How to Hire a Virtual Assistant

Matthew: Yeah, so what happened was I, five years ago, bought my own bought a business for the first time, right? So I’m a lifelong management consultant. And I then you know, so I’ve always been in the client service business, I really enjoy just helping clients solve problems. So a lot of fun for me. And hopefully, I add value. But about five years ago, I decided to actually buy my own business jump in, I just wrapped up my first business where it was a venture funded business, I was one of the people that founded it, but I wasn’t the lead person. And I decided I wanted to jump in the deep end of the pool by myself. So I spent a bunch of money acquired an E commerce portfolio. So it’s three. So it was three sites at the time, and just went for it. And, you know, from there, what happened was, I spent a few years, you know, working through how staffing works in a remote environment. It’s 100% remote company. So people were in Minneapolis, and I was where wherever I am. And so I worked through that and through attrition, and otherwise, it ended up hiring overseas. The reason that everyone goes to the Philippines is I want to get someone for five bucks an hour, it’s gonna change your life. Well, it’s not true. What it turns out, is you can get really high quality people for a little bit more. And they are just real business people and they can just help you work in your business and run stuff. And it changed my life.

So is this the current business that you started during this pandemic that we’re talking about?

No. So okay, so my E commerce business, okay. Everyone has to realize ecommerce right now is blowing up. It’s booming. It is one of the best places you can be. Except if you’re one business, that would be the winning business. You can imagine you can imagine how well that’s was going. I was doing 4000 orders a month, you know, roughly that going into high season in March. March, I think was 15. They announced the European travel ban and went down 95%. Well, here’s there is I don’t care who you are like you can’t you it’s hard to recover from that. Now it’s since settled in about a 25% of historical sales. And I like to say it’s on pause, right, and it’s gonna come back, it just went. So what happened was I restructured my business, that ecommerce business and I said to the UN at the time, what had happened in October is my wife of the previous October as my wife was going, and I were going on a family vacation to China. And she said to me, she says, I hope you’re not going to work on this vacation because we’re going with my parents. I don’t know if either of you are married. But whatever. Hope is really not a it’s not a request in a marriage. It’s about as you better not effing work, right? Let’s be honest. Right? So she said go find my wife say go find someone the Philippines to run your entire business. And my response honestly was Honey, I don’t know anyone that’s ever done this. I know some pretty experienced people with offshoring. Let me see. She goes when she says, Well, it’s a country of 100 million people. I’m sure there’s one person who can help you. Right? So only you like your spouse can say– 

Dominica: right.

Matthew:  And so, you know, I’m being kind with the inflection of my voice because it wasn’t that nice. 

Dominica: Understood. 

Matthew: Oh, so it turns out it took me about six, eight weeks, I found someone and Angelica was Chief of Staff for 100 person at dev shop. And I convinced her to come work for my at the time it was six people, six person ecommerce business and help oversee it oversee operations. She never had ecommerce experience. But what she did have was she was smart, senior and had just great operations experience. So my personal belief is ecommerce isn’t that complicated for someone to just oversee it? I put her in. Within one week, she was doing pretty much 80% of what I was doing perfectly. Wow. Right? I was. So I went to China, everything was fine. When I left China, I was working 14 hours a day, six weeks later, I was only in China for two weeks. But six weeks after high Angelica I was working four hours a day or three. Then about a year later, I was working about two hours a week. It’s just me having conversations. So when I said to her the pandemic, I said, everyone thought I was crazy when I did it. Then they were like, wait a second, can I get someone like her? During the pandemic? I said to her, I said, Hey, what about starting an agency? Hmm, you could pull it off. She was absolutely. Okay. Great. She handled the recruiting side. I handled this outside. And we just hit 50 people since Wow.

Dominica: Wow. That’s incredible in such a short period of time. Wow. 

Matthew: Yeah. While I’m running another business–

Dominica: Right.

