Jennifer Shanika

:: Class Fourteen, July 30, 2009 ::

I can’t believe how quickly time is passing! There are just a few weeks left and still so much to do!

Our business plan finals were due this week so that’s pretty much been the focus of my life (other then the distraction of my disastrous personal life). I found myself writing in circles the past few days, which is not a good direction for progress. I finally decided I was happy with most of it (I still have a lot more to think about and plan for the marketing part) and only had one area that I needed to complete: the financials (cue scary music)! I’m soooo not a math person (pretty much the sole reason I studied languages in school. Learning Ancient Greek –yes, I am a Classical Scholar – was way easier then Algebra for me). Anyway, so I spent an hour on the phone with my Accountant, Chris, this morning (poor guy volunteered his time to help me out and even worse, had to deal with grumpy not-a-morning- person me) and let me tell you, I’m even more in confused then when I started! And depressed! Having been in corporate my whole life, I had no idea how high self-employment and income taxes are. Ok, I’ve heard about it from my parents who are also business owners, but I had NO IDEA! Pardon me about this little rant; I’m just still spinning. Chris was pretty cool, calming me down and trying to be encouraging, “Don’t give up. You can do this. You can be successful and make a living. You just have to be aware.” He gave me some ideas to help set aside money for the RIDICULOUS taxes and tips for good habits to get in to so it will be easier. But I just have to repeat; I was totally not prepared for what the numbers turned out to be and I was discouraged. He made me list all the reasons I’m starting my own business: Freedom, growth, relationships, joy, independence, flexibility, control over my career, self-care… it’s not all about the finances. But you do have to know about them…

I’m actually really glad that we had to go over all this stuff for the business plan. If I hadn’t known about what’s ahead, I could really get myself into trouble. I have plenty of time to plan, develop good habits, and be really aware of what’s coming up.

I’ll just remember to keep my focus on the big picture when it comes time to write those checks to the IRS.

Our trainer, Terry, is out of town for the next 2 classes so Antonette is taking over while she is away. What a great person! I totally love her style, her positive nature and really connected with her. She really helped me this week.

Let me explain, my boyfriend and I broke up last week after 8.5 years (ok, to be a chick it was 8 years, 6 months, and 4 days). Needless to say, my heart has not been in class recently, actually my mind has been decidedly absent as well. I can’t seem to focus on anything. The reason I mention this personal topic is that of course it would follow that class this week was centered heavily on relationships. Ok, to be honest, I nearly lost it when Antonette began. Oh boy, how can I get through this without losing it? I realized though, that I was in a safe place, and if I did “lose it”, I was surrounded by people who really cared and understood. So I was ok, mostly. The topic was specifically directed towards developing relationships with your client, but it of course it reaches much deeper as all VTP classes do. As hard as it was for me to listen and participate in this class without getting ridiculously emotional (like I said, Antonette was great as was everyone else), I found it a good reminder of how pervasive the VTP is. I have found several times that the difficulties occurring in my private life are often addressed (unknowingly) in class. Life has been funny that way: I’ve been handed difficulties (to put it mildly) but at the same time offered support and skills from another direction. This year, the majority of support has come from my brilliant mother and from AssistU. And I’ve really needed it.

As I’ve said before, and it is something often repeated, the VTP offers more then the steps to starting a Virtual Assistant business, it reaches much deeper then you could possibly imagine. The lessons you learn and the depths that you go to in the program help you figure out how to create a better life and become a better you. And it gives you life skills, not just business skills. I’m not going to lie; it’s a hard, powerful journey but you will find yourself in a better place when it’s all over. (Ok, right now I’m taking that part on faith.) Thankfully, AssistU knows that this can be a difficult and intense journey and is there with amazing support. I’ve never experienced anything like it before.

I’ve very thankful for all the skills and knowledge I’ve acquired during the VTP and the valuable introspection that one gains through the program. As broken as I feel right now, I also feel stronger and more confident about the course that I am on. I can look to the future and know that the difficulties I am going through are necessary for my long-term happiness and success.

I don’t know what I would’ve done these past two weeks without the love and support I’ve gotten from my AssistU buddy in particular, but also my fellow classmates and everyone at AssistU.

