Voice Actor: Welcome to Thriving Entrepreneur with your host, Steve Kidd, third generation minister and 30 year business coach. Listen in as amazing world changing authors, speakers and coaches share their struggles and victories and hear from bestselling authors insight into how you too can live your life as a thriving entrepreneur.

Steve Kidd: This is Steve. Welcome to Thriving Entrepreneur. Thanks for being with us here today. We have got a jam-packed show full of exciting guests. They’re going to talk to us about the systems inside of you that really work. What are the things that you do that are powerful and that when you discover them they are your superpower in the world? And what are the things that, you know, honestly somebody else should be doing in your company. We’ve all heard the phrase, you should only do the things that only you can do. But a lot of times it’s hard to figure out what is that niche that is really me and what are those things within that niche that I should really be the one doing. So I’ve got three very diverse but great guests for you that are going to really help you narrow that down and ascertain what is that systematic you, that powerful, superpower of you that you should be doing so that you can live every day of your life as a thriving entrepreneur. Like I said, we’ve got a jam-packed show. We’re gonna jump right in. Join me in welcoming Zach Boothe. Hey Zach, how you doing today?

Zach Boothe: Doing fantastic, how are you?

Steve Kidd: I’m doing good, thanks. So tell us a little bit about you and how you got to this point in your life.

Zach Boothe: Yeah. So, um, I, uh, I’ve been, uh, been an entrepreneur for a long time. Uh, I started working at a young age. My, my family, especially my father didn’t put up with any crap and didn’t allow me to sit around very much as a kid. And so I worked a lot of different jobs. Uh, and by the time I was 17, I wanted to do my own thing. I wanted to work for myself. And I started my first business. I started a window cleaning business and ran that for a decade and had had some success. I learned a lot. And but I but I learned more than anything that I wanted to get into real estate investing. I wanted to get out of the day to day grind and, you know, being on ladders and dealing with employees that didn’t want to be there. And and it was it was a lot of work to get to where I’m at now. But that was kind of my foundation of getting out of that day-to-day grind and getting into something that produced actual time freedom and financial freedom for me.

Steve Kidd: So what was that transition like for you? I mean, going from owning one type of business to something completely different.

Zach Boothe: Yeah. Well, when I was in my early twenties, I got married and we bought a duplex and we were living in one side and renting the other. And it was in a really bad shape. I had done construction as a kid. So I knew how to fix it up. And I put some money into it and did most of the work myself after work, right, in the evenings and weekends. And we were renting one side out for about 800 bucks and my monthly payment was only about $400. And so it was a really good deal for me. And I wanted to do more of it. But then when I looked into buying more rentals, I had to have bigger down payments, 25 to 30% down. And they wanted a better debt to income ratio. And I just I couldn’t qualify to get more loans. I just kept hitting roadblock after roadblocks. I started listening to podcasts and reading books, and I learned a lot and I paid for mentors and I learned something really interesting. I learned that real estate investing is marketing, right? And our product is real estate. And if you can’t figure out how to find off market discounted properties, where you can negotiate the price and negotiate the terms of the purchase, like seller finance and things like that, you’re going to really struggle to be successful. And so it took me a handful of years to kind of figure out what I was doing. I finally burned the boats, told my business partner, the window cleaning channel, I’m going to be a full-time real estate investor. And more specifically real estate wholesaling, where I just find off-market discounted properties and get paid and pass them on to a fix and flip or a buy and hold investor. And I went for it and that first year we did a little over $100,000 and the next year we did just shy of a half a million. The year after that we did 1.2 million. And so there’s been a lot that I’ve learned throughout the process, but it’s been an amazing experience for sure.

Steve Kidd: o if you could start it over again, would you immediately go into doing what you do now and just essentially finding those properties for people who want to do the dirty work?

Zach Boothe: Yeah, I mean, when I was first figuring it out, I tried flipping a house and that was a complete nightmare. And I held a bunch of rentals at one point and I’ve recently sold them all. I sold them all because they were taking a lot of my time, but there was some mistakes being made. I didn’t buy them right. There’s been a lot of mistakes. Of course, of course, hindsight is 20-20, right? A lot of the times we have to fail our way forward. So there’s definitely been some mistakes, but if I could go back to, you know, to Zach Boothe, when he first learned about real estate and right after he bought that first duplex, I’d say, yes, this is great, but what’s better is real estate wholesaling. All you got to do is find off market discounted properties, do some marketing. And then once you find that deal, you can, you don’t even have to close on the property. You don’t even have to risk any money whatsoever. You don’t even have to get debt. You take that purchase contract that allows you to buy the house. You got to make sure there’s a paragraph in there that allows you to sell that contract to Joe the flipper and Susie the buy and hold investor. And you can get paid anywhere between five and a hundred thousand dollar assignment fee for those contracts. And it’s amazing for cashflow. It’s a very systematic system and you don’t deal with termites and liens and everything else that most investors are dealing with day to day. It’s an amazing business model.

