Speaker 1: 0:04

Hey Beth, thanks for being on the show.

Speaker 2: 0:05

Thanks for having me Excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:07

So you have an incredible story of just exponential growth that I thought would be exciting for our listeners to hear. What I'm looking at says that you went from $46,000 in revenue in 2019 to $16 million in 2024. And from what you just told me before we even recorded, it's actually gonna be more than that in 2025. What has that journey been like and how did you get to where you are? Give us the overview.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Yeah, the journey has been crazy. I first would like to thank DoorDash for feeding my children for the last five years. Yeah, I'm not kidding, yeah, it's been incredible. It's been an incredible ride and journey. Previously to starting a company, I was a W2 employee. I didn't work for myself. I worked for different companies. I learned so much in terms of how they strategically designed their businesses around growth. I paid attention heavily and so I brought some of that just learning experience to this organization. But even having had been in many companies that had exponential growth, even taking that here, it's one thing to watch it and one thing to have to do it and build it, and the journey has been one of finding the right people in the right seats. That has been the most number one critical thing. I think that has been crucial to our growth and continuing to have the growth at the trajectory we've had.

Speaker 1: 1:33

That's good. One of the things you just said that I want to highlight is it's easy to watch it. It's more difficult to do it, and so I'm curious to dig into that a little bit. I think a lot of people experience this. They think, well, I'm just going to go start my own business. I could do it better, and that's good. That's a good instinct sometimes to go let me just go do a thing. Or maybe I got a new idea, maybe it's not even better, it's just something brand new. But what are some of those things that you maybe, before you got into the business, you thought this is going to be easier than I think it's going to be. And then you get in and you find out it's actually much harder.

Speaker 2: 2:03

Well, luckily, I'm not sure if I'm lucky for it, but I have a little bit of imposter syndrome, so I never went in thinking, oh, I can do this way better than anybody else.

Speaker 2: 2:11

So ego at the door was never part of who I am. So I always thought, okay, I want to learn from some of the best leaders, learn from some of the worst leaders and bring that into the organization that I'm going to run, and from some of the worst leaders and bring that into the organization that I'm going to run. And also just consistently thinking about okay, well, what does my company look like now and where do I want it to land? Where do I want it to look? What do I want it to look like two years from now, five years from now? And so for me, I think the biggest thing is what works now doesn't work when you double in business. You have to always consistently be thinking, especially if you're scaling consistently thinking about okay, the strategies that we're utilizing right now does it look the same and does it still function when you double your business, triple your business, quadruple your business?

Speaker 2: 2:53

So that's one of the lessons that I've learned very early on is that I had to consistently reimagine that because we would have some growth, and after we had that growth, it's like oh, we've already outgrown the procedures and policies we had in place, and so now we're having to reimagine all those policies and what it looks like next time. And so, having had done that three or four times now, I'm finally in a position, about a year and a half ago, where it's like, okay, now I'm always thinking 10X, I'm not thinking what happens when we double our business. We are investing so much time, energy, into new software, into new strategies. Let's make sure that those strategies are going to be, that are going to function when we 10X this company. And so I think that's one of the things that has been a critical learning curve for me, because we have been spinning our wheels time and time again to reimagine a process that we could have imagined from the beginning, thinking that we were going to 10x our business.

Speaker 1: 3:48

You know a couple of things that are really interesting there. One the imposter syndrome thing. I think most entrepreneurs, and probably the vast majority of successful ones whatever you would classify as a successful entrepreneur I think it's different for everybody have some version of imposter syndrome, and I think it is that there's a little bit of that belief in us that questions am I good enough, do I have what it takes? That actually drives us to go figure that out, where I think if we sat around with the opposite and thought I got this figured out, it probably wouldn't go very well.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Correct, absolutely Well, because if you have an ego and you're going into it, then you have blind spots, and I prefer to be eyes wide open and being open to you know, to whatever other else people can be thinking about or bringing to me. So but if you think it's only you and you can do it, and you can do it on your own and you can do it better than anybody else, then you have heavy, heavy blind spots and I think that, in essence, you're actually held up, held back in the end.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Yeah, for sure. And I love the thing too that you said about first asking what does it look like if I double my business and then now going what does it look like to 10X? It's kind of like the Dan Sullivan thing. You know, 10x is better than 2X, and I think that that's a really difficult thing for a lot of people to wrap their head around because they think, well, that can't be true. It was interesting.

Speaker 1: 5:04

I was on a call with a bunch of other marketing agency owners that's the industry that I'm in and the other day I get to help coach a lot of them and it's a lot of fun. And one of the other coaches on the call had kind of said this is a smaller kind of fledgling group that we were actually talking to and look what, know running million dollar agencies and a lot of them just couldn't fathom it. Meanwhile I remember being there, but now I think about it and I'm like if I had $100,000 a month, I'm in big trouble. I'm not gonna be paying anybody, you know, but it's so interesting. Like those, there's these like glass ceilings. I don't know if you experienced this, but I had these glass ceilings mentally of like what a lot of money was what like what success was, what was even possible?

