STP 109 | Alyssa Avant and Company.
===
Alyssa Avant: [00:00:00] It was because, uh, all the back and forth, because if you did not get the information at the beginning, then every time you went to build out a page or create an area, you were stuck and then you would have to wait.
Hey, that was Andrew Chapman from me, c fm. Uh, I did an a [00:01:00] recording with him, an episode, uh, 1 0 5. We talked about how to launch a podcast. If you're interested in launching a podcast for your course or for your business, go back and listen to episode 1 0 5. Andrew has a lot of wisdom and experience on launching podcast.
Hey, if you wanted it to do your own introduction for the show, like you, you like. Listening to the show and you wanted to share a little bit about yourself, you can go to the show notes and there'll be a link for you to record your own intro. I'd love to add those for the listeners and for the guest hosts.
Before we begin, I got a quick question for you. What if the key to your online course is already inside you? That's right. What if you already have all it takes to make a profitable online course that can fund your mission? If that's something that speaks to you and you're, you've been thinking I do have a course.
Well, I have good news for you. we're doing the [00:02:00] therapist chair to. Course challenge. This is the five day challenge, where in just a few minutes a day, you're going to refine your idea, find your key audience, and know exactly what you're going to teach and who you're going to teach it to.
You're gonna find your spark to teach your online course. My goal is to give you two years of progress in one week of 15 to 20 minutes a day. Uh, just boiling all the good information down into bite-sized chunks for you to make a plan to create your your own online course. How can you do it? How can you do it when you're so busy?
How can you do it when you're not sure if people will buy it? Well, guess what? I'm gonna answer all those questions. For free in the five day challenge. So go to the website and in the show notes there will be a link to sign up for the challenge. And I'll also have a popup banner on the homepage for you to sign up for that five [00:03:00] day challenge.
Today we're gonna be talking with Alyssa Avant Man. We had a great conversation about communication. Communication is really, really important. Uh, if you've ever been on the wrong side of a bad communication. Uh, exchange and you're wonder why things aren't getting done and you just wish you had some more tools to get effect.
You communicate effectively with your direct, direct reports or your virtual assistant. Alyssa has some great tips and tactics that she uses. To communicate and make sure things get done for a virtual assistant. So I really hope you'll listen to the show and grab some, some tips for yourself on how to be more efficient and work with your virtual assistant.
James Marland: Hello friends, and welcome to the Scaling Therapy Practice. This is your host, James Marlin. This is the show where, where we help [00:04:00] mission-driven leaders put their mission in motion. Uh, I'm here today with Alyssa Avant. She is a podcaster, author, and the owner of Alyssa Avant and Company, a virtual assistant company that helps.
Business leaders fulfill their mission and get more done. Alyssa, welcome to the show.
Alyssa Avant: Thank you for having me back. I was excited that you asked me to come on again.
James Marland: Oh, yeah. Uh, I follow, I follow your podcast and your posts, uh, uh, mostly on LinkedIn. Um, and I'm, you know, always in the background getting your wisdom from, uh, your posts and your podcast. And I was really happy to have you on here because I. Being a business owner, like good support and good help is hard to find.
Alyssa Avant: That's true.
James Marland: You know, and when I ran a virtual assistant company, we made, um, big differences in the lives of our clients and our practices when, when we help them. And I know you, you [00:05:00] do the same thing. So why don't you, why don't you tell the audience, just catch us up. What do you do? Uh, uh, how long have you been doing it?
And, uh, yeah. Tell us about your, your practice and your business.
Alyssa Avant: Absolutely. So I have been working as a virtual assistant since 2007, so it is almost, it'll be. 18 years in October, and in the last couple of years I've actually grown it more into an agency and have four team members on board as well. We help Christian authors, speakers, and coaches to build and maintain their online presence. And we mostly help them with email marketing, social media, marketing content repurposing in their websites. And so we do that. Um. With those, those, uh, particular groups of people, it is a joy to serve them and to get behind them in their mission and to be able for them to contribute what they are supposed to to the
James Marland: Hmm. Yeah. Uh, because the, the [00:06:00] leaders, there are only some tasks. There's, there's certain tasks only they can do.
Alyssa Avant: Right.
James Marland: they are the, the, the, the most important part in, so in their process. But they don't have to do everything,
Alyssa Avant: Right.
