Staying competitive in a globalized ecosystem of enterprises requires assistance from outsourced, external experts to help your business scale. In this episode, Bianca Robinson, the CEO of Cayden Cay Consulting, talks about her career shift from being a project manager for an engineering firm to diving into consulting service. She also discusses how and why she digitized her service for growing clients. Tune in to this inspiring episode and listen to how Bianca pushed through after encountering heavy resistance and challenges along her path as she started to build her consulting business.
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I’m very excited to have my friend Bianca Shellie-Robinson joining us. Bianca, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.
I always enjoy our conversations. We were vibing and exploring what was going on with families and our worlds. There seem to be many connection points. I’ve been looking forward to having you on and having you share some of your story and experience, and how you got to where you are with everyone here.
I’m excited too. You’re my spirit animal. We vibe very well together. I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Let’s get into it. For those who aren’t familiar with you and your work, you are the CEO of Cayden Cay Consulting. It is an operational management firm that works with businesses to develop and manage their business infrastructure needs. We’re going to get into how you diversified and create a whole digital side to your business.
You’ve also worked with some very well-known organizations like MasterCard, Mercedes-Benz, University of Illinois-Chicago, and a whole bunch of others that I’m sure people would also be familiar with. Before we get into where your business is now and how you got to where you are, take me back to before you started your consulting business. What were you doing? Where did you grow up? Set a stage so that everybody has an understanding of your initial journey before you started consulting.
Before I started this business, I was a Business and Project Manager of an engineering firm. I worked there for maybe a couple of years. When I was in college, everybody was trying to find a job and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. A recruiter came and he told me that he was the CEO of a temp agency. I was like, “What does that mean for me?” He said, “You can work at a lot of different corporations and a lot of different places. You’ll get a lot of different experiences, but you work Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00, weekends off, and you get paid every week.” I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just didn’t know what. I knew that I needed that experience. I did that for three years.
I’ve had probably 30 jobs. I’ve worked everywhere except for maybe NASA, but I’ve worked a week there, three months there, and things of that nature. I learned a lot of transferable skills there that I was able to apply to my business, not knowing that I will be needing those skills to go to the level that I wanted to go to. I started there. The engineering firm was my first real job that wasn’t from a temp agency. I settled in there. From there, that’s when I started this particular business.
How long did you work at that engineering firm before deciding to go out on your own and start your own business?
I worked there for two years. I started off as the business manager. I was helping my project manager with a lot of projects. He was like, “You’re smart. I like what you’re doing. You should go back to school and become a project manager so you can make more money.” I went back to school and got my Master’s in Project Management, but I didn’t want to do that at all. I was okay with being a business manager, but I fell in love with project management. I’m good at telling people what to do and giving orders, so it made sense for me to go that route, and also get paid well to do it. I worked there for two years and then I transitioned.
The first business that I started was a bookkeeping business. I hate bookkeeping with a passion, but in 9 out of 10 businesses, their back of the house is not in order. When I quit that job, I quit on a big bookkeeping contract. I got certified. The accounting head taught me everything. I believe in starting profit-based businesses first, not passion-based businesses. I knew I wanted to eventually become the job that I love, but I didn’t know how to run a business, how to up-sell and cross-sell. I didn’t know any of that.
I believe in not starting on the thing that I absolutely positively want because you start to think that maybe I’m not good at it or I don’t like it. It’s because you’re not prepared and ready yet to be able to do what you want to do within that field. I knew coming from temping that I had to transfer a different way.
People often hear that you need to be passionate about your business, lead with passion, identify your passions, and then build around that. The reality is that it’s essential to start a profit-based business before you start seeing more passion. Click To TweetI want to unpack and dig a little bit deeper. You said something that might rattle a few people and maybe skim or went in one ear and out the other for a lot of people. You said that you believe it’s important to start profit-based businesses before you start with passion. Often, people hear that you need to be passionate about your business, lead with passion, identify your passions, and then build around that. Make that distinction for me and share with everyone here a little bit more about your thinking about the connection and distinction between profit-based businesses and passion-based businesses.
When it’s a passion, you’ll do it for free. A lot of times, when it’s a passion we just do it. We don’t charge correctly. We don’t have the right type of clientele. We fall in love with the client, not the products and the services, but the client can change. If you start a profit-based business, this is a skill set that I have. I can use this. People already see value in it. I was hired to do this already. You know that it can make money. I believe in starting that first and understanding the phase in and phase out of it.
