Intro: This is the Work-At-Home Heroes podcast. Your host, Caitlin Pyle, digs deep with people from all over the world who make money from home. Get ready to wake up to a world of possibility for freedom, flexibility, and a life you ll love. Well, hey, everybody. Welcome back for another episode of the Work-At-Home Heroes podcast. I m your host, Caitlin Pyle, and I m here today with Katie Colella. She is from Wales over in the UK, way across the pond. I m recording this from Orlando, Florida right now. Now, Katie is a virtual assistant and business mentor who works with female entrepreneurs to improve their online presence through social media and other associated tasks, and we ll get into all of those details here on this episode. Now, Katie has worked at home for this current business for about a year now, and previous to that, she worked for herself for over fifteen years, and we ll get into that as well. A lot of it was home based, so it s really exciting. Welcome to the show, Katie. Thank you very much, Caitlin. Thank you for having me. So you re a virtual assistant and a business mentor. What do you do exactly as a virtual assistant? So the virtual assistant side, I help establish female entrepreneurs mainly on the online side of things with their businesses, so anything really they need help with, things like sales funnels, email marketing, social media, Facebook ads, whatever they kind of need a helping hand with when they kind of rub their eyes, and they can t cope with everything. And they re feeling overwhelmed, and they just need another set of hands from someone that s kind of been there as well and run businesses and knows a little bit about what they re doing. That s awesome. So I m pulling out a few patterns from just the number of interviews that I ve done with the Work-At-Home Heroes podcast and within the community and stuff. The patterns that I m seeing are people that come on the show, our guests, are
solving people s problems, and we re always talking about how, if you want to make money, you ve got to be able to solve people s problems and also finding that niche. And so I want to go into how you found this niche. How did you know that you wanted to help female entrepreneurs improve their online presence? It probably started with my last business, so my last business was started I think it was 2012, which was e-commerce, and that was home and giftware purely online. So that kind of grew to quite a good standing, but along the line, I taught myself everything I needed to know. If I needed to learn a skill, I d go away and find out how to do it, but I was such a control freak within the business. I wasn t very good at outsourcing, so I used to just spend hours upon hours going and learning what I needed to do for myself. And it wasn t until the end of that journey that I started realizing how powerful it was to actually outsource and pay somebody who already had those skills to do something a hell of a lot quicker than I could go and do it and start from scratch myself. When I decided to sell that business, I just thought there must be other entrepreneurs out there that were in the same position as me, trying to do everything, being that complete control freak phase, and just not ever wanting to give that part of their baby up because, for most people, that business is their baby. They ve started from scratch and really struggling to kind of give that power to somebody else and ask for that help. So it was just before I sold it I started looking and thinking, you know, there must be other entrepreneurs looking for this help and don t know how to get started. And at the time, I didn t actually realize a virtual assistant existed. I just kind of thought I invented the whole concept, and it wasn t until I started setting up the website and looking around that I realized that it did exist, and there are plenty of people looking for this help. And it was just a nice feeling, knowing I had that skill set. I d done it myself, so I completely understood. I completely understood from their point of view how difficult it was to actually give up some of that work and hand it over to somebody. So I think the trust was there with a lot of people as well because they knew I d
been doing it for myself, my own existing, successful businesses from previous years as well. So I think that helped a lot for me. Yeah, that s definitely a good selling point, and I can definitely validate that the struggle is real myself, a female entrepreneur, and I started my business from scratch, and I was a control freak. I have the hardest time giving any part of my business away to anyone else, something as simple as email, scheduling social media, and I started with Proofread Anywhere, and it was especially hard because if that person made a typo, it made me look like an idiot, and so it was very difficult. It s a really good selling point that you ve been there and done that, and so you can really relate to your audience. So a way that you can relate to your audience, for those of you listening that maybe don t have that kind of background, that