Hey , hey , mamas , welcome back to Conquering Chaos . A mom's guide to self-care and sanity . I'm your host , sydney Crowe , and today we have Anne Raju , from Mauritius . Anne is a virtual assistant , but she is the founder and CEO of Virtually , an e-assistance hub that helps female entrepreneurs streamline and scale their businesses through strategic outsourcing . Anne's goal is to guide dynamic women on a journey towards mindful mastery of work and life , reshaping the way we perceive productivity . She also is the creative force behind Magic Mom Life and Peaceful Productivity , designed to support ambitious women balancing careers with motherhood .
Speaker 1Anne's journey began as a career woman , wife and mother of two young boys . She felt the pressure of motherhood and the pursuit of perfection , but she shifted her focus towards what truly matters helping mothers become focused , productive and fulfilled without succumbing to burnout . Her dream of an extraordinary life led her from a tiny village in East Germany to London and finally to Mauritius , where she now resides with her family . Together , anne and Virtually are redefining success by creating a harmonious blend of professional achievement and personal fulfillment for female entrepreneurs . If you're a woman looking to streamline and scale your business , connect with Anne Raju and Virtually to take your entrepreneurial journey to new heights . Welcome , anne .
Speaker 2Thank you so much . That was my dog barking . I hope you didn't hear that too much .
Speaker 1That's okay , it's just life right , like we've got kids and dogs in the background all the time . Kids and dogs and all the other animals , yep , perfect . So why don't you tell the listeners who you are and what you're all about and how you landed in Mauritius ?
Speaker 2Perfect . So why don't you tell the listeners who you are and what you're all about and how you landed in Mauritius ? Yeah , so I'm originally from Germany . You can figure out the accent , but I've left more than half of my life ago . I figured just a few months ago .
Speaker 2I always wanted to travel , so I studied tourism and event management and then went to London , was supposed to stay there for about a year , stayed there for 10 years and met my husband , who is from Mauritius . So we got married , had our first child there and then felt like the fast pace of London is great when you're single or a young couple , but we didn't quite feel it was the right place to raise a family single or a young couple , but we didn't quite feel it was the right place to raise a family . And my , I think , my , my idea of like seeing the world just came back to me like , well , there's worse places to live than in Mauritius , so let's just go . And I had said it out loud and he quit his job and did everything like for him . It was like he's been waiting for it . So then we came here . Everything like for him , it was like he's been waiting for it .
Speaker 2So then we came here and that's now eight years ago . I can't believe it . And in the meantime we had another child , so a second boy . There is now Lucas , who is nine , and Liam , who's four and a half , and they are growing up in this beautiful , amazing little speck of the world . Like we said before , we recorded . Sometimes it's not on the map , you sometimes even have to look it up where what it is .
Speaker 2But it's just really paradise and I'm really grateful to be here and to have that experience with them , and grateful to have the opportunity to now build my business . I've been working here before , but then , yeah , covid came and I lost my job and there was no jobs to be found . So I started working online and never looked back and couldn't imagine going back to a job and really tried to find that elusive balance Maybe I prefer the term harmony between living , you know , the adult life and having fun for myself , but also having a really great time with my children and , yeah , just seeking this extraordinary life and finding a way to create that for me . That what it means for me . It probably doesn't mean the same thing for other people , but , yeah , I'm really happy where I am at the moment and how things have gone . But I'm sure we're going to get into the more challenging bits of that journey because , while it's very nice now , it hasn't always been .
Speaker 1Yeah . So why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about that ? Like I was an expat when I was younger and it is really fun to live abroad , but I think you're finding it nice to be there because you have family and roots on your husband's side , and so why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about that ? Like you've basically uprooted your understanding and your beliefs to go and live with your husband's family and nearby and what he knows , but that's got to be very different than how you were raised .
Speaker 2Yeah , absolutely yeah . I come from that small village in East Germany . Both my parents were working middle-class , just a very simple upbringing . But I always wanted to see the world . So I went to London , had lots of fun and then met my husband , who at the time was living with his mother , and I eventually moved in with his mother , living with his mother , and I eventually moved in with his mother , which was already one of the very culture shock , strange things to do , because I'm that independent , strong woman that my parents raised and now I live with my mom and I still live with her , or she lives with us , depending on how you want to see it .
