In this episode of Moni Talks Tech, Moni talks about finding her place in the online world.
Moni Talks Tech (and other things) is a show hosted by Monika Rabensteiner, a weird Austrian lady, who went on the journey to start her own business and is now here to tell the tale. But not only that: she will be caressing your earbuds with tips and tricks around tech tools and design - everything you need to make your online business work smarter not harder - and look better in the process.
Welcome to Moni Talks Tech and Other Things, the podcast where service-based business owners and coaches like you can walk away with simple tips and tricks to level up your business and defeat the ultimate end boss, your dreaded tech set-up. Are you ready for this, then? Let's go.
Hello, and welcome to the second episode of Moni Talks Tech. You're here again. Wow, you totally stuck to the first episode. Listen to my ramblings on my values and other things, and what even is this thing that is going to happen now, and you're here again. So thank you so much for that. I'm so excited to have you. Today we are just gonna have a bit of an introduction. I'm gonna tell you how I ended up where I am now because maybe it's interesting to some people that want to know how you can even start working online.
As I mentioned in the previous episode, I had a couple of jobs that I've done before this one and before I finally decided to start my own business and do my own thing. I started to work right after school. So in 2005, and I jumped into it with a job that I got from a teacher back in the day and it was a job at a printing company who basically created stickers for all kinds of things, for cars and signs and stuff like that. So we did all of these kinds of things, and I stayed there for a very long time. I had the tendency, and I still do, to be honest, to stay with things longer than I want to because of a lot of reasons. , one of them is definitely comfort. The other is obviously a bit of fear, and what are you even gonna do afterwards?
While I was working there after the fourth year, I decided to go and study because I had a short intermittent affair with university, let's call it that, right after school. That didn't work out so well because , for some reason, I thought it's a great idea to study English and maths and to become a teacher . I mean, thinking about it now, it's kind of hilarious, but it just turned out it wasn't for me or at least I was too young to do the studying in bigger city things. So I went to a different school, did a college for two years there, and then I started in another company and the thought of going to uni never really left me. So I started to study educational science basically, that stemmed a bit from the want of wanting to be a teacher since I was in school and then not really doing it right after school.
And also because I always loved psychology and educational science for me was a combination of with both of those things in a way. So I started to do that and I still worked part-time in the company that I started to work in. It was a pretty neat arrangement because I had a bunch of days that I had to be at work. And then the rest of the days I tried to organize all my lectures and all the other things to be able to go to uni on the days that were then still available for me. And it was really comfortable for a while because I had both, I had money, and I had the ability to learn more, which was great in what I really wanted and needed at the time. And I have to say, I think that uni or that special time in my life was really, really important for me and my personal growth because I really learned a lot about doing your own thing and doing what is good for you and not what everybody else and society tells you is good for you.
Because I grew up on the countryside somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Austria, and traditions were really, really important thing for my family or particularly for my mother. Like there were so many things she was really into that had to be that way because they are that way. And don't get me wrong, she wasn't one of these stuck-up people who was no fun and only tradition. That's definitely not the case. She was a really, really fun person, and she knew what she wanted, and she thought that that's how life basically had to be. And it took me a really long time to be able to figure out that I don't need to get married if I don't want to. I don't need to have children if I don't want to. I can create my life the way I want to create my life.
I think would I not have gone to uni at the time that I did. I don't know where I would be now, to be honest. I don't know if I would have this business now. I don't think I would, and maybe I would be married, have like 15 children running around or something. But instead, I'm a business owner now. I do my own shit. I do what I want, and I really am on this path of finding what is right for me. And I think that was really an important step in how I also ended up now doing what I do. After an additional about two and a half years that I studied and worked at the same time, I decided that I want to switch jobs. I wasn't happy in the previous job anymore and just used it a bit to keep me financially over water.
But I then found a job in the industry that I was studying in. So I started to work in a company that works with families that have kids with disabilities. And for a while, I was supporting the families at home, going there and taking care of the kids so that the families could have some off time and some downtime and looking after them, taking them out to excursions or doing certain things like going to the swimming pool and going to the playground or just taking care of them while the parents can get that obviously necessary downtime. At the same time, I was also responsible for all things project work and obviously because of what I know and the industry that I was coming from, which was graphic design and web design and all these kinds of things. Also, these tasks started to become my tasks because why would people wanna hire out something or to someone when they have somebody in the company that can do these exact things?
So aside from looking after the kids, I was also trying to write proposals for European projects and equally also creating flyers and a new logo and all the other things that are necessary for people to advertise themselves and to work, uh, and to get recognised and to be seen in the area. So I took what I had already known with me into this new job, into this new thing that basically had nothing to do with what I've done before, but I kind of combined both of those things and started to work in this new place. In hindsight, the teams interesting because I think I have this, let's call it five-year threshold , where I started to not wanna do what I'm currently doing anymore, and I need a change of scenery and a change of things. So I already, for a multitude of reasons, started to become really unhappy where I was working at and the circumstances that a lot of other circumstances that happened during that time.
And I accidentally came across this, I think it was a Facebook ad, or somebody I was following on Instagram was posting about this five-day virtual assistant challenge. And I had no idea what it was, but it sounded really intriguing. And this was really also, in hindsight, and looking back on the situation, my first connection to anything that was related to online marketing, because I was chronically online for years. I mean, I've, I've found friends and communities and boyfriends online even before dating online was a thing, I was 15, and I had my first boyfriend that I found somewhere on ICQ, and we've met, and he visited me. We were together for ages, and that was all before people started swiping left and right on this thing that's called Tinder now or whatever other app you're using. So I was kind of really ahead of the curve with a lot of the things, but this particular thing I didn't, I've, I had never seen before.
