Episode #556 - Virtual Assistance: Breaking Down Barriers & Eliminating Physical Presence with Na...

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. So which has the biggest long term potential for you?

You think Econ Balance? I think outdoor school will stick around and we're constantly adding people to it. But I think Econ balance has the potential to be a seven, eight figure business if we execute properly.

And how does that actually work with an entrepreneur? What size company? How does that actually work that you do the billing and everything?

Yes, we just have a key point.

You know, that's a lot of trust for people to have it in an outsourced way.

Yeah. So we do the bookkeeping. So I mean we charge clients on the 1st, they get their books by the 15th. We can help with any kind of catch up or cleanup work. We custom price every client. You can go on the site, create an account, go through our pricing process and we get you a quote within a day. And yeah, I mean it's all about taking bookkeeping off your plate. As an entrepreneur, you should never be doing your own bookkeeping. It's not a good use of your time. Usually it has to get redone anyway. But you do need to review your financial reports every month. You should have a finance meeting on your calendar. If you go to ecombalance.com agenda you can get our finance meeting that we've gone through every month for the past six years. And that's how you make good decisions. The reason we're able to scale free up is making good decisions every month based on what the numbers are telling us. And the reason we're able to sell free up is because we had four years worth of clean books that passed due diligence and had accurate numbers. And we knew our numbers very well. So it's all about helping people make good decisions based on the numbers each month. And that can also lead to less stress during taxes, funding investments or also selling your business.

Well, I've said for a long time, it's like there's one thing, the one thing an entrepreneur despises more than anything and that is doing the books. But if you, the choice you got to come to is either you've got to do the books or you got to work up work for somebody who will. You got to keep up with things or you're going to have to go to work for somebody who'll keep up with things. And you seem like you have come up with a solution that kind of plugs the gap there, where an entrepreneur can run things, keep an eye on it, but not get bogged down into the minutia. Would you say that's a good.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's the two unsexy parts of businesses or three, the hiring, the building processes and the bookkeeping. Most of that stuff that people don't like doing. But it's the core of any business. And if you want to succeed, you have to be doing all three really well.

Now, when you go in with how did you launch your course? How do you launch a course?

Yeah, good question. We got courses. The key is to sell it before you build it. So we created a waiting list. We marketed it, we sold people at a discount, and only if we got sales would we then spend the time to actually make the course. So that's how we went about it.

And so you marketed it online or through your email list or your website? Where did you take ads out? On YouTube or.

Yeah, social media ads. We did a lot of content. We have a lot of partners in the space and affiliates that we asked them to promote it. Relationships that we built over time. Email blast, stuff like that. So it's kind of all channels.

Did you find that your advertising budget got up to a sizable amount before the sales started to kick in, or was it all kind of an organic thing right from the beginning?

Yeah, I mean, everything's trial and error and tweaks and you kind of make adjustments over time. To be honest, we're more on the organic side than paid. We're just have a very good organic marketing strategy. So it's a combination of everything. And when you launch a new business, you never really know what's going to work, but what's not. And whatever does work, you double down on. And whatever does work, whatever doesn't work, you kind of tweak and try something else. So that's kind of how we approach it.

Well, when we, when we're moving forward, we're focusing on the positives and we're dealing with the negatives. And it's easy to bury those things. But some of those negative experiences are the most formative, you know, and you know, like there's. There's a coach, one of the football. Woody Hayes coach at Ohio State said there's. There's nothing, nothing that causes you to your focus to return. Like getting your jaw knocked off, you know, getting your head knocked off. Go out there and just get beat by 20 or 30 points. All of a sudden the Team is really focused. And I really think, I'll tell you this, I really think the reason this past weekend Georgia beat this stuffing out of LSU is the fact that Georgia Tech was, was my team. And we have a reunion on Saturday after Thanksgiving and Georgia Tech and Georgia always play. And so this is in South Georgia, so everybody's a Georgia fan except for me. But when Georgia Tech came at the end of the game and scored that last touchdown, I told, I looked around, I said LSU is really in trouble next week because that gave Kirby Smart, the coach, a reason to jump down their throat because, you know, letting Georgia Tech off the hook and score a face saving touchdown there towards the end of the game, that was just totally unnecessary from Georgia's standpoint. But it was great for him because it allowed the team not to stay arrogant all week going into the game with lsu. And so a lot of the times we go through things, Nathan and I would, people would look at you and say, you know, he's just gone through, he's had his little dings and everything, but never really had a meteor fall out of the sky and hit him on the head and traumatizing with, with any, you know, somebody from the outside or something, you know he did or, you know, he just is really on top of his game. Is that always the case? I mean, have you been able to dance your way through or have you had some major traumatic things? Because people have the idea that successful people really never had anything tough to deal with?

No, I mean, I've had plenty of tough things and you kind of learn perseverance by going through it. I had a situation where I went on vacation and on vacation my identity got stolen, someone filed a tax return on my name, my biggest employee quit on me, and my biggest manufacturer dropped me all on the same day of my vacation. So I've had plenty of ups. I've had Amazon accounts suspended, I've had businesses I've sold and really high ups and downs. So entrepreneurship is a lot of ups and a lot of downs. And as you get do it more and more, you kind of stay numb to the whole thing. I mean, you realize when things are going bad that it's just a problem you gotta solve. And when things are going good, you can't stay on top of the world too long and you gotta protect yourself and think of all the things that could go the opposite way. So no one just has straight success. I was fortunate enough to have some early success with the Amazon business and free up in terms of overall just sales and profit and that. But there are a lot of bumps along the way that you kind of learn how to problem solve.