Speaker 1: 5:50

So did you experience that like in that imposter syndrome side of going well, this I don't know if we can even do this, you know did you ever experience that.

Speaker 2: 5:58

Absolutely so. I had it in my head from the very beginning when I started the company, that I you know, reaching a thousand VAs, placed with medical clients would be the big, the big giant goal. Right the hair the big giant, hairy, audacious goal.

Speaker 2: 6:11

Like that's, that's that's what I thought and I really I created that get glass ceiling for myself. We hit a thousand VAs and then I was like, well, well, now what you know, now what happens, and I thought you know the saying is I thought I'd be up over my ski tips, meaning I would be out over my ski tips and about to crash and burn and not knowing what to do next. And the reality is I set that on myself and now we're over 1,300 VAs and growing and continuing to add on. So now 2,500 VAs doesn't sound ridiculous anymore. So I've removed that glass ceiling. I still have imposter syndrome. It's still there, it still happens. But I definitely have had to remove that glass ceiling and it's critical that you do so. I remember reading Dan Sullivan's book and going through like 10X and trying to do the whole. You know, even imagining 10X of my organization was.

Speaker 2: 7:04

I couldn't even put myself there. I'm like that's never going to happen. So I didn't. I backed it down to okay, what if I 5X? And that number was still a big number and a hefty goal for me to be able to reach. But, and even now still, when I think about 10X in your company, can I really 10X my company, you know? And that starts to go back into my head as well. So, yeah, I think the imposter syndrome is still there, but we create these glass ceilings on our own, and getting an executive coach and having someone like yourself who can consistently kind of break down those barriers to keep you to continue to launch forward is critical.

Speaker 1: 7:38

Yeah, I think having people in my life that will just question my limitations, where I'm like, yeah, but I don't think that's possible. And they're like, why is that not possible? And it's like anything is actually possible, like we live in a world of abundance and you just got to go get it. And I'm curious one thing. This is kind of a total sidebar, but I was looking about looking at your website, thinking about the niche that you've chosen, because you could do just virtual assistance in general. I mean, a while back I got to interview Brian and Shannon Mills who used to own Belay, a large VA organization. They sold it.

Speaker 1: 8:12

They were not as niche as you. They probably more like general small business VAs. That's probably where their focus has been. But they had a massive, massive, mega, multimillion dollar exit a while back. They did incredible. But I remember them being at an event years ago and they were like this tiny little booth you know that was, I don't know they were just getting started. And now they're like I don't know they're killing it. But what made you choose to go into that niche, that vertical of medical virtual assistants specifically, versus virtual assistants?

Speaker 2: 8:40

Yeah, so I came from the medical space. I.

Speaker 2: 8:43

I've been in the medical industry for just over 30 years. In high school I knew very early on I wanted to be in the medical industry, I wanted to be a nurse, I wanted to be in the operating room and so through that journey I was introduced to virtual assistants. But I really knew that there was a niche within medical that had been unmet, partially because number one the rest of the industries out there virtual assistants were starting to really be heavily utilized in all different industries except for in medical. And I knew it was possible. I spent a lot of time in medical practices. I spent a lot of time in hospitals paying attention to the ins and outs of what happens in patient care, with the administrative piece of patient care, and I knew that it was going to be successful. I knew it was possible. But previous to COVID the medical industry wasn't open to remote work.

Speaker 2: 9:31

They weren't open to any of that. You had to come into the office, you need to see patients, you need to be there on site, regardless of what your task was within the practice. Covid that my sales calls previously to COVID was trying to get people to imagine even being able to do it. When COVID hit, it forced the industry to have to go remote and people realized, wow, not only is this possible, but we can potentially be more efficient. We have, then, access to a global workforce that can be remote, and so then the sales calls became more around strategy not around like you know, can I sell you into this? But strategy how can we do this? How quickly can we do it? Where can we start? And then, how do we infiltrate quickly into that medical practice or hospital system? So and the medical side just comes naturally I love medicine, I love working with, with medical practices and hospitals. So that's that niche, but there's still a huge amount of space to continue this on in a really big way.

Speaker 1: 10:34

It's great. It's just a good example of people that are listening to kind of think about a couple things that you just said, beth. One is that you already had experience in that space, so you know the people, you know how they talk, you know what they think, you know what the insider language is. You got some established relationships, so that helps when you're kicking something off. And while I have not historically like niched down as a marketing agency even though everybody told me I had to but I haven't I think for a lot of businesses there's no question that from a scalability perspective, you will scale faster because your audience is more focused. You're not selling everything to everyone. You're selling a particular thing to a particular audience. I think that makes a huge difference.