James Marland: you know, they don't have to write the emails, they don't have to post on social media, but they can be the driving mission.
And vision and voice behind all those things and get it in order. So, I wanted to talk to you today about communication. Like communication, I found is, is one of the things that can either make or break a successful, uh, project, a successful, uh, working relationship. Um. And there's like pitfalls in communication and best practices.
And I know you deal with your clients and you have tools and tips and techniques on, uh, using communication effectively. So I wanted to talk, talk about that with you today. What do you think I.
Alyssa Avant: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I do upfront is a lot of times people are afraid [00:07:00] to get on the phone or on a Zoom call like this. But I always, um, when I'm onboarding a client, that's the first thing that I do is get to. Meet with them face to face, see if they're a good fit for our company, and, um, what would it be like working together and. After that, when they do come on board, we ask them how they would prefer to communicate. Everybody's different and everybody has a little bit different communication style. So we offer the one-on-one calls, we offer email and we offer text messaging. Um, so those are some ways that we can communicate with them on a, you know, daily basis, weekly basis ever.
How often I have clients that just like to do check-in calls on a monthly basis. Um, to be able to make sure we're on the same page. And I do the same with my, um, team. I check in with them. We actually use a program called Slack. Um,
James Marland: Mm.
Alyssa Avant: communications, but, uh, learning what the client wants and is most [00:08:00] comfortable with and offering that to them in the beginning is extremely important.
Just to see, you know, be flexible with them and what, what would they like to, how would they like to communicate? So we do that upfront, so we'll kind of get a feel for them. And then, um, that gives us, you know, open communication and knowing how to best serve them.
James Marland: So couple, couple things came to mind when you were talking. How important is that onboarding call? I, when I, when I would do this a. Sometimes it was difficult to schedule that onboarding call because people really didn't value it. Like, oh, we're just gonna talk about details and, you know, numbers and how to get contact.
Like, I don't have time for this. Can you explain to the audience, like, like what's the purpose of the onboarding call and how important is it to you to get that done? Uh, successfully.
Alyssa Avant: I think it's extremely important, especially since I've created this team approach, because I like to do the onboarding [00:09:00] call to introduce my client to the team member that they'll be working with and get them on the same page. And also to gather information because if we gather as much information up front, like in that onboarding call, uh, that means less times that I have to bother you down the road for all the little details of your business that we need to know
James Marland: Those calls add up that those little calls and interruptions add up. And then it's like the waste of time in between, like, let's say you're missing a, a vital piece of information. You can't move forward without it, but then it, it sets in their voicemail or it sets on their text or they, they don't get ahead.
Like there's a lot of waste. So what you said about getting it ahead of time all upfront, it, it's, that's, that's critical.
Alyssa Avant: Yes. Well, I used to do a lot of website builds, and one of the things that I hated about doing websites because I. It was because, uh, all the back and forth, because if you did [00:10:00] not get the information at the beginning, then every time you went to build out a page or create an area, you were stuck and then you would have to wait. Um, unfortunately, the only time that, that's a big issue for me now, and I dealt with it this morning, was I was trying to help someone. Um, with social media and adding some things, us as admin, on her team on social media, and there are so many policies, uh, like I guess their privacy policies and things that, uh, Facebook has to send you a text with a code and you know, so we were texting back and forth and waiting on it.
And um, so that's really the only time that we have that issue now, but. able to get. And I like to get on the phone with someone when we're doing something like that because then they can read me out the code and it can go so much smoother and faster. And, um, we do those types of things, making sure we're added to all of their accounts and things that we need access to, um, knowing what they use for each [00:11:00] platform.
So for example, we do a lot of email marketing. So I need to know what do you use for your email? What do you use for your website? Some people are Squarespace versus Wix versus WordPress. You know, just ironing out all those little details that we need to know in order to serve them the very best way possible.
I.
James Marland: So I was, I was wondering about, uh, you, you talked about their, their preferred method of communication, but you also talked about regular communication and getting in that rhythm. Uh, I know everybody has their own preference, but what do you think is the right amount of communication? Is it weekly, daily?
I guess it sometimes depends on the project. Once. Once you're in the groove, I suppose what, what is the appropriate level of communication and why do you think people should keep communicating even when things are going well?
