Nov. 21, 2023

3 Strategies to Reduce Your Workload by 25% (Or More!) | QRE265

3 Strategies to Reduce Your Workload by 25% (Or More!) | QRE265

Ever wondered how to scale your business while actually reducing your workload by 25% or more? 

We've got you covered.

In this week’s episode, we'll unravel the mysteries of efficient team building, delegating work to free up time for busy entrepreneurs, and how hiring virtual assistants can supercharge your business growth overall.

Imagine no longer having a job you hate, but rather running a business you love.

If you're ready to work smarter, and not harder, tune in now to unlock the secrets to scaling your business while maintaining a 25-hour workweek like my guest Melissa Swink.

Your path to business efficiency starts right here.

Ursula’s Takeaways:

  • Intro (00:00)
  • Maintaining A 25-Hour Workweek (04:15)
  • Business Growth And Team Building (09:07)
  • Reducing Workload (11:46)
  • Streamlining And Automating Business Tasks (17:47)
  • Eliminating Busy Work (23:23)
  • Outsourcing Tasks And Delegating Work (26:52)
  • Scaling A Business With Coaching And Team Growth (31:59)
  • Hiring Virtual Assistants For Business Growth (36:10)


About GUEST

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., is a business consultant and has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

After enjoying a corporate career in process improvement and operations management, Melissa turned her knack for productivity and efficiency into a business. Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped dozens of business owners, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Melissa isn’t a coach - and that’s what sets her apart. As a consultant, she focuses on teaching the “how” not the “why.” Her work is all about nuts and bolts, doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results!


Connect with Melissa Swink

Website: www.melissaswink.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/MelissaSwinkCo

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/melissaswink

Instagram: @melissaswinkco


FREE GIFT:

Masterclass | How to Hire a Virtual Assistant to Scale Your Business: https://www.melissaswink.com/masterclass


About Ursula Mentjes 

Ursula Mentjes is an award-winning Entrepreneur and Sales Expert. She will transform the way you think about selling so you can reach your revenue goals with less anxiety and less effort! Ursula specializes in Neuro-Linguistic Programming and other performance modalities to help clients double and triple their sales fast.  

Honing her skills at an international technical training company, where she began her career in her early twenties, Ursula increased sales by 90% in just one year. Just 5 years later, when the company’s annual revenue was in the tens of millions, Ursula advanced to the position of President at just 27.  Sales guru Brian Tracy endorsed her first book, Selling with Intention, saying, “This powerful, practical book shows you how to connect with customers by fully understanding the sales process from the inside out. It really works!” Ursula is also the author of One Great Goal, Selling with Synchronicity and The Belief Zone, which received the Beverly Hills President’s Choice award. 

Ursula also serves as Past Statewide Chairperson of the NAWBO-CA Education Fund and Past President of NAWBO-CA. She is the recipient of the SBA’s Women in Business Champion and a recipient of the Willow Tree’s Extraordinary Example and Extraordinary Entrepreneur Awards, the NAWBO-IE ANITA Award, chosen as PDP’s Extraordinary Speaker, PDP’s Business Woman of the Year, the Spirit of the Entrepreneur Awards Finalist and the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award from two Presidents.  She has shared the stage with bestselling author Loral Langemeier, Les Brown, Tom Antion, Lisa Nichols, Giuliana Rancic and many others!  Her clients include Aflac, Ebenezer and Fairview Hospitals, New York Life, Paychex and more!  She holds a B.A. in Psychology and Communication from St. Olaf College and an M.S. in Counseling Psychology from California Baptist University.


Social Links:

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram: @ursulaincorporated!

Twitter: @ursulamentjes

QRE Private Facebook Group

Quantum Revenue Class Sign Up

2X Your Monthly Income?

Youtube


Thanks for Listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others would love to listen, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode, or want to be a guest on the show? Leave a comment in the section below or visit the website to contact me!

Follow The Podcast

You can follow us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon, or whatever your favorite podcast app is!

