The Achieve Podcast - Joan Burge (Office Dynamics International)

Welcome to the Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight the leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs who are building meaningful businesses and shaping their industries. I'm your host, Stephen Bunker, and today we're excited to learn from Joan, founder and CEO with Office Dynamics International. So Joan, for those getting to know you, can you give us a quick backstory of the business or organization?

Yes, I can. I will do that. Well, it's not a quick story, but I'll give you the quick version. Uh, yes, I started Office Dynamics in 1990. I actually pioneered an entire industry that did not exist, so that's unique to my story. It was not in existence, so that was quite challenging. Um, and prior to starting Office Dynamics, I worked as an executive assistant. I worked in the administrative profession for 20 years. During that 20-year time, I worked in 12 different companies in 5 states. So that was all so unique because, you know, at that time jumping around did not look good. But I was an eager assistant. I wanted to move up. Um, we did move several times because of my husband's career, and then I lost 2 jobs because of downsizing. But the good news, the The great news is I learned so much by being in various cultures, various organizations. I worked for a lot of big corporations, so I knew when I started my company I wanted to model that, even though I wasn't going to be a Fortune 500 company. But the lessons I gained— and of course, being an executive assistant, I was behind the scenes. I saw how leaders were thinking and why they did what they did. And I worked for some fantastic executives who taught me business. So that foundation, you know, I wanted to mention that because that also was unique training ground for me that I didn't realize, you know, during that time I eventually was going to open my own company. And then I saw this gap that that there wasn't any robust training for my profession. Yet the people I supported, the lives I ran, I ran their life, they were getting all kinds of training, all kinds of development, never questioned. It was never questioned. But what about me? You know, I'm the right-hand person. I'm running your life really. And I'm not getting anything from my career so I could grow with you, you know? So that's what drove me to that. It was very, very hard. Very hard. One, when I stepped out, I didn't know anything about training and writing curriculums and instructional design and adult learning. Yeah, I was afraid to speak, you know, in front of a big group. It was brand new territory, but I was so passionate, right? And so then just really quick, I was very, very determined. It was very difficult, especially in that day and age. You know, I used to just cold call Pick up the phone, call people, knock on doors. And I would hear so many nos. Admins don't need training. Admins don't need training. We don't invest in admins. But, you know, for that entrepreneur, you know, when you really believe in something, that helps you. And, you know, 35 years later, 36 years later, that's what keeps me going is the passion I have because I almost closed my doors 6 times.

Wow.

From everything from 9/11 affected my business because I used to travel and go on site into all these companies to do the training. And I also worked with the executives in the companies as well as the assistants. But pre-COVID, I was on site all the time. Then I had to pivot entire— my entire model. I had— there were a few medical emergencies I had over. I had brain surgery, I had open heart surgery, injury. I had to keep everything going through all of that, but I had a good team in place. So I guess that's my first— one of my important lessons is you have to have a great solid team in place and be prepared for those emergencies. But, uh, but anyway, here I am 36 years later. I'm as excited as ever about just keeping evolving the business.

Can you tell me, like, at this stage, what's actually driving growth and opportunity for you right now?

Uh, the growth is just assessing— well, the growth is coming from my adapting to what happened during the pandemic and the virtual, being able to pivot to virtual. So a lot of what we are doing is still the virtual training, um, and we— the marketing, of course, aspect of that is my marketing team. We work very closely together. I have an— I had a complete team change over last last year.

Has that ultimately been a positive change, going to virtual?

It has. Well, it has, yes, because, um, I can reach people around the world now, where before, if a company wouldn't hire me to come in, you know, or assistants, they could come to our conference. We hold some public conferences, but the virtual actually Yes, I was able to pivot quickly because I had content. And then yes, it opened up a whole new world in that now we reach assistants and their executives all over the world, which we weren't doing, you know, previously. So in that respect, and it was, you know, having to learn and shape and twist. The other thing that grow— helps us grow is, is I am a visionary at heart. Yeah. So I think that's an important trait and not everyone has that naturally. And if not, then that entrepreneur has to develop and make the time to have a vision. So I look a year out, 2 years out, 3 years, and I get ahead of the trend, like AI right now, right? Is a hot, hot topic.

Oh yeah.

And so I've been ahead of that curve since 3 years ago when ChatGPT came out. So what we're doing now, I'm leveraging that, you know, by providing trainings and talking to companies about, and the assistants, how do they leverage this? How do they work in tandem so they're not replaced? So that's another area, you know, I'm already thinking about how do I design a certification course that'll bring in revenue to me, so, or to the company. So it's, yeah, getting abreast or getting on what's going on right now and then creating the services we can provide that will bring in that revenue because it's in everyone's face right now. Yeah.

