Hello, welcome, Kirsten to No Rest for the very podcast.
It's so lush to have you here. Thank you for being here.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to our
conversation today. I love your podcast.
Oh, thank you. We've already had like we were
both sitting in different virtual rooms in in the online
just looking for it. But so, but the the universe
decided we're recording on Zoom today, which is brilliant and
we're here and we're ready. I'm very excited.
Introduce yourself, Kirsten. What do?
What are you here to do? What's your mission?
How do you help people? So my name is Kirsten Graham
with six figure business coaching.
I'm the co-owner of the company and I guess I would have to say
I'm here to boss people around. Brilliant.
Hello over there that says I'm not bossy.
I have better ideas that my sister-in-law gave me.
Yeah, no, I have always been self-employed and I've always
had team members and, you know, it's staff.
And one of the things I think by purpose here on earth is right
now is to empower other business owners to learn how to delegate
confident confidently for them to learn that we, you know, we
lead people and we manage tasks. And so that I feel like it's my
passion, we help our clients outsource to the Philippines.
And so now after all of these years, it's been 17 years since
we've been outsourcing, I feel like I've seen the impact of how
a virtual assistant over there, working for a really good boss
over here, how it changes their lives.
You know, it gives steady income, it gives them the
opportunity to grow in their, in their job.
It allows them to help provide for their families.
So that's the other side is I have this heart for helping
these people who are hardworking and smart and live on these
islands that just don't have as much opportunity to have them go
to work for someone who treats them really well.
And then they, of course, they help that business owner grow.
I love that. Have you been out to like visit
anybody that you've helped in the Philippines and.
I have not. It is on the list of things to
do. But life gets so busy, you know,
so Judy's, her second child goes out to college, not next year or
the year after. So then her life will slow down
a little bit. And then that's something we
have talked about wanting to do is go over and spend like a
month because, you know, the. The Philippines are 7100
islands. Yeah, but we have team members,
you know, across the entire country.
So it'd be nice to go and spend time and, and see them and yeah,
but it's, it's amazing just to, to get to do what we do.
Even like you were talking about, you were in Riverside and
I was on Zoom waiting. Like this technology did not
exist when we first started outsourcing.
No, it's, it's, it is incredible, isn't it?
If you one of my clients runs a travel company in the
Philippines and does tours and they are incredible and the the
business gives back to the schools.
So the the the profits and the profits going to build the
schools in the Philippines. So if you need any tours.
I will definitely see you. Yeah, what that could happen for
sure. So tell me the business love
story. How did it all begin?
Boy, that's a windy, windy Rd. How much time do we have?
You have as much time. I love a windy Rd. story, it's
my favorite. I wish I had a couple now so I
could just sit. So my background is actually
real estate. I got my real estate license in
the late 80s. We started selling real estate.
I eventually moved to the mortgage side and went on to own
a mortgage company and a title company.
And I love everything about real estate.
I still real estate investing, I still love everything about real
estate, but you know, in order it it, it's definitely a, a
business that keeps you location bound.
And so one of my goals at some point in my life was to be able
to live anywhere. And that all kind of happened by
accident, I guess is the way I would say it.
I did a lot of loans for self-employed people and I was
very involved in networking, you know, B and I the chamber.
So I was always out and about and I would do loans for
self-employed clients and I would see their business tax
returns and their personal tax returns.
That's very intimate. You know, like they're giving
you all of this information. And later they would call and
say, hey, can I take you to lunch and pick your brain?
And I think it was because they just knew that I kind of knew
their numbers and things like that.
So I mentored other entrepreneurs for about a
decade. So I did that and loved doing
it, loved helping other business owners.
And I eventually started taking on business clients in 2007,
which was interesting because we had no idea what was going to
happen in 2008. So I slowly but surely just
started taking on coaching clients.
And again, with no zero plan 0 intention of what?
What did we turn into with just helping people?
And so, you know, our business did survive.
Our mortgage company and title company did survive 2008.
I always say we were thriving. We were surviving.