It’s not what I want to do long-term but it will give me the stepping stool that I need to get to where I’m trying to go. I believe in starting a profit-based business. You’re going to see profit because you’ve already done it before. It’s something that’s not new to you. It’s like second nature, but also don’t get bogged down in staying in the profit-based business. You want to transition that so that you can eventually do what you love, but it doesn’t happen like that at the beginning for most people.
We’re going to get into how you’ve built your business to where it is now. Everyone who’s more advanced or has a more established consulting business, they’re going to get a lot out of what you’re going to share coming up. Before we go there, for those who are new and might still be working or who are very early stage, talk about what was going on for you emotionally and mindset-wise. Making the leap from working in an established company as an employee to going out and starting your own business, did you feel a lot of risks? Was that a natural transition for you? How are you thinking about that before you made that leap to start your own thing?
It’s funny because I and my fiancé at the time had a conversation about it. I was doing it on the side and making a little bit of money. He said, “I can support us for a year. You can do this thing for a year. You don’t have to worry about anything. I’m prepared to take care of us.” We had that conversation on a Monday, and then on Friday, he ended up having to get emergency brain surgery. He was off work for nine months with no pay.
My little business which was supposed to be extra money ended up having to step up to pay for all of our needs and wants. My daughter was four months and we had just bought a house. It was a lot of things that were going on. In my mind, I had a year to figure it out, but I did not. I jumped in there and take care of our household. I didn’t have that time to think like most people would think because it was survival mode to make sure that I was able to hold down our household and stay afloat.
I’m glad I started a profit-based business because I needed all of the profit then. It worked out in our favor that I didn’t start this business that I have now that I absolutely want because I didn’t even know how to upsell. I didn’t know all of that, but I knew bookkeeping. I knew I could be a tax master and do bookkeeping. I’m glad I went that route, but I didn’t have the luxury of figuring it out like most people.
It’s so interesting how sometimes that stress and pressure that one person looks at as a negative and terrible situation can create results and outcomes that you wouldn’t have expected by looking at it from a different perspective. At that moment when you found out that your fiancé at that time needed to have surgery, you had so much on the line. Why not go back to the safety of getting a full-time job? Why did you keep pushing in building the business?
It was because my husband couldn’t watch my daughter, and we didn’t have care. I had to be able to facilitate having to take care of him and take care of my daughter and be able to take care for my bookkeeping clients. He was able to watch her for maybe a couple of hours. I would go out for business, prospect, come back home, and then do the work. If he was okay, I probably would have gotten a job, but I didn’t have the time, the family, the resources, or the money for daycare to even be able to pay for that. It was out of necessity that I had to do it that way.
I hope everybody’s thinking about their situation. When you encounter something that you feel is a heavy resistance or a challenge, think about what Bianca is sharing here. This is a testament to powering through and how we can all achieve more than we probably initially believe we can. Let’s fast forward now a little bit. You moved the bookkeeping business forward. Before you started your consulting company, did you have other businesses or projects? Walk us through what that looked like just to the point of action and then start the consulting business.
When I started the bookkeeping business, three companies that I work with from our corporate job ended up finding me on LinkedIn because the project totally fell apart. I started off in government procurement because I was doing that in my corporate job. I wasn’t certified yet. I didn’t have the MBA, the WB, and all of those things, but I was a contractor on these particular projects. I worked on those projects for a couple of years. They brought me more business. I use that to facilitate my pipeline to be able to keep the business afloat, but then I started bookkeeping. I knew I hated it. I transitioned out of that in eighteen months.
I knew my objectives when I started bookkeeping. I wanted to get testimonials, case studies, and white papers. I had a whole plan of what this business was going to bring me. I transitioned out of that and then I started to do career development because I was good at resumes and helping people get jobs. I used that and that helped me to learn how to write better case studies, white papers, and things of that nature because my writing skills got good. I transitioned out of that in eleven months.
I then started to coach. I had this program called the Employerpreneur Program. I was already helping people with their resumes anyway, and so I helped them to start their side business while they were still working their 9:00 to 5:00. I’m good at transitioning and phasing people into what I’m doing. I took my bookkeeping clients and then I helped them get government contracts. I took my career development clients and then I helped them start their own businesses.
