There is a lot of vandalism of our assets by well-meaning VAs.
Most of you don’t realize that when you post a piece of content under my name or the client’s name, you are representing that person.
Imagine taking the microphone away from Rihanna while she’s singing on stage, but you don’t know how to sing. And you’re deaf, so you don’t realize that your singing doesn’t sound the same.
This is what happens when you work on content without understanding the context.
Whenever you touch any piece of content, always ask yourself WHY someone should see it and WHO specifically should see it. You must know the GCT (Goals, Content, and Target audience).
One way the #1 VA mistake hurts us is when you process one of our videos, or a client’s videos, but don’t understand the GCT of that video project. This leads to bland summaries that don’t get views or engagement, even though the original video itself is powerful.
The same applies to the articles we create from videos.
Unintentional Vandalism: The Cost of Misunderstanding Content and Brand
Recently, we’ve had some VAs attempt to work on my personal brand, but they failed.
Even though these VAs had good skills, wanted to do good work, were well-meaning, and even went through some training, they struggled to make a significant impact on my personal brand. Here’s why:
We have a document called the Personal Brand Manager, but if you don’t know what it is, the different people involved, the specific terminology we use, the underlying concepts, and don’t even follow me on Facebook, you won’t be able to work with it. It’s not because you lack skills; you simply don’t have enough understanding to effectively represent me in personal branding.
If you look at anyone’s personal brand, there could be a lot of content depending on its sophistication. In my case, we’ve collected a significant amount of content over the last few years and processed it through all the stages of the Content Factory, much of which I have done myself because we practice “Learn, Do, Teach.”
If I want to tell other people that it takes 15 minutes to take a raw video, process it, script it, and post it to a webpage, then I should be able to demonstrate that I’ve done these things many times myself. I can’t simply delegate tasks that I’ve never done before.
And if I’m going to give advice on “how do you speak on TV,” “how do you speak at a conference,” or even “how do you run a Facebook ad,” then I need to have that expertise myself. If I lack expertise in the topics I am teaching, it would violate the “Learn, Do, Teach” principle.
If you try to teach something you have never done yourself, it’s like an overweight person giving weight loss advice. Your advice might be good, but you’re just repeating what someone else said. If you haven’t implemented it yourself, your advice on that subject is not credible.
Anyone who gives an opinion or advice on how to do something should be an expert practitioner on that topic, even if they are highly confident in their opinions. If not, they make the #1 VA mistake, which will likely always continue to be the #1 VA mistake.
Personal Branding and Topic Wheels: Insights for Virtual Assistants
Personal branding is mainly about a business owner’s network rather than self-promotion.
Many believe that constantly discussing their accomplishments is necessary to build their personal brand, crucial for hiring, driving leads, growing their business, and forming partnerships. However, this is not how it works.
People are primarily interested in what a business or person can offer them. True credibility comes when others in your network speak about you, not from self-promotion. Someone could create a hundred pieces of content per day, but they still wouldn’t be able to outperform what their network can do for them.
This concept is organized into a topic wheel, which connects “who a business owner knows” with “what they know.”
When we look at the six stages in the Content Factory process: a figurehead produces the content, and a virtual assistant processes it.
When you write under a figurehead’s name, you must have excellent grammar. You must also understand the different people in their network and the reason why they are in their network. You should know what themes or topics are important to them and understand their “why.”
Similarly, when promoting content for a business owner following the Content Factory process, you must be aware of their audience as well as their business strategy – their goals, content, and targeting.
In our case, the goal is to create a million jobs. The content is all our training for VAs and specialists that helps us achieve that goal. And the target is anyone who wants to learn or participate. In this ecosystem, some people want to get a job, while others want to hire one of the VAs who’s been trained in our system.
Why Understanding a Brand’s Core Mission is Essential and How to Get There
A common issue is that people hire a virtual assistant (VA) and simply hand over a folder of their speaking engagements, articles, and archives.
However, if the VA lacks understanding of the business owner’s identity and mission and mindlessly edits using templates, the resulting work often falls short of expectations. This is a clear violation of the Learn, Do, Teach principle: you cannot effectively teach or modify what you haven’t thoroughly learned and practiced yourself.
We see the same issue in our company as well.
If you aren’t familiar with the structure of my personal brand or the people in my network, you won’t be able to effectively work on my brand, regardless of your proficiency with tools like Photoshop or Premiere Pro. Understanding a brand before you work means that you should know how someone is “connected” with the brand you’re working on.
Here are some examples of people in my topic wheel: John Jonas, Larry Kim, and Karen Freberg.
John Jonas, founder of OnlineJobs.ph, has extensive experience hiring VAs, making him a credible voice on the topic. His platform hosts 2 million VAs. Although I also have significant knowledge in this area, creating content with John would boost my authority in hiring in the Philippines.
Similarly, I have vast experience in PPC, but collaborating with someone like Larry Kim, who controls 2% of global ad spend on Google and Facebook, adds more value. Larry and I have worked together over the years, and by elevating him, I enhance my personal brand.
