SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yup, because you know how it goes. More acts, more profits, off in the grind, more revenue coming, but you're running out of time. Agency advantage. Rad starts breaking it down. Better people, better systems, better moves all around. Leadership, leverage, profit, and scale. Real world lessons from the winds that fail. Build it smart to lead the team. Take your freedom back. Agency advantage. Now you're on the right track.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Agency Advantage, the show where age donors share the behind the scenes of everything they've gone through to scale their agency from the ground up. Today's guest is Nisha Ryan, founder and CEO of the Aligned Pretzel. Here's why I wander on. Nisha was an operating room nurse who left to become a VA, then taught herself web design, funnels, and conversion, and built an agency serving online educators. Then she did what most of us do. She grew the team, the margins got thin, and she ended up running a business that paid everybody else except her. Six people on payroll, 16-hour days, and she was taken home less than she made as a nurse. She tore it down, and today it's a team of three. She pays herself significantly more. She takes her kids to Europe for six weeks at a time while the business continues to run without her. Her argument is that everybody assumed her argument is that every I my team cut this. Her argument is that the constraints everybody assumed would cap her. No nights, no weekends, school pickup are the exact reason why running an agency works. Nisha, welcome on.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

Thank you. I never heard anything so succinct in my life. That was perfect.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Claude is amazing, isn't it? Right? It does amazing, amazing things for us. So, you know, so let's kind of get into it a little bit. Let's take everybody back to the beginning. Uh, you went from operating room nurse to VA to agency owner. Walk me through like how that happened, like what got you decide I want to step away from being an operating room nurse and I want to work for myself remote, uh online, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

Can I tell you it was just a total accident? So without taking literally 10 years, because it has been 10 years and it's been a journey. I was actually in a car accident. I was rear-ended out of red light on one of my off days when I was a nurse, and I had just been like wanting more of this balance anyway. Like I've been craving this balance, but I wasn't sure how to achieve it. So I had ended up going into like a yoga teacher certification right before this had happened, trying to create that balance myself, didn't know what that looked like, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

And so I, you know, I got injured. I so I wasn't able to work, and it was just kind of like this. Well, someone was said, well, take these yoga classes online. And that's how it started. And people within a few months were asking me, wait, how did you do this? How did you do your website? You know, like, how do you, how do you get paid online? How do you, you know, advertise yourself on social media? And it was just this very organic of like, oh wait, I could charge for this. So yeah, I mean, I I had no money, I couldn't work. I was in such a stuffed place. And I think that's so beautiful because you have to make it work. And I think that's why I've gotten to where I am. I was like, I had no choice but to, you know, figure it out. Luckily, I didn't have a child then because that would have been extra stressful. But I just figured it out. And I I remember one day I was just like, people were paying me, like kind of on the sly, like it wasn't public that I was doing these kinds of things. And I remember just making a post saying, that's it. I'm opening virtual assistant services like around 2017, 2018, around there. And and I remember having like five clients both like by the end of the day. Like it was just it was an an insane thing. And I stuck with it and just kept I kept growing, but it wasn't, it was accidental, the whole thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Wow, that is uh that is crazy. So you know, you get to a point where it's like, hey, I get in a car accident, I can't work, and it's like, what do I do? Right. So a lot of people would say, meh, I got in a car accident, can't work. And like I I know you're in in Canada, I don't know what it looks like there, but here in the US, like that happens. Like you can go into like disability and unemployment and everything. Some people would just kick their feet up and relax. And so obviously, in your case, you did did not do that. So you launched this company for providing VA services to people. So was it primarily like coaches and educators you were doing these services for? What exactly was your like ideal client then?

SPEAKER_03 4:38

Exactly. They were coaches and educators. I mean, I was kind of in this space anyway. There were healers, other yoga teachers. I do get an odd kind of like tutor, or but yeah, it was mostly in the education space, people have courses and memberships and masterminds, you know, the mentorship and education space. And it was on mostly I started out on the Kajabi platform, and that's kind of where I got my start. And they recognized me as an expert after so many years of being on it. And so yeah, that was my my niche at the time.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Okay, okay. And so you then transition from kind of these VA services to now, hey, I'm doing marketing for these companies. So is that because the work that you were doing for these coaches and educators kind of naturally transitioned into that? And so then it's like, hey, I'm just gonna pivot my entire business and model and everything like that.

