How a 30-Year Executive Assistant Built Her Own Business in Her Late 40s
How a 30-Year Executive Assistant Built Her Own Business in Her Late 40s
How a 30-Year Executive Assistant Built Her Own Business in Her Late 40s
Welcome to Episode 1 of Built On Your Terms. There's no better person to launch this series with than Bonnie Schutz.
Bonnie spent nearly 30 years as a corporate executive assistant supporting C-level leaders. The kind of role most people would call "a career." She had benefits, security, and the kind of inside-track access most assistants only dream of. By any traditional measure, she had made it.
And then, in her late 40s, she walked away.
This episode is the story of what came next, and why it might be the clearest case study yet for what Built On Your Terms is actually about.
30 Years In, Then Out
Bonnie didn't leave because she stopped loving the work. "I love people," she says in the episode. "But it was just time." That was around the moment she and her recruiter bestie — also working at the same corporate job — started asking each other how they were going to "get the hell out of here."
The two of them co-founded what eventually became Tandem Resource Solutions. It started as a recruiting firm. Now it's a US-based remote-support agency with about 35 admin and light-operations team members. Bonnie is deliberate about the language: she calls Tandem a "remote support agency," not a virtual assistant agency, because the old term "didn't fit my people."
Old Network Is Your Net Worth
The line that anchors the episode comes around the 12-minute mark: "Old network is your net worth." Bonnie's whole second act has been built on her existing relationships — colleagues from her corporate years, women she met at networking events, people who knew her work before they knew her business. She doesn't talk about cold outreach or paid ads. She talks about the people who were already in her life.
She also talks about Polkadot Powerhouse — the second-act-women's-entrepreneurship network founded by Barbara Brooks. There's a very funny story about how Bonnie basically stalked Barbara at a co-working space to introduce herself. It's a perfect example of what she means by network being net worth: the women in her tribe didn't come from a marketing funnel. They came from showing up.
The Test of Freedom
If you want one moment from this episode that captures what BOYT is built on, it's around the 30-minute mark.
Bonnie took a one-month sabbatical. A full month away from Tandem. When she came back, "my business was still there. I didn't lose any clients."
That is the cleanest definition of income you control anyone has given on this show. Not "passive income." Not "scale to seven figures." Just: built something that doesn't fall apart when you step away.
She closes with this: "That's freedom. It's the freedom to still make money, still afford life, and be able to do what you wanna do."
What This Means If You're Starting
You don't need 30 years in corporate to build what Bonnie has built. You don't need to start with a co-founder or a network of 35 people. You need to start with one offer, one client, and a clear next step.
That's exactly what the free 5-day Build Your First $1,000 Side Income Bootcamp is built for. We'll help you pick a lane, build an offer, set a price, and find your first clients. No hustle. No empire-building. Just income you actually control.
Start the free bootcamp →https://sideincomestudios.com/bootcamp
And listen to Bonnie's full episode here: https://builtonyourterms.buzzsprout.com/
