As VAs, many of us know, that a great many business women are giving themselves unnecessary stress (not to mention wasting their own valuable time), because of a simple misconception about self-employment. They believe being self-employed means they must do it all alone.
However, as VAs, we can also be guilty of harbouring the very same misconception over our own businesses!
What self-employed means
When you look up the phase ‘self-employed’ in the dictionary, you get the definition:
‘Earning income directly from one’s own business, rather than as a specified salary or wage from an employer’.
The term ‘self-employed’ simply relates to how you earn your money. It’s not about having to do everything yourself – and it is this point that we use to illustrate how we can help build a client’s business.
We remind our clients that they need to stop going it alone and to make optimum use of our services.
How we as VAs, come unstuck
However, completing all the tasks that need doing in business isn’t the only way a business owner can be ‘doing it all alone’ – and this is where we, like other business owners, can come unstuck.
We may well delegate out tasks to others, in an effort to free up our time, but we still approach our business from a view of having to ‘do it all’.
How? By neglecting to see the benefit of having a support network around us.
We believe that all other aspects of our business need to be done alone. If we don’t know how to do something, we spend copious amounts of time looking to figure it out. If we don’t have the right contacts, we spend time looking and building those relationships on our own and, if we’re fighting our own negative and limiting thoughts and beliefs around our abilities as a business woman – we try to solve it by ourselves in private.
We all need support
The amount of time and effort we spend on these areas of our business can really affect us – emotionally, physically and financially. Having the right support around us – and using that support network – not only helps free up your time and energy, it also enables us to expand our reach further and build our businesses on a basis of collaboration, rather than competition.
A support network gives us the opportunity to better support each other, to glean knowledge from each other, offer a superior service to our clients, help ensure clients and VAs are suitably matched, based on their needs – as well as helping the VA industry to grow and flourish. And ultimately, it means we never need to feel like we are a lone cog in very large, uncaring wheel.
If you’re tired of doing it all alone and want access to a supportive and collaborative environment, check out what we at VIP VA can offer you. Not only will you get support, you’ll also get access to training, business help and a client matching service – check out all the details here.
Image courtesy of Piotr Marcinski/stock.adobe.com