Episode 025: Sarah Potts: BTS of Hiring My VA

You have a hundred tasks to managing in your business, but what would that look like if you brought on a little help? In today’s episode, Sarah Potts, my own virtual assistant (VA), joins us to share what a VA can do for your business. Listen in as Sarah and I walk through what it looks like for us to work together, but also highlight how Sarah and her team support other entrepreneurs building successful businesses.

The Business-First Creatives Podcast is brought to you by CRM and Dubsado expert Colie James. Join Colie each week as she discuss how to build a business that brings you joy and a paycheck! From business advice with fellow entrepreneurs to sharing automation tips and tricks, Colie and her guests are sharing industry trends and resources, along with a little bit of sarcasm.

SUBSCRIBE ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST PLAYER

Apple Podcast App | Spotify | Amazon | Google Podcast | Youtube

Here are the highlights…

[1:29] Get to Know Sarah

[2:05] Working with Photographers & Building Systems

[6:45] Sarah’s Onboarding Process

[9:30] The Role of a Virtual Assistant & Your Team

[10:54] VAs for Service Providers

[14:36] Steps to Hiring a VA

[17:07] Finding the Right Fit + Next Steps

[20:00] The Learning Curve

[25:52] When to Hire a VA Based on Finances

Connect with Colie on Instagram

Connect with Sarah

joyfullyorganized.com

instagram.com/joyfullyorganizedva

facebook.com/JoyfullyOrganizedVA

Review the Transcript:

Colie James: Hello and good morning and welcome back to the Business First Creative Podcast. So my guest today, I am super excited to have her on. Here it is Sarah Potts, my very own virtual assistant. The name of her business is Joyfully Organized and she has definitely started organizing my life. Good morning, Sarah.

How are you?

Sarah Potts: Good morning. I’m doing so well. Thanks for having me. I’m so excited.

Colie James: I am so excited because I will just say, I don’t know what episode this is gonna be, but whatever episode it’s gonna be, guys, it’s gonna be in at least the thirties or the forties. I have had several moments since I started this podcast back in May where I have talked to my guests about hiring people, hiring virtual assistants, hiring podcast managers, hiring editors, just basically hiring people to make your life easier.

And I will say that there were a few. For example, I believe it was episode four with Annemie Tonken, and then it was episode recently, I think it was 19, with Rachel Grime. And I was like, Yes, I must hire someone. And then after I chatted with Rachel, I was like, No, I did it. I hired a virtual assistant. So. One of the things, Sarah, is I’m an enneagram eight.

I’m very type A, I don’t like to hand anything off to anyone. And so you are amazing at taking things and running with them and making me feel like my tasks are in good hands. So first of all, we all know who I am, but who else do you work with as a virtual assistant?

Sarah Potts: Yeah, that’s a great question cuz I feel like every virtual assistant has like their own like field that they really love to work in. And so we really love working with photographers and any sort of like coach and consultants, so only service based business owners that are generally photographers, coaches and consultants.

Colie James: Okay, and that just ran off your tongue so it’s clear that you’ve practiced that. Okay,

Sarah Potts: I try.

Colie James: So let’s, let’s start with the photographers, because you know that half my business is photography, and a lot of the listeners are photographers. What is like the number one task that you do for most of the photographers that hire you?

Sarah Potts: Absolutely. So I will say Colie, you tend to be very different, I feel like from a lot of photographers I work with in a good way. You love, like you are very organized. You have very good systems in. lot of photographers I work with, no, like shame or anything. They’re very and that’s what they’re very good at.

But the like, day to day details of like email follow up or onboarding or all of those details are just not their strength, nor should it need to be. So one of the things I love. working with photographers on is letting them be able to focus on their work and what they’re so good at, and then coming in to help support them to make sure no balls are getting dropped.

Clients are getting followed up with, we’re making sure like that all the boxers are getting checked, so they have really good client experience.

