G.A.M.E. P.L.A.N. - Learn How To Become A Leader and A Boss w/ Brittany Bettini

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:37Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs powered by Action Coach Growth Partners. You likely went into business to have more freedom and flexibility so that you could spend more time with your family, do more things or travel or enjoy your hobbies or whatever it is that you like to do in your spare time. We're here to help you find better ways to make more money, build better teams and get that time back so that you can have that freedom and flexibility. We'll help you simplify things and make sense of business, investing, and wealth building so that you can be epic and achieve all your dreams and goals.

1:10And now, enjoy the show. Hey, Bill. I am Brittany Bettini. I'm what you would consider a serial entrepreneur, but my main goal is to help business owners build unstoppable teams through hiring virtual staff that can help them cut costs and maximize their productivity. All right. There's a lot to unpack there, but let's just figure out, let's go back and reel in. How did you get in this business in the first place? Yeah. I started my entrepreneurial journey when I took over my family's large-scale commercial janitorial company. That's a real boots on the ground type of business. It's very easy to get burnout and exhausted.

1:55And then I had the bright idea to start a second business, like an online business of my own while still running that company. And so I quickly got to a point where I was like, I don't want to do entrepreneurship at all anymore because I'm so tired and exhausted and burnout. And it's just a lot. And so one of my business coaches recommended me to hire a virtual assistant. And when I did that, it changed my life so much. And I was so I was telling every single person that I met that I had hired this virtual assistant. And she was helping me with everything from social media to I mean, even helping me with like my PTA stuff with my kids school.

2:39and so at the end of every one of those conversations every single person I talked to said well I need a VA and so I launched a company called I need a VA and I started helping all those people hire their own virtual assistant. Okay so we got the so we need virtual assistants I mean I've always said that the biggest thing the biggest boost in productivity that a business owner can get is hiring an assistant. And so I think the best investment you can make is an assistant. Let's talk about maybe virtual assistants versus an in-person assistant. When do you think virtual assistant works for everything or do you think sometimes an actual assistant?

3:25I think that depending on the type of business that you have, I think every single person should have a virtual assistant. And then if there are things that need to be done that require someone to go somewhere and do a thing, they need help. They need an in-person employee. But my virtual assistants can really do anything and everything that can be done from a computer or a phone. And now I have multiple now. I have actually 15 people on my internal team. We have departments and everything. But when I first got started, I started with a virtual assistant because number one, the cost was something that as a startup entrepreneur, I could afford.

4:07And I didn't have to worry about all of the extras that come with workman's comp insurance and federal taxes and, you know, all sorts of things that you have when you have an in-person employee in the United States. But I have both. Like I have a lot of in-person employees and I have virtual assistants, but I think that for a lot of startup entrepreneurs, a virtual assistant is a great way to learn how to become a leader and a boss, which a lot of people struggle with. And so it's a good way to get their feet wet. So you match people up with virtual assistants, depending on their needs. But the virtual assistants are essentially your employees.

4:51Is that right? Yes. So we have about 150 VAs in the Philippines. they if they're hired to work for a client they report directly to the client and then we're kind of the management company in the background we're making sure that they're vetted we're making sure that they have all the things that they they need to do their job as far as training goes but they do report directly to their you know boss that's hired them we're just kind of like the management company in the background handling hr payroll and training yeah and so i mean there's some real advantages to that. Obviously, if you match somebody up, there can be a trial period and it's no big deal.

5:30They just pick up the phone and say, hey, let's try another one, right? If it doesn't work out. So what are some areas that you believe people could use virtual assistants better? Yes. So I think that most people focus on the small admin tasks and then social media and graphic design, web design, those things are pretty common in the virtual assistant world as far as tasks that they'd like to perform. But what I've done is I've created, I make my virtual assistants feel like they're actually, you know, a part of the company, even though they're not here. And so I have, you know, market research is a huge thing that I delegate to my virtual assistants so that they can figure out what are my competitors doing?

