I didn't read about this in a book. I lived it.

Before all this, I was a senior customer account manager at a fast-growing company that designed and built schools. I owned the whole customer journey, sales, design, fit-out, sign-off. I was good at it. But it was long office hours, every single day.

Then I fell pregnant with my first child, and the maths stopped working. The role offered no flexibility for life after the baby. We were living in Dubai, away from family, away from the "village" you lean on back home, and my partner and I made a deliberate choice: we wanted to be present for our son rather than hand everything to childcare. So building my own business wasn't only a career decision. It was a family one.

In my first year, another VA advised me to lower my prices because I was new. I ignored it, the demand was there at the rate I'd chosen. Don't undercut yourself became my first signature lesson.

I was solo, doing every piece of client work myself, with no time left to grow. I struggled with boundaries, working evenings and weekends, and losing the very flexibility I'd built the business for. Eventually I made a scary decision: I let go of one big, high-hours client who was a major chunk of my revenue, because they were blocking my growth. It took months to replace that income, but it was the decision that let the business actually scale. High-revenue isn't the same as high-value if it stops you growing.

"My first five clients came from my warm network, people I already knew. Warm beats cold, every time, when you're starting out."

Today The VA Office is a team of four, me plus two in the UAE and one in the UK, working with clients across PR, interior design, marketing agencies, health and wellness, education and more. We've recently launched the UK side of the business and we're growing it fast.

I built The VA Office Academy because of everything I wish someone had handed me on day one. Not the hyped "make thousands in months" promises that make me cringe in other courses, but the honest, practical setup: how to price, how to find clients, how to deliver, how to grow, and how to keep the flexibility you started for. It's the conversation I'd have with a friend who wanted to do what I did.