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Dave Braun 00:00:02 Hey, everybody. Welcome to the HireMyVA team and Business Building Podcast brought to you by Yoogozi.com and Victory. In this podcast and at HireMyVA, we help you to reclaim your freedom through hiring and thriving with Virtual Assistants without breaking the bank. Of course, that means your bank, the most important bank. […]

Well, I think we ought to get into some ways to say no without feeling guilty because right now I’m sure a lot of you are gonna have something that’s gonna come up today or tomorrow, or you’re thinking something in the back of your mind. For me, there’s an organization I’m involved in that’s a volunteer organization, we talked about it a little bit before, but I’m the vice president of it. And I know what’s gonna happen in like six months is they’re gonna ask me to be president when the current president rotates off. I’m almost positive that they will. So then I should be thinking ahead, how am I gonna say no? Or should I say no? But let’s assume I’m gonna say no, which we’ll see. But so what do you think are some ways that we can say no without feeling guilty or maybe even like what you did with that team member kind of saying no, but making them feel good at the end of it.

Once we realize that if we are hiring for motivation, integrity, and capacity, first, we’ve talked about this in previous podcasts, look for motivation, integrity, and capacity before you ever look for the experience, because you can train them on everything else. If you see somebody who’s got that, bring them into your organization because everyone wants to be on a winning team. So if you got a team of Rockstar and you start bringing in low performers, you’re gonna like—everyone’s gonna be bummed out by that. So I think we should start with that.

Some of the biggest brands that we know and use today, we started during recessions. And some people just time it right. They get in during the recession and it grows and they get out before the next economic downturn. But if you’ve been around for any number of years, more than just a few years, you’ve been hit by some cycle of recessionary recession and inflationary times. So I just wanted to start with that, just acknowledge that it’s hard. And I hope this is the time that you’re rallying your troops and talking to mentors and those types of people. So some people tell you that if you’re in business, now’s the time to double down on your business and say, I’m in this to win it. And particularly during the one that we’re in right now during this—We’re recording this in mid-2022.

We’ve been talking about selling your business, you know, about the WHYs. Like why do I wanna do it? Sure. You know, and, and the, you know, I think a couple of episodes ago we talked about, you may not wanna do your business anymore or, you know, guess what? You will not wanna do your business for some reason or another some point. You know, and then we talked about the next part, which was 1 43. So the first one was 1 42 about the wise 1 43 was about how to position your business for sale. What are the things you need to do, get ready to sell? You know, we talked about maintaining client database about getting your recurring revenue up, like systems, you gotta put together a few other things. So that was episode 1 43. So today though is kind of the, what would you say? Like the, the peak of the three, we we’ve kind of set this up. So this is probably the most important we want you to listen to the other ones, of course, but this is one of the most important ones, important episodes that we’ve actually recorded and obviously the most important in our three part saga. So we’re gonna talk about HOW.

And maybe we can just remind people on, like, why would you sell your business? And the reason we’re even talking about this is that I was stunned from a conversation that I’d had a survey I’d read first or not a survey, a statistic I’d read first. And then having a conversation with a business broker friend of mine that most small businesses don’t actually sell, they just close. They just close the bleeding doors. Because they don’t think that they’ve got anything to actually sell. And the truth is most businesses, even if you’re not making any money, even if you’re losing money, there’s some value there. It might be the client list. It might be be equipment. It might be inventory. It might be territory. It might be proprietary information. It might be the systems on how to do things. You could sell your business to entrepreneurial startups. You could sell it to the competitors. You could sell it to a family member, all kinds of people out there who would offer you money for your hard work that you put into this all these years.

The emphasis is probably on the “really” right? Can I “really” sell my business? This is very interesting, Dave because you and I were talking about this recently. Weren’t we? Where I had a conversation with a business broker friend of mine after reading the survey, I was shocked because sometimes this is a mindset thing. For me I’m always thinking about, okay, how do I position this business for sale? How do we begin with the end in mind? And how do I get the most value out of this thing? What’s the end game here? But I guess most people don’t think about their businesses that way. So I was a little shocked when I learned that most businesses don’t sell, they close.

No country is perfect. Boy, if we got opportunities here that put places around the world, they just lock them. So how do you do this, Dave? I think one of the first things we need to do is we have to act—they call it vision casting. You gotta cast your vision of what does your organization look like to your team members into the world? And then you have to pound it into everyone’s head. This is why we have this dynamic business plan for growth in our organizations. This is why you should post it on bulletin boards. This is why it should be part of your recruiting efforts. Who are you as an organization? And what do you want to be? Now, I would not suggest that if your corporate culture is to grind people down at every opportunity, you know, no vacations, no benefits. Those probably aren’t the values that are gonna attract the sunshine lollipop and rainbow people.

Think about every time we’ve done a mastermind, we’ve done an acceleration challenge or we’ve done Victory master class. We have folks do not just org charts for today. What’s the org chart look like, what are you gonna need in order to move you from the 5 million to the 15 million mark or from the hundred thousand to the 250,000 mark, right? Or from the 50,000 a year startup to break your first a hundred thousand dollars. Cause most people can’t do it by themselves. And sometimes these, these are even outsourced people.

I want you guys to thrive. I want you guys to have the best person on your team, to have your businesses grow great. So let’s get into what are the critical things to help you find great team members and then the course getting them at the beginning. Now you can get more of this information. We’ve got a comprehensive checklist on our site and at Hiremyva.com. So go over there and grab it.

