Latest / The Comeback Career Podcast with Fexingo: Returning After a Gap, Stay-at-Home Re-Entry / How a Career Gap Helped One Parent Return as a Military Spouse Entrepreneur
Transcript
- Lucas: There's this assumption that a career gap is a smooth, continuous period away from work. But for military spouses, that gap can be a series of relocations, deployments, and interrupted plans that make a traditional return to work path almost impossible. Luna: Yeah, and the statistics bear that out. The Department of Defense estimates military spouses face an unemployment rate around 22 percent, and even those who are employed often earn significantly less than their civilian peers. Lucas: So today I want to talk about Anna Velez. She's a military spouse who stepped away from a career in event coordination after her second child was born and her husband got orders to Fort Hood. That was in 2017. Luna: Seven years of not being in the workforce. And she didn't go back to a traditional job. She started a business. Lucas: Right. She launched a virtual assistance practice in 2024, and as of this July, she has twelve ongoing clients, she's fully booked, and she's turning down work. The angle that stuck with me is how she rebuilt her professional network from absolute zero. Luna: Because moving every two or three years means you can't rely on local connections. Every time you start over. Lucas: Exactly. Anna told me that after her first move, she tried the typical approach: joining the local chamber of commerce, attending networking mixers, handing out business cards. She said it felt like throwing pebbles into the ocean. No one remembered her. Luna: So what changed? How did she go from invisible to twelve clients? Lucas: She found a directory called the Military Spouse Virtual Assistant Network. It's a free online listing specifically for spouses offering remote administrative services. She set up a profile with a single service: calendar management for small business owners. That's it. One thing. Luna: Interesting. She didn't try to be a generalist. She picked the one pain point she knew she could solve well. Lucas: And she priced it at $350 a month per client. Not hourly. A flat retainer. That completely changed the conversation, because now she's not selling time, she's selling a predictable outcome. Luna: Did she have any clients before she put up that profile? Lucas: Zero. Her first client came from that directory within three weeks. A solo real estate agent in San Antonio who was drowning in appointment scheduling. Anna sent a short, direct message: 'I can take this off your plate for a flat fee. Here's how I'd do it.' No resume, no interview about her gap. Luna: That's the power of a very specific offer. You don't have to explain the gap when the solution speaks for itself. Lucas: Exactly. And from that first client, the referrals started. The real estate agent mentioned her to a colleague who needed help with email management. Then that colleague referred a financial advisor. Within six months, she had six clients. Luna: So the directory was the starting point, but the real engine was referrals. And referrals depend on trust. How did she build trust quickly when she had no recent work history? Lucas: She did something very deliberate. For each client, she created a simple process document within the first week. A one-page guide to how she handled their calendar or emails. She shared it with them and said, 'If you ever need to hand this off to someone else, it's ready to go.' That small act signaled professionalism far more than a resume would. Luna: That's smart because it shows she's thinking about continuity. That's a huge selling point for overwhelmed business owners. Lucas: Now, the emotional side of this was harder. Anna told me she felt a lot of guilt starting a business during a deployment. Her husband was in the field for months, and she was at home with two young kids, trying to build something. She said she kept asking herself: 'Why am I adding more pressure?' Luna: What helped her push through? Lucas: She framed it differently. She realized that the business was actually giving her structure and a sense of control in a situation where she had very little control over anything else. The deployment was unpredictable. The kids' schedules were demanding. But her client work had clear boundaries. That predictability became an anchor. Luna: So the business wasn't another burden. It was a stabilizer. That reframe is powerful for anyone in a similar situation. Lucas: Another thing she did: she connected with other military spouse entrepreneurs through a Facebook group called MilSpouse Startups. She didn't just lurk. She actively asked for feedback on her pricing and her service descriptions. She said that community gave her the confidence to raise her rates after her first year. Luna: From $350 to what? Lucas: She's now at $500 per month for the same service, and she lost only one client who couldn't afford the increase. She replaced that client within two weeks. Luna: That's a nearly 43 percent increase without losing momentum. It shows she had real pricing power because the value was proven. Lucas: There's a broader resource here I want to mention: the Military Spouse Employment Partnership, or MSEP. It's a program run by the Department of Defense that connects military spouses with over 400 employers who have committed to hiring and retaining them. Anna didn't use it because she went the entrepreneurial route, but it's worth knowing about. Luna: For listeners who might want a more traditional re-entry, that's a solid starting point. But Anna's story shows that entrepreneurship can bypass a lot of the resume-gap scrutiny. Lucas: Right. And that's a theme we keep coming back to on this show. Sometimes the most direct path back into professional life isn't through the door that everyone else is lining up at. It's building your own door. Luna: And if this show has helped you think differently about your own career gap or maybe given you a concrete idea like Anna's single-service approach, I'd say that's exactly why we do this. Lucas: Yeah. And one thing we're proud of is that we deliberately don't run ads on these episodes. No sponsors, no interruptions. If you want to support that choice and help us keep doing it, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: It's just a simple way to say this content matters to you. No pressure, but we appreciate anyone who finds value in what we share. Lucas: Alright. Back to Anna's playbook. One more tactic she used that I think is underappreciated: she offered a free two-week trial to her first three clients. But the trial had a specific structure. Luna: Oh, I want to hear this. Most free trials are open-ended and devalue the service. Lucas: Exactly. Anna's trial was only for two weeks, and she set clear deliverables: she would organize the client's existing calendar, set up a booking link if they didn't have one, and send a weekly summary of how much time she saved them. After two weeks, the client had to make a decision. No extensions. Luna: That creates urgency and demonstrates immediate value. It's a classic conversion tactic, but applied to services. Lucas: And every single one of those trial clients converted to paying clients. She said the key was the weekly time-savings summary. That gave them a concrete number they could point to when justifying the expense. Luna: So her marketing was essentially a before and after metric. 'You were spending eight hours a week on scheduling. Now you spend zero.' Lucas: Exactly. And she didn't have to explain her gap at any point because the conversation was about the client's pain, not her past. Luna: I think that's the biggest takeaway from Anna's story. The gap only matters if you let the conversation be about you. If you redirect the focus to the value you can create now, the gap becomes irrelevant. Lucas: Anna is now at the point where she's considering hiring a subcontractor to handle overflow work. She's gone from a seven-year career gap to running a micro-agency in less than two years. And she did it while moving twice more, by the way. Luna: That's remarkable. And it's a testament to the resilience of military spouses, but also to the power of a very focused, low-risk business model. Lucas: One thing I want to emphasize: she didn't have a background in virtual assistance. She learned calendar management tools through YouTube tutorials and free courses. Her previous event coordination experience gave her organizational skills, but the technical side was all self-taught. Luna: So for anyone listening who thinks they need a certification or a degree before they can start, Anna's example says otherwise. You can learn on the job, as long as you're transparent with clients about what you're figuring out. Lucas: And she was transparent. She told her first client, 'I'm new to this, but I'm committed to getting it right. Here's my plan.' That honesty actually built trust. Luna: I think that's a great note to end on. The gap doesn't define you. Your willingness to start, even imperfectly, does. Lucas: Next time, we're going to talk about a parent who returned to work through a temp agency after a five-year gap. That story has some unexpected twists. Until then, thanks for listening.