 Hey, good afternoon everybody time steward here. I'm with Liz Trotter and our guest today is Melody Edwards and this is smart business moves Hey, y'all. Hi. Thanks for having me today Hey, thanks for coming Melody. Yeah, I'm excited I think this is a first cuz Melody and I first met like five minutes ago Mm-hmm. Neither one of us know anything about the other Yeah, I think you're right I don't remember us ever being in a situation where you didn't know the the guest at all. I love this Yeah, I know I'm gonna be taking notes cuz I'm I'm a member of the audience today I'm gonna make some popcorn Too late Tom too late Huh, so um, I guess I'll kind of lead us a little bit since Tom doesn't know anything about anything I just don't know anything Well, just about Melody which wins time. It's okay. Yeah, she doesn't know so that's another thing Right. I don't think we've ever had a guest on that didn't know who Tom was I love this because Cuz I was the first guest that you didn't know anything about and I didn't know anything about you So there's that and you live in Massachusetts. Liz will tell you I will never forget that. We'll have a discussion Yes, remember the guests that we had that we didn't know each other and she's from Massachusetts. What's her name? I have no idea. It's okay I'm giving you permission to not remember my name even though it's Melody like music Okay, that'll help that will that actually I can see remembering that Tom Melody the music from Massachusetts Alliteration in there. Yeah. Yeah Well, okay, so let me give you a quick rundown of who Tom is actually Tom Why don't you give Melody just a quick rundown of who you are? I've been in the house cleaning business for a few years and know a few people and Liz and I do this thing called smart business You may have heard of a couple of things that he's connected to Have you ever heard of castle keepers cleaning? Yes, I think I have so that's that's his company He owns first and he has a partner and I think at least one of the branches and then he has He's run castle keepers for how many years now Tom few decades 30th. This is our 30th year anniversary so been around for a while And then I think what he does now that is much bigger most people know him for this is Software program called made central. Of course. I've literally today was training one of my VA's To help her on board with made central. So If you have any questions just hit me up I can help you This is great. So now I you don't need to I don't need to know you Tom. I know who you are now You know him, right? Everything about you just from that one thing. Yeah, I know it's like oh You're That's why I mentioned the castle keepers thing first because I lost in the fray there All right. So now that you know, hey, Denet good to see you And I know Denet knows you melody. Yes. Yeah, I need So why don't you go ahead and tell our audience a little bit about you melody? Okay? I'd love to so I started in a very weird way I was I've always been in home service Which is like window cleaning house washing all the things about exterior cleaning and all the weird stuff and I started accidentally when I was 17 And I was saving money for a trip to Europe and I hated it thought it was not what I wanted to do I wanted to work in an office and wear nice clothes and be on a computer like professional people do and Then I kept going back to window cleaning. So I went to Europe on my trip. I came back I went back to window cleaning. I learned that I really like working with my hands Eventually I bought that company And I sold it started another one. I've had a coffee shop And I'll just say this I'm a business starter. I love starting businesses I love the hardest part Which is the starting and getting things off the ground and then I get bored with the scaling part of it And so I have this habit of selling my businesses to oftentimes employees but I I also had a holiday lights company a commercial holiday lights company that I just sold and I have home service VA which I started with my first virtual assistant dean who is now my business partner And we help people in home service and cleaning in all industries plumbing electric and Other like any business basically or coach or professional Find and match people with great virtual assistance from the Philippines Which is who I where I work from because that's where Dean lives And we train the VA's and the clients how to work together I'm very much about communication and I think it's so important that We compress the amount of time it takes to develop a trusting relationship with with You know the VA and the client because that's going to get you moving forward really fast And one more thing I want to say one of my first businesses I ever started actually was a an errand service But what it turned into very quickly was a house cleaning business because it was like It was called the run-around errand service and literally I do anything. This was like 25 years ago maybe and Everybody wanted their house cleaned So I do have a background in house cleaning my parents owned an inn and they were very OCD about cleaning so I grew up like that and I rebel against it to this day But I like clean house I just don't like to do that part of it So so that's kind of like everything there's so many things But my area that I really focus on and love because I'm very purpose driven as I was just talking about I Love helping people. I love helping people find better ways to get great employees. I'm very good at that And I love helping people with communication Understanding, you know, there's different learning styles. There's different ways that we even advertise to find the right people You can do you know, and I love helping people build culture So a lot around employees and building relationships with people and I love system building I do not follow systems though that I built. I built them for other people Okay, so that's interesting you build systems for other people to use and then you don't follow them No, that's your whole building thing. You like to build and then sell. Yes So systems you build and then push off. I think what I've realized is I'm very much I was diagnosed with ADD when I was 30 as an adult and the reason that I even bothered to do that Was because I was in college trying to finish it up for the 50th time And I went my doctor finally said I think that if you were anybody else I wouldn't say to do this as an adult, but you want to get stuff done You need to get to go to this Psychologist who diagnoses people and I knew I had a learning disability Well, I found out this and it completely changed my life Because everything I had thought about