We were not thriving. Yeah, my mom was also terminally
ill with cancer. And so she was at the end of
that battle. And in 2013, I just decided, you
know, I wanted to spend the last six months or so with her.
And so I ended up closing my mortgage company and title
company. And then I had the coaching
practice and I was able to spend time with my mom.
She actually passed away in April.
So I really am glad I took that leap of faith once with her.
But yeah, and then and then from there, it just grew.
Jeannie was actually one of my coaching clients and she is, you
know, she loves marketing and she's brilliant with marketing.
And I was helping her and she, her business grew really
quickly. And this is back.
Oh, my gosh. This is back when Facebook first
had fan pages. Oh, yeah, yeah.
It was back with local businesses, online businesses
knew about, like blogging and e-mail marketing.
This was all very new to local businesses.
So she did some classes to teach business owners, you know, what
is a blog and what is e-mail marketing?
And So what happened after that, after she taught those classes
was she got very busy very quickly.
And at that time, like you didn't really know how to price
the services. So she was probably under
charging. But we went on to, you know, we
went on to talk about outsourcing and I said, would
you be open to outsourcing overseas?
I've never done it, but I read about it.
I will if you'll help me. And I was like, OK, so we had
one on this journey of helping her build her marketing agency
with virtual assistants. And that worked out really,
really well. I continued, you know, my
one-on-one coaching practice and then things have changed a lot,
right? You know, I think back, you
know, 20 years ago someone else really could easily do your
marketing. But now with social media
marketing, we have to show up as ourselves, right?
We have, we have the content. We are the content.
Yes, it made sense for her to shift.
And so that's what we really partnered and I guess we kind of
look at ourselves as marketing and outsourcing specialist.
You know, her emphasis is on marketing and mine is on hiring
and training virtual assistants, providing systems and processes
to lead them by and then helping our clients step into that CEO
role and learn how to manage a virtual team.
Little wise. What you love most about what
you do like with, I mean, obviously you've spoken about
the what you give to the people that are in the agency.
What bit of the work do you love the most?
OK. So what's interesting, Claire,
is we're not a marketing agency and we're not an outsourcing
agency. We are truly coaches and virtual
assistant trainers. So what happens is our clients
actually have the virtual assistant works directly for
them rather than paying an agency for that person.
And strategically, there's a reason for that.
What we have found really early on was when someone takes on a
team member and they're paying them on the 15th and the 30th
and they are, they're the ones who are leading that person.
It shifts everything for them. Things I wasn't expecting to
hear were things like I feel like a real business owner now
that I have my marketing virtual assistant.
Yeah. I had no idea how much I was
beating myself up every day because I couldn't get it all
done And there was just physically no way or, you know,
I didn't realize how isolated and lonely I was in my business.
And now having this virtual assistant that I meet with a
couple of times a week and we're collaborating on my content and
she brings just amazing visuals to all the content that we
create. So we're both very excited about
it and it's giving me a new energy in my business.
And then the other thing that I thought was really powerful was
we'll be a guy, a client. He, he had really big dreams,
right? But what was amazing is he said
after he got her up and running and was really creating the
content, he realized he could build a business 10 times bigger
than he ever imagined. So that's what I love is
empowering business owners to realize you didn't start a
business, to be self-employed, that, you know, to build a
business. And that really is about
leverage. It's about leveraging technology
and automation. It's about leveraging people,
great talent on your team. So I I do love seeing our
clients have those amazing aha moments.
And it is quite a difficult process.
Is it? Well, I'd say it's an
uncomfortable process to understand what you have to let
go of in order to grow. Do you support your clients to
move through that? Because it must be.
Well, I know because I've done it myself, like bringing people
into my team that your business is so important to you.
It gets a bit scary giving it to other people just OK, you can
like let go and. OK, you can do that.
If you want. Right.
Well, I feel like the, I think there's several reasons why
people fail when they try to outsource.
One of the reasons is they don't understand cultural differences.
