Five years ago, I was running a successful 7-figure agency, Your Virtual Assistant. From the outside, I looked successful. Inside, I was a prisoner to the business I had built.
I was the “glue” holding everything together. My days were a chaotic scramble of firefighting, triaging an inbox that never cleared, and making every single decision. I’d close my laptop with that satisfying click after dinner, only to wake up to a full inbox and a team waiting for approvals they could have decided themselves.
I was a hero in a cape, but the cape was made of fear. Fear that if I stopped, even for a day, the whole thing would fall apart.
THE TURNING POINT
The “best thing that ever happened to me” didn’t feel like a win at the time. It felt like a war zone. After a major fight with my husband, I had a moment of terrifying clarity: work always came first.
I had created this business to put my family first, yet I was sitting at the dinner table mentally answering emails while the people I loved were talking. I was bone-tired and ashamed. I realised I didn’t have a business; I had a very expensive, very exhausting job.
BUILDING THE ESCAPE HATCH
I didn’t need to work harder; I needed to build different. I stopped trying to find “another me” and started building a system to replicate my results.
I drew an Accountability Chart for a business I couldn’t yet afford. It took three years to shift from managing 30 contractors to empowering a leadership team of four who actually run the business with me. I stopped being the answer to every question.
FREEDOM TO LEAD
Today, my business works for me, not because of me. The real shift isn’t revenue or being able to take time off. It’s being fully present to hear a joke while I’m on holiday.
The Lever exists because I am building the support I wish I’d had a decade ago.
I have walked this path, so you don’t have to walk it alone.