you haven t had your own business yet and you want to help these people, but you don t know where they re coming from, is to go and find those people and talk to them. Find out where female entrepreneurs hang out, dentists, doctors, whatever your niche is, whoever the people are that you want to help, artists, whatever, painting business owners, all kinds of stuff. Whatever your niche is, go and talk to those people, and you can find out what their problems are, and they will tell you what their struggles are, and then you ll know what skills you need to learn to be able to alleviate some of this overwhelm because, I mean, the struggle is definitely real, and you feel so overwhelmed, but you have to be able to let go if you want to grow your business. You have to be willing to collaborate and delegate, and that sounds like that you found your specialty, Katie, which is really, really cool. And you started your first business at age 18. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, so my first, I left school after so in the UK, we do eight levels, left that, didn t want to go to university, did a job for literally, I don t know, six months, and then had the opportunity to purchase a business, which was a small sandwich bar locally, and my mom and dad helped me to finance it to buy it to start with. And I just kind of went, Yeah, let s do it. Literally two weeks later, I was a business owner, made a lot of changes, did some catering in the back of it, and had that for three years, so from
when I was 18 to 21, which obviously was a huge learning curve at that age, so learned a lot about working for myself and being my own business and absolutely loved it, but from there, kind of various different things and made the decision that I wanted to sell it, so sold the first business at 21 and then went into employment for a fair few years after that initial business. Wow, and you also have kids, too. How did that kind of play into this? That probably was the next part I was being drawn back to being self-employed I think from that initial kind of period. It was on holiday some years later with my now husband, and we were just talking about having more of a lifestyle-run business I guess rather than being employed and being dictated to, looking for the freedom. My husband when I met him already had three children, so we knew we wanted children as well so decided that we were on holiday, and I think on holiday you get carried away with wanting more holidays and more travel and more freedom. And we were just kind of talking about what business we could start, and my husband had had businesses previous as well. So we were talking about which businesses we could start to get this kind of freedom lifestyle, and we decided upon a guesthouse at the time. So we bought a house in the UK, did a lot of research, bought a house that wasn t a guesthouse, did a full renovation, and turned it into a guesthouse within about three months. And then I d found out I was pregnant as well in the meantime. So by the time we opened in July, I was about six months pregnant and took our first guests and then had two children in that time as well. So that was then five children all together and then ran the guesthouse for five years as well as a catering business, both of us full time, and then my husband went back to work, and I stayed and ran the guesthouse during the week, and he ran the guesthouse then with me on the weekends. And then after five years, we decided to sell that as well because it was the opposite of what we thought it would be. It wasn t the
kind of idyllic dream that we thought it would be. It was probably one of the hardest times in our life. It was just really, really difficult because it was relentless. There was no switch off. It was just very, very constant guests and then having to share our home with obviously having a big family as well was really difficult. Wow, my head is spinning, but I think that that s cool. I bet you re glad that you did it even though you re glad you re not doing it anymore. Without a doubt. Yeah, there s value in learning what you don t want to do. Precisely. I can tell you that on every single vacation I ve been on, there has never been a time where my husband and I or my family and I didn t discuss the next trip because it just inspires you. You re like, I need more of this, and I need to make more time for this, even something as simple as going to get a massage. I m like, Why do I wait so long to do this? I need to build this into my life. And so it s really just part of the journey, figuring out what you like and don t like. It s just part of the journey to building your ideal life. So you ve got your hands full. You guys have two kids together. He has three kids from a previous relationship, and so you ve got five kids all together, and you re still able to generate income from home. And, if you don t mind me asking, what kind of income are you generating each month working at home? At the moment, it s about 2-1/2 to 3,000 pounds monthly, and the next kind of big aim is to get to that 5,000 monthly.
