Unlocking Time Freedom with Virtual Assistants
Join us in this episode as we explore the world of virtual assistants with Tobe Brockner, Founder of Katuva Inc. Delve into the reasons, dos, and don'ts of having a virtual assistant, backed by real experiences. Discover the unique approach of Katuva in matching entrepreneurs with the right VAs, and the transformative impact on achieving time freedom. Learn how virtual assistants are revolutionizing not just administrative tasks but also redefining the boundaries of what's possible in various industries.
TOBE’s Bio
Tobe Brockner is the owner and founder of Katuva, a virtual assistant placement agency. Tobe has been a business owner his entire career because, as his wife of 25 years says, "He is functionally unemployable." Tobe's passion for entrepreneurship and helping business owners live better, more fulfilling lives is always on full display. Helping business owners find, train, and manage virtual assistants has been his main focus over the last 7+ years and his greatest joy is in helping other small business owners like himself free themselves from the businesses that they own and live a life of freedom and autonomy.
He lives in Meridian, Idaho with his wife Kirsten and two kids, Beau and Scarlett. In his newfound free time he enjoys fine cigars, aged bourbon, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and the Idaho outdoors.
- The Katuva Difference:
- Tobe shares the backstory of Katuva and the entrepreneurial journey.
- The importance of systemizing the business for strategic thinking and growth.
- Tobe's personal experiences with virtual assistants and the initial challenges.
- The Process of Matching VAs:
- Tobe explains the process of matching entrepreneurs with the right virtual assistants.
- Utilization of DISC assessment, Enneagram personality assessments, and other tools in the hiring and onboarding process.
- The evolution of virtual assistant roles beyond traditional admin tasks, exploring new possibilities.
- Adapting to Change:
- The impact of the pandemic on the virtual assistant industry and how technology advancements facilitated its growth.
- Tobe's perspective on embracing rapid change and the role of experience in navigating evolving landscapes.
-Expanding Horizons:
- The wide range of tasks virtual assistants can handle, from admin work to innovative ventures.
- Examples of unconventional uses, such as virtual assistants in medical professions and real estate.
- Encouragement for entrepreneurs to think beyond conventional boundaries and leverage virtual assistants for business expansion.
- The limitless potential of virtual assistants in freeing up time for creative thinking and business development.
- Encouraging listeners to explore the transformative power of virtual assistants for unlocking time freedom.
https://learn.katuva.com/300-tasks-ebook?am_id=isabel425
https://learn.katuva.com/exploratory-call?am_id=isabel243
Welcome to the Lift As You Climb podcast, where it's all about the
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journey and the joy of discovering who you are now, deciding who you want
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to become, and embracing your genuine identity, influence, and impact.
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In each episode, we'll explore how life's experiences have prepared us for what
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we choose to do next and how to create our Encore, write our own script, and
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star in the next stage of our lives.
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I'm your host, your Encore strategist, and transformation catalyst, Isabel Alexander.
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Hey out there in virtual land.
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I'm Isabel Alexander, and I'm very happy to have you here with me today
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on the Lift As You Climb podcast, because today we're beginning a brand
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new series on the fascinating world and opportunity of virtual assistants
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and how they will be virtually the best assistants you can imagine
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for your business, your leadership.
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You're just great.
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Full life.
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Thanks to my special guest and my copilot on this trip, I have the opportunity
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to go inside, behind the scenes and share how this evolved the industry of
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virtual assistants, how to use them.
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to your advantage and to have mutually beneficial
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relationships for maximum rewards.
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I like very much to be able to share what I feel is An improvement, an upgrade
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in everything I do in my life, and it's part of Lift As You Climb, right?
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I'm building my success ladder, and I want to share success with you.
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So, I'm delighted to share with you Toby Brockner, who is the founder of
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Katoova, a very valuable resource for me and my business, and that I also use.
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to help my clients.
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Now before we dive into the Virtual Assistant universe, let me give
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you a little bit of context.
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I've been working with Toby and his company for almost a year now and
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finally I found somebody who had the recipe for success on how to really
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make these relationships work together.
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And why?
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Because like us, Toby's an entrepreneur, a business owner, and
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he has struggled over decades trying to find the best way to do things.
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Based on his try, try again until he got it perfect, you and I now
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today will benefit from the fact that he doesn't know when to quit.
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He's always going to make it better for us.
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Now, I am As I've shared, a very satisfied client of Katuva, and I'm adding extra
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resources from that organization.