myself up to that point was based on failure like I'm trying so hard but I keep failing I'm doing all the right things, but I keep failing and What I realized at that point is I needed if I wanted to be successful I couldn't play the game the way everybody else was playing it I needed to do it the way that my brain worked and I knew and that's kind of how I came to the VA business is really I learned that I need an executive assistant somebody who is going to be my executive functioning skills The things that I lack. I'm very good at detail. I can hyper focus. I can build things But the day-to-day stuff is really really hard for me And I train people how to work with people like me, which is a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs. Yes Yeah, a lot of business owners So so one of the things you said when you first came on was that you're training somebody today to how to how to do Say made central so I'm guessing you have Yes, a business owner that uses made central and yes Amy and Rose have been patiently waiting. Oh my gosh, I haven't heard about Amy and Rose in so long Really? Yes, they are fantastic. So we just started we were only a recruiting company up until recently and we just transitioned to an agency My theory was when we started three years ago plus was that I wanted to get the systems as good as we could I didn't want to fail anybody. That's like my greatest fear, right? We fear failure and letting people down and over the past three years. We have continuously Recreated the system made it better and finally I realized we just have to do the switch There were some things that was just time and so they became our very first agency clients And the great thing about them is they are the exact person the exact kind of company I want to work with they they care about living wages for their people They care about what their VA is going to get they care about the things that we care about in our company They also care about and they have been extremely patient as we've been figuring it out And I've been training their VA this week with four other VAs and she's fantastic. I'm so excited for them. She's gonna go into there and just kind of Takeover essentially like I see it in her. It's amazing. So I'm excited for them all right, so I liked what you said that they are exactly the kind of people that you want to work with I Tell us a little bit more about that. Who who do you know? Yeah, yeah, we're all sitting here wondering if we're qualified Well, so the very first thing that I keep to is we have a no jerk policy We don't want to work with jerks for clients. I know that some people love it No, but that that's really something I want to actually put on my website Because I think it's important that people understand like the standard of what we're willing to deal with now We've never really had a jerk that we've worked with maybe one time in all of the hundreds of people We've worked with and it wasn't that they were It's just about treating people with respect and understanding that you're hiring a human being you're not hiring a robot You're hiring somebody who needs to be a part of your team. So I yeah, go ahead Tom So Professionally through the business a little over three years, but three years three years and only one jerk Yes, because I attract I really work hard. It's all been word of mouth as much as we can. I'm really good at connecting and being a community community builder like I said and so And helping people and so when you do a good job for people They tell other people and that's how the business has been built We didn't start digitally marketing until like a month ago. Well, you know, you're gonna be overwhelmed with new business I'm not ready, but I hope so because here's the thing that I understand is I wish that I had been had grown up in the maid Service industry when I talked to or the cleaning industry as when I talked to my friends in the cleaning business like Robin Murphy is another friend who is just fan so brilliant and just kind of like me and like just a lot going on in her Yeah, and She doesn't believe me when I say how hard my journey has been because it's so male dominated I'm a unicorn in home service. I was a window cleaner starting 30 years ago So I did something that most people have never done and as a woman who owns a window cleaning company I can count on my hands how many women it's more now But how many that I've known who not like a husband wife team where they stay in the office I mean somebody who's really out in the field So in that regard, I had a house washing company holiday lights. I'm boom lift certified Like I'm doing all the things but to get credibility in that industry has been Extremely hard. Whereas the women that I meet and the men that I meet in cleaning. It's like a different It's a different space. It's it's so clean cleaning companies are like my favorite people because There's not that barrier to entry for me because when I talk to them they hear me and they We're usually we're there's an understanding and it's it's been a much harder journey in home service Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we definitely have a lot of women in this industry. We have a lot of men too. Yeah I do think that for the longest time People associated the most successful house cleaning companies with men And that was that was very common for a long time I'm not sure that that's the truth anymore that there are a lot more successful I don't know if that was ever the truth in reality. Yeah, it was just uh, it was the yes Yeah, it was just a a thought right it was just the way It can become true for people. Yeah, they tend to be more confident in the way they deliver information Um, for sure, there's a lot of people who speak very confidently Even when they don't know they're like we're gonna figure it out, but we're gonna talk I mean all my guy friends. That's how they talk Women we have been raised to be modest and humble many of us and that anything that's not that so this is true I have waited for years unconsciously for somebody to tell me I'm finally like somebody's gonna hand me a certificate that says you're ready now. You're an expert you can talk like one and That I just found out that's never gonna happen. There's not like I don't know you just mentioned it melody I have a feeling some certificates are Your mailbox I need it because then I'll know that I'm ready to be um, yeah, now you can do it Well, I I think that a lot of um people do struggle with that sort of well We think of it a lot as um imposter syndrome and not not necessarily just from being a woman, but you know being Human too on this planet. It's hard