The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

I can’t remember what got me starting thinking about this, but I know it was some little, innocuous thought that eventually led me to musing about some things that I’m really proud of about myself.

For one thing, I’ve always created my own opportunities. Like when my daughter was a little less than a year old and I was ready to get back in the workforce. I was still really young and at the time, the job market wasn’t that great. I ended up hearing about a volunteer opportunity at a family services organization and I thought it would be a great way to brush up on my existing skills, learn some new ones and gain some more recent references.

And it turned out to be just that… a really wonderful experience and opportunity all the way around that eventually helped me get into a great job working for the city/county and later, an even better job working for a labor union. I have always been proud of the fact that I created my own opportunity in that respect, as well as the fact that even though it was a volunteer position, I treated it as if it were a paid position. I showed up on time, every time, on the three days per week that I committed to work. If the organization had had more money in the budget, they would have hired me in a heartbeat, but even so, I gained an enormous amount of respect and admiration (and references) because of the dedication and helpfulness and skills I demonstrated while I was there.

Another thing I’m really proud of is the fact that I always pay those who do work for me. I got to thinking about this from a conversation I had recently with my guy. Somehow we got on the topic of this one really icky client I had way back in the day. I tried making a go of things with this client for about year, but I finally realized his lack of honesty and integrity simply wasn’t going to change.

This was back when I was still doing bookkeeping, in addition to administrative support, in my practice. This guy was always paying vendors late, he wouldn’t submit employee monies to the agencies they were supposed to go to, etc., etc. For example, he had a couple employees who were having their checks garnished for child support. Well, he was having the money taken out of their checks, but he wasn’t sending it in to the agencies. (I did the bookkeeping and completed and filed the various tax/business forms and reports, but he wouldn’t let me do any actual bill paying or transferring of funds.) And it ended up causing some very serious, stressful problems for these employees.

He also wasn’t turning in the social security, medicare and other taxes to those agencies. I tried to impress upon him that these weren’t monies that were his to play with. They belonged to the employees and it was really going to end up coming back to haunt him if he didn’t take care of these things. He was already going through employee turnover like crazy because of his shoddy treatment and practices. And all the while, he was buying himself Harleys, living in a condo beyond his means, and generally not depriving himself of anything whatsoever while stiffing everyone else. He’d make a show of acknowledging what I was saying whenever I brought it up, just enough to make me think he wanted to make things right. Always wanting to think the best, I ended up being strung along for far too long because the bottom line was he didn’t care who he screwed over or how.

Anyway, we were talking about that situation and it reminded me of how I have always paid everyone I’ve ever worked with. I’ve never stiffed anyone, tried to cheat them, or made them wait for payment. I think that is absolutely wrong and I’m proud of myself for always living up to that value and walking my talk.

So those are just a couple things I’m proud of myself about. What about you? What kinds of things in your life or business are you most proud of? I’d love to hear your stories!