108. 3 Business Mistakes That Led Me to Burnout as a VA and OBM

What happens when your business looks successful on the outside but you're miserable behind the scenes? I'm getting vulnerable today and sharing three major business mistakes I made as a VA and OBM that led to complete burnout, even though I was making consistent income and had replaced my 9-5 in just five months. If you're in a business that technically works but isn't flowing like you want it to, this story is for you.

In this episode, I'm walking through my biggest mistakes...exactly what happened, why it happened, and what I wish I'd known back then.

Because if your business technically works but something feels off, you're not imagining it.

Does any part of my story feel familiar? Are you successful on paper but miserable behind the scenes? I'm offering a limited number of free 45-minute business audit calls!

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Andrea Elibero: Andrea here, your host and passionate business coach and scaling strategist for soulful service providers and coaches. Welcome to another episode of Solepreneur Scaling Stories. Have you ever wanted to look behind the curtain of your fellow entrepreneur's business to see what actually went into scaling it?

[00:00:22] Andrea Elibero: Well, you are in for a treat 'cause that's exactly what we are doing here. In each episode, we will be uncovering the truth of the lessons and the stories behind what it truly takes for sold entrepreneurs to scale their businesses intentionally. I'm hoping that their stories will help you to unlock the true potential of your business so you can create your own soulful, abundant, and aligned laptop lifestyle through intentional scaling.

[00:00:46] Andrea Elibero: So whether you're just starting out on your scaling journey or you're a seasoned entrepreneur seeking inspiration, this episode has something incredible in store for you. Are you ready to rise, grow, and create a business that fully supports your dream life? Well, let's dive in. [00:01:00] Before we begin, make sure to hit that subscribe buttons.

[00:01:03] Andrea Elibero: You never miss an empowering episode filled with real stories and soulful insights.

[00:01:10] Andrea Elibero: Okay. Hello everybody and welcome back. So today I want to get a little vulnerable with you guys. So I want to share something that I don't usually talk about in this much detail. This is not like.

[00:01:26] Andrea Elibero: The marketing things where it's like, oh, everything's great, and I have all the answers.

[00:01:31] Andrea Elibero: You know, this is my real, real story

[00:01:33] Andrea Elibero: because if you are a virtual assistant, OBM done for you service provider listening to this, there is a really good chance that you are also in a business that technically works, but maybe it's not really flowing like you want it to.

[00:01:49] Andrea Elibero: And I. Know in my heart and soul how lonely that can feel. Especially when you look online and everybody is like, I booked a client. I did this. [00:02:00] Oh, I'm earning so much money. Oh, I'm taking a walk. I'm going to yoga. Whatever. Right.

[00:02:04] Andrea Elibero: So this episode here is me being honest about three really big mistakes that I made in my business as a VA and as an OBM.

[00:02:13] Andrea Elibero: And the mistakes that I made actually looked like success on the outside, but they led me to burnout and to a lot of other negative consequences. And there are lessons. In this for you. So buckle up because this is for you. So what I want to say to get things started right up front is that my business was successful, right?

[00:02:37] Andrea Elibero: Like I worked really hard at the beginning, well all the rope, but at the beginning I replaced my nine to five income in just five months. I had that goal for myself to do that.

[00:02:49] Andrea Elibero: And I hit my deadline. I made that goal and I made money consistently, and I was able to quit my job and from then on.

[00:02:58] Andrea Elibero: Everything was good for a number of [00:03:00] years, and so it was like, yeah, like from the outside I had this successful business, right? But inside I was building something that wasn't me, and that leads me to stake number one, which was I became an agency owner. Without ever choosing to become an agency owner. So let me back up and tell you why this was a mistake on my part.

[00:03:24] Andrea Elibero: So I first started as a virtual assistant in 2019, and it was my goal. I, um, purposefully at that time, I said yes to all the things, right? I wanted to learn, I wanted to figure out. What I enjoyed, I wanted to figure out what I was good at. I wanted to figure out what I never wanted to do again. You know? So I did a little bit of everything.

[00:03:44] Andrea Elibero: I had a lot of clients and some of these clients were like five hour a month clients, like, and I had a lot of them, right? So at first, you know, and the clients kept coming, and at first I felt really validating. Like, oh my God, I'm like this amazing business owner. I'm doing all the right things. [00:04:00] And then it got to a point where it's like, wait, I can't take on any more clients as this.

[00:04:04] Andrea Elibero: Solo VA anymore. And

[00:04:08] Andrea Elibero: what I should have done at that time was to kind of pause and to really ask myself, okay, I have proven to myself that I can run this business, but what do I actually want this business to become? Right, and I didn't do that. I did what I thought I was supposed to do because I looked online.

