133: Pro Tips for Using VAs and More from LauLau Remote Offshore Staffing Founder, Anna Lautenschlaeger

We work mostly in the US and place people from other countries to help people save money and actually get access to good stuff. It's interesting, when I just started, most clients came to us to save money, but nowadays law firms are struggling to find good quality people. So some of my clients come to me after they have advertised in the States for three months and just couldn't find anyone. It's difficult to find quality people nowadays. And then they come to us because they have access to a large pool of candidates to choose from. Yeah,

and we've talked to a few people who they love the fact that they can hire an attorney in another country. Yeah, obviously they can't technically do legal work if they didn't write the bar, but they can do phenomenal amounts of case work, up to and including just, they just can't file that case or go to court.

Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time you're listening to this podcast, welcome to the 10 Golden Rules ofIinternet Marketing for Law Firms. Podcast, we've got a great guest today, and I'm going to introduce Anna in two minutes. Just want to ask everybody a favor. If you're a regular listener of this podcast or you watch us on YouTube, do me a favor and click the subscribe button. Click the like button if you're on iTunes or podbean or Spotify, subscribe to the show because it helps us a lot to get amazing guests that we all want to hear if we get more like subscribers. Oh, and a five star review would be awesome on iTunes. Anyways. Anna, welcome to the 10 golden rules Internet Marketing for law firms podcast.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Good night, good morning, good, day, good. And AVEN,

this is exciting. We've got, I won't say our first international guest, but maybe our most international guest. When you hear Anna's story, you'll be as impressed as I was. She's made some amazing stops in her career, and we want to hear all about that. And we want to hear about la la, her staffing company and her expertise with law firms. But first things first, Anna, why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey and how you ended up in South Florida?

Ooh, you could write a book about it. Yeah. Well, I lived in 17 different countries, and I love to travel, so I travel to about 50 countries so far, and ended in the United States in general, not really by choice. My parents moved here about 20 years ago and just wanted to be with family. As we get a little bit older, moving places becomes less and less appealing, so I decided to stop somewhere for a while and grow roots. Moved initially to New York, and New York is beautiful. It's a great city. We started snowboarding in and came to Florida a couple of winters, and then a few years ago, I just decided not to go back. So I didn't really move. I stayed in Florida. I refused to go back to snow and cold, yep. And absolutely love it here. And, yeah, yeah. But

tell us a couple of those interesting stops, because you've done some fascinating things in your career. I know you were supervising supermodels. At one point you had tea with the queen. So tell us a couple of the interesting stops. Yeah,

I spent a long time in Asia and did a lot of interesting things that's there. I lived in Korea. I lived in the Philippines, Vietnam, so a number of interesting places. Really enjoyed it, and a lot of funny stories from that time, for sure, I remember once my team gave me a gift. I came into my office since the morning, and had a trash bag on my desk, and it started moving. So I was like, what is it? And I said, Well, we bought you two snakes for dinner. So open the bag, and there are two snakes, and there are still moving. So I learned to kill a coca snake. So that was an interesting one in Vietnam. And then for real, delicacy, I'll be honest, it tastes like nothing. I didn't realize that snakes are bony, so it just the meat is tough and it's a lot of small bones. I didn't realize I had bones, to be honest. So it was an interesting experience. But yes, I was driving home on a motorbike with that bag in my hand, and the snake is moving. So it was pretty unique. So I'm I'm lucky I'm not scared of snakes. And then there was a Chinese New Year. And might seem so again, in the morning, I come into my office, and I have a massive, huge, humongous rooster in my office, not a dead one, a live one, and he's walking around, you know, being bigger than life. And I'm like, what is it? Oh, It's the Year of the Rooster next year. So for good luck, we bought you a rooster. So I've had the pleasure again to tie the rooster to my motorbike take it home. He was very aggressive. I wasn't a friendly rooster, so he was packing and everything. And I. One. So I've had to lock it up in the bathroom and get neighbors to come and kind of get it out and any gift that to a neighbor for New Years. But yeah, a lot of interesting, funny stories about travels in Asia, being stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere, diving. Definitely some lovely stories. And then I spent about 10 years living in in London, in the UK, and had the pleasure of being on the Olympics committee for the London 2012 Olympics. And through that, met a lot of interesting people, so a lot of athletes who came for the Summer Olympics, swimmers. Oh, my God, the swimming team that was a highlight of my life. So far. Thing,

