Get Your Business Shit Together with Stephanie Veraghen and Renia Carsillo

what's up everybody welcome to episode number 360 of the embodied podcast today we have two guests with us we have stephanie verrigan and rina carcio and these two women are both some of my business besties as they say um but just two dear friends of mine as well women who have been supporting me i mean we've been supporting each other for a number of years now and reena is a digital marketing strategist slash expert stephanie is a project manager extraordinaire specializing um specifically in online businesses but not limited to that and together they are running a program called get your [ __ ] together and they've been working together as well and their program is all around what are the things that help people get their businesses from a couple hundred thousand dollars a year to a couple million dollars a year so this is a really specific kind of episode for solo printers and entrepreneurs in the online space so if that's not you i don't know if you're gonna enjoy this one you might dig it if you're nosy and you like hearing me talk about behind the scenes of our business as well because we certainly dive into that um most of you know that i'm a mystic first and a business person second and it just happens to be that i run a business because that's what it takes to do my sacred work in the world this lifetime but these two are absolutely amazing what they do i'm so excited that they've teamed up we're talking about a lot of things in digital marketing in the online business world some distinctions between working with contractors bringing on employees in your business things that help you grow things that don't are pet peeves in the online marketing space it's a really great episode i hope you will listen in check it out check out some of the resources they have for you all including a quiz that helps you figure out what exactly in your business um [ __ ] what business [ __ ] of yours you actually need to get together so if you're someone who's been overwhelmed in your business isn't always sure where to start what to look at first who to hire how to spend your money you might find some gems in this episode so check it out all the links will be at the show notes at unseamyourself.com forward slash 360. and i can't wait to hear from you let me know what you think what's up everybody and oh damn you know what i was gonna be like welcome to our first three-way on the podcast but we've actually had two other ones sorry but i still got to say three-way so we're still winning everybody listening this is rina and stephanie who are two very dear people to me who've been in my life for a long time now stephanie's been my project manager since 2017. like

she literally helps keep me like organized and on task which for those of you that are in human design as a manifesting generator not always an easy thing to do and then reena started out in wild soul movement many years ago and actually um in 2019 she came to one of my weekends and it was a conversation we were having about like embodying like our queen energy that afterwards i was like i want this this woman in my life so then i invited her and some of you know trudy lebron um i invited reena and trudy to be like a pure mastermind with me and then reena helped us redo the website last year so normally we don't have a lot of business oriented conversations on the podcast but um rina and stephanie have teamed up to create an offering for people that i love the name of it's called get your [ __ ] together and i wanted to talk about this because actually no we have a lot of people in the audience um who listen who are business owners of like some degree or another like a wide range of types of businesses and stuff like that and listen i've been in business for a decade now and there is still [ __ ] i'm figuring out there's like always things i'm never going to be good at and actually these two people really helped fill in those gaps for me so i thought it would be a fun conversation to have plus i trust these two they're embodied they're wild souls so how you all doing today i'm doing fantastic you always are doing fantastic i feel like you do feel that way okay so you two have been also working together for a couple years now too and i'm really curious what made you realize and i'll i'll send this question to reena first and then stephanie if there's anything you want to add on what made you realize that people really don't have their [ __ ] together um i'm going to answer this completely honestly and say i've been behind the scenes in a lot of businesses that look really great on the outside enough times to realize that nobody has their [ __ ] completely together totally and um i think we saw like we saw the same patterns over and over and over again it was the same [ __ ] wasn't together the same kinds of things happening over and over again what are those things so not understanding how to utilize staff not having repeatable systems in place um thinking that the only way to make income was to have a big launch which is exhausting so exhausting um stephanie has actually helped me get some of my [ __ ] together so stephanie probably has an even bigger list that i do what are yours yeah well people come to me and they say i my [ __ ] is all over the place which is why we ended up naming the program what it's named because they're like i really need to get my [ __ ] together everything's a mess i don't even know where to start i'm so overwhelmed i've got a thousand things on my plate please help me yeah well wait i just have to say like stephanie and i were calling it the get your [ __ ] together program for like six months and we're like what are we gonna name this get your [ __ ] together thing or like let's just call it what it is yes well and stephanie i mean the way things are systematized in our business now is miraculous like when we bring new people on they're even like i've never seen anything like this before which is cool but there's still plenty of things that are not together um reena there was something you said that i wanted to respond to i'm slipping out of my brain i'm sure it'll come back later if it needs to come back so [Music] you know the two of you have separate kinds of genius so i'd love for you to tell the good listeners stephanie you go first what's your genius my genius is systems and processes and workflows and organizing a command center uh meaning their project management system so that it acts as a command center so that when you are onboarding clients you are working with your team you feel ease so here's what's amazing about stephanie people listening we're just going to go on a little human design tangent if you're a human design person stephanie is a projector and she does more than most like generators and manifesting generators i know and the reason i'm sharing this is because over the years i have had a handful of projectors in my life who are like work horses and i'm like that's so interesting because that's not really what you expect of a projector based on how projectors are typically described and i know stephanie's into human design so stephanie how do you think it is that as a projector you're able to hold like the client load you hold like the the complexity like the amount of work and you always have so much energy like to me you present as like an absolute anomaly as a projector but i think it's just a different expression i know you have a lot of practices and things that you do yourself so i'm curious how that works for you yeah i've always as um even when i was younger i've