Colie James: And of course that’s literally what I do on the other half of my business is I create those systems for photographers and Dubsado. But like, so what do you do on that end? Like are you managing photographer CRMs? Do you work with photographers that don’t have CRMs at all, Like what does that look like for you in terms of managing what could be like several, multiple photographers, inboxes, and client management and communication

Sarah Potts: Yeah, absolutely. So I will say I am thankful that most all of the, um, photographers I work with have a CRM in place

Colie James: just.

Sarah Potts: whether that’s Dubsado or some other CRM and they have some sort of basic structure of a workflow that they like to go through. But as you probably know, we like to customize a lot of things or like email templates.

And there’s always gonna be people who are emailing you that is not gonna fit directly in a workflow. so I help, and my team helps by monitoring some emails. If someone has a question about, you know, something like, we are just helping to follow. with emails or getting things on the calendar, and then also making sure that the workflows are functioning properly.

So you know, your emails about getting a testimonial are going out. When those testimonials have come in, what are then we doing with those? Are we putting

Colie James: Oh.

Sarah Potts: website or are we putting them on social media? the next steps that come next.

Colie James: Ha. Sarah, you just added something to your task list cause Okay.

Sarah Potts: love

Colie James: Were you on my Instagram recently? When I was doing a recent sale for my course, I had one post where I was talking about the course, not really the sale, but I was talking about the course and I emailed all of my students and I said, Hey, if you guys have a chance today, can you just pop on this post and answer one of these three questions?

And it was basically, you know, Why did you decide to do a course instead of diy? What made you decide to work with me? Like, I don’t remember what the third question was. It’s not really that important, but like 11 people went on that post and were like saying all of these nice things and I did screenshot them.

So now I know what to do with them. I’m just gonna send them to you and make you make, make them look pretty and put them on the website and all that stuff. Now that’s great because one of the things that I emphasize when I’m setting up someone’s Dubsado, is the need to get those testimonials, those Google reviews, and.

Where I feel like a lot of people fall short, and as you said, this is no shape to photographers or really any other creative, but like the entire time that I’ve been in business, when I got like a, Oh my God, that image was fucking amazing, I would immediately go put it on my website when I get a testimonial.

That’s amazing. I’m like, Okay, schedule, Time to go to website to put this on here. And many creatives just don’t do it in the moment, like maybe they let them stack up in some kind of folder and then, I mean, but those things are gems when it comes to client messaging. You don’t know what to post on social media.

Go post one of those amazing testimonials that you got.

Sarah Potts: Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like, I mean, as business owners, like there’s always so many balls in every court and like things are, you know, moving around that like things like that. If you don’t have some sort of partner in your business that can like help remind you of things, you’re having to like do it all by yourself.

Colie James: Mm-hmm.

Sarah Potts: some value of having someone else there to help sure that we’re keeping the balls in the air if we wanna use that metaphor.

Colie James: Yeah. Okay, so I’m gonna take a step back because one of the things that I hear from many photographers that I coach, I set up Dubsado, whatever, however it is, I come across them. They’re like, Yeah, but I don’t know what I would have a virtual assistant do. And I will admit, I was like in love with your onboarding process because it is very similar to what I do.

I have my clients like basically brain dump. Like what are you currently do in your business? And then I’m looking for ways that I can help them improve that in the systems. And you have a very similar process. So tell me about your onboarding process and about that amazing onboarding call and then what you do with the information after.

Sarah Potts: Absolutely. So during an onboarding call with clients, I tell them if they wanna come to the call prepared with a complete list of like, Here’s everything I want you to do. That is fantastic. Do that. That’s great. Not everyone’s there and that’s completely fine. You do not have to be there in order to hire help. I am here and a lot of virtual assistants are here. We’ll get on a call with you. Tell me what are you doing in your business? Or, one of the questions I love to ask is like, you wake up in the morning, what is most stressing you out about your business? What is that thing that you, you know, has been on your list forever?

You’re like, Uh, I just need to do it. Okay, well let’s talk about that. Let’s figure out what it is, then. Part of it or entirety of it. Can we take off your hands? I think one of the things that people tend to get stuck with, and I will say I get this stuck in my own business, working with the team, is like feeling like you need to hand over the entire project to make it worthwhile when there is pieces of it that you can delegate out and you can still do the rest it, especially if there’s a portion of you, like you don’t have to do all the administrative things that can, that make the whole project come together.

