Welcome, Dawn! Dawn is one of our amazing students of our virtual assistant course and we are so excited to have her share her story. Dawn, tell us a little bit about you. Where are you from? What does your family look like? Give us a little information about who you are!

 

Thank you for having me! I currently reside in Charlotte, North Carolina, however, I’m a Baltimore girl, born and bred. I moved from Baltimore to Winchester, Virginia where all three of my children were born. From there, I moved to Orlando, Florida and resided there for about 20 years. Then, I moved to Charlotte with two of my children. My other child lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife, and two kids plus two cats!

What about your business? How did it start? Why were you looking to start a business, and why virtual assistance? Paint a picture for us.

 

You know, I was really thinking about this today about what led me to this place. I have to tell you that I believe that everything in your life happens for a reason, and takes you down a path. This is not the first time I’ve owned a business. I owned a business back in my twenties and early thirties. Funny enough, I was in technology. I was in telecommunications on the front edge doing fiber optics and things. My company helped install a lot of fiber optic rings and things that actually have created what makes everyone here able to work from home today, so I’m really proud of that. I had to shut that business down for personal reasons and made the decision to relocate to Florida with just my kids, and to concentrate on them. But, the one thing I learned from owning that business, is that as much as I love telecommunications and technology, I REALLY loved just running a business! I learned everything about my business from the bottom up. I learned about sales, marketing, customer acquisition, inventory, facilities, management – you name it and I knew it inside and out in my business. 

 

At the time, I was raising my kids, going to school at night, working full time, and I found myself in the C-Suite environment for businesses. I just went to work where I knew the work. I knew work in the operations field and so I started working for these executives, being their right hand of the organization. I worked for different companies for four to five year periods, helping small business owners grow and expand their businesses, whether it was mergers and acquisitions, building a client base, relocating their teams, rebranding, or whatever their need was. I helped them do that and helped them grow. The last company I worked for, I had been with them for about six years. I was actually planning an exit strategy because things were good, but they weren’t great. I knew I needed to leave, that I was either going to be looking for another job or starting my own business. I decided that I really wanted to start my own business because I wanted to reach more people. I was thinking about doing business consulting, not really working for anyone again.

 

I had this whole plan in place. I was saving money and I was going to give my resignation in November. And I was going to work through the end of December and then go to work for her as an independent contractor come January, because she would need help with sales through January and March, you know, so I could make money that way while I was building my business, I just had this grand master plan of how I was going to do things. Then, in July of that year, I was working an event and fell and broke my ankle, which put me on immediate bedrest. I had to have surgery, pins, plates, everything put in my ankle. In the midst of this, this company that I had been working for, fired me with no notice, no reason. Then, they denied my work comp claim. So, I found myself laying in bed with no job, just thanking God I’d been saving money, and planning my exit strategy. I sat there and I was like, what do I do? I looked at my finances and I knew I had a very finite amount of time to figure something out. I’m by myself, I don’t have a partner, and I don’t have anyone else in my household paying my bills. I’m it! I started to look for what I could do from home since I was on bedrest.

 

I thought it would be four weeks. I was on bedrest for twelve! I was stuck, right? Then, I couldn’t even walk fully unassisted until December. It was a long recovery. So I was searching online, remote jobs from home, work from home, what can you do from home? I came across a bunch of groups, but one of the groups I came across was for The Virtual Savvy. I started to dive deep, which is something I always do. I look into companies and I check them out. I was reading reviews and I sent stuff to a few confidants of mine. I’m like, what do you think, you know, do you think I could do this?

 

Even though I had limited funds, I jumped in and I was like, okay, I’m going to do this. I need to make money. This is something I could do from my room! And, I opened my business. I joined The SavvySystem Virtual Assistant Course at the end of July, had my business name in August, had my first discovery calls in September. I started with my first client in September, and was fully booked by the end of October. I was earning enough money by December, which was my goal, to pay my bills!

 

And tell us, how long ago was this? 

 

Three years ago.

 

Wow! Are you all inspired yet? I’d like to pull out a few things you said. First of all, everything happens for a reason. Even your fall and dramatically breaking your ankle was part of your story! However, even before that, you had this desire to get out. That was for a reason, right? It prompted you to make a plan and come up with what this was going to look like. You had no idea that fall was going to happen when it did, but that that desire burning inside of you to do something else was just the start of that ball rolling. 

 

Second, you jumped in and did your research. We encourage everyone to do that! Dawn decided to jump into The SavvySystem Virtual Assistant Course. There are so many different articles comparing the SavvySystem to other products. And while we think it’s the best out there, we want you to do your research and choose the course that’s right for you. We want you to find something and someone that you can learn from to help you do this. 

 

So, you jumped into the SavvySystem, you launched your business, you had great success in just a few months. Now, what does growing your business look like? What are some of the peaks and even some of the valleys that you’ve experienced inside of this growing phase of your business?

