The Virtual Success Show

Barbara Turley and Matt Malouf
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The Inside Scoop on Outsourcing Success

  1. 23/04/2025

    How Nathalie Lussier Built a Powerhouse Business Using Virtual Teams

    How Nathalie Lussier Built a Powerhouse Business Using Virtual Teams Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, special guest Nathalie Lussier, who has been making websites since she was 12 years old, takes us through her journey of starting her own business and using virtual teams to help her grow her business to what it is today.  Nathalie takes us back to the beginning when she started with just one VA who was working 5-hours a week, and how she has grown her team to include seven specialists, who span the globe. Some of the areas covered include: The importance of good systems and processes The need for a project management tool Allowing your team to step-up and perform The importance of meetings with your virtual team Tips on engaging the ‘right’ virtual team member Why it is important to adopt the mindset of ‘let it go and have somebody else do it’.     Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.   In this episode: 01:50 – Who is Nathalie Lussier? 03:25 – Nathalie’s virtual team 04:40 – Her first real hire 05:53 – The importance of using a project management tool 07:47 – Good systems and processes already in place 8:23 – Write down your processes, step-by-step 10:57 – Growing the team 13:26 – Allowing your team to step up 16:31 – Managing a big virtual team 18:16 – The importance of meetings 21:54 – Nathalie’s tips on engaging a VA 24:27 – Investment vs expense mindset 26:58 – Share your business vision with your team 28:19 – Wrapping things up Barbara:  Hey everyone, and welcome back to another show of Virtual Success, where we give you the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. I’m joined as always by my fantastic co-host Matt Malouf. Matt how are you?   Matt:  I’m well, how are you Barb?   Barbara:  I’m great thanks, excited about today’s show as always. Because we’ve got a new guest on the show today.   Matt:  Yes.   Barbara:  Nathalie Lussier who a lot of listeners will be very familiar with. Because Nathalie is someone I followed myself, in my own entrepreneurial journey for a long time. She is the founder of Ambition Ally, which has the software tools, “Access Ally” – which is a membership site, a fantastic membership site plugin, I think if I’m using the right term. She also has Popup Ally, which is a popup forum builder on websites.   I love the fact that Nathalie … not only does she have a team, a virtual team that we’re going to talk about today. But she is also a female really going for it in the tech space, which is not that common, getting more common. Nathalie, welcome to the show.   Nathalie:  Thanks for having me here guys.   Barbara:  Great, so Nathalie just to kick off, can you just give us a quick idea of what you’re up to today? A quick synopsis of where you started, and this whole virtual team thing. You started out as I think a web developer? Who is Nathalie Lussier?   Nathalie:  Yeah. I like to go way back to how I got started on the web. I started making websites when I was just 12 years old. I studied software engineering, and I had this job offer on Wall Street that I turned down to start my first business. That very first business was in the hub space and the info-product marketing space.   I quickly learned that my gift was technology, but for some reason when I was in the corporate world I didn’t really enjoy my work in that space. I realised, “okay, let’s go back to tech, let’s focus on that.” So I did do web design in those early days. Then I switched off to doing more website building and more training in the tech space and marketing space. Then eventually I came full circle and I started designing software where instead of teaching people how to use tech tools, I design the tech tools to make it easier for them to achieve their results. So that is how I got to where I am today with our Ambition Ally products for ambitious business owners.   Barbara:  What I love about what you’ve done is that your products are very beautifully designed. They make everything look good. Ambition Ally makes everything look good on your membership site. I’ve had a look at it.   Nathalie:  Exactly. Thank you Barbara:  Very good, talk to us a little bit then, I mean obviously we’re here to talk about virtual teams, and I know you’ve got seven people on your team, including your husband. They’re all virtual, which is great, perfect for this show. Talk to me a little bit about what the team looks like today. Who are they, where are they based? Nathalie’s virtual team Nathalie:  The only people who work together in person are my husband and I. Because obviously, we live together. Those are the two of us, then we’ve got people in- we’ve got one person in Canada, one person on the west coast, two or three in the central timezone, and then one in the Philippines. Basically how it works is, we have a project manager– she really helps to make sure everybody is working on the things they should be working on. It helps progress our different goals and different projects that we’re working on. Then we have development, editorial marketing, and support, there is a lot of things going on. Also editing and project management stuff too. Barbara:  Great, that sounds like a well-oiled machine. Nathalie:  Everybody has their strengths and I think that we work really well together. I’m more than happy to talk about how we make that happen virtually. Because that can be tricky sometimes. Barbara:  Yeah, and I definitely want to get into that. But to kick off, can we just take a step back to your first hire. Did you always know you were going to have this virtual team? What was the first step into that, for you? Her first real hire Nathalie:  The first real hire was virtual, and she’s actually still with us today. Really it was when I was reaching this point where I couldn’t do everything myself anymore. At the time I was doing a lot of consulting, and doing a lot of client work, and I realised, “Okay, like I just can’t handle everything anymore. I need to at least take some of this stuff I’m doing and complete it, or get it ready to go out into the world.” I hired my first virtual assistant. She worked I think five hours a week at most. It was very minimal. We actually had one phone call when I hired her and she was recommended to me. Then we basically did not have a phone call for almost a whole year after that, and we worked together very well surprisingly without any actual phone conversations. We did everything through our project management tool. Which we still use today, which is called Asana. Obviously, any tool you use is going to be great as long as you’re really using it. We basically assigned things and reviewed things through that tool. That was my first hire, kind of … the business that we have today. I did contract with other people before then, but that was the first real deal hire. The importance of using a project management tool Barbara:  What I want to- I just want to- I know Matt’s probably salivating at this point as well, over the fact that … I just want to focus on this area for a second before we move onto the bigger team thing. You’ve mentioned Asana, both Matt and I are huge advocates of Asana, or Trello, or whatever people want to use. The key thing to making this sort of stuff work is using a project management tool. Now you got away with not even having a phone call, so talk to me about that. Because some of clients over at Virtual Angel Hub – We’ve said, “Look, you definitely need a project management tool.” And for those who still struggle we recommend huddles and ten-minute catch-ups each day, and things like that. But talk to me about, how did you … you must have had everything very detailed in Asana if you were able to not even have a phone call. Nathalie:  Yeah, and today we definitely do have phone calls. I’m not saying that I recommend that method. But yeah, definitely we had things very well oiled in Asana. What we had was a lot of recurring tasks. Especially for those early days, some of the things that my virtual assistant did were kind of the same things in and out. Scheduling the newsletter, or handling certain things in support or whatever. They were very specific step-by-step type things.   The other thing that we had, that we still have to this day, is our wiki. On the wiki, I tried to detail and obviously, the team also helps detail, the steps for doing things, so that we don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time. If we get a support ticket, and its like, “okay, how do you handle this specific case?” Usually there is either a wiki, or in our case these days, a canned response. Something that we can use, so that we’re not off the top of our head trying to come up with a solution every single time. Matt:  Nathalie, when you hired your first VA, five hours a week. The projects or tasks that you asked her to do, did you have systems already for those? Good systems and processes already in place   Nathalie:  I sort of did. I didn’t really think of them that way. But I did in my mind. I always did things a certain way. When I realised, “Okay it doesn’t have to be … the works system can be daunting for people.” When I just realised, “Let me just write down how I do things every week.” And she can just take the parts that she’ll handle, and I’ll take the parts that I will always handle. That just made it so much easier. I had to actually write down those things, and how I did them. Sometimes I did record little videos too, or it was like, “Okay, well this is how I click around