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What's important here for you when you listen to the series is understanding
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how this makes sense for us all today, why the circumstances like the pandemic
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have made it even more essential for us and our businesses, and some.
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Free resources that Toby is generously going to share with
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you that's going to help you make some decisions about is a VA.
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The next best thing that you can do for yourself.
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So stick around because we're going to talk about Toby's
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entrepreneurial journey today.
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How he perfected the methodology and the practices that Ketubah uses today.
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And.
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We're going to learn a few more of the highs, lows, secrets, and successes
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that both he and I have experienced.
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Stay to the end.
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There's going to be some resources for you.
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And remember, I only share with you what I believe is really good stuff.
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And so from me to you today, let's dive into virtual assistants
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and are they right for you?
Isabel:
All right, everybody, as I promised.
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We're going to take a deep dive into the reasons, the what to dos, and the what
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not to dos of having a virtual assistant or, as in my case, more than one.
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I've already Introduced you to my guest today, Tobe Brockner, who is the founder,
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the creative genius behind Katuva.
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And I am a very happy customer, a client of Katuva.
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And I only share with you, the things I really want to endorse, that I believe
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in, and that I have tried, and so that's why we're here today, because many of you
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have said to me, wow, you have a virtual assistant, wow, I tried that and it wasn't
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a good experience, oh wow, I wouldn't even know where to begin, and so that's why
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I've asked Tobe to join us here today so that we can talk about those things and I
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can respond or I can ask him some of the questions that you have been asking me.
Isabel:
Tobe, let's jump right in here and talk about the mysterious
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world of virtual assistance.
Tobe:
Absolutely.
Tobe:
Thank you for having me.
Tobe:
I really appreciate the invite.
Isabel:
I am, I'm delighted and I'm very grateful for you sharing
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your time because I know you have a lot of things going on besides
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running a very successful business.
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You have a lot, you have a big personal life as well, and I know because
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I've been in your orbit for a while that is only possible because you've
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successfully integrated VAs into your life and into your business.
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So you can do that.
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And you've got a fabulous team that I have enjoyed getting to know and working with.
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I've already talked about the backstory of Katuva and your entrepreneurial journey.
Isabel:
I really would like to start with today is talking more about what makes the
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experience with Katuva's VAs different.
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And what is your process for matching, the wild horses like me, the
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entrepreneurs that are going in many directions and have a very, in demand
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life and a very demanding personality to the right VA and how you find
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them and recruit them and train them.
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So please.
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Take it away, Tobe.
Tobe:
Yeah, that, that's a very oniony type of question or many layers.
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As you peel back one you expose more and more.
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And honestly, a lot of what we've done and what we've created is
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based on two main components.
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One is, I am you and I am your audience.
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I am an entrepreneur.
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I'm a business owner.
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I've done that my entire career.
Tobe:
I've never worked for anybody in my life except for a three week stint
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at McDonald's when I was 16, and they fired me because I was asking them
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why we were doing it like a bunch of idiots, and I thought I knew more
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than they did, and I was promptly let go, but so I am that person.
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I am you and your audience, and so that's number one.
Tobe:
And then number two, it was just built on old school trial and error.
Tobe:
It was failing over and over and over again until we figured it out.
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And that was a good four to five year journey that it took me because like
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you said, that's probably the two most common things we hear from new
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clients when they say, I need a VA is, I've been wanting to hire a VA,
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I just never knew where to start.
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I don't even know what to do.
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And the others are, I'm just intimidated by the process and I don't understand it.
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And so I'm just not going to do it.
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I've got too many other things going on.
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And so they don't do it.
Tobe:
The turning point for me came pretty early in my career, even before I
Tobe:
knew what virtual assistants were.
Tobe:
The mindset shift that took place was when I read a book by
Tobe:
Michael Gerber called The E-Myth.
Tobe:
Lots of entrepreneurs have read this book.
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If you haven't, you absolutely should.
Tobe:
It's a game changer, but he talks about systemizing your company in
Tobe:
a way that allows you to work on your business instead of in it.
Tobe:
And so many of us get caught up in the day to day, and we get buried
Tobe:
in the minutia that we don't have time to plan and to strategize and
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to do the big picture thinking that is required to take your business to
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that whatever next level is for you.
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And for some people that's revenue.
Tobe:
For me, it's time freedom and autonomy.
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That's much more important to me than money.