Speaker 2: 11:14

It makes a huge difference. You know, I have been distracted many times. People have come to me oh, you know, let's place virtual assistants in law practices, let's place virtual assistants as executive VAs. Or you know, executive assistants, I know my diamond, I know my lane, I want to stay there and I think that that, you know, holding true to that, is really what's going to continue to the growth.

Speaker 2: 11:37

And also, I kind of have figured out that when we mass market into one particular area and we're not having one client come on and just request one VA, they're coming on and requesting 10 VAs. Then, as they see that, oh, the proof of concept is there and it's working really well, then they're requesting another 20 VAs. So we're seeing a massive amount of growth in each one of our clients. We don't need a ton of clients, we need a couple of big clients that will turn into big clients. So it's a different strategy of going deeper and not just bringing in more clients but actually focusing in on the clients that we have and bringing in the right clients to grow at scale.

Speaker 1: 12:16

Yeah, that's a big thing to pay attention to. I mean, I think a lot of people are always worried about how do I go get a new client and I'm like look, how do you care better for the ones that you have, because the chances are really good that your current clients probably don't even know everything that you offer. I mean, we're guilty of this. I'll talk to people all the time and they're like I know y'all do like a lot of marketing strategy now and messaging, but do you still do websites? I'm like yeah, of course we do websites. Like it's like a that's the center of the marketing hub, but some the marketing hub but some people ask questions they don't know. Like we live in this curse of knowledge that everybody just knows everything we do and they don't actually care, you know until it's going to help them.

Speaker 2: 12:52

Yeah, so the power of scale could just be with your existing client base Absolutely and really making sure that they know everything that your, your company, does. In most cases they come to you with one pain point. You fulfill that one pain point and then they think they're done. But in fact there's deeper penetration that can happen within that client of more, of course, adding additional services across the board to them.

Speaker 1: 13:14

So in not forgetting that is key, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 13:15

Thinking about you scaling in COVID is interesting to me because you know it's such a crisis. I mean, you know I could list a handful of them in my lifetime that was certainly one of the biggest one, maybe the biggest one that just is so disruptive. I mean, no other time in our lives have we been told hey, you got to actually stay at home by the government, you know. I mean that's like a whole different ballgame from anything we've ever experienced, at least in my lifetime. And but the question that I learned a long time ago from Michael Hyatt that I love, which is kind of what you did, is asking the question what does this make possible? Now, that can feel a little dark in the context of people having serious health problems, all those kind of things, for sure, but at the end of the day, we've all got to still put food on the table and we've got to figure out how to manage our businesses, how to care for the people that work for us, how to care for our clients. And it seems like you did that.

Speaker 2: 14:00

You kind of go hey, what does this make possible now as people's perspectives are changing? Oh, absolutely. And pouncing on opportunity when the opportunity is right there, knocking at your door, not stepping back and waiting. Also, not getting stuck in analyzing. You get paralyzed by analyzing and we just didn't have time to do that.

Speaker 2: 14:20

I also knew, you know it was a three small children at the time. You know, one high school, one middle school and an elementary school student. And I was like, well, you know, we're all kind of grounded, we're all stuck in hell, no one's going to sports, no one's leaving the house. This is actually a great time for me to work and work really, really hard, really hard, and and so it it. Actually it gave it gave me that time and that platform to do that where ordinarily I wouldn't have had the necessarily time or even made the time to be able to to plunge as deep into it as I could. So timing is everything and certainly COVID was in so many ways so trialing for all of us. And in business, even in businesses that were shut down, you still learned from it.

Speaker 2: 15:05

You still kind of came out and the businesses that succeeded after the fact, when everything came back, it was because they reinvented themselves during that time off, because they didn't just stop. They were thinking, okay, what do we do next? And that's also key.

Speaker 1: 15:18

Yeah, so good, let's let's talk about remote work a little bit, because this is a big one. We were all kind of I always like to joke I was remote work before it was popular. Back in the day I didn't believe I needed an office. I was remote, my whole team was remote for 16 years and then finally put an office in and now I'm like I don't think I would want to live without my office, but also have five kids at home getting homeschooled.

Speaker 1: 15:42

Well, two of them are gone, and now I think the world, or the vast majority of industries, have moved to this kind of more hybrid approach, which is what our team here is. At Business Builders, people need to be in the office two days a week, but the rest of the week they can choose where they want to be. Some people are here every day, but we also work with a ton of contractors in all kinds of spaces who are virtual and remote, and that requires a certain level of skill. So I'm curious for you as you think about building culture and caring for people who are remote how do you do that without it becoming people, turning into raw resources instead of actual human beings with cultural relationships?

