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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 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

As women, we are really good at a lot of things. But I think one of the things we might actually be best at is self-sabotage. In my coaching, in the two and a half, three years of coaching, over a thousand women, I have seen self-sabotage pop up and veer women right off the course into a full-blown, fiery crash so many times I can't even count. And the self-sabotage usually doesn't even come from the fact of not actually doing enough. It is so common that I see women who are doing everything right logistically, they're checking every box, they've made the decision, they've made the resume, they're doing the networking, they're doing everything right, and they're still managing to self-sabotage. Because when your brain is terrified of actually finding success doing this, and the thought of, oh shit, what if this actually works freaks you out, then it doesn't matter how effectively you do the logistics of becoming a VA and finding clients because that mindset is going to win out and you will sabotage yourself.

Laura Nicole: 1:48

I think most women, when they start in the VA industry, they assume that the challenges are going to be the logistics, right? Setting up the foundation, learning how to manage their time, getting clarity on their skills and their services. Typically, I think most women think their biggest challenge is going to be finding clients. And that is usually the number one challenge, but it's not the number one challenge only because of the actual act of networking and finding clients. But if you're not in the right mindset, you're going to be completely blocked from actually finding good, solid clients to work with. The fear of failure gets talked about all the time, right? I have a very recent episode of this very podcast, episode 28, Start Scared, Overcoming the Fear of Failure. But the fear of success is just as real. It's just a lot more sneaky. And the reason that this comes to mind for me to talk about with y'all right now is because I have seen it firsthand, this fear of success, the fear of, oh, what if this actually works?

Laura Nicole: 2:53

With two of my superstar accelerator members in the past couple of weeks. And the superstar accelerator, just to make sure I'm not throwing out jargon that you don't know what I'm talking about, is my group coaching container where I'm in conversation with the women in there helping them build up their VA business five days a week. And this very issue came up for two of them very recently. These women are doing the work. When I tell you, like they are carving out time in their days to focus on this. They have been very intentional with setting their services, taking the time to get really, really freaking clear on who their idle client is. They're putting in the time to network and build like build connections. Like they are checking off every single box on the to-do list, right? Like what to do to become a VA. They're doing all of it. And then just recently, they both started to see that paying off. And they both shifted into almost this feeling of panic instead of excitement.

Laura Nicole: 3:58

So one of my accelerator women, she just got an offer from a literal dream client who falls like right smack dab in the avatar that she had created for the type of client she wants to work with, the type of business she wants to support. And this client is like ready and rearing to go. She has 25 hours a week for my accelerator right from the jump and very, very clearly has plans on having that expand to a full-time 40 hours a week. Like this is exactly what she wanted, right? This is exactly what my accelerator has been working towards specifically. But now that it's right in front of her face, her gut reaction is is this really happening? Is this really real? And holy shit, I'm actually gonna get what I want. Like she felt very uncomfortable in that feeling of it actually paying off and bringing her what she's been working toward this whole time. And that subconscious fear had been blocking the right people from finding her.

Laura Nicole: 5:03

She wasn't actually internally ready yet to receive what she had been asking for and what she had been working for. Now, luckily, she's got me in her back pocket. So we talked through it and we rewired the thought process a little bit here. And now we've shifted into the excitement, right? Of like, holy shit, this is such an incredible opportunity and I cannot wait to dive in. But that was not her gut reaction. And for so many women, the gut reaction stops them in their tracks and then they self-sabotage and then they don't move forward. And the other member of the accelerator, who had a really similar experience, she has gone the path she decided to create a business Instagram profile to help market and network her VA business. And she had a couple of posts that just really took off and she was getting honestly more traction than she expected and that she thought she would. And again, instead of excitement, she kind of freaked out. She sent in our we have a group chat that they can send messages to me five days a week. And this is word for word what she said to me. She said, I think I'm partly scared of success.

Laura Nicole: 6:09

I posted a few weeks ago and it got more attention than I thought, and I panicked that I'm too busy. Now we know she's not too busy, right? She has been very intentional in her planning to this point. She knows how many hours she can take on. She knows overall how it's going to fit into her lifestyle and into her daily routine. But her brain is trying to keep her safe. And so her brain's tricking her, right? And saying, Nope, you're too overwhelmed, you're too busy, you can't handle anymore. Pull back. And those kinds of thoughts will slow down momentum. They will block opportunities. And both of these women are just examples of the truth that success, really with anything, but specifically here, success as a virtual assistant requires both skill and mindset. I have a business mentor who always says we like to do the work and the woo. And it's so true. You have to have a balance, you have to do the logistics, you have to do the work, but you also have to have your mind in the right place to be ready to receive the things that you're working toward.

Laura Nicole: 7:17

If your mindset is actually fearing that success, then you will subconsciously slow yourself down. And then that gets into that hamster wheel of I'm doing all the things, I'm having all these conversations and nothing's coming from it. So I want to give you a reframe for this, okay? Instead of thinking to ourselves, like, oh, what if this actually works? Like, what is that really gonna look like? And letting that kind of negative connotation be attached to the success, I want you to shift to what if this works and it gets to be easier than I thought. And I also want you to just tell yourself that like things are allowed to be good. Things are allowed to feel easy. I think this is kind of off topic here, but I think we because of the way that our society functions, I think that we have this thought kind of hammered into our brains that in order to find success, it has to be hard and it has to be uncomfortable and we have to be hustling. But like the truth is that we really don't. Like good things can just come easily to us if we have our mindset in the right place and we're doing the work on the logistical side.

Laura Nicole: 8:35

I've had to have that conversation with a couple of accelerators too, who have signed these dream clients and they started working with them, and they're convincing themselves that it's more complicated than it really is, or that they're not actually doing a good enough job at the work, even though they're doing exactly what their client is asking them to, and their client's happy with their work. They have a hard time. Women in general, our society has trained us to think that good things cannot be easy. And so they're not allowing it. And I'm so grateful that they chose me as their coach, and then I get to be in their back pocket and remind them, like, hey, you're overthinking this one. Like, let's just allow this to be good. Because sometimes we just really need that like grounding reminder from somebody who's not in our own head to bring us back into the mindset and headspace that we need to be in. And I am just such a firm believer in the concept of doing the work and the woo, which is why inside of my program, the Superstar Assistant Academy, we tackle both sides.

Laura Nicole: 9:41

You get a comprehensive step-by-step system to help you with the logistical side of becoming a virtual assistant. But we also have um these lessons, they're called mindset minutes throughout the entire program. And they were created specifically for our students by my favorite growth and mindset coach, who's actually my personal one-on-one mentor. And we have those added into every single module because the mental blocks and the mindset part of this is just as important as the practical logistical side of things. So if you're looking for the roadmap and the confidence boosters and you're looking for strategy and support, then the Superstar Assistant Academy is definitely the program to help you get your VA business off the ground and creating solid income for your family, working with clients that you love because it gets to be good.

Laura Nicole: 10:41

There is a link in the show notes that lays out for you everything that comes with the Superstar Assistant Academy. So go take a look at that. I would be so honored to get to help you build the version of success that your brain is trying to tell you is too much. It's not too much. It's yours, and I would love to help you create that.