The Virtual Success Show: Recent Episodes

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How to Create an Online Course for Free with Chris Badgett Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley speaks to Chris Badgett of LifterLMS about the process of creating your own online course and membership sites, and how this will help you and your business especially in the middle of a global crisis.Some key points include:Getting your course ideas out of your head and actually creating themThe minimum tech stack needed in order to start an online course or membership siteTaking advantage of the current crisis and developing your business online Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.  In this episode:02:11  How to create an online course for free06:22  SCIDL Method09:58  How to avoid getting stuck with the Tech Stack13:13  Taking advantage of the current crisis17:20  What does it mean to Pivot your Business18:30  Having the right Business Mindset this crisis19:44  Wrapping things up   Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work? Are you spending time doing things that you're not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show. We bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts, Matt Malouf, and Barbara Turley. Barbara Turley: Welcome everyone to today's episode of the Virtual Success Show podcast where today I am joined by Chris Badgett, who I've had on the podcast before, who's the founder of the LifterLMS membership site plugin. And we're here today to talk all about membership sites and why now is the best time ever for you to get your course out of your head onto a learning management system. Like something like Lifter and get it out to the world so obviously, I'm Barbara Turley, your host of the Virtual Success Show podcast and founder of The Virtual Hub. Chris, welcome to today's show. Chris Badgett: Thanks for having me, Barbara. I'm really excited to get into it with you today. Barbara Turley: Yes, so look, you know, I know loads of people over time have always wanted to create membership sites, online courses and you know as well as I do that people get stuck not just with getting the course out of their heads but getting it onto the platforms, the tech stops people and usually business stops people in that you're running the day to day running of your business stops you, so now is the best time I think, for a lot of businesses to try to pivot fast and go this route. We'll talk about kind of the best businesses that can do that in a minute but I was really inspired by your- recently you did a four day course creation boot camp, I think you'd call it online and with the idea of to help people to get a course out of their heads, get out of the weeds and actually get the course created. Can you give us the short and dirty version of how do we do that? And how do we make it less overwhelming? Because it's quite overwhelming to do it. How to Create an Online Course for Free Chris Badgett:  Yeah, well, first, I just want to acknowledge the huge problem and this isn't a new problem because if you think about it, if you're watching this right now, just raise your hand or smash the like button or whatever, if you have ever thought about writing a book, but you never actually wrote the book. This kind of- this is an age old problem right here too, with creative entrepreneurs and people who want to innovate and are really passionate about a topic or helping a certain type of person. So I see unfortunately, a lot of people get stuck in the weeds of like they're looking at the mechanism, they're looking at the course or the membership site, or the coaching program that they're going to put on the internet and they're really focused on it. But then there's this giant gap between, "Alright,

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Office to Remote: The Tech Stack for a Seamless Transition with Peter Moriarty Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley speaks to Peter Moriarty of itGenius and discusses the how-to’s of setting up your company fit for a virtual environment. They talk about creating the right systems and processes in order to effectively manage a remote team.   Some key points include:The tools that you need in order to have a great task and communication flow in your business.Challenges working in a virtual environmentWhy you should eradicate emailsWhat does it mean to have the right mindset shift  Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.  In this episode:02:02 Roadblocks when setting up Cloud Based System04:30 Important G Suite features07:40 Task Management, Systems and Processes 11:58 Working in a Virtual Environment15:22 Why Task Management by Email never works19:21 Tips in getting through this remote setup successfully26:28 Remote Business Playbook28:09 Wrapping Things Up  Tools Mentioned:AsanaTrelloPodioG SuiteDropboxZoomSkypeSlackZapierOntraportActive Campaign  Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.  Barbara Turley: Hey, everyone, welcome back to another special edition episode of the Virtual Success podcast where we're now taking it live online to cope with this COVID-19 crisis that we're currently all in right now. Today's guest, I'm talking to Peter Moriarty from itGenius and he's given me so many tips already before we've even started this show. But really what I want to talk about is so many companies have been scrambling to try to move people into a remote or work from home situation over the last few weeks. Me included, I at The Virtual Hub had to move 110 staff very quickly into work from home situations and it was something apart from the issue of not having computers, the actual online or the systems, part of it was very easy because I had actually set it up that way. But I know a lot of companies have been scrambling trying to do this and not really getting it right. So, Peter's here with us today to talk specifically about how to set your company up to make sure that the next time, hopefully, we never have to do this again. But if you do, you can move fast and that your systems are portable. So Peter, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.  Peter Moriarty: Thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here.   Barbara Turley: So to kick off, can you tell me, I'm sure you see this all the time in your experience with working with companies. A company who comes to you and wants to be more cloud-based or wants to be more nimble in terms of moving people around, what are the major roadblocks and problems that you see in their setup? To kick off.  Roadblocks in Setting Up a Cloud-Based System  Peter Moriarty: Yeah, I'd say it's always people. But people are always the roadblocks. It's either processes that are in place, or ways of thinking they're in place, which are the biggest blockers. And technology change requires people change. And so when you're going through a process of you know, everyone's been through a bad technology change at one point in their life, whether that was you know, working in corporate and having someone implementing your system without training people properly, or just, you know, switching from a PC to a Mac, and the first couple of days, kind of not knowing where the buttons are, you know, the frustration and the the fear, it's not just a fear of change for stop, but it's certainly, you know,

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Scaling up the Delegation Game with Nigel Bennett, Co-Founder of Aqua-Guard Spill Response  Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley speaks to Nigel Bennett of Aqua-Guard Spill Response about how to delegate effectively, how to grow your team, and avoid Business Owner Burnout.  Some key points include:The importance of having a business coachHow to manage business owner burnoutWhy you need to invest time and energy in training your peopleThe importance of systems and processes in your business  Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.  In this episode:02:18  Aqua-Guard Spill Response05:52  Business Owner Burnout11:38   How to Delegate more effectively18:38  Organic Growth in your Business19:58   Processes and Systems 21:12   The importance of Life Rhythm in your Business27:35  Who should manage the people and the teams in your Business28:38  Keeping in touch with your team during this pandemic32:19   Nigel’s experience with Burnout Business Owners37:19   Fight, Flight, or Freeze40:34  Final thoughts42:23  Wrapping things Up  Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.   Barbara Turley: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Virtual Success Show podcast where I'm your host as always Barbara Turley. I do co-host this show with my co-host, Matt Malouf, who's not with us today. But my guest today, I'm joined by Nigel Bennett, who is the co-founder and owner of Aqua-Guard Spill Response. And also because I want to mention your book, also author of the book, "Take that leap, risking it all for what really matters" and he's also the founder of TruBeach. He's been a member of the entrepreneurs organization for 15 years, has won a whole pile of awards and not even gonna go into how many they are but I met Nigel on a mastermind call that I had the pleasure to be on a few weeks ago, when I heard his story about, how he has managed to not just delegate effectively, but has actually managed to remove himself pretty much completely from the day to day operations of his business. So Nigel, welcome to the show and thank you so much for joining me.   Nigel Bennett: Hi, Barbara. Thank you so much. It's, it's the pleasure. Pleasure to be on your show. I'm in. I'm in Whistler here in British Columbia, and you're in Chamonix, I guess. And Barbara Turley: Yeah, we're both in the ski slopes but there's no snow, we're not allowed to ski Nigel Bennett: No snow and we can't go out, Yeah, I know. Barbara Turley: During this crisis time and you know, like it's been really great connecting with so many entrepreneurs at the moment during this crisis time that we're currently in. But Nigel, to kick off just give us the quick you know, Aqua-Guard Spill Response and what I love about this company and about me finally interviewing you, is that it's different from most of the types of businesses that we've had on the podcast or that I've been talking to in that it's kind of, it's way off the charts from what I would normally be doing in the digital world or whatever. So give us the quick synopsis of what it is.  Aqua-Guard Spill Response   Nigel Bennett: Yeah, we're an emergency response company. If you go way back, right out of high school, I was working for my father's environmental mapping company. And next day after high school I was I was on a plane down to Venezuela. And I live in Vancouver, and I'd never really been out of the country very much. So I was. I was doing overflights over Lake Maracaibo taking photographs of the coastline for environmental mapping.

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How to Hire A-Players Consistently with a Streamlined Recruitment Process Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley and her co-host Matt Malouf discuss The Virtual Hub’s recruitment process, what makes it different from others, and the secret to hiring A-players in your business.  Some key points include:The importance of having a great recruitment processThree key things to remember when recruitingHow to determine A-players from B and C-players   Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.  In this episode:2:39 The Virtual Hub’s Recruitment Process8:40 Recruitment Status in this Crisis11:05 How to avoid bringing in the wrong people14:20 Attitude vs Skill17:48 Three key fundamentals in Recruiting21:59 Wrapping things up  Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.  Matt Malouf: Hi, everyone and welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I'm joined by my co host, Barbara Turley. Hi, Barbara. How are you today?  Barbara Turley: I'm great Matt and you?  Matt Malouf: Yep, going really, really well... really well. Very excited to starting to see what we're coming out of lockdown through this pandemic that we've been going through and life is starting to get back to some form of normality. How is it on the; I'm in Australia today and your in France. How's it, how's things over in your neck of the woods?   Barbara Turley: Well, you know, I'm just excited too Matt because the restaurants are opening this week. So, you know, we're slowly opening up, but we can finally have a glass of wine somewhere else other than our house. So that's got to be a good thing. So but yeah, very slowly opening up, everyone wearing masks where we are. But I guess that's the right thing to do for now. But good to see us all opening up again.  Matt Malouf: And today's show, I wanted to actually spend some time interviewing Barbara, because we've been having a few conversations recently off air. And one of the most interesting things that we've been talking about is the recruitment process. And the hiring of VAs and how Barbara and her team are doing that process at the moment. But the, I guess, not just about the process, around, I guess the numbers behind how many VAs are the like you've got to go through or interview to get to a diamond and I wanted to share that with everybody today because I think it's an area of business that so many business owners struggle with, which is hiring a little and hiring their VA. So I wanted to spend some time just getting Barbara's insights and sharing that with you all today. So Barbara, I guess let's start with regards to hiring VA's and the like. What is the sort of process? Is it just a, do you just follow a traditional recruitment process? Or are you doing something a little bit different to test and find the right people?   The Virtual Hub’s Recruitment Process  Barbara Turley: Yeah, great question, Matt. Because, you know, a lot of people would have different definitions of what is the traditional recruitment process, I suppose in most people's head, that is put out a job ad, get a load of applications, look at a few resumes, narrow them down, interview a few people and pick the one you like the most. Over the years, you know, you start off doing that. But really and I know we did a full show on this, you and I before where I dissected out our recruitment process, and it is a lengthy process that we go through that involves a lot of metrics.  And it is very, we only bring in the relationship piece at the very,

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Vital Business Cashflow Management with Matt Malouf Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley is joined by her co-host Matt Malouf to talk about How to Manage Cash Flow in a Crisis and Lead your Business to Survival and come out Strong.  Some of the key points include:What is cash flow analysis and how it is doneHow to survive in this crisis The difference between a Bookkeeper, an Accountant, and a CFOThe importance of numbers/data in your business  Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.  In this episode:02:06  Cashflow Analysis and Forecasting05:48  How to help business owners with their Cash flow statements08:48  Reacting vs Responding10:57   Importance of Cashflow analysis during this crisis18:39   90daycashflow.com22:03   Accountant vs CFO26:56   Importance of numbers in the business28:06   Wrapping things up Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley. Barbara Turley: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I'm finally rejoined again, I've managed to coax my co-host, Matt Malouf, back to join me on this show. I'm your co-host, Barbara Turley. Matt, thanks for coming back and joining us on the show again, Matt Malouf: No worries and yeah. So sorry, I haven't been, I've been so proud of all the episodes you've been doing and we should've been on there. It's just been one of those crazy times at the moment. Barbara Turley: Absolutely. I know if, we're you know, as we're recording this today. We're sort of right in the middle of this Coronavirus situation that's going on. But it's a very interesting time for the show Matt. And you know, the concept of remote working and virtual teams. And we've actually seen a massive uplift in people interested in actually the podcast. And the stuff we've been talking about for the last three years on this podcast has all of a sudden become even more important than ever before. So what I wanted to talk to, I'm getting Matt back on the show specifically to talk today about cash flow. It's not really a virtual team kind of topic, but it's important in the environment that we're in right now. And Matt, you've been out talking a lot about cash burn, cash flow forecasting, managing your cash and being lean in this environment, but not so lean that you can't come out strong. So I want to dig into this topic with you. First of all, let's start with talking about cash flow analysis and forecasting and watching your cash. Can you start at the beginning and talk to us about what do we actually do to do that? Because lots of us don't even know how to do that. Cashflow Analysis and Forecasting Matt Malouf: Let me start with I think the importance around cash flow is that it's more than just looking at your bank account. And I was, I did a presentation this morning. I think one of the biggest mistakes so many smaller, medium business owners make is their key report that they rely on in their business is an ATM receipt, to tell them what's going on in their business. And the reality is that cash in your business is like oxygen to a human, where you can only last a very short period of time without oxygen and in a business can only last a very short period of time without cash.  And so, in normal practices, in normal and I'm using very common, as in normal times, we should be managing our cash flow. What does that mean, that means we should be predicting based on our leads and conversion, cash coming in. And we need to factor in things like, if our business invoices,

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To Pivot or to Pause with Jenny Blake Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley speaks to Jenny Blake about the Concept of Pivoting. They talk about taking control of your business and recognizing the opportunities that are out there in the midst of the current global crisis.   Some of the key points include:How to pivot your business How far ahead should you plan when pivotingShould you pivot your business or should you hold off  Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.  In this episode:02:23 How to get the right mindset when pivoting05:11  How to listen more effectively08:55 Rising into a pivot from a negative mindset13:05  The Next Steps15:52  The Pivot Runway20:26 The Important thing about pivoting22:30 Final thoughts25:09 Wrapping things up Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley. Barbara Turley: Hey everyone social medialand... Welcome to another episode of our special COVID-19 series of the Virtual Success Show podcast. I'm your host, Barbara Turley and today I am joined by somebody who has become somewhat of a friend. Jenny Blake is author of pivot, the book called “Pivot: The only move that matters is your next one” and she also hosts the podcast, Jenny what's the name of the podcasts? Jenny Blake: Pivot with Jenny Blake Barbara Turley: Yeah so welcome to the show, Jenny and she's here to talk to us today about this whole concept of pivoting, it's very easy to talk about it and everybody out there right now is talking about how in this crisis, that you know of course there's gonna be opportunity there's gonna be opportunity absolutely everywhere because in every crisis there is and those who know how to pivot, and those who can handle the pace of pivoting and pull it off can do quite well. From my own experience over the last what, we're five weeks into this whole thing, 5-6 weeks into this thing and what I have personally found difficult and I wanted to talk to Jenny about this today is, you know when you're coming out of saving your business in the initial stages of the crisis and then you have to try to shift very quickly into a different frame of mind, which is the creative side of yourself.   To try to pivot your business and get the animal spirits flowing again of entrepreneurship and it's hard to wake up every day and to try and get yourself into the right mindset to do it, when you've come out of kind of being you know, beaten over the head every day with your ops and trying to save your clients and save the business. So Jenny, welcome to the show and talk to us about you know, how do we quickly shift this mindset and how much of it is mindset, if you can talk to us about that.  How to get the right mindset when pivoting Jenny Blake: Well there's so much that you said there and I think one thing is giving ourselves permission to be on this roller coaster and have, that's really one we do train for us entrepreneurs, is that exact journey, that exact roller coaster, but right now during a global pandemic, a crisis, the volume to such metaphors, the volume on that station just got turned all the way up to a ten. So we're gonna, I feel that the highs are high and the lows are pretty low and what you described Barbara is so important is, I don't know about you but I also, simultaneous to all the stress I felt a lot of adrenaline tried to navigate every single day these first five weeks and I do a lot of keynote speaking and traveling for work, all of that was canceled, not all of it went straight to virtual.

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The Power of Podcast Marketing with Interview Valet Founder Tom Schwab Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley speaks to Tom Schwab of Interview Valet about the rising relevance of podcasts especially with the current global crisis and the opportunities podcasts present to business owners everywhere.   Some of the key points include:

How to leverage your business with podcast and podcast guestings When to become a podcast host and/or a podcast guest. How to repurpose old podcasts in order to get more traffic and attract more listeners.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.   In this episode: 02:09  Why Podcasts are a brilliant marketing strategy

04:10  How to capitalise on Podcasts

06:39  What makes a great podcast guest

09:17  How to be different with Podcasts

12:16  Content amplification and repurposing

15:11  Growth of the podcast industry

18:46  Wrapping things Up

Intro:  Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work? Are you spending time doing things that you're not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the virtual success show. We bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts, Matt Malouf, and Barbara Turley.

Barbara Turley: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the virtual Success Show where we are streaming live now online for our episodes of the show. I'm Barbara Turley, your host, I co-host this show with my good friend Matt Malouf. And today we're here to talk about the very topical topic right now of podcasts and I'm joined by, good friend and someone I work very closely with, Tom Schwab from Interview Valet, who is the go to guy if you want to be talking about podcasts, you know, getting on podcasts, getting guests on your podcast. Welcome to the show, Tom, thanks for joining us today.

Tom Schwab:  Barbara, I am thrilled to be here. And there's a lot of problems in the world. But there is no better time to be alive. We look at the technology that we have. And still, we can reach customers around the world.

Barbara Turley: Absolutely, yes. So you know, like, guys, you guys watching the Facebook Live, you know that we are in a major crisis right now. There are many crises that happened throughout time. I have to say I was thinking today to myself, I'm old enough now to say that this is not my first rodeo with crises like this. We've had the 2008 financial crisis, we had the tech bubble collapse, and in my career, I've been through a couple of these. So it's every crisis brings its own challenges, but I always feel that they're crises nonetheless and some things that we do in business are the same. Now in this particular situation that we're in right now. I feel podcasts are really gonna be it. So Tom, talk to us about, first of all, why podcasts, in general, are a brilliant marketing strategy for any business right now. But also why now specifically.     Why Podcasts are a brilliant marketing strategy Tom Schwab: Well, the way I look at it is that every business's biggest problem is obscurity, right? There are millions - thousands, millions of customers that you could serve right now, with your current product, your current offering, your current service. The only problem is they don't know you exist. Right now a lot of people talk about breaking through the noise.

Honestly, I think that's like adding to the noise, right? The idea that I'm going to yell and somebody's gonna hear me, I think is laughable, right? So, if I can get in on the conversation that my ideal customers are already listening to, that's golden. If I can get introduced by somebody that is a trusted resource, a trusted friend of theirs, that's golden. And really, that's what podcasts and especially podcast interview marketi...

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Do I Need a VA and a Bookkeeper? Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Matt and Barbara speak to Bean Ninjas founder and CEO, Meryl Johnston about why it's so important for companies to have a strong financial team, what that team needs to look like, and why financial reporting tools are the key to business stability and growth.   Some of the areas covered include:

Meryl’s journey from a consulting firm to global, systemized, online business and the perils behind bringing in virtual contractors before you have your processes in place.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.   In this episode: 1:50 Xero as a Platform

2:38 Aspects of Utilizing Virtual Teams

4:50 Boundaries

5:12 Key Roles Within the Finance Team

8:21 Cost-Effectiveness Medium

10:14 Bookkeeping Role vs VA Role

12:55 Differences with Bookkeepers and VAs

15:11 Stop Doing Book

16:42 Xero Cleanup

19:29 Reporting Practices

20:53 Where to Start

22:10 Building Skillsets

23:22 Next Steps

Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.

Barbara Turley: Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show. Where we dissect everything you need to know about how to outsource, how to get the right team members into your business, and how to do it all in the right order. Because today's show we're going to be dissecting a very common problem, and I'm going to be sharing a big trap that I fell into myself. But of course today I'm joined by my cohost, Matt Malouf. Hi, Matt! How's it going?

Matt Malouf: I'm well, Barbara, and yourself? Xero as a Platform Barbara: I'm great, thank you. And I'm pretty excited that on the back of last week's show, we invited Meryl Johnston, who's the founder and CEO of Bean Ninjas back to the show to dissect this particular problem with me. So Meryl, welcome back to the show.

Meryl Johnston: It's great to be back. Thanks.

Barbara: So guys, I was chatting with Meryl after we interviewed Meryl around the growth of Bean Ninjas and her experience around managing a global virtual team. Because obviously, that's the genesis of this show. But in chatting after the show, I was sharing a story that I... A trap I fell into myself around using Vas, bookkeepers, accountants. And in the very early days, not that long ago, really, I decided in my wisdom that if I had Xero as a platform, which is your, you know the platform that everyone's using I guess globally for bookkeeping and accounting. And a good VA that I could show a few tricks of the trade to, that then I wouldn't need a bookkeeper.

And I went that route, and needless to say it blew up in my face. Let's just put it that way. After a couple of years, and really cost a lot of pain. It wasn't the VA's fault. It was just a whole host of problems. And Matt, I'm sure as a recovering accountant yourself, this is making you chuckle because I'm sure you see this a lot. Aspects of Utilizing Virtual Teams Matt: I do. I do. You know, I think it's interesting. Barbara, you and I have talked about this in many aspects of utilizing virtual teams, but find it, yeah. People's expectations of that whole concept of the super VA that can do everything is still very, very prevalent in today's society, business community.

