The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

Guess what, folks?

Judgment is a fact of life.

We ALL do it, day in and day out. Every second of our lives, we are making some kind of judgment or assessment about someone or something else, either consciously or subconsciously. It is how we make sense of the world and without it we simply could not function, process all that we are bombarded with, and make determinations in order to proceed.

Here’s how people are judging YOU:

When they look at your website, they are deciding whether you are a competent expert or a sub-par amateur.

When they find out your rates, they are recognizing that you are either a knowledgeable business person who offers something of quality and value, or a poorly skilled provider who is desperate for work, any work, "please-oh-please-oh-please, I’m begging you."

These determinations, in turn, inform their subsequent expectations and define how they will treat you as either as a respected professional or as someone they can devalue and take advantage of.

(Hint: Desperation is NOT an attractive business characteristic. Successful people are not desperate, and success, or at least self-worth and dignity, IS a very attractive attribute that clients respect and happily pay top dollar for because they correlate that with skill and competence).

When people read your emails or other written word, they are influenced to view you as either an educated, intelligent, articulate, knowledgeable business owner, or someone who is at an ignorant level in business and able to only speak in grunts and mutters (being facetious, but I think you get my drift).

Likewise, they are getting the picture as to whether you are an organized, timely, detail-oriented person who knows how to spell, punctuate and put together a proper sentence or whether you are a sloppy, disorganized person who might apply that same lack of discipline and competence to whatever work you do on their behalf.

Yup, people are judging you based on all these things and more, like it or not.

Conscious, intentional business content is supposed to be divisive. It is intended to be attractive to the kind of clients you want to work with and repellent to those you simply want to go away, to put it quite bluntly. Said more delicately, it helps those who are a fit for you recognize themselves in your copy, and those who aren’t, recognize that and move on to look somewhere else.

You only want to work with those you are going to enjoy working with and who have the need for what you offer (because it will have real value for them then), and vice versa. Otherwise, there is absolutely not going to be any longetivity or meaning or value to your relationship and it will be a grand waste of everyone’s time

What’s so hilarious, is that the folks whining and crying about being judged, turn right around and themselves make judgments on others, LOL, often based on nothing more than their own limited, ignorant, uninformed thinking.

But get this, judgment can actually be GOOD for you. Why? Because it creates standards and healthy competition. It is what pushes folks to step outside their comfort zones, to strive, to learn, to grow, to improve. It forces us to expand our thinking, understanding and knowledge. It gives us something to aspire to and build upon. It gives us purpose and drive. It helps us determine goals and find focus and clarity. It helps us determine what we love and what we don’t.

So where do people get this idea that business is supposed to be equal and fair and there is to be no judgment? Of course there is judgment! And fairness exists as long as it is merited to the extent that you show up to the table first being professionally qualified, competent and skilled and are willing to put in the effort.

I run the Virtual Assistance Chamber of Commerce in the same way. I’m not sure where some folks get the idea that everything is a democracy. And we aren’t trying to attract anyone and everyone as members. From day one, our organization has been about representing and promoting only excellence, the cream of the crop in the Virtual Assistant industry and those who are serious about their businesses.

Our content is meant to clearly and precisely spell out exactly what we are and what we aren’t, what we believe and what we don’t AND yes, who we are looking for and who we aren’t. Yup, that’s judgment. But you can’t stand for excellence and at the same time cater to the lowest common denominator.

Don’t like that? Sorry, but that’s the way it is. You can keep whining and complaining and wasting time, or you can buck up and stop being a victim.

(Side Note: And to the gal who is posting on a public Virtual Assistant forum that she registered and was invited to complete the essay portion of our membership process and then waited for weeks and never heard a thing… um, unless you registered under a completely ficticious name, you were NEVER invited to complete the essay portion of our membership and we NEVER received any essay from you in either case. So for you to pretend you were and then badmouth us because you never heard anything back regarding your completely imaginary communication with us… all I can say is "Wow! How dishonest are you?")