Chapters

Chapters
What’s in it for me? Create a successful business in just one day!
1
It’s possible to start a company in just 24 hours if you need to seize an
opportunity while it’s hot.
2
The authors’ business acumen helped them identify the flaws in other
virtual assistant services.
3
Infrastructure can be built with free tools, but services should always be
of the highest quality.
4
Be clever when hiring. Have a plan and look for potential employees with a
proactive attitude.
5
Networking can help your company grow quickly, but growth can also
present structural challenges.
6
Don’t let negative feedback fester; use innovative problem-solving
techniques to keep ideas moving.
7
Once you’ve nailed a strategy for success, you can teach it to others.
8
There are many ways to optimize a company’s processes, but getting
clients hooked is priority one.
9
Once your structures are solid, start working with your company’s
numbers and keep investing.
10
Final summary
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Idea to Execution
00:00
Introduction
What’s in it for me? Create a successful business in just one day!
Have you ever come across a new product or service and thought to yourself, “Hey,
I had the same idea!” What if, instead of keeping your inspiration to yourself, you
had seized the day and turned your idea into a thriving business? There are many
reasons why we don’t act on great ideas. You probably felt overwhelmed by the
complexity of starting a business from scratch or were intimidated by the amount of
capital you might need to get started. But times have changed. The fact is, it’s
never been easier to set up a company, quickly and with little or no investment.
These blinks show you the steps, from day zero to infinity, to starting a business
and keeping it going once you’ve begun. The secret? Optimize, automate and
outsource. In these blinks, you’ll learn why a lack of available funds is not a deal
breaker for an aspiring entrepreneur; how to build and manage a remote team of
workers; and why customer engagement is crucial to a company’s success.
00:54
Chapter 1 of 9
It’s possible to start a company in just 24 hours if you need to seize an
opportunity while it’s hot.
Many people believe that starting a company requires years of careful planning and
diligent market research. But sometimes it’s best to seize an idea spontaneously
and run with it. While it might sound crazy, it’s possible to bring a start-up to life in
just 24 hours. This isn’t mere hyperbole, as it’s been done! In August 2015, authors
Ari Meisel and Nick Sonnenberg were having dinner when they came up with an
idea: a company that provided virtual assistants. Both friends had extensive
expertise in maximizing business efficiency and productivity, so it seemed quite
feasible. Just one day later, their business was up and running. How did they realize
their idea so rapidly? And why did they feel the need to act immediately? Their
timing was propitious, as Zirtual, one of the largest US-based virtual assistant firms,
had just folded. This left 2,500 clients without assistants and 400 assistants without
a job. Ari and Nick saw the opportunity of a lifetime – but only if they responded
quickly. The authors knew they had a narrow window of opportunity. This is, of
course, true for all start-ups, regardless of industry. Savvy entrepreneurs know to
grab an opportunity while it’s hot. The duo that night made a quick sketch of their
virtual assistant business. Their first clients and assistants were secured from the
Zirtual fallout. Within 24 hours, their company, Less Doing Virtual Assistants, was up
and running, using free online tools and apps as infrastructure. They didn’t need a
penny to get started, and their business was scalable and profitable from day one.
Over the year, Ari and Nick consolidated their company, dealing with challenges as
they arose. These blinks tell the story of that adventurous year.
02:50
Chapter 2 of 9
The authors’ business acumen helped them identify the flaws in other
virtual assistant services.
The authors were well aware of the flaws of other virtual assistant companies, and
knew that their start-up could address such problems more effectively. One of the
major limitations of the virtual assistant business model was that it offered either
on-demand assistants or long-term dedicated assistants. On-demand assistants are
assigned simple, one-time assignments, such as coordinating a delivery or
arranging an appointment. Because there’s no continuity or long-term relationship,
they can’t work on large projects. Dedicated assistants, in contrast, are responsible
for a wide range of tasks for a single client – but can also represent a bottleneck,
since one person only has so many hours in a day. Under the Zirtual model, all of
the client’s needs, whether booking meetings, conducting marketing research or
designing a website, would be delegated to a dedicated virtual assistant. But it was
unlikely that the virtual assistant would have a sufficiently broad skill set to manage
the variety of tasks assigned. This is where Ari and Nick identified the market
opportunity: there was room for a new model to match a client’s needs with
assistants specifically suited to a task. It’s a simple truth that business success
starts with offering customers a different or better service than what is currently
available. The duo’s business acumen armed them with the knowledge that busy
executives were looking for a one-stop solution for hiring virtual assistants. Ari and
Nick came up with the innovation of addressing both issues with one solution: a
client’s specific needs would be matched with the specific skills of an assistant, but
through one channel – their company. Clients would benefit from a team of
assistants. The team would be small enough to remain intimate and personal, but
large enough to ensure that each client request was completed by a person
uniquely qualified for the task. A manager would lead each team and serve as the
client’s point of contact, thus ensuring a personal touch and maximum efficiency.