Leave Us an Apple Podcasts Review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Transcript
Ursula Mentjes:

Hey everybody, and welcome back to quantum revenue expansion, the podcast where we talk about turning your annual revenue into your monthly revenue. So excited because we have a special guest back and actually she's this is her second time I thought it was like her fifth time. So Melissa swank Welcome back to the show.

Melissa Swink:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be back.

Ursula Mentjes:

I think it's because we hang out so much like on on the Zoom world that I feel like I've interviewed you many times. And I know I'm going to have you back again, because today we're going to talk about the three strategies to reduce your workload by 25% or more. How's that? But before we jump in before I tell you about Melissa, if you don't know her a couple things. If you haven't yet, you can grab our masterclass quantum revenue expansion, the masterclass which pairs nicely with this, just go to Ursula inc.co, it's on the homepage, very easy to find. And we do three things in that course, we talked about how to create a quantum revenue container for your next level of business, we talked about how to uplevel, your pricing, your marketing, all the things that need to happen so that you can hit that goal. And then we talked about how to collapse time and get there even faster, which is a little bit about what Melissa is going to talk about, because that's truly her expertise. And also, if you haven't hung out with us at the 2x intensive yet, and you're feeling the pull, you're like yes, I wanted to x my revenue and shave 20 or more hours off my work week, that would be fun, you can go to Ursula inc.co, forward slash apply. We love that course. It's two days, it's on Zoom. So wherever you are in the world, you can join us. And Rebecca and I master coach Rebecca Hall, and I will dig into your business for today, we'd love to get our hands on your business. And we keep that class small because otherwise, it's impossible. If we tried doing it with more people, it's too hard. So you get lots of one on one intimate attention on your business. Plus, you get a 30 minute private coaching session ahead of time. So all the things send your information in. And because you're a podcast listener, you get an extra special package. So let us know if we can support you with that. And finally, before we go any further, I just wanted to say this, somehow, in the quantum realm, this podcast has hit in the top two and a half percent of podcasts in the world. I have no idea how that happened. I don't even know like I don't even know all the different places this podcast is now because it kind of just you know, since the podcast world has exploded, sometimes all of a sudden you're just up somewhere else. And but my team at amplify you they keep track of that. And they let us know that this week. So I want to thank all of you, our listeners, I want to thank Melissa because Melissa has shared the podcast with other people. And they've told me they're like, well, Alyssa told me about it. So Melissa, thank you, you're probably like a big percentage of that percentage and, and for our listeners all over the world. Thanks. Thanks for hanging out with us. We appreciate you. We love hanging out with you. And we're truly here to support you and your business growth and keep you going on the days that you want to give up. So shout out to all of you. So thank you for that. So let me tell you about Melissa Swank. She is the founder and CEO of Melissa's winking company. She's a business consultant and has a team of virtual assistants who provide admin and marketing support for small businesses and nonprofits. After enjoying, we'll put that in quotation marks. Now maybe she really did enjoy being a corporate career in process improvement and operations management. Melissa turned her knack for productivity and efficiency into a business since 2012. Melissa and her team have helped dozens of business owners, and she's dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses that they actually love. Imagine that not a job you hate, but a business you love. Melissa isn't a coach, and that's what sets her apart as a consultant. She focuses on teaching the how not the why her work is all about nuts and bolts doing what works and eliminating what doesn't and driving real, measurable results. And Melissa, one thing I mean, that we love about you is just your authenticity like you truly we know you care about your clients, you go above and beyond. Like, not only is Melissa helping her clients do this, but she's doing this every day. She's scaling her business every day. She's hiring like it feels like now every day because you're growing so much. So when you're listening to Melissa know that, yes, these are the things that she helps her clients with, but she's living it every single day, all while maintaining what a 25 hour workweek or less. Yeah,

Melissa Swink:

I would say on average, I work no more than 30 hours a week I'd say 25 is probably the closer average.