So we coach for both the virtual assistant and our clients and
cultural differences, most business owners never create
standard operating procedures or workflows, so they don't
document how they want things done.
So that makes it very hard to delegate.
And then there's a lot of frustration.
You know, you always hear, oh, if I have to spend as much time
training them, I'll just do it myself.
Yeah. You know, and, and so and I
think that's so sad. And, and I get that because when
we first started outsourcing, there were times when we
definitely wanted to give up right, a little bit too, to give
up. So I like to say if it could be
done wrong, we, he did it wrong probably more than once.
But what we really focus on is map marketing, outsourcing.
And the reason for that is the clients that we work with, a lot
of them are not super tech savvy.
So they're really happy to have a virtual assistant that will
take care of their video editing and their audio editing and all
of their graphic design and their social media management
and their e-mail marketing. So a lot of them really don't
have a problem handing that off because it's things they
generally don't like doing. And then the clients who do love
posting on social media, we explain to them like that, don't
you don't have to stop doing the posting that you're currently
doing. We just want to help you
integrate an Evergreen marketing strategy into your content,
where you're creating content that's going to work for you
years and years and years. And that's SEO rich.
So people will actually find you.
So it, it really is interesting that most of our clients are
happy to delegate the things. I, I do feel like a lot of
business owners, you know, they have this thing.
Well, I need to know how to do it, to tell them how to do it.
And I don't need, I've never logged into our Canva account.
I don't need to know how to edit a video to tell someone who
knows how to edit a video what I like and dislike.
You know, I love that transition.
I don't like that transition because it's too fast or it's
too jerky. And that's to that my style or,
you know, hear my brand colors stay on brand with my colors.
You know, Oh my gosh, that you did a great job on the video.
But that piece of B roll that you chose had a lot of men in
suits, so they looked more corporate.
Most of our clients are women and the men that we do work
with, they're not going to be wearing suits.
They're generally business owners, so they're going to be
more casual. So fine images or B roll that
has, you know, maybe 20 to 30% men and the rest women.
So I can coach someone on what I want my content to look like
without needing to know how to do it.
And I think that's the difference in being an
entrepreneur and being a business owner.
I think as an entrepreneur, you have a vision and you have the
ability to communicate that vision.
And I think sometimes when you just start a business and you're
afraid to let go of anything, it's really you're more of a
self-employed person. And I think that's a, that's a
challenge we all have to challenge ourselves with is you,
did I start this to do everything myself forever?
Or did I start this to really grow a business?
And and that requires growing ourselves and being
uncomfortable delegating. Have you read the book The E
Miss? But yeah, that's what it
reminded me because of being when you're in either
entrepreneur, manager or technician role and I love that
it. And when he talks about the the
manager role, it you have created a business to be
employed by it and what comes with that.
And when you actually step back and you can see that actually
potentially you're doing that out of fear and not embracing
your zoner genius because you, the expectations and the busy
work that you are keeping hold of when you don't need to is
stopping your growth. Yes, yes.
And again and again. I think it's scary because when
most people start a business, they have to do everything
they're doing their own, keep doing all of their own
technology. But if you think about like, I
love coaching and I love doing podcast interviews.
And luckily I can just spend most of my days talking to
people about our programs or interviewing people for our
podcast or being interviewed. So I could just spend most of my
time doing what I love doing. And that keeps me really excited
about the business. It's how I can serve people the
best by doing what I do really well and what I love doing and
then having other people. That's I think that's the other
side of it is our clients realize that even though they
don't like doing something, we we think if we don't like doing
something, what else doesn't like it, right.
But with the hiring virtual assistants and they see these,
you know, people light up about the excitement of the video that
they've edited or the graphics that they found or the designs
that they created for social media posts.
It's exciting to know that you're employing someone else to
work in their unique genius and you're giving them an
opportunity to bring what they, you know, their great gifts to
the world. So I think once they understand
that, it changes everything. Yeah, yeah, that's and that is
so incredibly correct because I know when I were used to
outsource things to my view when she first joined the team, when
I first hired her and she would love to do the things.