    30 min

  2. 03/08/2020

    How to Create an Online Course for Free with Chris Badgett

    How to Create an Online Course for Free with Chris Badgett Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley speaks to Chris Badgett of LifterLMS about the process of creating your own online course and membership sites, and how this will help you and your business especially in the middle of a global crisis. Some key points include: Getting your course ideas out of your head and actually creating them The minimum tech stack needed in order to start an online course or membership site Taking advantage of the current crisis and developing your business online Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group. In this episode: 02:11  How to create an online course for free 06:22  SCIDL Method 09:58  How to avoid getting stuck with the Tech Stack 13:13  Taking advantage of the current crisis 17:20  What does it mean to Pivot your Business 18:30  Having the right Business Mindset this crisis 19:44  Wrapping things up  Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work? Are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show. We bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts, Matt Malouf, and Barbara Turley. Barbara Turley: Welcome everyone to today’s episode of the Virtual Success Show podcast where today I am joined by Chris Badgett, who I’ve had on the podcast before, who’s the founder of the LifterLMS membership site plugin. And we’re here today to talk all about membership sites and why now is the best time ever for you to get your course out of your head onto a learning management system. Like something like Lifter and get it out to the world so obviously, I’m Barbara Turley, your host of the Virtual Success Show podcast and founder of The Virtual Hub. Chris, welcome to today’s show. Chris Badgett: Thanks for having me, Barbara. I’m really excited to get into it with you today. Barbara Turley: Yes, so look, you know, I know loads of people over time have always wanted to create membership sites, online courses and you know as well as I do that people get stuck not just with getting the course out of their heads but getting it onto the platforms, the tech stops people and usually business stops people in that you’re running the day to day running of your business stops you, so now is the best time I think, for a lot of businesses to try to pivot fast and go this route. We’ll talk about kind of the best businesses that can do that in a minute but I was really inspired by your- recently you did a four day course creation boot camp, I think you’d call it online and with the idea of to help people to get a course out of their heads, get out of the weeds and actually get the course created. Can you give us the short and dirty version of how do we do that? And how do we make it less overwhelming? Because it’s quite overwhelming to do it.   How to Create an Online Course for Free Chris Badgett:  Yeah, well, first, I just want to acknowledge the huge problem and this isn’t a new problem because if you think about it, if you’re watching this right now, just raise your hand or smash the like button or whatever, if you have ever thought about writing a book, but you never actually wrote the book. This kind of- this is an age old problem right here too, with creative entrepreneurs and people who want to innovate and are really passionate about a topic or helping a certain type of person. So I see unfortunately, a lot of people get stuck in the weeds of like they’re looking at the mechanism, they’re looking at the course or the membership site, or the coaching program that they’re going to put on the internet and they’re really focused on it. But then there’s this giant gap between, “Alright, I gotta get these tools and I got to do some marketing, I got to do some sales”, But first things first. I need to figure out which course to make, how to make it, how to structure it. So we ran that four day, we call it a course design sprint challenge. I brought in a professional instructional designer from Europe to actually facilitate and lead the process. And really, the worst thing you can do is what I call going into the course creators cave. This is where we go into our home office and work on a course for months and for most people, it actually turns into years, and then it never actually launches or even if it gets built, it never gets like kind of publicly just done, it’s just kind of in, like that screenplay sitting in a box somewhere in your office. So the key to getting out of your head is to start with who, who are you going to help? Like a lot of times, with what I find to get people moving in unstuck is getting outside of the desire of making money online or having an online business. This is all good stuff, I’m not against it. But if we switch our mindset from this is what I need to I’m going to help this specific type of person achieve this specific type of results. It’s not about me and my expertise, it’s about you know, this target market and the result that I can dependably get them even in challenging circumstances, through content coaching and, you know, other resources. Once we have that mindset, we can start reverse engineering from the result, the various milestones that this target customer needs to go through, that we’re going to help them achieve through courses, content, exercises, tools, resources, group coaching, private coaching community, all these things. We put our customer at the center of our education business and not ourselves as a guru or expert and then we guide them on that path. So, and the key to that which we did in the four-day design sprint challenge was doing it out in the open with real people part of the problem with the course creator cave is you don’t have a feedback loop open. So you got to get your target market involved you got to get their feedback, you got to you know, I love this idea of co-creating with the market. You might even adapt the curriculum as you go because you’re finding like there’s other gaps and things they need before they can move on to the next milestone you thought they needed. Well, I could keep going on and on like guide me Barbara.  Barbara Turley:  I was about to say, like, you know, this sort of idea of creating it and actually it requires a lot of ready, fire, aim kind of approach a little bit beginning and for it not to be perfect and for you to be totally fine with that because you may need to go like, you might decide on module four is going to be this and then when people are going through it, you’re like, “Oh, we need to change that”. So I guess, maybe creating a live, I’ve often thought actually, should you just create like, you know, get 10 people who are interested in something and then get them together on a live Skype thing that’s just live and just do the initial course, sort of a live version of it, and then turn it into a course thereafter. It sounds to me like you should just do it on the fly.   SCIDL Method Chris Badgett: Yeah, there’s actually a name for that. I’ve heard it called the Scidl Method, which stands for “Screw it, Do it live”, and what you do is you just figure out a way to get paid from- it’s not about getting a lot of people like you said, 10 people, 5 people, 3 people, it’s more about validating the idea. You could go and Skype, you go in Zoom, whatever you record it, that becomes the first version of your course and then you just keep improving it. I know course creators like, who have been launching the same course every year, twice a year for like 10 years and it gets better and better and better. I like to say that the course launch it’s not the finish line, it’s actually the starting line. And when we have that mindset, running that first version live like you’re talking about is a great way to get moving and get started with real people with a feedback loop open so that the course creators not in the cave, in a vacuum, you know, where all the dragons are that like, sabotage the project. Barbara Turley:  So this is this whole concept that you’ve been talking about actually, it’s like a collaborative approach with your ideal client or customer who you may already have, because that person might need or that company might need more help or whatever. So it’s about listening to the market, collaborating with them on creating what they need. And then being okay with the fact that the first iteration of that course might not be as slick and perfect as you want, but you’re getting feedback and you’re probably still creating a huge amount of value for people who actually take you up on the course offer. Guess that’s kind of where we’re going with it. Chris Badgett:  Totally, totally. My friend Danny says, “If you put some time constraints on it like you don’t have to create the transformational program, your life’s legacy, all your expertise in one”, that’s very dangerous. Imagine you’re on a plane from, Sydney to Los Angeles and that’s all the time you’ve got, maybe a shorter ride, maybe like a 2 to 4 hour ride, and your target market sits down, that person sits down in the seat next to you. And you’re going to help them get that result and you have four hours to do it by giving yourself that constraint that can also help you with not putting, trying to put cram too much into the program, especially the first version.  Barbara Turley:  Well, I guess the way to do that then is to have a launch date and to announce it, we’re starting in two weeks time.  Chris Badgett: That’s all we did with a four day b

