Episode 202: 3 Excuses Keeping You From Quitting Teaching and Becoming a Virtual Assistant

Full Episode Transcription:

(00:07):
Hey, friend. Do you find yourself coming up with all sorts of reasons why you’re having difficulty quitting teaching and becoming a virtual assistant? Maybe you’re disguising your excuses as obstacles. Either way, they impact your ability to show up and grow your virtual assistant business God’s way, but the good news is that you can easily break free from them. In today’s episode, I’m gonna outline the three main excuses I hear and some simple tips for breaking free from them. Firstly, please take this with a grain of salt. This might hit a nerve, but please do not get angry with me. The reality is that every one of these excuses has some truth to it. Believe me, I know, but some of these excuses are just that excuses and until we’re ready and willing to look at them and discern if they’re excuses or realities in our lives, we can’t make any changes. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again thinking that something is going to change. That’s just not where we need to be. I believe that God has led to you to this podcast for a reason, and I know that you have this incredible calling on your life and these incredible giftings on purpose and that God has this amazing place he’s trying to bring you. So we have to blast through these excuses once and for all.

(02:37):
Excuse number one, to blast through and start growing your virtual assistant business is I don’t have the time now. I’ve definitely been in situations where I had limited time or in seasons where I had less time than normal AKA, having a newborn but saying I don’t have time is not true and it’s an excuse. We have to know exactly what time you have and eliminate all the time wasters from your schedule once and for all. If you’re saying to yourself, “I do not have time to learn how to become a virtual assistant, to take those steps toward being able to quit teaching”, here are a few tips for you. First, I want you to get out a sheet of paper and write down why you believe you have no time. Next, I want you to look at that sheet of paper and then pray and ask God to reveal to you the truth about time in your life. On the other side of the paper, I want you to write down all the things you do every day that are not God-centered or are time wasters. Then ask yourself how you can eliminate or get rid of them during this process. I want you to be honest with yourself about what you actually don’t need to be doing. I’m sure there are so many. I know there’s so many things in my life I don’t need to be doing. Okay. Finally, I want you to put a timeframe next to each of the things you wrote down in the previous step. I want you to assign a specific time each week that you’re gonna get those things done. Plug them into your planner so you know when they’re happening and you can see when you have free space, once your planner’s filled out, you’re gonna be able to see exactly where you have time to dedicate to your journey to quit teaching. If you don’t call yourself out, who is gonna call you out? If you don’t change your behavior, nobody else is gonna do it for you.

(04:29):
No one else is going to force you to change the way that you spend your time. You are the only person in control of your daily activities, so you have to set those boundaries for yourself, beginning with identifying what your reality really is. So for example, I did this a few years ago and I said I had no time, but when I prayed to the Lord and started working on why I thought this was true, I realized it was because I spent way too much time scrolling social media, figuring out food for the week and watching tv. I figured out that I would have an additional five hours per week just by reducing my scrolling time. How much extra time can you find in your week to put towards becoming a virtual assistant so you can quit teaching? Is this an excuse or is this an obstacle?

(05:18):
If it’s a reality that you actually have no time, then okay, I get it. In that situation, it’s not an excuse, it’s an obstacle with every excuse. We have to discern if it’s truly an excuse or if it’s an obstacle, and if it is an obstacle, how are you gonna overcome it? Every single problem has a solution and it is your job to find it. Okay, so excuse number two, keeping you from quitting teaching and becoming a virtual assistant is, “I’m afraid”. I hear this excuse regularly. I’m afraid or I’m scared. You know what this means for you? Maybe you’re scared of judgment, failure, not doing something right. There is so much fear going on in today’s world, and I just want you to understand that fear is not something we’re called to lean into as Christians. We are told that fear is a liar and we are to fear not instead or to lean on God and have confidence.

