This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Molly Rose Speed. Molly has a great story. She is a military spouse who had enough of being a corporate accountant cubicle dweller and decided to create a business to help military spouses and others reach their own dreams through entrepreneurship. In fact, she was named 1st Special Operations Group Spouse of the Year.

She is the creator of Virtual Assistant Academy which provides trusted Virtual Assistant solutions and flawless tech execution to busy entrepreneurs and business owners. Molly has become the go-to professional for some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the speaker/author and content creator industry. Even the former president of Chicken Soup of the Soul is her client. Molly has created the life she dreamed of and is helping others do the same. And I’ve asked her on the share her story and how to completely outsource your business.

www.VirtualAssistantManagement.com

Molly was a young, focused executive hustling in corporate America. She woke up one day and realized that there was more to life than just moving up the corporate ladder. Her husband was being deployed at a rapid speed. And when he was home, she was working and they hardly could see each other. So, she quit. Her husband came home to find out she did not have a job and said, “OK, you’ve got 4 months to figure this out.” She started doing freelance work and had success. It evolved into more clients and success in the personal development space. She was creating the life she wanted and other military spouses kept asking her how she did it. She saw an opportunity to help other military spouses do what she was doing in the virtual assistant space. Virtual Assistant Management was born.

How did being a military spouse help prepare you for entrepreneurship?

• You’re given this huge responsibility of running the ship when your spouse is gone. The house, the family, the finances, all the little things that couples would do, but on your own.
• There is a level independence that being a military spouse teaches you which helps to transfer to entrepreneurship
• . It also teaches you to be resilient and adaptable.

What there a catalyst that spurred you to quit? And what is your advice for someone who is in the same place you were and wants to make the leap to entrepreneurship?

• She went to a conference for high-potential young professionals.
• The term entrepreneur, the ability to use your skills and talents to create and sell services was introduced to her.
• Learning this gave her the lightbulb moment that there was another way.
• She was getting completely drained every day in the corporate world and was in tears a lot of days.
• She had to trust in herself and created a plan and took action on it. She had the choice and the power – it just needed her to take action. She did.

Talk about having a plan and taking action. How do you advise people in this area?

• First, you must figure out what you actually want.
• Define what you want your work to be. For example, Molly defined hers as a position that she can do virtually, on her own time, that pays her at least 75% of what she was making in the corporate space.
• When you envision what you want, the universe will open it up to you.
• But it takes an action plan.
• You should know what you are going to do every day.
• You should reach to others and let them know what you are doing. Your Power 100 list – the most influential people and those close to you that should know as they may be able to help you.
• “By doing nothing, you are not going to get anywhere.”

Other lessons that you feel are most important from your journey?

Being present in the interactions with people you are with every day.

• How you spend your day is how you spend your day – and it is your choice how to spend it.
• It is amazing how fast you can build a network.
• Pay attention to the people that show up and the opportunities – they can come out of nowhere and are so important. Be open to them.

Talk to us about utilizing virtual assistants, the dos and don’ts, etc.

• Entrepreneurs have a passion for the solution they are providing, but as they grow, they find that they wear a lot of hats and have created a number of jobs for themselves.
• There is a big difference between running a company and creating a job for yourself.
• Entrepreneurs need a plan to outsource from the beginning.
• When it comes to hiring a virtual assistant, it should be the first person an entrepreneur hires as they can where several hats and take a number of things off the entrepreneur’s plate. 
• They give you leverage at a lower cost.

If you were coaching someone on how to hire their first VA, what would you have them do?

• First, recognizing all the things that are on your plate and then start cherry picking all of the things you want to offload. This serves as your initial job description.
• Start with 5 hours a week.
• Each week should have a weekly meeting with the VA and an action plan with roles and responsibility.
• You can use a project management tool like Monday to help.
• Communication throughout the week is important. VAs where a lot of hats and have a number of ways to communicate – pick the medium that works best for you.
• Make them part of the team, share your goals and how they can make a bigger impact.
• By knowing the bigger picture, VAs can find opportunities to make things even better.
• Clarity is very important for everyone in the process to maximize productivity and success.

