A Little Nudge - For Those Who Need It
Posted in General Business by: SandiAs many of you all know, I belong to a wonderful professional organization for REAL professional Virtual Assistants – you know, those of us who don’t want to just ‘play’ at being in business, but really want to grow as individuals AND as professionals, who want to see our professional elevated to the level it truly deserves, one with standards and ethical expectations of its members, one that is seen as a truly viable business solution. That organization is the VACOC. We’ve had a recent topic of conversation on the forum over the weekend, and I got to thinking that maybe other business owners could benefit from some of the discussion. The topic was about how to transition from working full time to running your business full time. A lot of people have the misconceived notion that the only way you could really be successful in business is to drop everything and jump in, full speed ahead. While with a lot of businesses, that does have to be the case. However, for those of us who have started their businesses from home, it isn’t an absolute necessity, no matter what your colleagues might have you believe.
I started my business from home, without really much of a clue where I was going with it. I am probably a shining example of all the things you SHOULDN’T do when you try to go it solo, but hopefully the story I shared with my colleagues will help just one small business hopeful see that maybe, just maybe, they can make things happen for themselves.
My particular beginnings are slightly different than most. I didn’t start out to be a “VA” as I didn’t even know the term existed when I started out.
Way back in the day, I was a divorced single Mom of four kids, had just bought my very own house IN MY NAME, and had somewhat of a promising career ahead of me with a mid-sized family-owned, Commercial Contract Building Maintenance firm. Life was pretty good, although I struggled with a lot of family issues at home with my oldest son who while academically brilliant, suffered with severely delayed social skills, impulse control deficits, and a tendency for violent outbursts. After a lengthy battle with doctors & the mental health community, my son was finally diagnosed on the Autism spectrum after years and years of misdiagnoses, numerous doctors & specialists, and a list as long as my arm of medications we had tried with little to no success. At that point, I felt I had already lost so much ground in getting him the right help (most Autism spectrum kids are dx’ed before the age of 4 - my son was 8, almost 9) that I knew everything else in my life would have to get put on the back burner. He had to be my main focus if we had any hope of covering the lost ground before he got too much older & too much more ’set’ in his ways. His therapies alone were a full time job with 3 OT appointments, 2 Speech Therapy appointments, and 1 psychology/behavioral modification appointment EVERY week, not to mention 2 psychiatry appointments a month AND all the additional “homework” his therapists assigned for him to do at home or add to his daily routine.
Everything in my life seemed to be in chaos then. I was working 60+ hours a week as an Operations Manager, not counting all the work I brought home with me, and trying to ‘make up’ hours lost from all of Mike’s appointments by working even later into the evenings than usual. My youngest daughter was getting in trouble at school to get attention. My son was struggling terribly with all his new meds, all the therapies, etc. I wasn’t getting any cooperation from the school for either of them (in fact, the school caused me more stress than anything else by REFUSING to abide by the IEPs we had in place for both my son & his older sister.)
So, here I am, a single Mom with four kids, one of whom would be considered “special needs,” one of whom is acting out to get the attention her brother took away from her, and the other two just getting honestly ignored while I dealt with their siblings “issues.” I’m working 60+ hours a week, trying to keep up on everything there but falling way short since all my attention was focused on personal issues at home (my poor boss tried sooo hard to work with me, bless his heart!) I was shelling out a FORTUNE in daycare & babysitting fees, and now just enormous medical expenses for my son, putting my meager finances not just short…but in a hopeless tailspin. Everything finally reached a boiling point right after Christmas that year. In one day, I decided enough was just flat out ENOUGH! I quit my job and pulled my kids out of public school. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do; I just knew I would have a nervous breakdown if I didn’t make some seriously drastic changes in our lives. I had to make my world STOP so I could have a minute or two to breathe and get my thoughts in order. I had enough money stashed back to cover the mortgage payment & other bills for 2 months. I figured that would at least give me a little time to figure out what to do next.
My boss, who was really a great guy & had been right there with me, doing everything he could to work around Mike’s issues before I quit, threw me something of a bone a few weeks after I turned in my notice. He kept me on the payroll & basically handed off anything I could possibly do from home - forwarding the phones when everyone was out of the office, doing orders for supplies via our vendor’s websites, client check-in calls, research for projects he was bidding on, etc.
Long story short, I realized that there had to be other businesses out there in similar situations (my previous boss had his office budget cut back after I quit, so he really couldn’t afford to bring in a replacement.) At the same time, I was also getting heavily involved with home schooling my kids & even started venturing into homeschool curriculum. (I had an Ebay store at one point, selling homeschool curriculum & supplies for secular homeschoolers - a very under-served market.) I joined several groups and organizations relative to that. I volunteered to help out with various tasks I could do from home in addition to my Ebay/curriculum stuff. Before you know it, I was being referred to other groups who could actually afford to pay me a little here and there for the work I was doing. (Designing & printing newsletters, managing online calendars, updating websites, etc.) Slowly over time, less and less of my clients were related to homeschooling or previous employers and more and more were simply small business owners I had met via homeschooling networks.
Still, in the beginning, the little bit of money I was bringing in still wasn’t enough to cover the bills, so that’s when my ex-husband (the kids’ Dad) moved back home. Even with the little bit of income I had then & his income, we were still snowed under with enormous medical bills for our son. I was in something of a fix because I couldn’t really go back to work and keep up with all the appointments. But we had to have more money coming in. It didn’t seem fair for my ex to go out & get a second job. So, I made the decision to take on a couple of independent contractor arrangements for two companies that I knew weren’t going to be paying me what I was worth. But, what else was I going to do? I had to pay the mortgage & feed my kids. I had to be able to cover the $1,200 a month in medications my son was on.