Now, that they have their own business and they’re working their 9:00 to 5:00, “Let’s quit that so you can be full-time.” A lot of my people, in the beginning, they’ve been with me during my transition of the ups, the downs, pivoting, and things of that nature. I have a very strong clientele base that I’ve built over the past several years.
What’s your approach to communicating with your client base? Very often, consultants will deliver on a project when they’re working with a client, but they don’t do a very good job of maintaining that client long-term. It sounds like you’ve been pretty intentional to bring your clients with you and always find new value or new services that you could offer them that would be valuable for them. How do you communicate that to current and past clients?
Every month we have this coffee chat. It’s the fourth Friday of every single month. I invite all of my clients, whether they bought digital products, corporate clients, or whatever the case might be. We have this big coffee chat. It’s like a networking event where I tell them what I have going on, some new clients, some ups and downs, and also introduce everyone. That’s how I started. It started with, “I have some free time. Let me do a coffee chat,” and then it became, “Is the coffee chat happening this month?”
I’ve been doing these coffee chats for eight years. It has been the same time. That’s how I’m able to tell them what I’m working on and how I’m transitioning. Even clients that I have that could be beneficial to them, “I want you to meet such and such. This is her. Let me put you in a private room.” I have been that network hub for my clients to find new clients, but also for me to be able to get reoccurring clients.
How many people tend to come on one of these coffee chats?
Maybe like 400?
You have a lot of people coming on.
It was 400 and now, it’s probably 2,000 because I’ve mixed my digital lower-tier products with my higher-tier people. I’ve mixed everybody in these coffee chats.
You have over 2,000 people come on and you’re just sipping a coffee, talking about what you’re doing, and what’s going on. Is there a real structure to these calls that you’re having?
Some of my clients that I’ve had that month, I use that for them to give their testimony about how we work together and how I’ve helped them, and also to showcase their area of expertise. Now I have this pool of people that come from all different walks of life because we do sell lower-tier and mid-tier digital products. They can get those clients too, whoever was the client of that month. It’s like a fireside chat where I have a conversation with them, and then I’ll open it up for networking. That has been the flow since the pandemic.
People who are reading this are probably going, “That sounds like an interesting concept. It’s almost like a virtual round table, but what’s the value?” Especially, if you’re thinking about a senior decision-maker or somebody in an organization, not a solo business owner, freelancer or whatever, but somebody that is working in a more established larger organization, what would be the value for them to show up to one of these chats?
Very often, when doing things out of passion, we don't charge correctly. Click To TweetA lot of times, a lot of my smaller-tier clients have a lot of employee-customer benefits that they offer to corporations. One of my clients has a tutoring firm. One of the major corporations wanted to implement that into their business, and so they partnered together. Now, that’s the employee benefits package. Some of them have catering companies, so that’s another employee benefit that they add to it. They listen to these different things to be able to add to their business and their clients.
It also helps them with the community initiative that they came. They write a lot of case studies and monthly newsletters talking about the actual event that they came to. It’s something that is out of the norm for them. They wouldn’t normally do things of that nature, but since I do it every single month, it piqued their curiosity, and now they love it. I have Fortune 500 CEOs that come to my events because it’s fun and exciting. It’s one hour and they get to let their hair down and talk to people that they normally wouldn’t talk to pique their interest.
The real takeaway that I want to spotlight here is you’ve been in this for eight years. Consistently every month, this is happening. Often people will try something like this or it might be completely different like something on social or different kinds of webinars or whatever. They try something but they stop when they don’t get the result working right away. I’m sure you can speak to this. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but were there times when you were starting this where it didn’t feel like there was much traction to it or did it work perfectly out of the gate?
When I first started it, it was probably me and maybe three of my clients. I used that to, “Let’s perfect our elevator pitch, our ideal client, our target market, and our value proposition.” I used it when there weren’t that many people there to perfect my skillset and craft. That’s how I started to create digital products because people weren’t showing up. I had a small audience so let me record this and repackage it and sell it. That’s how the digital product form started from there.