Steve Kidd: That’s super cool. And you now said you have this new thing that you’re doing that you’re on day two now of a 40 day thing. Tell me what that is and all about it.

Zach Boothe: Yeah. So a couple of years ago, when I had hit that half a million dollars or just shy of half a million in revenue, I wanted to do a million dollars the next year. I had set that as a goal. I honestly had no idea how I was going to double my business. I was kind of shocked I had done a half a million, honestly. And I got invited to a self-help journal called Living Your Best Year Ever. And I said, of course I’ll do it. I’ve got some big goals. I would love that. And there, the first hundred pages that talks about the importance of giving away whatever it is you’re trying to receive. And so I was trying to make a million dollars. So that meant I had to give away a million dollars. And I didn’t want to give away a million dollars, but I was trying to take it serious. I was like, well, how do I give away a million dollars? How do I help people? And I thought, well, I could teach other people what I had done to make a half a million. I picked 10 people, teach them what I was doing and they can duplicate my results. I put more than a million dollars in people’s pockets. Let’s see how this goes. So I started coaching and I started getting massive amounts of success for my students. One of my first students, his first deal was a $113,000 profit deal, life changing, quit his corporate job. He was able to just do this full time. His name’s Scott Dowlinger. And I started helping all these people. And at the end of that year, we did $1.2 million because the more I taught, the more I learned. But more importantly, I fell in love with helping other people in this business. I fell in love with the coaching side of this. I spend so much of my time now focused on coaching. And a couple of years ago, when I was really getting into this, I had this crazy idea. Of like, how do I show people that they can do it? That you don’t need to be the smartest person in the room. You don’t need a ton of real estate experience to do this. I was like, how can I do it? I was like, well, why don’t I just show them? And so we were supposed to fly out last January to do this challenge, but COVID hit. I didn’t know what the risks were for my family. And so we postponed it and I am here now.

And so what the challenge is, is I’m taking $1,000 and the goal is to turn it into $40,000 in 40 days. And the reason I flew to Florida is I didn’t want my normal connections. I didn’t want people to be like, well, yeah, he has friends, connections, resources and stuff he’s built over the last handful of years. But I don’t want any of that. I’m starting from scratch. And so that’s what the challenge is all about is showing people step by step, like what I’m doing to make this a reality. And it’s all gonna be aired free on my YouTube channel for people to see.

Steve Kidd: And so how, so you’re gonna be working with 40 people? Did I understand that correctly?

Zach Boothe: No, I started coaching and that’s what got me into wanting to help people. I started coaching people. And so when I’m down here in Florida, my goal is to take $1,000 and turn it into 40 grand in 40 days, doing what I teach my students, just so people can have an inside look at what I’m doing and what I’m teaching and see that it’s possible for themselves to also do it, is what the challenge is.

Steve Kidd: OK, all right. Sorry, I missed that somehow in there. So what can people are the videos going out on YouTube already or when will you do the videos at the end of the 40 days or how can people be involved in it even right now?

Zach Boothe: Yeah, it is semi live. I’m posting stories and updates on Instagram and Facebook, and I’m posting them on TikTok every day. And then YouTube is going to be semi live. It’s a little bit more editing. So I have a team back home editing the videos. I have a film crew following me here. So our goal is to be uploading videos towards the end of January, January, 2021.

Steve Kidd: Now you said it’s day two, so it’s a little early, but have you made $2,000 yet?

Zach Boothe: I haven’t made anything yet. So we had our first appointment today, which is really exciting. So from day one of marketing, most of your revenue falls in about three months, 60 days out. So for me to be able to generate leads, generate sellers, people that want to sell and go meet with them and sign contracts and find a buyer for the contract, most of the time that takes three to four months. And I need to find roughly three deals is my guess, anywhere between two to three deals to make 40 grand. But I have to do that in 40 days. So I’m working extremely hard. I’ve been cold calling. I’ve been door knocking. I’ve been texting and driving around and looking for rundown potential, you know, properties that are a thorn in people’s side. So we had our first appointment this morning. It was not a good appointment, but yeah, I’m hopeful that within the first 20 days we can get a couple contracts.

Steve Kidd: That’s so exciting. Driving around going, you know, your house really looks like it’s a nightmare. Could I buy it from you?

Zach Boothe: Essentially, that’s what we’re doing. We try and do it in the nicest way possible.

Steve Kidd: So well, before we go any further, what is your YouTube channel or whatever that they can follow along with you? Whatever the best way for them to follow.

Zach Boothe: Yeah. YouTube channel is called DFD Mastery. So it stands for Driving for Dollars. So D F D Mastery. And then you can go to my website, dfdmastery.com and go to, there’s a button for my social media and it’ll give you a link to all my social media accounts that you guys can follow along.

Steve Kidd: And so based on the way you’re describing it, my assumption is that the intent is, OK, so I did this so you can do it too. Is that pretty much the end goal of all of it?

