EP364: Gina Cotner - Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Virtual Assistants

Michael Palmer: And she said, Gina, you need to open this as a business. And I said, Tiffany, no, I've been an entrepreneur before. I don't want to be an entrepreneur again. That's way too scary. I don't want my mortgage getting paid, being contingent upon the next contract that I sign. And she said, just get over yourself. Get over yourself. Go open that business. You're listening to The Successful Bookkeeper with your host, Michael Palmer. Listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success to help you increase your confidence, work smarter, and build a business you love. This episode of The Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by purebookkeeping.com, the proven system to grow your bookkeeping business. Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper Podcast. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be fantastic. Our guest is the founder and CEO of Athena Executive Services, a firm that pairs high-caliber virtual executive assistants around the United States with busy owners, entrepreneurs, and executives. Gina Kottner, welcome to the show. Thank you, Michael. Great to be here. It's great to have you, and I'm looking forward to this conversation because we have a lot of busy business owners that listen to this podcast. So, you are definitely in the right place and so is our listener today. And before we get into all of it, Gina, please tell us a little bit about your career journey leading up to this point.

Guest: Boy, it has been a winding road. Not definitely not the linear trajectory out of college that one one thinks of. Um, boy, how far back to go. So yeah, I got a degree in human resources and public relations, and I'd say in the last 30 years I've probably worked in human resources all of 6 months and in public relations all of 6 months. Uh, but really good background and really good informative place to come from for my entire career. At one point, oh, let's go back, we'll go back 20 years, let's just say. I was working for IBM for 7 years. It's 1998, right? So we're approaching the dot-com world. All my friends are working for startups and trading stocks and doing really cool things. And I was just too nervous. I just wanted a really solid job with a really solid company. And IBM was a great place to be for 6 or 7 years. And then I don't know if it's because it was the early 2000s or if it was because I was in my early 30s and everybody in their early 30s does this. I don't know. But I started having that, like,