(06:12):
So if this is you, I want you to go to scripture or Google and look up scriptures for fear, scriptures for when you’re afraid and scriptures for when you’re afraid of judgment. I want you to write these scriptures down and then turn it into a God says statement. So for example, let’s do Deuteronomy 31:6. “Be strong and of good courage. Do not fear nor be afraid for the Lord your God. He is the one who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.” So when I turn this into a God says statement, it might be God says, I am strong and I am courageous. God says, do not fear or be afraid. He’s telling me He’s with me right now and will not leave or forsake me. It might seem kind of harsh to y’all to say that fear is an excuse, but it totally is.

(07:00):
You have to push through your fear. There was not a time when I started something new that I was not afraid. There was never ever a moment when God called me to do something and I said, this is gonna be easy and comfortable. I’m not worried what people are gonna think of me. Quitting teaching and pursuing something new takes courage and you cannot let fear prevent you from living out the calling that God has over your life. I have been terrified so many times in my life and business, but that is the whole point. We have to step into our fear by faith so that we can lean on God. That’s it. You clutching your fear is actually you not surrendering and trust to where God’s trying to take you. It is time to release that fear because fear is not from God. It should not have a home in your life, in your mind, in your heart, or anywhere near you.

(07:49):
Excuse number three, stopping you from quitting teaching and becoming a virtual assistant is, “I don’t know how”. Sometimes this can look like perfectionism or over analysis or you might just be frozen. “I don’t know how, so I’m gonna do nothing.” This is absolutely an excuse. Everyone who has done something incredible in this world did not know how. When I quit teaching, I didn’t know how to do the different virtual assistant services. But guess what? I pushed through the I don’t know how and I figured it out. One thing I have learned, which is insanely valuable, is that instead of trying to figure things out that I didn’t know how to do on Google, I instead invested in the person or program that does know how. Find someone who knows what you don’t, that you trust and follow in their footsteps so you don’t have to make the same mistakes that they did.

(08:42):
Do not be afraid to invest in learning. Every time I’ve been willing to let go of money and allowed that money to help me grow and learn, it has come back tenfold. The ROI of every dollar I’ve spent learning something new, learning the how has been exponentially returned in so many incredible ways. I do realize that it takes a minute to have some finances to invest in yourself, but I invested in myself long before the money was comfortable and we were in a place to do that. Every time I’ve come up against a roadblock and had to decide whether to invest in something to help me, I knew that I needed to do it and that if I did it myself, it was gonna take me way too long, be super messy, or I was just gonna stay stuck for far too long and end up giving up.

(09:27):
If you don’t know how you can like afford to learn how to do something, ask God how and get resourceful. If not knowing how is keeping you from not moving forward? Ask yourself, Lord, where is my how? So don’t ask yourself, ask God, where is my how? And then get resourceful. Get on the internet. Look it up. No matter where you are, there is a how for you. If you’re wondering how to become a virtual assistant, I’ve got that program for you. I’ve got the Teacher Turned Virtual Assistant program. It will teach you everything you know. It’ll teach you the different services that you can offer as a virtual assistant. It will teach you how to find potential clients, how to communicate with them, how to send contracts and invoices. I’ve literally got the templates for you for all of that. You can plug-and-play your info, makes it so easy for you.

(10:19):
So if you’re ready for the Teacher Turned Virtual Assistant program, go check that out at teacherturnedvirtualassistant.com and you can get registered there and if it’s not the time for you to invest in anything right now, if that’s you, there is a how on this podcast if it has anything to do with quitting teaching and becoming a virtual assistant, your how has been answered here we have over 200 episodes your “how” is answered here. We also have a free catalog of all of the podcast episodes, which I have linked in our Facebook community so that you can search for the solution you need by different keywords.

(10:56):
Y’all not knowing how is just another lie from the enemy trying to keep you small. It’s trying to keep you from pushing forward. It is time to go bust through these excuses. Let God and His word drive away your fears, talk to you about your time and priorities, and guide you on how to do it. Quitting teaching and becoming a virtual assistant is possible. If you have the courage to say no to these excuses, you are called and it is time to step into your calling and prove that anything is possible with God by your side.