Zach Boothe: 100%. 100%. This is to give back. This is to help other people understand that they can do it as well. I learned from Tony Robbins something that really helped me in my life. And he talks about it as his cycle of success. And he talks about how important it is for us to have a belief in ourselves, a belief in whatever we’re approaching. Because if we don’t have that belief, we won’t take the type of action. We won’t give massive amounts of effort. If we don’t give massive amounts of effort, we’re not going to get the results we want. When we don’t get the results we want, we say, see, I knew I couldn’t do it. See, I knew this was not real. And then we get in this down-rolled cycle of feeling like a failure and not giving the effort we want. But when we have this massive belief, this confidence that it’s possible, we give more effort. When we give more effort, we get the results we want and it builds our confidence. And we get this confidence from past experiences and it builds. Right. And so my hope is to show people like, so they can actually see it happening so they can have that confidence so that they’re willing to give that action and go for it. You know, I had something similar happen to me when I was just getting into this. I had heard about buying real estate with no money down and taking over people’s loans and seller finance and all these really cool things. But I was like, well, that can’t work in this market. It’s a really hot market. You can’t find off market discounted properties. I had all these limiting beliefs that many people have. And something happened to me that completely changed it all. I was washing windows for a very, very wealthy gentleman. And I found out he was a real estate developer. And I was like, that’s so cool. And I heard his story. And at the end of it, I said, I’d love to find two rentals for myself. And he said, that’s really convenient because I have two rentals I don’t want to deal with. I’ve got these big development projects. I don’t have time to deal with the rentals. The tenants haven’t paid me in four months. The property manager bailed on me. They have deferred maintenance. I don’t want to deal with them. And I said, OK, I’ll buy them. And I said, how much? He said, a half a million dollars. And it’s like, man, I would love to, but I can’t get a loan for that amount. He said, that’s fine. I’ll be the bank. I’ll sell them to you and it’ll be deeded into your name, the title be in your name, and you just make payments to me instead of the bank. I said, okay, great. Let’s do it. He said, well, how much can you put down? Can you give me anything upfront? I had only a couple thousand dollars to give him, but he did it anyways. The crazy thing is he gave them to me at such a discount. A year and a half later, I was able to turn around and sell them for over $100,000 profit, as is just running a vacuum through the carpet. He understood that he was giving them to me at a discount. He didn’t want to deal with them. It was a convenience factor for him, and he liked me. He wanted to see me succeed. Having that experience made me realize that there are always people that want to pawn shop for their house. They don’t want to deal with it. We just have to get good at finding those properties. And so when I saw that, I knew that it was real. And then I had this extreme belief and confidence, and I gave massive amounts of effort, and I had massive results. And so my hope with this challenge is to put massive confidence and massive amounts of belief into people that want to get into real estate investing that they can do it and it’s real and there’s a ton of opportunity all around us. We just have to be willing to go for it.

Steve Kidd: And tell us again one more time if a person wants to work with you, how they can get in contact with you.

Zach Boothe: Yeah, so my website is dfdmastery.com and you can follow me on social media. All that’s free. I have a ton of awesome free content, but I’m a coach. Like I said, I coach people. I do have a process to apply for my program. I don’t take everyone because I don’t have time to coach everyone that wants me to coach them. And I do have some requirements to become a student. So it’s by application only. So in my website, you’ll see a button that says book a call. That’s the application process. You have to fill out an application and schedule a time to speak with either myself or one of my onboarding coaches to see if we’re a fit.

Steve Kidd: That’s perfect. Well, Zach, I really appreciate you spending some time on the show with us here today.

Zach Boothe: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Steve Kidd: Let’s take a quick commercial break and then be right back here on Thriving Entrepreneur to see what are the ways we can help you find that superpower that is you and a system that’s gonna make it work within your business today.

Voice Actor: If you’re an author who’s on a mission, stand out with your brand out. Check this out guys, yep, everything’s marketing and marketing is everything. Your existing book can become a best-selling book or even hey like mine a number one international best-selling book in five days. Listen, if your business isn’t known by everybody, it’s obscurity and it’s death, right? The same thing is true for your book. If you’re not happy with the way your book is performing, you got that far and then just fell off the face of the planet kind of feeling. Go to yourbestsellertoday.com. Schedule a talk with Steve, it’s risk-free. It’s guaranteed. It’s proven. We’ve done it thousands of times. What are you waiting for? Yes, yourbestsellertoday.com. This time next week you could have a beautiful seal on your book and get the attention that you deserve. Reach the people that you came to serve. Come on now! What are you waiting for? Grab a pen, here we go. All you got to do is book a call yourbestsellertoday.com, go to yourbestsellertoday.com. Book a talk with Steve, it’s proven, it’s guaranteed, it’s going to happen, all you have to do is say ‘Yes’ to your destiny. Welcome back to Thriving Entrepreneur.

Steve Kidd: This is Steve, welcome back. Thanks for listening to Thriving Entrepreneur as we identify our superpower and ways that we can also not do the things we shouldn’t be doing. Let’s look now at the power of automation. Join me in welcoming Richard Snitzel. How you doing today, Richard?