This week we continued to talk about marketing, but now we’re getting into more detail. I’m really loving this part! There are unlimited ways of marketing yourself, but AssistU breaks it down into three types of marketing: Brazen, Just Out of Your Comfort Zone, and Introverted Marketing. It’s comforting to know that there are very effective things you can do to promote your business regardless of your personality type. And it makes sense, right? Some people are comfortable doing cold calls, others prefer target mailings and advertising. What a great idea to break marketing into personality types. I totally loved all the specific suggestions, too. There were things that I never would’ve thought of! Very clever.

It can be hard and even intimidating to market yourself. I am really impressed with the VTP and how comfortable they make it for everyone. They truly want everyone to succeed and it’s such a positive place.

As I mentioned last week, our business plan drafts were due this class. Each week, before class begins, we take a few minutes to chat with each other while we wait for everyone to join the call. As you can imagine, this week business plans were a hot topic (that and the weather :) ). While we waited for our trainer, Terry, to join us, there was a lot of back and forth with questions such as; “How did you handle this?” “Did Terry want this part included?” “Do you think Terry will like this?” “I didn’t finish this part, I hope Terry won’t be mad.”

I stepped in and said, “First of all, this is a first draft. Don’t worry about the small stuff; you’ll have time to fix it. Second of all, do you like your plan? That’s the most important thing here. It’s YOUR plan. This is for you. All of this, everything we do in the VTP. We may do it because it’s been assigned, but that’s not the reason to do it.” (Yes, I really do talk that way sometimes. Ridiculous, huh?) But seriously, it’s hard for people to get out of the student/teacher mindset. It’s how we grew up. A large portion of our lives was spent in school getting assignments, completing them, and then having someone else evaluate them based on their criteria. It’s not a surprise that we fall back into the habit of tailoring our work to satisfy the teacher’s standards to get a good grade. But I don’t believe that we should treat our experience in the VTP in this way. We are assigned fieldwork, but it’s not on a whim or for the purpose of busywork. Every assignment we have is for the purpose of creating our business. It’s to help us figure out what WE want and how we want our business to be. Ok, so it’s evaluated, but come on, how much should that matter in the long run? We are taught to reexamine everything and keep our minds open to learning new ways in the VTP but also to empower ourselves and strengthen our individuality. So, yeah, Terry gets to have input (and I’m happy for any feedback she has to offer and I do carefully consider what she has to say), but my opinion is the only one that really matters. It’s not “homework”; it’s our business.

Hey, it’s just my opinion :), but I really do urge everyone to change his or her mindset when in the VTP. Don’t tailor your plans, writings, and ideas according to what you believe someone else wants. Remember your purpose for what you do. It’s good advice for life, too.

Well, it’s worth it to note that we are now halfway through the VTP. It feels like it’s a big transition week mentally. I can see the end now and it’s all coming into focus. I finally have a vision of what my business is and how it’s going to work.

I don’t know what to write about this week’s class, it was unusually quiet. We started talking about Attraction Marketing and although the concept sounds cool, I’m not sure I really get it. I believe we will be talking more about it next week, I hope so, because I’m really confused about the topic or more specifically, examples of how you use Attraction Marketing. Yeah, I think I need some more info on that one.

Class was so mellow this week is because business plan drafts are due next Thursday! Everyone is really focused and I think that’s really where all our attention was. You know, it surprises me to say it, but I have enjoyed writing the business plan for the most part. I have found that it has really helped me to visualize and think, in detail, about every aspect of my business. It makes everything seem more attainable and real. I have found myself totally obsessed with thinking about my future VA business. I even dream about it. It’s all becoming real and it’s very exciting.