So looking back for you personally, like, I mean, there's been a lot of ups and downs, positive and negative. Like, what has changed how you think about running an organization with all that, with that change?

Yeah, well, I think in terms of, of, um, focusing on being a real, a leadership heart, um, really— and I've always kind of worked with my team, but I've become much more collaborative with my team. And that's been really important because I used to kind of be the driver of it, you know. Yeah, here's the idea and here's what we're going to do. And over the last several years, as I have matured, I, I have really created a collaborative environment. When we sit together as a team and there's ideas, I want to take in everybody's idea. Not— I've learned to not constantly say no. I still say no sometimes, but it's developing to listen and lead with heart. I say lead with love because I, I can be a very— I'm a very red style. Let's go, go, go, go. I don't have time for fluff talk, you know. And so I learned, I learned to pull back and lead with, with heart and take that time, you know, for my team and showing that, even if it has to be where I'm critiquing them on something. Uh, so I've switched, you know, being a little softer in how I approach and help them grow. Um, the other thing I've really learned because of my, my near-death experiences is to, you know, step back. You know, sometimes we, we're as entrepreneurs, we're very driven and business owners, and we just want to go and go and build and build. And, and it is hard for me to like step back, but I've definitely grown in that appreciation of really focusing a lot and making time for my well-being and going to yoga classes. Because I realized too, if I'm not in that good space, I'm not creative, I'm not as energetic. You know, if I don't get a good night's sleep— like, I'm on fire today. I've been sleeping good. I work out at the gym. Spending more time making that connection looking at myself holistically, that all these other elements of my life, you know, actually feed over to my professional life. Yeah. So it, yeah, it has shifted. And that life goes by actually so much faster than we think. And I know when you're younger, you just, you don't see that. When you're 30, 40, you're like, I'm going to be around forever. But I just, I am with tens of thousands of people in a year and I hear so many stories of everything, you know, breakups, illnesses, you know, people really open up to me. And some of this is happening when people are 40, 50, you know, so I've really stepped back. And I think in today's world, what's happened actually, Stephen, we're all back at a crazy pace, even crazier than before the pandemic. So, you know, we all had a slowdown. We were forced to slow down, right? We're right back at it now. We've totally forgotten about making time for people because that's all we had before. And, you know, and the technology is moving so fast and we're so time compressed. So when I look at everybody again, it's like we're back on these hamster wheels and people are forgetting again to stop. Have the human connection. So that's another piece of it. Uh, we're so glued to this and all this, this connection, but that is not where your real relationships and friendships are built. And I can tell you, every single time I have had to really— I've been brought to my knees in my business, that is when I'm so grateful that I have built powerful relationships because those are the people I can go to and say, what should I do? What ideas do you have? Have you been in similar situations? So if we do not build— and people are really bad at this today, they don't take the time for the human moment and making real connections. That's not the same as having hundreds of followers on your LinkedIn. I'm talking real because it's also very lonely being at the top. It's very lonely being a business owner, and there's things you can't share with people. But if you build good relationships and you know who your inner circle is, who do you think you're going to call on? And even not in bad situations, you know, like when I get great ideas or I, oh, I have this idea, I want to do a Learning at Sea seminar, which I did do. I can go to those people. And get perspectives.

Can you tell me kind of a little bit of a pivot here, but when it comes to like your messaging and your outreach and your systems and your marketing, like what's been working well for you?

Believe our email, actually our email works extremely well because we do follow and we do look at our statistics. We, they look at open rates. We, um, so Email actually has been great. Well, in terms of, of getting them to sign up for our courses or services. So we emailed to our list. And then the other piece that we've really been working on with the social media is, of course, video is the big thing. Yeah, we realize video and the importance video plays and content rich video, not trying to sell the product. Right. It's like, yes, that thought leadership. And my team, we're starting to rock it. We've got a rhythm now. I actually myself, where I wasn't doing so much of this posting, but we realized I've got to build my personal brand as Joan Burge, a speaker and presenter, but as Joan Burge, the founder and CEO of the company. So now I've got a regular routine where one day a week I will just take maybe a half hour, 45 minutes. I will— with my own little phone, you know, I'm learning all of that. I learned— I got a teleprompter the other day on my phone too, but I, I can speak pretty freely. But I will do my own, maybe 3 or 4 little recordings, 4-minute, 5-minute clips. And then I've got even— I mark it on a chart, I post Tuesdays and Thursdays on my Joan Burge LinkedIn, on my Joan Burge Speaker Facebook page. So I'm not just saying, oh, that's up to the team, because also it's working very well because being in the speaking industry too, they keep telling us that, um, the, the per— the people who are posting on a regular basis are the ones who are winning. And they're— and you know, the thing is because there could be garbage posting out there, right? And they're still going to win just because they're, they're on social. They are coming up all the time. So we're in a different world. So I'm doing that. That's working very well for us.