I just used social media as everybody would like; you had this profile and then used to stalk a bunch of people and looked at the pictures like old school friends and people you knew from ages ago. That's how I used social media. But because I had started to follow a couple of influences that were interesting to me for different reasons, I then came across this five-day VA challenge that was hosted by two women, Hannah and Val. They called themselves Digital Nomad Kit. And it sounded really interesting, even though I had no real idea what a VA or virtual assistant was, but it just felt like this is something that sounds really cool. And I was just so curious and so nosy that I was like, I'm just gonna participate in this because what can go wrong, right? And I didn't even expect a lot from it.
It was just the curiosity that drew me to it. Once the challenge started, it was a life changing whirlwind, I have to say. We got tasks every day that we needed to do, which really made us think about why we would want this, what we would want to do and what we could be doing and to work online as a virtual assistant. And I, based on my history and what I had been doing and what I had learned when I went to college, it just felt like this was a really, really, very well fitting thing for me that I can do. But it was not only that it felt doable. It was also that the way the challenge was set up was really very community-focused. So in just five days, it felt like I got to know a bunch of people so well and so deeply and connected with them on such a deep, deep level that I had never experienced before.
And always, I am a community person. I love community, I love people, I love my friends. I I'm more of a friend than a family person. And it was just amazing how close a group of people got together in such a short amount of time-based on this five-day challenge that we went through together. And I think, would it not have been for that community aspect? Maybe it would've been more like something that I would feel like I could do but not really wanted to like fully get behind. But I think the combination of the community aspect and the way that it, that Hannah and Val made it sound so incredibly doable and just it made it in that moment in time for me, the perfect alternative and my perfect next step. So the challenge happened at the end of 2016.
It was this end-of-the-year shebang, and I quit my job by March 2017 and officially started my business then. I started to get quite a few clients through Hannah and the Circle and the people she knew because I was really, really very, very active in the challenge and in the community later and in the course that she offered later on. And would it not have been for Hannah and the challenge and the people I met along the way, I would not 100% not still be here or still do the thing that I do now, which is being my own boss, waking up whenever the fuck I want, going to bed whenever the fuck I want, which is probably the bigger issue. , and revenge procrastination is a real thing. , but at least I can make my day how I want to and I can create my business the way I want to, which is incredible.
And sometimes, yes, you have these feelings of I would really like a bit of security and leave work and not think about it and have time to myself and do a lot of other things that are not related to my business. And it's not like that when you are self-employed, you always working, your brain is always part of the business, and you are never off, you are never really 100% off. And that's something that you miss sometimes or getting paid to have a shit because , when I don't work, I don't get paid. Whereas some people, can still do that. So this is definitely are some things that I miss, but also what I don't miss is that I can get up when I want. I can take a break if I want to. I can go for breakfast with a friend without having to ask anyone.
And those are just the small things that I sometimes really, really, really, really appreciate. And especially in the last couple of months after Covid-19 and after. I mean, we're still, who, who the fuck are we kidding? Covid is always gonna be a thing, and it's still a thing like the pandemic is not over. But I'm braver now again, and I'm going out more, and I'm starting to travel a bit more. And now, I start to realise that I can do all these things because I work the way I work. I can take my laptop, I can go places, I can go every month if I want to. I can go every week if I want to. I'm just that flexible. And I really, really start to appreciate the flexibility even more now. The most important thing for me that Hannah taught me and everyone else, and she's still teaching that to everyone else, the five-day VA challenge is still going strong ever since that first time she did it.
I'm part of DNK now I've worked together with her. We created things together and I can still see her creating and having this incredible impact on people and on everybody who is really taking her challenge and taking it seriously. And the best thing for me that she gave us all is the optimism that every skill you have is somehow translatable and necessary and wanted by other people. You need to not be the perfect person. You don't need to be perfect and know everything there is to know in life. Nobody can ever fucking achieve that anyway. But you need to know what you know well and you need to know it better. And, if only it fits only 10% better than the person you are serving, then you were already wanted. And everything can be translated into something that can be used online.
I have friends who write, I have friends who are really organised. I have friends who also have businesses now that do so much of that organise events or that create courses or all the things are translatable and transferable for you to do online. And just because you can't really imagine it at this very moment doesn't mean that it can't happen. I've been doing this for five years now, and I think until this day my boyfriend won't be able to tell you what I do for a living. Neither can any of my family and rarely or barely anyone that I meet that is not actually also an online business owner and works online can grasp what I do, but it doesn't matter. And for a while, at the very beginning, it was really difficult because it felt like I was the only person and I had nobody who got me and what I wanted to do because it was something that they didn't know.
So that's why this community aspect of it all was really, really, really important. And that's why again, community is this one thread in my life that is just always helping me through difficult times. And the people I meet through these communities are, some of them became my best friends, my best business colleagues, my best people. I refer to people that refer me to somebody else. It is just such an important network. But not because I want to get ahead or I want to achieve, or I want to use them for the currency that is the connection. They are my friends, and they are people that I genuinely want to connect with. And this is why we help each other. And I always and forever will work in collaboration with people and not in competition because it won't get you anywhere. There are enough people out there that need your services, that want your services.
You just need to want to do it. You need to put the work in, and you will find people who will honour you and will honour your skills and will honour your time and will honour your worth. And thanks 100000% to Hannah. Would it not have been for her I don't know where I would be now. I would not be here. I'm pretty sure about that. And I would not have the friends that I have because of the business, and I would not be able to create a life that I want and create a life that looks the way I want it to look, that makes me feel good about myself and what I, who I serve and what I do. So sometimes you just need to take that first step to believe in yourself really and do what lights you up and start now.