    21 min

  3. 20/07/2020

    Office to Remote: The Tech Stack for a Seamless Transition with Peter Moriarty

    Office to Remote: The Tech Stack for a Seamless Transition with Peter Moriarty   Want the transcript? Download it here.   In this episode, Barbara Turley speaks to Peter Moriarty of itGenius and discusses the how-to’s of setting up your company fit for a virtual environment. They talk about creating the right systems and processes in order to effectively manage a remote team.       Some key points include: The tools that you need in order to have a great task and communication flow in your business. Challenges working in a virtual environment Why you should eradicate emails What does it mean to have the right mindset shift     Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.     In this episode: 02:02 Roadblocks when setting up Cloud Based System 04:30 Important G Suite features 07:40 Task Management, Systems and Processes  11:58 Working in a Virtual Environment 15:22 Why Task Management by Email never works 19:21 Tips in getting through this remote setup successfully 26:28 Remote Business Playbook 28:09 Wrapping Things Up    Tools Mentioned: Asana Trello Podio G Suite Dropbox Zoom Skype Slack Zapier Ontraport Active Campaign     Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.     Barbara Turley: Hey, everyone, welcome back to another special edition episode of the Virtual Success podcast where we’re now taking it live online to cope with this COVID-19 crisis that we’re currently all in right now. Today’s guest, I’m talking to Peter Moriarty from itGenius and he’s given me so many tips already before we’ve even started this show. But really what I want to talk about is so many companies have been scrambling to try to move people into a remote or work from home situation over the last few weeks. Me included, I at The Virtual Hub had to move 110 staff very quickly into work from home situations and it was something apart from the issue of not having computers, the actual online or the systems, part of it was very easy because I had actually set it up that way. But I know a lot of companies have been scrambling trying to do this and not really getting it right. So, Peter’s here with us today to talk specifically about how to set your company up to make sure that the next time, hopefully, we never have to do this again. But if you do, you can move fast and that your systems are portable. So Peter, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.     Peter Moriarty: Thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here.      Barbara Turley: So to kick off, can you tell me, I’m sure you see this all the time in your experience with working with companies. A company who comes to you and wants to be more cloud-based or wants to be more nimble in terms of moving people around, what are the major roadblocks and problems that you see in their setup? To kick off.     Roadblocks in Setting Up a Cloud-Based System     Peter Moriarty: Yeah, I’d say it’s always people. But people are always the roadblocks. It’s either processes that are in place, or ways of thinking they’re in place, which are the biggest blockers. And technology change requires people change. And so when you’re going through a process of you know, everyone’s been through a bad technology change at one point in their life, whether that was you know, working in corporate and having someone implementing your system without training people properly, or just, you know, switching from a PC to a Mac, and the first couple of days, kind of not knowing where the buttons are, you know, the frustration and the the fear, it’s not just a fear of change for stop, but it’s certainly, you know, fear of something new and in some ways, maybe to take baby steps. And so, whenever we’re leading any technology change for any business, we always go back to, you know, what are the people, who are the people that are involved, and what are the steps that they need to go through as humans to be ready and okay with that change. So it’s all a change management process, the technology is just the tool or the strategy that’s being implemented.        Barbara Turley: So you find it at the moment, I think what would have happened then with a lot of companies is that people have just been sent to work from home and told, like, here’s zoom, here’s a couple of tools, show up for the meeting tomorrow. I could just imagine how it would work and then people are thinking, “Do I need to download something?”, “How do I get on the meeting?”.      Peter Moriarty: Yeah, I’m expecting the first couple of weeks will be fine. because it’d be like, “Yeah, I’m on zoom, and I’m working from the kitchen table, and isn’t this fun and great!”. And then after then, the poor work boundary sets in or you know, the instant messaging overwhelm sets in, all the burnout sets in when people aren’t working well, or, you know, maybe they haven’t set up their workspace properly. And so they’ll literally have physical fatigue in their body or maybe they’re not getting outside the house for 15 minutes every day and they start getting the cabin fever settling in. So, I worry for the challenges that will come in the coming weeks and months.        Barbara Turley: Yeah, right, okay. So talk about, let’s talk about G Suite. I mean, that is the kind of, you know, I know you do lots of change management, you do a lot of consulting and we’re a G Suite user, we are client of yours. Talk to me about, I mean, G Suite, I already know, like, we’re not using it to the level that we should be, right? So talk me through some of the major features that you see people not using effectively enough within let’s say, G Suite. I’m still asking this for my own benefit as well. And, you know, how can we quickly sort of turn some of that stuff on and figure out how to roll it out?     Important G Suite features     Peter Moriarty: Yeah, for starters, anyone who’s considering adopting G Suite, the easiest way to explain like what G Suite is and why you might consider using Google Cloud over the Microsoft ecosystem, or you know, any kind of hodgepodge of other things is that you know, G Suite is like the Tesla you know, Tesla doesn’t have a drive train. It doesn’t have a million moving parts cooling system, all these electrical systems and the energy and all those different bits to make a gasoline car work, you know, petrol fuel injection, all those things, Tesla just has a couple of moving parts, I think there’s only five or 10 moving parts in the whole car. And that’s about it. So G Suite is simpler. It’s a bit like moving from a Windows machine to a Mac, it’s simpler but all the things that you need are there. And what I love about that is it means that you get out of your own way, and you’re able to just get work done.     So most businesses will have Dropbox for their files, they’ll be using Zoom for their video conferencing, they’ll be maybe using Skype for chat, or Microsoft Teams, or whatever and they’ll be using Office for documents. And they’ve got to kind of like try and put all those things together, whereas the Google ecosystem is simpler. But if you just kind of do everything the Google way, then everything works nicely in there. So what works really really great is using Hangouts chat, which is a bit like Slack, right? And many people are using slack as well. Hangouts chat is a bit like slack but it’s got really great integration with your calendar and integration with Hangouts for video calls as well. Google rebranded that is as Meet and so you can be chatting to someone to chat back and forward and you realize, “Hey, you know what, actually, we need to jump on a video call and have a quick call about this”, you click one button, and then bang, both of you are in a video call. Or maybe you’re working on a Google document and you want to share that with a colleague, if you drop the URL into the document, it’ll automatically share that document with the person that you just sent it to in chat. So you don’t have to, you know, do the double sharing type thing. So there are a couple of things that are built in.     The other things just broadly with Google is all of the AI integration. So you know, they’re auto composing emails, now. They’re giving you suggested replies in your email inbox, and even in the Gmail app, Google now say that, over 30% of all emails, over 30% of all emails through Gmail, are actually using the AI suggested replies, which is just crazy, you know, it’s only been out for six months now. And now 30% of emails are being written by at least in part by AI. So those little bits and pieces that make your day easier. That’s what I really love about the Google ecosystem and I think even using a Google spreadsheet instead of an Excel sheet sitting in Dropbox and waiting for it to synchronize back and forth, you know, many businesses, not even using something like a live document to share information together.      Barbara Turley: Yeah, I mean, I know, look, we’re not, I got some tips of things we should be using G Suite. But I know that one of the reasons we were able to move very quickly, and work from home was because we are G Suite user. And we do heavily use the drive and the live document sharing and you can just do that from anywhere, I mean, it’s, you know, we don’t have servers, we don’t have-, everything that