Richard Snitzel: I’m doing well. Thanks for having me on.

Steve Kidd: Yeah, so tell us a little bit about you and how you show up in the world.

Richard Snitzel: Yeah. So in a business perspective, I help six-figure entrepreneurs scale their business through automation. And the way that I show up to do that is being a conduit for conversation with people. The tech space can be a little scary because there are so many options. And my life has brought me to a point where I am very good at having a conversation with somebody about their business and what it is that they’re doing and translating normal people speak into the tech world, understanding both sides and translating back what may be true from a tech perspective back into normal people speak so that they can make informed decisions about their business and how automation may be beneficial for them.

Steve Kidd: Oh that transition between tech to human. That can be a tough one.

Richard Snitzel: Absolutely can. It’s become an interesting niche that I’ve found for myself.

Steve Kidd: So how does that show up in a day-to-day basis? What kind of things do you help people with when they’re trying to get a point across to a technical person or vice versa?

Richard Snitzel: Yeah, so when you’re talking in the tech world, there’s a base set of assumptions that we’re all always making when we’re talking to somebody else. And the struggle comes out that if you’re talking to somebody who’s thinking through tech, their assumptions are completely different from what your assumptions are. So I see it a lot where you’ll ask somebody, I want you to build this thing for me and I want it to do X, Y and Z. And to do X, Y and Z, there’s a bunch of things that you’re leaving out that are really important to you on how those things come to fruition. And unless you consciously recognize that when I go to build X, Y and Z, okay, I’m assuming that you meant that once this information goes in, it’s never going to change. You may never want to update it. Or I’m assuming that the information flow is always going to come from me to your clients or the other people. And it doesn’t have to come back. If you don’t ask those questions, then there’s a disconnect of those assumptions. And I have a background in mechanical engineering. So my brain is extremely logically thinking, but I also have a lot of people in my life personally who are very strategic, very creative thinkers. So they think completely different from me. And I’ve had to learn in my personal life how to communicate my thoughts and ideas and have conversations with people that they understand because there is such thing as a rabbit hole of engineering where you just kind of spiral and nobody understands what you’re talking about unless you know the lingo. So the idea of being able to say, okay, this is the way my brain is comprehending this statement. This is the way that I think you mean this statement. And these are the five or six assumptions that I’m making to get to this point. Am I correct or am I wrong? It almost sounds a little bit like couples therapy in terms of two people who are trying to say the same thing, but can’t get there because they’re not hearing the same thing when words are coming out of the other person’s mouth. I’ve gotten very good at doing that same thing, except if instead of two opposing people in a relationship, it’s an entrepreneur who has this great idea for this business and a tech person who at the end of the day really only just cares about how am I going to build it and what do you want me to build? And those two ideas are combating each other.

Steve Kidd: So like many of us, we get this great idea and we’re like, you know, and if this could be automated, it would just be the most awesome thing in the whole wide world. And then they go to a tech and try to get it built. How do we really as lay people, I say we like I’m a lay person, but that’s a whole different story. How does a person be able to get that idea automated and how can automation work for them?

Richard Snitzel: So I think it’s important that you do a little bit of homework before you have the conversation with the tech person. And that homework looks a little bit like starting at a 30,000 foot view of what you’re trying to achieve. So as simple as you can make it, this is where I’m trying to go from A to B. And then you start to drill down in more detail into what it actually takes to get you from A to B. And the cue that I give people is pretend you’re having a conversation with a five-year-old child about this process. And every time you say something, their response to you is going to be, but why? I want to send this email out to my customer, but why? Well, because of this and this, and I want to say this, but why? Have that back and forth with each other, with yourself of the but whys and be deliberate about writing down what those whys are so that when you go to have the conversation with the person building it for you, you can give them that information and even if they don’t ask, the fact that you can give it to them and they can read it will start to change the way that they perceive what you’re trying to get at because they don’t want to give you a bad product, right? They want to give you exactly what they need. They just don’t always have the vocabulary to ask the right questions. So if you can give them the answers and then they can create and answer their own questions all at the same time, you’re going to get a better product at the end. And the second aspect of that is absolutely do not go through that process in a vacuum. The worst thing that you can do is sit in your office for three hours in an afternoon and go through all this information and don’t show anybody and then give it to the tech person. You need that back and forth exchange so that you’re getting your own but whys, but you’re also getting but whys from other people who don’t have the same blind spots that you do in your process. They’re gonna see the things that are such a base assumption for you. You don’t even understand that they’re an assumption. That’s just a fact of reality and why should I even mention it? But those are the little details that are important for when you’re trying to build automation in your business and you’re trying to go through this process, that’s what makes it good or good and great automation.

Steve Kidd: Now, I have found, maybe you’ve found this too, that most people, the first time they think about automating something, they swing for the fences. You know, they want to create something that should be an Xbox video game or something like that, you know, something really high end. What is a good way to introduce yourself to adding some simple automations to your company to begin making use of that process?