always had the capacity to hold a lot and a lot of resilience and just have that natural ability and i have trained myself maybe being a single mom you have to maximize your time and get everything in and be very structured and very disciplined with it so i am constantly anticipating what my next moves are and what i need to serve my clients with so everything goes into a structure for me because that is the container in which i can flow and have fun and ease and actually have energy because i'm not holding it on my brain because you could do that actually you do the projector thing really well because don't most of your clients come from referrals yes absolutely so you're just like getting recognized getting invited yeah yeah it's been really really great i'm so grateful but it all started with systems huh yes i used to think that systems were like the enemy i was like i'm a wild soul i don't do systems and then i was like no [ __ ] systems is why you could be as wild as you want to be you need some structure and containment systems are sexy they really are i love so rina you know these words that you used repeatable and sustainable that [ __ ] does not sound sexy but it literally you know what's so funny i really wanted to say and i'm just gonna say it it like makes my nipples hard it makes me very excited [Laughter] uh i love it there's a song oh i can't remember her name india ari that's called steady love yes i love this song i love this song and that is the way that i think about entrepreneurship these days is like i don't want to be on the freaking roller coaster i want a nice steady sustainable type of love yeah i'm not 22 anymore yeah yes and i don't even know that that's an age thing because even when i was in my 20s and i was doing that rollercoaster thing or even earlier in my 30s it's not like it's not like i had a capacity for it or i enjoyed it i just didn't know what i didn't know yeah so okay what is reno what's your genius so i am an activator so this comes from strengthsfinder which i'm sort of obsessed with but i really own it as my particular genius people come into my space when they want to move when something is ready to shift um that's what they are here for and we do that through the vein of really nerdy marketing [ __ ] but that's really what it's about is i help people move um can you talk about your like pet peeves and the marketing of like oh gosh we can spend the whole time well because like i just here's why i'm asking this question for people listening there's just so you know over the years most of my private clients i would say probably 75 if not 80 of my private clients since 2014 so it's like seven years now are entrepreneurs and most are entrepreneurs in like this space like in this industry and um one of the things that i just noticed over and over and over and over again is people feeling pressured to do things that they're not built to do because they think it's some like industry standard or like some requirement where there's some fomo fear of missing out if they don't do like for example social media i know you and i talk about this a lot because you don't love social media and i don't necessarily i mean i actually kind of do love it but i'm just on it i know i'm built to be on it and i do a lot of things there and we connect with so many incredible people from all over the world on social media um but there's there's all kinds of things like not everyone can do everything not everyone is built to do everything and so um in exploring the pet peeves i'm not asking that so we could just sit here and talk [ __ ] and laugh about it i'm asking that so that people could hear us say you don't have to do this if it's not for you well i think that's a good point of what probably my number one pet peeve is is there is no one way and every time i think there is a one way something happens to us like happened last year where we worked with a client who had a multi-million dollar online business and no website it is like no no there really are no requirements yeah so the way that a lot of online course creators in the marketing space make money is by selling these cookie cutter systems and you have to do this and you have to do this and you have to do this and they're it's just not true there is no one way and forcing yourself to do things that you hate or don't fit for you or you don't have the capacity for is only going to lead to burnout and frustration and i see a lot of people get a little bit of success that way and still hate things so i like it's not even just that i don't love social media it's like i think we've bought into this idea that social media is the only way to do it and it's just not true yeah um i actually it's funny because this always happens in my life on days when i have many calls like whether it's akashic records readings podcast interviews or whatever there tends to be like a theme or like a thread through at least a couple of them and i was doing the akashic records reading earlier today for somebody who um she had a bunch of questions about starting a business she has a corporate job she got a coaching certification she wants to do coaching but in the realm of like what she does in her corporate consulting work but just in a different container and on our own terms and this was one of the things that it's so funny was like even coming up and coming through in the akashic records was like you just don't have to like it's it's so much more important that you do what is going to work for you and be sustainable rather than freaking burn yourself out like literally in the akashic her masters teachers and loved ones were like please go down this list of things and just make sure you check off how like what works for you and what doesn't because one of the other big things is like well why do you want to come out of a corporate job she's like i just don't want to have all the structure and that was part of the response like okay so make sure that you don't set up a structure for yourself in your own business that you also feel trapped by because i think both of you could probably speak to i've seen that and it tends to be like the multi-million dollar people right who are like cranking and then but they hate their life because they hate the way their business is set up so that i think is the fundamental thing that stephanie and i are trying to solve with get your [ __ ] together um is this thing where we encounter these businesses particularly in the like mid six figures to early seven figures where they've set up a fairly successful company that doesn't work for them it makes them unhappy it makes the people around them unhappy because they are busy all the time or they don't like the way they make money or they don't like that they like running these launches that we have taught everyone in the online space that are the only way to do it if you run it in that cookie cutter system it's exhausting if you are launching these big launches once or twice a week a year like we've all done it they're exhausting i i know there's a way to do it to launch fun and we do a lot of fun launches but the way most people do it isn't fun and so stephanie you've been behind the scenes on so many launches what do you notice or like like the patterns or the common things with people who are forcing themselves let's talk about this launch model for a bit like yeah is that enough of a question or do you need more oh no i i totally i can respond to that um normally um there is the anticipation of it there's the stress of it there is the million parts and pieces to manage of it there is the burnout of all the