How about just like with all the buzz around AI and automation, have you found ways to use it or where do you still feel there's opportunities?

Oh man, I love AI. It is my best friend. I use Chat. I started using it 3 years ago. Uh, I— every day I'm using Chat. Um, it exponentially has speeded up my ability to not only push more out but especially clarify my thoughts, um, to build my thoughts out. So I can just get on there and spew out all this stuff. I mean, this is actually stuff I just was working on yesterday.

Oh, wow.

Threw out all my ideas and it spits it back to me all lovely and nice and things of things I didn't think of. So it's broadening, actually building on, on my scenarios, but it broadens it. And then I go through, I still have to analyze, you still have to assess, does that make sense? But I've written executive briefs with that to give to clients to really uses ammunition, why they need to buy our services. I've written white papers through that. We build out actually for my, my marketing team. So let's say I have an idea about a new program or a webinar I'm going to do, and I put, I put all my stuff together, my script, my outlines. But while I'm in chat asking it to kind of expand, or what did I miss? Well, once it's done. It's so fast. Instead of just going to my marketing team and saying, all right, now take 2 hours to figure out your social posts, your emails, immediately I ask ChatGPT, okay, write me 4 social posts. I want an email. This is what I want the email to reflect. I want it to be an emotional tone, or I want to be attention-grabbing. I tell it exactly the tone I want. I say, okay, while we're at it, let's write a blog, 800-word blog. So I get all of that. It still goes to the marketing team, but do you see, I've— it'll spit it out in a couple minutes. How much time I have saved them. Then they can build from there and strategize and put it into Asana and the calendars and how they're gonna execute. So it's been a huge shift. And I would encourage anyone out there, you need to learn it and learn how to prompt it because there is something to prompting, right? I'm sure you know that.

So when you're using that, do you feel like there's any process or automations or things like that that could be more predictable?

There are. Oh, yes. Well, I've been— I've also been learning, you know, that you can create templates with it. So now I have to start applying some of that. I just learned that yesterday on a tech class, uh, that we actually hosted. But I have a tech guru, and so he was talking about how, you know, when you're doing this, you could create these templates so that every time you could just go to the template and put it back in. Um, and you can do that. Um, I don't use it so much for my calendaring and things like that. I mean, a lot of people can, but that's where I have an EA who is my strategic partner. I've always had an EA for years, and I want that thinking human being to look at my calendar and holistically view it and think about, gee, I'm— how I'm going to be, right? But a lot of people are relying on it. I think it's— it is excellent maybe to create templates for if I have weekly staff meetings or quarterly strategic meetings where maybe it's that model framework and that's already put together. But of course, then I add in whatever is happening in the moment. Yeah, there are so many ways, and I don't know it all yet. I'm so excited about learning how else it can help me.

So when you think about the next stage for your business, what does excite you?

Uh, I'm excited. Me is building out my whole Joan Burge brand now. So, um, you know, the company at first was Joan Burge Office Dynamics International, then I pulled myself away from it because I want the company to stand on its own, not around me having to always be here, right? So we've done that, done a great job. Now I'm super excited. I built out my whole Joan Burge new website. I'm really pushing my, my brand. I wrote a new book for women. I'm passionate about it.

Oh, I love that.

Empowering women is my next step. Like, I've always supported women, but now I'm super excited. Red lipstick is my signature thing. So now I've built— uh, the book came out. I built out a whole line of Red Lipstick on merchandise, ball caps, t-shirts, uh, mugs. I'm super excited. I'm just building all of that out, hosting virtual book clubs. I'm putting together a recorded training class. I'm right— I just can't wait to branch that all out because I want to reach more and more women and support women in all facets of their life.

So your vision kind of pivoted to where it's like Because I— so your business, Office Dynamics International, was primarily geared towards like helping businesses develop their, um, assistance, and then you're kind of pivoting towards empowering women in business and leadership.

Yes. And then with Office Dynamics, actually, it's also evolved tremendously. So while I was— it's still intentional with the admin community because because there are so many that are supporting leadership. But over the years, because I teach the soft skills, I don't teach any tech. I teach interpersonal, intrapersonal skills, leadership, persuasion skills, communication skills, attitudes. Over the years, non-administrative professionals have taken our classes and companies can be certified to teach my courses in their company. And so we've had wealth advisors go through my classes, customer service people. It's because really the soft skills are for everyone, right? Yeah. So we're— but it's still that workplace excellence piece is Office Dynamics, and that will continue to evolve and grow. I'm excited about that. But yes, Joan Burge, now I want to broaden that, go to next piece, as you said, and really empowering and helping, helping women. You know, they now navigate such a complex life, so complex. And, you know, I've been around women forever. I am a woman. I know the emotional baggage. I know the extra load women carry, you know, between caregivers and kids and aging parents and workplace, you know, and all this stuff. So, uh, they need a lot of, of support and guidance and help. And, you know, I'm just—

about it. So when you look at your own journey, like the wins and mistakes, like what lessons have stood out to you?

