From Burnout Corporate Mom to Virtual Assistant Agency Owner
The thing about building a life on your own terms is that it rarely starts with a perfect, everything-figured-out plan. It usually starts with a breaking point.
Mine started in 2020, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, with late-night meetings and a never-ending workload that still stacked up at midnight, in a city under lockdown, when I was miserably disappointed about the gap between the motherhood I had imagined and the one I was actually living.
I remember one evening after coming home from work exhausted, barely recognizing myself in the mirror. My depleted body did what it could to protect me from one more to-do.
There I was — getting cranky and angry at my husband and my two-year-old daughter. Nagging at both of them because the dining table wasn't clean, because there were toys on the floor, because she wasn't in bed by 7:30pm sharp, blaming them for not following what I had told them, and for how disorganized everything felt.
Then came the guilt. Heavy and quiet, covering my heart and my head, keeping me up that night with the feeling that I was failing — as a wife, as a mother, as the woman I had promised myself I would be.
The more I thought about it, the more frightened I became.
I remember lying in bed that night, asking myself: "Just one child and I'm already this exhausted. How on earth will I ever manage with two?"
Then I blamed my fate for how hard motherhood was turning out to be.
Little did I know then that I was being so harsh on my husband and my daughter because I had never learned to stop being harsh on myself.
THE GIRL WHO DID EVERYTHING RIGHT
Growing up in Hanoi, I was the girl who followed every rule in the invisible script.
Study hard. Earn good grades. Win the scholarship. Go abroad. Be the pride of my parents.
In 2012, I graduated with a bachelor's degree in biotechnology and became the only Vietnamese student selected for a Japanese corporation's scholarship that year. I moved to Tokyo in March 2013 to pursue a Master's degree in Food Science at the University of Tokyo — one of Asia's top universities at the time.
I was twenty-three years old, feeling both proud and terrified.
For my entire life, I had performed and proved. I earned my place at every table I sat at and then worked twice as hard to stay there.
What I didn't know then was that I was living entirely on the surface — and that somewhere underneath all that performing, a young girl was quietly waiting to be seen.
A girl who was deep and emotional and sensitive, but who had learned along the way that she needed to be strong. That she needed to hide her vulnerability so her family could be proud of her. That needing support meant weakness, and weakness was never allowed.
And I carried that lesson into everything I did without knowing.
THE WINTER THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
In late 2015, my husband Long and I finally reunited in Tokyo after nearly three years of long-distance. We had been married since 2014, loving each other across time zones and uncertainty. Our reunion felt like exhaling after holding your breath for years.
Two months later, while in the final months of finishing my experiments and writing my Master's thesis, I found out I was pregnant.
Exhausted. Overwhelmed. Surprised. Full of joy so sudden that I didn't quite know what to do with it.
But that joy only lasted for two weeks. Until one morning in late November 2015, when the doctor looked at the ultrasound screen and told us that there was no heartbeat.
The sky over Tokyo that day was grey and heavy, the kind of winter sky that feels like it is pressing down on everything underneath it. Long and I took a taxi home from the clinic. Without a single word, we leaned our heads onto one another and cried.
That moment, I will never forget.
In the middle of thesis writing and defense preparation, I lay immobile in bed for an entire week, staring at the ceiling, asking myself a question I hadn't expected: “If I keep pushing the way I've been pushing, what else will I have to give up?”
That question made me stop.
I turned down the PhD invitation from my professor — the path everyone expected me to take — because I knew, in the quiet way you know the things that truly matter, that I needed to listen to myself for once.
THE CORPORATE YEARS & THE SLOW UNRAVELING
After graduating with my Master's in 2016, I stayed in Tokyo as a science teacher at an international school.
Everyone thought I was wasting my degree.
I never saw it that way.
That role gave me something my academic path never had — a deep understanding of early childhood education, of how children learn, of how profoundly a parent's presence shapes who a child becomes.
That understanding quietly became the foundation of everything I do today.
In 2018, I came back to Hanoi to give birth to our first daughter, Hana.
After a year of full-time motherhood, the ambitious part of me woke back up. I found a good corporate job. Decent salary. A manager title. Opportunities for promotion. Everything that was supposed to feel like enough.
The joy of working again — the part of me that had been hungry for it for over a year — didn't last long before I found myself coming home depleted every evening to my daughter, who needed me most.