I just, Oh my God, just so tedious.
But it is also just recognising your zoner genius and embracing
it, isn't it? I just love that.
And when I know when you started, So when you started on
your social media journey, how did you transition?
Because because obviously your other business was born in a a
time when it was, I mean, I know my first business, Instagram
didn't exist. It just, it just didn't happen.
It was me going out and, you know, selling and stuff.
How did you transition yourself from that old model to the more
modern model? So because Jeannie was one of my
coaching clients in 2006 and seven, she actually encouraged
me to start creating YouTube videos for my mortgage company,
which we saw brilliant. And yes, and to be honest, my
very first video was done out of complete frustration because I
would talk to a client and I would say, hey, Claire, you
know, I need your, your last two W twos and I need, you know,
three months of bank statements and I need all the pages
because, you know, the underwriter doesn't know that
page 7 is blank. And I would go through and give
you this very detailed list and conversation.
And then I would e-mail you a checklist again, kind of that
detailed conversation. And then when people bring back
their loan documents, they would bring back partial documents,
right? They wouldn't bring everything
in, and that meant my processors had to chase them.
It also made them feel like the. Yeah.
And even though we asked for in the beginning, it makes them
feel like you're asking for more and more stuff when really
you're just chasing them to get what you originally asked for.
So my first video was so cheesy. It was like, I need your W twos,
and W twos popped up because I didn't in turn at the time that
you could figure out how to do that.
And I need your bank statements All.
Yeah, three months of bank statements, all pages.
And here's why, guys, you know, I know you look at that page 7
and it's empty. It has nothing on it.
But at the bottom it says, you know, 7 of, you know, one of
seven, seven of seven. So the underwriter knows that
there's another page that you didn't give them.
And they don't know that sitting on page 7 isn't a, you know,
$1,000,000 loan that, you know, right.
They don't know that. So it's so we've kind of had fun
with that. But what happened was our
document rate went up. So we started having the
conversation with the client and sending them the checklist in
the video. We they came back with documents
and then we just started creating more videos.
And I think this is where when you talk about a content
journey, like I, you know, I'm not a person that lives out
loud, right? So you're not going to see
pictures of what I'm eating or, you know, be hanging out on the
beach very often or whatever. I can usually try to share
things, but that's just not me. I'm not a live out loud person,
but I love educating people and I love helping people.
So a lot of our content was things like what's the
difference in appraisal and a home inspection?
Well, that's a great question if you're new to real estate.
We did things like interviewing attorneys on things like what is
the 1031 exchange and how can someone use this to grow their
wealth? So we did just a lot of topics,
but what was fun was my dog was often in the videos, you know,
there was different loan officers creating content.
And this is when the light bulb went off.
It was like, have you ever had that aha moment?
You're kind of like, this is freaking amazing and weird at
the same time. Yeah.
I would have a client come in and, and they're so familiar
with me. They're like, oh, hey.
And they're asking about my dog and, and I'm.
I'm thinking, how do I know them?
Where did I meet them? Oh my gosh.
Yeah. I'm racing through my mom.
You understand? You're like, oh, how are you?
And you're like, like, you only start sweaty.
She like, so I'd never met them. They just watched our video.
Yeah, that was when the big light bulb went off.
It's like, Oh my gosh. You know, it's so it it has the
same power, you know, of, of you and I are not in person.
We're halfway around the world apart.
But by the time we finish this conversation, I'm sure we'll
chat again. We're going to know each other
fairly well and feel, you know, I'd be comfortable referring to
your business. And you don't want to get to get
invite you to our podcast. You get to know people even
though you're out in the same room with them.
And that was when I really understood the power of video.
And so when it comes to helping our clients, you know, get
confident on camera, most of our clients are amazing at what they
do, and they're passionate about what they do.
And they could talk and educate people all day long, but they
don't want to live out loud. You know, a lot of them, they're
just not their thing. But they are very willing to
create great, valuable content. And that's what we focus on.
