Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The OBM Educator. I am excited and ready to jump into this week's topic because I think it's something that is thought of second or third or fourth when starting a business in general, especially a service provider business, but I see it a lot with OBM as well, and that is the business of having a business, the business behind being an OBM. I'm going to be talking about things like the processes that you set up in your business, some of the contracts and legal things that you need to have in place in your business, and then the difference between working on versus working in your business. So those three things are really going to help you focus on running your business instead of having a business that is just for the purposes of servicing your clients, which is great, but we want to actually have a business, so these three things are really going to help you. So let's dive in. Welcome to the OBM Educator. I'm your host, Amanda McVicker, a veteran OBM who serves six and seven-figure entrepreneurs as well as educates new OBMs with the skills and confidence they need to start and grow their own successful online business management business. Follow along as I share valuable insights behind the scenes, sneak peeks and proven strategies to help you build a better OBM business when you make the decision to start your business right.
01:39
I remember back in 2019 when I was like I'm going to start a VA business. I had been waffling on it for like a year and I finally made the decision and I remember that it was like I put out a social media post and then I was like, yay, I'm in business and it's like, well, you know, technically, as a sole proprietor, it can work that way. But there were so many things that I didn't even think of until I was actually running my business that if I had thought of a bit earlier on, it would have made the running of my business a bit smoother. When I made the transition in 2020 from VA to OBM, I had obviously had a lot of these things in place as a VA that helped me be successful in running my business. But there were still some things that I needed to put in place to help me run my business better and, as I've talked to VAs who want to make that transition to OBM or new OBMs who want to start their business, these are kind of the key things that I'm going to be talking about the key things that I see missing a lot of the time. When I have a bird's eye view of someone's business or when I look back at my own business. These are the things that have helped me run my business better. These are the things that I've seen help other people run their business better, and so let's dive into those, the first thing being your processes. And so when we start our business, we really don't have a way of doing things yet. Right, we don't have a way of onboarding or offboarding or invoicing new social media things like that. We kind of piecemeal things together. With onboarding, we're like okay, yeah, like I guess send me your passwords and pay me, and those are kind of the things that you think about. But having different processes for these different scenarios is really going to help you in streamlining your business in the same way that you do it for your clients, and that's like a really important distinction of what we're talking. We do a lot of these things for our clients. We set up their processes, but we don't really have them for ourselves.
03:59
I remember my onboarding process. It was great for my clients, but for me personally it was very much manual and like okay, let me put this together. Let me put this together. And it wasn't until a season that I had probably like five new clients in a span. That's a story for another time. But halfway through that I'm like I need to get this figured out. I can't be spending all of my time doing all of this manually, and so I set up my process. But for our own business me and I say this from experience it's usually on the back burner that we set up our own processes. So my recommendation is to make it a priority to set up your own processes.
04:45
So onboarding, what does that look like? How can you automate it? What needs to be included? As an OBM, I always recommend having a very in-depth questionnaire so that you can learn about your client's business. I recommend having a strategy session so you can get on a Zoom with them and really hash out what it is that they're wanting to focus on. I recommend having a way to get credentials before that strategy call so that on the strategy call, you can sign into accounts and have them right there for any verification that you need. Like it's things like this that sure it's small, but it's going to help you so much more when you're like ready to start with the client and they're going to feel like they're so much more taken care of because you've thought of all of these things, and it's going to make your business run smoother.
05:36
The same thing for offboarding. What is your offboarding procedure? For some of us, we really don't think about it. You know we have long-term clients, but sometimes the partnerships come to an end or maybe it's more of a one-time project. What does that offboarding look like? What do you need to give to them? What do they need to give to you? Are you asking for testimonials, like, how does that all work? Another big thing that we really need to think about is your invoicing, especially if you're new to a business. What payment process are you going to use? Are you going to use PayPal or Stripe or Square? Are you going to use Dubsado payments, kajabi payments? Start thinking about, like, how is it that you want to get paid and set that up? Going with that?
06:21
Tracking your analytics, tracking your income, tracking, your expenses tracking. If you have an email list, how many subscribers do you have? Where are they coming from? Tracking your social media following, tracking your discovery, calls your close, rate things like that that you're able to see a bigger picture is really going to help you move your business forward, and that'll come into the third thing that I talk about. But if you're tracking your analytics like, again, we do this for our clients, right, we track their launches, we track their email marketing we need to do it for ourselves as well.
06:58
Another thing in the process is your marketing, like social media. Obviously, it's usually the first part where we announce that we have a business. But what does it look like on our consistent basis of marketing, like, how often are we going to post? Where are we getting the ideas? How are we tracking that? How do we put together the caption and the image or the reel? How does that all go together and what is the process there?
