Privileged to be invited to be a guest blogger for Louise Brogan’s Social Bee Academy on the topic of becoming Virtual!

Despite virtual nature of my job, I am still of the generation that likes to send snail mail and was writing a card to my former boss in Luxemburg the other day who has just retired. As I was writing it, I was thinking if someone had said to me in May 2013 that I’d be leaving Luxembourg to go back to Northern Ireland by May 2014 and that by May 2015 I would have started my own business, I would have laughed. Yet here I am in Moira, Co.Armagh, May 2016 an entrepreneurial business woman and not totally broke!

When I was writing the card it made me think of the YB12 (Your Best Year Yet) workshop that I did with John Higgins last September and one of exercises was to write an email to your future self. I found mine the other day and am proud of what I achieved in the last 12 months, though of course there is still lots to do to build my virtual empire!

What does it take to make the leap to self-employment?

This is the question on the lips of anyone who’s ever thought about leaving the security of a full time job to go it alone. Making the decision is the first step, but how to turn that into a reality and stick at it is not always as clear cut.

Three years ago, I was working as a Personal Assistant (PA) to a senior Director in the headquarters of the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg where I’d gone to work 9yrs previously as a bi-lingual Project Administrator. I’d got to the stage in my career where I could go as far as I wanted in my grade and had already taken a sideways step to get more experience. I knew I wanted to use the skills I already had developed in 14yrs of varied administrative posts: customer –orientated , knowledge sharing, adapting to different personalities , evolving with new technologies and working with a high level of autonomy but I wasn’t quite sure which way to turn as I couldn’t find a role which was demanding and interesting enough.