Amber Field

13/04/2026

Contracting someone for a set number of hours a week does not mean they are available to your business across your entire working day.

If you've engaged someone for five hours a week, those are five hours across the week - they are not on standby between tasks. They're not sitting and waiting for messages in case something comes up. They are not available immediately because you happen to need something at 2pm on a Thursday, and they finish at 2:30pm

This isn't a limitation of the person - it's the nature of the arrangement, and it's an arrangement that works really well when both sides are clear on it from the start.

The businesses that navigate this well are the ones who've had a direct conversation before anyone starts: what are your working hours, what does availability actually look like, how does work get requested, what's the turnaround.

That conversation takes about ten minutes and can prevent frustration, scope creep, resentment (and then we know where it can go from there...).

If you've been unclear on this in a working relationship, you're definitely not alone, and it's not too late to have the conversation now.

Has this ever caught you off guard on either side of the relationship? Tell me how you handled it 👇

13/04/2026

"Another important psychological shift is redefining value. We know that outcomes matter more than constant availability at work. Yet people-pleasers often equate worth with responsiveness. Remote work exposes this belief by stripping away performative busyness. What remains is the question of whether one feels allowed to rest without guilt."

When it comes to working remotely - whether that is in the capacity as a self-employed freelancer, or as a remote employee - we easily allow our boundaries to be blurred, and when we let them keep going, they become invisible.

The areas that I see damaging the working relationships between contractors and business owners are around expectations:
-Expectations of being consistently available, or working to "their business hours only"
-Expectations that they will operate as an employee and attend to any tasks assigned (eg: "and additional duties as required by the needs of the business" do NOT apply to B2B services)

People pleasing is a slide, and it's harmful to both business owners.

Psychological research reveals why some remote workers struggle to log off.

12/04/2026

Truth (and celebration): 3 years ago today I "launched" this business because I needed to earn money.

My husband had joined the Defence Force, and we were posted to Wagga Wagga where it was really difficult to get a job.

A couple of years prior we'd left government jobs to run a plant nursery in a rural area while homeschooling our kids, and then I needed to build something that would work around Defence life, postings, being the default parent, and a body that doesn't always cooperate.

I had a million years of corporate experience (that's what it felt like anywho 😜). I looked at what I knew - operations, people coordination, supporting leaders in different ways - and then I built something around that.

3 years later, it's become something I genuinely care about. The work around helping business owners understand what it means to work ethically with virtual support professionals. The community I've built for solo business owners who don't want to work alone. The conversations I have every week that confirm there's a real gap in how the industry addresses the client side of the relationship.

There have been hard seasons - holy smokes, have there been some lessons! 🫠 There have been periods where my autoimmune condition made showing up feel impossible. There have been postings and transitions and the particular kind of exhaustion that comes with being the stable point when everything else is feeling like a dumpster fire of expectations, urgency and needs.

And then there have been moments where I've sat across from someone and watched something shift for them. Where the conversation created clarity that wasn't there before, and I realise that all'o'the things, the experiences helped to create this.

Thank you to each person who has shared, encouraged, elevated, listened and guided over the years.

Ax

11/04/2026

Conversations Behind The Screens

Real chats with the Good Humans running businesses online, sharing who they are, how they support themselves and their communities.

Come and meet some of the epic entrepreneurs I get to know :D

Behind the Screens with Cassandra Barrie CONVERSATIONS BTSReal chats with the people keeping small businesses running. From delegation wins to boundary lessons, this series lifts the lid on what it actually takes to run a sustainable service business.

10/04/2026

Let’s talk about the Defence spouse business reality.

Running a business while living Defence life isn’t the glossy “work from anywhere” dream people imagine 🫣
It’s juggling time zones, relocations, and uncertainty, all while trying to keep something of your own steady when everything else around you keeps moving.

It’s rebuilding connections every few years.
It’s learning to run meetings from temporary housing (read: a hotel room).
It’s knowing that sometimes “flexibility” isn’t a perk - it’s survival.
It’s also resourcefulness on another level.
It’s creativity born from necessity.
It’s learning to build and rebuild, over and over, and still find ways to serve, connect, and grow.

Defence spouse businesses don’t just run on passion.

They run on grit, hotspots, and sheer determination.

So if you see a Defence spouse building something, know this: behind that brand is someone who’s had to start again more times than they can count, and still shows up.

To my fellow Defence partners in business - what’s one thing this lifestyle has taught you?

10/04/2026

Speak Up & Be Heard!

Learn how to collect your thoughts and land your message. Every time (without feeling unnatural, forced or awkward).

Cat Matson is hosting her fabulous FREE Speaking with Impact series next week, and I highly recommend it. Cat has been the person who has taught me all the tools to gather my thoughts, calm my sweaty-nerves, and be able to share my business quickly and seamlessly.

You'll learn how to structure your message for maximum impact, collect your thoughts on the spot and even manage any 'I'm not good enough' thoughts you might have when speaking up.