[00:04:26] Andrea Elibero: I was like, well, how do you, like, I had no idea, right? Like, how do you grow? Like, okay, I paid up capacity, my hourly capacity, and how do I grow this business? Like what do I do? One option came up on Google one option. Build an agency, hire subcontractors. That's how you grow as a virtual assistant, period. So I did, right.

[00:04:46] Andrea Elibero: I hired subcontractors. I became the middleman. I managed communication. I was the one who clients talked to. I reviewed the work of some of these subcontractors, you know. All the things right that you can imagine [00:05:00] and great. I had like 14 clients, three people on my team. Like that sounds really cool, right?

[00:05:05] Andrea Elibero: But like that's success. But I didn't choose that path, right? Like I didn't realize this until later. I didn't choose to be a people manager. I didn't choose to have this large number of clients where the work is. Uh, I don't wanna say like, kind of like basic admin work, right? Like I never decided I wanted to be responsible for other people, like the people on my team's incomes.

[00:05:35] Andrea Elibero: I didn't ask if this role actually fit me. It was my business that demanded it of me, and I just followed, I went with it. So it is not something that. I wanted, I realized later, right? Like, like it wasn't making me fulfilled. It wasn't making me happy, and my business stopped feeling like my own business. I was busy all the time.

[00:05:58] Andrea Elibero: I was making money but not fulfilled, [00:06:00] right? I was grateful, but also kind of trapped in what I was doing. And then I felt guilty because so many people, you know, struggle to get clients. So many people would love to be where that position that I was in, but. It wasn't what I wanted, so that was mistake number one, was letting my business lead me to building this agency that wasn't really in my heart.

[00:06:28] Andrea Elibero: And so then what I did was I shifted out of the agency into, I became a certified online business manager. I shifted into OBM work because I was like, you know what I think I want, what I want is to go deeper, or I want, like, at that point I was like, okay, I've been doing this for like a year. I'm like, ready to be more strategic to do this, like higher level stuff and whatnot, like deeper work, fewer clients, a higher hourly wage.

[00:06:57] Andrea Elibero: And that's kind of the key term here is [00:07:00] that mistake number two is that I built everything on hourly retainers. And I'll tell you why that is a mistake. So

[00:07:10] Andrea Elibero: as an OBM, and this is typical when you are, you know, like the literal right hand person for these six, seven figure businesses, you can only handle maybe three, maybe four clients because you are deeply involved, right?

[00:07:24] Andrea Elibero: You are the person that your clients rely on. You're the only one. You know, something breaks. They hired you to fix it, right? You are holding the business when it feels unstable. And I took that seriously, right? Like that was my responsibility. And even with those boundaries, the mental load never really shut off, right?

[00:07:43] Andrea Elibero: Because they were thinking about their business. I was thinking about three or four businesses. If something went wrong on a weekend, I knew about it. If a launch felt shaky, I felt that, you know, in my body, if a client was stressed, I absorbed that stress. It wasn't that, yes, I was working a [00:08:00] lot, but I was also carrying a lot.

[00:08:02] Andrea Elibero: And you know, for instance, I had a client whose website went down on a Saturday in the middle of launch. And obviously I don't normally work weekends, but that I had to deal with and you know, so obviously I did, but it's kind of like one thing after another. And I do really love the OBM work and I was good at it.

[00:08:21] Andrea Elibero: However, when I am the person for a few of these. Hourly retainer clients. One, it's a lot of responsibility. And two, I was capped, right? I was making these in the range of, depending on the month, eight to 12 K months, right? But even at that level, I was capped both monetarily and also emotionally. I was exhausted.

[00:08:47] Andrea Elibero: There was no room to expand. I could never focus on my own business. I couldn't focus on anything else. Right. I was giving up more and more of myself to handle these hourly [00:09:00] retainer clients, and yes, this is good work. Yes, it pays, you know, it pays obviously more per hour than a va, but at the end of the day, I was still kept.

[00:09:11] Andrea Elibero: And it was a lot. And so that's what led me to my burnout because now I am the one who's focused on all these other people's businesses, and I didn't feel like I had a business. My business didn't belong to me anymore. I was reactive to my clients, and it felt like I existed inside of their businesses instead of building my own.

[00:09:34] Andrea Elibero: And that is the point where burnout really hit me. It was a burnout where, you know, at one point, you know, I parted ways with a couple of clients and normally I would've been like, okay, add it again. Let's get some, and clients would come on and everything was good, but I couldn't do it at that point, right?

[00:09:49] Andrea Elibero: Like I couldn't do it anymore. I had burnout and it lasted at least a year. And because of my business model of how I went into it, [00:10:00] thinking that the only way or the main way was with these hourly retainer clients and so. That was mistake number two. So one was having this VA agency when it was kind of accidental.

[00:10:14] Andrea Elibero: I kind of fell into it. And then two was having my business model be based on hourly retainers. So these first two mistakes could have been avoided. Because the real mistake, and if you take nothing else away from this story, take this away. The root cause of all of this is that when I started my business, my goal was replace my income, leave my nine to five so I could be free.