04:57
Chapter 3 of 9
Infrastructure can be built with free tools, but services should always be
of the highest quality.
If you think a start-up can’t launch without sophisticated, expensive infrastructure,
think again. A new business can be run easily with software tools that are not only
free but also easy to use. To manage client tasks, Nick used a free management
program called Trello. Trello’s structure is straightforward. It offers boards for
specific projects; lists that give the status of a project; and cards that show which
tasks still need to be completed. Nick found an innovative way to use the software’s
project boards, deciding to assign a board to each client. He then created a
template to make uniform lists for each client, ensuring continuity. Each board now
reflected a client’s requested tasks and the status of each – fulfilling the basic
operational needs of the start-up at no cost. The next step was to ensure that the
new business wasn’t merely offering basic services but was going above and
beyond each client’s expectations. The virtual assistant industry mostly targets
demanding, high-earning professionals, so guaranteeing a maximum of quality
would be key to the company’s success. To secure the most talented assistants in
the market, Ari and Nick committed to paying employees two to six times the going
rate for requested services. Doing so also meant the company would charge clients
four to eight times more than other virtual assistant companies. Offering top-notch
services was how they justified the higher prices. They also billed by the second and
openly shared all timesheets with the client. Here’s just one example of the start-
up’s focus on premium service: they created a business website for a client of
theirs, a real estate agent named Chip, and had a virtual assistant follow up on the
leads coming through it. The assistant only booked appointments for Chip if the lead
was qualified – so all Chip had to do was show up on the date and time of the
appointment to seal a deal, allowing Chip to do less but win more. This was exactly
the kind of time-saving service that the company’s name promised!
07:06
Chapter 4 of 9
Be clever when hiring. Have a plan and look for potential employees with a
proactive attitude.
Applying for jobs is a grueling process. But hiring employees isn’t a walk in the park
either – in fact, hiring can be one of the most energy-consuming tasks for a young
company. So when you begin to look for new team members to grow your start-up,
you need to have a thoughtful, efficient strategy in place. Once Ari and Nick had
established their start-up’s infrastructure, they were ready to hire some high-quality
assistants to build the business – seeking maximum returns for minimal effort. First,
they created two email addresses: [email protected] and
[email protected]. Candidates would send an application to
[email protected] and receive an automated response detailing the position
available. The applicant was then instructed to send a two-minute video pitch and
upload it to YouTube, sending the link to [email protected]. Right off the bat,
this two-step process eliminated about 80 percent of applicants. Those who couldn’t
figure out the instructions properly or created a poor-quality video were
immediately filtered out. Ari and Nick figured that if an applicant couldn’t come up
with a creative solution to the problem, then that person certainly wouldn’t make a
good virtual assistant. Second, the team made sure they identified proactive
candidates with a winning attitude. Top-notch virtual assistants need to have not
only excellent problem-solving skills but also the ability to plan ahead and seize
opportunities when they arise. One of Less Doing’s many experienced virtual
assistants offers a prime example of this ideal type. By following the Facebook posts
of an important client, the assistant learned that they loved a particular brand of
whiskey. The company could then send the client a bottle as a special birthday
present. It is this attention to detail and dedication to customer service that sets a
proactive worker – and business – apart from the rest.
09:07
Chapter 5 of 9
Networking can help your company grow quickly, but growth can also
present structural challenges.