    29 min

  4. 06/07/2020

    Scaling Your Delegation Game with Nigel Bennett of Aqua Guard Spill Response

    Scaling up the Delegation Game with Nigel Bennett, Co-Founder of Aqua-Guard Spill Response Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley speaks to Nigel Bennett of Aqua-Guard Spill Response about how to delegate effectively, how to grow your team, and avoid Business Owner Burnout.   Some key points include: The importance of having a business coach How to manage business owner burnout Why you need to invest time and energy in training your people The importance of systems and processes in your business   Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.   In this episode: 02:18  Aqua-Guard Spill Response 05:52  Business Owner Burnout 11:38   How to Delegate more effectively 18:38  Organic Growth in your Business 19:58   Processes and Systems  21:12   The importance of Life Rhythm in your Business 27:35  Who should manage the people and the teams in your Business 28:38  Keeping in touch with your team during this pandemic 32:19   Nigel’s experience with Burnout Business Owners 37:19   Fight, Flight, or Freeze 40:34  Final thoughts 42:23  Wrapping things Up Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley. Barbara Turley: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Virtual Success Show podcast where I’m your host as always Barbara Turley. I do co-host this show with my co-host, Matt Malouf, who’s not with us today. But my guest today, I’m joined by Nigel Bennett, who is the co-founder and owner of Aqua-Guard Spill Response. And also because I want to mention your book, also author of the book, “Take that leap, risking it all for what really matters” and he’s also the founder of TruBeach. He’s been a member of the entrepreneurs organization for 15 years, has won a whole pile of awards and not even gonna go into how many they are but I met Nigel on a mastermind call that I had the pleasure to be on a few weeks ago, when I heard his story about, how he has managed to not just delegate effectively, but has actually managed to remove himself pretty much completely from the day to day operations of his business. So Nigel, welcome to the show and thank you so much for joining me. Nigel Bennett: Hi, Barbara. Thank you so much. It’s, it’s the pleasure. Pleasure to be on your show. I’m in. I’m in Whistler here in British Columbia, and you’re in Chamonix, I guess. And Barbara Turley: Yeah, we’re both in the ski slopes but there’s no snow, we’re not allowed to ski Nigel Bennett: No snow and we can’t go out, Yeah, I know. Barbara Turley: During this crisis time and you know, like it’s been really great connecting with so many entrepreneurs at the moment during this crisis time that we’re currently in. But Nigel, to kick off just give us the quick you know, Aqua-Guard Spill Response and what I love about this company and about me finally interviewing you, is that it’s different from most of the types of businesses that we’ve had on the podcast or that I’ve been talking to in that it’s kind of, it’s way off the charts from what I would normally be doing in the digital world or whatever. So give us the quick synopsis of what it is.   Aqua-Guard Spill Response Nigel Bennett: Yeah, we’re an emergency response company. If you go way back, right out of high school, I was working for my father’s environmental mapping company. And next day after high school I was I was on a plane down to Venezuela. And I live in Vancouver, and I’d never really been out of the country very much. So I was. I was doing overflights over Lake Maracaibo taking photographs of the coastline for environmental mapping. And within the first couple of days of my arrival there, I was being shot up by the FARC guerrillas that are on that Colombian Venezuelan border. So that was a real wake up call for an 18 year old kid. But I spent 10 years doing that type of work around the globe. I was in 10 different countries and I had a long stint in Egypt and there was a helicopter flight that I had over the Sinai Peninsula with an American ex Vietnam pilot. And I flew over and there was people in the back and he told me, you know, not to show them my camera, because if they saw my camera, we could be thrown in jail as spies, so I was terrified that was probably 22 by now. And so we were flying over this area, and all I saw was pipeline after pipeline after pipeline that had been ruptured, and it was flowing into the Red Sea. So I was taking photographs of this stuff, and I landed back at the helicopter base, and he said to me, he said, “I know why I took you up here and I took you into some areas I’m not supposed to take you, make sure that these photographs get back to the right people and that they see them”. And he said, “I know what you’re doing”, But he looked at me. He said, “Do you really think you can make a difference?” And I was like I was a young kid and of course I’m gonna make a difference. So that really, really resonated me for the rest of my life. It’s a long story, I wrote this, my experiences in my book. But I was there for about five years on and off in Egypt, looking at these oil spills that were just horrific. And unfortunately, my father was incarcerated because I was working for my father’s company he came to, he came to visit at the end of our project, and he was thrown in jail and I had to escape out of the country and it was a crazy story. But I ended up coming back to Vancouver and I broke off my father’s company, because I had so many clients around the world that I had met that needed help. And I was going to a technical college at the time, British Columbia Institute of Technology and I was in a Mechanical Engineering program. And I got another guy from that company and he was working for my father as well and we broke off and formed Aqua-Guards Spill Response and what we do is we design and we manufacture, spill response equipment to contain and to recover marine oil spills. So everything from like the Exxon Valdez in Alaska In 1989, all the way to the BP horizon down in the Gulf of Mexico, and we’ve been involved in business about 104 countries around the world, we have about 3000 clients. Yeah, so that’s a bit of a, I don’t know if I went on a bit too long there but that’s a bit of a long and short of it. Barbara Turley: Well the thing from that is, that is a huge operation to run. And that sort of brings us into kind of what we’re going to talk about today. So when you were saying that, I think I remember you saying when we were chatting that I’ve read some of your articles about this that you literally wanted to give up where you got to the point where you were just so burnt out from doing everything. And the ops and the whole thing that you just wanted to get out. Let’s start there, a lot of people that are being burned out now, right now. You want to get out, right?   Business Owner Burnout Nigel Bennett: I know, I know. Absolutely. And I I totally feel for them. We’ve gone through this, I don’t know four or five major times in my Career life. There’s that whole period. You know, when you’re a start up, you get out and you start your own thing. Like when I did with my father, I broke off, I had no money, complete debt. My wife had more money than I had. And we bought a little house and we basically rented everything out. And so, I was building up this company called Aqua-Guard, and we had a little bit of business, we had everything leveraged. And then, we hit a couple of home runs, because after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, they had to redo all of the equipment in Alaska. And we just happened to nail a really nice contract at that time. And it went from being a startup to the phase of absolute chaos, and I call it a doorknob effect. So I would get to the office every morning and I’d put my hand out and I would touch the doorknob, and it would almost vibrate because I knew what was going on inside the office. I knew there was absolute chaos. I would take a deep breath, you know, and I would open the door and I’d step in into an absolute bees nest and it went on for 20 years like that. In the shower every morning not knowing if I could make payroll or if I have to lay people off or if I could hire people, you know, it was just this up and down roller coaster, and a friend of mine, he was a football player in the Canadian Football League. It was a 320 pound lineman, big, big boy. He had just retired out of professional football and he saw what I was going through and he literally grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and he said, Nigel, I’ve joined this organization, it’s called the Young Entrepreneurs Organization. It was called the Young Entrepreneurs Organization at the time, it’s now called EO, the Entrepreneurs Organization. And he says, “You have to come to a meeting with me”, and I just thought there’s no way, I don’t have time. I’ve got three little kids, my business is out of control, I have not got time to go and even step put my big toe in anything like that and he literally grabbed me and he took me there. So I went to my first meeting and I actually got recruited into what they call a forum group, a focus group of nine people. And my wife and I talked about this to this day. I mean, this was 20 years ago that I joined. And we talked about is that if we had not joined or been dragged into the Entrepreneurs Organization at that time, I don’t know where we would be, we