Tell us about hiring an outsourced, COO…

• This is the goal of a tenured VA in their career.
• They are the right-hand person for a business owner.
• They take your vision and run with the strategy, the how, and run and delegate a team to help execute the vision.
• A level below that is an OBM – outsourced business manager.
• This can be done at a fractional level, and you don’t need a 40 hour/week employee. They can execute their duties in 10-20 hours per week.

What are the major duties Outsourced COOs do and how can they do it in less than 40 hours per week?

• Technology and automation is a big part of things.
• Outsourced COOs are very good at building systems.
• They are good at taking projects and mapping everything out, hiring the needed contractors to help to do it.
• They can do payroll and book-keeping and interface with others in the business and even clients.
• They are the gate-keeper for the entrepreneur.
• Costs for COOs range from retainers of $5000 to paying a commission or a mix of both.

Talk about automation and its importance…

• If you are doing any task that is repetitive, you need to automate it and automate it all the way down to things like email templates.
• Online schedulers are very important to maximize productivity.
• Your sales funnels, how you sell, and after-sales engagement, etc. should be automated.
• Every area of a business, if broken down, can have a lot of it automated.

Other best practices to free time and be productive?

Take some time and look at your calendar for the last couple weeks. How did you spend your time? Did you enjoy it? How many things would have made sense to avoid or eliminate?

• Pay attention to what you are saying “yes” to and decide if you should be saying “yes” to these things.
• Working in sprints of say 90 mins at a time and then having a little break is good to help.
• You can also work in 45-minute sprints with a short break to maximize productivity.
• You must be intentionally with your scheduling and plans.
• You must also create days off.
• Automation is very important to help make this a reality.

​ Any other advice for managing and hiring VAs?

• There is a big difference between overseas and local VAs.
• It takes more work for overseas, but there are great people.
• For overseas, you must be very specific and be willing to work across the different time zones. In fact, local VAs can even help hire and manage overseas VAs.
• There is a place both types in a business.

Best Quote: By doing nothing, you are not going to get anywhere. 

Molly Rose Misfit 3:

Time freedom – wherever you can create this in your life, look for it and enjoy it.

There is great importance in human connection. Those your surround yourself with greatly affect all areas of your life. Choose wisely in your connections.

We are here to support and engage with one-another. Give and have gratitude. In the end, it is about the impact and experience you had on this earth.

Show Sponsors:

Five Minute Journal

www.MisfitEntrepreneur.com/Journal

Blue Lagoon Resources

www.BlueLagoonResources.com 

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Ari Galper. Ari is the world’s #1 authority on trust-based selling. He’s the best-selling author of “Unlock the Sales Game,” a must read by the way, and “The One Call Sale.” He’s been featured everywhere from Forbes to INC and CNN and is sought after by business owners, entrepreneurs, and major corporations like Citibank and GE to help them improve their sales organizations.

But the thing I am most excited for Air to share is the journey he took to become who he is. In some ways, it parallels my own journey with the Misfit Entrepreneur as we both have a very special why. Of course, we are going to talk all things sales and selling too.

​​www.UnlocktheGame.com for a copy of Ari’s book and other free resources.

Ari met his wife over 20 years ago. She was from Sydney, Australia. He came to meet her family and fell in love with the country. They lived in LA for a while and moved to Australia after the birth of their son. He was in professional sales in tech and other industries prior to going out on his own.

At the 6:30 mark, Ari tells the story of a major sale that would double the size of the tech company he was working. He did the demo and got awesome feedback. It went so well, he thought it was a done deal – until it wasn’t. This was where he learned how important it was to use trust-based selling to succeed.

• Somewhere along the way, it has become socially acceptable not to tell the truth to people who sell.
• Instead, we hear things like “sounds good,” “Send me information,” “Send me a proposal,” etc. without the buyer having any intention to buy at all.

Ari asked himself, “Why are people afraid to tell me the truth?”