to It's sometimes hard to just Get out there and have the belief in yourself that you are all that Some people are have it a little bit better or they can fake it better than than some of us too. I'm not sure But did you have something Tom? You look like we're taking that big breath like Get ready to say the thing I'm trying to figure out what part of uh Massachusetts melody lives in western. So I'm 40 minutes from every state around me vermont New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York And Rhode Island like an hour and something but I can get anywhere, but guess what I never go anywhere I go to the airport and go somewhere else usually But they're all beautiful states So not And I'm just it's no weird, right? Love weird. I'm weird. Yeah. I I love it. I'm gonna get along just great. Yeah And I don't know, you know, this is silly I feel like I've been in home services for forever. I guess it's semantics, you know house cleaning But there's this whole other world out there where people are like cleaning windows and power washing and getting up on lift equipment and All the Was that Did you say yard work? Yeah Yeah, and then there's the other leg of that which is the Actual trades like the electric plumbing all those worlds. So we've been very disconnected I think in terms of we kind of could all fall under the same kind of like let's take care of your home Label but the industries are so disconnected. I I don't know how house cleaning was but the the Window cleaning or the world of where I was home service was the wild west You say that you say that like all these other Verticals are over here and then you got house cleaning like house cleaning is not even part of all of these other Services He's hearing you Oh, no, no, I'm saying that they're kind of all side by side, but we don't we're so disconnected from each other's industries so Like I went to work with all those other verticals, but you're just starting to meet some people Because our industry events are not the same. That's really what it comes down to I've been going to industry events for like probably 15 years Like the electricians don't go to the same thing at the Landscapers or window washes go to do they're starting to because it's more about business events now and less about tool Like I used to care about tools I was the best window cleaner in the world And I focused very much on how good my tools were how efficient I could be All the inventions I could make I just played games to make it more interesting. Basically, I'm sure you guys do that in house Yeah, and it was like a point of pride because there's also like anybody who's ended up in home service This is how I viewed it a lot of times we didn't do very well in school not everybody But this is what I've experienced with people a lot of times we might have struggled or had a learning disability, which I did Um, I now know I have dyslexia, which I didn't understand before about myself I learned it from my son when my son was diagnosed And so we come out of school feeling like less than but also we know we're really smart But we have a chip on our shoulder and it's like also the world that i'm smart I'm gonna start a business nobody can tell me that I can't do something And we don't always fit into the main thing, right? And so does that chip go away over time? Kind of if you're really emotionally intelligent, maybe but it's always kind of there, you know, it always comes back So that's what my experience in home service has been I don't know about the cleaning industry But what I've often also thought is you know window cleaning and house washing you can get much higher rates per hour than you could in house cleaning And hopefully that'll change because there's no difference in labor or anything It's just people view it as like oh, I could clean my house even though we know that's not necessarily the truth, right? but like the A lot of women don't go into places like house House washing or window cleaning there's no way to enter those industries So, okay, so let me let me see if i'm getting some clarity here I think I was stuck a little bit where tom was stuck and I think I might be getting it now You were so when you are separating home services from house cleaning the thing that is separating them is that there are more men that are like a much wider amount or a much larger amount of men To a percentage of men to women and home 99 percent point 99.5 percent men And and everything that is not house cleaning. So like window cleaning and house washing and all of that So all of those things that are mostly men you're calling house Home services. I'm and I'm doing that because I don't think of house cleaning even though it is home service I'm thinking more in terms of you guys have like the issa for instance, right? And so I actually I am a united states trade delegate. I don't know if you knew this sponsored by the italian government because in 2019 um, I went to the issa Um trade show in in italy and the government paid for it the italian government did and it was fantastic Um, and there was so much about cleaning there and not just and there was like some window cleaning But really it was like all the industries here in america. I feel like our trades their shows are very disconnected It's not like the way that it is in europe or other countries. So like The I don't do you have window cleaners go to like the issa really or like You know, there's a lot of disconnection for The places that people are not as much in the last five years. I think people start to recognize There's more opportunities when you learn outside of your own Area. Yeah, does that make more sense? Issa is a really large relatively large organization and It started out as the international sanitary supply association and It was like chemical manufacturers and their distributors and then they kind of grew and they brought in building service contractors 20-some odd years ago a Brunch of house cleaning businesses got together and started this thing called arcsy association residential cleaning services international arcsy merged with issa I don't know. What was it half dozen years ago? Maybe um Yeah, and there's a handful of other associations that have merged in with issa over over time as well Yeah, so this is all news like i'm very deep into the I just call it home services because that's my background of how the industry that i'm in refers to it They don't really refer to the cleaning industry. So that's something right there That doesn't it's interesting to think about and it doesn't make sense, right? so The way that i've met people like martha woodward or other people is through Going to a lot