Speaker 2: 16:20

Yeah, great question. So I can totally attest to the entire remote workforce and some needing to be in also like a hybrid role entire remote workforce and some needing to be in also like a hybrid role. Here in the United States for our onshore team, we are in hybrid positions where we can work from home, part-time work in the office, the, the, but we need to be attending and going into the office as an executive team. Just, we get so much, we get a lot done. You know we're working remotely, but it's that team camaraderie, especially at the executive level, I feel is critical for us to be in front of each other a lot, because then we end up being so siloed in our thoughts and kind of how we're addressing our departments. So that's incredible for us. But with culture, culture hands down is the number one thing that we are focused on here at GMVA. Because how else can you get an entire remote workforce of know remote workforce of over 1300 people to all be rowing in the same direction? How can you make sure that they're all putting in, you know, putting in the day-to-day effort and productivity that's absolutely necessary for success of their medical client? So so we have standards that are put in place. We have process and procedures. We have core values that we consistently stick to and are a really big piece of our daily operations service excellence, compassionate care, team. Together everyone achieves more. We focus on those and if we really focus on those core values and everybody works hard to try to stick to those core values, the work and the productivity and everyone rowing in the right direction happens.

Speaker 2: 17:48

As soon as you have someone that doesn't believe in that culture and doesn't stick within that culture and they're no longer a culture fit. It doesn't matter if they're productive, it doesn't matter if they're great in terms of productivity Then they start rowing in a different direction. That's counterproductive for the entire team and then we end up having to have them exit or they exit on their own because they just don't fall in line with the culture. But that is the core piece I always feel really strongly. You know there's a difference between skill and will. We can upskill someone. I'd rather have somebody who's amazing in terms of they believe in our culture, they believe in our core values, they'll continue to work at the level that they're supposed to. But if we need to upskill them, let's coach them, let's upskill them, but if they don't have the will, that's really hard to teach and coach and get them to have the will, and so the core values and the culture is absolutely number one, especially in having a remote workforce values and mission statements.

Speaker 1: 18:50

All that were just things that big corporations did. They didn't actually follow. And I spent a lot of time, though, with Dave Ramsey and the entre leadership team, and they really focused a lot on having solid core values and mission statements and all these kinds of things, and for a long time, I struggled to define like. What is culture Like? What does that even mean? People talk about it and a lot of times they mean like ping pong tables and taco lunches, and it can.

Speaker 1: 19:08

That can be a piece of it, but that's not it, and the way that I like to define it is and it's basically exactly what you just said which is our culture are the attitudes and behaviors that prove our core values to be true. Like we say that these are who we are, we've listed these core values and that's kind of who we say we are as people. Those are the right person, if you will because you talk about right person, right seeder. The right person is defined by are they aligned with our core values? And our culture either calls us a liar or not, and I always say a good culture does just a team full of people fully aligned with the core values. That's a good culture.

Speaker 2: 19:42

Yeah, absolutely, and it's interesting. I just, for example, I just had an HR call this morning with some you know unfortunately, we have somebody on our team that's been with us for a long time that their core values are just no longer aligning with ours. They've strayed from the core values and they're not uplifting their team members around them, they're cutting them down, and so that just doesn't work here. So just coming up with strategies of okay, you know how are we going to handle this situation, Because that does more damage. We have nine other people that are about to resign because this one person is really poisoning the well and because they're just not really following our core values. So it's amazing how you know.

Speaker 2: 20:21

For myself, I do have to say, like I said, I worked for lots of corporations before I went to work for myself and I try to think about well, what were their core values in the different companies I work for and I don't remember that.

Speaker 2: 20:32

So what does that mean? Does that mean that the leadership did not do a great job making sure that I was at the lower level? I was a lower level manager managing a territory. Does that mean that the leadership didn't do a great job of making sure that I knew at the lower level, as a lower level employee, what our core values were, or did I just not pay attention to them? Either way, I learned from that because I want to make sure that everyone in my organization knows our core values and that we are paying attention to them, and it's how and it's how we do our daily, it's how we thrive and we do our daily job, so so it's a big focus. So if anyone on you know that's listening, that is just starting out, or even has a decent sized company that don't have their core values truly as a focal point, you need to, and that is what ends up defining the culture of the organization 100% so real tactically.

Speaker 1: 21:20

So let's take a team member who is not aligned with the core values. What have you learned over time? What is your actual tactical process of? Okay, we've, we've, identified this person not aligned with things. We've got a couple options. One, you know terminate them immediately. At some cases that's required based on things that are happening. Another is I'm going to have a conversation, but what is? What is your actual workflow look like internally? And you're obviously a lot bigger than you were when you started. But I mean, for people that are listening, how do you handle that like step one, two, three, before you actually fire somebody?

