Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brittany Bettini. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Brittany, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Like most of my businesses, I Need A VA was born by a need I had myself. I am a huge advocate of turning your problems into streams of income. In business, the biggest obstacles a founder faces are deciding when, and who to hire to help them take their businesses to that next level. Most start-ups struggle to hire employees because of the high cost of labor, the taxes, and the expensive benefits employees need their employees to provide.

When I started my financial services company I needed someone to do most of the administrative work but as a startup, I didn’t know where to find skilled people, who I could actually afford to hire with almost no income being generated. When I learned about virtual assistants I thought it sounded too good to be true. Hiring someone who is better than me with computers, eager to help me grow my company, and willing to work for less than half of what my own cousin wanted to charge me to just answer the phones? NO WAY.

I fell in love with my virtual assistant Mitchelle. She was helping me get 100 times the work done, keeping me organized, making me look good to clients, and competitors, and even helping me with tasks for my job as a mother. I start to talk about her to all the other business owners I knew, at one point I had a crowd around me at a children’s birthday party drooling over the idea of hiring their own virtual assistants. I knew there was a demand, and I was going to figure out how to be the supply.

I hired a mentor in the virtual staffing industry, I followed Mitch’s lead on how VAs wanted to be treated, and I created a company that provides an amazing resource to business owners, while also creating a safe and ethical work environment for virtual assistants in the Philippines. I Need A VA is my greatest accomplishment.

Brittany, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

6 years prior to today, my life looked completely different. I was a newly single mom, fresh out of a horrific domestic violence situation. I was receiving services from my local DV shelter, and taking my kids to a food bank so we could all afford to eat. I wasn’t raised in poverty, but I had taken a string of bad decisions and found myself tangled up with little to look forward to.

At that time in my life, I took a job working in a call center, I was driving a used ford with a 24%APR car loan, and living in an apartment a friend co-signed the lease just so I could get in when I lost my home. There was no part of me that said Big Boss Brittany.

My journey started with building credit and learning about financial literacy. I knew that was the key to unlocking opportunities that would take me and my children out of our current situation so I became obsessed with my own credit score, and my financial situation. I became extremely competitive at work so I could hit every bonus opportunity and win every competition that led me to more income.

When I discovered my natural abilities for entrepreneurship there was no snuffing the fire that had been lit inside of me. Each of my business ventures has been a product of me learning a new skill, applying it to my own life and business, then helping others to do the same through services, or learning opportunities.

I say this a lot: I think that women who have been victimized and survived make the best entrepreneurs. We survived what set out to end us, nothing in business is scary after that. Problems in business are small when you stack them next to the daemons we have already defeated.

My business now centers around helping frustrated entrepreneurs build 7 figure companies using a combination of coaching, virtual assistants, business funding, and press.

From the outside, it looks like a mouthful, but the real idea is, I’m just giving people all the tools I needed in one place backed by a company with integrity so they can build their business without worrying if they are the next victim to some internet scammer.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn hustle culture.

My survival mentality had me convinced that if I worked 24 hours a day nothing bad would have time to happen. I became so burnt out and exhausted, I started to hate the thing that saved my life, work.

When I started hiring my virtual staff I realized I could actually take time off. I could be asleep and the world wouldn’t end. My life and business changed when I saw that I could delegate tasks and even decisions to someone on my staff that I trusted. Eventually, that first virtual assistant helped me build an entirely new business and then scale it to six figures in less than 6 months. If I hadn’t unlearned that toxic trait of thinking I could do it all on my own. I Need A VA wouldn’t exist, hundreds of people in the Philippines would not have jobs, and our clients wouldn’t have our amazing service.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

My entire life is based on my story of resilience. Like a phoenix, I rose from the ashes of my life in ruins. I looked at my two children in the rearview mirror in the parking lot of a food pantry and I said “no, this isn’t enough for me.”

I was so hell-bent on never being in that position again, determined to prove my abusive ex-husband wrong about the type of woman I was, and it actually worked. On the days when I didn’t feel like it, I did what I knew had to be done to get me where I wanted to be. When I was sad, overwhelmed, and felt like nothing was working, I worked harder.

I went from hiding my car from the repo man to having more luxury cars than members of my household. I did it scared, I did it hurt, and I did it alone, until I do it better, with staff, systems, and a therapist at my back.

Contact Info:

• Website: brittanybettini.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brittanybettini/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebrittanybettini/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittany-bettini-301540165/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqNl0AZ0klN7sOMBtNW_uIg