• He realized that there is an invisible river of pressure that flows under every sales conversation, and you need to learn how to remove it, so you don’t play the sales game.

You must shift your mindset away from the goal of the sale and instead build deep trust with people where they feel vulnerable and comfortable enough to open up and tell you the truth.

You credit learning to be your son’s dad as a breakthrough for Trust-Based selling – what was the breakthrough?

• Toby has down syndrome which means he’s open and honest, kind, and a joy to be around.
• He has no hidden agenda with people.
• He is honest and open and doesn’t carry a shield.
• He lives in his authenticity and integrity.
• This is how it should be with a sale between the buyer and seller.
• We must detox from the old ways and behaviors of selling to a new way. A trust-based way.

So, what is it that companies and salespeople doing wrong in selling?

• Most people live in myths such as “sales is a numbers game”
• It’s not about that. It’s about at how deep you go in each conversation.
• The sale is not lost at the end of the process but lost at the beginning of the process.
• Most sales calls are over at “Hello.”
• The other myth is that sales rejection is part of the game when in fact, it is triggered by old habits and ways of thinking.

Define Trust-Based Selling…

The redefinition of selling as you know it.

• It’s not about making the sale for you. It’s not focusing on your goal but focusing on their goal.
• 100% authentic going deep underneath their problem to a level where they feel you truly get them.
• Trust-Based selling is making the process all about them and not you.

Take us through the process. How does an entrepreneur or salesperson get to the point where a prospect believes that they truly get them and understand them?

• Trust-Based language: Changing your words and language to show you are different.
• For example, always be diffusing pressure.
• Ari gives an example of a sales phone call at the 17 min mark and the moving forward conversation and how it should go. Instead of telling what they next steps are, ask “Where do you think we should go from here?”
• When you people feel you truly care about them and show it and back it up – it sets you apart.

Why is the sale lost at “hello?” And what do people need to do differently in the beginning?

• We have been conditioned to start the relationship at hello, to build rapport.
• Relationship building and trust-building are mutually exclusive.
• The mistake is made where salespeople try to get people to like and know them.
• Buyers don’t have to like you.
• Think of a doctor and patient. A doctor doesn’t have the luxury of being liked as much as they are responsible for diagnosing solving a problem with a patient whether the patient likes them or not.
• Build relationships after the sale – not before the sale, so it’s not fake at “hello.”
• Instead as entrepreneur or salesperson, you be the doctor. Peel back their issues and go to the place they don’t even know about and help understand the real challenge to solve.

At the 25 min mark, Ari gives examples of what to say on an initial call.

• It includes things like “asking for help” or asking if they “would be open” to a problem that you help clients solve.

How is unlocking the sales game comparable to the Japanese art of Aikido?

• Aikido is all about no resistance.
• You deflect and diverge energy in Aikido.
• When you sense pressure or tension in the sales process, you are conditioned to two responses – fight or flight.
• Instead, don’t try to fight resistance, but diffuse it and don’t go to “fight the battle.”
• Diffuse and re-engage.
• For example, if someone tells you that your “fees are too high,” the natural response is to fight the battle for them. Instead, say something like, “You are absolutely right, it can be perceived as high if you haven’t had a chance to actually the product or service to get the result you are looking for, to justify making this happen. Would you be open to looking at this from a different perspective to see how we can build a business case for this?”
• This is redirecting to a different path of thinking about things.

How does someone develop themselves to be able to practice Trust-Based Selling?

• It is about unlearning.
• People typically put on sales armor, get ready for battle, and react in the moment because we are not centering ourselves.
• People have a pattern of moving things forward and the minute that is broken, we freak out and get defensive, we over-educate, give stuff away – we lose ourselves and the ability to be the “doctor.”
• We must be 100% present in the other person’s world.
• It requires practice and coaching, a shift in mindset.
• Remove this phrase from your vocabulary – never ever again use the phrase “follow up.” Not in email or phone call, etc.
• The only profession in the world that uses that phrase is selling and sales.
• Stop being a “salesperson.”
• Get rid of the old language.
• Stop using “check in” or “touch base.” Instead use “I’m giving you call to see if you have any feedback from our last discussion or from our meeting.”
• Change you thinking and language and people will tell you the truth.