Speaker 2Okay , yeah , that was definitely an interesting step to to to make , but back then it had lots of advantages because I didn't have to take care of most of the house household , which is just not something I like , and even now she really helps me with lots of the cooking and the cleaning and obviously it's nice to have the support for my children , even though it's not always perfect . It comes with certain challenges , but it also is really a part of the culture here . So it's a lot of multi-generational households and she is a single , single , older woman and yeah , I don't . I don't have a mom anymore . My mom passed away a few years ago and so it's it's got more positives than negatives , but that's definitely one aspect .
Speaker 2That wasn't quite what I thought my life would be . I thought just very independent , but yeah , and then obviously when we left London , it was quite hard because back in London I could go back and forth to Germany every couple of months , would see my family , and then my dad had never traveled , for example . He had never an interest in traveling , he didn't want to come at first . Now he likes it , now he sees why we moved here . But it was quite hard .
Speaker 2They didn't quite get why we wanted to move so far or why I wanted to move so far away . But for me , really , I saw this opportunity , or I saw this beautiful place where I really felt I can raise my children in a very safe environment . They can be outdoors a lot and we can just have . We have so much sunshine and beautiful weather and we can have so much fun . It's very different from how I grew up , but it's for me it felt like , while I was happy in my childhood , I felt it was always a bit , yeah , boring that's why I wanted to leave Germany yeah , you got that travel plan right and I really love , love , the multicultural aspect here .
Speaker 2Mauritius I have a friend who's currently visiting and she went to the Capitoline so that I've never seen a place that has so many different influences , because we've got all the cultures . Mauritius is the only African country where Hinduism is the main , main religion , and it's just . I love that , like I feel my children can have so many things that they see and they can pick the best things that they that they really enjoy , and that's what I'm trying to do as well . I try to keep my German culture as much as I can . It's not easy . It's been over 20 odd years that I have left . I don't even remember most of the things , to be honest , but I try to bring it as much as I can . But then I also have all the other aspects of the different cultures that we have here and I feel that gives them something that can be really special in a world that can be sometimes quite narrow-minded .
Speaker 2If we want to go that way , yeah , no , that's okay .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , and I absolutely love that I'm going to have to put Mauritius on our map , because my husband and I are definitely big believers in educating our kids outside of a classroom and so we try to travel with them as much as possible , because we do live in a really small town in Canada and there isn't a ton of diversification . As the town is growing , we're starting to see some diversification . They really don't have a ton of outside influences , and so that's why travel has become so important for us . So I share those values . I think that's so important to allow your kids to experience or understand so many different things about the world and then make the decisions that best suit them right , so that we're not building these like cookie cutter fit in a box type molds .
Speaker 1As I was raised as I was raised , it was I felt like while I was exposed to things , I very much had a checklist , like I was very much like I have to go to school , I have to get the job , get married , have kids , like there was like a checklist that I feel like I had to follow in order to feel like I was doing well in life , and I don't want that for my kids . I want them to make their own decisions because , while success can be defined by a wide variety of measures , I think a lot of people put financial at the very top of that and I don't think that that's necessarily the highest definition of success . Right , you could be the happiest person in the world and that makes you the most successful , so I think that that's really important and really cool that you guys have such a diversification there that your kids are able to be exposed to , so that's really amazing it's beautiful , but my older son will tell you that it becomes very boring .
Speaker 2So now it's . He looks outside to the world . He obviously watches youtube and all this stuff and everything is like oh my god , they have this and they have that , because quite a lot of things we don't necessarily have or it's complicated . We don't have anything like amazon we can't like . Shipping is incredibly expensive and it takes forever and and so we don't have a lot of that culture of like buy the next thing and this quick and instant gratification , but to go to a shop and then it's not available or it's a lot more expensive than it's in other places . So he's very much like oh my god , we need to . I want to live in Germany because we recently traveled there oh my God , america is so cool . So it's like he's getting that now that this is a very small place . So this is a downside . Sometimes it can feel a little bit yeah , just tiny and a little bit repetitive , because we've been here for a long time and then obviously , with COVID , we didn't travel so much . But yeah , I think it opens conversations of like there's there's certain things , that there are certain reasons why we came , but also ,
I think what you said .
Speaker 2With the checklist I felt very much the same , even though I was always maybe labeled a bit of a rebellious person , even as a young , like as a teenager , and got in a lot of trouble .