The exhaustion wasn't just physical. It was the kind that sleep, rest, or a weekend away couldn't fix.
I was carrying everything alone. The housework, the baby, the family responsibilities, the invisible mental load, and a career I was constantly trying to prove myself in.
I thought doing it all alone was the only way to prove my capability and my worth.
Until the resentment became impossible to ignore — showing up as fights with my husband and a short temper with my daughter that broke my heart every single time.
That was when I knew I needed to find a different path.
THE LOCKDOWN THAT OPENED EVERYTHING
One morning in early 2020, while Hanoi was in lockdown and the world was contracting into something nobody recognized, I was scrolling on Facebook and saw a job post looking for a Virtual Assistant — someone to handle admin and customer care, the kind of work I had been doing well for years.
Without thinking much or knowing how it would turn out, I submitted my application at the very last minute before the deadline.
That first application brought me my first Virtual Assistant client.
Then a second. Then, a few more online projects alongside them.
Working remotely. Flexible hours. No office. No commute. No manager watching the clock.
At the end of that first month, my income had tripled compared to my corporate salary.
But it wasn't just the income that cracked something open. It was the team environments I found myself in.
No more corporate dramas. No toxic dynamics. No quiet competition dressed up as collaboration. Just respectful, growth-driven, genuinely kind people — working together across time zones with a warmth I hadn't experienced in a professional setting before.
Three months later, I resigned from my corporate position — the role that had been tied for so long to my image of a stable, respectable life.
The day I turned in my resignation letter, the heaviest fear wasn't about money. It was about losing the version of myself I had spent my entire life performing and proving.
Leaving felt like walking away from the only system that had ever told me who I was. Not just "can I afford to leave?". But "who am I if I do?"
But the day I actually left, I could hear a sigh of relief deep down inside me. Never had I felt such freedom invading my body — the kind of spaciousness I never knew possible to have.
FROM VA TO OBM TO AGENCY OWNER: THE CONVERSATION THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
The first year after leaving corporate, I worked as a Virtual Assistant — supporting clients across the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia with administrative tasks, content repurposing, project coordination, and systems building.
I was good at it. In fact, better than good.
But somewhere along the way, I started noticing something.
I wasn't just executing tasks. I was thinking strategically alongside my clients. I was anticipating problems before they arose. I was building systems that didn't just complete work — they transformed how entire businesses operated.
I was doing something more than VA work. I just didn't have a name for it yet.
Then I invested in a coach who changed everything with one observation: "What you're already doing is OBM work. You don't need a certificate to become what you already are."
OBM — Online Business Manager. Someone who works alongside a business owner not just to complete tasks but to coordinate entire operations, build automated systems, manage teams, and free the owner to do the work only they can do. I had been doing it without the title.
That conversation gave me permission to own what I had already built. I stopped undercharging for work that was genuinely transforming my clients' businesses. I started building a team rather than working alone.
And then I founded Root & Rise — my Operations and VA agency — with a team spanning multiple countries, supporting coaching businesses worldwide.
All from my home office. While being there for my three little girls.
WHAT I BUILT AT HOME WHILE BUILDING THE AGENCY
The path I am walking today has never been the common one.
But I knew at my core that I didn't only want to earn a good income.
I wanted to show my daughters what their mother could do — despite the skepticism, despite the doubts, including her own — when she kept choosing what she believed was best for herself, her family, and her children.
And I have never once regretted leaving corporate.
My 36-year-old self finally gets to do what my 6-year-old self always loved — creating things, having space to breathe, listening to music while working from a home office that feels entirely mine.
This path has never been easy or smooth. But it is profoundly rewarding to know I have never had to miss a moment in my children's developmental journey.
The presence, the patience, the calm I could never have offered if I had kept running on corporate empty.
The forehead kiss in the morning and the slow cuddling as I wake them up, without having to rush them out the door so I can make it to work on time.
The slow morning walks holding their tiny hands in mine, listening to them talk non-stop about wanting princess shoes and how eating healthy food means fewer visits to the dentist — before sending them off on the school bus.
The silly peek-a-boo after dinner that I was always too exhausted to play when I was coming home from the office.
My three daughters — Hana, Lisa, and Cherry — are growing up watching a mother who courageously chose differently.
Not a mother who sacrificed herself for them.
A mother who backed herself, for them.