different emails for all the different um you know campaigns that you're running and then if you decide to put affiliates on then you've got a whole nother set of things that need to be created it is a lot to manage if you don't have and a lot of them don't have a full-on launch team so they're doing it by themselves and they are by the time they're done with their launch they are fully exhausted and they don't ever want to do it again but then they uh get some rest pick themselves up and then they talk themselves into doing it again because they don't know there's anything to do but launch right right yeah so i'm thinking about over the years how i've just encountered so many freaking people who have no idea what they've gotten themselves into because to me i mean there's so many programs that people take right like i've certainly i started out in the b-school community and i think rina you never did b-school right i did but super late and by the time i did it very transparently i was like why yeah stephanie did you do it back in the day or not yeah yep okay so like i think probably people listening i'm sure there's plenty people who do b-school and you know not to knock these floor anything but there's like there's all different types of programs that are similar to b-school if you don't know what b-school is it's marie forleo's signature program i don't know if she is even still running it anymore but um and it gives you like the bones of setting up an online business but no one actually teaches anyone how to run a business right like i feel like all these courses that people take teach people okay how to set up your business it's basically like how to have a website have an update how to get leads how to do you know this is this and this but then it's like how do you actually run a business how do you hire people how do you train people how do you vet people how do you develop people how do you manage people like i laugh so hard and both of you have heard me talk about this for years how many things i knew how to do because i freaking weren't at coco because i went through a management training program starting when i was 19 years old to when i graduated college like one of my summer jobs was running my own office for the summer i had to like hire and train and recruit receptionists and run trainings and interviews and like literally vet people and i'm like how does anyone and even for me it's so freaking hard and i had like years and hundreds if not thousands of hours of practice of this this is the [ __ ] that nobody nobody teaches people how to do yes yeah so i have a background right out of college i was in corporate as well and i feel like that is a big root system and i think stephanie was in corporate i know stephanie was in corporate as well that's a root system that really helps like one of the things we do in the program is we teach people how to break their business into five pillars from sales and marketing to leadership and how to decide which of those need the most support at which times yes and that practice is revolutionary for people because everything is just like in one big pile until they think about breaking it down that way and learning how to prioritize and i learned that doing commercial loans at suntrust when i was a kid no way yeah so i love this thing that you said what are what are the five pillars so sales marketing operations distribution uh finances and leadership what's distribution in like online businesses that's like product delivery and stuff like that how you deliver the thing got it so if you don't have a physical product it might be your tech stack for example okay if anyone's listening they're like what the [ __ ] the tech stack what does that mean sorry there's yeah no this is what i'm here for because this is me like i know what these things mean now but i also know i really didn't in the beginning yeah the tech stack is just all the technology that you use to make your things run so say you have a course platform like a kajabi or something like that that you use with a wordpress website and stripe to accept credit cards that's a tech stack got it um okay this piece i am really into right now and stephanie and i we were literally talking about this on our team jam today this thing that you said how to decide which areas need the most support at which times because most people who are starting businesses like my business your businesses people who are probably listening to this podcast who are still tuned in because they're like oh this is relevant to me right technically you start out as what is called a solopreneur right it's you with your skills and your dreams and you're like all right let's [ __ ] do this but you need support and and most people unless you are coming in with some kind of trust fund inheritance a spouse or a family member who's like yeah take take what you need follow your dreams which listen some people have that enormous blessing and a privilege right like i didn't necessarily have that like my mom was like my safety net so it was like when i ran out of money i could be like hi it's an emergency you know like and she helped me like i i took out some interest-free loans from the bank of margaret de alto throughout the course of my business building and every once in a while because my mom's really generous she'd be like hi i'm turning this into a gift consider it an early inheritance and i always share that with people because one of my biggest pet peeves when i was new was finding out that people had sources of income or money or funding even if it was in the form of like credit or like uh like a business loan or whatever but they were letting people think that they were just self-sustaining that their business was supporting them and it was not and i think a lot of people do that and i think it's really to see or people are like making money some other way um and you don't know so i always i always share that with people some people probably already knew that about me so that was super helpful like i would have the one time i i really thought i was gonna have to like go get a job it was like right before wildstar movement launched in 2014 and then like some miraculous thing happened and i like i made five thousand dollars and i was able to like finish launching the thing if you know but i literally was like okay i've i've used every freaking resource i have and i don't know if this is gonna happen so um this piece basically i went on that tangent to get to the part where it's like most people are not in a position to do all the things all at once because [ __ ] is so much more expensive than any of us could possibly imagine it is so how do you help people and either either one of you could take this or you could both take it how how do you help people determine discern and i know you will help people hold hands hold hand-hold them through the program but just like the overview of how do you even help people begin to think about that when it's so much and it's so overwhelming i feel like stephanie and i are going to have very different answers to this and i love that the geniuses of us being together yeah and i just want to say to your point here nothing is more common than me watching a multi-million dollar launch telling people how to do something from scratch when the way they are doing that launch is on half a million dollars in facebook ads that that makes me want to blow up a building by the way but at their i'm like wait wait you're leaving out the part of how you did it in questions where you spent half a million dollars on facebook ads over the course of this launch yeah