And so when you're coaching them through that process of the
difference between living out loud and social media, what kind
of mindset reframes are you trying to get them to embody in
order for them to move forward with that?
Yeah, so it's a great question. We work with a lot of coaches,
but we also work with a lot of real estate agents.
So it's real estate's my background, you know, I have the
ability to help them with their topics and titles and tags and
descriptions and things like that.
So it was interesting because I met with a real estate agent
yesterday and we were talking about, you know, our program and
I met her in person, but she lives here in Sarasota, FL.
And she pulls up her phone and she starts showing me like the
content of this other real estate agent that just bugs her,
right? It just bugs her.
And you know, the person's probably 10-15 years younger
than us. And she, there was nothing wrong
with her content, right? Nothing wrong with it.
It was just not. What my client will be
comfortable doing. And it's not something she is
drawn to. And it's.
Well, you don't. We don't have to criticize what
other people do. That's probably working really
well for her. But it doesn't mean that's the
type of content you have to create.
And so I think sometimes it's that fear, you know, and I think
we all know someone in our industry who's on social media
that it makes you cringe every time you see them.
Yeah. Somebody, right?
Yeah. But you know, you, you form your
own path. And again, so like I said, we
really help our clients understand that when you're
creating Evergreen content for YouTube with keywords, you want
to create content that is valuable.
Someone finds you because they're living in Michigan and
they're thinking about moving to Florida.
You want to give them so much information and you want to
educate them that when they when they reach out to book a call
with you, they feel like they already know you.
And most importantly, they like and trust you because you were
their trusted advisor and you never asked for anything from
them other than saying, hey, if I can help you, give me a call
and value and appreciate that you gave, gave, gave to them.
Now they want to work with you. They want to have you to sell
them a house. So it's very powerful.
I think it's, I feel that definition of living out loud.
I love that because all that identity, because I feel like
I'm the same, but it's when I'm showing up, I am still me.
I'm just work me. I'm like, you know, that that
sort of not it's not an avatar because it is who I am, but it's
not the person I am. Like at the weekend, you know,
at the weekend I wear my glasses, wear hair up on my head
and I'm, you know, I'm mum and wife and getting things done.
But not like this is I'm just a completely different mindset for
it. So when I'm like this, Oh yeah,
definitely. But you're right.
Like you don't have to share every single moment of your life
to get people to trust you. Right.
Yeah. And I think, you know, Jeanie, I
always joke like, so we wish, we wish we were funny, but we're
not. So, you know, so it's really,
you know, we always joke about different things about like, oh,
I wish you were this like very casual, like in a funny way.
But you have to bring who you are to your content.
Yeah. So I little dog and I'll
sometimes show pictures of her running on the beach or, you
know, last night I was at a real estate event, their holiday
party for the Association of Realtors.
And I will probably post a picture later today about that.
So I don't mind posting some things about what I'm doing, but
I just, I don't think like, I I look at people when they're out
and they're constantly taking these.
I I feel like I like to be more of the moment.
You know, if I'm having dinner with you, I'm having dinner with
you. Yeah.
I'm not going to be on my phone. Now, if you said to me, you
know. Hey, Kirsten, you know, my son,
he's what, 6? Is that right?
Yeah. Yeah.
So they thinking, OK, well, he's at the sitter tonight, but he
wasn't feeling well. So I want to keep my phone here
just in case. Yeah.
Right. That makes sense to me.
Right. You've got a child.
You may have to leave dinner because you know he's not well.
So there are reasons why people need to have their phone
accessible, but I don't. I just don't enjoy being with
people that the entire time you're with them, they want to
take selfies or selfies with you.
Absolutely. When I'm out, I never take any
photos. It's been, I turned 40 in a
couple of weeks. And so all of my best friends,
they were all turning 40. So we've all got these parties
and events. And then I'm like, I haven't
taken any photos. I don't even know where my phone
is when I'm done, you know, And at the weekend, I very often
just turn it off, right? And I I love that because I feel
my phone, I'm going into that world of Narnia, go and do my
business thing, go and help all these people.