Networking is essential to moving your company to the next level. You can’t just
make a great product; you have to get out there and show it off. In November 2015,
Ari and Nick were invited to speak at a Genius Network event that Ari had
participated in a few years earlier. Joe Polish’s Genius Network brings together
industry leaders, well-known authors and high-powered entrepreneurs. They didn’t
have sufficient time to prepare for the event, however, and delivered their
presentation off the cuff. Yet the two entrepreneurs had so much to say about their
start-up’s methods of tracking and outsourcing tasks that they held the audience
rapt for some three and a half hours! Audience members also posed some questions
about the service, giving Ari and Nick the opportunity to demonstrate their
company’s approach to solving problems right then and there. After the workshop
was over, 90 percent of the people in the room had signed up to Less Doing’s virtual
assistant services – a networking success! Getting a flood of new clients is good
news, right? Sure – but sometimes growing quickly also brings new challenges and
might require restructuring. The start-up had to quickly come up with a way to deal
with this boom. Nick built a new tool, a custom-coded dashboard that would give
him and Ari an overview of all their Trello client boards. The dashboard enabled
them to easily see all tasks and each task’s status, so they could optimize where to
focus their attention and the attention of their team. Now the team could keep an
eye on the company’s overall performance while maintaining rapid growth.
10:47
Chapter 6 of 9
Don’t let negative feedback fester; use innovative problem-solving
techniques to keep ideas moving.
When you’re nurturing a project that you feel is your “baby,” it’s not always easy to
hear negative feedback. But when you do, it’s vital to act decisively to fix the
issues, before they bring down your company. By January 2016, Less Doing was
thriving, but some customers were complaining that the onboarding process wasn’t
smooth enough. When Ari and Nick realized that this was costing them clients, they
started to proactively attack areas of improvement in the company. One of their
tools was the 5 Whys method. First, articulate the nature of the problem, then ask
why the problem exists. Once you find an answer, ask “Why?” again. Repeat the
questioning process three more times. By the end, you’ve led yourself to the root of
the problem. This method led Ari and Nick to realize they needed to simplify their
software interface and also provide clients with better instructions for using it. Once
tweaked, the onboarding process for clients was seamless. To avoid future client
complaints, the entrepreneurs decided to encourage employees to think proactively
by using another tool called the Kaizen method. This method was pioneered by
Japanese companies such as Toyota and Mitsubishi. Kaizen translates to “change for
the better.” With the Kaizen method, every person in a company – from cleaners to
C-level leaders – is asked for input on what the company could improve, based on
personal experience. For Less Doing, this meant asking every virtual assistant to
submit one idea per week on how to improve the company’s processes or methods.
Immediately Ari and Nick were presented with a problem with an easy solution.
They learned that some virtual assistants weren’t sure how to properly charge
clients. It turns out that assistants had been performing extra administrative work
free of charge, leading to some frustration. The Kaizen method raised this issue to a
level where it could be addressed, taking care of both the clients’ and assistants’
needs appropriately.
12:56
Chapter 7 of 9
Once you’ve nailed a strategy for success, you can teach it to others.
By the time your business is going strong, you will have acquired many skills and a
lot of insider knowledge. You’ll then have the opportunity to create a secondary
source of income through teaching other entrepreneurs what you’ve learned along
the way. To gauge the potential of training as a new offering, Less Doing advertised
on Facebook that it would sponsor a business boot camp. Some 20 participants
signed up, and the presentation overall went well. But feedback after the event
made it clear that the authors had come on too strong, overloading the audience
with complicated technical terms and demonstrations. While the experience on the
surface seemed like a setback, it provided Ari and Nick with some useful data. They
realized that hosting live events required a huge time commitment and also wasn’t
the optimal format for the information they wanted to share. This is an important
lesson: you need to be flexible and ready to adjust course as you develop a new
branch of your business. Ari and Nick didn’t put an end to their teaching venture;
they instead reconfigured their strategy. By moving all its operations online, it
eventually became a sustainable arm of the business.
14:12
Chapter 8 of 9
There are many ways to optimize a company’s processes, but getting
clients hooked is priority one.
Building a successful company requires an entrepreneur to constantly optimize
operations, such as considering which tasks can be delegated or even outsourced.