If you call your employees, “employees”, if you treat them like employees, they will show up like employees. Now, I’m not a big fan either of the other extreme where people call them family members. Because they’re not family members, either. They’re team members, they’re on your team. And my feeling Dave, as you know, cause I tend to be an evangelist about this all the time. So if you give me an opportunity, I’m gonna talk about it. Everyone wants to be on a winning team. And the great thing, I think particularly to this question, Dave, is that we all know that together, we have a mission.

If you look at the number of books that we’ve read, the number of conversations that we’ve had, the number of podcasts that we listen to, and radio shows, and seminars that we go to, if you actually take just one nugget from each of those interactions, you apply those to your life and you stare at your Naval a little bit to understand how bad experiences and good experiences have impacted us. And then you just share those with the world, that’s called wisdom. And sometimes I just recognize, I just need to open myself up when people are sharing their challenges and just let the universe flow. Because something, I am shocked, you’ve seen to look on my face, sometimes at masterminds. It was like, where the hell did that come from?

The question is, what’s this hiring process checklist you have all about? I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, but this is something that we have as a free download on our site. And it’s our VA hiring process checklist and blueprint. And of course, it is what it says it is.
It’s a checklist of things for you to consider when you’re gonna be hiring somebody. Now we’ve developed this hiring process checklist after years of victories and a few failures here and there. And the cool thing about it is like all of our tools. You can use it, not just for remote workers, but you can use it for people that you’re hiring for in-person as well. So it can be used for both categories and we want you to do that, but remember, if you want it, you need to opt-in at our site, but it’s free for you. And we walk you through it there as well. But we thought this episode, we’d walk you through this a little bit and show you how valuable it really is.

More as a General Virtual Assistant, that was kind of your requirements, right? So, I remember interviewing you and a few others and I remember one of the things Daph and if you have forgotten, but I tell you this every now and then, one of the reasons that I picked you over others, because the skills, you know, you guys were pretty close, but your personality is something that drew me to you. Like the joy that you have, how much you laugh, and how much fun you have. And I think that has helped us morph the company to have core values, we have GRITS at Pro Website Creators. GRITS is, the acronym for it stands for Grins, Relentless Improvement, Integrity, Thankfulness, and Service. So grins and laughter and having fun.

You know what, here’s what I think a lot of people need to understand about this HireMyVA thing. We are constantly adding new content to this darn thing, based on what we’re learning, what’s working, what’s not working, and what are we learning from the clients that are going through the thing, and so it keeps getting better and better. And the truth is between the podcast and the lessons we’re learning, there is more content in there. So it is a good question because frankly, you and I have looked at a lot of the—We’re not the only VA program out there. We’re the best, but we’re not the only ones out there. And one of the things I think that makes it the best, Dave, is that it’s an evolving product. It’s not a course that we put together over a weekend and we’ve recorded it. And now we’re just pushing it, pushing it, pushing it, and doing all kinds of ads on social media, that’s not the way it is. I think it’s because you and I are both successful business owners who really use VAs in our real businesses to grow them. And we’ve got coaching clients that are doing it as well. And now, we’ve got clients just through the HireMyVA Program. So it’s an evolving program.

I understand where the question comes from, it’s just that I think you and I have heard this so many times between masterminds and podcasts things and people submitting questions. It just makes me chuckle because, I get that people don’t get the math right on this, Dave. So why are we trying to hire Virtual Assistants? Well, we’re trying to find more freedom in our life, right? We’re to find freedom so that I as the business owner or the manager or the leader of the organization can free up some of my own time to grow, to grow the business, or maybe I’m just working so many stinking hours, I need help.

Therapy is very powerful, so that leads us to our topic and our question. This is Episode 132. So the question is, as an entrepreneur, I wanna be at my best. How do I go about finding a therapist for entrepreneurs? And Larry, I think this is not just for entrepreneurs, really. The question is really for everybody. And the other thing that I wanted to say before we get going is that I think I’ve made a mistake and never gone to therapy. I wish I would have, like early in my life. It’s like, why, because I know for many, many years I’ve needed it, but I haven’t gone to it. And that’s one of the things that I’ve recognized that I need some therapy on a couple of things in my life. But then you, you’ve been smart, a lot smarter than me in this, and recognized that for you to be at your very best, you needed some outside help.

Folks you’ve listened and you’ve hung with us through these three episodes. Maybe what you can do is review them, go back and listen again. But the ones that we’ve mentioned recently, maybe there’s one or two things that you can adopt. I mean, there’s a bunch of them like Larry said, maybe 25 things, but maybe just one or two things that you can adopt that will give you the ability to be more resilient, to be able to take that edge where you’re at that burnout point and bring it down, bring it down just a little bit.

It’s great to volunteer and that’s awesome. But what really helps reset your perspective? Because sometimes burnout can be caused by, we get a skewed perspective that’s all about us and it’s my issues, and it’s my problems. And your world starts becoming all around you as opposed to getting outside of yourself. And especially to people, working with people that are less fortunate than you.

If you’re experiencing mental exhaustion or emotional stress or you’re feeling physically exhausted, you could be experiencing burnout or the warning signs of it. And that leads to fatigue, feeling disconnected, feeling worn out. Burnout is really just a form of extreme and I’m gonna use this word intentionally chronic stress that shows up and can manifest itself in really lots of dysfunctional ways. I’m using those words intentionally because this is serious stuff.