With your client base, when you then transitioned saying, “I’m going to create this consulting company, Cayden Cay, and operational management firm helping companies in many different ways as you’ve done, how did you get your initial clients? Not even just initial, you said some came from LinkedIn or some were bookkeeping clients. Beyond that, once you had the first few clients through the door, what did you find at that time that was working best from a marketing perspective to attract more of these higher-value consulting clients?
I took all of the bosses that I had at the temp agencies that I had. I sent out an email blast and told them what I was doing. They were my first people because I knew that they did contract work because I was a contractor. I knew the workload that it entailed. I turned to those major Fortune 500 companies. They were my first clients because we’ve worked together in such a big capacity before. I was their assistant while their assistant was out of town or I was the accounts payable person while their main person was out of town. I had direct connections with the C-Suite employees. It was an easy transition for me because I temped for so long that my Rolodex was nice.
There’s so much power in that. It’s one of these very simple things that you can do. It’s letting people that you already have a relationship know. Even if it’s not the strongest relationship, I’m sure you weren’t necessarily sitting down for lunch or having regular communication with many of these people that you work with over the years, but there was at least some relationship. They remembered who you were when they got your email.
Many people have that opportunity and they don’t do much with it. I want to encourage everybody right now to think about who you have had a conversation with in the last 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 6 months, 12 months, or whatever it might be. Reach out to those people because that could create a conversation that could turn into business for you.
In terms of your business, you mentioned that you’re providing these services, running these chats once a month, and you’re finding that there’s a lot of value in what you’re doing, but people aren’t necessarily always showing up. That was the starting point to digitize or create these digital products. Can you talk a little bit more about what that was like? That process of taking what so many people will provide in terms of services and deliverables to packaging them in digital form, and then offering them to a much broader audience. How did you make that transition?
I’m good at, “This no longer serves me. I don’t want to do it anymore, but I still want to have the impact.” I’m good at doing something for a couple of months and then turning that into a digital product. I’ve come to realize that I am dedicated to education, but I’m not dedicated to being there when it finally hits for the clients. I’m not dedicated to the transformation when it finally hits for you because it can take 3 months, 6 months or 1 year, but I want to give you this information.
That became my thing where my information is the same, but how I deliver it is different. One month I might want to do an intensive. Next month, I might turn it into a mini-course. Another month, it might be an in-person workshop, but I got good at taking what was working and figuring out how I can diversify this on multiple levels.
It started off with me teaching elevator pitch because I was teaching pitch competitions. I believe that your elevator pitch is one of the most essential tools needed in your business and all businesses need it. I started to teach that and help people win pitch competitions. I then got tired of doing it. I was like, “I can record this, put this in digital product form, and give it to the masses.”
My first product was an elevator pitch because I believe in collecting the data and then segmenting the data from there. Let me do something that is blanketed that all businesses would need, and we work with those in professional services. I get a lot of people that are not in professional services, but I sell digital products that are for all businesses. Let me throw the net to collect the data and then segment it from there.
I want to get into what you mean when you say segment the data and what you learned from that process. Some people might be going, “Bianca, first of all, you’re busy. It sounds like you’re creating a ton. It also sounds like maybe it’s not manageable because you’re creating a lot of different things for a lot of different people.” How do you see it? How do you make sure that you do stay focused, and that you’re building the brand in the way that you want and not putting a ton of stuff out there that may or may not be good for the long-term?
We are an operational management firm. How are we an operational management firm? We have three core focuses, which are business consulting, project management, and business development. I believe that you should have a business that supports the personal life that you desire. Let’s figure out what the personal life is and let’s wrap a business model around that that supports that. I am that walking brand of I live this lifestyle. I have a seven-figure business, but I run it differently than most people.
I was able to figure out my three core focuses and put the training in the buckets where they should go. That’s how I stay focused. If I’m doing training like I did one on value proposition and core competencies, that’s business development, so that goes in that particular bucket. Do I want to turn that into a digital product or do I want to keep that as a live intensive? Do I want to make that into a challenge?
It’s always live training first. From that live training, then the client comes to me and says, “I want you to help build that for me,” or “I want you to teach this to my employees.” I do it first and then based on what they need, determine how I package it, but I don’t package it. I have a team that packages it. I just give the information and then they package it accordingly.
