Virtual Assistance and You

People are at their best when using their native gifts. The fat person who dances beautifully; the gentleman who becomes a farmer; the introvert who inspires millions: these are examples of the deliciously contradictory nature of personality. One’s native gifts are not defined by others because they can often contradict outward appearances. We each must find our own core skills.

Always, my thinking stems from the assumption that every sentient being has something to offer by way of helping others. To be alive and whole is to share and empathize.

But identifying your core skills is not easy. A great many of us forever remain blind to the best uses of our energies.

Those who do identify their native gifts and use them for the benefit of others have the opportunity to live harmoniously and with relative ease. Examples might be a someone who loves cooking and writes cookbooks; or someone who is a natural public speaker and delivers speeches for a living. Or perhaps someone who is an expert housekeeper and works cleaning houses.

A large portion of the workforce have no idea what their core skills are, or never consider the question. They’re just glad to have a job. Generally, no one questions it: individuals fit into job descriptions; job descriptions do not change to fit individuals.

Increasingly, however, alongside disillusionment with corporate careers, many are copping a new paradigm. They are responding to a new imperative, one that echoes from inside their deepest dreams as well as down the canyons of social need today. It’s a sort of desperation, maybe: finally we turn to our inner selves for answers, all else having failed.

Creating a job means you have done all the homework of self -and-other research, consciously building a livelihood from your core abilities.  It means you have approached the challenge of making a living from the perspective of compassion, as opposed to the perspective of self-protection. You  have figured out how to translate your talents into gifts.

But what are your talents, and how can they be configured as gifts? It worries me that discovering your answers may take most, if not all of your working life. But perhaps, if you start searching right now, you’ll find the answer just around the corner.

I would be honored if you’d share your story about defining right livelihood in your life. Please comment!

This blog has a modest readership, and I gather that most of you are fellow virtual assistants.  If you’re not a VA, you probably work with VAs or you’re looking into working with one. Whichever of these categories defines you, it’s likely that you’re a solopreneur, or at least an entrepreneur, working your buns off to realize a dream.

Most of my clients are people involved in work that is close to their heart. They may have had previous employment in corporate circles or other organizations, but now they are committed to realizing the best expression of themselves, the best gifts they can make to life.

Usually people don’t work up the gumption to go into business for themselves until later in life, if at all. But since our economy is so fragile, more peeps nowadays are leaving the corporations to venture out on the high wire of their native proclivities, presuming to make a living through in-depth experience of whatever thing(s) they are passionate about. The risk involves blood, sweat, and tears; and then the simple heaven of knowing you gave it your best shot. You might succeed and you might not, but you will not wonder what if.

Most VAs will know what I mean, because we are business owners who usually start out as solo efforts, whether we stay there or not. We know what it is to depend on your own belief in yourself.

There are so many others, as well, who will relate to the compelling drive to find their best expression, who do not want to settle for what others want them to be. It takes a lot of courage to stop working a safe job in favor of doing something that comes more naturally to you. A barrage of ancient rules and taboos gets in the way, not to mention the paralyzing fear of loss.

Being who you most profoundly are, submitting to the vision quest in search of how your core self can be most useful to both your self and your fellow human beings, requires huge strength and ongoing faith. It’s certainly not the easy way out.

The current limelight on branding as a concern of every individual shows that the trend towards increased self-employment is not just a blip on the radar. Personal branding is about taking responsibility for the chain of events that is your career, both where you plan to end up, and every step on the way. It’s your life, not your boss’ or your father’s or some other leader’s. You are the center of your universe. Because of this, strengthening your core skills is always in your best interest.

Many don’t recognize a core skill apart from their daily work as it is. But for those who feel a disconnect between their occupation and their compassionate pre-occupation, proceeding to your own business or practice is inevitable.

And if you’re on that road, it’s my advice to do all you can to find company. Seek out places where you can find others similarly realizing their dreams, who can support and sustain you. It could make all the difference.

Recently, I parted ways with a contractor because we couldn’t agree on price. Though it was a cordial disagreement, it still hurts. I had hoped the partnership would be mutually beneficial, but her policies and mine differed to such an extent that an ongoing exchange was obviously not going to be possible.