Barbara: Absolutely. And you know, actually, I am still recovering, honestly, from that mistake myself. I was quite badly burnt. All my own fault. Completely and utterly my own fault. And Meryl, that's kind of what led me to your company in the end, to go, "Oh my God.

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How Bean Ninjas CEO Meryl Johnston Built A Global Virtual Powerhouse Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Matt and Barbara speak to Meryl Johnston, the CEO, and founder of Bean Ninjas. Some of the areas covered include:

Meryl’s journey from a consulting firm to global, systemized, online business and the perils behind bringing in virtual contractors before you have your processes in place.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode: 1:20 Meryl Johnson the founder and CEO of Bean Ninjas

3:38 The power of systems and processes

4:29 Building a business to scale

8:38 Key Tools or Methods to manage your team

10:24 Wrike

12:06 Systems, tools, and Processes as the front driver

13:30 The Strength of the machine

14:01 Team Meetings

17:07 Concept of the Lunch and Learn

18:02 Virtual Christmas Celebration

20:43 Local knowledge vs Overseas Knowledge

24:39 Training Guide Procedures

29:27 Highlights of the show

33:14 External Leverage

35:09 Top 3 Learnings working with Virtual Team

Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.

Barbara Turley: Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show. I'm joined by my co-host Matt Malouf as always. Hey Matt.

Matt Malouf: Hey Barb. How are you?

Barbara: I'm good. And you?

Matt: I'm excellent. Yeah, I'm enjoying a sunny day here in Sydney after what's been a very, very wet sort of week down here.

Barbara: Yes, unusually so for Sydney. But the Sydney sun is back, which is awesome.

Matt: It is, it is.

Barbara: Yeah. So we're back, guys, doing one of our interview series, which we love doing. We love when we find interesting business owners that are building virtual teams and can really add value to our listeners and to ask quite frankly about how they're doing things. So today's guest is someone who's become somewhat of a friend of mine, Meryl Johnston, and she is the founder and CEO of Bean Ninjas, which is a bookkeeping, financial reporting, and education business. She's also a chartered accountant. She's host up her own podcast, the Bean Ninjas podcast, which I definitely can recommend listening to. And she's also a big surfer living on the Gold Coast, the beautiful Gold Coast here in Australia. So welcome to the show Meryl. Meryl Johnson the founder and CEO of Bean Ninjas Meryl Johnston: Hi Barb. Hi Matt. Great to be here.

Barbara: Good. So listen, why don't you just give us the quick rundown, Bean Ninjas. What is it? Why did you start it?

Meryl: Well, Bean Ninjas is a bookkeeping and financial recording business, and before starting Bean Ninjas, I was running a consulting firm, not very cleverly named MCJ Consulting, my initials. And I was doing project accounting work and quite quickly found the business difficult to scale. It was hard from a cash flow perspective, with project work being lumpy, and it was difficult to build a team. And I looked at some other business models out there and the kind of business that I wanted to build, which was recurring revenue, it would have processes so I could scale the business and I wanted it to have global potential. And then I looked at my skill set, which is accounting and thought about how I could marry the two together, my skill set and the kind of business that I wanted. And that's where Bean Ninjas was born.

I founded the business with a co-founder who had a similar vision of creating a global business and a business that we could run from anywhere in the world. So that was where it started.

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The Quick and Effective Way To Assess The Success Or Failure Of My Virtual Assistant Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Matt and Barbara talk about the quickest way to assess your Virtual Assistant whether they're working out for you or not. Some of the areas covered include:

The challenges of assessing an offshore VA, identifying the key areas you need to assess! Reviewing your onboarding procedure to make sure you are setting your VA up for success in their role. Continually reviewing and refining your processes.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode: 1:18 How do you assess your Virtual Assistant?

1:52 Biggest Challenges to Assessing Your VA

3:10  Identifying your Key Areas

6:55 Delivering Feedback in An Effective Way

7:42 Identify KPI ‘s

8:14 Assess Your Onboarding Procedure

10:17 Feedback

12:35 The Stop Doing List

14:46 Role Expectations and Communication

16:04 Monthly Assessments

Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you're not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.

Matt: Hey everyone, and welcome to another show of the Virtual Success Show where I'm joined by my co-host, Barbara Turley. Hey Barb.

Barbara:  Hey Matt. How are you today?

Matt: I'm really well, and yourself?

Barbara: Good, thank you. Excited about our topic that we're going to dissect into today?

Matt: I am, I am. As always, meetings before the show are always interesting conversations and topics just pop up. This one, it was funny. We were halfway through a conversation, Barbara and I, and we went, "This is a show, let's start recording." So we did.

Barbara: So here we are, to dissect what the problem I presented to Matt is… How Do You Assess Your Virtual Assistant? Matt:  And it is. I think one of the questions I get asked regularly is how do I assess or measure the success or failure of my virtual assistant? How do I know whether they're doing well or not doing well? It's a really interesting topic. I think there's many many different ways you can do this. But what we wanted to do today was open a discussion between Barbara and I because we were talking about this beforehand, and then we share some insights into this. I think one of the biggest challenges when trying to assess your virtual assistant is making it really complicated and then therefore hard to measure and be transparent. When you try to measure the success or failure of a role, you've got to make it really easy and transparent for both you and the persons you're assessing to understand how they're doing. There should be no surprises.   Biggest Challenges to Assessing Your VA Matt: The way that I've done this over the years with the virtual teams and even local people that I've had working with me, I create a list of the things that they are responsible for. For instance, they may be responsible for managing my calendar, managing my emails, booking hotels, booking travel. One for Barbara and I is the podcast, so actually taking the recordings and producing the show. You need to create a list of all of the key areas or key responsibilities that your VA has. What you then need to do is you need to get them to score themselves, let's say it's a scoring system out of five, and five is that they are completely competent, confident, and do this task exceptionally well, and one is that they're a novice at it, that they really don't know what they're doing and are struggling with it.   Identifying your Key Areas Matt: You get them to assess themselves in each of those areas as a score out of five.

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How to Get Success Working With A VA Outside of Your Timezone Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Matt and Barbara talk about how to avoid frustration with Virtual Assistants who work in different time zones as you and how to keep everyone accountable. Some of the areas covered include:

Tools to use for tasks and reporting Frustrations most business owners feel when their VA works in another country

Let us know in the comments below what your key takeout has been from this episode or why not join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode: 2:27 Timezones

6:21 Setting parameters and direction to avoid feelings of frustration

9:12 Loom and Asana

9:30 Designing a system that works

10:32 Stand up

15:06 Creating documentation for recurring tasks

18:21 Time, Patience and Attention to Detail

Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you're not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.

Barbara Turley:  Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I'm again joined by my co-host Matt Malouf. Matt, how's the going?

Matt: It is. It is, and I had to think about that because we normally do these recordings in the morning but it's—

Barbara:  Great, thanks. And as always we've come up with a fantastic topic again today that we think the listeners, you guys are gonna really love, common problem. I love how when we're just chatting in the planning of the show, we just come up with all these ideas that just come from our experiences with clients and, Matt you with coaching clients, me seeing people getting VA's, brings up the most interesting stories for us.

Matt: Absolutely, and I'm really excited about today's show.

Barbara: Yeah, so a common one and something that did come up for us recently, and I know a lot of people in the Virtual Assistant, virtual team game out there globally would have this problem, is how do you get success when you're working with a virtual team or a Virtual Assistant that is not in your time zone?

So for example, you're in the US working, your business hours and you have a VA in the Philippines who works their business hours. So therefore, it's in the middle of the night for you, which sounds like the Holy Grail because the idea would be that you wake up in the morning, and all these amazing tasks have been completed overnight.

But often we find that, while that does seem like the optimum solution, it doesn't always work out that way. So, Matt, I'm sure you've seen this with people who have offshore VA's and overseas contractors.

Matt:  Absolutely, and I'm, and I'm like, I've even seen it to the extent of where Australians are working with Filipinos where there's only a couple of hours time difference. Don't get this right. So its-

Barbara:  There's a couple of extra tricks I think to getting this right. The…

Matt: I agree. Timezones Barbara: I think all of the things that we talk about on this podcast all still hold very true. But when you're working different shifts and different time zones from each other, you almost need to like crank up the fuel on all the things that we talk about and you need to be extra vigilant with so many things.

Of course that means, using things we always talk about, project management tools like, Asana or Trello, whatever, using Slack effectively, making sure that you've got really detailed processes and task lists, et cetera. But there's a little bit more to it than that, isn't there Matt, to get this right?

Matt: Absolutely.

Barbara: Yeah, so we had a case of this, the reason this is an interesting one for us.

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3 Crucial Tech Tools to Guarantee Success with VAs Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Matt and Barbara speak about the 3 most crucial tools you must have in your business to guarantee success. Let us know in the comments below what your key takeout has been from this episode or why not join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode: 1:25 - Technology that is crucial to succeed in your business

2:58 - Tool Number 1: Project Management

9:25 - Tool Number 2: Effective Communication

17:49 - Tool Number 3: Data Management

22:40 - Why having processes is also crucial to your business

23:40 - Benefits of these tools

24:26 - Bonus Tech Tool

27:03 - Wrapping Up

Tools Mentioned:

Asana

Basecamp

Trello

Slack

Zoom

Skype

G Suite/Google Drive

Dropbox

Loom

Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work? Are you spending time doing things that you are not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks, so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show. We bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs, and now, here are your hosts, Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.

Matt Malouf:  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another show of the Virtual Success Show where I'm joined by my co-host Barbara Turley. Good afternoon, Barb.

Barbara Turley:  Hey, Matt from sunny Sydney. Is it sunny where you are in Sydney today?

Matt: It is. It is, and I had to think about that because we normally do these recordings in the morning but it's—

Barbara:  I know. It's nice to do it in the afternoon.

Matt:  It is. It certainly is. How's everything going?

Barbara:  Good, great. We're heading into a nice time of the year here, my favorite time of the year in Sydney. The weather gets a bit cooler, which is good. But excited about today's topic. I love how we pow-wow and come up with these problems that we see across business coaching and in what I do in outsourcing and gel them together and come up with these great topics. So what are we gonna talk about today, Matt? Technology that is crucial to succeed in your business Matt: As Barb and I were preparing, we were talking about the technology that's crucial to succeed and win when you're working with your virtual teams. I think there's so much technology at our fingertips these days and so much advice around, you should use this, you need to get that, you need to integrate it with this, it can be very, very confusing for many of us. I know technology is not something that has come naturally to me. It's something that I've had to learn and train myself with. But the key is that there are some crucial pieces of technology that you must adapt and adopt in your company to succeed with virtual assistants.

Barbara:  Definitely. I mean, I echo those thoughts. You know, Matt, I'm someone who is into technology and I love integrating systems and everything, but my love of simplicity is bigger. Even though I love tools, I actually have very few. We recommend strongly that clients stick to a few key things. It was great when we were discussing this today to actually come up with three. There's lots of things we could talk about, but there are three that we would describe as the non-negotiable. If you want to get success with a VA or a virtual team, or, honestly, even if you have a company that just has a lot of people, there are three non-negotiable tech tools and setups that we've isolated to make this work.

Matt:  Absolutely.

Barbara: Let's kick this off, Matt. Tool Number 1: Project Management Matt: Okay. The number one that Barb and I were discussing was you need a project management tool. It may be a tool like Asana, Basecamp, Trello, or the like. Our preference and what we both use in our respective businesses, and I know Barb you highly recommend it with all of your clients, is Asana. What's the experience that you and your team have had arou...

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How To Successfully Recruit The Right VA Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Matt and Barbara talk about the importance of recruiting the right virtual assistant for your business.   During this episode, we talk about the in-depth process you need to have when recruiting from Overseas.   Some of the areas covered include:

Barbara's personal recruiting process Why taking your time during the hiring process pays off in the long run Why you need to define the culture of your business so you can identify the characters that will thrive in your workspace Why it's important to have strong systems in place for your staff

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode: 1.17 - Recruiting the right VA

3.23 - Biggest fears around hiring an offshore VA

4.05 - Barbara's personal recruitment process

5.18 - Steps to successful recruiting

14.58 -Why a trial period is so important

15.43 - Hiring an expert to recruit your staff

18.02 - staff character and work culture

25.27 - Local insights into what’s important when hiring a VA from the Philippines

27.10 - Recapping of the major steps

27.59 - Wrapping up

Intro:  Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work? Are you spending time doing things that you're not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks, so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show. We bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs, and now, here are your hosts, Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.

Barbara Turley:  Hey, everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I'm joined by my co-host Matt Malouf. Hey, Matt, how's it going?

Matt Malouf:  Excellent, Barb. And yourself?

Barbara: I'm good. Now, where in the world are you today? Because I know you're traveling a bit at the moment.

Matt:  I am. I'm in the beautiful sunshine coast of Queensland ...

Barbara: And is the ...

Matt: ... up in Noosa.

Barbara: The weather?

Matt: It is, it is. I went for a beautiful walk this morning along the river there and it's balmy and humid as Queensland is this time of year. Recruitment Barbara:  Yeah, Noosa is an amazing spot. Well, I'm based in my hometown of Sydney at the moment so it's kind of wet and windy here today. Today's show look, I'm really excited about today show because it's a topic that's close to my heart and it is we're gonna tackle the difficulty in getting offshoring right and specifically the difficulty about recruiting because that is literally the first step to get right. I know I hear it all the time with clients coming to our business who sort of say, look I tried, I failed, you know, how are you different? That's kinda what they ... They're burnt out from the experience of trying this and I know, Matt, you've had some stories like this as well.

Matt:  Even just yesterday. A lot of the business coaching that I do we're obviously trying to help people grow their business but also increase their margins and their profits and so using Virtual assistants is one great way of doing that. Getting great people to do things. Yesterday I'm in a meeting and as soon as I broached the subject the callers like, "Stop." He actually put his hand up, stop. I've done it, it doesn't work for me. I looked at him and I was like, this guys been in business for a long time. I'm like, "What do you mean it doesn't? I've tried it, I've tried it, I've heard it all, I've read the books, it doesn't work for me."

Barbara: Absolutely, yeah.

Matt: I think what we want to really get out of this episode today is to dispel this myth because Barb and I have a belief that it can work for everyone. It's simple but not easy.

Barbara: Yes, and I guess what I really want to show today, is you know, I'm running ... We've got almost 120 employees now in the Philippines and I can t...

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I Don't Know What My VA is Doing Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara and Matt talk to listeners about a common anxiety felt by many business owners who work with VAs - “I don’t know what my Virtual Assistant is doing” – and the strategies they can put in place to ensure they are always across tasks that their VA is working on.   During this episode, we take a look at the importance of communication and the setting of clear expectations within your team, to ensure that business owners and their VAs always know what each other is up to.   Some of the areas covered include:

The importance of managing your team and flow of work Set clear expectations around what the deliverables are of each task How important project management tools are in keeping communication open and transparent Building solid systems within your business and ensuring you have the right systems and processes in place for your team

Let us know in the comments below what your key takeout has been from this episode or why not join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode: 01:36 - “What is my VA working on?”

02:17 - How do I manage my VA?

02:45 - Set clear expectations

03:57 - Use project management tools

05:50 - Keep communication open

06:58 - Set clear deliverables

08:09 - Build a solid system

10:58 - Have I got the right systems and processes in place?

15:15 - Working within your ‘genius’

17:08 - Refining your systems and processes

20:58 - Wrapping things up

Barbara Turley:  Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I'm joined by my fabulous co-host, Matt Malouf. Matt, how is it going?

Matt Malouf:  Excellent, Barb. How are you today?

Barbara:  I'm good. Thank you. Loving doing this show as always. I'm always amazed of how many times we think we have no more topics to cover. Then, we go, "What about this question?" So many things to talk about.

Matt: Absolutely, absolutely. We would come up with a list of I think half a dozen in the prep for this show.

Barbara:  Exactly. I know. So, guys, what are the things we're going to talk about today on today's show? It's a very simple topic, but it's one I actually see quite a bit not just with clients, but people online talking about VAs, and the question that I get sometimes is... It's not really a question. More of an observation or a fear. "I don't know what my VA is working on," which is a tricky one. So, people feel a little bit almost disempowered because they feel like, "Well, I think my VA is working, but I don't actually know what they're doing." Now, Matt, is it just me, or do you hear anything similar in your coaching practice, right, your retreats, or any of your masterminds? “What is my VA working on?” Matt:  Yeah. It's very common. I hear, "I'm not clear or sure what they're doing," or it's, "How will I know if they're working all the time at their desk?" So, it's very, very common. Very common.

Barbara:  Yes. Yes, and I think what happens is people start to feel, like I said, a bit disempowered, and then the fear comes in, and I even talked to our VAs about this actually. I say it's very important that you don't let yourself fall into this trap because the client in the back of their head won't be able to help themselves, but wonder, "What are they doing?" So, you got to try to be visible, and you got to try to be demonstrating what you're actually working on.

How do I manage my VA? But at the same time, it does... I feel it comes back to the client and the way the client is managing their team and managing the flow of work that's going on in a business, which really is the responsibility of the owner or the person managing... You might have an operations person that's managing this. It's really their responsibility to know this kind of thing. So, Matt, what would you... As a coach, what's your take on this? What's your advice? Set clear expectations

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Top 10 Tasks A VA Can Do For Any Business Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara and Matt share with listeners the virtual assistant tasks that they feel a VA can do to help you in your business. During this episode, we take a look at how every minute you can save in your business and put into a direct income generating task, or something else important in your life, is a minute that is valuable to you.                                                                                         Some of the areas covered include:  

Calendar management – whilst this may seem like a simple task that you can do yourself, if you had your VA managing this for you, you gain valuable ‘minutes’ to spend on your business. Newsletter creation – this can be a timely exercise, so passing this task over allows you to focus on other important tasks, whilst making sure you have the ‘final sign-off’ on the newsletter Managing social media channels – this task can be quite tedious as different channels have different specs for text limits and image sizes.

Let us know in the comments below what your key takeout has been from this episode or why not join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode: 02:37 - Task #1 – Research

04:10 - Task #2 – Calendar Management

05:54 - Task #3 – Formatting documents

08:27 - Task #4 – File management

09:16 - Task #5 – Create and send newsletters

11:37 - Task #6 - Blog posting

12:57 - Task #7 – Audio transcription

14:35 - Task #8 – Manage social media channels

16:56 - Task #9 - Reporting

21:09 - Task #10 - Invoicing

24:21 - Task #11 – Travel arrangements

27:15 - Task #12 – Appointment confirmations

29:04 - Wrapping things up

Matt Malouf:  Hey everyone, welcome to another show of the Virtual Success Show where I'm joined by my co-host Barbara Turley. Good morning Barb.

Barbara Turley:  Hey Matt, how are you today?

Matt: I'm excellent. Yourself?

Barbara:  I'm pretty good. I'm happy that my voice isn't sounding as husky as it was earlier because I have a bit of a cough at the moment, but yeah, good radio voice, good radio voice for today.

Matt: Very good, very good. Well, I'm really excited about this show today for no other reason than its simplicity. And as Barb and I were preparing for today's show, we sort of were talking about various different topics and I sort of suggested why don't we just share…what are the top 10, or 10 easiest tasks that you could have a virtual assistant do for you. One of the regular questions I get asked as a business coach is, "Okay, you've given me this concept of a virtual assistant, but what would I have them do?" And so, what we wanted to do today was put a very simple show together just highlighting what Barb and I believe is the 10 easiest tasks you could have a virtual assistant do. And this can apply to any business.

Barbara:  Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I hear that a lot too, Matt. And I think sometimes it's sort of... I get a bit thrown off by that question because I'm so deep into the virtual assistant thing that I'm almost too far into it to kind of be able to get back to that simplicity again. So, when we were running through the list, it was actually you coming up with more of the top 10 simplest tasks than it was me. So, I'm even excited because I can now talk to other people about this when they ask me that question.

Matt:  Yeah. I know, I know. And it's going to sound sometimes over simplistic when we go through this today. But honestly, these top 10 that we're going to give you, if you have somebody else do that, the time you'll save and be able to invest into other areas of your business, or in your life, for that matter, is just going to be phenomenal for you. So, let's rip into this. So, Barb, I think we had number one as getting a virtual assistant to do research for us. Task #1 – Research Barbara:  Yeah, that's such a great one because it can span so many different are...

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How ManageFlitter's CEO & Founder Kevin Garber Gets Success with his Global Virtual Team Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Kevin Garber, CEO & Founder of ManageFlitter shares some great insights into his own personal journey with virtual teams, including the benefits of tapping into global talent pools vs local talent pools.   After developing ManageFlitter to satisfy a need of his own, Kevin has grown a highly successful company that has been built on the notion of ‘The quality of your team is everything!’.   Some of the areas covered include:

The quality of your team determines so much about the success of your company Why communication is so important, both written and face-to-face, within a virtual team Don’t make assumptions when it comes to ‘thinking’ you know what someone else wants or needs Souring the right people for your team and ensuring they are a good fit, both for the job and the culture of your team

Let us know in the comments below what your key takeout has been from this episode or why not join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

Resources mentioned in this show: www.manageflitter.com In this episode: 01:50 - What is ManageFlitter?

05:48 - Building the team

07:36 - The quality of your team is everything

09:20 - How to keep your team connected

12:19 - Keeping the communication complete

13:32 – Be clear in your communications

15:08 - Eradicate assumptions

16:54 - Bringing new team members onboard

19:00 - Guidelines around communication

21:32 - Sourcing the right people

23:02 - Incentivizing your team

25:46 - Offering your team flexibility

27:20 - Wrapping things up

Barbara:  Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I'm joined by my fantastic co-host, Matt. Hey, Matt. How's it going?