SPEAKER_03 5:30

It was two things. I saw a a this big hole in like in between the consulting and the implementing, right? It was kind of like someone was doing one or the other. And I'm like, there's a big hole here, or someone would just say, Go do this. And I'm like, this is a terrible idea. Can I tell you why? Yeah. Um, can I stop you from making thousands in dollars of mistakes? So it was natural. It was after I had upskilled myself, but it was just a market, like a gap I saw in the market of like, I need to like bring together the strategy, but also the implementation. And that's when I I just revamped, I think this was probably like maybe five years ago. I revamped all of my offers so that it was no longer just like, you know, I I didn't have a fancy name. I called it consultation and implementation. That's like that's what I and but it worked, right? And and that has continued, and that's why people have continued to come to me because they don't know 10 years of marketing experience and what the industry is doing and what's working, what's not working. So it was all just I'm just here for the ride. Like it's all just natural. I'm just like, whatever's happening, I'm just here riding it out.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Absolutely, absolutely. My one of the favorite quotes that my wife says that she's here for a good time, not a long time, right? And so uh it's just like I'm just here for the ride. I'm here to, you know, go through all the ups and downs and enjoy it while I can. You know, you mentioned through this, like you you made this transition. There's this like consultation aspect, and there's the implementation, and you're like, I'm just gonna call consultation implementation. Like a lot of people like think I have to go out and create this like creative name and everything. And even with like the podcast as an example, like I was like prompting ChatGPT and Claude and doing something. I'm like, I want something that's like catchy and edgy, and I want this name that's in people's face. And so we originally launched this podcast with the name like the unfucked agency, and then it just like people weren't like latching on to it. And then I have somebody at an event who tells me, like, hey, I'd love to be on it, but because of the name, I'm an adjunct professor. If my if the kids that were in my classes saw it, like just I can't. Sorry. And so we changed the whole name and we just went to it agency advantage, right? And it's simplistic and it just gets the point across. Uh, and so oftentimes we try to do all this extra stuff and fluff to make things look cooler and better. And it's like, just call it simple, like the agency advantage or consultation implementation or the delegation roadmap or whatever, right? It's very simple and easy to uh do those types of things. Let's, you know, let's go back to real quick the uh like the the VA service side things. And even when you kind of pivot into like the marketing and funnel aspect of things, what was like the first thing that somebody had paid you for and like how badly was it priced compared to like where it is that you are now?

SPEAKER_03 8:15

Gosh, I think I I I charge like maybe a thousand dollars a month for like you know, up to 40 hours or something like that. And I was doing their funnels and their emails and like all of the marketing and social media, and I was like, what am I doing?

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

So yeah, I believe that was kind of like where I started. I mean, I had I had been in the game long enough to know like, okay, I have a threshold I can't, like I can't be going under that, you know, this amount, especially knowing the width that I deliver. But even now, I mean that's not atrocious. I mean, I'm sure there's people who are like, you know, effectively pricing themselves out at five dollars an hour if they actually tracked their their hours of how much they put into it. But yeah, I think it was around like, you know, maybe a thousand dollars. And why that doesn't sound so egregious, the amount that I put into it really, really was.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yeah, and it's like you think about the you know, a thousand dollars, forty hours, but making twenty-five bucks an hour, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