Ursula Mentjes:

Yeah, that's your number. So for those of you who have been a listener for a long time, you know, we I interviewed Melissa we figured out so almost two years ago around like two years ago, so it's been a minute, but if you want to hear more of her story, we're gonna share a little bit about it today but more of her story and how she grew her business. Definitely go back and listen to that. I have all kinds of different questions this time and Melissa and I could talk for hours about this idea of scaling and productivity and working less. But before we get into that, Melissa, just for some people who maybe don't know you, what's the quick story? So you left that corporate career that you enjoyed? I

Melissa Swink:

did, yes. Some days were more challenging than others in that corporate career. So I actually work in the building materials industry through the housing crash of 2008. And the recession that followed. So there was a lot of downsizing. And the good news was, is that I retained my employee employment status the entire time. But the not so great thing was that over time, my role just continued to change and evolve. And I found myself in a place that just really wasn't a good fit for me. So that was the kind of push that I needed to venture out on my own. I know, when I left that job, I was really craving more time freedom, I wanted more control over the work that I was doing, who I was doing that work with. And so in March of 2012, I resigned from that position and spent that summer doing process improvement consulting here in my area I located in Green Bay, Wisconsin. And during that time, I was introduced to the concept of a virtual assistant, because I didn't know what that was. And many people 11 years ago, in Green Bay, Wisconsin didn't know either. But I knew right away that it was the solution to so many of the challenges that I was seeing my consulting clients face, because as we were talking through, they knew what they wanted to be doing. They knew what they should be doing. But there weren't enough hours in the day to do it, or they didn't have the expertise that was required. And they couldn't necessarily justify hiring a traditional part time full time employee to do that for them. And so I knew that a virtual assistant would be a really good way to bridge that gap. And so I started offering virtual assistant services in fall of 2012. So that's how we got here. And, you know, of course, the business looks a lot different today than it did 11 years ago.

Ursula Mentjes:

Tell us about that. Tell us about your business? Sure,

Melissa Swink:

absolutely. So you know, it has evolved a lot over the years. So in the beginning, for about the first six years, I worked on my own. And also during that time my daughter was born. So I went through that experience of my time no longer being entirely my own, and that if she was sick, or if school closed or daycare closed or something, work stopped, because it was all me, I was the one doing all of the client, deliverables, I was the one doing all of the backend maintenance on the business. And you know, under that model, not only was that a quick recipe for burnout, but my income was completely limited to the amount of time that I could devote to my business. And that really wasn't a good place to be, you know, I couldn't fully unplug to take vacation. Or if I was able to unplug during vacation, I paid for it for weeks afterwards, because I was trying to get caught up. So so that business model not so great. I kind of have a joke that, you know, at that time, when I started my business, I thought I wanted a small manageable business. But it turned out that small manageable business manage me. So it was time to be able to evolve. So I in in 2018, started building a team to support me and the first iteration of my team really centered around helping me with fulfillment. So doing client work, helping out behind the scenes backing me up as needed. But I was still very client facing at that point, I was serving as the account manager, the the main point of contact for all of my clients, everything kind of flowed through me. And so then the second iteration of the team, structure of my business was, you know, establishing and really, really empowering the team to serve our clients and removing me out of the middle of all those communications. And so the business today looks a lot different than it did, you know, in the early stages, so today, I spend a lot more of my time working on the business rather than in it as the CEO of my company. So we can chat a lot more about that as we go on today. But that's just kind of a highlight overview of how things have changed.

Ursula Mentjes:

Yeah, congratulations. I mean, I know it like it's growing a business is not easy. And you I mean, you, you were doing you were hiring the people that you needed on your team. And then you know, that's like that, that that willingness to share your knowledge and to support other businesses as they wanted to grow as well because that's where we get stuck. And you know, statistically for our ladies out there only 3% of women, business owners make it over the seven figure mark. And I mean, if you and I had to guess a big part of that is because we don't hire soon enough. In fact, one of my coaches said to me one time she said, when men start a business and not Amen, but a lot of men, they hire a team right away and women's toward a business. And we are the team. And you talked about that. And I was definitely that it. You know, I went from working in corporate America where I had a big team of people, you know, running multimillion dollar, a multimillion dollar company started my own company. I was like, where's my CFO? Where's my controller? Where's, you know, where's HR and the, when that hits you in the face, you've had this great corporate career, like probably for most women, like leaving corporate, they had a six figure salary, they were doing pretty well, doing that one piece, and all of a sudden, they start their own business, because they're like, well, I could do this over here. And it's like, it just hit you in the face. It's like, wow. And we go from, you know, creating this dream of the business that we really desire. Like, we have this dream, right? We sell this, we launch this business, and we think, Oh, it's gonna be awesome. And we end up with a job we really hate. And I'm guessing that there's listeners right now who are like, Yes, I, my company is not a company at all. It's just a job I don't like it's a job where I have to wear all the hats. And I'm frustrated. Yes. So let's talk about your three strategies to reduce your workload by 25%. Let's start there. I know I'm gonna have more questions. But I'd love to learn more with that framework. Sure,

Melissa Swink:

absolutely. So let's talk about the first one, then. So the first one that I recommend to clients, especially as I'm working with them on, you know, a consulting basis or helping to do some strategy work with our clients, the first thing that I recommend that they do is eliminate that which is no longer in alignment with where they're headed. And so this could look like clients, it could look like team members, maybe there's some products or services that they just no longer enjoy creating or delivering. Maybe there's some partnerships or some vendors that were a great fit at the time, you know, maybe in an earlier stage of the business that now it's time to maybe grow and expand and move on from there. So I know for me in the beginning, when I started my business, and like so many others, we kind of say yes to everything, because we need money, we have bills to pay. But then over time, we start to realize who we work best with who we don't work so well with or who is a really good fit for our team, what types of personalities or skill sets are a great fit for the team. And which ones maybe that we struggle to get on the same page with. And so you know, it's okay over time to kind of grow and evolve as we need to. I have one, I have a client who is a life coach, and she had a baby a couple of years ago, she was doing a lot of one on one coaching. And you know, with becoming a mother, she decided that's really not the business model that she wanted to continue to run during this next phase of her life. And so she has changed the way that she coaches and she runs six week programs for groups. And she's also launched her own Oracle Card Deck, which is something really interesting as well. So, you know, she's been able to really maximize her time, but that require going through that difficult stage of, you know, eliminating that one on one coaching model. So sometimes it can be really difficult, but it can be unnecessary overall, when you take a look at what are my goals? And where do I want to be? So I always talk about eliminating first, what do we what do we need to let go of in order to make room for for more growth in the future? Yeah, that's

Ursula Mentjes:

such a great place to begin. Because we don't often think about that. Often. We think what do I want to like? What do I want to create next versus more

Melissa Swink:

as more as more

Ursula Mentjes:

really got to get let go of and so true when it comes to programs, networking, even just the way we do things over and over again, these habits that we formed that just don't serve us and they waste a lot of time. So I love it. Is there any specific way you recommend people do that? Like just write it down on a piece of paper? Or kind of go through their day? Because I

Melissa Swink:

don't know that? Yeah, that's a good question. So so when I read off that list of the clients, the team members, products, services, partnerships, vendors, I do this with workshops that I run as well. And I tell the audience to pay attention to your gut as I'm reading these off, because our gut can usually answer these questions a lot better than our brains can like immediately were you think of that client that's like, that name pops up on your phone or pops up in your email and you just go what do they want now? You know, or that team member that's just you keep having to correct correct the mistakes or you know, that person that you're hesitant to hand off work to because it's just not clicking where it's it's more complicated than it needs to be. You know, your gut can answer that question for you. But the right away, your brain will step in and try to justify, like, it's fine. That person always pays on time. I don't, I don't want to release them as a client or this person is trying their best, you know, I'll just not send them that type of work. Maybe I'll send them this thing. Instead, we're like always trying to justify it in our brains. But really, it's a gut check kind of a thing. So

Ursula Mentjes:

we make a band aid approach, rather than just addressing that, but listening to your gut first. So go through the list, listen to your gut. Okay.