Speaker 2But I think this checklist it was so ingrained culturally that obviously , as I grew up and then lived in London and had my stable job and met my husband and get married and had my child , like I definitely followed these checklists and we bought a car and we bought a place and and so on and so on , even though I always thought no , no , no , I would never , ever do that . I will be very maybe not feminist , but very like I'll do my own thing without having to follow these things and my husband will surely be like a 50% equal partner and all of that . But then reality came and it definitely wasn't like that , not that he wouldn't , wouldn't want to do that , I was just , I think , what happened for me in early motherhood I , the strong women , came through in the sense of like I can do it all I can do it , you don't need to help me .
Speaker 2I can . I can do all the night nights I can do . For example , I was struggling to breastfeed . It just didn't work out . But I was adamant . I was breast pumping like exclusively breast pumping for nine months drove me crazy at the end but I was like , no , no , no , he's got to have the best that is possible and breast is best . I was really putting myself through a lot of that pressure of like I can do it because it's supposed to be natural and I'm , I would say , what they call a high achiever . I always try to do my best , always be perfection , like I said , like , yeah , like I said , perfection really got me into burnout . So , yeah , I think this is like it was a lot from this checkbox .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , we had a very similar journey because my oldest we struggled to breastfeed as well and it was like I would pump and bottle feed and we'd have to supplement with formula because I never had enough supply . And I did that until six months and finally I was like , okay , well , at least she's made it to six months and I still felt like it wasn't enough . So that level of perfectionism is definitely very much ingrained in myself and can lead can definitely lead to burnout . So why don't you talk a little bit about that , Because I know that's a lot of what you help women entrepreneurs with now is avoiding that burnout , not necessarily being stuck in that perfection state . Why don't you tell them a little bit about that ?
Speaker 2was living in in the UK then and there was paid maternity leave , so we were having the best time going to all these play groups and always researching what does he need developmentally , what is the like , how can I foster his development ? And and and also continuing with my sport , for example . I was aware I always loved sport , so always trying to do all the things , and he had a terrible sleep pattern as well , so not sleeping enough and just keep going , going , going , because that's what I was used to . Then we moved to Mauritius and life was beautiful . It was a beautiful place and we got used to new things and set up our new home and I got a new job and obviously then day-to-day life kicks in and the little one was in nursery , so everything was going smoothly .
Speaker 2But you know , I mean nowadays like time passes by so quickly . So I think it must have been like three years just passed by without really looking at anything I was doing and eventually I started to feel really , really sad in in this beautiful place and in this life that we had created and just not really feeling , feeling the thick like , just not happy and not knowing why , you know , started to have arguments with my husband felt like the job was just really horrible and couldn't really point my finger to what it was . Started to have health issues because , again , I still wasn't sleeping , I still was doing far too much , not resting , not taking care of myself , really . And then my mom passed away very suddenly . She was in Mauritius on holidays and went to bed and was supposed to wake up very early for her flight back to Germany and she never woke up and that really was the moment where I was like oh , shoot , like this can happen , like this happens to me , like nothing bad ever happened to me .
Speaker 2Everything is fine , like and and yeah , I , I really just broke down . I was like this was not supposed to happen and what is this ? And I felt totally lost with everything and obviously went through all the grief process and yeah , and that's just realized that life is really short and all the ideas and plans and visions I had of my extraordinary life , I didn't . I didn't take care of them . I just forgot all about me because I was mom first of all .
Speaker 2Yeah , a bit of my career , because it was important to me , and a little bit of wife , but even that wasn't enough because obviously it led to relationship issues and but everything else . That was Anne , who had fun and who was very creative , enjoyed experiencing new things , doing sports I hadn't done any sports in forever because there was no time . I had left all of that behind and was just mom , wife and work . And then , with the realization that life can be really short , it's like , well , this is not quite the life I was looking for and did some work on myself , worked with a coach , read loads of self-help books , listened to lots of podcasts and realized that I think , really , really deep down engraved and drained , is this perfectionism always being perfect ?
Speaker 2but not in a good way , because what what does bring you Life first of all , is not perfect . Your loved ones pass away when you don't ever have an idea that this can happen , or whatever can happen in life . But I just really decided that I don't want to be perfect anymore , I want to have a good life , and it can be sometimes really challenging , but as long as I have fun . I think fun and joy are really my key ingredients in my day to day and all the rest doesn't matter so much at the end of the day and that's really when I changed how I looked at things . You needed to progress in career . You needed to have that nice house , the next TV , the next car .