As a business owner, and even if you're just doing this yourself, you know, having a team, like you have to price yourself in a position to be able to like hire that team, right? And so it's like, how much do I want to get paid after I pay my team, you know, everything like that? And so you can do things like improve margins, like have an offshore team or a near shore team. But at the same time, even if you like for me, like I price things in the way in the event that like if I ever decide or have to bring on someone here in the US, like I need to be able to have that price point and margins to do so, right? And so it's important to be able to look at that and always kind of, you know, sometimes we have to just get people in the door. When I launched talent fees, like my first 10 clients got like a super discounted rate, right? And that was like, hey, this is a new company, it's just as much risk for me as it is for you. So you're gonna come in at a discounted rate and we're gonna build this plane while we're flying it, type thing. Sometimes you just have to do it. Um, but then eventually you have to realize, okay, now I need to flip that switch and increase my prices and kind of realign everything. So let's kind of walk through, you know, one of the things I mentioned in the intro was you had six people on payroll. You're doing 16-hour days, you're taking home less than you made as a nurse. Uh, you know, I went through that with my agency, like I was making a hell of a lot less than that than I was with the job I had prior. When did you actually let yourself see that number for what it was? Because sometimes we just kind of as business owners, we lied to ourselves and say that things aren't as bad as they are, and then just keep going and eventually say, okay, maybe they are that bad, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:43

Yeah. So I want to be super honest and like this, yeah, a lot of this transformation has happened this year. So like it's still kind of fresh, right? And I feel like I'm still sorting it out in some way. But so I think what happened was I had absolutely terrible boundaries, and I was like the yes woman to every client, like, yes, yes, we can do that, yes, we can do that, yes, we can do that. And so that created this terrible situation where I had to stack more people to support the work, but my margins got thinner and thinner and thinner. Yeah. And it was to the point, yeah, we had six people, like one person was just doing admin, like just loading emails and that kind of thing, or like maybe helping me with the admin side. And I'm like, what are we doing? AI can AI can do most of this. You know what I mean? And so I'm like paying someone, you know, within Canada, like, you know, 30-ish, I think it was $30-ish dollars an hour. And I'm like, this is crazy. Like, what am I doing? So it was twofold, right? It was like, where can we automate? Where can I actually be a leader in my own agency and not expect my, you know, people who are working for me with me to bring bring that to the table. Like I have to be the innovator. I was just going through the motions, right? But also, it was also like a boundaries and standards, and kind of I refined my avatar a little bit as well to make sure that it was gonna fit my lifestyle. And it wasn't just about farming out stuff, right? Because I I definitely of everything, I don't want I want this to be a human-centered business. I don't want this to just be like you're just on a farm, you're just on a conveyor belt, and you just go go, go, go, go.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Yep. Yeah. I mean, yes, but at the same time, like I think of things like, you know, as an example, you go inside Target or Walmart, right? Like, you know, we love Walmart plus delivery because it's like I can order it and I can have it in five hours, right? And it's like that, like things are just being farmed out, right? And it's that, but then like you have the human who go who goes and drops it off of your front porch, and there's that human touch element there, but there are certain things where it's like, I don't want to talk to people, right? I just want this to get done, even to the point now where like people who ask me, like, hey, do you think that the role of an executive admin is gonna, you know, be gone because of AI and all these like AI EAs and everything? And I've tried an AI EA, and there's things that I'm like, actually, yeah, this would be great. And I use one where like it makes sense. And then in other areas, it's like, hey, no, like my team needs to handle this, right? And so it's kind of like finding that that balance between the two. As you've gone through this transition, do you do you feel like, you know, has some of this been like, I'm just gonna increase the prices on my current clients I have, or we're gonna keep them on legacy pricing, I'm gonna call it, and then we're, you know, transitioning everybody new. What does that look like? Because like even we've gone through that too, where it's like, I gotta increase prices. Where do I do it? Where do I make more money? Everything.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

Yeah. I think I've definitely looked at where I might be saying yes to like kind of small things. I'm like, oh, can you just oh, I just need this one touch, this one time, or or I just need this small package, and kind of say no to that. But for for us, for the last, I would say three to four years, I've intentionally done, and I would just suggest that everyone do this because I know time can pass much quicker than we think. I've intentionally done rate increases like at the beginning of every new year. So that because I will remember January is coming. Okay, we're gonna send out notices, right? So I've just intentionally been doing that incrementally over the last few years. So that is something that you know, now we're you know, we're soon gonna be going into Q4. That's something I'm thinking about. It's like, okay, I'm gonna, where am I going to up this a little bit, tweak this? I often you kind of tweak the services a little bit as well, right? Like, where is that more gonna where can I more support the client in this area?

