Apparently, one of the skills behind my $10K/month VA business was learning how to professionally tell someone, “Girl, don’t play with me.”
There are certain phrases that can immediately change the temperature of your entire day.
“We need to talk.”
“Can you hop on a quick call?”
And my personal favorite...
REPLY ALL.
If you've ever worked in corporate America, you already know.
Nothing good happens when somebody decides their attitude needs an audience.
And years ago, while supporting one of my clients, I met a woman who apparently considered Reply All her personal stage.
We'll call her Mary.
Mary and I were not friends.
Let Me Introduce You to Roy
Roy was a great client.
I genuinely enjoyed working with him.
His business, however, came with business partners.
And business partners come with personalities.
One of those personalities belonged to Mary.
Thankfully, everything happened virtually because there were moments when I was genuinely grateful there wasn't a conference table separating us.
One day, Roy asked me to coordinate a meeting regarding some upcoming acquisitions.
Normal executive support stuff.
I'd spent more than 20 years working as an executive assistant, including supporting C-suite executives.
Scheduling a meeting wasn't exactly going to take me down.
Or so I thought.
Enter Mary.
And Then She Hit Reply All
Mary didn't simply respond.
She started double-emailing.
Correcting.
Demanding.
Telling me how the scheduling needed to happen.
Telling me what needed to be accommodated.
And doing it in front of everybody.
Now, could I have interpreted some of her tone differently than she intended?
Sure.
But at the time?
Oh, I read it exactly how she wrote it.
And it pissed me off.
My immediate reaction was basically:
Who the fuck is she talking to?
Because I knew how to do my job.
I knew how to manage executives.
I knew how to coordinate complicated schedules.
And I certainly didn't need Mary conducting an unsolicited masterclass in calendar management from the Reply All button.
My fingers were READY.
Fortunately, my brain arrived before I pressed send.
My First Response Was Terrible
I drafted an email.
A long one.
Way too much explaining.
Way too much accommodating.
Way too much energy spent trying to demonstrate that I was being cooperative.
I read it back.
Deleted the whole damn thing.
Because something about it bothered me.
It sounded like I was asking permission to be competent.
And I wasn't.
So I poured myself a glass of wine.
Very important step in the conflict-resolution process.
Then I reread her messages.
But this time, I stopped reading them emotionally.
I started reading them strategically.
What exactly was she saying?
What did she actually need?
Was she talking to me?
Or was she using me to communicate something she really wanted Roy to hear?
Ah.
Now we were getting somewhere.
Sometimes You're Not the Person They're Actually Talking To
This was something my years supporting executives had taught me.
Office politics rarely announce themselves.
Nobody sends an email saying:
“Hello Monica. For context, there's some weird shit happening between the partners right now, and you're about to get caught in the middle of it.”
That would be incredibly helpful.
Unfortunately, adults prefer subtext.
And once I stopped taking Mary's messages personally, I started noticing what was happening underneath them.
Some of what she was saying wasn't really about me.
I was simply the person standing between the people who actually had an issue.
That changed how I responded.
I didn't need to defend myself.
I didn't need to explain my résumé.
And I definitely didn't need to write a dissertation about scheduling.
I needed to represent my client.
Period.
So I Matched Her Energy
Professionally.
Which is considerably more satisfying.
My response was short.
Factual.
Firm.
I used her own words to answer her concerns.
No emotional paragraphs.
No excessive explanations.
No apology tour.
No corporate version of “please don't be mad at me.”
Just enough information to make my position clear.
Translation?
I can match your energy.
I just know how to do it with poise.
And that was one of those moments when I realized how much my professional experience had changed me.
Younger Monica probably would've reacted.
Or overexplained.
Or spent the rest of the evening replaying the exchange and wondering whether she'd done something wrong.
Experienced Monica understood something different.
Sometimes saying less gives you more authority.
Welcome to Virtual Office Politics
People sometimes talk about virtual assistants as if we're floating around the internet completing random tasks.
Schedule this.
Send that.
Update the spreadsheet.
Book the flight.
Cute.
But when you're supporting CEOs, founders, and executives, you're often sitting close enough to the business to see the things nobody puts in the job description.
Competing personalities.
Power struggles.
Internal disagreements.
Communication problems.
People who refuse to speak directly to each other.
And occasionally, a Mary.
You're not simply completing tasks.
You're representing another person.
That requires judgment.
You need to know when to speak.
When to stay quiet.
When to ask questions.
When something isn't actually your problem.
And when an email requires a response instead of a reaction.
Those skills don't always show up nicely on a résumé.
But they're part of what separates somebody who completes assignments from somebody an executive genuinely trusts.
This Is Part of How I Built a $10K/Month VA Business
When I think about building my VA business to $10K months, it's easy to focus on the obvious stuff.
Clients.
Contracts.
Pricing.
Revenue.
But there's another part of that story.
I had spent years learning how executives operate.
I knew how to anticipate needs.
I understood discretion.
I could navigate complicated personalities.
And I had enough experience to recognize that the task sitting in front of me wasn't always the actual problem I needed to solve.
That's what I wish more VAs understood.
Your value isn't measured by how many things you can cross off a list.
Sometimes your value is knowing how to handle the moment when somebody hits Reply All and decides today is the day they're going to test you.
Because anybody can type an email.
Knowing what not to type?
That's experience.
Mary Accidentally Taught Me Something
I don't know whether Mary ever realized she taught me anything.
Probably not.
But that interaction reinforced something I've carried with me ever since.
I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.
I don't have to explain myself into exhaustion.
And professionalism does not require becoming passive.
I can be warm without being weak.
I can be helpful without becoming somebody's punching bag.
I can disagree without losing my composure.
And I can put someone in their place without ever typing the words:
“Bitch, who are you talking to?”
Growth.
The Real Flex Wasn't the $10K
I'm proud that I built a $10K/month VA business.
Of course I am.
But money was only one measurement of what I'd built.
The bigger accomplishment was becoming someone clients trusted with situations that required judgment.
Someone who could walk into complicated environments and figure out what was actually happening.
Someone who understood that executive support wasn't simply about completing assignments.
It was about becoming the person who could handle the shit that happened between the assignments.
That's part of what eventually made coaching other VAs feel natural.
I wasn't teaching something I'd studied from a textbook.
I'd lived it.
Including the emails.
The personalities.
The uncomfortable conversations.
The moments when I wanted to react and learned not to.
And the occasional glass of wine required to preserve diplomatic relations.
So if you're building your career right now, don't underestimate the experiences that feel uncomfortable while you're living through them.
One day, you might realize that the client drama you hated dealing with was quietly teaching you exactly how valuable you'd become.
And Mary?
Well...
She gave me a story.
So I suppose we're even.
CURRENT MOOD
“Respect” by Aretha Franklin
Because sometimes the entire lesson really is that simple.
Know what you bring to the table.
Know how you expect to be addressed.
And know that having professional composure doesn't require shrinking yourself to make somebody else comfortable.
PEAK OF THE WEEK
Looking back at the version of me who built a $10K/month VA business and realizing the money wasn't the most valuable thing I earned.
I earned experience.
I learned how to read people.
I learned when to speak and when to let silence do some of the work.
And perhaps most importantly, I learned that I could be authoritative without becoming someone I didn't recognize.
Although I reserve the right to cuss about it afterward.
#ReplyAllAndFindOut
XXX,
M💋
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