all the swimming teams are one particular. Well,

there was a swimmer on the US swimming team with the last name starting with pH, who I felt was very well mannered and good looking. So my entire team had a crush on him, for sure, and he was great. And got to meet the same boat, which was quite a highlight. So it was quite a privilege to do that. And we got to meet the royal family, who came to our campus, to our university campus, to visit the athletes. So it was interesting to meet the former Queen and Princess Kate and other members of the royal family that was quite, quite a highlight as well. I actually

saw Michael Phelps speak recently at a conference, and I asked him a question that it was always something that I kind of figured out, but it reinforced it for me. And I said, you have this phenomenal workout regimen. How do you get yourself to work out? And he said, The most important thing is just go there, and once you're there, it's easy to get yourself going. And he's talking about the pool, and he was talking about even current day, because he said he works out six days a week in his home. But he said the most important thing and he now he's working on his golf game, so he's got trainers and he's got coaches, and he's taking the same aggressive approach that he took as a swimmer, but he said the most important thing is getting there. And I know that's true too, because it's not hard to work out once you're at the gym, but you got to get yourself to the gym and then the rest is relatively easy. Yeah,

I check myself that way as well as sometimes say I'm going to take a book and go to the gym and read the book, and I just was a gym, and then once I'm there, yeah, it's definitely, it's enjoyable, and I like it. It's just getting there that's sometimes a challenge

to tell myself too, no excuses, like with myself, Oh, I'm tired, I'm going to hit the snooze button, or I have to do some work before work. There's no excuses, because the workouts the most important part of getting the day right. I think,

yeah, I'm not a morning person, so I work out at night. So I work out 10pm 11pm but it really helps me to forget about my day and sleep well. Because usually, otherwise, I go to bed and I start thinking, have I done this? Have I emailed this client? I just can't sleep. So actually, gym is my way of the reconnecting, deconnecting and just getting some sleep, clearing my head. And yeah, that's great.

Yeah, I would not work out if I had to work out at night. But you gotta find your place, right? So we talked about your journey, and let's maybe bring it to modern day. And we met through a really great business and legal networking group called provisors, and Anna is one of the rock stars and provisors, everybody knows they're in this area. I'm probably soon, all across the country. So if you're a provisors member, give Anna and I showed and connect with us on LinkedIn and whatnot, and tell us which provisors group you're in. I'd love to hear about how things evolved into working with lawyers.

Providers is a great networking group for different types of professionals, but I feel it works particularly well for lawyers, and I think about 40% of providers members are lawyers, and aside from maybe pi, lawyers get a lot of referrals from other lawyers. They cross refer business. So it works really well for them that it's such a lawyers intense organization. But also there are other types of professionals, from HR to accountants to consultants, coaches, digital marketing agencies like yours that support lawyers and help them to be successful, helps them to scale their businesses. So I think this organization is not just followers, but for ambitious lawyers who do want to scale, who want to expand, and who do not want to stay a solopreneur and a self employed lawyer or solo professional. I am in Del Rey one group. I'm the group leader of that group, and the group was established a couple of months ago. So it's a new group that is growing very fast. I'm also a member of Bucha group. I'm child socials for that group. That's your group. As well. Jay, it's just great. Bucha is now up to 40 members, of which about 1718 members actually in the legal profession across different fields. And yeah, people collaborate together. So it's not just about sending each other referrals and helping to grow business, but you find a lot of partners, business partners who work alongside you to bring benefits to a client. So I really enjoy it. I grew a great network of partnerships. Met amazing people like you who are on top of their game. And normally you don't have access easily to these kind of people. So for example, people of your quality, I'm not going to meet in public, so at a b9 meeting was somewhere else. So providers, because of the 10 year requirement, you need to have at least 10 years of experience in your field, tends to have members that are just more seasoned, more experienced, more mature, and are on top of their game in their field, and you being the best example of that. So it's a great organization. It's working out very well for me.