Matt:  Good, Barb, and yourself?

Barbara:  I'm well. I'm well. I'm really, really looking forward to today's show, because I love when we have a guest on, so as all the listeners know, we tend to try and find guests that are running large virtual teams so that we can actually get that sort of inside scoop from them on how we actually can get more success with this and what the benefits of it actually are. Today's guest, I'm really happy to welcome Kevin Garber, who is the CEO and co-founder of a fantastic tool called ManageFlitter, which I am currently trialling at the moment. We'll get into what that is in just a second, and he's also the host of the It's a Monkey Podcast, which talks all things tech, entrepreneurship, scalable business. Kevin, welcome to the show.

Kevin:  Thank you so much for inviting me on. I'm excited to be here.

Barbara:  Yeah, and I know, we've talked before you've got some great insights to share, I guess, around the journey with virtual teams and the benefits, I guess, of global talent pools versus more local talent pools and all that sort of thing. Before we kick off into that, give us the ManageFlitter story. What is ManageFlitter, and why should we care? What is ManageFlitter? Kevin:  ManageFlitter is a set of search filtering and sort tools that sits on top of your Twitter account, helps you work smarter and faster with Twitter. We have paid customers from over 100 countries, although the bulk, at the moment, in the United States, and the bulk of our users are people that use social a lot. They use Twitter a lot. They use our product to clean up their account. They use our product to grow their account with the right followers, to search for people tweeting about certain topics and to easily follow them in a compliant way that keeps Twitter happy and keeps your account in good shape. It's a nice set of tools for people that use Twitter a lot. We've been around since 2010. The tool was actually built internally first for myself, so I discovered Twitter on a trip to San Francisco. I can't remember, it was 2008 or 2009 and I started using Twitter quite a lot,

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How Testimonial Tree is Scaling Their Business With a Virtual Team Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest and founder of Testimonial Tree, Jason Dolle, shares with us how he is scaling his business with the help of a virtual team. Jason, who has an engineering background, started the Testimonial Tree to convert customer feedback and experiences into powerful tools that can help business owners grow their business, and in the process has grown a successful business of his own.                                                                                         Some of the areas covered include:  

More about Testimonial Tree How Jason has grown his company by bringing the right people onboard at the right time The ways in which Jason communicates with his virtual team to keep everyone on a path for success The importance of planning now, for the future

Let us know in the comments below what your key take out has been from this episode or why not join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. Resources mentioned in this show: www.testimonialtree.com In this episode: 01:49 - What is Testimonial Tree?

03:26 - The power of stories

04:34 - How Testimonial Tree started out

06:55 - Funding helped grow the business

09:00 – Finding the right people…

11:49 - How do you run the company today?

13:12 - What is your communications plan?

18:54 - Have you had offshore staff?

20:25 - Tips for building a SaaS company

22:29 - Plan now for the future

25:35 - How long does it take to integrate a new recruit?

27:48 - Invest in your people

30:43 - How do I use VAs?

31:48 - Learn more about Testimonial Tree

36:04 - Wrapping things up

Barbara: Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I'm flying solo today without my co-host Matt, but I've got an absolutely fantastic guest that I'm interviewing. Jason Dolle, who's the founder of Testimonial Tree. The beauty about this particular interview today is that Jason's background, he was actually an engineer, who started selling luxury real estate on the side. One of his clients flew in on a private jet and bought a $4.4 million home, and then flew out the same day. And Jason thought to himself, "How on earth do I get this guy to give me a testimonial?" Because testimonials are so strong. To cut a long story short, basically, Testimonial Tree was born out of that. From an engineer, it's now doing million dollar annual recurring revenue and has 95,000 customers with a 95% retention rate. And Jason's running a team of 10 people and is here to talk to us today about the challenges of growing a SaaS company and growing a team at the same time. Welcome to the show, Jason.

Jason Dolle:  Yeah, thank you for having me.

Barbara:  Cool. So, listen, Jason, give us a little bit of background first on Testimonial Tree. What is it? It's obviously a SaaS product out there in the market for people to get testimonials. But give us a kind of a feel of what it is. What is Testimonial Tree? Jason: Yeah, it's sort of evolved over the years. It started about 2013. I built it for myself just to mainly get my, like you said that one customer for example, to get him to share a testimonial on social media, because at least in US here, your licenced to sell real estate in a certain state, and you can't really do a lot of stuff outside the places you're licenced. So I was trying to get him to share his experience in a place where I normally couldn't get. So social media was the easiest way to do it. And that's how it started. And it's evolved since then, but what happened after that experience you just mentioned, some real estate broker here got wind of it, and said, "Hey, we can use this thing if you pay us." And it's grown exponentially since.

Barbara:  Oh, so you had a business. Actually, it's a bit like Virtual Hope.

Jason:  Yeah.

Barbara:  I call it my accidental business. I didn't mean to launch it.

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The Stepping Stone to Hiring an Operations Director with Sarah Noked, OBM — Part 3 Want the transcript? Download it here. During this episode, we take a closer look at the role of an Online Business Manager and whether this a seat you want to be filling in your own business.                                                                                         Some of the areas covered include:  

Understanding the role of an Online Business Manager (OBM) The key differences between what a VA does and what an OBM does When you should consider bringing in an OBM to help you grow your online business Knowing when to replace an OBM with an Operations Manager

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.   This episode is the last part of a 3-episode series. You can listen to the previous parts here:

Part 1: Do I need a VA, Project Manager or Operations Manager…or all three? Part 2: Right People, Right Seats, Right Time

In this episode: 02:12 - What is an Online Business Manager?

04:58 - The difference between VAs and OBMs

06:56 – When you should consider bringing in an OBM?

09:25 - OBM versus having someone physically working next to me

11:26 - Online presence vs. offline presence

13:28 - Knowing when to replace and OBM with an Operations Manager

15:05 - Choosing the right team member for the right stage of business

19:19 - Having team members play to their genius

20:50 – Sarah’s Top 3 Tips

24:00 - Wrapping things up

Barbara: Hey, everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I'm joined by my co-host, Matt Malouf. Hey, Matt, how's it going?

Matt: I'm excellent, Barb, and yourself?

Barbara: I'm good, thanks. I'm good, thanks. I'm trialling out a new space today in Sydney. I'm at the beautiful WeWork Co-Working Space in Sydney recording this podcast.

Matt: Very cool. Very cool.

Barbara: For today's show, guys, we're going to do the third in a three-part series that Matt and I are quite excited about. The three-part series where we talk about VA versus project manager versus operations directions, or more of an operations manager. The first show we did, it's worthwhile listing to that, where we dissected each of those roles and where they fit in your business. In the second part of this three part series we looked at getting the right people in the right seats on the right bus. Sometimes you got the right people, but they might be in the wrong seats and that can destabilise things. Often you see people just getting rid of staff rather than just figuring out whether that is the issue. In this third part we really want to get into this operations project manager piece.

Barbara: I've brought on a very good friend of mine and someone who helps me out a lot in my business too, Sarah Noked, who is a certified online business manager and trainer. She's one of only three people in the whole world who is actually able to train people to be online business managers. She runs an amazing agency of OBMs from Tel Aviv and she's joining us today, very early in the morning, from Tel Aviv. Hey, Sarah. How's it going?

Sarah: Hey, I'm fabulous. Thanks for having me on. What is an Online Business Manager? Barbara: You're very welcome. Look, Sarah, to kick things off, can we just talk about ... You run OBMs which are online business managers. Let's just explain to the listeners, break it down, what is an online business manager? What's the sort of definition there?

Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, a great question that I get asked quite often. Basically, an online business manager deals with the management piece of an online business. Project management, people management, operations management, and resources management. You'll often find an OBM in the place working alongside the business owner where the business owner comes to the table with the "what". You know,

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Right People, Right Seats, Right Time — Part 2

Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara and Matt take a closer look at some of the human resources roadblocks that business owners may come up against when taking on the task of growing their business. During this episode, we take a look at the importance of not only finding the right people for roles within your business but making sure they are the right fit for the role and bringing them onboard at the right time. Some of the areas covered include:  

Understanding which seats you are going to need and when you are going to need them The importance of mapping out your organisational chart and understanding not only where your business is now, but more importantly, where you want to take your business in the future – and planning for this Deciding whether you have the time and resources to train up an existing employee or bring on board someone who already has the skills you’re looking for

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.   This episode is the second part of a 3-episode series. You can listen to the other parts here:

Part 1: Do I need a VA, Project Manager or Operations Manager…or all three? Part 3: The Stepping Stone to Hiring an Operations Director with Sarah Noked, OBM

In this episode: 01:02 – Right people, right seats, right time

02:14 – Right people

04:24 – Skilled people vs training people

05:58 – Right seats

07:15 – Which seats you need to fill and when

13:00 – Right time 16:13 – It’s easy to do and easy NOT to do

20:18 – Wrapping things up

Matt:  Hey everyone. Welcome back to another show of the Virtual Success Show. I’m joined today by my co-host, Barbara Turley. Hey, Barb.

Barbara:  Hey, Matt! How’s it going? Good to do another show with you.

Matt:  It certainly is, yeah. It’s such a beautiful winter’s day here in Sydney today.

Barbara:  It is.

Matt:  It’s clear blue skies and can you believe, 23 degrees in the middle of July, or beginning of July.

Barbara:  I have to admit, I love… The Australian blue skies are just to die for. You get blue skies all the time, pretty much all the time here. It’s very rare that it’s not blue skies. I just love that. Right people, right seats, right time Matt:  Certainly is. And it’s a really exciting day to be doing this topic as well, titled ‘Right People, Right Seats, Right Time,’ and this is a follow-on show from the last show we did where we talked about VAs or project managers or ops manager, which should you choose? And it was really interesting conversation that Barbara and I were having as we were preparing for these shows, and this topic sort of just popped out for us, because what we’ve been finding is so many of our respective clients have the mindset that they need to put people in their businesses to help them grow, but they’re not taking enough time to number one, choose the right people for what they need done.

Secondly, putting them into the right roles or seats in the business, but also then it’s about the timing of all this, and that’s what we wanted to talk to you today. So, let me get started. Barb, right people. What’s your experience as far as right people in your business and some of the challenges you’ve had over the time? Right people Barbara:  Yeah. So, look, a lot of the things that I share on this podcast I learned myself through the hard way and not having anyone really to sort of advise me on it, but I guess a lot of these things you do learn by experience. So, in terms of the right people, I think… Look, with VAs, I felt it was a bit easier for me, because I was very clear on that boundary of what a VA does and what a VA doesn’t do.

Barbara: When I tried to… I had some VAs though that were very, very good and I realised I needed, sort of, project management help and I thought, “Well, they can do it. I mean, they’re really good.

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Do I need a VA, Project Manager or Operations Manager…or all three? — Part 1 Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara and Matt take a closer look at what really defines the role of a Virtual Assistant, Project Manager and Operations Manager and when you may need all three roles in your business. During this episode, we explore all three roles and the importance of business owners taking the time to delineate each role to ensure the lines are not blurred in order to avoid any problems arising. Some of the areas covered include:Understanding the skill sets required for each role and ensuring you have the best person for the jobDetermining whether your VA can confidently carry out the tasks you require or if you need to bring in a Project Manager and/or Operations Manager to fill the skill gapPlanning for the future and ensuring you bring the right people onboard at the right time, and not when it’s too lateThe importance of seeing each member of your team as investment, rather than an expense Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. This episode is the first part of a 3-episode series. You can listen to the next parts:Part 2: Right People, Right Seats, Right TimePart 3: The Stepping Stone to Hiring an Operations Director with Sarah Noked, OBM In this episode:00:45 – Do I need a Virtual Assistant, Project Manager or Operations Manager?02:49 – What is a Virtual Assistant (VA)?04:38 – Common VA tasks04:56 – VAs managing social media content05:38 – VAs and content management06:18 – General VA tasks08:07 – The role of a Project Manager10:33 – When should I bring in a Project Manager?12:34 – Confusing the role of a Project Manager with a VA13:46 – The role of an Operations Manager17:39 – Part-time or full-time roles?19:25 – Investment vs expense20:20 – In our next couple of shows…21:05 – In summary…22:45 – Wrapping things up Resources mentioned in this show:The Stop Doing List Barbara: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined today by my co-host, Matt Malouf. How’s it going, Matt? Matt: Very good, Barb. How are you going? Barbara: I’m great. Excited to be getting back into these shows and producing some more epic content for our listeners. Matt: 100%. 100%. Do I need a Virtual Assistant, Project Manager or Operations Manager? Barbara: So guys, look, today, Matt and I wanted to delve into a topic that we’ve been… we’ve sort of been hashing out this topic for a long time, because we think there’s a lot of value in defining parts of roles that you need in your business. Today, what we’re going to be talking about is, do you need a Virtual Assistant, a Project Manager or an Operations Manager, and when is it time to have all three? It’s really important that we define each of these roles, because what we’re finding is sometimes, clients, there’s blurred lines between each of these roles, which is okay initially, but it can lead to problems when we’re not clear about what the roles are and how to progress to the next one. So Matt, I’m sure you see this in your coaching businesses all the time as well. Matt: I do. I’m really excited about this topic, Barb, because so many of the clients I work with need help and like the idea of a Virtual Assistant but they get very confused very quickly, I think, with being able to clearly delineate roles, so I think this is going to be really, really helpful for our listeners today. Barbara: Yeah, and we often talk about expectations management. I know we did a full show on this. What I find is where people sometimes get disappointed is when they get a Virtual Assistant, but they don’t realise that possibly what they were looking for or what they need might be more of a Project Manager or, dare I say, an Operations Manager, which is a whole other thing. And when you try and make a Virtual Assistant do certain things that real...

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When Should You Fire Your Virtual AssistantWant the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Matt and Barbara talk to listeners about the often-avoided topic of when to fire your Virtual Assistant and help business owners understand the situations when it may be necessary. This episode focuses on the some of the tough situations business owners may find themselves in with their VAs and why letting them go can be the best outcome not only for them, but their business as a whole. Some of the areas covered include: Avoiding the Churn & Burn – hiring and firing VAs over and over againThe importance of having sound systems, processes and tasks listsAssume nothing, clearly communicate everythingThe need for meeting rhythms and clear accountability criteriaSetting clear parameters around what your ‘non- negotiables’ are Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode:01:16 – When should I fire my VA?02:26 – The Churn & Burn03:08 – Flawed task lists03:40 – Effective communication05:53 – Setting your VA up to win07:09 – Holding your VA accountable08:04 – Meeting rhythms09:41 – Making the decision to fire a VA10:40 – Getting clear on your standards13:06 – What are your ‘non-negotiables’?16:53 – Wrapping things up  Resources mentioned in this show:Asana  Matt:  Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined by my co-host, Barbara Turley. Good afternoon Barb. Barbara:  Hey Matt, how are you? Matt:  I’m excellent. How are you? Barbara:  Good thanks, good thanks. Matt:  Good. I’m really really excited about today’s show, and the reason I’m excited about it is because I think it’s one of those topic areas where a lot of people avoid the conversation, and the conversation we want to be having with you all today is understanding when to fire your VA. When is it time to let them go? And I’m excited about this only because it’s one of those areas that often is not discussed until it’s too late. When should I fire my VA? Barbara:  Absolutely yep, and I see that happen a lot within our business, you know, for clients it’s a difficult area … And also there’s sort of two things I want to touch on with this topic. There’s when to fire your VA. Sometimes people fire them too early as in you sort of get into this churn and burn cycle of they’re not good enough, get a new one, they’re not good enough, get a new one. And then other people we find, try really hard and probably allow things to go on way too long until the point in which they’re getting railroaded by someone. So, sometimes, I mean obviously by the nature of my business, I’m very pro-VAs on these podcasts, but I’m also very aware that sometimes you have done all the right things, you’ve followed all the things that we talk about, and you actually just have a person who’s not either good enough for the role, or who is actually doing the wrong thing by you as an employer. And that’s a tricky thing to face. Matt:  Which one are we going to start with Barb? Let’s start with the churn and burn. The Churn and Burn Barbara:  Yeah, because this is a common problem. So, when … Often we see people hiring someone and they just decide very quickly after two weeks, oh they’re not good enough, it’s just not going to work out? And really I think there are boxes to tick before you make the decision to fire someone. There’s actually a lot of boxes to tick. Sometimes … I mean there’s so many shows we’ve done on this, sometimes it’s people who you’re … You’ve no processes in your business or you’ve no systems and you’ve tried to kind of just offload a task list on someone and they don’t even know how to find your files or navigate your business. So that’s the kind of … The most basics of major problem. Flawed task lists Other times we do see people, and you’ll see this as well Matt, people who have got processes, or task lists, but they’re too vague.

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How Often Should I Talk To My VA? Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara and Matt cover a question that they are both asked all too often…”How often should I talk to my Virtual Assistant?” And if you yourself are asking this very question, then the answer is ‘start communicating more’. This episode is full of insights into not only how often you should communicate with your VA, but also the ways in which you can communicate effectively.   Some of the areas covered include: 

Common barriers to communication, including geographical location and time zones The importance of establishing communication protocols and meeting rhythms Constantly evaluating your communication style and frequency to ensure it is working for you and your VA/ team There is no such thing as ‘over communicating’

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode: 01:24 – How often should I talk to my VA?

01:52 – Barriers to communication

04:03 – Establishing communication protocols

05:43 – Setting a meeting rhythm

09:22 – Matt’s ‘Bat Signal’

12:35 – Re-evaluate your communication style and frequency on an ongoing basis

15:23 – There is no such thing as ‘over communicating’

17:28 – Wrapping things up Resources mentioned in this show: Asana

Barbara: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I am joined by my co-host Matt Malouf. Hey Matt, how are you?

Matt: Hi, I am well Barb, and yourself?

Barbara: I’m good, thank you. Good, thank you. Enjoying all these shows always and learning all the time from everything we talk about on the shows.

Matt: Absolutely, absolutely. And I must say also I’m also I’m loving the warmer weather we’re having here in Sydney at the moment.

Barbara: Yeah, that helps. Winter has finished.

Matt: It has.

Barbara: We are now into summer. For those in the northern hemisphere you’re heading into your winter now, we don’t envy you. So look guys, today’s show we’ve been getting a lot of questions actually, which is great, from a couple listeners and some of our clients that actually listen to the show about stuff that they’d really like us to address on the show. So, today one of the biggest questions that I get asked and Matt gets asked a lot is how often should I talk to my VA? How often should I talk to my VA? Now, it sounds like a simple question but like I said, we get this one a lot and people actually are quite confused about it and even when they figure out how often should I talk to my VA, how should I do it, and how should I make it effective?

So, Matt, I know with your coaching and in your Stop Doing book and in all the stuff that you teach you’ve got this concept of a meeting rhythm, which I thought would be really good for us to delve into today to address this question. Barriers to communication Matt: Absolutely, and just as a preface before we get into meeting rhythm. I think one of the most important things with communicating with your virtual teams, your virtual assistant, etc., is to try and act as if it’s no different than if they were sitting next to you in the office. Now, you want to be mindful of that because it’s not that you want to be picking up Skype and the like every five seconds to ask a question. But I think too often we have this separation in this, they’re over there and I’m over here, maybe I’ll just message them rather than talking to them etc. We create these barriers of communication, and I think it’s really really important to have rules around communication. And for me, this is whether you’re in an office working with people or in a remote kind of environment. It’s knowing when to communicate and in what form to communicate, I think, is critically important.

Barbara: You know what struck me as you were saying that, I don’t know but people who have…and you would know the answer to this because it’s probably more...

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The Trials And Tribulations Anfernee Chansamooth Has Faced Whilst Building a Virtual Team of Specialists Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest Anfernee Chansamooth, Chief Marketing Officer at Simple Creative Marketing, takes listeners through the challenges he faced when building a virtual team of specialists to support his rapidly growing business.   Anfernee, whose expertise lies in writing online content, takes us through his journey of assembling a team of specialists and how it’s important to not only find the right people, but also have well thought out systems and processes in place to ensure everyone is set up for success.   Some of the areas covered include:

Before you do anything else, work out what the core service is that you are delivering and then start to decode that first Building a virtual team isn’t easy, but it’s definitely worth it The importance of systems and processes as they provide the foundation to which you can then build a team around The need for good communication tools in order to systemise the processes used for communicating with your virtual team and/or clients

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.   Resources mentioned in this show: Simple Creative Marketing

Trello

Podio

Google Drive

Google Docs

Upwork

In this episode:

02:15 – About Anfernee Chansamooth

05:13 – Getting started

06:32 – The challenges of building a virtual team

09:25 – Making sure you have the right people in your team

12:30 – A global team

14:16 – Tools for communication

15:33 – Team collaboration

18:09 – Shifting your mindset

18:35 – Constantly refine your processes

21:40 – Building a Virtual Team isn’t easy…but it’s worth it

22:50 – Advice from Anfernee…

26:18 – Key takeaways…

29:11 – Wrapping things up

Barbara: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined by my co-host, Matt Malouf. Hey Matt how is it going?

Matt: Excellent Barb, how are you going?

Barbara: I’m good, I’m good. We’ve been punching out these shows recently. We’ve got a whole bank of amazing content up on the site virtualsuccessshow.com these days. So, I’m excited to keep going with this.

Matt: Absolutely, very exciting for the community.