And then I turn it off, recharge, come back out on a
Monday, you know, and I love that.
Do you feel that that where you where people struggle with those
kinds of things? That's coming from imposting,
you know, we that comparison. Itis that some of us find us in
ourselves in which I feel can be completely healed.
Definitely like you can get over that, but that feeling of
discomfort and getting yourself out of your comfort zone as you
learn new things for you now you've been self-employed for,
you know, majority of your life, your whole life.
And that I just love that that you, you know that you stepped
into that. I'm like this, this is a bit of
me. I'm going to stay in this mode.
How does doubt and those thoughts still appear for you?
Or is it something that? Yeah, I think you're always
going to have impostor syndrome to a certain extent, right?
I I just think that's part of being normal.
It's, it's a fear, right? We all have fear of rejection.
We have fear of failure. You know it.
It's. Kind of a success.
Bring it. Yeah.
If I don't bring in business, I don't eat kind of thing, right.
Like there's a lot of pressure there at times.
But I I think that the number one thing that I think helps us
and our clients get over that is do you really have a heart to
serve people and accepting the fact that the way I look on
camera is the way I look in person.
Like my hair's really flat today, right.
But a few days ago, then if we meet in person, like I talk with
my hands, my grade says, I would love to see you sit on your
hands to see if you have a conversation.
I don't think it could happen. Yeah.
But if you you know, you're going to see the I'm the same
person. Yeah.
That's what I think people have to accept and it and it's really
hard. A couple of the women that I
were with yesterday are are a little bit older than I and a
little bit heavier than I am, right?
And so that was what they were talking about is how hard it is
to get comfortable on camera when you feel, you know, you're
overweight, you don't feel good about yourself and you know it
it. But again, it goes down to the
majority of the people you work with may be overweight, right?
I know it sounds kind of crazy, but, you know, yes, you may work
with some really fit and healthy people, but the average American
is overweight. Sometimes that person's moving
to Florida and they see this real estate agent who's their
age and maybe a little bit overweight like they are.
They may connect with you more. There's a lid for every pot.
And so showing up is yourself and accepting who you are and
where you are. You know, and I think, you know,
a lot of times, have you ever watched a show that has, you
know, maybe a new actress on it and the show gets more and more
popular and then you see them get so thin they're almost
anorexic? Yeah, right.
Recently to some, I was watching the the two like actresses from
Wicked where they're doing the show.
Like you can see them losing weight doing all of the media.
Yeah. And so, you know, women
obviously have a lot of pressure to look good.
And but at the end of the day, unless you plan on really
getting serious and losing weight, like in the next six
months, so you can show up on camera, just show up as who you
are now. You're going to attract clients
Who are your ideal clients. You know, somebody who wants to
work with a, you know, real estate agent that's 25 years
old, you know, this skinny and has a million selfies.
That's not your client anyway. They're going to find that real
estate agent and work with them and it's going to be a great
fit. So I think it's it's also just
having a heart to serve. I think you really, really,
truly want to help people. Then you'll do whatever it takes
to get in front of them. Yes, exactly.
It's two things. From what you were saying is
one, it's this pressure as well that the outside of you is the
thing that Makes You Beautiful when it's actually your mind and
your heart. Like that's what really Makes
You Beautiful and that we all have human faces.
There was a point of view when I would not show up.
If I did show up without any makeup on, I would say, sorry, I
haven't got any makeup on. And I corrected myself.
It was a few years back and I just thought, no, this is my
human face. Why am I apologizing for my
lovely face that does all these beautiful things for me?
The poor face, like getting beaten up if you don't.
It's just helping me to smile and helping me to see.
But another thing is that it's not even about us.
No one actually cares about us, what we look like, what you
know, as long as when they are listening or watching us, it
makes them feel good. Whether that is inspiration,
motivation, you know, education, all of those things.
If they're watching and they have a feeling that's what they
buy into. It's got it's not nothing to do
with what you look like. Exactly.