6:23What are they doing well? What can they do better? How can we use this information to better our company? What are these huge corporations doing? What are they having their virtual assistants in foreign countries do for them? Because, I mean, you can't call Papa John's and order a pizza anymore without talking to someone in the Philippines. This literally happened to me the other day, Verizon, Google, I mean, all these huge corporations use virtual assistants to, to do these tasks. Why aren't we? And then also the actual, I guess, brain behind the business. What, what can your virtual assistant do to help you grow instead of just handing them these tasks that aren't income generating?

7:07I actually have like strategy meetings with my teams of VAs like, Hey, what are your ideas? These people are, are some of the most intelligent, humble, kind, wonderful people I've ever had the opportunity to work with. And honestly, our relationships are better because I give them more kind of say so and how we run our company instead of just looking at them like, okay, did you mine for 500 new leads today? or did you make these cold calls, you know, really letting them be a part of the actual function of the business? Yeah, I think there's a knack to doing that. I mean, everything's, I mean, we've, you know, we've gotten used to Zoom.

7:49Of course, we were using Zoom well before the pandemic, but everybody's used to Zoom now and everybody's used to the virtual teams or they, If they aren't, they're moving backwards, I believe. So, yeah, I think it's great. I think the message for entrepreneurs is that there are a lot of uses and a lot of ways that you could use outsourcing some virtual assistants. And they end up being excellent, excellent team members if they're treated like team members and brought into the fold. because these are smart, generally well-educated people who have skills and they work hard. That's what I've found.

8:34Yeah. I mean, they'll put out the work. So excellent. Well, all right. So you got into the business. So you see one of your things as an entrepreneur is you seem to see an opening and just go for it. Yeah. Yeah. So where did that come from? Um, so I come from a background of poverty and domestic violence. And so I, um, I really started my whole entrepreneurial journey from a survival mode of just, I need to feed my kids. And I don't know if I still tap into that sometimes, but mostly like I wake up every morning and I'm like, how can I help someone avoid the pitfalls or the mistakes that I made in business, trying to figure it out on my own.

9:24How can I solve a problem, you know, that I've solved for myself? How can I help someone else also solve that problem? And so normally that turns into, okay, I figured out how to solve my problem. How could, you know, there's a business that I can create that will solve that problem for them too. And they will pay me to help them do that. And it's much easier for me to be an entrepreneur knowing that I'm not only just generating income now, I'm helping people. And so it's motivating and it gets me up every day and people think I'm crazy, but I just keep going. Well, I think there's plenty of places that are motivational.

10:09I mean, you can be motivated by an away from goal. Like you don't want poverty. You don't want to be part of domestic violence. I got to take care of myself and my kids if I'm going to make my way in the world. And then once you kind of get out of that hole, though, they're they're they're bigger goals. And and I mean, it's great. Good. I mean, tap into the negative, tap into the positive and the the the goals out there because it it is wide open. So so you've scaled a lot of these businesses. Talk a little bit about some of your philosophies of of growth and scale. What are some of the keys in your mind to what you've been able to do with your businesses?

10:48Yeah. So I actually I call it I don't know about you, but I'm very highly motivated by sports. And like when movies like Remember the Titans and things like that, it's so invigorating. And so I created for my client something called my seven figure game plan. And it's like each letter of the words game plan kind of acronymed out. And a few of those that are really important is the E in game, which is execution. If you ask any of my coaches or anyone that's ever worked with me, whatever I learned, like we're always learning new things, but we're not executing on them. And so the way I'm able to scale and grow and keep moving forward is that when I say I'm going to do something, it is immediate that either me or someone on my team is putting the wheels in motion to do that thing.

11:39And then the other one is really important for me and how I've scaled is the M in game, which is measure. And, you know, a lot of us are like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. And in the long run, that's not something that is sustainable. And that's how people get burnout and quit. And so just like you do when you're running ads, you know, you want to watch every single analytic for your entire business. so every number you have to know your numbers. If I, if I close 50 % of sales of people that get in front of me and I want to close a hundred, I know I need to speak to 200 people.

