NT mum shares how she started two virtual assistant businesses while raising family
Fiona Campbell founded her first company after being made redundant while on maternity leave, now she runs two businesses while raising her three kids.
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An NT mum who juggles raising her three kids with running two virtual assistant businesses has shared her story ahead of the 2025 International Virtual Assistant Day.
Fiona Campbell, 39, was made redundant from her corporate executive assistant role while on maternity leave in 2013, and moved into the virtual assistant field through a desire to keep working.
“I was looking at other options and also getting a bit bored on maternity leave not having anything to fill up every part of my brain so to speak and so I started looking into what being a virtual assistant was.”
A virtual assistant performs mainly admin roles in a remote context, with many practitioners specialising in very specific areas, such as data formatting.
Clients can hire virtual assistants to complete work as needed, rather than forking out for a full-time staff member.
In 2013, Ms Campbell founded her first company Thought Penny, which specialises in “C-suite executive assistant support”, quickly building a base of clients.
When she later went on maternity leave, she hired subcontractors to keep business up, later bringing them into her company full time.
In 2021, Ms Campbell’s husband got a job in Katherine, and the family moved from Newcastle, something Ms Campbell said was made easier due to her remote work.
The move to Katherine also coincided with Ms Campbell starting her second business, VA Lead Network.
“It got to a point where I didn’t want to keep building my team and building an empire and taking on more and more clients,” she said.
“I really wanted to deliver quality service to the clients we had, but that didn’t stop people approaching our business, looking for a VA, and it didn’t stop lots of Australian VAs inquiring as to whether there was room on our team because they wanted to get into the VA space.”
Ms Campbell said a team member sparked the idea of creating a service to create networks between VAs and clients.
The service started with 30 members and has been rapidly expanding, with more than 350 members by May 2025.
The number of clients using the service has nearly doubled, from 61 to 120.
Ms Campbell said being a VA had afforded her a lot of flexibility, and allowed her to be a part of her kids’ lives, including running their school’s second-hand uniform shop every Friday.
“There are lots of parents who wish that they could attend every single assembly and not give up all the work they’re putting into their career and I feel like I’ve got both,” she said.
“I’m just so grateful.”
Ms Campbell said International Virtual Assistant Day on May 16 was important for spreading awareness about the industry and supporting other VAs.
“Typically the VA industry is made up of people who are in support roles and support each other and so Virtual Assistant International VA Day really ends up being about VAs propping up other VAs and celebrating each other,” she said.
“We’re not a typical cutthroat industry where everyone’s the competition. The majority of us are so willing to help each other with our shared experiences and to grow our businesses. I think that’s what makes the virtual assistant lead network work so well.”
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