Talk to us about the “One Call Sale.” Explain your philosophy.

• It is Ari’s lifework in a book.
• It is a refined model that removes resistance at “hello.”
• It teaches you to be a “doctor” and have the right bedside manner to peel back the onion – like a therapist and patient.
• At the 37 min mark, Ari walks through some of the thought process.
• It is all about digging deeper and deeper below the iceberg.
• You job is not to move prospects forward, but to move them down the iceberg to where they say, “How can you help me?”

Final thoughts?

• Let go of the idea that your job is to educate prospects of and in your sales process. They don’t want work to do.
• They are not asking whether they want to buy a solution, but instead – is this person the one I can trust to solve my problem?

Best Quote: There is an invisible river of pressure that flows under every sales conversation, and you need to learn how to remove it, so you don’t play the sales game.

Ari's Misfit 3:

1. Stop selling. Build trust instead.
2. Be the doctor and diagnose problems.
3. Be present with people in their world so you don’t slip out into your world.

Show Sponsors:

Shopify (Get a 14-day FREE trial)

www.Shopify.com/misfit (all lowercase)

Blue Lagoon Resources

www.BlueLagoonResources.com 

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Carson Tate. Carson is the best-selling author of Work Simply: Embracing the Power of Your Personal Productivity and founder of the business with the same name which helps clients amplify team performance, better engage their workforce, and increase productivity.

Carson and the principles of Working Simply have been featured everywhere from Fast Company to Forbes to the Harvard Business Review. And Working Simply has helped some of the largest organization including FEDEX, J&J, Chick-Fil-A, and Lowes, just to name a few, improve their performance.

I bet you can guess why I asked her on the show. What entrepreneur wouldn’t want to improve team performance, better engage, and increase productivity? ​

www.WorkingSimply.com

https://www.workingsimply.com/work-style-assessment/

Carson started her career in corporate America in HR/Training. She then went into outside sales for Big Pharma and that is where the light bulb went off for her and where she realized she wanted to be an entrepreneur. It was like having her own business, until they changed her compensation which require her and her team to change how they did things. They had to become more productive, so Carson developed a system that got great results to a point where it became a model for the company. Carson saw that there was a good opportunity for a business to help companies in this area, so she left and launched her business.

What does it mean to work simply? What are the principles?

• Can you re-orient from output to impact and results only work?

What are the principles?

• It starts with identifying what is not working well
• Where are team members burned out?
• Do you have a communication or meeting issue?
• Depending on the root cause, that is where you go to work.
• For example, if there are too many meetings and they are ineffective – then the focus would be on optimizing meetings for results and time.
• You also have to look at how they team gets work done most effectively and make sure everyone understands it.

Where do you see challenges in productivity consistently?

• Execution is one area that is consistent.
• It is also looking at conflicts between individuals and teams. People need to learn how their personal dynamics can work better together.
• Meetings and email management are two other areas where a lot of productivity and time are lost.

Explain why email management is so important?

• It’s the primary communication tool in most businesses.
• Most people don’t know how to use platforms like Outlook most effectively.
• People are also connected to it 24/7 which means it makes it easier to get burned out.

At the 14 min mark, Carson and I have a great conversation on being productive in training people to be respectful of your time.

Thoughts on running a team to be most productive?

• Dedicate time to each of your direct reports to ask questions and get updates.
• A leader’s focus should be on coaching and development during focused time.
• Leaders should stack 1 on 1’s and do them in the same day if possible. This will help with focusing on the same activities which helps you to be more productive.

The data on multi-tasking proves it does not work. Multi-tasking is an illusion and goes against your biological design of voluntary vs. involuntary focus. You are much less productive when you multi-task.

Any other productivity tips that people should know about?

