I Don't Want to Work All Hours - Isn't Running a Business 24/7?
You've spent years watching that little light on your phone flash with school emails at 9pm. You've replied to parent messages on Sunday evenings. You've done "just a bit of planning" during your summer holiday. You've been available to everyone, all the time, for your entire teaching career.
So when someone suggests "run your own business," a voice in your head screams: "Are you kidding? That sounds even worse!"
The Instagram stories of entrepreneurs working until midnight. The LinkedIn posts about "hustle culture" and grinding 24/7. It looks like swapping one form of burnout for another, with the added pressure of having nobody to blame but yourself when it all gets too much.
But - running your own VA business gives you more control over your time and boundaries than teaching ever did. Not because it's easier. Not because the work magically does itself. But because you get to make the rules.
The Teaching Trap: Boundaries That Don't Exist
What do boundaries look like in teaching? Well, for most of us there aren’t any.
You can't ignore that email from a parent, even if it arrived at 8pm. You can't skip that staff meeting because you're tired. You can't say "I'm not marking this weekend" without consequences. You can't finish work at 4pm and actually be done for the day.
The system doesn't just expect your availability… it assumes it. And any attempt to set boundaries is met with guilt (from yourself), pressure (from others), or the very real concern that things will fall apart if you're not there to hold them together.
You're not working all hours because you're bad at time management. You're working all hours because the job requires it, and there's no mechanism to opt out without opting out entirely.
The Business Reality: Hard Work, Different Rules
Let's get the truth on the table right now: running a successful VA business requires work. Real work. Strategic work. Consistent work.
You'll need to find clients, deliver excellent service, manage your finances, handle your marketing, solve problems, and build systems. Some weeks will be busier than others. Some months will push you. There will be times when you need to work evenings to meet a deadline or go the extra mile for a client.
This isn't a path to never working hard again. Anyone who promises you that is selling a fantasy.
But here's the crucial difference: you get to design how that work fits into your life. You set the boundaries. You make the rules. You decide what "hard work" looks like for you.
The Control You've Been Missing
When you run your own VA business, you have control over things that were never negotiable in teaching:
Your working hours – If you're most productive in the morning, you can front-load your day and finish at 2pm. Prefer evening work after the kids are in bed? That's an option too. Need Wednesdays off for whatever reason? You can make that happen.
Your client load – Feeling stretched? You don't take on new clients. Want to earn more? You can increase your capacity or your rates. The choice is yours, not someone else's staffing budget.
Your response times – You decide if you're the VA who responds within an hour or within 24 hours. Both are perfectly valid business models, you just need to be clear and consistent.
Your services – Hate email management? Don’t offer it. Love content creation? Make that your focus. You design your business around your strengths and preferences.
Your boundaries with specific clients – If a client consistently emails you at weekends expecting immediate responses, you can address it, reset expectations, or choose not to continue working with them.
None of this happens automatically. It requires intentional decision-making and the confidence to stick to your boundaries. But at least the option exists, which is more than teaching ever gave you.
Dispelling the 24/7 Myth
The "hustle culture" narrative is loud online because it's dramatic. But it's not representative of most successful VAs.
When you run your own business, you have the opportunity to put the boundaries you want in place. You can set your working hours, take holidays when it suits you, and design a business model that works for your life. Whether that means working 9-3 during school hours, taking Fridays off, or blocking out August for proper time away – these become choices you make, not rules imposed on you.
Why don't you see those stories plastered across social media? Because "I worked 9-3 today, finished everything I needed to, and had a lovely afternoon with my family" doesn't get the same engagement as "I'm grinding until midnight to build my empire!"
The VAs working 24/7 are either in an unsustainable early phase (which happens in any new business), haven't yet learned to set boundaries (which we'll address), or have chosen that lifestyle for their own reasons. It's not a requirement.
The Frameworks That Make It Work
The Teacher to VA mentorship programme doesn't just teach you how to be a VA. It teaches you how to build a sustainable business with boundaries that actually stick.
Systems and automation – You'll learn to set up processes that work for you, not just work harder. Email templates, scheduling systems, project management tools, and automated workflows that give you time back.
Boundary-setting strategies – How to communicate your availability clearly from the start, what to include in your contracts to protect your time, and how to handle clients who test your limits.
Pricing structures that support boundaries – Understanding how to price your services so you're not working endless hours just to make ends meet. Higher rates for fewer clients often means better boundaries than lower rates for everyone.
Client selection criteria – Learning to spot red flags early and having the confidence to say no to clients who won't respect your boundaries, even when you're just starting out.
Time management for business owners – This isn't teacher time management (where you're trying to squeeze impossible amounts into limited hours). This is strategic time management where you design your schedule to suit your life.
These aren't abstract concepts. They're practical frameworks you implement from day one, so you build a business with sustainable boundaries rather than trying to retrofit them later when you're already overwhelmed.
What "Get Out What You Put In" Actually Means
Yes, you need to put in work to build a successful VA business. But the work you put in has direct returns that you control:
Put in work on your marketing → You attract better clients who respect your boundaries
Put in work on your systems → You work more efficiently and have more free time
Put in work on your pricing strategy → You earn more for the same hours
Put in work on your client relationships → You build long-term contracts that provide stability
In teaching, putting in more work just meant there was more work to do. In your VA business, strategic work compounds. The effort you invest in building strong foundations actually reduces the amount of reactive, exhausting work you need to do later.
The Freedom to Choose Your Hard
Teaching is hard. Running a business is hard. But they're different kinds of hard, and only one gives you the freedom to shape what that difficulty looks like.
In teaching, the hard is imposed: marking deadlines, curriculum changes, difficult parents, behaviour management, endless meetings. You don't choose it; you endure it.
In your VA business, you choose your hard: learning new skills, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone with marketing, having difficult conversations with clients about boundaries, investing time in systems that will pay off later.
Both are challenging. But one drains you because it's relentless and out of your control. The other energises you because you're building something that belongs to you.
Your Business, Your Boundaries
The teachers who've successfully transitioned to VA work aren't working 24/7. They're not slaves to their phones or at their clients' beck and call. They've built businesses that fit their lives – and yes, that took work, but it was work they had agency over.
Some work part-time hours and earn enough to be comfortable. Some work full-time hours but choose when and how. Some have busy seasons and quiet seasons they plan for. There's no single "right" way, and that's exactly the point.
You won't build perfect boundaries overnight. There will be a learning curve. You might take on a difficult client early on and learn from it. You might work longer hours in your first few months while you're establishing yourself. That's all normal and part of the process.
But you'll be learning to set boundaries in a structure that actually allows them, rather than trying to set boundaries in a system fundamentally designed to ignore them.
Ready to Design Work That Works for You?
The Teacher to VA mentorship programme opens twice a year. Over six months, you'll learn not just how to be a VA, but how to be a VA with boundaries that protect your time, energy, and wellbeing.
This isn't about working less or achieving some mythical work-life balance where everything is perfect all the time. It's about having control over the choices that shape your working life.
Your future self isn't necessarily working fewer hours (though that might happen). Your future self is working hours they chose, for clients they selected, doing work they enjoy, with boundaries they set.
That's not a fantasy. It's what happens when you build a business intentionally, with the right support and frameworks in place from the start.
