How I Started My BOSS Business

When I was 16, my mum setup TLC Office in the UK. She was part of a network of small business owners and saw that many of them could use help with secretarial tasks and managing their finance books. I wasn't sure about my career path yet, so I skipped university and joined her.

I learnt how many people starting in a business appreciated having the professional help without having to worry about the permanent cost of hiring someone, or feeling obligated to pay a virtual assistant each month without fully utilising the resource. Her fee was calculated according to the hours worked, which was great for small business owners with limited extra cash to spare.

Due to the various clients and work that they needed support in, I learnt so many new skills in that one year. My skills in Excel have meant that I have been called an Excel Wizard from time to time (move over Harry Potter!) I also mastered the world of bookkeeping: reconciling bank statements and recording income and expenses. Other skills learnt include using CRM, promoting businesses using social media, and even cold calling to make appointments for account managers. As someone who was unsure what her career path looked like, getting to try out different types of jobs helped me figure out what I really like to do for work.

After a year, my mum closed the business as she was offered a full time bookkeeping role for one of her clients. I started working in the NHS in my local hospital and was eager to learn more new things so I jumped into different roles over the next five years - Human Resources, Cardiac Investigations, Project Co-ordinator, Project Analyst and Data Analyst.

During my time there, I picked up skills like taking minutes, checking blood pressure, doing CPR, organising meetings, mastering waterfall project management, leading process mapping sessions, and eventually delving into data and SQL.

I really enjoy solving problems, and as a Data Analyst, I had the chance to spot data quality issues, team up with IT to fix them, and collaborate with various departments to figure out what data questions they had and create reports to address them. I then had a 3 year stint in insurance, working as a business analyst and project managing their data migration and PowerBI implementation. This part of my career life was my favourite however there was something missing. I did not get to engage with people as much as I wanted.

That brings us to 2020. As they said "this was the year to see things clearly" and suddenly I found myself single and emigrating to Hong Kong. Going back to my roots also meant that I decided to try out different types of jobs to figure out what I really like to do for work - moment of déjà vu there. I decided to focus on more people focused roles as that was the gap I was feeling:

6 months as a financial planner - networking with a lot of people and got to learn about investment opportunities. However, I couldn't afford to be on a commission only salary.

6 months as a brand partnership manager - working with 150+ brands across Hong Kong and Singapore. Found my joy in organising virtual space when I re-organised the Google Drive for the company and CEO. Rediscovered my love for coding, development and databases.

1 year as an executive assistant - if there is a task an assistant can handle, I've probably aced it or at least survived it. I orchestrated relocating our office after 12 years to a new spot across town. I was the go-to person for flights, insurance, car stuff, and even had a daily bank routine for 3 months because our online access got frozen. The office manager role helped with my desire to be people focus, financial bookkeeping helped with my desire to be analytical focus, HR and IT helped my desire to problem solve. Sounds like the perfect job, except the work culture took away my joy and I was more stressed-out than any other job I had been in.

1 year as an assistant to a professor - all admin but the reason for my job made it so much better. My boss wanted to focus on the science and doing research and all the reasons why he became a professor. He wanted someone to handle those tasks that did not bring him joy.

My journey has helped me realise that I want people to enjoy work and that they should have more happy days than stressed-out ones. If you are a business owner, I can help shoulder those tasks that do not bring you joy. If you are looking for work, I'm all about creating a workplace where you can figure out what kind of work lights you up.

And that is how I came to be in Hong Kong setting up a business that my mum started 15 years ago. Even though I have learnt a lot, there is always more for me to learn, so whether you can find your task on my services list or not, please get in touch and we can discuss it over a cup of coffee (or glass of wine!)