Thank you, and you've done an amazing job. Anna's been like a real lightning rod for our group and organizing all the social and creating a brand new group. So what are some great tips? How do you really stand out for networking? And maybe give us two or three business tips that lawyers can use, and people who work with lawyers can use,

I think, with networking. To be honest, I've been networking for many years now and observing other people what they do well to be successful, I must say that I came to conclusion that the main thing is being intentional. A lot of people go to as many events as possible, meet other people, have a good time, socialize, have a good time, have a couple of dreams, and then nothing comes out of it. So I think it's important to ask yourself, why are you going to that event? Should you go to that event? Because there is this opportunity cost. When we go to one event, we don't do something else, we don't hang out with a client. We don't read a business box that might help us to develop our business, or we do not go to another event, or we don't spend time with our family and friends. So I think you need to be selective which events you are going to attend for networking purposes, and also plan so for example, I have a great client. He actually scaled from working with three lawyers in his law firm to over 20 staff in two years through networking and basically, before he goes to any event, he sets himself a goal. He looks at the list of people who will come to the event, and he says to himself, I'm going to speak to these five people during the event. He does research on them so he knows a little bit about their background. Can start a conversation. And also he has an outcome in mind. It doesn't need to be a potential client. It could be a potential referral partner who will be sending him leads, or someone who is of value to his clients. He is very successful. And also what he does, he always follows up, because it's not enough to meet someone, exchange business cards and have a good conversation. I think it's really important to be intentional with follow ups. There is this theory, I don't remember which book it was, but that you have to connect with someone at least eight times for them to become your client or your partner. So I try to keep it in mind. I have a follow up strategy. People I meet intentionally, I follow up on LinkedIn. We connect. I send them birthday cards, we meet for coffee. So there needs to be a plan, there needs to be a goal in mind, and with that goal in mind, you just approach it differently. So I think networking is all about intention. For me,

that's great, by the way, those are awesome tips.

Thank you. And I think about, kind of thinking about business tips. Again, a lot of my clients are law firms. About 40% of our clients are law firms, actually. And looking at law firms that are successful, as opposed to law firms that stall and do not grow and scale and develop all the time, I noticed there are probably, like, three things I would recommend that you consider as a lawyer who wants to scale. One is automation. Nowadays, there are so many different platforms, technologies, tools that lawyers can use to automate up to 60, 70% of processes. For sure, that frees up a lot of your time, but also it gives you more time back to focus on what counts, which is billable hours. And friend of mine, she has a law firm here in Miami, what she does every six months, she has one day blocked in her calendar where she sits down and reviews what new tools are available, because systems always evolve, even if you have a CRM system like my case, or Clio, whatever you are using the key. Adding new features and more and more things can be automated. Some agencies, Some law firms, invest into automation experts, so they actually hire someone to review the processes and do it for them. Personally, I think it's a great investment. It will save you a lot of time, a lot of money, give you back a lot of time to focus on what counts business development, billable hours, legal

Pat. Patrice Jimenez, yeah, yeah. Oh, great. And absolutely we all want to learn about a great business technology, business expert for law firms. Listen to our podcast with legal Pat. It's

a great podcast. Actually, I have it in my list of short term Thank you. Thank you. And not only that, it just helps you to reduce mistakes, because you kind of try to eliminate that human error, because things are automated, and you can automate everything from billing to client communications, client engagement, case management. There are so many things you can do with tech if you sit down. I mentioned that friend of mine, she sits down every six months for one day and reviews what's new out there, and always adds new tools to increase her productivity effectiveness. So automation, I think, is a must. That's a good start. Second, I would say, delegate. It's interesting when I talk, especially to lawyers who just started out quite often they feel they don't have money, that don't have the resources to delegate, or they are worried about the quality of work, yet if you do not delegate, you will never so we all have a limited number of hours right per day, 24 hours out of which maybe you can work for 18 hours a day. So if you don't delegate, that's your glass ceiling. So you have 18 hours, and that's the maximum you can ever do. And I always say, if you are a lawyer and you work in things like admin, managing cases, let's say you're a PI inward. If you yourself reach out to get medical files, you reach out to clients to get the statements, put your E court filings, so your 18 hours per day are reduced to maybe two or three billable hours per day, and that's about it. So I always say, think about how much your time is worse per hour, and what you can delegate at a lower rate. So for example, we place paralegal, let's say paralegal with us that's in the Philippines, with experience working in the US and perfect English experience working in your field of law is $12 an hour. So did you really become a lawyer to do work that can be outsourced for $12 an hour? For me, it makes no sense for me, I feel it's a great investment to delegate everything that can be delegated, and for that, automation is a great tool to do it as well. So delegation for me is a must for growth. Yeah, automate, delegate, network. And I think I

want to, I want to hold for one sec because we skipped a step. Okay, Anna's got this great staffing company and provides these incredible resources. So tell us a little bit about Lau, Lau and staffing company and the role that you all help with business. So Lau.