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

So that's something that's kind of you know on my mind this time of year at the time we're recording this.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

So I I don't go back and say, hmm, where can I increase? But I do, I do look at w and I think this has been very, very helpful is like, where are we wasting software? Right? Like people have they've got Cloed and they've got Chat GPT and they've got Mannis and they've got Gemini. It's like, do we really need all of these?

SPEAKER_02 14:52

Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:53

Right.

unknown 14:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 14:56

And like, oh you know, and and on the tier that we're on. So I've really been looking at just on a month-to-month basis, which I think most people don't do, is like where are the costs besides labor actually going? And do we really need that? Or can we, you know, go all in on one or two platforms, for example? Like, where is the wasted?

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Right. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Right. Well, even like right before we hopped on here, like I was t test piloting. Uh, I did like a three or four-day free trial with like grok bot. And I was like, yeah, that was cool. And then like some of my automations on my I have a Mac mini, my office that has some automations running, and that they like weren't running the last five days. And I'm okay, we're gonna try out, we're gonna try out paying for GrockBot now, and I'm gonna move some of these automations over. And so then like I, you know, uh enroll in that as like 20 bucks a month, like whatever. But then you have like 20 here, 20 there, times, you know, you have to get it for every team member can really add up, right? I've found myself in the past where it was like I was spending so much time trying to figure out how to cut cost and cut waste that I could have just gone out and like sold more to cover that cost, right? Yeah. Uh, and so it's kind of like this this catch 22 that you have to balance the the two on there. You know, uh a couple things that I've seen people do here, you know, for for those who are listening and you know, going through this like pricing increase aspect, right? I love the aspect of like, hey, GN1, I'm gonna do this increase, right? Um, I'm involved in some agreements where like I have a price increase built into my agreement, right? And so I know every year it goes up 5%, it goes up 10%, right? And so like that's already baked in and it's baked into the to the the agreement there. And so then you just know every year, like it's going up 5%, 10%, whatever. Um, and for a lot of companies, that works great because they're like, if you think of minus our post-COVID inflation, like your average cost of of living increase each year, and you just do a little bit of a margin on top of that, you should be, you know, over a five-year period for the most part taken care of. The other thing I I've seen companies do, and that we've done or what I've done is I just had a bunch of agents, Claude, Chat GPT, Grok agents go out and do a bunch of deep research on all of my competition out there, right? So I I gave it a bunch of documentation on who talent fuse is, what we do, who we serve, everything like that. And I'm like, go out and find everybody. I want to know what their pricing model is. I want to know who they serve, how they serve, what roles they hire, uh, you know, all these different things, what's included in their packages. And if their site does not show that data, like with us being in the industry of like hiring people, the models are different, right? So some companies bundle in their markup into the wage of a talent. So if like they're hiring somebody from the Philippines, and let's say the company pays them 15 bucks an hour, they're paying that person like seven, eight bucks an hour. So then I told it like, go look at things like Glassdoor and look at like reported salaries and everything, guesstimate, you know, their markup, everything like that. So I had it do all this and then I had it build it into like a an artifact in Claude and then like compare it to like our existing client base, right? How many clients we have, how many team members they have, all those different things, and where we're at priced on there, right? And I looked at that and I was like, I cannot believe how on a price we were, right? And so then you kind of open your eyes up to, okay, now I get to have price increase conversations with people, but now I can look at it and say, hey, market is here. We're here or we're here, wherever you're at on that. And somehow we have to get you to here because we provide X amount more value than everybody else or whatever that may be is. But, you know, there's a few clients I have where it's like a 500% increase, right? I'm not gonna go give somebody a 500% increase on their price. And so then it's like the conversation of like, how do we like step this over time to get there? And so that's for people who are listening to the that's another creative way in which you can go out and find the pricing of other people. You don't have to go out and do it yourself. You could have your admin or your VA go out and do that. I took the route of, hey, let me see if an AI agent can actually like do this research for me, and it works. So um, that's just something that's people are listening, like great insight uh on there. So, you know, so you you're you're going through all of this, Nisha, at the moment. One of the things that you mentioned was, or I mentioned in your intro, was like you you you have kids, right? And so you built this company where it can run in a way without you. You can go to Europe for six weeks, do whatever. You can not work the evenings, not work weekends, you know, be there for pickup and everything like that. But at the same time, like people need something now, right? And so it's like this like this balancing of demand. So as you've kind of reshaped your team, how has that affected things? Like, has your team seen more like productivity from other people? Uh, are you having to get a little bit more involved in things?

