Today we’d like to introduce you to Kiara Perez.
Hi Kiara, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
My mom used to always tell me to choose a career that would make me happy. That while money was an important factor to consider when choosing a career, choosing a career that you were passionate about and would give you a sense of fulfillment was the most important factor to understand. Even after her passing when I was 16, those words stuck with me as I was reaching adulthood.
I’ve always strived to be an entrepreneur and make a career out of something that I was passionate about. I launched my first freelance business at 18 and I was a bridal and editorial makeup artist and hairstylist in NYC. I really enjoyed my journey with my first business but after marriage and having my firstborn, it became clear that being a freelance makeup artist and hairstylist wasn’t going to give me the lifestyle I was really striving for.
So to focus on my family, I had placed my goals of entrepreneurship to the side. I thought I could be content with how my life was turning, I was pursuing a new career in healthcare, and had hoped to live a thriving lifestyle with my family.
Well, a few years later, I found myself in an abusive marriage, financially broke, trying to make it as a first-time mom-soon expecting my second, and all visions of a thriving lifestyle were gone. Even feeling broken down and defeated, I knew that the life I was living was not the end. So, for my kids and myself, I knew it was time to make scary but strong decisions.
On May 1, 2017, I left my abusive marriage, finalized my divorce, moved back home with a family with two little ones, and I started my journey to rediscover who I was and go after the life I wanted for us. After becoming a single mom of two, raising my son who soon was diagnosed with autism, many attempts in network marketing, and pursuing advancements in healthcare, I discovered that I wanted to launch a business that would allow me to work from home to be a present mom and to help others.
After living at home for two years, I made the decision to move from New York to Florida hoping for a fresh start with my family. Through many ups and downs along the way, I had found an industry that was going to give me everything that I had hoped for as an entrepreneur.
In November 2021, I did the famous google searches “work from home jobs” and “online business ideas” and came across an article that had mentioned how you could become a virtual assistant. It seemed perfect for someone like me who was still pursuing her college degree and I could work around my schedule as a mom.
I did a little more research online and in came across a virtual assistant coach and six-figure agency owner on Instagram named Annalisa Abel and took her course, The Ultimate Virtual Assistant Bootcamp. Everything in her Bootcamp made me realize that I could take all of my skills from freelancing and working in healthcare to launch a profitable virtual assistant agency.
In November 2021, I finished the course, in December 2021, I launched my agency, Virtually Thriving, and in my first month, I was able to scale to 4 figures, in 3 months I doubled my income, and crossed off business goals sooner than I expected.
It’s so amazing how life could turn around so much in 5 years. I’m grateful. to God and my family because there were many times that I wanted to give up, times I thought I’d never be the Kiara I used to be again, and everything has become way better than I could’ve ever imagined.
Some days, I feel like the struggles of my past feel like a dream, but deep down, I’m grateful for the lessons it’s taught me along the way because I’ve been able to grow from feeling broken and defeated to uplifted and thriving.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road hahaha! My biggest struggle then and even now is ignoring imposter syndrome and perfectionism.
Having gone through the struggles I’ve been through, I tend to always feel this pressure to never be in that situation again. I’ve been financially broke to the point where I didn’t even have enough money to buy my son baby formula and pinch for pennies to put gas in my car. There are no words to describe how defeated I felt then, so even today I’m afraid that I’ll end up back in that situation.
So there are days that I’m trying to make everything perfect so that there’s no room for failure. Then imposter syndrome wants to come in and make me feel like I don’t have what it takes to accomplish my goals and that I’m going to fail.
But I know there’s no such thing as perfect and I’m learning every day that there’s beauty in mistakes. There are opportunities in failures. Take those mistakes and failures to help you learn and grow to become better at what you do. With imposter syndrome, I remind myself that every successful entrepreneur had to start at the beginning, and the only thing stopping you from reaching success like them is lacking consistency and self-confidence.
I know who I am, I’ve faced things that honestly should’ve left me broken or even worse killed me, but I prevailed through it. I’m capable of doing anything I want and no one can stop but ME.
The talents, skills, and knowledge are already a part of you. Stop getting in your own way and be consistent with what you want to achieve.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Virtually Thriving is virtual assistance and digital marketing agency that helps the busy entrepreneur develop a “hands-free” business with a strong online presence.
We implement automation tools to help you eliminate performing the tedious day-to-day tasks to provide you with more availability to pour into your business and anything else you love. We also implement customized social media marketing strategies, content writing, SEO, and email marketing campaigns to increase your brand’s awareness on multiple online platforms to generate new leads for your business.
We offer services such as operations management-establish systems and workflows to automate your business to be more “hands-free”, email marketing-drafting email sequences and segments for email campaigns, and we offer social media management-a customized social media marketing strategy will be implemented together to identify your brands content pillars, target audience, content that needs to be created and structuring a content schedule.
What sets us apart is that we don’t like to establish an “employee/employer dynamic”. As independent contractors, we like to ensure that our clients know that we are partnering with them, not working for them.
We establish a very communicative, honest, and trustworthy dynamic with our clients because we understand how hard it can be to delegate tasks for your business to someone else, especially if you’ve been managing your business alone for a significant amount of time. It is our goal to help our clients get back to enjoying and feeling passionate about managing their business, develop a healthy work/life balance, and scale their brand and make it thrive.
We are proud of the results our clients have been seeing with results with our digital marketing strategies and enjoying managing their business while still having a personal life. We had one client who was able to enjoy a family trip to Italy and be present without worrying about their systems or online platforms and was able to generate new clients for her business with the help of Virtually Thriving.
If you’ve been looking for a virtual assistant or social media manager because managing your business has been too overwhelming or you’re ready to truly take on the role of a CEO, choose Virtually Thriving to assist you. You’d be partnering with an agency that truly cares about the success of your brand and wants to see you thrive not only as a business owner but in your personal life.
You deserve to be the CEO you’ve always wanted to be and you deserve to have the right support to help you get there.
We’d love to hear what you think about risk-taking?
In my eyes, everything is a risk. From the moment you wake up, you have no idea how your day is going to go, who you’ll meet along the way, or what choices you’ll have to make. In that mindset, I would say I’m a risk-taker. A calculated one but still a risk-taker hahaha.
Every day, I analyze my choices, decisions, and how to handle things to clarify if it aligns with the life I want for me and my family. If it doesn’t I won’t do it or if my gut tells me that it’s not a smart idea, I won’t do it. But you have to be open to taking some risks like I said smart ones because you never know which “risk” could turn into the opportunity of a lifetime.
It was a risk giving a woman, I never met and had seen on Instagram, to learn about a business and an industry I didn’t have too much knowledge about, with the little money I had, to take a course with reviews that I wasn’t too sure if they were genuine or not. That risk has allowed me to gain more knowledge, opened my eyes to other opportunities as an entrepreneur, launched a profitable business, and gained a mentor who helps push me to scale my business to new heights.
I followed my gut and intuition. It was a risk but I said the worst that could happen would’ve been that lost money. It turned into an opportunity to help me achieve my goals.
So be smart, follow your intuition, and don’t be afraid to take a risk every now and again because you never know what doors it’ll open.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @VirtuallyThriving_
- Twitter: @KiaraNicoleVA