12:23Those are numbers and numbers are easier, easier to track than just, Oh, I'm frantic. I got to make$10 ,000, you know, instead of, you know, okay, if I get in front of this many people, I know I'll make this much money because these are my, my analytics and numbers. That one is huge. Um, and then adding team members, like whether it's in person or virtual, I never like push people specifically to virtual, uh, employees, but just knowing that as an entrepreneur, you cannot do everything alone. You're, you're not operating in your genius. You're not, you know, operating in your expertise, if you're trying to be the bookkeeper, the social media manager, the customer service rep, the, you know, face of the company, and also, you know, trying to package orders.

13:16When is the last time you saw Jeff Bezos pack an Amazon box? You know, so those are a few of the keys that have been really, really important in helping me grow any type of business in any industry. I like it. I like it. Well, let's, I mean, you've got us curious now. We're not going to go into each one, but give us the letters for game plan. Give us all of them. So I would not have my little notes with me today, but G is for grit, grit, determination, just having that, you know, get up and go, no matter how many times you get knocked down. A is for accountability. So a lot of us struggle with not being able to admit that we have messed something up or we didn't handle something right.

14:07Or, you know, the best thing that there's a reason I was featured in Forbes for customer service is because I take accountability and I make it right. Um, M of course is measure E is execution, um, plan or yeah, P the P in plan is PR. So doing things like this, getting out there in front of people, writing press releases for your business, um, exposing yourself and knowing that your reputation is important. And in the world we live in, people are scared to death to give you their credit card number or buy your service because there's so many people doing things wrong and stealing and scamming that, you know, if you have really put some effort behind the PR of your business, you can walk into a room with a good reputation.

15:07and reputation equals authority and it equals sales. So that's a huge part of my game plan. So P and then L is, oh, I have this all written out. It's fine. It's fine. It's good. It's good. It's okay. We're human. Yeah. And then N stands, I'll think of L sooner or later, but N stands for non-negotiable goals. When I started my businesses, I had some serious goals. I spoke them out loud to my family. I, you know, my, one of my goals was to retire my parents completely so they would never have to work again and move them back home. And I, you know, it was non-negotiable for me. And a lot of us as entrepreneurs, if we were at work at a corporate job and they said, this is our yearly goal.

16:01And if you don't meet this goal, we're going to let this position go. So we're going to work until we reach that goal because it's non-negotiable. And then in our own businesses, we just let ourselves off the hook all the time. We're like, oh, well, I can do that next year. And for me, it's just every single goal I set, it may have to get pushed back a little bit, but it is non-negotiable and we're getting there. I like it. I like it. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, I'm going to get your thoughts on my saying, which is be epic. So epic stands for things as well. So we'll just do a quick fire round here.

16:44The E is education. So what are your thoughts on the importance of education? That was L. L is for learn. Learn. Oh, I like it. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, good. But yeah, education is huge. I would not be where I am today if I didn't invest in courses and coaches and educating myself on the things that I don't know. And then even investing in the education of my team. You know, I recently, we scaled our business organically. Every single one of our businesses, we never ran an ad on social media. And recently I realized if I really want to scale this where I want to go, I need to start running ads, but I don't know how.

17:29No one on my team is an expert in that. So I hired a coach to come in and not teach me, but teach my entire team who was going to be actually doing it, how to do that really well. And it's been epic for our sales to have that information and to be able to really execute on it. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yeah, I realized I was going to do a training the other day and I realized, well, hang on. I don't need to know this. But a person on my team needs to know this. I'm done. It took me about three minutes to say, no, no, no, that's not part of the 20 % I need to be doing. So good stuff. All right.

18:07Planning. I mean, part of your is game plan. So I figure planning is important. What's your thoughts on planning? Listen, I'm kind of, I walked the line there. That's okay. Usually I'll have a thought and then I'll just start executing and I will skip over the planning stage. And that has been detrimental, honestly, in some cases. So I think it's super important. It's something that I'm working on in my own, you know, businesses and my own life every single day is getting better at planning. I'm kind of like a instant gratification. I'm like, I want it now. And I don't put enough effort into planning.

