Brave Biz Lab 2024 08 02

Hello.

Hello.

How's it going? Good.

How you doing?

Good. Happy Friday.

Indeed.

I broke the horse.

You broke the horse?

The fourth dog who is, like, so wild. She's like. I'm. She's super mellow. She, like, just comes over to me and wags her tail. I'm her alpha now.

Congratulations. Is that what you're celebrating today?

That is what I'm celebrating today.

Yeah.

Never mind. Never mind that the rest of the week made me black and blue and covered in scratches.

But, you know, I guess maybe I'm.

Becoming a dog trainer.

Who knows?

We count.

We counter wins where we can. I love it. What else are we celebrating? Hello, everyone. Hi. Who wants to celebrate something?

I did four market research calls this week.

Yes. Amazing. And I saw your question that you're noticing a lot of themes around Freedom.

Yeah. I don't know if I would call them themes yet, but it's coming up. Freedom. Yeah. Like, I don't know if I have enough data yet, but two of the interviews were very similar.

Yeah. So here's what I want you to start paying attention to and asking about. If you're hearing someone say, I just want more flexibility, ask some flexibility to do what? Flexibility for what? And get, like, follow that rabbit hole until you figure out what flexibility actually looks like for them, because that's what you're going to use in your content.

That did come out. They were both moms, and they were like, I want flexibility to, like, go home and work from home when my kid's sick. I don't want to have to ask my boss to, like, you know, do this or do that. Like, it. It's very clear that they're like, don't want to be managed by another human anymore. And that's. I. Yeah.

Awesome. Cool. All right, well, keep up the good work. Congratulations. What else do we want to celebrate this Friday?

I.

Well, I feel like I've been. I've been MIA for a bit. I've been traveling for, like, two weeks. So one is just, like, coming back feels good. And then I think the other thing is my program is. Is ready to be sent out to the people that I had market interviews with. And so I'm drafting up an email and a plan of how I'm going.

To be doing that. So that feels really exciting as well.

Fabulous. Did you see my response to your question?

No, I didn't.

Okay. In this case, because you're inviting everyone who did a re. Research interview with you to a WhatsApp channel that. Where they can then become your client. I think it's fine to make the.

Two CTAs in one thing.

In one thing. And if you wanted to pop language into. Into a Google Doc and share that to Heartbeat, I'm happy to go in and edit.

That would be really helpful.

Yeah, of course. Awesome. All right, what else are we celebrating?

I'll go. I posted on LinkedIn, while it was not my post with the most engagement ever, I had 50% of interactions from people that are second degree connection. So I was like, okay, that is more helpful to me than, you know, all of my friends liking and licking.

So celebrate that. Awesome. Yeah. And just a little pointer. Anyone who's second degree, third degree, who comments on your stuff, you go and connect with them.

Okay.

Yeah, just send them a connection request. You don't have to send note, they.

Know you follow or connect.

Connect.

Okay. If someone, if someone follows you, what do you do then? Because through commenting yesterday, had so many people follow me all of a sudden.

Do I connect with them? So when you're in a growth phase, when you're wanting to grow on LinkedIn, anyone who interacts with you at all, like, send them a connection request because it, like they're telling you they're active on the platform and they want to see more of your stuff.

Okay.

Like grow your network that way because they're already, they're already opting in.

And even the follows, even like all the people who just like click, follow or.

Okay, yeah, connect with them.

Okay.

It will be so flatter. Yeah, they will be so flattered. And this is for everyone. If you're growing on LinkedIn, if you're growing on Instagram or on any social media platform, if people are really engaging with your stuff, go and connect with them.

Perfect. I'll do that now.

Awesome. All right, what else are we celebrating today? Anything else before we dive in?

I can quickly go.

I actually have two things to celebrate. I am nominated for the Business Person of the Year through the Board of Trade here locally, where I'm at.

Congratulations.

And I'm accepting the nomination. And also I've been nominated as part of the Reader's Choice Award. So this is the fourth year in a row I've won in the past as well. That's just as well, locally.

That's awesome. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Yeah. Awesome. Anything else to celebrate? Okay. I want to design something with you all because we have a lot of people on the call right now. Um, and I know a lot of you are in a phase where you need to ask for help. And so I want to save like the last 10 minutes for everyone to kind of rapid fire if you haven't asked to make it the group. If you need help with certain thing, if you need introductions for something, ask. So think of what you need. If, if there's anything that would be helpful from the group and ask. There might be someone who's willing to help you. There might not. But here's what we need to get better at. Here's what we need to desensitize ourselves to is the fear of asking. Right? Because if we don't ask, the answer is always no. Right. And asking for what you want and need is a lot easier in a group like this than it is out in the world. But once we practice in a group like this, it's far easier out in the world. Right? Okay. So if there's anything that you want to ask, I'm going to keep an eye on the clock. If anyone notices that we're 10 minutes of and I'm not stopping, do you mind, like waving at me and letting me know? Okay, cool. Awesome. Let's take it to open Q and A. What questions do you have? How can I support? I literally just moved my hand and I was like, oh, someone's raising their hand. It was my hand. Never mind, I'll go.

