Years ago, I started dreaming.
- I was dreaming about some unknown job that would combine doing what I enjoyed with being in the environment I loved.
- I was dreaming of a job that would allow me to be a successful working woman, and a successful homemaker at the same time.
- I was dreaming of a job that would allow me to still have some time and energy for the things and people I loved.
- I was dreaming of a job that I could do right from my own kitchen table.
But I wasn’t sure if a job like that even existed. And if it did? I had no idea if I could ever find it. No one I knew worked from home, and I wasn’t interested in Multilevel Marketing.
A couple years later, I got a real life taste of that dream. I discovered a company that would pay me to take in-bound customer service calls from my home. I was elated.
It was demanding, exhausting and didn’t pay well. It wasn’t the “dream” I was looking for, but I was working from a desk in my very own room. This was my first experience with a home based job. It lit a fire under my own dream and motivated me to keep looking until I found something that I could afford to stay at home to do.
I was absolutely determined to find a way to keep doing this working from home thing.
Over the next years, I worked other jobs. Some of them were in-home, and some of them weren’t.  All of them were in an attempt to figure out what my dream job was and how to make it work. I tried web design. I did more phone work. I applied for dozens of freelance jobs and considered transcription. I met with some good results here and there, but nothing exactly fit.
It sometimes felt like I was spinning in circles and getting know where. But what did happen was I started to figure out what exactly I wanted to do from home. I figured out what I was good at, and did enough to know what I enjoyed and what I really didn’t.
But life got more complicated. The economy turned inside out, and my husband and I joined the hundreds of thousands of people who were suddenly unemployed. It was one of the most stressful times of my life.
I knew I still wanted to work from home. It was still my big dream, after all. But I was discouraged. I didn’t know how to get going, or if I even had what it takes to make it in the work at home world on my own. We were in desperate need of income and I felt doomed to work jobs that I hated and barely paid for my gas for the rest of my life.
But then I met the The Bootstrap VA.  It changed everything for me. I had discovered the term “Virtual Assistant” a few years earlier and it fit my skills. I already knew that Virtual Assisting was exactly the direction I wanted to go if I ever could work from home. I just had no idea how to actually launch a business, find clients and make it work.
Lisa’s book was exactly what I needed to read. It laid it all out there, step by step. It showed me how much closer I was to making my dream a reality than I dared to hope. It also helped me to realize I already had the skills and the resources to make this work. I could launch a business doing what I loved. I could manage my own time and work from my kitchen table. I could actually do this!
I was so relieved, so excited and empowered by what I was reading that I just might have cried a few times over my notes. The book made it so clear and so easy to understand. It answered my questions and gave me resources and tools to not just make a half-hearted attempt at figuring it out, but to build a good foundation that would help make my efforts more successful.
The Bootstrap VA was an answer to prayer.  I credit it as the thing that helped make working from home go from only a dream to a reality. I know that God used it at the right time to help me find the courage to make the leap into starting my own business.
In January, I officially launched my dream in the form of a brand new website. In March, I got my first client. I have been thrilled every day since that this work from home dream is actually happening!
My business has a lot of growing to do. And I think it always will as I learn and develop new skills and as my life changes over time.
I’m telling this story because I think I’m not the only one who has felt trapped in a place or job that they really don’t want to be. Maybe this book could help you find your niche and your courage to step out and start something of your own.
I truly can’t say enough about how The Bootstrap VA helped me to know how to focus and plan ahead for working from home. I loved how easy it was to read, and I hope that some of you can benefit from it like I did.