Lau was born 15 years ago, when I lived in the Philippines, I started placing paralegals so the Filipino legal system was basically exported from the US, so a lawyer in the Philippines can transition seamlessly into becoming a paralegal in the States. And I noticed that a lot of lawyers work for call centers. The English is excellent, and as a call center agent working for Expedia or Chase Bank, they are more than being a lawyer in the Philippines, so we started placing them with law firms in the US, and that's how Lau, Lau or lauten, lauten states, lauten is such a simple German name. In Germany, everyone is like Smith, but he obviously lauten, lautensche was difficult for clients, so we transitioned into becoming La La but yeah, we started placing paralegals, legal assistants and also executive assistance with law firms in the US. And then over the years, we transition to placing either other types of remote stuff. For example, accountants. This week, we placed engineers with luxury developer in Boston. Basically, we do all remote staff. Our staff are based in the Philippines or Colombia for bilinguals, they work from home during your business hours, and they cost a fraction of price, so our clients save up to 70% on the payroll cost, and all our virtual assistants are fully trained, so they come with. Have at least three years of experience working for a similar employer in the States. So if you are a family law firm looking for a paralegal, will match you with a paralegal that has experience in family law in Florida. So yeah. So I'm very passionate about this company. I'm the managing partner, and hopefully soon the only partner. I'm buying out the last partner this year. So yes, it's a great I love working internationally. We work mostly in the US and place people from other countries to help people save money and actually get access to good stuff. It's interesting. When I just started, most clients came to us to save money, but nowadays, law firms are struggling to find good quality people. So some of my clients come to me after they have advertised in the States for three months and just couldn't find anyone. It's difficult to find quality people nowadays. And then they come to us because I have access to a large pool of candidates to choose from. Yeah,

and we've talked to a few people who they love the fact that they can hire an attorney in another country. Yeah, obviously they can't technically do legal work if they didn't write the bar, but they can do phenomenal amounts of case work up to and including just, they just can't file that case or go to court. Talk to me, one of the questions a lot of my contemporaries always have, what are some of the best practices for working with remote working with remote teams being efficient, making sure they're not doing two jobs. And you know, all those typical questions like, how do you make it work seamlessly and effectively?

That is like a whole wealth of issues I actually would be very happy to send. I wrote a book. I published a book on it. It's called hiring and managing virtual assistants. Because there are so many blogs after COVID, it seems to be such a popular field and topics. So there are a lot of smaller, younger agencies that don't have the expertise. So it just started annoying me and I wrote a book for our clients. So if your viewers are interested in getting a copy of the book, I'll be happy to mail it to them, but it has a number of chapters dedicated to making it work, basically working with remote staff. I think there are

number where should they request that? Just connect with you on LinkedIn,

yeah, connect on LinkedIn. I'll be happy to Yeah, just send it out with you. What's the website? The website is the LAO, low com, so T H, E L, a U L, a u.com and or for legal staffing, Lau, Lau us. So, la U L, a u.us I think there is working remotely with remote staff, whether it's in the States or offshore. So there are challenges like cyber security, because no one wants that data stolen or be negligent. If you have a cyber security insurance, you don't want to be considered negligent. And if something was to happen, there are a lot of things law firms can do to protect the data and to monitor remote stuff. There are platforms like teramint that allow you to monitor your virtual assistants desktop remotely. So they would give you access through the IP address, and you can monitor what they're doing. It takes random screenshots throughout the day. It tracks what they're doing, literally an activity report, and also attracts productivity and compares it to similar staffing worldwide that use the platform. For me, it gives a number of interesting insights. And for me, it shows which of my staff are performing. High performers, basically get more done in the day. It also allows you to monitor their hours and monitor their access because using these platforms, you can give them access to certain data and then exclude them from accessing other data on your system. Then all these new CRM systems are cloud based, which is considered pretty safe. It's encrypted data. So systems like my Clio, Lexis, Nexis, my case, legal, Panthers, like all cloud based software, so it's encrypted for communications, we use WhatsApp, which is two way encryption as well. So that's the only app that is encrypting messages. And there are a number, there are so many tools clients who want the highest level of security. We do FBI background checks, the equivalent of the FBI background for for their staff and and also recommend other things, like using virtual desktops, which is basically accessing all the data on it, you would take a laptop or a computer, put it in your office, and then your remote staff will log in, remotely into your office, basically, instead of working on the device. And we have a number of policies, we actually our staff sign a 28 pages contract with us, and we take cyber security super. Seriously, we invested a lot of time and money in building the systems to make sure it's as safe as possible. And then there is this layer of working with international staff, because all of them are talented. We recruit top 5% of talent in in the Philippines and now in Colombia as well. But there is such a huge difference in cultures. So for example, Filipinos are very, I call it like fluffy, very kind people, very nice people,