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I've always found that I can make plenty of money, but if I don't have the time
Tobe:
to enjoy it, it doesn't really matter.
Tobe:
And so we start with that sort of basic premise of what sort of life do you want?
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It's not even really about business.
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The business has always been for me, not always, but recently as
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I've made this mindset shift, it's always been a means to an end.
Tobe:
And for too long, it was the end itself.
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It was, I want a business that does 10 million a year in revenue.
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And I want, a big office and I want the big house and the
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cars and all these things.
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And I had all of those things.
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I had the big eight figure business, and the Range Rovers, and the pool
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in the backyard and I was miserable.
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I remember one day, looking at my keyring, I had so many keys on my
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keyring for cars and boats and rental properties and offices and just on and on.
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And I went about systematically reducing the number of keys
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on my keyring by selling
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off assets and things that weren't serving me at the time that were
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just acting as an albatross around my neck and weighing me down.
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As I let go of those things and the keyring got lighter and
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lighter, my heart and my soul got lighter and lighter as well.
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And all of that was possible because I was willing to say, okay, this
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is the kind of life I want to live.
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And now I need to figure out how to create it and just work
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backwards and reverse engineered it.
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And virtual assistants were a huge part of that because I had a staff
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at one point, we had 150 employees.
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We were, I think our payroll was around a little over 300, 000 a month.
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which that'll keep you up at night staring at the ceiling.
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If you've got a 300, 000 payroll every month, that's enough to do it.
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So I started looking at ways to, how do I make the impact that I
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want to make not only in my life, but in my clients lives and also
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scale back the risk and the stress.
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Virtual assistants were a natural answer, although I didn't know it at the time.
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I read Tim Ferriss book, Four Hour Work Week, like a lot of us have.
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He talks about virtual assistants in there.
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That was, he wrote that way back in 2007.
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That was probably really close to when I was first exposed to the idea, but
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because like most of the clients I deal with, I wanted to hire a VA.
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I just didn't know where to start.
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I put it off for six years, seven years, and until 2014,
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2015, I hired my very first VA.
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It was an absolute disaster.
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I had a second VA, absolute disaster, just on and on, until
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we figured out the process for it.
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And so we've taken a lot of pains to make sure that the initial hiring,
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onboarding, training and management components are in place and they're
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built on solid foundations using not just practical, in the trenches
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experience, but also DISC assessment and Enneagram personality behavior
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assessments and various things like that.
Tobe:
There, there's a lot of different things that we do to make that happen.
Isabel:
Wow, because I feel like you're telling my story here.
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That is one of the reasons that I just connected so very quickly
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with you and your concept, because I too had an eight figure business
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and had staff, not 150, thank God.
Tobe:
That's a giant daycare, believe me.
Isabel:
Absolutely!
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Every single business owner will say people is the hardest part, right?
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And so that's why another reason why Katuva and understanding the success
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model with virtual assistants is so critical because today, especially,
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post the pandemic, everybody is saying:
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"I can't find people.
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I can't keep people.
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I can't engage the people that I have."
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Not to go down the HR rabbit hole just yet, but I want to, first of all, let
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me say to everybody who's listening, if you're driving your car or on the
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way to the gym We will, of course, include Tobe's book selections, his
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recommendations in the show notes, because those are both excellent recommendations.
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And I was I was thinking when did the term virtual assistant come
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into our business vernacular?
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Would you say that Tim Ferriss introduced us to this idea?
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I think he introduced
Tobe:
it to the broader world of business, small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Tobe:
Big companies have been using that, although they probably wouldn't call
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them virtual assistants and call them remote workers or customer service reps.
Tobe:
Big phone companies have been outsourcing their customer service to other countries
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for decades going back to the seventies.
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And so it's not a new concept among these bigger companies, but it's
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all things that like that, they it trickles down from the top.
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And so when a big company is doing different things, the smaller guys like
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me and you and whoever else there, we think there's, we can't really do that
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because we don't understand it or we don't have the tools and technology.
Tobe:
Even this business that we're running with Katuva, I don't know that it
Tobe:
could have existed even 10 years ago because of Zoom and Skype and WhatsApp
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and the messaging, those just weren't as developed as they needed to be.
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It was always a challenge to have reliable technology to build
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these types of businesses on.
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Really the pandemic, actually helped my business a lot,
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because it did shrink the world.
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A lot of people don't remember 2018, 2019, Zoom was pretty clunky, it
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wasn't really what it is now, and they actually were forced to hire more
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engineers and make the technology better, which benefited all of us, obviously.
