How I Turned Sudden Layoffs Right into a $20 Million Enterprise

I used to be laid off from my perfect-fit job as a digital assistant in 2015 as a result of the corporate imploded in a single day. When it occurred, I by no means would have imagined ending up the place I’m at present—operating a multi-million greenback enterprise that employs lots of of army spouses identical to me.

On the time, my life felt like a nasty nation tune. I used to be three months pregnant and had made the choice to begin a household primarily based on the solidity of being a dual-income family, which was abruptly now not true. Given how exhausting it had been to seek out this job within the first place, I wasn’t assured I’d be capable of discover one other rapidly—army spouses are one of many highest unemployed demographics within the U.S. due to how usually we’ve got to maneuver. My husband had been deployed two weeks earlier than the layoffs, so I used to be alone making an attempt to course of all of this. I used to be a scorching hormonal mess and undoubtedly let myself cry a variety of tears that first day.

After which I began to show issues round, as a result of I didn’t actually have some other alternative. At first, I began working for myself as a contract digital assistant (VA). Earlier than lengthy, I had extra work than I may deal with. Two years later, I launched Squared Away with the aim of ultimately using as many army spouses as attainable by matching them with firms that want versatile help. After 5 and a half years of bootstrapping my enterprise, we just lately crossed $20 million in gross income, work with over 900 purchasers, and make use of over 390 army spouses—numbers that also shock me daily.

For anybody else trying to take stability into their very own palms within the face of financial uncertainty, listed below are a number of the methods which have helped us scale quick but in addition sustainably over the previous 5 years.

We constructed the corporate primarily based on an actual want

Frankly, I believe a part of what has helped my enterprise succeed is that I didn’t stroll in with the aim of being a CEO of a giant firm. I didn’t even stroll in with the aim of beginning an organization.

As an alternative, I got down to meet wants I noticed. Initially that was my very own must have an earnings, together with the wants of the purchasers of the corporate that laid me off who expressed curiosity in persevering with to work with me. This kicked off my preliminary stint of self employment.

A couple of years later, one in every of my purchasers got here to me expressing a necessity for extra help. His firm was on the brink of increase, and he needed extra VA capability. On the flip aspect, I used to be seeing a necessity from different army spouses in my community for versatile, secure, fulfilling jobs just like the one I had. So many buddies got here to me sharing how they couldn’t discover any jobs that labored for them, and asking how I did it. Seeing the overlap of these wants is how the concept for Squared Away initially happened.

Strolling the trail of entrepreneurship from the headspace of wanting sustainable careers for myself and people like me, in addition to searching for to satisfy others’ wants, helped me determine actual alternatives for pure progress as a substitute of making an attempt to pressure one thing.

We centered our advertising and marketing on impression

When individuals hear about our progress, they’re usually stunned to listen to that we’ve spent lower than $1,500 on paid advertising and marketing over the previous 5 years.

As an alternative, we preserve our advertising and marketing focused towards communities for which we predict our sort of versatile VA help can have essentially the most impression. Over time, we’ve partnered with predominantly feminine founder organizations like Dreamers & Doers, Chief, and TheLi.st to share details about our providers and provide reductions to members. As a feminine founder myself, I understand how invaluable it may be to have a bit additional assist when working towards a mission you care about, so I felt like we may garner a excessive stage of curiosity from this cohort.

By way of our advertising and marketing messaging, we additionally give attention to educating prospects in regards to the impression that delegation can have. Our emails and social media posts will share concepts for duties to delegate, recommendation for the right way to talk when delegating, and different actionable ideas. By offering free assist up entrance, we create quick worth for purchasers and provides them a style of how a lot we may do for them in the event that they signal on.

Lastly, we’ve all the time made certain our mission to make use of army spouses is entrance and middle, which I believe helps individuals really feel extra emotionally related to our model and excited to be part of one thing larger. After we can say, “Hey, you’re going to be ten instances much less harassed than you have been earlier than and, by the best way, you’re supporting a significant trigger whilst you’re at it,” that’s a way more attractive pitch than simply one other subscription you must pay for.

We’ve held a excessive bar for high quality to encourage referrals

Phrase-of-mouth has all the time been our greatest advertising and marketing channel: 85 p.c of our new purchasers come from referrals. Whereas we do encourage this by giving a referral credit score to our present prospects, I believe the larger cause they’re excited to share us with different enterprise house owners is due to the standard of labor we offer.

For starters, we’re very choosy in regards to the VAs we’ll rent. Everybody who desires to hitch our staff goes via a rigorous software and coaching course of the place we’re continuously assessing whether or not they exhibit our pillars of over-communication, excessive consideration to element, the flexibility to assume outdoors the field, and being a staff participant—and solely about 10 p.c of those that apply make it. As exhausting as it’s for me to show away army spouses given our mission, I do know conserving our high quality bar excessive is essential to long-term success (and we give suggestions to those that don’t get employed to assist them of their employment journeys).

We additionally gained’t match simply any shopper with simply any assistant. We all the time need to discover the perfect match on each side in order that our workers are excited to offer their all to every shopper they’re working with. This sometimes means we’ve got to ask purchasers to attend a bit longer till we will determine the precise match, however purchasers have expressed they admire the thoughtfulness behind our matching course of.

There have been actually moments the place I may have scaled quicker by matching incoming purchasers with whoever we had out there or hiring assistants that weren’t fairly to our normal. However I’d fairly develop extra slowly whereas conserving our purchasers completely satisfied so that they preserve eager to work with us, and preserve eager to sing our praises to others.

We’ve deliberately grown extra slowly

As soon as we launched and noticed early success within the first yr, there have been actually many individuals who inspired me to scale quicker. I may have raised cash to rent an enormous inflow of digital assistants so I may very well be prepared at a second’s discover to employees up new purchasers. I may have paid for large advertising and marketing campaigns to get a ton of recent purchasers.

However I didn’t need to take the identical path of the corporate I had labored for beforehand, rising too quick after which having to put individuals off when issues didn’t work out as deliberate. As an alternative, I’ve taken a extra incremental method to progress.

Congrats to @michellepencz and the @gosquaredaway staff to kick off 2023 passing $20m in complete income pic.twitter.com/6sCXPYW3Yu

— Shane Mac (@ShaneMac) January 2, 2023

I consider it virtually like a teeter totter method, seesawing forwards and backwards between progress on the shopper aspect and the employees aspect to maintain issues balanced. If we discover ourselves with extra purchasers than assistants, I can decelerate our advertising and marketing funnel and focus extra on recruiting, reaching out to army partner boards or teams and asking our VAs to refer buddies. If we swing the opposite path, I can sluggish recruiting and ramp up advertising and marketing, rising our social media or e-mail pushes and reminding purchasers about our referral program.

Sure, this implies we sometimes discover ourselves with minor rising pains—quick stints the place we’ve needed to ask purchasers to attend a bit longer than we’d like to seek out their excellent VA, or the place we haven’t had sufficient work to fill our employees’s schedules. However these little imbalances are a lot simpler to appropriate than they might be had we swung method too far in a single path like so many quickly scaling firms appear to do.

It makes me assume again to the corporate I used to be working for earlier than this all began. If they’d taken a extra incremental method to progress, perhaps they by no means would have needed to lay me off within the first place—however then I’d by no means be the place I’m at present. It’s exhausting to consider one of many worst days of my life was this unbelievable alternative, and I hope I can preserve providing stability to myself and my group for years to come back.