I have a question about LinkedIn. Sorry, that's my only focus because else I'm not doing anything about mark my own business right now. How do I. I know we've talked about this briefly, but maybe it's. I hope it's relevant for everyone. So how do you get out of your own bubble of like, you know, all the same people? And do you actively look for interesting people to follow to comment on their stuff? Because obviously I, for me, it's easy. Easy, like feels most natural to comment on marketing stuff. So I'm like, okay, there's like this marketing guru. Some are like huge. Others are like, you know, they get a hundred likes type of like, engagement type of things. How do I find them? How do I find the right people to comment on their stuff? What helps? Any tips? Pointers?

Yeah, let's do an exercise and I want to do this within mind. Like, let's not create a pod accidentally, right? Because like, pods do not help anyone in growing their business. Everyone. I want you to go into LinkedIn and I want you to find two creators that you really like whose content's just interesting and fun. And I want you to put their con, their link to their profile in the chat. And I'm going to do this too, Sam. I don't know about everybody else, but.

My LinkedIn feed is blowing up with that Olympic gun shooting picture.

The one with the guy with the cat?

No. The gun shooting picture.

No.

But there's a Turkish guy who was shooting and he had a cat. And like, this is the next John Wick ready to happen. If someone.

I've not seen the cat. No, they just have like weird glasses.

Oh, I don't know.

But yeah, the guy from Turkey who shows up with his. With a T shirt on and a hand in a pocket is just like, bam. And they're all saying he's like that one hit man.

Right.

They're like, there's no way he's not a hitman.

Yeah. So someone also went to his personal, his personal, like Instagram and found a picture of him like cuddling his cat, like so in love with the two up next to each other. And like, yeah, no one touched that cat. Because this guy will come for you. It'll be a four part series. Okay, awesome. So Alex, these are the people, these are the. I want you to go through, open all these tabs and just like commenting, save the book, like bookmark them and go through and just engage on their content. That'll really help you break out of your. Of your current silo. And this is for everyone.

Yeah, sorry, do you actually bookmark the people that you want to check their, check out their profile? Like, do you have like a LinkedIn?

Yeah. Yeah. So what you can do is you can actually create a bookmark File that's like LinkedIn profiles.

Yeah, exactly. And then have all of those.

Yeah. And then you can bookmark them there when you're trying to grow. Kind of helps for you to go and like be very consistent on certain creators content. They don't have to be massive creators as long as they have an engaged following because it keeps you really accountable to staying active and you do end up building relationships with these people.

Yep. Okay, perfect. Thank you everyone for sharing their links.

And if everyone wants to do this as well, you know, you now have a list of people who. And not everyone's going to be interesting to you, but like, this will help you break out of any silo you've created around yourself. All right, what other questions do we have?

I have, I have one about maybe expectation setting. I found this week it was challenging to try to do the work that I was trying to do for this and try to do my job. So there was lots of days where I went home feeling like, man, like, I don't feel like I gave 100% at work, and I didn't give 100% here either. So what are some recommendations that you have for, like, how to set up this in a way where it feels good and it feels like you're still honoring your commitments but also growing this as well.

Yeah. I offer this as an imperfect way to do this for someone with adhd, because I know, like, setting routines for yourself is really hard. Right. But when we're starting a business and we're also working a full time job, I want you to imagine you just got another part time job where you're like waiting tables and Applebee's two nights a week. Right. You know, if you don't show up for a shift, what happens?

Get fired.

Yeah. If you go to Applebee's on your days off and try to take tables and try to work, what happens? I mean, they get a restraining order. Weirdo.

Depending on if they need your help, they'll let you just continue working.

Right? Right. Let's assume they're fully staffed and they're like, no, Jason, go home. Right.

Right.

You're also gonna end up burning yourself out. So, like, for those of you who are working full time and trying to build this, you know, it's something that's really helpful, is to set hours for when you're going to do the work in your business. Right. And clock in and clock out, metaphorically for it. Right. Because here's what. What a lot of people tend to do is they tend to say, okay, cool, I have a full time job and I have X amount of waking hours outside of my full time job. I should just work all those hours in my business. Well, guess what? That is a recipe for. Yvonne, do you want to answer since it's your specialty?

Sorry, I was distracted.

No, it's a burn out.

Burn out.

Yes, exactly. So we don't want to burn you out. We also don't want you feeling like you're not giving 100% at your job because that's paying the bills right now. And so I ask you, you know, what are the hours you want to set for yourself in your business?