but so nice, right? Very indirect. They never they never say no, they never say no, even when they should say No,

exactly. So it can be blessing, but it can be a problem if you are not aware of it, the amount of times when I just started. So I have five executive assistants, all of them I in the Philippines when I just started years ago, I would say, on Monday, hey, Richelle, for example, can you complete this task by Friday? Of course, Friday come nothing is done. And I'm like, what happened? Oh, I actually don't know how to do it, so why didn't you tell me on Monday? I didn't want to disappoint you. So what do you think I'm feeling now that it's Friday? It's not done well. I thought so many things can happen by Friday. Maybe you change your mind so it that's a very typical response. So you need to approach things and delegation in a certain way, and be aware of some of the cultural pitfalls. There is a great researchers. His name is Gert Hofstede. He dedicated 30 years to cultural research. He has a great website. It's Gert G, E, E, R T, and Hofstede is H, O, F, S, T, E, D, E, so if you google him, he has a website that shows compares different countries. Let's say you can compare the United States to the Philippines, and it shows highlights the differences between these cultures. And it's so true. So Filipinos, for example, when you work with someone from the Philippines, they get offended easily, so it happens very frequent that to clients who are not familiar with the culture that Americans are very direct. They actually don't realize that. But my typical American lawyer Monday morning, what's done, what's not done. So the Filipino assistant was like, and the lawyer like, this is bullshit. This is bullshit. This is not good enough. This needs to be redone. So the Filipino assistant is in tears and never comes back, so they just disconnect and disappear. So we work, we actually have a cultural coach who does a lot of training with our staff to make them understand that it's just a medical way of doing things, and it's not offensive, really when they give direct feedback. And equally, we work with our clients as well to raise awareness that you just use one sentence at the beginning of feedback, how are your kids? And then start, this is bad. This is bad. This is bad. This needs to be done that avoids so many issues. Or Filipinos, for example, they avoid conflict, so they wait to last minute, so they can really suffer in struggles. They will never offer negative feedback. So if they have a manager who is root user, I had a member of staff a couple of weeks ago, so he worked with a lawyer at turns. Out, I didn't know about it. Turns out, she was cursing at him day and night. She was very emotional getting divorced. So she was crying, swearing, cursing, basically, abusing him non stop. And he was taking it all three months or three months until he had a complete mental breakdown. So it's very difficult because they won't say anything the appealing. So there is an issue that don't know how to deal with it. That's why I have a big HR team, and we touch base with them on a regular basis, and it's easier for them to open up to someone from their own culture. So I have actually a team in the Philippines. Is a amazing Filipino team, but also we don't hire people with no previous experience working in the States, because I hope so all of our staff have at least three years of experience in the States. But yes, is there also many might

ask you a specific question, like, everybody's getting VAs these days, what are a couple quick tips that someone can use to get started with a VA?

I think one of the key things to remember is it has advantages and disadvantages. Yes, it gives you flexibility. It's convenient. Usually you save money as well. So that's the entire concept. Usually, depending on where they are based, you can be very flexible with ours. If you are an evening person like myself, one of my EAS works almost through the night, because I'm up till two o'clock in the morning. I need some support. So that's great at the same time, there is this challenge of remote work. How are you going to monitor their performance? How are you going to assign tasks when they need support? How are they going to communicate with you? So there is a lot. Of that and trust issues as well, until you are fully on boarded. So how are you going to change it? So I always say you need to plan for it. So you just need to be aware of what the potential issues are and what the differences of working remotely as opposed to having someone in an office. And just be aware of these things. I have a chapter in the book of that as well. And basically, some people perceive, let's say, someone's internet is not working properly, so they get upset. But yet, when we work with someone in an office, they can be late because their car breaks down. Kids were too late getting up for school. Something else happens. People with virtual assistants have lower tolerance levels, because we just don't see these people face to face. Don't build the same kind of relationship with them, I guess. So, definitely planning. So how are you going to onboard them? Plus, I always recommend to all clients that they always record all training sessions, because you will do it on Zoom anyway, with your virtual assistant, there is no other way of doing it. Record. If things do not work out for the next virtual assistant you on board, it will cut down your training time, your onboarding time, because I will have all these videos and use loom. Because, especially when you work with an international assistant, sometimes they may not understand your accent, and well, they will not ask you about it. They will feel embarrassed to double check things. So I record a lot of things on loop. At the moment, I'm onboarding new head of recruitment. Everything I show her on my screen. I record on loom, and then again, she can review it. I sent her the link if she has a question or she forgot how to do things I do push her to take notes. So use as many tools as possible. If you don't feel comfortable, make sure you monitor. Use a platform like param to monitor.

