She's Got This: A Journey to Success

In this episode, Shelby highlights the importance of adopting an environmentally friendly approach to day-to-day business operations. She shares insights on how businesses of all sizes can work more proactively and efficiently to reduce their carbon footprint.

From reducing energy consumption in buildings and reducing carbon emissions through transportation, Shelby also discusses the benefit of working with suppliers who follow eco-friendly practices. She emphasizes the need to embrace a business culture that prioritizes green practices at its core and suggests ways that businesses can align with organizations that work to nurture and protect the environment.

Shelby outlines the benefits of remote working for employees to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are the result of their daily commute. As a virtual assistant providing support to businesses, she outlines how her business also operates with a low carbon footprint by working remotely and using digital tools such as online document management systems, online file sharing, email, and digital invoicing. She encourages businesses to transition from paper-based processes to fully digital solutions and offers virtual assistance support in these and many other areas.

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Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

• Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
• LinkedIn: Joines Administration
• Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
• Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

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Transcript:

Shelby 00:07

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of She's Got This: A Journey to Success. Thank you so much for being here. As always, I am so grateful for all my followers and listeners. If you haven't already, subscribe to this podcast on any of your favourite channels such as Apple podcast, Google podcast, Amazon music, or Spotify— whatever tickles your fancy, it would be greatly appreciated. Now, today's episode is going to be something that is really important, especially in today's economy, and the way that the world is moving in regards to greenhouse gas emissions, and businesses and companies that are really stepping up to reduce their carbon footprint. So buckle up, we're gonna be talking about some exciting initiatives and exciting ways where you can decrease your carbon footprint in your business, no matter what industry you are in. 

Shelby 01:07

When you think of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint and being green and helping the environment, what usually comes to mind? Personally, big corporations, corporations that deal more so in industries that require deforestation or oil and gas, logging, transportation supply chain, things of that matter. A lot of us automatically go directly to those big corporations, the ones that you hear about in the news. Those are the heavy hitters, personally, for me anyways, when I think of greenhouse gas, carbon emissions, things along those lines, there are multiple other areas that could probably come to your mind too. But as a small business owner, are you thinking about your carbon footprint when it comes to your operations? Probably not. This is one of those things that we may not be thinking about on a regular basis. We think this is something that bigger businesses can do. What can the smaller, littler guy be doing to make a big impact on the environment and help reduce their businesses or their company's carbon footprint? Now, this is going to be an exciting episode, because this is a topic that I've really gotten super interested in in the last couple of months. This is something where I feel like my business Joines Administration is really going to take strides in the administrative world when it comes to supporting businesses in reducing their carbon footprint. 

Shelby 02:46

So today, we're going to be talking about all things that relate to that and how an administrator that is virtual such as Joines Administration, can support your business when it comes to helping you reduce your carbon footprint. So, to start off, what is a carbon footprint? This is something and a word and a topic that gets thrown around so much, whether it's media, social media, the news, you name it, it is everywhere. But really, what is it? 

Shelby 03:29

So, a carbon footprint is the measurement of the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted directly and indirectly by a person, organization, event or product. It is usually expressed in the equivalent tons of carbon dioxide or CO2. Now, a lot of people think that when it comes to carbon footprints or greenhouse gas emissions, or whatever the word that you may want to use means, they are very interchangeable. We think about businesses that have a product, sell a product, a physical product that needs to be created, designed, packaged, shipped, and whether that shipping is via rail, trucks, boats, air freight, emissions are being let out into our environment. But there are ways where you can help reduce that and make more conscious decisions on where your business is going and how you can help reduce that carbon footprint. So why does knowing and understanding your business's carbon footprint matter? 

Shelby 04:39

For one, it can help you avoid regulatory penalties. Now, these penalties more so come into the bigger industries I mentioned before, such as oil and gas, logging, trucking, things like that. But by proactively adopting eco-friendly practices, businesses can avoid potential fines and penalties that are associated with current environmental regulations. Now, here in Canada, we have the carbon tax, there are ways that you can reduce that if you are in a more product-based business, or one of the bigger industries that will receive penalties from regulatory and environmental regulatory platforms if they are not reducing in a certain timeframe. But as a business, you can make the conscious decisions to really look into your supply chain management, who is the company that you are using to ship your products from? Are they personally taking any initiatives to really reduce their carbon footprint and reduce the emissions that their business is taking. Doing research like this and making tweaks to service providers or vendors that you were using based on these items can help you save in the long run and help you do a little bit to help our environment. Another reason why it matters is you want to experience the long-term financial resilience. Now this can apply to any business, whether you’re product-based, service-based, you name it, digital-based anything. 

Shelby 06:19

But sustainable business practices can lead to greater long-term financial resiliency, by mitigating your risks associated with resource scarcity and climate change impacts. Now, when it comes to reducing your carbon footprint and becoming more eco-friendly as a business, it is not a race. It is definitely 100% a marathon, and this is something that you constantly have to be building on, evolving with, and helping to grow long term. But by taking these steps now early in your business, or just at any point in your business, just starting with it, you will, in turn, be able to see long-term financial gains from this in the long run by making tiny tweaks and adjustments to the way you operate now. So, what contributes to your carbon footprint? Other than the obvious things that you can, maybe be thinking of right now, I'm sure one or two are probably coming to mind. But from an administrative standpoint, what can contribute to your carbon footprint are things like commuting and business travel. So, frequent business travel, especially by air, can greatly increase a company's carbon footprint. You can consider having more Zoom meetings, digital meetings, things along those lines. Now, I'm not saying to completely stop meeting in person or anything like that, but being conscious and aware of how much you are actually travelling, what the distance you are travelling is, the method of transportation and taking those into effect and consideration, can really help lower your carbon footprint as a business owner.

Shelby 08:06

Energy use in buildings and facilities— now this is another big one for people who are not so much on the virtual side but actually have real estate and office space where they go and are in-person, working all the time. 

So offices, warehouses, and other business facilities consume a significant amount of energy for heating, cooling, lighting, and operation of equipment. Whether that is things that you plug in and you use on a daily basis, such as external hard drives, things like that, or if we're talking about more heavy operating equipment, such as compressors, or other tools that may run off of gasoline, diesel, whatever it may be, just being aware of how much you are using and consuming your energy in your buildings and your facilities can really make an impact. These can be tiny changes such as switching out your light bulbs to more energy efficient things, being aware of how many items you have plugged into outlets at any given time or power bars, making sure that any type of electronics that you may have, do have that energy efficient sticker on it. Little things like that, as well as the standard of making sure that you're doing your recycling and any kind of shared kitchens, doing your part on composting, things like that can really make a difference. And as I mentioned before, you also want to evaluate your supply chain operations. 

Shelby 09:40

Now, the carbon footprint of a business is not limited to its direct operations but also includes the environmental impact of its supply chain. Now, as I mentioned before, this is how products or services or anything like that is shipped, whether that's again trains, air, truck transportation, boats, you name it, being able to evaluate who your supply chain operators are, and seeing what they are doing to offset their carbon footprint will in turn benefit your business's carbon footprint as well.

Shelby 10:13

Business practices and culture— this is one of the topics that people don't normally think about. So, a company's culture that doesn't prioritize sustainability can lead to higher carbon footprints. This includes practices like unnecessary printing, lack of energy-saving measures, and poor resource management. Now, this can all get tied into, again, just doing those little things, making sure that if you do have to print a document, really ask yourself, is it crucial that I print this, what is the most effective way to print this, instead of printing it in full color, maybe go the route of being more print ink friendly and doing it in black and white, or sending out digital copies of any material to the attendees, and they can decide if they would like to see it virtually or digitally, or print it on their own time. Little things like this can really make an impact as well as can be huge cost saving measures in the long run. Businesses today spend an outrageous amount on printing and ink-related documentation. So not only are you helping the environment, but you are also saving a whole bunch of money in the long run for your business. 

Shelby 11:40

Now, what are other ways that you can reduce your footprint as a business owner, we've mentioned a few of these before, but energy efficiencies, improving the energy efficiencies in your business operations is one of the most effective ways to reduce your carbon emissions. Now, whether this is at your home office, you have a physical office you go to anywhere you are conducting your business really, you can achieve this by upgrading to energy-efficient lighting, getting your heating and cooling systems checked regularly and making sure that they are up to date with the latest energy saving technology, as well as ensuring that you have proper insulation and ventilation in your business or your buildings, home, away. They will greatly save you again in the long run.

Shelby 12:25

Remote work options. This is what we are here for and all about. By allowing your employees, or contractors, subcontractors to work from home, reduces the need for commuting, office heating, cooling, lighting… the list honestly goes on, thereby reducing the overall carbon footprint of your business. Now, this is a huge topic, and one that I don't think gets discussed about, talked about, or even just kind of brainstormed about really. Remote workers can save you so much on your energy bills, not only then as a subcontractor, for me, for instance; I take on my own carbon emissions footprint, all of the fun taxes and bills that come along with that onto my shoulders. Now, I am as energy efficient as I possibly can. In the new year, I'm looking to become more energy efficient and implement ways that I can help reduce my carbon footprint. But those things all fall on to the subcontractor, leaving you with lower bills, more cost savings, and a lower, smaller carbon footprint. 

Shelby 13:45

And, like I mentioned before, supply chain management— making sure that you're choosing your suppliers who are also committed to sustainability and reducing their emissions can have a substantial impact on your own carbon footprint and the process of lowering that. And another fun option that you can do to help reduce your footprint as a business owner is carbon offsetting. And this one is super exciting. I do a bit of carbon offsetting myself in my business. I like to plant trees for my clients, customers and vendors at Christmas time and other times throughout the year as just a little thank you to help with reforestation across Canada. Not only does it make me feel really good, but I am making a small impact on helping our environment grow, while giving something of value to my clients, customers and vendors that's not necessarily going to increase my carbon emission. Don't get me wrong, gift baskets are great. But if you really look into it, the amount of products that are being built and packaged to have this basket, then for it to be shipped or delivered or courier to a client, it all ends up adding up. So that is my little bit of carbon offsetting. 

Shelby 15:10

But what you can do, while reducing your admissions as the primary goal, you can also invest in offset carbon offset projects, such as reforestation, like I mentioned renewable energy development or community projects that really help support developing countries. Those are just a few little options to help you offset your carbon footprint. There are countless ones out there. If you're looking to go green and implement some carbon offsetting, I highly recommend you take a look at the amazing options that are out there. If you're looking to hear more about a company that I use for myself for planting trees across Canada, feel free to send me an email to info at joinesadministration.ca. and I will definitely pass that information along to you. 

Shelby 16:07

Now, how can a virtual assistant help you offset your carbon footprint? This is an amazing little section, I had so much fun putting this together for you guys. So, on average, virtual assistants can help you save 10% + per year through reduced commuting emissions. Now, Joines administration works remotely, and by doing that we eliminate the need of daily commuting to an office, which is reducing our greenhouse gas emissions associated with our transportation, particularly from vehicles that are powered by fossil fuels, which a good majority of us are still running on because, just haven't gotten to that nice EV just yet. 

Shelby 15:00

But, another great way that I can help offset your footprint or virtual assistant period can help you offset that footprint, is by decreasing your resource usage. Now we're specifically talking about paper right here because this is one of the biggest, biggest emission-producing things that businesses do, and a virtual assistant can help you reduce your paper usage by 20 to 50%. And for businesses that traditionally rely on a lot of paper-based processes, transitioning to a digital workflow with the help of Joines Administration can significantly reduce your paper consumption, thus saving the environment, one tree at a time. 

Shelby 17:47

Now, we can also help you by supporting your business in implementing more green initiatives. We can do this through research, helping plan, and implementing eco-friendly practices within your company. Now this includes identifying sustainable suppliers that you may need to use, managing any green projects or initiatives, or tracking your overall carbon footprint. Another one, like I mentioned earlier, is carbon offsetting initiatives, we can help assist in identifying and managing those initiatives, such as investing in renewable energy products, reforestation efforts, or other environmental projects that compensate for your company's unavoidable admissions. We have to say it, sometimes these emissions can be unavoidable, but being able to really offset those emissions can do wonders for your business. 

Shelby 18:45

Oh, I hope that you all found so much value in this really, carbon emissions isn't just something that is specifically targeted to big businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises or businesses can absolutely do their part as well in helping to go more green, be more eco friendly, and support the environment through sustainable, eco-friendly practices. And that can all start by very little initiatives that can lead to big and amazing things.

Shelby 19:31

All right, everybody. I hope you had the greatest time listening in on this episode. This one was truly one of my favourites and I really hope that some of the tips and tricks I provided will help you in your business become more environmentally friendly, more eco-conscious, and just overall of little bit greener in your business. As always, if you haven't already, I would super appreciate if you would like, subscribe and share this podcast with any female entrepreneurs who you think this would bring value to. Be sure to follow like and subscribe on all the major platforms and podcasts such as Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify. We’ll see you next time.

It’s hard work being a momentrepreneur, and in this episode, Shelby welcomes entrepreneur and strategic business coach Brittney Ashley to the studio. Brittney discusses how she helps clients deal with the all too familiar imposter syndrome that many women suffer from as they begin their journey into entrepreneurship. They also discuss the reasons they started their businesses and the challenges they faced working at a 9 to 5 job while raising a family. 

Brittney suggests that companies offer flexible working options, including hybrid or work-from-home models, to allow employees to balance work with family commitments. In her own business, she provides work-at-home opportunities for Canadian women, employing a team that works from coast to coast. 

As the owner of Creative Dynamics Virtual Services, Brittney understands the need for entrepreneurs to outsource tasks so they can focus on growing their businesses and also benefit from a better work-life balance. She assigns her clients an online business manager whose skills are matched to their specific needs. To save time and streamline processes, Brittney is also a proponent of automating tasks wherever possible through CRM tools such as Dubsado or Moxie, which are invaluable for her business. 

About Brittney Ashley

Brittney Ashley is the founder of Creative Dynamics Virtual Services, a virtual service agency offering specialized services to business owners. Her team consists of virtual assistants, online business managers, CRM specialists, marketing experts, and graphic designers who support business owners in taking their businesses to the next level and improving their lives. 

Her journey to become an entrepreneur was sparked by the challenges of raising her children while managing a full-time career. Becoming an entrepreneur allowed her to manage both her career and home life successfully, and so she set up her company to empower fellow moms to work from home. Today, Brittney manages a highly-skilled,  all-woman team that provides exceptional service to their clients. Brittney is also certified as a Business Coach (ACC Accredited) and an Imposter Syndrome coach and works across various industries, including tech. ​

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Dubsado
• Moxie

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Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

• Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
• LinkedIn: Joines Administration
• Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
• Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

Contact Brittney Ashley | Creative Dynamics Virtual Services: 

• Website: https://www.creativedynamicsva.com
• LinkedIn: Creative Dynamics Virtual Services
• Instagram: @CreativeDynamicVirtual services
• Facebook: @CreativeDynamicVirtualServices

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Transcript: 

Shelby 00:46

All right, and I am so excited for today. I have the wonderful, Brittney Ashley, of Creative Dynamics VA, or is it virtual assistants… sometimes you don't know if people actually just use the abbreviation or the full one.

Brittney  01:07

I know, Creative Dynamics for short, but it's a mouthful— Creative Dynamics Virtual Services. 

Shelby 01:16

Awesome. Oh, love it. And she's here to talk about all things VA industry and the struggles that we go through with impostor syndrome on a daily basis, being entrepreneurs, mamapreneurs, female entrepreneurs, whatever you want to call us. But welcome, Brittany, thank you again. I've said this before we started recording so many times, I am so appreciative of you being here today and being our guest and talking on these super important topics with us. I am really looking forward to where this is going to go. It's always such a pleasure to be able to talk to other virtual and administrative personnel and staff, and workers. So, I am truly blessed to have you here.

Thanks. Tell me a little bit about yourself and kind of what got you started on this career journey, where you've been, and all that good, fun story things. 

Brittney 02:16

Yeah, well, Creative Dynamics started with the notion of helping mums work from home, and then it's just kind of built from that. But prior, I always joke that I was a hippie, because I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do in life. I came from like the tech, corporate world, it was just very toxic, not really understanding... like, I just felt like I never fit in. Even when I worked in a nine-to-five job, I just never understood why because I did all the things and some. And so, long story short, realized I was never meant to be a nine to five, because I work at 100,000 miles a minute and then get bored really fast. I have self-diagnosed with ADHD, and I do have dyslexia. So my neuro-diverse brain just can't, like, sustain… I'm not allowed to fit in a box, nor should anyone. So that's kind of how I started after my… I went on maternity leave with my daughter. And I realized that I was not happy. I tried to like break myself back into the norm because we're brought up to be told, like go to university, go work nine to five, and all was great. So I was following the trend of what we're supposed to do. And when I was after maternity leave, I just my part of my one brain would be like— you need to go work nine to five. And another side of me was like, I absolutely do not like it. So why am I keep on constantly putting this VA business that I kind of started on the side hustle… why do I keep pushing it off, keep pushing it off. And what actually kind of really pushed me more forward than anything was my stepdad passed. And I was like, You know what, life is too short. Let's just like jump in both feet, like right before COVID. Let's just jump in both feet and see what happens… two months after then COVID hit and I was like, well, I guess it's kind of good that I'm not in the… because I was in the I switched over the tech industry and started working more in the event industry and that went sideways. So yeah, I just felt like everything happened for a reason of my long journey to get me to how I built Crave Dynamics, but I wouldn't change it for the world because I feel that every lesson, like it helped me grow as a person and it's made me kind of who I am today. I'm also a certified business coach, imposter syndrome coach, and along my journey of building Creative Dynamics, like I mentioned that I hired mums to work from home. A lot of the mums that were coming to work with me were coming from a nine to five and struggling with that, that switch and feeling like they weren't good enough to work with clients even though they worked with big corporations and/or in the tech industry. So I ended up realizing I had to be more of a coach/mentor with them, and even work on impostor syndrome, as well, to kind of get some of them to where they are today, and not taking all the credit, because they're the ones who put themselves out there to… assist if they need it.

Shelby 05:17

Ah, and that's so beautiful. And I really feel like the virtual world is such an amazing place, especially for moms that are looking to make that switch. I know, it's, personally, I'm a single mom, for the most part. So I can totally relate to that fear of taking those skills from your nine-to-five corporate kind of service position, and actually, switching gears into being your own boss going out on your own, taking the skills and things you've learned and applying them for yourself is scary, especially because there goes your security financially as well, you don't have that either monthly salary or bi-weekly paycheck constantly coming in, then you're really having to hustle and open up all these other windows and doors to kind of lead you down these paths to success, but no, that is such a great thing to hear that you're in that space to be able to mentor and kind of coach other women through that little phase of— this is something I really want to do, but I'm scared to take that first step into actually doing something for me that will then benefit my family, my household, whatever it may be. But what got you into that kind of coaching? Do you do kind of have some background education that you went and took with that as well? Or… 

Brittney 06:49

Yeah, so I went through a certified coaching program, which made you a certified business coach. And so it was a very intensive program. And then I'm also went through the ICF, as well. So I'm like international, federally, whichever they would like, a lot of people don't really know a lot of… my journey, I really pushed very hard, I'm the kind of person that goes big or go home kind of mentality. And then I actually wrote my paper, my final paper on like kind of what I was building and kind of the symptoms of imposter syndrome and all that, and so I end up doing a lot of research, and I stumbled upon Dr. Valerie Young, who I took my imposter syndrome course seeing with and if you research her, she's just really cool in like digging in deep on impostor syndrome and building the way to help us coaches to work with those who have imposter syndrome. 

Shelby 07:50

Oh, that is so beautiful.

Brittney 07:51

I just find like… impostor syndrome right now, I feel like more and more people are talking about it. And that's what I love. Because the biggest thing to get rid of impostor syndrome is to normalize it and talk more about it. And so I am so excited to kind of jump more into this role as a coach, impostor syndrome coach, to just be more open about it because the more open we are about it, the more I think we're going to start shifting our mindset that we don't have to be perfect all the time.

Shelby 08:20

Exactly. And I feel like that is so key, and having you kind of evolved from where you were, and you started kind of in the tech industry, with your nine to five to where you are now is just such a beautiful, transformational journey, which is just super exciting. I feel like everybody who is in business or is an entrepreneur has dealt with impostor syndrome at some point, whether that's chronic, or it's kind of one of those pops up every once in a while, and some high-stress situations or whatnot, but I think that having somebody who you can work alongside who will be that coach and that guiding light to kind of be that person that's standing there beside you. And being a sidekick. Like you kind of said to guide you through those moments and be able to really see through that it's just… a funny thing that our brain kind of ends up tricking us into, is thinking that, you know, we're not good enough for not well versed or educated on a certain topic to be speaking about it, or if we really have the skill set that we said in our resume that we have, and we know we're capable, but are we capable? Yeah, it just it goes on. So kudos to you for that. That's a big step. 

Brittney 09:46

Yeah, I'm really excited to just be jumping more into it and working with more because I just I, I love to see everybody grow and collaborate and work together. I don't believe in competition. I know a lot of people, especially my marketing friends, I have my BBA in marketing communications, you know, like the whole SWOT analysis, look at your competitors… I really feel that we're all here to come together and collaborate together and work cohesively, and that's how we're all going to grow and thrive. And so if you start changing your mindset on, okay, yeah, sure, that's a competitor, but how can you work together as collaborators to kind of work side by side and grow? That's how my brain works. 

Shelby 10:30

No, I, I love that, because I'm the same way, I feel like— my background, I guess, goes back into like oil and gas administration, so really high stress, really fast pace working situations, and having that little bit of, what do you call it, it was just on the tip of my tongue, I had something so good to say there, then totally lost it. Darn, that was such a good thing I had going, and now it just completely left my brain. 

Brittney 11:05

Oh, yeah, just collaboration is… I think every business can grow together, I'm actually just creating a proposal for a potential new client, and I was like, they can totally collaborate with these guys, because of like, it's totally might be left centred, they might be like… this person is crazy. Yeah, I'm thinking of... so I was like, no way, and I think it's like, even though you guys are in different spectrums, in a way, how you guys have your values are so similar. And not to say that you need to go collaborate with all the people, I think you need to go back and really understand who you are as a business, what your values are too, because you want to work with… you started your business for a reason, so you want to work with people that also would work with you, not against you. 