 

I have to be honest with you, when I first started my business, it came from a place of desperation. I needed to make money! I was so distraught from the situation I was going through, that I undervalued myself.  I was a high paid individual in the corporate world! But then starting my business, I was like, okay, I’m asking for this amount of money, why would anyone hire me? I really undervalued myself and undervalued my skill set. I took some jobs upfront that I probably shouldn’t have taken. I’m thankful and I’m blessed and I learned a lot from them – overall I’m glad I took them. I say I probably shouldn’t have taken them simply because they undervalued me so much. 

 

I took the first six months to actually learn what I liked to do as a virtual assistant and what I didn’t like to do as a virtual assistant, because it’s such a big realm, you know? At first I was like, I’ll take any work. Then, I quickly learned that I’m not going to take just any work anymore.I need to be very specific about the rates I charge and the work I do.

 

Keep going! Dawn, what did growing look like for you? What are some of the high moments? What are some of the peak moments that you loved in that phase of your business?

 

When I started to land offers at my price point, that felt really good. I was able to land that first deal and be like, oh, this feels nice! When you can start to package it where you’re getting paid twice the amount you were getting paid, it just feels good. Then you start to feel valued and you start to feel like, okay, I do understand my worth. I do understand my value. I am an expert in my field! I hadn’t been treating myself like I was an expert in my field, so it was really coming to an understanding of those things. Being able to have great deliverables for my clients, having my clients be happy with the work I was delivering. Those were really all good things. And, this is going to sound like a crazy thing to be really proud of, but to be able to learn when to say no and to step away from a client because it’s the right time. Sometimes you just need to say no, it’s not a good time to continue and it’s time to separate and move forward from your client.

YES! Sometimes it’s okay to say no. Taking it one step further, sometimes it’s actually the right thing to say no. Sometimes saying no, either to the client or the service or whatever it may be, could open the door for the yes that’s right around the corner! Everything happens for a purpose, and even that opportunity to say, you know what? This client is not the right fit. No, I am not willing to drop my price. Sometimes saying no is the right thing to do, so that you can say yes to the very next step that is right around the corner.

 

So my next question, we kind of just answered, but Dawn, we know that owning a business is not always easy. There are going to be low moments where it’s really hard. There are moments where we may want to just throw up our hands and give up. What are some of those low moments that you’ve experienced? And then what did it look like as you moved out of it? 

 

I think the lowest moments are when you get a call or email from a client and they’re like, I need to meet with you today, and you know what the call is. You know it’s one of those really hard conversations to have, because 9 out of 10 times, when you get those types of notifications, it’s because they’re going to execute their option to terminate your contract. So a few things to remember in that – because it hurts, let’s be honest. It hurts to lose money that’s coming in, but you’re a business owner, right? One, you have to recognize that it usually isn’t about you. Most of the time it’s having something to do with their business. The couple of times that I’ve been let go from a contract, it’s been because they’re having financial issues in their company. It had nothing to do with the work I was providing! And two, you need to stand strong in your contract and tell them that they have a 30 day notice. At least, in my contract it’s 30 days, and I don’t let them out of it. They can buy out that 30 day notice, but they have to give a 30 day notice. And, you know, you might get some of the, ‘well, I have a financial issue’. It’s unfortunate, but those are some of the hard moments and I stick to it. If you’re not constantly preparing yourself and constantly having other opportunities available, those things will destroy your business because you aren’t preparing for tomorrow, today. 

 

YES! Stand firm in what you’ve decided as a business owner, especially inside of that contract and those 30 days, that’s going to be so vital to you in the launch phase and even more so in the growth phase, and in the scale phase as you continue to grow this business. Protect your boundaries! 

 

What I want everyone to hear is that owning a business is so much fun. Being your own boss and making your own choices on how much you’re going to charge, who you’re going to serve, what your services are going to be. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be easy, right? There are going to be hard times, but we need to recognize and accept that from the beginning. It’s worth every high and low.

Okay. We’ve talked about launching. We’ve talked a little bit about growing. Let’s talk about scaling. Dawn, when did you know, okay, I am in the thick of the growing I need to look at scaling my business. What did that look like for you? How did you know when you were ready to scale?

 

It’s funny because I don’t think that I actually did know I was ready to scale. I remember I scheduled a call with you and I was like, okay, so I have this idea and I don’t know how to put it together. It was something that was on my heart that I wanted to do personally, and I knew I wanted my business to kind of have a piece of that because It was about who I was as a person, but does it make sense to attach it to my business? And you walked me through that, and it explained to me that yes, that’s part of scaling my business. So it was just about something I had a passion about that I wanted to do. Then from that, it kind of lit the spark about all the other things I wanted to do. And from there I’m like, oh, well wait, now I can do this thing. I mean, I have so many ideas, and that’s what scaling looks like to me. Really what’s happened for me is that in working these retainer jobs, I have clients that’ll come to me and they’ll ask me to do what’s actually very specific project work. Like, can you build a Clickup database for me? Well, I can, but that’s really not something that I should be doing within a retainer, that should be project work. Learning that there’s some things that a client might ask you to do within your retainer that should be project work, that’s what’s helping me scale. Realizing that, okay, I have this retainer work, but these are things that should be done outside of retainer and that’s what I should scale my business on, these add-on services, to make additional money.