Matthew: No, I say it’s down. It’s still just a significant amount of revenue. But it’s not enough to keep my time. And she’s actions. Not only what she’s helped me start this business, she’s running another business overseeing it. So, right, that’s the level of quality you can get. And I started with my first one person was my accountant. He was my first client. And now it’s just people I don’t know. And it’s starting to build momentum as I build a brand.

Dominica: Wow. Have you ever met her in person? 

Matthew: No. 

Dominica: That’s incredible. Okay, so I have to ask, then, at what point were you able to just sort of like, give up the reins of the first e commerce business? You’re like, oh, no, no, because a lot of business owners and a lot of our listeners have such a hard time just letting go and allowing people to help them grow. Right? Especially if it’s their first business. Do you have any advice about about how to go about doing that?

Matthew: Give me seven days. Seven days in a commandment, my God. Just like board on how I said do not work? Right. So seriously. So I think for me, what it was, is that I was so done. And like I was carrying myself like, Okay, I know better, I know better than to get sucked into the business. But I forgot the cardinal rule, which is, you know, your operational excellence for 99% of industries, it’s not going to make you more money. Right? It’s just, it’s just not like you have to execute to a certain level. But after that’s me being involved, it’s just a waste of time. And I bought my value, I created all this value. And but I really did it, right. So I was just at the right time to step out to just be like, I’m done, I want out of this business, I would have sold it if I could like it just wasn’t ready for sale. Like I was like, I’m out. So it was the right time for that. But for entrepreneurs, what I would say is do actually like your life, really enjoying doing tactical things that just don’t matter. Right? And people would say, well, Client Management man as well. I don’t manage my clients for my VA business. I have my team do it. So when I talk to clients, it’s about important stuff. Right? If there’s a big enough issue, or large enough issue that arises to me, it’s very important. The fact that a VA may need coaching on something. It’s not that it’s not important, right? But it’s not important enough that I should deal with it. I have people who are gonna do a better job at coaching VA than I am. So they deal with it. They work with the client. And as a result, the clients get better client service, right? Because, like, I’m missing emails, if they email me and I’m like, I’m too busy, like I’m running around. So what I would say to people, my advice is if you like your life the way it is, and maybe you don’t need help, but there’s no successful entrepreneur or company who’s done it alone.

They always have a team. So what are what are some of the biggest fears that you see entrepreneurs have when they’re trying to make that jump from working in the business to working on the business?

Yeah, I would say that the number one thing that entrepreneurs struggle with is they think they’re special. That’s that’s that. That’s it, you’re not not special. I’m not special no one on this call special. Guess what, there are people around the world who can do it better, faster and more efficiently than you. Now the pushback you get is, well, I, as the entrepreneur, I can do engineering and marketing. I want an engineer at somebody to do both. Well, you’re the boss. Okay, so let’s come down to reality, you’re not going to find a pink sparkly unicorn with blue eyes? Not even in the United States, are you gonna find people like that? And if they are guests, if you do find them, guess what they cost about $350,000. So you want to pay that no problem, right? But you’re the entrepreneur for a reason, your job is to orchestrate the business. And you can, by the way, the fact that you can do two things, two very different tasks. And execute doesn’t mean you do them, well, you just means you can do them. So the biggest thing is, you know, just realize you’re not special entrepreneur, and realize that having someone focused on a task will make the execution of that task better.

Rory: Yeah, it makes me think of like, the person who owns an airline is not the pilot, and they couldn’t be the pilot, because if they had to be the pilot for every single airplane, no one would get anywhere.

Matthew: Right? 

Dominica: It’s really good analogy.

Matthew: It’s true. That’s exactly it. Show me one successful business that is run by one person with zero help. There isn’t like it’s just doesn’t exist. Everybody has a team in some capacity. Even most people don’t do their own taxes, or many people don’t do their taxes, they have the outsource that to an accountant, because they’re going to do a better job. Yes, I can go to h&r block. And yes, I can get my taxes done in some proficient fashion. But I also know my accountant is way better than me. So this, he’s gonna help me think different, right? So it’s just, it’s just that level of recognition that you have to have achieved to be successful. 

