How’d she do that?

A lot of people have asked me how I came up with the idea to work from home. They always look a little dissapointed when I tell them that necessity was the only reason I began the search for meaningful work-at-home opportunities.

I was working as the office manager for an insurance agency. For a few months I had been trying to get pregnant and was just thrilled (and petrified) when I found out that I had succeeded. Around this time the owner of the company decided to sell it to a larger company and we were going to be moving to the new office. I had a really bad feeling about the move and I let the owner know my concerns for him as well as his business. He dismissed my concerns as the raving lunacy of a pregnant, hormonal woman and left it at that.

The day before he was to sign the contract, he backed out. There was a problem because our salaries had already changed and we were already being paid by the new company. Now that we were staying we had to have our salaries switched back over. The owner called me in, sat me down, and told me he was going to be paying me less money because there was no way I’d be able to keep up the managerial duties because I was pregnant and wouldn’t be able to set the bar as high as he wanted it.

As I sat with my jaw on the floor being silently (but probably obviously) offended, he made sure to add, "I didn’t put that in writing so don’t bother getting bent out of shape and telling anyone."

I quit that night.

It was a little more than two months later that my husband was downsized from his current position. He quickly found another job that was much better suited to him, but it was a "pay your dues" position that he’s still working 70 hours a week at and while he will soon see great returns, as of right now he’s still working very hard for very little to show for it in the actual paycheck.

I did the only thing I could think to do…search online for legitimate work that I could do while being waddling-pregnant that I could still do once I had an infant to take care of. I checked <a href="http://www.wahm.com">WAHM</a>, which is a great work from home resource. One of the ads I found was for West Telecommunications, an inbound call customer service agency. I worked for them for a few months, until I realized that I couldn’t stay chained to a phone for eight hours a day when only two hours of calls were coming in.

During the time I worked with West, I still searched online to find something that more accurately fit my vision of working from home. I stumbled onto a VA subcontracting service provider. I signed up with them and began work almost immediately. This is when I realized that being a Virtual Assistant was my dream career, and my only regret was not finding it sooner!

While there are many ways to become a Virtual Assistant, the way I did it was by far the smoothest. It required no outlay of funds on my part (other than the computer and DSL line I already had) and I was able to learn about daily reports, invoicing and the types of small business owners that were looking for VAs. This was an invaluable education in being able to start out in the field. It also enabled me to meet people who knew other people that wanted to work with me directly and not through a subcontracting company. This was how I acquired my first client that I had to bill directly.

If I hadn’t experienced that incident at the insurance company, I would probably still be working there today and dropping my two babies off at daycare every morning. I would be making less and spending a fortune on gas. There are a few downsides to working from home, but they are minimal compared to the gains.

I’ve been fortunate enough to meet several people and I enjoyed showing them how to become a successful Virtual Assistant. The number one rule, as with almost anything in life, is to be yourself. More on that later…