Colie James: Because you know, this week, or was it last week? It was last week. I finally got my air table set up to where, Cuz guys, just in case you don’t know, I actually did two hires in the same month. . I hired Sarah as my virtual assistant and I hired Haylee Gaffin as my podcast manager. And one of the things that I’ve been.

Playing around with for the last two months was how can I get them to do everything and just leave me out of it? So finally last week I set up my air table where when I have uploaded an episode into script for Haylee to go edit blog, do all her magic. She, I changed the status and Haylee gets an automatic email that says, Colie has given you a new podcast to edit, and it tells her the URLs and all this.

All this is automated. Guys, you know, you know me, everything’s automated. And then when Haylee is done with her part, She now changes it to set, to publish, and then Sarah gets an email that says You have a new podcast, episode to finalize. And then Sarah goes in and she writes the email, she uploads it to YouTube.

Like she, they are both doing all of the tasks to where now literally the only thing I have to do for this podcast is hit. It is amazing. But I also took myself out of the middle using automation so that the two people that I hired to do their zone of genius can now talk to each other, but not really talk to each other

But then everything gets done and I just get notifications after everything is done that hey, it’s ready to go. It’s fabulous. So for the people that are hiring you, are you typically the only other like member that they’ve hired out or do they have other people? That they have outsourced tasks to.

Sarah Potts: Yeah, so I think it, it honestly depends. I would say about like half the people we work with, we are the first person that they are hiring in their business, the other half is we are coming in as part of a team. So maybe they have, they have a podcast, so they have a podcast editor, or they have a marketing strategist that’s providing all of this, you know, great strategy, but they need someone to actually do the physical implementation of that. so I will say it goes like 50 50 both ways.

Colie James: I mean, but that’s good to know. It’s also really good to know that you are the first hire, because I feel like sometimes people, and I actually tell people this with CRM management, like when people are like, Oh, I need to hire a virtual assistant. I actually tell them, But do you know what to do in your business,

Like if you get your CRM set up, you can then hand it over to your virtual assistant and you will make their job easier. So I don’t know if you agree with that, but that’s what I tell a lot of people. Although I do know that you, in essence, off of that onboarding call, will actually help them figure out what their systems are if they don’t have systems.

So, Either way, guys, if you already have your CRM set up and you’re looking to hire a virtual assistant, someone like Sarah is happy to like pick up the slack, get that backend going, or if you come to her with nothing, she has, you know, a wealth of knowledge that will help you get started, which is amazing.

Let’s pivot to non photographers. So are there any differences between what photographers hire you to do and what the other creatives hire you to do? Like are there any differences or is it really just all service providers basically all need the same kinds of tasks? Um,

Sarah Potts: I will say from the most part, all service generally need the same sorts of tasks to have their business running. There might be differences in the tools that we’re using, so like for some clients, we might be helping to send out some emails via pic-time. That’s not gonna be applicable to everyone. a service provider, it’s the same sort of structure. So I kind of like tend to break it up into, into categories. So like we do a lot administrative. Tasks, So helping with emails and and data entry and formatting. We help with a marketing assistant, so like scheduling out social media posts or putting up blog posts or helping to get emails sent out.

So like we do a flodesk for your podcast emails. And then also helping with like making sure our and operations are talking we’re using all of our systems in. Ways that make sense and are talking to each other. And then we also do, especially since the pandemic started helping with a lot of like, tech assistance with like webinars or online courses so that all you’re doing is facilitating and someone else is managing like the q and a or any tech issues that may come up.

Colie James: And I know what you use, but I’m actually gonna let you talk. I’m, I’m not gonna steal your thunder. What is it that you guys use to manage your business and your interactions with your clients on the back end?

Sarah Potts: Surprise, surprise. It is Dubsado that we also use

Colie James: You use that for project management, but what do you use for task management?

Sarah Potts: We use Asana for our task management. So we, have all of our clients in there. They all have a private board so the client can see exactly where we are with any of their projects. Me and my team will be able to see anything. It’s been really great, especially because one of us is out, like I generally work with you, Colie,, but like if I am out.