Speaker 2: 21:52

Yeah, great question. Well, one of the very first things we do is we do what's called skip-level meetings. So our HR team will have meetings with anyone that has. So we do surveys each month. Every manager has surveys done for anyone that's working under a manager. They have surveys that are done every single month. For anyone that's working under a manager. They have surveys that are done every single month.

Speaker 2: 22:14

When we see the responses to the surveys, it immediately gives us a clue in on what is the morale of the team working for that manager. And there's two things to look at. It's one of the very first things you notice. Let's say you have 15 people that you're managing, if only four respond to the survey, ooh, that means people don't have much nice. They don't have many things nice to say about you, so they'd rather just not respond. So that's one thing, right. The second thing is if you have a large response number and it's consistently, overwhelmingly good, okay, then you know that you've got pretty good standing with this team. The morale is high. So there's immediately there's just things you can look at within that. If there's little inconsistencies within those surveys and then we see that someone is there might be some performance issues.

Speaker 2: 22:56

We then start doing skip level meetings. Our higher level management will skip over that level manager to go, start meeting with their team members to find out what is going on. How are you feeling? How do you feel about your job? What's happening on a daily basis? Do you feel like you're being supported? And we kind of do just that skip level touch base with them. It's amazing how much information we learn during those meetings. Right, it's not throwing anyone under the bus. That's not what we're expecting. We know that we will have attrition if people don't like their manager and we want to make sure that we're enhancing our managers to be better managers if they're not hitting it. So from there, if we get consistent feedback, that's not great. We then will do coaching directly with that manager. So the operations manager will meet directly with the next level down manager and have some coaching with them.

Speaker 2: 23:45

Find out what's happening. Is it the workload is too much? Is it that they're having work-life issues at home or personal issues at home? Is it they don't have a work-life balance? What's going on? To try to trigger what's happening and try to figure out if we can be assistant to that, if it really truly is just a misfit. This person does not believe in us any longer, doesn't like what they're doing, whatever it is, then that's the path to the exit. We know that. But if we uncover other things that's happening on it most of the time there are other things that are going on.

Speaker 2: 24:16

We always in this organization give a second chance. We don't just give up on someone. We don't just immediately do the exit. It takes time and energy to replace people number one and especially if they're good people but they just need a second chance. And then it's redirection and there's additional coaching. Then that's what happens. Third step is, of course, a PIP putting someone on a performance improvement plan, seeing if they can actually stay within the guidelines and confines of what we're expecting them to be able to do. And then there's an exit after that if they just can't stay within, you know, within the confines of the PIP. But in most cases our team members we've rectified most cases as just being. They're burnt out, they're overwhelmed.

Speaker 2: 25:00

A lot of it is personal problems at home is affecting their work life and so, as soon as we can be and a lot of times it's just a matter of giving them the time and the focus to be able to vent it to us that then we can help in trying to offset their workload or try to get to them a place where they can be in a healthier space to be able to go ahead and do their job at the level expected.

Speaker 1: 25:19

Yeah, I think it's just incredibly important. I mean, you know, we're not severed human beings, we don't show up at work and have separate lives from our home lives, like it's all one big giant thing that overlaps and if somebody is going through a divorce or has a sick kid or who knows what, they've actually got going on at home and everybody doesn't need to know everybody's business all the time for sure. But it is okay for somebody to go hey, I've got some really hard stuff going on at home right now and I'm trying to navigate it and it probably is going to mean I'm not operating at the highest level, but I am trying. To me, that means a ton from anybody and I would want the same for myself. I always think I err on the side of grace. We err on the side of grace because that's how I want somebody to treat me.

Speaker 2: 26:00

And time and time again in HR hearings. When I'm brought into HR hearings, I almost always end up having the discussion with our team that in the end, we are all human and we need to be making sure that we're treating each other with utmost respect and grace. And we are human and so as long as we go into those meetings with that in mind, you'll make the right decision as a business owner and or leader in terms of whether or not to continue on with that person or to where you have to let them go.

Speaker 1: 26:30

Yeah, and we're going to. By the time we get to the end of this show, we'll talk specifically about work-life balance. What does that even mean to you? How's it changed in different seasons of life? We're not there yet, but we will get there. One thing I took away from what you just said is I love the monthly survey idea. We do something kind of similar to kind of gauge people's morale, stress, workload, and really it comes back to that old quote of don't expect what you don't inspect. I am probably the polar opposite of a micromanager in general. Sometimes that bites me. I've had a problem historically of not being clear enough with people because I want them to like me and I have learned over time that's not actually kind. Like to be clear is actually to be kind. If I'm doing something wrong that's causing other people problems, I want them to tell me that because I might not know, you know.