18:49So I'm working on that. I do think it's super important. Yeah. I think we probably have that in common in a lot of ways. I've gotten way better at planning over the ways, you know, the The thing is, we believe that if you do the basics, if you educate yourself, if you do the planning well and the other basics well, then you're going to find the inspiration to commit, which is the C. So let's talk about inspiration. You've obviously found inspiration a lot of places. How important has that been in your success? Absolutely. Being an entrepreneur, it is difficult to be consistent and inspired all the time.

19:27Some days you wake up and you're like, no, I don't. And no one's there to kind of hold you accountable to that. And so keeping things around me and doing things every single day that keep me inspired has been a huge tool in being able to stay consistent in what I'm doing in all my businesses. There's nothing more inspiring than landing that new client. But on the days when you're not landing that new client, what are you doing to really keep that inspirational flow going? I love that. I love that. You need the inspiration so you can do the basics so that you can stay consistent. And consistency is the key to growing a business.

20:07I mean, we all know that. So and I would have probably put that under the C, which stands for commitment. So you obviously have these non-negotiable goals. So you're committed. How do you talk a little bit about commitment and that importance to you and to your team? I think that for me, commitment is something that has always been really important to me. I'm what you would consider like an extreme like ride or die kind of person. I'm committed to people that I love and things that I care about. And so it's been very easy to transfer that over to business because I know I'm committed to helping other people.

20:53And there's just no other in my life more gratifying thing than seeing that commitment turn into other people's success. And then you're getting more of that I, that inspiration by seeing, OK, what I'm doing is actually it's not just benefiting me and my own family, but I'm actually making a difference in other people's lives. And then they're going to make an, it's like a ripple effect. So, and you only get that from being really committed to what you're doing every day. If you get up every morning to help people. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's what gets you out of bed every day to help. I mean, it probably started with your family, but then it's now it's, it's morphed into the world.

21:34Like there are so many people who need what we have that, um, that, that's awesome. So last thoughts on anything to do with growing a business or entrepreneurship or one. Here, I got it. But, you know, what's one thing you wish you had known before you went into business? I wish I had known that. There was going to it was going to be such a roller coaster. I guess I just thought that at some point, at some time frame, you just had the success and it never went away. and you didn't have to like maintain it because honestly, the people who are super successful because they have teams and because they have systems, it looks really easy, but I don't think it gets any easier.

22:22It just gets more fulfilling. And so it, I think that I just had this, this idea of like, it was kind of like a pyramid straight up to the top when in actuality, it was this weird, windy, crazy road that, you know, you thought you had made it and then all of a sudden you're broke again and then you're up again and it's been a wild ride but i'm just i'm thankful that i get to be the one on it yeah good good on you yeah we have this saying we we realized the other day that epic is you know successful is not the top of the mountain it's probably on the side of the mountain somewhere and you get to epic and then there's another mountain to climb and so you know so it's it's super interesting well this has been great i I think you and I could probably talk for days about this sort of stuff and it would be good.

23:10So I'm looking forward to our next conversation. But how do people find or get a VA or get VAs if they want to get a hold of you? Absolutely. So I'm on all the social media networks at Brittany Bettini, just my first and last name. And then if you want to schedule, first of all, I'm probably the most fun salesperson ever because I don't do weird calls. where I'm like trying to close you at the end of the call. I just want to give you all the information so that you can make an educated decision as a business owner. And we can set up a free time freedom consultation if you go to Ineedava.com. Ineedava.com.

23:49We'll put that in the show notes. Yeah. So that'll be awesome. Well, great. Well, this has been fun. Thanks for being here. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Bill. And until next time, we want you to be happy. Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. Here's four things you can do. First, you can listen every week on Biz Radio Mondays at 1. Second, you can subscribe to the podcast. Hey, you get it. The more subscribers we have, the more cool things we can offer you. Three, you can also go out and give us a five-star rating everywhere. And number four, if you'd like a free copy of my book, The Coach Approach, Five Principles to Build an Epic Business, just go to giftfrombuild.com.

24:32It's your roadmap to building your epic business. That's giftfrombuild.com. Until next time, all the best.

24:50Hey, thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast. Here's three things that you can do. Number one, remember to subscribe to the podcast. It takes very little effort on your part. It's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs. Plus, you guys know how it works. The more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly.

25:37Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.