You have a list of many thousands of people that you can send out an email to. You can make offers to them and build that relationship with them. In the early days, when you created these products, whether it was a workshop that you would deliver live or an in-person or it was a digital product that you put together, who are you selling that to? Were you advertising traffic from Facebook or some other platform to get people to buy? How did you go about getting enough people to purchase these products and offerings to make them profitable and worthwhile for you?
I have been in business for several years and I don’t invest in ads. It has been me being transparent with my audience and growing my large social media following and being able to help them and funnel them. I’m all about the repeat clientele. Eighty-two percent of our clientele is repeat clientele. I’m very much into feeding the people that we already have, and then they’re bringing people to me because I do training a lot. It’s like, “You pay for this but invite a guest to come.”
I use the resources that I have and from there, they helped me facilitate that. I’m big on municipalities. I learned that in my corporate job. Municipalities have the money, whether it’s a small municipality or a big municipality, most people don’t realize that. I do a lot of training for municipalities. That municipality is a corporation. They get the e-blasts and the emails. Sometimes I teach classes at the libraries. The library is free but it’s a database of millions of libraries that my training goes out to, and they have their own society as well. I’ve been good about using those municipalities to be able to facilitate my offer and my clientele. It’s free, I don’t have to pay for that.
Someone is like, “I love that idea, Bianca. I want to go and give talks to municipalities and therefore get in front of organizations and have my expertise promote out into a much larger distribution set.” How do you go about that? What’s your recommendation for somebody who has the expertise and wants to tap into their local municipality or state or whatever it is? Do you send an email to the executive director or a program administrator? What’s the process to start to get some traction there?
I figure out when someone else is having a training next there and I’ll attend the training because the decision-maker is at that particular training. We’ll then have a conversation from there, and then I’m always, “I know you have this coming up. It’s last minute. Can I do a fifteen-minute training? Can you insert me in this particular training?” Nine times out of ten, it works because I’m only asking for fifteen minutes, but I’m doing that to showcase my area of expertise so I can eventually get my own training day.
I hop on a lot of people’s days, “I don’t want to hold. I only need fifteen minutes. Can I get fifteen minutes?” What’s the blanketed topic that I teach? Elevator pitch, value proposition, core competencies, and things of that nature because all businesses need them. Once I get them in, then I can segment them to where they need to go.
On the segmentation side, you mentioned that you’re very big in terms of putting stuff out there, getting the data, and deciding on how to segment. Can you talk a little bit more about your mindset around that, the strategy, or the decisions that you make? What do you mean when you say, “Get a lot of data and segment based on that?” Give an example of how you’ve applied that to your business.
You should have a business that supports the personal life that you desire. Click To TweetWe’re about to do this training on the five core focuses. I believe all businesses should have this particular core to take them to the next level. It’s all businesses. Even though from an ideal client perspective, I only work with those in professional services, my target market is anybody that wants to start growing or scaling a business because we have those digital products.
When I do this mass class, a lot of people are going to sign up for the class. From that class, my funnels are already set up like, “You don’t even have to come to this class if it doesn’t pertain to you. These are the things that we offer, case studies, and white papers. Click the one that best supports your situation.” Once they click it, we have the funnels already set up for them to go into their perspective area. I always have the serve-serve-sell emails.
We have emails that go out three times a week. They’re scheduled for the entire year. It depends on where you go. It determines what emails you get, but it’s already set up where it’s my tip, white paper, case study, testimonial and showcasing us in the light of being an expert. Once they go through that funnel, then they can pick and choose if they want to work with us or not, or if they want to buy a digital product. All I have to do is catch them to get them in the net. From there, the systems in the backend does it on their own.
This is very tangible for everyone. What you’re saying is you’ll send some emails to people about a workshop you might be holding. When somebody gets that email, it’s going to give them a whole bunch of options. When they click one of those options, that tells you and your team, that person is interested in a specific topic by then. In addition to that, you have your automation up so that additional emails will be sent to that person about that specific topic.
They get more relevant emails, so it’s more personalized for them, but you’re also getting data to see, “We had 100 people come through this.” Let’s say 54 people clicked this one specific topic, that tells us there’s a lot of interest in this specific topic. Maybe we should do more and put out more content, social media posts, whatever it is, and go deeper into what the market wants. Is that correct?
