I learned some of my best skills to become a better Virtual Assistant, not in an office, but shoveling piles of manure. You wouldn’t think that working on a farm would equip you with skills transferable to the VA World, but it turns out it is one of the best environments to build patience, resilience, proactiveness, and problem-solving skills.
This post is all about How Shoveling Sh*t Helped Me Become a Better Virtual Assistant.
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When I graduated from High School, I had no idea what I wanted to be when ‘I grew up’. It felt like such a daunting question, that I froze whenever someone asked. You don’t know what you don’t know and I felt like there was so much I wanted to explore but one thing was for sure, I knew that I loved horses. They are my spirit animal; they speak a language that few humans understand.
It all seemed fine and dandy in my head at this point, so off I went to college to study agriculture with a focus on equine. Little did I know that the amount of time you actually spend working with the horses is very little compared to the amount of time you spend caring for them. Not to mention the amount of time it takes to maintain all moving aspects of a farm.
I was originally going to title this blog post something very demure (makes me laugh that this word is a trend right now), like 5 Top Tips to Become a Better Virtual Assistant but would that have made you click on the blog post? Nah, probably not, it was the shit, wasn’t it?
Table of Contents
This post shares How Shoveling Sh*t Helped Me Become a Better Virtual Assistant
Learning Patience and Client Management as a Virtual Assistant
I’ve mucked a lot of shit in my life, and when you spend that many hours shoveling, you have a lot of time to think. The repetitive motion of scooping and flinging in the wheelbarrow quiets the mind and allows your subconscious to work without all the distractions of modern life.
But along with the astronomical amounts of poop produced by my equine-loving friends, I was also working alongside 1000+ pound beasts who have a mind of their own, don’t speak the same language as me, and react to their shadow blowing the wrong way. You have to be careful right? It’s dangerous. Not to mention that working on farms, there are tractors and lots of heavy equipment to be mindful of.
You quickly learn to first and foremost have patience, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. I remember my first school horse, his name was Skippy, he was blind in one eye. Which didn’t prevent him from being an amazing teacher to me but it made it so that sometimes we needed to introduce certain maneuvers or obstacles to him with his ‘good eye’ first.
One time in the riding arena, Skippy spooked at a yellow cloth that someone who was walking along the boards was waving around. He started snorting and prancing and hopping around like a spooked cat. I quickly hopped off and walked him over to the girl from his good side with his ‘good eye’ first so that he could clearly see that there was nothing to be afraid of, it was just a silly yellow cloth. After a good sniff, Skippy realized that the cloth wasn’t going to ‘eat him’ and off we went riding again. Yes, horses are scaredy cats like this.
It’s happened quite often with my Virtual Assistant clients where, from the outside looking in, I can very much see that they need to shift XYZ in their business, to make it function better, generate more revenue, or whatever the reason may be, but until the business owner is ready to admit it to themselves all you can do is keep being patient and remind them of the shifts that need to happen to see growth in their businesses. I’ve had virtual assistant clients who insisted on hiring the cheapest person for a position, even if they weren’t the most qualified.
Why?
Because they wanted to save a few bucks. But what they didn’t realize at the time, is hiring someone who is less than qualified, leads to mistakes being made, time spent fixing those mistakes and more time spent teaching them the job.
So did hiring the cheapest person really end up saving them money?
And this situation kept happening over and over again, until finally one day realization hits that if you hire one quality person, they can often do the work of multiple less than qualified people who have no idea what they are doing!
Problem Solving and Resourcefulness as a Virtual Assistant
Working on farms you also need to be a good problem-solver. Have you ever seen what can be done with a roll of duct tape and WD40? Miracles, I tell you! Apart from the one farm I worked at for a rich family (it wasn’t farming making them rich), all the other farms I have worked on utilized what they had lying around to fix their problems. There’s nothing a little bit of bailing twine can’t fix!
Growing up, I used to love walking around my great-grandpa’s farm, where my grand-parents lived. All of the barns were stuffed full with stuff and you could often find some interesting things. The old chicken coop housed by grand-pa’s old skidoo, that my brother has now restored and the old barn stored old fire trucks and cars that were historically significant for the community that I lived in. But apart from that, the old building also contained a lot of old nails, tin, shovels and various other things. If you needed something, you asked Jerry, more than likely he had it lying around somewhere! Or he had something that you could use to make use of.