    43 min

  5. 22/06/2020

    How to Hire A-Players Consistently with a Streamlined Recruitment Process

    How to Hire A-Players Consistently with a Streamlined Recruitment Process   Want the transcript? Download it here.   In this episode, Barbara Turley and her co-host Matt Malouf discuss The Virtual Hub’s recruitment process, what makes it different from others, and the secret to hiring A-players in your business.     Some key points include: The importance of having a great recruitment process Three key things to remember when recruiting How to determine A-players from B and C-players     Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.     In this episode: 2:39 The Virtual Hub’s Recruitment Process 8:40 Recruitment Status in this Crisis 11:05 How to avoid bringing in the wrong people 14:20 Attitude vs Skill 17:48 Three key fundamentals in Recruiting 21:59 Wrapping things up     Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.     Matt Malouf: Hi, everyone and welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I’m joined by my co host, Barbara Turley. Hi, Barbara. How are you today?     Barbara Turley: I’m great Matt and you?     Matt Malouf: Yep, going really, really well… really well. Very excited to starting to see what we’re coming out of lockdown through this pandemic that we’ve been going through and life is starting to get back to some form of normality. How is it on the; I’m in Australia today and your in France. How’s it, how’s things over in your neck of the woods?      Barbara Turley: Well, you know, I’m just excited too Matt because the restaurants are opening this week. So, you know, we’re slowly opening up, but we can finally have a glass of wine somewhere else other than our house. So that’s got to be a good thing. So but yeah, very slowly opening up, everyone wearing masks where we are. But I guess that’s the right thing to do for now. But good to see us all opening up again.     Matt Malouf: And today’s show, I wanted to actually spend some time interviewing Barbara, because we’ve been having a few conversations recently off air. And one of the most interesting things that we’ve been talking about is the recruitment process. And the hiring of VAs and how Barbara and her team are doing that process at the moment. But the, I guess, not just about the process, around, I guess the numbers behind how many VAs are the like you’ve got to go through or interview to get to a diamond and I wanted to share that with everybody today because I think it’s an area of business that so many business owners struggle with, which is hiring a little and hiring their VA. So I wanted to spend some time just getting Barbara’s insights and sharing that with you all today. So Barbara, I guess let’s start with regards to hiring VA’s and the like. What is the sort of process? Is it just a, do you just follow a traditional recruitment process? Or are you doing something a little bit different to test and find the right people?       The Virtual Hub’s Recruitment Process     Barbara Turley: Yeah, great question, Matt. Because, you know, a lot of people would have different definitions of what is the traditional recruitment process, I suppose in most people’s head, that is put out a job ad, get a load of applications, look at a few resumes, narrow them down, interview a few people and pick the one you like the most. Over the years, you know, you start off doing that. But really and I know we did a full show on this, you and I before where I dissected out our recruitment process, and it is a lengthy process that we go through that involves a lot of metrics.     And it is very, we only bring in the relationship piece at the very, very end of the process. So what I mean by that is, we don’t even interview people until they’ve jumped through about 10 different hoops, and we’ve tested them in certain areas. And only at that point, are we sort of saying we’re interested in meeting with them and having a chat. And interestingly, 50% of people still fail at that stage, even though like the majority have already fallen at the other hurdles that we’ve set along the way. And still, in that interview stage, 50% of people will fail right there. So it’s very difficult.         Matt Malouf: I mean, for many business owners, just even the thought of 10 steps before he gets to an interview. They’d be probably sitting there going, I don’t have the time for that. Why such a lengthy process, Barb?     Barbara Turley: Well, in my experience, if you want to get you know, everyone says they want to hire A-players. But in order to find a true A-player, it’s like you have to kiss a lot of frogs, right? Because you don’t know, the people applying for jobs, depending on the type of the level of role that you’re looking at. But you know, when we’re recruiting for VAs, for example, it’s not a lower level job, but I mean, it’s not a leadership position. It’s not at, the pool is large. So when you’re, when depends what rank you’re going for in a company. But when you’re looking for a kind of a rank and file sort of position, where the masses might come and apply, and especially if you’re saying that you offer training, like for example, the way we do, you’re going to get people who are switching industry and that sort of thing happening.     So in our experience to try to find the A-players, they don’t often walk through the door with the correct color coat on, if you know what I mean. So you have to kind of, you can often find diamonds in the rough. And you have to be able to look past certain things so that you might find the diamonds that you’re looking for. I hope that makes sense. It’s kind of a difficult thing. And really, metrics is the way to filter it fast, is to filter a lot of people down to the people you actually want to speak to.         Matt Malouf: Yeah, it’s so interesting. Like, you wouldn’t think something like recruitment would come back to metrics, but the numbers don’t lie in any area of business. And I think that’s the key. And once you, the only way to get a set of metrics, like what you’re talking about, is through spending a lot of time and having a large data set to be able to produce that.       Barbara Turley: Well, if you think about it, Matt as well, I was just thinking there, you know, the majority of people, the majority of businesses, spend little or no time or you know, scant time on recruiting. They might pay an agency, they might spend but really is it a folk? Is it a department within the business, usually not unless you’re a very large company. But if you think about it, the people that you’re bringing in and allowing to walk through the door of your business, if you put as little energy into your, you know, account your finance area, or your delivery of product or sales or your marketing area, as most businesses do in the recruitment area, your entire business would fail.     So, in The Virtual Hub, recruitment is like one of the linchpin departments where we say to ourselves, every time we see a problem within the company, even if it’s like, after two years of having the same employee, we actually look back and go, Hmm, we look back at all their recruitment, testing and all of the notes that we took through the entire process, and we try to figure out whether we should have seen that or whether we can recruit that out in future. That’s how much energy we put into it.         Matt Malouf: That’s brilliant. The number of people that will not do that, they’ll actually point the finger at the person versus taking responsibility and going back, right at the beginning of the process and going, how could we have changed things back here? Is there anything that we need to improve or change right at the beginning? Oh, that’s amazing, you know? I mean, that’s a really important point for everyone to take home. It’s taking the responsibility, and then understanding how we can make it better. That’s brilliant Barb.       Barbara Turley: Well, you know, when you’re talking about setting expectations Matt, we did a show on setting expectations with your team. And you know, when somebody doesn’t meet expectations, or somebody doesn’t, you know, perform on the job or whatever and you think you just have, how could they have been so confused? If that thought goes through your head for a moment, think about how they could have been so confused, potentially. It happened way back in the ad that you put out for the job. Potentially, not always.     But if you go right back to the source, you’ll think well, how did this person first walk through our door? It was the ad and how was that written? What were they told in the entire process that they came through? And then on the onboarding and the training and the coaching and the quarterly catch-ups and all this stuff going forward, either they were just a C-player that you hired, you thought they were an A-player, and or it was your process that caught the whole thing out, maybe, just worth asking those questions.     Matt Malouf: And so in the current climate, Barb, what are you, as you’re recruiting for VA, are you seeing anything different at the moment?         Recruitment Status in this Crisis     Barbara Turley: Yes, yes and no. Okay, so yes, in that we are seeing large numbers of people applying for jobs, which you know, is always great because once the