Richard Snitzel: Yeah, it’s a great point. It’s like shiny toy syndrome. Technology has gotten to a point where there is so much that we can do and everybody loves to talk about the ultimate creation of what’s possible. And we all just kind of get pulled along into that, like, okay, I have to build something amazing. So to combat that, I think part of what you need to do is redefine the way that you’re thinking about automation. What we’ve heard for a long time when we think about automation is something that is a hundred percent non-human interaction and can take care of an entire process all the way through from the inception of understanding what you want to do all the way to delivering it to somebody. And for me, the best automations are small chunks that take bits and pieces of the manual labor out of an entire process that get linked between each other by human interaction. So it’s the idea of starting really small. The idea is that when you get an email from a customer, you create a folder in your Outlook and you create a rule that if the domain is @johnsmith.com, put it in the John Smith folder so I can always find their emails. That is an example of an amazing automation that is improving the efficiency of your process because the emails are coming in exactly where you need them to be. And for me, the key point of that is it’s also improving the efficacy of what you’re doing and that it’s allowing you to do what you would already be doing as a manual process of reading your emails and having to respond to them, but it’s allowing you to do it better because the interaction that you have with that email outcome is gonna be more beneficial.

Steve Kidd: So where is the resistance? Why don’t more people use automation in their business? Why do they fight itself?

Richard Snitzel: I think it’s very much linked to the question that we were just talking about of that everybody, it’s so complicated. And there’s this idea that you have to do it at the ultimate or it’s not worth it. We see the giants in the tech space pulling out artificial intelligence and neural language processing and all these really cool things. And there isn’t a lot of talk in the automation space of ignoring all of that. I don’t care about the bleeding edge. I want to build as if it was two years ago and what was possible then. And simple things can still be really beneficial and still be really powerful. And if we can limit the scope of what we’re trying to do, we can begin to understand what’s going on because that, it is a way of thinking. I’m doing this all day long. So when I talk about automation, my brain has gotten very good at looking at the scope of what’s possible and finding the path through to things. But it would be as if I walked into a new business tomorrow and somebody just ran off a list of all the tasks that I had to do this week. They know exactly what’s going on because they had been there for you months, years, built the business, whatever that is, that makes sense to them. So if I’m coming into that business and I can’t follow along, that experience is very much the same for an entrepreneur who has this idea that automation is this really powerful thing. I think it has value in my business, but they’re expecting to take the understanding that they have of their own business and just apply it to automation. I think you have to scale back what your starting point is so that you can flex that muscle and get it stronger so that you can then widen what’s going, what you’re looking at in your business.

Steve Kidd: So it sounds to me like it would be very helpful to have somebody like you help a person wrap their mind around even where to get started. For somebody that wanted to work with you, how do they get in contact with you?

Richard Snitzel: The website is richardschnitzel.com. There’s a link on there for a 20 minute call with me. It’s linked to my calendar. So if I’m available, you can book a time then. And that call is all about having a conversation about what your business is, what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and figuring out where you are in that journey of understanding about what automation is. Seeing if it’s even something viable for you to consider doing. And if it is, what does that look like?

Steve Kidd: Perfect. So for the people listening that just want to kind of dip their toe in, they’re looking around their office and they’re thinking, hmm, should I do this? What could they do to prep themselves for that call with you so that they’re ready to discuss the potential for automation in their business?

Richard Snitzel: You know, everybody has a gut feeling about things that really just, I do this all the time. This is really simple. Why am I still doing this? And I think that’s a great place to start the conversation. It may not be where we decide to automate, but starting at that point is beneficial because you’ll have ideas and thoughts about what to change, how to do it. It’s a great icebreaker. And then from that icebreaker, we can let the conversation go where it needs to go. When I’m on a call with a client, I’ll let them talk. And then I just interject questions and ask them the, well, you said this, what about this? You mentioned that five minutes ago, now you’re talking about it again. Why do you keep asking it or why do you keep phrasing what you need in this way? And the key to getting to that point is having a topic that’s very front of mind for you, something that you recognize is something that needs to change. And then we can follow that conversation to wherever it makes the most sense from an automation perspective.

Steve Kidd: I love that. So I hope a bunch of you will go to Richard’s website and talk with him. The automation can be so great in your business. Richard, thanks so much for spending some time with us on the show here today.

Richard Snitzel: Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Steve Kidd: Don’t go away, there’s more to come here on Thriving Entrepreneur as we identify your superpower.

Voice Actor: If you’re an author who’s on a mission, stand out with your brand out. Check this out guys, yep, everything’s marketing and marketing is everything. Your existing book can become a best-selling book or even hey like mine a number one international best-selling book in five days. Listen, if your business isn’t known by everybody, it’s obscurity and that’s death, right? The same thing is true for your book. If you’re not happy with the way your book is performing, you got that far and then just fell off the face of the planet kind of feeling. Go to yourbestsellertoday.com. Schedule a talk with Steve, it’s risk-free. It’s guaranteed. It’s proven. We’ve done it thousands of times. What are you waiting for? Yes, yourbestsellertoday.com. This time next week you could have a beautiful seal on your book and get the attention that you deserve. Reach the people that you came to serve. Come on now! What are you waiting for? Grab a pen, here we go. All you got to do is book a call yourbestsellertoday.com, go to yourbestsellertoday.com. Book a talk with Steve, it’s proven, it’s guaranteed, it’s going to happen, all you have to do is say ‘Yes’ to your destiny. Welcome back to Thriving Entrepreneur.