In class we went over our elevator speeches again. I’m still really impressed how we are all starting to make the transition from I want to be a V.A. to this is what MY V.A. business is going to be. We are all so very different and it’s totally cool to see the directions we are growing in. We also started talking about the Law of Attraction, which has always been a favorite topic of mine. I’m a big believer and have seen it work many times. The LofA theory is quite extensive and detailed and I won’t try to go into all of it. I will mention one thing, though, one of my favorite parts of the Law of Attraction can be summed up to what I like to call the “Refrigerator Magnet Theory”. If you ever played with magnets, then you should know how there is a positive and a negative side, right? If you put two positive sides together they attract magnetically, if you put two negative sides together they, too, pull together. However, a positive will never affix to a negative side, and a negative won’t stick to a positive. (Try this out if you don’t believe me.) This translates to life, too. You can intentionally go about creating a positive life by having a positive idea of what you want and you attract that to you. Positive attracts positive. For me, it’s a very simple and powerful life philosophy. And it works! Ok, there is soooo much more to all of this and how it works, how to get there, but I’ll stop here. I would just like to say that I’m very happy that the VTP decided to included the Law of Attraction in the program.

After a couple of rough days, or weeks rather, I’ve bounced back and I’m excited again. Wisely, I had an extra long coaching session and it put me right on track. I’ve been worried a lot lately (which you can tell from reading my entries) but it’s been because of some larger issues hat have been going on in my personal life. I had such a careful plan when I started the AssistU VTP and pretty quickly, it all went up in smoke!! Needless to say, I was thrown off course and struggling. I’ve been in a full-blown panic for quite a while. It didn’t do me any good and just tarnished the things that were going well (like the VTP). So, here I am reminding everyone that, yes, we all have these moments, we all have these fears, but don’t let them get too big and don’t let them cloud the positive things. And when all else fails, try a coach!!

Now that I’m hopefully done being preachy for the moment, I want to discuss class this week for a second. We went over our “elevator speeches”. An elevator speech is the 30 to 60-second speech that you could give to a stranger to describe what you do. It’s particularly useful as we are in a relatively new industry and get asked about it a lot. I found it a very fun exercise! Wow, I was really impressed with my fellow students. There was such a variety. It was very obvious that we are all at the point in the program where we are starting to form our own business identities. I could really hear everybody’s personality coming through. It’s a pretty cool thing. What a transformation from where we started. It’s amazing how far we’ve come in just a few weeks!

I’m going to be honest. My mind has not been focusing on class this week. Although I did the fieldwork and all the reading, I didn’t invest anywhere near the time or energy that I usually do. My roommate and really good friend moved out of state yesterday so I made spending as much time as I could with her my priority this week. I’ve also had a lot of emergencies come up this week. My mind has just been elsewhere. That’s life, though, and it’s bound to happen.

Class has been going well. I’m learning a lot. We talked more about fee structures, which is a lot more complicated then I realized and something I definitely need to revisit. Every week I keep finding things I need to “revisit” from the previous week. It makes me feel like I’m falling more and more behind and not getting anything accomplished. There are so many big decisions to be made, things to flesh out and research, and each week something new is added. My list keeps getting longer and longer and I’m getting frustrated. I have decided to set aside an entire day next week to tackle this new list. It’s really weighing on me.

As much as I hate the word, I will admit to being “overwhelmed”.

At this stage in the game, your mind is going in all sorts of directions, you’re buzzing. You're really examining and questioning everything you're use to.

I’m thinking this week I’d like to write about the philosophy of VA businesses, or rather, my philosophy of my business. In class, we talked about fee structures, if you should do a contract or not, late fees or not, and what types of things you might consider writing in your Policy and Procedure document. In class, there was a great debate about all these things. “Protection”, “liability”, holding the client “accountable” these words and phrases were being thrown around in pro-contract, pro-late fees support. I heard a lot of fear and concern at the prospect of not having signed legal contracts and penalties for late payments. Then Terry, the trainer, had to ask my opinion (since I was being very quiet on the topic). I really didn’t know where I stood. I really could see both sides. After all, I was chained up in the corporate world for many years where everything came with contracts, fees, and strict guidelines. If you don’t have these things, well, you’re going to be taken advantage of; you’re setting yourself up for bad, bad things, right? But as I was wavering on this issue and talking it through on the call, I realized that I did not want to set up my business according to corporate traditions. It’s like we’re parents at a playground, preparing to spank our child before the he or she had even thought of misbehaving. We’re preparing ourselves to expect bad behavior. That’s a lot of what the corporate world is. Why would I want to run my business following the same guidelines and philosophies that made me completely unhappy? After all, I left for a reason. We are in a business, yes, but remember that we are striving to create a better business model. One of the essential, and most appealing, elements of being a VA is that it’s relationship based, and who wants to be in a relationship that starts off with mistrust, penalties, and punishments? We are working with people we like, trust, and choose to partner with. So, that is where I’m at, making a mental note to avoid corporate rules for the sake of the familiar. I am not going to operate my business from a fear-based place. I can be professional, responsible, and have a trusting partnership. There is a happy medium between the formal legal contract and the school ground pinky swear and that’s where I’m going to thrive.