of events joining networking groups where we go, you know and meet each other So that's how i've become more immersed in your world And it's been like almost like something. I didn't even know existed before maybe 2019 when I became an Trade delegate. So you can call me a diplomat if you want to go Yeah, I love that I knew that you went to Italy because you did share that small piece of your story. Um, but yeah I didn't know that extent. It was interesting. It was pretty fun. I did not belong there you guys like Do you know why? Yeah, do you know how I got into that trip? This is just it's very interesting They they sent out an email to a lot of people and it said, um Free trip to italy and does that sound like spam? Yes Yes, my friend allison hester is a um writer And so she had gone before as a writer for that and she told me that's not you have to apply for this They need people to use their funding So a lot of people didn't go and they literally took me because I Was a body who could go And so didn't you only have like a week's notice or it's like two weeks or less It was really quick and I Was my dream to go to italy. Um, it was the one place I didn't go when I was younger when I traveled through europe and I was like I have to go So that's my family for letting me do that Without all right. Well, I do love that you have this Varied background here So talk to us a little bit melody because the majority of our audience is Home services house cleaning Out of home services that house cleaning Yeah um, so like Well, what what should we know? Well, like what should our industry know about From your perspective and you have a different perspective Um about what should we know about hey denny? I'll get this in here. Oh, did he want to agree denny? Just find out. Yeah, I have it every three or four years. Just so you know Yeah, reach out and find out. Hey, do you need any more delegates? Yeah to go um But what what should we know when we're looking for so here here's some of the things that I find I I work with um Um My company is called core profit builders and it's a coaching company. I know you know a little bit about it And I work with mostly residential cleaning business owners And they Need help and they need to hire vas But many of them are afraid many of them don't know who to hire They don't want to they don't ah, it's just seems so big and overwhelming. What can you what can you give my folks over here? Okay? well Residential house cleaners are the same as hi amber Amber is a good friend the same as residential work window cleaners in that we go out We do the work And then we come home and spend all our time if we're in the field for instance I spend all our time and phone calls emails like I used to come home and I had a kid and you know And then I'd be like sorry guys have to go spend three hours on emails because that's the way it was and it was never ending And I didn't start with virtual assistants. I actually started by getting an office assistant Because when I had my office because what I recognize is I will always procrastinate on phone calls I will always procrastinate On certain things that I don't like doing because it causes me anxiety or And what I what I found is that I want somebody it's worth a part of my salary This is how I thought of it to have somebody take that over Because then I cannot feel stressed and that's worth a lot of money to me What I didn't realize is that by hiring this person I had to get a lot of things out of my head like how do we price things how to make her as efficient as possible Well, this person Her name was tia. She became she paid for herself so quickly Because the other part of me is if I meet you like tom now we're best friends, of course I meet you I go to a job site and i'm going to give you a quote and Um, I spend three minutes with you. I'm like, oh tom's so nice. He's my best friend now Like I got to give him the friend discount, you know, we give people who don't need discounts a discount Oh my gosh. Yes Emotion that when we care for people we want to give so I needed a buffer I needed a customer buffer an estimate buffer. So when I would go to houses after I would say I'm not allowed to do estimates because I'll give you the best friend discount and Then I'll be out of business. I barely know you. Yeah um and just because like people get that and then she would Stick to the pricing and she made suddenly We had so much more revenue coming in And it was amazing very quickly that one thing alone Changed it and then the second thing is that She took over all of those things. She took over the emails the phone calls And suddenly things were running much smoother But it also was really hard to train her because I didn't know how to train We're really bad at training people like we don't get taught how to train people usually And if we do if we spend invest in it, it might not be our natural way of being able to You know, um, it might not be natural for our personalities to be good trainers And it's the same for technicians versus, um office people So Yeah, we make lots of mistakes with training For instance, I used to spend a lot of time Showing somebody how to write an email by showing them how to write an email as I wrote the email What does that teach somebody it teaches them nothing So everything that I have designed into my company is based on the experience that my partner dean and I wish had existed When we first started working together because it was a lot of experimentation and I'm really good at this. We're very successful Because we teach people all of the things that they're worried about They we take care of it. We help them through it. We are always Providing a level of support taking them. I've thought of all of the things that people are going to maybe not do because they Procrastinate on things that seem like it's going to be a lot of work and I trick them into doing it Um, I say that to them like I'm going to trick you Um by giving them fake deadlines or doing things that are going to make whatever that person needs Because we can usually see what they need. We're going to figure it out And bring me back to your original question. People are scared usually of how to bring somebody on Yeah, and when and how to do it and how do they get the right choice and We do. Yeah, so There's a lot of different companies. I'm never going to sit like I'm a very much a Collaborate not compete kind of person Every company that's out there is doing something that's valuable and good like one of my friends uses Task away and she likes it a lot. And so I know that there's a lot of different companies that do different things What I'm really