Sick and something happens, another team member can pick up. Cause we have our SOPs

Colie James: It’s.

Sarah Potts: can see my communication in there. They can pick it up should something happen. And I’m out for, you know, a couple days or anything like that.

Colie James: Yeah. And from the client side, like when I’m, it’s, it’s at 2:00 AM guys and I’m like, Oh, this is a new thing that I wanna give to Sarah. I can go into my Asana board and basically assign it to her. And then I basically, you know, write what I need. Sometimes I make her Loom videos like, Hey girl, this is how you do this and this, this.

And then I put it in there. And she has these really great, statuses so that I know like sometimes she’s put things. Waiting for client info, and that’s like a red flash to me. Like, Oh wait, Sarah, what do I owe you? What do you need so that you can get this task done for me? And I know that she’s doing it using recurring tasks too.

Cuz you know my podcast episodes guys, she’s doing that for me every week. So she gets a recurring task that tells her, Hey, Cole needs this email written by Wednesday for the podcast on Thursday. So it’s amazing. So what kind of tips would you give to someone who knows that they need a virtual assistant, but they’re scared to take that next step?

Like, what is the process of looking for and actually hiring a va? Because my experience with you guys, I’m just gonna be, you know, fully transparent. Sarah followed me on, I. I went and I was super nosy, clicked all on her website, and then I saw that a fellow photographer friend Carolyn Fong had hired Sarah.

So I dropped into Carolyn’s dms and I’m like, Tell me all about Sarah. What do you make her do? Is she awesome to work with? And literally like five days later, I hired Sarah. So, I mean, mine was a pretty weird , like this is my path to hire Sarah. But anyone else who doesn. Know, a virtual assistant to hire.

What kind of tips do you have for getting started and ready to hire a virtual assistant?

Sarah Potts: Yeah. Great question. So first shout out to Carolyn. Love Carolyn. She’s fantastic. Second for hiring virtual assistant. I think in one of your, the previous episodes that you were just talking about those complimentary consultations, you really should be viewing those as alignment calls. So find some virtual assistants, find them on Instagram, get some recommendations, like find some websites that you kind of resonate with, but then don’t hesitate to sign up for several consultation calls and use those as a chance for an alignment call.

Because the number, like the two number one things that I want you to think of when you’re hiring a virtual assistant is you need to be able to trust that person. You are letting them into your business. And unlike some of the other people you might hire, you often will give them access

Colie James: access

Sarah Potts: Yeah, they’re putting out things on your behalf.

You’re giving them access so you, not that they’re not trustworthy, but you have to feel like you can trust them to do that, and then you wanna get along with them in a personality standpoint.

Colie James: Yes.

Sarah Potts: sure your personality is aligned, because again, you’re gonna be working very closely with them.

And so if it’s not someone that you feel like you’re jiving well with, just not gonna work. Schedule some alignment calls. on those calls and sure learn, you know, about what they can physically and technically do for you, but make sure you feel like that is someone that you can trust and that is someone that you and your, that your they get along with really well.

Colie James: Because I will say guys, in my, in my perspective, not only am I letting Sarah into my business, I’m actually letting her into my client’s business, which is scary as fuck. So when I had the conversation with Sarah, I was like, Okay, we sound like we get along. I gave her some tasks. And she knocked those out of the park.

And guys, I will test, like now, I will just give Sarah anything. I mean, she wants my bank account number. She can probably have that too. I mean, it, it is okay to ease in. It is okay to like test the waters and give them access to things that, you know, you’re like, hmm. You know, I don’t really wanna give them access to my entire Dubsado account.

Let’s, let’s just give them access to my email account first. Let’s see how that goes. Cause I mean, literally through last pass, I mean, I think Sarah has access to most of my things now, and so you do have to make sure that you really like your virtual assistant and that you get along with them. But Sarah, let’s talk about the other end.

Like, I don’t see myself firing you or you firing me, but what happens if you hire someone? And you as the client know that they’re not a good fit, or the virtual assistant is like, Yeah, I’m probably not the right one for you. Like, what do you do in a situation like that?