Alyssa Avant: Well, my minimum for my team members to communicate with their client and they CC me is on [00:12:00] Fridays. We do like a recap. So
James Marland: Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Avant: they will do a recap letting their client and myself know these are the things that we're continuing to work on, and they give me like a status update. They give their client a status update.
You know, they might list the projects that they're working on, and then list where they are on those projects, what they need from the client at that point, what's kind of, you know, stopping them from completing the project. And so minimum is weekly. Now, if you're in the midst of a project and you are. Actively working. Then obviously you're going to communicate even multiple times a day, sometimes, depending on the process and where you are on the project. But for, uh, my team and I, it is, um, a weekly, uh, status update.
James Marland: So, and that's something you promised to your clients. You, you update them weekly. And I've, I've had clients in the past like, oh, weekly's too much. And, and, but there are reasons why you came to that weekly, uh, status [00:13:00] update and, uh, the, there's reasons why you put in your email, what you're working on and what, what's blocking you and what you've accomplished.
Can you. As I talk about those things, how did you come up with like the weekly rhythm and what you put in those emails?
Alyssa Avant: Well, basically it's been from experience over time of learning. Um. Sometimes things slip through the cracks and therefore we might forget, um, or the client might forget where we are on a specific task or project. And, you know, things get buried in email all the time.
James Marland: Oh, yeah.
Alyssa Avant: you know, earlier in the week, uh, we we're doing this weekly recap and maybe earlier in the week we had emailed and asked for a piece of information or pertinent, you know. Information for their project, and maybe they didn't see it, or so maybe we're texting, and like you said earlier, maybe they never open that text message. I have opened text [00:14:00] messages and forgotten to respond, which, you know, maybe you're at lunch and you're like, oh, I need to read this. But then after you get back to your office or whatever you're doing, you forget to respond.
And so that's why that follow up email on a weekly basis is critical because then. It's like a reminder, um, to myself and to the, the client, and it helps set a good expectation for both of us, um, to be able to continue moving forward. I.
James Marland: Yeah, I love that. Um, I, I always felt like the weekly email. We in our, when I ran the virtual company, we, virtual assistant company, we did have to learn about the rhythm of communication. 'cause there were often projects that were going very well, but just like you said, a piece, a critical piece of information or an expectation gets buried in an email or a text, and then it doesn't get done, or a step gets missed.
Then you do the wrong steps or the step got changed. You do the wrong steps for [00:15:00] weeks and it causes chaos when it's found.
Alyssa Avant: Yeah, exactly.
James Marland: like, uh, there's two, two, uh, two travel examples of that. One is the airplane. When an airplane's on autopilot, it's not going in a straight line. It's going, it's making micro corrections.
It's like taking a reading. A correction, traveling for a certain distance, making another reading, and then correcting. Yeah, it's correcting over time.
Alyssa Avant: right.
James Marland: the. If the distance in between the corrections leads to how big of a variation or mistake you might be making,
Alyssa Avant: Mm-hmm.
James Marland: far off you are. And then the other, the other travel one is, uh, it's much easier to pull to, uh, pull a car out of a ditch before it goes in the ditch.
Alyssa Avant: Yeah.
James Marland: Like, like if you don't notice until the end when it's too late, like either trust is broken or results aren't there, or. You know, I've worked with, um, [00:16:00] virtual, uh, like, um, maybe. Uh, the, the insurance wasn't getting done, uh, because it was a, just a human error and, and then you go three weeks without that, and then all of a sudden the therapists aren't getting paid because the insurance didn't go, like somebody didn't click the button to submit it or whatever.
It's not those, it's normally those little things that build up and without the course correction, without those check-in emails. It just gets buried and missed. So I didn't wanna glaze over those check-in emails 'cause I, I really think those status updates once you do them and on a rhythm, it, it makes good projects or it make it turns okay projects into good projects and great and good projects into great, you know, high producing very valuable projects when everybody's on the right page heading in the right direction.
So anyways, I li I liked, I I just wanted to highlight [00:17:00] that, those recap emails, it's not a, it's not a one half thing.
Alyssa Avant: Yes. Yeah.
James Marland: They're really important.
Alyssa Avant: to get used to doing that. It takes like getting in the habit of doing that. Um, and sometimes it takes a little time for. Them to see the value in it, but it is definitely a valuable piece.