Yes. If 54 people click that, let’s do training on that this week. From the training, what’s the upsell? Let’s do a two-day intensive for those people that come through here. We look at the data Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We do that at the end of the day before we go home. We have that data. I’m very on top of the information that comes in to know, “Based on the trend that happened this week, what should we put out?”
You mentioned that repeat clientele is a big thing in your business. Any best practices, tips or things that you found that worked and had a big impact in helping to have more repeat clients that you would recommend for somebody who also wants to improve in that area?
When they come into the net, they get these questions. From these questions is information that can help me. “What is your goal within the next 90 days? The last person that you work with, what did you love the most about them? Tell me about your ideal client. How did that work out?” I’m asking these clarifying questions because if ten people have the same goal for the next 30 or 90 days, I can simply reach out to them and say, “I’m doing an intensive, I want to put you guys together and this particular group.”
I’m able to come always refunnel the funnel of the people. I believe that once you come in, I have what it is that you need. If I don’t, I have this coffee chat every single month where you’ll find the person that you’re looking for. We became this resource hub for a lot of our clients, but also for us too. I don’t have to fish for clients like most people do because I’m refunnelling the same clients that I already have.
How many team members do you have now?
We have three full-time employees including me, and then I have five contractors.
How do you stay on top of everyone? You do have a lot going on. Your business model from an outside perspective is not as simple as, “We have one program or one thing going on.” You have multiple offerings. There are lots of moving pieces and you’ve structured it in a way that for you, it’s still manageable and things are moving along well. What’s the key to that? How do you make sure that the eight people, including you, and everything is moving forward the way that it should be and that progress is being made? I know you have a PMP background as well. What’s the key to making all that work from your experience?
We have a focus every single month. We’re always going to do a two-day intensive. I have more customers now than clients because our business model is 90% digital and 10% service. Of that 10%, 8% is our government and corporate contract, and then 2% is small businesses like you and I. I’ve been good about vetting the ideal client to come over here so that we can work with them. Most of our money now, we’re doing training and helping other clients do training.
It runs systematically because we only do four core offers. Even though it sounds like a lot, it’s only four offers that we have. You’re either going to get them in a digital product form or a service form. We only offer four things. Being clear on the flow for the week has helped us understand the framework for the entire month. We do profit plans every single month. I do them with all of my clients. We’re talking about the coffee chat. I do a big profit plan to show you how to understand your numbers.
When you say profit plan, what is that?
You know the goal that you want to make for the year. Maybe your goal is to make $1 million. I’m into cult brands. I’m a cult brand fanatic. The reason why we buy into cult brands is that they have a mission. You want to make $1 million, but how does it help other people? What’s the mission behind that? Our mission is we want to help 10,000 service-based professionals to be able to add at least an additional $10,000 a month to their overall bottom line.
I know that mission because I know the products and services that I need to sell every single month in order to make that particular number happen. We break the mission down by month, and from that month, what’s the product or service that you’re selling this month? Before we try to go get new people, let’s do our repeat clientele flow to see if we have somebody that already gave us some money to be able to help us with that. We do our profit plan every single month. We’re in alignment with it every single week when we do our weekly training and meeting. That’s how we stay on task. It’s from the plan.
That’s so important. We’ve done something very similar over the years with clients where we have them reverse engineer it, “What do you want to be achieving?” Part of that of course is financial, but when you reverse engineer, you start to get very clear on, “How many conversations do you need to have every single week? How many leads do you need to create those number of conversations?” You end up having one number that you become very focused on. If you do that and do it consistently, good things tend to happen. I’m with you on that. You have eight people on your team. Walk us through how you go about hiring those people. What was the plan? Who did you hire first? What are your next few hires look like?
Since I come from a bookkeeping background, I know that’s the most important person on the team. Even if you don’t make the type of money that you want, we’re in business to make money. We need to be able to have a place where we can use this money and organize it, so we can know if we can hire a team or what those expenses look like.
People ask me that all of the time. That’s why you should hire a bookkeeper first. I know you don’t have the money right now, but if you have them set it up and show you how to do it, when the money does come, you’ll be in a better position. The bookkeeper was my first hire since I knew that coming from bookkeeping, and then somebody to support me. It was my assistant.