[00:10:42] Andrea Elibero: And I did that. There was no. Goal. I never went back and had a vision after that. I was just learning. I was in it. And then my business was taking me places, right? Like she was guiding me. I was not in the driver's seat. So mistake number three. The root cause of all [00:11:00] of this is not having a clear vision, and this is what I understand now that I did not understand back then.

[00:11:07] Andrea Elibero: Again, like I said, my only goal when I started was to quit my job. I didn't really ask myself. I knew I wanted to quit my job. I knew that I wanted to be able to move abroad, which I did so amazing, right? So I, but, but, but I never asked myself, okay, what do I want to feel like? What kind of work actually sustains me?

[00:11:27] Andrea Elibero: What role do I want to play long term? Like what feels good for me? What would make me excited to get outta bed every morning? And so, because I didn't take the time to have this vision, and there's a lot more that goes into it, but there were some basic questions. Every decision I made from then on was reactive.

[00:11:47] Andrea Elibero: More clients came. I adjusted work, piled up. I adapted. Opportunities appeared. I followed them. I never really designed my own business. I let it design me. I let my [00:12:00] business be in control. And then when you do that, as I have learned, when you do that for long enough, burnout is not just a possibility. It is inevitable.

[00:12:09] Andrea Elibero: Okay, so what I needed back then was not a higher rate, wasn't another offer. What I needed at that point was space. I needed to pause for a second, really zoom out and ask myself, okay, what am I building and does this support the life that I want to live? Am I doing the work that I love doing and that I'm so excited to jump into every day?

[00:12:35] Andrea Elibero: And if not, how can I make it that way? And that's the work I did eventually, and that's when. All of the things change my offers, my structure, my energy, my relationship to my business, and

[00:12:49] Andrea Elibero: This is the thing that led me to create my framework. Effortless offer flow, which is what everything I do is based on including my one-on-one coaching expansion. So expansion is not something that [00:13:00] I built because, oh, I want to coach VAs and ODMs. I built it because I lived the alternative, because I know what it's like to be successful on paper.

[00:13:13] Andrea Elibero: Miserable behind the scenes. I know how confusing it is to feel stuck when you're like, well, I'm doing well, but I don't really feel like I'm doing well and feeling guilty about that. I know how painful it is to realize that you've built a business that depends entirely on you, but that doesn't actually support you.

[00:13:32] Andrea Elibero: Expansion starts with a vision for a reason. It doesn't start with strategy, it doesn't start with marketing. It doesn't start with systems, how to scale. The very, very, very first thing we do is create a vision, because without a vision, every next step just creates a different version of the same problem that you have.

[00:13:53] Andrea Elibero: Vision is the very, very first thing that you should have, and that's your north star. That's your guiding light [00:14:00] for everything that you do in business. So if you are listening to this and you're thinking like, oh, like this really resonates with me, okay? Like I kind of see myself in this story. I have good news.

[00:14:13] Andrea Elibero: You don't have to do this alone and you don't have to pay me anything. I know. I am offering free 45 minute business audit calls. They're not sales calls where I'm pressuring you, you know, give you five minutes of advice and pressure you to buy a 10 K program. I don't even have a 10 K program. You know, I'm not going to pitch you but's not aligned.

[00:14:31] Andrea Elibero: We will look at what's going on in your business, what's keeping you stuck in reactive hourly work, and what are the next one to two steps that you can take in order to create this. Business that you actually love and that's going to make all the money while supporting you. If expansion is a fit, I'll tell you, but if it's not, you're still going to leave with clarity.

[00:14:55] Andrea Elibero: And so I only take a few of these each month because I'm serving my clients. And if. Spots are [00:15:00] open. Head over to the link in the show notes because you'll see them if spots are open them. So remember that you don't have to suffer in your business to succeed. You don't have to be reactive and just let your business lead you down All of these paths that don't feel good to you.

[00:15:17] Andrea Elibero: But you do need to choose your business. You need to consciously take the next step instead of letting it guide you. So if any parts of my story felt familiar, you are a hundred percent ready for something different and you can do this. I took the step, I changed it all, and so take me as an example. You can do this too.

[00:15:40] Andrea Elibero: And so with that, I will say goodbye for this episode and I'll catch you guys on the next one. 

[00:15:47] Andrea Elibero: Thank you so much for joining us today. I really hope you found inspiration and insights from today's episode. You know, scaling your business [00:16:00] intentionally and from the inside out is a transformational process, but I'm here to support you every step of the way. Head on over to dancing leaf solutions.com/resources for free tools to help you do just that.

[00:16:12] Andrea Elibero: And thank you again for being a part of the Solepreneur Scaling Stories community. Your presence and dedication to growth inspiring me every day.