Melissa Swink:

Yeah. 100%. I mean, the other thing, too, is really getting clear on your goals. And what do you want? Yeah. What do you want moving forward?

Ursula Mentjes:

That's hard for people. I do. Like, I think it starts with what people don't want, though, right? Like To your point, like, when you ask it, when I ask somebody what they want, they're like, Oh, well, and it's like, overwhelming. There's so many possibilities. But if you create a list of things that you don't want in your business anymore, that can help with this whole process, right? Because then all of a sudden, typically, the opposite of what we don't want is what we actually do want.

Melissa Swink:

Yeah, and I know that I've gone through times where I just feel really frustrated, or I feel really stuck in the business. And I'll take just a notepad out. And all right at the top things that aren't working at Melissa, Swink, and CO, and I'll just do a brain dump. It doesn't have to be pretty nobody else has to see it. But just a brain dump of like, here's all the things that I don't like, or here's all the things that aren't working or, you know, I don't want to work with this type of client in this type of industry anymore. And here's why. Sometimes being brutally honest, can be really helpful to your point of like, here's what we don't want,

Ursula Mentjes:

right? Yeah. Mm hmm. All right. So first strategy, limit

Melissa Swink:

elimination. Yep. So then the second strategy is to look for opportunities to streamline and automate the repeatable tasks that you do on a regular basis. And we go there next, because it's going to reduce manual work, whether it's yours or somebody else's, it's going to make decision making easier. And ultimately, at the end of the day, it's much more cost effective to look at streamlining or automating something rather than outsourcing or delegating it, oftentimes, so. So when I say streamline, or automate, sometimes, there's that initial panic of like, Oh, here's the technology conversation. I'm not, I'm not big into technology, technology's not my friend. But there's a lot of simple things that we can do in this area. So of course, when I talk about, you know, systematizing things, certainly apps and software. But then also, it can be as simple as having some checklists, or some templates created for the business are also documented or recorded SOPs standing operates his his standard operating procedures in the business. So like for to give you an example here, I have a client who's a brand photographer, and we did a strategy session together to really map out her client journey. And then we took that one step further and built that out in her CRM, to help automate communications and streamline the logistics of planning for these photo shoots. So in that CRM system, she's able to create her quotes, right, and that system, it gets sent out reminders are sent automatically for people to review those quotes and sign them. Once that quote is accepted. And in signed for, it automatically sends the invoice for the you know, the down payment on the project automatically sends an email to schedule the strategy call for the photo shoot, there's just so many things that the system does automatically, that she doesn't have to touch. But then also she's not paying somebody else to babysit that process for her easier it like either. So it's just, you know, it's not only up leveling the customer's experience, because every customer that comes through her door, per se, is receiving the same process, the same level of customer service. But she's also not paying for somebody else to do that work for her either. So we look at streamlining automating. There's just so many apps out there. I know even for me personally, you know, and I want to address here too, is sometimes it can feel like when we start talking about systems and apps and things that subscriptions you feel like you're being nickeled and dimed to death with all these subscriptions that you pay a lot. Yeah. Mm hmm. I have to laugh at myself because this was probably about two years ago. Now. I was paying for QuickBooks Online, just a simple subscription. And that was great. For my bookkeeping purposes and such but you know, a couple of hours a month I invoice clients on the first or the 15th Depending on when they start working with us. And for a couple hours a month I would sit down on those dates and send out all the all the client invoices where I would literally duplicate last month's invoice me Do you make any changes needed most of the time, they were all the same. And send that out. And then a few days later process the payments, click the buttons and all that. And then like, This is dumb because I could I could bump up my subscription with QuickBooks Online by another $25 a month. Any eliminate like probably three or four hours worth of manual work that was going on.

Ursula Mentjes:

Wow. Yeah. Wow.

Melissa Swink:

Right. So taking a look at, you know, how can we use systems? And how can we use checklists and things to make life easier before we start looking at handing it off to somebody else? That's

Ursula Mentjes:

so great. Any favorite applications that you have?