In another case, a favorite client asked me to do some payroll prep work. It took a full meeting between us and an hour of reviewing the info on my part before I screwed up the resolve to tell him he should find someone else for the job because accounting is just not my bag.

I’ve gotten better at detecting such misalignments in my almost-three-years as a virtual assistant. Awhile back, I might have overlooked small or even not-so-small discrepancies and miscommunications in the interest of getting and completing the work.

Over time, though, I learned that it’s not worth the heartache. If you can’t trust your virtual relationships, or if you are not providing surefooted trustworthiness from your end, the partnership will not work. Period.

If you detect a glimmer of mismatch, which is not resolved speedily, you may as well say farewell. Virtual relationships depend on a few points of intersection that must be infallible. Your faith in the other is what makes it work and you can do nothing of value without that faith.

For anyone who has made a profession of helping others, for people who work as administrators, helping others to realize their plans, it’s just plain difficult to turn anyone down. The whole point is to be of assistance; it goes against the grain to say no. Virtual Assistants are ‘can do’ people, after all.

So VAs in particular suffer from can’t say no syndrome, but it’s common as well amongst people of all kinds who are in the start-up phase of business.

Come to think of it, it’s a phenomenon that appears in youth, whatever the context. Adolescents, for example, are famous for not saying no. An adolescent is usually far more in love with love than with the particular ‘other.’ Was your first teenage romance a solid investment, founded in well-placed trust? Or was it a crazy fling with no basis in reality? As you matured, you learned to say no to some of the many possibilities in the world of romance, right?

Similarly, when you enter the work force for the first time, you are anxious to take whatever job you are offered. It’s only later that you get picky.

So it’s no surprise that as a business owner, building your own clientèle entails the same discernment and selection.

I’d like to avoid having to be selective in person, in the moment, though. That is, I’d like to be organized sufficiently and communicate appropriately,  so that the people I interact with are entirely self-selecting, and already in full awareness of my policies.

Yes, that’s most likely the real challenge before me. The next step in the continuing saga; the rational growth of my enterprise. I must better ensure that my message attracts the right prospects for me. That way, no one’s time will be wasted and everyone’s potential will be maximized.

In life, in business, in relationships, we refine the definition and thus mature to reach a golden age of understanding, I do believe, don’t you?

I’ll let you know how it goes.

A few recent observations:

• I feel a strong urge to share with you this article by David Castro, an Ashoka Fellow, on the subject of social entrepreneurship, because it really took my breath away;
• I’ve been offended, lately, by the aggressive presence of political and religious representatives in business networking meetings, and feel like ranting on the trend;
• I remember that profound old maxim of creative production: weed out those parts you love the best, and then you begin to approach a worthy work of art.

These thought threads intertwine; and in describing how they do so, maybe some usefulness can be extracted.

•  Castro’s article is compelling and challenging. Social entrepreneurship is defined as establishing repeatable systems that create value, where value is defined as receiving more than you put in.

How is it possible to harvest more than you plant? The metaphor proves the point: what actual harvest is inferior to the lowly seeds that started the whole thing? The harvest is blessing beyond any discernable effort.

Even though expressly for-profit, as opposed to Castro’s focus on non-profit entrepreneurship, any business may benefit from understanding this natural law. What kinds of inputs will yield returns far richer than their sources? How can you organize in ways that realize surplus, and therefore ensure experimentation and growth?

•  My particular geographical region tends to be somewhat parochial, if not downright backwoods, when it comes to religion and politics. You have to expect a dominant contingent of redneck mentalities wherever groups are gathered here. I know this and generally manage it tolerably, but lately, it’s gotten out of hand. Preachers rail at us in their 30-second elevator speeches; Tea Party cavalry keep us hostage in their 10-minute presentations.

Certainly I will defend to the death your right to whatever convictions you choose. But this is a country where we agree that separation of Church and State is ideal; and where respect for trade supposedly levels all playing fields.  I come to these meetings for commerce, not to be sermonized.

•  An insidious force working against your forward progress may be your own sentimentality. Consider this scenario: you make something, anything, a creation that involves (and is intended to communicate) your imagination, self-expression, and choice-making. Included is a part of it – perhaps the original whim that gave you inspiration, or some other small piece that fell miraculously into place just when you needed it – there’s a part of your creation that you love especially, more than the rest.