Steve Kidd: This is Steve, welcome back. Thanks for listening to Thriving Entrepreneur. Now let’s take a look at what things shouldn’t you be doing and who could be doing them for you. Join me in welcoming Barbara Turley. Hey Barbara, how you doing today?

Barbara Turley: I’m great, thanks. How are you?

Steve Kidd: I’m doing good, thanks. So tell us a little bit about you and how you show up in the world.

Barbara Turley: Sure. Wow. Gosh, that’s a loaded question. We could go on forever with that one. Well, the quick synopsis of it is that I’m Irish for those that haven’t picked up my accent, but I’m sort of a truly global citizen because although I was born in Ireland, I lived for 20 years, almost 20 years in Australia and became an Australian citizen. So I’m currently living back in Europe. So I’ve traversed the globe a little bit in my life. And I have a business in the Philippines that services clients all over the world. So yes, I feel like I’ve got a truly sort of global footprint right now. Yeah, where else would you like to dive in there?

Steve Kidd: So tell us what do you do for work and business?

Barbara Turley: Sure, so I have a company in the Philippines, like I said, that we, it’s called The Virtual Hub. And we are a team of virtual assistants that help business owners all over the world to essentially eradicate overwhelm by cost-effective delegations. So our virtual assistants are helping businesses all over the world with their processes, with helping with all those to-dos and tasks that take up people’s day and our aim is to free up business owners and their teams really, so they can go on and grow their businesses and hopefully help the global economy do well as we sort of leave this pandemic time that we’re currently in.

Steve Kidd: It’s interesting because my mastermind group and I were actually just talking about this in our group last week. And I think a lot of times people have a lot of misnomers, especially when you start talking about hiring people from foreign countries to be your virtual assistant. So can you give us just kind of a basic overview of what it’s like to hire somebody from the Philippines as a VA?

Barbara Turley: Yeah. And look, you know, that’s a very common conversation, of course, in the world. I mean, I think one of the things to remember if we can unpack this is that outsourcing to the Philippines or having offshore teams, shall we call it, is something that’s not new. It’s something that’s been around since the seventies and eighties, really, with big, larger companies doing a lot of outsourcing. And then of course, you know, 10, 12 years ago now, kind of long ago, but Tim Ferriss came along and wrote his Four Hour Work Week and kind of blew the whole thing open of smaller businesses being able to use this strategy alongside with the internet and digital marketing and all the things that started to grow and businesses to do more business in the cloud. It became obvious that it no longer mattered where somebody lives or works from because, and now as we’re in the pandemic, you know, currently in this coronavirus situation that we’re in and so many businesses have been catapulted into a remote working situation, people now realize that it doesn’t matter whether somebody’s in, you know, next door, next state or another country, it’s all remote anyway. So it’s becoming a lot more mainstream to think about having people not just in the Philippines, but you know, I mean, one of my team works out of Ireland. She’s in Ireland, I’m in France. I used to be in Australia. And this concept of location is becoming less relevant today than it ever was before. So that’s the first thing to really think about when this conversation comes up. The second thing, of course, is then the next obvious thing that always comes up is, what about the English, the level of English? And I can tell you that a country like the Philippines, I used to question the level of English too until one of my close colleagues who became a friend over the years said to me one day, well, we speak English, Barbara, to each other. So the level of English sometimes astounds me of my own team. They’ve often used expressions or words that I myself have gone, wow, that’s a big word in English. So yeah, you can get a fantastic level of English in somewhere like the Philippines. And of course, then the final piece of that puzzle is the education system. And funnily enough, the education system in the Philippines is quite good. A lot of people have third level degrees. I would class some of my team as definitely smarter than myself. So, you know, I think you can pick up some great talent there. And the global talent pool is opening up because of this location irrelevancy that has come up today.