good at is I Help people who normally would struggle with this sort of thing or even if they they just don't want to They don't have the emotional energy to go through this process I help them go through it the fastest way possible And I would love to give you a quick example if you don't mind of how I love that Yeah My my idea is that I want to teach people how to train themselves I want to teach employees how to train themselves whenever possible So I'm going to use email as an example because it's my favorite one And it and it shows you how I think about things very quickly. How do you train somebody to take over your voice? Take over your emails Know all the things that you know in your head when you're sending out emails use your voice Well, if you're really high level you'll make some templates for them and then But what templates do is they just teach people to copy paste something They don't teach them to think or they don't teach you them how to learn More about how you would respond. There's no critical thinking involved in that So what I have people do is they go if they're going to take over for me or for any of my clients I advise that they start by deep diving into the email And if you're smart you're going to tell them the the main kinds of emails that you tend to get so they have like at least a point of They at least know what to kind of look for So let's say like a new client or a new prospect request or a client has a question or whatever it might be They're going to start to look for those common types of emails They're going to see how you respond what your tone is How you are you friendly? Are you professional? They're going to get all of that And they're going to create the templates out of those things that they find Every time they see a question that's been answered. It's going to become an FAQ template Every time they see a problem that's been solved in an email. It's going to become a troubleshooting template It's also going to get into their brain, right? It's going to they're learning actively So the next part is they're going to give you all these templates and you will not touch them Although it's really hard. I still struggle to remember that I don't have to do it And I have people I give them permission to remind me by saying mel. Let me do this Like it happened yesterday, but they'll they'll I'll look at the templates and I make a loom video very quickly and I teach everybody how to do this I say these templates look great But I'm going to go through right now and I'm going to tell you what needs to change and why it needs to change And that's what I do They take it back They make the changes and you go back and forth until you have pretty good templates And at that point aren't you going to trust them to start drafting your emails for you? Yeah Do you just let them loosen your mailbox and say here are all of my sent emails start reading? Yes, I'll go back to that after because I know that's trust and security are very Very difficult thing and I'll and I'll go to that Um the next thing, you know, they're not coming to work because they have a free trip to Italy Couldn't they do that if they were in your office though? Sure Yes So the next part of that drafting they're going to draft and you're going to do the same thing If their email is ready to go you'll just say send If it's not you're going to make a quick loom and you're going to say hey This is great, but I want you to just make a couple changes and here's why They're actively learning and it's taking you almost no time You're doing almost nothing and then Once they're about 80 to 90 good on their drafts where you're like they're really good and the rest of the time They're asking you the right questions or they're saying. Hey, I think you need to respond to this directly Or what do you want me to say? Aren't you going to trust them completely to send your emails? That's the how and it can take less than a week to have something Right. I don't know that tom would but I absolutely would I have I have had people come into us you're like I love challenges because I love people who I'm an old school person by the way 30 years in an industry. I have that old school mindset of like There's certain things that I fight against all the time. So I love it when I can find A client and they're usually high level people who I want to say names, but I won't who come in and they do the thing and then they're like It kind of changes the melody. Give us a name So, yeah That wasn't me trying to say that you're one of the people amber that was me accidentally hitting your name Amber's not one of the people Amber's my my longtime industry buddy. She knows so Um, yeah, so it's really cool because every way that I create systems is about Letting grown-up adults do the job that you hired them for What usually happens? We are micromanagers, right? We tend to as business owners think all of our hard and earned knowledge Oh, hey, Sean. I love Sean. He's the best. I love Sean. Yeah That's not to love. I ain't awesome. He and I like we're the same thing like I love people who have that same mentality And he definitely is on the same page. Yeah, he really does definitely a collaborator And so like what does it do when we bring somebody on board? And we think we we own all the information in our head, right? We had to learn this the hard way And so we automatically sometimes think everybody has to learn it the hard way So they can't possibly learn it so much quicker than we had to So even with software tom, I was just telling this to I say this to all my clients People learn made central up to the level the software can do this much They learn it up to here just enough to get them going to do the daily things, right? How often can they go back to really take the time to learn it? It's so hard. We have so many things and then they learn up to here And then they teach people up to their level of knowledge And then that person's always bumping up against their level of knowledge And then they get this person gets annoyed And they feel like this person doesn't know how to do anything Because we're inside our brain what I teach people is don't be the middleman here Have them go and learn from the software company. This is what the software company does And you guys have that admin training I see Yeah, I just saw that yesterday and I was like that's super smart because a lot of companies don't have that And I my company we go and we find all the videos that we can to help train people To help train people's va's We have a whole list and every time that's what we do we take the list and we put it in a training plan And what we say is do not train