List down what you’re good at. And a sneak peak. Day 5.
When I started as a VA, I had a hodgepodge of skills.
Now? Well…
Okay, I still have a hodgepodge of skills.
Quick interlude.
I was chatting with a client about an upcoming project. It involved planning, graphics, writing, layouting, customer support, website tinkering, some back-end tech stuff. Very hodgepodge. A little bit of Teachable in my life, a little bit of Facebook by my side… that type of deal.
I mentioned that I might not be able to handle the load by myself, and they said, “Okay, well, who can you recommend that can do this too?”
I —
“Yeah, see? You have the broad set of skills that I need for this project!”
My Jack of All Trades-ness?? Came in handy?? It’s A Thing??
No one was more amazed than I was, okay. Being a master of none was a huge insecurity growing up — and after twenty-seven (!) years! that’s exactly what someone wanted?
Bless my lil slightly-above-average-at-a-bunch-of-stuff heart.
Where was I? Ah, my skills. Yes, they’re still a whole bunch of things. But! My hodgepodge is now starting to take shape.
First. By asking: “What do I want to do?”
Remember when I said Maya Elious asked me,
“What are you doing in your business, and what do you want to do?”
That game-changer of a question?
I answered it with a sort of, “Well, I like this… but I don’t know if I’m good enough yet, so I kind of also offer these other things as a backup — ”
“You have to stop doing that. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you have to do it.”
Point taken.
So I wrote down the things I enjoy doing and sorted them into several categories and columns. Here’s a peek:
^ But that’s the clean version. Draft 1 looked more like this:
This was such a fun exercise because the more I wrote, the more I discovered, oh right, I can do this thing! And this other thing too! (10/10 would recommend you doing this as well.)
Having this list allowed me:
- To say no to the things I didn’t really enjoy, and
- To say yes to the things I do!
Second. By setting parameters and constraints.
The first parameter being, I want to have the time freedom to be with my son. Whatever I come up with has to allow me to say yes to family things and prioritize them.
So it can’t be something, for example, that had fixed desk hours, or that needed me to be on call all the time. I also don’t like constant tiny deadlines — I’m better at budgeting my time when there’s a big deadline far away so I can plan out my work chunks. That way I can work around life, so to speak, and choose when to do what (“when” = time of day, e.g. through the mornight, and/or “when” = I’ll take care of you on Friday).
I also listed random things I like and random things I don’t like, that my new business model had to fit into:
I love constraints. They turn on my puzzle brain.
The puzzle here being:
How can I do the things I’m good at, given this set of parameters?
Some ideas that jump out:
- Helping people live on calls
- Teaching things like the aforementioned hodgepodge of skills
- Big projects like creating simple websites
- Puzzley things like creating game plans for your personal set of constraints and parameters
Patterns are emerging, yes? Things starting to take shape?
Third. By experimenting.
Here’s where things get a lot real, and a bit scary.
I’m a believer in tiny online experiments. Try a little thing, put it out into the world, see what happens, tweak as necessary. A small messy thing is a lot less pressure than a big perfect thing.
So: here’s a sneak peak behind my first tiny online experiment for this business shift!
This is the sales page I’m working on for my As Yet Unnamed Service!
If you’ve got an idea that’s stuck in your head (in both the can’t-stop-thinking-about-it way and the can’t-get-it-out-of-my-head-and-into-the-real-world way), I’ll work with you one-on-one to make it a reality.
I’ll help you out with a game plan, keep you accountable and on track, and support you with my — what? — hodgepodge of skiiills hehe.
My low goal for this experiment is 3 people. My high goal is 10. My “girl are you crazy I thought you wanted a break?” goal is 15.
I will open this by the end of the week as I’m still working on the page!
But if you want to
- claim one of the 3 (or 10, or 15 … we’ll see. Transparency! I am not sure) spots
- know more details to see if this is a good fit for you
- give me specific feedback
- let me know that you, too, are watching RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars and that last episode right? #rakatatititata
Send me an email at mikli@heymikli.com!
If I could give you one little action step though. Even if you don’t have a business shift happening in your life.
List down the things you’re good at + the things you like to do. Really flesh them out. Get messy with your draft. Write down whatever pops into your head, and then allow more things to pop into your head like they naturally will.
Then look at your list like,
Dang.
Not bad.
I can do something with this.
And if you do want to do something with it… let’s chat.