Speaker 2: 27:15

Agreed. Yep, we're siblings in that. I think that people understand what I'm asking when I ask for something. My team has been so incredible. They've learned. Okay, I don't typically set deadlines for people, which is an immediate disaster.

Speaker 2: 27:31

I am setting someone up for failure when I don't give a deadline of when I want this work performed, because either they're going to they're going to do it way after I anticipate it because they don't know how to prioritize, or they're not sure what I'm expecting them to prioritize because I've given them something new to do. So you know it's also making sure that people around you, you know, give feedback, but of course then also know how to work closely with you. And immediately, one of the very first things when I, when I asked for a particular project, immediately anyone on my team knows okay, beth, when is the deadline for this? Like there's like certain times they did, they know the triggers, they know my downfalls right, and that's critical to also having a great, great team around you is learning from that. But I'm trying to get better at that myself.

Speaker 1: 28:12

Yeah, it's going to be an ongoing process. I think for me it's probably a personality trait that I've got to work through. One thing I'm really curious about you know, going from you know, tens of thousands of dollars of revenue to tens of millions in revenue is an entire organizational shift at an incredible level. Everything you mentioned earlier, like getting the right people in the right seats, like the people around you, have to change. In many cases, the people, processes, tools, systems that got you to a million dollars are not going to take it to 10 million. I'm going to take it to 50 million and so. But what I'm actually curious about is not those things. What I'm actually curious about is how you have had to change as a leader and how you've had to adapt from the early days to where you are now.

Speaker 2: 28:55

Yeah, oh gosh. It's been a lot of learning. I have learned that things that have had to change for me especially, is knowing that we need software solutions faster than I anticipate. And a lot of times some of our team members hide the redundancy of their workload because they just assume that, well, this is the job and this is the way to do it and they don't bring it to our attention that the process is really can be updated and not be so redundant. So, as a leader, one of the ways that I've had just to get down into the weeds as a leader just really being able to focus down into each department and what are the absolute necessities that are needed to grow and scale at the level that I'm expecting, because I can bring in a ton of new sales and bring in a bunch more new clients and grow. But if the rest of my organization isn't prepped for that, it doesn't matter. We're going to be set up for failure and I'm going to have really upset team members because they also are also being hit with the burden of the additional workload. So one of the things I've had to learn is that I'm not a software person. I've never loved software. I was like nitty gritty sales person that would, you know, hit the road with my list and go after my targets and not really focused heavily on software. So always making sure you're a step ahead and anticipating the needs of the business, because a lot of times your department heads won't know what's anticipated or what's needed because you as the leader are deciding really the trajectory of the business and so you've got to know well what's necessary for the rest of the company to have. So that's one of the things.

Speaker 2: 30:37

One other thing that's been a really big shift in my mindset is I didn't always used to fully follow my gut and in the beginning I would consistently question myself.

Speaker 2: 30:54

I would consistently question myself. As I got further along I realized that my gut instincts were absolutely dead on. Do not ignore what your gut is telling you, even if you have an advisor or you have an executive in your company or someone else that's telling you to do something else. Deep dive, do all the hard work you need to do to try to make sure you're doing your due diligence on an issue, but follow your gut, and time and time again I've had to have tough conversations with people and say you know what my gut is telling me we really need to be doing X, y and Z and this is why we need to do it. I always have a why. There is a reason why, but you've got to follow your gut because, definitely, as the leader of the organization, the responsibility is on you and in the end, you've got to be able to really look into yourself to make sure you follow the right direction, and a lot of times it's your gut telling you what to do.

Speaker 1: 31:41

Yeah, I have a leader that I get to work with who talks about his kind of like his Spidey sense, you know, like Spider-Man's kind of got his something's going on here and I can just feel it.

Speaker 1: 31:51

It is, that's a real thing, you know, it's a real thing and there's something to it that I actually I've got no science for this, but just this is from my experience, I think.

Speaker 1: 32:02

In some cases I think women have better intuition and like gut instincts than men do At least that's the experience in my life which is why my wife, while she doesn't work in the business, kind of becomes like the you know sounding board. Even before I hire people, she'll be kind of like the last we'll take them and their spouse out to dinner, and I'm not asking for like a deep interview, but I do want her instinct to go like does it feel right? And I will tell you what in every situation, every time where she has said I just don't know, and in some cases sometimes I'm like but why? And she's like I don't know, I just don't, I don't think it, I don't think it's going to work out. It never works out, never. So I just need to listen to her from the beginning, from now on yes, you do, and that that actually happened to me last year.

Speaker 2: 32:43

Same situation my fiance had met a new hire that I was going to be bringing in and he didn't really. He didn't really say anything to me at the time because it's my business, I'm doing my thing Right, and he's so proud of what I do and how I've grown, so he, he fully trusts me. But in the end, after, when it wasn't working, he's like yeah, you're like.

