SHOWNOTES
In this episode, I talk about the mindset we all need to adopt in order to succeed with a virtual team.
Specifically:
✔ Why letting go is important for you to become the visionary and leader of your team
✔ Why you should look at hiring a virtual assistant as an investment rather than as an expense
✔ Why you need to trust your VA rather than being fearful of working with them
✔Tools than can help you protect yourself as a business owner
✔ Why it's okay to slow down to speed up
Don’t miss this episode and let me know your thoughts after you listen. I always love hearing from you. If you have any questions about this episode, comment below or DM me on Instagram @jen_lehner
RESOURCES
3 Secrets to Scaling your Business & Building Your Dream Team Workshop
TRANSCRIPT
[00:20.510] - Gary Vee Hey, guys, it's Gary Vaynerchuk, and you're listening to the Front Row Entrepreneur Podcast with our girl, Jen.
[00:28.910] - Jen Lehner Hey there. Today I want to talk about the mindset that is critical to succeed with a virtual team. And you hear me talk a lot about all the tactics and the strategies and that kind of stuff. I rarely talk about mindset, but honestly, if I think of what is the most critical component to being successful with a virtual team, it really does come down to mindset. And mindset is such a buzzword these days.
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[00:59.250] - Jen Lehner And I really do not like buzzwords. I don't know, I just have always been that way. Like when a word gets used too much, it just sort of makes me like number one, it becomes kind of meaningless and invisible and it doesn't have impact. I don't know, whatever.
[01:15.380] - Jen Lehner It's a buzzword. We could call it perspective mindset, perspective, attitude, whatever. That's what we're talking about today and it's really, really super important. So first and foremost, I would say you just got to let go. You have to let go.
[01:34.030] - Jen Lehner People joke and they're like, I'm a control freak. I mean, half joking, but I think a lot of us are a lot of us who are entrepreneurs are kind of control freaky. We know how we want things done. We're doers. So we've done all of it ourselves.
[01:50.390] - Jen Lehner And to let go of that, it feels a little bit uncomfortable. But it's really I wouldn't say dangerous, but it's not helpful. It's unproductive when you think you are the only person who can do it and do it right. Honestly, that's just trash. Okay?
[02:08.770] - Jen Lehner It's ridiculous because of course there are people that can do it. We just kid ourselves. That's what we think. We honestly think that, but it's just not true. First of all, there are people that right from the jump, right from the get go, they will be able to do it as well as you and maybe even better.
[02:27.860] - Jen Lehner It really depends on whatever that thing is. But yeah, in a lot of cases, maybe they can't do it as well as you right out of the gate. But if not, they're going to get there if they're given the right systems, instruction and space to grow and to develop. So if you find someone that has a strong work ethic and strong skills and they're motivated to do well and they're excited to be working with you and they're coachable. Give it some time.
[02:59.580] - Jen Lehner They need a little while to learn their way around your business. Just like you did when you started any new job and when you're all bogged down and all of that stuff and you aren't being a CEO. You're being what? Michael Gerber in his book The E-Myth, which I highly recommend that's Michael Gerber is the author and the book is The E-Myth. He calls that a technician.
[03:20.510] - Jen Lehner And if you think about it, that is absolutely true. Here you are doing all the scheduling and the invoicing when as the CEO, you should be the visionary, leading your team to higher and higher heights. All right.
[03:36.610] - Jen Lehner The second mindset is investment versus expense. Like, which one are you? Which category do you fall into? Do you look at hiring a virtual assistant as an investment or as an expense? And what's the difference? I'll tell you what the difference is. The difference is night and day.
[03:53.650] - Jen Lehner It is the difference between growth and stagnation. And because when you view something as an expense, there's no real return for you, right? But with the idea of an investment, we view that way more positively. So if I invest a dollar, I'm going to get back more than a dollar. But with expense, with an expense mindset, if I spend a dollar, I get nothing back. What a drag.
[04:23.150] - Jen Lehner So with your team, if your mindset is one of investment, your whole energy shifts and it really affects everybody around you. You have an attitude that you want them to win, right? You're all working towards the same goal. And with every investment, there is risk.
[04:42.750] - Jen Lehner But with this mindset of investment, it's not just that you're investing in your team, you're investing in the future growth of your business. But if you're walking around thinking, I've got to spend all this money, these people are all such an expense that's just going to get you nowhere. And that energy just like the positive energy with investment, this negative energy affects the whole team. So I think that if you want to shift your perspective on this, if you really just have a hard time not seeing the dollar signs that are going out of your bank account with every hour, your VA works, if you have that mindset, you really just need to understand and believe that it is an investment.
[05:32.460] - Jen Lehner I can't just tell that to you. You have to believe it. So I would recommend that you just dive into some books. I will list a bunch of helpful books below this video that will get you there. And the one that I mentioned, Michael Gerber's E-Myth, is a fantastic one. So check it out and start reading up on the topic and pretty soon you'll be a believer and you'll have an investment mindset.