A MESSAGE TO MY YOUNGER SELF - and to YOU
As a little girl growing up in Vietnam, I never felt like I was enough.
A serious illness kept me from starting school at six years old. I spent half a year lying in bed, watching life happen from a distance. Multiple accidents followed that I was fortunate to survive. I thought I was simply too different from everyone around me.
I remember a five-year-old girl hiding behind her teacher's back on the kindergarten playground, watching other children play. Not daring to speak loudly. Terrified of being seen.
Even as an adult — even after becoming a mother — I still carried those wounds. I had to shed so many layers to arrive where I am today.
I sometimes look back at that 5-year-old and my 15-year-old self, who carried so many invisible scars and believed she didn't deserve to be heard or seen, and I whisper to her: You see, my love? You did it.
To my 30-year-old self who felt like a monster mother on her worst nights, I say: You were allowed to pause. You were allowed to ask for support. You were not failing — you were carrying too much alone, and that was never the only way.
To my daughters, who arrived in this world and guided me back to trusting myself, I say: Thank you for showing me what I am capable of. I am doing this for us.
And to you, dear reader:
If you have ever felt like a bad mother, if the world has ever told you that doing everything alone is the only way to prove your worth — you don't have to. You never did.
FIVE THINGS I WISH I HAD KNOWN EARLIER
1. Your skills are worth far more than you have ever given them credit for.
Every skill you built inside that corporate system — the coordination, the strategic thinking, the ability to manage complexity and people and projects simultaneously — has real market value outside it. You have been undervaluing yourself inside a system that was never designed to show you your full worth.
2. Building an independent career does not mean quitting tomorrow.
It means starting to build something of your own, quietly and intentionally, alongside what you already have — until the day comes when you are ready to step fully into it on your own terms. Every woman I have worked with began exactly where you are now. Still in corporate. Still uncertain. Still carrying more than she should have to carry alone.
3. Asking for support is not a weakness. It is the fastest path forward.
Every significant leap in my journey came after I reached out to someone who could see what I couldn't yet see in myself. The coach who told me I was already doing OBM work. The programs and communities that showed me what was possible. Doing it all alone is not a strength. It is the longest route to where you actually want to go.
4. Every investment in yourself is a doubled investment.
I used to think investing meant real estate, stocks, or my children's education. I never imagined I could invest in myself in a meaningful way. But that thinking kept me small. When you invest in yourself — in your mindset, your healing, your growth — your children absorb that too. The calm you cultivate, the boundaries you learn to hold, the way you begin to move through your days differently — they feel all of it.
I have invested tens of thousands of dollars in learning how to grow my business sustainably and in coaching that helped me unblock beliefs I didn't even know I was carrying.
Every investment has returned doubled and tripled — not only in income, but in the depth of connection between me and myself, between me and my children, between me and my husband.
5. Every stumble is a step forward, not a step back.
I used to be terrified of failing, of being seen as someone who tried and didn't make it. But as I have grown, I have come to understand that every stumble has shaped me into who I am today. The only way to truly fail is to stop trying altogether. As long as I keep going — even imperfectly, even messily — I am moving forward.
A MESSAGE TO YOU - THE WOMAN READING THIS
If you have read this far, something in this story has touched something in you.
Maybe it is the exhaustion that sleep cannot fix. Maybe it is the desire to arrive home differently — present, rooted, with something still left to give. Maybe it is the quiet sense that your skills are worth more than anyone is currently paying you for them.
And if you have been holding yourself back because you believed you weren't enough — not experienced enough, not ready enough, not brave enough — I want you to know:
You are more ready than you have ever given yourself credit for.
My journey from a depleted, overwhelmed mother who didn't know there was another way, to the agency owner and coach I am today, was not linear or glamorous. It was messy, imperfect, full of tears and missteps and moments of genuine doubt.
But it was worth every single one of them.
If you are standing at the edge of wanting something different but scared you won't find your way back if you try — let me tell you this:
Take one small first step. It is always the hardest. But once you do, the path will begin to reveal itself.
And when you take that step, you are not only taking it for yourself.
You are taking it for your children, so they can inherit a different story than the one you were given.
May you always stay unapologetic in your choices. And be the miracle of your family.
From a mom of three to you,
Annie 🌿
P.S. If something in this story has stirred something in you, I'd love to invite you to take the quiz below. It will help you see how your current career might be quietly shaping the emotional climate of your home and your child's brain and future.
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