and i've been on those teams i've been like i we don't do ads in our company but we've been the other side of the strategy to someone on an ad strategy and it just makes me furious um and i would always say like sales always comes first i think this is a mistake that we teach particularly new businesses where we're like start your facebook account and start marketing and get your branding together and build your website and the most effective thing that you can do is get sales so sales always comes first because it makes every other pillar possible literally yes so for me like do you have your sales [ __ ] together is always the first question and for more established question companies it's always do you if you look at the last three to six months do you have pretty predictable revenue over that three to six months and even when i'm looking at million dollar companies a lot of the time the answer is no they don't know what they're going to make from one month to the next because there is no sustainable sales system yeah um this piece by the way or just reminds me of how you were saying earlier you worked last year with a multi-million dollar company that didn't even have a website some of the most lucrative offers of mine over the years i didn't even have a page for i literally like wrote a facebook post or sent out an email and like with a link to an application and i mean let me not discount that you know people had already been listening to the podcast like there was already a rapport and relationship built but like so much of the fancy like branding i think branding is important in the long term eventually but i think it comes later so i appreciate that you said that and then just from like the emotional energetic standpoint another reason why and i'm curious for stephanie's input on this too but is like because you need the confidence right when you are making sales and making money you will feel better and that energy is going to seep into everything whereas if you're not making sales and you're not making money you're going to feel like [ __ ] or you're going to feel overwhelmed or you're going to feel stressed and that will also seep into everything yes absolutely yep so what's your is your dancer is your answer different from arenas oh it totally is well first and foremost they do need to be um generating consistent income to come in for me to even be able to help them because um when we go into things uh we roll up our sleeves and dive in so normally they come in and clients are like i have no idea where to start i'm overwhelmed i've got it they've got a team in place and they don't know where things are at so i start sorting what's your burning fires what are the things that you absolutely must have and then what are the things that you would love to have and we get the fires put out first we get everything organized and set up they get some initial relief because they've got it all out of their head and into their project management system and then we go to work on refining and building out the rest of their foundation i could really speak to that and i bet people listening can relate to you know for so many years i just had things slipping through the cracks that i didn't even know were slipping through the cracks or things that were duct taped together that i didn't know were duct taped together because people who were setting them up like that's how they were doing it and actually remember like what rina saying to me which she knows i don't have any kind of thin skin so she just said it she was like i've been waiting for you to ask me to get my hands on your website for so many years she's like you literally have so much stuff and you could be doing so much more and like you're just missing out on so much because your [ __ ] is not organized and i'm like yes i know help me i'm ready now oh fun times so i think this is going to drive really piss off some new businesses out there i know but i actually think the dirty secret is that sales are the easy part i would agree with that i think that the operational piece and the financial piece are actually where people stop and can't move forward more often than not where they don't have things together to deliver well so it makes the sales feel harder than they are it makes the delivery feel harder than than it is and that's why stephanie is so magical um she did that for me a couple years ago too and the financial piece is you can bring all the money you want in the door if it just goes out the back side and the problem is when you get really out in the world so let's say your branding is really successful you build an audience your people are watching you that also means that a lot of people are going to be talk trying to talk you into giving that you them giving them your money and it's easy to just let money kind of slide out the door we stephanie and i have talked about it a few times like overdrawing a checking account like i don't know if you've ever been in that yeah at least i'm the queen of messaging the bank and being like hi can you just give this overdraft feedback by the way if anyone has that you'd be shocked at how often banks would be like yeah sure so because i used to be a banker um i actually terrible story about banking y'all i used to get paid off of how little fee income i gave back so i was the queen of like no you can't have your money oh don't call her elizabeth [Laughter] um yes that's why i'm not a banker anymore but anyway um it's you're sort of over drawing your business the way you overdraw a checking account where like that three dollar charge now cost forty dollars because of the nsf fee where you do the wrong thing or you hire the wrong person and it instead of costing five hundred dollars it costs fifty thousand dollars because you've gotta have somebody go fix it listen been there still healing from it on some levels it's so it's so infuriating and it could be really something to beat yourself up about so anyone listening if you've done that or you find yourself in that position it's like you didn't know what you didn't know it's really not this goes to what i was saying earlier like you didn't know like how could you have done anything better if you didn't [ __ ] know where you're gonna say stuff i will say that also so in this uh entrepreneurial world in which we uh work uh we're sold the you can have this business it doesn't take much to set up um get yourself out there and um most entrepreneurs they have a dream they're successful they make the sales they have no idea what operations entail or um communicating with a team or leading a team or training a team developing standard operating procedures they have no idea that they even need these things to have a fully functional business and so i feel like our industry in some ways has done a disservice to people who are starting out because they have no idea they don't know what they don't know about business and if you don't have your operations in place it's costly even the smallest of things from like your standard operating procedures to the way that you onboard your team members whether they're employees or contractors all the back and forth and emails eats up time which costs you money and it doesn't look like it on a daily basis that you're spending a lot but if you added it up you would see that it's a major money suck i had an experience um within the last year where i hired someone and stephanie knows this and we just didn't realize that this person was taking like three times longer to do everything then that i'm gonna say that it should because i've had i've had various people in this