On New Year’s Day, I swam across this bay in Lanzarote and let me tell you the Atlantic Ocean is baltic in January wherever you are! but so what you may think? What you don’t know is 1 ½ years ago I joined my local swim club to learn how to do the front crawl and it has taken me that amount of time and getting up at 05:30 twice a week to actually learn the skills and build up the confidence to swim in any expanse of water past my comfort zone.

The same applies to starting up a business. Tomorrow I’m talking at the Women in business female Bootcamp event about my entrepreneurial journey on setting up VirtuAli Admin Solutions 2 ½ years ago nearly now and it has made me stand back and take stock how much hard work goes mentally and physically in starting up and growing your business and your brand. When I started out I had very few business contacts, had no idea about marketing and was terrified at the thought of going to networking events as I was so nervous about speaking in public.

This weekend past Eve Earley from Empowering Change held an excellent vision board workshop to set your vision in 2018. In January 2014 when I hadn’t even decided, at least not consciously, to leave Luxembourg I would have laughed if you told me I was going to set up my own business in 2015 and in January 2018 would a) have a business b) be speaking in public in front of a room full of budding female entrepreneurs telling them how I did it!

I often have people who are exploring new career options contact me about setting up as Virtual Assistant and occasionally you are approached by someone who thinks it will be a much easier option than going 9-5, let me tell you it is not!

You can do a lot of learning in 2 ½ years and I know I have but there is a still an incredible lot to come! If you decide in 2018 to launch a business you will too.