Uh, I think a lesson actually that just came to mind is you can have all— something could look so logical to you and you could check all the boxes and it still might not work. So, and then what I thought about is several years ago I made a leap. This was a hard lesson. I made a leap, but I was going to, uh, I was going to spend X amount of dollars, I think like $15,000 on this advertising through the Training Association, which of course, and I was going to be everywhere in all these different vehicles logically to me, this is my industry, this makes sense. This is the biggest association for trainers. And I— and it was a whole year thing. I don't think I got one lead off of it.

Oh, wow.

I spent $15,000 to $20,000. It was the biggest leap for me because believe it or not, a lot of my non-paid advertising, I get more business than when I would do paid advertising. Yeah, and that was hard because I was like, logically everything checked off. So that also led me to think a lot of my little methods that I do actually work better than when I would do paid advertising. So I think that was a big aha for me. Um, and so yeah, I think that's a good lesson. Um, lessons for me are so built around the, the pure determination. Um, I think another lesson is, you know, that waiting as an entrepreneur or business owner. Like, you know, my business was hovering at a certain place for quite a while before maybe I got that big, big breakthrough with a 7-figure revenue. And it was this slow, slow— and it's, it's hard, like, learning to be patient when you see it and you want it so badly you could taste it.

Yeah.

So when that breakthrough happens and you finally hit that mark of 7-figure revenue, it was like, wow, I could see where all my hard work, it finally did pay off. And then not, you know, give up. And I'm, I work on sheer determination. Um, that's one thing I have definitely learned. And, and the wins can be great, you know. Uh, I think a great win for me again, just by working so hard for so many years. Finally, at my 30th year anniversary, or 28th year, uh, Walt Disney World called me from Orlando, Clearwater. Oh wow. And I got a 6-month contract with them. And so again, though, I look back, it was like not giving up and keep putting myself out there.

Yeah.

And not knowing— I think that's a great lesson when it— you might hit that opportunity comes along.

Do you have any final thoughts or advice you'd give other leaders or entrepreneurs who are on a similar journey as yourself?

Yeah, I'm growing it. It's not hard. It's— I mean, it is hard, like growing, like you said. You, you start out, you know, and there's seasons of a business. I was just— and I work with some great entrepreneurs entrepreneurs too who are much bigger than me. And so one thing, network with other entrepreneurs, network who— with executive and leaders and entrepreneurs and business owners who are 3, 4, 5 times your size. Don't be afraid because we love to mentor, they love to mentor. I've been surrounded with these kinds of people. We go to lunch. I want to know And so I watch what they do. I pay attention. I'm very observant. And I run my business as if I'm a Fortune 500 company. So that's my advice. Pretend— look at what Fortune 500 companies do because they know what they've got. But we're doing it smaller scale, right? And so sorry, I had so many thoughts I wanted to share with them. Around that, but learning that advice and testing things. Don't be afraid. That's one thing. Like I did, I created a Learning at Sea. I did. I wanted to be revolutionary in 2016. No one was even doing that in any industry. And I'm like, all right, but I'm, I'm always willing to try something. And if it doesn't work like you hoped, I've learned you either have to tweak it and do it again and fine-tune it and polish it and try it again and try it again. Or you say, oh, I tried it, I didn't get the results I wanted. But sometimes we don't get the results either because we're not marketing it right. We're not promoting it right. Yes. So that's one thing. I'm a risk taker. I have put many things out there. I mean, you could see I started an industry that is now There are tons of other people who are training assistants. So just, yeah, as that entrepreneur, be willing to test your ideas and then always debrief after. And what worked well, what didn't work, why didn't it work? If you still want to do it again, you know, or launch it, what do you need to do better? And keep polishing that.

Well, Joan, thank you so much for sharing your story and especially your insights with us and how you're just navigating all this change. So this has been a fantastic interview. So thank you again.

You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me on.

And to learn more about Office Dynamics International, visit officedynamics.com. We'll also put Joan Burge's LinkedIn contact info in our show notes. And that wraps up today's episode of the Achieve Podcast. A big thank you to our sponsors Achieve Fractional, which provides fractional marketing services for growing businesses. If you enjoyed today's conversation, follow the show and share it with another entrepreneur who'd find value in it. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Achieve Podcast. Thank you very much.