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Bobbie Racette, founder and CEO of virtual assistance company Virtual Gurus, didn't always have a clear sense of how her story would unfold. She didn't necessarily envision a chapter on becoming an entrepreneur — but it would turn out to be one of the most important ones.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Virtual Gurus. Bobbie Racette.
Before Racette started her business, she says she had little direction and "was kind of just one of those people who went from job to job looking for different things to do." In 2015, Racette was working as a safety technician in Calgary's oil and gas industry when layoffs struck — she lost her job and struggled to land her next role.
"Nobody would hire me."
"I couldn't get a job no matter how many resumes I sent out," Racette recalls. "Interviews after interviews after interviews. And nobody would hire me." Racette lived in a conservative area and says that her identity as a queer, Indigenous woman with tattoos may have hindered her search.
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Ultimately, after being inundated with posts about the freelancer gig economy, she decided to try it out for herself: She created an Upwork profile offering her services as a virtual assistant. That, too, was difficult. Most of her competitors were in other countries, so she had to bid as little as $2 to secure jobs on the platform. Racette knew there had to be a better way.
So, despite not knowing "anything about running a business," Racette resolved to start her own. She set out to build a gig work platform that would connect virtual assistants with companies in need of help with a range of tasks, from bookkeeping to customer support and officially launched in 2016.
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Racette's long-term goal was to provide quality work-from-home opportunities for other people from marginalized and underserved communities.
"Working with Indigenous folks is my north star."
In the early days, when Virtual Gurus was a one-woman show, the market need for the platform was clear: The business Racette launched with just $300 to her name saw $300,000 in revenue in year one.
By the second year, Racette still hadn't hired her first employee, and although she continued to make money, she worked "around the clock." She needed to raise funds and assemble her team.
It took 170 investors saying "no" to Virtual Gurus before Racette got her first "yes," but the business secured an $8.4 million CAD Series A round and has since grown beyond a $50 million valuation, per the company. Racette's first hire was a single stay-at-home mom, and by 2020, she'd expanded to a team of more than 40. Today, Virtual Gurus has provided work for more than 2,000 people in Canada and the U.S. — and counting.
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"Working with Indigenous folks is my north star," Racette says. "We're working to go into Indigenous communities and looking to partner with the employment centers so that we can bring Indigenous folks into these employment centers that are in the community [and] keep them in their actual communities. Because that's super important."
Racette notes that Virtual Gurus provides Indigenous people with computers and training and is forming a new partnership to empower and hire about 5,000 Indigenous workers by the end of 2026.
"Who I am now as a leader is tenfold different."
Like most new entrepreneurs, Racette faced plenty of challenges along the way, including building out Virtual Gurus' technology as the company scaled. However, learning how to be an effective leader for her team proved to be one of the most significant obstacles, according to Racette. "Leadership is super difficult when you've never really learned," she says.
Determined to be the kind of leader her business needed, Racette enrolled in leadership courses through Harvard University and committed herself to improving each day.
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"Who I am now as a leader is tenfold different from who I was two years ago," Racette says. However, she also acknowledges that leaders have a responsibility to grow every day and inspire the next generation of good leaders.
"The sky's the limit — nothing's holding you back."
Racette also believes that business leaders have a duty to share their stories so that young people can see the positive examples that motivate them to pursue their own goals. Women in business, particularly in tech, have been discouraged from sharing their stories for too long, Racette says, and in her work mentoring young women, she strives to break that cycle.
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No one should be afraid to launch their business and live their own story through it, according to Racette.
"People will leverage entrepreneurship a little bit more as medicine at that point," Racette says. "Because then it's like, the sky's the limit — nothing's holding you back. Nothing can get in your way. Nothing can bring fear because you're living your own story."
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