objectives are in 2022. This is about what actually got done in 2021. It’s not about what your plans were in 2021. What did you actually do? Now having said that, how often did you make it known that you had a business? How often were you showing up on social media? I think that was that question I already asked you: how often did you show up and did you show up how you intended? Rewind it to get the exact way I said it. So anyway–Okay, now I want you to go to your website and note how many blog posts did you post this year. Go to your email system, your Mailchimp, your AWeber, Constant Contact. How many times did you send out an email to your list? This is not a judgment call or anything like that. That’s just for us to be honest and see what we were doing. Right? Now having written all that, some of you are like, Yes! I reached my goal! I know exactly, you know–I did what I said I was going to do! Some of you are like, Dang, I know I said I was going to do this but I didn’t. And it’s okay. This, again, this is about a year-end review to see what you did.
And now, the last thing I want you to do is write down what worked this year. What worked this year? Right?! What worked? I don’t remember the episode number, but not too long ago we talked about Celebrating Ourselves. Right? So, what worked this year? What worked this quarter? What worked this month? Write that down! Also take note, what’s something that you tried that did not work? I don’t want–don’t write down anything that you didn’t try/that didn’t work because it didn’t work because you didn’t do it! Write down what you tried that didn’t work. Because I’m telling you to go ahead and write it down because I know it’s just, you know, it’s gonna pop into your mind when you try to write down what worked. Then you’re gonna think about what didn’t work. Do both. I want you to celebrate what worked. And I don’t care if you set out to do 12 blog posts and you only did one blog post. What worked this year? Because it could be that you didn’t do the one blog post because you had so many clients, you just didn’t get a chance to blog for client no. 1. And that’s okay. We know to do something different 2022, but you were building your business right? You were serving your clients. What worked? End strong with that in your year-end review for yourself!
Now when we come back next week, we’re gonna go into our planning. So you have a week to get all your numbers together and then come back next week and we’re gonna look at planning into 2022. Thank you so much for your time, for watching, for listening. You guys have a wonderful and fantastic day.
Much love,
Tiffany
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