Richelle Colinares – Real Estate Virtual Assistant

Richelle Colinares VAHi, I’m Richelle Colinares. I’m a coffee loving Filipina who aims to help business owners make their life easier and business better by handling some of the mundane tasks that are taking up so much of their time.

I am based in Davao City, Philippines where I live with my husband and son, Luis. Aside from drinking coffee and watching Korean novelas, my ultimate hobby is designing graphics. I am currently a volunteer graphic designer to my own non-profit organisation which specialises in helping one of the indigenous groups here in the Philippines.

I am the kind of person who sees good in everything, both in good times and bad times. And I guess the best proof that I can give you is this sort of ‘downfall kind of story’ I have – how I hit rock bottom and eventually how I managed to come back to life again.

Before I decided to work at home, I was actually running my own small online thrift fashion business. Oh, by the way – fashion is one of my interests if you may ask. I started with a very small capital that was around $39 and of course without any background on how to run a retail business. So I did everything from scratch. I did a lot of research on my own, built my own marketing techniques and utilised well the social media. Eventually, I became one of the richelle-colinares-vatrusted suppliers of thrift fashion bundles who was already supplying small thrift fashion entrepreneurs nationwide. I never even thought that I’d become an entrepreneur myself before but because of my interest in fashion, I eventually fell in love with it. Long story short, that online business helped me avail a rent-to-own home, got my own boutique, paid my bills, and a lot more. I was already making my way to real success until things went wrong…

My husband quit his job without enough funds left in his bank account. Eventually, the business had to assume all the expenses needed for our daily grind. The business was not ready for that. It wasn’t able to survive and in the end, fell down which caused us to lose almost everything we had – the house, the car, the store and more. We were back to zero as they say.

So you can imagine how painful it was. We were buried in debt, could no longer pay bills, always fighting, no one to run to – chaotic, super! And I was super depressed and almost giving up. But when I started thinking of the positive side, everything started to lighten up. That dark moment made me realise how hard it was for those people who suffered the same or people who are in great need to continue living without someone to help them. So in the midst of my dark times, I saw a ray of hope. I then created a group that aims to help people especially those who are financially challenged. It was hard to convince people to join me at first but I did not stop. I worked hard reaching out to different people, and I am glad I did that. Now the group has already done worthwhile outreach projects. My craving for helping other people indeed pushed me to stand up and grind again.

So here I am now. 🙂 There are actually reasons why I want to work at home and these are:

1. To help business owners grow their business
2. To earn a competitive salary that can help me fund my group’s advocacies
3. To be with my family while still earning
4. To do more of what I really want

Going back to why am I here, I’ve never worked at home but I have some experience working as an office-based real estate general virtual assistant. I am a self-starter, so you can assume I can do things on my own. I value integrity. I don’t want to act like someone I am not. I won’t pretend I know even if I don’t. I am a teachable person and always willing to learn new things and thrive on going above and beyond.

So if you’re looking for someone like me, then let’s talk. I’d be happy to help you in any way I can. Xoxo!

For a copy of Richelle’s resume please click here.