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 as we speak—operating a multi-million greenback enterprise that employs lots of of navy spouses similar to me.

On the time, my life felt like a nasty nation track. 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 instantly not true. Given how laborious it had been to search out this job within the first place, I wasn’t assured I’d be capable of discover one other shortly—navy spouses are one of many highest unemployed demographics within the U.S. due to how typically now we have to maneuver. My husband had been deployed two weeks earlier than the layoffs, so I used to be by myself making an attempt to course of all of this. I used to be a sizzling hormonal mess and positively let myself cry quite a lot 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 might deal with. Two years later, I launched Squared Away with the purpose of finally using as many navy spouses as attainable by matching them with corporations 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 shoppers, and make use of over 390 navy spouses—numbers that also shock me on daily basis.

For anybody else trying to take stability into their very own palms within the face of financial uncertainty, listed below are among 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 feel a part of what has helped my enterprise succeed is that I didn’t stroll in with the purpose of being a CEO of an enormous firm. I didn’t even stroll in with the purpose of beginning an organization.

As an alternative, I got down to meet wants I noticed. Initially that was my very own must have an revenue, together with the wants of the shoppers 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.

Just a few years later, one among my shoppers got here to me expressing a necessity for extra help. His firm was on the brink of develop, and he needed extra VA capability. On the flip facet, I used to be seeing a necessity from different navy spouses in my community for versatile, steady, fulfilling jobs just like the one I had. So many associates 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 looking for to satisfy others’ wants, helped me establish actual alternatives for pure development as a substitute of making an attempt to power one thing.

We centered our advertising and marketing on impression

When folks hear about our development, they’re typically 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 expect our sort of versatile VA help can have probably the most impression. Through the years, we’ve partnered with predominantly feminine founder organizations like Dreamers & Doers, Chief, and TheLi.st to share details about our companies and supply reductions to members. As a feminine founder myself, I understand how invaluable it may be to have slightly further assist when working towards a mission you care about, so I felt like we might 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 tips on how to talk when delegating, and different actionable suggestions. By offering free assist up entrance, we create rapid worth for patrons and provides them a style of how a lot we might do for them in the event that they signal on.

Lastly, we’ve at all times made positive our mission to make use of navy spouses is entrance and middle, which I feel helps folks really feel extra emotionally linked to our model and excited to be part of one thing greater. Once we can say, “Hey, you’re going to be ten instances much less confused than you have been earlier than and, by the way in which, you’re supporting a significant trigger when you’re at it,” that’s a way more engaging pitch than simply one other subscription it’s important to pay for.

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

Phrase-of-mouth has at all times been our greatest advertising and marketing channel: 85 p.c of our new shoppers come from referrals. Whereas we do encourage this by giving a referral credit score to our current prospects, I feel the larger purpose they’re excited to share us with different enterprise homeowners 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 needs to hitch our group goes by means of a rigorous software and coaching course of the place we’re consistently 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 group participant—and solely about 10 p.c of those that apply make it. As laborious as it’s for me to show away navy spouses given our mission, I do know preserving 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 consumer with simply any assistant. We at all times need to discover one of the best match on either side in order that our staff are excited to present their all to every consumer they’re working with. This sometimes means now we have to ask shoppers to attend slightly longer till we will establish the appropriate match, however shoppers have expressed they admire the thoughtfulness behind our matching course of.

There have been definitely moments the place I might have scaled sooner by matching incoming shoppers with whoever we had out there or hiring assistants that weren’t fairly to our commonplace. However I’d reasonably develop extra slowly whereas preserving our shoppers glad so that they preserve desirous to work with us, and preserve desirous to sing our praises to others.

We’ve deliberately grown extra slowly

As soon as we launched and noticed early success within the first 12 months, there have been definitely many individuals who inspired me to scale sooner. I might 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 shoppers. I might have paid for large advertising and marketing campaigns to get a ton of recent shoppers.

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 folks off when issues didn’t work out as deliberate. As an alternative, I’ve taken a extra incremental strategy to development.

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

— Shane Mac (@ShaneMac) January 2, 2023

I consider it nearly like a teeter totter strategy, seesawing forwards and backwards between development on the consumer facet and the employees facet to maintain issues balanced. If we discover ourselves with extra shoppers than assistants, I can decelerate our advertising and marketing funnel and focus extra on recruiting, reaching out to navy partner boards or teams and asking our VAs to refer associates. If we swing the opposite course, I can sluggish recruiting and ramp up advertising and marketing, rising our social media or e-mail pushes and reminding shoppers about our referral program.

Sure, this implies we sometimes discover ourselves with minor rising pains—brief stints the place we’ve needed to ask shoppers to attend slightly longer than we’d like to search 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 approach too far in a single course like so many quickly scaling corporations 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 strategy to development, possibly 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 as we speak. It’s laborious to imagine one of many worst days of my life became this unbelievable alternative, and I hope I can preserve providing stability to myself and my group for years to come back.