Barbara: Yeah. So today’s topic is quite a good one because I know that we’re going to be interviewing a very good friend of mine who runs a business, who delivers content for people looking to do content marketingonline or any business looking to build content. And we all know that actually it’s quite a big job to get content up. Writing blogs and doing this sort of thing. And a lot of people really don’t enjoy it. But it’s a really important part of your marketing strategy.

So today we’re going to be talking to Anfernee Chansamooth who is the Chief Marketing Officer at Simple Creative Marketing. He also has a podcast called Authentic Influence, which is a fantastic podcast, that I myself was on the other day. So, check that one out also. So, Anfernee, welcome to the show.

Anfernee: Thanks for having me Barb and Matt.

Matt: Welcome

Barbara: So Anf, just to kick off, just give us the quick background of how you ended up… I love the offer that you have around people can sign up for a monthly offer basically to have your team, which is all a virtual team of writers, create their content strategy and deliver the blog strategy for them. What’s the back story to how you actually ended up delivering that offer? About Anfernee Chansamooth Anfernee: Well, we go back about four years, I was the Marketing Manager at one of Australia’s largest co-working communities. And so I was actually writing a lot of the content for the company at the time. And then what we realised was we had a distributed team of about 12 people across Australia. And we struggled, even with a team of that size,

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Is a Virtual Assistant Really What You Need? Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara and Matt take listeners through the necessary steps for business owners to take to determine whether they really need a Virtual Assistant or the help of a specialist. This episode takes a look at some of the key questions business owners need to ask themselves in order to determine who they need help from and how they can go about getting the right person for the job.   Some of the areas covered include:

Determining whether it’s a VA that you need, or a specialist Understanding what your business needs are in order to make the right staffing decisions Slowing down and taking the time to map out your business needs will actually allow you to speed up your business

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. Resources mentioned in this show: The Stop Doing List In this episode: 02:00 – Do I need a VA or a specialist?

06:25 – Understanding what your needs are

08:44 – Slowing down in order to speed up

12:08 – Wrapping things up

Barbara:  Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I am joined by my co-host, Matt Malouf. Matt, how are you?

Matt:  Barbara, I’m excellent.

Barbara:  Good, how’s all your brood?

Matt:  They’re well, they’re all good. They’re on school holidays at the moment, so they’re back in school next weekend I’m sure my wife will be very, very happy about that.

Barbara:  Yeah, all the mums are like, “When is school coming back?” I’m not into that phase yet, I’ve just got my almost one-year-old, well she’s nearly 11 months, so I’m a bit off the school holiday thing yet.

Matt:  Nah, it’s all good.

Barbara:  Yeah, so today’s topic guys, is again, a sort of a scenario that Matt sees and I see. I probably see a bit more than Matt, actually, in my line of business at Virtual Angel Hub, where we had a particular case and we’ve seen this a few times, where a client will come in, all revved up, excited about getting a VA, get a VA and then it just doesn’t work, right? And then we get in and try to see what the problem is, get another VA in there, still doesn’t work and in one particular case I said to the team, “Can you ask the client to send us a very detailed brief of exactly what it is that they’re really looking for?” Just so we can get a better sense. We just had this feeling that we’re missing something. So the client very kindly sent a very detailed briefing, which was fantastic for us to see, because the whole team sort of collectively, virtually online went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” Do I need a VA or a specialist?  

Because what was laid out would actually…really what this client actually needed was kind of a marketing agency and they were trying to get a part-time VA to do things that really are way outside the scope of what a VA is capable of doing. So I thought this would be a great topic to discuss. When is a VA really not necessarily not the right choice, but maybe not the first choice you should make or you need something more developed alongside the VA. Otherwise, you are actually going to waste time and money. So Matt I was interested to hear your thoughts on this. Would you see this happen a lot? I mean you’re on the coaching side-

Matt:  Yeah—

Barbara:  So presumably, we’d actually recommended that this client go and get a strategist or a marketing person to sort of lay out what they need first.

Matt:  And I do see this regularly. I think when I wrote the stop during this book and put the tool together, I actually put one of the questions to ask, as you go through the tool is, I’m just going to read it, so I get it exactly right – Are special skills required for the task? And so, as you’re unpacking all of the things that you want to stop doing and categorising them into your excellence,

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My Amazing Virtual Assistant Just Resigned …What Do I Do Now? Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Matt and Barbara discuss the reasons why business owners should never become dependent on any one person in any specific role and the common traps many fall into in this area. This episode focuses on some of the key areas that business owners need to stay on top of to ensure there is minimal impact to their business when that superstar VA leaves.   Some of the areas covered include: 

The need for up-to-date and current systematisation and documentation Understanding that you need to slow down, in order to speed up your business It is the responsibility of the business owner to build and create the systems to ensure business success

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. Resources mentioned in this show: The E-Myth by Michael Gerber

In this episode:

00:54 – My VA just resigned…

02:05 – Creating a turn key business

02:56 – You must document tasks

05:05 – Everybody is replaceable, including you

06:28 – Slow down to speed up

10:40 – Key takeaways

12:57 – Wrapping things up

Barbara:  Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined by my co-host, Matt Malouf. Hi Matt, how’s it going?

Matt:  Well Barb, and yourself?

Barbara:  I’m really well, thank you. We’ve been flat out busy, both you and me in the last few weeks, up-leveling.

Matt:  Absolutely. And braving that it’s very chilly here in Sydney today, but …

Barbara:  It is.

Matt:  But we’ve got a hot topic that we’re going to be talking about. My VA just resigned…  

Barbara:  Yes, definitely, definitely. One of the questions … I mean, I hear this quite a bit at Virtual Angel Hub, but I also see it online and I’ve heard it from people I’ve spoken to, who’ve had VAs or virtual teams before, what if my … Let’s say you have an amazing VA, that just does epic work for you, is a massive asset to your business, and then they tell you that they’re resigning for whatever reason, they may be going back to study, or whatever. They’ve announced you that they’re resigning and you go into this total panic mode of, “Oh my god, what am I going to do now?” because this person is such a huge part of my business and knows all the processes and what we do.

And I find this really interesting, because in my business, I often move people around, I promote people. Thankfully nobody’s ever really left me, but people often very quickly have to be moved into new roles, which means that I can’t have a situation where they’re indispensable in the previous role.

So Matt, I’m really interested to talk to you about this as a business coach. How can people not fall into this trap of having somebody who is indispensable, I guess, in their business, and then you’re left in chaos if they leave? Creating a turn key business Matt:  Yes. It was a really interesting conversation we were having just before the show, but I think that the person that put this best is probably Michael Gerber in The E-Myth, about you’ve got to create a turn key business. A business that can operate without you.

And I think that anytime in business, where knowledge is held with a person, without documented systems or processes, it’s risky. And I know Barb, what I see, a lot of these business owners holding a lot of the IP in their head, and doing things just naturally in the natural course of business. Then they bring a team member on, and what they do is they download their brain into the team member’s brain, without getting it all documented. So really what you’re doing is transferring the risk, as opposed to de-risking the business. You must document tasks Barbara:  Yes. And you know what I find as well? Sometimes when a client comes to us, and we have a very high success rate as you know,

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How to Integrate a Virtual Assistant into Your Business Successfully Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, we take a look at how to integrate a virtual assistant into your business successfully and the importance of having a sound on-boarding process. This episode is full of insights from Matt and Barbara into answering the common question of “What do I do to get my VA started?” Some of the areas covered include:

The importance of a strong onboarding process Clearly communicating your expectations, in order to set your VA up to win Building a strong ‘human connection’ with your VA from the outset Being clear on your preferred communication style Learning your VAs strengths so as to encourage them to work in their genius

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. Resources mentioned in this show:

VSS – How To Get Your Virtual Team to Ace Your Expectations

In this episode:

01:02 – Integrating a VA into your team

03:07 – A strong onboarding process

05:14 – Communicating your expectations

07:50 – Being properly prepared to welcome your new team member

09:15 – Building a human connection with your VA

10:16 – Be clear on your communication style

12:18 – Learning your VAs strengths

13:46 – Process for onboarding your VA

15:55 – In summary…

16:56 – Wrapping things up

Matt: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show. I’m joined by my co-host, Barbara Turley. Hey Barb.

Barbara: Hey Matt. How’s it going?

Matt: Excellent, yourself?

Barbara: Good, thanks. Good, thanks. I’m excited about today’s show. Got another great case study style topic to cover.

Matt: Absolutely. Absolutely. Hey, just before we get started, how’s that little Ruby of yours?

Barbara: She’s great. She’s just started walking, so for all of those people out there with young babies, well the fun has started. She’s running around the house. Integrating a VA into your team Matt: Fantastic. Fantastic. Barb and I were just having a chat before the show and what came up in our conversation… I was just recently working with a client who was bringing on their first virtual assistant into his business. He’s got a team of seven in his office, but it’s his first virtual assistant. We were having a coaching session and he said, “Matt what do I do to get them started?” He was really puzzled and really unsure. It was like, he’d never onboarded a virtual assistant before. This guy’s got an amazing business, an amazing team, and it was … I was actually just saying to him, I said, “What would you normally do with your current staff if someone was joining your office?”

It sparked this conversation, and we’re going to go through it today, but it’s so interesting the mindset I see so often, and Barb I’m sure you see it as well, where we … there’s this, a virtual team member is there and our team is here and because they’re not in physical proximity there’s this huge difference that needs to happen. It has to be done in a different way.

Barbara: Well they don’t even see … For example, we often see clients getting all excited through our on-boarding process and they interview the VAs and they’re like, “Wow.” They pick someone and then we’re like, “Okay. Over to you guys,” and then they’re like, “What now?” We’re just like, “Well, you start to forge a relationship and you’re bringing someone in.” I think people still see … they just still don’t see it as someone in their business. It’s them and us, and that could be because of the distance and the virtual thing, I’m not sure, but it’s … I guess I’ve got experience doing it now but I can remember when I got my first VA, I do remember feeling the same way, and I had no idea where to start on day one. It is a common problem. Matt, what did you advise this client to do? A strong on-boarding process Matt: What’s interesting, I think this is a common problem whether it’s ...

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How Brian Casel, Founder of Audience Ops, Has Built a Virtual Team of Specialists to Help Grow His Online Content Marketing BusinessWant the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest and founder of Audience Ops, Brian Casel, shares with us his experience of building a virtual team of content marketing specialists and how you may not always get it right the first time. Brian reveals that in order to grow a successful business in today’s constantly evolving marketplace, business owners must remain responsive and ensure their own businesses continue to evolve. Some of the areas covered include:The initial challenges faced when building a virtual team of specialistsWhy systems and processes are so important in building your team up for successThe need for effective communication tools within your virtual teamEnsuring you have a sound onboarding and training process for new recruits Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. Resources mentioned in this show:Audience OpsCasjamSlackTrelloHelp Scout  In this episode:02:28 – Who is Brian Casel?05:57 – Initial challenges with building teams09:55 – The importance of systems and processes12:14 – Do you need a VA or someone else?13:04 – Firing yourself from business processes14:48 – Business processes are constantly evolving16:50 – Brian’s business processes22:30 – Challenges of bringing new people into your team25:42 – Getting the onboarding process right26:36 – How to deal with an underperforming team member27:48 – Have your team suggest ways to improve processes29:56 – Outsourcing a task that requires talent or expertise33:18 – The need for good online content35:37 – Brian’s #1 tool that has streamlined his business40:20 – Wrapping things up Barbara:  Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where today I’m flying solo without my co-host Matt Malouf. When we have guests on the show, which we do today, often we find it’s easier to get really good guests if we can split the shows up and not have our own schedules getting in the way, so on today’s show I’m really excited because I’m talking to Brian Casel, who is the founder of Audience Ops and also has a fantastic podcast called… it’s called the Productize Podcast, Brian is it? Brian:  Yeah actually I have two podcasts, but yeah Productize Podcast and the other one that I co-host with Jordan Gal is called Bootstrapped Web. Barbara:  Oh fantastic, fantastic! So guys today we’re going to talk all about all things content and managing team’s when it comes to content and how to get content up on your site without it overwhelming you. I know one of the questions I get a lot Virtual Angel Hub is clients who have VA’s through us will say, “Well how do I get a consistent stream of content?”, particularly when the VA’s able to do quite a lot of work with that content but one of the challenges is trying to actually get consistency in this area. So Brian’s going to talk to us all about this today and his own journey with managing teams in this area. So Brian, welcome to the show. Brian:  Well thanks Barbara. It’s great to talk to you. I just love talking about this stuff, whether it’s outsourcing, working with a team, collaborating, managing people, growing, yeah. Barbara:  Me too because I think one of the key things to actually growing or scaling is getting this right, cause so many people can’t nail this and it will trip you up if you can’t figure out how to manage a team once you start to grow, as you and I’ve just been talking about off air Brian. Brian:  Yep, absolutely. Barbara:  The whole challenge of it. Okay so to kick off the show, give us first a quick Audience Ops, the Productize Podcast, all about you so give us the quick what are you doing these days with your businesses. Who is Brian Casel? Brian:  Sure. Yeah I tend to like to work backwards in this story.

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The Stop Doing List – Part Three: How to Actually ‘Stop Doing’ Want the transcript? Download it here. In the final episode of our three-part special on The Stop Doing List book, author Matt Malouf takes listeners through the final step in the process – how to actually ‘stop doing’ those tasks that are not in your genius. During this episode, Matt focuses on the importance of the KRC model – Knowledge, Responsibility, Control – as without knowledge, we actually are unable to effectively be responsible or control any aspect of anything. Some of the areas covered are:

Understanding that without knowledge, we actually are unable to effectively be responsible or control any aspect of anything In order to start imparting knowledge and enable somebody else to take responsibility, there needs to be training systems and technology, and a blend of these, with systems being at the center of this To avoid tasks boomeranging back to you, you must invest time and money in the on going training of your team The importance of reporting and accountability once a task has been delegated

In this episode:

02:00 – How to actually ‘Stop Doing’

03:02 – The KRC model

04:38 – Linking the KRC

08:22 – Reporting and accountability

11:33 – Managing delegation

18:23 – Wrapping things up

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

Resources mentioned in this show:

The Stop Doing List – www.stopdoing.com.au

Barbara:  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another show of the Virtual Success Show where I’m joined by my co-host, Matt Malouf. How are you, Matt?

Matt:  I’m well, Barb, and yourself?

Barbara:  Good. Thank you. Good. Thank you. Really enjoying this series that we’re doing on your book, The Stop Doing List. I learn a lot every time I do this show, but it’s about refining things. Although I’ve gotten quite good at all these steps of delegation, and systems, and processes, and teams over the last few years I’ve been doing this, there’s always little bits that I learn more of when we do these shows and particularly from this series about The Stop Doing List.

Matt:  Yeah. It’s interesting. I started writing the book two years ago. Obviously, we published it three months ago now. As you go back, and you remember, and you go, “Oh, yeah. We put that part in there.” I was also preparing for the show, you know, there’s things you forget that you put into the book, so it’s really great for me to go back and reiterate what I actually put in here as well.

Barbara:  I think the point actually that it’s a good point we make here, and I’ve often said to clients, “Processes are not a one-time thing like, none of this stuff is you just set and forget. It’s a constant evolving process of mindset, ‘Stop doing. Stop doing. Stop doing.’” Okay. Today, we’re going to tackle part three of the book, which I think is probably one of the most important areas to get right and one of the areas we see a lot of clients getting tripped up in, which is actually how to stop doing. How to actually ‘Stop Doing’  

When you create your task list, you’ve got all your processes and systems in place, and you delegate, and you got the VA on board, and you’ve done everything you were told to do, and then this is the area where people often fall down. First of all, Matt, can you tell me why is that? What happens in the actual process of how to stop doing?

Matt:  Yeah, and this was one of the most interesting parts to writing this book because I think many of us, myself included, have delegated and passed tasks on before, and it seems like that boomerang effect where they keep coming back to us. I was just intrigued and kept asking, “What is it? Why do these tasks keep coming back?” Then, in my research, I stumbled across what’s called the “KRC model,” the Knowledge, Responsibility, Control. It’s a model that is part of the Harvard Management System.

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The Stop Doing List – Part Two: Unpacking and Creating Your Stop Doing List So You Can Step Into Your Genius Zone Want the transcript? Download it here. In the second episode of our three-part special on The Stop Doing List book, author Matt Malouf talks about the key to understanding where you are spending your time and how to categorise those tasks to get clear on where you should be spending more time – your Genius Zone.    During this episode, Matt explains that the more time you spend in your ‘genius zone’, the more you’ll love your business, the more profitable your business will be and the more freedom you will have long-term. Some of the areas covered are:

The importance of determining the value of your time – your hourly rate – and the process to do so Understanding your genius zone – those tasks and activities that you love doing, that you do really well and that have a positive financial return to you and the company How to filter your tasks through the focus funnel in order to determine which tasks you should, delegate, automate or eliminate to create your ultimate Stop Doing List

In this episode:

02:30 – Unpacking and creating your Stop Doing list

03:55 – Understanding your genius zone

08:00 – Calculating your hourly rate

10:25 – Determining your opportunity cost

12:35 – Wrapping things up

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

Resources mentioned in this show:

The Stop Doing List – www.stopdoing.com.au

Barbara:  Hey everyone and welcome back to the Virtual Success Show where I’m joined by my co-host, Matt Malouf. How’s it going Matt?

Matt:  It’s going well Barb, and yourself?

Barbara:  Really good, I’m very excited about today’s show, and to delve into part two of our three part series on your The Stop Doing List book, which has just been a pivotal book for me to read recently. All the things that- I thought I knew lots about this but I’ve just learned so many things from delving into your book again.

So guys, last show we did was part one of The Stop Doing List, where we talked about the mindset- and it’s such a detailed show on the specific steps and the specific mindsets that you need to get into in order to actually stop doing, and then in today’s show we’re going to talk about actually unpacking and creating your stop doing list, which- one of the key questions we get at Virtual Angel Hub is “how do I know what to put on my list to give a VA?” So it’s a really big question that we get asked, and I’m sure Matt, you get asked this question all the time as well.

Matt:  Absolutely and also those that are wanting to grow their companies, this is the starting point. Everyone’s looking for what I need to do, I need to do more, do more, but unless you let go of some of these things first, and utilise a virtual assistant, or even employing technology and the like to help you with this, it’ll just burn you out.

Barbara:  Yeah, and you don’t have the space and time to strategise and move forward. You actually need to free up your time effectively first, it’s like the number one thing you need to do, I think, before you start trying to grow and scale.

So, now, we did a show- a couple of shows back we did a show that we delved into quite a lot of what this second part of the book talks about so Matt, can you just run through- I think it was the show called, “Think You’ve Only Got Five Hours to Delegate? Think Again.” So it’s a great show on how to figure out how much you’re actually doing that you need to stop doing.

So Matt, can you give us- just kind of run through the key steps in this part of the book.

Unpacking and Creating Your Stop Doing List

Matt: Absolutely. So, this part of the book is really about you’re starting to understand where you’re spending your time, and then how to categorise those tasks to get clear on where you should be spending more time.

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The Stop Doing List – Part One: The Essential Mindsets You Need To Unlock Your Entrepreneurial Freedom And Ultimately ‘Stop Doing’ Want the transcript? Download it here. In the first episode of our three-part special, our very own Matt Malouf, author, business coach and co-host of the Virtual Success Show, talks us through his recently published book, The Stop Doing List, and the importance of adopting several specific mindsets in order to gain more time, more profit and more freedom in your business. During this episode, Matt explains to listeners the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone and letting go of negative mindsets in order to adopt the essential positive mindsets to ultimately ‘stop doing’. Some of the areas covered are:

The importance of mindset, before strategy, before tactics Realising when you have stepped too far out of your comfort zone and how to reign it in Being aware of common negative mindsets and how these are holding you back from business success The five essential mindsets specific to ‘stop doing’ which will ultimately unlock your entrepreneurial freedom

In this episode:

01:51 – The Stop Doing List book

03:25 – Mindset, before strategy, before tactics

05:00 – Three key areas of mindset

07:00 – Signs you’ve stepped too far out of your comfort zone

09:30 – Four most common negative mindsets

10:47 – Essential mindset #1 – Learn to say ‘no’

12:05 – Essential mindset #2 – Less is more

13:48 – Essential mindset #3 – Investment vs expense

17:18 – Essential mindset #4 – Adopting the 80/20 rule

19:30 – Essential mindset #5 – Don’t sweat the small stuff

21:50 – Wrapping things up

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

Resources mentioned in this show:

The Stop Doing List – www.stopdoing.com.au

Barbara:  Hey, everyone, and welcome to yet another episode of The Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined by my co-host Matt Malouf. Hi, Matt, how are you?

Matt:  I’m well, Barb, how are you?

Barbara:  I’m good, thanks. I’m good. What’s been your week like, biggest learning this week for you?

Matt:  Yeah, biggest learning. It’s a really interesting week, and I think the biggest learning is that as business owners and entrepreneurs, sometimes we need to have a recovery week to allow our energy to come back up. I had a big week, three weeks on the road and presenting and the like. I came into the week feeling a little bit low, and I’ve had a really great week. I’ve just allowed myself to recover. Energy’s now flying again.

Barbara:   Yeah, that’s so true. Actually, for me, it’s interesting, the show we’re going to do today on your book, The Stop Doing List, I’ve had a week where … Or probably a month, really, where I’ve been pushing very far outside my comfort zone, because there’s some business decisions that I’ve had to make. I’ve been really grappling with the emotional turmoil that that can often bring. It’s just interesting that today’s show, we’re going to talk quite deeply about that, because we’re going to discuss your book.

