If you follow us on Instagram, you’ll have ‘met’ some of our Associates already, in last year’s Meet the Team series. But whilst that gave you the ‘who’ of our team, it didn’t necessarily give you the ‘why’ – the reasons our team became VAs and love what they do! We asked one of our Associates to spill the beans…
“A few years back, I was working for a company full-time and I was miserable. I was making a difficult commute everyday – a 5 mile journey could often take over an hour on public transport (sometimes longer if the local football team’s supporters were on their way to a match); the work itself was uninspiring and monotonous, and the team were mismatched and mismanaged – we didn’t play well together, to continue the sporting theme. It was a toxic workplace, personal development wasn’t encouraged, and faking enthusiasm every day on the phone to customers and clients was taking its toll on my health.
Moaning to a friend about it one day, I realised that all I ever did was complain about work, and was becoming a real bore! Even worse, I’d stopped pursuing my hobbies, I wasn’t looking after myself, and I was unhappy ALL the time. I felt like I was treading water – staying afloat but with no sense of direction or purpose in life.
I knew I needed to get out of my situation and find a new job, but the problem was, what could I do? I’d been working in a fairly niche industry and was pretty sure that my skills weren’t that transferable. I was also terrified of making a change – better the devil you know and all that!
I’d never thought about being a VA – in fact I didn’t really know that being a VA was even a job! I assumed it was a kind of ‘secretary from home’ and wasn’t sure that it was really for me, but a friend put me in touch with Amanda and suggested that the two of us might be able to help each other out.
Amanda soon dispelled the myth that it was ‘just’ secretarial! She had a client who needed some fairly technical work doing – we soon worked out between us that it was well within my skillset (with a few short online tutorials in my own time to fill the gaps in my knowledge) and before long I was working across 2 or 3 clients on a variety of tasks. Some of it was on the adminny side, but a lot of it was far more practical – I was constantly learning and developing my skills, thus giving me a far wider skillset to offer new clients.
Not only was I enjoying such a variety of work, but I was also enjoying my life outside of work a lot more. I was, to a certain extent, able to pick my hours to suit my needs; there were no more soul-destroying, footie-fan dodging commutes; and I was able to pick up my hobbies again. Working as a VA means I have short, concentrated bursts of time when I work solely for one client at a time, which stops me getting bored (I have a low boredom threshold!), and I’m never sat at my desk pretending to look busy, counting the minutes until the end of the day. I get to work with a range of colleagues, and it’s always a treat to connect with them.
Being a Virtual Assistant has improved my work life no end, and it’s allowing me to pursue my long-term goals whilst still paying the rent: win-win!”
Until next time!
Stay productive.