Amanda McVicker (0:00)
Hello and welcome to today's episode of The OBM Educator. Happy September. Where I am in the U.S., which is in Kentucky, it is actually feeling like fall, which is kind of weird.
And looking at the weather, it doesn't really look like fake fall, which is even weirder because we usually have like a fake fall and then it goes back to summer and then maybe a second fake fall and then goes back to summer and then start to get into fall. But it actually is looking to be lovely weather, which is always fun. And I know for a lot of, I would think at this point, almost everyone in the U.S. is back to school at this point.
We go back to school beginning of August, so they've actually been school for about a month now. But with this season, right back to school season, a lot of times people think of it as more of the start to the year than January. I know for me, a type A person who loved back to school, loved back to school, school supply shopping and getting my class schedule and my agenda all color coded and everything.
I loved back to school. And I think as an adult, that's carried with me. Even before I had kids, it was just something about September was like, okay, this is a fresh start, right? We have four months left in the year, anything can happen.
And so with that idea of this back to school time, I am going to be doing a series in September called back to business. And so just like with back to school being like a time to refresh, this back to business series is going to be the same. So going back to the basics of OBM, right? Even if you've been in OBM for a while, and maybe you feel like things just haven't been aligned, you're having trouble getting clients or finding packages that feel sustainable to you.
Sometimes it helps to just go back to the basics, go back to, okay, let's refresh and figure out maybe a different way to do this. And so that's what this series is going to be. And it's going to be every Thursday in September.
And so today we're going to be talking about OBM services in general. I'll get more into it in a second, obviously, but sometimes it's helpful to just kind of take a reminder of what OBMs do. What is the purpose of an OBM? How can they be supporting businesses? So we'll talk about that today.
And then we're going to talk about ideal clients next week. And so talking about how you can figure out who your ideal client is, why it might not be as restrictive as maybe you've been led to believe, we'll get into all of that. And then we're going to talk about packages and offers, right? And we're doing that in this in particular order because obviously like learning about OBM and the different types of services, and then your ideal client are all going to help you in figuring out your package.
If you create your package before you figure out who your ideal client is, you might be offering something to someone who doesn't need that, right? We need to know who the ideal client is so that we can create packages based on that. And then we're going to talk about finding clients, right? Because once you have your ideal client and you know what it is that you're offering, it's time to go find them. We don't need to be wasting our time doing little nitpicky things in the background.
Once we know who our ideal client is, who we want to work with, and how we want to work with them, it's time to go find them. So we'll talk about that during the fourth week of this series. So I'm really excited to get going into this.
I think it's going to be really helpful for you. Okay, let's get started.
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 competence 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.
So if you have been a listener of The OBM Educator previously, I hope, I really hope you know what an OBM is, online business manager. But maybe you found this episode and this is your first time listening in, you're like, what is this OBM thing? Or maybe you just need a refresher. Let's talk about what is an OBM. So online business manager is a term that refers to a type of service provider.
So someone who is providing a service to their client. So a type of service provider who is supporting a business owner, entrepreneur, whoever your client is, supporting them in the back end of their business. And so you think about the front end of the business being front facing.
That is what people see. And typically in online businesses, so think coaches and other service providers, what you can see are the coaching that they do, right? The coaching with clients, you can see the courses that are all perfectly put together. You can see the masterminds, you can see the podcasts, you see the social media posts, you see all of those things.
That is the front end of the pretty polished, all of that stuff. On the back end, that is going to be getting all of that set up, getting all of that to the point that it can look pretty on the front end. And so not to say that OBMs do everything on the back end, but we are responsible for the back end of the business.
And that usually comes in the form of management of usually three things. There are more, but this is kind of like the core OBM management tier and things that you need to okay with doing as an OBM. And so it is team management, systems management, and project management.
So with team management, if your client has contractors, it is usually contractors, but they might have a part-time employee or a full-time employee or something like that. Social media managers or assistants, podcast editors, graphic designers, website designers, anyone who is on that client's team needs to be managed. And a lot of times, business owners get to a point where managing their team is taking them away from their zone of genius.
And so team management definitely falls under the OBM role. You are making sure that your client's team is working the way that they should be, the way that they need to, to make the company or the business work smoothly. So you're making sure that deadlines are being met.
You are making sure that questions are being answered. You're making sure that everyone knows what they need to be doing. You are having hard conversations if team members aren't meeting deadlines or doing work up to spec, right? That all falls under team management.
You might be doing some hiring, onboarding. I would usually leave the firing to your client, but you would bring up things to your client of why maybe someone needs to be fired. Team management is going to be huge in being that filter between your client and the team, which allows everyone, both the client and the team, to get what they need, right? Client is not spending their time answering all the questions, right? They're not spending all of their time meeting with every team member, but team is also not waiting on the client to get back to them with a question.
The client obviously as a business owner is super busy and they have a lot going on and they can be the bottleneck in team. And so the OBM kind of comes and makes that flow of communication and flow of systems and things like that just work a lot smoother. So then the next thing that an OBM will typically do is systems management.
And this encompasses a wide range of things. So when you think of systems, sometimes you think of tech, right? The different tech platforms that are out there, and that's definitely part of it. But it's also the processes of how things are done.