your va don't make software training videos Let them learn and then when you come to them They're going to have that base level of knowledge that you can come in And you're already at a similar level of understanding instead of starting from scratch And it's going to make you trust them a lot quicker again I'm all about trust as quickly as possible And it's going to allow you to see that they're Competent they're going to get it really quickly or they're not or they're not and a lot of times it's not What's not because they're like stupid or it's because a lot of times We don't communicate the same way. So like my husband speaks English and so do I but he speaks man and I speak lady And those two seem to go like this a lot of the time and that can happen in a work relationship too You can end up working with the va that Might not communicate the same way that you do And it's frustrating because you're like a lot of people take ownership Like extreme ownership and they think oh, I have to do better. I have to train them better. It might never work That's how I view it Because it'll just be bumping up against something. I mean my husband and I have been married for 14 years It's working Um, I'm very cognizant and so is is he of those differences in how we communicate how we take Yeah, communication struggles are are huge. You have to be aware of them You have to work with them or they can derail you if you're you know, if you're not doing that So I'm sitting here wondering, you know, if I'm looking for va. How do I know if it's a good fit? How do I know if we can So or communicate If you're doing it on your own, I won't speak from the agency view, but if you're doing it on your own I would say one of the good ways that you could figure out is to have everybody do the same tasks like Maybe make a video of something and have a if you're going to interview people Have them do the same task and see how they approach it How long it takes them to get it back to you Something that's going to be a metric that you can judge and then The other thing is so what I know about myself what I've learned is that Because of my ad d sparkly brain. I can you hear I talk really fast. My brain is moving fast I have to get the stuff out or else I'll forget it because there's more stuff that needs to come in And to write I type much slower than my brain thinks and I used to try to type out instructions to people And I would be so frustrated because I couldn't get it out fast enough And I just kind of give up and hide under my blankets and I just didn't want to deal with it when I realized that Oh, if I voice memo things to people instantly My brain can do what it needs to do and the person can translate that information Into and and be able to say like this is what I heard is this accurate And what I have in slack is a is a channel called mel's brain And everything that goes into that slack channel is the things all the things that are from here And what my v my assistant does is she takes all of those things some of them are like I need to write a book on this subject But my dog also needs a hair appointment And don't forget to that I have to be on this podcast tonight And I need to make sure that I get this piece of equipment for It's like all the things are always in our entrepreneurial brains, but it goes in there. It's not urgent It's not like the things that are going to be an emergency level But it's things where she can put it on my master list or she can put it in my calendar Or she can make the appointment for me And then I know that it's gone somewhere and that something's happening with it and she reports back to me Does that make sense? Yeah, so one thing that you said that I love mel is that So I like to verbally tell people what to do, but I like them to write it Yes, I want to read the thing so I need people to work with me who like to hear it Yes want to type it out Yes, and that's me. I didn't even get to that part I refuse I hate listening to voice memos because people talk too slow And I can read really quick. I can skim so with my dyslexia. I didn't realize I'm like my whole life I've been trying to read but but I've always been skimming, but it's okay because now I can get the main points very quickly So my goal is to be as The least amount of frustrated in my daily life is possible and the most In my sparkly visionary creative brain doing the deeper work that is actually really really hard to do So even when people get VA's they think they're going to get time back. That's a lie everybody. I lied to you It does save you time But if you're like me and you're a recovering workaholic like I am Um, you are always going to put new things in in that busy And stay busy really saving you time. It's just expanding your ability to do work I usually say compress time. Um, this time I said save time But yeah, that's what it is changing what you spend your time on Yes, your your ability to focus in on the things that matter So, um, I think you really like to get things in writing so you can see all the detail and you can See all of the stuff and you you can And I forget stuff too and so whatever I asked somebody to do something for me It's like send me an email with what it is that I just asked you to do And so that's very interesting. I on boarded a new executive assistant about two weeks ago um, my Former assistant is now the social media manager because her weird brain matches mine and I needed her To be weird on the internet for me so that we have that presence and she's the best But what with the new assistant being best at being weird Best at being relatable to people in a very fun weird way and you're in your way In my way I call it weird. It's just me. You know, I'm me zoe who's doing social media. She's zoe like Yeah, I'm not somebody who has the energy like to do Fakeness, you know, like I can't Pretend to be something that I'm not and that's all I want to be is just more me if possible if people can handle it And zoe's like that too. She's just her she's zoe. And so I'm like, this is this is the right role for you But with my new eva She likes to get things written. We didn't realize this in the beginning until we started doing my trainings this week And I started talking about it Oftentimes the very things I train people on we're moving so fast in my company I don't do them because again, I make systems and I don't follow them all the time So it was great. I brought her into this training and we realized she's not the right person for me We're always going to have a struggle. She's very very good But she likes things written and she likes to write it back like she likes that And so it's going to be a