Shelby 11:55

Yeah, 100%. And I feel like that's so valuable, especially in today's age, where it's, business has now shifted from being super transactional to being more those emotional, long-term relationships that you're building within the business or outside of the business aspect. But the thing that I was going to talk about, I finally remembered after you started talking about what you were talking about, but being in the oil and gas industry, everything was just so tight-knit, very closed doors, very secretive on things and just going into business for myself now, I don't want to be that gatekeeper of knowledge. I feel that knowledge shared is knowledge that is valuable to everybody, and being able to support somebody or help somebody or guide somebody in a certain situation or with a certain task or whatever, whatever it may be, is really what does it for me nowadays, like it really fills my cup and just makes me feel so like, I'm doing a little bit extra in the world to make it a better place. Almost. 

Brittney 13:10

So yeah, I actually just went to a reunion, I guess we'd say, so one of my first jobs was in, it's a company called Blackball, if you've ever heard of it was a very tight-knit kind of family when you first start working, and a lot of people are like, businesses can't be family, but certainly it felt like family, like a lot of them came to our wedding… that's where my husband and I met, and so they just did a 50th reunion for Rod because he was working there for 50 years, and also just retired. So they did this huge party, and it was so great to kind of like see familiar faces, and I was just having this conversation with one of the people that I used to work with that Ryan, who owns the business, because I had that such a good experience of working with an owner, made me realize how I also want to be as an owner, because I went from working in a very good business to very corporate tech, like, not great, very toxic, and I saw I was losing sight of like, who I was, who I wanted to be, who I also want other people around me to be, because I really think that everyone should be able to shine no matter what role they're in. And so I think like just going back and having that reflection again too on Saturday was like, even when I was up to Ryan and like… you were always my favorite boss because he just trusted the people to get the work done. And it would excel right and I think that's what as business owners and those who want to outsource and all that, like you have to have that trust. If you don't have that trust, then people are going to start to slowly…   away and not want to really work with you because you can't trust them to execute. So a lot of the VAs on my team have I've had since I started the business, a lot of them, there's a new few ones here, err, but I just I kind of do my random check-ins if they need anything, and I kind of like go away. They probably think it's really weird, like, where's Brittany? 

Shelby 15:13

Here's the Tesla video if you need help, like, text me, message me whatever it is yeah.

Brittney 15:16

Right. I don't like to micromanage. 

Shelby 15:21

Yes, I agree. I have been in far too many positions where I myself am micromanaged. And I'm a firm believer in that whole, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So it's like, I want to treat you how I would expect to be treated if I was in a similar position. And you know, the roles were switched per se. And yeah, it's it's a lot. But how many people do you have on your team currently… that's always exciting. 

Brittney 15:50

Mm hmm. We have about ten, give or take, but then I also know like, we have a pool of others that I can outreach to if need be. Yeah. So it's not everybody on the website, per se. But I do have like a handful that I've kind of like, I don't like calling it the interview process, either. I like to make sure that, you know, at the end of the day, if we want to go meet up to have coffee or wine, we can do that.

Shelby16:17

Oh, I love that. Yes. And are most of your assistants kind of local to you then or do you have a couple that are a bit more on the remote side? And how do you kind of check in with those ones? 

Brittney 16:30

Yeah, so we're all Canadian base. So I'm based in Victoria BC, so some of us are in Victoria. And then the furthest is in Nova Scotia. So we're all Canadian but from across province to province.

Shelby 16:44

I love that you're literally coast to coast. That's amazing. 

Brittney 16:50

Yeah, I love it. Now, that's such an amazing business model to have, is like a fellow Canadian VA, I always love when people like stay within the community, even though like community can be as large as like the province, the whole country, but being able to kind of support local moms and females that are just needing that, you know, extra little bit of income, or they want to make this their full time job. Really, that's, that's what excites me and is my goal one day to be able to build out to be a bit bigger and supporting local, here in Alberta and things like that. So that's so great to hear. 

Brittney 17:30

As you say, so that you added some services to, to your, your roster, which is awesome, and so exciting. 

Shelby 17:40

Yes. So slowly getting to the point, I've been doing this for almost a year and a half now. And I've finally gotten to the point where I'm like… these are the things that really excite me and like, are things I want to do on a regular basis. They're not just generally just doing emails or just doing calendar management or just doing filing or anything like that, but having that little bit of variety and having a more creative option to kind of express either my work or my client's work with is just really what excites me a lot more recently. But yeah, speaking of services, that was kind of where I was going with my question before was, what kind of services specifically or what kind of a niche do you service client-wise with your business?

Brittney 18:33

 Yeah, so we're service-based businesses, we don't work with E-commerce. We did start that at the beginning and then took that off the list. But really service-based businesses. So we've worked with interior designers, landscapers, construction, to, we had worked with a little bit of restaurant industry before COVID. We work with the chambers here. Yeah, so we've worked a range of industries, service-based ones. And then services that we offer like administration, marketing, CRM setups, we have our own team who also does like logos and graphic design, and we have a few others to assist with website development and branding. So, really a range, I foresee us kind of being like, in a way like your one-stop shop. Instead of going to like Upwork, we're not anything like Upwork, but come to us.

Shelby 19:28

Oh God.

Brittney 19:30

…but then you have access to the team, if you're needing to do an item, so for example, I have like a coach. We also work with a lot of coaches and real estate agents. I paired, that's kind of what we do now, too, is we match you to your perfect VA or online business manager. So then I am pulling away to be more of like the business strategist and coach with entrepreneurs that come in. So I paired one particular coach with Ashley, and so Ashley does all the things in online business management specifically for this particular client, and then outsources some things over to the VA, Ryan. So then it was like online business manager, virtual assistants, which should be, if no one knows what that is, Online Business Manager is like your operations manager, like if you're in the store, overseeing all the things, making sure that the team is running efficiently, and processes are in place. So we offer that as well. It's a variety of things. And I think a lot of people get confused. And so that's why I say, if you don't know, just ask, because what I'm trying to do too is, I don't want the woman on the team to feel like they can't do what they want to do. I want them to specialize in their particular area of expertise and feel comfortable doing it, then not, so we have a lot that are like unicorns, I like to say, we have OBMs, and then virtual assistants who specifically maybe just want to focus on admin work. Yeah. 

Shelby 21:00

Oh, that's so amazing. It's so refreshing to find another VA, that's kind of not specifically one industry, you kind of are open to a lot of different areas, but you've know the services, and you know how to do them well. And you're able to really be in that position to, you know, talk with the new potential client that's coming in and from that, being able to kind of match up specifically to a virtual assistant or an online business manager, and then from that umbrella that roll out a little bit more to any other of the service providers you've got on your team. But, that is so amazing. And when it comes to, I guess, working with new potential clients, how do you make sure that you're matching the correct person to that client that's coming in.

Brittney 21:57

So I listen to the client's needs. And I and then I know everybody on the team, personally and on the business level, of what they like to do, what they don't like to do and have like a, like a spreadsheet in a way. So I review that. And then really, I just kind of outreach to who I think would be the best match if they have availability to take on the client. And if they do, then I would pair them together. It's very, no API's, all me. 

Shelby 22:28

Oh, nice. I know, I feel like sometimes it can get super overwhelming with the amount of programs and apps and systems that you can get running in your business to kind of simplify stuff. And in the end, there's a couple tasks where I'm like, I could get something to do this, but in the end, it's like, it's pretty basic, and I could do it myself, which I should probably start steering away from that mentality a little bit in some areas. But I'm the same in other ways where I'm like, nope, I've got my spreadsheet. I've got my form. We're good to go now.

Brittney 23:03

Yeah, I think, I think all of it's your business, right, so it's, I think some of us are a little bit type A, it's really hard to let go. I know, I'm like that. But it's… just start outsourcing small steps, and then you'll feel more comfortable once you remove those things off the plate. Like right now, what I'm doing is switching CRMs so I'm in I'm using Dubsado, but I'm switching over to Moxie. Oh, exciting. I just kind of like some of the additional features for this, like, why not put more work on my plate. The thing is, what I'm also doing right now, what I've been doing this year, though, is fixing the foundation in my business because I need to practice what I preach. I do, I work with so many business owners, and really I'm very self aware. I know my gaps in the business. And so this year, I've been kind of slowly cleaning it all up. Yeah, because I would like to outsource my stuff, I know to a certain point as well. So I just needed a better CRM to help me to get to that place. And so that's what I'm doing. 

Shelby 24:06

That's always such a big endeavor to take on, especially once you've got a system like you mentioned Dubsado that's all set up, and now it's like okay, I'm going to be starting from scratch, other than the odd little bits and pieces where you can like pull a cvs file or something and just kind of re-upload or move that way. But yeah, I commend you. That is like one of those things that I feel as a business owner it's like setting yourself up or you know, walking or talking your walk, walk, talking your talk, walking your walk, one of the two. But you could be so good at doing a task for your clients, your customers, whatever it may be, but when it comes to kind of doing that for yourself, it can be so difficult to find, I guess the motivation, or the inspiration, some people may say, to really like, make the time, sit down, block out a couple of hours or a couple of days in the week, where you can really like just, nose to the grindstone get stuff done. But I can 100% relate to you with that aspect where it's just like—oh, I am the best at doing this for everybody else, but when it comes to doing it for myself, that's where I'm lacking. And like, you need to get those perfect unicorns to be able to outsource those little bits too.

Brittney 25:35

Yeah, and I find like, we're all sometimes our own worst client. Like, I have a coach, I work with my coach pretty steadily. And they're like asking me all these questions and I'm like, I know I should be doing it. Yeah, it's just… I just need you to coach me, because my brain, the other part of my brain is like, no… 

Shelby 25:57

Yeah, I'll get to it. Or I'm just going to do these dishes first, or this one load of laundry, or focus on this other thing, and then I'll get to it. And I don't know about you, but sometimes my mind just jumps from like, task to task constantly, where I like, never finish anything to 100%. Everything's between like, 80 and 90% complete, just, yeah, going around in circles.

Brittney 26:21

Yes, nope, can relate to that. We're building out the CRM, and it's just gonna know, I told myself, I've been practicing. I'm like, no, like, refocus, you know, this is what you need to do. This is like the missing piece. Not to say Dubsado is not good, but I do like, Moxie is a bit cheaper as well, for what I need. It's very similar to Dubsado, but it has a few extra things that... make sense, like I'm a visual person. And so my biggest thing with like, Dubsado is like when it's in project state, when a lead comes in, it has to be in project state, and like, I can't have that they're like, I can't see it, like I have to archive it, but then I forget that I've archived these people, then I forget. And then it gets lost in the pipeline of not to follow up. 

Shelby 27:16

Yeah. And then one day, you wake up at 2am. And you're like, Oh, my God. 

Brittney 27:20

Yeah. That's why I'm switching it has nothing to do… I'm just a visual person. So I'm very particular on what CRMs look like, and all that stuff. Yeah. So if anyone is looking for CRM, there's so many out there.

Shelby 27:34

So many, and I have been at a state of overwhelm with it. I'm still like, trying things out, because I'm just not finding the one. It's like, I'm constantly loving little bits and pieces. Sounds like you can relate to this too, but it's not the bits and pieces all in one nice app. And I don't want to have to be jumping between two and three, five different apps to get a task done or be able to track things. And fill something out here, then jump to here to get the report and do this. So I'm definitely now going to be checking out Moxie to see what that one's all about. And especially knowing that you're Canadian, and it works in Canada. I don't know. If you found difficulties with some of these programs. It's all ridiculously US-priced per month, and that extra 30% is…can be a killer. Right? 

Brittney 28:40

That's Moxie is half the price, I think and like unless you want to add teams, and it ends up working out to what the full price is for Dubsado, so yeah, it's pretty good. I'm liking it this far that I've seen, and I'm all about like customer service too. And they've only just started I believe, like, this year which usually I don't like to switch to things that… Yeah, right. You just never know but I love that they're so customer service focus like I asked… this is why I don't do things with kids running in the background— I was uploading my contacts, but I accidentally uploaded it into projects, after archive this all and then they're like don't worry, we'll clean it up for you. It's like…  upload to the right section. 

Shelby 29:33

Yeah, it's like please slow down. And I think we just get so hyped up sometimes to where we're just like, okay, I gotta get this done super quick. I gotta move and we ourselves, when it's stuff for us… forget steps, let things slide, hit wrong buttons, make more work than we need to. And yeah, it's one of those… I guess I'll take this as a learning curve, lessons learned.

Brittney 30:00

Yeah right. And then I'm still looking more into this, but has like, request tickets and stuff like that. I thought it was a neat feature to kind of send to clients as well. 

Shelby 30:12

That's awesome. So they can see like status updates and stuff. Yeah, that's amazing.

Brittney 30:19

Kind of it's the more I've been playing with it, the more I've been pretty impressed, so, and it goes on your phone that the biggest thing for me…

Shelby 30:30

Oh, having a mobile app that I've found is super important. I've ran into a couple programs where it's like, no, we have an app, but you can't do anything in the app, you have to use the desktop version. And I'm just like… what is the point of having an app if I can't do anything in you? Like, I just want to sit at my son's hockey game and like pound something out really quick here, but…

Brittney 30:50

No, exactly. Because I've had some issues, that triggers wouldn't go. And then I'd be out somewhere and be like, Well, it'd be nice if I can just log in and push it out. But yeah, yeah, I like the feature. Anything that is added to your phone is also another win for me. 

Shelby 31:09

Yes, that's definitely on my high, top priority lists of almost must haves when it comes to technology, and there's just so much out there. And being able to find that like, unicorn in the rough and especially depending on what your business is providing, like, if there's VAs out there that do more of the social media aspect, that's a whole another can of worms, when it comes to applications and programs, then you've got the ones that are the website builders, or they specialize in doing those things. There's so many, so many things. But that's why you hire somebody like us to help you out with all of those tasks.

Brittney 31:54

100%. Like, this is the stuff that I do as well. So it's like, it's hard for me to outsource to someone on my team, because I do all this CRM stuff. We actually do a lot of audits with clients as well. And we can see that they're not utilizing their CRM, as much as they should be. 

Shelby 32:14

Yeah, yeah. I find that a lot too. Right? Yeah. Because it can't, some, not everything needs to be fully automated. But you can have things automated in a way that makes sense. So you're coming in and doesn't get lost in the wave.

Shelby 32:30

100%. Like even just those onboarding steps, or just follow-up messages, it doesn't have to be a robotic system by any means and make it feel, I guess, just that virtual sterile, almost robotic, where there's that no personal aspect, it's that obvious copy and pasted auto reply that comes through. So being able to just get those like five to ten key areas nailed down where you can have a really smooth system with that and still be able to add in that little bit of a personal touch. But yeah, I know, there's lots of businesses out there that aren't utilizing their CRMs to their full potential. They're using it just to track, kind of clients or the pipelines, but then they're using a whole different program for email marketing, or just marketing in general, or another program that is tracking their social media analytics when a good majority of CRMs out there from what I've found, I know it kind of varies from what you need, but can do all of that and then some all in one nice, place so you don't have to be remembering all those logins or jumping from app to app and running into that… oh, they don't have a mobile app. Now. I gotta wait till I get home to be able to utilize my desktop and yes, on and on and on.

Brittney 33:54

Yes, we have. Because we are business owners, we wear many hats. So it's nice to get some things off the list, even if it's automated to a certain point. So like, I built, I just knew what a CRM could do. So when I had my daughter, like, while I was building the business, I made sure so much was automated as much as possible to help you kind of get through the process. 

Shelby 34:20

Yeah, and there's always that, you know, a time and a place for that and especially for people who want to go on like vacations and they're not wanting to be involved in the business as heavily as they would if they were at home working, being able to get those like nice automation so aspects can at least run in the background for you and whether that's generating leads and clients or if that's processing the financial aspects such as your invoicing and making sure that everything is kind of automatically flowing that way. It's there's always a time and a place, and especially being a new mom, I if I was in the entrepreneur world back when my guy was born, he's ten now, but, definitely would have been something that would have been my main priority is setting up those automations getting that foundation set so I can put in a lot of time in the beginning to get it set to perfection or as perfect as technology can be, and just kind of set it and forget it in a sense so that I can then buy back my time to be able to spend with my family or with my son and things like that doing other things that I enjoy. 

Brittney 35:44

It’s so true, I have a five and two-year-old so they keep me busy and even too like, I feel like I'm just starting, like I was super pumped that my daughter was going into kindergarten because I was like, oh, yeah, one less bill. But then I didn't really think of like, oh, maybe we didn't need. I didn't realize kindergarten was only from nine to two. So it was like, oh, so only have really five hours on a day to get work.

Shelby 36:00

Yeah. And then you've got the back and forth pickup in the drop off that you take into account too, so it's really like a four, maybe, four and a half. Yeah, so you don't have anything else pop up unexpectedly. 

Brittney 36:15

Exactly. Right. So it's just, it's just a different dynamic. I just, we only just got like, really full time care in January this year, and then it just kind of, I just feel like we were going a little backwards. But I think as a mum entrepreneur, sometimes having like, maybe a different minds switch, when these moments happen, helps you kind of keep pushing forward. Because sometimes these kind of hurdles that might get away can be daunting to a lot. And then a lot may be like, Well, why should I keep doing this? Why am I doing X, Y and Z? Maybe I should go back into nine to five, all these things. But I… persistence is key, and switching your mindset when you have your low moments really helps you keep moving forward. 

Shelby 37:06

Yes, 100, 100%. I could not agree more. And I feel that, yeah, just like you mentioned there, having that entrepreneurial mindset that those hurdles that we may come across in the family work life are easier to tackle because we've done similar troubleshooting in our business. And we're able to kind of relate that experience a bit more into our home life. It's not necessarily meshing your work life and upsetting that nice balance that everybody wants, but being able to utilize those skills and those experiences that you use in your business and being able to kind of twist them and play them back in your personal family life, I think makes things a lot easier. I know there's a lot of people where, you know, it takes time, obviously, for that skill to be able to relate those two things together to build on that. But it's one of those moments where once you finally click and like understand that you can take that knowledge and reapply it in different areas that it's completely life-changing for how you deal with situations after that.

Brittney 38:15

Yep. I can't agree more. I just, I finally, the journey of all the things that makes you have a sense, a different perspective on life as a parent, entrepreneur, business owner, all the things that— life is too short, and it's nice to know that I can go pick up my kiddos and drop them off if needed even know right now my daughter is like, I want to take the bus and like

Shelby 38:42

Yeah. The slowly outgrowing your attention phase. 

Brittney 38:45

I was like, You're not even like… you're five going on thirteen already. And like…

Shelby 38:52

Yeah, it's like I'm not mentally ready for this.

Brittney 38:57

Like, I want to drive you and drop you off. Can't you wait to next make me feel like this. 

Shelby 39:08

Oh my god. Kids are so special. And that's one of the beautiful things that I love about being an entrepreneur too is having that, i'm home when my son gets off school, like we're very fortunate his school is within walking distance from where we are— so amazing. Being able to have that. I didn't realize when I was working my nine to five how important that was to me, I think because I was just so hyper focused on… this is the routine, you go home, you make dinner, you clean up, you go to bed, you wake up, you go to work, repeat and just you get stuck in that tornado cycle. But now I don't have to feel that anxiety when I get a phone call from the school saying your son is sick and you've got to come pick him up and I've got to be like, well, I've got to go and I know I've only been here like an hour and a half, but I don't know if I'm coming back for the rest of the week, so I will keep you posted, and that fear of…

Brittney 40:06

…am I going to get fired?

Shelby 40:09

Are the next words out of their mouth… gonna fire me? Yes. So it's like, ah, the flexibility, and he's at a great age, he's super independent now, so it's like I have in that free time and not feeling stressed about, you know, having to entertain him necessarily all the time. He's out there running around the neighborhood with friends, and he can make his own kind of snacks and things, so it's like, this is the life that I love. Yeah, we're in the vicinity. And I love being near you. But I love being able to get my work done at the same time. It's just been such a beautiful opportunity. I can barely put it into words sometimes.

Brittney 40:52

I feel like I had some time to get there.

Shelby 40:55

Yeah, that that will come. But enjoy. Obviously, the moment you have now, as cliche as that sounds, I, there's times where I'm like, I kind of miss when you're a baby, and you like didn't talk and ask me like sixteen million questions a day and… have you had a good sleep schedule, and you didn't argue, but I'm like, I wouldn't change it for the world. But yes, it's coming. And it'll be a glorious moment to have more than five to six hours to do some work. That's kind of been one of my favorite things.

Brittney 41:30

Well, that's like another thing. Oh, just going back to feeling that instant anxiety of thinking that you're going to get fired from a job. I don't think any parent should feel like that. When you're, you're a parent, you have to do, unfortunately drop things to go pick up your kids when they're sick, or whichever. Like, I keep saying this over and over again. I probably would have been fired like 200 times now. For the amount of times I've had to drop what I'm doing to go get the kids from daycare. So the daycare that they're at, like if one kids sick, and both have to come home. And Hudson’s two, so he's still going through the, he's a true COVID baby like born during COVID. So he's like, all the, all the different things that are going on now the world is sick all the time. So I felt so bad for my daughter because he was always sick. So she always had to come home. So they literally were, so technically, they started in daycare, this one in September. Yeah, they were home more than they were at that daycare. That's why I said…

Shelby 42:35

And how frustrating is that sometimes like, just as a parent where you're like, I'm paying for like a month, and you're there for very, very little amount of time unless they give you like little refunds or whatever. But I don't think so. 

Brittney 42:51

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any company to give refunds.Yeah, I don't know. I seriously don't know how parents do it today that work nine to five. I praise you because I know for a fact that, especially if I was at a company, I probably would have been let go within like, oh, you're out? 

Shelby 43:13

Yeah, exactly. And it's, I'm sure it's like this huge fear of like other people as well. It might not just be like family, like they've got a child that's sick, they may have a parent that is aging that they have to take care of outside of like their nine to five, where something may come up there or, you know, heaven forbid that something happens at home and just that dread at overwhelm of guilt, I guess, because you're not performing and not able to do what they hired you to do. Regardless, if you love or hate your job, I guess you know, you want to make, you want to complete your work, or I'd hope you do. But then that internal battle of like knowing family is number one and making them that one, number one priority, and not feeling guilty about saying, you know, I've gotta go, I've got to deal with this. And I think that's something that a lot of women struggle, I'm sure that men struggle with similar situations as well. But it's a sad place to be that we have to like, feel that we need to have that guilt in order to kind of move through that situation almost. Yeah, exactly. I really hope things change differently in the world of a regular nine to five. I personally just think I keep saying this. In the, in the next generations to come, we're just going to see more kids wanting to be entrepreneurs and doing their own thing than working in nine to five corporate lifestyle, like that the life of a corporate style. It's dying. It's dying. Yeah. So for those who are employers just listening, change your mindset a little bit, because they already, you can already see people are saying it's a hard time to hire employees. It's because we're tired of being treated this way. So that's why we're now doing our own thing, because we were never able to be in a flexible place, so if you're in the corporate world, I think they need to have that change of how can we make this more flexible? Because as long as your work is being done, you shouldn't have to question if the person…

Shelby 45:32

100%. I agree so, so much with that. I feel it's all about the performance, and if the work is getting done, why should it matter if you are sitting in an office that's 15 kilometres away from your house, or if you're sitting in your bed, working on a laptop doing the exact same thing? I think that one benefit of, I guess the pandemic and COVID period that we kind of got was the fact that it took a real shift in the workplace, where we went from being that nine to five, you're in the workplace for Monday through Friday, for the next 35 years of your life, maybe 45 now, because of the way pensions and everything are going. But it really pushed the virtual hybrid working experience, and it really, I think, showed a lot of people that I don't need to be in this big building with all these random people doing this work, when I can easily do it at home, like technology got such a big push at that time. Like Zoom, for instance, I didn't even know that was a platform until like COVID happened, and all of a sudden, everybody in their mind has a Zoom account. That was just wild. 