As far as the burnout piece, the other thing that I often recommend is like, what is the minimal thing that you can do in either your job or your side hustle that makes you feel like you're making progress, spending hours and hours and hours. Right. Like, do the most important thing and get that done. And then give yourself a breather, go for a walk, get some brain space. It's about quality work, not quantity, like, not time.

Right?

Yeah. And I want to bring it back to, like the three non negotiables for starting a business. Number one, visibility. So, Jason, if you do nothing else in your business one day, if you post to social media, if you go and comment on stuff and you're visible, you won the day. That's the number one most important thing. Number two, moving your body and taking care of your body. Because if your body crashes and burns, guess what happens to your business. And number three, taking care of your mind. You know, giving yourself the right amount of rest. The right kind of rest. Right, right. Like, literally, if people know that we exist and they understand what we help them with, at some point they're going to become our client if they have that problem. Right. And if they connect with us, visibility is the number one most important thing. If you can do that, then you've won the day and you're always going to have a super fucking long to do list. And I'll. Let me just share with you. I'm six and a half years into my business. I've only just recently, recently in the last like three months, understood how at the end of the day it can feel like, oh, cool, I did enough today. Awesome, I'm done. Right. You are starting a business. This is brand new. There's no like, like, feedback loop for you to understand, like, what's enough for you to do because there's never ending options for work for you to do. Right. It's going to take time for you to get to the point where, like, that was enough.

Okay.

So I don't know how, how helpful that was.

Yeah, no, it was helpful. I, I think that my target right now has to be around getting the market research interviews done. And what feels good to me is maybe setting a reasonable. I'm going to send 10 or 15 messages a day. Yeah, that's not too overwhelming.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and I love that you're focusing in on the action and not the result. Right. Because we don't have control over the result. Right, right. Like, LinkedIn could crash and we might not get anything that day, you know, completely out of your control. But if you're just saying, well, here's the action I'm going to take and then you're checking that off, crossing those names off of your list, that's going to give you a drop, a dopamine drip that's going to carry you into whatever you need to do next.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

All right. Helpful for Everyone.

Yeah.

Cool. What else we got?

I have a question.

Yes.

So I know we already had our chat.

Yes. Something that I want to do in.

My business is I already have some digital products to kind of create the passive income. I guess what I'm torn between right now is is this the time for it or do I need to focus on what we talked about first? Get to that point and then work on this.

Tell me about the, the digital products.

So digital products, some of the. They're already done. So I have like over,000 basically AI prompts.

But tell me, tell me what they are and who they're for.

They are for small. So they're for the same target market, small business owners. And they're just a one time to basically purchase from my website. The part that I would have to work on is putting it on my site. So getting the page set up and everything and then coming up it would also. It would be a part of my marketing strategy to basically push it as well. But that's. So the only thing is to put it on a landing page and create a landing page for them and then set it up and connect it to PayPal and everything. So it would be automatically they pay and then they will receive the product. So it is a one time.

What is the product?

Sorry, they are digital products like AI prompts, like basically checklists. For real for somebody who wants to do it. Yeah, it's pertaining to what I do.

Okay.

It's just digital products that they can download. They have to pay for it first.

Okay, cool. So yeah, I mean I absolutely think it's a great list builder. Right. And anyone who downloads that could potentially be a coaching client for you. I don't know that I would have you build like a whole page and have it do all the backend work. I would just set it up on Gumroad. Honestly.

Okay.

Yeah. People are pretty used to buying digital like PDFs and things on Gumroad. I mean I've bought numerous things on there. Has anyone else? No. Okay, well I can look into it. Yeah.

But I guess my, my question is, is this a good time to. To basically dedicate a bit of my energy right now given that I am my like major shifts in my business happening.

Yeah. So. So here's the balance is when we, when we focus on like getting one on one, clients still offer up a lower ticket item if you have it.

Yeah.

So like maybe, maybe you're posting three times a week about offering coaching and doing done for you. Social media. And maybe one post is about this resource.

Okay.

Right, Yeah, I think that would be really helpful because, like, the people who buy it, download it right now may not be your ideal client right now, but six months from now, they could be.

Yes. And it's. For me also, it's a way, like, so some would be for free and then some would be, like a passive income. There will be a lot. Very low ticket item.

Yeah, totally.

Sounds good.

What other questions do we have? Monica?

I have a question slash reminder about the ClickUp stuff.

Shit. Yes. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Here. Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna do this right after this. Thank you for the reminder. Yeah, okay, thank you. I apologize. Doing that stuff is something that I hate, and so my brain doesn't. Doesn't let it stay top priority. So. All right, what other questions do we have? Yes, Rachel, just.