Steve Kidd: Absolutely. I think a lot of especially solopreneurs tend to really fight against the concept of letting go of the reins and letting somebody else do it. So help us get an idea of what are some of the early on things that a person really should be outsourcing to someone else.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, look, I think, you know, just unpacking that concept of the solopreneur first, I would love to just say that I don’t think anyone becomes a solopreneur so that they can drive themselves into the ground, work seven days a week, 15 hours a day. But sadly, that is what happens to some people. Obviously not all. But most solopreneurs want to remain solo because they want to, you know, have a better lifestyle or they want to be quite self-directed. But you know, the reality is that any business these days, particularly with the demands of being online, the amount of work involved is enormous, absolutely enormous. So letting go of the reins is sort of, you know, you’re sacrificing your own freedom by not letting go of the reins. But also the way to let go of the reins successfully is to really master the art of delegation. And a lot of people think that delegation means telling other people what to do or letting other people just take something and run with it on their own. I would argue that really mastering delegation is about making sure that you’re building the machine, you know, the processes, the systems that you’re systemizing to a point that you can then delegate running the system or executing process or improving stuff or managing stuff to other people. And I hope that makes sense. Michael Gerber has written a whole book about this, The E-Myth Revisited. If anyone listening hasn’t read that book, it’s definitely worthwhile reading it. So I think first of all, it’s getting your mindset right in terms of wanting to do this and then realizing that, you know, outsourcing or delegating to a virtual assistant or whatever it may be, if you do it properly, it is really going to pay you back enormously and I’m not talking financially. It can pay you back enormously financially because you’re freed up to grow the business. But even if you want to be that solo operator, it can pay you back such massive freedom dividends to enable you to go and do the things you want to do, live the life you want to live from a freedom perspective as well. So getting that bit out of the way first, the first way to think about what should you delegate first or what should you outsource first, I always say to people, the best way to think about any business, and again, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a solopreneur that has a hobby style business that’s a part-time on the side gig, or you’re a billion dollar company, every business has departments, no matter how small or how big. You’ve got marketing, sales, product creation, delivery, inventory, all of these different things that are going on. And what you find is within each of those buckets, there are tasks that need to be done on a daily, weekly, monthly, or whatever basis in order to keep the engine of the business moving forward. And a lot of those tasks, when you really sit down and think about it, are quite process driven. And those are the first types of tasks that you can start to think about delegating to something like a virtual assistant to start freeing up your own time to then go and work on what other processes or what other things might you then pass on once that person has kind of taken the reins or freed your time sufficiently that they can move up and do some more stuff. So I hope that helps to kind of unpack it in a, people always want me to tell them exact tasks, but it’s much better for a business to think about it in this way so that you can think about what it means for the type of business that you have as opposed to just one size fitting all.

Steve Kidd: No, that makes total sense. So if you were to meet with somebody, what kind of information do they need to have in place in order to be able to really get started using a virtual assistant?

Barbara Turley: Yep. The key, and this is following on from what I just said, the real key is first of all, understanding what you want done. So a lot of people just think, I’ve heard that, you know, getting a virtual assistant is going to give me time freedom. I want one. And they haven’t really thought about what they’re actually going to get that person to do. And then what happens is they get a virtual assistant and they’re all excited and fizzed up. And then on day one, it’s like an enormous job because you think, now I don’t know what to give my VA to do today. And then you find yourself waking up every morning with a new task on your list that you didn’t have before you had the VA. And that is the, what am I going to get my VA to do today? And I can imagine that there are people nodding, listening to me going, that has happened to me. And it’s very stressful. So the first thing really is to ascertain, you know, do your buckets, write down what are your tasks within each bucket and part of your business that you would like and that you feel are easily delegatable in the beginning. And then you start with that. And then that gives you a great basis for understanding, you know, what skillset do you require? What level of proficiency in what area is better for you? So it gives you a much more robust conversation to have with a company like ours or whoever you’re speaking to about getting a virtual assistant.

Steve Kidd: Let’s talk for a minute to the person who has or had a virtual assistant and it wasn’t a great experience. A lot of times, you know, we get burnt and then we don’t go into it again, but what should we have learned from a bad experience with a VA?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, and look, let’s be honest, elephant in the room, there are some horrific experiences with virtual assistants and it’s all over the internet and many people have had bad experiences. But I think there’s a couple of things. So the first major stumbling block is bad recruiting. Okay, so it’s very, very difficult. Recruiting is something people think about as a kind of, I must go out and find somebody a VA, right? But it’s actually a skill that also needs to be mastered. It’s not easy. It’s quite difficult. I can tell you, because we recruit at mass and it is a painful, painful experience. Even if you find the right person, then you have to go on and manage that person properly and there’s HR and all this sort of thing. So the first thing to recognize is that, you know, recruiting is a skill all by itself and it’s okay to fail at it a couple of times because most people are not really recruiters. They don’t have the experience to do this. So, you know, with interviews, I think what a lot of people do is they tend to meet with a person, they look at resumes, they might get them to do a test task or two and somebody can shine. People are some people are great in interviews or they’re great at shining in the beginning. And then you get into the first month or two and before you know it, the person has disappeared or they said they did work and they didn’t. And all of these sorts of stories happen. So, you know, it’s hard to get around this problem admittedly, but I think if you have very strong systems and processes in the beginning and you know exactly what you want someone to do and a good defined role, then it leaves very few places to hide for the person that’s coming in. Now that’s on the side of, you know, if you recruit well, but let’s talk about virtual assistants have also had terrible experiences with clients where a client doesn’t know, and this would apply by the way to US virtual assistants or Australian ones, or I’ve spoken to loads of them, where you get a client who really doesn’t know what they want, or they can’t articulate what it is that they want. And somebody is just constantly trying to read their mind. Now, in the context of somewhere like the Philippines, what you’ll find happens there, if there’s expectation, if there’s communication misalignment or expectation misalignment, a Filipino VA might decide to just disappear. So I get asked this all the time. Why do Filipino VAs go AWOL? Well, that can be one of the reasons where they’re just not comfortable even bringing up the conversation so they disappear or the work never gets done or, you know, they’re coming from a yes culture. So they just say yes, try and figure it out and realize they can’t do it. They disappear. So, yeah, those are all real challenges that are out there. And I think half the battle is awareness of these things. My experience, and I’ve been burnt many times because I’ve been doing this for years, but in my experience, I’ve gotten better and better at it. The more I improve my own business machine and my own systems and my own, not necessarily my communication style, but my communication rhythms and my meeting rhythms to keep everyone accountable, on track and aligned. So I know that’s a lot to unpack. So let me know if you want to dig into any parts of that or if that makes sense.