role over the years and i just i've been understanding and also before my business grew and i i there was a lot of [ __ ] i had to do myself even though i wasn't great at it like tech wise especially because just enough money to pay people so it's like i have a really good idea of how long certain things should take and especially like if it would only take me this long it should definitely not be taking a professional like someone who this is what they do two or three times longer than that and i didn't have a tracking system in place um and they were invoicing me only on a monthly basis so this like huge invoice landed on it and i was like how but that like that was on me like lesson learned i'm not doing monthly invoicing anymore like even stuff like that where it's like someone might prefer to be paid monthly but if it was an hourly person right so even like these nitty gritty little things like if someone's hourly and i know reena you have opinions about hourly and stuff um it's like no like either weekly or every other week or whatever and and we need to also be looking at how long is it taking to do certain things and yeah there's just so many moving parts i i just want to say i'm fine with hourly for a lot of operation stuff what i get really itchy about is hourly for um marketing related things and stuff like that because your people are paying you for a certain results um so like we work on retainers with all of our clients we don't do our projects we don't do hourly rates at all because people aren't paying for our hours they're paying for the thing we're going to create and i get really unhappy when i have to pay someone to fix their own mistake this is this is something i was just talking about with somebody today it's like cool you didn't understand the assignment or it wasn't communicated well either way it got messed up and now i'm paying you twice to do this yeah and my team are all employees so the people on my team i'm knowing i'm making an investment in their development that when they mess things up or when they fail or when they're learning we've made a long-term investment in each other to me that's different than like a contractor where if it's your business and you have to fix a problem you eat that in my mind like we do it all the time yeah one of my employees does something that isn't quite right and i have to go fix it i'm not charging the client for that right yeah um so what do you need do you need to explain well and i would just like to well what comes up for me in this conversation is that elizabeth well both of you know from hiring um contractors again this industry sells you could be a virtual assistant you could be a technical assistant and all you got to do is get your little website up there and and go no my friends you have to be in business and if you're a contractor in my opinion you are a business owner whether you think you are or not and part of that is servicing your clients so for example you hire a technical person elizabeth right they don't deliver or there's a mistake there's having the wisdom and business sense to know that like hey i'm taking care of you as my client i'm going to take care of that for you and a lot of customer service things i go crazy about because those things aren't taught in this world right it's just get up and go and and do the thing that you know how to do yeah um so you both have kind of said you've referenced like having a business and i'm curious how you would each define actually having a business and reena i almost screenshotted this and sent this to you yesterday um i'm in this local entrepreneurs group and someone posted hey everybody i have my business set up um it's not making any money yet but everything's in place the social media this that that they were calling this a business but they haven't literally not made a single sale she and the person was like and i want to sell my business does anyone know how to sell my business and i was like you don't have a business like you don't have you don't have a business until you've sold something right like is that i mean you might have a trademark or something that you can sell i don't know even model like it was like she's like and she was like calling it's a turnkey but it's like but you don't know if it makes money that's business involves commerce i don't know there's a lot of franchise that i feel like that's basically all they are so i think that this is super important um as someone who used to finance business purchases so part of what we had to do was look at whether the business actually was a business so there's no shame in being a solopreneur there's no shame in being self-employed but to me owning a business happens when you have both some a little bit of revenue and someone else relying on your company besides just you so whether it's contractors or an employee or something like that i tend to define people that are on their own as solopreneurs and once you take that step into other people's livelihood is reliant on you that to me is what defines a business okay and i believe i believe by the way that the holy obligation of a business is to create jobs oh interesting so that's a big shift for me over the last couple years cool and so i have a follow-up question i want to go back but stephanie what's your definition like what's the how do you know if you have a business or if you're just like figuring [ __ ] out i agree with rina um do you have consistent income are you are you able to live off that business you know does it help you feed your family or feed yourself you know are you responsible for other people all of the all of these components go into being a business i think this is important though because for some people they don't they don't need or want like a whole big business right and people get to make that choice right so in terms of like does it does it i'm glad you said does it feed your family or does it feed yourself and and that's that's metaphorically as much as it is like literally okay because for some people like their side hustle that's still a business you know what i mean like i have i think of a client of ours who um you know she works in the finance world and that's her job but she does beautiful incredible amazing um fiber work now i didn't i didn't even know that was a thing like making textiles and weaving and she has like all this cool stuff and like that's a business right but it's just like not it doesn't it's not the thing that like pays the bills because she also has a job so i just i wanna i don't wanna invalidate anyone who might do something on the side or whatever that is actually a legit business and makes money and whatever and is consistent but you're just not interested in making it like a whole big huge company thing quitting your job and doing all that i want to be super clear that i don't like to me there's no judgment in that that's why i like that difference between a solopreneur and an entrepreneur like a solopreneur could you could do that your whole life and i think that is amazing yes step into being an entrepreneur to me is that responsibility for other people yeah um okay this say more about this responsibility to create jobs like at what point and like what's the cap on that right okay so i want to say two things about this i have been in huge judgment that i am working through about this whole industry of online businesses and the practice of gig work which i think is problematic in lots of ways not that it's never good but it's often not good and so i made a shift a few years ago in this realizing that there's only like a handful of things that