Sarah Potts: Yeah. And I, I mean, the thing is, is it does happen. It’s going to happen. I think that two things, it’s going to be a learning opportunity oftentimes like. unfortunately, you are gonna work with someone for a couple months and you’re like, Hey, this is maybe just not a great fit, Whether it’s technically just not a really good fit with me personality wise.

And so I think from a client perspective, just be very upfront being like, Hey, I don’t see this. is where I’m having an issue. Do you think that this is something we can address and maybe like work around or is it just something like it may not work and if so, like don’t to ask for another recommendation?

So here’s the thing is Ike, I know many other virtual assistants and I am more than happy to provide a recommendation to any of them if we’re a good fit. Because like there are plenty of us, there’s plenty of work and I wanna make sure. I want to enjoy working with you just as much as you want to

with me.

And so I want to make sure it’s a good fit on both sides. So I think like honesty, like talking about like, Hey, this is what I’m experiencing. It’s not really working. Can, like is there something that we can like tweak and make it better and like work around that? Or maybe it’s just not a good fit. And like what do those next steps look like?

Can you provide a recommendation for someone else? How do we wrap up in a way that feels satisfactory for both?

Colie James: Because I will say I don’t really think that we’ve had this issue yet, but when I tell people my experience of the first time that I outsourced my images, people are like, Oh, but you would do that Coly. I would never do that. No. So when I hired my first editors out of, um, the image salon, The first three to four catalogs with every single new editor that they gave me.

I went back and forth, and I don’t wanna say I nitpicked their work, but like I tried to make them understand what decision they made that I would not have made. I mean, for a few of them. They delivered an image gallery to me of like a hundred images. I went back and edited like 20 of them and recorded myself doing it and sent them back the catalog so that they could see the adjustments that I made.

And I’m like, Please re-edit this. And you know what I loved about that process was, it seems like I’m very Type A and I am. But guys, the people that you hire and the people that you trust to outsource your business to are not mind readers. So if you do not tell them what is wrong if you do not inform them when they either did something that you don’t like or they didn’t do something that you expected them to do.

If you don’t tell them they don’t know

Sarah Potts: Yeah,

Colie James: I mean, like, I mean, so. You know, just make sure that you are in fact communicating with the virtual assistant that you have hired to make sure that it is a good experience. Because if you are having some issues on this side, and you’re not actually expressing them, you’re just going back and basically redoing what they did wrong or redoing what they missed.

I mean, that’s a real missed opportunity for you to actually take more work off of your plate and make sure that it’s done in a way to where you don’t feel like you’re constantly going behind them and like picking up the dirty laundry. So to.

Sarah Potts: Yes, a hundred percent. And this is like one of the hard truths that I like hate to share, but love to share too is. So often people come to hire a virtual assistant when they’re completely overwhelmed in their business and they’re just like, I need someone to help me, which is great. Please do that. I will say, anytime you start working with a virtual assistant, it is likely to create more work, at least for the first little bit because you, they have to, and I have to learn what is my client’s style for the way that they are doing things and how like I have to get to know you and your and how you communicate and how you do. And so it is going to take a little bit more work on your end in the beginning in order for it to become a smooth workflow like down the road. So I have some clients now I’ve worked with for five or six years, and it’s like a well-oiled machine because we know each other so well. But that beginning, first, like few, whether it’s weeks or months, may take a little bit more work on end, which I know is super hard to hear.

Colie James: I mean, you know, and I’ve heard that. I haven’t really heard it about hiring a virtual assistant, but going back to the editing, the only reason I’m saying that is because as photographers, I feel like that’s the first hire, Like photographers look for an editor before they look for anything else. And I have heard people say, Oh, well I tried editing.

And it didn’t work out. And I’m like, Okay, what? What didn’t work out? Oh, well, you know, I had to go and reedit the entire catalog. Okay. Did you tell them what you reedited? Well, no, I didn’t have time to do. Okay, so did you hire them again? Well, no, they didn’t do it right the first time. Yeah. I mean, it takes a little back and forth.