Can you can you say that? It's brilliant. Clearly,

E R, A M, I m, d, T of mine. So it's a great platform. It's, I think, $39 a month, but it does give you such a wealth of information if you need to use for your virtual assistant to have a US phone a user in central because it records all calls, outgoing and incoming, and that phone number. You can choose a local area number, let's say UI in Boca. You can use five, six months, and that then it records all calls, which is great for training purposes. You can listen into them, give feedback, train your stuff. So that's always good. And also always, always use VPN to sign up for a VPN platform will be $10 a month, but it encrypts all data. It's much more safe and secure. It's very important, and also please remember, when you work with a virtual assistant or any type of remote staff, your cyber security insurance are not going to just automatically apply. It's like homeowners insurance if you use candles everywhere and burn your house down, they're not going to pay same with cyber security if something happens, and those claims are usually five plus million claims, and a lot of companies go bankruptcy over these claims. So if you are not able to show that you had some due diligence going into the process before you buy the virtual assistant and created systems to ensure your data is as safe as possible, it's not going to apply, they are going to refuse to support you with a claim. Thank you.

Those are great tips, and this is awesome. We ran through time, and we're right at the end where we do the quick one liners. First question, what apps or techniques to use for personal productivity?

I already mentioned loops so in terms of recording as much as possible, so that I don't have to repeat myself over and over again. And sometimes I move people in my team from one position to another, promote them so they have a library of videos. I record all meetings when someone could make it to the meeting, make sure that you watch the video. So I like how it allows you to share your screen and record what you show on the screen for sure. Then I love the new app. It's, I don't know if it's new, it's new to me. It's called freedom. So this app allows you to focus time, so you connect all your devices and everything to it, and you basically put it in non disturbed mode, and it blocks out all calls, messages, emails, so that you can have uninterrupted focus time. So I have three slots per week where I have two hour blocks to focus on things like strategy, invoicing and other things that need my full attention and focus. And that app is actually working wonders. I really love it. And then I. Would say I really like notion, so a lot of people are using Trello or Asana for project management, and notion, I feel, is underappreciated a little bit. So it allows you to manage projects, so coordinate different activities with other people, but also take notes, create to do lists, organize calendars. And what I like about notion specifically is they use AI to identify your preferences and your particular working style, and then they're just settings. So AI basically monitors how you do things and how you'd like to do things, and then it edits your settings to personalize the platform for you, so the more you use it, the more like you it becomes. And it's a great tool that old dogs that always learning new tricks. I like that

best business books. Yeah, I

actually prepared three books that I really enjoyed, and I keep recommending them to I actually should stop charging the waters for promoting this book.

By the way, Anna's VA asked my VA for the list so she she had this in advance. Yeah.

So never eat alone. I love this book because it talks about the power of relationships and personal and in professional life. I'm a huge believer in it. And I think for lawyers in particular, the two key sources of new leads usually are relationships with other lawyers and with former clients. So that's very powerful. And my dad used

to be, by the way, I love it, and I and Keith, yeah, yeah, no, Keith Razzi, the author of Never Eat Alone has been on the podcast.

Ah, I didn't know that. Okay, perfect. So, you know, way back, but yeah, now, actually, my dad, he used to be a Wall Street broker, very, very successful, and that's what he does. I read the book. I kept thinking about him. He goes anywhere in the world, and because he maintains relationships, we were in Africa, I think, three years ago in Kenya, two years ago in Kenya, we met people in different camps. He exchanged business cards. He followed up. And now some of these people went to California and he was in California at the same time. Yeah, but he keeps connecting. He comes to Florida to visit me? He calls 10 people in Florida, and he Oh, I shouldn't have breakfast by myself. Oh, I'm going to go to Starbucks. And that person lives near Starbucks. Fantastic for coffee.

