VA Success Spotlight: Meet Laurie

Meet Laurie McAleenan, Task Owl VA.

When Laurie joined VA School, she had been out of the workforce for years. 

She'd had a corporate career for about ten years, before she had two small kids and a series of moves around the country for her husband's career. 

She homeschooled. She volunteered. She told herself that eventually, when the kids were older, she'd figure out the next thing. 

Then her son graduated high school with a plan for trade school, and "eventually" turned into now. 

So she pulled out her resume, dusted it off, and started looking. And nothing fit. Her kids still needed her for all the growing-into-adulthood things. She wanted the flexibility she'd built her life around. The jobs she was finding asked her to give that up. 

What she found instead was a free training I was running, and something in it clicked for her: the skills she already had were skills someone would pay for. 

I asked her what nearly kept her from enrolling. Here's what she said: 

"If I had to say one word, I would say fear." 

Fear of not finishing, because she had a shelf full of things she'd started and drifted away from. The $27 programs. The email opt-ins. The DIY stuff that never quite fit. Fear of spending money on one more of those. And fear that nobody would take her seriously enough to hire her. 

I want to sit on that for a second, because I hear it a lot, and it's a fair thing to think about. 

If your have a history of half-finished programs, the smart question isn't "am I motivated enough?" It's "what's different about this one?" 

For Laurie, the answer was the structure around her. 

"I knew I needed mindset. I knew I needed accountability. I knew I needed some hand-holding." 

She had already figured out the LLC. She'd freelanced a little. The mechanics weren't the gap. The gap was having people in the room with her every week. The Chicken Chatter calls. Office hours. The cohort check-ins. 

That's the part she says made the difference. The community. 

Thirty days in, Laurie had a paying client. 

Her reaction was not a victory lap. 

"I was shocked, and then I was scared. Somebody's paid me. And now what do I do? 

So she came to Study Hall, we talked, took a breath and Laurie did the work. The client was happy. They've worked together ever since. 

And here's the part I keep thinking about. Laurie didn't kill the scared voice. She just took action anyway. 

"That fear and nervousness began to be replaced with a little tiny voice that would say, I can do this." 

That's the whole game. Most people try to squish the voice like a bug, and it gets bigger. Laurie replaced it a little at a time, and the momentum started. 

Coming up on two years in, Laurie works about 20 to 25 billable hours a week. 

Mornings start with coffee and usually a business book. Her adult daughter comes over most days and they sit and talk, which Laurie names as one of the real prizes of this work. 

Around 9:30 she opens the laptop. She has one long-standing recurring client with standing Monday and Friday meetings. Wednesday mornings she goes to a networking group she joined a year and a half in, a group she describes as feeling more like a small family than a business thing. 

She's honest that it wasn't smooth from day one. There were clunky weeks. Weeks she said yes too much. Boundaries she had to learn to set with herself, because she likes the work and will happily run past lunch. 

She hit consistent $2,000 months within six months. She set a big revenue goal for her first full year, and when she filed her taxes, she realized she'd gone past it. 

And the money is helping her family: tuition, new shoes, the thing her son-in-law needed, the unexpected stuff. 

I asked her what she'd say to a stay-at-home mom reading this and thinking, sure, but not me. 

"Joining VA School has been the single best decision I've made for myself in the last twenty-five-plus years. Easy." 

And then the practical version: 

"As a stay-at-home mom, I gained skills. We learned stuff, we manage stuff. And that's all transferable. It works around your schedule. People need the help, and they'll pay for it." 

She added one more thing, which I think is the most useful insight in our whole conversation: 

"It'll scale with you. If you have young kids, you may not be able to do a 20 or 25 hour week. You might only be able to do ten. But that's still significant." 

That's Laurie's story. She made the decision, she stayed in her seat, she did the work. 

VA School is open for enrollment right now, and this is the 30th cohort to go through it. It's the same six months Laurie did: the weekly Study Halls, Cut the Chicken Chatter, Power Hour, and the cohort that turns out to be the part women treasure the most.