Tell me about your vision.
Thank you so much. So really my vision is all about supporting women
to ditch the nine-to-five and live life on their terms.
So really more about breaking free from societal norms and society tells us that we go to school,
we go to university, we get a good job, and then you retire. So really what I've seen is
that we don't need to wait until we retire to enjoy our life and to live life how we choose to.
So it's really about sharing the vision with women to know that they can have a flexible life,
that they can still have a career, they can still run a successful business and still be present for
their family. And I think that's really the most important thing is presence for your family and
also the flexibility to go wherever, whenever, and on your own terms as well.
Tell me more about that. It's a pretty broad term that can apply to a lot of people. Why did you
specifically choose women and why and how you got along this journey? I'd love to hear more thoughts.
Yeah so organically it happened that I drew in women. I do have some men as clients and it was
just because of the way that I showed up and the way that I spoke about my own experience that
attracted women. So I actually have my daughter on my own. I went and by the time I was 32 I hadn't
met the one that I wanted to be with so I decided to go and have my daughter on on my own. And what
that presented for me was the, I guess the need but also the desire to not not provide her with
a life that she deserves and being a one-income household. It's certainly more apparent to be
able to provide for her and give her the experiences that maybe a two-income family could provide.
And it's something that kind of happened organically over time and something I fell into
because of COVID. So I had had a very long 25 year career in hospitality and events and working in
hotels all over Australia and overseas and when COVID happened the entire industry shut down.
The hotel that I was working in at the time was the very first hotel in the country to
enter their quarantine program because in Australia we all were bound to hotel quarantine when we came
back in from overseas. So very early on actually only just after I went back from maternity leave
was there no industry and no job. So through random ins and outs of trying to stay in other jobs
because everywhere kept on closing and things like that I found this beautiful space in the
online industry and essentially all I did was use all of the skills and experience that I had
and I created my own virtual assistant business and that really just took off really quickly.
And because of the flexibility that I created I was just like I really felt like I tapped into
something and I really wanted to share that vision with women all over the country and now I've got
some clients worldwide that this is another option to the nine to five and you can earn more money
than your nine to five. So that's really where the whole vision started and really where I get to do
what I love now. It's interesting that you mentioned virtual assistants because
we have three teams and I think fourth and fifth coming up soon throughout the world. Predominantly
our team is based out of Latin America and we have a team based out of Philippines and we have
I think two people we hired from Pakistan and one coming very soon which I'm in charge of. We're
opening up in India and I think hopefully some part of Europe as well in the future.
So the way I understand virtual assistant and the way I think you've explained to me I think a very
different understanding. How does that virtual assistant business relate to being free from a
nine to five in your terms and what do you mean by that? I would love to hear what exactly it is
that you do. Yeah great so what I've discovered there is lots of different definitions and lots
of different ways that you can hire a virtual assistant whether that be a full-time virtual
assistant from an agency similar in Australia. We have a lot of offshore agencies and predominantly
from the Philippines and that's really at a low cost I guess a lot less skill level and
a lot of times they hire them full-time to come in sort of replace the need for a full-time employee.
What we do and the clients that I have in the virtual assistant business and the clients that
I teach in Australia is really about that let's say higher level executive that has predominantly
worked in a typical nine to five maybe they're an executive assistant or a personal assistant
and they're using their existing skills and mapping across to being a CEO of their own business
and offering those skills to business owners and specifically because of their experience and a
lot of them have gone to university. A lot of them similar to me have got you know 25 years experience
in their their industry is actually providing them at the top end of the market so not competing with
say the five ten dollars down at the Philippines we sort of work within the hundred to one hundred
and fifty dollars per hour and being niche on experience niche on service to allow that business
that business owners to actually really grow and really scale their business because you're having
all those expertise that come in as a collaboration. So it's very different in terms of the level of
support the level of initiative and the level of work that is done but for the business owner going
into this space it's not binding their time by the business owner it is that flexible arrangement so
you might work with three or four businesses and you would commit to say a minimum amount of hours
per week or a minimum hours per month and you would actually do those hours on your own terms.
So just say it was a 10 hour a week for one client the hours that you do that 10 hours is actually
all down to us as the VA business owner it's not down to the person that's essentially hiring our
services so it's more like hiring if you want to use a term to compare it you know like a marketing
agency or an ad agency or something like that you wouldn't you wouldn't dictate the hours
and specifically what they work so it's a little bit more of a partnership type of business to
business arrangement than more of a business to a subcontractor type of arrangement.
I kind of understand it but I really don't understand most of it but I think I've had more
conversation about it that maybe I'll get to the bottom of it so let's get to let's let's move away
from the what and the how and then go to do the who and the why. So why did you get into this
building and why what gets you out of bed every morning to keep doing this?
Yeah so I guess when I started my business it was actually because I met with an old colleague from
the hotel industry outside of a coffee shop when we went out inside the coffee shop and we just had
a coffee and I was just picking her brain what are you doing now you seem to not really be doing that
much at all and she said that she was working as a virtual assistant and she got paid more than she
did in three days than she did in her five-day hotel job so that really spiked my interest.