Dominica: Right. So your virtual assistant company today is called extend your team. Right? Tell us about the services that you offer is it’s obviously virtual, right? But what would you say is like the top three services that you cater–

Matthew:  what we do is a little different than a lot of virtual system, typical virtual system. When people hear Philippines they hear one word she, oh, I’m gonna get someone for five bucks an hour, they’re gonna use social media and email and my calendar. And, you know, yes, you can do that. Or you can even maybe do it on your own, but you’re gonna cycle through a lot of people. Mm hmm. And the one thing that people forget, is, anytime you’re managing someone, it’s not there, like, the task doesn’t cost, their their rate or their salary because their rate plus your rate. So if you’re managing someone who’s $5 an hour for 20 hours, 2030 hours a month, which is not abnormal, then you’re spending roughly about $27 an hour for that $5 An hour resource, assuming you’re about $100 an hour, right. So what we do is we take a completely different approach, we find people with real experience called 10 to 20 years experience, and help them and put them in your business. The number one use case is what I would call a business manager or Chief of Staff. So think of a project manager on steroids, who can oversee pretty much all tactical tasks, or you can call it like a very, super EA, but like an EA again on steroids. That takes over all the tactical items on your list and just make sure that either executed by overseeing different projects or executing themselves. Our graphic designers, telemarketers general virtual assistants mean people who know how to do you know who could do video editing, picture editing, podcast editing, through your calendar, do social media, like a generalist like that, but even those people will have, you know, 10 years experience and are just experts at what they do. Everything is a level up. Because what we found in my own experience is it just saves you money. spending more money will save you more in the long run, because it’s just the aggravation. Imagine if you had someone who could just free up all your time. You can go spend money, you can spend your time making more money instead of following up with a client for some document. 

Dominica: Oh, yeah, we’re big proponents of exactly what you’re talking about. So Heck, yeah. In fact, Roy and I were talking about the pod just our podcasts and how many hours goes into doing what we do. We really should just train somebody else to do this. So might be hitting somebody else on your team?

Matthew: secret is that people who have virtual assistants No, but companies won’t tell you is only hire from time. Do not waste your time, you can do 20 hours a week, right? But if you’re doing it for yourself, right, honestly, just go 40 hours, if you only have 25 hours worth of time, guess what, within 60 days, you’re gonna fill up 40 hours a week. Because you’re gonna be like, Oh, my God, I have all this other stuff people can do. And the reason is, it’s not a culture of contracting like the United States, where it’s like, oh, I have to 10 hours on this client 20 hours and that client really do want full time work. And that’s their preference. And if they don’t have full time work, they’re piecing together 40 hours or 60 hours. And imagine you’re trying to go through to three different clients in one day, how difficult it would be, right? It’s difficult for them to 40 hours, we only do 40 hours a week full time hires, or we don’t take lines.

Dominica: Well, that makes sense. I would imagine just having, like you said, jumping around to so many different things like what am I even doing for this hour? Right? So it just makes sense to be fully committed to doing one full time deal. And then you can fully invest in that. It makes sense. 

Matthew: Yeah, it pays on time and time again, whenever I first when I started the business, I made exceptions. And there were just challenges, right? There’s people that bolt on and a full time job. Or if you’re an I like to say and this was taught to me if you’re not first or fourth, right? So it’s just the way it is right? If you’re not the priority, you’re not the priority doesn’t matter.

Dominica: Very true. Gosh, that’s so true. 

Rory: And I want to go back to something that you had said, even though you’re a virtual assistant company, you actually recommend that people don’t hire virtual assistants. 