James Marland: Yeah. All right. So, um. We started talking about different ways that, that people communicate. Um, there's email, text, phone, slack, uh, uh, how do you, and, and then people have their preference. Like I've had people say, oh, I only want text, or I only want phone calls. Like, how do you, how do you use the right method of communication for the, the task or the, the person?
Is there a way to, to work through that?
Alyssa Avant: Well, one of the things that I point out to them early on is say they choose email and things are going along smoothly. [00:18:00] Smoothly, and then maybe we're working on a project and I really need their feedback, but it is difficult to. Type it all out, um, what I need their feedback on, or it's difficult to point out what we're looking for.
And so sometimes I will say get to keep down confusion, the best way for us to do this is for us to connect via phone or zoom, um, so that we can look at this project together. We can look at this, you know, webpage together, email together, and we can work on this at the same time so that I know what. You're seeing and making sure we're seeing the same things and everything's lining up. Um, most of the time you. Kind of this, discover this on accident sometimes when you're realizing, hey, this email thing back and forth isn't working. Um, some people have a hard time communicating what they're looking for in an email they need to tell me.
And so, you know, sometimes it's the client [00:19:00] who points out, I could really, I could really, um, benefit from talking to you today about this. Or, you know, can we set up a call? So most of the time it is because it's diff it becomes difficult to communicate in the way that we've established.
James Marland: Yeah, I had a, I had a, uh, two email rule. If I couldn't, if I couldn't communicate it in two emails or things were getting worse
Alyssa Avant: Uhhuh,
James Marland: after two emails, then it, it's a phone call or a meeting, like you just,
Alyssa Avant: Absolutely.
James Marland: uh, man, I made some bad mistakes, continuing to try to understand and get my point across over email.
Alyssa Avant: Well, you both end up getting frustrated,
James Marland: Yeah.
Alyssa Avant: so I usually try to, you know, email 'em and say, Hey, can we get on a quick call or text them and say, do you have time to talk today? Or can we schedule something?
James Marland: Okay, so, uh. So do you, you make them or you ch you choose a preferred method of communication and then [00:20:00] you stick with that because, uh, one of the, one of the problems is knowing where to get the information. I think, uh, either it's email or text or we, we communicated over a social media, uh, platform and I was like, I forgot we even did that.
I was like, oh yeah, we communicated in that. I was looking through the emails for it, like. So, do you have any, um, uh, tips on like how to keep things straight? Do you just use one one platform, or how do you
Alyssa Avant: I try to use that. Sometimes it kind of goes awry because maybe they thought of something at the last
James Marland: mm-hmm.
Alyssa Avant: to text me or they're. You know, trying to remember something. So they text, text and ask a question, but I usually try to keep them on one. Um, two is not bad, you know, if we're kind of alternating between text and email. But, um, I just try to go with what they're most, they prefer in the beginning. And then as time goes on, sometimes that will [00:21:00] change. I, I'm flexible as I try to be as flexible as possible with that.
James Marland: Great. Well, what about, um, some tools, communication tools that you use? Like what are, what are some of the, the things out there that you use to keep projects and things on track?
Alyssa Avant: Well, a couple of things that I do. One is for the onboarding piece and le like the leads and things like that. I use HoneyBook. Which works really well for, um, for sharing information with someone who is interested in working with a virtual assistant, and then also for keeping up with the contracts and. the things like that. Um, and then I also use Asana as a project management system that will allow me to track the different projects that we have going in each of the tasks. And subtask, sometimes clients like to be included in Asana and be able to see what we're working on live without having to, you know, ask.
But I don't have very many that [00:22:00] want to do that. Um, but it's mainly just for the behind the scenes and it helps us. Stay on track. Um, one of my favorite features is that you can repeat task. We do a lot of repetitive task where we're doing something for the client on a weekly or monthly basis, and it will repeat that over and over so I don't have to keep putting it in. I really like that about it. It also helps me just stay on track. Um, another thing that I have that's not necessarily a tool, it's something we have to build out is a set of SOPs or.
James Marland: Hmm.
Alyssa Avant: Standard operating procedures, and I try to do these specifically if a client has something that we are going to work on, um, a repetitive task.
So we're going to do a weekly newsletter or a monthly newsletter, or we're going to do their social media on a regular basis and have kind of a standard by which we go by for that. Um, so that if one, you know, say. That something happens with one of the virtual assistants on the team. Maybe they [00:23:00] get sick or something, someone else could step in and do the work by following that procedure.