Speaker 2That is really not important to me . For me , really important is to be with my boys . But also to be with myself and to prioritize myself Not always easy , because my husband is very , very close to me , he very much enjoys to be with me and I enjoy to be on my own sometimes , so that doesn't go down too well all the time , but it's been really my focus to to share with them as a family why it's important to me and to make them realize that when , when I feel good , happy mom , happy family , they say .
Speaker 2and it's just so true so yeah , I really let go of the perfectionism that's like you get me the way I am today . I put some makeup on because I wasn't sure if you're going to video record , but most of the days I'm just . Whatever happens , it's just . It's just me on a normal day and living my life .
Speaker 1Yeah , I rarely wear makeup myself , like sometimes when we go out for dinner , but even for a podcast , I don't wear makeup . So you got , you got a leg up there . Well , I think that that's beautiful and I am so sorry to hear about your mom it is . It really is eye-opening when something like that happens and you really just dig deep and start to evaluate what's really important , and kudos to you for turning it into a positive and reevaluating what was important and really finding more harmony in your life , because I agree with you , harmony is a much better word than balance .
Speaker 1I mean , there is I've had this conversation before where when I think of balance , I feel like it's like the legal scales , like can you picture those like legal scales ? And it's like life is never , ever equal , like sometimes my career needs more of me , sometimes my family needs more of me , and it's this ebb and flow Like it's never just like okay , once I've achieved balance , like yay , I'm here and it's going to stay that way . You have to find a way to find like harmony and I love that word to enjoy the ebbs and flows and find the ways to communicate with your family when maybe work needs a little bit more of you . Or maybe you need a little bit more time to yourself , or maybe I recently had loss in my family as well and I knew that my kids needed more of me . It was just like I had to pump the brakes on other things that I had going on and just be with them and enjoy that time and connect with them , because that's what was needed .
Speaker 1And so why don't you talk a little bit more about your magic mom life and peaceful productivity , because I love those names . Magic Mum Life Like who doesn't need that ? I definitely . If there's a magic wand for mum life , like , bring that over , I wish . Yeah , I haven't found it yet . So talk a little bit about these programs that you have .
Speaker 2Yeah , so Magic
, mum . Life really came from that journey , from like just feeling very , yeah , very , very sad and disconnected from myself to seeking the magic , because I often had these comments of , like your life looks perfect . Well , it did on on Instagram and Pinterest , but in reality not so much , even when you live on a beautiful island and when you seem to have it all . I seem seemed to have it all . I had my job , I had my family , I had a husband who's always been involved with the children , all of that but I didn't feel there was any magic . I felt it was really really just really shallow , in the sense that there was no , there was not much purpose , there was not much fun , and if there was fun , it felt often the Pinterest baking session very much like . Am I doing this for me and the children , or am I doing this because I feel obliged to do it ? As a good mom , I should be doing some activities with them , and so I felt like there's this magic spark that I used to have as a young person and I had lost it and I really worked hard on getting it back . And as I was working on it , I started sharing with other moms and we spoke initially like this whole idea of like it . Only it's only me who's going through that . And if I share it , people look at me like , oh , she is , she's a rubbish mom , like how can she not love motherhood and how can she be looking for more ? And what more magical is there than having your children ? But I shared it anyways . The more I shared , the more I had people coming back to me like me too , yeah , I feel the same . And that's when I thought , okay , like let me share my , my knowledge , what I gained through working with coaches . In the meantime I had done a coaching certificate myself and so I started sharing and working with moms to help them finding their magic .
Speaker 2And then , a couple of years down the line , I came back to old patterns and basically repeated my perfectionism that I had let go in motherhood . I repeated it in entrepreneurship . So trying to be the perfect entrepreneur , following the steps doing working really hard day and night and taking care of my children in between , and then realizing , oh , I'm burned out again . Oh , no , yeah . And that's when , peaceful productivity . Because that's when I again stripped it back and said , well , what's really important , what's the work that I really enjoy what's the work that delivers an outcome , that that brings results and all the other things that maybe someone else is telling you to do that or everyone else is doing it when we're checking on the Internet and I'm like , well , no , I don't have time for that . So I really stripped it back down in terms of what are the basic things that I need to do . I don't have long to do lists anymore . I really know what is important to me in my business and I have very good boundaries now around my business , which before I didn't .