When you come the point that you know that that very piece is the one that must be deleted, when you see that without that one beloved bit your creation will finally communicate with the greatest clarity, then and only then do you approach true completion of your project.

So there’s the pattern:

1. Surplus for survival.
2. Separation of trade and opinion.
3. Exile sentimentality.

• I like Castro’s article because it suggests answers can be found in working smarter, more holistically and more realistically.
• I dislike proselytizing in business networking meetings because it suggests answers can be found in what someone else tells you to believe.
• I use the teaching about throwing out the part you love the best because it suggests answers can be found when I get out of my own way.

Yes, just a few musings on business life. A motley crew of perceptions. But the whole is far more glorious than the parts; the harvest is far richer than the tiny seed.

How about you? What has possessed/obsessed your thought recently?

In a local biz group, we’ve been talking about SOPs. You know, those interminable step by step delineations of exactly how anything and everything that has the slightest thing to do with your company and its operations, all pinned down in careful black on white for posterity and whatever emergencies/exigencies might, may, or could possibly happen.

SOPs. Standard operating procedures. Are yours properly spelled out? Or are you like me, procrastinating on this one little necessary business duty?

Ostensibly, we create SOPs so that knowledge about how to complete any task for the business can be quickly and uniformly shared with new employees. It’s the franchise premise: create a detailed-enough manual, and your biz can clone itself. If  you’re Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth, the standardizing of your processes and systems is the pivotal key to business success.

Now, I am a planner through and through. I believe and live by planning, for all endeavors. I like the process of planning, and I like using a plan as I proceed.

But creating SOPs is another matter entirely.

Writing plans is creating the future; writing SOPs is tabulating the present.

Writing out your standard procedures is bean-counter activity. It’s taking inventory, listing all that exists.  And to me it is terrifyingly dull.

(Is that why a great deal does not get done in life – because the dullness of the task actually terrifies us? I’m not afraid of hard work, but tedium is horrifying and to be avoided at all costs. )

But I know that writing out my SOPs is, indeed, key to my business success, and I know I must accomplish this monumental task, and the reason I know that has nothing to do with franchising or sharing with employees, since I’m a solopreneur.

I know that writing out your business SOP is the same as learning about something by drawing it.

When you draw an object, you come to know it in a detailed and intimate way. You realize things about it that you didn’t realize previously.

It’s the same with writing out your operating procedures: you come to know your biz in new and profound ways.

So I’m going to get down to it, one of these days. Soon. I promise.

In the meantime, if you’ve got any hints to make the job more palatable, please comment.

I started up my virtual assistant business in November of 2007. That’s a mere 2.5 years ago, yet so much has changed. I still consider myself a virtual assistant, but hardly ever use the term anymore.

In the early innocence of way back in ’07, a virtual assistant was someone helping businesses and professionals from a remote location. I was drawn to the industry because I had served as an administrator all my adult life and I loved the idea of working it as my own business, in which I could maximize my time and skills by serving more than one boss at a time. So much of an administrative assistant’s time is wasted sitting in the office, waiting for the boss to get it together. I was never any good at pretending to be busy.

Like many of my colleagues in the industry, however, my good intentions ran headlong into a wall of reluctance on the part of business owners to work virtually. They had a hard time understanding how it would work, how it would benefit them.

I think many VAs start out hoping that the work itself will define their niche offering; we think it’s the clients we manage to attract and the kind of work they need done that will shape our services. If they’re looking for marketing, I’ll do that; or if they want scheduling, email management, websites, writing, reports, bulk mailings, customer relations; whatever it is, that’s what I’ll become.

Except it doesn’t work that way, of course, which we quickly realized.

Some VAs still try hard to defend their general-ism.  Indeed, you can find many VA agencies who are proud of being a ‘one-stop-shop’ and whose list of services reads like a Chinese menu.

But for the most part, VAs have turned to specialization and found success by specifically naming the services they offer. We are writers, or marketers, or legal assistants; we do bookkeeping, or concierge arrangements, or we manage your affiliate program; we build blogs or Facebook pages, or produce your online event. We are focusing on a few chosen skills, instead of trying to be everything to everyone.