SPEAKER_03 19:50

No, I would say I'm the less involved now than I've ever been. That doesn't I'm looking to be more or less involved. It's all I feel like it's always a refinement.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:00

So I have I have one son who's almost three, so I'm very much like in the young age trenches. I know you have two kids, so you I know you get it, and you have it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:09

I've seen it. I know you know. And I'm actually a single mom. So the the the thing was like, again, I don't have a choice, right? I do not have, I cannot do the 16-hour days. Um, and and and that came because where I live, they often don't take them into like daycare until they're like two. So for the first two years, I was just like slacking it all. You know, I was like do doing everything I could. I was on, you know, all the time pretty much. Obviously, getting that culture of daycare helped a lot. And then that was my like, okay, now we need to change our behavior. So I do think for some of us, we really deeply care about our clients' results and how they feel, and you know, so I think for me part part of this was well, we normalize whatever we normalize our clients think is that's what's normal, right? Like whatever we normalize is what we're going to get. So I had normalized, you know, doing everything, always being on, right? As as much as I had to in order to keep the thing running. Cause I already had, I had like, I think, five, six figure years before I had a child. So I was like, well, I can't let this go. But the last two years have been the most explosive, I think, because of that centering like what's normal, like putting in your own standards of like, I'm I'm not going to, you know, get on Slack at eight, nine o'clock at night, you know, like for no reason.

unknown 21:31

Right.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

I'm not gonna keep something that a team my team can do, but because I feel like I should be doing it, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:38

Or this is not an actual emergency, please put your nervous system down. It's fine, it can wait till Monday. Right. Yeah. So I think that's part of it. It was part giving my team more like domain, like you own this, right? You don't need to go through me like you own this, you and your customer service manager are taking care of this. You know, I'm I'm here if you need me, but yeah. putting that leadership to them, right? I think you don't know how someone will, you know, re react, respond to more responsibility to a leadership role, to owning their own outputs unless you try it. So I think that's kind of the main win. And for for business owners, it's so hard to let go. Right. And I think that's the other thing is just the the behaviors and and trusting. And when I say behaviors, I mean my own as well, right? Like yeah, I have to have a separation between business and my life because it's like there's someone else who you know is in the picture that I'm solely responsible for and I don't have assistance.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Yeah, absolutely. Well and like sometimes depending on where you're at, like you do have to work like that APM. Like you you're you're bringing back memories for me. Like last year my son was in the hospital four times and like I was he got kicked out of daycare. Then we hired a nanny and then she quit and it was like I knew we were trying to bring my wife home from work. So I was like we're going to stack this cash and I'm just going to figure out how to balance being dad at home while we're on the business. And so I remember like you know blocking off my calendar right took sales calls during his nap time frame. So I'm like he's got to be up at this time so I can get on the bed at this time right and then I would tell people like hey my son's sleeping and so we if you're talking and I get up and walk away just keep talking and I'll be back with a kid. He's cute, right? And so it's like you just had to make it work. And so sometimes I would then have to work at 8 p.m right but it's because my life needed that at that time right and so now we're back in a position where it's like hey I I don't need to be doing that. But what I did was from the beginning of launching talent views now it's because of the fact that my son was in the hospital the day we launched but I was like Karen from my team she is going to do your onboarding call right you're going to meet with her. So like I don't meet with clients. I never have met with clients on a monthly basis because that's how it was designed from day one, right? So you talk about the the nervous system and calming that right we as founders we as agency owners are so involved in the business and so involved in the finances behind the business that like being involved in accounts is probably not the best idea because you have an account go wrong like I'm going to give a a discount larger than my team's going to give because I see the bank accounts right and so it's like no I want to reach and I'm like these are your SOPs. And so like the the team just handles uh handles all of that. So d definitely something like those who are listening like that doesn't mean that you have to build this business where you're working like eight to four, nine to five like that type of thing. Seasons of life determine different aspects of things but the beauty is that you know when to turn it on and off right like hey this is my time to be dad. This is my time to be mom and because I'm mom or dad right now I'm going to work an hour this evening after the kids go to bed, right? Sometimes that's what it demands, but also you got the right to just not work and just get to it tomorrow, right? And so if you delegate with the right team you can do that too.