So when you think of onboarding, or course delivery, or team hiring, or social media, or podcasts, blogs, like all of these things, the way that they get done is through a process. And whether that is a defined process, or a refined process, or a crazy process, it's all a process. So even if your client hasn't sat down to define what it is, they still have a process for doing it.
So as an OBM, part of your job is to create processes and standardize processes and optimize and systemize processes, right? Make things automatic where they could be, or take away superfluous tasks, depending on what's going on, and then defining them, right? Creating SOPs, standard operating procedures. Because when a business has SOPs and defined processes, it makes it so that things are not reliant on one person. If only one person, even you as the OBM, knew how to do something, that's not sustainable.
That's not a sustainable business for you. That's not sustainable for the client. And it's not sustainable for the team as a whole, right? If a team member has to come to you every time they're doing something because only you know the process, and sure, you showed them how to do it, but there's no place that they could go to see the SOP of this is how you do it, that's just wasting everyone's time.
So as an OBM, you're in charge of the processes and creating standard processes. But then on the other side, the tech and the implementation of it, the strategy of it, that also falls to you. And so that is going to be, and this is where if you were overwhelmed by something as an OBM, chances are it's the tech.
It's the tech piece of it because there are so many options. Some things are more difficult than others. Every client uses something different, right? But as an OBM, tech is going to be a really big part of the role that you play.
And so whether that is finding a CRM, or a project management system, or an email marketing platform, or a podcast recording platform, social media schedule, like it can be so many different things. You're kind of in charge of the strategy behind it, but then also the implementation and the maintenance of it, right? Like we can all set up Dubsado, but if we don't maintain it, it's going to turn into a crazy mess, if you know, you know. And so that all kind of falls into the OBM.
And a lot of the things that you typically think of that an OBM does really falls under that systems management. And then the last thing that if you're going to be an OBM, you really should get on board with having to do this is project management. And so in the online space, which is like the business coaches and the life coaches and all the businesses you see on Instagram, right? Project management is going to take the form of launch.
So managing launches, and there are a million and one different ways to launch things nowadays. And it's always changing what works, what doesn't work, the different tactics, all of that stuff. And so it's kind of the same as tech, right? Like we get overwhelmed thinking about all the different ways that we can launch.
But if you can know the basics of it, you can kind of figure out the different formulas in the launching world. But being able to manage the different pieces of a launch, you know, the pre launch, the actual launch, the post launch, what goes into that, you know, you're not writing like social media, but are you making sure that hype posts are getting put out there that you're the audience is being nurtured, you're setting up the the automations on the back end so that when someone purchases, they get put into the right places and they get the right information. You're making sure checkouts work testing sales pages, making sure all the buttons go to the right places, right? There's a whole bunch that goes into that launch management or project management.
And as an OBM, that's definitely something that you will find yourself doing. And so those are the big three. But I will say and I whenever I talk with OBMs who are like wondering about services, especially if they're coming from a VA background is you can add in well, you can add in anything you want.
But admin management is sometimes a good thing to add in, especially if the ideal clients that you're looking at are more solopreneurs, maybe don't have team or only have like one VA, maybe the smaller businesses, because it's going to be really attractive for those type of clients to have someone who can also clean out an inbox or, you know, do some scheduling right so that they don't have to hire another person for that. If you can take on the admin management for a client, if you would like to, that is always helpful. So I say that, you know, like, if you want to, or if you don't want to, because it's super important when looking at the types of services that you want to offer as an OBM.
And we'll kind of get into this more with like the packages and services, but be thinking about it. Now, you want to look at what is it what is it that you like doing? And what is it that you do not want to be doing? Right? So for a lot of people, social media is something that they don't want to be doing as an OBM, because it's not an OBMs job. And so you want to make sure that you make it clear that you're not writing social media posts, you're not writing emails, you could repurpose if you want.
And like you make that clear, you're not making graphics. But if there's a template, then you could use something like that, you want to be clear on the things that you will do as an OBM, and then the things that you won't do as an OBM. And then you want to make sure to talk about it in your discovery calls, put it in your contracts, put it in your welcome packets, right? And, and hold up to that, like when a client is like, hey, you know, I know you said you don't like writing social media posts, but could you write this like one for me? Right? Holding strong to those boundaries is going to help you later down the line.
Because once a boundary gets crossed, they get crossed more and more often. But be thinking about that, right? Like I call it the yes no list. What is it that thing that it's a yes, I will do this.
I enjoy doing it. I want to be doing this. Or what's a no, I do not want to be doing this on like that.
I don't know how to do that. Think about I don't know how to do that. Do I want to know how to do that? Or do I not want to know how to do that? Because if it's a I don't know how to do it, and I don't want to know how to do it, then that is definitely on the no list.
And you know, there's no point learning it. If it's on that, I don't know how to do this, but I want to learn how to do this, then you can look at opportunities of like, a client wants to, you know, do a podcast. And I've actually been kind of thinking about like getting into podcast editing, you know, like, maybe I can just offer that as a service, even though it's not a typical OBM service, because it's something that you want to do.
You know, you can use that opportunity to learn it. Okay, so this was a very quick overview of OBM services in general. And I hope it gave you a bit of a better understanding of OBMs, what they do, and how you can figure out what it is that you want to be doing as an OBM.
So next week, we're going to be talking about ideal clients and how to kind of figure out what an ideal client looks like for you. So come back next week for our back to business series. And I will talk with you all 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.
