Meet Evonne Barrier

We recently connected with Evonne Barrier and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Evonne, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

Finding my purpose was definitely a journey. In our culture we place so much value on what you do as your purpose in life. I worked in the restaurant industry for a decade, the last five of those years at a local wine bar as a manager and bartender. I left there because I felt unfulfilled and like I was doing a disservice to the regulars who came in to drink the same things every day. That started a journey that took years and me being open to trying new things. I was searching for purpose through my career. I’ve always felt like my achievements are what made me worthy or valuable to others. But I’ve recently seen that that is not true. We are always worthy just for the person we are, and your purpose doesn’t have to be world altering, but can simply be to show up and take care of your family and be a good mom, dad, wife, husband, friend or family member.

To get clarity on my purpose, one day at a professional networking event we did an activity together, the Ikigia. Ikigai is a Japanese term that translates to ‘your reason for living’. You fill out a chart, listing out what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for and what you are good at. At the intersection of all four of those items is your Ikigai. The first time I did the exercise my purpose was clearly to help women build the life they truly wanted for themselves. I first tried to fulfill that by having a free group for women that offered personal and professional development. As I found my vocation, working in the virtual assistant industry, I was able to take my purpose and build that into the foundation of my business.

We help women build the lives they want by helping them build a solid foundation in the virtual assistant industry. We do this through our boutique placement process to pair the right virtual assistant with the right client to ensure they have the best chances of a longterm working relationship.

The second time I did the Ikigai exercise, I felt my purpose had shifted some to encompass education around food and growing your own food to take care of your family. I’ve learned that your purpose can shift, evolve and grow as you shift, evolve and grow through life.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My name is Evonne and I am an Oklahoma girl, born and raised. I grew up in a typical middle class American family where my parents both worked corporate jobs. My path to becoming an entrepreneur was not what you may call typical, or maybe it is more typical than I think. I started my career working in the restaurant industry and built management and customer service skills. The last 4 years in the industry I was a manager for a local restaurant and did all of their front of house hiring and training. When I left the restaurant industry I spent a few years trying different things, and this is the time I was first introduced to personal and business development concepts.

I quickly became obsessed and started consuming as much content as I could, learning from every source I found that I connected with. Eventually I stumbled into the virtual assistant industry and started my career supporting business owners. After about a year of doing that, I was working full time across three clients and I had a business owner I knew reach out to me to see if I could offer her business support. At the same time a friend’s daughter contacted me asking how I had gotten started in the industry. The light bulb went off and I realized, perhaps I could pair them together and mentor the new VA as she got started with her first client. That was in August of 2019 and they are still working together today. As so, Barrier Consulting, my virtual assistant agency was born.

After that followed a few years of building, creating systems and processes and really optimizing the way we support our clients and find our VAs. I was wholly focused on building this business and then in 2022, I started my first garden. Watching a tiny seed turn into a 10 foot tall okra plant that provided tons of okra, I was enthralled. Gardening is pure magic to me. Watching something smaller then the end of your pinky finger turn into a large plant that provides food you can eat is truly something special. I found a new passion and fascination with growing food.

I had actually been food conscious for a while before 2022. My husband and I had been eating deer he had hunted and buying local meat from our local farmers market since 2018. But in 2022, after that first okra plant grew, my passion for local food and being deeply connected to what we eat truly bloomed. The act of growing food for yourself and your community is a noble thing. There is a true sense of joy and peace that finds me when I’m out in the garden, hands in the dirt, listening to the chickens scratching around me.

So, with this new found passion, we decided to buy an active egg farm. Our dreams to own land and have our own homestead grew until it was something we had to act on. We are currentlly under contract for our dream egg farm and we are closing at the end of August 2024. Through that business we will be providing pasture raised chicken and duck eggs, as well as eventually goat meat and naturally grown vegetables with no pesticides or herbacides used. Our goal is to build a food forest through permaculture practices that can feed ourselves and our community for years to come.

In the meantime, my focus with my agency hasn’t wavered. We are committed to providing quality virtual assistant support from US based VAs for business owners who need help. We recently hired our COO, Sonja Atkins, and have been thrilled to add her experience and expertise to our team!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

One of my top qualities is my belief in my ability to figure things out. The fact of the matter is, you will never know everything, You just can’t! And, challenges are inevitable in business. Something will happen and you are going to have to solve that problem. If you look at your past, you have survived through so many challenges and you’ve found solutions to those as well. You have proof that you can do this, you can figure it out! If you can really trust in your belief and embrace creative problem solving and thinking outside of the box, that will take you so much further than you can imagine.

For me, my management and understanding of people and personalities has been a huge piece of creating the success we have in this business. I work with people from various backgrounds, personality types and experiences. It’s important that we are thorough in considering who is going to be the best fit to work together, to ensure the success of the VA engagement.

Sales skills are a must! And they are not something I started with. Most of us don’t appreciate or want to do sales. We have these images of pushy car salesman in our heads and it can make you feel dirty. But there is a different way to approaching sales that can be supportive and helpful for everyone involved. Sales skills were some of the first things I learned to build, but it wasn’t until I found something I truly believed in and WANTED to sell that I saw things take off.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

We would love to connect with business coaches or marketing agencies. For business coaches, we can typically help their clients offload tasks that are keeping them from going after their goals or focusing on what only they should be doing. For marketing agencies, we have become very talented at connecting marketing agencies with project managers, as well as offering white labeled social services, such as engagement or reel creation and management. The easiest way to get in touch with us would be to email me at [email protected].

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Oakes Creative House

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