Invest In Yourself
It’s easy to not invest in yourself when you’re first starting out in business. You may believe that until you’re making money, you shouldn’t spend money. But nothing could be further from the truth. If you’re serious about getting up and running with great clients, you need to show them that you are in business for real! In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I share a few important areas in which to invest – right from the beginning.
TRANSCRIPT
My name is Belinda Wasser, also known as RocketGirl. And today we're going to talk about the importance of investing in yourself.
When you're just starting out as a virtual assistant, I think the thing that people try to do is to spend as little money as possible. And I completely understand that because it seems like you really need to be sort of in business first before you make any kind of investment.
However, I would like to talk about four areas that I believe are very important to invest in right up front. The first one is a professional headshot. Now, let me tell you what I mean by professional. This doesn't need to be a big photoshoot with lights and lots of expense. It doesn't need to be anything like that. But what you do want to do is have a shot where there's nothing sticking out of your head or there's no one's face right next to you, or there's not a crazy background.
So you could go to a part of your house where there's a white wall or a beige wall. Get yourself all set up and have someone take your photograph in good light that, works as well. There are also ways to do this very affordably.
When I had my headshot done, I did it at the shopping mall. There's a photographer called Portraits and Bloom. When I think, a professional headshot with something like 75 dollars, so not nothing, however, it's not a 2,000 dollars photoshoot, so something in between there.
So take some time to do that because when people see us online, they have an impression of us based on what we put out there. And it's important to put out something that looks professional.
The next thing is a business card. A business card is important because when you meet someone in person, you want to be able to give them something that will remind them of you. You can do this in Canva. You could do this at Moo.com. There are lots of templates that you can use to get a really nice-looking business card, so take care of that for sure.
How you dress matters. I know that we're working virtually so you can be more relaxed than usual. And if you're not on camera, you can wear whatever you want as long as you are productive in those clothes. I certainly am not that productive in my pajamas. It's better for me to get dressed.
But if your client-facing it's important that your hair is handled, that you don't have to get all made up or anything like that. But you want to do something as simple as I've done, which is to have a glass on and take a minute to make sure that I look professional, so definitely do that.
Also, you want to make sure that you're learning new skills. So if you're wondering about a course, or even investing just time into learning new skills. You can do that without spending a penny. Decide one tool that you want to learn. Spend some time with it, really go deep with it and add it as an investment to your services, really important.
Before we go, I just want to take a minute to invite you to my free online classroom. The Virtual Assistant Connection. We're over on Facebook, and you can find this by typing The Virtual Assistant Connection in the search bar and clicking the join button. I'd love to have you.
We're a community of over 13000 members, and it's a wonderful place to be if you're just starting out or if you've been a VA for a long time like me. So come and check us out.
If you're watching on YouTube, please click the "Subscribe" button so you'll be notified every time we go live.
And if you have a thought, please put it in the comments and tag me and I'll be happy to circle back around and answer your questions.
Until next time. I'm Belinda Wasser, Rocket Girl, signing off. Bye-bye.