I’m going through a big transition.

Since I got sick last year and was told I needed to change my life, I’ve been reexamining everything around me. How do you decide what you need to change and get rid of in your life? Some things were easy for me, well, an easy choice if not an easy action, like the decision to leave my job. My doctors told me that if I didn’t, I’d be dead by the end of the year. Easy choice, right? Appling to AssistU was a really big decision, but it was also an easy one. But there are other decisions I had no idea how to evaluate, like if I should end certain relationships and what other changes do I need.

In class we talked about a very simple question to ask when evaluating your life and decisions, “does it pay, support, feed, or nurture me”. Hmmm, if I used this very basic equation, what would the result be? How many people, things, and choices in my life fall into one of these four categories? I’ve started making a list. I was pleasantly surprised that a majority of the things now in my life do qualify (certainly wasn’t true last year). I have learned that there is such a huge benefit to surrounding your life with things that strengthen you.

I am happier, healthier, and able to give so much more. There are some really big things, however, that don’t provide this, that don’t fit the criteria. Now, I’m not going to say that I’m automatically going to get rid of everything doesn’t fit, I’m not ready for that and life is more complicated, but I think it is a really excellent gauge of the areas that I should keep my eye on. For example, a certain long-term relationship is not currently fitting the “pay, support, feed, or nurture” categories but I’m not ready to let go. I know that I will, though, if something doesn’t change because I now know the benefit of making decisions to take care of me and now have a very simple way to measure it. We talked about other things in class, of course, but found it very interesting that this simple, little phrase ended up impacting my thought process so much. That’s what AssistU is, it’s more then a “how to be a VA” program, it’s a “how to change your life” program.

I feel like just jumping into this entry.

I want to discuss boundaries, a topic heavily featured in this week’s class, as I had a rather significant revelation. In my career history, I’ve always been acutely aware of the fact that I was horrible at establishing boundaries. I found myself constantly being taken advantage of, not being able to say no to a request, always feeling resentful and used, and never being able to manage a life in addition to a career. When I took my last job, I decided that I was going to have strong boundaries. It was going to be different this time and I was not going to allow myself to fall into the same pattern.

Unfortunately, as I told myself again and again that I had established boundaries and was standing firm, I ended up as I always did; working 60 hours a week, no lunch breaks, no days off, no life. In all actuality, I was in a far worse place then I ever had been because I still believed I was maintaining “boundaries”.

During class this week, I had a realization. A simple, quite obvious realization and I wanted to slap my self on the forehead. I realized what my problem has been all these years and why I couldn’t get the “boundaries” thing down. My problem was that I never identified those boundaries I just told myself I had them. How obvious, right? I never took the time to spell out what I would and would not do so how could I follow them?

Yes, all this is rudimentary and perhaps instinctual for many, however it was a significant insight for me. I know that going into business for myself, I run the risk of giving too much, of not knowing when to stop, when to walk away, when to take care of myself. The simple realization that I need to define, in writing and in detail, my standards and boundaries is going to be an essential key in my success and longevity.

Each step is a step closer, isn’t it?

I’m not sure what to write this week.

This week in class we touched on software and hardware needs (in general terms) and we talked a lot about image portrayal and being authentic. I must admit that I was really hoping we would be talking more about the technical aspects of running a business. I still don’t know much about taxes and finances and the legal issues. I’m even still fuzzy on registration, permits, and the like. There is so much I didn’t know I didn’t know.