make entrepreneurship really special and one of those things is that there are not a lot of ways to create new jobs big corporations are actually pretty bad at it you would think that they are good at it but they're actually pretty bad at it they're better at cutting jobs than making new jobs and entrepreneurial folks are the most likely place for new jobs to come from and one of the reasons why we have problems in the us anyway with job stagnation is because we have fewer entrepreneurs than we've ever had before which is amazing to me in this online world but it's dramatically different it's something like 30 fewer businesses have been started in the last 25 years then were started in the 25 years before that's wild because i would think but i think this goes back to what's the definition of a business right right having a website having a social media account having branding that's not a business right so entrepreneurs create jobs and no one else is really good at creating jobs and when you look at building community which you know elizabeth i'm really passionate that we have to get back to this building community over just individuals and when you look at building community one of the surefire best ways to build community is to build jobs and when i started hiring employees instead of contractors everything shifted for me because families were now reliant on us and we've been able to give like amazing opportunities so like i know you and i are we spoke about in that mastermind with trudy where she talks about impact all the time in her work a lot of the impact that you're able to have as an entrepreneur is in the jobs that you create um and so i've just gotten really passionate about it because i'm not sure there's anybody else who can save us when it comes to this jobs issue except business owners yeah stephanie what do you think about that i i think that i see it i i totally agree with what she says but being i've been a solopreneur for many many years um and you know having my own business i feel like i'm able to impact my clients lives so it's a different perspective versus having a team that i'm impacting not that i don't eventually want to go there but i think with the lifestyle that i've had set up of being a single mom and being able to be free and manage my time and not have the responsibility of a team it served me and now that my daughter's off to college i can now step into that place yeah i think it's all about where you're at in the journey and i think that impact can be made and in so many places yeah i'm with you i have i'm working through this as well reena like i am i have an enormous resistance to being responsible for people um i like to be able to so i'm i'm almost like a hybrid like i certainly have a business like i've had people working on a team with me since like 2011 or 2012. um but i've never made anyone an employee um yeah i have business trust issues is the bottom line and we're working on it and i mean and still even when people do you know i have so many friends who have employees there's just no avoiding it's like dating like there's just no avoiding that you're going to end up in bed with the wrong person at some point you're going to be like man i wish i wouldn't have done that that wasn't the best rina and i were just talking about this yesterday on our webinar about um delegation and trust because a lot of times when you get into entrepreneurship you've created you've gone after your dream you've created it you now have to hand your baby over to somebody and trust them that they're going to take care of it the way that you would or respond the way that you would and and that there's a lot that goes into it and many times i've seen working with clients they will find ways to hold on to things that they don't need to be holding on to anymore because it serves their pattern of not trusting i'm in this right now i'm like just giving stuff away i'm like take it take it we all know i'm not good at this somebody take it take it take it take it and realize it because sometimes it's hard to be like oh of course i should not be doing this how do you all between the two of you what do you think um how do you help people determine what they should and should not be doing themselves and by the way this this this your program i know is certainly geared for people at a certain level of business so whatever your answers are about to be might not be appropriate for people who like can't afford to pay people and there's no shame in that right like we've all been at that point in our businesses like so we know that it takes getting to a certain and rina this is also reminding me of something that you and i have talked about with trudy a bunch as well which is like that place in business it's almost like it's not a stalemate but it's almost like a plateau or like a a tough spot when it's like okay i don't necessarily have the budget to get the team that i actually need to grow yet so this is let's do two-part question the first part is how do you um i i lost it but i was asking it did either of you pull it stephanie i feel like [Laughter] you were asking like how do you know which things to focus on first yes and i would say well i think rita and i will have totally different answers um and i think this is what it also led reno and i to start working together on different client projects right so when people people enter into my world they are full of overwhelm and they have stuff scattered all over the place right so it is back to what i said earlier what's on fire what is the must-have and what is what you want to have right and then getting all that stuff in there and then going all right now what does your budget look like for hiring support and what and after we determine you know what the things are that are needed it becomes very apparent who needs to be hired first do you need a virtual assistant do you need a technical person do you need a sales person you know what is it that you need to support your business you know what you're so i kind of fall into this like jim collins zone of believing that the most important thing that the founder can do is focus on the most important thing so i always think like sales is the last thing that that most i advise most people to give away because it is the most important thing right so give that away last give away lower stakes things to start out with and i would look at the things that you i think a lot of people would say look at the things you're the worst at i actually want people will give those away fairly easily typically because of pain i want people to look at the things that they are like uh i'm mediocre at this i can get it done because those are the ones that usually suck the most time totally so a lot of times that looks like in my world it often looks like building and copywriting um because they're like i can build my own landing page i can build my own sales page and yeah they can because that's what they've been doing all along but it takes them twice as long and probably is missing a bunch of stuff than if they would just hand it off to someone else and many people in our world copywriting is the most painful thing to hand off because it's if not done properly can really not come across with your voice but it's also most of the most people are not copywriters even great writers maybe especially great writers are not copywriters and so often that's what i'm trying to claw away from people can you explain the difference for anyone who's like i don't know what that means okay so a writer is someone who entertains or moves with story on a page right so they can