We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Aleah Vassell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Aleah, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I’ve been singing, dancing and acting on stage since the age of four years old. My parents always encouraged my passions – they took me to see The Lion King on Broadway when I was eight, and then In The Heights starring Lin Manuel Miranda and Jordin Sparks when I was in high school. But what really solidified that musical theatre was something I wanted to do professionally was seeing Legally Blonde, the Broadway musical performed on MTV. I’d never seen anything like it and it was everything I didn’t know I was looking for in musical theatre – a fun, exciting, energetic, and relatable show that I could see myself in. Don’t get me wrong, Lion King was a beautiful experience and so was In The Heights, but Legally Blonde spoke to my fifteen year old soul. After watching it, I told my parents I wanted to study Musical Theatre to make it my profession, and that was the beginning of it all.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Aleah Vassell (they/she), a Canadian born, Jamaican rooted, American based multi-passionate creative (actor, creator, and online business owner) living in Dayton, Ohio.
When it comes to my main profession of theatre, my parents saw my love for singing and acting at a very young age and nurtured that passion, putting me in shows and skits at church and school. I also enrolled in dance classes at the age of four, danced competitively in high school, and went to two magnet arts schools growing up. I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre from Samford University, and my Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Including my theatre studies and acting internships, I have now professionally performed on theatre stages across the U.S. for 10 years.

The pandemic is when both my creator and entrepreneur journeys truly started. In May of 2020, I received my MFA and then was thrust into a world where what I studied for three years was no longer an active option to pursue. Theatre was completely shut down and I was unemployed and broke. I knew I had to get creative with money if I wanted to survive.

I tried various things, such as virtual freelance work, a 9-to-5, and a self care business, but I still held the starving artist mindset which worked against me. In 2021, I got serious about my finances and mindset and worked actively to build wealth from what I knew. I ended 2021 earning $27,000 annually, which was $10,000 more than I made the year before. After another year of hard work, I ended 2022 by quadrupling my income, earning $116,000 annually!
It was in the fall of 2022 that my virtual assistant business, R3 Creative Co, and my anonymous personal finance Instagram account, Creative With Money, were born. In three months of launching my VA business, I was bringing in consistent $5,000+ months gaining financial stability as an artist. I started Creative With Money to talk about this as well as my whole personal finance journey because I wanted to inspire other creatives to get out of the starving artist mindset and build wealth. After two years (including an identity reveal in September 2024), Creative With Money has grown organically to a community of 20,000+ across all platforms.

Flash forward to now, I am an Actor, Content Creator, 6-figure Virtual Assistant and VA Coach. I teach folks how to get creative with money through free personal finance content, resources, and helping people start their own virtual assistant business. Now that theatre is back in full swing, I perform in professional theatre shows at night, and work as a VA and VA Coach during the day, helping entrepreneurs get their time back, and coaching aspiring VAs in my program called the Virtual Assistant Accelerate, where I take people from 0 to an extra $1,000-$5,000 monthly as a VA in seven weeks.

As a black, queer, non-binary immigrant, I’m most proud of the journey I took to get to where I am today. I built wealth from my passions and unique skill set and now I have the ultimate pleasure of helping others do the same while staying true to myself and my love of theatre.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

That if I was going to be an artist, I was going to be broke.

The “starving artist” mindset is a regular trope in the world and was ingrained in me from a young age. “If you want to make money as an actor, you have to be a movie star or on Broadway.” Other options, such as tours, non-Equity theatre gigs, non-SAG movies or commercials, and/or regional theatre work, have a wide range of pay that can be either livable or laughable. Hearing all of these things repeated throughout my life, including during my theatre studies, made the prospect of being a wealthy actor harder.

I unlearned this during the pandemic where I untangled my self-worth from my career as an actor. I first needed to understand that, as a human, I am worthy and deserving of joy, happiness, and wealth just by existing. Secondly, I worked through the thought of not feeling like a successful artist if I didn’t make money solely from my acting career. I did some research and found that the average millionaire has seven streams of income. This helped me instill in myself that making money in multiple ways doesn’t make me less of an artist, it makes me a better one.

By being financially stable, artists and creatives have the mental space to continue creating, serving, inspiring, and shaping our world. Money is a tool that artists especially can heavily benefit from, and there’s no shame in that. I’m thankful that part of my mission is helping creatives move from surviving to thriving through this exact work.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

The power of mentorship.

As an online business owner, I figured out the basics of starting a virtual assistant business on my own but I would’ve skipped so much hardship if I had invested in a mentor earlier. If you’re looking to start a business of any kind, find those who’ve accomplished the things you’re working to achieve, research what they’re about, and if you’d like to learn from them, invest in working with them. There are also a million free resources on the internet about starting an online business and building wealth, but your biggest breakthroughs will come from personalized help.

As an actor and theatre professional, I followed my spouse to Ohio in 2021 as a last resort since New York was still not a viable option. I researched local actors, art administrators, Artistic Directors and more, and started having coffee dates with whoever was interested. Along the way, I found mentors who have poured into me, helping me improve my craft, land private auditions, and lead roles.

Bottom line – lean into your community to find mentorship to help you reach your goals quicker. No one will have the same exact path as you, but you can still get great support from those you admire.

Contact Info:

• Website: For my actor / artist work: www.aleahvassell.com | For my personal finance work: www.creativewithmoney.com | For my virtual assistant & coaching work: www.r3creative.co
• Instagram: Main: @creativewithmoney | V.A. Coaching: @thrivingva.co | Personal Finance for Creatives: @financiallystableartist
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleahvassell
• Other: Threads: @creativewithmoney

Image Credits

Jessalyn Renee Photography, Kayla Marie Media, Mikki Shaffner Photography, Kenton Yeager