We have a hybrid model where it’s productized and digitized based on how the money comes in, but I don’t need another me. I need somebody to support me in being me. My assistant was the first person that I hired. From my assistant, she hired other people like, “We’re doing all of this. I see the need for these particular things.” We have a communication manager. Since we do a lot of digital products and a lot of white papers and case studies, I need somebody to take my thoughts and make them make sense. We have a communications manager that’s in charge of helping with the content and the copy.
Social media is a big platform for me, so I need a social media manager to be able to run it and facilitate it. We have a web designer too because we put out courses and classes all the time. I need them to facilitate this. We then have a data analyst. Our data analyst is the one that helps us when we are pitching. They pull the list and segment the data, and we use that. I have a CFO, and then one other person is my operations manager. It’s a lot of us, but everybody knows their particular role.
It was never my goal to be a big company with a lot of employees. A lot of my clients are in tech and so they make 9 or 10-figures and there are six full-time people on their team, but the rest of them are contractors. I came from that when I worked in my corporate job. It was me, the CEO, and one other person, and we had a lot of different contractors. I liked that model and I’ve seen it be done. I want to stay clear and stick to the particular model that we have.
When you think about your team and the hiring experience that you have, what do you feel is one key thing that is critical to hire, but also the potential to retain great people?
Understanding your workflow and the system will take your business way further. Click To TweetI’ve learned not to hire in the season that I need those people because when you need those people, you’re pressed and stressed. Every little mistake they make, you’re stressed out and you’re upset. I know how our business flows. We just hired a person. I need her for the end of the year, but I don’t want to hire her at the end of the year when I need her. I’ve learned to hire and train early.
Some of them are good people, but we’re not good trainers and we’re not good bosses, not because we don’t want to be, but we have so many other things going on that we haven’t given them the proper tools that they need to be able to be successful. I started that off in the beginning, hiring all these people and not being able to properly manage them and help them. I hired them in the season when I don’t need them.
We sell a lot of things to build our reserves. We have a reserve fund that we use so that when I am hiring these people and they’re not able to produce, I’m not stressed out about, “Am I going to make payroll? The money is low. The cashflow is low.” We build a reserve so that every single month based on what we do, we take a percentage and we keep putting it into the reserve.
When you look back at your experience of transitioning from delivering 100% services and deliverables to shifting a lot of your knowledge and expertise online, and then packaging these products and making them available to many different types of businesses out there, what’s one thing that you think, “I should have done that differently. If I was doing this again, I would have done it differently. If I was going to advise somebody who’s going to be doing the same transition, you need to look out for this or pay attention to that.” What stands out for you?
It’s the systems because we are a system-based business. Understanding your simple workflow and the system will take way further. A lot of people have a person that is an hourly employee that a system can do. You haven’t learned the system enough to be able to take that person that is now a taskmaster to use their ability to be able to help you. I’m all about, “What’s the system that we’re wanting to use? What’s the end goal?”
If we go from the house, which is the goal that you think. It’s my job to bring you back to the dirt so we can figure out how we can get to this house. It’s understanding that there are objections and figuring out what system works best, and what system will support our growth. You might learn this system, but it doesn’t have the ability to scale the business. Let’s start with this version and figure out how it can take us to the next level. It’s understanding the system.
Can you give me an example of one scenario where you’ve done that in your business, where you had somebody who was working on an hourly, and then maybe a system could have replaced or taken their output to that next level?
We do a lot of email marketing. For every client that came in, I had someone to call and welcome them. One ten-minute call turned into two hours on the phone talking to this one person. What we do is when the client comes in 30 minutes before we leave, we’re recording a quick video, “Thank you for joining. I want to let you know what’s going on in the portal. This is the information. If you have any questions, let us know, but you’ll be on Bianca’s schedule next week to talk about it. This is the particular day.”
It’s taking that and still adding the human component. We sell a lot of digital but the human component is why we sell so much because they know even if I do training and it’s a digital training, I’m going to do a live Q and A session at the end of the month for this training to answer your questions, comments, and concerns. Having someone to call all of these people where you can spend 30 minutes and you might be able to record twelve videos because they’re only 1 or 2 minutes, and still give them that personal touch. It took our business to the next level because now I was giving this person their time back and not having them do manual labor and be a taskmaster when our $45 a month system could do that.