Speaker 2So , yeah , I worked again on all of these things that were coming back from that deep down perfectionism into my entrepreneurship . And , because I'm a VA , I also realized that I help most of my clients and moms , because that's just who I attract and resonate most with , I think . But I help them to obviously be more productive and felt like that's one element to get help in your business or at home if you can Like . That's why my mom and I are so helpful . But it's all like different elements that I realized are really powerful when it comes to being productive .
Speaker 2But a lot of the mindset shifts again letting go of the perfectionism , letting go of any guilt of unrealistic expectations , of society pressure who says , as an entrepreneur , you've got to work really hard and so on . So , and your business should be doing like this and you should have six figures or seven figures or whatever it is . There's all these outside influences . So , yeah , I started working on those and again , I'm sharing it with my community and it's pretty much a very raw and vulnerable share . I wouldn't say I'm the total expert . I've definitely changed things and I'm seeing results from it , but I'm still learning so much as well . Yeah , just like in motherhood , every time when we think we figured something , out something , a next developmental phase comes around the corner and we're like , oh , what's that now ?
Speaker 2entering the teenage years now and okay .
Speaker 1Yeah , like next level . I read somewhere that somebody was like we should start talking about like our age , like it's levels , like I'm at level 39 , almost level 40 . And I feel like that just like describes life right , like you feel like you get to the next level and there's going to be new challenges and new rewards and new things , but it just feels I don't know , there's something about it that just makes me feel better to say like I'm almost at level 40 , instead of like I'm almost 40 years old . I don't know . It's like parenting and all the things right , Like , oh , I'm almost at the next level and it is true Like entrepreneurship , parenting . I find so many similarities in both of those universes because you are like , I talked to my oldest a lot . I'm like , just so you know , like we're learning and growing up together . It's okay .
Speaker 2I can say that to me to be a mom .
Speaker 1And there's all these different things that as she encounters them . And I feel like raising kids now in an age where , like , social media is a big thing and the internet like we didn't have those when we were growing up and so at least until later in life , and so like trying to navigate that with them and it is . It is a learning process , and so is entrepreneurship . Like you think you have one level unlocked and you're like , okay , everything is really good , but then maybe you need to hire on staff , or maybe you are now oops , maybe you are now at the next level in terms of income , and it comes with a whole other slew of issues . So I think that that's really , really important and I love that you have these now . Are these programs that people can buy and they do on their own , or is it you coaching with them one on one ? How does that work ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so I've got a mini course that is the peaceful productivity , your entry yeah , let's say entry product and then I do one on one sessions and the magic mom life . I had a membership , which I paused at the moment because it's just been becoming a little bit too much , because the VA business is has been shooting through the roof . So , but yeah , I do , I do mostly one-on-one , simply because it's it's it's more flexible for me in terms of managing it with that other part of the job and my time zone , which can be sometimes quite challenging and all of that . But , yeah , mostly one-on-one and a couple of online products . But I'm working in the background , always working on something that in a few months will come out , but it just sometimes takes longer because there's too many things going on .
Speaker 1Yeah , it's the life with motherhood and entrepreneurship right . There's always things that you're trying to manage and juggle . Where can people find you , anne ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so I've got two websites One is annerajucomcom , which is mostly focused on productivity and motherhood , and then I have the website for the VA agency , which is virtue fully , but also Instagram is probably the best place there it's an underscore and Raju underscore and again where I talk about mainly productivity and motherhood wonderful .
Speaker 1Well , what one piece of advice would you give to the moms that are listening out there ?
Speaker 2yeah , I think , let go of the perfectionism . If you have that trait in you , it's just not really helpful and I think that the level of perfectionism a lot of us thrive for a few levels down talking about levels is just just as perfect , and already I know so many moms who are incredible and I think it's they . They just deserve , yeah , the , the acknowledgement for that , and they just don't need to be perfect , because they're already perfect for their children and their family as they are .
Speaker 1I love that advice and thank you so much for sharing that . Thank you for being here today and thank you , guys , for tuning into today's episode , where we help you conquer the chaos one day at a time .