I know that you said that you would help edit it, but I'm just. I'm typing out this email for, like, sharing my product with the people that I interviewed. And, I mean, part of me was considering just reaching out to people one on one and being like, hey, if you're interested, you could do this. But I think this is probably a good place to start. So right now what I have is like a thank you and then sharing that I've officially solidified the program and sharing, like, a couple bullet points on the program. And then, like, please respond to this email to schedule a strategy call. And then I would probably. Yeah. What do you.

Yeah, so. So what we want to do is we want to, like, thank them. Like, I wouldn't have been able to design this without you. The top five things that I've heard people really struggle with or women. Women in. In space really struggle with are these five things. And so I've designed my program to help you, like, overcome these challenges and get to, like, this main goal, which is. Is pretty common, or something different that, you know, you might want to identify. And then instead of saying respond to this email because that creates a lot of back and forth and work for them and for you that, you know, if you're curious about learning more about the program, then here's a link to book a strategy call and share that link for them to book it. So it's just like they can just go through and do that. Right. And also as a thank you for being so willing to donate your time, I have created a small community in a WhatsApp chat, and I would love to invite you in and hear the benefits to being a part of this Membership or to being part of this community. Okay, yeah, yeah, because we want it, remember? You know, do you remember a conversation you had with a friend, say like a month ago where you upset. You were upset about something?

Maybe.

Maybe.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I'm sure there was a conversation at some point in the last month where you were like, oh, this is so frustrating, or oh, my gosh, like, you know, I really want this and it's not happening. Right. But you've forgotten about it. The time has passed. There's. There's no longer heat and emotion to it. Yeah. Right. So we want to like, remind everyone, here's what you said in, in these interviews. Here's what you were. Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, for sure. All right, what other questions do we have?

Yes, Monica, for the internal corporate side of my offering, I was wondering if I should have intake questionnaire for the strategy calls, like I do with the.

I would coaching stuff.

And I don't know what to. I don't know what type of stuff to ask. I, I sent something in heartbeat, but I think it got lost in the shuffle.

Yeah, let me. Okay, so, yeah, sorry, I totally missed this. Okay, so, yeah, so you want to have an intake form where you're talk, you're asking them about, like, what are the problems that they're facing right now and what are the goals? You know what, just thinking through, you might want to have, You might want to have a question around, like, what. Describe the audit team right now and what their priorities are. You probably want to ask about their industry. Right, because then you, before you get on the call, you can kind of go and see what the, the data security issues have been in that industry. So you can be well versed if they bring it up. I would also have a question around, like, how urgently do you want to fix, You know, and of course you want to wordsmith this to figure it out, but, you know, have it be something that's super relevant to how they would speak. What else? I would also ask for their company website. What else? Yeah, I would start there and then you'll, you'll honestly learn as you go through it as people book. Like, what other questions will be useful for you to A, sort people out before you get on a call with them and waste your time and B, like, what is more helpful for you to walk into the meeting knowing, yeah, start there for right now. Because the entry form is A, to kind of sort people out, you know, because anyone who's not willing to answer some questions to Book a time on your calendar is far more likely to no show. Right. And also it gives you some insight. So you can really tell before you get on the call with them if you can be helpful. Yeah. Okay. Because if you can't, you want to get on the call and be like, cool. I looked over your intake form and it looks like you don't actually need me. You need someone like this. Right. Or it can be something that you email them beforehand. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But I would start with those questions. Thank you. Of course. All right. What other questions do we have?

I have one.

Here's my face.

I brought it. I, I texted you earlier, but it was I. Then I came here. So. So someone reached out to me who is like a potential coaching client. I talked, I've had a strategy call with her. Great person. I've actually known her since college and she wasn't ready to invest and that's cool. So she reached out to me to ask me if I do interview training and coaching and like, why not?

Yeah.

Right.

And so for like one off one hour sessions, what would I charge?

When you say interview? Like they are interviewing people or they're up for.

No, she's interviewing for jobs and she wants to know how to interview, which happens a lot with high level people who haven't interviewed in a long time. They're like, you know, I don't know. And I think she's been with the same organization for like 20 years, so.

Yeah.

I mean, realistically, in one hour, can you teach her how to be a really good interviewer?

Yeah.

Okay.

At her level. Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, I can offer more than one and I can, you know, sort of further help her with like negotiating and if she's applying, like, I, you know, I can do job search coaching. I don't really love that I like doing interviews.

I'm not thinking that. I'm thinking like, let's, let's look at the efficacy for the client. Yeah, Right. Because like do. Working with someone in an hour, like, you may be able to impart your knowledge at them for an hour, but they may not be able to absorb it all in an hour. Right.

Yeah.

You know, you see what I mean? And also for the type of job, like, you know, you might want to have them workshop some answers.