When I stumbled on the VA industry, there were alot of folks in the industry who looked down their noses at me because I still had those contracts going. I belonged to a particular forum then & whenever someone would post asking about just this same topic (how to keep the bills paid while building a practice) the folks on that forum acted like things would just magically happen because you opened your doors. You could only be serious about your business if you dropped everything and jumped in full time. Honestly, let’s face it, that’s not always feasible. You have to do what you have to do to handle your responsibilities while you build your business. If you find a way to juggle both a j.o.b. and building a business ‘on the side,’ and it works for you, then why not? It just so happens that I found a couple of jobs that I could do from home.
More than once, when another member of this ‘other’ forum (I’m sure alot of you know the forum I’m talking about. lol) would express being in a similar situation - needing to be home with kids, but still bringing in a paycheck, I would offer to send them info on the companies I was working with so they could look into it. Man, o’ man, some of the responses I got from ‘veteran’ members were just shameful. They acted like I was somehow selling out because I had these 2 IC’s as my bill-paying buffers. At one point, I actually posted that I thought it was pretty snotty to look down your nose at someone when they made the conscious decision to do what they had to do until they could build up the living they really wanted. It’s not like I was working for some 900-call-my-fake-psychic line. One of the companies I worked for was a legitimate business research firm. I got paid peanuts for doing telephone surveys for other businesses, but it helped pay the bills, I got to pick my own hours to a certain extent, and I got to do it from my own home. It was a conscious decision to find a temporary band-aid to help out until I didn’t need it anymore. What’s wrong with that? Heck, it was better than cutting the neighbor’s lawn & pruning the trees around her trailer park - which I did too for awhile.
The whole point to my rambling is this…if having your own business is truly, in your heart of hearts, what you want to do? You’ll find a way to make it work - even if it means staying at your regular job, or taking a step back & going back to work for awhile to keep your finances healthy, or *gasp* getting paid peanuts from some crappy company for awhile. You’ll find people willing to help you along the way if you’re determined enough. You’ll find creative ways to meet your needs as you build towards your final goal. None of us started out (to my knowledge) with a fully functional, running in the black business. You have to start somewhere. If that means you start part time while keeping your regular ‘day job,’ then so be it. If it means it takes you 5 years to go solo rather than 1? So what? It’s YOUR dream. Fulfill it the way that works best for YOU, not anyone else. However you do that (within reason, of course) is up to YOU. There’s no shame in saying “Hey, I have to keep the bills paid while I build my business.” There’s no shame in going back to work after you start your business if you haven’t quite met your financial goals yet either.
Life is a series of choices. You plan ahead for as much as you can, but there are no guarantees in life. The only thing that’s certain is that YOU have to wake up with you every morning. So, you set realistic goals, keep yourself moving forward towards those goals, and make whatever choices you need to in order to keep that forward movement going. It’s all a learning experience - the good, the bad, and the ugly. There’s no one right way to do anything. Personally? I’m actually grateful for those crappy IC jobs I had in the beginning. They gave me an opportunity to learn how to balance work/home responsibilities when there was no longer a dividing line between the two. I learned what I needed in order to have ’space’ to work when there were kids right outside my office door. I learned how to teach my kids to respect when I was working, etc. The kind of things that clients aren’t always as ‘forgiving’ about. (Like children yelling in the background while you talk to your supervisor on the phone. btdt. lol.)
My kids are older now. My oldest daughter is now married & living in New York. We’ve made tremendous progress with my oldest son. My youngest daughter is growing up to be quite the strong, independent, not afraid to speak her mind kind of woman. (Much to my dismay at times when she decides she just HAS to speak her mind 
She is, after all, only 15, full of spirit, opinions, and ideas about her own, er, um, shall we say – level of maturity & worldly wisdom? I swear, if I had a penny for every time I’ve heard some manifestation of “Geez Mom. You just don’t GET it!” generally followed by Stomp, Stomp, WHAM, I’d be a wealthy woman!) My practice is by far more successful than I ever thought it would be and I’ve found ways to keep myself focused on the things about it that I love and feel passionate about. (After all, having your own business is a lot like having a child who never grows up. It’s easy to get so caught up in trying to reach your next goal that you get bogged down and forget what it is you love about your business.) But I’ll never forget the journey from where I started to reach this point at which I sit now. It wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve had my fair share of days that I wondered whether or not it was time to bail out on the idea of having a successful business.
My point in sharing this story here is to hopefully reach out to that one business owner, sitting at home wondering “What in the WORLD have I done? What was I THINKING? This is never going to work & my family will suffer if I can’t make it work out…somehow!” I have been there and done that, as the saying goes. I know what it’s like, and I’m here on the other side to say that you CAN make it work! Don’t give up! There are folks out there who really will help you along the way – even if it’s just to offer moral support. There are options out there for you, you just have to sometimes be a little more creative, or be willing to temporarily deal with less-than-ideal choices in order to keep moving forward towards your dreams. You will make bad choices, too. But hopefully you’ll be able to learn something from them – if nothing else, you’ll learn why you shouldn’t do something a certain way. And if you’re colleagues try to poo-poo the choices you make that are in your own best interest? Then find some new colleagues!
I hope this helps whoever it is that I’m suppose to send this out for. I’m sure you’re out there somewhere, even if I don’t know who you are.