That s really, really good. But now I m curious that you ve had this background. You sold your first business at 21, and not all of us were in that boat. I mean I didn t start my online business until, gosh, I was 27 or 28, and so sometimes people look at stories like that. Oh, you ve had your first business at 18, 21, or whatever. You re lucky. But I m guessing, and you can tell me if I m wrong, but I m guessing you re just like the rest of us in that you didn t have this special brand of confidence that only you had. You probably had some obstacles and mindset stuff pop up, so let s talk about that. What kind of challenges have you met? I think mindset wise, even more recent than that, the business before this that I started from scratch that was the gift and homeware, I never did any self-development or growth at that stage. I ve very much grown in myself the last two years or the last eighteen months since I ve had this kind of more recent business. But up until that stage, I didn t do any of that. I was very much work in my business rather than on the business, so it was constant obstacles, second-guessing myself, and when it was time to up-level, I kind of held myself back. I think looking back there was a lot of self-sabotage going on as well. If something good would happen and I would step back and think, No, I m not ready for the next step. But sometimes it s only after that you can kind of see, looking in from the outside, that they were obstacles, and it was a mindset issue and so forth because at the time you just live in it, and you can t always see that. But, for me, definitely looking back at that last business, it had gone a little bit quieter, and it wasn t until a year or so later that I realized that was probably my mindset that was affecting that in the first instance rather than being a little bit quiet and then me being kind of feeling a bit blah and not being as motivated and not enjoying it as much. It was the other way around, but I ve done so much work. If I m ever to give any tips to anybody, it is to really work on your mindset daily and really put a lot of effort into whatever works for you, whether it s morning routines, whether it s reading, watching motivational videos, podcasts, whatever works for you, but find the tools that do work for you, that pick you up and help you get
back to your highest vibe and where you re most comfortable and feeling confident. None of us are born with confidence or given confidence out in a queue. It s something we just choose to believe about ourselves, so it s no good sitting, kind of telling yourself I m not a confident person because you need to tell yourself you can be a confident person and just take the steps. Take the action. Step outside your comfort zone, and push yourself constantly to become that confident person you want to become. That s so, so, so good. Oh my gosh, so breaking that down just a little bit, we re not born with confidence in the same way that we re not born learning how to walk. It takes practice and Exactly. And I think that s just music to my ears because there s days where I feel like I don t like what I do, but the reality is I just don t like myself for some reason. I m not I m wasting time. I m not motivated. I m just not able to get out of bed or I just tell myself, Oh, I just can t get up. I just can t. I just can t. Because I m associating some kind of pain, and I m avoiding working because I m thinking I m not going to get anything done. I m just feeling terrible about myself, so I need to put myself first and do things in the morning first thing. So instead of going on social media, I read for ten minutes, and I say in ten minutes I can quite, and oftentimes I m reading for thirty minutes because I m enjoying myself so much, and then I get out of bed. I m like, all right, I feel great. I ve been reading Tony Robbins lately, and so Me too. Yeah, he s so good, and so I start my day off with power. I do a workout. I don t check email until I m done with all of the things that I want to do for myself in the morning and, as a result, I can work faster, I can have more free time, and I m just on fire instead of feeling like this endless slog of, oh, I ve got to get up and go to
work. It s just not like that anymore, and I think a lot of us just don t realize what kind of control we have over the way we feel about ourselves and about our work. But we can take charge, and learning skills and learning what we re doing and learning how to master ourselves and skill just like anything else. And so you re loving life now, Katie. Is that how it s going for you? I m loving life. I definitely feel all these different experiences of just being huge opportunities to get me to where I m at now, and it s difficult, again, to see that along the way, isn t it? Sometimes you feel like things are hard, but actually they will put you on the right path to where you want to be, and I absolutely love what I do. I m back working from home, which is a lovely environment. It s lovely to be here so I can take my children to school in the morning, which is something that s important for me. I can pick them up everyday. I can take them to the after-school activities. I can work my life my work around the children to a certain extent. I can take holidays and travel when I like. Again, I can take the laptop if I need to do some work and work from a beautiful holiday apartment, or I can choose to just switch off for a few days and make sure I get the work done around it, and I just think it s life on your terms when you get to this stage where you ve been able to work from home. You have got a different level of freedom, but I just feel so privileged and grateful to be at this position to be able to do that. It is a privileged position to be able to work from home and make money doing something that you actually thoroughly enjoy. Absolutely, and it is about the freedom. So many of us think it s about the money, but when you really get down to the nitty gritty of why people want to work at home, it s not because they want a bunch of paper with notables on it, right? Yeah, definitely.