• The most important practice is the recognition that people don’t think and process information the same way, so there is not a one-size fits all solution to productivity.
• Many companies think everyone can function the same way in the same structure for productivity. Some will do well, others will not.
• Ultimate productivity comes when you are able to personalize productivity based on work style.
• Carson developed an assessment to help people understand how they process information and how to maximize productivity around it.
• Just go to https://www.workingsimply.com/work-style-assessment/

What do you see as the most important thing a leader can do each day to help their team’s success?

• Coach!
• Transform from manager to coach.
• A coach invites the individual team member to co-create and problem solve.
• It is asking questions vs. telling.

What have you learned along your journey about how to consistently perform and succeed?

• It starts with you.
• Exercise, rest, and meditation are essential for your ability to navigate entrepreneurship thoughtfully and intentionally.
• Self-care is essential.

Best advice to an entrepreneur just starting out?

• Radical self-awareness is needed to succeed.
• Get clarity around why and what your best way to contribute is.
• Once you start building a team – the self-awareness allows you to know where it is best for you to focus and work with your team.

There is a difference between being a leader and a CEO. What are your thoughts on how to maximize your success as a CEO?

• Having an information and eventually more formal advisory board with diversity is helpful.
• It is important for leaders to engage an executive coach at different stages to help them.

Your thoughts on how to select the right coaches?

• First, there are credentials for coached.
• There are processes, methods, etc. that coaches can be certified in.
• Another important thing is if they have experience in the area you are looking for help in.
• Above all, it needs to be a good fit. You have to be able to trust them and be open with them. ​

Anything else you feel is important for us to understand for success?

• Engagement and engaging your team.
• You must create and engaging environment for your team and your clients.

Best Quote: The most important practice is the recognition that people don’t think and process information the same way, so there is not a one-size fits all solution to productivity

Carson's Misfit 3:

1. Know thyself...
2. Take care of thyself...
3. Serve others...

Show Sponsors

Ecom Automation Gurus (Save 15%)

www.EcomAutomationGurus.com

Five Minute Journal

www.MisfitEntrepreneur.com/Journal

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Alisa Cohn. Where to start with Alisa. She has been named the top startup coach in the world and has been coaching startup founders to help them grow into world class CEOs for almost 20 years. She is also an angel investor and advisor and has worked to help everyone from Venmo to Etsy to Draftkings in their sucess. She has coached CEOs and C-Suite Executives at many of the largest Fortune 500s such as IBM, Google, and Microsoft.

And if that is not enough, she is a top leadership speaker and guest lecturer at Harvard, Cornell, and even the Naval War College. Alisa is the author of the best-seller, From Start Up to Grown Up and I’ve asked her to come on the show to talk everything startup and leadership.

www.AlisaCohn.com

Alisa was in the non-profit world and had a moment of truth when she was working at a university. A provost told her that “you could not manage faculty because the have tenure.” She thought that it could not be. She went to business school at Cornell and ended up focusing on finance and accounting. She ended up working at Price Waterhouse Coopers. She was fast-tracked. After working for some time, she knew it was not what she wanted to do. One Sunday she woke and thought to herself that she hoped to get the flu, so she didn’t have to go to work the next day. 18 hours later, she was rushed to the emergency room with the flu!

She was out for 2 weeks and during that time really thought about what she wanted. She went to a conference and there was speaker and coach. They were amazing. The next day, she followed the coach and watched her speak – she loved it and decided that she wanted to go that route. She took jobs during the dotcom boom and went through coach training. When the dotcom bubble burst, she decided it was time to go on her own and she’s been doing it ever since.

Define Leadership…

• A leader is like a conductor. They bring people together in service of something bigger and better, coordinated together – and then empowers the people to do the best work of their lives.
• It’s knowing where you want to go and having the vision and then finding the people and unlocking their potential to help in fulfilling it.

Qualities of great leaders?

• Great leaders come in all shapes and sizes.
• The greatest leaders care about people genuinely.
• They do what it takes to move the organization toward the mission.
• They make the hard the calls. They make sure everyone is on the same page.
• Sometimes it means getting in the trenches.
• Great leaders have situational awareness and do what it takes in the moment to be effective and powerful.