Matthew: Yeah. So here’s what I mean by that. I call my team virtual assistants simply because it’s easier way to communicate what we do not because it’s the reality, to me, the virtual assistants are the people that are five bucks an hour that all these companies are pushing on people all over LinkedIn, right? You’ve probably gotten 15 messages from, you know, just hey, you want a virtual assistant, Hey, you want a virtual assistant? They’re very low level entry level team. My team were there remote workers, they are just they are professionals who happen to be in the Philippines, hire a business leader hire the highest paid person first. And we’re really only talking 16 to 19 an hour. That’s all we’re talking about here. Right? And you know, the difference with you by the way, $6.16 is 1800 a month. If you can’t, if you don’t, if you free yourself up from 80% of what you do, and can generate an additional 1800 a month in profit. My opinion is you have to look at your business, because that’s a problem. No, it’s it sounds trite. But it’s true if you if you actually don’t see how you make 80 not forget 20,000 more a year because that’s what people get stuck with. Right? Oh, it’s 20,000 More 30,000 More, it’s really break it down by month. It’s in this case, $1,800 a month. If you can’t make that more in profit and 90 days, you have a problem. But if you get the right person and hire a business person, right, instead of an entry level, college kid, you’re just gonna go in to see results. And these are remote workers. They’re not virtual assistants, in my opinion.

Rory: Yeah. And what I’ve noticed is that the thing that really snowballs is when that person that you hire to be a business leader in your business, when they are managing all your other team members, and they’re hiring them. That’s where that breaking point is where you start to see the exponential growth from it.

Matthew: Oh, absolutely. There’s no way not it’s not even remotely possible that I could have built a 50 person business in seven months, okay. It’s just there’s just no way, forget that I couldn’t, I can’t, because now I’m having I have Filipinos hiring Filipinos, and it’s a world of difference in the quality. The three of us simply do not have access to the talent pool that they do. It’s just you just don’t. And they’re, I mean, I am consistent. I’m constantly amazed at who I’m finding who we find, right. We play someone recently, who ran a 2000 person division. Wow. Okay. $23 an hour to a client. Think about that. Right, too. That’s a legit See, he was like, I think he was he was been CEO, but it’s he’s a legit coo. Wow, Chief Operating Officer. So that mean, that’s the rare. i There’s no way I can find that person. It’s just not possible. Or we’re gonna have to pay a headhunting agency or they’re just there’s no way you could point it there’s just no possible So all of a sudden, right, so everyone on this journey starts typically in the same place, typically the same websites, where there’s a lot of people but low quality, right? And that’s where everyone goes from the United States. But there’s a whole world of professionals that you are and I just would do bespoke searches, right? We’re looking for people that you just can’t, can’t find. And that’s what we target. Right? It makes, it makes a world of difference.

Dominica: I’m sure makes a world of difference for for you and for your main people who don’t have to do a lot of back and forth. Like if people just know what they’re doing from the beginning, then I’m sure there’s probably little to no error happening, you know, for your clients.

Matthew: Yeah, look, I mean, things happen right now. Everyone’s perfect. But as for me, I need to be open as a business owner, it’s less problems on the back end for me, personally as the agency or because now Well, we do some different things that are different than pretty much every other agency, we give, like medical, dental life insurance, we pay for their internet would require clients to given vacation US holidays off. And we also have a dedicated client person who helps properly onboard and monitor the engagement to make sure there are no hiccups. And when there are hiccups, we step in, so higher touch. But the advantage to hiring better people, for me as the person with the agency to be completely open has, typically speaking, there’s less work for us to do, because now we’re just supporting someone when they need extra help. We’re not guiding someone how to work with at a company, it’s a more fruitful engagement for everybody. You’re getting more out of it as a client, and we can help you more because we’re not focused on well, how do you use email? Right, but just that’s not the stuff we do–

Rory: When someone is getting started? How much do they have to budget time wise to get someone up to speed if they’re having to learn someone’s business systems?