SPEAKER_03 25:04

Yeah. So like I don't I don't want to like be misleading about that. Of course there are days where it happens is necessary. I got to jump in or whatever. But as a rule that is where I try to land right obviously I'm the one doing pickups because there's no one else right obviously I'm the one doing bedtime there's no one else right so that means I'm not working during those times and yep and after school and weekends I try to be like as present as humanly possible. He doesn't really nap anymore but I feel you I was like all of my calls were the two hours during nap time and that was it. Like or yeah there were times where I did some calls at 10 o'clock at night because that's all that could work and they wanted to come on as a client right but that was kind of the norm prior to having daycare because I had no choice. But now that I have a choice I try so hard to play within that lane. Yes I come out of the lane sometimes but if I'm doing it it's just like make sure I'm not falling back into old patterns like I'm doing it because there's like there's revenue on the horizon or the team needs some like it's it's for a good purpose. Like it's with intention.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yeah absolutely so you know uh one of the things we talk a lot about is like delegating the business right and as a single mom I'm sure you've had to figure out like how to delegate things personally as well. What are some things that you've done that like in the personal life you you kind of thought were like I don't have the right or I shouldn't be delegating this off but you have and it's been like the best thing that you've done.

SPEAKER_03 26:31

Well I guess daycare is obviously a big one. Yeah we have just moved so that we have like more resources at our disposal we were like in a very rural area where there was like nothing.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

So but you know we've had like you know house cleaners come in sometimes and sometimes I feel that guilt like well shouldn't you be cleaning your own house you know that that that kind of thing like but I have to have the mindset of like well where am I most useful right like what is the thing that only I can do so you know in some in terms of pushing the business forward growing it in some being the visionary for it in some senses that's something you can do right like only you should be doing. It doesn't mean you're doing your own marketing or anything like that. But being the vision of how am I growing this, how am I Xing this business, then yes, that's me. Nurturing my son, teaching him parts of that should be me, how I want him to be raised and his beliefs and his values, etc. But I don't think only scrubbing the bathtub needs to be me. So we literally just moved three weeks ago so that we have like access to more things. But if I can outsource something in life I will do it like whether it's like meal prepping or like anything that I can think of that is not going to take me away from you know building the business the way that I know I need to I am all for that. And yeah there is always a kind of voice in the back of my head but I was like shut it down.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