    23 min

  6. 08/06/2020

    Vital Business Cash flow Management with Matt Malouf

    Vital Business Cashflow Management with Matt Malouf Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley is joined by her co-host Matt Malouf to talk about How to Manage Cash Flow in a Crisis and Lead your Business to Survival and come out Strong.   Some of the key points include: What is cash flow analysis and how it is done How to survive in this crisis  The difference between a Bookkeeper, an Accountant, and a CFO The importance of numbers/data in your business   Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.   In this episode: 02:06  Cashflow Analysis and Forecasting 05:48  How to help business owners with their Cash flow statements 08:48  Reacting vs Responding 10:57   Importance of Cashflow analysis during this crisis 18:39   90daycashflow.com 22:03   Accountant vs CFO 26:56   Importance of numbers in the business 28:06   Wrapping things up Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley. Barbara Turley: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I’m finally rejoined again, I’ve managed to coax my co-host, Matt Malouf, back to join me on this show. I’m your co-host, Barbara Turley. Matt, thanks for coming back and joining us on the show again, Matt Malouf: No worries and yeah. So sorry, I haven’t been, I’ve been so proud of all the episodes you’ve been doing and we should’ve been on there. It’s just been one of those crazy times at the moment. Barbara Turley: Absolutely. I know if, we’re you know, as we’re recording this today. We’re sort of right in the middle of this Coronavirus situation that’s going on. But it’s a very interesting time for the show Matt. And you know, the concept of remote working and virtual teams. And we’ve actually seen a massive uplift in people interested in actually the podcast. And the stuff we’ve been talking about for the last three years on this podcast has all of a sudden become even more important than ever before. So what I wanted to talk to, I’m getting Matt back on the show specifically to talk today about cash flow. It’s not really a virtual team kind of topic, but it’s important in the environment that we’re in right now. And Matt, you’ve been out talking a lot about cash burn, cash flow forecasting, managing your cash and being lean in this environment, but not so lean that you can’t come out strong. So I want to dig into this topic with you. First of all, let’s start with talking about cash flow analysis and forecasting and watching your cash. Can you start at the beginning and talk to us about what do we actually do to do that? Because lots of us don’t even know how to do that. Cashflow Analysis and Forecasting Matt Malouf: Let me start with I think the importance around cash flow is that it’s more than just looking at your bank account. And I was, I did a presentation this morning. I think one of the biggest mistakes so many smaller, medium business owners make is their key report that they rely on in their business is an ATM receipt, to tell them what’s going on in their business. And the reality is that cash in your business is like oxygen to a human, where you can only last a very short period of time without oxygen and in a business can only last a very short period of time without cash. And so, in normal practices, in normal and I’m using very common, as in normal times, we should be managing our cash flow. What does that mean, that means we should be predicting based on our leads and conversion, cash coming in. And we need to factor in things like, if our business invoices, what’s our average collection period, and being very conservative on our predictions on cash in. And then the second part of that is in looking and having a deep understanding of cash leaving our business and that’s gonna be in the form of our fixed expenses. So things like your rent, if you’ve got salaried employees, if you’ve got loan repayments that you may make, if you’ve got other kinds of subscription services or contractors that you pay regularly, if fixed expenses, their expenses that you are incurred, irrespective of whether you make a sale or not. And then you’ve got to factor in your variable expenses into this cash burn rate. And then 30 in this way, so many business owners, they get it wrong and they fix it. It’s the non p&l cash transactions. So things like taxes that you have to pay. It might be inventory, often, you know, inventory is not impacting your profit and loss statement. It’s impacting your balance sheet. And so that cash that’s coming out of your business, cash that you need to spend in order if you don’t have any stock, you can’t sell any goods, but it’s often not calculated. And this is where you need to get really clear and understand that a cash flow statement is very different to a profit and loss budget. Barbara Turley: Our business is even doing a cash flow statement. No I’m not. Are we doing cash flow statements? Do you find clients are really doing this stuff? Matt Malouf: They’re not, but that’s why they’re wondering why they don’t have cash in their account. It’s why they’re sitting there looking at their p&l is going “I’ve got a profitable business, but I’ve got no cash”. And that’s often the gap is they don’t understand the impact of these non p&l items that are impacting their cash. Barbara Turley: Yeah, I think this is a major problem. And I think at the moment when people are feeling in a crisis situation, like what we’re in right now, which is impacting business a lot and there’s handouts coming from governments, and there’s banks like deferring loans and stuff like that. It’s actually very difficult to get the headspace right to sit down and figure this out. So what, how are you helping clients with this? And how can we, how can we do this better for anyone listening? How to help business owners with their Cash flow statements   Matt Malouf: So the first thing we’re getting everyone to do first, first of all, you’ve got to have clean data. And what I mean by that is that your accounts need to be up to date, they need to be reconciled. You can’t understand where things are at if you’ve got messy data or out of date data. The second thing is then going line by line through the last three months at a minimum of what cash has gone out of your business. And asking yourself, Is this still necessary for us to operate and move forward? And I guess it’s a bit like, you’ve got to cut the fat out of your business. But what you don’t want to do, you don’t want to deplete muscle or bone. You just want to cut the fat out because the muscle and bone is essential for you to be able to not only survive through this, but then thrive on the other side of it. So you know, things like, a lot of the things that we’re seeing, their nice to have. So it may have been, yeah items that you had in your office, kitchen. It may have been subscriptions that you may have only use part of the time, but not all the time. I had some clients that had, they had a Click Funnels account, a lead pages account, they had this, they had four things that could do the same thing. And so it was a case of actually going through line by line over the last three months and looking at all of that. The third thing then is understanding what is required for you to continue to operate your business and move forward. And so what happens is people just slash and burn and they cut and they cut and they cut and they cut and they cut. And then all of a sudden, they’re the person doing everything. And they’re like wondering why they’re not moving forward with any speed or not able to generate any revenue and cash. coming in.   Barbara Turley: Yeah, we saw with our clients just with The Virtual Hub exactly this was happening. Initially, people were like, “Ohh slash the VA, slash the team, slash everything. And then they came back couple of weeks later going, “Oh, we need to cancel the cancel”. Because they realize that actually if this, Yes, they were trying to cut costs, but then they were sitting up to two o’clock in the morning doing landing pages or doing stuff or do answering, you know, customer support tickets or whatever it was that they were cutting. And then they’ve no time energy, they might have a bit of money left, but they’ve no time energy or anything left to actually drive the business forward and get out of this crisis. So we did see that happen and people kind of panicked and cancel the service and then try and then came back looking to uncancel it, and one client actually came back and grew, which was quite interesting. Reacting vs Responding Matt Malouf: Yeah, and we were the same with coaching. The first thing people’s reaction was to cut business coaching, but once they settle down their response was, “Hey, we need you more than ever”. And I think that’s an important point that I wanted to hear, it’s, are you reacting? Or are you responding? and reacting is very emotional. It’s very short term thinking. It’s not even often even tactical, it’s just, it’s that field. And not a lot of thought that’s gone into it versus responding is strategic. And you need to be being strategic through this time. Otherwise, you won’t have a business off the other side. And that’s not being dramatic. I just, that’s my, true to my belief right now.   Barbara Turley: I firmly b

