Do What You Love to Do Interview Jackie Speight

The next Do What You Love to Do Interview: allow me to introduce you to Jackie Speight. 

A 49 year-old mum of 2 (aged 10 and 8), wife of 1 (as long as he behaves himself!) and the director of Angel Virtual Assistant Ltd (her 3^rd ‘baby’). She’s lived in the seaside resort of Blackpool for 11 years, but was born and bred on the Wirral, just across the River Mersey from Liverpool.

What is she known for?

She works with small businesses providing social media management, typing/transcription and document production services and accountancy, giving them time to focus on their business rather than the ‘back office’ tasks.

Aside: I was so pleased Jackie said yes to doing this interview. If you’re thinking of a similar career change, and have a question for Jackie, please leave a comment. 

What does doing what you love to do mean to you?

I don’t have to worry about need to take time off for childcare, school trips, special occasions or when the boys are sick – I am solely responsible for managing my time and my workload to fit the needs of my family. Although I’ve a long way to go before I can say I’ve achieved a good ‘work-life balance’ – if such a thing exists – I would say that I have complete control of my ‘work-life design’ and that counts for a lot. 

I can design my business and choose the services I offer to fit with my professional strengths and personal values. For example, I absolutely love all aspects of social media – and this is now the single biggest area of my business.

Working on something I enjoy that much doesn’t feel like work!

For the most part, I can choose to work with clients whose businesses interest (and in some cases, fascinate!) me, and with whom I’m able to build up a good working relationship over time as we are a good ‘fit’.

I hope it means that my boys will see that there are different ways of earning a living rather than simply walking into a job and expecting to stay there.

The world is constantly changing, and who knows what jobs will be around in the future?

I hope that they will see that it is possible to design the kind of life that’s right for them so that they can do what they love in future.

What were you doing before this?

When I left school I intended to become a music teacher, but changed my mind while I was at University because I didn’t want to do the extra year of study required to qualify at the time.

The lure of a steady wage, secure future (well, it was back then) and an interest in administrative work lead me into the UK Civil Service, where I spent 21 happy years working in a great variety of jobs, travelling around the country and working my way through the ranks. Happy days!

What led you to this love specifically? 

Having my children changed how I felt about my career – going back to work after maternity leave was hard, and I decided that I didn’t want to miss out on being at home whilst my son was small.

Fortunately, whilst on maternity leave the second time, the opportunity for voluntary redundancy came up – although it was a tough decision to make the break from the only career I’d known, I took the opportunity and went for it.

So began 4 years of full-time motherhood, something I feel really blessed to have been able to do.

As the boys reached school age, I knew I wanted to have some kind of career again, but also wanted to find a way to be able to work around their needs (I also wanted to be able to go to their school events, help out on trips, be there when they came home from school etc…) I thought about various career changes – including teaching (again!).

By chance, I saw a feature on ITV’s ‘This Morning’ about opportunities to earn money from home, and one of the people interviewed was a virtual assistant, running her own business from home around the needs of her family.

I realised that it ticked a lot of boxes for me – i.e. working at home, using skills I already had, low set-up costs etc – and so the seed of the idea was planted.

How did you make Angel VA happen?

It was still a few years before I managed to get going properly; I spent a fair bit of time researching the industry and the market, and even more time navel-gazing and…procrastinating!

But by September 2009 I was nearly ready to go, and got as far as meeting with a business adviser and fine-tuning a business plan.

Sadly, I lost my Mum very suddenly and unexpectedly as I was in the midst of this, and it totally threw me off track. The next 12 months or so were pretty tough, not only because of my grief and subsequent depression but also because my Dad was suffering from dementia, and eventually passed away 13 months later. So this was family time as my sisters and I dealt with all the things we had to do.

On to 2011, and I started to pick up my ideas again.

Thanks mainly to the unswerving support, guidance and much needed arse-kicking from my amazing business adviser, I made progress and on 1 March 2011, Angel Virtual Assistant Ltd opened for business!  

Okay, can you share the good, the bad, and the ugly and your journey to doing what you love to do?

Good:

A great sense of achievement in getting the business up and running – I’d never, ever considered myself as a natural entrepreneur, so it was a big thing for me to design and establish a company.

Finding my first client – and then attracting subsequent clients, thereby proving that the first one wasn’t just a fluke!

Discovering a whole lot of people who have had similar journeys and are in similar situations, setting up their own businesses and dealing with the same kinds of trials and tribulations on a daily basis. Many of these are people I’ve linked up with on Facebook and Twitter – people I’ve never met, but who I now communicate with regularly.