James Marland: Yeah, that, that's critical for, um, for past, for doing tasks over and over again with a standard level of, um, co competency and professionalism
Alyssa Avant: Right.
James Marland: for sure. Um, do, just, just curious, why did you choose Asana over Clickup or Trello or Monday or one of the other ones? Is it something that you made a conscious decision with or what?
Alyssa Avant: I like the style of it. We talked about that you had used Trello. Um, I liked the list and that when I open it up, one of my favorite things is I can go to my task and it has every task listed that I have to do, no matter what project it's on. when I was using Trello, I would have to go into a board to see each individual project. Um, it did not give me a good overarching like, you know, um, from the [00:24:00] sky view of everything I had to do that day or that week or that month. Um, it was, you know, a lot of having to open little. Different little, uh, boards. And so I really like that, you know, Scott, from the top view, okay, I have this many tasks.
Um, that was my favorite thing. And being able to make assignments you can assign to your different team members, um, each of the clients, that was helpful too.
James Marland: Okay, great. Um, before I, before I ask you about your, you know, your webpage and things like that, do you have a, uh, a story or a time where you worked really hard on the communication with a client? It might not have. F started out well, but you worked through some problems and then it ended up, uh, you know.
Fantastic. Do you have a, a story about that?
Alyssa Avant: Well, yes. Um, we. I have had lots of issues in the past where, you know, communication was in the beginning [00:25:00] difficult, and I think most of it was because that person was trying to. Share, um, details, you know, bit by bit by bit and not like that overarching. So one of the things that I did do was implementing, even if they don't prefer phone for the entire relationship, I like to have that in the beginning, a call in the beginning so that I can ask some standard questions and a good I. Feel an idea of how they work and how they like to work. I also created a, a, what I call my How I Work document, and that document talks about the way in which we practice and,
James Marland: Mm.
Alyssa Avant: the procedures that we use and. Like the fact that you're gonna get a weekly email, all those different things so that they, it sets the expectation and it, it, it helps them to know, this is what you can expect from me.
This is what I expect from you. Um, and that is, that has helped me over time because in the past, um, not [00:26:00] having those expectations set has caused issues with the communication.
James Marland: Awesome. That sounds really good. Um, having those, you know, how, how I, how we work best together, what we do, the standards, all, all of it works together to, so that the owner, the, the person would. Hiring the virtual assistant company can get, can get stuff done and get stuff done effectively, and, uh, stay on track.
So I love that, uh, I love what you do and how virtual assistants and a good, you know, the good support can make the difference between, you know, uh. Tears of joy and laughter or tears of anguish and frustration, why are things so hard? So thank you for what you do and your services. Why don't you tell us about your webpage and some of the services that you offer and your podcast.
Alyssa Avant: Okay. Absolutely. So, um, it is alicia avan and company.com and, um, you can go over there. It's, uh. [00:27:00] To see all of our services and the things that we offer. Also, I do have a podcast for Christian authors, speakers, and coaches. It's called Christian Business Advantage. You can search for it on your favorite podcast app, or if you go to the website, you can click podcast in the navigation there.
James Marland: Excellent. I saw you, you offer, um, some services for social media and, um,
Alyssa Avant: Social media, email, marketing
James Marland: marketing was what I was thinking of. Yeah.
Alyssa Avant: content repurposing, so like repurposing content you might have if you have like a podcast or a blog into other pieces of content, as well as helping with websites.
James Marland: Yeah. As, as someone who produces their own podcast, I'm raising my hand. That's a lot of work. It's like at least a half day to get all the, the repurpose, the blog post and the, the YouTube video and the audio and the, the graphics. Then social media posts, and then sometimes I do reel, you know, clip [00:28:00] reels out of it.
All that, all that stuff, it's all there. Like if you record any content or do some blogs, all your stuff is there. It just takes time to get it done so you don't have to do it all. You know, a virtual assistant company can really help you maximize your time and get your message out there. So anyways, thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Um, I, I really enjoyed your, our conversation. Thanks for being here.
Alyssa Avant: Thank you.
James Marland: Thanks for listening to the Scaling therapy practice. Remember, you don't have to do it all by yourself to put your mission in motion, get some support so you can do the best things that you do while other people do the best things that they do. We'll see you next time.