move you emotionally um they are and probably in creative ways whereas copy is fairly formulaic there are certain things that you need to do in order to move to an end result and there are certain patterns that need to emerge on certain types of copy so you do different things in an ad versus in an email versus on a landing page and that formulaic thing generally will drive a writer nuts so just like an artist doesn't want to be like told they have to make their art in a certain way a writer is an artist and a writer will really often have a very difficult time shoving themselves into the box of copywriting yeah so writers make terrible copywriters often yeah i love copywriting so much i've loved it i mean i was fortunate enough back in the day when i did marie's mastermind laura belgrade was like in it she was our mentor basically and i already had like a natural aptitude for it literally from my cut co i think you both know this story right like the very first sales video i made that i remember some people will know the name james wedmore he started out by doing like video marketing stuff and i remember like i made this video and he's like this video is great who wrote your script for you like who did the copy and i'm like i did he's like what and i'm like yeah i just used my cuckoo seven steps to a sale i'm like literally no joking it's just like it's like build rapport so i just like translated like the seven steps from like literally the cut code demo where you show up at someone's house with your bag of knives you compare so they were like there was like build rapport create a general problem create a specific problem like let them try the product like give them an experience and so like handle the objections like all built in the video for my first fitness program which was called tighter in 10 days which the name now makes me want to cringe but back in the day when i was 28 years old so freaking funny but um i love that i love i i love this i love that definition too reyna like writers move people through story but like a copywriter gets people to take an action with their words right they compel people on some level to do something or make a change what i love about copywriting so much and i think this is why it's really important for people who are not good at it to get help with it because i'm not even great at it but i just look for me and for my line of work like there's the only thing i've ever given away the copywriting on is like podcast show notes because that's just like very practical like just tell the people what's going to be in the episode like i don't that doesn't need to be in my voice the podcast isn't my voice but everything else i'm like there's like a soulfulness and a mysticism and like uh it just feels so important in my business that that actually has to come through me energetically but if i had no understanding of copywriting whatsoever i would not feel that way so i think that there's a point there about what you do for your business too right like if your business is like well like selling apparel yes um maybe not needed for you to write the copy exactly even if you are good at it and that i think um i think that what happens with these things that we're sort of okay at is that we can't hand them over because we want to be great at them we're like oh if i just did a little if i just took another course if i just like i could make this into a strength um but if we just lean into the things that we are really great at um it's like i've had to finally just lean into that at least for the next couple of years i am probably the client manager in my company because i am exceptionally good at that and you are so good at it as someone who's been your client i'm like this is literally the best experience i i feel i've never felt so taken care of you all listen weekly emails to be like hi here's what's going on here's the checklist here's the things we need from you like it wasn't me i was like thank god i felt managed i felt handheld i felt supported i needed all those things especially because what you do is so freaking overwhelming and there's so many moving parts i love it when you say that because i need reminding of that and i think we all do sometimes in our work like that reminding of other people feel overwhelmed by the thing that feels easy for us listen it doesn't even strike you as your genius and that's the other thing i was thinking because i know you and i have geeked out a lot on the book the big leap by gay hendrix and one of the things that i just keep thinking of is it's not even like the things that you're so so at the zone of excellence is the enemy of the zone of genius because especially when you're actually like pretty good at something it's it's even harder to justify getting somebody else to do it but it frees you up to do the thing that you're like nobody else in your business can do nor should they be doing yeah i love that um okay stephanie what i just want to check in we've we've been ranting and raving over here about a couple things what's your two cents my my two cents is the same i think also is that um delegating off things that rina and i were discussing time optimism right and thinking as a business owner that you're like oh i can just whip that up as opposed to giving it off to a team member like you all got that you all are reading me to filth right now [Laughter] why should i pay the money for that if i don't have to right and i can just do it that is like time optimism i'm having a whole moment i could just do it how many times have i said that to you stephanie and you're like are you sure because you knew damn and then like three weeks later the shit's not done and i'm like i need somebody else to do this i'm like hey just checking in on that thing that you said you're gonna hold out when stephanie says that line hey i'm just checking it it makes you like oh we have to we instituted what up task wednesday where stephanie sends me a voice note to be like it's what up task wednesday like what can we take off your plate and i'm like oh so the time optimism uh conversation goes both ways not only does it go i'll just take this so and i'll do it uh because it'll be super fast and i'll get it done super quickly it also goes the other way with delegating out to your team members well this thing only takes like 20 minutes so then you delegate it over to a team member well yeah it takes you 20 minutes because you've been doing that thing for the last 10 years somebody new has just come into your business and they're learning all the little nuances that you know about already like i go into my wordpress site that this little thing does this thing and i need to look out for that somebody going in does not know that listen and then they break things and then we call rina sos seven o'clock in the morning i do sometimes get boxes from y'all that are like help sorry by the way i fully realize and recognize and appreciate that like we have a special relationship and that like those calls don't get answered for everybody so yeah i it's funny because i i really accidentally hurt one of my employees feelings today with this i'll tell y'all like um they spent unbeknownst to me until later like half the day figuring out this email formatting thing and i was like we're in a deadline let me get in there and handle this and i got in and i did it in like four minutes oh my god this person just was like what is wrong with my life and i felt awful because it's there is this context that we get when we've been in it for a long time that we just forget what it's like because we all struggled through