Dr. Karen Freberg, a leading educator in social media and PR, consistently speaks highly of me, not out of obligation, but because we share similar beliefs. Her endorsement is far more impactful than self-promotion. When she talks about our program for college students starting agencies, it adds more authority to my personal brand than if I were to do it myself.
Your credibility is most powerful when it’s endorsed by the most relevant person, not necessarily the highest authority.
My entire brand is built on co-created content with these individuals, and I actively manage these relationships. It’s not just about taking photos with them at conferences every few years; I genuinely know these people, and we spend time together.
If you are working on someone’s personal brand and processing their content, you must understand all these stories and relationships that make up that personal brand.
Can you imagine working at Apple and someone comes up to you and asks, “Hey, can you tell me about the iPhone?”
And you say, “What’s an iPhone?” How would you feel about that?
That’s what we have going on.
We have people on our team who don’t even know what a “Lighthouse” is. Some don’t know what the Dollar a Day strategy is. They are unfamiliar with the things we teach. I don’t care how good you are at WordPress, SEO or any other skill; you must understand the brand, which means knowing its Goals, Content, and Targeting.
The High Cost of VAs Not Practicing Active Listening
Working on a client’s brand without understanding their strategy or mission causes major issues.
For instance, we faced serious backlash from Darryl Isaacs because VAs working on his content missed the deeper story behind Isaacs and Isaacs. They overlooked the significance of Darryl’s near-fatal accident in 2015, after which he committed his life to helping others.
Instead, the VAs posted poorly written content that lacked meaning because they didn’t bother to learn about Darryl or his mission.
Darryl recently told me, “We’re good friends, but you need to improve your quality. We can’t afford these mistakes.”
In digital marketing, we all make mistakes. Maybe the client is unhappy, the ad didn’t perform well, or something was delayed. There could be reasons beyond your control – someone else’s error, a personal emergency, or technical issues. But when a problem arises and a client or team member approaches you, that’s when you need to practice active listening.
Active listening means that when someone tells you something, instead of just saying “I understand,” you should respond with something like, “Okay, what I hear you saying is that you’re not happy because the report’s been coming late. Is that right?” You’re repeating it back in your words. This gives the other person a chance to confirm or clarify what they’re saying, ensuring you both understand the issue accurately.
The number one way to determine when someone isn’t practicing active listening is when they simply say, “Yes, I understand.” This doesn’t show real understanding. Instead, you need to reflect back what you’ve heard in your own words to confirm that you’ve grasped the issue correctly. For example, “What I hear you saying is that you’re not happy with the campaign’s cost per acquisition, or the creative work on the website, or maybe we’re not handling MAA properly. Let me make sure I understand what the problem is. Am I stating the problem accurately? Is that right?”
When you do this, you’re not just acknowledging the issue, but also establishing a common understanding, which is crucial for finding a solution.
The hardest part of active listening is admitting when you’ve made a mistake. It’s natural to want to deny the problem, ignore it, or downplay it. But real active listening involves acknowledging the issue and clearly stating it, not just saying, “I understand.”
Once you have a common understanding, you can then move forward to fix the problem.
This is where understanding the brand’s Goals, Content, and Targeting (GCT) becomes essential. Failing to grasp GCT, or ignoring it due to overconfidence in your skills, is an example of the #1 VA mistake, because it shows an inability or unwillingness to demonstrate in active listening, which results in failure. This usually happens when you think that being an expert at one technical skill (video editing, WordPress, etc) is enough.
For instance, consider a situation involving one of our VAs:
Failure to Perform MAA: An Extension of the #1 VA Mistake
The idea of Metrics, Analysis, Action (MAA) is that metrics are based on GCT (Goals, Content, Targeting). We’re supposed to drive a certain number of leads, rankings, business goals, phone calls, or clients. When we don’t hit that, or when something doesn’t seem right, we have to acknowledge that there’s a problem.
Many people believe that having technical skills, like video editing, is enough. However, it’s important to understand that if the videos you edit don’t boost sales or enhance customer engagement, tracked and optimized through MAA (Metrics, Analysis, Action), you’re essentially using the company’s resources without contributing to its success. This results in a negative return on investment.
You should also be able to apply MAA (Metrics, Analysis, Action) to your work to assess its impact on business outcomes and optimize areas as needed for maximum profitability. Here is an example of a VA who believes that having technical skills alone is sufficient:
He then expressed a willingness to perform MAA, but he still wasn’t sure how it was connected with GCT.
Not being able to do MAA is an extension of the #1 VA mistake. When you don’t understand the client’s GCT, you won’t understand the metrics and, consequently, won’t be able to perform MAA – measuring performance, outcomes, and determining the next steps.
If you continue to process content mindlessly, without evaluating its effectiveness or optimizing it to achieve results, you’re not adding value, whether you’re working for a company or your own clients.
Why You Must Never Message Only Me
Another common mistake is when you email me directly and don’t CC other members of the team. You might think that because I’m the decision-maker, your email should only come to me.
You might even have other reasons that seem good at the time. However, I process over 1000 emails every day. When you send messages to me alone, you’re not just placing the burden solely on my shoulders; you also risk receiving a delayed response or, in some cases, no response at all.