So it was really because of her that I jumped into it and she all she had really done was planted
the seed of the opportunity and added me to a couple of Facebook groups. Now I kind of watched
the space for six months and then when there was one week in my job that wasn't really having much
fun extremely micro-managed and I noticed that there was quite a lot of people looking for support
so I just dove in head first secured my first client in 24 hours and then I was able to get
my first client in 24 hours resigned from my full-time job in a week and I was fully booked in
three weeks so it kind of snowballed really quickly and then within about four months and this was
before I knew that there was such thing as a business coach because I didn't know that you
could get a business coach then but about month four in my virtual assistant business I realized
that this was an opportunity that I wanted to share with other women so that they could also create
their own businesses and have that freedom and flexibility to choose when they work and who they
work with as well so I started coaching at four months into my business and just essentially
showing other women on how to set up their own business and then you know fast forward probably
two or three it was probably two years later than that I really decided that coaching and helping women
was what drove me that really got me out of bed seeing them quit their nine to five seeing them
create their own business seeing them make way more money than they did in their nine to five
that was that was enough for me to be like coaching is all in for me and a lot of the clients that we
had in the virtual assistant business I gave them to the team to go and actually run them within
their own business and now 99% of what I do is about supporting women to not only build their
business but also once they built it is how to actually scale it so that it's a long-standing
long-standing thriving business that's not just a side hustle essentially thank you for sharing that
let's go to one more leap a layer deep in this I would love to hear some of those stories that
pertain to your why or maybe some of the experience you've had those women I'd love to hear those
yeah so very early on I realized the impact that it had on their family life and the fact that
they didn't have to go back to the office that they could stay home with their their little
ones that much more and that was pretty cool because I had to go back to work I had to go back
to work full-time with it it was six months six months of the day I had to go back after having
my daughter and there was no flexibility given to me I was in a sales role and I still couldn't even
do a day from home doing sales calls it was very you want your job you come back in the same
capacity and I know that there's there's so many other women out there that they're forced to put
their kids in child care or they're forced to just have to go back to work whereas this opportunity
can actually provide them with you know still a couple of days of work in the beginning
whilst their kids are young and they can always increase and build that thriving business when
the time came and then the story started to come out even money-wise I had clients saying I just
I just cannot fathom the amount of money that I'm making and I'm paying off credit cards I'm now
being able to provide my kids more presents for Christmas like all of that I was just like this is
this is the work this is the work because if they've come from a family that's struggled for money
or if they've taken time off to have kids they're always on the back burner in terms of money so
those stories are really what got me to to where I was and because of the experience that I had when
I went back to work no flexibility no allowances for school pick up or score drop-offs it's here's
your job that take it or leave it and I think that's a very much a one track minded I know a lot of
that has now changed since COVID and a lot of those companies now have you can pick a day and
you can work anywhere you like or they're very much tailoring the work hours suit women but I think
why did it take a global pandemic for us to get there and I think that the nine to five industry
still has a long way to go in terms of providing flexibility to families yeah yeah you're right
because a lot of times people they want to they really want to share that they want to chase that
freedom that most times people can't get so how many times that people don't enjoy times with
their families because some things that come up or there there's not enough boundaries in a workplace
or there's not flexibility and people struggle through it and they have to choose between
providing for their family putting food on the table or or quality time which it's a hard choice
for most people to do so that's awesome that's great that your work can do that so thank you
for sharing that with us you're welcome when it comes to your vision Sasha where do you think
that you're going with your vision if you could see it going in the future somewhere or imagining
getting a bigger maybe five years ten years down the road if you haven't thought about that
that's fine too but if you have we'd love to hear your thoughts on on where you where you're going
and exploring with your vision now yeah I've definitely thought about it this is this is my
this is my life now so it's always about how can we impact more people and I really see myself
talking on really big stages to room full of people to really just help them to know that
there's actually more to life and they can actually choose how they live their life and I think
that's really where the change is is once they realize that they don't have to live the way that
society tells us or they can believe in themselves to go and reinvent themselves or to go and change
the trajectory of their life I think that's really where the work is and the way to do that
is by speaking on stages motivating you know it's even women men and women to really honor
themselves and actually give themselves and their family actually this amazing life because one
everybody deserves to have it everybody's also worthy enough to have it and they just have to
decide to go and get it and the problem is because a lot of generational trauma and what society tells
us everyone's playing small because they don't know that they can do anything else so it's more
about just sharing with them the vision that they can break free from the nine to five and they can
go and create whatever they want to create and live life essentially on their terms not by somebody
else's thank you for being here today I'm really happy that you tuned in to vision pros live I'm
looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward this is going
to get more and more fun we'll have more and more engagement as well we'll invite people to
participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention have an excellent time
building out your vision and becoming a vision for yourself you