As an AssistU Mentor, a senior VA leading interns, and a self-described lover of learning, I often find myself having the conversation around continuing education. This week, I had three separate phone calls about it and it prompted me to want to share my feelings about it with you here.
I believe we are always learning, in some capacity, and to keep growing and moving forward, this learning plays a vital role. As a Virtual Assistant, there are always new things to learn… software, hardware, systems, processes, tools… as they enter into my everyday workspace, I have to navigate them in some way. I can avoid them or embrace them. It is my choice.
On a call Friday, with a woman wondering if AssistU was the right choice for her, I explained that entering into our field, becoming a VA, is only one piece of the learning puzzle and that she would encounter many. The conversation was similar to the one I had with a past intern on Thursday… as she sought advice while creating her continuing education plan.
For me, I had the foundational learning from AssistU. I knew how to use Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, even Access pretty well from my years in corporate. Those hard skills are important. I also knew how to support people, manage multiple projects, and navigate relationships. Those soft skills are every bit as important.
What I was lacking, and why I originally chose AssistU, was to properly establish a foundation for my own business that was solid so that I could go out into the world and support others with their own businesses. Things like:
- Getting a core advisor team together to help support me.
- Balance multiple clients and workspaces effectively.
- Set my rates so that I could be profitable and remain in business for the long haul.
- Create my standards and boundaries so that I could have the business I longed to have.
- Properly set up my business structure, accounting, marketing, and systems and processes.
AssistU trainnig provided this foundation and the additional continuing education opportunities like post-graduate courses, certifications, and internship opportunities, to allow me to further hone these soft-skills and core elements for myself.
Outside of AssistU, I worked to enhance my hard skills as well. I have taken many courses to enhance my skill set and make myself more effective at what I do. Software and platform trainings, courses on social media, websites, internet marketing, and even productivity and project planning are all examples of hard skill learning that I have and continue to participate in. It’s challenging to carve the time out on the calendar to do this but it is vital to my ability to continue to support my clients in the way I really want to support them.
I could spend hours learning more hard skills… but if I dislike doing the work, or don’t have a client need to do it, I am spinning my wheels. I would rather apply the hard skills I already have to my clients and as we work together see what the needs are, compare them to what I enjoy doing, then make the decision to learn something new if it serves me and will make me happy, when the need arises.
This approach makes the next type of learning the most active in my practice today. Within my own business, there is vital soft skill learning at play each and every day.
- With my coach, as we continue to stretch me and find ways for me to better myself and my business.
- With my AssistU mentees, I relearn the fundamentals each time they come through the program as I work with them and answer questions. It’s fun to get the basics again over and over as they learn.
- With my interns, I see how they have applied their AssistU learning and more importantly feel how it is to engage with them and work with them on projects. I love when issues arise and I get to feel how my clients feel, and learn how I can create better experiences for them by developing myself through these interactions.
- With my vendors and my client’s vendors, I notice the discomfort or ease of working with them and apply that to how I work with others. Am I making things hard when they could be easy. What can I improve based on that engagement?
- And, finally, with my clients. What am I doing for them that I love? What don’t I like? How can I shift the work to make it better for both of us? And… as they grow and new opportunities become available, are these things I want to learn and do, or things I am not comfortable learning and want to pass on?
Each relationship offers vital continuing education for me if I pay attention. And, as I told my past Intern on Thursday, this last type of learning, the relational learning I do with mentees, vendors, my coach, my interns, my support team, and my clients, is currently the most valuable of all. It is really where I am able to set the tone for my business and determine what lies ahead for me and what is next for my own continuing education plan.
With all of the things there are to learn: software, hardware, systems, processes, tools, better relationships… whatever… I am trying to make a choice to embrace the opportunities that make the most sense to me on my journey.
I believe that continuing education is all around us, every day, depending on how we choose to approach life. What about you? How do you determine what you are going to learn next?