Melissa Swink:

Oh, my gosh, that's a really good question. So like I said, QuickBooks Online for for automated invoicing, and such huge. Some of the systems that we use within the team, Asana project management system, we have a lot of checklists built out within our Asana as templates. So there's a Client Onboarding checklist. So every time we have a new client decide to work with us, we duplicate that checklist, and we make sure that everything gets set up, their account gets set up, that a thank you goes out to any referral source that may have made that connection, they get a welcome gift. There's so many so many great things that we're able to do. And again, it's consistent that that client journey is consistent. Let's see other tools and apps that we use, Google workspace has been huge for us. And just the collaboration of being able to share files and work together easily. Voxer is another one. I know I'm throwing out a lot of random apps and things but Voxer is basically like a walkie talkie voice messaging app that has reduced our meetings drastically. Because I can send you know, a two or three minute voice memo to one of my team members or to a client. And then we can just Converse that way at our convenience. So much easier to do to do things that way. So

Ursula Mentjes:

excellent. Thank you for those Yeah. And we definitely underestimate the power of a checklist. So I'm glad you mentioned Asana, where you can go check out your automated checklist in there. Because they've done studies on just I mean, in hospitals, they think this is Malcolm Gladwell 's work, they started using checklists, and that like save lives. So if it can save lives, checklists can save our businesses. And then also was that

Melissa Swink:

first step of getting all these things out of the solopreneur brain into a physical space of some kind, that can be delegated to others, as well. Like, just because I know all the things that I need to do when a new client comes on board, doesn't necessarily mean that my assistant knows better. Or if she knows what I've done, versus what is left over for her to do. You know, it's easier to have that all in a system,

Ursula Mentjes:

right? Like what order or what did I miss? Alright, so we have eliminate, let it go, that we have streamline and automate, and then what?

Melissa Swink:

Okay, so then this is my favorite one, this is the space that I live in, of course, delegate and outsource as much busy work as you can. And the end, is why because all the busy work that you do adds up, and it dilutes your results. So when you take a look at, you know, the goals that you've set for yourself, or what you want to create, and then you take a look at where you're spending their time, there's often a gap there. Because I mean, how many of us have ended the day and you're like, I don't even know what I accomplished today. I've just been running around and putting out fires and doing these random things rather than really working on the the needle movers or the high impact work that I need to be doing so. So when you take a look at, you know, busy work, some of the common ones, I mean, email, how many hours are spent, you know, looking at email, most of us don't go through email in the most effective way anyway, scheduling meetings, certainly, there's a lot of meeting schedulers out there that are becoming more and more popular. Like there's Calendly there's acuity, there's so many, but how often you're, you know, exchanging emails with another person and you're like, well, let's go out for lunch on Thursday, or let's set up that meeting for Tuesday. That doesn't work for me what other days work for you just like all this back and forth, or you don't hear back from them at all. And then there's a missed opportunity. Because there was no follow up involve scheduling meetings posting on social media. I think most people, you know, understand that some social media presence is important in this day and age. But it can be really hard to do that consistently if you're doing it on your own. Or you're spending hours and hours and hours creating these posts because it's not necessarily in your skill set where you could be you know, doing the work that actually lights you up and makes an impact in your clients worlds. Like I had said sending, sending invoice cases and processing payments and paying bills, outreach to potential clients. Yes, in some ways, you could argue that that is a needle mover. It's also something that you don't necessarily need to do on your own, I have plenty of clients who have our team reaching out to potential clients on their behalf. And once a client is interested in having a conversation, then they're able to bring the client involved where there's a lot less time that the client is spending on client acquisition, responding to inquiries, there's just so many things that could be busy work in our day to day lives mean even looking at, you know, running errands and things like that. There's this, there's so much busy work out there. And there's so many demands on our time. Yeah, yes.

