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Nuria Fernandez is the founder of VALady, a Bilingual Virtual Assistant offering online business support including Inbound Marketing to business owners and small companies.Born in London but raised in Barcelona, she moved back to London in 1991. After achieving a degree on BA (Hons) Business Studies, she began her professional career working for Blue Chip companies alongside with top executives and gaining a great deal of knowledge, experience, dedication as well as the personality needed to be able to provide the level of expertise required to start her own business. Her clients include phycologists, music organisers, business coaches and artists. Thanks to her bilingual skills, some of these clients are based in Europe. Nuria credits the success of her company to the fact that as a business person herself, she understands the pressures and multiple demands her clients need. As she believes she is an entrepreneur just like her own clients. Nuria is married to a music producer and has one son. When she is not working on her business (which is rarely) she loves going out with her family and friends to have fun as well as meeting other entrepreneurs to exchange experiences and ideas.
NF: Although I had a clear plan, I still had a thousand questions in my mind without a solid and reliable answer about how my new future was going to be: will I succeed? Will I have clients? Will I be able to afford it while I’m still growing? The unknown factor was definitely a tricky one! Changing my mindset was the most difficult part for me. After so many years as an employee, I felt that it was a huge step going from employee to entrepreneur and I realised that the success of my business very much depended on the ability to adjust to my new situation quickly. There is no job description, I keep on learning new skills as needed them. I have been tempted many times to find a part time job but thanks to the support of my family and friends, I still have my business.
NF: There have been many people that have influenced me into who I am today. However, I do think the person who deeply influenced me is my husband. He has played a very important role supporting me and reminding me not just that I was able to do it but also that I could achieve great success. He is also an entrepreneur and he has also gone through the same challenges as me. The perseverance and passion he demonstrated have been an example for me to follow. Besides my husband, I am being influenced every day by my own clients, being most of them women running their own successful businesses. I am fascinated about their spirit and energy and that makes me come out from own comfort zone feeling motivated to do better. My husband is my greatest influence. However, I do have other sources of motivation encouraging me to do better. Although I constantly try to improve, I wouldn’t give up my new life thanks to the people around me cheering me on to try to do better and achieve my dreams.
NF: My vision is to be recognised as one the VA´s most innovative, client orientated and business solutions provided in the UK and within the Spanish community. I am really driven to achieve my business goals and I am working really hard towards them. I am sure that within 5 years, my business will be successful and will have reached the desired level.