    30 min

  7. 27/05/2020

    To Pivot or to Pause with Jenny Blake

    To Pivot or to Pause with Jenny Blake   Want the transcript? Download it here.   In this episode, Barbara Turley speaks to Jenny Blake about the Concept of Pivoting. They talk about taking control of your business and recognizing the opportunities that are out there in the midst of the current global crisis.     Some of the key points include: How to pivot your business  How far ahead should you plan when pivoting Should you pivot your business or should you hold off     Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.     In this episode: 02:23 How to get the right mindset when pivoting 05:11  How to listen more effectively 08:55 Rising into a pivot from a negative mindset 13:05  The Next Steps 15:52  The Pivot Runway 20:26 The Important thing about pivoting 22:30 Final thoughts 25:09 Wrapping things up   Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.   Barbara Turley: Hey everyone social medialand… Welcome to another episode of our special COVID-19 series of the Virtual Success Show podcast. I’m your host, Barbara Turley and today I am joined by somebody who has become somewhat of a friend. Jenny Blake is author of pivot, the book called “Pivot: The only move that matters is your next one” and she also hosts the podcast, Jenny what’s the name of the podcasts?   Jenny Blake: Pivot with Jenny Blake   Barbara Turley: Yeah so welcome to the show, Jenny and she’s here to talk to us today about this whole concept of pivoting, it’s very easy to talk about it and everybody out there right now is talking about how in this crisis, that you know of course there’s gonna be opportunity there’s gonna be opportunity absolutely everywhere because in every crisis there is and those who know how to pivot, and those who can handle the pace of pivoting and pull it off can do quite well. From my own experience over the last what, we’re five weeks into this whole thing, 5-6 weeks into this thing and what I have personally found difficult and I wanted to talk to Jenny about this today is, you know when you’re coming out of saving your business in the initial stages of the crisis and then you have to try to shift very quickly into a different frame of mind, which is the creative side of yourself.     To try to pivot your business and get the animal spirits flowing again of entrepreneurship and it’s hard to wake up every day and to try and get yourself into the right mindset to do it, when you’ve come out of kind of being you know, beaten over the head every day with your ops and trying to save your clients and save the business. So Jenny, welcome to the show and talk to us about you know, how do we quickly shift this mindset and how much of it is mindset, if you can talk to us about that.    How to get the right mindset when pivoting   Jenny Blake: Well there’s so much that you said there and I think one thing is giving ourselves permission to be on this roller coaster and have, that’s really one we do train for us entrepreneurs, is that exact journey, that exact roller coaster, but right now during a global pandemic, a crisis, the volume to such metaphors, the volume on that station just got turned all the way up to a ten. So we’re gonna, I feel that the highs are high and the lows are pretty low and what you described Barbara is so important is, I don’t know about you but I also, simultaneous to all the stress I felt a lot of adrenaline tried to navigate every single day these first five weeks and I do a lot of keynote speaking and traveling for work, all of that was canceled, not all of it went straight to virtual.   So there is a big lull in my business and a lot of companies that I do large-scale pivot programs have their budgets on hold because they’re doing the same thing we are, trying to batten down hatches, tighten the belts and weather the storm. So, I found myself with adrenaline, the highs and lows and then as you said, now, they’re still, I still feel we’re in listening mode, a little bit of what do people really need.     There is a lot of noise now of everyone who is kind of freaking out and figuring you know how do we pivot during this time, so for me listening comes a little bit before creating and sometimes in parallel too and during the creation process and part of the skill of this and entrepreneurs have already a great head start is navigating the creative process, staying open to that, staying receptive so that we’re not in panic mode because you can’t create from panic mode. While still holding the operational side in our minds and still addressing that because I don’t think we’re done making those shifts either.   Barbara Turley: Yes, I love that you’ve said listening, because I definitely I think the pressure I was feeling, I can imagine a lot of people out there are feeling the same, is that you feel this pressure to, “Okay I’ll fix that, I’ve done that bit, I now need to pivot” and you’re sort of thinking well, I actually did it quite quickly and I developed this whole new thing that we were going to go out to market with and we haven’t, because something in my gut has sort of said to me, “Hold on, maybe just follow the horse up there for a second”.     I’ve questioned why I been holding off, it doesn’t feel quite right yet, and probably because I think what you’re saying I just went straight for the pivot and didn’t necessarily listen that deeply and the market is still trying to figure out what it’s doing itself and where this is all landing. But how long should we listen for? I mean you know, when you say listening, can you give us some tips around how to sort of, how to listen, how to listen more effectively to what’s really out there.         How to listen more effectively     Jenny Blake: I love what you just highlighted which is listening to your own intuition and I’ll give you a similar example with all my big corporate programs on pause or cancelled or postponed. I started to think, well should I just email all my former coaching clients and bring on a whole slew of coaching work which is what I did to sustain myself as bridge income for nine years but I made the commitment to myself in 2020 that I wanted to work on the business, not delivering services. So even though I like coaching, in fact I often love coaching, I’ve been doing it since 2008. I, just like you, I’m hesitating because there’s something about it that isn’t honoring my original intention and where I saw myself growing in the vision.     It would almost be a move, a stopgap move and I’m not ready to make that move yet and I do think that it’s important to pause until you feel very clear, that yes I would choose this path, not just out of fear but out of excitement and possibility because otherwise even the pivot you were thinking of making with your team there’s probably a very valid reason that you haven’t hit the launch button yet and it’s important to know what those are and I think that’s part of not freaking out and that’s a privilege depending on how much cash runway each of it has as well, so there may come a point where that runway is totally gone and we need to do whatever it takes and that’s fine too, but what you’re highlighting is not jumping straight to whatever it takes such that you’re digging yourself out of a project-based hole on the other side of this, in addition to financial.   Barbara Turley: Yeah, that’s really good advice, yeah   Jenny Blake: In terms of specific strategies for listening, things like getting on the phone with former clients, current clients, and you Barbara, potential clients, so the reason we’re here today is that instead of having someone on your team, take my inquiry about working with you, you got on the phone and so in a way, that helps you get more closely in touch with the people that you’re serving and what they need-   Barbara Turley: Yeah, I was telling you that I needed, I felt the need to know these calls with clients now because I wanted to listen to what people were asking for now. So actually, there might be, I suppose I was kind of listening.   Jenny Blake: And it puts you in closer touch with the pulse of your business and your client base and I’ll share just one more strategy because I think it’s brilliant, my friend Leanne Hughes, she hosts a podcast called First-time facilitator in Australia. She put her listening to her right out on the podcast, she said “If any of you listening want to book me for 20 minutes, I just want to hear what’s on your mind, here’s my Calendly link and let’s chat”. So that’s an open call you know, it goes far beyond, even her current clients and just anybody that happens to be listening, so imagine, though I call it serendipity popcorn of that. Who’s gonna schedule? and Barbara, say, to you and your team’s credit, you also have an open scheduling link on your website, so it’s very broad, in a way you’re constantly listening by doing that.   Barbara Turley: Yeah and what I wanted to sort of veer into now is, I think for me, what ended up happening and you know, I like to share my own experience with this, so you know you guys listening to this, this is actually coming from my own experience, what I’ve been going through and I know others are going through this. I sort of realized that I had made that knee-jerk reaction of thinking that I had to pivot, because