Yeah. I mean, I would want to know what, what she's really looking for, but. But I don't really want to do a strategy call. So I mean, I certainly could offer her more than one option. You know, in, in the old days when I Didn't charge anybody for anything. I could make a big impact in an hour with somebody who, like, knew who they were and what their skills were, but didn't know how to talk about it.

Yeah.

So potentially I could do.

Yeah.

What, what she needs in an hour.

Okay.

Depending on what she needs.

Okay, well, so let's start with a one hour thing, and then if she wants more, you can say awesome. Like, a lot of my clients start off with me working on these things, and then we continue once they get the job and we can talk about ongoing coaching. I mean, I would charge, I would just charge like what you would normally charge for an hour for your clients. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's a one time thing. As, as a general rule, if it's over $1,000, you do typically need a strategy call with your clients and with, with people like this who are already sold that you can be the person who helps them. You might not need it. If you find that there's a lot of resistance, then we might want to either drop it below a thousand, or you might need to do a strategy call, in which case we want to augment the offer so that it's a higher ticker. A higher ticker, a higher ticket thing that has a few more sessions. Yeah, but I would start with that and just see how it goes.

So would I charge hourly? Like what I charge for consulting hourly?

No, for coaching.

So my package is 2500amonth and it's two calls plus on demand. So sometimes it's two calls, sometimes it's eight calls. So how would you break that down into one session with no on demand time? 700.

I would do 1250. I mean, you can do. It's up to you. 100. Up to you. I would personally do 1250. Yeah, yeah. But you can do whatever you want. You can do anywhere between 750 and 1250.

Okay.

Okay. You do nine smack dab in the middle. Okay. Yeah.

I feel like the benefit of 2500amonth is that like you have me. Right. Like you have me all month kind of as much as you need me. I don't think even for like a one off coaching session, I don't think I would charge 1250. So maybe I would do like.

But I want to remind you here, they're not paying for coaching. They're paying to get the job.

Right.

It's. It's not about the coaching. It's about the results that they're hoping this will help them get right. It's less about you and what, like the time you're giving and more about the impact it's going to have on their life. Right. And also remember, people associate cost with quality.

Right.

Right. So, like, if someone is paying 1250 to get really good at interviewing, they're going to take it very seriously. They're going to go back, they're going to watch the reporting.

Right.

You might have like a little PDF thing that you send them that they can fill out that helps them. You know, it's like a tool that they can utilize for each interview. You know, like they're investing in the transformation from being shitty at interviewing to, oh, I'm super confident and I want to get this job.

Right.

You know, and I'm far more likely to get the job. And by the way, just job pay, especially at the level where your clients are.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. So there's no. There's no one. Right answer. There's the answer that you feel like you can say without vomiting, essentially. Right. That is also going to land for your clients.

Yeah.

Right. And also, you know, it does create a benefit of working with you long term, you know, because what we don't want to have is someone's like, oh, cool, well, I could work with her for 2500amonth, or I could just pay for the occasional one off session. And like, that's way less. Yeah, we don't want. Yeah, okay. Right. And you also have to, like, do you do need to, you know, honor the clients who are paying that amount for. Right. It's not fair to them if they're paying 2500 for two sessions a month. Let's forget the on demand support. But we need to make sure that, like, they're feeling like their investment is honored. Right? Yeah. Especially if this is something that you're not doing a sales call to, that price is going to be public and they're going to think, what the fuck? You're charging them 750 an hour and I'm paying this much an hour. You see? Yep. Yeah. Okay. Cool.

Yes. Thank you.

Awesome. What other questions do we have?

I have one really quick. So with the niche that I'm going after, one of the things that kind of feels icky that I'm trying to work through is like, if I notice somebody has recently, like, one of my interviewers just closed down his company, so a career pivot has been forced on him. When people are in those sort of vulnerable states and you're. You're reaching out about product or service that you might offer to eventually help them how do you not feel icky about that when like, it almost feels like I'm taking advantage of the fact that they are having a hard time? I don't know if I'm saying that right.

So just to get this clear, you sent out an email saying, hey, I need to interview people. He volunteered to be interviewed.

Yeah, well, and like I, I commented on someone's LinkedIn post yesterday. They are in the middle of a job search. And so I reached out and said, hey, like I'm doing this market research, I'm talking to mid career professionals who are looking to make a career pivot. Would you be interested in talking to me? But I don't really know her, so it kind of. Does that feel like pariah ish or.