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And now it's a much different, much smaller world.
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I always joke, I got a degree in international business in college,
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but it was only because I'm fluent in Spanish, and I never used it until now.
Tobe:
We're an international business because we really are.
Tobe:
We have clients all over the world in different countries.
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All of our VAs, obviously, are from the Philippines.
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It's a different world right now and we have to embrace it for what it is
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becoming, not what it was, or even what it is, because it's changing so fast.
Tobe:
Jay Paul Getty had a great quote.
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He said, "In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy."
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. And I really believe that.
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I think that the experiences that we've had in the past, while they
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will serve us as a foundation, they have to be pivoted upon in order for
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us to maintain success in business.
Isabel:
Yeah, I was thinking the old saying necessity
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is the mother of invention.
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If we weren't forced into the scramble of figuring out how to do business
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virtually, and, force technology creators to be more innovative then, wow!
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I can't imagine.
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We would've all just had to take a very long nap.
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So this is good.
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It is really great to put this in perspective, Tobe, about how this had
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to become more mainstream and how it was possible and how that you have
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thoughtfully leveraged technology to create a service business, a very
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much needed service for entrepreneurs like myself, business owners like
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myself but also people with brick and mortar establishments as well, right?
Tobe:
Yeah, absolutely.
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Essentially, anything that you don't have to do in person, a virtual
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assistant can do for you, and even some things that you can do in person.
Tobe:
We're experimenting right now with having medical professionals who are doing
Tobe:
client or patient intake type things.
Tobe:
They have a tablet.
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They're on Zoom.
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VA is on Zoom with them, and they are taking notes as they're talking
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to the patient in the same room, and the VA is basically another
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set of eyes and ears taking notes.
Tobe:
We went in to the real estate niche for a little while, and I was joking
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with one of the real estate agents about, I really want to see if we could
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have a VA do an open house, on Zoom.
Tobe:
Just live on Zoom and as people come in, they can ask them questions.
Tobe:
I think there's some licensing issues with that but, you're limited
Tobe:
really only by your imagination at the end of the day with what virtual
Tobe:
assistants can do for your business.
Isabel:
Okay, so you just inspired me to open up my own aperture and thinking
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about like, how could I create more products and services and diversify
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and create more value for my clients by thinking, less linearly, is that a word?
Isabel:
Linearly?
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Just throw out the rule book and say why not?
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What if a virtual assistant could do that for me?
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Then what does that allow me more time, more brain space to create?
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So I I love that there's no limit.
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There's no upper limit on this.
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So that's one of the things I promised everybody that I would have you
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on a couple of episodes of this.
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We're creating a series here right now.
Isabel:
Okay, so that's a wrap for Episode 101, the first leg of our fabulous tour
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of the world of virtual assistance.
Isabel:
I want to thank our guest again, Toby Brockner, the founder and
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thank him for sharing his years of experience as an entrepreneur and
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lending all of that experience to us.
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We've got four more episodes coming up in this series with Toby.
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So if you liked what you heard today.
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Wait till you know what we talk about tomorrow and the day after.
Isabel:
So subscribe, you know, do the thing, right?
Isabel:
Push the button, do this thing here, watch us on YouTube, listen to us on your
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favorite podcast app, get the downloads, get Toby's book recommendations.
Isabel:
And you know what?
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We're here, both of us, because we want to share with you what we
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have learned through this great trip through entrepreneurship.
Isabel:
Come on back.
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I'll see you in episode 102.
Isabel:
Thank you for spending this time with me.
Isabel:
I hope our conversation added value to your day and expanded your
Isabel:
vision for your legacy and impact.
Isabel:
Please join me in increasing my impact and expanding my reach to even more
Isabel:
people by sharing this episode on social media, with friends, and leaving a review
Isabel:
on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Or channel of choice to catch all the latest from me.
Isabel:
Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.
Isabel:
Connect with me and others in our community Facebook group, the Lift
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As You Climb Movement, where you can engage, be inspired by and grow
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with a tribe of like-minded people.
Isabel:
As I evolve as a podcaster and spokeswoman for collaboration and
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economic empowerment, your input and feedback are especially important.
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To me, I welcome your suggestions and questions to hello@theencorecatalyst.com.
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Until we meet again, please remember your success may be the foundation
Isabel:
for someone else's to together we can raise success ladders around the world.
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