Brittney 46:52

I think it also pushed people's perspective too, in just the, the trust that employers had maybe on their employees, and it was kind of given to them and then taken away in some kind of capacity. And I think it's just to the point where we all had enough… we're just going to do our own thing, because you promised X, Y and Z, we went online, you can see that we can do work online, and then you, now that the world's open up again, you switched it, that we have to be in office, because of… I think people are just fed up, and they just want to do their own thing. I know so many people that are looking for jobs in nine-to-five, but they have to promise them that they can work from home to a certain capacity. 

Shelby 47:37

Yeah, it's either remote work 100% or remote hybrid with favouring more stay-at-home opportunities, maybe come into the office one day out of the week, for four or five hours. It doesn't have to be a full day. But yeah, it really did push a nice flexibility and kind of a woke people up into technology, workspace revolution, I guess in a sense, where people are like, You know what we can 100% do this from home. We're living in 2023, 2020 to 2023 at that time, but we have the technology, and now we're finally starting to like, be more vocal about it, express how it is improving mental health in the workforce, like there are countless positives that have come through with this. And in the end, it's beneficial to not only the employees or the workers, but also to the corporations and big companies. As you know, you can then downsize a little bit on what you're paying on office space that you're either leasing or renting or using. And from that comes a lower power bill or energy bill or heating bill because everybody is just responsible for their own because they’re working at home like the, I could go on and on about the cost-saving measures of this virtual world we're living in because it's just so powerful. But… yeah, it's been amazing to see like, those little positive notes that came out of that little chapter in the world. It's one of the things that I try and bring up as a positive— the whole thing can be seen on multiple sides on positives and negatives, but always bring it back to that little positive— it’s nice. 

Brittney 49:30

Yes, yes, definitely. Oh, yes. 

Shelby 49:35

What a great conversation we have had. I am just, uh, I could honestly keep going for another several hours Brittany, honestly, it's been so fabulous talking to you today. Again, I appreciate you so much for being my guest on She's Got This: A Journey to Success, and I cannot wait to see what the reaction for this episode is and to see where you take your business and kind of where you go in the future. I'm really looking forward to staying in touch with you and, yeah helping each other out later down the road. So thank you. 

Brittney 50:12

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

In this episode, Shelby addresses the issue of mental health for entrepreneurs. Shelby is joined by Jenn Betts, Registered Psychologist, Founder, and CEO of the Calgary Institute of Counselling. Shelby and Jenn discuss the importance of addressing mental health in both our personal and professional lives; Jenn promotes the idea that we are not on this journey alone and that we thrive when we have the right team to support us on both a personal and professional level. 

Jenn discusses her profession as a psychologist and the belief that to serve their clients properly, psychologists need to find support and counselling to deal with their own mental health. She also discusses the difficulty female entrepreneurs experience, wearing multiple hats as mothers, wives, and business people. Through her own journey of entrepreneurship, which she started just before the pandemic, she learned that business owners need the support of a team to help them on their journey. While a business coach can help with professional growth, nurturing and caring for your own physical and mental health is key to success. 

Shelby and Jenn discuss mental health in the workplace and helpful steps to support employees at work. Betts suggests that while we are now openly talking about mental health, we are still a long way from implementing proper measures to promote it. She recommends providing employees with access to psychological support and offering long-term help when needed. Team-building exercises, company events, and even small gestures to acknowledge and show appreciation for employees can improve their mental health and boost morale, allowing them to live happier, more fulfilled lives.

About Jenn Betts 

Jenn Betts is the Founder and CEO of the Calgary Institute of Counselling. With over a decade of experience in counselling, she leads a team of psychologists who strive to bring impactful change to the lives of their clients. 

Jenn takes an empathetic and collaborative approach in her practice and creates a place of emotional safety for her clients. Her training includes Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Emotion Focused Therapy, and Gottman Couples Counselling and she provides therapy for individuals as well as couples.

Jenn is passionate about moving mental health from simply a conversation to more concrete action to generate significant change in the wider community. She advocates for more mental support for society as a whole and consults with businesses, educational establishments, and faith organizations to incorporate mental health into their culture. 

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Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

• Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
• LinkedIn: Joines Administration
• Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
• Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

Contact Jenn Betts | Calgary Institute of Counselling: 

• Website: counsellinginstitute.ca
• Instagram: @counsellinginstitute
• Facebook: @counsellinginstitute
• LinkedIn: Calgary Institute of Counselling

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Transcript

Shelby 00:07

Hello, and welcome back everybody to another amazing episode on she's got this a journey to success. Now this is a great and exciting episode today because we have a guest joining us. Jenn Betts with the Calgary Institute of Counseling will be coming on with us and sharing a whole bunch of insight about how having a solid support team behind you as an entrepreneur is crucial to keeping your mental health wellness in check. So don't go anywhere. We're going to start diving into all of this right now.

Shelby 00:46

Okay, we have our special guest Jenn Betts here today, I am so thrilled to have you as a guest on my podcast, “She's Got This: A Journey to Success” today. I have been a huge follower of you on Instagram and with the beauty of social media, we were able to connect and get an amazing episode together for our listeners and share some insanely beautiful and important knowledge when it comes to mental health and all things seeking that little bit of extra support outside of your business and bringing that in. So Jen, what can you tell me about yourself? Let's do a little bit of an introduction… how you started getting into this sphere of work… who you are, all the goodies. 

Jenn 01:38

Oh, thanks so much for having me, Shelby, I'm really happy to be here. I'm so happy to be talking about mental health today. My journey as a psychologist started many, many years ago. I took a BA in psychology and then was working with some clients and they were facing unplanned pregnancies. And I can clearly remember the moment when all of a sudden I felt stuck with these teenage girls that were getting pregnant, didn't know what to do, and I was like, giving them clothing, giving them food bank hampers… that is not going to help them in the long run. We need to figure out where all this is coming from, why are they getting pregnant at 13? What is happening here? And so then I realized I needed to go back and get my master's. So I went back, got my master's, then registered as a psychologist, worked at an agency as a contractor for six or seven years. Then I realized something in the mental health world needed to change. I myself have seen a lot of terrible psychologists out there. There's a problem in every field, right? Like there's… in hairdressing, as a lawyer, whatever it is, right? There's always those bad apples. And so I realized I needed to start an agency. I needed to train up strong and ethical psychologists. I was tired of hearing my clients saying I went to so and so psychologists, and they actually really hurt me. I was tired of psychologists saying to me, I don't know how to help you. Some other really frightening things that were said to me, and so I started up an agency. At our agency, we ensure training for all psychologists, we have team meetings, we have supervision for all because people need to follow their ethics, people need to be strong and competent in what they're doing, so we have a really high standard at our agency. And thankfully, everyone is up to that challenge of the high standard because there are things that need to change in this world when it comes to counseling. And I'm going to be that catalyst for change. 

Shelby 03:42

And that's so important. And I think that people also don't realize that, you know, sometimes the therapists, the psychologists, whatever kind of profession in that field, it may be, they also need to support in order to be the best that they can for their clients as well. I can only imagine, and kind of as you briefly mentioned before, the stories that they have to hear from their clients, the traumas that they help them kind of rebuild, and how that has a personal effect on them as well. And just even from my personal experience, having or finding that support in either a psychologist or a counselor or whatever it may be, can be one of the most difficult things that a person can do because, you know, depending on what you're needing that support with and then help with, it may be several sessions just to scrape the surface of why you're there, just to find out that they're not the right fit, and you have to go back to the drawing board, and kind of you're constantly reliving and just scraping that scab of traumas and things that are going on in your life and never really getting it fully healed and just letting it fester while you do your big journey but…

Jenn 05:02 

Exactly. Well, you're exactly right. At our agency, and most agencies, they do have 20-minute consults. But in those 20-minute consults, it's important to ask lots of questions, to ask what their training is, to ask what their background is, what their specialties are. I think it's also important to ask, because, like you were saying, ask a psychologist what they do for their mental health. My clinical director, Michelle, at the agency, she is big on teaching everyone that you, as a psychologist, you are the tool, like when you go to a hairdresser, the tool is the scissors, right? Yeah, but we are the tool. And we have our own traumas, we get into this because we are rescuers by nature, we want to help. But that hurt for a lot of psychologists. And so I strongly recommend, and I think most of my psychologists attend therapy themselves. We call it countertransference. And so we get triggered in session, if you're talking about your mom or your dad, I have stuff with my mom and dad, and then maybe I get triggered, right? And then I can't do as good of a job. So it's incredibly important that psychologists themselves go to a psychologist as well, because we can't solve our problems ourselves. I remember clients have laughed at me and said, why, it's like, you can't solve your problems yourself. No, I absolutely can't. No one can. And so I regularly see a psychologist, I have counselors here that also regularly see a psychologist. Because, yes, the load is very heavy. As you get more experienced in the field, you do learn to leave it all behind. It gets easier as time goes on. And I've gotten to that point that I can absolutely leave everything behind. But in the beginning, that's tough. But you also have to work on your own stuff. If what I say to my psychologists is, if you can't see it in yourself, your unhealthy coping mechanisms, or whatever it may be, you are never going to see that in a client, and you'll never be able to fix that in a client, if you can't see it in yourself. So I believe that all psychologists need to go to therapy, unfortunately, all don't. And to me, that seems a little hypocritical. But I believe it's incredibly important for people to take care of their own health, if they're working with the health of other people as well. 

Shelby 07:16

Absolutely, it's so important and like, kind of coming around full circle being in the profession, in general, your kind of calling in life is that support role you want to be there. So I am sure that there are a lot of psychologists and counselors and others in that field that are very empathetic by nature, and they kind of will bring in and hold on to that client energy and everybody needs that little bit of a safe space, or that third party that doesn't know all the details to just be able to put all that extra emotion from kind of pulling in from clients and their stories and being able to bottle that up and or not bottle it up, I guess but deal with it, manage it and you know, kind of be productive and healthy. In a sense, I feel like the mental health aspect is extremely overlooked, especially in the world of entrepreneurship, small businesses, owning, running, managing multiple streams of income, whatever it may be, we all think that we can take it all on, deal with it all ourselves, we're all kind of that focused on the money hungry and worried about the physical health of our business. And then the secondary health of ourselves. But that's from most of the people I talked to is very low on the list. And then the mental health aspect to it is even lower than that 90% of the time, if not more, but just the importance of having that. Not even like people have business coaches, right, they get those people to help them kind of guide through their business, what the plan is, how to set their goals realistically, and so on and so forth. But on top of that, a business coach can only take you so far. And they are focused mainly on the business, the financials, the numbers, the progress, where the entrepreneurs and the small business owners overlook the importance of actually having a psychologist or a counselor or somebody in the mental health field where they can actually discuss things a little more openly and freely without the judgment of their business reputation coming into play and leading into a whole new tailspin of anxieties and overwhelm that come from that. So yeah.

Jenn 09;37

Exactly. I have business coaches, and I think they are absolutely wonderful and they have helped me with my business. But nothing has helped me scale my business and getting my mental health in check. I opened this business January 2020. I was pregnant. The world shut down two months later, it was…

Shelby 09:56

Great time.

Jenn 09:57

The last few years have been pretty awful. I will be honest, being a business owner during a pandemic is not something you wish on your greatest enemy. My husband lost his job, we had a two-and-a-half-year-old who could not go to daycare anymore. My husband… long story short, couldn't do his job… like it was just impossible for him to do during the pandemic. So he took care of our daughter in the basement, and I worked my butt off to save our business up on the main floor, seeing as many clients as I could all that kind of stuff, had my baby in July 2020, took a month off, completely stepped away for the business for a month and then went right back into it in August, and it has been a tailspin, I'll be completely honest, the last few years, I… long story short, I9 found out my body doesn't actually produce vitamin B. So I'm getting my mental health in check and my naturopath has been my saving grace lately. But I've worked a lot on my inner game, I will call it a lot of business owners who want to scale and nothing will help you scale more than getting your emotional and mental health in check. My business is starting to scale more, because I'm getting my mental health and emotional health in check. I'm figuring everything out when it comes to an emotional standpoint of running a business, management, all of that. And because of that, my business is really starting to work. I forget what the quote is exactly, but it's like 90 - 95% of businesses fail in the first five years. And I completely understand why. But since I have got my emotional and mental health game in check, things have changed. And so in my opinion, you cannot be a healthy business owner, you cannot scale properly if you do not get your emotional and mental health in check. It just becomes a panic frantic rat race and it does not need to be that way. I have been there, 100% I have been there, but it does not need to be that way. 

Shelby 12:06

Exactly. And I think people are constantly looking when they're at that awkward moment of growth where they're like… I need to scale or I'm gonna fall down, like there is no in-between, that they only focus on the how do I get more clients? How do I gain more revenue coming in? How can I sell more products or my services, and they're looking at it through the eye of I guess, a corporate lens in a sense where it's all about the money, it's the numbers on the spreadsheet, it's the transactions, but they don't look at the inner work and the holistic work that needs to go into themselves to be able to have that clear vision and that healthy vision and just healthy internal processes that go along with it. I think the mental health and the mindset and the internal body work and mind work gets extremely overlooked in the entrepreneurial world. I know, a good portion of the entrepreneurs that I know today were once in a completely different area in the corporate sector, whether that was healthcare, oil and gas construction, trades work, anything along those lines, but they go into it with a mindset of it’s business, and they don't think that themselves as a person holistically have as big of an impact on their business as they do. 

Jenn 13:33

Yes, exactly. And just like Michelle, my clinical director says that, as a psychologist, you are the tool. That's the same thing with being an entrepreneur. You are the one that's doing the work. And it's going to catch up to you if you don't pay attention, if you don't take care of yourself. I had a pretty awful summer, I'm pretty open about my life. Like there there just doesn't need to be shame, like life is life, right? We all struggle but I was flat on my back most of the summer. Again, like I found out my body does not produce vitamin B correctly. So I'm getting adrenal shots because I've had everything from fatty liver disease, adrenal fatigue, low iron, low vitamin B, you name it. I've had all of that and literally I wasn't able to stay awake each day, and so I would nap each day. I'm finally feeling better. My naturopath again has been my saving grace. That's what entrepreneurs need is a team around them, and I will never ever let go of my team ever again. I will stay in therapy. I will stay in contact with my naturopath, all of that, but I can promise you it is not worth it. The money is not worth it. I have never been more thankful for my health and my family it scared me this summer because I pushed and pushed and pushed so hard and was anxious and needing to make sure I had the money, and needing to provide the best life for my family and all these things, right? But that is not what this is about. What they talk about nowadays for young entrepreneurs I’ll say, is it's not about money, so much as it is about time. Like, I get to pick up my daughter every day at school at 2.30, that is more of a blessing to me than having 1000s of dollars in my bank account, right, like time with my family, the ability to go to an appointment with my naturopath during the middle of the afternoon, or whatever it may be. That, to me is what matters. Yes, I absolutely want to create wealth for my family, and all of that, but if you do not take care of yourself, you're gonna end up flat on your face like I did. The only way to be successful is to take care of yourself, because you are the one that is in charge of everything, you're at the top of it all. And if you aren't healthy, your business won’t be healthy, and I've seen that clearly in my life. 

Shelby 16:04

And it's so true, like just kind of circling back to where we started with that when I kind of started this virtual administrative journey that I'm on now, I had finished, like 16 years in oil and gas, and you and I have kind of had a few conversations on Instagram and in meetings and stuff about this. But just being in such a wild and unpredictable environment for such a long time and really getting into supporting high-level executives right out of the gate after I'd finished my education and administration. Not setting healthy boundaries for myself and going right in as being like the yes man to everything and anything that people would ask of me, turning into like that 24/7 executive assistant that's working on salary and not going anywhere. But it too had led to a point where my health had taken like a huge turn before I'd gotten into this virtual reality of administration, pretty much. My kidneys were on the verge of shutting down, my liver, my cortisol levels were like off the charts. But like you, thank God for natural paths and being able to figure out that like, perfect little vitamin mixture that just replaced any type of prescriptions that I was taking at the time, and you feel so much better and healthier, but at the time, you don't realize people talk about burnout all the time. They talk about what the signs and the symptoms are, but when you get to a point of being so burnt out, you're just running on empty and fumes all the time it gets to be your blinders are on to your own well-being and mental health, and in the end, I too fell flat on my face for a couple months wondering if like, am I going back to school? Is this where I want to be? What do I wanna do with my life, and you just hit a hole, like a wall at a certain point in your life where you're like, I need to really switch gears here, or this path is just going to be a nasty couple of years coming up. But, I guess, yeah, it's wild. But with that, what are some things that female entrepreneurs or business owners just in general, can do to prioritize their mental health while trying to scale a successful business? Yeah, like I said, you have to have a team around you.

Jenn 18:33

Yeah, like I said, you have to have a team around you. I had a personal trainer for a while. That helped me lose a bunch of weight I had to lose. I lost about 20 pounds in order to fix my fatty liver because I emotionally ate for the last three years. I did not deal well with things. My psychologist was mainly online during the pandemic. And it just was not helpful. I couldn't get anything from online therapy, so I did not have a team around me. I'm now seeing a different psychologist because I'm dealing with like business and parenting and like all that kind of stuff. 

Shelby 19.10

Newer aspects with life too…

Jenn 19:18

Exactly and I see her regularly, and when I don't have a session booked with her, I can tell. And so I book regularly with her now, even if things are going well, because I need that constant support. I need to see my naturopath regularly. I also had cortisol levels that were through the frickin roof, like you name it I had it. And so if I don't have that team around me like a personal trainer, a naturopath, a psychologist, I am again going to fall flat on my face. I'm feeling great now. Things have changed pretty quickly, and in like about three months it took for things to go from not being able to stay awake during the day to feeling great. And yes, I understand that that takes money. I absolutely do. And like, that's the great thing about being an entrepreneur. But if you want more money, you have to take care of your health, you need to be able to talk about it, you need to be able to surround yourselves with like-minded people. I have a new friend that I've made recently, and she's an entrepreneur as well. And she has big ambitions like me, and I'm able to share all my fears, regardless of how silly they sound. I just text her everything that's in my brain. I don't even tell my husband everything that's in my brain because he doesn't get it. Not a mom. He's not a business owner, all those kinds of things, but this woman is a mom, she's a, she's a business owner, she's a high functioning entrepreneur, all these things. And so you have to have people in your corner, just like a boxer has people in their corner, they have, you know, the people that clean up their wounds, or give them water or coach, like they have all these people in their corner. Yeah. And they can’t fight if they don't have people in their corner. And so I think it's totally possible to scale and be that high-functioning executive. But you can't do it if you're not taking care of your health. Like I talked to the CEO of Calgary Counseling Center, the biggest agency here in Calgary that I'm modeling myself after a bit, and her exercises in the morning that she does on the treadmill, or whatever it may be is non-negotiable. She knows nobody can bump that for a meeting, no one can bother her during that time. And I for a while I was doing that exercising regularly that my health got so bad this summer, I couldn't do it. But there are things that need to be non-negotiable in your life, a healthy diet, whatever it may be, those things have to be non-negotiable in your life. Again, I very much understand that that takes money, but that is a perk of your business. And so you need to use your money wisely. If you are going to scale, you have to do it properly.

22:09 Shelby

Absolutely. It is so important. And I think like I mentioned several times, it's so overlooked by entrepreneurs. And really, I have a true, like, mantra that you know, it does take money to make money, and you need to know these areas of your business and your personal life and your personal health. And find these areas of non-negotiables like you were mentioning where you have to spend this money, invest in these personal development courses, invest in yourself and having a great journal that gets you excited to look at it's got a great texture, it's got a great feel it's got great prompts in it and actually gets you excited to do your morning journaling or your evening meditation before you go to bed. But being able to, you know, invest and actually plan out and find where those areas really need to be, have some plugs I guess put in where there may be some leaks and things, but it is so important to even schedule in like half an hour, 45 minutes out of your day where it is… your team knows that hey, I'm unavailable right now, this is when I do my meditation, my reflection, my weekly planning whatever it may be, but having that time and then staying consistent with it, which I know is one thing that we can all probably relate to, is just keeping consistent with these new things that we're trying to incorporate into our life to try and make things easier. I know I've been in several places where I'm like, okay, I'm on a really good journaling roll right now. It's been three weeks and then something sneaks its way into my calendar, and then everything kind of falls off the rails for a couple of months I'll say, I slowly realized that man, through those couple of months where I wasn't consistent with my journaling. I truly noticed a change in my mood, how my mind was organized during my days, how I was able to complete tasks on time, all the things, but it is one of those things you really have to prioritize that personal development, that personal growth and that personal just raw hell.

Jenn 24:27

Yes, and that's the thing like we are in, we're in charge of our calendar. Like that's what I've come to realize, is like, I'm in charge of my calendar; if I can't meet someone for another two weeks, because I have my naturopath appointment at that time that I can't move or whatever it may be, that's fine. We don't have to be like I think the entrepreneur world is very much known for being frantic, male or female. 

Shelby 24:51

Like have to say yes to every opportunity, right? Or you're gonna miss out.

Jenn 25:00

Yeah, and you don't need to say yes to every opportunity. I'm a big believer in like, the universe brings you things that are going to help. And you, you're not going to miss out on what the universe has for you, you can absolutely self-sabotage yourself and hurt yourself, but you're not going to miss out on what the universe has for you. I think trust is a big thing as a business owner, like, yes, you have to build your business strategically and I have very much built it in a strategic manner. I have people under me that take care of a lot of work that

I just frankly, don't have time for. There's too much else on my plate. But I think we need to change the belief, the mindset of like, go go, go and hustle and chase the sale and chase the dream. But I think if we just sit back and trust that everything will be okay, like I took two months off, I didn't talk really to any of my counselors this summer, and my business finally took off with me stepping back. And so I think that that was one of the most valuable lessons that I've ever learned as an entrepreneur, that we can trust that things are going to be okay. 