Like, I don't know, there's a fine line. So like if you're interviewing people and you're making it very clear I'm just interviewing, this isn't a sales pitch. Like, I know finding a job is really challenging. You know, I just happen to see that you're, you are in that position and was curious if you'd be willing to be interviewed. That's okay. But what we don't want to be is we don't want to be like a pile on, you know, so like I, you know, I'm pretty open about like wanting to lose a little bit of weight, you know, but I no longer share it publicly because every fucking time I do, I get people in the DMs are like, I'm a fitness coach, I can help you. And I hate it. I absolutely hate it. If someone is out there asking for help, then of course, like, oh cool, yeah, I absolutely help with that. Here's a link to book a call if you're curious about learning more. But what we don't want to do is like catch people. I think your instincts are right on here. We don't want to go after them when they're vulnerable in the interview stage. It's totally fair game to reach out and just say, hey, I bet you're super busy with your job search right now. But I noticed your post and I am actually looking to interview folks who are, you know, looking for their next role. If you have the time, I would love to interview you. It's not a trick to a sales call. And if I know anyone in my network that I can introduce you to afterwards, I'd be happy to do that. You know, I think that's perfectly fair ask. But I think your instincts are on that. We don't want to go after people when they're vulnerable, you know?

But of course, using the. It's not a sales call in the message, that feels better to me.

Yeah.

At this stage.

Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, there are a few business coaches who are. They're teaching their people to do the interview, but it's a trick to a sales call, and it kind of. It's like peeing in the pool. It ruins the party for everyone, you know, so. But yeah. Yeah, I think. I think your instincts are right on there. Yeah. Awesome. What other questions do we have?

I have a random question.

Yeah.

Alex, there's so many things that I hate about, like, now owning a business. Like, you know, filing receipts and all of these, like, operative things I technically like doing. I don't know if anyone feels that way, too. And I feel like I'm always the person who wants to throw money at a problem so immediate. I've thought many times already, like, should I have a virtual assistant already? Because my husband doesn't want to do my stuff. Would have to pay him. And I've asked him, like, he needs to take over my finances, but has anyone? And not because I'm a bad spender. I just don't. Don't keep track of what I'm spending and, like, comes in and track, as in, like, in an actual sheet. Does anyone else have a virtual assistant or. Katie, do you want to tell me, like, Alex, wait until you hit, like, a certain, like, you know, revenue milestone or something. I feel like it's just like an open discussion that I like, I feel like I want to throw out in the open.

Here's the question. Is it creating problems for you right now in your business?

Like, it's like this mental. Like, I should be doing something, but at the same time, I'm like, what would I make them do? So it's like, okay, you know, I have a few receipts and I have a. I'm sure it could come up eventually with a list, or maybe I could have that person research a bunch of people on LinkedIn for me to reach out to for market research or.

I don't.

Like, I feel once you start having someone, I feel like you can come up with lots of things.

Yeah, here's. Here's my general rule of thumb when it comes to VAs, is like, when you get to the point where you're out of time to do all the stupid admin shit that doesn't make you money that someone else can do, that's when you bring in a va. Okay, you can absolutely bring in A VA to like manage your email. I don't know that you, you necessarily need it right now.

No, because right now it's truly like, you know, it's my client emails. Like they're asking me like, hey, can you help us with this product? Like it's very specific, you know, like it's a fourth and back email. They couldn't help with that at all. And that's exactly.

So here's, I mean here's genuinely something that you can do is once a month, like just have an hour blocked off in your calendar where you go through and just filter for receipts and you know, and just like put it all in a file and just forget about it and then eventually you forward them all to your bookkeeper or something. But I, I don't think that's enough for you to have a VA right now.

Yeah, that's the real talk that I needed. Like, yeah, hitting that certain milestone. Like, okay, now it's like I've spent today again, like, and maybe I need to like, just write it down like the, like, okay, like here's a little like, yeah, post it note on the side, like 15 minutes today, whatever, like just. And then adding the numbers and once I get to like a. Yeah, they're not cheap anymore either.

Yeah. So like when you get to the point where there's so much like back end stuff that you don't necessarily need to be doing that doesn't necessarily need your brain specifically on it and it's keeping you from doing sales calls and it's keeping you from being present on LinkedIn. It's keeping you from really building relationships with potential clients. That's when we need to bring in a va. Okay. Right. Also, if it's just creating so much mental load for you that it's keeping you from being productive in the other areas, that is when we need to bring in someone. But until then I don't know that you need it and. Or is all. I see you. Do you have something to add?

I just, Yeah, I wanted to give my perspective given that somebody that I had a team of five before and I do have a VA right now. So for me currently it was more about looking and saying, do I have a time management issue or do I actually have a lot of work that needs to be done? So once I made it, like once I figured that out that I actually had basically some of the tasks that I need to offload, one thing that I did was do a not to do like things that I didn't like to do list that helped me to delegate things that could say, okay, well, these are some of the things that she could do but give. Like, for me, my VA does a lot of my bookkeeping. So when I did the calculation of hiring my accountant to do bookkeeping versus my va, it's cheaper for her to do it. But at the same time, I have a corporation here in Canada, which means my bookkeeping needs to be really. It's tedious. So it has to be done and it has to be on time. So for me, that was a priority to have somebody. But she also does additional stuff as well.