Finding that there are a lot more honest, ethical and passionate business owners around than the media might have us believe. You don’t have to be a ruthless, selfish fat-cat to run a successful business!

Bad:

Isolation – after working in lively offices, it was a major change to have to work on my own without the camaraderie and banter of office life. I’ve balanced this up by getting involved with a local networking group which I love, and which gets me out of the office (or ‘box room’ as it’s called in our house…) And again, social networking and online communication have been my saviours.

Cashflow – lack of – quite a lot of famine and not much feast – I’m sure we’ve all been there.

And.

The buck stops with you – always.

There can be a perception that a mum working from home is just ‘playing’ at being in business and isn’t really serious about it as she’s working around her family.

Fortunately, you don’t have to look too hard on the Internet to find numerous ‘mumpreneurs’ with years of experience and masses of expertise running a whole range of businesses.

The ugly. 

For me, it was the:

Self-doubt/lack of self-confidence – when something doesn’t go as planned it’s easy to fall into a downward spiral and start to question everything. ‘Why am I doing this?’ ‘What makes me think I’m good enough to get people to pay me’ are questions that often run through my mind, and that of other business owners I’ve talked with.

Naysayers – those well-intentioned (or not, as the case may be…) people who give you all the good reasons why you shouldn’t try to do what you love. 

What were the biggest hurdles, challenges, and barriers you had to overcome?

Self-doubt and lack of self-confidence were significant barriers at first.

Also, the time needed to actually get going was a challenge – there always seemed to be something else that needed my attention and would distract me from the action I needed to take.

Given the ‘self-doubt’ issue, some of this was probably procrastination – and this is where my business adviser played such a big role and gave me the push to get me going properly.

Getting involved in business networking was a challenge – after many years as a confident professional in the Civil Service, I found it hard to walk into a room for of business women and feel like I deserved to be there.

Fortunately, the network I joined is extremely supportive and my confidence had grown enormously from being involved there.

What would be your top 5 pieces of advice, or suggestions, words of wisdom you would like to share?

If your dream involves running your own business, then find yourself a business adviser to help you through the initial stages.

There are local agencies offering free business advice and courses, and they are a mine of great information. I can honestly say that, without the guy who helped me, I’d still be sitting here trying to get the wording right on my business plan!

Find positive people and link up with them – whether in person or online. There are more of them around than you imagine, and it really makes a difference to how you feel when you interact with them.

You don’t have to do it all at once – baby steps are steps nonetheless. You have to make a start to make a success, and if that start is just a small step then at least you’re moving.

Remind yourself regularly just why you’re doing what you do – it’s so easy to get bogged down with day-to-day stuff and lose sight of your ‘big why’. And if you find that things have changed so much that this is no longer what you love, then be brave enough to think again and make the changes you need – you’ve done it once, you can do it again.

Look after yourself – there’s only one you and you’ve got so much you want to do!

What has been your biggest learning in your journey so far?

I’ve learned that I can’t be all things to all people – and I shouldn’t even try to be.

Focusing more effectively on fewer things is making my life and my business much better! 

What’s next for you on your path?

Hopefully, I can offer job opportunities to other people who want to undertake my kind of work but don’t want to go as far as running their own business – maybe within the next 18 months.

Then one day, I’d like to offer franchises to people who want to set up a business but would like the support of an established brand.

I also want to try to encourage young people to consider running their own businesses as a way to live their own dream. I’ve been into my boys’ school to talk about my career when they’ve run an ‘Apirations Week’, and I’d love to do more of that.

What was the biggest piece of learning you picked up and ran with?

Although you have to plan and prepare to do the thing you love, there comes a point where you have to simply get on with it. So, in a world awash with acronyms, the one that sums up my biggest learning is ‘JFDI’!!! (or ‘Just feckin’ do it!)

Pick a quote for life, and explain why it hits a home run for you?

‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’ – lyrics from John Lennon’s ‘Beautiful Boy’.

This line always struck a massive chord for me, not least because of the fact that he recorded this just before he was shot, which just proves his point.

But it’s rung true at all the key points in my life – however much you plan, other things will happen, so to some extent, we have to keep making it up as we go…

And lastly, where can we reach you?

You can find out more about my business through my website, or link up with me via my Twitter and Facebook accounts which I use on a daily basis! I love finding interesting things to share on Pinterest too. Lastly, I have a sadly neglected blog which I have resolved to give more TLC in the future, so feel free to have a look there.

Your Turn:

Do you have a question for Jackie? Want to know more about what being a Virtual Assistant? Please feel free to leave a comment and I will nudge her to pop back in here.