Shelby 26:09Yes. And I feel like we are so caught up in the anxiety and the overwhelm of if I step away, everything is going to crash and burn, and it's all going to fall apart. And me being on for two weeks is in three months of cleanup, just to get back to where I was. And really building that strong team, whether it's in kind of your personal self-care world, whether naturopaths, things like that, psychologists, or if it's in the business world, where you've got a virtual assistant, you've got project managers, in your case counselors and things, knowing that they've got their roles and responsibilities, everybody has their place what they need to do, and just really taking that almost leap of faith, I guess you could call it the first time around where it's like, I'm gonna step back, and I'm really gonna say, you're all educated, and we're all adults, and we know what we're doing, and I'm going to shut down for a few days, and I'll check back in when I'm back where I need to be. But we're so terrified that that is just an impossible dream that we can achieve as entrepreneurs, when really that's the whole point, most of the time on why we got started was to be able to grow to a point where we can step back and have things automate and run themselves while we can enjoy life a bit more. 

Jenn 27:35

Yep, exactly. Yeah, that's the goal. And if you don't do that, you're going to be forced to do that. That's what happened to me. 

Shelby 27:44

Yeah, exactly. So I know that you started off kind of seeing patients and clients and things like that in your world, and you're in the transformative period of stepping back a bit more and kind of doing more of the education on mental health, so what do you think are… what do you see as the benefits of providing more education on the mental health sphere, either in Alberta, or Canada and North America as a whole? 

Jenn 28:12

Yeah. I love seeing clients, and I still work with some of my long-term clients that I've been seeing for, oh, goodness, I can't even count now like eight, nine years, I've been seeing clients, right? Like, life happens, and we need to stick with someone that's supportive. But I think what's been interesting about the pandemic is it highlighted mental health. And so I think that that's a beautiful thing that we can see coming out of the pandemic… there was I’ll say some good that came out of the pandemic, but unfortunately, we have a mental health crisis. But right now we are okay, talking about mental health. That's what I find interesting is since the pandemic, they'll talk about mental health on the news now, they… people in conversation will talk about mental health. But people are still not taking action. 

Shelby 29.06

Yeah.

Jenn 29:08

That's what's frustrating. I'm very thankful that we can talk about it now that it is safe and normal in a sense, to talk about mental health, but people still aren't taking action. Like some of my friends are nervous about couples counseling, because doesn't that mean I'm going to get a divorce Jen? No, that doesn't mean you're gonna get a divorce. If you don't go to couples counseling, you are gonna get a divorce. And so there's still a lot of, I don't know what the word is, like stigma, stigma, I know… 

Shelby 29:41

…the taboo almost. 

Jenn 29:46

… but like, people are afraid to go to counseling, and I get it, I've been there… my first appointment like… I can still remember fighting and fighting and fighting the fact that I knew I had to go to therapy. I was in my early 20s and I knew I had to go, but I was scared. I knew I wanted to be a psychologist. But I was still scared, right? And I'm still trying to figure out what that change needs to be. I think we just need to talk more about it like, talk about like, going to see a psychologist is normal… we go to see our doctor, we go to see our naturopath… like a psychologist is no different part of the journey. And so that's why I'm wanting to step out into an education role, is we still need to talk more about it. It needs to be even more normalized. Yes, it became a more normalized thing to talk about during the pandemic, and afterward now. But I still see people that are not taking action, I still see my friends, I see relatives, whoever it may be, that are not taking action, that need to get themselves into therapy, that need to get their child into therapy, and are not doing so. It's okay to talk about their mental health, but it's still not okay to get into therapy, and so I'm really wanting to change that. I'm really wanting to change how we talk about it in the corporate world, I'm really wanting to get in with larger companies and talk about… you need to set aside, you know, benefits or money or whatever, so your staff can go to a psychologist or whatever it may be. I met with the NDP last summer, so 2022, to help them roll out their plan for universal mental health care for the election. Unfortunately, I found out a few weeks before the election, they weren't going to roll that out… that was a pretty devastating day for me because I thought finally change is gonna happen. But even the government isn't willing to go there quite yet. And I get that it's an expensive endeavor, but if anytime was right to roll out universal mental health care, it was after the pandemic, because there's such a crisis and such a need for it. And so I still don't know what it is, that is going to help people get in the door… we're now finally talking about it because so many people die from suicide, the divorce rate and infidelity rate we're seeing at the agency is through the roof… I've never seen anything like it. So yeah, I want to get into these businesses and start talking. I'm not sure what needs to change. But something needs to change. And we're gonna get to the bottom of it through education somehow. 

Shelby 32:16

And I love that and I feel like especially going into the corporate sphere of things and kind of getting those bigger companies that provide up to a certain amount, which is maybe enough to cover three sessions, maybe a bit more depending on what level of psychological support you may need. Obviously, sometimes, counselors can be more affordable than psychotherapists and different scales and models, but being able to provide a healthy amount of support where the employee doesn't have to feel like I have to squeeze 20 years of life traumas and difficulties into three sessions, and hope to god cross all my fingers that I'm going to get the either results I'm looking for, or at least a handful of tools that work, that I can utilize when I come into difficult situations. But it's never enough, and personally coming from corporate and being on the side of salaried employee and a contractor, it is never easy. Like I said, whatever salary benefits you do get are never enough to do anything of true value health-wise, whether it's vision, dental, prescription, mental health, chiro, physio, you name it. And then on the other hand, as entrepreneurs and small business owners, we are not salaried employees most of the time, we have to pay out of pocket, or if we've gotten to a successful place the business will pay for benefits or you can use that as an expense or whatnot but it's never enough, and that was always the struggle…is you get so excited, like yes, I've got benefits, but then you look into the fine print of everything and it's like you might as well just not have offered me benefits in the first place because you're paying more into them even if it's only 50% than what you'd actually get out of them. So yeah, I completely…  having those conversations is so important, and to be able to either boost up those or have companies be able to provide like mental health days for their workers that aren't like one or two a year which do nothing, or just any type of seminar support, or here we've got a psychologist is coming in for the day. Everybody gets an hour session or 45 minutes to chat with them real quick, and if you need additional support, we’ll help you out, but there's so much more that we can be doing in the corporate world, and I feel like corporate mental health is really undervalued, and people don't see, depending on the industry… what the struggles are and how many people are like doing self-medication outside of work, because it's so stressful, or they're leading into drinking problems or other addiction problems, and it just ends up snowballing to a point where that person gets to be unemployed, they're on short term disability, and that may turn to long term disability, and then they're just almost useless to the workforce at that point, and… which is just so unfortunate to see that there's not enough support to get people that additional help… like don't get me wrong, there's support but not the right and the right amount to be offered to people. 

Jenn 35:57

And that's exactly it. Like when you talk about the return on investment in the report I wrote for the NDP, if workers are taking care of, absenteeism goes down, sickness goes down, even hospitalization rates for like, cold and flu go down. Like it changes society. If people's mental health is taken care of, yes, it takes several years for us to see this change, but if people's mental health are taking care of the ROI is huge. And so it's just, it's fascinating to me that companies don't invest in that.

Shelby 36:35

I would see it that way. It's either they're not seeing it that way, or they haven't been shown it in that way. And I feel like you going into the more of the education field of mental health, that would be an amazing point to really bat home because really, the statistics are all there. I think every time there's some kind of a census that gets done either on the municipal, provincial, or federal level here, that it's always, uh, oh, workers are getting sicker, and like, companies are claiming bankruptcy, and there's just like that output/input isn't balanced. But if they do take care of not only the physical well-being… I know, there's companies out there who will give you like gym memberships, or you get discounts to do excursions and bam, for get outside, I know, NBC doctors are able to now prescribe National Park passes as like a prescription that you can use to get out in nature and kind of boost that mental health aspect, but things like that are great, but when it comes to that mental health side, too, it's just lacking. But really, if people are healthy, they've got that extra time even those four-hour workweeks that are starting to be implemented over in Europe and stuff… companies have been coming back saying we have doubled, tripled, our revenue in this year, and we have cut down the amount of working hours that we're doing because our employees and our contractors are excited to come to work. They're happy, they're energized, because they've gotten that six hours of family time instead of maybe the hour and a half at night that they get with their families, and being able to socialize with their friends and just have this better outlook on life. So one of my biggest things would be that would be great to have here. Yeah. 

Jenn 38:27

And entrepreneurs need to know that. Yes. Yeah. Like if entrepreneurs, I think figured that out, and I think I'm figuring that out, is, I need to invest financially in to buy psychologists, and so today we're having like just a connecting time where we're just hanging out I'm going to like… I found this new bakery here in Calgary, and it's like really fancy doughnuts. really fancy cookies… like it's just, it makes people feel good, right? So, I'm going to pick those up today and we're doing a team-building event. We're all going bowling at Banquet next Friday and like, we have team-building events every quarter… the more I invest into my psychologists, the greater the business grows. And so we have to invest in the care of our employees…it has to happen. 

Shelby 39:18

And I think that's one of the things too that gets overlooked a lot, is that okay, I've got this team now, I just have to manage them, and micromanage or run them, and filter everything through, but nobody sees like the personal relationship building that goes into building a business as well, and the impact that those little things, like even you know, the staff members birthdays this day, you send them a quick e-card or you get them like a little $5 Starbucks card, something… it doesn't have to be huge or expensive by any means. But even those little gestures just to show that hey, I appreciate you, and really showing that appreciation and compassion. Recognition for their work, and just bonding together on more of an emotional relationship personal level rather than it being constantly business. Like I'm sure when you have your team building exercises, there may be a little bit of shop talk, but for the most part, it's like, how's your family? How was your summer? How was so and so's wedding? What are you doing this weekend like, things like that, and I feel that's one of the biggest parts too that can just be something that the average person in the office can do to kind of boost somebody else's mental health, outside of any kind of additional supports, I feel that kindness gets kind of brushed under the rug a lot nowadays… we're such a fast-moving society. And we want instant gratification and instant results and like, go go go, and there's no time to stop and… taking that moment to just say… hey, thanks for doing that. Or, hey, I appreciate you getting this to me before our kind of scheduled deadline. You know, it doesn't have to be expensive gestures or support that you go through, but really kind words can make the world of a difference in somebody's day too.

Jenn 41:12

I think people want to be seen, right? And if you see them as a boss, as the entrepreneur, I think that goes a long way. 

Shelby 41:22

Yeah, exactly. You want to have that nice balance of leadership, I guess more so than that boss mentality. I think in just the world of business in the last probably 15/20 years, it has really shifted from being transactional, we're counting the number of sales, you know, if you don't hit this level, then you're kind of, you know, knocked down a couple of notches where now it's the building the relationships, getting to know people on those levels, really connecting and showing that appreciation and starting from that point of, I guess, compassionate selling or soul-selling as some people may like to call it, but it's taken a huge turn and just in the world of business, I think those appreciative… and they're free. Like, things that will make somebody's day that are free. You really can't beat that. So why not just sprinkle the free compliments everywhere? 

Jenn 42:27

Yeah, I would agree completely. 

Shelby 42:32

Oh, it has been so great chatting with you, Jen, I've got one last question that I'd actually like to ask you, but what advice would you give to female entrepreneurs or business owners who may be struggling with their mental health right now and are kind of on the fence about seeking help? 

Jenn 42:53

Mm hmm. I think it's sad that people in general, I'll say have a lot of shame about talking about their struggles. I think that women especially struggle with that. They carry all the hats. They're the mom, they're the wife, they're the house cleaner. They're the cooker, right? They're the boss, they have all the hats. And it is impossible to do all those things, well, no one can, and I think if you are going to try to do those all well and perfect, that again, you're going to fall flat on your face. And so what advice would I give that? It's such a hard question, because I'm so used to being a psychologist, right? That, for me psychology is just really, it's just such a normal thing. 

Shelby 43:41

You guys are on a different path. 

Jenn 43: 45

But there is no shame in asking for help. Life is hard enough, and we should never have to do life alone. I don't believe that the world was made so that we struggle alone. I am a huge believer in community. And community is what fills our cup, and in order for you to scale, you need that support. There is no shame in saying, I have a psychologist. I have a naturopath I have a business coach. Right? They're one in the same. I'm not sure where it went wrong that for some reason, it's okay to have a business coach but not a psychologist in your corner. They're one in the same. And so they're like, again, it comes back to there is no shame. No one is perfect. Everyone has weaknesses. And the more we talk about those weaknesses and bring them out to the light, the less shame that we will have. And so I think it's just about making that decision. You don't even have to tell anyone you're making that decision… that's between you and your counselor. And you just slowly start to seek support. It's going to radically change your life. I think it's completely okay to be anxious about it, but it's pushing through that fear. I told myself at the beginning, or I guess the end of last year, I'm going to walk towards anything that causes me fear, I'm not going to try to run from fear, like I've done in the past. And I think it's okay, even in the first session, lots of clients would say to me, like, I'm really scared to be here… I don't know what to talk about. And it's the job of the psychologist to lead the session, to figure out what's going on, and kind of pull those things together. It's not the client's job to figure it all out. That's why you're hiring a psychologist to do it. And so it's okay to put it all on the psychologists and say, I don't even know what to talk about today. I know I'm stressed out, but I don't know what is stressing me out. I'm scared to be here. Whatever it may be, I think it's okay to put that all on the psychologists for them to try and figure it out. You just need to show up and be your authentic self. And that's where change happens.

Shelby 45:50

That's absolutely beautiful. That resonated with me at the beginning, I started getting like goosebumps and stuff, and I'm like, don't tear up, don't tear up, don't tear up.

Jenn 46:02

But it's okay to tear up, right? We all grew up in life, I know. 

Shelby 46:07

But I was like, you know, what is a safe space, if I end up crying, oh, my podcast with a great psychologist and everything here. Then you know what… I'm doing alright, and the whole beauty of this is being vulnerable and really knowing that you're not alone in this venture, this journey, whatever you may want to call it, that there are countless people out there that are going through same or similar situations. As cliche as this sounds, as I'm actually talking about it now,but really, we're not alone, whether you think that you may be in the worst place of your life because you're hitting a bad time in your business, or you may be struggling with some family issues, or, you know, you're stuck in a housing crisis and trying to find out what your next move is, there is always somebody and there's always light at the tunnel to get out. There’s always dark moments, and you know, as entrepreneurs and business owners, we may think we're immune, we get on such an adrenaline rush when things are going great. We're making profits, we're selling services or products, we're doing all the things, and then we get that one thing that veers us right off in a different direction, and we think that our whole world is coming to an end… we start questioning why we did this, should we go insolvent, should we claim bankruptcy, all the things… I go from one extreme to the other in my head, and I know for a fact that I am probably not alone in the entrepreneurial world about that, where it's the complete overwhelm pendulum swing, but knowing that others…

Jenn 47:47

…but the more we care of our mental health and our emotional health in that, the less pendulum swing there will be…

Shelby 47:53

Yes, they get smaller, farther apart and the business will be more stable. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. And that is the beauty about this journey of entrepreneurship, you never know what's going to happen and just gotta learn… 

Jenn 48:11

…it's okay to cry your eyes out too every night. 

Shelby 48:18

Exactly, cry in the bathtub every night. Who knows?

Jenn 48:22

When they're done that, and that's okay. 

Shelby 48:25

I for one have been known to go to the mountains and hopefully find a nice quiet hike and just scream at the top of my lungs and hope to God nobody calls stars but… whatever.

Jenn 48:37

And that's a healthy choice to do. You have to get your emotions out. I think that's so helpful. 

Shelby 48:41

It is, and we all need to release those emotions every once in a while because you bottle those up for too long. Some people are really great at holding on to that bottle for a long time before it pops, others not so much… avoiding that.. being a huge explosion is the goal, and being able to even let off a little bit of steam every once in a while and just decompress that bottle a bit. It does wonders. But thank you so much Jenn, for being here today. This has been such a lovely conversation. I enjoy you thoroughly. As I mentioned before in some other messages, I will probably be coming to utilize your services and definitely have you and the Calgary Counseling Institute at the top of my mind for anybody who's seeking some additional support. But thank you so much for being here with me and for this lovely episode. I appreciate you so much. 

Jenn 48:40 

Thanks, Shelby. I appreciate it.

Shelby 50:00

What an amazing episode we had today and thank you again so much to Jenn Betts of the Calgary Institute of Counseling for joining us today and sharing all this great information regarding mental health and the entrepreneurship journey and how it is so important to take care of yourself first. Now, you can check out more information about Jenn at her website at counseling institute.ca and on her social media links that are listed down below. If you haven't already, everyone, I would greatly appreciate it if you liked, subscribed, and followed “She's Got This: A Journey to Success” on all of the major platforms such as Google podcasts, Apple podcasts, Amazon music, and Spotify. Thank you again so much for being here and we'll see you next time.

In this episode, Shelby discusses the importance of taking time away from your business to relax and recharge. Business owners tend to get so caught up in running and building their businesses that they tend to forget about scheduling time for themselves. Shelby offers practical tips for carving out some time for yourself, along with requirements on how to set up your business so it runs smoothly in your absence. 

Taking time away can include scheduling four 15-minute breaks each work day or planning a short weekend getaway. In order to be comfortable taking a break, it’s essential to put a competent team in place, invest in training, and assign tasks and responsibilities, giving your team accountability for the work done. Communicate your absence clearly to your clients and your team, and outline your expectations on how things should be managed while you are away. This way, you can completely unplug, knowing your business is in safe hands. 

Shelby recommends practicing mindfulness and self-care; the break should allow you to release work-related stress and set you up for long-term success. 

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Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

• Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
• LinkedIn: Joines Administration
• Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
• Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

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Transcript:

Shelby  00:07

Welcome back to another episode of She's Got This: A Journey to Success. I'm your host Shelby Joines and today we're diving into a topic that's often overlooked but crucial for every entrepreneur — taking time away from your business. We're going to explore the importance of unplugging how you can build a strong team to support in your absence, and share some valuable tips on managing your business while you're out of the office. So, let's get started.

Shelby  00:36

In today's fast-paced business world, it is easy to get caught up in the constant hustle and forget the importance of stepping back. Taking time away from your business isn't just a luxury; it's a necessity for your mental health, creativity, and overall wellbeing. When you unplug you allow yourself to recharge, gain a fresh perspective, and prevent burnout. One way to prioritize unplugging is by scheduling regular breaks, whether it's a short weekend getaway or an extended vacation, or it's maybe taking four or five 15-minute breaks throughout your day, if it's a really… you can't get out of town. It’s crucial to take these times because it can help you return to your work with a renewed energy and focus. Now that we understand the importance of stepping away, let's talk about how to build a team that can manage your business in your absence. 

Shelby  01:44

A well-structured team is key to ensuring that things run smoothly while you're taking this time off. Our second tip is making sure that you delegate responsibilities. Now, delegation is an art, and it is crucial for any business owner. Assign tasks and responsibilities to capable team members, empowering them to make decisions and take ownership. This not only eases your workload but also fosters a sense of accountability amongst your team. Our third tip is to invest in training. Now, to build a reliable team, you want to invest in training and development. Equip your team with the skills and the knowledge that they need to handle various situations and challenges. This ensures that your business can continue to run seamlessly, even when you're not around. 

Shelby  02:38

Now you built a strong team, and now it's time to discuss strategies for managing your business effectively while you're out of the office. Communication and planning is crucial in this phase. Another tip that we offer is clear communication. Now, communicate your absence to your team, your clients, partners, any other members that are key to your business as a whole, well in advance. Set clear expectations on how things will be managed during your time away and provide a point of contact for emergency. Open lines of communication to prevent misunderstandings and ensure a smooth operation. Now, another tip is to utilize technology by leveraging technology to stay connected without being there tethered to your desk. Cloud-based project management tools, communication apps, and remote access to important documents can help keep you in the loop while giving you the freedom to enjoy your time off. Make the most out of your time away. Now that you've set the stage for a successful time away, let's talk about how to make the most of your break and return feeling recharged and ready to tackle new challenges rather than anxious and worrisome about tasks being completed. 

Shelby  04:01

Embrace mindfulness. Use your time away to practice mindfulness and self-care. Engage in activities that bring you joy and help you to disconnect from work-related stress. Whether it's reading a book, going on a hike, or simply spending quality time with your loved ones or family, these moments contribute to your overall well-being. Another tip is to reflect and strategize. Take advantage of your break to reflect on your business goals and strategies. Use this time to brainstorm new ideas, set future objectives, and envision the growth of your business while you are in a serene, calming environment that brings you peace. Sometimes, stepping away can provide the clarity needed to help you see the bigger picture.

Shelby  05:01

And there you have it — unplugging for success. Now remember, taking time away from your business is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of strength and strategic thinking. By building a capable team, communicating effectively, and embracing the benefit of disconnecting, you are setting yourself up for long-term success. Thank you for joining us today on this episode of She's Got This: A Journey to Success. If you found these tips valuable don't forget to subscribe and be sure to tune in next time for more business insights. Until then, take care and remember to unplug and recharge.

In this episode, Shelby discusses the importance of having a strong virtual assistant (VA). Not only can working with a strong VA help support the growth of your business, but a well-trained, competent VA can also ensure your business continues to run smoothly while you’re on vacation. The key to reducing stress and preventing disruptions to your operations requires finding the right virtual assistant with complementary skills to your needs. Shelby shares her top tips for successfully onboarding a strong VA to make your life easier. 

Finding the right VA is step one to making your business operate smoothly. The next step is to onboard successfully and delegate effectively. Setting clear task instructions and expectations, scheduling regular check-ins, and using streamlined communication tools make working as a VA easier. If you’ve been dreaming of taking a vacation and not worrying about your business, this short and sweet episode is a must-listen for you!

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Notion
• ClickUp
• Slack
• WhatsApp

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Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

• Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
• LinkedIn: Joines Administration
• Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
• Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

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Transcript:

Shelby  00:07

Welcome back to another episode on She’s Got This: A Journey to Success. My name is Shelby Joines and I am your host as always, it is so great to have you here. Now, at the time of recording this episode, we are currently on a little bit of a vacation ourselves out in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, doing some camping. So there is a little bit of potential for you to hear some bird noises, some chipmunks, possibly a little bit of road traffic. But bear with me because this is all going to tie into today's episode. So stay tuned because this is going to be a good one. 

