Success Interview with Alex Hughes

Success Interview with Alex Hughes

Welcome to success interviews where I chat to fellow female business owners and find out more about why they started their business and how they measure success. You can either watch or read the interview, my guest today is Alex Hughes. 

Interview Transcript

I met Alex about 6 years ago, through the Association of Professional Virtual Assistants. She’s an amazing VA, well, not just a VA.  

Alex Hughes has run Auxilium Business Consulting Ltd since 2017 and supports busy CEOs of service-based businesses to take a helicopter view of their business, unravel their spaghetti brain and get all their ducks in a row. This is done in various ways e.g. audits and brainstorms and gives them clarity and confidence to help them grow and thrive.   

Why did you start your business? 

My business is 6 years old and we met very early on when I was starting my business. I left my job as an operations manager and I was helping small business owners with all sorts of admin projects and tasks. That was back in 2017. I very swiftly realised that my operations background meant that I was looking at the whole business, giving a business owner a helicopter view of their business. I therefore moved into business consulting and made that official in 2020. I’ve been doing that for three years. 

I was an exchange of money markets dealer for 15 years and then operations and office manager for 17 years. I set up my business as I got to the end of that 17 years and lots of people were asking me, can you help me with this project? Other people were asking me to support them and I thought, I could set up a business doing this. So, Auxilium was born. Auxilium means to aid, assistance and support in Latin. That’s how it all came about and I’m now helping people take a helicopter view of their business with brainstorms, audits and operations and office management. 

But more recently, at the core of everything I do is sustainability and helping people create the impacts and put them in place to help the planet become green and have sustainable efforts for the future.  

How do you measure success? 

There are so many things that cover all aspects of the way you run a business.  For me, it’s about having happy customers and positive feedback for the work I do. I want to make a difference. If you refer me to someone because you’re happy and you’ve given me a testimonial, then those things are a measurement of success.

Waking up and having a purpose to my day and the work I’m doing that’s aligned to my vision, mission and values is really important. Being able to pivot and move into different things.  

Work/life balance, being your own boss, I also like being challenged. I see that as a success if I can hit a challenge and complete it, I feel very comforted by that. 

Also, for me, from a family point of view, I’ve got two daughters, seeing them, going out into the workplace, being confident and independent, as well as me looking after them and running a business that is a true measurement of success. 

It’s not always the big things that you need to measure for success. I see my clients coming to me, they’re riding a bike with stabilisers and they need my support. I support them and then you see them going off into the distance without the stabilisers and that means that I’ve measured my success because they’ve gone off happy. I remember the very first time I did that; I was feeling really bad. My client doesn’t need me anymore and my husband said that’s because you’ve done your job. You’ve got success from that.  

What one tip would you give to your younger self? 

With my grey hair, you can tell I’ve been around a bit, so tips for the younger self come thick and fast. 

I remember when I was young, if you asked a question in class, that meant you didn’t understand and nobody wanted to put their hand up. My tip would be to make sure you ask all the questions that you need. Don’t be frightened. Soak up the information and knowledge that people give you and ask for feedback, whether that’s good or bad because we can all learn.   

Brainstorm your ideas. Work on your business.  

Take risks, think outside the box and step outside your comfort zone. Change is good and we’ve seen a lot of change in COVID. We’ve all had to change; someone else’s journey is not yours so don’t copy someone else. Go on your own journey and do what you do best and outsource the rest. 

Watch the Interview