Got it.

I love that the figure out whether you have a time management issue or if you actually have so many administrative. I think for me it's a time issue for. Which doesn't make sense because I'm so. Ty Bay.

Yeah.

And Lauren.

Yeah. I wanted to offer perspective too. So, Alex, do you have a bookkeeper now?

We have. We use our accountant for everything, but it's like, you know, at the very end of the year, we're looking actually for a new account who helps more like small llc, to like, you know, get pay as little as taxes as possible.

Yeah. So I'll put my accountant's information in the chat. She's awesome. Thank you. So I got an accountant. And that was like, when I started working with Katie, I was like, when I leave, I want to. When I leave my corporate life, I want to be able to afford an accountant, because it's not even that much time. I just freaking hate it.

Me too.

So with this accountant, because I have a business checking account and a business credit card, and I don't use those for anything else, and I don't use anything else for those. The only time I have to send her anything is like during tax time for my personal stuff because she does both. Or like, if I accidentally charge something to my personal card and I'm like, here's a receipt. And she's. Everything is online. I have a QuickBooks account and she connected my bank account and my credit card to the QuickBooks. She sends me a monthly report every month. Sometimes I look at it, sometimes I don't. And I have at least quarterly meetings with her where she like, explains where I am. I could do it myself. Like, I'm good at accounting. I freaking hate it.

Do you want to?

Exactly.

Yeah.

So I pay her, I don't remember, somewhere between five and $600 a month. And like, I just know it's handled and, you know, and then I pay her to do my taxes and I don't have to think about it. And it's not that many hours. And like, I don't care how many hours it is because I'm paying her a monthly fee. So that's what I. That's what I did, like, before I even left. And now that I'm. I'm three years into my business and now I'm starting to think about, like, what else do I not want to be focusing on and where do I want to start investing money? And that's what Katie and I are talking about now.

Yeah.

Love it. Thank you so much, Lauren. And would love the contact.

Yeah. Awesome.

I feel like that was also perfect. We only have 12 minutes left. I already asked what I need help for and just.

Okay, awesome. Thank you for the reminder. Any questions before we dive into kind of networking and making an ask of everyone?

Well, I did just now, so.

Yeah, jumped ahead of the line.

No.

I like to be first.

Anyone? Okay, let's move into like any ask you have of anyone here. And it could be people to interview. It could be. If you want introductions in certain types of companies. It could be. Do you know of like a Canva tutorial so I can do this better? Like, whatever it is that you feel like you're struggling with that you want?

Yes, Canva. Did you just say Canva?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Canva tools, by the way, are pretty amazing, but yeah, it's a learning curve.

Yeah, I feel old that I like, I do everything in PowerPoint.

Because that's.

How, like, I'm from corporate. That's what we use. And then power PowerPoint became so powerful. And then you're like, oh, my God, it's a graphics tool. And then Canva came along and you're like, what the.

So, yes, yeah, yeah. So if anyone knows of a. Of a Canva tutorial or a PDF or something, speak now or forever hold your peace. And maybe remember this question. If you come across anything, send it to Alex.

The one thing I would say is if you hate Adobe like I do, Canva now makes it possible to edit PDFs, which has been a game changer because I already have Canva and so I don't have to deal with Adobe at all anymore. And I love it.

Yeah. Yeah, Alex. I will say I kind of taught myself Canva and really it's going on, going in and just around.

Yeah.

You know, just like.

And.

And don't put the pressure on yourself that like, oh, I have to, I have to share this, but just go and make posts. Go and make Templates. They also have a ton of, like, done for you templates that you can change the color on.

Yeah, exactly. Like, my perfectionism comes out in those things. So I'm like, oh.

Painful exercise for you. And it's going to be wonderful. It's going to really get you out of your perfectionism.

Yeah, I hate it. Coming from corporate, where you had your creative team, everything looked shiny and glitzy, huh?

Yeah, it's hard.

It's really hard.

Your challenge is I want you to create something and send to me by the end of the day to go.

To Costco after this.

But you know what?

Like, do it. Do it while you're in line. Do it on your phone.

I don't even have the app. I didn't even know they have an app.

You can do. You can do it on your phone. It's magic. Yeah.

And now I'm going to sip it so everyone else can.

All right, what other questions do we have that you want to ask of the group?

I'm struggling with really low LinkedIn engagement, and I don't know if it's a content problem, if it's. I'm not using the right hashtags or whatever, but that's my struggle right now that I could use help with.