Again, no one is a mind reader. Even if I edit a full gallery for the editor and I send them a video, the next session is going to be slightly different. They still don’t know enough about you and your processes to know which tools to use when. So it does take a little bit of back and forth, especially for someone like me.

Uh, photographs people indoors and outdoors. I mean, y’all know, All y’all know by now, I don’t do the mountain photos, but I do photograph people in their backyards, and those images tend to be very different than the images that I edited inside because, Hello son, there’s lots of sun outside. And so if I don’t go back and forth and show them a couple of different examples, and allow them to, you know, really learn my editing process.

I am missing out on a great opportunity because again, guys, even though I send back three or four catalogs with every new editor I get, eventually they start sending me catalogs that I just sweep. And I’m like, Eh, that one image, I don’t like it. Let me delete it and then I export and I’m done. Like, you get to that point.

But it takes work to get there. Yeah.

Sarah Potts: it does. Yeah. And I will say, and you mentioned this, loom may become your best friend

Colie James: yes.

Sarah Potts: the, Here’s the thing is I also wanna say like, if film yourself doing your process, just feel loom. Don’t feel like you have to make it perfect. Don’t feel like it has to be this well edited video. Just film yourself doing it. it to me and I will then learn how you do it.

Colie James: I feel like I’ve sent you a few loom videos where I completely lost my train of thought. I was doing something and I was like, I don’t remember what I was gonna show you next. Let me pause this. I’ll be right back. , I feel like I sent you one of those recently.

Sarah Potts: But yeah, you don’t have to be perfect. That’s the other thing that I feel like people like, I mean, it’s your business. You want it to feel like, well, professional and everything, but you’re letting someone into the back end. Don’t feel like you have to be perfect. Just be who you are. Share where you are.

We will work together to figure it out.

Colie James: And I wanna say, because I feel like this needs to be said, virtual assistants do not judge you.

Sarah Potts: No,

Colie James: I feel like when people hire me, especially if they’ve had Dubsado for years, they’re like, Oh, holy, I’m so sorry. It’s so bad in there. I’m like, But that’s why you hired me. You hired me to clean it all up. Now I will admit, and the whole time I’ve been doing doto setups, there have been like two or three people where it took me a couple times to go into their account and clean it up because I was hyperventilating.

They had so much stuff in there. I was like, I mean, 20 copies of the exact same proposal and I had to open everyone to see what was different. And it turns out there was nothing different. That particular client kept hitting save as template instead of save. So she was just

Sarah Potts: that,

Colie James: copy after copy, after copy.

But I mean, when you’re scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and you’re like, You gotta check every one of these to make sure that there’s not something important that you’re missing,

Sarah Potts: right?

Colie James: but I don’t judge you. I mean, I have a cocktail for an account like that, but I don’t judge you. I clean it up, I make it all pretty.

And Sarah does the same thing as your virtual assistant.

Sarah Potts: This is all the whole thing about trust. Like we love to come, like here’s the thing is I love a good challenge. I love setting up good things. So like, like I’ve pretty much probably seen, I won’t say I’ve seen all of it, but I’ve seen a lot of things. There’s really nothing gonna shock me. I’m here to help you grow your business and whether that means get more clients or take more time off and spend with your family, that’s my goal.

And so like how can we get you there and like clean? if we need to clean up your business, how do we do that?

Colie James: And I just wanna say one of the other things that I hear when people are contemplating hiring a virtual assistant is, well, but I don’t have that much work for them. So of course Sarah can probably speak to other virtual assistant friends that she has. But like, I currently only hire Sarah for 10 hours a month, and I didn’t think that was gonna be enough.

But it turns out I’m not giving her enough work current. Like I, I felt like I was gonna go to 20 really fast and just because I guess it’s like my slower month. I haven’t had to increase yet. But I just wanna let you guys know, like there’s a lot that you can get done in 10 hours a month. Like it doesn’t have to be that you’re hiring someone off the bat for 10 hours a week in order to make it worth it.

So, Let’s talk about when people are financially ready to hire a virtual assistant, because I feel like there are rules with bookkeeping. Like bookkeepers are always like, you know, if you’re make, like my particular bookkeeper always says, you know, we tend to encourage people to hire bookkeepers when you get above mid five figures.