Shelby  00:54

Welcome back to she's got this a journey to success, where we dive deep into strategies that will help you along and succeed in your business and entrepreneurial journey. I'm your host Shelby Joines, and today we are going to be discussing a topic that is crucial for every entrepreneur. And that is the importance of having a strong virtual assistant or online business manager so that your business can continue to thrive even while you're taking that well-deserved vacation. To kick things off, let's talk about the role of a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant is like an extension of your team. They handle tasks that range from administrative work and customer support to social media management and project coordination. This, in turn, allows you as the business owner to focus on those more high-priority tasks and strategic planning. delegating tasks to a virtual assistant or an online business manager offers numerous benefits. Firstly, it frees up your time so that you can focus on growing your business rather than being bogged down by those day-to-day operations. And secondly, it enhances your efficiency and productivity as you're able to work on tasks that align more so with your strength. 

Shelby  02:15

Now let's address the heart of today's topic. How having a strong virtual assistant or an online business manager ensures that your business can continue to thrive even when you're on vacation. With a competent VA, you can confidently step away from your business, knowing that someone who is capable of the tasks and the work is overseeing your operations. This not only reduces stress but also prevents disruptions to your business's momentum. Now, finding the right virtual assistant is key. You want to look for somebody with a skill set that complements your business needs. Clear communication, trust, and a shared vision are essential for a successful working relationship. It is important to onboard them effectively and provide all necessary information and resources that you have to help them succeed in their role. Let's discuss some tips for effective delegation. Start by creating clear and detailed task instructions. Regular check-ins, whether bi-weekly, weekly, or monthly, and feedback sessions are crucial to maintaining a smooth workflow. Additionally, the use of project management tools to streamline communication and task-tracking. This will be a huge benefit to you whether these tools are things such as Notion or Clickup, or communication tools such as Slack, and WhatsApp. There are countless apps out there. Making sure that you have that streamlined communication and task-tracking programs together is a major point in keeping the workflow going. 

Shelby  04:10

Now as we wrap up today's episode, remember that having a strong virtual assistant or an online business manager isn't just about taking vacations. It's about creating a sustainable business model that can flourish even when you're not present. So start exploring your options. Delegate wisely and watch your business reach new heights

Shelby  04:39

Thank you so much for joining us on She's Got This: A Journey to Success. If you found today's episode valuable, be sure to subscribe and leave an amazing review. We'll be back again soon with some more insights to help you succeed in the world of business. Until then, take care and keep thriving.

Are you afraid to delegate tasks in your business? If so, you're not alone! Yet, overcoming your resistance to delegating will save you both time and money, plus increase productivity in your company. In this episode, Shelby shares tips on how to overcome your resistance to delegation with a clear process and advice for changing your mindset. If you're at a place in your business where you're overloaded with tasks and know you could share the workload with others who have the skills, this episode is for you. 

Delegation is fundamental for business growth because you just can't do it all. If the thought plagues you, "No one can do it like me." or you feel paralyzed by the fear of mistakes and failures, Shelby has strategies to help you release that resistance. She shares the importance of giving clear instructions, setting expectations, and implementing consistent communication to help ensure delegation is smooth. By the end of this episode, you'll feel an increased confidence in your delegation skills. From knowing what to delegate to whom and when you'll learn the strategies you need to be an effective delegator and leader in your business. 

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Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

• Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
• LinkedIn: Joines Administration
• Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
• Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

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Transcript

Shelby  00:07

Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting episode on She's Got This: A Journey to Success. I'm your host Shelby Joines founder and CEO of Joines Administration and today we are going to dive into the art of delegation. This is an indispensable skill that CEOs and business owners like myself, looking to propel their companies to new heights. Effective delegation can be a game changer, which leads to increased productivity, effectiveness, and ultimately, more business growth. So stay tuned, we're gonna get into all the dirty nitty gritty details in this podcast episode today.

Shelby  00:51

Understanding delegation. To start this podcast, we're going to start with the understanding and what the meaning of delegation truly is. Now, delegation is the act of entrusting tasks and responsibilities to others while maintaining accountability for the outcome. Many leaders struggle with their delegation fearing that loss of control or the possibility of tasks not being completed to their standards. However, effective delegation can unlock the true potential of a business by leveraging the strengths of the team and promoting overall growth. This is such a big one. Huge. And being in the virtual world and doing freelance administration and running my own company. Delegation is one of those tasks that in the early stages of business, I was letting slide I was saying, nah, these tasks are things that I can absolutely do myself. I have an administrative background, I'm basically administering my own business. But you don't realize the amount of work that may get put into areas where your expertise may not lie. I had such an exciting time really diving into new areas of business and administration. That being such things as social media management and creating designs and updating websites, things that in the corporate world I was not always exposed to. When you're in the corporate world, it is Microsoft Office Suite, pretty standard, basic day to day things. While it's an entirely new universe of programs and applications that can be used in the virtual sphere. But recently, I came to the conclusion where I knew that in order for me to scale my business and to grow as an entrepreneur and business owner that I needed to find the right people to really pass off these mundane tasks or these things that I was struggling with completing in a reasonable amount of time, because I did not have the expertise. I was still learning along the way watching YouTube videos, things like that. But, delegating these tasks out, which I have done in the last several weeks, and I cannot recommend it to business owners and entrepreneurs enough, because it has been a complete game changer. I feel that as entrepreneurs and business owners, we get caught in the dilemma of balancing our own personal back-end work and handling and managing client work. One pays the bills and one just eats up your time. So being able to delegate those tasks where you may not have the expertise or the true knowledge to effectively and efficiently complete the tasks. Having that sent out to somebody who specializes in that will buy you back your time, which is another big factor in business nowadays, we all need the time. And outside of that, there are so many benefits to delegating those tasks. First, it frees up your lead.. your time, allowing you to focus on strategic decision-making at higher-level tasks. Secondly, it empowers employees or subcontractors or whoever your team may consist of, in fostering a sense of ownership and responsibility, which then increases job satisfaction and motivation. Furthermore, when your delegation is done correctly, it promotes skill development. As team members gain experience and expertise by taking on new challenges. Which has been amazing for me to watch. I have been fortunate enough to finally be in a place where I can start bringing subcontractors on to support me support my client work and it has been wonderfully, amazingly beautiful to watch them truly flourish in these areas that they have expertise in, and being able to allow them to take on new challenges on tasks that are not super important or urgent to be completed now in relation to my business work, watching them, take that on tackle it, do the research and really come up with an amazing final product has been amazing.

Shelby  05:36

Now overcoming delegation challenges is another thing that we're going to talk about. And although delegation offers significant advantages, it's not without its challenges, as with anything in life, as with anything that we go through as entrepreneurs and business owners in this grand journey. And I call it a journey because it never really ends, you may think that you get one thing squared away, and it's good to go and something else pops up. But one common hurdle is the fear of delegation leading to mistakes or failures. Now, I'm sure you have heard the phrase where the best way to do things is just do it myself, because nobody can do it like me. That's what they're expecting. And that is so far from the truth. That is a complete mindset. And that is a shift that you need to take and take it from that negative to that positive mistakes and failures shouldn't be seen as something that is detrimental to your business. Mistakes and failures are truly the moments in our journey that allow us to grow and develop and learn and avoid making those mistakes again in the future. So, to overcome this, it's essential to provide clear instructions and set expectations, ensuring that the person taking on this task understands their responsibilities to their fullest capacity. Now, with this, you obviously want to have some sort of layout. Now to or what—I guess I'll backtrack a bit there, you want to have this great layout, you want to have your expectations set, you want to have clear instructions. And you want to provide them in an effective way that works for your staff, or your employees or your subcontractors. It could be anybody. But having those clearly stated that anybody can pick it up, anybody could come in and see what the expectations are, these are your goals. This is what how you want to be done. But also have that room for flexibility if your assistant or somebody who is coming to help you out with these extra tasks. And delegations really knows the full picture of what you want laid out clearly, whether that is through lists, whether that is making step by step manual documents, or doing loom videos, where you're walking them through in a video aspect, there are so many different types of learners out there. And from what I have experienced, being able to address those different types of learners will not only give you a bigger net that you can catch with. But it also just shows that you care. Now, regular communication and support are also vital to address any concerns and provide guidance when needed. Obviously, I am not here saying just provide these clear instructions and these expectations and just let them go, no. What has been beneficial for me when delegating tasks out is that for the first one to three months of them working with me, it would be weekly updates. Now whether that would be on a Friday, to go over what has gone on the week before or on a Monday to discuss what was happening the previous week and then discussing a path forward on the following week, whatever it may be, but having those clear set times where you can actually communicate openly through either phone calls zoom or you actually set a messaging time aside where you're going back and forth with things. Whatever it is, you have to constantly be in communication. Now I'm not saying you have to keep up that schedule for the entirety of this task or this delegation process. You can obviously after those one to three months whatever fits for you decide to cut back a little bit. Maybe it ends up moving to bi-weekly meetings or monthly meetings or every second Friday. Whatever suits your business the best is definitely where you want to have that but really having that communication set in place so that they are, are the opportunities for either party to really go over any questions, any concerns, any things they may need clarification on.

Shelby  10:14

Another challenge is also identifying the right tasks to delegate. Now to do this, what I suggest is you take a moment or some time, put it in your calendar and really analyze your own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to your business. As well as those of your team members, if you have any currently working with you. Delegate the tasks that play to their strengths, fostering a positive environment for growth and development. Now, take your time with this, this is no rush, this should not be something that you consider to take you five minutes and everything is good, and everything is done, really sit down and put the pen to paper, in a really philosophical, honest with yourself way. Don't try to sugarcoat anything with yourself and say, Oh, I'm not that good at this. But I guess there's some areas where I am good. No, obviously, that first off is a red flag. And that's a task or an item that you should be delegating. You want to play to not only your strengths and weaknesses but also your teams. So by analyzing where their strengths have been either in past work through what has been mentioned on the resume conversations that you may have had with them, really take those tasks that you do not want to do, and match them and align them up with the task where your team members can really shine. Really put the positivity out there, put the vibe out that this is a place of growth and development, this is a place of learning, being able to be in a more educational mindset of leadership within your business will truly be another factor that will take you to the next level. That's just an extra little tidbit I'm gonna throw into this podcast. So you listeners are pretty lucky today.

Shelby  12:11

So the delegation process, the delegation process involves several key steps. The first is task selection, where you're gonna go in and identify the appropriate tasks to delegate based on your team skills, and the importance of each task. Now, all of your tasks that you may have come up with in your analysis may not be urgent, high priority needs to do it now should have been done six weeks ago type tasks, you will obviously come up with tasks that are ideas that just start flowing through your mind as you're writing down, and are nice to have little things that could break up the time and space between other tasks, things like that. So really take the time to select those tasks. And be sure that you are delegating them based on your team skills and the importance of those tasks. Next, you're going to want to choose the right team member for the task, consider their expertise, their workload that they currently have, and their interest in the assignment. Now, analyzing their workload, or bringing that into consideration is huge. Because if you start delegating these tasks out to members of your team who have, are already at their limit, they cannot take on another task, that's not going to benefit you in the long run and just create more of a hassle for you later on in the future. One because they won't have the time. Obviously, they are overworked with what they've got going on right now. Or it's a really big crunch time for them and their client workload. And the second reason is, if you push them too hard with too much work, you are going to cause burnout for them. And that just ends up snowballing and making it extremely difficult on your business as this could lead to them taking time off which any client work that they were dealing with would need to be reassigned to somebody else but are you then going to overload them with work, and the list just goes on and on and in turn, you may or may not have to rehire for that position. So really weigh it out when it comes to your team members workload. Out of all of these little tips, they're also their interest in the work. That would be one of the hugest ones to put into consideration. Now the third step, again, providing clear instructions and expectations. You want to be specific about what the needs are that need to be accomplished, any deadlines that may be involved and the desired outcomes. Be sure that you're always open with the communication, offer support and resources and make sure that the team member you are assigning these tasks to is confident in their abilities to truly complete the task successfully. Don't just drop the workload and run, be that person who has that true open-door policy. Be that warm, welcoming person that you can really have confidence that your team will come and approach you if they have any problems or need concerns addressed. Anything like that making sure that your team is comfortable and excited and positive, is truly the first stepping stone to even beginning this delegation process. And the final step with this is to establish a feedback loop, have a regular check in process in place, be sure that you're offering guidance in areas where they may not be competent or sure of what they are doing, and provide constructive feedback. Now recognize and celebrate their success. This is a huge point in making this delegation be successful for any and every business who puts into place, reinforcing your positive delegations will create a happy environment and culture within your business. Be sure to appreciate people for the work that they are doing for you. Now, I'm not saying to go and buy cakes and spend wild money and do all of these things. Because truly having a genuine conversation and really saying you know what, I appreciate you. Yes, it may be late, but you're still working on this work. And I cannot thank you enough because you have saved me X amount of time. And in that time, I've been able to do this with my family, I've been able to spend more time doing this, focusing on bigger tasks, whatever it is, that little bit of positive reinforcement will really go a long way with your team and allow them to have that spark in what they do. Again, sometimes all it takes is a little bit of positive reinforcement.

Shelby  17:07

And in conclusion to mastering the art of delegation, it is a fundamental skill for business growth. It cannot be said enough, the delegation will save you not only time, but money, think of all the amounts of time on a project that you may have been working on and you got stuck in one area. And instead of spending like half an hour, 20 minutes on it, you get frustrated and you're spinning your tires, and that 20 minutes turns into three hours. And you've really got nowhere, and you've got nothing to show for it by delegating that out to somebody who is specialized in it, even though you may be paying them for their services, obviously, unless it's a barter agreement, you are saving yourself time and money in the long haul. And what we have to remember too, is that in business, we plant the seeds, not for immediate growth, but for in the following 3, 6, 9 Maybe even 12 months later, we're then reaping in the benefits of planting that seed. By empowering your team members, you're creating them more efficient and productive work environment. Delegation not only allows leaders to focus on strategic decisions, but it promotes skill development amongst team members and fosters a culture of trust and accountability. And who doesn't want trust and accountability in their business? I know I do trust and accountability and transparency are the top three things that we strive for in Joines Administration. And I truly believe that every business not only needs to say those words, but to actually walk the walk with those words. Now remember, effective delegation also requires a clear communication, task selection and ongoing support. Be sure that you are embracing this delegation as a means to unlock your team's full potential and take your business to new heights.

Shelby  19:25

Thank you so much for joining me today. On this episode of She's Got This: A Journey to Success where we dive into the power of delegation. Now, if you found this information valuable, please make sure to subscribe to us on whichever platform suits your needs. We are on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google podcasts and Apple podcasts. And you will be ready to go when we've got new insightful content releasing. Until next time, happy delegating and the best wishes in your business growth.

In this episode of "She's Got This: A Journey to Success," Shelby explores the significance of online business managers for small businesses and entrepreneurs. She outlines eight essential steps to successfully hire the right OBM, starting with understanding their role in managing various business aspects and allowing entrepreneurs to focus on growth. 

Step by step, she covers clarifying business needs and goals, defining responsibilities, finding the right candidate, establishing effective communication, onboarding and training, nurturing a productive partnership, and evaluating the OBM's impact. Shelby highlights the benefits of hiring an OBM, including reduced workload, improved work-life balance, and enhanced business success. Following these steps can lead to fruitful collaboration, boosting overall business operations and achievements.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Notion: notion.so
• Monday: monday.com
• WhatsApp: whatsapp.com
• Slack: slack.com
• ClickUp: clickup.com
• Loom: loom.com

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Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

• Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
• LinkedIn: Joines Administration
• Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
• Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

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Transcript:

Shelby  0:07  

Hey everyone, welcome back to She's Got This: A Journey to Success. On the last episode, we talked about the importance of hiring a real estate-specific virtual assistant to help you with your outsourcing tasks needs, such as the back-end business that eats up the valuable time of real estate agents and agency owners. Now today, we're going to switch it into a little bit of a different gear and talk a little bit about online business managers and how you can use these eight simple steps when it comes to hiring one for your business. So, stay tuned, don't go anywhere. We're about to dive right into this topic.

Shelby  0:55

Today, we're going to be discussing eight steps to successfully hiring an online business manager for your small business or your entrepreneurial journey. Now, an online business manager is a key person who can help support so many important aspects of your business, such as managing and tracking your projects, such as clients and their workloads. Taking care of your team, if you have multiple subcontractors or employees that work alongside you, making sure the communication is smooth, efficient, and everybody is on the right page. As well as helping you with strategies and goal setting, either for yourself personally to deal and work within your business or for your business. Or to help you strategize goals to reach x amount in revenue by the end of the year, specific quarter goals and strategies, ways to build your business and so much more. Truly, an online business manager is an invaluable asset for you to have on your business team. They are life-changing, they will help you in ways that you didn't even know you needed help in. So, we're gonna dive into our first step when it comes to hiring an online business manager. And that is understanding the role that they play within a business or a company or alongside an entrepreneur. So, an online business manager is basically in the corporate world, what you would see as a general business manager. They manage the day-to-day operations of the business, for making sure that either the finances are on track or the team is on track to complete their tasks relating to monthly, weekly, quarterly, yearly goals that you have, financially making sure invoices and things like that are being paid and taken care of. They will help strategize with you on how to get your business to that next level of whichever goal it may be, whether it's revenue, sales numbers, new clients, referrals, hiring, any little aspect that you can get analytics on, they can help you track, project and see where you're going and where you may need to make any sorts of tweaks within your business, to truly get the full value of what you are giving, whether that's a product or service and getting a great return on it. You want to make sure that your clients are happy. And another thing that an online business manager can help you with is tracking those clients, making sure that there are regular follow-ups, checking in with them to make sure that there is nothing outstanding, any revisions that may need to be made, additional tasks that may have popped up since the last meeting, things of that nature. Keeping your clientele happy, and comfortable and feeling like they truly matter to you and your business is insanely important. And an online business manager is able to support you with that. They can also help you with any types of apps or programs to help you stay more organized. So, you're not constantly working in Excel or Google Sheets, or having a hard time getting all of the information from up in your head and as an entrepreneur our heads are full of information, moving bits, they're constantly on the go. We do not stop thinking. But they're able to take that information from you and input it into an amazing customer relations management program. Now whether that is Notion or Monday.com, there are so many countless options that you can choose. And when hiring the right business manager, you can absolutely lean on their skills and expertise and suggestions that they may have because every industry and every business is unique and different. And that is, the best part about being an entrepreneur and a business owner, is no matter how many little shops there may be, that are similar, you are the only one of you. So, they're able to take that clientele, organize it for you, so you can easily track and automate any kind of tasks that may be repetitive, client work, and just overall give you that peace of mind that things are not slipping through the cracks. Now, the benefits of having an online business manager, as I've already discussed before, especially for female entrepreneurs and business owners, is that they are literally there for you to buy back your time. I discussed this in my last episode as well. Buying back your time is such a hot thing to be doing right now. And I am a firm believer in it, that if you are financially in a place where you can afford to start outsourcing tasks, 100% recommend it. You know, if you're a small business owner or entrepreneur, and you are just starting out and starting to build your credibility and your clientele, getting your name out there, getting some invoices paid. Just take these tips into consideration because there's a lot more that we're going to be discussing through this episode that you can take and apply yourself to do within your business in the meantime until you are financially at a point where you can comfortably outsource these tasks to somebody else. And the bonus of that also is, is once you've been working in these tasks for a while, you'll be able to know the step by steps, processes, everything that goes on with what you currently have. So, you'll have a great framework in place to pass that information off to an online business manager. And they can then take that and recreate and build you a better plan for moving forward. So, besides being able to buy back your time, this online business manager can take so many tasks off your plate that again, eat up your valuable time. And we all know that those little tasks and little things that may only take us 10-15 minutes, no big deal, a day, adds up into an hour or two a week, which is time that you could be better spending on building your business and working for your business instead of in your business. I'm sure you've heard that one before as well. So, they are just life-changing. And the benefits that you can get from hiring an online business manager are just countless. For one, you hire them as a subcontractor, thus, not needing any type of an office space, they have their own technology, their own equipment, they may have health benefits in place for themselves, all these little areas that you will be saving on as a business owner. Think of all the money that you may be currently paying for, say an employee you have with your business, the insurance, the benefits, any type of tax implications, all those little things add up. And they may be one-time annual fee, any type of access, you may need to give them as well, things like that. Think of the amount of money that you will be saving on that alone by outsourcing to somebody who specializes in managing and dealing with these tasks that you struggle with and find eat up a good chunk of your time during the week. Having the ability to delegate your tasks out to an online business manager such as managing your projects, and providing you with strategic support is worth its weight in gold, not only to your wallet and your financial situation, but also to your mental health and well-being. Sometimes we don't notice as entrepreneurs and business owners how much of a toll a task is taking on us until we're almost completely engulfed in that one thing. An example of this would be say you don't like dealing with finances or doing your bookkeeping and it has turned into one of those things that you absolutely dread doing. You have a knot in your stomach when you think about it. You just start to sweat, your heartbeats really fast and you just don't do it. You push it off and say you know what, I'm gonna be in a better place tomorrow, next week, the end of the month, and I will push through and just get it all done. Next thing you know, weeks, months have gone by and your books are completely out of sorts. They're out of date. You're having trouble tracking your current expenses that are coming, going out and any kind of revenue that's coming in, and things just aren't adding up.

Shelby  10:00

Take a minute to take a deep breath, if that overwhelmed you with how quickly and anxiously I went through that, but an online business manager will be able to take that and completely erase it from your plate. I cannot stress enough how healthy or healthier you will be mentally, which then leads to physically happier overall by taking these tiny things that you may not love doing or you find unnecessary and you just can't find the time but you know what needs to get done. Outsource amount to an online business manager, truly look into it at the very least on what online business managers in your area or on your continent or anywhere could do for you. Now there are many types of online business managers that specialize in only a handful of things. Some are very general and deal with all aspects of the business and would only like to have one full-time client that they are working with specifically. Other ones like to take little bits and pieces and work with multiple clients at the same time. Honestly, the options are endless. But I can guarantee there will be an online business manager out there that will be the perfect fit for you. And also, you can refer back to my last episode where I talk about some great tips and tricks in regards to hiring a real estate virtual assistant and take and apply some of those things that I mentioned there, and bring it back to when you need to hire an online business manager. Truly, you will thank me and I will be waiting here happily for your things. 