Speaker 1: 33:04

Well, let me know next time.

Speaker 2: 33:05

And then someone else. Someone else said the same thing and I'm like why didn't anyone say anything? Because I was going in wholehearted with this person, thinking this person is absolutely the right hire, and I had two people that are very close to me that from very early on had that spidey sense of I'm not so sure. So follow that instinct, I know.

Speaker 1: 33:27

It is funny how some of those times like sometimes, you'll have a hiring situation. I had a girl that we hired one time on a team to run social media for an account and she in the interview I sat and asked her. I said, hey, tell me the five things that we're not doing that you think we should be doing. And it was like she was reading my brain and I used to meet. It was like hire her right now, don't even interview anybody else, like it was, it was and it was the perfect hire and I just knew it.

Speaker 1: 33:48

And then there's another time where I was in an interview. I didn't have as good a reason, but I thought this girl was great, I thought she's gonna be amazing, our, it was just like a personnel and it's probably because my personality liked her personality and we just I just seemed like the kind of person would go get stuff done. And I had a couple of people who afterwards same exact thing we're like yeah, I could have told you that. And I'm like, okay, well, why didn't you? Then you could have saved me a lot of drama and money.

Speaker 2: 34:11

You know, yeah, absolutely, and it's always good to, you know, go in eyes wide open, right, and to be aware. So let's say I mean, cause that happens too where you may have some in your team, that's eh, I'm going to hire this person, but I'm going to stay on alert right. I'm just going to make sure that we get off to a really great start and it stays that way, or you know, you, just you know when it's time to move on, you move on quickly, right 100%.

Speaker 1: 34:37

Well, there's two final things that I definitely want to get to before we land the plane today. The first is going to be that work-life balance question. It's always an interesting one, and so what I like to do is ask what does it even mean to you and how has it changed through different seasons of your life and business? And then the second one is really where people can learn more about you, about your business. What's the best place for them to find you online? So let's start with the work-life balance question. It means something different to everybody. I've got five kids. It was very different when they were all toddlers than when they're all now teenagers slash adults. Seasons of life change, season of business change. But number one, what does it mean to you? What does work-life balance? People say that. What does it mean to you? And then two, how has it changed the different seasons of business and life?

Speaker 2: 35:18

Sure. So work-life balance what does it mean to me? So, for me, I'm heavily rooted in purpose, like I, I'm my happy, I'm my happiest when I am rooted in purpose and what I feel really good doing. And for me, right now building this company and continue to build the company it's just giving me a tremendous amount of purpose. So all the people around me, I had, you know, I had an interesting conversation with my 21 year old just last night, because we were talking about business and he had said to me oh, you know, you know plans for this weekend, for example. And so I'm like well, I've got this meeting, I've got this meeting and I also have this report I need to get done. And he's like, mom, like I've never like you work so hard, like you've worked harder now than you did. And I'm like no, I'm older, you are more independent, you don't need me right there either and I can choose to offset my time a little bit differently now. So so, work-life balance what it looks like for me is is just that, as I'm feeding my purpose, so not to say that it's all work, I want to have kids hockey games. I am there, I am there in my cowbell, I am there screaming like a lunatic. I am that hockey mom that you would expect to be there. But when it's time to work, and even when I have downtime, I am always thinking about work, always.

Speaker 2: 36:34

So some people would say I have no balance, I am heavily workloaded, but I feel extraordinarily purposeful and so I feel very fulfilled, and so, for me, that's my work-life balance. When I feel like I need to back off of that, that's when I'll take a vacation, that's when I'll take a break, that's when I'll, you know, back off. And so I know those gentle balances and I, even last week, I knew, okay, I needed two extra days off because I just needed a break after a 4th of July, and so that's what I did. I took two days to get what I needed to get done and feel fulfilled again, to really go back in. But that's really my work-life balance. That's kind of where I sit, but I'm working a ton, make no mistake about it, but I love it.

Speaker 1: 37:13

You know it's so interesting because I ask the question a lot, because it does matter to me, because I don't want my kids to grow up and resent the fact that I worked all the time. I want them to know me, I want to have deep relationships with them and my wife obviously, like you know, I care a ton about that and I also know that business comes and goes, you know, and I can always go get another deal. That said, I think our culture is like over indexed to some extent, like almost work shaming people.

Speaker 1: 37:39

I'm like, well, if you're working X amount of hours a week, like you're not resting enough, and I'm like, but work? I realize you don't understand this, but work is my risk sometimes. Like I like doing what I'm doing. I'm not waking up Monday being like, oh my gosh, I have to go to work. How miserable I'm. Like let's get going, you know. And and. So I always joke that like work is my hobby. So I kind of feel the same way.