Steve Kidd: No, that totally makes sense. So what would be your piece of advice to somebody who wants to try a task? I mean, can you just hire a company like yours and say, hey, you know, just want to kind of try this person out or should they really go more towards, hey, let’s take the next 90 days and give that person 20 hours a week for 90 days. What is the best way to kind of try that?

Barbara Turley: I think if you’re gonna go to the direct market, so you’re not gonna use a company like ours, if you’re gonna go into the direct market, you would want to get a very clear description of what it is you’re looking for first. So you need to be clear on what it is you’re looking for. You will get flooded with applications and it’ll be very difficult to decipher who’s who, but once you narrow it down to the people that you might want to look at, it’s probably a good idea to give each one of them the same task and see how it all comes back or a series of tasks. And then you can sort of look at the results of three or four different people at the same time. And that will give you a sense of who’s the best one. And that’s a great starting point. If you’re coming to a company like ours, we do a lot of the heavy lifting really with that stuff prior. We’re not a recruiter. So we’re not like a pure recruitment company. Other recruiters out there will go out and recruit on your behalf and do a lot of work for you. We take it a step further again in that we actually recruit and hire our own people. And then we put them through intensive training programs that can be anywhere from a month to three months long, where they actually work with us before we would ever even consider introducing them to a client. So the purpose of doing it that way is our success rate is quite high, but that’s because we spend a lot of time with our people before we ever sort of decide that they’re ready for a client. And you get to see any funny business or games will happen in that first two to three months. So we tend to have it happen at our time as opposed to the client’s time. Not all the time, but that’s kind of how we differ. And yeah, it does take that long. So if you’re going to go this route though, it’s not a good idea to get a VA and after a week just go, this isn’t working for my business. You’ve got to make a plan. And I think you need to allow about six weeks to really work with somebody. And that would be if you bring them on on a full-time basis, to be honest, or a part-time basis, not on a five-hour a week type engagement. And the issue with the five-hour a week type engagement is that it’s like sort of the dating game. You know, you’re not really committing to someone and they have to go out and find 10 more of those five-hour a week contracts in order to make it. So they’re probably not gonna be that committed to you or they may find something better and not actually deliver for you.

Steve Kidd: That makes a lot of sense. So for the person that would like to go deeper with you, how can they get in contact with you?

Barbara Turley: Sure, yep. So we actually have a special page for you guys, a lot of stuff on this page that you’ll love. So if you go to thevirtualhub.com/thriving, we have a free mini guide there, which is the five things people, the five things that cause people to fail with VA’s and how to fix it. So it’s a really clever little kind of PDF that you can use, basically all the things that can go wrong and how not to fall into those traps. And a lot of it is stuff that you can control as a business owner as opposed to relying on the person you’re about to bring in. You can also sign up for free course we have there which is the seven part scalable business success formula. And that’s about using the art of delegation to make sure that you grow your business. And also on there you can book a consultation call with one of our outsourcing consultants and they can have a chat with you about whether we’re right for you or what your needs are, yeah, and take it from there.

Steve Kidd: That is awesome. Well, Barbara, I really appreciate you spending some time with us on the show here today.

Barbara Turley: Thanks so much, Steve. Lovely being on the show.

Steve Kidd: What a great group of guests helping us identify that one major primary thing in life, and that’s that you are uniquely brilliant. You were created for a purpose, and the world needs you. You do have a superpower. There are systems that can be put in place that’ll help you automate, help you get the right people in place, and also help you discover that place that you should be working in, that thing that you are the one should be doing, and then do those things that you should do and let others do the things that you had not to be doing anyway. And then you can really live as a thriving entrepreneur and have great days, weeks, months, and a wonderful life. I hope you really enjoyed it. I appreciated our time together. I look forward to being with you again next time. Until we’re together again, I hope that you have an amazingly great week.

Voice Actor: Thanks for listening to Thriving Entrepreneur today. If you want to get your question answered, send an email to questions at wehelpyouthrive.com. We look forward to you joining us again next time.

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