Shelby  11:52

So, one of the first steps that you will want to do once you get into the stage where you're like kay, I am officially going to hire an online business manager to support me and my business, you will absolutely want to get clarification on what your business needs are, and what your business goals are as well. Now, this can also be a great combination of your business needs and goals, coupled with your personal needs and goals. You're going to be working very closely with this person in your business, this is your baby that they are going to be supporting you with. They're going to end up being your right-hand person, and almost an exact clone of you when it comes to operating the back end. So, you want to make sure that not only do they align with your business needs and beliefs, goals and values, but also your own. So, take some time, whether it's 10 minutes, an hour, a weekend, and really sit down and jot down, brainstorm, Mind Map, whatever it takes, and whatever works best for your learning ability to really clarify what you need and what your goals are. Are you looking to build your revenue and expand your revenue and exceed what you did in the last year or in the last two quarters, one quarter, whatever it may be, really get clear on how this online business manager can support you and your business. You really want to take the time to assess your current state, where you are currently, where you see yourself going in a year, a quarter, three years, five years, 15 years, up until retirement, whatever it may be. But you need to get clear on these goals in order to really get the true value of who you're interviewing and if they will be a correct fit for you and your business. You want to be sure that you are identifying your pain points in business or any gaps in expertise that you may have in areas that may just overall require additional support. Maybe you are not the best with balancing your bookkeeping or managing your bookkeeping, expense tracking, getting your invoices sent out on time, so you have consistent revenue coming back into your business. This could be a pain point because you just dread doing it. You dread doing it and that dread comes from you having gaps in your expertise. Maybe you, before going into business, had zero idea of anything relating to bookkeeping, you'd never dealt with finance in other jobs. Your own finances were kind of handled by banks or other, you know, institutions or things like that. But you never really had the hands-on experience to competently say, my books are up to date, my books are correct. If I were to get an audit, I'm good to go. So, in those instances, this is a key point on what you could outsource to your OBM. They can take over that. So, it's one less thing that you have stress over and just ends up snowballing into a bigger issue than it absolutely needs to be. But make sure that you're really writing down and clarifying what those pain points are in your business. It doesn't have to be the finance, it could be something as simple as document control. You could just be randomly saving stuff into a main folder, when you do have 15 subfolders, that could be more appropriate places for that document to be filed. It could be you not having the best expertise when it comes to using customer relation management, and you're kind of just throwing stuff all over. And there's no true order to things. And OBM can absolutely bring that all together, organize it to your liking and your needs and what you want to see, most important, least important, however, you want to filter it out. But they can then take that off your hands so you have less to stress about. But making sure that you are clear on those pain points and any gaps in your expertise. Don't feel ashamed to say, I don't know how to do this. And it has led to a struggle when you are in an interview phase with an online business manager. They can take that and explain how they can help you, what tips and tricks they may have, what they'd like to implement and any strategy suggestions that can help you going forward. So, you also after clarifying your business needs and goals, as well as your personal needs and goals, when it comes to hiring an online business manager, you want to be sure that you are defining the scope of work and responsibilities for the role. 

Shelby  17:09

So, you will likely want to go into detail again and do some reflection on the step where you will go over and clearly define the scope of work and responsibilities that your online business manager would have within your company. Now, this could be key areas that they would handle such as operation management, team coordination, project management and system implementation. But make sure that you have a good solid understanding of what you want them to do. The clearer the better. Online business managers love lists, they love tasks, they love the organization, and clearly seeing what is being expected of us. When it comes to managing these larger aspects of your business that require a bit more hands-on, a little bit more detail and a bit more strength in core areas, making sure that you're clearly defining those is super important. We do not read minds, I don't know anybody who has the ability to read anybody's mind, especially through a computer of what needs to be done or what they would like to see. So, along with that, make sure that you are also open to having clear, open and transparent communication with your online business manager, once you get to the final hiring stage. That will then tie into the scope of work and responsibilities and make sure that they are on the same page as you and vice versa. You can create a comprehensive job description and establish the real realistic expectations for your OBM by again, reflecting and going back to previous points that we discussed earlier, which would have been clarifying your business needs and your goals. So, what I have found the most success in this area is again taking a day or a couple of hours to really think about what I am expecting this OBM to do and what their responsibilities will be. And tying that into what my job description would be. Now AI and things like ChatGPT, Jasper, any of those programs out there can be really beneficial to you at this point in the hiring stage. To get a general template together on how you would like to see your job description and any job posting or information relating to this role out to the people who would want to apply. I have used ChatGPT multiple times for quick little things that I have needed to post and then gone back in and just specified and tweak certain areas to include the roles and responsibilities, the specific tasks, the duties, any expectations, and of course, an About Me section, about the company, what we believe in what our mission is, what our values are. And just give them a little bit of a warm welcome into the world in which they are applying for. You want to make sure that your applicants are just as comfortable applying to your job as you would be hiring them into the role. 

Shelby 20:44

Finding and selecting the right online business manager. So, there are various methods for finding potential online business managers, which include referrals from other clients or businesses that you work closely with or network within, online platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, anything like that. There are many, many groups on Facebook alone that have hiring platforms for virtual assistants and online business managers. Instagram is also a great place, search a hashtag online business manager and key details for a search. And I'm sure you will find multiple profiles where you can kind of look through, get a good idea about who they are, what they do, and possibly invite them to apply to your position or book a meeting to talk to them one on one, whichever floats your boat. But you can also network through your industry. Many business managers in the conventional sense that they work a nine-to-five job in an office downtown or in a actual brick-and-mortar business. Now is a time when a lot of those people are honestly considering taking their skills and expertise and moving them online. So, if you do know people who have been discussing that they've been a manager or business manager, department manager, whatever it may be, at a company for a long time, but they're looking for a change. Those are also great people to get in touch with and talk about the opportunity, and the pain points and the struggles that you're having as a business owner, and how you could possibly team up together in the future or right now to build your businesses together and support one another. And then also at the same time, taking stress and all that extra stuff off your plate as a business owner by having that extra support. So, just like any interview that you do, you are wanting to assess your candidate's qualifications, their experience and their capabilities that match and relate to your business. Now, just because you're going into the interview stage, and you're going to start talking to people, you've probably read portfolios, resumes, any type of application forms that you may have put out in the meantime, and you've scaled it all down to your top three or five, whatever it may be. This is where you get to have an exciting opportunity to be unique and be a bit different from the general stuffy corporate interview stages. This will allow you to have an opportunity to not only ask the general what are your qualifications, tell me about a time when this happened? What work have you done for past clients? How have you supported, what are the results you've gotten for your clients, things like that? But this is also a great opportunity to ask them more character and personality style questions. Now, you may be asking, if you also hadn't heard my last episode, what are you talking about Shelby? What does this mean? This is a great moment for you to actually ask them more questions and build upon who they are as a person, what their likes and interests are, and have them get more comfortable and learn about them on a more organic and personal level. Build that strong relationship now. Because if they do end up being successful, you will hopefully be wanting to work with them for a long period of time going forward. So, you're gonna want to have gonna want to like each other, right? So, getting to know one another, relating stories, having that great communicative conversation where it's not stuffy. It's not stiff, it doesn't feel like an interview. It flows. It's organic. It's fun and exciting. You're laughing. Have an interview, where it is warm and welcome. I can guarantee you that whoever you are interviewing for your positions will thank you for not being so stiff and stuck up and just that general thing. Break the mould a little bit here and have fun in your interviewing, quote-unquote stage. Because truly, that is where the gold is. Hard skills such as how to use programs, how to store this and file that can all be taught. And there are amazing tutorial programs and apps out there that can assist you in making that a quick and easy process for training. But those can be taught, whereas somebody soft skills there, how they work with customers, how they communicate with you, are they friendly? Are they bubbly? Do they make you smile? Or are they always in a mood? Those are key factors that you should be looking into more so than the hard skills when you are hiring, not only for an online business manager but for any position in general. It will make the entire interview feel so much more comfortable and relaxed. And you will both be in a much more warm, comfortable, for lack of a better word, place during the interview process. It doesn't have to be scary and stuck up. Now when you conclude the interview, it is not unusual to ask for references of other people and clients they have worked for in similar roles. Where you can either email, which is the most easiest when it comes to online business management communication like this. Email and check in and see if they can answer a few questions in regards to their previous work or provide you with testimonies. All things like that will help you get the clarity you need in order to properly hire the correct assistant or online business manager for your business. 

Shelby  26:53

Another, the fifth tip that we have today is establishing effective communication and systems. So, once you've done the hiring process, you have your unicorn online business manager ready to go, you have to make sure that you establish the effective communications and systems that you are going to use as partners almost going forward. So, establishing clear communication channels and systems with your OBM is crucial to having that open communication and being able to be on the same page. Communication is key and making sure that the standards and policies and procedures in regards to communication are laid out early on in the work journey is crucial. Whether you're communicating through WhatsApp, Slack, Clickup, anything that's out there, those are just a few that I have personally used in my business. But make sure that you're touching base with people. Email is always my personally preferred method of important communication. So, if there is a big update, it's easier for me to track it in my email than it is through a text or message through Slack. But if it's any kind of quick questions or quick communication that needs to get passed back and forth, those are great resources to keep everybody on the same page and in the loop with one another. Now the best practices for setting up regular check-ins utilizing your project management tools and fostering effective collaboration truly depends on your business, and a little bit of personal preferences. For example, I check in with my virtual assistants, weekly. And then one big monthly check-in with everybody all together. This has proven to be super effective. I've got them right at the end of the week. So, we can kind of touch base on what happened the week before, what we have going for the week going forward. And then at the end of the month, just a big monthly review. Honestly, two meetings a month is all I have or not two meetings a month, two main meetings a month, four meetings a month one on ones and one meeting with the entire team and it has been a lifesaver for communications and making sure that we're all on the same page. Things are getting done accordingly to timelines and timeframes or any deadlines that need to be considered. You also want to be sure that you are all utilizing the same tools when it comes to either your work, your client workload, anything like that. So, once you have hired and are working alongside your online business manager, if you don't already have a project management tool in place, work on getting one of those set up as soon as possible. Send out any invites or joins or passwords or whatever it may be, so that you can have access to the same area, you can see what one or the other is doing, keep track, mark, check, cross off whatever is completed what needs more attention. It will save you so much time and having everything in one place where everyone is able to read, write, edit, whatever it may be, makes life so much easier. So, you don't have to be jumping between 20 different apps to find one little tidbit of information. So, that is super important. And that also ties into fostering effective collaboration. If you don't have the proper check-ins, and project management tools and communication channels set up, how can you expect to effectively collaborate with one another and make sure that things are really running on track for you and your business and your clients and nothing is falling through the cracks. Because there is nothing worse than something sliding and finding out about it weeks or months later. No, thank you. The importance of this is also, you want to make sure that you are maintaining an open and transparent communication line through everybody in your team, whether that's just your online business manager and yourself. Or if you have a larger sub-team below that. Make sure that there is the trust is laid out. Boundaries are set. Things are shared with your team members in regards to communication policies and best practices, anything like that. But be open and receptive to your team at all times. Yes, there are limits, I do not expect you to be answering weird type of messages in the middle of the night. Because that may not align with your boundaries. But then again, it might, so make sure that you are just open and receptive to your team that is truly one of the most important things to having a successful working relationship. And making sure that that process is solid will then lead to future endeavours and tasks being solid as well. 

Shelby  32:19

Step number six is onboarding and training your online business manager. So, you want to make sure that you're discussing and processing the importance of providing the necessary training and resources to your online business manager. Now if they have been in this role for years or a very long time, they probably know the ropes and have dealt with a good majority of the programs that you are also dealing with. You may come across that there's one or two that they don't specialize in or haven't dabbled too much in and may need a little bit of extra training, whether that's a Loom video just showing them where everything is stored in Notion where they can find certain things in Slack, if they need notes pointed out in Clickup, whatever it may be. But if you tie in that open communication that we discussed in step five, you can bring that over here to step number six. And it will give you a lot of clarity and guidance on any type of training or resources that you may need to provide to your online business manager. Again, this would be something that they would openly express you saying that I don't have this much experience here but I'm willing to learn and are you able to help me with some things, then by all means, please provide training to anyone you are hiring, not even just an online business manager but that little bit of training and that effort that may take a little bit of time to put into creating and prepping things will be worth it in the long run. Not only will they appreciate you for actually taking the time to care about their businesses, so that they can perform at their optimum efficiency. But it will also give you a peace of mind and something that you can possibly template or have them template for you later on down the road, tweak here and there that you can just keep recycling and automating for any future hiring that you may need to do. Providing regular feedback and performance evaluations is crucial as well in any type of position that you are doing in regards to onboarding and training with your online business manager. You want to make sure that they are comfortable with the information that you are providing that they are truly absorbing it, taking it in, understanding everything fully and really getting the full value out of your training. Now not expecting you to do hours and hours and hours of training. But even just some brief documents with notes, step by steps, loom videos, anything like that there's some great new apps and programs out there, that'll help you do step-by-step guides. Anything along those lines will be greatly appreciated, and also offer any suggestions. Or allow your online business manager to offer any suggestions back to you to help you in creating more effective training plans going forward. That’ll allow future employees or the online business manager themselves to quickly adapt and integrate into your business. Now, you may think everything is great, straightforward, it makes sense to you. So, by golly, it must make sense to the entire world. But sometimes when we're in business, we forget that things such as acronyms, and abbreviations can mean multiple things in multiple different industries. So, when you're doing any type of training documentations, or making a training plan that anyone you hire, such as your online business manager, can quickly integrate and use to get to know your business, make sure that everything is well laid out and really go into detail and explain things and avoid if you can, abbreviations and short terminology. This will make everybody's life just a little bit easier and allow the smooth transition of onboarding and starting to get more in-depth with your company. 

Shelby  36:27

Now step number seven is nurturing a productive and supportive partnership. Now this kind of ties back into several topics that we've kind of already discussed in this episode, but you want to be open and transparent. You want to be the person that is super supportive of your online business manager, virtual assistant, anybody you may have hired for your business, so that they feel welcomed, and they don't have a fear of coming to talk to you, if anything were to go wrong. Any questions that they may have, issues that may come up about current clients, prospective clients, anything along those lines. Allowing the productive and supportive workspace will allow them to come to you when there is an issue and actually have a conversation with you and not feel ashamed or frustrated and be that person that they can also lean on as much as you are leaning on them. There are so many benefits to providing your OBM with regular feedback, and performance evaluations and just overall recognizing their achievements. Sometimes the job can be something that may be easy to you as the business owner or entrepreneur. But really, it ends up being a daunting task. So, if things are going well, praise your subcontractors, praise your employees, so much positivity. That all goes such a long way in making somebody's day. I am a firm believer in positive feedback while being constructive at times. But you don't have to be a complete jerk about it. You can go in there and be nice. Something I use on a regular basis, if I ever have to give any criticism is a compliment sandwich, where you kind of go in I'm sure you've heard, go in with a compliment, add in the area of improvement or the issue that you may have. And then put another compliment on the bottom. So, you go in giving them positive, you give them something to think about and then you close with another positive remark. Works every time, and I have not had any issues with providing any type of feedback using that structure. But whether you're doing these monthly, quarterly, every 3, 6, or 9 months, make sure that you are truly giving feedback. Whether it's positive, negative, areas of improvement, what they've done well, where they could maybe improve on and just really give the opportunity and start building and continue building the relationship of positivity in the workplace. Which brings us into the next tip that I have for this step seven, which is you want to maintain a healthy work-life balance, and you want to avoid micromanaging your OBM. Now it can be extremely easy. And in the first couple of weeks, maybe a month or two of the onboarding process where you're still getting to know each other's working relationship, how they're producing the work, how you're receiving it, if there's been any revisions, you know, just ironing out the kinks and getting to know one another. It's almost like dating, if I'm being honest with you, but really take the time to foster that relationship. And make sure that you are maintaining a healthy work-life balance, not only for yourself, but for your OBM and making sure you're not micromanaging. Now, like I was saying, in the first weeks or a couple months, it can be super easy to micromanage or feel like you're micromanaging, when in fact, you're only giving tasks, clarifying on certain things. You're more so just providing a lot of information in a very short span of time. There is a difference between micromanagement and onboarding, I guess you could say. So, just make sure that you're really taking that time, giving them all the resources and help they need. But making sure you're checking yourself and even asking your OBM, Hey, I hope you don't feel like I am micromanaging you, if you feel this way, please let me know. I would love to adjust how I'm working with you to better our relationship and get things accomplished at the same time. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. 

Shelby  41:12

Now, our final step, final step people, it's been an amazing episode. And I really hope these last seven steps have helped you in gaining some clarity around hiring a online business manager successfully. But step number eight, here we come, evaluating the success and making adjustments as needed. So, when we talk about evaluating the success of your online business manager, we're talking about how they have produced any content for you or manage any of your projects specifically. Has your revenue increased because of their them joining your team now, what positive success stories have come out of this hire? You want to share your metrics and indicators that will help you to assess the effectiveness of your online business managers' contributions. Now these may be, like I was saying before, your online business manager has managed your team a little bit better, you've taken that off your plate, allowed them to do that. The team as a whole has become 25% more productive. You are sitting at a 98.9% client satisfaction rate, three months after hiring this online business manager. These are the things that you will want to track and be aware of. And if you are lacking in any of these areas where you were expecting or predicting to be at a certain level by a certain amount of time, but you didn't hit that target. Make sure that you are making any necessary adjustments to that and discuss the importance of going over these items with your online business manager. Don't keep them in the dark if things are starting to go south a little bit and then all of a sudden, one day flip out and let them go. We are not here for you to fail. We are here to support and help you succeed and level up. If we're doing something wrong and we don't know about it, how are we supposed to fix it? So, making sure that you are openly discussing these metric evaluations and any type of successes and adjustments that may need to be made. Openly discuss those with your OBM and when it comes to any adjustments that may need to be made such as realigning responsibilities or exploring additional support options, take the time to really sit down, outline yourself, what's going well, what's not going well, where you could improve, and book a 30-minute meeting or have a 45-minute meeting phone call, whatever it may be, but have a conversation one on one with your OBM about these areas, what your concerns are, what your suggestions are on fixing it, how they can implement and any suggestions that they may have back for you. Take this as an opportunity to truly brainstorm and bounce your ideas back and forth so that you can successfully move forward. 

Shelby  44:26

And that is it. We have talked about eight steps to successfully hiring an online business manager for your business. That first step was understanding the role of an online business manager, clarifying your business needs and your goals, defining the scope of work and responsibilities, finding and selecting the right candidate, establishing effective communication and systems, onboarding and training as well as nurturing a productive and supportive partnership, and evaluating the success and making any necessary adjustments. I really hope that you found the value and the positive impact that hiring an online business manager can have for you as an entrepreneur, or business owner, no matter what industry or area you work in. Whether it is product-based business, sales-based business, service business, you name it, an online business manager can be an invaluable and irreplaceable asset to your team, and someone who can really help you take your business and scale it up higher than you are. Most of the time entrepreneurs and business owners find that they cap out at a certain level, because they are unable to take on any more work that will then get theM more revenue going. An online business manager can take all that, reorganize it and allow you to build up your foundation further for more success. So, I want you to take a moment and really soak in all the information that was given to you today in this episode. I know it was a lot, feel free to listen to this multiple times. But this is an important key part to any successful business, is having the right support team behind you. And an online missus manager can be just that.

Shelby  46:35

I hope you guys got so much value out of that episode. It was absolutely thrilling for me to share what I've experienced over the last little while, my reflections as a business owner and entrepreneur, and really how the power of storytelling in your business can make a huge impact on client engagement and going above and beyond when it comes to your customer services. Whether you sell products or you’re service-based industry, having a strong backstory on why you are where you are, is the way of the future when it comes to engaging with your customers or clients. Thank you so much for listening. I had a blast, sharing all of this with you on today's episode. If you haven't already, I would appreciate so much if you could subscribe to She's Got This: A Journey to Success, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts. Subscribe and Like on your favourite or if you're super Keener, Subscribe and Like on all of them. Thank you so much, everyone. Looking forward to our next episode with you. Take care.

In this episode, Shelby Joines explores the concept of hiring a real estate virtual assistant and the advantages it offers to realtors. Shelby emphasizes that a real estate virtual assistant goes beyond general administrative support by having specialized knowledge and licensing in the real estate field. They can handle tasks such as contract management, scheduling, communication with clients, coordinating showings, and managing social media presence. If you’re in the real estate industry, this is an episode you don’t want to miss. 

The episode highlights the importance of outsourcing these tasks to a virtual assistant, allowing realtors to focus on customer service and building relationships. Shelby also discusses the role of virtual assistants in maximizing marketing and lead generation efforts, particularly in utilizing social media platforms. The episode concludes with tips for hiring a real estate virtual assistant, including reflecting on business needs, asking creative interview questions, and being open to their suggestions.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Blog Post: Why Real Estate Virtual Assistants Are a Necessity for Smooth Operations

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Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

• Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
• LinkedIn: Joines Administration
• Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
• Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

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Transcript:

Shelby  0:08  

Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to another amazing episode of She's Got This: A Journey to Success. I'm Shelby Joines, and we are going to be talking about unleashing the power of a real estate virtual assistant. We're gonna go over a few of the important areas and what the concept of a real estate virtual assistant is, and the importance of having that additional support as a realtor to lighten your load and allow you to focus on the core, customer service, helping your clients out aspects of your business, rather than lead generation, the door knocking, the keeping up with social media, hopping on trends, making those reels, back in financing communication, you name it. Having a virtual assistant in the real estate field can help you scale your business, and today we're going to dive in and discuss this topic more. So, stay tuned and get ready. 

Shelby  1:17

Understanding the role of a real estate virtual assistant is the most important starting point in this topic. Now, what is a real estate virtual assistant? This isn't just your everyday general virtual assistant that helps you out, although it is in a sense. But when it comes to virtual real estate assistants, most of them have credentials and licensing in relation to the real estate world. So, they are able to deal with more in-depth things to help a realtor out, such as contracts, doing sale closings, anything relating to the finance and contract and legalities, back End things. They would be able to fully support you on that front. Now, as I mentioned there briefly, some of the tasks that can be delegated to a real estate virtual assistant are things like managing the contracts, whether that is from a buyer or a seller, any type of scheduling of home inspections, communication with the client, whether that again, is a buyer or a seller, looping in meetings, scheduling showings, coordinating with sellers on when they will be available for showings. Honestly, the list goes on and on. They can also help with promotional items, such as any type of marketing, such as flyers, brochures, pamphlets, and signage in creating the graphics around that, getting it sent to a printer, and getting that shipped directly to you. Things like that, as well as managing your social media presence, such as any advertising that you do, any amazing photography or videography that a realtor could get done in regards to showing a home and advertising. And using social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube even is becoming a huge area where real estate is really taking over, not only just for advertising, new sales and new listings and facts about how the market is going in a given area of a country or continent or wherever your clients may be. But it also allows you to show yourself more in a personal way and just reach the overall wider audience at a very affordable and low cost to you. Because we all know, keeping up with expenses can be difficult. So, why not take advantage of outsourcing these tasks that may be eating up a good majority of your time that you may dread doing or you may not be doing as well as you could be? Your consistency is not on, all the things. Outsourcing to a virtual assistant who specializes in real estate can be a huge time saver and a money saver. The hot thing that people are talking about now is you need to buy back your time. You cannot put the sand back in the opposite end of the hourglass. Gravity just won't let you do it. So, having the ability to pay somebody who is experienced and maybe an expert in the field to help support you with this workload, will not only give you a solid peace of mind, and your overall mental health will thank future you. But you get just that, you buy back your time. So, you can focus more on the client relations, going out in networking and making sure that people are aware of your services, who your ideal clients are taking clients out and catching up and following up with past clients. Because just because a sale has been made, whether your client is buying a home, or they are selling their home and planning to move, having and keeping that relationship is a key factor in continuing to scale your business. Having those relationships are so important. And even if it's somebody who you helped six months ago, or six years ago, doing something to reach out to them and say, Hey, I'm thinking about you. How's your property, have you done anything really to be invested in their story? And I can promise you, you will have lifelong clients and referrals coming into you. 