He lived. Never Eat Alone before. He read the book. Yeah, yeah. Keep going. Keep going. These are the quick

ones. Bye, back of your time. Yeah. Love it about it's all about delegating. It's a best seller. I think many people know of the book, but probably Yeah, how to identify tasks for delegating, and it helped me a lot, because I'm a perfectionist. I struggle with delegating, believe it or not, and to grow and scale my company, I had to delegate a lot of things out and lunch lived with 95% perfection. I call it, and this book gives you a tool to identify what you can delegate and actually promote.

Actually, the line I love in the book is 80% done. Is 100% awesome.

I actually have it on my vision board here. I love that. Yeah, exactly. And

basically what that means is if you can get your VA to do something for you, and he or she's not perfect every time, but it gets done, it's much better than stuff that's sitting around that didn't get done.

Yeah, I actually keep reminding myself as well that if I don't delegate, I actually tend to make mistakes. Because I'm so overworked. Yesterday, I suddenly two o'clock in the morning writing an email, which I used to delegate, and then I thought, That's just stupid. I'll probably mistype something. It will be much worse. But, yeah, moving on. Today's book, build a business, not a job. I love it, so it's all about and actually, it's a great book. Followers. So if you don't want to be a solo practitioner, basically a self employed you're employing yourself to do five billable hours per day. But if you are thinking about scaling, you want to have a law firm with paralegals, with other lawyers working with you or for you, you need to create systems to to be able to delegate. So this talks about creating a system where you can come in, bring in new people, disconnect people when you can't work with them any longer, bringing other types of people and but you have a system and processes where they can follow, so can follow and implement things the way you would have done it. And that's how I built my business. From certain stage, I actually reached at some point where it was only one me, and I was trying to kind of fill in for several senior management roles, and it's only one me. So I started creating SOPs, standard operating procedures and using technology, I'm now rolling out Zoho, for example, for that particular reason being. Because of this book. So it gives you tools and systems to create a system where you can scale your business. You are a business owner. You start thinking as a business owner or rather than just a lawyer and self employed professional. So

I love it, and I'll definitely buy the book tonight. Your first two were on my top 10 business books. So how about Ultimate Sales machines? Have you read that one? Yeah, so blogs, podcast and YouTubes, things that you subscribe to, and it hits your feed, and immediately you you listen or watch.

I'll be honest, I'm not huge on videos and podcasts. So the only thing I kind of watch on YouTube is comedy. I subscribe with your German comedy channel called the German Comedy Club. I love it. So whenever I can't sleep or need something to get a little bit more light hearted, to distract myself, I listen to that, but not a business podcast. I tell

us a German joke

I could, but only enjoy once you translate it. It sounds stupid, it just looks I tried a couple of times, and then people thought I wasn't funny. So

okay, what's, what's a great introduction for you. Anna,

great introduction. I actually love people, and I feel it's interesting. Some people are met seven, eight years ago, they were not leads or partners, and now suddenly they are leads, actually the business the real estate developer I mentioned earlier, who is in Boston, he wasn't a lawyer, not an accountant, so really, not an obvious potential client. We met on a plane going to Korea, started chatting, I love people, and I told him of my experience, and he's really well traveled and speaks seven languages and is into metal, so we connected to metaphysics, started talking about it. Then he gets in touch with me half a year ago and says, What do you do? So I told him, remember, I have this virtual assistance agent. So what do you do? Real Estate Development. Do you need virtual assistance? He says, Well, it's construction. How would I use a virtual assistant? And as well, let me tell you. So. As a result, he hired a project estimator, project manager, civil engineer, mechanical engineer, a permanent specialist with 10 plus years of experience working in the US, with us, building codes and these people cost him $20 an hour and an architect at $17 an hour. So he's saving 70 and got access to great people. I love it, of course, because he said we calculated out of fund. He's a numbers person. So am I? He will save money that he can so much money on finding these six people that in one year's time he can buy Bentley from that savings. So that's a good goal. So I'm helping

question you answered this before, but where can people get in touch with

you? LinkedIn. I'm checking LinkedIn almost every day, so find me on LinkedIn, or just drop me an email. My email address is Anna A N N, A at the lalo.com so T H, E, L, A, u l, a u.com so email, reach out on LinkedIn, schedule a coffee. I love being with people, so we'll definitely find something in common.

Anna, this was great. Thanks so much for being on the 10 golden rules podcast. Thank

you so much for your time. It's an honor to be here.