Bootstrapping a Company to 130 Employees

Michele Hansen  0:00 

Hey, welcome back to Software Social. I'm Michele Hansen. Colleen Schnettler  0:04 

And I'm Colleen Schnettler. Michelle Penczak

And I'm Michelle Penczak, the CEO of Squared Away. Michele Hansen  0:09 

We are so excited to have Michele with us our guest, another Michelle. She. So she said she's the founder of Squared Away, which is a company that employs mostly military spouses to be virtual assistants. And they have over 130 remote virtual assistants working for them. So Colleen and I are super pumped to have us joining our virtual table today to learn more about her business and what they're working on. Michelle Penczak  0:47 

Thank you guys for having me. I'm excited to chat with y'all. Colleen Schnettler  0:52 

So Michelle, I have just so many questions about how you started this business and grew this business. And I would love to like kind of hear a little bit about the beginning of your story, I read some of your Medium articles about how you were a virtual assistant and you got laid off. So most people, when they get laid off, you know, they try to find another job, or they just don't find another job, but you decided to start an empire. So can you tell us a little bit about that. Michelle Penczak  1:18 

I wish it started and found that cool. But um, I it kind of sounds like a really bad country song getting started. Um, I was a virtual assistant for zirtual in 2015. And this is where the sad country song part comes in. My husband had deployed two weeks before I was three months pregnant with my first little boy. And I was actually on a family vacation when it happened, Michele Hansen  1:51 

Oh my gosh. Michelle Penczak  1:52 

So literally woke up one morning, five years ago, and couldn't login to my email. And that's when I found out along with 399 other people that we did not have a job. Michele Hansen  2:05 

Oh my gosh. Michelle Penczak  2:07 

I still am like, Oh my god, I can't believe that happened. even five years later, it's kind of crazy. But, um, I called one of my clients who was to be honest, my favorite client at that point, and I kind of had a mini meltdown on the phone with him. And he was like, "You know what, it's going to be okay, because we're going to get you more clients, and I'm going to keep working with you." And he told me that and I was like, You know what, yes, I'm going to kick ass regardless of what's happening right now. And I'm going to do my thing. And I did that and started my own independent contractor business as a VA. And I worked literally, my husband will tell you, I worked up until the moment I got my epidural, with my four year -- now-four-year-old, but I was literally like, putting my out of office email up when I was going into labor. And I took a grand total of two weeks off. And because it was just me, at that point, supporting my clients, and worked with them with a newborn and that whole thing and becoming a new mom and all the craziness that goes into that. And in true military fashion, Colleen, I'm sure you are familiar with the military fun, um, my husband came home one day and was like, hey, guess what, we have orders to Hawaii. And I was like, shut the front door. Get outta here. I cannot even entertain this idea right now. And, um, I can't, you know, working with my clients. Um, I told them when we were getting ready to move to Hawaii that I was taking a week off to move. And I took a week off, we moved to Hawaii, and I started working with them like normal. I just started getting up at 3am to work Eastern standard time hours with them. And still had, you know, a nine month old at that point. And I told my husband was like, I am either insane, or I have way too much of a coffee addiction to stop this. And he was like, you know what it's working. And I did that for about six months before Squared Away was kind of implanted in my brain. Colleen Schnettler

Wow. Michele Hansen  4:31 

Can you talk to us about how you're, you're in this state where you are waking up at 3am every day with a newborn, navigating everything that comes with having a baby and attempting to work and then you decide to create a company and -- talk to us about that. So I like I'm so excited to hear this, I have to say cuz like we started Geocodio when our daughter was four months old. And people always think we're crazy. And I don't think I've come across anyone else who started a company with a baby. And so I'm really excited to hear from you about how that came about. Michelle Penczak  5:26 

I, so my co founder, Shane, he was one of my clients, and his company was doing really well. And he had always told people about, you know, the glory of having a virtual assistant as a resource on your team. And he was like, you know, what, I need you to scale. I need you to clone yourself. And I was like, Huh, this is as good as you get like, you get me. And he told me, he was like, you know, we need more of you. How can we do that? And I said, I told him, I was like, let me think about it. And I called him a couple days later, I said, I figured it out. We're good. We can do it with military spouses. Because I had always heard, you know, in my journey, as an assistant, how can you work? How can you have a baby and work? How can you still be able to do this as a military spouse? And you know, I would tell people, hey, I work as a virtual assistant. And they would say, Well, how will How can I do that? How can I get into this, and I didn't really have a good path for them I, at that point, I just kind of fallen into it with my circumstances. And this was a really clear cut path for me to say, this is what I did. This is how I provided help provide for my family. And this is how we can make a path forward for other military spouses as well. So yeah, it all kind of happened by circumstance. But um, my when the idea came about, I'd been in Hawaii for about six months. And my son was thriving, he was going to preschool. And I was like, You know what, because I don't get enough sleep as it is, let's take this journey. Squared Away started, was officially formed in March of 2017. And I brought on my very first assistant, who is now my director of operations, in July of 2017. Michele Hansen  7:26 

That's amazing. And I think I think maybe, almost with both of you, it's probably worth diving in a little bit more on just what it's like to be a military spouse and how hard it is for military spouses to work. Because I think, you know, being sort of like non military, myself and not coming from a military family, like, this isn't something that that you really come across. And like the unique challenges there. Michelle Penczak  8:00 

Yeah. And I, I can speak to the pilot side of the house, I know calling you said your husband's a Navy pilot, as well. So their schedules are so unpredictable. Like sometimes they're flying in the mornings, sometimes they're flying in the afternoon, sometimes they're flying at night, and they're just kind of all over the place. And when you have to be that constant for your family and for your kids saying, Okay, well, I'll pick you up from school, I'll do bedtime routine, and all that good stuff. That's something that's very fluid with every single day. And it's not predictable, and the following week, and being able to say I have this job or career that I'm working towards during the day and being able to support your family is huge for a military spouse, because a lot of times it's so reactive to the military members schedule that, you know, you can't typically work a regular nine to fi...