Ignore the "What Ifs?"

When you’re just starting out as a Virtual Assistant, one of the scariest things is the ever-powerful “what ifs.” You know … What if the client asks me this? What if the client asks me that? What if I don’t know? What do I say?

In this episode of the RocketGirl Show, I'll share some things to keep in mind when these situations happen.

TRANSCRIPT 

My name is Belinda Wasser, also known as RocketGirl. Today we're going to talk about the "what ifs".

When you're just starting out as a virtual assistant, the "what ifs", the ever-powerful "what ifs" can be driving you crazy at any given moment. What if the client asked me this? What if they ask me that? What if they want skill and I don't know how to do it? I hear the "what ifs" over and over and over. And it was funny because at first when people were asking me the questions, I thought that they were actual questions.

And so I would say, Well, why don't you just tell them this? And then what I realized was these questions were the voices in new and established virtual assistants heads nagging them and causing them to worry. So today I'm going to talk about the "what ifs" and hopefully quiet the voices. We all have them.

Okay, so as a virtual assistant, we are natural problem solvers, right? It's so funny. I get on a Zoom call with some of the people in the VIP club or a class, someone else had a question and everybody's like Zoom. They're immediately trying to figure it out. They're on their screen. They're trying to figure it out. They're Googling something. And Google is your friend. I used to have clients. They would ask me a question and I didn't know the answer, and I would get a little anxious. And then I would sort of quietly over on this site, Google the answer and say, Why don't you try this? What I discovered is clients are happy for me to do that.

They don't expect me to have all the answers. And in fact, I'll say to them now, hold on a second. Let me Google it. And they'll say, "Okay, great", because they're not great Googlers or they don't want to do it alone or it's frustrating or they don't have the knowledge that we have to take it to the next step once we read what we're supposed to do. So Google is your friend. You are a natural problem solver. Do not forget that, very powerful. Everyone doesn't have those superpowers. And I think we forget about that all the time.

Training. Training is something that clients often will give us. There is no way that you can know everything in every certain way that a client is going to interact. Probably, unless there's a service that someone's hiring me to do that they don't know how to do. I always get trained. Sometimes they make me videos. Sometimes we'll have a meeting on Zoom. Sometimes they'll explain it, and I'll take notes. But training is a really big part of bringing on a new client if they have a specific process that they want you to follow.

The other thing is, depending on the application, there is often really good training online. If you Google anything about MailChimp, you will find step by step instructions on how to do exactly what it is. If you Google how to do something in Gmail or Google Suite or Google Workplace, you'll find instructions.

The other thing is, a lot of the big software companies have training sites, telling you how to use their software, and you want to check that out as well. If it's completely foreign to you and you have no idea another option is to get schedule a call with the salesperson for the company if they have a sales Department and have them give you a demo and you can ask a million questions. I've done this so many times, so there's training. You can also say the words I'll get back to you, which might seem like you're going to die if you do that. But again, you can do that. You can say, "Let me just percolate on that a little bit and make sure you know what they're talking about.

Make sure you're clear about what they're asking, and then you can go off and work on your own without someone watching you and get back to them. You just want to make sure that you get back to them in a timely way. Seriously, clients have no problem with that. No problem at all, because the key to this whole thing is they don't want to have to do it themselves.

They don't want to have to try to figure it out. They want to use their time for something else or they just don't understand. I haven't had a client when I said to them, she said, "Where can I find the image on my computer?" And I said the hard drive. And she said, Okay, how do I get to that? Everybody's not like us. So please remember that. And I do have some clients that are technical and are right there with me. But many of them the reason that they hire me and they bring me into work with them is because they're not. And they want someone who's patient and who can just sit back and help them with whatever the work is.

Now I have the biggest "what if" for you? Okay, ready? What if you rocked it? What if you were just really good? So next time all the questions start and you're thinking about all these things that are driving you crazy. You're so worried that you're not going to have the right answer. Say to yourself, "Well, what if I just rocked it?"

And if you are a member of my online community, which I'm just about to tell you about, there are 13000 virtual assistants in there, and then you'll answer your questions. And if you remember of the VIP Club, there are about 100 virtual assistants in there with lots of experience and both places is a fabulous community.

So if you're not a part of the virtual assistant connection, I invite you to join us. It's a free online classroom. Like I said, there are 13000 people that are either new or thinking about being a VA. And you can just type The Virtual Assistant Connection" in the search bar at the top of Facebook. Click the Join button. And I would love to welcome you. Tons of videos, tons of information, great community and you're welcome to come. I'd love to have you. If you're watching from YouTube, our YouTube channel, you click the Subscribe button, so you'll be notified every time we go live, that would be fabulous. And until next time, I'm Belinda Wasser RocketGirl signing off. Bye bye.