Matthew: Fair? So the answer is, it really depends. Because many entrepreneurs have standard operating procedures already in place, and then it’s just training that person on there. Right. But with us, I would say we would spend one to two weeks set, you know, making sure that this SOPs are in place, helping the entrepreneur, you know, set expectations. And then after that, it’s off to the races, you know, within 60 days, you’ll see significant value. You know, look, it’s not a day one thing, right? You’re interested, nobody, I walked in when I was a man managed to get assaulted, I didn’t walk and say, you know, here you go, I’m gonna tell you, you know, I’m gonna solve everything. I’m gonna say I’ve done in 24 hours, it doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t matter who it is, right? And so you have to realize that it takes it takes time. But within 60 days, you’re you’re humming if you have like, if you were like me and had a fully functioning business with standard operating procedures and a team, and then you have a business manager come in, just to be like a high level project manager and Chief of Staff, and Jelic was up and running within seven days. And then within 14, yeah, within 45 days, I said, like three to four hours. That’s all I was working for 14. So it’s it can be that quick, right? And we’re there to help you figure this out along the way. Right? I mean, I did it myself. The one thing I love about this, where I get to help entrepreneurs, I this is I solve my own problem. And I’m just doing it for others. I run a business this way, while running this agency, I may still oversee the Econ even though I act like I mean, I do not act I mean, I only work two, three hours a week, but it’s just overseeing it. But I’m still able to do that and start a new business. It works.

Dominica: Totally. And I love that connection. I think you had sent me a message on LinkedIn. And you said this episode, I think is episode 15 was all about solving your own problem, right? Yeah. And you’re like, This is exactly what I just did. I gotta I gotta come on your show. So I love that that’s the connection. 

Matthew: Okay, I’m gonna be open with the, with both of you. I didn’t do that. I was like–

Dominica: Oh, that’s so good.

Matthew: That’s so I have a procedure. So I have this I shouldn’t say this because I mean, I tell all the podcasts, this is good. But I have a procedure where I do an automated connection campaign. Sure, to all podcasts staying on the listener, right. Which you know, then I have my then I actually will listen after my chief of staff picks out an episode response to the person pretend she is my persona and connects and then I will jump in at the appropriate time to do whatever I have to do. Right. So all the upfront so again, it’s you know, some people say, well, that’s disingenuous, but no, it’s not. If you think someone wants say like Gary Vee and maybe not Gary Vee, cuz that guy’s a maniac, but your man outside of Gary Vee outside of him.

Dominica: I love you, Gary.

Matthew: Oh, I mean, to be honest, like, we all you just look at me like I, I don’t understand. But even him, he has a podcast team he has a, he’s there’s no way I get mean, he would just be on messages all day, it has to be so informed as to, you know, you think about it right? Like, how else could you get leverage? I mean, all I would do is spend time doing this, you have to figure this stuff out. And, you know, people may say, I don’t think it’s disingenuous or on now I get to have higher value conversations than an initial connection message.

Dominica: Well, that’s true. Because look, I mean, you’re sitting with us, so obviously it works. Case in point, yeah, point in case. Yeah.

Matthew: If you had someone who was really high quality representing you, I actually, I mean, she runs my business and insurance to businesses, for me as 60 people were overseas, she’s obviously 60 people. You know what, that’s okay. She represents me,

I’m fine with it. 

Dominica: Yeah, obviously, you’ve got this great connection, you’ve built the trust with her. That’s everything. You can’t buy trust, you know?

So no. 

Matthew: And you know, the Filipino people are very, very open and honest and warm. And I really enjoy working with them. Because it’s, it’s very, there’s a lot of similarities to the culture, they’re very Americanized, and a lot of them are used to working with Americans. So it’s an advantage right away, as opposed to some other countries where you may have to navigate a little more cultural stuff. There is a common language of culture, in many ways. Some ways it’s very different. But in many ways, that helps a lot. 