Interesting how this messes with the original concept of a VA. A great many of us were admin assistants previously, and we thought of ourselves as the ‘secretary,’ the all-round ‘Gal Friday.’  We brought this concept into our own VA biz, and then realized it doesn’t work so well in the open market. A virtual assistant used to be thought of as an executive secretary, delivering work digitally. With so many of us now specializing, that definition doesn’t work anymore.

I’m a copywriter and inbound marketer. My work is location-independent and delivered digitally. I assist business owners and managers in the smooth operation and success strategies of their organization. I refer fellow VAs when I’m asked for skills that are not in my specialty area.

Come to think of it, perhaps that’s really what makes me a VA: I am part of the network of VAs who communicate with, educate, mutually support, and refer one another across the globe.  Maybe it’s a tribal thing.

I have a free download available on my site, in which I talk about extroverted listening - meaning listening to what’s going on around you, as opposed to listening to your own thoughts. It’s important to make this distinction, because we are so unused to listening as a regular practice. If I suddenly say to you, “Listen!” you’re likely to focus your attention on your ears. But it will be several seconds, if not minutes, before you really start to listen to your surroundings, leaving behind self consciousness.

For the most part, business can’t afford to listen that deeply. Time is money, and that kind of attention takes too long. Doctors and ministers may be funded for such activities, but commerce is not.

Yet isn’t it true that the times when you have listened most attentively are the most informative moments in your experience? And how often, after a business transaction or meeting do you wish you had listened more carefully?

Certainly for me, listening is an ongoing discipline. In initial consults with clients, for example, I can never seem to listen well enough. Though I have gotten heaps better at it over the years, the quiet mirror-mind of an excellent listener ever escapes me.

Still, the learning from listening is the best learning. And the more listening, the more learning.

Are leaders also good listeners? Perhaps long-lasting leaders are. We can be sure they’re keenly hearing the call of some command.

And what about terrible listeners – you’ve encountered them, right? They’re in your face while they talk, and then when you speak they get busy doing something else.

Listening defines reputation in a big way.

Of course, I’m not advocating for keeping mum all the time. I’m way too outspoken for that. But maybe now, especially, when the web lets us all have a voice, pausing to listen before speaking may be more critical than we might naturally think.

And it continues to astound me, despite strong intent and careful preparation, how I fail to listen enough. The required understanding is enormous.

Ah well, no reason to quit trying.

If you’ve been paying close attention, you will know that in my early background I was involved in the live theater; and later I was employed in the non-profit arts world for many years. It’s natural to me, as a result of all that training, to think more like an artist than a business person.

Though this is mostly to my detriment, it’s also a comfort.

Thinking like an artist is a liability in that vulnerability, that tender essence that makes an artist powerful, is more crippling than anything else in business. So finding a convergence between the heart of art and the steel armor of business is no easy task.

But knowing the artist in me has huge influence over my decisions is also a comfort because it justifies doing things my way, no matter what the critics claim.  An artist answers to a higher power.

Dedication to my way is no easy slide, though. Though you’re determined to be independent, you are by no means excused from discipline. For that matter, the demands on your continual education are enormous, compared to anyone who is simply ‘working for the man.’ If the lone wolf  is not wiley, he’ll never survive.

The main distinction in having an artist’s perspective in business is that the process is far more important than the product.

Now certainly, any merchant worth his cash drawer knows the product is what counts. Who cares what it took to get there? If I’m making the sale, I’ve hit a home run.

But if you suffer from artist’s syndrome, you see the sale as just one part of a larger experience, and it’s the larger experience that you value above all.

Oh my, is this starting to sound like all the preaching you see everywhere about social media customs and protocols? About how the sales process is continual, how life is one launch after another?  Are you hearing John Lennon: “Life is what happens while you’re busy doing something else…”

Could it be that the ‘new marketing’ and the marketing theories based on relationships, on marketing/communications, result from the intermarriage of business and art?

You could put it that way. I ask, study, listen, analyze, network, publish, measure: and then I use mind and body to discover and describe my gifts, or offerings, to others. I synthesize business organization with personal skills and predilections. It’s an unending mind-body balancing act.

Nonetheless, I have never felt more productive – despite all the focus on process!