[05:58.670] - Jen Lehner Okay, next I want to talk about trust versus fear. So I was just talking to someone today in our workshop group, which, by the way, I have a free workshop that is all about how to scale your business with hiring a VA. And it starts August the 15th, and we have a community going right now where people are asking questions, and I'm live streaming and so forth. And they said, my issue is that I just don't trust working with a virtual assistant.
[06:30.670] - Jen Lehner And the thing is, first of all, there's no need to be fearful of working with a virtual assistant, especially working with a virtual assistant versus someone who is in your office, like right next to you. Because the truth is, if someone wanted to harm your business or harm you or rip you off or something, they could do that in person. They could do that right there in your office. That should be the least of your worries, quite frankly. And the other thing is, we have so many tools that make it really easy to protect yourself.
[07:07.470] - Jen Lehner And I honestly look at these tools as more of a way of giving you confidence to move forward because it's like if you hire your Perfect Match virtual assistant, which that is what I am all about, is showing you how to do that. You don't even need these tools. Okay, but I do recommend using them. Safety first. But I'm just saying, let me tell you about a couple of them.
[07:29.960] - Jen Lehner So first, there's LastPass, where you're able to share your password without sharing your password. In other words, anything that you need for your VA to log into, like your social media or your course platform or whatever it is online, they can do that without ever seeing your password. And if for any reason you needed to cut them loose, or you did have a funny feeling that things weren't that maybe they aren't to be trusted, you could have them disconnected from your business in just a few minutes where they wouldn't be able to access anything anymore. They're gone completely. And there's even a tool, I don't necessarily recommend it, but for people who are truly fearful and really lack trust, there are these tools that allow you to actually see the screen of your virtual assistant.
[08:19.290] - Jen Lehner Your virtual assistant knows that you could see the screen, but there's a screenshot that gets taken every ten minutes. You could sort of set the intervals. And so sometimes when people are really fearful, I'll say, hey, look, just turn that feature on and keep it on for a couple of weeks and then maybe let it go. But that makes people feel better. But the truth is, I'm no psychiatrist, okay, thank goodness.
[08:41.640] - Jen Lehner But if you have this fear in your business, my guess is that it's showing up in other parts of your life as well. So that's worth a closer look because fear and anxiety can really hold a business back. It's like poison for your business. So I guess if we're going to turn that into, like, how does that translate into adopting a positive or a CEO mindset? It would be a trusting mindset is a CEO mindset.
[09:16.710] - Jen Lehner And lastly, let's talk about the mindset that it is, okay to slow down, to speed up. Okay? So for as much as I am really proud of how fast and efficiently people who take my Front Row CEO program are able to find a great VA and are up and running really fast. The fact remains that it takes time in the beginning. You have to invest time with the person, which means you must slow down. I cannot even tell you how many times I hear Jen, I just do not have the time. And you know what I say to that? I say, if you don't have the time for this, you will never have the time for anything. So let me say that again.
[10:06.030] - Jen Lehner If you don't have the time for this, you will never have time for anything. What does that mean? Well, if you stay bogged down on this hamster wheel constantly doing everything yourself and you don't let it go, when are you going to squeeze in the time to take vacation? When are you going to go on the trip to see all the national parks with the family and rent that RV that you talked about? Is that just going to slip away because you couldn't take the time to train your help and to work with them to help them grow?
[10:42.090] - Jen Lehner CEOs who adopt the mindset that it's necessary to slow down, to speed up, are winning at life, if you ask me. And if you think about it, to slow down for a month or two can speed up your growth in your business by a couple of years.
[10:59.070] - Jen Lehner Okay, so let's review. To have a mindset that is critical to succeed with a virtual team, you need to let it go. You aren't the only one who can do it and who can do it right. It's helpful to have an investment versus an expense mindset. You are investing in your business when you invest in your virtual assistant and your team. You need to adopt a mindset of trust. There are tools to keep you safe. And more importantly, most people I have found are good people and they just want to do a good job.
[11:39.510] - Jen Lehner And I also want to say in all the years that I have been helping people to find their perfect match virtual assistant, the hundreds of people who I have helped match, I have never, not one time had someone come back to me to say this person was untrustworthy. This person tried to rip me off. I mean, not to say problems don't come up. Of course problems come up, but never about anybody being malicious or untrustworthy. And finally, it's okay to slow down to speed up mindset.
[12:16.470] - Jen Lehner Well, thanks for spending time with me today. Make sure and sign up for the free workshop. It's August the 15th, and to sign up, just go to ceosecretstraining.com. You get a really great workbook to go along with the workshop that I think you're going to love. And make sure to join me next week.
[12:32.530] - Jen Lehner We're going to talk about the importance of recurring daily tasks. Recurring weekly tasks. Recurring monthly tasks. Recurring quarterly tasks. It's all about the recurring tasks. And we're going to talk about that next week. See you soon.