What is it for? How do you. Your identity is stolen and you're on vacation. How do you do. How do you get back home with your. With whatever cash you have or start picking up?

Yeah. I mean, you sulk for a little bit, you feel bad for yourself for a little bit, and then you problem solve and you learn, hey, how do I protect myself on future tax returns? You learn, hey, how do I diversify my hiring so that if next time someone quits, it's not that big of a deal? And how do I diversify my. The suppliers I work with? So again, if someone drops me, it's not that big of a deal. So it's, hey, how do I learn? What resources do I have? How do I get this back on track? And what do I do to prevent these issues from ever happening again?

How long does it take you to get your identity restored after it's been stolen like that?

Yeah. So they stole $40,000 from the government under my name, which had. Didn't really affect me, to be honest. It was a lot of paperwork and all of that, but they didn't really take any of my money. And now I have a PIN number every year that whenever I file my taxes, I have to submit that PIN number so they know it's me. And overall, it took a few months. Big picture. It didn't really, like, affect me in any way. I had to pay my accountant a little bit more to just deal with a lot of it, but it ended up being not as bad as it potentially could have been.

Yeah. And like, even in the beginning, you know, we, we tend to gloss over these things or exaggerate them, but in the beginning, as a rookie starting out, you said, I've had hundreds of no's. How would. Kind of thousands.

Okay.

Yeah. And what's your experience of going through? What have you learned from doing the hundreds of podcasts that you've done? Have you done that primarily for marketing purposes?

Yeah. Podcast. It's good for relationship building, it's good for SEO. It's good for evergreen content. It's a good way to get in front of thousands of your. Your, Your, Your audience at once. You build different partnerships. There's lots of good things there. And yeah, I mean, rejection is kind of just part of it. And you. You kind of, you know, you don't. A lot of times in life, you don't get things unless you try. And, and sometimes it Takes follow up and persistence and creativity to, to get what you need.

Well, it's, it's funny from doing these, these interviews, you see people that, they're The Forbes top 10, this, that and the other, the, you know, the Inc. Magazine top, fastest growing 2022 and this. And so how did you get that? Well, well, we applied.

Right, exactly. You don't get out. You don't get it if you don't try.

Yeah, it's like. Well, we checked to see how would you apply. We thought that could look good on the, on the website. We applied and then, you know, we got it. You know, so the thing is that you do have to be proactive and reach out and move forward and try different things. What are some different things that you've done that, you know, creates an excitement for you right now that you're able to do that, that's, it's keeping you buzzing?

Yeah. I mean, being foster parents is kind of cool. I mean, you take, you take a lot of stuff for granted growing up, having loving and supporting parents, food on the table, a house to live in, a school to go to. And I mean, those are bare minimums to a lot of people. You meet teenagers that didn't have that experience for whatever reason and being able to help them and teach them problem solving and life skills and things that you kind of had the privilege to learn. So for me, that's kind of cool. I'm kind of at the point of my life where I don't work on anything business wise unless it excites me. So I'm really excited about outsource school and econ balance and it's fun and we're helping people. But yeah, I mean, life's just great. I can do whatever I want whenever I want, work with people I want to. My family all lives in Colorado now just enjoying the Colorado lifestyle. And I apologize, I have to hop off here in a few minutes. But yeah, I mean, hard work kind of paid off and I'm trying to pay it forward however I can.

Yeah, no, no. Just curious. How would you tell people how did you get going on the foster parent thing and that, in other words, that's something you would recommend is what you're saying that's a pos been a positive experience for you?

Yeah. I mean, nothing's easy, but yeah, I mean, you get certified. Every state has their own certification. But if you have the financial means and a place that you can, a room that you can give a kid that needs it, it's a very rewarding Experience.

Yeah. And how, how long have you done that?

Approaching a year now. So not, not that long.

When you make a commitment, when you make a commitment to be a foster parent, can that be one or more kids? Is it, is it for a year or two, is for a period of time or what, what are the commitments you're making there?

Yeah, I mean, everything's different. Like, you can have kids that stay with you for years. You can have kids who you just need a weekend to go before their relatives come into town or could be a month, long stint. So it's kind of all over the place. You can start, you can stop. Like, all the agency that we work with is pretty supportive and. Yeah, it's just a cool opportunity.

Absolutely. Well, thanks so much, Nathan. It's been great and I wish you the best. And I'm going to be sending our people over to check out your website because. Absolutely. It is a game. Both of those things are game changers. Thanks so much. Any last word you'd like to pass on when you. I always like to leave when I remember. Let people leave the last word or ask the last question themselves or the last comment.

Yeah, I mean, feel free to connect with me on social media, Nathan Hirsch, and any social media channel. I love networking with other entrepreneurs and check out outsource school and econ balance. And thanks so much for having me on, Larry.

Thank you. And enjoy that Colorado weather.

Appreciate it. See you. Bye.

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