Ursula Mentjes:

Let's just say to for our women, business owners, if you're, and this isn't, like, I know a lot of men, my husband, like, you know, a lot of men do a lot. So this is not to take away, I just find that naturally women tend to we tend to check all the boxes, we tend to be like, you know, handling a lot of things or if we're not physically handling them, we're handling them up here, right and costly thinking about them. So having that plan is really important getting things off your plate. So here's the the question, though, right? Like what stops people from taking this step? Because you've talked to people who are like, Willis, I'm ready to go, like, I'm ready for my BA and then like, what, where do people get stuck with this? Yeah,

Melissa Swink:

that's a great question. So I would say for the most part, there's one of two things. One may be the cost involved with hiring help in the business. And certainly I like to remind people that there is a return on investment, or at least there should be a return on investment when you look at delegating. So I work through an exercise during the workshops that I do, where we take a look at, let's say, let's say you work 40 hours a week, and you figure that you probably spend about half your time on busy work, which would be a conservative estimate. So let's say you decided to outsource or you decided to hire an assistant for 20 hours a week. And let's just say for simple math, that's $500 or $25 an hour, $500 a week, times 52 weeks in a year, I think it comes out to like $26,000 a year. And you may be thinking, I don't have $26,000 a year to pay somebody to be my assistant, if I had that kind of money rolling around if we'd be having a different conversation. But then, if we take a look at okay, though, what if you were able to spend that 20 hours a week that you've freed up, let's just use my photographer friend as an example. She let's say she's able to do five more photo shoots in a month, because she's freed up that time. And let's say her average package is $1,500. That's $7,500 a month that she would be bringing in because she's been able to outsource all that busy work. And then that comes out to about $90,000 a year of increased sales. So when you take a look at $26,000 per year invested to receive $90,000 of new sales coming in, that's three times the investment. Yeah, so and that's a big example of you know, literally hiring a part time assistant in the business, you can start small, you can start by I know one of the first things that I personally outsource for my business, social media, having somebody create consistent quality social media content, that was huge. A lot of clients will reach out to us and say, I just want a monthly email newsletter, to go out to my list so that I can stay in front of my current clients, my past clients, all the people who have opted into my list, I just want to have that consistent visibility. It starts it can start small, but I would say continue to grow from there, don't just outsource one thing, and then grow, like keep going like keep handing off work as you grow the business. So that would be the big thing is cost. The second thing is a lot of overwhelm. When it comes to maybe onboarding and training another person, that's another place of resistance that I see a lot. And I certainly understand that myself as well. Because you know, when I talk about these concepts, I'm coming at it from not only my experience as a VA myself, but then also building a team. And so one of the things that has made things a whole lot easier, even just for me, and building a team has been finding people who have experience and also have the skill set that's required to do the tasks that I want to outsource. That's huge because then I'm not training them from the ground up. It's really just a matter of fine tuning, how I approach things and how I would like things done on my behalf. But it's not training somebody from the ground up and that is a huge time saver. And the other thing too, I think is, you know, there's not everybody is, you know, and I would put my hand up here, not everybody is a natural delegator is so a lot of us DIY is very deeply ingrained. And so one thing that's been helpful for me, as I've on boarded an executive assistant this year, is to have a check in call with her every week, where we go through, here's what's coming up on my calendar, here's what's on my to do list, and she's able to pull things out of my hand saying, I can create an outline for that presentation, or I can draft that email that needs to go out to the team, I can do some research to create that list, where she'll tell me what she can help take off my plate. That's been immensely beneficial. Huge.

Ursula Mentjes:

Yeah, having those regular communications once you have that person on board, right. So this, this is such an important topic when we talk about scaling the business, right. And it's, it's also an area where we see business owners, they get stuck, or they get stopped. When you think about all the people you've worked with, and just your own trajectory. What What's the best advice you'd love to give a CEO who's out there? And who's like, oh, everything you say, makes sense? Well, aside, I'm scared. I don't know. What should I do?