Matt:  Yes, absolutely. It can actually be detrimental to be too far out of our comfort zones for too long, because it’s very draining.

The Stop Doing List book

Barbara:  Just for the listeners, Matt has written an amazing book, The Stop Doing List, which I would encourage anyone … I’ve been diving into it. I’ve read it about twice already, because there’s still so many nuggets of things to learn inside. What I wanted to do was actually interview Matt on the three very distinct sections that are in the book. What we’re going to do is we’re doing a three-part series on The Stop Doing List. Show one today, we’re going to talk about the mindset that you need to get into and the challengesyou’re going to face mindset-wise when you start this stop doing list exercise. Part two, then,

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Gordon Jenkins, aka The Visible Guy, Shares With Us The Results of His Global Survey and How Virtual Assistants Can Market Themselves in a Way That Clearly Differentiates Them From OthersWant the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest, Gordon Jenkins, takes listeners through the results of a global survey he conducted aimed at people who have used, or are using, Virtual Assistants to get their feedback on exactly what they look for when engaging the services of a VA…and the results may surprise you! Gordon touches on some of the more stand out results from the survey and explains how VAs and their clients may need to shift their thinking in order to gain more success from the client/VA relationship. Some of the areas covered include:The importance of verbal communication – emails alone are not enoughJust because an employee is virtual, doesn’t mean they aren’t part of your teamAs a VA, client perception is your reality – so really understand what your client is looking forAs a client, be really clear on what your expectations are – so you can set your VA up for success Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. Resources mentioned in this show:The Visible Guy30 Different Ways to Network20 Different Ways to Differentiate Yourself  In this episode:01:45 – The Visible Guy…Gordon Jenkins02:59 – Surveying clients of VAs to find out what they really want06:40 – Stand out results from the survey08:06 – The importance of verbal communication13:51 – Just because your VA is virtual, doesn’t mean they aren’t  part of your team16:26 – Email shouldn’t be your only form of communication with your VA18:15 – Top 3 tips to gain success as a client or VA20:50 – As the client, be clear on what your expectations are of your VA25:31 – Wrapping things up  Barbara:  Hey everyone, and welcome back again to the Virtual Success Show where I’m joined by my co-host, Matt Malouf. Matt, how’s it going? Matt:  Excellent, Barb. How are you? Barbara:  I’m very good, thank you. How’s your week been? Matt:  The week’s been great. It’s been busy but it’s been really, really good, and having great conversations with many entrepreneurs out there at the moment. It’s a really exciting time for business owners and entrepreneurs at the moment. Barbara:  Yeah, and how about your book? Is it starting to fly off the shelves, The Stop Doing List? Matt:  It is, it is, and we’ve recorded the audible version so that should be coming out in the next little bit, so very, very exciting. Barbara:  Brilliant. Brilliant. Well, listen, on today’s show we’ve got a very interesting guest to talk about client feedback and a survey that he did with clients that are using, or have used, Virtual Assistants in the past. So my guest today, or our guest today, is Gordon Jenkins, who’s actually called The Visible Guy. Gordon, welcome to the show. Gordon:  Welcome. Good morning, Barbara. Good morning, Matt. How are you? Matt:  Good thank you. Barbara:  Good. So, Gordon, just to kick off, can you just give us…you know, who The Visible Guy? Talk to us about who is the The Visible Guy and what does The Visible Guy do? The Visible Guy…Gordon Jenkins Gordon:  Sure, so a quick snapshot … The Visible Guy, in simple terms: we look at people and organisations and we look at what they are and then simply we go and tell the world what they actually do and the world is simply their marketplace, so it could be just the people in Melbourne or it could be we’re going to take people globally and tell the world about exactly what they’re doing. We do it in a way that is not talking about what’s unique about the person or the organisation, but we look at what’s the clear differentiations, and it’s as simple as that. Barbara:  That’s very interesting. When you recently, just for the listeners, Gordon was asked … he was a speaker at the Virtual Assistant … is it at the Virtual Assistant’s ...

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Think You’ve Only Got 5 Hours of Work to Delegate to a Virtual Assistant…Think Again! Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara and Matt talk listeners through some honest truths when it comes to deciding just how many hours per week you 'think' you can delegate to a virtual assistant.   This episode takes a look at the essential factors to bear in mind when deciding to onboard a VA and how, if you are truly committed, you could easily find at least 20 hours of work for a virtual assistant to do in your business, every single week!  

Some of the areas covered include:

The only way to really know what to delegate is understanding where you’re spending your time The importance of changing your mindset to “Stop Doing” certain tasks, so you can focus on more of the things you love doing How putting ‘positive stress’ on yourself can help your business grow faster Bringing in specialists for ad-hoc tasks can also help reduce your workload, freeing up valuable time for more important, revenue-generating tasks

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

Resources mentioned in this show:

The Stop Doing List – www.stopdoing.com.au

In this episode:

00:55 – So I ‘think’ I only need 5 hours a week from my VA

03:28 – If you think you’ve only got 5 hours, you’re not committed enough

04:32 – Changing your mindset to ‘stop doing’

06:59 – Are you in business, or have you just created a job for yourself?

09:30 – How to ‘Time Log’

11:35 – Ask yourself – “How can I stop doing?”

14:30 – Positive stress

16:43 – Shifting your focus

17:45 – Pros of committing to a full-time VA

18:47 – Bringing in specialists for ad hoc tasks

22:51 – Wrapping things up

Barbara:  Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show. I’m joined again, as always, by my co-host, Matt Malouf. Matt, how are you?

Matt:  I’m well, Barb. How are you?

Barbara:  I’m great, thank you. Great. Enjoying this a little cooler weather we’re having in Sydney now, which is very nice. I love this time of year.

Matt:  I know. But its beautiful blue skies today. We’ve had a lot of rain over the last few weeks …

Barbara:  I know.

Matt:  … and so very interesting.

Barbara:  Very enjoyable.

So I ‘think’ I only need 5 hours a week from my VA

Listen, on today’s show, everyone, we thought a really interesting thing that I’ve wanted to delve into on the show for a quite a while, actually, because we get quite a lot of customers coming to Virtual Angel Hub with this exact question. They’ll sort of hit up our Facebook page, or our live chat, asking, “Look, I only need five hours or so a week with a VA. You have a minimum of 20 hours a week. Is there anything you could do for me?”

What I find interesting about this question is that, for me, five hours a week, having worked with a lot of virtual teams and in various different businesses, five hours is actually not very much and, obviously, some smaller businesses will think, “I only need that much time.” My feeling is that well, I know that within a few weeks of joining Virtual Angel Hub, so many people who thought they would never fill 20 hours can’t believe how quickly it got filled up when we actually helped them to sort of see what else they could be doing.

Matt:  Yeah, and I think I’m just going to be real direct to our listeners straight upfront, is if you only think you’ve got five hours to delegate, you’re not trying hard enough. You really aren’t. Because I think too often these days, we get caught up in being busy and, so, we think that the busyness is important. Yet, in actual fact, a lot of the tasks that are causing the busyness are either not necessary, or not of high priority and can be done by somebody else. They need to get done, but they can easily be done by somebody else.

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How Entrepreneur and Blogging Expert, Yaro Starak, Is Embracing ‘The Laptop Lifestyle’ and How to Break Free From Emails in the Process Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest and online blogging expert, Yaro Starak,  takes us through how he has adopted what some may call ‘The Laptop Lifestyle’ and how to break free from emails to focus on the things he loves. This episode is full of insights and tips from Yaro on how you can begin the process to ‘break free’ from managing your emails and once mastered, can bring so much freedom and success to you as a business owner. Some of the areas covered include:Adopting The Laptop Lifestyle – having the right people on your team is paramount to making this happenThe importance of separating personal emails from business emailsHiring the right person to take on the task of your emailsThe value of setting up systems and processes for responding to emailsTips on training your new recruit Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.  In this episode:02:05 – About Yaro03:22 – The laptop lifestyle04:15 – Having the right people on your team08:20 – Yaro’s blog: Break free from emails13:10 – Steps to break free from emails13:25 – Separating personal from business emails14:35 – Hiring someone to take over your emails15:56 – Creating systems for dealing with emails19:07 – Emotions experienced when handing over emails22:35 – Key competencies needed to take care of emails25:48 – Tips on training your new recruit35:41 – Wrapping things up  Barbara:  Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined by my co-host Matt Malouf. Matt, how are you? Matt:  I’m well Barbara, how are you? Barbara:  I’m good thanks. You must be having a good week. Finally, your book has come out. Your book has launched – The Stop Doing list. Matt:  It has. It’s been really exciting over the last … it’s been out for about a month now. Getting some really positive feedback. So really, really enjoying the journey. Barbara:  Yeah and probably a bit of rest time after all the push that was involved with pushing the book out. Matt:   Absolutely, absolutely. Barbara:  I can imagine. Matt:  There was a few things that I might stop doing years from now. Barbara:  Yeah. Well, I’m reading it at the moment and I’m thinking “Gosh, there’s so many things I can still stop doing.” Anyway, one of the things that I do need to stop doing is my own email, and our guest today on the show, I’m very keen to talk to today’s guest about this because he wrote a fantastic blog post about this a while ago which triggered me to bring him on the show. He’s not only a friend of mine, but he’s very big in the online marketing space online. I would call him sort of the King of people who would want to start a blog and figure out how on earth to get traffic to your blog. And get going with your blogging journey. Yaro Starak, welcome to the show. Matt:  Welcome Yaro. Yaro:  Thank you guys. Love to be here and looking forward to talking about something I don’t really talk about on podcasts very much. Barbara:  Yes, obviously you would usually be interviewed about online marketing, getting started in blogging. Tell us a bit about your background, tell the listeners a bit more about your background just to get things going. About Yaro Yaro:  Yeah, you’re quite correct. I do normally talk about blogging on I’d say, 95% of the podcast interviews I do. Primarily because that’s what I teach and what I’m known for, and I’ve been blogging myself for, we’re in year 12 now of blogging. I started in 2005, so it’s been a career. I’ve pretty much had an online entrepreneurship career my entire adult life. It’s been great to me. I have to really thank the Gods for being born in a time when I can use the internet as a way to run a business, and I’ve pretty much made my living entirely online.

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Why a Virtual Assistant Can Be a Great Investment in Your Business Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, we take a look at the positives of bringing a Virtual Assistant into your business and how you need to look at your VA as an investment in your business rather than an expense. This episode is full of insights from Matt and Barbara into answering the common question of “Well, what can a Virtual Assistant do for me?” Some of the areas covered include:

The importance of understanding the value a Virtual Assistant can add to your business Why you need to adopt the mindset of your Virtual Assistant being an investment rather than an expense Accepting that it takes time to transition your Virtual Assistant into your business Tips on speeding up the transition process

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

Resources mentioned in this show:

The Stop Doing List – www.stopdoing.com.au

In this episode:

01:30 – What can a Virtual Assistant do for me?

03:35 – The mindset of ‘Investment vs. Expense’

04:34 – Will I get a return on my investment?

07:30 – Setting your Virtual Assistant up to win

12:26 – Misconception of the super VA

14:30 – Speeding up the transition process

15:45 – A bit about Matt’s book – The Stop Doing List

19:04 – Wrapping things up

Matt:  Hey everyone, welcome back to another show of the Virtual Success Show. I’m joined again by my wonderful co-host, Barbara Turley. Hey Barb!

Barbara:  Hey Matt, how are you?

Matt:  I’m excellent. How are you going?

Barbara:  I’m good, I’m good and loving all these shows we’re doing, I’ve been this week listening back to a few of the older shows and some of the tips and stuff we’ve been talking about, because I’m actually revamping some of my own processes in my business and I just pick up such great stuff, even from the stuff that we talk about and some of the guests that we interview, so yeah it’s been a good week for that.

Matt:  Excellent. Excellent. Well, I’m really excited about today’s show too, Barb, as we were talking about just before we started recording and what we find in both Barbara’s business and what I do as a coach is we’re constantly asked, well what could a VA do for me? I think a lot of people like the idea and understand the concept of having a virtual assistant, but they’re not really sure on what a VA can do for them or for their business. Barb, do you find this?

What can a VA do for me?

Barbara:  Yeah. Yeah, a lot. You know we get, I’m actually to add to that one of the things that I hear quite a lot as well is, I’m not sure what a VA can do for me and then there’s also a little bit of confusion about what a VA doesn’t do. So implicit in that, sometimes people have an expectation that they can do, this superhero VA type thing, the myth of the superhero VA that they can do everything possible, from video editing to web design and all the sort of things in the middle. So it’s a very broad topic and problem right there.

Matt:  Absolutely and I think what this leads into is people having a clear understanding of the value that a VA can bring to their business. Because one thing I see is people grappling with the decision on, well, okay … This is an extra cost in my business. Am I going to get my return? And I think if you start with that mindsetaround this, then in my experience you’re actually setting yourself up to fail right from the start.

Barbara:  Yeah, so Matt, you know one of the things that we see as well, when people are booking calls with our ad sourcing strategy consultants at Virtual Angel Hub we ask them a series of questions because we’re trying to get an insight into where they’re at before the call and one of the questions we ask is, ‘what’s your biggest fear about hiring a VA or working with a VA?’ And often one we see, the comment is,

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How Women’s Fitness & Nutrition Expert, Elle Kealy, Has Used a Virtual Assistant to Take Her Global Business To The Next Level Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest Elle Kealy, founder of Rebelle – an online women’s fitness and nutrition coaching business – shares with listeners her experience of taking the plunge into the world of Virtual Assistants and how the experience of taking on a VA has been a liberating one. Elle takes us back to where it all began and how her decision to take her business online resulted in her engaging with a Virtual Assistant, which has resulted in her building a highly successful global business.  

Some of the areas covered include:

Don’t wait till you are drowning before seeking help The importance of finding a VA that is well trained The value of having sound internal processes Why addressing issues with your VA as they arise is vital to business success How having a VA has allowed Elle to concentrate on the drivers of her business The need for an effective project management tool

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

Resources mentioned in this show:

VSS Episode 17: How to Expand Your Business, Rather than Contract it, when Important Life Events or Business Goals Result in You Having to Take a Back Seat in the Day-to-Day Operation of Your Business

The Four Hour Work Week

Asana

In this episode:

01:42 – About Elle

03:10 – Taking the plunge into the VA world

05:18 – Challenges in the early days

09:37 – Challenges faced on-boarding a new VA

11:10 – Speak up when things aren’t going well

12:06 – All processes are evolutionary

14:07 – More time to work on your business vision

15:44 – The importance of sound internal processes

18:40 – Communication is key

21:40 – The importance of using project management tools

24:38 – Wrapping things up

Barbara:  Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show. Today I am flying completely solo again, my co-host Matt Malouf is not going to be on this show today. He has been doing some epic work with some clients, and I am just doing a couple of shows by myself.

So it’s Barbara Turley here and I’m delighted with the guest that we have on today because she is one of the longest standing members actually of Virtual Angel Hub, the company that I run where we recruit, train and manage VAs.

Elle Kealy, she is the founder of Rebelle, which is an amazing online health and fitness coaching business for women. A beautiful platform that is just about to launch an on-demand video streaming platform, I guess, where we can find beautiful fitness and health strategies and tips online for ourselves as women.

So Elle, welcome to the show.

Elle:  Hi Barbara! Welcome, thank you so much for having me.

Barbara:  Yeah, and look, you know you’re probably going to explain this a lot better than me, but I’m really keen first of all to kick off and, just tell us a little bit about the business and … You were raised up in Hong Kong, so tell us about …

Elle:  Yeah

Barbara:  …. tell us about, you know, your journey there and how this business started and where you’re at now.

About Elle

Elle:  Sure. So I’m actually originally from the UK if you can’t guess from my accent.

Barbara:  Yes.

Elle:  Found myself living in Asia about 10 years ago, so, I’ve been here a while. But my business is actually a global business. I made the decision to go online because I am global, because I travel a lot, and now I run Rebelle, which is an online fitness and nutrition coaching business, exclusively for women, which I think you just mentioned.

Barbara:  Yeah.

Elle:  And you know the grand vision really for this business is to be able to support women from all over the globe, which is why we made the decision to launch an online business. In revolutionising,

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How Maria Golding, Founder of Intuitive Motherhood, Has Embraced the World of Virtual Teams to Achieve Her Business Goals Want the transcript? Download it here.

In this episode, Intuitive Motherhood & Embodied Parenting Coach & Speaker Maria Golding, talks us through how she has built a team of virtual specialists to assist her in achieving her business, and personal, goals.  This episode is full of insights from Maria on how she has played to her strengths and the things she loves doing, whilst surrounding herself with amazing virtual teams, to essentially do the rest.  Some of the areas covered include:

The importance of not waiting too long to seek help Listening and implementing sound advice can definitely work in your favour Expanding, rather than contracting, your business when things seem tough Identifying your genius, and letting go of the rest Why having the right business tools is important to the overall success of your business

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

In this episode:

01:47 – About Maria

04:26 – Why Maria sought help

06:41 – Accepting sound advice

07:16 – The importance of having specialists on your team

09:45 – Expanding, rather than contracting, your business

10:46 – Business automation

11:27 – Having a VA with the correct training and support

13:04 – Identifying your genius…and letting go

14:15 – Transitioning to a new VA

17:20 – Following the success formula

20:30 – Facing your fears

23:08 – Maria’s advice for overcoming your fears

25:43 – Wrapping things up

Barbara:  Hey everyone, and welcome to yet another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined by my co-host Matt. Hey Matt, how’s it going?

Matt:  I’m well Barb, and yourself?

Barbara:  Very well, thank you. Sweating in this constant heat that we’re having. We’re still having this heat in Sydney as we record today.

Matt:  Yes, it’s brilliant though. It’s better than wet, freezing, or any other type of weather there could be. I love it.

Barbara:  Well, you know though, I’m just back … I had the joy of spending Christmas in Europe this year and I spent six weeks in Europe, and some of that was spent in the French Alps. It was minus 20, but blue skies and snowing. And it was amazing. It was a beautiful … like red wine, big fires, cold outside, very very nice. So there is joy in cold weather too.

Matt:  Beautiful. I’m looking forward to today’s episode Barb.

Barbara:  Yeah. Me too, me too. I mean look, for listeners out there, hands up. I know so many people want to launch online programmes, and it can be… Product Launch Formula by Jeff Walker is probably the most overwhelming thing that you will ever do. I know I’ve done it. Lots of people try and pull it off, and it’s a huge job to do. Particularly when you’ve got no real experience with technology, systems, VAs, strategists, or any of this sort of thing.

About Maria

So today’s show, we’re going to talk to a Virtual Angel Hub member, Maria. And Maria runs a beautiful programme called Intuitive Motherhood. And she was someone who came to us looking for a VA, and I think she was just about to throw the towel in on all this online stuff, because it’s so difficult. And we actually spoke on the phone. She very kindly sent in this support ticket asking for some help around platforms, and I spoke to her and I gave her some advice around the things that she needed to do if she wanted to launch her programme. She needed a strategist, a VA, and a system like Ontraport, which is what she ended up taking on.

But the beauty of this story that we’re going to share with you today is that then she told me her timeline for her launch, and she had announced that her launch was supposed to be the beginning of November. And this was the end of September that we were talking. So Maria, welcome to the show.

Maria:  Thank you Barb.

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From Corporate Jungle to Lifestyle Entrepreneur Using Virtual Teams with Paul HigginsWant the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest and co-founder of TrackZEN, Paul Higgins, chats with us about his transition from the corporate world to running his own business and how, along the way, he has amassed a team of virtual specialists to help him achieve immense business success. Paul, whose passion is helping business owners slash their work hours whilst exploding their profits, shares with us his strategies and tips for getting outsourcing right, the first time. Some of the areas covered include:The importance of investing time into recruiting, training and building your systems and processesThe common challenges faced by business owners when dealing with outsourcing countriesPaul’s framework for success with virtual teamsTips on starting out with a VA Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. Resources mentioned in this show:https://www.facebook.com/groups/buildlivegive  In this episode:01:50 – About Paul Higgins and TrackZEN06:03 – Tips and strategies for getting outsourcing right08:19 – Challenges faced when dealing with outsourcing countries08:56 – Using virtual staff at TrackZEN10:06 – The 3 key elements to managing a virtual team11:44 – It’s up to the business owner to get these elements right13:28 – Managing a large virtual team15:43 – The challenges of managing a large virtual team17:14 – Framework for success21:53 – Paul’s future vision23:18 – Paul’s top 2 tips on starting out with a VA24:00 – Wrapping things up  Barbara Turley:  Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show. I’m joined today by my fantastic co-host, Matt Malouf. Hi Matt, how’s it going? Matt Malouf:  I’m well, Barbara. How are you? Barbara Turley:  I’m great, thanks. I’m great, thanks. Matt Malouf:  Excellent. It’s sweltering here in Sydney today. Barbara Turley:  It is. Well, they’re talking about … They’re actually talking about power outages because all the people are using air conditioning. It’s awful.  You know, in the 15 years that I’ve lived here, I don’t think I remember a summer this hot. Ever. Matt Malouf:   Nah. It’s brilliant. We’ll all be down at the beach later today. Barbara Turley:  Yeah. All the international guests will be thinking, “Yeah, we really feel for you. It’s terrible.” Very good. So, listen. Today’s show, guys, we’re … we have yet another Virtual Angel Hub client and a good friend of mine and someone who’s just very experienced in this whole outsourcing and systems and managing teams type business. Paul Higgins is the founder of TrackZEN Club. Paul, welcome to the show. Paul Higgins:  Thanks, Barb. Good to be here and Matt. Matt Malouf:  Welcome, Paul. Paul Higgins:  Thank you. Barbara Turley:  So, listen, Paul, just to kick off … TrackZEN Club … Let’s talk about…I said before we started the show it would be better for me to let you explain a bit about what you actually do. What is TrackZEN Club? And why should we all know about it? Tell us a bit about it. About Paul Higgins and TrackZEN Paul Higgins:  Sure, so, they say if you’ve got an itch, it’s best to scratch it yourself and really, the TrackZEN Club came about me not being able to find the solution. So, I was ex-corporate running my own business. I was lonely. I was missing the corporate team and environment and I was really struggling to sort of focus and be accountable. And I was looking for different groups and I just couldn’t find a group or a mastermind group that sort of suited my experience and exactly where I was. It was either a lot of people for young start-ups or really young business that hadn’t had a corporate career or there were sort of people that were running very bricks and mortar businesses that sort of didn’t suit me either. So, in short, I created my own and it’s a mastermind where people like m...