Dominica: How would you say that a business owner should go about like becoming an outsourcing Pro? And what does that mean? Like, if I was brand new at being a business owner, and I had all my ducks in a row and was like, Okay, I’m ready, like, I’m ready to extend the team. I’m ready to go for this. How does someone become an outsourcing, bro–

Matthew: If you’re gonna do it on your own, what you need to recognize right away as you’re hiring, for hiring for regular position, A, the number one mistake, but a very common mistake that people make is like, I’ll just get a VA and they just treat it like I’m buying a pair of sunglasses, like, Whatever, I’ll just go get one. Yeah, they seem nice, right? You have to put the time and care into hiring as if you were making $100,000 $150,000 hire. Once you do that, so that starts with what two things one, create a job description. Write write a formal it sounds silly. Write a formal job description. Not hey, I want a VA. Right? So and how do you know what the VA should do? So here’s the second task you need to do these two things will save you a lot of time. You divide your just take a piece of paper, do a line down the middle on it write two columns strategic not strategic. So strategic and tactical, right? Strategic is thinking tasks that require you and your experience. Right? Were things that add value. So the three of us having this conversation, that strategic for me, right, I’m not going to give, you know, anyone else using my, what we just talked about making connections and getting it took the conversation to a point where I need to jump in. That’s tactical, right? Because at the end of the day, I can train someone to do that. Right. So then go through your day. And I would say probably 80% of your day will be tactical, including producing the podcast, everything besides talking right here, everything up besides that, including managing your LinkedIn, podcast production, following up with guests, whatever, that’s all tactical that should be done. In my opinion, someone else, once you write that out, those those strategic tactical take all the tactical translate to a job description, make it a little sexy, describe what you’re doing, put it up there and go start hiring like a regular person. Now recognize if you’ve never done this before, it’s going to take you 12 to 18 months to cycle through people to get the right person. It’s it’s not you don’t it’s not I mean, if you’ve never had experience with this, it’s just going to take time. I mean, it took me takes everyone time. So just recognize you may go through 789 people before you get the one person that you like, and you can afford that. So that’s kind of that is that is one of the advantages of let’s say, going through an agency like us, we I now have Filipinos filtering Filipinos, so it’s three interviews, recruiter, Chief of Staff than me, by the time it gets to me, all the stuff that I wouldn’t recognize is filtered out. And then I’m looking for other things that I know as an American business owner, as an entrepreneur, that they know but there are subtleties that I’m gonna get from talking to the client, they may not pick up. So it’s trying to triangulate, you know, the right person for the client. So you can shortcut a lot of the aggravation by doing that by hiring an agency who but let’s say you still want to go on your own route, which is great, then Next thing you need to do while in the hiring process is create standard operating procedures or SOPs. Now if you’re as old as I am, you, you might remember a time when you would just write all these things down painfully, like just write everything down painfully. Thankfully, no one does, it doesn’t like this anymore. Go get a product called loom Ello m.com, it allows you to make screen captures or videos from your desktop. And you can just take a video of your screen talk people through things, so they hear you describing the task they’re doing. Take that takes on takes 30 seconds, two minutes, whatever it is. And you can just crank through all these things. Take that either, you know, put it in a spreadsheet somewhere, you can put it in there a lot of checklists, software that you can say, Okay, step two, do this. Step three, do this next video, right one that we use called process Street. And it’s process.st. And it’s great. And what you can do is, then you can you know, now you have a series of steps you give people it’s all videos, took you probably five to 10 minutes to do this entire process. You give it to someone else, they can watch the videos in the process 4000 times doesn’t bother you. And now you have a standard operating procedure for whatever process you are doing. Just rinse wash repeat. After that, I mean, after that you hire someone, you give them all the processes. Obviously, you have to meet with people done. Also have a call once a week at least on Skype, checking in. Yeah, checking in before the pandemic audit, people didn’t get it as much. But you might you have to have a call once a week or more on Skype, or Skype or zoom or whatever reason is there people, no one would like to be the random person receiving instructions from a Slack message or an email. That just sucks, right? That’s just really crappy. So, you know, they want to be part of something they’re excited. They’re joining your company, this is it. It’s a big deal. They’re not they’re not a widget, right? You know, you’re hiring a person. So treat them like one. And I think if you do those four things, so strategic, not tactical on size, job description, SOPs, treat them like a person, I think you in short order can eliminate a lot of nonsense.