07:26
I think for a lot of people who grow their business, especially get to that OBM level, you're going to probably be hiring a VA at some point. Having this process down because social media might be the first thing that you hand off is going to make your life so much easier and have your business be so much smoother, because then you can focus on other things, and that's like the whole point of having these processes down is that you can then focus on other things. You don't have to waste brain space trying to put all these things together. Like, even if it's not automatic, it just flows better. So having your processes set up in your business is going to help your business. It's going to help you run your business better. So the next thing that we need to think about in thinking about your business and how you run it is the legal side of things, and so this is going to include number one contracts, contracts, contracts, contracts.
08:30
I've had many conversations with VAs who might have started out with the template that they give you in HoneyBook or Dubsado or whatever, but have never actually purchased a real contract that was written by a lawyer specifically for service providers and as an OBM, I feel like this is a non-negotiable you need to have a legitimate contract in place that is going to protect you, that is going to protect your client and is going to make you look like you are serious in your business. There have been times when I have started with a client or was about to start with a client, and the fact that I had my own contract was the reason that they signed with me. They saw that I cared enough about my business and I cared enough about their business to have invested in a contract. I have a contract specifically for service providers and I'm able to add in my services my agreements, my pricing. I can use it for retainers, for VIP days, for strategy sessions, and it protects me and it protects my client. It was written by someone who knows the online space, who understands the different nuances, and for that reason it protects me. If you do not have a legitimate contract in place in your business, I 100% highly suggest that you get that. I get all of my contracts through Destination Legal. I will have the link in the show notes, as well as a coupon code to get a certain percentage off. If you do not have a contract, I very much suggest that you go there to get their template and start putting it into your business immediately.
10:26
Along with contracts, there are other legal sides of your business that you need to have in place to be legitimate, and we all want to be legitimate, and so that includes, like registering your business, reporting your income as needed, paying your taxes. That's a big one. Speak from the perspective of being in the United States, but it's on a federal level, it's on a state level, it's on a local level, doing the research to see what is needed on all of those different levels depending on where you are. That is so important. I feel like it's such an overlooked part of these online businesses. Right, it's not a traditional storefront or agency type thing that has a specific place in a specific process for registering businesses. Sometimes you think that, oh, it's just like an online thing I do from home, that you don't have to complete those steps, but you still do.
11:25
Have your business be legitimate, have your OBM business be a professional business, get all of the legal registration side of things taken care of, and again, you can just Google for your state, for your county, like for me in Kentucky. I have my state registration, but I also have to do it for my county and I have to pay county taxes and submit a report for my county. So always be looking at what are the different requirements based on where you live. And so the last thing to talk about on the business of being an OBM is the difference between working on your business and working in your business, and you probably have heard that, if you've been around the online space for two seconds, that everyone's always talking about working on versus working in. And so when you're working in your business, that is doing client work, that is doing whatever it is that your business is Working on your business is what you do to advance your business. It is the strategic planning, it's the long-term goals, thinking ahead but then also taking care of, like, the processes and the contracts, legals, all of that stuff. That's the working on your business.
12:42
I think, especially as service providers, we are so focused on working in our business that we usually don't take time to work on our business. This is a huge reason why I don't recommend if, like, say, you have 30 hours a week that you can devote to your business, that you don't get four 30 hour retainers to fill up all of those 30 hours, because not only you know are billable hours different from actual availability, but you need time to work on your business. You need to be working on your business weekly, ideally daily, so that you can move it forward. This includes setting aside time to plan, setting aside time to reflect what went well, what didn't. You can do this on like a monthly, quarterly, biannually, yearly basis, right, weekly basis. What went well, what didn't go well, where do you want to improve? What are the things you want to do in your business, goal setting, especially and I know that this is really pertinent for people who listen to this podcast If your goal is to transition to being an OBM, what does that look like?
13:59
What are the goals that you have for that? When are you going to do it? That is the working on your business. Where do you want your business to go and how are you going to get it there?
14:08
You know there are some people who start as a VA, have a couple clients and are good with staying like that. That is great. I know that that is the case for a lot of people. But there are also people who want to continually growing their business right. There are people who want to scale, who want to add in additional products or services, who want to pivot to other things. You have to plan those things out. You really can't just like one day wake up and say you know what I'm going to do this today. Like there needs to be some planning and some reflection on what does all that encompass so that you can really make those goals happen. So when you're working in your business and you're doing client work which, of course, is totally important and appropriate for what we do as service providers.
15:06
We want to make sure that we're taking some time to work on our business as well, so I hope this episode was helpful for you.
15:14
I hope that you take some time to really reflect on where you can work on your business, where you can improve your processes, where you can make sure that you're on the correct legal side of things, because all of these things together are really gonna help the longevity of your business, to help you stay around for a while, to help you continue to grow, expand and meet the goals and the dreams that you have for your business and for your life. If you enjoyed this, I would love if you could give a rating or a review. Make sure you're subscribed so that you don't miss an episode, and I will see you guys next week. Bye, thanks for joining me for this episode of the OBM Educator. I hope what you heard today is helpful for you on your OBM journey. If you loved today's episode, I would so appreciate you sharing it and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Want to be a guest on the OBM Educator? Fill out the form in the show notes and I'll be in touch. Join us next time on the OBM Educator.