Since this has been bothering me since last class, I figured I would need some additional help. I am not going to feel comfortable proceeding until I know more about these things. I’ve started asking friends and family for advice and suggestions. I’ve been reading additional material and I just had a garage sale to help fund a small business start-up workshop I want to attend. I’m hoping all this will help me be able to make informed decisions about how to set up my business. I keep reminding myself it’s still very early in the program and it’s ok for me to not know these things and be a bit scared, but I must admit that I feel like I’m the only one having these thoughts.

I’m hoping this is all part of the process.

Well, I guess I really am starting a business.

We talked about lining up advisors today. So I need a financial advisor/ accountant? I always figured I would need someone to do the math since that isn’t my thing, but it was all in the hazy future. Special insurance? Well, perhaps I can see that at some point. A computer tech? Whew, ok, I can handle that one. A lawyer? Really?

I guess there is more to running a business then just doing the work. O.k., I really did know that, but never thought it would apply to me. Honestly, I have to admit that I never thought I’d need any help other then a tech friend I pay in beers and the nice old lady who does my taxes. Yeah, I’m having trouble imagining all this. It’s really hitting me that I’m starting a business. Suddenly I’m that one word that they’ve warned me about since day one: overwhelmed.

It’s part of the process, I guess. It’s all very scary and new for me and there is so much I don’t know. I still believe that I’m on the right path. I believe in what I’m doing. I know that I’ll figure all of this out. There is great support in the AssistU community and I know I’m not alone. I’m not the first to travel these waters.

Still….a lawyer?

So far, I’ve been successful at curbing my raging Scorpio nature and being patient. Quite a task indeed! Well, perhaps it wasn’t patience nearly as much as it was just being really busy! Homework from last week took a lot longer then I thought (I’m not feeling very efficient and need to work on that), and I am really out of practice writing. The assigned essay was hard! (I must admit to a lack of pride in my first class literary outing!).

This week’s call, officially Class One, went by very quickly. I’m slowly getting to know my fellow classmates. In class, we discussed various VA definitions, the VA mantra, and started laying the groundwork for our business plans (I prefer to think of it as a business wish list. I spent too much time in corporate to stomach the thought of a “business plan”). It was really great to hear the excitement when everyone realized that they choose the client, choose what they do, and that they are in the driver’s seat. These are the very reasons why I am pursuing VA work. Although I promised to be careful about this, I must admit I can’t wait!

One more thing, I would like to pause here and remark on how amazing the AssistU community is. I have never felt so welcome (except perhaps when I came through with the replacement toilet paper for the ladies room at a bar I use to work at!). The support and positive encouragement really makes you feel you can do anything. People really go out of their way to “stop by” and say hi. I hope everyone feels as lucky to be a part of this as I do.

I was nervous. Before orientation, a cautious “don’t feel overwhelmed” is echoed in the Strong Start Manual, diary entries, welcome mails and kindly spoken from various individuals. So what was I in for? Fearful, I frantically reread all the materials, books, and website information, anything I could think of. An hour before class started, I sat down by the phone, arranged my books around me, got out a new pad of paper and four pens and waited. It was very much like getting ready for a blind date (without all the makeup)! I had no idea what to expect.

Class started and progressed quickly. I was surprised when it was over. It was a great orientation that reinforced and built on all the reading and prep I did. Happily, I did not feel overwhelmed and my nerves subsided. Actually, I found myself wanting more and was even impatient. I was anxious to get going, get done, and get started in my practice! I wanted to yell, “Faster!” Then I caught myself. This was our first date, and here I was fixating on our 2.5 kids and their college funds. I was thinking so far ahead that I was not paying attention to where I actually was and what I was doing. I’m not going to learn what I need to this way and I’m going to miss a lot. I think I have a new, self-imposed homework assignment for myself. I’m going to be in the present, get as much from each moment in the program as I can and not be preoccupied about the future.

I am now a part of an amazing community that has already reached out and welcomed me with open arms. I can already see the value in the AssistU program. There is so much to do and learn and I hope to savor each moment.

Still, I can’t wait until next class!