Ivelisse McBride 
McBride Virtual Assistant is officially a year old! On a more personal note, I have been a business owner for a year.
I have been excited to celebrate our first year and look back on everything that came these last 12 months. For me, this year symbolizes how hard I have worked and, most notably, how hard I worked at not giving up! I have indeed built a business firmly rooted in my beliefs and values, making this a very successful year!
There have been many lessons learned within these last 12 months. However, the learning will not stop here because it is here that we grow not only as business owners but as human beings. I will look back at this 12 months from now and add many more lessons to this list.
Success is measured in many ways for each business owner.
This realization was the biggest lesson I have learned this past year. When I decided to become a virtual assistant, I joined groups and liked pages of more seasoned virtual assistants to grow and learn from them. I was impressed by all the virtual assistants boasting about having a 10k month. Oh yeah, that looked nice, and I couldn’t wait to have my first 10k month!
That has not happened….and that is ok! It could be easy to talk myself down and tell myself that I was not as successful as they were. But, in reality, if you look at my meaning of success, you’ll quickly see that I was very successful this year.
So how did I measure success this year? First, I wanted to complete my first year of business with a nice profit. So much goes into starting a business, and if I didn’t end the year in debt, I was ready to call that a successful year! Second, success means getting all my work done while working around my health issues without having to explain to everyone why I needed to stay in bed a little longer. But, most importantly, success meant being able to homeschool my child with his own unique needs.
How many Virtual Assistants can say they succeeded in business while schooling a tiny human? Probably not many. So I hit all my success goals for this first year, and I will put together another list of plans for my business as we grow and change.
Just take the plunge.
One of the most challenging parts of this year has been the newness of everything. I had to learn, sometimes the hard way with money spent, what works for my business and what does not.
Unfortunately, I am not very good with change, but I had to quickly get out of my head when it came to trying new things in the name of business growth. I tend to overthink and sometimes sike myself out of making an important decision due to fear. Luckily, my husband has become a PRO at pushing me off the deep end when making decisions to better my business.
Create a schedule to become a more efficient business owner.
This one took me a while to realize its importance. Building a home-based business is very deceiving. You often feel complete freedom because you are your boss but creating a structured schedule helped me level up and focus on my business. Not only does my schedule tend to get packed quickly, I sometimes don’t have the energy to dedicate the time to my business. Creating designated time slots and days of the week where I would only focus on my business helped me become a more productive virtual assistant.
This job is 50% client work and 50% admin work.
No one realizes how much goes into running a business! You may work 20 hours on solely client work, but you will also have to dedicate another 20 hours to admin work for your own business. It is this time where you will gain clients to cover your slow season. During this time, when you will create a social media presence and put your name out there for prospects to find.
My passion lies with every design I make, every blog post I write for a client, every project I work on, but I had to suck it up and realize that bookkeeping is also part of what I have to do even though I hate dealing with these numbers.
As a business owner, it’s important to have a plan for the slow season.
When I started this business, I started with a bang. It seemed like my schedule was jam-packed within days, and I thought things would stay that way. But, boy, was I wrong! My first slow season was the first time I honestly questioned whether or not I was ready to run a business. It shook me to the core, but I quickly realized that every company has a slow season. Many quit during the slow season, but those who stick it through becoming very successful businesses.
I am currently experiencing my second slow season of the year. I, unfortunately, lost two clients back to back and finished projects for two more, leaving me with ONLY two active clients. However, instead of beating myself up, I am enjoying this slow season and creating more effective workflows, concentrating on creating new content for my social media pages and blog. Lastly, I am taking this time to update my contracts.
The highs will be high, but the lows will be equally as low.
The great moments in business have made me feel like I was on top of the world. Your family is proud of you, your success inspires your friends, and you feel like you are one step away from making a significant impact on the world. This feeling is the best !
Unfortunately, after the high usually comes the low, and a low can be very low in business! It’ll have you looking at Indeed for your next job. I have had highs and lows within this year, sometimes all in 24 hours. It has been necessary to remind myself that 95% of the bad thoughts are inaccurate. That feeling of being a complete failure will pass because it’s a colossal lie. Even if it feels like you are against the world, you are still moving forward, making you a success! So take a mini-break, drink a supersized cup of coffee, and get right back in the game.
Have fun, be yourself, and give yourself some grace.
I started off being too serious in business. I wanted to be professional and make a huge first impression. Unfortunately, I became very miserable quickly. Then I realized that I am not always a skilled perfectionist. I love laughing and enjoying my day. So I decided to bring that into my business! I realized that if I made work fun and was myself, I was eager to start my day.
Above all, I learned how to give myself grace. Mistakes will happen, bad days will happen, and we will all fail at times. By showing ourselves the grace that we can get out of our bad days. I have the liberty to be IVELISSE with grace during every call, meeting, and interaction.
It has been an incredible year, and I am ready to experience everything to come. I am eager to see where I will be at years two, five, ten, and even twenty! Thank you all for being a part of this journey, and I hope you stay awhile.
Find this post useful? Check out another one which gives you 50 tasks to outsource to a virtual assistant.