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The Evolution of The Virtual Success Show Podcast and How Barbara and Matt have Effectively ‘Fired’ themselves from Podcast Management Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara and Matt, share with you the evolution of the Virtual Success Show podcast and give us a behind the scenes look at how they have utilised their own virtual teams to bring the shows to life.  This episode focuses on the step-by-step process that Barbara and Matt followed to make their idea of co-hosting a podcast show, a reality.  

Some of the areas covered include:

Don’t overthink an idea – sometimes it’s best to adopt the approach of “Ready, Fire, Aim” Working out what the potential road blocks could be Finding the right person for the right task, in particular, specialist tasks Be aware that nailing a process takes time – they are not something you can create in one day Don’t let yourself as the project or business owner be the bottleneck in the process.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

In this episode:

02:58 – How the Virtual Success Show started

04:36 – Ready, Fire, Aim

07:49 – Working out potential roadblocks

10:25 – Finding the right person for particular tasks

15:55 – How we fired ourselves from managing the podcast

17:09 – Great people, great process

18:09 – Nailing a process takes time

20:18 – It’s up to YOU to set your team up for success

24:31 – The reason things work is because YOU make them work

24:52 – Wrapping things up

Matt:  Welcome back, everybody to another show of the Virtual Success Show. I’m joined today by my co-host Barbara. How are you this morning Barb?

Barbara:  Hey, Matt, really good. Enjoying the Sydney summer that’s hit us all of a sudden the last few weeks. How are you?

Matt:  I’m excellent. Yeah, I’m enjoying this warmer weather, that’s for sure. It’s been awhile since we’ve been on the show together. You’ve had lots of wonderful things happening in your life with the new bub.

Barbara:  Yes, I have. I know I’ve been very busy with new baby, she’s 3 1/2 months old now so we’re “coming out of the fog,” as they say. She’s very good, though. She’s very good.

Matt:  Excellent. Excellent. You know, I’m really, really excited about today’s show because, as we were talking about just before we started recording, the show we want to do for you all today is to share with you the evolution of the Virtual Success Show podcast and, actually, what’s happened behind the scenes and how what we’ve experienced in utilising our virtual teams to bring this show to life. It was really interesting because we were just chatting a little bit pre-show talking about how things have just developed so well, particularly over the last six months and we wanted to share that in a show with you all because we believe there’s absolute gold in what’s going on.

Barbara:  Yeah, and I think I … Matt, I was saying to you and I want the listeners to hear this, that I was actually just … I was thinking about the show the other day, and I was thinking to myself, look, I don’t even know … We just record, and I know it just goes in the Dropbox, and at this point I have no involvement, really, after that point and it just shows up bang on time on our iTunes account, on our website VirtualSuccessShow.com, at the promotions ground on social media, and it just all works like a well-oiled machine without us having to stress about it or even think about it. All we do is what we love, which is recording the show. I know some people listening are going to think, “How do I get to that point? How do I do that?” And that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today on the show.

Matt:  We wave our magic wand and it magically appears.

Barbara:  Yeah, not quite, but yeah. I think both of us would probably say that having done this one, if we were to do another,

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How to Keep Growing Your Business Even If You Have to Take Time Off Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara shares with Matt and the listeners, her own personal journey of the process she followed to ‘fire herself from her own business’ when a very important life event – having a baby – meant she had to step right back from the day-to-day running of her business. This episode focuses on the step-by-step process that Barbara followed to ensure that her business went from strength to strength, whilst she focussed on being a mother to her baby girl. Some of the areas covered include:Think expansion, rather than contractionThe importance of strategic planning – taking yourself out of business processes is a process within itselfDon’t expect your new processes to work from day one – allow time to smooth out any ‘bumps’ and refine your processes before you ‘exit’ the businessHow to empower your team to make important decisions in your absenceThe importance of having the right people, in the right seatsBelieving in your people and their abilities ultimately leads to a more engaged team and successful business Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode:03:02 – Think expansion rather than contraction06:05 – You have to plan strategically06:54 – Taking yourself out of processes10:22 – Allow time to smooth out the new process, once handed over13:22 – Refining your processes15:40 – Empowering your team17:28 – Believe in your people18:26 – Support your team’s decisions22:09 – Give yourself time to fine-tune the processes25:15 – My key people are now more engaged in my business27:04 – Wrapping things up  Barbara:  Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined by my co-host, Matt Malouf. Hey Matt, how’s it going? Matt:  Hey Barb, I’m well, and yourself? Barbara:  I’m really good thank you, really good. I’m … As we’re about to talk about today, I’m in the throes of motherhood. So it’s been a lovely journey, but obviously a challenging one in terms of running your business, and setting things up so you can do a podcast recording like this, et cetera. So, a unique experience. Matt:  Absolutely, absolutely. Barbara:  Which brings me onto today’s show. So obviously we’re going to talk about how to fire yourself from any business, I guess. And what we’re going to focus on guys, for the listeners, we’re going to focus on actually my experience of having a baby. Because you know, as a woman when you’re pregnant, you’ve got this kind of deadline looming, that doesn’t move, and it’s not going to change. In fact, it might even move closer. So you become … You’re under a lot of pressure all of a sudden to fire yourself from your business if you’re running your own business. But as Matt and I were talking about earlier before the show, this would apply to any sort of life event, or if you just want to, you want to work more on your business or have a business that runs itself with a team. So it really doesn’t matter if you’re not pregnant, or if you’re a guy, or if you’ve got a wife having a baby, I guess. This can apply to anything. I mean Matt, you’ve done this in a couple of businesses too, haven’t you? Matt:  Yeah I have, yes. And just to add to what Barb was saying, if you really want to enhance and grow your business faster, what we’re going to talk about today is essential to fast growing businesses. Barbara:  Yeah, so although we’re talking about it, I’m really going to focus on my experience of doing this, because the trigger for me was pregnancy, but the trigger for you could be something … It doesn’t matter what your trigger is, what your reason is, but the steps that I’m going to talk to you about here would apply to anybody. But I guess there will be a few women with their ears pricked up all of a sudden wondering how they can get their business to actu...

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How Nathalie Lussier Built a Powerhouse Business Using Virtual TeamsWant the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest Nathalie Lussier, who has been making websites since she was 12 years old, takes us through her journey of starting her own business and using virtual teams to help her grow her business to what it is today.  Nathalie takes us back to the beginning when she started with just one VA who was working 5-hours a week, and how she has grown her team to include seven specialists, who span the globe. Some of the areas covered include:The importance of good systems and processesThe need for a project management toolAllowing your team to step-up and performThe importance of meetings with your virtual teamTips on engaging the ‘right’ virtual team memberWhy it is important to adopt the mindset of ‘let it go and have somebody else do it’.  Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode:01:50 – Who is Nathalie Lussier?03:25 – Nathalie’s virtual team04:40 – Her first real hire05:53 – The importance of using a project management tool07:47 – Good systems and processes already in place8:23 – Write down your processes, step-by-step10:57 – Growing the team13:26 – Allowing your team to step up16:31 – Managing a big virtual team18:16 – The importance of meetings21:54 – Nathalie’s tips on engaging a VA24:27 – Investment vs expense mindset26:58 – Share your business vision with your team28:19 – Wrapping things up  Barbara:  Hey everyone, and welcome back to another show of Virtual Success, where we give you the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. I’m joined as always by my fantastic co-host Matt Malouf. Matt how are you? Matt:  I’m well, how are you Barb? Barbara:  I’m great thanks, excited about today’s show as always. Because we’ve got a new guest on the show today. Matt:  Yes. Barbara:  Nathalie Lussier who a lot of listeners will be very familiar with. Because Nathalie is someone I followed myself, in my own entrepreneurial journey for a long time. She is the founder of Ambition Ally, which has the software tools, “Access Ally” – which is a membership site, a fantastic membership site plugin, I think if I’m using the right term. She also has Popup Ally, which is a popup forum builder on websites. I love the fact that Nathalie … not only does she have a team, a virtual team that we’re going to talk about today. But she is also a female really going for it in the tech space, which is not that common, getting more common. Nathalie, welcome to the show. Nathalie:  Thanks for having me here guys. Barbara:  Great, so Nathalie just to kick off, can you just give us a quick idea of what you’re up to today? A quick synopsis of where you started, and this whole virtual team thing. You started out as I think a web developer? Who is Nathalie Lussier? Nathalie:  Yeah. I like to go way back to how I got started on the web. I started making websites when I was just 12 years old. I studied software engineering, and I had this job offer on Wall Street that I turned down to start my first business. That very first business was in the hub space and the info-product marketing space. I quickly learned that my gift was technology, but for some reason when I was in the corporate world I didn’t really enjoy my work in that space. I realised, “okay, let’s go back to tech, let’s focus on that.” So I did do web design in those early days. Then I switched off to doing more website building and more training in the tech space and marketing space. Then eventually I came full circle and I started designing software where instead of teaching people how to use tech tools, I design the tech tools to make it easier for them to achieve their results. So that is how I got to where I am today with our Ambition Ally products for ambitious business owners.

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Online Course Specialist, Janet Kafadar, Shares the Trials and Triumphs in Recruiting the Right Virtual Assistant for Her Growing BusinessWant the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest Janet Kafadar, who is the Fairy Godmother of Online Course creation, shares her experiences, both good and not so good, in finding a Virtual Assistant that was the right fit for her and her business. Janet steps us through the trials she faced when looking for the right VA and how she has finally found the right person, with the right skills to really take her business to the next level. Some of the areas covered include:The three biggest problems faced when you have an offshore VAThe importance of recruiting the right VAWorking to your VAs strengthsHelping your VA grow in their role and in your business Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode:01:46 – Who is Janet Kafadar?05:44 – Knowing when to hire a VA08:48 – Dealing with quality issues09:45 – Sometimes things just don’t work out12:00 – How to deal with employees personal issues affecting their work14:20 – The 3 biggest problems with having an offshore VA17:30 – Recruiting the right VA for you and your business19:00 – Working to your VAs strengths22:46 – Helping your VA grow in their role24:35 – Building your virtual team27:43 – Wrapping things up Barbara:  Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success show. I’m your host Barbara Turley, and I’m flying solo again today because my co-host, Matt Malouf, is off scaling businesses like mad, and taking on lots of consulting clients. We are getting back in the fold together in the next few weeks, but I’m flying solo for a few shows. I don’t mind so much today, because the guest I have on is not only a very good friend of mine, but she’s a very good client of my company Virtual Angel Hub – Janet Kafadar. Janet is an online course creation expert, is how I would describe her, and she’s changing business for so many people out there who want to create their online courses, and really getting it out there. Janet, welcome to the show. Janet:  Thanks so much, Barbara! Barbara:  Did you like that intro? Janet:  Yeah, it was really nice. I’m like a super star. Barbara:  You are a super star. Course creation is a challenge for so many people. We know that online courses are the way to really scale businesses and get some passive income into your business, but it’s hard to get round to doing it, and then creating a course that people actually get traction with. To kick off, do you want to just tell me a little bit more about what you do, and tell our listeners a little bit about your business, how you started, and where you’re at now? Who is Janet Kafadar? Janet:  Sure, yeah, absolutely. As you said, I’m an online course design specialist, and I help my clients create online courses and information products. Before I used to do a lot of the coaching and mentoring side of things, but I realized that I couldn’t handle it. I really just wanted to get in there and just help them, and get it done for them, and help them move quicker, and help them move forward faster. That was the main issue that I kept seeing. After they would finish coaching and mentoring with me they would still be at that point where it still wasn’t launched, and I kept thinking, “What is it? Why are they not moving forward?” It’s really just the… Barbara:  Doing. Janet:  Implementation is what would just trip them up. Then life gets in the way and other things happen. Barbara:  That’s a challenge. Janet:  Yeah, it’s a challenge. Barbara:  As you know that was the main problem I saw as a business coach as well, and why I launched Virtual Angel Hub, was because people really get stuck in their business with the doing. They learn what to do, they usually know what they want to do, but they just have no time to get it done.

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How Nathan Chan Used Virtual Teams to Smash Foundr Magazine Out of the Park Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest Nathan Chan, who has had the pleasure of speaking with some of the world’s leading and aspiring entrepreneurs, shares his experiences in building and using virtual teams to take Foundr Magazine to the next level.     This episode is full of insights and tips from Nathan on how he has built virtual teams to allow himself to focus on what he really enjoys doing in his business. Some of the areas covered include:

What to keep in mind when building a virtual team The importance of delegating effectively How to fine tune your processes and why this is so important Effective communication with your team The need for a team or project leader

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

In this episode:

02:06 – How Foundr Magazine came to life

06:00 – What to keep in mind when building a virtual team

06:40 – How to delegate

07:28 – SOP – Standard Operating Procedure

08:03 – Tracking your time

09:08 – Be specific in your instructions

10:12 – Creating your list

11:54 – Creating videos for each task

16:35 – Building a virtual team

20:02 – Communication with your team

22:54 – There needs to be a leader of the project

24:22 – Wrapping things up

Barbara:  Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Virtual Success. I’m your host, Barbara Turley today, and I’m not joined today by my co-host Matt Malouf who’s normally on the show with me, but given I’ve just had a baby and Matt has taken on a whole raft of new clients and businesses, and as business goes, schedules are very hard to line up, so I’m doing the show solo today. I’m quite excited because somebody that I have been following online for quite a long time is Nathan Chan, who is the founder of Foundr Magazine, an absolute, amazing magazine for entrepreneur, with a huge Instagram following, and actually where I found Nathan was on Instagram. I’m very excited today to have Nathan on the show to talk about how he’s using virtual teams in his business and has been using them to really scale a fantastic platform, both digitally and internally as well. Nathan, welcome to the show.

Nathan:  Thank you so much for having me, Barbara. I also just realized, we have a mutual friend, Yaro Starak.

Barbara:  Oh, Yaro. We’ll have to get Yaro on the show actually. Yes, Yaro and I are really good friends, yes. It’s a small world in digital land.

Nathan:  Yeah, it is. He’s a great guy.

Barbara:  He is, indeed. He is, indeed. Nathan,  I found you probably, I think it was in the early days of when Foundr Magazine kind of first launched, and I did find you on Instagram because you had, you do have an amazing Instagram strategy and it’s something I know that you talk a lot about. Can you tell me a little bit first, just let’s start off with your sort of entrepreneurial journey, the quick two minutes on your background and how did Foundr Magazine come about?

How Foundr Magazine came to life

Nathan:  Yeah, sure thing. I started it March 2013 while I was working my day job just as a side hustle, passion project. I never thought it would be this big media start-up or any platform or anything of the sorts.

Barbara:  Did you just, I love that, so you just started as a sort of a hobby sort of thing and had no plan for this big platform that it’s become.

Nathan:  No, not at all.

Barbara:  Wow.

Nathan:  I launched it while I was working my day job. I was looking for a job in marketing. I even took the first issue of the magazine from my iPad to some job interviews, but no one would hire me.

Barbara:  I see. That was a stroke of luck, in hindsight.

Nathan:  Yeah. Long story short, I just, I started this magazine. I identified that there wasn’t really a publication in this space that spoke to aspiring and novice entrepreneurs and ...

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Virtual Angel Hub Success Coach Ram, Reveals The Biggest Challenges Virtual Assistants Experience with Clients Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, we cross to the ‘other side’ and hear from special guest, Ram Sta. Maria, a Success Coach and Virtual Assistant at The Virtual Hub, about some of the challenges of virtual assistants for not achieving success with their clients that he commonly sees happening. Ram shares his insights into what he believes to be the key problem areas faced by VAs and by recognising and accepting that your VA also has certain needs, this can ultimately lead to a very successful client-VA relationship. Some of the areas covered are:  The importance of maintaining an open and positive channel of communication between you and your VAHow to make your VA feel empoweredTips to ensure the feedback you give your VA is constructive, rather than destructiveThe need to provide a sound support system to ensure your VA stays on track, and feels connected and part of a ‘team’ Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode:02:37- Key problems03:55 – Maintaining an open channel of communication04:59 – Positive communication channels09:50 – Blocked communication channels12:26 – Cultural challenges14:10 – Empowering your VA17:33 – Constructive vs. destructive feedback21:44 – Having a good support system24:20 – Celebrating Success26:30 – Staying connected with your VA30:20 – Wrapping things up  Barbara:  Hey, everyone and welcome back to another show of the Virtual Success Show where I’m joined by my fantastic co-host who gives us insights every week into virtual success, Matt Malouf. How are you, Matt? Matt:  I’m well, Barb. How are you? Barbara:  I’m great, thank you. Great, thank you. I’m quite excited about today’s show because we’re taking a little bit of a different tact today. We’ve decided that on these shows, we often talk about what Matt and I are doing with clients or with our own businesses. We interview people who have big teams offshore and around the world and how they manage things. We thought today would be very interesting to actually bring one of our superstar VAs onto the podcast and interview him around what it’s like from the other side. Let’s hear from the virtual assistant’s side and some of the challenges that you might, as listeners, you may not realize is happening in the background. Today, we’ve brought on Ram Sta. Maria from our team and Ram is … look, he’s one of our superstars I have to say and he is one of our success coaches inside Virtual Angel Hub. He has a very unique insight because not only does he work with one of our fantastic clients, but he also coaches a lot of our new VAs that come on to work with some new clients. In the first few months, he will be coaching them and guiding them and just helping them in those initial few months to get success with their new client or clients. So Ram, welcome to the show. Ram:  Hi. Thank you, Barb. Thank you, Matt. I’m very honoured to be here. Barbara:  We’re delighted to have you. Matt, you would have some insights here as well. You’re probably excited to get some questions in for Ram, too. Matt:  Very much so, very much so. I’m really, really excited about the show today because it’s going to give everyone an amazing insight into, let’s call it, the other side. Barbara:  Yeah, which you often don’t hear because as we know, we often don’t hear enough from the other side. It’s very hard to, and especially with Filipino culture as we’ve been chatting about off air, it’s hard to the real insight and the truth from the other side. Key Problems Ram, obviously in your role, look, you started out with us with working with one of our clients and I say you were quite lucky because that went quite well. She was a great client, but I also think it was because you’re a great VA and you’ve a great ability to communicate.

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Setting up a Project – Part One: How To Set Your VA Up For Success When Executing a Day-to-Day or Small Scale Project Want the transcript? Download it here. In part one of our two-part special, we explore the world of project management and take a closer look at how to set up a project and what it really takes, from both you and your VA, to make those day-to-day and small scale projects really successful.  During this episode, Matt and Barbara step you through the methodologies that they themselves follow, and encourage and teach to others, when setting their VAs up with new, day-to-day or small scale projects. Some of the areas covered are: The importance of being clear in your own head around what the task or project is and what success looks likeTips on how to communicate your project goals clearly to your VAWhy it is crucial to have milestone check-in points throughout the project, not just a finish deadlineHow you can work with your VA to hold them accountable to check-in milestones and deadlines Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode:01:58- Steps for success in setting up a small project03:47 – Be clear on what you want06:27 – Clear communication is key10:18 – Case Study – sourcing notebooks for an event14:03 – A sense of control15:06 – “You can only expect what you inspect”15:40 – Overcoming project roadblocks17:35 – Having check-ins is not ‘micromanaging’18:28 – Wrapping things up  Matt: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another show of the Virtual Success Show. I’m joined with my wonderful co-host, Barbara Turley. Good morning, Barbara. Barbara: Hey, Matt. How are you? Matt: I’m well and yourself? Barbara: I’m really well. Thank you, thoroughly enjoying these shows that we’re doing. Matt: They’re lots of fun, aren’t they? Barbara: Yeah, they are, lots of insights. Matt: Had a good week? Barbara: Yes, a bit of a crazy week for me. I’m mentoring new staff members. I’m actually putting some of our key people into more leadership positions at the moment, so there’s obviously that transition from me directing them to them directing me, which is very interesting to do, actually. I’ve been enjoying it, but it takes time. Matt: Excellent. I’m really excited about today’s show. Today is going to be part one of a two part series that Barbara and I were talking about in how to set up a project. As we were discussing just before the recording, we were saying that there’s probably two distinct learnings here. One is around setting up a day-to-day task or a smaller task or project, and then there’s the methodology behind setting up a larger project. What we want to do today in part one of this is just go through a framework and methodology on how to set up one of those day-to-day or smaller tasks or projects. Steps for success in setting up a small project Where this came from, just over the last few weeks, I’ve just noticed a lot of our clients that are working with VAs are having some challenges in like, “Well, I’m not sure if this VA thing is working for me.” A lot of it is that they’re not communicating effectively enough upfront on what success looks like and how the VA needs to, effectively tick the boxes, in order to get the projects done. We thought it would be extremely valuable today to actually step you through the methodologies that Barbara and I use and that we encourage and teach, as part of today’s show. Barbara: Yeah, I think Matt, I see that a lot with our clients, too. It’s sometimes to get the simple things right. With hiring VAs, we often talk about the more complex things of how to get success with teams and various things, but the actual getting the simple bits right in the beginning, like what we’re going to talk about today, can actually make or break your experience with a VA. All the other stuff then can augment that experience later, but if you get this stuff right in the beginning,

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How Matthew Barby, Global Head of Growth & SEO at HubSpot, Is Leveraging Specialist Virtual Teams To Drive Business Growth And Ultimately, Business Success Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest Matthew Barby, an award winning blogger, industry speaker, and lecturer, shares his experiences in creating and working with specialist virtual teams and how when you commit to making it work, can lead to exponential growth and success for your business.   Many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of ‘trying to do it all’.   When used effectively, virtual teams can be very powerful; and Matthew knows this all too well. This episode is full of tips and insights from Matthew on how to approach the task of building specialist virtual teams to perform tasks within your business and how to leverage these teams to their greatest potential. Some of the areas he covers are:

Why having teams of specialists allows you to focus on things you love doing The importance of a having stringent screening process for team members Making sure you commit the time upfront to training team members so as to build rapport with them Understanding the value of Virtual Teams to your business His top three tips for anyone starting out with virtual teams

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

In this episode:

02:48 – Trying to do far too much?!

04:20 – The challenges

05:51 – Cheapest isn’t always best

07:58 – Commit to making it work

08:42 – Building teams of highly specialized people

11:28 – Prove the process can work for one small task

12:33 – Replicate the process

13:54 – Don’t rush through training up team members

15:45 – Complementary skill sets within the team

17:55 – Document your processes

19:58 – How can specialist team members add value?

24:09 – Growing the team

26:28 – Refining the process

28:46 – Spend the time to find the right people

29:31 – Project-based roles vs. Retainer-based roles

32:04 – Key selection criteria

32:27 – Nice-to-haves

33:19 – Absolute deal-breakers

34:03 – Trying to find your ‘silver bullet’

36:09 – Understanding the value of virtual teams

41:06 – Matthew’s three top tips when starting out

41:27 – One – Start off small

42:08 – Two – Strong selection criteria

42:49 – Three – “Treat people like people”

43:48 – Wrapping things up

Barbara: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Virtual Success Show podcast. The show where we give you the inside tips on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. As always I’m joined by my fantastic co-host Matt Malouf. Matt, how are you?

Matt:   I’m well, how are you?

Barbara: I’m really good. Long week, good week, as always.

Matt: Excellent. Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Hey, tell me something interesting that’s happened to you this week.

Barbara: This week. Big lesson this week for me was refining processes, and I know we talk about this a lot on the show, but I’ve discovered that, you know, even when you have a great process you can still refine it, evolve it as little problems happen along the way. So I’ve been doing a lot of that this week. Big thing for me. How about you? What’s been happening?

Matt: I’ve got a little bit of a left-field, quick story to share. I was at home this evening before we’re coming in to do this recording and my eight year old son says to me, “Daddy what are you doing tonight?” And I said, “I will be doing the podcast and recording.” He goes, “Daddy, is that the one where you teach people how to get other people to do work for you?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Can they do my homework?”

Barbara: Oh, he’s clever. (laughing) Tell him, “He doesn’t need homework, he’s clever.”

Matt: And he said to me, “I’ve got the money to pay them as well.” So I was just blown away.

Barbara: He’s clever and savvy.

Matt: Eight year old ready to leverage homework. I’m just like,

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How Taki Moore, Coach Marketing Expert and founder of the CoachMarketingMachine.com is leveraging his virtual teams to encourage everyone to work in their ‘genius’ Want the transcript? Download it here.

In this episode, we hear from Taki Moore, one of Australia’s leading ‘coaches to coaches’ on the benefits of using virtual teams to grow your business and how, if done correctly, will allow you to play to your strengths and live in your ‘genius’. This episode is packed full of useful tips and insights from Taki on how to leverage your virtual team to allow you to make more money, have more fun and help more people. Some of the areas he covers are:

Why breaking down your tasks from the beginning allows you to find your ‘genius’ and delegate the tasks you don’t enjoy/ aren’t good at, in order to get ahead Why letting go of the belief “They can’t do it as well as I can”, can be very liberating The importance of not trying to get rid of tasks all at once, as this can be overwhelming Why it is important to be a strong team leader Why a sold ‘communication rhythm’ is important for the entire team and why you should stick to it The importance of viewing the remuneration of your team as an investment as opposed to an expense

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

In this episode:

02:56 – Taki’s 60-sec elevator pitch

04:33 – It started with a book…

06:42 – Breaking down your tasks

09:00 – “But no one can do it as well as I can”

09:51 – Delegating to get ahead

11:51 – Finding your ‘genius’

14:29 – Allowing others to play in their genius

15:24 – The ‘Super VA’ myth

18:14 – A communication rhythm

20:34 – ‘Check-ins’ time frames

21:50 – Daily check-ins

23:16 – Weekly, monthly & quarterly check-ins

27:09 – The importance of sticking to your comms plan

29:51 – Create a meeting structure

30:51 – What Taki would do differently next time…

36:27 – Return on Investment

38:32 – Wrapping things up

Tools & resources mentioned in this episode:

Tribal Council Blog

The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What you must do to increase the value of your growing firm by Verne Harnish

Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable…about Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business by Patrick Lencioni

Matt: Good morning everyone! Matt Malouf here for another exciting show of the Virtual Success Show and as always I’m joined by my co-host, Barbara Turley. Good morning Barbara!

Barbara: Morning Matt! How are you?

Matt: I’m excellent! How are you going?

Barbara: I’m good you know I have had an interesting week. I’ve sort of had an evolving week in my business and I wanted to share a quick quote that I saw this morning just sums up completely the week I’ve had. It was by Ben Chestnut who’s the CEO of Mail Chimp – ‘As it grows, your business will go through several stages and each stage requires a different kind of leader’ – and I’m definitely feeling that in my business this week. I’m sort of moving to another level and feeling that sense of needing to be a different kind of leader as I go forward.

Matt: Fantastic! What a great quote, as your business grows, you need to become a different kind of leader. That’s amazing, that’s great! We’ll make sure we get that posted as an attachment to this. I think it’ a really good start!

Barbara: I’ll organize that!

Matt: So Barbara, I’m super super excited about today’s podcast. I’ve got a dear friend and mentor of mine, Taki Moore joining us. Taki Moore was one of my very early business coach and mentors when I became a coach and we’ve been friends for many many years and we actually met in my former life as a personal trainer. We’ve stayed in touch over the years and Taki has been responsible for an amazing amount of learning that I’ve had over the years, both in the area of virtual assistants,

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Communication – Part Three: How To Approach Tough And Emotionally Challenging Conversations To Achieve a Win-Win Outcome Want the transcript? Download it here.   In the third and final episode of our three-part special, we take a look at those tough conversations you have to have when things aren’t going as planned and why the approach you take to these is so important in obtaining the most positive outcome for all involved. Let’s face it! No matter who you are, tough conversations are never easy; you’re dealing with humans, and as humans, we all have an emotional side.   It doesn’t matter how great your business processes are, inevitably, as a business owner you will have to have these tough conversations. In this episode, Barbara and Matt draw on their own personal experiences and share their tips and insights into how to approach these conversations to ensure that you achieve the most out of them.  

Some of the areas covered are:

Why shying away from tough conversations is never a good thing. Why it’s important to become masterful with your language and communication style. The critical steps you need to take when planning for those tough conversations. Common conversation hurdles you may encounter and tips on overcoming these. Advice on how to respond if the meeting doesn’t go to plan. Ways to reduce the number of tough conversations you may be having.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

In this episode:

04:00 – Tough conversations are never easy

06:16 – Client case study – shying away from the ‘tough’ conversation

08:38 – The “tough guy syndrome”

09:19 – Candour

11:18 – Becoming masterful with your language and communication style

13:56 – Setting up for those tough conversations

14:12 – Set up a meeting with an agenda

15:52 – Present the facts as they are

17:28 – Use video communication channels

18:58 – Conversation hurdles

19:47 – Conquering those hurdles

24:03 – How to respond if the meeting doesn’t go to plan

28:29 – Reducing the number of tough conversations

30:21 – Wrapping things up

Barbara: Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Virtual Success Show. I am joined by my co-cost Matt Malouf. Hey Matt, how’s it going?

Matt: I’m well. I’m joined by the magnificent, wonderful, bright, positive, Barbara Turley.

Barbara: I was thinking we already said … I was chuckling in the background, and I thought, “I shouldn’t assume he’s going to talk about me.” Thank you for that great accolade. A lot to live up to on this episode.

Matt: How have you been?

Barbara: I have been well. I’ve been really, actually…the last little while I’ve been thinking back on the episodes we’ve been doing, actually, about communication. It’s something that I’ve had to grow into myself as a business owner and entrepreneur as well.

Some of the tips you’ve been giving on these shows have really actually helped me a lot in my communications with my teams and thinking about how I’m communicating and the language I’m using. Am I being too nice? You know? Wanting them to like me and not attacking the difficult conversations and the effective feedback and stuff like that. It’s been excellent. How about you? Are you communicating more effectively with your wife and your children?

Matt: Well, I’m doing my best (*laughs).

For me too, I think each one of these episodes that we do, there’s so many learnings that we’re trying to share, but I think we end up walking away, and after every episode we say, “Wow, that was … we took so much from it as well.” It’s certainly inspiring for me. What it does too, I think these episodes for me, not only with my own teams but in the coaching that I do, it just enables me to enhance the experience for everybody and really uncover and help people keep moving forward.

Barbara: You know, I think it’s an important point actually that we’ve just di...

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Communication – Part Two: Why Being Open To Giving And Receiving Effective And Constructive Feedback is Vital For Your Business And Personal Growth Want the transcript? Download it here. In episode two of our three-part special, we focus in on the area of giving and receiving effective feedback and why being open to this as a business owner is essential for the growth of your people and your business, as well as your own personal growth.   Giving constructive feedback can be quite a challenging experience, especially when the feedback may be somewhat negative and so a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with this, or may shy away from it completely. To help solve this, in this episode we share:

Real-life case studies on the dos and don’ts of giving effective feedback. Why giving feedback doesn’t necessarily have to be a horrible conversation. When done correctly, the feedback process can be collaborative and rewarding. How important it is to give feedback to your VA in order to refine systems and processes going forward. How the feedback process extends beyond that initial conversation. Why seeing you and your VA as a team is paramount to a successful working relationship.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

In this episode:

03:18 – It’s a two-way street

04:17 – Resistance as a result of fear

06:01 – Client case study – “Please don’t tell my VA, but…”

06:46 – Lose-lose strategy

08:04 – Be clear with your feedback communication

09:48 – It’s not a blame game

11:56 – Be mindful of cultural differences

13:13 – The use of video communication

14:00 – Feedback is more than one conversation

15:55 – Be willing to invest the time up front

17:43 – Some practical steps to put in place

20:03 – See yourselves as a team

21:14 – The mindset for success

22:36 – Being mindful of how you communicate your feedback

23:50 – Make your intentions clear

25:25 – Wrapping things up

Barbara: Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of virtual success, where I’m joined by my fantastically insightful co-host, Matt. How are you, Matt?

Matt: I’m well, Barb, how are you?

Barbara: I say that because every week I just get so many insights from you that I’ve implemented into my business, so I’m stealing tips along the way, as we do these podcasts together.

Matt: I’m writing, “Note to self, think of opening for Barb.”

Barbara: Did I catch you off guard, there?

Matt: My magnificent co-host.

Barbara: Yes, you can use that for the next show.

This is episode two, everyone, in our communication series. So if you haven’t listened to the last episode, where we discussed that we were going to talk about this topic of communication – such a huge topic – that we’ve decided to split it into three shows. This is episode two, where we’re going to deal with how to give effective feedback, with emphasis on the word effective, because giving feedback can be quite a challenging experience, especially when the feedback has negatives in it.

To set this up, really, with communication, it’s a three-part show that we’re doing. In episode one, we discussed how to set up a task for success in the first place, and your communication from day one. It’s really worth listening to that episode, if you haven’t been there yet. Today, obviously, we’re going to be talking about giving effective feedback, and then in episode three, coming up soon, we’re going to talk about how to have the tough conversations which everybody shies away from, naturally but it’s really important to know how to do that effectively.

So Matt, I’m excited about today’s one, yet again.

Matt: Me too. I guess, just to set up today’s show on providing effective feedback, I think, as a business owner, you need to be open to giving effective and constructive feedback, and receiving constructive feedback, as well. As you’re learning the skill of this, it’s really,

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Communication – Part One: How To Ensure Your Communication Style Sets You Up For Success With Your Virtual Teams Want the transcript? Download it here. In the first episode of our three-part special, we delve deep into the world of communication and take a look at how your ability to communicate effectively with your virtual team is often the difference between your success and failure. Communication is not only one’s ability to listen; communication is the response you get.   This episode is full of insights from both Barbara and Matt on how to communicate with your team effectively for success. Some of the areas covered are:  

Understanding the differences between the three communication styles. Accepting that one style of communication is not going to fit every single task. Communication must happen regardless of how experienced your VA is. You must have clarity on how you want to be communicated with in order to promote work flow.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

In this episode:

02:36 – Communicate effectively

03:14 – “Communication is the response you get”

04:25 – Setting up for success

05:48 – Styles of communication

07:49 – Communicate what failure looks like

11:20 – Slowdown in order to speed up

12:22 – Communication must happen regardless of experience

17:00 – Reporting back

18:14 – Clarify how you want to be communicated with

21:10 – Wrapping things up

Barbara: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Virtual Success, where I’m joined with my fantastic co-host Matt Malouf. Hey, Matt, how’s it going?

Matt: I’m well, Barbara. How are you?

Barbara: I’m good, thank you, and excited about today’s show.

Matt: I know. It’s a really interesting and exciting topic we’re going to be talking about today.

Barbara: Absolutely, absolutely, and just for the listeners, we’ve been talking about, Matt and I have had the topic of communication written on our podcast show list for quite some time, and it’s a show we haven’t done yet. And actually today, I was just saying to Matt off-air that I’m really glad we didn’t do it yet, because today we have such a powerful episode for you based on actual live case studies and actual live problems that we are seeing with some of our clients in Virtual Angel Hub, and we’re going to dissect them on this podcast, and actually on a few, we’re going to split this podcast into three episodes, that’s how deep this topic is.

We’re actually going to kick off today with talking about, how do we actually set up for success? How do we make sure that our communication sets up for success with a virtual team?

Then episode two, we’re going to dive into giving effective feedback, with emphasis on the word “effective,” and then in episode three, we’re then going to move on to having the tough conversations, because these, obviously, are the things that can derail us emotionally, can be very challenging to attack, and we’re going to give you some great strategies and tips on how to attack those tough conversations in a constructive way.

Matt: Just to add to what you’re saying, Barbara, I think, for the listeners, I want everyone to understand that, what we’re teaching in these three episodes are relevant to not only your virtual teams but your teams that you may have in your offices or locally as well. These teachings are universal and you need to really understand that communication at all levels in your organization is critically important.

Communicate effectively

Barbara: In fact, actually, I would say, and I know you’ll agree with me here Matt, for me, in what I’ve observed over the last couple of years of dealing with clients, dealing with virtual teams, I would say that your ability to communicate effectively together actually is the difference between success and failure with this. Task lists and processes and all those things are vitally important that...

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Why Siimon Reynolds, One Of The World’s Leading High Performance Coaches for CEOs and Entrepreneurs, Is Using Virtual Teams For Many Key Functions Within His Highly Successful Business Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Siimon Reynolds, mentor to business owners worldwide, shares his own experiences with using virtual teams and how using virtual staff for many vital functions within his business allows him to keep his business running successfully, as a 24/7 operation.   This episode is full of insights from Siimon into how to effectively use virtual teams to create business success. Some of the areas he covers are:

Why having a team of virtual ‘specialists’ is so beneficial to your business Deciding whether full-time, part-time or project-based staff work best for you The advantages of virtual teams versus local teams Managing the challenges of working across time zones How to get over the ‘hurdle’ or fear of thinking virtual teams won’t work for you How important it is to have very clear processes in place for your virtual team The importance of regular communication, both verbal and written, with your team

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

In this episode:

01:46 – Key team players

04:34 – Part-time vs. Full-time vs. Project-based

05:25 – Advantages of virtual teams over local teams

07:30 – Challenges of working across time zones

11:40 – ‘The Hurdle’

12:30 – Getting over ‘The Hurdle’

14:43 – So I have a VA, now what?

16:40 – Good relationships

17:33 – How proactive should my VA be?

19:56 – The art of communication

21:39 – The more you grow, the better people you need

22:52 – Wrapping things up

Matt: Welcome to this episode of the Virtual Success Show. I’m really excited to be sharing and talking with Siimon Reynolds today but before we introduce Siimon, hey Barb how are you going?

Barbara: I’m great Matt, thank you very much. Delighted and excited about this show to hear Siimon’s great insights into virtual teams.

Matt: Fantastic, and so welcome, Siimon, to today’s show!

Siimon: It’s great to be here!

Matt: Fantastic! Siimon and I, we work closely together at The Fortune Institute and I met Siimon back in 2008 and I think at that time you just moved from Australia to United States, Siimon is that correct?

Siimon: Yeah absolutely! I’m there now, here in almost always sunny, Los Angeles.

Matt: Fantastic! What amazed me at the time when we met – that time when we met you were coaching me – was that you were running your coaching business, you were living in the US and yet you had a team here in Australia doing a lot of the coordinating and the like for you. So, I guess what we want to share with everybody today was your experiences with virtual teams and using virtual staff for many functions within your businesses and your experiences with that. So if we could start with just sharing who you’ve got on your team, or your virtual team, and what sort of key roles that they play or task that they do for you.

Key team players

Siimon: Yes sure! Well, look I have a virtual assistant and have had for many years in Australia and she’s responsible for doing a whole lot of stuff, she sets meetings for me, she actually handles a lot of my finances, you know so she pays bills that are needed, all that kind of stuff. I use her also for research, so that could be work research or ‘Can you search for a company that does XY and Z?’, or I even use her for things like holidays, so if I want to go to Italy, I don’t search through for the best hotels in Milan, I say I want a hotel like this within these parameters in Milan, can you present me three good examples of that.’ So that’s incredibly useful and an amazing way to slice off time and I’ll even use her to slice off a minute, numerous times a week, so for instance, if I have or someone wants an appointment with me,

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Leveraging your virtual teams, both locally and overseas, to coordinate successful projects Want the transcript? Download it here.   In this episode, we are given insight into a real-life project and how leveraging your virtual teams to coordinate these in a time efficient manner. Some of the areas he covers are:

Why it’s important to have a clear project plan from the get-go? How important clearly defined roles within the team really are? Why it’s of benefit to have ‘specialists’ fulfilling particular roles and not expecting your VA to be a ‘jack of all trades’? Why investing the time in your ‘specialists’ upfront to understand you and your business can really pay off in the end? Making sure you have a project management system that is the ‘glue’ to ensure everyone communicates effectively How important is it to have clearly defined project goals and check-in points? Why it is paramount to lead the project team in order to set them up for success?

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode: 01:16 – Project background

03:05 – The right person for the role

03:30 – A clear project plan

05:55 – Clearly defining roles within the project team

10:06 – Different people have different skill sets

10:46 – Investing the time upfront to get it right

15:00 – Setting clearly defined project roles

16:55 – Don’t make assumptions…

17:15 – Have clear project milestones

18:52 – Don’t just have a deadline, have check-in points as well

21:19 – Driving the strategy

24:55 – Dealing with project curve balls

27:36 – Being a leader

29:27 – How to be a GREAT leader

34:57 – Wrapping things up

Matt: Good morning everyone! Excited to be here for today’s episode of the Virtual Success Show. Good morning Barbara!

Barbara: Hi Matt! How’s it going?

Matt: Going well and yourself?

Barbara: Great! Thank you, good week again.

Matt: Yes, another great week and so many great things happening. Which leads me to what I want to really focus on in today’s podcast was around an event that we, that I put on recently and how we utilized our virtual team to pretty much do the majority of the organization and setting up of the event.

Barbara: I’m so excited to talk about this topic because you know obviously, I have had a lot of experience, I have big virtual teams myself now but I haven’t put on an event yet so I’m very keen to pick your brains on how you interacted with the team and how you, because you pretty much offloaded most of the setting up of this event, didn’t you, to the virtual team.

Matt: Actually all of it! It was unbelievable, so I’ll start with how this whole thing came about and then we can go from there

Barbara: Yeah! Project background Matt: Like many of us, I was sitting around and came out with this concept for this event that I wanted to host. Locally, in my local area. I live in the Sutherland Shire and I thought ‘I’ve never done an event for a local business community’. I want to put something on for the local business community and as I said, I had one of those moments, light bulb, sounds great, how am I going to do it? So, I went to my whiteboard and literally white boarded up the whole event. We need a venue, we need landing pages, we need payment pages, we need marketing, all the aspects that we needed. And I looked at it and I went ‘Oh my goodness, how is all of this going to get done?!’ I set myself with this ridiculous timeline; I came up with the idea in late September and with the intension of doing this in the middle of November, so I literally gave myself 6 weeks to do this event. And then I started to think about, well who could do aspects of this? Who could do this part? Who could do that part? And that’s where I’m like, I’ve got this amazing team of people around me but there were some gaps and so I think the first thing I did was get clarity on what the whole thing needed to like an...

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How Annette Lackovic, Australia’s #1 Female Sales Expert Is Building On Her Success With The Help Of Virtual Teams  Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest Annette Lackovic, Australia’s #1 Female Sales Expert, shares her first-hand experience in working with virtual teams and how they have contributed to the growth of her business. This episode is full of insights and tips from Annette on how to overcome some of the common traps entrepreneurs can fall into when onboarding new virtual team members. Some of the areas she covers are:Why perseverance is key in those first few weeks of having a VA?Why it’s important not to shy away from those ‘tough’ conversations?Why open and honest communication is pivotal in building a solid working relationship with your virtual teams?How important the connection is that you have with your virtual team and ensuring there is an element of fun in your work day?Understanding your VAs skills and passions and fostering these to help them grow within your business, and ultimately grow your business?Why it is important to take the time to train your virtual team from the outset, to remove any unrealistic expectations you may have of them and their abilities, and vice versa?When’s the right time to bring a VA on board part-time vs. full-time?Why you really can’t afford NOT to have a VA? Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode:01:24 – Perseverance is key05:33 – Tough conversations06:33 – Open and honest communication09:05 – Let’s have some fun10:45 – Helping your VA grow in the role15:30 – Avoiding unrealistic expectations19:10 – Part-time vs. full-time23:28 – You can’t afford NOT to have a VA27:00 – Wrapping things up  Barbara: Hey everyone and welcome back to another Virtual Success Show! Matt, how’s it going? Matt: Going well and yourself? Barbara: Great, thank you! Another fantastic week as always, you know, learning virtual success with my teams. Matt: It’s always an interesting week, isn’t it? Barbara: It’s a journey! It’s a journey. And look, I’m actually really excited about today’s show because I have one of my favorite people on the planet on the show. Annette Lackovic, welcome to the show! Annette: Thank you! Favorite people; I love that. Perseverance is key Barbara: You do, you like that a lot especially on social media. Annette, I really wanted to get you on the show because as you and I both know, your virtual assistant was one of the first that we placed at Virtual Angel Hub when I started the business and what I just love, and what I want to share this story with the listeners, was that we got this VA and I was really excited about this particular person because I thought she was perfect for Annette and so she started working with Annette and within, I think it was week 2, maybe week 2 or 3… Annette: I think week 1 or week 2 (*laughs) Barbara: An email comes through from Annette to me and there were probably a couple of expletives in it. There were a couple of words in capital and I think, as I recall, something like ‘she’s so not worth the money’ things like that. So it basically wasn’t going well, it wasn’t a good email. Barbara: It wasn’t a good email but you weren’t having a good experience, let’s be honest and this is something a lot of people face in those first few weeks of working with a VA but the good news is that now, you and gorgeous Gemely, absolutely adore each other, work really well together and you’ve made the relationship really work. So I really wanted to talk to you about, first of all, how you got through those first few weeks, how you went from failure to success, I guess. Maybe to kick things off, just tell us about that first day, you know the first week when you met. Annette: The hardest bit is most entrepreneurs, we need somebody in our business because it grows, and we tend to put them in at the wrong time,

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Why a Recurring Task list is the Ultimate Gamechanger with Virtual Teams Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, we dive into the nuts and bolts of the ‘recurring task list’ concept and why it is such a game changer for those that want to achieve entrepreneurial freedom using virtual teams. This episode is jam packed full of actionable tips and tricks from Barbara on exactly why and how to build a rock solid recurring task list for your business …. So you can do more of the things you love.

Why the recurring task list is THE ultimate game changer if you want to achieve entrepreneurial freedom Why keeping it simple and basic is the key to getting started with a rock solid recurring task list. Why delegating correctly actually gives you control rather than taking it away. How the belief that you can do it faster is the thing that’s keeping you stuck in business. How to run multiple businesses and look super-human while doing very little yourself. Why this strategy will bring you more enjoyment, fulfillment and success in business.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

Today’s Gift for listeners:

Get ‘The Ultimate What to Outsource Guide’

In this episode:

01:36 – Keeping it simple – The recurring task list

06:46 – Delegating correctly

08:15 – “…but I can do it faster myself”

10:00 – You can be superhuman

15:11 – Gain more enjoyment, fulfillment and success in business

18:23 – The ultimate ‘What to outsource’ guide

19:24 – Wrapping things up

Barbara: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Virtual Success where I am joined with my fantastic co-host, Matt Malouf

Barbara: Matt how is it going?

Matt: Well, how about yourself?

Barbara: Fantastic, great this week. We’ve been punching out some amazing episodes this week and I have learnt so much myself, to be honest, from some of the people we’ve been interviewing and from you and the insights that we are sharing.

Matt: It’s always amazing! I love this time we spend together because even though we’re sharing our own insights on what we’ve already learned, I find we learn so much along the way as well. It’s a lot of fun, isn’t it?!

Barbara: Oh yeah, some of the insights that I have personally gained from some of the guests on the show and from you, have actually been shaping the business I am growing which is Virtual Angel Hub. You know, it’s really helped me a lot. So I can only imagine how much it’s helping those out there who are listening and maybe have just started with their first VA, you know just trying to get insights from people who’ve done it before. It’s a constantly evolving thing.

Matt: Absolutely, and lots of fun too.

Keeping it simple – The recurring task list

Barbara: Yes, I am excited about today’s show because we are going to be talking about something that is very close to my heart and that I have spent a lot of time teaching our clients how to do. It’s a concept called the ‘recurring task list’. It is something that is so pivotal that I feel, to get success with your virtual teams, it is something that I focus on a lot. It just alleviates a lot of the stress and pressure. The problem is though, that it is onerous to set up in the beginning and a lot of people avoid it. And when they avoid it, unfortunately, they can fall into massive holes later. So I always encourage people to really focus on this recurring task list as much as possible in the beginning, so you can have the freedom of using virtual teams later.

Matt: So, I agree with you. I think this is probably one of the most critical areas for success with your virtual teams. So Barb, let’s start with how did this evolve for you personally and then how it evolved with your clients.

Barbara: Yes, that is a great question actually Matt, because I didn’t wake up in the morning and decide, wow this is a great way to do it.

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The Entrepreneur Mindset You Need To Get Real Success With Virtual Teams Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, we talk about the entrepreneur mindset that is critical to succeed with Virtual Teams. This isn’t a nice-to-have or some off-the-cuff suggestions, Matt & Barbara share with you what they believe to be essential mindsets to succeed with your Virtual Team. The episode goes deep into the 5 critical entrepreneur mindsets you must adopt in order to succeed with your virtual teams. These include:

Adopting an entrepreneur mindset of letting go – believing your VA can do these tasks as good if not better than you can. Viewing you VA’s remuneration as an Investment vs Expense. Understanding that your information/data is safe and secure even though you can’t physically see your VA. Also that strong systems are essential to further mitigate this risk. You must slow down to speed up. Understand the cost of mistakes are often not as bad as you think!

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

Matt: Hey everyone! Welcome to this week’s episode, we’re really looking forward to sharing some amazing content with you today and I’m joined by my co-host Barbara Turley, how are you Barb?

Barbara: Great Matt! How are you? How’s your week?

Matt: The weeks are just flying by at the moment, it’s like,

Barbara: We’re getting old Matt, we’re getting old!

Matt: Tell you what, we’re recording on the Thursday today and it’s like, we are the rest of the week go? So it’s just flying by!

Barbara: Yeah but it’s good fun, good fun!

Matt: You know Barb I’m more excited than I’m normally am about today’s episode because it certainly is the area that I’m extremely passionate about and I’d say talk about multiple times every single day in what I do. It’s part of the book that I’m writing at the moment and it’s all around the mindset that is critical to succeed with virtual teams. You know I think a lot of this is touched on but I don’t see many people really addressing this seriously enough and I really wanna make sure that today the way that I understand it, that what we’re talking about isn’t it nice to have, isn’t like something’s was suggesting we believe that this is critical to your success with your virtual teams.

Barbara: Absolutely Matt, you know I think like I’ve said before, sometimes this can be a bit of a woowoo topic when we’re talking about mindset and believing in yourself and all that when the reality is if you don’t get this bit right, all the strategies and tactics in the world will not work because this will get into people’s way and you see it every day the people that you’re coaching. I’m seeing it develop with client’s relationships with VAs and … either succeeding or failing and often it can come down to mindset, little mindset tweaks. Interestingly we’re not in the part of the client but I actually see on the part of the VAs. We’ve actually tweaked a couple of mindset issues with VAs and watched them soar afterwards you know so it’s a very interesting area. I’m keen to hear your … because you obviously, coach on this a lot.

Matt: I do and you know the biggest challenge I had while preparing today was trying to condensed, I think I can talk a 2-day weekend workshop to get just this one topic so I wanna make sure that we hear the, what we’ve come up with is, what I believe Barb as we discussed prior to the show what you believe as well, the 5 critical mindsets that you must adopt in order to succeed with your virtual teams so let’s get straight into it I think! So, mindset #1 – you need to adopt the mindset of letting go, you must let go – I see so many relationships to team virtual assistant and business owners fail because the owner has, their mantra is, they can’t do as good as me, they’ll never do as well as I can, they can’t do it as fast as I can,

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How Dan Norris, Co-Founder of WP Curve, is Using Virtual Teams To Build A Million Dollar Business Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing the inspiring Dan Norris, serial entrepreneur and Co-Founder of WP Curve, on how he is building a million dollar business using virtual teams. This episode is jam-packed full of great insights and tips from Dan on how to engage your virtual teams for maximum success. Some of the things he touched on are:

Why doing what you love and delegating the rest is the wrong approach if you are a true entrepreneur building a scalable business. Why ‘working with people’ and ‘managing people’ are two totally different skillsets. Why it is crucial to have your expectations clearly laid out and documented. How to build processes for everything so every angle of your business is systemised and your virtual team can manage it effectively. How to build flexibility within a structure that works for your virtual team.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. Tools & resources mentioned in this episode: Trello

Slack

Zapier

Google Docs

How To Use Trello and Zapier by Dan In this episode: 02:13 – Where it all started

08:06 – Some of the early challenges

10:18 – Dealing with different work ethics

13:25 – The importance of systems, tools and processes

13:53 – Dan’s ‘must-have’ tools

17:04 – Creating processes is NOT boring

18:35 – Train your people to use your systems, your way

21:47 – Managing your staff

23:15 – Consider the costs of growing your business

24:13 – Your biggest mistake could be saying ‘Yes’

27:29 – You should be delegating everything

29:12 – Wrapping things up

Barbara: Hey everyone welcome to the show! And as always, I’m joined by my fabulous co-host, Matt Malouf. Matt, how’s it going?

Matt: I’m going well Barbara! How are you?

Barbara: I’m great, thanks! Good week?

Matt: It has been an amazing week and I’m really looking forward to today’s episode.

Barbara: Yeah, me too! I mean I’m super excited because someone I’ve been following from quite a long time, has been actually an inspiration to me in building Virtual Angel Hub and how to manage virtual teams, which is actually not as easy as people think, is our guest on the show today and that is Dan Norris, who is co-founder of WPCurve. And not only is Dan a very passionate entrepreneur with a huge obsession of content marketing and everything in digital, he’s also running a big virtual team and with 30 people at the moment in Philippines and a co-founder who lives in the US, so truly global virtual teams. Dan welcome to the show, we’re really excited to get chatting with you!

Dan: Well I’m excited too, thank you for having me!

Barbara: Yeah, it’s good! So, just to kick off, do you want to give us quick background into how you ended up with such a big team of virtual staff? Where did it all start for you? Where it all started Dan: Right, so two years ago I just sent an email to my list and asked them if they wanted ongoing WordPress support and I made the offer of unlimited small fixes each month for $70 a month and at the time I had one developer in the Philippines, Andrew, who was a really, really good developer and he’d worked on a lot of stuff with me and I really didn’t want to lose him. And actually the other thing I said was 24/7 too, so I had small jobs 24/7 and I only have one guy in the Philippines which is the same time zone as me and I had a bunch of people say yes to it and so I was like, doing it on my phone at night time. So I knew straightaway I was going to have to hire people. What ended up happening was I found a co-founder in the US to manage that side of the world, which made things a lot easier. And I’m also not a WordPress developer, so I was always going to hire people – it never would have worked without doing that,

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How To Get Your Virtual Team To Ace Your Expectations Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, we talk about how get your virtual team to ace your expectations by defining what your expectations really are. A common frustration experienced by many entrepreneurs when implementing virtual team members is that they don’t do what is expected of them. To help solve this, in this episode we share:

How to define your expectations. How to measure “success”. Communicating expectations – how to clearly articulate these to your team members. Are the expectations realistic for the roles you are employing your team members for.

Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.

In this episode:

02:36 – Clearly defining your expectations

04:40 – No-one can read your mind

05:36 – How to define your expectations

07:26 – Clear communication is key

10:00 – Don’t just think it, write it down

13:02 – Help them, help you

14:06 – What does success look like?

15:24 – Communicate clearly, assume nothing

17:49 – Communicating your expectations

18:22 – Document your expectations

20:32 – The good and the not so good

21:24 – Being clear on what failure looks like

25:33 – Unrealistic expectations of your VA

26:36 – Help your VA grow

28:55 – Wrapping things up

Matt: Welcome everyone to today’s episode and I’m joined by my co-host Barbara Turley. Hey Barb, how are you doing today?

Barbara: Hey Matt! Good and how are you?

Matt: Excellent, excellent! I’m really, really looking forward to today’s show. I think there are so many amazing topics – I think I say that every week that I’m really looking forward to the show but I’m just thoroughly enjoying the conversation and the education that we’re providing to the community.

Barbara: Me too, you know and it’s funny because I know we chat off-air all the time, we talk about just the depth of stuff that we need to discuss because every show we do, we’re like, ‘Ah we need to do a whole show on that little piece, or this little piece’, and that’s how all these shows are coming together, so it’s fantastic.

Matt: Absolutely, absolutely! How’s your week been?

Barbara: Good! You know, busy as always but I’m starting to implement some of the things that we’re actually talking about on the show and I’m really starting to see great results with our virtual teams, so it’s really useful and would say to the listeners, you know, implement this stuff! Really listen to what we’re talking about here because we’re actively doing it every day in our businesses and its working. How about you Matt? What’s been happening for you?

Matt: You know it’s been great. We’re always adding to our team which is great. We’ve now got people literally all over the world and that amazes me how, like what you were talking about, through implementation of the strategies that we talked about, I can literally work from my home office and have people, we’ve got people in America, we’ve got people in the Philippines, New Zealand, all around Australia and we’ve got people in Europe as well. So it’s just, it’s exciting. Really, really exciting!

Barbara: And I think the other thing to note here is, it absolutely can be done and very simply because a lot of people think that sounds really complicated. But actually, I’m just loving having a big team you know, most of mine are in the Philippines at the moment but I’m loving having them all over the place, we’re all connected online. With the technology today you can really do it and it makes my life simpler rather than more complicated. Clearly defining your expectations Matt: It sure does, it sure does. So today’s topic, we want to talk around expectations and what we want to focus in on in the theme of expectations is, have you clearly defined your expectations of your virtual team or virtual team members and do they understand how to fulfil and meet your expectati...

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Why Some Entrepreneurs Struggle While Others Fly High When It Comes To Productivity Success With Virtual Teams  Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, we tackle the big issue of why some entrepreneurs really struggle when it comes to getting productivity success with virtual teams. Having a great virtual team is like the holy grail when it comes to entrepreneurial freedom but sadly many struggle to really make it work. There are a few key things that typically trip most people up and in today’s show we give you someactionable tips to avoid the most common pitfalls. Why having the right systems (that actually work) is the key starting point for success.How to make sure your team have the right thought process as you when they are implementing your systems and processes.Why many entrepreneurs unwittingly set their teams up to fail … then blame them!How to foster true win/ win relationships with your virtual team & get explosive success. Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode:01:21 – The scenario04:39 – Common pitfalls when onboarding your VA06:10 – Check your systems and processes07:42 – Don’t overcomplicate things09:11 – Regularly review your systems11:00 – “People run the systems…”12:45 – Have a strong vision for your business13:32 – Expectations misalignment15:07 – It starts with you, the owner16:14 – Managing your relationships16:51 – Viewing your virtual staff as an asset19:26 – Am I setting my team up to fail?20:22 – Fostering strong communication22:09 – Let’s recap24:42 – Wrapping things up Matt: Hey welcome to the show this week! I’m joined by my co-host Barbara Turley, hey Barb! Barbara: Hey Matt! How’s it going? Good week? Matt: I’m having a great week and yourself? Barbara: Ah yes pretty good! Busy as always but you know going well. Matt: Excellent, excellent! Barbara I’m really, really looking forward to today’s episode. It’s really interesting, in the conversation we’re having, just preparing about some of the challenges that you’ve been witnessing with virtual teams this week and I’m really excited about the challenge you’re going to share with everyone today and how you are going to unpack that and help everyone learn how to solve this. Do you want give everyone an insight into what’s been happening? The scenario Barbara: Sure, yes! Well I had a really interesting situation happen this week where, you know, we often send feedback forms out to our clients about how their VAs are doing in Virtual Angel Hub, where as you know we recruit and train Vas. And I call it ‘compare the pair’ because we’ve had this interesting one come back where we have the same VA working on two different client accounts, part time on both accounts. Both businesses are similar business models so they’re not that dissimilar, they both do similar task lists and one arguably is more complex than the other. But the business that is a bit complex, the feedback about the VA was she is fantastic, I don’t know what I would do without her, her attention to detail has been amazing, her initiative, you know, glowing, glowing report! The other business has come back with a list of complaints, says the attention to detail is low, basically not happy, not wholly happy with this VA, we want to have a whole discussion about it. So I find this very interesting because how can the same VA with the same experience and the same attitude have two dramatically different situations occur with different clients. So it’s been a tricky one for me to unpack. Matt: Absolutely! So just to reiterate, we have very similar businesses, similar task lists that the VA has to perform for the both businesses. One raves about them and the other is considering what, dropping them? Barbara: Yeah I would say not dropping them yet but I know from the feel that we’re heading in that direction. Matt: So let’s call it, frustrated and unhappy!

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Opening The Kimono On How Any Entrepreneur Can Use Virtual Teams To Start Liberating Time… Successfully! Want the transcript? Download it here. On this very first episode, we open the kimono on the key challenges we see people facing when it comes to how to use a virtual team.                                                                                         Liberating time is really the number one reason entrepreneurs look to hire virtual assistants so they can then utilise their precious time on more high value, business growth activities. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as people think !   Often people get tripped up very quickly and can end up getting frustrated and giving up. They throw their hands in the air and decide that outsourcing just doesn’t work for them or their type of business.   Sadly, we see these entrepreneurs and their business growth plans suffer when they try to outsource and then suffer again when they can’t get it right. The purpose of this show is:

To educate more entrepreneurs on how to successfully implement and maximise the use of virtual teams in their businesses To provide strategies, tactics and action steps that boost success throughout that implementation process To talk about our own experiences and those of our clients case study style To interview the many entrepreneurs out there that have achieved success with virtual teams both small and large – the pros and cons, do’s and dont’s.

To kick things off in this episode we dived into:

How every business across every industry can make great use of virtual teams for business growth – even when they are convinced it wont work for them ! Why thinking you are a great communicator and actually being a great communicator can be two very different things. Why slowing down to speed up is one of the most pivotal things you can do to grow your business. How to delegate so you gain control instead of lose control. How to take the guess work, misses and mistakes out of your virtual experience. Let us know in the comments below what your key take out has been from this episode or if you have something cool to add – also let us know.

Systems and tools we mention in this show:

Asana Project ManagementSkypeSlack ChatDropvox

In this episode:

01:04 – Using virtual teams for business growth

06:42 – Being a great communicator

08:00 – Create a recurring task list

11:25 – Use a project management tool

13:10 – Create a meeting rhythm with your team

15:35 – Build rapport

18:17 – Be direct in your communications

22:06 – Working out your communication style

26:32 – Slow down to speed up

29:57 – Wrapping things up

Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work? Are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource this task so you can focus on your business.

This is the Virtual Success Show. We bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs and now here are your hosts, Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.

Barbara: Hey everyone, welcome to the show. I am very excited to be co-hosting with Matt Malouf. Matt how is it going?

Matt: It’s going great Barbara, how are you go today?

Barbara: Pretty good, excited to be kicking off our first show together.

Matt: I sure am. It just seems like yesterday that we were sitting around having a coffee talking about the challenges our clients and we were having with virtual teams, then we came up with the idea for this podcast. And here we are. Using virtual teams for business growth Barbara: Absolutely, yeah I know. We were just chatting and saying that one of the things that nobody is talking about is how do we solve some of the challenges that we face when you have virtual teams because it’s not easy. Let’s face it.

Matt: Absolutely. You know, I think the idea and ideal of a virtual team is attractive to a lot of people but then wading through the minefield of challenges like in most team...