Shut it down.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah absolutely well and it's like you we, you know, sometimes it's also like the limiting beliefs as well and like you know how how we were raised. Like I was raised like my parents are great. My dad literally can do anything and everything with his hands, right? And so I was raised on the aspect of like doing it all yourself and like the pride behind like doing this project yourself, like and how much that is just like yes like I did this myself right. And there are things that are like that. Like we have a like my wife made a comment the other day about this tree she once chopped down and I'm like those trunks aren't that big. Like I could totally chop this down. And like I've not done it yet. And that's a project that like I probably would want a few hours to myself just to like think, put on a podcast, whatever. So like that may be a project that I take on just for the sole aspect of like I want to do some some work in the yard and like that's calming for me. Right. But like one of the things I don't do is we have a half acre property. I don't mow that lawn because I have a push mower and it takes me two and a half hours and it's just not happening. Right. And the guys that come and mow our lawn, they charge me 60 bucks a week 240 bucks a month on average and they're in and out in like 35 minutes, right? And it's like I can get so much done in the business. I've I've closed deals when my office was at home I closed deals while on the call like on a call while they were mowing the lawn, right? It's like just those types of things it makes more sense to delegate those things personally and people don't realize how much noise at home is translating into their business right the clutter at home, the laundry piling up at home, you know, all these different things. And so if you can figure out how to delegate some of that you don't have to delegate all of it right we used to pay for a meal prep service right now we're in a season where we are no longer using the meal prep service that we are using. We don't want to start paying for this more premium meal prep service. My wife's home with the kids and so she's like hey I want to do activities with the kids. So like my son helps her like as she's chopping up vegetables he puts it in the bowl and it and so she now does our meal prep right um but it's one of those things that we were in a season where it made more sense to buy back our time in that sense. Now she's wanting to turn into an activity so we're not buying back our time there. And it's like okay now where else can we can we buy back our time to like help things personally on there as as well. So one of the things Nisha if I can I'm I'm actually going back through our our messages on on Facebook Messenger and one of the comments you made to me in a message and I won't give full context but says you know sometimes it feels like it's nowhere near enough when you hear what some other agencies are doing. We're talking about like monthly recurring revenue and growth and everything. And then I asked you like what do you think is holding you back from going further and you said your own nervous system, right? And so I bring that because we've mentioned that a couple of times we talk about limiting beliefs, but you know having that self-awareness of like this is what's h holding me back or this is what's not allowing me to grow. So obviously you said your own nervous system here, but like what is it that you feel like being more open on this show like is limiting you from reaching that next level in in your agency.

SPEAKER_03 31:07

Yeah. I think some of it is time and that's in like where am I choosing to spend my time. Yeah. So obviously like we just moved so right now like my priority is like a little peek into my life is like my son is not sleeping. Right. So sometimes it's not the season for growth. Right. I'm like and that's okay because I'm just kind of keeping it all even right now like where we're not sleeping multiple times a night it's like newborn sleep right now I'm like going through that going through that a little bit I'm like okay I thought we were done this but sure. Like it's been like about a month since I've slept through the night. So I'm like okay. And you know my business has the most revenue that it's ever had right now so you know that means we're the the busiest that we've ever been I have more support than I've ever had. So for me I am just so intentional now sure you can look at people because I was also in that seven figure agency program right yeah where they're like they're doing what do you mean you're doing a million a month where what what do you mean? And for me I like building a seven figure business that wasn't really why I signed up I had signed up for that because I was like that 16 hour days and I have this whole team how how how is that possible right and that was some that was my kind of deciding factor of going into that and sorting some of that out which I have. So I don't I don't want to go back to that that was like so terrible of like yes my son was also home during that time I had no care and then like 16 hour days and then a big team and a lot a lot of writing on me a lot of you know when I kind of streamlined that like do you have more work like I know in your last episode you talked about well you have this yeah kind of like pressure of like you you're providing for like so many more people and so many more families besides your own right and so I just want to grow that like gradually right yeah I mean I don't want to bring on like like we bring on like maybe a client or two a month. You know, I don't want to bring on like five new clients this month. I think like I don't think that's something that I could handle at this point. But realistically if I was like I can handle that no problem. Let's you know go moat it's about me making sure that I'm the front facing marketing instead of yeah you know maybe behind the scenes a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

That's period.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Yeah. Now I I will say you mentioned like I don't think I can you know bring on more than like you know the amount of clients you have like you can right like you would you would figure it out. You know, there's been months where I pushed my team and it's like we have never hired this many team members in a single month and you want us placing these people in 21 days and Brad I don't think we're gonna do that. I'm like oh we can like we're gonna figure it out right and that there's a book called The Science of Scaling and it talks about like this concept of like thinking outside of like you know if if I say I want to double my my MRR in 90 days or 60 days right and like it's like almost like okay that's impossible right like depending on where you're at in the business. Some people it's like yeah I can do that no problem. But like for the for most businesses doubling your your revenue every 90 days and not churning it at an early stage in business is tough, right? And so then it makes you think about like for me like when I think of that question at our current way of generating revenue for the business it follows through Brad's personal brand right and you know things like the podcast things like YouTube things like my content on Facebook and everything we cannot double our MRR in 90 days. And so it's like okay what do I need to do to be able to do that right and it's like all of a sudden I go from I can't to I can I just have to change these these systems, these processes, everything like that. So that's a great book to kind of uh read and everything like that. I I read that while we were while we were in Punta Can I was reading the book and was getting DMs and messages and everything like that for sales, right? So I'm gonna respond to those and it made me realize like I can't even take a vacation without the I can take a vacation with the delivery engine rocking and rolling, right? But I can't without the sales engine you know being dependent on me. Right. And so it's always a a catch 22 here. So really Nisha as we wrap up here yeah go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

