From the Desk of Janet Barclay

Here it is, already the end of April (where does the time go?) and I haven’t yet written about this month’s message on my motivational calendar:

ATTITUDE

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

Winston Churchill

Although it’s a pretty obvious statement, it’s worth reminding yourself from time to time that your attitude is a powerful thing.

If you expect things to go wrong, they probably will. And if you expect someone to be unpleasant,  they probably will, if only because your expectation will show in the way you treat them.

Keep that in mind and try instead to have a positive attitude! If you expect things to go right, they will! And if you expect someone to be pleasant, they will, again because you will be more likely to treat them with kindness.

How is your attitude? 

The story is often told about the time that Charles Schwab, as president of Bethlehem Steel, asked management consultant Ivy Lee to help him become more productive. Lee recommended the following:

1. Write down the things you have to do the following day.
2. Number these tasks in the order of their real importance.
3. Start your day by working on the first item on your list and stick with it until it’s completed (or until you’ve done as much with it as you can), then go on to the next one, and so on.

After trying it out, Schwab found this advice so beneficial that he gladly paid Lee $25,000 (equivalent to $400,000 in today’s world)!

The main principle here is that by following this strategy on a daily basis, you will always know that your most important priorities are not being overlooked or put aside.

Last night I started a telecourse, a follow-up to the Turbocharge Your Business program I took last fall, and we discussed this story and what action we could take every day to help grow our businesses. Since one of my goals is to establish more linkages within the VA community, I decided to visit the Virtual Assistant Networking Association Forum on a daily basis. Although I’ve been a member since 2003, I haven’t really been taking advantage of this excellent opportunity to learn from and share ideas with other VA’s from around the world. 

Someone forwarded me an email this week which he’d received from Milana Leshinsky, a very successful coach who recommends the use of VAs so that the coach focuses on what he/she does best. Her income has doubled three years in a row, and says that her biggest secret to coaching success is delegation without hesitation. Because some coaches don’t have that level of confidence in their virtual assistants, she has developed a special training program for VAs who support coaches, called Send Your VA to School.

I’ve been very fortunate to attract clients who support my professional development. Last fall, a certified Strategic Attraction Coach who is one of my clients offered me a spot in his six-week telecourse on using the Law of Attraction in your business. More recently, other clients have invited me to a two-day live conference and a series of teleseminars to be held over three days.

Although a VA is an independent contractor, and not your employee, it may be worth looking for ways that you can help him or her to become even better at what they do - it’s a win-win situation!

Shortly after writing my entry If I Only Knew…, I came across Judith Waller’s article, Unlock the Treasure Within, which describes a process similar to the one in I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was. It’s amazing how often it happens, that you come across either a new idea or something you hadn’t thought about in a while, and then it keeps appearing. I’ve been told that it’s not a coincidence, but part of the Law of Attraction, that it’s the universe sending a message. I could buy that, but I’ve noticed the same thing happens with words - I read or hear a word for the first time, then a second and maybe even a third time shortly afterwards, and even actors - while watching a movie a particular actor catches my attention, then they show up again in several other movies I watch within the next couple of weeks. I’m pretty sure the universe is not concerned about either my vocabulary or my movie-watching!

One of the last exercises we did in the Turbocharge Your Business class was to pretend it is a year from now and that we’ve just bumped into someone from the class, and to tell them all about the past year. Here’s what I said:

I had a really great year! I have been busy, steady. There hasn’t been one month where I’ve had to sit down and figure out where I’m going to get the money for bills this month; it’s always been where it needed to be when it needed to be there, and in fact, I’ve been able to actually put some money aside. We’re thinking we might be able to put a down payment on a condo on the Lakeshore.

The reason that I’ve been able to do this is because I’ve got people in place that I’ve been able to subcontract to or refer to if I was too busy, or things I didn’t want to do, and I’ve also got systems in place for myself so I can stay on top of what needs to be done and follow up with my clients who need that extra prodding to make sure that the work gets done and not just forgotten about.

I’ve started to form a Team 100 list, my 100 experts that I can go to or refer to, and everybody’s starting to think of me as the resource person - if they want to know something, they call me, because they know that I either know the answer or can find the answer for them quickly. 

And the best part of it is, even though I’m so busy, I’m taking good care of myself, I’m healthy, I’m spending time with my friends and my family, my relationships are stronger than ever, and I’ve even got some time to do something for my community; I’ve been doing some volunteer work. I’m so happy – I feel great!

What’s really exciting about this is that it doesn’t seem unrealistic (except maybe the part about the condo on the Lakeshore) - especially when I consider that my income doubled from 2005 to 2006, and based on my current list of ongoing clients, could easily double again in 2007.