How do you teach people to gain better situational awareness?

• It’s first checking in with yourself.
• Second, it is recognizing that all others have their own bundle of emotions, priorities, dynamics, etc.
• Get curious and super observant as a leader and strive to understand these things in people in the context of what you are feeling.

Leaders have blind spots. What are the ones you see most prevalent in leaders?

• Leaders do have very similar blind spots.
• The first one is that leaders sometimes forget they are the leader – the boss. Your suggestions are orders. As a leader, you have authority and need to remember that.
• Leaders don’t realize how much they need to communicate. They need to repeat themselves over and over to make sure everyone has heard them and is aligned on the strategy and vision.

Most important aspect for a startup leader to get right from the beginning? Most important aspect for a leader in a mature company?

• Starting up, leaders how to figure out who to even higher and need to be charismatic enough to get people on board and raise money, etc. It’s working a miracle in some ways.
• Startup leaders must be adaptable and willing to persist against all odds.
• As a company matures, the leader has to be willing and able to rapidly grow.
• Alisa’s book “From Startup to Grown Up,” deals with this.
• All leaders must have emotional self-control and be able to weather the ups and downs.
• Leaders in mature companies must be consistent and be excellent at delegating and making sure everyone is on mission.

Talk to us about dealing with the internal politics of business….

• Any time you have more than one person, you have politics.
• People have different opinions, agendas, ways of looking at things, etc.
• In large companies, status and power is part of politics and politics in companies is reality.
• Leaders need to have organizational awareness and be savvy to navigate for good and not for ill.
• Leaders need to build relationships and network with those have power and align in the right ways with the people making decisions.
• If you want good things for the company, you need to be savvy enough that your voice is being taken into account when decisions are made.
• For startups, it’s about creating a great culture and hiring the right people aligned with it.
• For startups, it is also about being transparent and doing things in the light of day.

Power and Influence – what role do they play in the development of a leader and what should leaders understand about them?

• You must gain power and influence as you get more senior, or you will be sidelined.
• This means you must be networking with and savvy with those that make decisions and the key stakeholders.
• You have to look and see what is being rewarded in the company and make sure that you participate in it.
• Observe your surroundings and the power/influence dynamic in the organization and what drives it.

How does a leader and organization developer their guidepost and values?

• Spend a lot of time thinking through what you want the company and culture to be. It’s worth it to slow down and get it as close to right as you can.
• Sit down and ask what things your really value? What kind of company do you want to work at? What culture do you want to ensure lasts?

Key elements of a successful startup?

• You have to have a lot of magic.
• You have to have a strong view of what you can create and why it is significant in the market.
• You have to get the feedback and take the negative comments and keep going.
• You then must find the right team who are aligned and committed to the mission.
• As you grow, you will need to bring in more senior people who know how to grow a bigger organization – maybe even replacing yourself.

Personal mastery – how does someone learn to live and work at their peak?

• You spend a lifetime doing it.
• It starts with intention.
• How are you going to be better tomorrow than today?
• It’s about learning from the masters and what world class experts do to achieve peak performance.
• It’s also figuring out which things make sense for you to take on and do with discipline and diligence that make the most difference.

What have you learned that is most important for success as an entrepreneur?

• Resilience, resilience, resilience
• The longer you can stay in the game, the better chance of success.
• Keep putting one foot in front of the other and do the next right thing. ​

What is the most unexpected thing you found on your journey?

• A pivotal moment was in 2006 when she reached out to Marshall Goldsmith.
• She met with him personally and he took her under her wing and helped her get her start.
• She dared to say yes to working with him and it has made all the difference.

Best Quote: The longer you can stay in the game, the better chance of success.

Alisa's Misfit 3:

1. Get out of your comfort zone and take more risk.
2. Build your network early and often.
3. Be someone who is known for helping other people and the rest will take care of itself. Believe in yourself.

Show Sponsors:

Shopify (Get a 14-day FREE trial)

www.Shopify.com/misfit (all lowercase)

Blue Lagoon Resources

www.BlueLagoonResources.com