    28 min

  8. 13/05/2020

    The Power of Podcast Marketing with Interview Valet Founder Tom Schwab

    The Power of Podcast Marketing with Interview Valet Founder Tom Schwab Want the transcript? Download it here. In this episode, Barbara Turley speaks to Tom Schwab of Interview Valet about the rising relevance of podcasts especially with the current global crisis and the opportunities podcasts present to business owners everywhere.   Some of the key points include: How to leverage your business with podcast and podcast guestings When to become a podcast host and/or a podcast guest. How to repurpose old podcasts in order to get more traffic and attract more listeners.   Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.   In this episode: 02:09  Why Podcasts are a brilliant marketing strategy 04:10  How to capitalise on Podcasts 06:39  What makes a great podcast guest 09:17  How to be different with Podcasts 12:16  Content amplification and repurposing 15:11  Growth of the podcast industry 18:46  Wrapping things Up Intro:  Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work? Are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the virtual success show. We bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. And now, here are your hosts, Matt Malouf, and Barbara Turley. Barbara Turley: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the virtual Success Show where we are streaming live now online for our episodes of the show. I’m Barbara Turley, your host, I co-host this show with my good friend Matt Malouf. And today we’re here to talk about the very topical topic right now of podcasts and I’m joined by, good friend and someone I work very closely with, Tom Schwab from Interview Valet, who is the go to guy if you want to be talking about podcasts, you know, getting on podcasts, getting guests on your podcast. Welcome to the show, Tom, thanks for joining us today. Tom Schwab:  Barbara, I am thrilled to be here. And there’s a lot of problems in the world. But there is no better time to be alive. We look at the technology that we have. And still, we can reach customers around the world. Barbara Turley: Absolutely, yes. So you know, like, guys, you guys watching the Facebook Live, you know that we are in a major crisis right now. There are many crises that happened throughout time. I have to say I was thinking today to myself, I’m old enough now to say that this is not my first rodeo with crises like this. We’ve had the 2008 financial crisis, we had the tech bubble collapse, and in my career, I’ve been through a couple of these. So it’s every crisis brings its own challenges, but I always feel that they’re crises nonetheless and some things that we do in business are the same. Now in this particular situation that we’re in right now. I feel podcasts are really gonna be it. So Tom, talk to us about, first of all, why podcasts, in general, are a brilliant marketing strategy for any business right now. But also why now specifically.     Why Podcasts are a brilliant marketing strategy Tom Schwab: Well, the way I look at it is that every business’s biggest problem is obscurity, right? There are millions – thousands, millions of customers that you could serve right now, with your current product, your current offering, your current service. The only problem is they don’t know you exist. Right now a lot of people talk about breaking through the noise. Honestly, I think that’s like adding to the noise, right? The idea that I’m going to yell and somebody’s gonna hear me, I think is laughable, right? So, if I can get in on the conversation that my ideal customers are already listening to, that’s golden. If I can get introduced by somebody that is a trusted resource, a trusted friend of theirs, that’s golden. And really, that’s what podcasts and especially podcast interview marketing is all about, right? So, most of the people listening, watching, have no idea who Tom Schwab is, but they know who Barbara Turley is. They know the Virtual Success Show. They love that. And so there’s that transfer of authority. And so I think it’s a time-proven strategy, but it’s using current technology to connect with people in here. You know, here I am in Kalamazoo, Michigan. If I can do podcasts, and podcasts interviews from Kalamazoo, Michigan, you can do it from anywhere. Barbara Turley: And I’m in France, right? So I’m here in the French Alps actually, stuck in the middle of the virus thing that’s going on right now and where we are. So Tom, with everything that’s going on right now. I mean, everyone’s kind of in panic mode, still wondering what’s going to happen next. But the one thing that I know I am certain of right now is everybody is on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, podcasts, webinars, like everybody is online right now because everyone’s stuck at home in this particular crisis that we’re in. So talk to me about you know, what, how can we capitalize on this fast with podcasts and we haven’t got a podcast yet. You know, podcast guestings, that’s another thing that people don’t really know is an opportunity, right now talk with more about that, How to capitalise on Podcasts Tom Schwab: You know, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity that we have here. So you can look at it as a problem or as an opportunity. One of my, you know, I’ve been on 1200, podcasts, interviews, I’ve never launched my own podcasts, I’m going to take this opportunity to start doing that. But that’s going to be a long term play, that’s not going to get results for six to twelve months. The fastest way to get results with podcasts is using other people’s platforms for the leverage. So you know, a lot of times in finance, we’ll talk about other people’s money and leveraging that. It’s the same thing with media, right? So, if you can leverage other people’s platforms, instead of just building your own from scratch, that’s golden. So find somebody that already is talking to your audience that’s already trusted by your audience and go to them and show them the value that you can bring. And boy, if you can get introduced to their audience, get that know, like, and trust, get the backlinks from it. That is the quickest way and especially today, people are listening, right? They’re looking for answers, it’s not just entertainment anymore, it’s vital to their business. And I would say those, those early adaptors, those people that are going to come out of this strongest are the ones that are looking for the answers right now. And I don’t know about you, but those are my customers that I want to work with. You know, there’s some people that still listen to 80s rock, God love them. But the ones that are trying to build something looking forward in the future, they’re looking for answers, and they’re either gonna hear us or they’re gonna hear our competitors. Barbara Turley: Yeah, look, I think the other thing to remember is, you know, anyone listening out there who thinks, “Oh, I just, you know, trying to launch a podcast”, and we’ll get to that in a second. You know, that’s gonna take time, strategy, whatever. There are loads of podcast hosts out there that are looking for people to interview for people who can add value in this particular environment. And it might not, it might be to do with your business, it could just be building your brand, so you don’t always have to be selling something. You know, I think, Tom, you would say that it’s about being out there and having your voice out there. I know that’s what I’m doing with The Virtual Hub, I’m on podcasts all the time. Sometimes I’m not even talking about VAs, I’m just talking about business building, but it still drives business to The Virtual Hub for us, it’s been a very good strategy. So, Tom, what advice would you give somebody about? You know, first of all, what kinds of topics do you think right now hosts are really looking for and what makes a great guest? How do you be a great guest on a podcast?     What makes a great podcast guest Tom Schwab: That’s a great question. And I think this is not only what they’re looking for now, but they’ll always be looking for. Have something that’s timely, that speaks to their audience, but make sure it’s timeless also, right? So podcasts are an evergreen medium, while we’re recording this here in April. There’s somebody in October that’s gonna be listening to this. So you want to make sure that the advice is timely and timeless. The other thing too is, come ready to serve, right? Gary Vaynerchuk talks about jab, jab, jab, right hook. I probably missed a couple jabs in there. I look at it as serve, serve, serve, serve, ask, and the ask is going to be people asking to work with you, right? So when you reach out to a podcast host, nobody likes a cold pitch, right? Listen to the podcast, leave a rating and review, we’re all vain, right? We listen for our own names. So share the content, make comments on it, and then when you reach out, you can say hey, here is something that I have that would, I believe, add value to your audience. And you know, then go there and just add value. You know, your goal as a podcast guest is not to sell, it’s to make the host look like a genius for introducing you to their audience. Because if you do that, they’ll promote you more than you ever could. And my favorite tweet out there is from a guy by the name of Rand Fishkin, Rand started a company called Moz, and he said, “Today, the best way to sell something, is not to sell anything, but to earn the respect, awareness, and trust of those who might buy.” And that’s what you’re doing with this show, that’s what I do on podcast interviews. Just getting

    21 min
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About

The Inside Scoop on Outsourcing Success

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  • Creator
    Barbara Turley and Matt Malouf
  • Years Active
    2015 - 2025
  • Episodes
    58
  • Rating
    Clean