I’ve always been one to start things with the end in mind and build businesses from Day 1 with a view on how they will look in five years’ time as a potentially saleable asset. That often meant making fast decisions around taking on people and business systems earlier than perhaps needed but, so far, much to my relief, it has paid off for me really well in my professional life!
I have taken risks and kept the strategic direction of each company squarely in my sights. Making it happen involves a big push and a whole lot of hustle, confidence, and faith, but I guess that’s the life of an entrepreneur.
You need to be fast on your feet and have an attitude of making it work no matter what. And leading an entrepreneurial life meant that you don’t sleep on your job, because once you snooze, you lose.
So, I was amazed at myself when I realised that I had built really streamlined, heavily process-driven, and automated business systems in The Virtual Hub — business systems that can only cater to clients with only one VA.
Somehow, even in all my years of providing professional business services, I had managed to overlook the fact that some people would, of course, grow their teams just like I had and would need a second or third person — or even more people in the long run.
It’s not that The Virtual Hub can’t handle two, three, or four VAs or even whole teams of VAs for clients — it’s just that we built all of our automations to beautifully cope with clients having only one. Anything more and it all becomes a bit manual and unwieldy.
Good problem to have, I guess! After all, it’s only when you encounter problems that you open your eyes to new possibilities and opportunities.
The whole conundrum presented me and my team with a huge challenge of overhauling our entire business systems to cope with ‘many-to-many’ relationships. One client can have many virtual assistants and one virtual assistant can have many clients.
Most people I speak to tell me they are not yet ready for a system like Ontraport and that it’s too expensive. Of course, your bottom line is something you need to keep a really big eye on, especially in the early days of testing your product to market fit.
But once you have a product that sells and it’s time to think about scaling that product, it is vital to start bringing in organization systems that can cope with the size of the business you have in your 5-year plan.
Messing around with a myriad of other business systems and trying to loosely string them all together mean you will eventually have to do a massive overhaul that, quite frankly, might just be too much for you and your virtual team all at once.
By having Ontraport from Day 1, I now can see that not only has the system made it possible to have about 30% of the staff that we would otherwise have needed to run our operations, it has also made the transition to this new ‘many-to-many’ model a heck of a lot easier!
All we had to do was create a few new areas and get our head around a few new system relationships and — Voila! — we have a new business system overhaul that solves what could have been a big operational problem for our business.
The best part is that I have a team of amazing Virtual Assistants who are skilled in working with Ontraport and how to navigate it. They have been instrumental in helping to implement the new system once I got my head around how it would work strategically.
If you are serious about building a scalable business, then I would urge you to think about your business systems and how much automation you are using or even aware of in the market. It is astonishing how much fat you can strip off your bottomline in business by simply embracing a Ferrari-style system and a team of great Virtual Assistants.
I can tell you from my own experience that the price of having both excellent business systems and an amazing virtual team is definitely not too high when you realise you can get the return on investment you want by spending a bit of time up front in strategically thinking about how you will utilise them all.
And it’s not just me, either. Several of our clients are now flying in their businesses, already having embraced Ontraport and one of our tech-savvy virtual assistants.
Why not give it a test drive yourself and arrange a demo with the amazing Ontraport team? Not only are they really nice, they also give the best professional service once you’re in.
Trust me, your future business (and self) will thank you for it!