Many managers try to keep a tight grip on a business as it grows, but sometimes it’s
smarter to let go and step back from the day to day. Until April 2016, Ari managed
Less Doing’s dashboard, ensuring no assistant was late in completing a task and
that all clients were satisfied with the company’s services. Eventually, he delegated
this task to a virtual assistant who performed so well that she was named general
manager just two weeks after taking the reins. Ari and Nick decided to train another
virtual assistant to handle the company’s financial and payroll needs. Soon
afterward, she was named the financial head of Less Doing. Each of these situations
was certainly win-win for Ari and Nick, who now had more time to dedicate to
improving other aspects of the company. And there was much to improve! It’s not
enough for a company to offer a great service; it has to ensure that clients are truly
engaged with the product. Less Doing still struggled to get its clients to commit
fully. For example, some clients continued to perform tasks themselves that a virtual
assistant could have handled. The authors sought the help of behavioral
psychologist Nir Eyal, author of the bestselling book Hooked, to help them find a
better strategy to increase client participation. They discovered that they needed to
invest more time and energy in the onboarding process to ensure new clients got
hooked on the Less Doing service. So the company changed its approach. Instead of
spending 15 minutes on the phone with a new client, virtual assistants were to
spend at least an hour coaching clients on how to best use Less Doing software to
address personal and professional needs. This process better acquainted clients
with the range of Less Doing services, allowing clients to use their time more
efficiently and commit to relying on more virtual assistance.
16:18
Chapter 9 of 9
Once your structures are solid, start working with your company’s
numbers and keep investing.
Once you’ve solidified the processes that keep your company running, it’s time to
start working with your performance numbers. When Ari and Nick took a hard look
at their company’s numbers, they realized the next task was to optimize the
company’s “churn rate.” This industry term describes the percentage of clients who
drop a company’s services or product after a given period, such as within three
months. Using a tool called ChartMogul, the company tracked exactly how long
customers used Less Doing services. The authors soon discovered that clients who
ended up dropping the service were those who used it less than once every few
weeks. This knowledge helped Ari and Nick to establish a best practice. When a
client was inactive for two weeks, they made sure to personally reach out to the
client and address any issues, to ensure Less Doing didn’t end up losing the client’s
business. This sort of extra effort might seem time-consuming, but it’s always better
to invest in your company than to lose clients based on inaction. It isn’t always easy
to muster the motivation to go this extra mile, of course. It can also be frustrating to
discover that after a year of hard work, you’re still sinking a lot of time and money
into your company. But remember: if you want to grow, you have to keep investing.
By mid-2016, Ari and Nick were still working hard to improve the company. Ari
logged dozens of hours talking to inactive clients, working to drive the company’s
churn rate from 11 percent down to three percent. Nick automated several aspects
of the dashboard to help further in removing menial tasks from the team’s plate.
They also strengthened outreach efforts by personalizing the company’s newsletter
and increasing its presence on Facebook. At this point, Less Doing’s managerial
team had grown, so the founders decided it was time to give key players an equity
share in the company. These moves paid off, and as of July 2016, Less Doing had its
most successful month ever, chalking up $100,000 in revenue. Not too bad for a
company that started as a dream over dinner!
18:33
Conclusion
Final summary
The key message in these blinks: You don’t need a lot of money to launch a start-up.
All you need is the ability to use existing tools to create a solid company structure
and the tenacity to search for ways to improve your services. Actionable advice: Be
tough when you’re running a services company. To make sure virtual assistants
were providing the best client experience possible, Ari and Nick implemented a
policy of “three strikes, and you’re out.” If an assistant made three crucial mistakes,
the person was fired. It might seem harsh, but such a policy ensures that only the
best people are working for you. Got feedback? We’d sure love to hear what you
think about our content! Just drop an email to [email protected] with the title
of this book as the subject line and share your thoughts! Suggested further reading:
Less Doing, More Living by Ari Meisel Less Doing, More Living (2014) guides you
through nine fundamental steps on your journey toward becoming more effective. In
these blinks, the author shares his favorite tools and techniques for optimizing,
automating and outsourcing everything on your to-do list, giving you time for the
things that are most important in your life.
Mark as finished
00:00
-19:32
Idea to Execution
Ari Meisel and Nick Sonnenberg
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