 

Pause for just a second. For those reading who may not know the term retainer, can you define what a retainer means?

 

Certainly. So, when I do my discovery call with potential clients, they tell me their scope of work and we discuss the services that they expect under that scope of work. Then, we decide on a number of hours. So, okay, that’ll take me 10 hours a week, which would equal 40 hours a month. So at 40 hours a month, it works out to this dollar amount. Then, they basically have a bucket of 40 hours a month that I work within to get all the things done. In my contract, not only do I put my responsibilities in, but I add a second addendum, which is their responsibilities. One of the responsibilities I give my clients is that they’re responsible to make sure they’re giving me enough work to hit that 40 hour bucket. It’s not my responsibility to chase them. They’re paying me to do a job. I will do the recurring tasks that I need to do, but if I’m only at 35 hours and they haven’t given me the additional little things, I’m not going to hold hours in a bucket for them. But, the retainer is the are hours I’m setting aside for the client each month. You know, I’m reserving space for them and they will pay me this dollar amount for that space.

 

I love that. You’ve all heard us say it again and again, but always, always, always have a contract in place! Never walk into a working relationship with a client without a contract. Dawn not only has expectations for herself, but for the client. This is a partnership. You are working together, you and the client, and you want that to be clear from the very beginning. 

 

Would you say, Dawn, that there was something stirring inside of you, that you wanted to take your business to the next level. And you just didn’t know what that looked like? 

 

Oh, yes. I mean, I was extremely successful before. I knew how to build a multi-million dollar business. I’ve helped other companies build multi-million dollar businesses. The idea of scaling a business was nothing new to me. I just needed to get out of my own head and realize that I could do it to myself again, you know, for me, instead of doing it for someone else. 

And, what have you learned about yourself as you’ve scaled?

 

I will say this. I started this business from a low and desperate place in my life. I closed my first business all those years ago from a low and desperate place in my life. That imprints on you, creates all sorts of questions in your mind surrounding value, worth, identity. Each time I moved to another level in my business it was because I dealt with some of those faulty mindsets. I learned I did have value and could charge my worth. I learned that I could do this again. That this doesn’t equal that.

 

Most importantly I realized that I could have a growth mindset and that meant a growth plan. Like I said, I have a lot of ideas. If I went full throttle at all of them on day one, I would never make it. My businesses would be too chaotic. Women of Collective, my first business, I built that with a vision of it becoming a place where women could work for me, learning skills and finding their value and worth. I want to build a place where we are helping women in low and desperate situations, not just by giving them a job; but by also providing them with support in their situation. And that is still my long-term goal, to create that within my business. But it was also the first stepping stone to my long-term goal. I had to create and work that business, while I built the next step, and so on. I am now in what I will call Phase 3 of my long-term plan, and everything is starting to come together. I see how the visions of this business model will flesh themselves out but I have to stay consistent, stay patient, and keep my eye on the end result.

 

So, I have learned just that… stay patient, stay consistent, and keep your eyes set on what you want to accomplish. 

What piece of advice or tips would you give to those reading this today?

 

Yes! I have three. The first piece of advice is to understand first and foremost, this is a business. We talk about being a side hustle and it can be, but if you want to quit your 9-5 job, you need to get into the mindset that you are opening a business. This means you now have responsibilities. You need to understand how to do your sales. You need to understand how to do your marketing. You need to understand about your taxes and your accounting and your insurances and your licensing, and how to do all the things that you may not want to do. It’s not just about getting a client and doing work for them. There are other responsibilities that you have as a business owner that you need to be accountable for. You need to treat it as a business. If you want to be an employee, go work for a company and be an employee. But if you want to be a business owner in this industry, remember this is a business and treat it as such.

 

The second piece of advice is to never stop learning. The industry changes all the time. Things change all the time. There’s always going to be new programs. There’s always going to be new ideas. I subscribe to a lot of books. Even though I think I might know something, maybe I could learn something new, right? It’s never bad to continue to read and learn more. Listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos, learn how chat GPT might help you in your business. Don’t stop learning, continue to build your skillset, continue to make yourself marketable and valuable in your field to be the expert in your field. That’s why you’re being hired, right? 

 

And, the third piece of advice is to have a support system. It’s imperative. Part of our job is to be the support system for our clients, but you need a support system for your business, as well. You need people. You can lean on people when you have the hard days, when you need to just step away when you need help because you’re having a problem with a client, you don’t know what to do. Maybe you’re frustrated by something, you just need somewhere to go. You need to have a support system that you can trust and will be honest with you in your business. It’s very important to have those people in your life that understand what it is you’re doing. It is hard to find people that understand that working from home, and doing this type of work is a real job. Find people who understand that and will support you in this and help you be accountable to that.

 

LOVE all of that! So, so important, all three! Dawn, thank you for sharing your story. You are such an inspiration and as you’ve heard us tell you over and over again, there are big things ahead for you. We are so excited to be on the sidelines and in your corner cheering you on.

 

Want to connect with Dawn? You can find her here: