Mads Singers Management Podcast

A common theme discussed on the Mads Singers Management Podcast is the question of hiring.  Who to hire, when to hire them, and perhaps most importantly, where to find them.  Our guest for today’s episode of the pod, Tim Brown, has had plenty of time to think about these questions in recent years as he’s grown his business, Hook Agency.

One of the first things I talked about with Tim was how challenging it can be to grow a business financially.  As you go from 10+ employees up to 50, you’re not going to be seeing a lot of profit, as you’re likely to be reinvesting a lot of it into the company to help grow it.  Tim agreed, noting that it could get “lonely” during that time and you have to persevere in order to keep the growth going.

Part of that growth is the people you bring on, of course, and we talked about the pros and cons of hiring younger and less experienced people.  I pointed out that while it’s tempting to bring in an external hire who is a superstar in a particular area, it’s almost always significantly cheaper to develop an internal hire, who can also then be shaped and molded to your company culture.

You also want to do internal audits to find common traits that you can add to your hiring brief.  When we looked at our top performers in one of my businesses 9 out of the top 10 had lived abroad at least six months.  Not the first criteria one might think of, but on reflection, it speaks to a willingness to get outside of your comfort zone and a basic responsibility to legally exist elsewhere for an extended period of time.

Tim noted that as much as he and his colleagues might share memes in slack about how isolation is affecting people at work (“we know you’re wearing sweatpants with your shirt and tie”) he also knows that people are actually getting depressed and has recently added a small monthly benefit to offset therapy costs.  This way he can show that he isn’t blind to this issue and that he believes that therapy does help.

Finally, as we continued the hiring thread that ran through this entire episode, I stressed that networking is one of the best things you can do not just for recruiting purposes, but to learn mistakes from others in your industry.  You can make all the mistakes yourself, but why would you want to?

Tim’s honesty about the challenges he’s faced is refreshing and you’ll enjoy his perspectives and passion for building a business the right way. 

Key Learning Points:

 1. Tim shares that he has sometimes had to let things “break” in order for everyone to learn (and implement systems) - 3:10

2. Mads notes that the better you can show the client the ROI, the longer they will stick around - 6:05

3. Tim laments the lack of professionalism he sometimes sees in small businesses - 8:50

4. Tim parses the difference between lifestyle and growth businesses - 10:10

5. Tim talks about a recent trend in his company of hiring younger and less experienced employees - 15:35

6. Mads shares that it’s always significantly less expensive to internally develop someone in an area of expertise than to hire a high-priced external superstar - 20:05

7. Mads gives a metric he sues when hiring people that relates to how long they’ve lived abroad - 21:45

8. Tim notes the importance of empathy in regards to Covid-19 and isolation - 33:00

10. Mads warns that the “I’m going to fix this” attitude isn’t just about poor delegation, but about an active ego - 37:17

11.  Mads stresses the importance of networking as a way to learn mistakes more quickly rather than having to figure them out yourself - 38:55

Resources Mentioned:
1. Who by Geoff Smart
2. Traction by Gino Wickman

Connect with Tim Brown

Hook Agency 

LinkedIn

While technology is an important part of scaling any business, without the right people, that scaling will never be successful.  This is a deeply held belief of my guest for today’s episode of the Mads Singers Management Podcast, Ryan Stewart.  Ryan, like many entrepreneurs I know (myself included), doesn’t limit himself to one business.  But he has smartly ensured that all three play in the same space: Webris, a digital marketing agency focused on SEO for B2B SaaS, The Blueprint Training, to train people to be better SEOs, as well as a software company that helps companies automate their marketing.

While Ryan has been in the marketing space for a decade now, he originally started as a consultant for Deloitte before discovering this thing called “internet marketing.”  Soon enough he was building his own websites, wordpress plugins, and even a digital marketing agency, all of which he has sold at one time or another.

Right away I asked him how he managed to keep all these businesses running smoothly, and he quickly answered: people and processes.  He firmly believes that the only thing that stops businesses from growing quickly is having the right people in place.  I couldn’t really disagree with him.  People are everything to a scaling business.  

As for where to find those people, Ryan really likes using LinkedIn not only because he can learn a lot about a potential hire there, but also see what their activity level is like and learn more about them through what they are commenting and sharing.  He has an interesting recruiting process in which he puts final candidates through a paid trial in order to assess them in a “real world” environment.  Not everyone goes for it, but that’s one more part of the screening process that gets him to the right candidate.

As for what could differentiate an SEO agency from the competition, Ryan focused on customer service and EQ.  “Customers have differing levels of what it is SEO ‘does’ exactly, so you need to know what level of knowledge you are working with and communicate appropriately.”  I agreed and pointed out that that’s also related to how much you charge.  The better you communicate with your client about what you’re able to do for them for what you’re charging them, the likelier they are to accept your (higher) prices.

Ryan’s an expert in his field and very comfortable chatting about the things that matter to him.  I think you’ll enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

Key Learning Points:

1. Ryan talks about his secret to maintaining multiple businesses successfully - 2:45

2. Mads shares why you DON’T want to just hire a copy of yourself - 4:15

3. Mads discusses the importance of case studies - 10:13

4. Ryan agrees and notes that those case studies should be niche-specific for maximum impact - 10:13

5. Mads notes the direct relationship between pricing and what you’re able to do for a client - 14:30

6. Ryan talks about how Covid-19 has affected his business - 17:10

7. Ryan sees the value in SEO is something that cannot yet be automated - 20:28

8. Mads talks about the fading importance of physical office space as part of business “legitimacy” - 27:15

10. Ryan talks up the value of LinkedIn as a place to hire - 30:45

11.  Ryan tells us why he pays people for a paid trial as part of the hiring process - 32:07

Connect with Ryan Stewart

LinkedIn

Twitter

When COVID-19 made remote work more mentally possible for many businesses, the tools necessary to maintain and sustain that remote work, like Zoom, thrived.  Today’s guest for the Mads Singers Management Podcast, Liam Martin, co-founded Time Doctor, a SaaS that has also continued to do well during this strange global period.  If running Time Doctor wasn’t enough, Liam also runs a conference called Running Remote, a business he started in part just to find out the answers he needed as he continued to grow and scale a remote company.  

If you don’t know about Time Doctor, it’s a way for any business to not just track time for work, but also analytics for how long it takes to do a task and what was done.  Among the fascinating facts that Liam and his team have discovered over the years?

• People who go onto Facebook during the workweek are more productive
• A 32-hour work week is optimal

We found out that Liam himself works pretty close to that 32-hour week, spending roughly 66% of his time on podcasts or speaking at conferences.  I loved hearing that, as it’s such a far distance from the mentality that pervades some of my coaching clients who are newer in entrepreneurship, who tend to think of their productivity in relation to hours, ergo, more hours, means more productivity.  Wrong.  What really matters is doing a few things very, very well.

That attitude also matters for your subordinates.  Liam shared a fascinating story about how he incentivized his team not just to chase any backlinks, but links with great authority.  By no longer using sheer numbers of backlinks as a KPI, but rather the Domain Authority (DA) score of each particular backlink, the team was able to up the quality of what they were getting at a fraction of what they would get if they hired someone: on average the Time Doctor team was paying $32 per backlink for DA of 50 and higher, whereas agencies routinely charge $350 for DA of 60+.  A 10X value, and keeping that value in house?  That’s the sort of stuff that builds great businesses.

This discussion of time management also led us into a discussion of the unhealthy #hustle culture, and why working 100 hours a week (or more) doesn’t make you some productivity hero, but only more likely to burn out and take your team down with you.

Later in the pod Liam also shared a story about how he was able to narrow down his search for a COO type to exactly 87 people in the entire world that publicly had what he was looking for.  It’s inspiring to see effective time management at every level of Liam’s thinking, especially in recruiting.

Speaking of time, that’s likely to fly by as you listen to this pod, one of my favorite discussions of this year.  Enjoy!

Key Learning Points:

1. Liam notes the importance of tracking how much time you’re spending with your clients - 2:50

2. Mads shares the importance of KPIs, particularly as you scale - 9:30

3. Liam talks about Dunbar’s Number and how technology can help us stay connected as a tribe - 10:15

4. Liam shares how many hours a week he works, and a number of hours a week he knows will end in failure for everyone involved - 12:26

5. Liam pushed back against #hustle culture - 14:10

6. Mads notes that it’s not about hours you work, but about doing a few things really, really well - 16:45

7. Liam gives a case study of how he and his team improved the quality of the backlinks they were getting - 20:30

8. Liam shares his predictions for the near future of remote work - 25:30

9. Liam shares a quote from Napoleon that guides how he gives out orders and assignments - 30:18

10. Mads talks about process documentation and the fact that the faster this is created, the faster a company can grow - 31:45

11.  Liam shares another fascinating case study as to how he brought in an A player from Wordpress to level up his team - 36:22

Connect with Liam Martin

Running Remote’s YouTube Channel (pro tip - Liam personally manages this page, so it’s a great way to get a hold of him)

Sometimes the side project you are working on ends up dwarfing your day job and becomes the path you never expected.  That’s what happened to my guest for this episode of Mads Singers Management Podcast, Slawek Czajkowski.  In 2008 he was building a company out of a small village in Poland when his side project, Surfer SEO, offered such possibilities for scale and growth that he knew he had to give it his full attention.  So he did.

Right away Slawek realized that he and his fellow managers had to go from being subject matter experts to managers of experts.  They are entirely different skill sets and the latter requires people who are open-minded to personal development.  When I asked him how management was similar to SEO, he responded that he considered them opposites: people who are skilled in SEO could be bad with people and introverted, whereas those skills would be disastrous in a manager.  While I agreed with that framing, I also noted that if someone in SEO was always looking to just get a little better every day, so could a manager, and that’s an ideal to strive for.

Slawek agreed with this and we also started talking about goal-setting strategies, and how “small” goals are virtually worthless.  Slawek said that he’s consistently thinking “10X” across various KPIs and encourages his team to think in the same tracks.  This is such a great practice because when you let someone set “reasonable” or “small” goals, they will simply end up doing the same things, but maybe with slightly more effort.  But when you ask people to do great, big, unreasonable, scary things, they will be forced to change their way of thinking and get creative.  That’s when exciting things happen.

You won’t get anywhere with goals as a company if you don’t have the right team members, and Slawek and I both love hiring from within, though Slawek also does a lot of hiring by referral.  While I think this is a good practice, there are also a couple dangers to be avoided:

• Sometimes “hire my friend” is more of a plea from someone who would like to work with a friend, not a reference to someone who is the best fit for a role
• When things go south with a referral, they can sometimes take the employee (or employees) who referred them in the first place, making for a double whammy

I still maintain that one of the best ways to find great candidates is to know a lot of people, which you can do by effective and smart networking.

The time with Slawek passed really quickly and I think you’ll find his straightforward work ethic and humility as encouraging as I do.

Key Learning Points:

1. Slawek notes that wherever you have processes, you have opportunities to automate - 2:40

2. Slawek talks about how Surfer SEO grew out of a side project - 3:26

3. Mads warns that being a subject matter expert can sometimes lead to your getting “stuck” instead of growing - 6:20

4. Slawek and Mads discuss how SEO and management are similar...and not similar - 6:55

5. Slawek shares his goal-setting strategy - 10:50

6. Mads talks about the “secret” of becoming good at something - 16:55

7. Slawek explains why he prefers to hire almost exclusively via referrals - 20:00

8. Mads shares a pro-tip when it comes to recruiting - 21:35

9. Mads notes why “hire my friend” isn’t always a good idea - 25:10

10. Slawek shares his “secret” to success - 28:05

Connect with Slawek Czajkowski:

 Surfer SEO

One of the biggest mistakes people make when scaling their business beyond their first ten employees or beyond their first million in annual revenue is thinking that what got them here will get them to the next level.  My guest for this episode of Mads Singers Management Podcast, Jan Cavelle, knows better.  She’s experienced all levels of business and has learned many hard lessons about scaling, all of which will be going into her forthcoming book from Bloomsbury: Scale for Success. 

One of the key points Jan made during our discussion was the need for entrepreneurs to personally develop in order to scale up: they should be putting just as much time and effort into personal development as they are into sales, marketing, and technology for their business.  I agreed.  One of the things I’ve observed in coaching entrepreneurs is a failure to be effective.  I often say that if you’re consistently working 12-hour days, there’s something wrong, and then this becomes a snowballing problem: because you’re not rested, you’re not making good decisions, and then you have to stay at work longer to correct mistakes instead of being productive within a normal work day.  

A key part of being more effective and productive is delegation.  If you’ve had your business for under three years, everything that the business owner is doing now should be off his/her plate in twelve months.  If you don’t take these sorts of serious actions, and quickly, you won’t be able to grow and scale your company.  

One of those items to delegate should be key processes.  The business owner isn’t equipped to be updating key processes of the company, simply because he/she isn’t in the trenches, working on those each and every day.  Those processes need to be created and updated by empowered employees.

Part of empowering employees is giving them the impression that they can progress within the company.  I’ve frequently stated my preference for hiring from within, and the reason is clear: if you bring in talent from outside while not developing the talent inside, you can demoralize your team, and the best people will leave.

Jan agreed, and noted that when she’s looking at the right skills or the right person, she’ll always pick the right person, because, “skills can be taught, but the wrong person is the wrong person forever.”  

I enjoyed hearing about Jan’s lessons and I think you will too!

Key Learning Points: 

1. Jan talks about the biggest mistake people make when scaling - 2:50

2. Jan mentions her obvious choice when picking between the right skills and the right person - 8:17

3. Mads shares why developing from within is so important - 9:38

4. Mads talks about the one thing all business owners who have had their business under three years need to do in the next 12 months - 14:20

5. Mads hammers home that the business owner has absolutely no place updating processes of the company - 16:50

6. Jan shares a blind spot many entrepreneurs have in scaling up businesses: personal development - 19:01

7. Mads notes the problem of consistent 12-hour days - 20:50

8. Mads opines about the problem of “normal” people’s opinions - 25:11

9. Mads and Jan talk about the power of peer groups - 26:10

Connect with Jan Cavelle

Jan Cavelle

Jan’s forthcoming book

My guest for this episode of Mads Singers Management Podcast is Greg Gibas who, like me, also owns an outsourcing company based in the Philippines.  Even though Greg was born in Poland, his family moved to the United States when he was young.  He ended up doing a Masters in Marketing in Australia and built a business in the Philippines.  He’s been living the digital nomad life long before it was cool.

One of the first things we talked about was how Covid may end up being the moment when remote work exploded into the mainstream.  We chatted about the changing dynamics we are watching unfold right now.  Even though Greg stands to benefit from this change, he has thought a lot about work philosophically and made some points that really rung true to me:

• Geoarbitrage isn’t just great for employees, it’s also great for employers.  Employees can choose a place they truly want to live and use a lower cost of living to save game-changing amounts of money.  Employers are no longer constrained by the labor pool in their limited local market.
• Small businesses will follow what their competitors do.  As they see other companies move into remote work, paying significantly less for the same level of worker, they will follow suit, which also frees up more capital to grow.
• The wage gap may close, soon.  If remote work becomes a “new normal” then the major wage gaps that currently exist will necessarily close, as remote workers find out just how valuable (or not) they are.

I’ve always wanted to create the biggest businesses possible and help the most people I can.  I think there are many problems in the world, but I think a lot of them can be traced to a lack of employment.  Give more jobs to more people in the world, and there will be fewer problems, I truly believe.  Yes, I approve that message and No, I’m not running for political office!

Greg and I have worked with hundreds of people over the past few years and he said something about hiring that I also really agreed with.  He said that the most important quality in any employee is attitude.  That’s also something he hammers home with people who brag about being ignorant about technology.  “If you don’t even know little aspects of technology, you can really get taken advantage of and/or be blind to possibilities,” he noted.

I think you’ll truly enjoy Greg’s perspective, experience, and optimistic outlook on the future of work in general, and remote work in particular.

Key Learning Points:

1. Greg opines about remote work pre-Covid - 2:14

2. Greg talks about geoarbitrage and its benefits for employees and employers - 6:58

3. Greg observes that companies in expensive locations may try to cut their wage bill by going remote - 10:20

4. Greg shares the most important quality he looks for after working with hundreds of employees - 11:30

5. Greg anticipates the worldwide wage gap closing if remote work becomes more “normal” post Covid - 16:03

6. Greg thinks just having a little bit of tech knowledge will save you a lot of time and money - 25:40

Connect with Greg Gibas

Gibas Associates

I live in the SEO world and so it’s always a pleasure to chat with someone about SEO, but even better when I can combine that discussion with another topic close to my heart: building and scaling companies.

That’s why my guest for this episode of Mads Singers Management Podcast, Nick Jordan, had so many interesting things to share about his journey.  Originally a sales and product guy at early-stage startups he wanted to make a move into marketing instead.  After a stint as a freelancer he saw some things he could leverage into making his own agency, and now, a few years later, he’s got a team of 25 at Content Distribution, helping clients rank on page 1 for tens of thousands of keywords.

Nick admitted that he already feels the pressure of managing a team of 25 and has a core of managers he has developed so that he does not have any direct management of his team of writers.  I told him that at various inflection points on the way up to 100 he’s going to feel those same pressures, but that as long as he made sure his managers gained more people skills as they were promoted (instead of focusing on technical skills) those pressures will be manageable.

I often say that when I think about promotion, especially to management positions, I tend to hire internally.  Then not only do I generally know what I am getting with an individual person, but there’s less risk that the person will fail, as I will have been grooming them via opportunities to take on more responsibility that I proactively give out over a period of working with them.  I learned this lesson fairly early on in my outsourcing business.  I got blinded by an amazing resume when I was looking for my second hire.  It cost me a lot of time to admit my mistake and a lot of money to replace that bad hire.

Speaking of a lot of money, we also talked about how many SEO agencies undercharge and underdeliver.  Instead of niching down into something specific and charging a premium for their expertise in that topic, these firms tend to take on all kinds of clients and use most of their retainer to deliver and hence aren’t really building a sustainable business.  Nick agreed with me that it’s much better to charge more, which allows you to spend more on delivering world-class service to your clients.

It’s always fun to be able to say you chatted with someone early in his/her growth trajectory.  Nick and his team seem to be doing a lot of things right, and he’s not afraid to admit when he’s gotten some things wrong and wants to improve.  That’s always great to see and just one more reason I think you’ll enjoy this episode.

Key Learning Points:

1. Nick shares some of the pressures of managing 25 people - 4:50

2. Mads notes the importance of niching down in order to be able to charge more - 9:22

3. Nick adds that higher prices also allow for case studies, which show dramatic changes and take a lot of time to track - 12:18

4. Nick talks about the early days of his business and why he waited before taking on more clients - 22:10

5. Nick and Mads give various reasons why they prefer to make internal hires - 23:30

6. Mads pitches the importance of encouraging entrepreneurial thinking among employees - 27:50

7. Mads shares an early big management mistake he made with his outsourcing business - 32:40

8. Mads credits DISC with helping him learn about people much sooner than others can usually - 44:27

9. Mads talks about the most important thing to help a manager with after you promote them - 49:23

10. Mads talks about the crucial stage of the company: when it’s not about the owner anymore - 52:55

Connect with Nick Jordan

1. Content Distribution

2. Facebook
3. Instagram

4. Twitter

One of the ironies of discussing company culture is the fact that so often some of my coaching clients who are trying to grow as entrepreneurs describe their company’s culture as what they would like it to be, not as it actually is at the moment.  Culture is the beating heart of any organization and when that’s muddled or off-track, everything suffers.

My guest for this episode Mads Singers Management Podcast is someone who knows that in her core.  Jocelyn Kopac, like me, started her first business in her childhood.  I sold strawberries; she sold farm fresh eggs to city-dwellers from Chicago who were enjoying the countryside.  Jocelyn is a serial entrepreneur and business strategist who works specifically in the DEI field: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion.  In this vein she helps entrepreneurs build and develop an inclusive company culture as well as have crucial conversations with those members of the team who may not understand the importance of DEI.   

Jocelyn is passionate about DEI and helped me understand some things: 

• Diversity is not just about skin color or race but can refer to people being in the military or not, being married or single, or having kids or not having guardianship of anyone
• Equity is about giving each other the tools to make sure we have equal opportunities to grow and mature as people and team members
• Inclusion is understanding that differences between us exist, nevertheless, we can and should introduce processes that allow us to cooperate and win together despite those differences (a smart tool I use in this process is DISC)

You can guess that this naturally led to a discussion of company culture, and I lamented the fact that so often people talk about the culture they want to have instead of analyzing the challenges with the culture they actually have.  Jocelyn shared the story of a recent hire who lasted precisely one day (Jocelyn did note that she hired against her gut feeling, so she takes some of the blame) because the company culture “spit her (the new employee) out.”  It simply wasn’t a good fit.

Part of their culture is making sure there’s no micromanagement going on and that everyone is bringing their “A” game every day.  She also enjoys sharing the goals and perspectives of different departments of the company with everyone so that they can see the bigger picture, make better suggestions, and ultimately, better decisions.  I couldn’t agree with that perspective more, and is definitely part and parcel of why I prefer to hire from within my organization.

Key Learning Points:

1. Jocelyn talks about the first business she ever started...at the age of 7! - 2:47

2. Jocelyn shares the 32-hour workweek she has in place for her team of creatives - 11:36

3. Mads chimes in to share his agreement about outcome-based work instead of time-based work - 15:02

4. Jocelyn talks about how and why she tracks the time of her team - 17:00

5. Jocelyn explains her three strikes rule - 21:45

6. Mads talks about how important it is for culture to be “what actually exists” as opposed to “what people want to have” - 24:25

7. Mads shares the importance of communicating with people in the way that they will understand best - 29:20

8. Mads warns about the bottlenecks that entrepreneurs can create - 34:22

9. Mads shares a management lesson he learned the hard way - 39:45

10. Jocelyn talks about cultivating her team across the different departments of the company - 43:58

11. Mads notes why he prefers to hire internally - 48:45

Resources Mentioned: 

Track to Success Facebook Group

Connect with Jocelyn Kopac

Jocelyn Kopac

Sometimes what sets us on a particular journey in life is not a particular aptitude or knowledge of a subject, but a traumatic failure.  When you hit rock bottom you get a certain clarity of thought that can help you not only to avoid such mistakes in the future, but to share those lessons with others.

Zachary Pritchard, today’s guest for Mads Singers Management Podcast, is someone who dealt with two such failures and has made them strengths: communication and finance.  While his undergraduate degree is in wildlife, in which he was in charge of water management, he ended up building a business and growing it from 3-12 employees.  He now works as a financial coach, helping people with their budgets.

We started talking about communication right away and I shared how important DISC was for me to understand my employees and clients and how I can communicate with them.  I firmly believe that it’s not what you say, but how people hear what you say.  Zach agreed, adding that part of effective communication necessarily resides in honesty and vulnerability.  “If you can’t be honest with yourself, you can’t be honest with your team,” he noted.

Zach also talked about the importance of developing enough of a relationship with his team (something that can grow out of consistent 1-to-1s) that they could feel comfortable disagreeing with him in a professional setting.  I agreed, noting that it’s not enough to say you have an “open door” policy (which I hear so often), but to actually make your employees feel that that is really true.  If people don’t trust you, they won’t open up.  I also shared a technique to use to ensure that your employees will be comfortable sharing their ideas that might contradict your own.

Zach is a proponent of the Dave Ramsey method of financial freedom and I lamented that we spend all this time learning complicated math that we are unlikely to ever use, but aren’t taught even one bit of financial education in school.  Zach’s financial coaching practice is one way to correct that!

I enjoyed chatting with Zach and I think you’ll find his perspective helpful.

Key Learning Points:

1. Zach relates how poor communication cost him his job - 3:30

2. Zach notes that the most important part of effective communication is total honesty - 6:07

3. Zach wants that honesty to go both ways, so that his employees can overcome any hesitance to contradict him on a business strategy - 7:27

4. Mads agrees, noting that a good relationship is at the core of good communication - 8:53

5. Mads also shares an effective strategy to make sure your employees feel comfortable “disagreeing” with you - 10:21

6. Zach discusses the importance of being vulnerable in work conversations - 20:05

7. Mads points out the importance of learning your team’s communication styles - 21:35

8. Zach shares that what happens at home necessarily spills over into work - 29:45

9. Mads laments the lack of financial education in school - 34:15

Resources Mentioned:
 Webinars on Budgeting

Connect with Zachary Pritchard

 All Around Financial Coaching

Reading The Four Hour Work Week is easy.  Implementing the lifestyle it puts forth requires effort, discipline, and often a bit of help from others.

Zsofia Banyai happens to be one of those others.  She helps busy entrepreneurs automate and systematize their lives and is today’s guest for Mads Singers Management Podcast.  Zsofia didn’t initially opt for the 4HWW life herself.  Her undergraduate studies started in history but her practical side kicked in and pushed her towards finance, where she spent some years in the corporate world before starting her own business.   

Zsofia shared that clients tend to come to her for two reasons.  They either:

• Want to proactively put systems into place and delegate better
• Aren’t excited about putting systems in place, but know that the only alternative is burnout

That led to an important conversation about setting expectations and Zsofia has a one-hour video to onboard new members of her team and I mentioned that kickoff calls are a key part of our onboarding process for virtual assistants as well.  

We also discussed the importance of giving team members ownership and impressing on them early on that they can own processes that they develop for clients.  Rather than heavy-handedly insist on doing it a particular way, one should really give the person responsible for actually executing the task the opportunity to document the process, but only after they’ve done it a few times and are comfortable with it.  They should also set up time periods when the process should be reviewed, and if necessary, updated.

Zsofia also shared that sometimes total automation isn’t the answer for every problem, as in addition to the time spent necessary to get the automation up and running, these tools can frequently cost a fair amount of money as well.

It was a pleasure speaking with someone who is helping solopreneurs build their best lives and businesses and it’s clear that Zsofia has a passion for elimination, automation, and outsourcing.

Key Learning Points:

1. Zsofia shares one of the biggest challenges she faced in starting her business - 2:10

2. Zsofia talks about the first thing she focuses on when onboarding a new client - 4:25

3. Zsofia emphasizes the importance of clients clearly stating their expectations - 6:08

4. Mads notes the importance of onboarding calls as another way to set expectations at the beginning of any working relationship, whether with clients or team members - 16:45

5. Zsofia underlines the importance of proactively asking questions of her clients and never assuming anything - 18:15

6. Mads gives listeners a tip about outsourcing and documentation - 22:32

Resources Mentioned:

The Four Hour Work

Automation freebies from Zsofia

Connect with Zsofia Banyai

1. Zsofia Banyai