And, and I think that especially when it comes to real estate, I
keep bringing up that topic, but you know, a lot of times when
you're creating content around real estate, you're talking
about the lifestyle. You're talking about this gated
golf community and what it's like to live at this golf
community that has very active clubhouse and tennis courts and
pickleball. So you're talking about the
lifestyle and the activities. And so if someone you know, is
your age and maybe again, a little bit out of shape and they
see you talking about all these activities and maybe you say,
yeah, I play pickleball twice a week.
You know, they think, wow, that person's doing it, I can do it
too and move there and live my best life and be active and be
outside, you know, because, again, that person really isn't
thinking about you on a conscious level.
But subconsciously that thought might happen again.
It wouldn't be conscious, I don't believe.
I think it would be subconscious.
Yeah. But what you're signaling to
them and what you're telling them is I have this beautiful
life, and if you want to move here, you can have this life,
too. Yeah.
And so. Yeah.
And that's the that is the power of marketing that what you're
creating. This is scenario that you'll
dream by a client customer, you know, can input themselves into
it and imagine themselves there. And if you can get that and
they're feeling good, right, money's coming in.
So with your success that you must have had so many success
stories of working with people. What's your favorite without
having a favorite client, but your favorite success story that
where your business has really made a a lasting transformation?
OK, so and we'll stay on the theme of real estate and then
we'll switch over to Coaches Co. So we worked with a real estate
agent who's had a YouTube channel for about two years and
her videos are great. She just hadn't gotten any
traction on it. She reached out to us.
It was either five or six weeks after having her virtual
assistant. She had three people reach out
to her who found her on YouTube. Two of them came to look at
properties with her and one of them went under contract.
Wow. That's the power of SEO, search
engine optimization, that's the power of having someone do all
the things on your videos to get them to show up when people are
looking. So that was really powerful.
We also work with a lot of coaches and consultants and one
of our coaches is erectile dysfunction coach.
And so very niche industry, very unique topic.
She was, you know, she's beautiful, but like everybody
else, she was a little self-conscious about getting on
camera initially. So within about, I want to say
the second month of having her virtual assistant and everything
up and running, she doubled her business.
And by the third month, she thought she was going to triple
her business. So that that blew my mind
because that's, that's, that's unusual, right?
It's very unusual for that to happen so quickly, and I want to
explain why it happened. She had a very large e-mail
list. And what people don't realize is
when you create a video, you know, an Evergreen video, you
now have this amazing piece of content that you can use in a
lot of different ways. You can break it up for social
media. You can have AI rewrite it as a
blog post. There's all kinds of things.
But one of the things we really encourage our clients to do is
send out their video to their e-mail list and make sure the
subject line that they know that there's a video in there.
So whether you put the little red dot or you put video in
parentheses, so your open rate will go up, promise you people
will open your e-mail, emails, you'll see your open rate go up
and then they'll watch your watch your videos.
So for her, I don't necessarily think it was new people finding
her right away off of YouTube. I think what happened was she
had had people on her e-mail list.
If she'd been communicating with them for a long time, you'd be a
texting copy, write, write an e-mail.
But when she put those videos in and that person got to hear her
talk and talk about what she does and how she does it and why
she does it right. So that's where I think most of
her business initially came from.
But you know, again, if you are having, you know, trouble in
that department and maybe you're married and you're stressed, let
me get late night searching that topic.
And if you find her video and you're very likely to reach out
want to work with her. So for, for different people,
you know, the success of the confidence one, once they
actually start creating videos and they see their, what their
virtual assistant can do with editing, their confidence goes
up. We haven't, we have so many
people that say, Oh my gosh, I've recorded this video four
times. And I finally just, I just
decided to give it to my virtual assistant and just start the
whole process. And then they get that video
back and all the UMS are out and all the mistakes are out.
And B rolls in it and images are in it and they're like, Oh my
gosh, it looks so good. Like, this is something I'm
proud of. Yeah.