They want freedom, they want flexibility, and they want to spend more time doing things that they love with the people that they love. So you weren t confident the whole time, but I m curious about what other people in your sphere of influence thought about your lifestyle, so wanting to kind of break away from the norm of going to school, getting a job, getting married, having kids, and you didn t do things the quote unquote normal way, which normal is becoming less and less normal these days. So were there people in your sphere of influence that kind of had some things to say about it, or maybe they were skeptical, and how did you navigate around that? I think on the whole, pretty much people were quite supportive. I think initially when I started at 18, my mom and dad obviously helped me, and at the time, they owned another small shop, and we re talking very, very small businesses. And my dad had been in and out of self-employment through my childhood, so that, for me, wasn t against the grain of normality I guess, being selfemployed. The fact that I work from home people just want to know more about it really and, oh, how does that work? And what if you need to do this? What if you need to do that? So some of it is just understanding exactly what I do, and I think a lot of people don t really understand necessarily what I do from home, so it s more about maybe the lack of understanding than anything else, but a lot of people I think are actually thinking, wow, I wish I had that flexibility and the freedom, like we said, themselves because obviously a lot of people in employment can be quite dictated to, and you just haven t got the freedom to do it your way, and there s obviously obstacles as well when you work for yourself. It s not all rainbows, but on the whole it s a lot nicer to get to make your own decisions than it is working for somebody else. Absolutely, and you bring up a good point and a point that a lot of other guests have brought up, and we touched on this quite a bit. And it helps people feel better because when there are people in your life that are saying negative things, it s because they don t understand, and so if we put ourselves in their position, and we know that they don t get it, then their opinion and maybe
whatever mean things they say, if they say negative or doubtful, skeptical things that maybe would take the wind out of your sails, if we know that they re coming from a standpoint of they just don t get it, then it doesn t have so much power over us. And so we get it; we know why we re doing what we re doing. Precisely. Yeah, use that as fuel and just do your thing because, when they do get it, then everything changes. I mean my in-laws, when we told them we were going to go take our online business to South America for a year, my mother-in-law cried, and my father-in-law said, Well, if you want to go waste a year in South America, be my guest because they were lovers of the corporate world. They built their wealth by saving every penny and working hard with the same company for forty years, which just doesn t happen and definitely does not speak to me nor does it speak to my husband, not something that we wanted to do. But they had the negative things to say because they just didn t know what to make of what we were doing because they had never seen it before, and they were fearful, and they didn t get it. And now that they do get it and they see that we ve been successful, way more successful than they were at our age, they re like, Okay, we re super proud of you. They brag about us all the time, and they re not worried anymore, and so you ve just got to keep doing your thing. And nobody knows you like you do, and so you guys listening at home listening to this right now, if you ve got negative voices in your life, keep doing your thing unwaveringly. You know the answers. You know yourself. You know what you re seeking, and you can build that because it s real, and that s why we have this podcast so I can show you, hey, look at all these real people in the world. Exactly, and then you can start showing. You can start showing the results, and people obviously have a different perspective there, and I mean I am lucky I ve got support. My husband is extremely supportive, but also it s so important to surround
yourself with people who are supportive and are like-minded, so if you haven t got that at home, go and find that tribe of people that are supportive. There are millions of people there that are in that same position, that are exactly like-minded, supportive, empowering people that are happy to do just that, and just start having your online virtual chat to people that are there to help you and support you and are happy to kind of pick you up if you re having a bit of a down day or understand exactly where you ve been as well. So I just think it s so important to surround yourself with people that do support and understand you. Yeah, absolutely, and then to think about what kind of ripple effect you can create when you are successful and you have these results and the people that are in your life that maybe didn t understand when you got started. They see the change that you effected in your own life, and they might be inspired to go out and start their own business or say, Hey, what skills can I learn, and what problems can I solve, and how can I change my life and create more freedom? Definitely. So, Katie, what is your daily schedule like? How do you keep yourself on track all day so you can get the things done that you need to get done in your business? I m super organized, and I m super planned to start with. If I ve got any one-on-one clients and so forth, try and get them booked in the beginning of the week so I know when all the calls are because I think it s fair too easy as you re going through the week or through your day for clients just to say, Oh, you ve got a spare half an hour now, and can you jump on now? You haven t always got that time, so anyone you know is going to need a catch up or a one-on-one, then I get those booked in first and foremost.
