Kathrine Ferris, Strategic Office Support
It’s easy to want to up and quit your dull day job and follow your dream. But hold off on quitting your day job just yet. As virtual assistant services provider Kathrine Farris of Southern Maine discovered, slow and steady wins the race. Kathrine used this strategy to shift from her boring bank job to opening her own virtual assistant business, Strategic Office Support LLC.
As the oldest child, Kathrine always knew she wanted to be “the boss.” But, it wasn’t until she was a married with a full time job working at a bank full-time as a Vice President and Branch Manger while teaching computer classes at a community college that her vision came true.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, life for Kathrine was simple and clearly laid out, but nothing seemed exciting or fulfilling as she settled into the routine of being newly married with a steady paycheck. Worse yet, she didn’t feel like she had control over her destiny. “It often felt like I was reliant on the perception of others to see my value,” she explains.
Finding her own value was a gradual process, but she got there as she learned to transition from employee to boss mentality. At the height of her former life, she was putting in over 70 hours a week in her combined jobs as well as being the mother of a 4-month old boy. Worse yet, she wasn’t giving her child the attention he needed and wasn’t happy in her career. As the sole earner for her growing family, leaving her day job seemed impossible.
Recognizing the unique skill set that she regularly used to help clients in her bank job by improving their operations, marketing, organization, and networking, Kathrine realized that she could use her talents to start her own business.
It wasn’t until Kathrine came across the term “virtual assistant” that she realized that she was offering a service that many needed. Now that she had a viable business model, her next step would be giving up her regular gigs, but that still didn’t happen overnight.
By taking a few well-thought out risks with her husband, Kathrine managed to create an exit strategy from her unfulfilling job by cutting back on some expenses, going without insurance for a brief period and above all having faith that her gamble would be worth it. It worked. After she transitioned from her bank job, she managed to triple her business’ revenue by the time her son was 12 months old.
Now, Kathrine is still the sole earner for her family, providing the income while her husband provides the childcare. Because she works from home, she still gets to spend time with her kids.
Kathrine stresses that her path to success wasn’t instant, but was the result of hard work and dedication. Eventually Kathrine managed to transform what had been a small time commitment into a full time business.
To help celebrate Kathrine’s achievement visit her website at http://www.strategicofficesupport.com/.
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://mysavvysisters.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/04-05-07_2209.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Carly Zinderman is a freelance writer and blogger, based just outside of Los Angeles, CA. Since graduating from Occidental College with a degree in English and Comparative Literary Studies, she has written on a variety of topics for books, magazines and online publications. In her spare time Carly enjoys watching old movies, reading anything that comes into her hands and planning her dream vacation. [/author_info] [/author]