And I don’t think that that’s true of virtual or is it like, when is it that someone. Should just nat, is there a money mark where someone should naturally start to think about, okay, I should probably hire someone to help me in my business? A virtual assistant is probably a good hire. Um, is there a range like that?

Sarah Potts: So I don’t know that there’s a specific like number range that I would identify. What I do and help try to help people think through is, is there, do you feel like you are at capacity in your business? Such that you cannot take on additional clients additional work because you are doing so much of the administrative stuff in your background

Colie James: Mm-hmm.

Sarah Potts: can’t get to that next level and make that more income because you’re stuck doing the administrative.

Could you outsource part of the administrative set and sign more clients, therefore would cover that more

Colie James: Mm.

Sarah Potts: that cost.

Colie James: Yes, totally agree. Everyone should be thinking when you think of hiring someone, buying a new piece of software, buying a course, mentorship, whatever it is, you should be thinking about how many new clients do I need to acquire in order to pay for this? And if the answer is less than one, I mean, I just encourage you to just leap and just hire them like right now, because

Sarah Potts: Yeah.

Colie James: whatever they do for you is going to enable you to hire at least, or to acquire at least one more client.

Like for example, guys, the thing that I actually hired Sarah to help me with initially is she is prepping for my VIP days. So when someone hires me, you know, I go through all your stuff. We have lots of. Pre-work and now what I’m doing after I get all the pre-work is Sarah is going in and basically loading everything that I need in order to do my magic on implementation day.

But I am no longer copying and pasting emails into people’s do auto accounts. I am no longer copying and pasting my templates in there. Sarah is doing all of that for me. She is setting up the tags, she is setting up the project statuses so that when I go in to basically streamline and automate everything.

Everything that I need is already sitting in my client’s account. I mean, like I, I love, I love Sarah, I love her. She is like my new best friend because it is so amazing when I go in there and I’m like, Oh, I don’t have to spend three hours copying and pasting before I can get to the good part. Now I just get to do the good part.

And so for photographers, of course she’s gonna do something different for you, but for the most part, Sarah does help me on the dip decide side of my.

Sarah Potts: mm. Well, I love you too. We love working with you. And I think that’s just a great example of like when you’re learning to start delegate or when you start delegating, it does not, I think some people, at least the people I’ve come in contract with, it does not have to be the entire project. I do not need to be doing the dub sodo, the whole setup, nor do I like, is that my, in my like capabilities, what is is like can get it all prepped for.

To make your job easier so you spend less time so you have more time to spend elsewhere in your business where you need to be, like where your special sauce is

Colie James: And now it’s not even spending that time in my business. Cuz you know, I’m homeschooling Chloe now. So now it’s, Oh no, we can spend three hours doing math and science, Chloe, because Sarah is prepping everything. And then when we’re done with this, then I can go and do the implementation. I mean, it just, it works.

Amazing.

Sarah Potts: I love it.

Colie James: So in closing, where can everyone find you? Where can they find out more information about your services?

Sarah Potts: Awesome. So my website is joyfully organized.com, and you can find a bunch of information there, but if you scroll down to the bottom too, I do have. it’s an opt-in, but it’ll basically give you a PDF too that gives you tons of ideas of what you can delegate to a, to a virtual assistant. So feel free to like grab that and just like start getting some ideas, if you wanna run with it, but you can find out more about me and my company on joyfully organized.com.

Colie James: Thank you Sarah. It was lovely to have you on the podcast. I mean, I feel like this is gonna need an update cuz I’ve literally been working with you for, I think it’s three months now, so I feel like mid midyear next. We’re gonna have another one and by then I’m gonna have given you like everything.

People are gonna be like, holy. What do you do in your own business? Oh, I’m really not sure anymore. Maybe we should ask Sarah what I actually still do in my own business cuz it’s so amazing.

Sarah Potts: best. over here living her best life, taking all the trips, she’s like, someone else is

Colie James: someone else is running it. It’s all good. All right guys. That’s it for this episode. Thank you for listening and see you next time.