Dominica: Brilliant. Makes perfect sense. Yeah. And I would imagine having that face to face time as well, it creates that accountability factor to for all parties involved, right? It’s like just making sure that you are checking in and like, on top of what the work that they’re actually doing. Right. 

Matthew:100%

Dominica:Yeah. 

Matthew: Exactly.

Rory: Let’s say you’ve, you know, convinced someone like, oh, like, you should go get started. But they’re having a little bit of say, like a hesitation of letting go of these tasks. And what would you say to them?

Matthew: Repeat them as your mantra I’m not special, just just special? Um, I like, like, what honestly, what is the worst that happens? You hire someone, it doesn’t work out after 60 days, you spend a little bit of money and – you fire them. Right? 

Dominica: You learn and move on?

Matthew: Yeah, learn and move on. What what is? What is the risk? Right? I hear people are just not comfortable letting go. Honestly, your business like not only are you not special your businesses isn’t either, right. But like, my business isn’t special. I sell wedding favors, while other people do that. Right. And they probably do it better than me. And I have a virtual assistant business, guess what other people do that. And they’re probably better than me too. So there’s like, it’s, you just got to remember that. You have to just there are other people in this in this world that can do things and they just may not live next to you. And that’s okay.

Dominica: Sound Advice? For sure.

Matthew: Listen, it’s not I know, it’s I get it. It’s not as easy as that. Right? But I coach people all the time. And I take calls from clients all the time, I’m struggling with this. And I just talk them through it. And you know, and at the end of the day, it comes with stop doing the work. That’s not your job. Right? Your job is not to do work, give it to someone else. I’m not sure they can do it. How do you know? Why don’t? Okay, well then give it to your person that you’re paying all this money for. And see, I saw somebody on LinkedIn, it was Home Depot CEO, and it really resonated with me. And he became this as a foreigner. He’s the former CEO. He wasn’t the founder. And he said, When I became CEO, I thought my job was to make decisions. I’m going to just say you do this, you do this, you do this. And then when he said one of the people who worked for him said it must be a pretty senior person, right? If he’s talking to the CEO at Home Depot, said to him your it was something like you’re failing at your job, like you’re not doing a good job. And he was shocked, right? It’s like, because you think your job is to make decisions. It’s not your job is to make sure that the all the cogs in the business are spinning at the right speed and something is Stuck to unstick it. That’s your job to make sure people can do theirs. That’s it. Right? And he said, it really resonated with me. Because if you think about it, where’s my value? My value is not getting into saying, you know, it’s, it’s not like, Well, did you have this call? Okay, how’s this call? Go? I want to hear about your call. Okay, let’s talk about what you did that’s, that’s hamstring people. My job is say, Okay, do you have the right tools in place to help you do your job? Here are your goals? Is there anything stopping you from meeting your goals? No, great. Yes. Let’s talk about it. That’s kind of that’s my job. Right? So if you think about it, from that perspective, it gets a little easier for entrepreneurs to say, you’re right, that’s not my job. I don’t have to be doing that. Because I’m just gonna be an impediment to success.

Dominica: Yeah. But also, I think, the the allure of like, Listen, you don’t have to do this, you’re not going to grow anymore. Unless you just let go. You have to let go and let people right. Let them help out. 