Speaker 1: 37:59

I am probably a little bit of a workaholic. But what does that even mean? Like as long as it's not negatively affecting the other significant relationships? And that's the stuff I think I've got to pay attention to.

Speaker 1: 38:10

It's like if I personally have said I care a lot about deep relationships with my children and my wife, if that's what matters to me, the question is, does it actually matter? Because if I am working 16 hours a day and I never actually see them, it doesn't actually matter. I'm just saying that it does. And so you know I've certainly adjusted over time, but I think it's worth people hearing that sometimes, most of the time, to grow a really successful organization, you're going to have to put a lot of hours into it and you're going to have to be willing to outwork basically anybody else. That's why it works. You know it's not, and maybe your goal is, maybe somebody's goal is to sell the company and go live on a beach somewhere. I actually probably would love that for like two weeks and then I'd be like all right, well, we've done this, let's get back to work.

Speaker 2: 38:55

It's so funny. You say that so many people have talked to me about exiting, about selling the company, and they're like, well, that's the thing to do there, that's the next thing to do. And I'm like, well then, what am I going?

Speaker 1: 39:03

to do. I love this, I love what I do.

Speaker 2: 39:05

This is exciting, it's also my passion, and when you you know, when you're following your passion, it's not work, it's it's, it's fun, you're growing and building something exciting. So, but yeah, but work, life balance. It is true People are shaming others for working too much, not working enough, whatever it might be, but it has to be, it has to work for your family Absolutely. And so you know, being critically involved, you can't have your primary partner, cannot be your business. Your primary partner has to be your spouse or your loved ones or your children, and then you work around that. But, knowing you know my father, it's interesting. Kids take things differently. Each kid has their own perspective.

Speaker 1: 39:45

For sure.

Speaker 2: 39:45

My sister and I were raised with the exact same way. We saw the exact same things. Her perception, her perspective on how things went are drastically different than mine. My father started his own company. He worked his butt off, he worked a ton of hours, and so I just I watched that and saw that and was like he's doing all of that for us.

Speaker 2: 40:03

And he's also doing it because he has goals and dreams that he wants to hit. I took it that way. My sister's perception is different. She is like, well, dad was never around. Oh my God, he was never around because he was doing all of this for us and also he wanted to build. So you just sort of be in touch with your children to make sure they understand the why and that they understand that they're also really important, and then they also learn so much from watching what you're doing and that work ethic and how and how how to handle difficult situations and how you struggle or work under pressure, teaching your kids.

Speaker 2: 40:37

What does this? What does a stressful look situation look like? Not everybody has anxiety. There is stress and how you learn and work with stress and so and your kids will learn that from you if they see you in those situations and that also is huge learning curves for our kids.

Speaker 1: 40:53

Yeah, not to go too far off a side tangent, but talk about the stress and anxiety thing culturally.

Speaker 1: 40:57

It's so interesting because it's like there are, there is some level of anxiety. That is good. If I have a meeting in the morning that I have not prepared for and it's a really important meeting, I should be a little anxious about that. That's a problem I should go solve. You know, if I, if I, if I'm, you know, worried about not having something done that I should have done, that, that that's a reasonable amount of worry that our body naturally goes. I need to prepare you for this, so you should pay attention. It's a smoke alarm, you know, and you look for smoke and if there's no smoke, you blow it out of the way and keep moving.

Speaker 2: 41:31

I know it's not easy for everybody, but you know not easy for everyone.

Speaker 1: 41:33

I know Well, let's gosh. We could probably keep talking all day, but I'm not sure who would keep listening. So hopefully they've gotten this far and if they have, I'd love for them to know where to find about all the things that your company does and what you do.

Speaker 2: 41:45

Yeah, absolutely the best place to go is just go right to our website. There's a tremendous amount of great information to learn about medical virtual assistants from us. There's also a spot where you can click on and create a strategy session with us to have a discussion with us about what we do, but it's wwwgmvacom or wwwglobalmedicalvacom. Either way, it'll bring you right to the same spot and come check us out, and definitely we're happy to have a discussion with you. If you're in the medical field and you want to learn more about what we do, we'd love to assist.

Speaker 1: 42:18

Awesome Beth. Thank you for being on the show today. It's been a real pleasure.

Speaker 2: 42:21

Nice meeting you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 42:23

Hey, I hope this video has helped you with some tips and ideas to build a business that lasts. Make sure you subscribe to our channel so that you don't miss out on the next videos that we roll out and, more importantly, for some awesome free resources. Head over to our website at building a business that lasts. Calm, you can get a free copy of my book there, where I tell you how I have built an agency that's grown year over year for the last 20 years in a row. So go grab that building a business that lastscom and make sure to subscribe to our channel. Thanks, we'll see you soon.