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Laura Nicole: 0:02

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's 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: 0:33

If you are being honest with yourself, one of the biggest things that is holding you back from becoming a virtual assistant and taking control of your days and your schedule and your income is not a lack of time or a lack of money to get started. It's fear. Point blank period. It is the fear of failing. It is the fear you have of trying something new and it not working out. But here's the actual truth that fear, that little tiny voice in the back of your brain that tells you to just play it safe is actually the thing that is causing you to fail because just not trying isn't keeping you from failing. It's not protecting you. It's actually just keeping you stuck exactly where you are, which is not what you want. Therefore, it's causing you to fail. Now, one thing we need to understand, okay, is that our brain's job is to keep us safe, not necessarily to keep us happy.

Laura Nicole: 1:44

Our brain is literally working in overdrive all the time to keep us safe. And it thinks that if you never try, you can't fail, right? If you never step off the ledge, you can't fall to the ground. But that's really just a mind trick, right? Because if you're not trying, then you're not growing. You're not even actually giving yourself the opportunity, which means that you stay stuck in the same job and the same routine and the same exhaustion and the same frustration and wishing and hoping and wondering what life would be like someday, maybe if we could stop feeling so damn scared of failing and actually try. And I want to kind of reconfigure the actual definition of failing. You think that failing means actually trying something and having it not work out, right? I don't want to fall on my face. I don't want my friends to see that I tried and it didn't work. You don't want to feel embarrassed, right? That's a big part of it. Our brain is keeping us safe, but it's also protecting our ego. And our ego does not want to feel embarrassed. But I believe that true failure is just choosing to stay stuck where you are.

Laura Nicole: 3:06

The worst feeling is never for me going to be, damn, I tried and it didn't work. It's looking back three, six, nine, twelve months, five years from now, and thinking, God, I never even tried. I never even actually tried. I just let my fear control me and I accepted that staying stuck was just the answer. That is the failure. You don't avoid disappointment by staying comfortable. You guarantee it because you're causing yourself to fail and you're causing yourself to stay stuck in the exact same spot. And when you feel fear, right, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. It doesn't mean that the path is wrong or that it's not a good fit for you or it won't work for you. It just means that something is new. But the only way for us to grow is to get out of our comfort zone, right? One of my all-time favorite sayings is nothing changes if nothing changes. And it's so similar, but I can almost guarantee that pretty much every virtual assistant that you look at or see online and think, like, man, I wish I had what they have. I wish I could do what they do, but I'm just so scared it won't work for me.

Laura Nicole: 4:25

I guarantee you that they felt that same exact fear when they started. But the difference between you and them is that they chose to move through that fear because action creates clarity and overthinking creates doubt. The longer you sit in the overthinking and the ruminating and the what if and let me do more research, the longer you sit in that shit, the more you're going to doubt your ability and the stronger that fear of failure is going to become. You don't need to know every single step. You don't need to be perfect. You don't need to know every single program or software out there. You don't. I promise you, you just need to start. And I want you to take a minute. This might sound a little more on the woo-woo side, but genuinely, I want you to take a minute and just sit and picture your future self six months from now. Would she be thanking you for just staying safe and for the fact that everything in life looks exactly the same? Or would she be thanking you for finally taking that first step? I don't think y'all understand how quickly moving into this space can start to make a difference not only in your financial life, but in your everyday life and your time with your kids and your time with your family and all the things because you have so much control. And if we think strictly in the financial sense, you could choose to start today and sign a client within the next four weeks that is a thousand dollar per month client, right? So six months from now, you could have made $5,000 plus you could have made nothing.

Laura Nicole: 6:16

And I know that might sound a little bit dramatic, but I just want to really put that in perspective for you because when I started this five years ago, it was my fifth month in that I signed a contract with a new client for $4,000 a month. There is no way that I could have known that was coming when I first started. And if I had let that little voice in my head win, I literally can't even imagine what my life would look like right now. And it's not just me. There's so many women inside the Superstar Assistant Academy who have also moved through this fear and decided to take action. And in their next six months, they've brought in $8,000, $13,000. And those were both supplemental incomes to a full-time corporate gig. I have another member, Stephanie, who left her full-time job at the end of last year. And in nine months, she has built up a full client roster and is bringing in just shy of $5,000 a month in VA income. If y'all try to tell me that she was not scared when she left her job and dove headfirst into this, I mean, let's be for real. Obviously, she was terrified. But she knew that nothing changes if nothing changes. And she knew that if she sat in her fear that another six months of life with her kids at home would just pass by and not in the way that she wanted it to. Because time is going to pass either way, y'all. It's going to pass either way. Tomorrow is going to come and go no matter what. But how you use that time is up to you.

Laura Nicole: 7:56

So I need you to let that fear of failure that's rising up in you, let that be the signal that you're heading towards something bigger and better. Don't let it turn into a stop sign that keeps you stuck for the inevitable future. Truly, the only way to guarantee success is to give yourself the chance to grow. And another saying you've probably heard me say on repeat is that the only way to fail is to quit. And I guess in this instance, we need to expand that to be the only way to fail is to never actually start. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be fearless. You just have to be brave once and start taking action, which is going to create clarity, which is going to create confidence, and it's going to propel you into that growth. And once you get in that stride, you are not going to fail. If you feel like you have been letting fear make your decisions, if you're listening to this and you are maybe feeling a little bit called out, like, damn, Laura, take it easy on me. Then this is your sign to actually take that one small brave step in the direction of what you actually want.

Laura Nicole: 9:11

And I would love for you to join me for the next live round of Discover Your Superstar VA skills, which is my four-day live workshop. Because if that is the next small brave step that you take, it is one that is going to provide you tons of clarity and confidence to finally start and step into that future, that six-month future you is going to look back and be like, damn, I am so proud of her. This workshop is full of actionable, tangible tips. We are going to show you how to use the skills you already have to start making money from home. And I will be right there guiding you every single step of the way through this workshop. So head to the show notes to grab your spot and let's stop letting fear run the show.

Laura Nicole: 9:59

Thanks for hanging out with me today and your virtual assistant coach. If you love 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.