Matthew: Yeah, people get stuck on the money, right? Well, it’s, you know, let’s just say it’s I think $16 is roughly like $2,800 a month. So like that. So, you know, people get to 26 weeks. So it’s like 2900. So people get stuck on? Oh, my God, it’s not. It’s called 3000. It’s $36,000 a year I’m signing up for? No, you’re not. You’re signing up for $3,000 a month for as long as it works for you. That’s what you’re signing up for. For me, at least I didn’t design a business that locks anyone into any contract. If I can’t create value for you, then I don’t, you shouldn’t have to pay me. Right? You should we shouldn’t be locked into doing business together. So but just everyone needs to realize it’s 3000 a month. So invest $10,000 in your business, you know, 3000 or 9000 3000? Over three months? invest that time? Is your business better if it’s not cut the cord?

Dominica: Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. But yeah, like you’re saying, you also have to give it a good shot. You might not know what’s to come in 30 days, and we’re gonna talk about that a lot. We get some clients that are like, I want to run ads for a week. No, no, that’s not how this is gonna work, takes 30 days just to get things like ready and ramped up, you know, so you can’t just quit out after, you know, a few weeks, even a couple months, you got to see where it’s actually going to take you.

Rory: And one of the things that I’ve always said is invest in implementation, rather than information. Because I see so many people who just go buy another course and buy another course on how to do something, how to do something, but nothing ever gets done because they have the information, but they can’t implement it. They don’t have the time. Or I guess you could say manpower to implement it–

Matthew: causes paralysis, they just spin their wheels or like, they’re looking at like, oh, well, if I just do this much more analysis, it’s going to make it better or yeah, you have to just jump in. You have to commit to it, like you said, because especially with someone ads, right? I mean, my econ business, we got whacked with WWE and shut down by Google last summer. It took and we were in the raw 100% of writing. It didn’t matter. I didn’t fire my agents, because that’s not going to be helpful. Right. I won’t fix any partnership again. But it took six months to get back the level of sounds. And frankly, there is nothing my agency could have done differently. I checked. Right? Trust but verify I checked, right? And everyone said no, this account looks great. Right? So you, you have to sum sometimes you just have to invest in order to be successful.

Dominica: Mm hmm. 

Rory: Yeah, that’s all part of, you know, running a business being a business owner, you have to be able to make these decisions to take your business to the next level. When if you if you don’t make those decisions, then nothing happens. 

Dominica: Yeah.

By the way, you may take a lead. And for whatever reason, it just doesn’t work. Right. It could be you. It could be them. It could be the business. It could be the look at my ecommerce business, there’s nothing I could do is to change COVID Right, right. Right. I can’t help the fact that I that there was a pandemic and that weddings are illegal, right. Like I never contemplated weddings,

right? The Gathering. Yeah. Illegal wedding.

Weddings, by nature are illegal. So I. So a lot of investment I made in that business, you know, as poof up in smoke for the time made, but there’s nothing I can do. I think as an entrepreneur, you just need to accept, you’re going to succeed, and you’re going to probably fail twice as much as you succeed. As long as your successes outweigh your failures are pretty good. The balance sheet is right, the balance sheet in the right direction, you know, as long as you succeed more than you fail.

Dominica: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This has been so fun. Thank you so much for taking the time with us and for chatting about just your personal experience and being a business owner and having successful companies and being able to pivot especially during this time. It is possible for all you listening it is totally possible. Matthew, thank you so much again for being with us. Today. This has just been a joy to have you on. 

Matthew: It has been a lot of fun. 

Rory: On the next episode. You did what? That’s right. It’s time for another one of those Dominican Rory get personal episodes. And this time, we are sharing all the stupid stuff that we’ve done in life business and otherwise, what the hilarity ensue. Ha ha

ha ha ha ha.

Oh, and by the way, did you know Apple podcast is a great place to leave us a review. Yep. Since you now know this exciting information. How about you put that information into action? By leaving that review? You’ve been meaning to leave? All right. See y’all next one.