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