Shifting Your Mindset

On so many of the forums I see new VAs wanting to get their businesses up and running as quickly as possible. And on these same forums I see promotions for this course, or that event, or lists to sign up with and so on.

When we are in the corporate world we are so used to being told what we need to do, which courses we should attend, the events that would benefit the business the most and we’re just automatically put on mailing lists for staff.

But what about when we work for ourselves? How easy is it to make those decisions for ourselves? Frequently we just take the word of others because they’ve been on the forum (and therefore probably in the industry) longer than we have.

I want to encourage all of you to consider each piece of advice, each suggestion, and look into it further. Don’t just take it at face value and make assumptions that because others are recommending it, then it must be the right thing for you and for your business. You need to shift your mindset from being an employee to that of being a business owner. Start investigating things, checking into the background, experience, credentials and look for testimonials. If someone promotes something then start asking questions about how they found it, did others do the course too, does anyone else know about this group or another?

We need to be our own minders and protectors. It’s very easy to start spending out for this and for that but without any clear idea in our minds (or business plans) how that particular thing fits into the bigger picture for our business.

As with my previous post “Who are you learning from?” it is important you take the responsibility for investigating each new thing you bring into your business – after all, you’re the one that holds the purse strings. Start thinking of yourself as a CEO or MD when processing all of this stuff that comes into your inbox on a daily basis and you’ll find yourself automatically (over time) checking into things to make a (wise) decision for yourself.