So how are your dreams these days?

I’ve often wondered why we don’t more persistently seek the meaning and uses of dreams. Is there any more accurate barometer of health and heart? If you keep a journal of your dreams, they may seem nonsensical when you write them down, but when you read them later you begin to make connections and see the messages that are being shared.

Taking into conscious consideration the value of sleep and dreaming can increase your feeling of balance and well-being. Respecting your need for a full night’s rest – and more, respecting the perceptions that happen during that time – can help you live more holistically, and better interpret your experiences. I liked a report I read the other day that suggested that naps may increase your ability to process and store information, if you dream while napping.

When starting out in the working world, we’re encouraged to follow our dreams, but that reference is to day dreams. Rarely is anyone urged to give value to their night dreams. Of course, if you’re psychotic, or depressed, or otherwise troubled, dreams may be part of a necessary soul search.

But what I’m advocating here is nothing so harrowing. Rather, I’m suggesting using dreams on a daily basis in normal life. Allow your subconscious a place in your awareness. Reflect on its images and use them to understand your waking experiences.

If that’s too ethereal for you, allow me to take a wider perspective. Because the larger point here is that Time Out is not an indulgence: it is essential to success.  It’s the yin of dreaming to the yang of doing. We ignore its importance at our peril.

Taking a break, napping, sleeping, going for a walk, using that good old Time Out is a fundamental best practice, no matter what you’re doing. Entrepreneurs and artists often have trouble controlling their drive. There’s a grim sort of glory in wearing yourself out. But notice that it doesn’t last.

Brilliance so often appears when we’re not looking. Your fierce, stubborn focus, your killer drive to the bitter end is pitiful when compared to the ease and perfection of accomplishment when you apply both your attention and your dreams.

You don’t necessarily dream the answer to your problems, or conjure up some failsafe get-rich scheme; I’m not saying you’ll have a premonition of bad stuff coming down, or dream what stock to purchase for big wins. You will, though, enjoy a new clarity about your involvements, as well as grow your creativity and compassion.

You’ll find that you feel rich, no matter what your bank account says.

Today, I am happy to present you with the ultimate lesson in business success. There is one reality, one angle you can take, one thing you can do that can absolutely be depended upon to deliver success every time.

Yes, folks, you may have thought that complicated knowledge and amazing feats of cleverness and derring-do are what it takes to enable the victories of successful entrepreneurs. But these qualities are mere icing on the cake. Winners possess something that underlies all their remarkable achievements; something that’s the foundation without which they’d be run-of-the-mill losers like the rest of us.

Okay, you ready to learn the one true key to success? It’s perseverance, good old commitment, refusing to quit no matter what.

New businesses especially need to adopt this truth. The cold shoulder that the world will give to a newcomer, the skepticism with which your bright enthusiasm is received, the assumption everyone makes that you can’t possibly know what you’re talking about – these reactions can be hard to take. And since your enterprise is new, you are indeed likely to make mistakes and endure the ensuing dreadful self-doubt.

But the fact is, if you hang in there and refuse to give up, you will eventually succeed. You may not be especially talented, but people will still buy from you. Why? You represent something familiar, and therefore more trustworthy than any unknown.

Few will dispute this observation. How often do you select the known product over a new unknown? Do you continue going to your familiar doctor, hairdresser, mechanic, or whatever even though they cost more than others? With these old friends, you know what you’re getting and the stress factor is eliminated.

People’s fear of the unknown is a major guarantee of business success. If you maintain a steady presence in the world of your market, you will gain customers even if your product or service is inferior. Not that I am advocating for inferior work; but, though it may seem counter-intuitive, perseverance trumps superior work when it comes to sales.

If you doubt the truth of this, consider the fact that the world has become flat, with every American town looking like all the others, sporting the same restaurants and stores. Familiarity sells, even though the locally produced goods may be vastly superior to those provided by the chains.

Bottom line: don’t give up if you’re working at growing your own business, if you love your work and believe it’s right for you. Do whatever it takes to stay in the ball game. Success comes for those who wait, and who, while waiting, do not complain but devote their energy to keeping the faith.

Need someone who can help you keep the faith by providing consistent support for your business? A virtual assistant may well be your answer.