struggle, you know, we use energy for everything She is a great very smart person And I'm going to rematch her through our agency with the client But I need somebody who wants video who wants looms and voice memos so that they can And so I actually found somebody and the reason why I usually wouldn't switch so quickly It's because I'm having surgery and I'm going to be out of work for about a month and a half So I don't have the time I normally would to train somebody So are you are you this what I'm hearing Melanie is that The one of the first places that people should look is how do you like to communicate? Yes, so However, you like to communicate be looking for someone who Likes to receive How you like to give it and who likes to give information in the ways that you like to receive it Yes, it's hard to think like that if you've never thought about it before it took me Yeah, but knowing that knowing that that's the one of the very first things. I think that's great I think another thing that is I'll go ahead tell me I can see That really applies to everybody in terms of figuring out who you can work with You know, how do you like giving information? How do you like getting it back? Especially in your office, right? Yeah, can you adjust because I don't want to adjust it's I want to be As true to myself and use energy only for other things that are meaningful or going to grow things If I'm using that energy up with communication on a day-to-day basis. It's just draining I don't want people adjusting because you know, they do when they're adjusting them or Or absolutely, right? Yes. And so that's one thing when people work with us. We actually we take full Ownership over the higher we give you one person that we have actually Searched for the right person for the role and for what you what your experience is We use disk as a way to integrate communication and figure out how can these two people communicate to the best As quickly as possible We so we use a lot of tools and and my team works really hard to get people through the funnel It's actually they're too stringent. I'm changing our system right now Um, because I'll look at people. I'm like, why did we say no to these people again? And so, um, it's it's something that's interesting. We get real our funnel. You're really good But if you don't make it with the client the quicker we can figure that out the better Because it's not usually that they're a bad VA It's just the communication. I have a a process very quickly that can show you If somebody's working for you and anybody can use this So what you want to do is anything that you create for training every time you do something in the office Make a video on loom for everything just as you're doing the thing make a video explain it as you go And then and it's a screen recording so they can see it If you want to talk about for instance, um, something that is not on a screen still make a video talk about it Because what you want that person to do is create a process sheet very simple document That they're just going to say to write in bullet points what they heard you say So you want these trainings to be very short five minutes or under sometimes 10 minutes at most If 8 out of 10 of those process sheets that they wrote are like oh that makes total sense Yes, they understand what i'm saying But two of them I missed something because they they need more context or I I realize now I You're going to take ownership because you trust that they understand the majority of what you just said, right? Yeah, they've they got 8 out of 10 of the process sheets written correctly and they understood you You're going to think oh, it's me. I need to change something But if if 4 out of 10 or 5 out of 10 were not like they're like, what did what did they watch? It's that's that's quickly how you can see a red flag for communication We're we're going to be pressing up on top of the hour here before we know it So, you know, I'm kind of curious I'm sitting here thinking, you know, what are all the things that I could use a va for what give us some some just highlight examples of Yeah, why would I want a va or you know, if i'm actively running a house cleaning company one of things that that va's could do for me So there's three different kinds of va's. We really focus on It's a general assistant kind of like a csr or an office manager if it's somebody who's really small It would be like an office assistant office manager They can do everything for you. They can run your entire office. They just can't sweep your floor or get your mail Literally anything that anybody in your office can do they can do and it's all about learning your systems And if you don't have systems I have systems that I give people or you can make a training video that says, hey I don't have a system for this but we need one bring me back two or three ideas of how other people Do this so that we can make a decision on it. That's a training video right there We don't have to have all the answers and so For that's a general role. It could also be you have an office manager who's not Be able to focus on the things that they're best at they might be best at talking to clients and you know Checking in on them and creating relationships, but they're doing data entry all day Or maybe they really suck at phone calls and you want somebody in there who's better at it So you can have a va come in and do that for sales A lot of times sales people are really really good at selling things and really really bad at paperwork or anything else and so Imagine what you could do for your sales person how much more effective they could be So a sale of the second type of vm. Sorry, that's the second type Yeah, and so there is some level of selling if you they're doing phone calls as a general csr role, right? If you operate that way But the second one is fully focused on sales. It could be cold calling It could be because filipinos have so many call centers with well trained people Who have learned how to sell and in your business? You've mentioned the Philippines a couple times. Is that Kind of your specialty is And here's how it's going to be different Every single person thinks i don't want to sound like a call center They're not going to sound like a call center and here's why they're going to learn everything about your business They're going to learn everything about the the way that you do work I want them to watch my technician training videos so that they understand what we do And then they're going to make a map. They're going to learn your area everything about your area They're going to make like a map of your area They're going to talk about the culture and all