Most of my clients are fairly flexible because at the moment I m doing half the business mentoring and half the VAing, so I kind of try and fit a lot of the work in then around the cold calls that I have that I booked in, like I said, in advance. I very much start the day with a bit of mindset work and some visualizational meditation, some affirmations, and a gratitude list, so I feel kind of in the right place to get my day firmly off when I m in a positive frame of mind. If I m still feeling like I m procrastinating, I might listen to maybe a Tony Robbins video or listen to something on YouTube, again, just to make sure I m in the right frame of mind and also to try and kind of get the biggest tasks and the things that I can feel that I m procrastinating about, get them done first and out of the way rather than keep procrastinating and pushing them back throughout the day, just try and kind of eat the frog and get them done first and foremost. Eat the frog; I love that, and you guys listening at home, I cannot emphasize enough how true it is what Katie is saying about starting your day off in the right frame of mind, and I used to dismiss that and kind of roll my eyes, and I was Me too. Yeah, I was a pragmatist, and I was like, oh, whatever. I d just get up and get it done, but if you don t start doing the things you need to do in the right frame of mind, then you hate yourself the whole time. I used to get up and do my workout. It was the first thing I would do because I felt like I had to get it done, but when I didn t start the workout feeling good about myself and about what my goals were and just reaffirming that, then I didn t start my day off correctly.
But now I m spending a little extra time in the morning reading my Tony Robbins first thing, staying off social media, doing some deep breathing, and maybe having a protein shake or whatever and just taking care of myself and just not taking myself too seriously either. I think sometimes we just we think every move we make is a life-or-death experience, and it s just not for most of us, not that way at all. And so we change our state. Tony Robbins calls it changing your state and recognizing what power we have, too. If you wake up in the morning and you just feel like garbage, you can either decide you re going to feel like garbage all day, or you can decide that you re not going to feel like garbage all day and do something to change your state. And so I ve really been focusing a lot on getting that frame of mind because it creates that ripple effect throughout your entire day. If you start in the morning, and I used to roll my eyes about it, but I don t anymore because I ve actually bitten the bullet instead of saying, You know what? That s stupid. I tried it, and I made it my own. You don t necessarily have to do what Katie does. You don t have to do what Caitlin does. You can do your own thing and kind of experiment Precisely. and see what works for you. I think I started out saying, Oh, I can t check social media until I ve done all these things, and now I m just like, No, I m just not going to check social media before 9 in the morning or not first thing in the morning at least. And that worked for me, so you cannot beat yourself up because you re trying to follow this list of rules. I don t do well with rules. I don t even do well with guidelines, but I do well with prioritizing myself and putting myself first because I ve seen Finding what works for you. Yeah, finding what works for you and not beating yourself up because that s not the good frame of mind you want to be in, not
doing things to improve your mindset because you hate yourself but because you love yourself. What s next for you, Katie? I m just curious. What are you doing to grow your business, or are you happy with where you are? What s next? I m definitely looking to continue to grow. I ve launched my first group program in January for the mentoring side of things, which I m absolutely loving working with a group of women that are just starting off in business that are just looking for that extra kind of help and support. I m looking to increase the one-on-one mentoring, and I think eventually it will be purely the business mentoring side of things. I actually end up working with quite a lot of VAs or new VAs that are getting into the industry and are just not sure where to start but like the idea of being a virtual assistant. So I typically attract the VAs that way, which I absolutely love helping them kind of get their businesses up and running. And I d like to kind of increase the passive income side of things as well so launched my first course on Facebook ads, just a real basic entry-level beginner s course, so kind of just started that journey as well in the last month or so, so lots of things really. I ve gotten I do some networking events. I d like some speaking opportunities eventually, loads of different things. I ve always got so many different ideas. Yeah, and the important thing is that you re enjoying what you re doing and I do. Yeah, I think that s really, really great, and the fact is and I love the fact that you re helping new VAs because everyday, there is more people starting businesses, and all those VAs that you re mentoring now, a year from now, they re going to be needing VAs, and so there s this continuing growth in the online business world where new people are entering. New people are growing,