The same goes for Virtual Assistants, you have to be a good problem solver and see the big picture to solve issues. Running a business is oftentimes expensive, and until you are well established, many business owners don’t have the funds to invest in systems and softwares. As a Virtual Assistant, it’s your job to evaluate what systems they are currently using, how best you can utilize them and research what other tools you can bring in and meld with what is existing within budgetary constraints and the goals of the business owner.
Not only that but oftentimes business owner’s have software preferences that you need to work with. As a Virtual Assistant, you won’t always know the ins and outs of all softwares but with time, you will eventually notice that many softwares are similar to one another. For example, Dubsado and Honeybook. So you may know one and not the other, but it’s up to you to be willing to learn, research and figure things out to make them work and make them better by improving upon what processes are already in place, or researching what other tools can be brought in to make it better.
Developing Mental Resilience as a Virtual Assistant
Farming is a physically and mentally demanding job, you wake up early at the crack of dawn to feed the animals that rely on you for their nourishment and you do it every damn day because it feeds your soul regardless of how you feel. It’s similar to the commitment you need as a Virtual Assistant.
I used to own my own mini farm, where I cared for my 3 horses on my own. Yes, I had help from my parents and from the neighbour occasionally, but day in and day out, my horses relied on me for their care. Thankfully I don’t get sick often, but when I did I still got up and at the bare minimum took care of what was immediately pressing like giving them their grain in the morning and at night with their medicine and made sure that they had enough hay and water for the day. Not to mention shoveling more manure!
I remember when I first started on my Virtual Assistant journey on the verge of tears working for my first client (who I later discovered was a difficult client when everybody quit- story for another day) because I didn’t know what the next step was or what I was doing but willing to give it my all because I desperately wanted to stay home with my daughter and didn’t see any other option at this point.
Not only that, but this client depended on me for their business’s smooth functioning. If I would have quit, her business would have been in shambles, I was a vital piece of the puzzle. Being mentally resilient as a Virtual Assistant is about showing up, even when you don’t want to or when you don’t know what you are doing and trying your best to figure things out, learn, and move things forward.
This mental resilience translated well into dealing with difficult client meetings (trust me there were tons!), handling unexpected challenges, and dealing with client/team conflicts. This job taught me to persevere, no matter how challenging the situation.
Being Proactive and Preventing Issues as a Virtual Assistant
If you have owned animals for any length of time, you know that veterinary bills are expensive. You also know that there are lots of preventative steps you can take to be proactive in minimizing these veterinary expenses.
We used to joke in the horse community that if your horses can get hurt on something, they will! Meaning that if you see something that is a potential danger to your horse, you best take care of it immediately because as soon as you tell yourself, ‘Oh, I’ll come back to that later,’ it’ll be too late. Your horse will get hurt on that piece of barb wire sticking out, leading to that pricy veterinary call that will inevitably be placed on a holiday when a veterinarian charges a premium for their emergency visit.
Business owners appreciate Virtual Assistants who are able to think ahead and be proactive. I remember one time expediting client orders when I came across an error that had been produced. We hadn’t ordered the correct quantity of an item. Instead of waiting for someone to realize that there was an item missing I proactively went to my boss and informed her that it looked like there was an error in the quantity and verified that we still indeed needed the original quantity requested. J
ust by simply being attentive and dealing with an issue at hand immediately, we were able to minimize disruptions to the business. Which ultimately leads to happier clients, keeping us employed! Being proactive doesn’t just mean avoiding issues, it builds trust which is everything as a remote worker.
Now does this mean that you too need to put in the labour of scooping thousands of pounds of manure to become a better Virtual Assistant? Well no! Phew! Business owners need team members who are proactive, patient, problem-solvers, and resilient. It doesn’t matter where you have learned those skills, it’s just important that you apply them to being a Virtual Assistant. Which, ultimately will keep your business owner happy resulting in word of mouth business for you.
The skills to become a better Virtual Assistant you don’t learn in a classroom, you learn them by showing up every damn day and doing the work!
This post was all about How to Become a Better Virtual Assistant
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