of the things like a fifth grade geography project So I do want to get to the third thing But I don't want to leave this one because I know you want to get that third thing So I but I don't want to leave this one And I also want to make sure that you hit on the language. I know a lot of people are concerned about I don't want somebody from another country. They're you know, we're gonna have this language barrier thing No, so philippinos learn americanized english in school because apparently we were in the philippines long ago as um And now we're and they love america. It's very I was there last year very americanized culture And they speak very good english and they're very very polite. Was there an issa event there? I don't know. That's a good question. I'll have to to see if I can All right, you had to pay for that trip. Okay It was to meet with my team But so it's a it's a culture where people are like the perfect type of employee Can you find good employees right now? I believe you can But americans have other dreams too and so the world can be our employment pool right now, especially for office roles So you they're never going to sound like a call center because they're going to learn everything about what you do and who you are The third type tom, how many businesses do you have right now too? We'll leave it at that Okay Anybody who has more than one business who has other things? Needs an executive assistant You need somebody in your life to manage So what my executive assistant did for me is they brought me all of the things that I needed to know about each of the businesses That's number three And there are a lot of different kinds of VAs we focus on these three because they're the most important that we know we can do well and That executive assistant what I call mine is the melody manager Because I don't want to manage somebody. I need a manager. I need somebody to manage me And so the one thing about the Philippines is that people In the Philippines the culture is the boss is here the employee is here When really as americans we want more of this usually we want somebody who's on our team right and so That's what we really Have issues with is giving it a lot of permission to make sure that they understand That they're on a they're a part of a team and that we want to collaborate So they do speak really excellent english. They're known for their english skills I have learned this I was why I wanted to hear it from someone else because I have heard this but i'm like What does that mean? I know that I'm going to send you I'll I'll link a voice test that I have for different voices to this podcast I mean this episode so that people can hear it in the comments. So yeah different voices All right, well tom we got our three and I know you want to share at least try and get melodies Uh her website up there. We're getting really tight on time now. Yeah Callie dang, I wanted to show issa's got events in all of these places exciting wow May of 2023 That's the one That's the one I went to you went to it was so there you go didn't eat if you want to go Yeah, there you go, but it passed us. I didn't it says 2023 Oh, that's right Oh wait, it's uh 2025 now We can Got update talk to you. We can start saving money Oh, no, they'll pay If you get on the list if you get on the list they need i'm dropping the link in chat So you can like start researching and get your application in our link. Yeah I would love it if that actually happened wouldn't that be amazing? Yeah, didn't reach out to me And I'll tell you exactly how it worked And who you might be able to reach at the Italian embassy or consulate about it So this is what we do. So our language on our website is still about our recruiting service because we're we're phasing that out We are fully in agency now that because I want ownership over the roles that our company gives I want ownership over the training that we provide And the support that a VA gets and the benefits they get because one of the things is a lot of problems happen When a when a client is not at good maybe as the management side of things And we don't find out until it's too late So taking ownership over this allows us to have a much more consistent Service we have like about between an 82 and 86 success rate on our first time matches If we have that's huge for our industry. That's a big deal For for our second time matches if we if we don't get it right where people are imperfect It's not always perfect, but second time we're in the high 90s And if they need to go to a third time sometimes it's not us Sometimes it might not just be the right client for us. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, but we all deal with that, right? Yeah, I'd love anybody to reach out to me on facebook messengers my favorite friend me I have a women's group called the business misfits if you're a purpose get driven Generous giving you know a giver in this world and you want to be surrounded by like-minded women It's my group. So it's a private group, but you can ask to join No jerks allowed And that's actually the how I had met you for the first time melody was through the business Yeah, yeah, that's how I knew about you when I met you and it's a secret club Yeah, I dropped the url to your your website melody in the uh in the chat. So so everybody could get that and I have to say it was a pleasure meeting you. I had a lot of fun today I did too. I mean you let me talk a lot. So thank you. That was fun for me We're friends now and we are And another time if you were giving me a quote to clean my windows, I'd probably get a deal The best deal Well, thanks so much melody. I really appreciate you coming on here today and You know just giving us a little bit more education I really love that you broke it down with these three areas that you really do well So highly recommending anybody that needs a va in one of those three areas Or if you don't know that you need a va, but you're struggling in one of those three areas. Guess what you do So yeah, I'm always willing to talk. It doesn't have to be about us It could be just helping them find the right way to go about it. So Nice If you're curious, I think it would certainly at least be worth a discussion and Go to melody and hit her up in facebook messenger and Learn a little more. Thank you so much for having me here. Are we going to be back next week? Liz? I Will not be here tom, but you All Yeah, I'm solid. I think I'm gonna be in florida next week. I'm doing a Business ride along for a week Okay. Yeah, I'm solid. I'll be here next wednesday five o'clock eastern with smart business moves You guys have a great week. Bye. Thank you. Melody. Bye. Bye