No I was just gonna say I I I'm so conscious about not going back to a place where I can't pay myself or you know the margins are so thin. But I I agree with you. Yeah I'm like I I know exactly what you know I could be doing for example.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

So yeah it it is me just trying to control the yeah the yeah and and and I'll I'll add there, you know, there's this fear right of not going back to where you're at my wife and I have made a lot of mistakes where we've gone some deep deep into debt and crawled back out right and so I I I literally said to her like two months ago, I was like, we cannot go back to where we're at. Like we are we are so far past that right. And so I was like we we have to be here personally because we're growing I need to add more team members and she said to me like you can't be afraid to take a dip for one month. And what that meaning was was like I needed to bring on some team members whose salaries were more like combined between these team members is more than I could afford to pay. And so it was like we had to make the choice do we take home less? Do I find the revenue right? And so it was kind of like these are who you need to get to that next level of business. And you can't turn on the fire hose to that next level business until you have these people in place. And so we had to make the conscious choice to take home less and basically ride 30 days of these people's pay on a card right and it was like we don't want to go back to where we're at and riding things on a card is what we did to get there. Right. But I was so I could have let that fear you know get me out of like say no I'm not gonna hire these people or I could just hire them and just rock and roll right we hire these people and I'm like okay I have mouths to feed I have bills to pay right and so it's like sales sales sales sales like just closing like I can and so sometimes our limiting belief is like I can't do this but really in that sense in that sense we can. So yeah. So Nisha as we wrap up here you know those who are are are listening, you know, I'm thinking of someone who is working a full time job or they are transitioning careers, right? Like they are in between jobs, they're thinking about what that next step is for them. Maybe they're thinking about like hey I just want to be like a remote executive admin, remote virtual admin for other people, right? Thinking back to yourself at that time, what is it you would recommend to those people on how to get started and get their first customers right to really get their business up and going.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

Yeah. My first VA clients like I didn't have a website I didn't have like for that right it was for yoga like it was I didn't have anything. I didn't I I didn't even have like payment set up or contracts or in nothing. I was just like put this out there and see if I actually have interest. And you know in the kind of educator world and I think in other worlds too we talk about like minimum viable products. So like what is the minimum amount of like resources I can put into this to make this you know active live like you know maybe it's about like reaching out to your network and like saying hey I'm wanting to get into this like what you know what do you think or maybe there are agencies who who are willing to take on you know someone who is novice and learning right maybe there's someone who's doing this who you're gonna reach out to and say hey can you mentor me and how do I get into this if we don't if we don't just you know like pull up the big big boy and big girl pants and just like put yourself out there be like what do you have to lose really right I remember I was at an event last year with Kajabi and I said to the like the literally the the head of marketing I was like I I want to speak on these stages. Like I want to be telling people about my experience with Kajabi and how I've done this and how I've gotten this business as a single mom and they literally the next year they interviewed me at their headquarters we were flown out for like a very private event but I was so nervous at that time I was like shaking because I was very taught like be meek be mild you know don't like you know don't brag that kind of thing and I was like no I I've earned this I'm gonna ask this and I was like who are you in my head when I was doing it. Yeah but I think if we don't do those like who do you think you are moments right and do it anyway like we will never we will never grow.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Yeah absolutely absolutely well Nisha thanks again for hopping on this episode was was awesome and thank you those who are listening or watching go follow Nisha and check out the align pretzel all the links are in the show notes. If this one helped you share it with another agency owner who's still trying to do it all alone and subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss next week. But until next time this is the agency advantage