I feel like that's a huge win for a lot of people is when
they, you know, they realize that having this, this magic
wand of a virtual assistant in the background making your
content look good is huge. And then the other thing is, too
just seeing them step into that power of being the CEO and
understanding that they can delegate to someone who gets to
do what they love doing. And it's a win win for everyone.
So I think those are the wins. It's just that type of thing.
I love that. I love those stories.
I mean, the the coach, the erectile dysfunction code, that
must been so significant because it's such a vulnerable topic and
you're breaking down those barriers.
And I mean, this is this helps with every business, but it's
specifically for that niche where you're breaking down the
barriers where they like feeling so self-conscious.
Maybe they haven't got the bandwidth to even read, but they
could watch a video. It's right.
It's so much easier for your mind to just click and watch,
and we will program to do that. So I love that.
That's so powerful. Well, I don't know if you've
noticed. You know, obviously Google owns
YouTube. Yeah.
And YouTube had start adding chapters to our videos, which
kind of tells you what, Mark, you know what you're talking
about at each section of your video.
And the reason they did that is because Google serves up more
and more videos now. I don't know when the last time
you did a Google search was. And all of a sudden, after all
the sponsored ads, up came videos.
Yeah, so there's a couple of reasons for that.
The first reason is YouTube and Google are both ads platform
where they make money from ads. And Google knows that you'll
stay on a video longer than you will on an article.
So it makes sense for them to send you to YouTube where
they're going to make more ad money.
So that's put chapters in. So I don't know if you've ever
noticed, but sometimes if you click on the video, it takes you
to the part of the video that answers the question you can
type into the search bar. So I think the way the
technology's changing is incredibly powerful as well.
And that is a very good tip for my videos because the SEO needs
to be in the chapters too. They, I mean, my chapters are
there, but am I weaving in enough SEO?
I'm down an SEO rabbit hole at the moment.
I'm calling it my NASA mode so that I need the to every tiny
little little thing to do with SEO.
I'm tightening up. I've oh, Kirsten, I've loved
chatting to you today. It's been absolutely glorious.
Thank. You.
What? What am I saying?
I was just feeling so grateful. Then I lost my train of thought.
Where can people find you before I ask you the 10 year question?
So I have a free gift for your audience.
It's called Double income with a marketing virtual assistant, and
you can get that at Outsourcing for bosses.com, Outsman for
bosses.com. I will definitely put that
outsources in for bossing.com. I'll put that in the show notes.
That's really, really lovely of you.
Do you hang out on Instagram or anything like that?
I really don't. I'm to now on Instagram, but I
really don't hang out on Instagram.
I'm probably more on LinkedIn than anything else.
OK, cool. So what do you wish you had
known 10 years ago that you know now?
So again, we work with a lot of coaches and consultants.
And when I moved from Virginia to Florida and I had stopped,
you know, obviously it wasn't in the mortgage business, which was
again, a very local business and I was actually coaching.
I really leaned into being in the online space, probably to my
detriment because I could spend all day in Zoom creating
content, those types of things, having meetings online.
And I think I really missed out on getting out and networking
and meeting people, but also helping local businesses.
So I decided a few years ago, really after COVID, my life
didn't change during COVID because I was not going up
anyway. I was mostly inside working.
But I ended up deciding that I just wanted to get out and do
more things, to join chambers, get involved in female
networking groups and doing some more charity work.
And what's been impactful is that we've picked up so much
local business and sometimes we forget that there are people in
our own backyard that really need our help, they really need
our service because sometimes we get so sucked into being online.
So one of the things I talked with coaches about is, yes, you
want to create Evergreen content, but if you live in a
halfway decent sized city, there's $1,000,000 of revenue in
your own backyard. Just go talk to people.
Oh yeah, the power of conversation.
I love it. Thank you so much, Kirsten.
This has been absolutely wonderful.
Thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me, I
really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you, We do a pretend
goodbye. Thank you so much for listening
to the No Rest for the Vivid podcast, written, produced and
hosted by Claire Hill. And music has been composed by
my brother Phil Vick.