All the details are here 👇

Learn how to collect your thoughts and land your message. Every time.

09/04/2026

My tagline: "Without U, there is no business – it's just BS-iness."

Your business exists because of you.
Your energy.
Your ideas.
Your capacity.
Your skills.
Your decisions.

Somewhere along the way, we started treating business like it should run separately from the human behind it. Like you should be able to push through burnout, ignore your capacity, skip lunch, work weekends, and somehow that's what makes you "serious" about your business.

That's not business. That's BS.

If you're burnt out, your business suffers.
If you're exhausted, your decision-making suffers.
If you're constantly in reactive mode, your strategy suffers.
If you have no boundaries, your relationships suffer – including the one with yourself.

You can't separate the business from the person running it. They're connected, and when you neglect one, the other falls apart.

So when I work with clients, I'm not just looking at operations, systems, and delegation. I'm looking at capacity. Boundaries. Energy. What's sustainable for you as a human, not just what looks good on paper.

Because without you – the actual human with limits, needs, and a life outside of work – there is no business.

It's just tasks. Stress, reactivity, chaos. A to-do list that never ends.

That's not what we're building here. We're building businesses that work for the humans behind them - not against them. You're not a robot, and your business shouldn't treat you like one.

Time to get really real. Where do you fit in your schedule?

08/04/2026

My beautiful friend, Emma Lovell, has done it again - this time it's not her story though!

Emma has now published 2 books; the first being about the bleisure life (which we all need to embrace 😍), and this one shares the magic[al life] of her 103 year old cousin, Bill Hunter.

Grab Emma and Bill's book here: https://amzn.to/4votQ4j
and read about the launch of it in a whole other country here:
https://roscoenews.com/after-80-years-of-magic-roscoes-magic-bill-becomes-the-story/

A Life of Magic: 102 Years of Service, Showmanship & Unforgettable Storytelling

07/04/2026

This seems obvious when you say it out loud, but it's behind a surprising amount of friction in working relationships with virtual support professionals.

Your freelancer has other clients.

That means when you reach out, they're likely in the middle of something (and it may be for someone else). When you need them "urgently", they may have competing priorities. When you want to add something to the scope this week, their capacity this week is already allocated.

None of this is a problem with the person. It's the nature of how contracting works, and it's actually the same reason they can offer you the expertise and flexibility they do.

The working relationships that function well have accounted for this from the start.
There's an agreed communication rhythm.
There's a process for how work gets requested.
There's an understanding of what their weekly capacity for your support needs are.

That's not complicated to establish - it just needs to be clear before the frustration kicks in.

Was this a challenge when you first started working with a VA?

05/04/2026

When you bring a freelancer into your business, the onboarding is your responsibility 🤝

That means giving them the context they need to do the work well. Where things live. How you communicate. What your preferences are. What "good" looks like for the specific tasks you've handed over. Who to go to when they're stuck.

A freelancer is skilled at what they do - they are not skilled at reading your mind.

The onboarding doesn't need to be a 30 page document. It needs to cover the things that are genuinely going to affect their ability to do good work for you. That's usually less than you think, as long as it's the right things.

Investing an hour in a proper handover before someone starts is almost always worth more than the time you'll spend answering questions or redirecting work that missed the mark.

That's part of the preparation I work through with clients. Getting clear on what someone actually needs to know to get started well, so if you're at this stage of needing help, book in a consulting session and let's get you sorted.

04/04/2026

One of the more expensive things I've done in my business is pretend I had more capacity than I actually did 🙃

Taking on clients when I was already at my mental limit.
Saying yes to things that required energy I didn't have.
Operating at the pace of a good week during a hard one and hoping it would hold.

Spolier alert: it doesn't hold.

The thing about building a capacity-conscious business (living with an autoimmune condition, and being a Defence family + all'the'things that life just lifes us with) is that the cost of ignoring capacity isn't immediately obvious - it compounds. A week of pushing through becomes weeks of recovery. A period of operating beyond my limit means a period where I can't operate properly at all.

Designing my business around honest capacity has meant saying no to things that seemed like opportunities. It's also meant that when I say yes, I can actually deliver on it.

The honest version of your capacity is a better foundation than the optimistic version.

Is this something you relate to? Or have you figured out how to honour your limits? I'd love to hear what's worked for you 👇

04/04/2026

Connection often gets filed under soft skills and personal development. I want to reframe that.

In a business built on working relationships - with clients, with contractors, with a community - connection is infrastructure.

The business owners who work well with virtual support professionals are almost always the ones who've built a genuine relationship with the person. It doesn't have to be a friendship necessarily, but it's a professional relationship with human communication in it.

The businesses that retain contractors, that get honest input from the people they work with, that create environments where problems get flagged early, those businesses have invested in connection as a deliberate part of how they operate.

It's not a nice-to-have. It's what makes the functional parts actually work.

Do you feel like connection gets dismissed as fluffy in business conversations? Tell me your thoughts 👇