James: James Schramko here from SuperFastBusiness.com with Kat Jarman from YourOnlineTeam.com. Welcome!
Kat: Hey, James.
James: So, I’ve been asked this question lately, when it comes to a sort of online business manager, this is the person who you bring in between the visionary founder and your team to sort of run the team and communicate with you and be this shock absorber. So, you don’t have to micromanage anymore. And you can sort of impart your vision, and then it actually gets implemented. Some people see this as a cost. And they’re like, Am I at the stage where I need this person? Is it going to cost me money?
And I’d love to sort of ask you with your experience of running that type of role into entrepreneurs, businesses, where do you see the balance between it being a cost or an investment? And what kinds of impact can this person have on the overall business revenue and profit?
Kat: Yeah, so awesome question. What I find is that it’s definitely an investment. And for some people, the thought of making that investment on something that maybe the return on investment isn’t as obvious, they shy away from that. But these are the same people that have probably hired some sort of marketing contractor that they’re paying maybe $6,000 a month. They have probably got a graphic designer that they’re paying $1,000 a month. They’ve probably got all these contractors that they’re probably not utilizing super well, because they haven’t got the time to answer the questions and give the contract with the information they need so they can go out and be worth their five or $6,000 a month.
So that’s one thing that immediately comes to mind is having your online business manager in charge of making sure those contractors have everything they need so they can move forward. Essentially, not only is that saving you money, because you’re not wasting money on your graphic designer, just sitting there doing nothing or your marketing guy, you know, not having the copy that he needs for the Facebook ad or whatever. If they can be efficient and do their job, then, in turn, that should make you money as well.
James: Yeah, that’s amazing. I mean, having had a website development business and an SEO agency, and dealing with so many agencies, and just been through the process of updating our own sales copy, and constantly having designs, I know that it’s really easy for those projects to stop, if you can’t get the inputs you need.
And usually, in a business, that’s sort of smallish, and growing bigger, it’s the founder who’s trying to do absolutely everything. So it almost sometimes feels like they’ve hired a contractor so it kind of lets them off the hook. So they no longer have to write the copy or they no longer have to build a website (which I highly advocate), but then they’re holding on to the bits and pieces that that person needs to do the job. So it’s spending out the money but not getting the return on investment. So what I’m hearing is your business operations manager can actually extract the maximum result from all the people who you’ve hired where you’ve just been sort of scraping just a little bit of a thin result compared to what you should be getting.
Kat: Exactly. And even just thinking of my own inbox, there are emails from my bookkeeper that if I don’t get to them, that part of things isn’t going to move forward. And that’s kind of pretty essential to make sure that you, you know, answer important emails and let your contractors, your bookkeepers, whatever it is move forward with their job. So if you can’t do it, if you don’t have the time to do it then you need to get somebody else to help you with that. Otherwise, all that money you’re paying for all those people, that’s just gone.
James: Yeah. I remember when I went traveling once, I was in the Dominican Republic and I got there and the internet was just appalling. I mean, my room had a leak, the place was in a very weak infrastructure. And I remember going to the foyer at about three in the morning, when there was like, 1 Mbps of internet just to send off to my team, I’m out of action for a week, I can’t do anything about it. You will just have to make do. And from then on, when I got back, I’m like, okay, I don’t want to be in a position where I’m the only person who can send a customers $20 rebate for report they purchased you know, or I don’t want to be the only person who can edit a podcast and upload it for the team to publish. That and going to the Maldives a few times when there was pretty poor internet forced me to enable and empower my team to just take over.
And now when I’m dealing with contractors, quite often I’ll just ask someone in my team to move the project through and they love it because they actually want to get things done. It’s in their DNA. And they’d rather that I focus on doing the hard stuff, you know, like doing the videos, and the podcasts and answering coaching questions. That’s my role. Everything else is their role and we want to get the best results from all the contractors we hire by giving them all the things they need. So that’s how your online business manager can both save you money and make you money at the same time.
So, Kat, thanks for sharing that tip. And if you want some help with this kind of role, that’s exactly what Kat does, YourOnlineTeam.com. You can actually have someone come into your business and start fixing it up so you can get on with what you’re supposed to be doing.
Kat: Yep.
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