It’s amazing. We’ve seen that over the years. That human touch is one of our values. We say La Familia. We’re not Spanish but it’s that family vibe that we care about. We want to work as closely as we possibly can with everybody that comes into the community that we have an opportunity to work with. I feel you on that. That’s incredibly important and very missed or not as present as it could and should be these days.
Before we wrap up, Bianca, you have young kids, this growing business, and lots of good stuff going on, what are 1 or 2 habits that you feel play a big role in your life? It might be on the business side or more on the personal lifestyle side. What are 2 things or 1 thing that you go to and you do every day or at least several times a week that is connected to you being able to perform at a higher level, be productive, be focused, and be your best?
For me, it’s understanding what type of personal life I want in this particular season. Does my business model support that? Many times, we’re not willing to change our business model and I am dedicated to the information, but not how I deliver the information. In the summer like Q3, I don’t work with clients. I’m outside enjoying my kids being out of school for the summer.
We travel a lot but I know that my systems and processes have to be in order because I’m going to be doing a lot of customer service and running my business from my laptop. It’s understanding that the information that I want to give is great and valuable, but I can switch up how I give it and still be in alignment with what our mission and vision are.
I’m not married to the delivery, but I’m married to the information, but not how we give the information. I’m able to touch so many different people because I’m like, “This is individual service so it has to be done this way. It’s the summertime. People are outside traveling. They’re not going to be in an intensive for 8 hours for 2 days. Let’s go ahead and turn it into a mini-series and then throw a Q and A into it.”
I’m able to do that based on what’s going on in my personal life. I’m able to adjust. It’s figuring out what type of personal life you want to have, and now that you know that for this season, what business model supports that personal life so that you can have a quality of life and make the money and live the life that you desire?
Do you spend time every day or every week reflecting on that? A lot of people do journaling or meditation. Is there any practice that you have that you use to make sure that you’re still in alignment and you’re going in the right direction?
It’s funny because we have our team meetings every week, but I also have meetings with my family every single week. For my team, we meet every Monday to figure that part out, but on Sundays, it’s my entire immediate family. That’s about ten of us, and we have meetings on Sunday and figure out, “What’s the goal? What’s the plan? How can we adjust? What is it that you need? How can I support you?”
I’m the oldest, but you would think that I am the baby because I’m the only one with kids. It’s “How can we support you?” I do help my immediate family. “Are you going out of town? Do you need a babysitter? Do you need help with the workshops? What is it that you need?” It’s pretty much the Bianca show every Sunday because I’m the one with the business. I’m the one that helps a lot of my family members. “How can we support you and help you be great so that you can continue to do this?” That has been key to me taking my business and growing it at the level that I have. It’s because I do those check-ins with my team and also with my family every single Sunday.
Before we wrap up, whether it’s 6 months or 12 months, any books that you’ve found to be helpful that you either read or listen to? From a resource perspective, where are you going and where are you getting information that you feel is helpful for you to grow your business?
It’s like a shameless plug but I listen to your show all the time. When I listen to your show, I journaled that particular time. I’m like, “They said this and how can I implement this? What are some things that I can do?” I’m an avid listener of the show and the people that you have on the show. I listened to their podcasts too and I buy all of their books. I come here first to get the information because I know you’re going to give me the right information and then I funnel it from there.
I have two membership programs. We have a book club. I’m reading a book every single month. I’m reading The Slight Edge right now. I just got through reading a Floyd Mayweather book. Before that, I was reading a sales book. I’m into the psychology of selling. I’ve been reading a lot of those, but I’m big on documentaries. I watch a lot of documentaries. We do that on Sundays where we watch a documentary for my membership and we have to write, talk about it, and figure out how we can apply this to our business.
Where are you grabbing your documentaries? Is it Netflix?
Yes. I watched Halston. It’s about how he started this business and then they took over this brand. I watch it on Netflix, Hulu, and all of those different places. Every single week, I have to watch a documentary. I have to pick it or my membership picks it, but that’s how we stay in alignment with current events and figure out how we can apply it to our business and what are the best practices. It’s podcasts first for me, then it’s my books. I’m big on sales books, sales psychology books, and personal development too. I’ve been reading a lot since we started this in our membership.
I appreciate that. I always like hearing feedback from people who tune into the show here. Bianca, thank you so much for coming on here and spending a bit of time, sharing some of your story and journey with us.
Thank you for having me, Michael.
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