when we were first learning yeah but you have to forget that or you wouldn't be able to go on yeah um this is making me want to ask this question where do you all stand because i'm sure this comes up you know hiring i know you said one of the big things in the program is like helping people work with staff um i've gone i still go back and forth on this depending on the thing um like opinions conventions best practices what have you found to be most consistently successful you know especially because you two you both work with so many different types of businesses um and types of people with different offerings train someone like you want someone trained up already knows how to like work in your systems your platform your tech stack or whatever or do you want to train someone so they do it the way you like it done or is there a mix is there a hybrid like what's your where you stand on those things so i feel like we may have different answers here as well but i feel like most people that i work with these days don't really have the option of hiring the really experienced person because they don't have a clear understanding of what that person costs and to give you all a very 2021 in this moment answer if you want a whiz at running your tech stack and who can do some like light html and css which is like styling your website and schedule all your emails and do all that stuff for you if you were hiring that full-time it's a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollar a year higher for a person who has all that down already and most of the companies that we work with don't have that kind of budget right for one person so it is a necessity that you be able to train people into your systems this is a great point absolutely i will say also um a lot of people will get into a they're looking at okay i have this much money and i want to hire a va and they overload the va with responsibilities that they are not equipped to handle nor is their skill set anywhere near what that job description entails um it can look like oh it's administrative but then they end up becoming the operations person person and they have no business in that seat they fall down the business owner gets frustrated that the person didn't perform when they didn't have any business being in that role in the first place so really looking out at you know for the hourly rates if you decide to bring on a contractor you know depending on what the hourly rate is yes there's a fluctuation so you could say virtual assistant right and in our world that can mean so many different things yeah so but if you're hiring somebody around 20 to 25 an hour that's basic stuff and you you are the task master they are not generating anything you are leading them and feeding them if you want a peer that you are bringing to the table it's going to cost you way more than that to have somebody come in and handle your stuff for you as reno was saying well and i think this is the catch 22 right because i see people posting in spaces all this like hey someone hey everybody i'm looking for someone i need to hire someone for this position um you know someone reasonable or someone affordable and it's like but that position might not be affordable for you right now because like what reena said like it depends like there's there's always going to be a range but then the other part of the catch 22 and i really find this stephanie you mentioned it earlier you know there's so many people who have become like virtual assistants for example or online business managers is another like popular role uh because they saw that as an opportunity to be able to like work from home or be with their family or whatever and they just they don't actually have the skills to do either thing right but they say they do like we've had this happen a couple of times right where someone like presents themselves like they could do all these things because they think they'll be able to figure it out when the time comes and then the time comes and they can and and like that that really bothers me a lot like we've even in our hiring processes we've started to like ask for client recommendations like if you say you've been doing what you've been doing for like three to five years and there's not two people i can call who will rave about how well you do that thing that's a problem yeah there so we i tell people this when we're doing calls with prospects and stuff all the time if you're going to hire a web design marketing any digital anything type company speak to clients that they've had in the past do not hire them without speaking to clients they've had in the past and if they won't let you do that that is a huge red flag and you should look elsewhere huge red flag because i even think about the people i've worked with over the years who somehow like the way things have gone down i won't i would not be a person that you could call i had someone work for me for four years and the way it all unraveled towards the end in the last few months and stephanie was there for this i was like i'm really i'm not gonna be able to be a recommendation for you which after four years is really not great for the person because if someone's going to be like where'd you work for the last four years yikes yes i've also seen situations where you've checked references and it's the person's aunt or sister as a reference this place is the wild wild west i swear i you name it i've seen it over the years and i'm sure you all have to i've learned to just get really specific right like ask cool how did they do with this this like this type of thing give me an example you know show me a picture like whatever yeah it's really your responsibility as a business owner to get in the details and check out your people to vet reena what were you gonna say i was just gonna say i i want to give some real talk about knowing a couple of things about industry right so you need to know the job tenure and market for your industry so like where is it at right now so for example when we all started like when i started in digital in 2008 not a lot of people really valued digital marketing and seo and things like that yet and so there were a lot of people just kind of we were all running fast and loose figuring stuff out and there weren't a lot it didn't pay very much for the most part unless you were at like the very top of a corporate fancy something and so i think a lot of people got conditioned that that's the way it worked but here we are 12 years later almost and now it's the opposite market there are more jobs available and more contracts available than there are people who are skilled to do them yes and that means that the prices are higher because there's scarcity there yeah um so if you are looking at digital marketing for example finding someone that has experience a decade of experience that means they had to start in 2008 when it was brand new and there are very few of us y'all yeah so you're going to pay for that you're going to pay for that experience but you don't have to have you don't have to have that for everything your va doesn't necessarily have to be 100 or 200 or 300 an hour person maybe that is a 50 an hour person but your digital strategist is a 200 an hour person because you need that context there so like it's it depends on the thing they're doing too like checking your email may be a lower a lower value than planning your brand strategy and i also want to note for people and again i know we're kind of just i want everyone to go check out rina and stephanie's program like and now i'm g

2021-09-22 19:25

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