Episode 97: Why I Decided to Quit Teaching and Become a Work From Home Mom – My Journey to Becoming a Virtual Assistant

Full Episode Transcription:

(00:07):
Y’all I seriously cannot believe that this week marks three years since I officially became a virtual assistant. It’s crazy to think about where I’ve come from and where I am now. And on today’s episode, I’m gonna be sharing the reasons why I decided to quit teaching and become a work-at-home mom. So you’re gonna get an inside look at my journey to becoming a virtual assistant. The good, the bad and the ugly.

(01:49):
But before we jump into this episode, I wanted to take a moment to share this podcast review with you: “I’ve been teaching for a decade and the past few years have me questioning if I want to stay or not. Not knowing quite where to navigate, Arianna always brings in top-notch guests to share their stories and give ideas of what ex-teachers can do. She is sweet and kind, and I feel like we are chatting over a cup of coffee when I listen to the podcast. Thank you, Arianna, for sharing your story, tips and tricks, and always supporting us along the way.” You guys, this review and all of the others that are left on the show, they seriously make my heart so incredibly happy. It just shows me that y’all are really appreciating all of the time that I put into creating this content for you, and, like I said, it just lights me up. And if you didn’t know, as a thank you for leaving a review on the show, I’m offering you free access to my Ditch the Classroom Toolkit. So all you have to do to get that is go to Apple podcasts, search the Ditch the Classroom podcast, click on it, scroll down and then leave a five star review and write a few short sentences about how this podcast has helped you. Then before you hit submit, (this is important) before you hit submit, take a screenshot, because if you submit it first, it sometimes takes a few days to show up. So take a screenshot before you hit submit, and then send it to podcast@ditchtheclassroom.com. Once you do that, I’ll send you a coupon code and you’ll get the Ditch the Classroom Toolkit 100% for free. So that’s just kind of my thank you to y’all for helping me spread the message of this show. All right, let’s go ahead and jump into my story.

(03:40):
So I think the reason that I originally went into teaching is probably pretty similar to a lot of y’all’s stories, I always loved kids growing up. I babysat, my first job was at a daycare, I worked in an after school program and summer camp. And so it just seemed like the logical next step was for me to go into teaching because that’s what I knew. But the truth is that I didn’t even really fully explore other options. Kids were what I was good at, but I didn’t take the time to think about whether I was going to enjoy everything else that comes with being a teacher and how that choice would affect my life.

(04:21):
Then once I got into the classroom, I very quickly realized that teaching was a lot more than just helping students learn. I would come home stressed every day from all the additional expectations placed on teacher’s shoulders, as well as not receiving the full support that I needed to properly help my students. I pretty quickly realized that I did not wanna teach for the rest of my career, but I wasn’t sure what else I could do. Especially since I had just invested so much freaking money into my teaching degree, and I had these huge student loans looming over me. So I couldn’t bring these feelings to my husband or my parents because I literally just finished this degree and I’m like, “Seriously, what am I supposed to do now? Go back to college?” No, I didn’t want more student loans. So I was like, “Do I have to stay stuck here? What am I gonna do?”

(05:18):
So I just mostly kept these feelings bottled up inside. And not only did I not wanna tell them because that meant spending more money, but it felt like I was admitting failure that I just, you know, wasn’t cut out for this. And like I said, I love teaching, but it was everything else as I’m sure y’all know that I was like, this is not sustainable. Then when I got pregnant with my daughter, I ended up opening up and telling my husband that I didn’t think I could be the present mom that I wanted to be while still teaching. So we had a discussion and we agreed that I would take the first year of my daughter’s life off of teaching. And the plan was during that time that I was going to either nanny or deliver groceries, something where I could take her with me, that would make up at least a small portion of my income.

(06:13):
And it’s funny, looking back, those were my plans. The plan was to go back to teaching a year after she was born. But God listens to the dreams on our hearts and he has different plans for us than what we sometimes think. For me, the day I went into labor, I came across this world of virtual assistance and I’m like, what is this? I didn’t know this was a thing. And so once I kind of explored and saw, “okay, this isn’t direct sales”, ’cause I had tried that, that didn’t work for me. This is something that I could maybe actually do. So like I said, this was the day I went into labor. From then on, I spent every spare moment that I could while I was nursing or just up late at night, unable to fall back asleep. After I fed her, I spent all that time learning everything that I could about becoming a virtual assistant. Then within one month I had landed my first client. And within three months I had replaced half of my teaching income. And then within six months I had replaced my teaching income completely. And this was all with my newborn daughter by my side, working only about 20 hours a week.

(07:31):
You guys virtual assistance seriously was an answered prayer. And I’m not a unicorn. You can do this too. You listen to this podcast and you gobble up every episode because you have dreams for yourself. But are you sitting on those dreams or are you actively pursuing them? If you’re just sitting on your dreams, why aren’t you pursuing them? Are you afraid that this new dream that you have for yourself is gonna cause ripples and you don’t like to make waves? Y’all I had a big vision for what I knew my life could be. And I knew I would regret it if I didn’t at least try. I had no proof that I was gonna be successful at this, but I knew that my drive to be at home with my kids and to still be able to pay off our debt and take those dream family vacations.

(08:23):
I knew I could still have all of that. If I gave this my all, I really truly believed that I could figure this out. I knew I had the capabilities to learn. And even if I didn’t have the experience yet, I could figure it out. As I went, I didn’t need everything to perfectly align from the start. God doesn’t show us the end destination from the beginning, because if we saw where we’re gonna end up, we’d probably be like, “are you crazy?” And we would never try. So it’s just about taking one step at a time and having faith in His plan for you.

(09:03):
Now, if you’re afraid and you’re like me, you just don’t know how to express this to your spouse or your family. You feel like you have no one to talk to about this dream. That’s been placed on your heart, come into our free Facebook community, facebook.com/groups/ditchtheclassroom. This is your safe place to really share how you’re feeling and allow us to encourage you and push you to take that first step. I also want you to know that you can ease your feet in, get them a little wet. You don’t have to do a cannonball into the deep end with this virtual assistance world. You can start learning it one step at a time, but also I wanna make sure you’re not just sitting around waiting for everything to be perfect before you pursue your dreams. I’m all about “done” not “perfect”. You can go back and tweak things later, just get it out there. Take those steps, take those big leaps of faith and make your great dream come true. You need to commit to it, give it the air and the light that you needs to grow.

(10:08):
And when you stumble upon a solution, take it. Even if you’re stepping into it with wobbly, Bambi legs, at least you’re freaking taking the step. Okay? And if you need that encouragement, that accountability, that ongoing support the tools to make this possible. And it just make this vision come to life for you. Then the Teacher Turned Freelancer Academy is for you. This is where you’re going to get everything you need to take your virtual assistant business from zero to 60 so you can replace your teaching income and start working from home so much faster. And actually you’re gonna end up saving money too, because you’re not gonna make all the mistakes that I made starting out. So go to teacherturnedfreelancer.com, see everything that’s included in the program. Get registered. I can’t wait to see ya’ll in there. And, just to kind of wrap up this episode, I want you to ask yourself, what steps do I need to take to make my dream come true? What conversations do I need to have? And what do you maybe need to let go of so that you can get to the place where you are able to quit teaching and pursue the dreams that have been placed on your heart. I want you to answer those questions for yourself and if you’re ready, I’m right here waiting for you. All right y’all, we will see you next episode.