Okay, let me just see. Ah, my mouse is not working. Okay. Yeah. I'm just going to give you some feedback really quick. Number one, no more sharing links in your posts. So YouTube links. It sends people off the platform. LinkedIn will see that and be like, we're not showing any of Jason's stuff to anyone because he's trying to send people off our platform. Right. Let's see your hooks. Your hooks need a little bit of work because here. Here are the few. The jobs of the hook aid has to tell the person, this is relevant to you. Okay. So it could be. Oh, there's a similar goal. So the one suggestion that helped me. Helped you do what? Right. To get really specific with that. It also has to create curiosity. You know, it has to give them a reason to want to click See more. Right. And. And it, like, it's. It can be kind of bait, clicky. It can be funny, it can be serious. It can be any number of things, but you want it to be really specific so that, like, people have very limited time and attention. What's going to make them want to click See more. Right. And I want you to go a little bit more into storytelling. Like, you're close with it, with the jiu jitsu, but it's. It Leans towards kind of preachy, like here's how it helps me. You're teaching about it rather than sharing the story of it.

Okay.

What was your first Jiu Jitsu lesson? Like, what made you go back for the second one? You know, what does it feel like when you don't go to Jiu Jitsu, you know, for a couple weeks, you know, share the story. Share the story of like the argument you had with your spouse because you realize that you were completely disconnected from your body because you hadn't been working out. Right. We want to go personal over preachy every time.

Okay.

Okay. But start with those. And if you're writing posts and you want feedback, it does take me a couple days. But if you want to share them in a Google Doc in heartbeat, I can give you some feedback on it before you share it.

Okay. Okay.

Right.

Thank you.

Yeah, of course. Any other questions of the group requests? Anything?

I was just gonna suggest if everybody could take a few minutes just to share what they do. Just given that this is my first time and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have no idea what everybody does.

Yeah, please, let's popcorn it. So whoever goes first will choose the next person and I won't go because you all know what I do.

Alex, Marketing advisor slash consultant for mainly B2B companies. Jason?

Yeah.

I'm in tech sales but I'm building a business to help mid career professionals transition to their next thing.

And who are you picking?

Oh, Yvonne.

Thanks.

I'm a holistic wellness coach. I help people recover from and prevent burnout.

Thank you. Monica.

You. I'm a career coach for people that want to change careers into the data space. And I also am doing consulting for internal audit teams.

And Lauren.

I'm an executive coach for people who have gotten to the middle slash top of their career and they are fine, but they're not really fine because fine is a terrible place to be. And I help them boundary set emerge from burnout and figure out what they want to be when they grow up. And then I just took on a side gig as a dog sitter because I lost my dog a month ago and I'm dog sitting for four dogs this week. This is, this is the ugly one. His tongue sticks out the side of his mouth.

He's so cute.

So that's what I do.

It's like the doggy in Deadpool in Wolverine.

He's therapy.

It makes me so happy.

Oh my God. And Rosella, what have you go also sure.

So I've had my own social media agency for, for almost 10 years and right now I' currently going to transition into social media coaching and training and I'm based out of Canada.

Great. All right, any other, Any other requests of the group? Going once, going twice. All right, let's move into main takeaways. And we're again, we're going to popcorn it. So whoever goes first picks the next person. Who picks the next person? What is your main takeaway from today?

Yes, I'm just going to get it.

Out of the way.

So for me it's. It was just looking and seeing that we all have like similar challenges because sometimes I feel like as an entrepreneur you feel so isolated and you just feel like you're the only one with a certain challenge. But then having everybody share their challenge, it's. It just makes you feel like you're.

Not alone in it.

And then obviously you sharing your insight, it does help with solving that challenge.

Thank you. And who are you picking next? Who?

Sorry, jason. I muted myself. Yeah.

Bright butter hooks and activity. I'm going to focus on activity, not outcomes.

Awesome.

Alex, thanks. Working on my time management with anything that's not like, directly like, you know, concerns working with my clients. I pick Lauren.

The value of my hour was like a big aha. That I shouldn't charge less for an hour than I charge for per hour per month. Yeah. Thank you.

Monica.

You.

I have it takeaway. That is an indirect takeaway, I suppose. I always have weird takeaways. I feel like I need to find different ways to kind of get out of my space without having to go outside because it's like 90 degrees before 8am and I don't know what else to do.

So.

Yeah, I need to figure out ways to.

Yeah. Yeah. I wish I could help you with that. But I also. It's not even that hot here and I'm like, I'm not leaving the house. Yeah. All right. Awesome. All right, I'm getting on ClickUp. Monica, thank you for the reminder and everyone, have an amazing weekend and I can't wait to see you next week. Yeah. Beginning of the month. So BYOB our first calls next week. Hyper focused first calls next week.

And.

Feel like there's something else, another announcement, but I've forgotten what it is. So I will let you guys know when I remember. So awesome. Have a great weekend, everyone.

You too.

Bye.

Bye.