Shelby  6:19

So, the second part about the importance of the value that real estate virtual assistants can bring to you is that they are able to assist in leveraging your administrative tasks. So, it may be completely different from the contract side where there may be some licensing or rules and regulations involved and who can touch and see what. There are other tasks that realtors use and go through and have to deal with on a daily basis. That is completely separate from that. Like I mentioned before, social media, following up with leads, keeping a clean calendar, sending out meeting invites, just responding to general emails, whether that may be from a home inspector that is working with a client of yours on a new house that they're buying, or selling, or any type of cleaners that you may have scheduled to come in. Honestly, the list is endless. And I bet if I gave you at least 15 seconds right now, you could think of at least three tasks, as a realtor that you could outsource to a virtual assistant that don't require any type of licensing on the VA side. Now with having a specific virtual assistant who specializes and is niche down into real estate and helping realtors out, is that they are able to help you by maximizing your marketing and lead generations. Now, if you are a real estate agent that is listening to this podcast today, hey, but I'm sure that you can relate that generating new leads and keeping up with your marketing, whether that is print, it is online, it's electronic, whatever it may be, can be extremely time-consuming. And one of those things you may absolutely dread doing, period. Now lead generation has come a long ways in the whole history of real estate. We have gone from door knocking, which not knocking, pun intended, but many Realtors still use that and have great success with it today. But there has been a shift to more of online presence when it comes to marketing. Especially when it comes to reels, short clip videos, whether that is on Facebook or Instagram or any type of social media platform. YouTube even is getting really hyped up on short-form content. But having that ability to utilize these free platforms that we have available to us to showcase educational bits, testimonials from past and current clients or third-party vendors that you have used continually throughout your time as a realtor, showing your most recent listings, like the list goes on and we are in such an exciting time in the world of business and technology and the two blending together. That there are so many interesting ways you can utilize technology to help you with your marketing, maximize your lead generation and just really scale. And having the support of a specific virtual assistant can take all of the guesswork out of that. Have them take the reins and come up with the most amazing ideas and strategies for you to utilize to maybe scale in quarter, four, quarter 120 24, all of next year, like, truly, I cannot say enough. And maybe I'm biased as a virtual assistant, an online business manager myself. But the power of outsourcing these small tasks that you may not realize are little time periods here and there that you kind of pick away at. But if you were to add them all up in a week, how much time are you wasting kind of spinning your wheels and doing things that may not be as important or what you should be focusing on at the time? 

Having a virtual assistant, maximizing your marketing and being able to take the reins on posting your content on your social media platforms, getting creative with real ideas on how you can showcase not only your brand and your business, but yourself personally too. Where again, in an age where people are not blindly purchasing and selecting services based on an ad in the paper. They want to know the person behind the brand, behind the business behind the company and really grasp onto that emotional connection. That can be easily and low cost to the point of free for you to do on social media. And having a virtual assistant that can take the reins, be creative, and just knock it out of the park for you, while keeping you on a consistent schedule to really build your following and build the awareness around not only you but your brand, is the key to really taking your business to the next level as a realtor. 

Shelby  12:07

So, we've talked about why it's been great and why it is the best thing since sliced bread to hire yourself a virtual assistant if you're in the real estate world. But we're now going to talk about overcoming the challenges that I'm sure you've been thinking about as you've been listening to this podcast. And one of those is overcoming the challenge of hiring a real estate virtual assistant. Where do you start? What are you looking for? What do I need? And as I say I am speaking in your personal view. But where are the areas that you spend unnecessary amount of time spinning your wheels on repeating steps, sending similar messages out every time to new clients or clients follow-ups, whatever it may be. And not knowing exactly where to even begin. You know you need one, but how do you get from point A to point B. So, the best thing that you can start off with and these are going to be my three biggest tips that you can do. First one being is take the time, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, whatever you can spare, and really take a good look at your business. Where are your struggles? Where do you think that you need the support right now? What areas of your business do you maybe dread doing or you're just not excited to do but it's one of those things you have to do. Make out a list. Really take the time to reflect and dig deep into yourself. Dig deep into your business. And write out tasks areas, jot note it, paragraph form, make a video about it. Record yourself, reading out what you need done, whatever it takes, but really sit in the moment with this and try and detail out as much as you can. Now, if you have to come back and revisit this several times, not a problem. Remember, this is your business. You want somebody who is caring, understanding, trustworthy, can handle those confidential little things that pop up in real estate. All these little personality traits that would fit and vibrate with how you see your business and aligning with you as a whole and any other team members that you may have working with you. So, once you get that initial part written out, whether it's chicken scratch or a 10-page paper thesis about it, at least get that first draft done, then you can kind of come back, tweak things, reorganize. Don't let the stage drag out for too long, I'd give it a week tops, unless you're one of those people who's like, Nope, this is the list, I'm done, next step. So, once you finish that, the second step that I have, is to take an opportunity to really dig into what you would like to ask through the interview stage. Now, this, the beauty of outsourcing is that this does not have to be a stiff corporate interview. I want you to have fun with this, because this is going to be somebody who will be your right-hand person, they are going to be with you and you want them almost to be a duplicate of yourself. That's doing all the amazing backend work for you. So, make sure that you take an opportunity to really think about your company's mission, vision and value statements. Now, whether this is in paragraph sentence form, or you just have a bunch of jot notes on your website, whatever it may be, really take a solid look into this as well. And evaluate what are the characteristics in a person that I am looking to hire would align the best with what I am currently envisioning for my company. Also take a moment to really dive into yourself here and get a little personal with this step because you, again, are going to have this be your right-hand person in business, you really want to have, in my case, anyways, a little bit more of a personal relationship outside of just the business of being your virtual assistant. So, really dive into those three points of your company, if you do not have a mission, vision and value statement or any kind of notes on that, this is also a great reminder and a great opportunity for you to think about that reflect on it and really get something written out in paper form or on your computer, typed, whatever it may be that tickles your fancy, but get it out into the universe because this is a really important step in you branding yourself as a business, solidifying who you are, what you stand for, what are your beliefs and values, and how you see the future of your company going, or your business, whatever it may be. But people want that emotional connection, just as I mentioned earlier. So, take the opportunity, think through that and really have fun with these interview questions. That is, I guess, part 2.1 of step two. But think of some fun interview questions. This is an outsource opportunity, you are hiring a subcontractor position, you may be hiring an internal position and doing it as an employee thing. Cool. If that tickles your fancy, go for it. But really do not use this as an opportunity to ask the same old stuffy corporate business job questions, you know, the ones I'm talking about? Tell me a bit about yourself. Tell me about a time that you were faced with a situation with an employee that involved conflict, and how did you manage and overcome that? I, one of the greatest things about being out on my own, sidetracking here for a second, is that I do not have to have those types of interviews anymore. I have been fortunate enough to have discovery calls and what you would quote unquote call an interview. But they're a conversation. They're getting to know one another. Each other's business, getting personnel, talking about our families and what we do outside of work, and turning in some really interesting questions like, what are your top three favourite apps that you are using in your business, to help keep yourself organized and on track with your goals? Or what do you enjoy doing on your weekends or outside of your business hours or throughout the day, when you take breaks? Do you go outside, make it personal. And those are just random examples I'm pulling off my head as we're talking. But really get unique with it, have fun with it. Ask silly questions that may have nothing to do with the actual position, how to do the job, anything like that. But getting to know how the person would act or react in a certain situation, make it fun, make it light. Help people feel more comfortable in situations like this by having a lighter vibe to any type of interview or screening questions. One thing that I do when I am hiring along with the job posting, obviously, is I will fill out an online form with just some random brief fun questions, where you get to know their character and personality more so than their hard skills. You're learning more about their soft skills, and just who they are. That is more important to me. Because programs, things I do in my business, all that can be taught and trained. And with the amazing leaps and bounds we've made with technology and new apps, it is so easy to make quick and easy tutorials that you can send videos to record, looms, anything you name it. So, that's the easy part. But being able to understand their character, and really having them connect with me on a deeper level and being personal with them. That is the most important part to me, when hiring. Low food for thought you can take that into your hiring process as well. But having those forms where you can learn about their character and personality, outside of the actual hard skills and technical skills that they may possess, from previous work experience in the job description that you've been asking for. Get to know them. It is so refreshing, honestly. And the last third step that we're going to talk about when it comes to challenges that you may have. And tips that I can provide when it comes to hiring and working with the virtual assistant is be flexible. When you have that first interview, or if you've already gone through that and you're finally done your little breakthrough about your top people you want to have for a second or that final question period. Have an open mind and understand that they may come at you with ideas and really listen. And that seems to be another hard thing too, but be open to their suggestions. They are the virtual assistant. They are the specific person that can help you build your business, reorganize your business, get back on track, buy you back your time, and so many other things that they are the experts in this field. So, don't take what they may say as a suggestion like you're currently using monday.com. And they suggest notion, don't stick your nose up at it. But really dive into it a bit more and ask them what their reasoning is behind it. Do they have more experience with that platform? Maybe? Is it a better-suited platform for your specific business needs and tracking needs, client management that you didn't consider before because Monday was the hottest thing on the market at the time. Go in with that open mind and really bounce some great ideas off them. If you're going back for a second interview, or second screening or whatever it may be. Obviously, there was something there that really piqued your interest that they either said, they wrote out in their forms, or they may have emailed you about or anything along those lines. But there was a reason you're back talking to them again. So, really take this opportunity to listen to suggestions because those suggestions could save you more money. It may be a lower subscription than what you're currently using. Who knows. And it could be a program where you can compile three of your other apps or programs that you use on a daily basis into this one program. Again, saving you money, saving you space on your phone, saving you from remembering another password. Because we all know that there are multiple different apps we have and I hope you all have different passwords on every single one of those apps, if not, we need to have a conversation. But really, overall, have fun with it, be open, be receptive, be courteous. There may be some VAs or admins that deal specifically in real estate that are new to the world, but they're excited and keen to get started. Don't push those people off to the side, give them at least a chance. Yeah, hiring a virtual assistant, if you are in real estate, a real estate agent, anything along those lines, can not only save you, your time, your money, but it can buy you back your sanity. Having somebody who specializes in areas that you need support in. You will not realize how much you needed this until you have it. But they will completely change your world, their expertise, their skills, the value that they bring. It just mind-blowing, mind-blowing. And really, if you're a real estate agent, you're a realtor, you are in any sort of market that deals with home buying, home selling, anything like that, you need to outsource your tasks to a virtual assistant. Especially if you are hoping and wanting and planning and aiming to scale your business, whether it's the next quarter, the next two quarters, year, you name it, you will not be able to do this, if you do not have a team of support that it's there that sees your vision, cheers you on and is there to truly and 100% drive you to those goals and get them to completion.

Shelby  27:08

Thanks again for tuning in and listening everyone. I hope that if you work in the real estate world, whether you are an agent or you own an agency, or any other the moving bits that go into buying and selling a home, that you got some great value, tips and tricks on how you can outsource some of your tasks to a real estate specific virtual assistant. As always, I hope you enjoyed. Thank you for listening without you, She's Got This: A Journey to Success wouldn't be such a success. And if you haven't already, please go ahead and like this episode, follow and subscribe to me on Amazon Music, Apple, Google and Spotify. Under She's Got This: A Journey to Success. Your support means so much to me. If you want to learn more about this topic, about outsourcing and the tasks that a virtual assistant who specializes in real estate can do for your business and your overall well-being. Check out my latest blog post in the comments below and get to reading. Once again, thanks so much. This is Shelby Joines with She's Got This: A Journey to Success.

In this episode of "She's Got This: A Journey to Success" hosted by Shelby Joines, the power of storytelling in business is explored. Shelby emphasizes the importance of building strong, long-lasting client relationships through the use of storytelling. She discusses how storytelling humanizes a business, creates a deeper emotional connection with clients, and fosters trust and loyalty. The episode highlights the significance of authenticity, differentiation from competitors, and simplifying complex information through relatable narratives. Shelby encourages businesses to embrace storytelling as a tool to engage emotions, build connections, and leave a lasting impact in today's business landscape.

Shelby explains that by sharing personal experiences, challenges, and successes, businesses can humanize their brand and foster trust and loyalty with clients. Shelby also discusses the role of storytelling in differentiating a business from competitors and simplifying complex information for better client understanding. Through relatable narratives and emotional engagement, businesses can create memorable experiences and attract loyal customers. As you listen, you can reflect on your own business stories and unlock the potential of storytelling to deepen your client connections.

Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

• Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
• LinkedIn: Joines Administration
• Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
• Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

Transcript:

Shelby 0:08  

Hey everyone, it’s Shelby Joines here and welcome back to She's Got This, Journey to Success. I am so happy to have you here today I've got such an exciting topic that we're going to be discussing on today's episode. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for being here. And thank you for being a committed listener. If you're not already following us or subscribed, please click that subscription button. Whether it is on Apple podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google podcasts, you name it, it would mean so much to me, if you could go and subscribe on whichever of those channels is your absolute favourite. Or if you're super keener, go and like it, and subscribe on all those platforms. Thank you, again, so much for all of your support with this podcast. This would not be possible without amazing listeners like yourself. So, today's episode is going to be one that is super important. And I've been reflecting on for a couple of weeks now, just through viewing people's websites, getting to know new people networking and everything. And the importance of having a story within your business and being able to showcase that throughout your website, in the about us section or the homepage, your social media accounts, really connecting with businesses, and future employers or subcontractors, whatever it may be. But having that deeper emotional and personal connection has been something that has been taking off in the last couple of years, several months, all over the world. And today we are going to be discussing how the power of storytelling in business can help you build strong, long-lasting client relationships. So, stay tuned, we're about to dive in. And here we go.

Shelby  2:21  

All right, everybody. Here we are. Thank you so much for tuning in. I am so fired up about this topic that we've got going on today. I've been reflecting on the importance of a story and really getting those deep emotional connections going with your clients, the days of transactional sales are out the window, it is all about building those strong, long-term client relationships through the power of storytelling. Now this is the way and the era that we are now in when it comes to keeping those clients happy, making sure that we as service providers and business owners and entrepreneurs are providing the best services that we can, best products we can, to whoever our clients may be out there. And like I mentioned, I've been reflecting on this for a couple of weeks. And I'm so excited to finally bring this together in an episode and share my thoughts, hear what your thoughts are. And just expand on how important it is to truly build a story around your business. Now, whether you're an entrepreneur, solopreneur and you've got a tiny little company, you're just starting out, you're midway through your kind of career timeline or you're a seasoned vet, your business is 50 plus employees, 500 plus employees. It doesn't matter the size or how long or how little you've been in business, but really crafting and taking that time to reflect on what your why is. Why you chose to be where you are today? What made you decide to take this leap and start your own business or become an entrepreneur, and really get emotionally connected with your clients? We're in an era where people don't just want to read a blanket statement on websites. They don't just want to see copy-and-paste type content and things like that. It is all about being vulnerable, being authentic, being you and really letting those clients, whether current or new ones that you're prospecting, know who you are as a person, what your values are as a business, what your business stands for, what you want to do with your business, where you want to take it. Have you been active within the community? Things along those lines are extremely important to people who you may be hiring, so employees, subcontractors, anyone like that. Investors, banks love seeing this information in business plans and things like that if you're going for loans or anything like that, it is just truly an all-around important thing that we need to start bearing more attention to in our business. And businesses are recognizing the significance of storytelling and its ability to build those strong relationships. So, we're going to be discussing a couple of key points that will help you build that strong connection, that it will help you differentiate yourself from your competitors, how you can simplify complex information when it comes to your story and help you build on fostering long-term relationships.

Shelby  6:13  

So, storytelling offers a unique opportunity for businesses, no matter what the industry to really showcase who they are, and be authentic with their clients, their customers, or other businesses they may be working alongside or with. By sharing your stories about your journey, your challenges, your successes, you humanize your company, where it doesn't look like a robotic website or social media, where it's the exact same spiel, just different words here and there that other people within your industry are using. Now humanizing your story also brings your brand together in a more holistic way, which in turn, will build better trust with your clients or your customers. I'm sure we can all agree on that. But that is pretty straightforward. But again, this can be one of those things where it can easily be overthought and become overwhelming. But really, it's the sharing now, I'm not talking about going into like all the nitty gritty details about your journey, any challenges or anything, I'm not saying to go out there and start bashing or name-dropping in a negative way of businesses, but really bring it together, show people that it wasn't just, I snap my fingers in this business is an overnight success, because we can all agree that that is not how it works. And people too, are just naturally drawn to narratives that resonate with their own experiences and values and stories that they may have, especially if you're doing business-to-business type work. This is extremely important having that connection and that opportunity for clients or customers to really have the ability to resonate with you and relate to those experiences that you as a business owner or the company as a whole, have gone through. Through storytelling, your business can demonstrate your authenticity, the values that you hold, whether that may be how you like to operate your workplace, your flexibility, your beliefs, and environmental circumstances or anything volunteer like, things like that really helps the clients and your customers develop a sense of trust and loyalty, which especially small business owners and entrepreneurs, that is key to building a successful business from the get-go. You want to maintain these relationships, keep them happy, feed them, everything you need. It's almost like raising a plant. If you're not watering them, they will die. If you're not staying in contact with your clients and your leads, they'll eventually go cold. Now the second great part about storytelling is that it allows for engaging emotions and building connections. Whether that's with your followings on social media or again, just staying in touch with clients that are already existing or ones that you are looking to obtain. Facts and figures alone may not inspire these clients and leave a lasting impression. Don't get me wrong, it is great to throw out statistics, especially if it's your business. You've increased x amount of percent over last quarter. You're doing better than you were this time last year. You've been able to raise x amount of dollars for charity, low turnover rates, anything like that, that is extremely beautiful and amazing information to share. But you also want to provide information that inspires and really gets to the heart and soul of your clients. But when you have these facts and figures, going back to that these things are not bad to be posting about, bring them and wrap them up in a compelling story, which then, in turn, makes them more relatable and emotionally engaging to your followers, your viewers, clients. Whatever it may be how you're trying to get this information out, don't just throw out a great graphic that just says, X amount of percent this month. What does that mean? What does that mean? There's people out there that are visual, audio and there are multiple different ways that you can get that mission or that topic across where it will relate to people a lot more. So, have a story that pulls people in and engages them. And by weaving the narrative that evokes emotions such as joy, empathy, or even a sense of adventure, your business can create a memorable experience for your clients. Super important. Today's day and age, it is all about getting to know people, wanting that deeper connection, it is not just let's look up a company in the phone book and call them because it's convenient and they are first ones that show up in the Yellow Pages or the white pages, whichever one it may be back then. Ageing myself a bit, but times have just changed and really building that credibility has gone from transactional to more personal. 

Shelby  11:58

Now, also in today's crowded market, differentiating yourself from your competitors is extremely important. And businesses need to find ways to stand out, it seems that everybody may be doing the same thing. I'm not sure if you notice on social media, but people in the same industries are posting very similar content at times. So, you want to make sure that you are standing out by really engaging in storytelling, which will provide you with a unique opportunity to really differentiate your brand, by showcasing your business's unique history, values, and even your innovative solutions. I know a lot of people out there in the business world don't think that their ideas are the best or somebody has come up with that before or they might not get the approval or things that they're looking for. But really, those are the ideas that people aren't talking about. So, the odds of you really getting some good feedback and engagement from those types of posts would just be extremely valuable to you. And by telling stories that really highlight your unique business, selling propositions and your values that you bring to your clients. You can carve a distinct identity in your market and attract those loyal customers, they will be coming to you because they feel like they know you, even if they only found you through social media, Instagram, any type of ads, LinkedIn, anything like that. Building that strong trust will keep those clients coming back, reoccurring and really wanting to stick with you for the long haul. 

Shelby  13:49

Now, in some industries, it can be extremely difficult to really come up with stories, especially if your industry deals with complex information or very technical jargon. Storytelling can still be an extremely powerful tool to simplify and communicate your key messages out to your clients and customers, so effectively. So, by framing intricate concepts in the form of relatable narratives, you can make your content more accessible and understandable for your clients. Because not everybody is as knowledgeable as we are. We are experts in our field and sometimes, in my case anyways, it can be extremely hard to remember that not everybody is privy to the information that I have. So, really being able to break down that content, simplify the complex information that may be involved with your industry or your business is so important. A great tip for this by the way is if you do have complex information. AI is an amazing tool I'm sure you have all heard about it. It is like one of the hot things that people have been talking about for the last several weeks or for all of 2023, almost. But take your information and ask AI to simplify it. So, that a five-year-old or a 10-year-old would be able to understand it. Take that little bit that it spits out for you and just tweak some areas to be more specific to your business, your industry. And you have such valuable information that you can then turn over into storytelling, and breaking down those complex ideas into more digestible pieces, which as I mentioned, makes it so much easier for potential clients to grasp the value and benefit from your product or service.