and then we re creating jobs for people is what we re doing as we grow as entrepreneurs. I started out as a one-person business, and then I expanded and I hired VAs, and I ve got anywhere between ten and twenty virtual assistants. We ve had up to thirty team members doing various things and projects at some point, but I started with one. It was me. I was a one-man band, one-woman band, and we all start that way, but we ve got to work with the people that work remotely in order to grow. We ve got to let go of our need to control everything and do everything ourselves. Just because we can do everything ourselves doesn t mean we should, and I love that you re helping virtual assistants grow into what they can do to help other people take the load off and feel less overwhelmed so they can grow as well. Final question for you, Katie, is a question I ask all of our guests at the very end because I know there is somebody who s listened to this entire episode, and we ve been speaking for over twenty minutes now, about twenty-five minutes, and there s probably somebody who s listened to this whole thing, and they re like, You know what? I m just too scared. I can t make this first step. They re just knocking themselves down before they even get started. They re scared. They just don t think it s going to work for them, fearful. What advice would you have for that person, Katie? Probably just take that first step. I know it s the most simple kind of advice you can ever do, but the amount of people that just procrastinate and don t actually start and say they re going to don t take that step is probably the majority of people. We ve all got skills. We ve all got things we can do. Just to make that kind of first step is probably the most simplistic tip that I can really give anybody, and also start believing in yourself more because most of us, when we start in anything, whether it s a new kind of skill set or new business or whatever it may be, we kind of sit back, and the first thing we say is I can t. There s no reason. There s nothing stopping you, so just start and believe in yourself.
Yeah, and a lot of times I think we make up reasons for why we can t start Oh, precisely. like taking that first step, and I use the example of my first day at personal training school, I felt like getting up and walking out because I didn t know how to be a personal trainer, not even seeing that right in front of me, the reason I was there on day one of personal training school was to learn how to be a personal trainer. You don t have to know it all. We get sucked into this vortex of research of feeling like we have to know how everything is going to play out. We have to know how to get the clients before we know how to do what we re going to do for the clients. Start with step one. You don t have to know everything ahead of time, and you ll get more confident the more you learn, but you ve got to take that first step to learn the first thing, and it doesn t matter how big the step is. Most of our steps are eight inches, nine inches. Take a tiny step forward. It s better than doing nothing and then looking back on past you as future you, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now and wishing you had gotten started and wishing you hadn t been so afraid because what could you have done in that time. A lot of us will overestimate. I think Tony Robbins says this overestimate what we can do in a year, and so a year goes by, and we re like, I m not where I want to be. I quit. This sucks. This doesn t work, or it s a scam or whatever, but we underestimate if we just stick it out how our lives can transform what we can do in a period of five, ten, fifteen years what kind of ripple effect we can create if we just get started. Well, Katie, I want to say thank you so much for coming on the show. You ve been so inspirational. I know that our listeners just totally love to listen to your story and how you balance everything, having five kids between you and your husband, and
just starting these businesses and overcoming obstacles and continue to grow and starting your day off with the right frame of mind. Where can people reach you if they want to get in touch with you and ask questions? We are going to have a thread in the Work-At-Home Heroes Facebook group, so we re going to tag you there, and you guys can go and ask Katie questions. But where s your website? How can people find you online so they can get in touch with you? You can find me on the website. It is katiecolellasocial.co.uk, which is K-A-T-I-E, C-O-L-E-double L-A, social dot co dot uk, and all my social links you can find there, so I m all over the place, but you can find all the links on the website. Awesome, and we have all this in the show notes as well, you guys, so it will be very easy to get in touch with Katie. Again, thank you so much for being on Work-At-Home Heroes. Thank you very much for having me. Take care. Well, thanks again for listening, everyone. I hope you got some value from this episode. There will be links in the show notes. As always, feel free to join our Work-At-Home Heroes Facebook community where we discuss all the episodes in a dedicated thread. If you found this episode useful or any of the past episodes, I d love it if you would leave us a review. It will help us reach more people with our message and keep bringing you these success stories. Talk to you in the next episode! Outro: Thanks for listening to the Work-At-Home Heroes podcast with Caitlin Pyle. Be sure to listen to previous episodes at caitlinpyle.co/podcast. While you re there, read the show notes and check out all the great links and resources mentioned in this episode and more. You can also subscribe to the Work-At-Home Heroes podcast so you ll automatically be notified when our next episode is available. Remember, as Caitlin says, mo skills means mo money.