Melissa Swink:

Yeah, I would say my number one piece of advice for any CEO who's looking to really grow and scale the business is don't DIY, don't DIY, I think the biggest factors for me in really changing the way that my business functions. I don't know if we even got to this in the beginning. And when I shared my story, but I look back at my numbers, and between April of 2021, and two, you know where we're at now. We're a team of 21, including myself, but we've for Rockstar revenue. Yeah. And a little over a year since, by the way, wow, that's huge. And I think, you know, the the top contributing factors, number one are that I did invest in coaching, I think that it's really important for a CEO and a business owner to hire a coach that has a proven track record and has the experience in order to guide them to their next level, because we don't see a lot of the opportunities for ourselves. We have blind, we all have blind spots, or it's been so helpful to have other people be able to say, to take a look at the business and say like, Oh, hey, have you thought about doing this? Have you thought about doing that? I think investing in in mentorship and coaching has been huge. When I say don't DIY, I think you need that, that help with that guidance. But then it's also looking at, you know, who else do you need to bring on into the team to help you up level, and maybe that's bringing in a marketing strategist, maybe that's investing in SEO for your business so that you can get Google ads up and work with a company that has a proven track record, again, of being able to get those results for you. I think it's really looking outside of yourself and looking at who can help you get to that next level. Yeah. So good.

Ursula Mentjes:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, and we've loved being on this journey with you. And you know, just congratulations. And that's the thing about coaching, right? Like we get to walk with you. But ultimately, you've had to do the all the things like you've had right to walk through your fear of like that growth of hiring 21 people and expanding and that that mindset piece of unwillingness is just as important. So I know you have a gift for our listeners, you want to tell them about that?

Melissa Swink:

I do. Yes, I'm really excited because I just launched a brand new masterclass, and it's called how to hire a virtual assistant to scale your business. And this course is full of tips and strategies that I've learned not only as a VA myself, but then also building my team of vas. And so you can find that on my website at WWW dot Melissa swank.com/masterclass. And I'm sure you'll put the link in the show notes but you can either watch it or listen to it. I wanted to make sure there was an audio component as well. So if you're going for a walk or you know you have a commute or you're on your way to to a meeting or something easy to pop that in and take a listen to it and I promise it will be helpful it no matter where you're at in business, whether you are a solopreneur and you're doing all the things yourself or maybe you're getting help with certain things in the business, or maybe you are actively growing and scaling a team. There's a lot of helpful tips in there as well.

Ursula Mentjes:

Awesome, thank you for that. So how to hire a virtual assistant to scale your business? We'll have that in the show notes. And Melissa, if someone's listening, and they're like, You know what I, I'm ready to hire a virtual assistant and what Melissa just shared really resonates with me, how can they get in touch with you? Just to have a good they have a complimentary call to chat with you or someone on your team? Yes,

Melissa Swink:

absolutely. So if you go to my website, again, www.melissaswink.com. There's a contact button up on that page. There's the homepage, throughout to book a consultation with me. So those go about 30 to 45 minutes and we really dive into you know, what are your goals for your business? Maybe who's on your team currently, maybe it's you maybe you've got a handful of people, and then take a look at okay, what are some of the things that you need some support on in order to get to that next level? And how can we work with you and your existing team to plug in and fill any gaps that might be there?

Ursula Mentjes:

That's awesome. So go to melissaswink.com. In the masterclass one more time, melissaswink.com/masterclass masterclass, as easy as that. One word.com forward slash masterclass. So, you definitely want to go there as well. Melissa swag. Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for three years. I mean, it's been such an honor to take this journey with you and so much fun. Thank you for all that you do. And you share a lot with our CEO table members in our community. So anyway, thank you, and we wish you a phenomenal next 12 months.

Melissa Swink:

Yes, thank you so much. It was great to be on and I hope the information is helpful for your listeners.

Ursula Mentjes:

I'm sure it will be and we look forward to having you back. And thanks for hanging out with us today. We so appreciate you. If you feel compelled to leave us a review that helps other people find the show. And if you have any thoughts for me or if you have a recommended a topic that you'd like me to talk about, you can email us at contact at Ursuline inc.co. That's it for this week. Everybody have your most awesome month yet