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Laura Nicole: 00:02

Welcome to Your Virtual Assistant Coach, the podcast for moms who want to make money from home on their own terms. I'm your host, Laura Nicole, a successful six-figure earning VA and coach who replaced my college professor salary in just five months back in 2020 after my daughter was born, and I have never looked back. I'm here to help you build a profitable, flexible VA business that fits into your family's lives so you no longer feel like you're living just to work. Let's dive in. 

Laura Nicole: 00:32

All right, y'all. I am about to put myself on blast in today's episode, and you're about to see a very real life example of the fact that as virtual assistants, we are human, we make mistakes. It is absolutely bound to happen. And I'm gonna give you a real life example of a pretty big mistake that I just made about a week ago for a client that I only started working with two weeks before that. Because something that I hear come up for women a lot of times when I'm talking to them about becoming a virtual assistant, they have this fear in them of like, what if I mess up? What if I make a mistake? I'm gonna get fired. I'm not gonna be able to keep a client. And I always respond to them and tell them, listen, you're human. If they wanted a robot and a task rabbit, they would give all their shit to AI. But that's not what they want. Business owners want a real person on their team, and they know that that means that they're running the risk of mistakes being made. Now, obviously, it's our job to do our due diligence to do the absolute best work that we can and avoid those mistakes from happening, but shit happens sometimes.

Laura Nicole: 01:52

Kind of like when I went to refund a customer for my new client and accidentally hit the wrong button and double refunded. I double refunded my client's customer. This brand new client I'm working with, I have never used the payment processing software that she uses. I am not familiar with it. But in looking in this customer's account, there was this button there that said refund order. And in the multiple payment processors I have used for my clients in the last six years, that's always the button. That's always the one that you click. And I was supposed to be refunding this client $256, I think it was. I click the button. Also, typically, these buttons will then prompt you with another button that says, like, hey, are you sure? Like, hey, you're about to refund this money. Are you sure you want to do that? That did not happen. I click this refund order button and a block pops up that just says you're refunding $572. Like, I don't remember the exact number, okay? 500 and something. And I, when I tell y'all, if there was a camera on me, it makes me think of like Ashton Kutcher's punked show, right? Like my face, my eyes were popping out of my head, my stomach fell out of my ass. And I was like, what just happened? What? And it was so fast. I couldn't stop it. There was no cancel button. And then I just stared at my screen, like, what did I just do? Literally, what did I just do? And I looked at it and I understood after, once I saw how it processed it, that refund order meant to refund all of all of the customers' purchases that they've ever made on their account. Whereas if I wanted to refund just the one, I needed to click into that one specific order and then refund it. Okay. Big mistake, right? Is $250 life-changing money? No, but I gave a customer back double the amount of money that they were supposed to get. That's pulling profit directly out of my client's bank account. But I then practiced what I preach.

Laura Nicole: 04:19

I always tell my students: if you make a mistake, number one, own up to it, right? Don't try and hide it. Don't try and cover it up. Be an adult. Own up to it. Tell them you made a mistake, tell them what happened. And then secondly, find a solution to put in place to ensure that it never happens again. Make sure they know that you know what steps to take proactively to ensure that that same mistake is never something that they are hearing about from you ever again. And so, in taking my own advice, I had to tell my client. I had to let her know about the mistake that I had made. And this client in particular, we communicate via text. That's very common. That's my preferred route of communication with my clients. And I did not want to just text this to her. I felt like it would be kind of dropping a bomb. And so I called her. I gave her a quick call, asked her if she had a second, let her know that I had made a boo-boo. And it actually almost worked a little bit in my favor because when I said I made a boo-boo, she thought I made like a really, really, really big boo-boo. And so then my $250 mistake didn't sound quite as drastic as she had anticipated. But I told her what happened. I owned up to it. I let her know what I pressed in the system that was incorrect. I now know I obviously will never be pressing that button ever again when I'm handling these things for her. And in this case, because it truly was 100% my bad, I offered to just have her keep that amount from my pay because it was wholly on me. And now I know that a lot of y'all who have this fear ingrained in your brain, that little voice that says, if you make a mistake, you'll never keep a client. 

Laura Nicole: 06:07

Y'all, my client literally said, Oh my gosh, absolutely not. I am not taking this out of your pay. I so appreciate you telling me and letting me know what happened. And then luckily, she was actually able to stop the refund from processing all the way through in a different dashboard she has access to that I did not. But like imagine if I hadn't called her 10 minutes after it happened and told her if I had waited because I felt guilty or I was trying to find a way to cover it up, or I was whatever, just avoiding it because I felt really bad about it. If I had waited, she wouldn't have been able to stop it. She wouldn't have been able to fix it. And that's obviously a good thing that she could, but more importantly, it actually increased the trust in our relationship, right? Because clients don't trust you because you do perfect work. They trust you because you're a good human who handles things responsibly and owns up in your part of the process. So hopefully just seeing that a very vet VA who's been doing this for six years, who has handled a lot of sensitive information for clients. If I can still make a mistake, then yeah, you probably will make a mistake at some point for your clients. I have made plenty in my career as a VA. But I also hope that it's refreshing to hear how clients can handle these situations because honestly, her response is how every client I've ever had in the past, when a mistake has happened, how they've all responded. And that's just another reason. It's another piece of evidence for why I am so passionate about helping women learn how to find clients that you really align with, you connect with on a human level, that you enjoy each other as people, because when these mistakes happen, you already have that relationship built with the person. And so one mistake is not going to break that. But I do just also have to say that then a week later, I saved a refund from needing to be done. And she sent me a voice note telling me what a great job I did. And so in my brain, we're kind of even now. At least that's what I tell myself. Okay. If you happen to have a story of a mistake that you have made working with a client, pop over to my Instagram. DM me. Let me know. I will not put it on blast. I will not share it. But you know, sometimes it's just nice to share our sob stories with each other. My handle is hey.Nicole. You can also find it in the show notes if you just want to click there. But come share, come tell me, because misery loves company. 

Laura Nicole: 08:52

Thanks for hanging out with me today on your virtual assistant coach. If you loved this episode, be sure to share it with your best friend, your sister, or even your favorite coworker who you know wants to start making a flexible income. I'll see you all next time.