Shelby  16:03  

Now, strong client relationships are built on trust, communication and shared values. I'm sure we can all agree on that. Storytelling creates an emotional connection that can foster these long-term relationships with your clients, by consistently sharing stories that align with your clients interests. This is where a little bit of research comes into play, as well. Look into what your client is excited about or in your next meeting don't let the entire meeting be about the business. Take that time whether it's 5, 10 or even 15 minutes out of the meeting to really talk to your clients or customers about who they are. What has their family enjoyed doing? What part of the city did they live in? What did they do on their free time? Are they skiers, are they snowboarders? Build that relationship and keep those key facts that you hear from your clients on file or in a place that you can refer back to, so that you can drip that into fostering this relationship long-term. Also, build on your client's needs and their aspirations. And you can definitely cultivate a sense of loyalty and ongoing engagement. Having that personal connection and not making the business be, just that, business and transactional will benefit you in the long run. You may not see immediate results, but what you do now you may see 3, 6, 9 12 months down the road and it will be life-changing for your business. Clients who resonate with a brand story are more likely to become advocates, spreading positive word of mouth and ultimately attracting new customers to your business. I cannot stress how important these types of referrals are. Clients who have a strong trust in your business, in your brand, in what you stand for are so much more likely to refer you out to other businesses within their network that you may not even been exposed to, leading you into a whole new network area that you can then explore and again, build your business further with. The power of storytelling is a tool that businesses can leverage 100% with ease, to build strong and meaningful client relationships. By embracing the art of storytelling, instead of fighting it, companies can showcase their authenticity, engage emotions, differentiate from their competitors, simplify their complex relationships, complex information, and foster long-term connections with their clients or customers.

Shelby  19:12  

In today's business landscape, where customers seek more than just a product or service, stories have the ability to transcend transactional interactions and create a lasting impact. So, this is me telling you to really take some time in your business, to reflect on what you stand for, who you are, where you're going, what your dreams are for your business and even yourself personally. Take this opportunity to be vulnerable with your clients and share new things. Harness this power of storytelling and truly unlock a new level of potential that will allow you to build those deep and meaningful relationships with your clients or your customers. I am challenging you right now, as a listener, regardless of your industry, what your business is, if you do not have an engaging story that can truly bring in an emotionally trap your clients or your ideal customers into really accepting your business and wholeheartedly, feeling and knowing that there is a connection, and a great fit there. Take this opportunity to reflect and build up your story. This doesn't have to be a long novel or anything like that, but craft it as a mission statement, outline and a few sentences, who you are, why you started this, what your challenges are, how you overcame it, and what you can do for other businesses, whether that's through products or services. 

Shelby  21:03

It has just been phenomenal. And I am so happy that I got to share this information with you and I really hope that you got something amazing out of it. Truly, storytelling is the way of the business future. And once again, this is me, reminding you to really engage with your clients and your customers on a more emotional level. Be vulnerable, let them know who you are, and why you are different from the competition. 

Shelby  21:50

I hope you guys got so much value out of that episode. It was absolutely thrilling for me to share what I've experienced over the last little while, my reflections as a business owner and entrepreneur, and really how the power of storytelling in your business can make a huge impact on client engagement and going above and beyond when it comes to your customer services. Whether you sell products or you’re service-based industry, having a strong backstory on why you are where you are, is the way of the future when it comes to engaging with your customers or clients. Thank you so much for listening. I had a blast sharing all of this with you on today's episode. If you haven't already, I would appreciate so much if you could subscribe to She's Got This: A Journey to Success on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music and Google podcasts. Subscribe and Like on your favourite or if you're super keener, Subscribe and Like on all of them. Thank you so much, everyone. Looking forward to our next episode with you, take care.

Curious about Shelby’s background, how she gained her administrative skills or how she launched her company? Shelby shares her backstory in this episode, from her very first admin job in a hair salon as a teenager to thriving in the corporate world for over a decade to the day she knew things had to change drastically for her mental and physical health. If you’re a woman entrepreneur or a woman with entrepreneurial aspirations, you’ll find Shelby’s journey relatable on many levels. 

If you’ve ever had the dream of working for yourself but feel scared and anxious about starting, Shelby shares her inspiration to take the leap, along with sharing her sources of motivation, accountability, and strategies to grow her business. She also speaks honestly about why she would never return to the corporate world and the surprising perks of running her own business from home. Shelby doesn’t sugarcoat the realities of being your own boss, especially as a woman, but she shares her best strategies to help you find your purpose to do what you love. 

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Fiverr
• Upwork

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Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

• Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
• LinkedIn: Joines Administration
• Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
• Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

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Transcript:

Shelby  0:07  

You guys, we are in for a crazy episode on something that I feel I should have probably talked about a while ago. I don't know why I haven't just got so excited about starting this podcast that I did not do an introduction about me. Hi, everyone, my name is Shelby Joines. I am the owner and Operations Manager of Joines Administration. And I am your host on She's Got This a Journey to Success. So stay tuned and listen up. Because this is an amazing episode that goes into a bit of detail about my history, my experiences, corporate administration, why I became a VA and started this company and all the goodies in between. 

Shelby  1:00

Hey, everybody, welcome back to She's Got This a Journey to Success. It's me, Shelby Joines. Thank you for joining us. I always have to throw that little spin on my last name there because it's just too good not to. Thinking the other day, I realized that I have gone into this podcast already and I have not shared much information about myself about Joines Administration and it's raining outside at the time of recording this. And it's one of those days where there is just no life and no energy and trying to stay focused is a little bit of a struggle when it's gray outside. But what a great opportunity to take advantage of some downtime in my day, to tell you a little bit about myself how I got to start Joines Administration how this podcast even got started from that huge dream, where I am intending on taking this company to what my dreams and ambitions are. And I can't wait to share with you because I've had, honestly, so many people ask me as of late--I woke up at like two in the morning last night or I guess this morning and was like, "Why have I not done something like this?" So here we are today, discussing all the amazing things about Joines Administration, how I got here, my background, my history. And let's just learn a little bit together today, shall we? 

Shelby  2:44

So as most of you know, just from this podcast, my name is Shelby Joines. I am the owner and Operations Manager of Joines Administration, which is a company that provides virtual assistant and online business management to support to female entrepreneurs and small business owners within Alberta and within Canada. It has been such an exciting journey. And also this is super fitting coming up to our one year anniversary in business as well. But let's take it all the way back to the beginning, shall we? My background before starting Joines Administration was in administration. I had been doing administration for about 16 years prior to going out on my own and taking on this entrepreneurial journey. A lot of that experience was within oil and gas is my biggest area that my career started out in many, many fun, challenging learning moments were had in those years. And aside from oil and gas, I've done some work in health care and nonprofit organizations here in Calgary, Alberta as well. So, the experience is there. Through my time in oil and gas, I had various roles such as administrative assistant, Executive Assistant Project Coordinator, Project Support administrator, branch administrators, really the list goes on procurement and logistics, like I touched a little bit of everything in that industry and my time in oil and gas is one of my most fondest memories of my career because that's really where it all began it all the heavy information, the pushing multiple meetings out a day dealing with multiple vendors and service providers and just being that person that was the jack of all trades, that administrator that you could go to at any time, ask me to do something, and it was done. Like, if there's anybody from those oil and gas times that are listening to this podcast right now, I'm sure they're having little visions of me just speed walking around the office, getting signatures, picking up printing, taking things down to the mailroom, doing those fun engineering drawings and things that will get printed on those massive printers. Ah, the good days, the good days, and then oil crashed, and it kind of all went down. But, you know, really all of the skills that I am able to apply now as a virtual assistant and online business manager have truly come from my time in oil and gas. I was able to hound in on time management, dealing with executives, CEOs, senior management positions, doing complex travel arrangements, meeting bookings, taking minutes doing the payroll invoicing, sending documents to other companies that we're helping on projects, like the list goes on. And I am not even scratching the surface of that little bit. But really, I can always and forever attest a lot of my who I am today and how I conduct my work in my professionalism was still having that flexibility to have fun and show my fun personality has all truly stemmed from that time in oil and gas. It was where all of my knowledge came in from. But even before starting in oil and gas, I guess, my administrative career did little things along the lines before that major chapter of my life, kind of doing some support and administrative work for small businesses that my mom was working with. A hair salon, I'd do, you know, reception work on weekends when I was younger and stuff like that, and kind of do the shampoos if nobody was available. But booking people in, taking the payments, making sure that's all done running towels to the laundromat next door to make sure they were washed really fun times. And the whole administrative career truly did start when I was quite young, in my early teens, just doing those odd little jobs for people and finding that my passion in my career truly stems from my love of supporting others.

Shelby  7:47

Which is really, why I love this job why this new path that I've taken has just been phenomenal because not only am I still providing that support, but I still get more flexibility for myself. Which leads into the part about how Joines Administration kind of came together I was in what was that? I guess June 2022, I had a contract that was just ending, working at a service shop here in Calgary for oil and gas, funny, funny, and covering that leave and stuff like that. So contracts ended. And at that point, I was feeling extremely beat down, I will not lie to you, my not being able, I guess I would say to set true boundaries between my work and my personal life. I'd let that slide a little bit at times throughout my career where I'd end up being that 24/7 admin that was at your beck and call but lo and behold, I'm on salary, so no overtime pay or double time or anything like that for me, which I didn't realize how stressful I was making my job what I was allowing to take over my life and my career and the last several years and it had taken a toll on my health. Not a lot of people know that. Once that, like, summer last year or spring last year, I guess it would have been in 2022, my health had taken a drastic turn, both mentally and physically. The stress that I was not acknowledging was attacking my body to the points where my kidneys and my liver were starting to suffer and on a projection to potentially shutting down or having crazy problems which would lead to just kind of plaguing me for several months or several years down the line and finally took that opportunity after my most recent contract ended to really step back, take at least two weeks, focus on my health reevaluate if administration is even where I wanted to be. Because at this point last year, I was strongly, thinking about a huge career change, huge career change, I felt in some instances that I was doing so much for people and not getting any sort of appreciation or kudos or recognition for the work that I was doing. Which I let slide burry under the rug, push way down in my guts and just not listen to. And of course, we all know that that eventually bubbles up and will explode into either a mental breakdown of some sorts, or a terrible health crisis, or so many other things. And it can affect so many aspects of your life in so many ways for such a long period of time. So I knew I needed to take time before jumping into anything else to really reevaluate what I loved in life, what I wanted out of my life, what I wanted in a career. And given that this was just at the end of the pandemic, and you know, virtual work and working remotely was still really a thing that people were still doing, I guess, for lack of a better word. But people were wanting to work from home, people wanted those legitimate remote work roles, where they didn't have to wake up at five so that they can be ready to leave the house by six to sit in traffic for an hour and a half, just one way to work by the way. And then just wake up and do it all over again, like we're stuck in the matrix or in some kind of simulation or something. And it's just Groundhog Day on repeat. So after taking some time to reflect, I was speaking with my significant other and he just told me, why are you not going into business for yourself? Why are you not taking your skills virtually, and being your own boss? And it had been something that had crossed my mind in previous years, multiple years ago, but I always saw it as how can I afford a lifestyle that I want? Being an administrator at the time assuming I'd only be charging $25 an hour? weighing out the pros and cons? Is it feasible? Am I going to be making enough money being self employed at that rate to really balance out to what a salary would be? And all the questions just start running through my head, right. But once I started looking into it, and it kind of took me to like a weird area of the Internet where I'd never seen where I'm like, Oh my God, there's an entire community around virtual workers, virtual freelancers, I discovered Fiverr and Upwork for the first time and I was like, What is going on? And it just blew my mind and doing some more research in it. And I was like, You know what, I can probably do this I'm going to give myself a year to give it a go and see if I can actually work my tail off in this sort of new environment, be my own boss, be my own time management, my everything and just be the business.

Shelby  13:38

So yeah, I registered the company online for I think it was 200 or $250 or something like that. I don't even know. got everything sorted insurance, business numbers, setting up CRA accountants, bookkeepers, you name it, I ended up over time, obviously, collecting this little little bag of mysteries and magic of all my little helpers that keep me sane and do some back end work for my company. But as I was saying, gave myself a year. Within the first two months, I was able to get in touch with a old coworker of mine who just started her own business, doing a couple things for her to support her. And one thing led to another and word for word of mouth is really what took my business to the next level. And having that super excitement in the first couple of months of being like, Okay, I'm gonna make a proposal I'm making business plans. I'm gonna reach out to contacts I used to know and work with who I knew had their own companies and things like that, that could need my support. And just from what I remember, loved working with me in the back in the day, but yeah, it just took off from there and And by the fall of 2022, I had several clients under my belt. I've been working out well, I've been doing such an amazing array of work that is completely different than what I was doing corporately. I'm not sending emails, really and doing things like that. But I get to be more creative with my time. I support coaches with doing social media and creating any kind of marketing for events they might be having in person, or helping massage therapists really get their voice out there on social media to bring in their new clients or just being involved in different industries where I have more power to accept that client in a sense, and not be judged on my resume. Because with having so much experience in oil and gas, I cannot tell you how many times I had been turned down for opportunities, based on my experience in oil and gas, which is 7, 8, maybe 10 years, if I remember correctly. I'm blonde. So math sometimes slips my mind. But they'd say, "No, you're to niche down" basically into oil and gas when being an administrator, and especially one that went to Bow Valley College and got my whole administrative professional certificate and knowing that my skills are transferable, and no matter how hard I tried to make that come across in my resumes, or cover letters, or just little blurbs, spots, where you can add some more details, I was always getting turned down, because where I was applying wasn't necessarily oil and gas. And they just assume that you've had X amount of years in oil and gas. And that is the only industry you're capable of living in. Take care, goodbye. So having now the ability to really have those discovery calls where I'm able to chat with people and businesses and entrepreneurs about what their needs are, what their vision and mission is for their business where they want to go. What are your goals and aspirations? Where do you want to take your business in the next three to five years and really narrow down if this is not only a person that I would like to work with, but is this a company whose values and belief systems truly align with what I am taking forward in my business. 

Shelby  17:36

So there's Joines Administration, there, just getting clients and things. And, you know, I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late because of our one year--"our", I say that all the time. and it's still just me in this business--but our one year anniversary is coming up. And it's been a lot of taking time to reflect and be grateful and express my gratitude for the people who have supported me and really been my cheerleaders because being a female entrepreneur period, is not easy. Let alone being a female entrepreneur who was a young mother has a 10 year old at home, trying to pay the bills on a house that she just moved into last year. Keeping it all together, bringing in the money feeding the people paying the bills, I am sure there are countless people listening to this podcast right now who can absolutely relate to the struggle of just being a woman, woman in business, a woman entrepreneur, female entrepreneur, whatever you'd like to call it, there are obstacles and barricades that we need to face and that we come in contact with throughout our journey. I've been extremely fortunate and I thank the universe every single day that I am, where I am, and that it has been a very smooth transition for me. Part of that, I attest to my previous career in corporate administration and obtaining the skills there that I can then transfer into my virtual world. And having the absolute love and support of not only my family, but my friends, and old co-workers that are just cheering me on, even if we haven't talked in a really long time. They're there, they're sending messages, all of the love and positivity. And as well as just having great mentors. I have been super fortunate to stay in contact with a lot of people I've worked with in the past and be able to have those conversations about where they are in their business, how they're running things. If they're in a specific role within their company, whether that's like procurement team, a manager or supervisor, what are the skills that you find the most invaluable to your job. I've always told people that when it comes to learning new things, no matter how old I get, I will forever be a sponge. I will be that person that is sitting there intently staring at you probably drool coming out my mouth. Because I'm so invested in the knowledge that you were sharing with me. And I feel like it's a very rare thing to find in people that they are truly invested when you talk about something, and that I get excited about you being excited about what you do. But that may just come from my holistic loved of supporting people, period. But regardless, the journey has been fantastic. I tell myself every day, "Why have... why did I not do this sooner?" "Why did I wait so long to go into business for myself?" But really, you can ask why all day long. And I just have to keep reminding myself that you know what I am here, and I am loving it. And I'm enjoying it and I am taking the waves I am riding the bumps, I am sticking through it. Have I wanted to cry myself to sleep at night and quit because it just seems like too much. And I may have bitten off more than I can chew? 100%. But that is why I have a therapist where I can finally let all of that emotion out. And she helps me get back to where my vision is, where my why is, who I am and that I am in control. It's my life and the whole why behind starting Joines Administration truly just comes from wanting that flexibility. We all say it, I am sure I am not the first person that you've heard, say it and I'm sure I will not be the last. But until you're in it and you understand it. Having the flexibility, for me. anyways, my day usually starts at 530 in the morning, I will work for two hours and then I get my son off to school, go back down, take a couple meetings or calls, do another hour of work. And honestly, I am in a position where I have truly put things in my calendar, like naptime. I take a nap Monday through Friday, from 1pm until 120. And it has been life changing. And it's what works for me. I'm a morning person, I punch out all my energy into my work first thing by noon, one o'clock, I'm sure a lot can relate as well, you start hitting a wall where you're going to the break room, you're drinking coffee, you're trying to do little water enhancement, Energy Shots, anything like that just to keep going and having the ability for me to, without guilt, take that 20 minutes to myself throughout the day, and recharge my batteries so that I can get right back to it if there's anything else I need to do that afternoon. Honestly, that is the biggest part of my why it may be weird, there may be people out there who think that you shouldn't be taking a nap in the middle of the day, there's work to do. And you could be right. But this is what works for me in my business. And that's one of the cool things about being an entrepreneur and a business owner is that you get to do a lot of trial and error. And I could not go back to a nine to five job because of how well I've now trained my life and my schedule to get my client work done while still having that time for me. And another beautiful thing is if my son is sick or needs to be picked up from school or anything, I also don't have the guilt and the dread of having to go to a manager or supervisor and saying, Hey, I have to leave. I might be off tomorrow too because my son is sick. Again. I'm sure numerous of you have been in situations like that. And it might not even be your son but you just feel the guilt and the shame for having to leave work to deal with something that is not work related. And it's, I was getting so tired of that. The anxiety that I would have and the amount of times I'd spend at my computer just sitting there after a phone call from my son's school, thinking are they going to fire me for leaving to take care of my family? I could not imagine going back to that and putting my body through the unnecessary stress, unnecessary anxiety for something that is really so minimal. But sometimes our brains just run with something. 

Shelby  25:15

But regardless, this journey of Joines Aministration has been amazing. I've been so grateful, like I mentioned before, reflecting on everything this last year has been phenomenal. And I am so excited for countless, countless years to come. I'm only one in and I've already got three to five year plans running around in my brain right now. But you know, the future of Joines Administration. There's some big things in the works. One, I'm gonna take this podcast and I'm gonna make it something great, you mark your you mark your calendar, and mark my words. That's totally what I meant to say before. But this is going to be big, this podcast is going to blow up in the next year, I am so dedicated to it. And aside from that, I am super excited to be looking into creating more of an agency with Joines Administration and getting some subcontractors coming on to support me and the business so that I can focus on being that face of the company and working for my business, not in my business. That makes sense. But one day, one day, I will be working from the beaches of Mexico, that is my ultimate goal is to be that VA that Canadian VA on a beach, living her best life, hashtag YOLO. But there are so many exciting things that I've got running around in my brain, I don't want to share all of them yet because who knows when or if they will come to flourish. And but they're there. And all I can say is that I am excited. I am excited for our future. We're hoping to in the next year get more involved and make impacts within our community as well here in Calgary and Alberta. supporting local artists and things like that whatever we can do to really get our name out there, get involved support amazing causes. Being my own boss, this is one of the exciting things that I get to think about and plan and just build from the ground up is any way that I can support others, whether that's on a community level, a sports team, other businesses, anything to just show that we care, because we do, we're not your average, here and you as a client are seen as a transaction, we truly believe that transparency and having that work life balance, as well as knowing where and when boundaries need to be set. We want to build those long term relationships with our clients. And we hope that they feel the same way working with us, but only time will tell and every day we are getting better and better at follow ups talking to people how to word things, how to talk about what we do, how we can truly support businesses and entrepreneurs like yourself. It is really, I run out of words at times and I just say I'm so grateful. This journey has been amazing. Because that's all I can say it's such a new experience. But I am so thrilled that I was not necessarily pushed but guided into this new career path. And ever since taking it, I, like i said, could never ever go back to a nine to five having a boss being overworked, underpaid, underappreciated. Being in dramatic situations, the nice thing is that I can just be dramatic with myself which is probably just me talking to myself about all my client work, but you know, you gotta keep guy keep the office bumping it sometimes and exciting. 

Shelby  29:43

But what is truly amazing to me is that I am not the only person who has been in a situation where the corporate world just broke them down to a point where it was damaging to their mind to health or physical health or family relationships, home relationships, anything, but it is so important as women and women entrepreneurs who have taken this leap to truly share our stories and be vulnerable with them. Because if we don't share this information, we're still just damaging ourselves. You can't keep that bottled up in your heart and your soul in your gut and not have negative repercussions from it. So this is me, Shelby Joines telling you that you need to let go. Be vulnerable. Now, I'm not saying go into like, super deep, nitty gritty details, if that makes you uncomfortable, but be vulnerable in saying you know what, my life may look perfect on social media, or wherever. But it is farthest from that 90% of the time, 98% of the time, maybe in my case, but just have that ability to be vulnerable. Whether that's on Instagram Story, you do a YouTube video, Facebook Live, Instagram, or LinkedIn, whatever it may be. Just learn to share, be vulnerable and let go. Because I can tell you, once you--I know it's dreadful getting to that point, but once you do it, you feel like there has been an entire weight lifted off your shoulders. 

Shelby  31:44

Oh, but thank you, you guys for taking this time to listen to me talk about myself, I probably missed out on a lot of topics. Because I'm never one of those people who is super keen to talk about myself. I am one of those people who's always keen to learn about you. But what I would love to have you do is if you've got a story about being vulnerable, or you've got something that you want to share, or you want to engage, or you've got additional questions or comments about something that I may have just not touched on, or briefly touched on in this episode. Drop me a line. And I would be so thrilled to answer any of those questions on an upcoming podcast. I think that might be one of the things that we are going to do coming up is a Q&A type question podcast where people will get the opportunity to ask any other questions about whether it's my life, business, my career choice, what I'm doing, programs I'm using, literally anything. And I have the opportunity for me to answer those and really go in deep about specific things that you guys are curious about. So thank you, everyone, for listening, wherever you are. It has always and will always be my pleasure to talk to you on whichever platform you are listening to this podcast on. My name is Shelby Joines and this is She's Got This: a Journey to Success. I will catch you next time.

Shelby 33:34

Well, you guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode where I went into a little bit more detail and some information about my background, Joines Administration, how I got here and all that fun stuff. So thank you for being here listening with me being a committed follower. And if you are not following She's Got This: A Journey to Success. Right now. Once you're done hearing this, I want you to go and favorite, follow, like, subscribe to our podcast on Google, Spotify, Amazon, and Apple podcasts. Truly you guys this podcast would not be successful without you my wonderful listeners. So anything to support me would be so much appreciated. So not only go follow, subscribe, like whatever it may be to this podcast. Tell your friends, share this podcast on social media with the hashtag: #shesgotthisajourneytosuccess. Can't wait to talk to you guys soon. Take care.