[00:01:24] A.J. Lawrence: Okay. This person knows how to juggle their business without any doubt, so much stuff and doing it so well. Her ultimate passion though, is helping people build their wealth in ways that are in alignment with their life goals. And in doing so has empowered thousands of her clients to reset their lives and businesses on a path that unlock their creative. I can’t wait to get started on learning from our guests today. So please join me in welcoming, Amy Amy Ransdell.

[00:01:54] Hello, Amy. Thank you so much for coming on the show. This was really cool.

[00:01:58] Amy Ransdell: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:59] A.J. Lawrence: I’m really excited. I’ve been diving through your material and stuff and doing so many cool things. Love for the audience to learn more. Yeah. As I was telling them just second ago before you got on. So yeah. I would love to know how you see yourself on your own journey. Where are you?

[00:02:17] Amy Ransdell: Oh my goodness. I’m going to assume so many listeners are gonna relate to this. I am an eternal student. Right. Like, I think we’re always our own worst critic, right. We celebrate all of our achievements. I believe in that. I celebrate every little win all the way through the journey, but I always feel like eternally at base camp one, even though I know I’m not. And I think it’s because I think as entrepreneurs, we’re so driven to keep building, keep growing, what’s the next thing.

[00:02:41] So my journey is there. Like I’m still very grateful and very challenged and inspired all the time is where I’m at in my journey as to what can we do next? Where can we grow? And that’s, that was my gut response when you first asked me that when we talked earlier, I was like, okay. That’s where I am I say. I’m very blessed to be able to do what we do and continue growing more things.

[00:03:04] A.J. Lawrence: Build up capabilities, yeah. That’s, I like that a lot. That is, yeah. Yeah. What’s the phrase? To bring a beginner’s mind, to be able to always be learning on that.

[00:03:14] In looking at your different efforts, what I really like is how entrepreneurs build their businesses and how they connect. I’ve learned from a lot of good people. And I’ve seen people who seem to have a business here, a business there, oh, we do this, we do that, we do this. But the ones I find that really have their game on, and this is why I was so impressed with you, each piece seems to connect to others in a sense, you seem to have a flywheel going.

[00:03:36] You know I love how in the real estate, coach you provide, the services to support real estate businesses, you do this. Was that part a plan? Did it happen? How did this kind of your, your conglomerate around- conglomerates the term? I’m going to use it in this phrase. This I masked her turns of phrases. This is what I do – how did that kind of come about?

[00:03:59] Amy Ransdell: So I love that. So conglomerates is a great word, I love the word synergistic, right? Almost symbiotics. And we’re just now, if you’d asked me 20 years ago, was this the plan? Was this the master plan thinking in the brain that would have been like, no, I don’t even know what the hell I was doing 20 years ago, but as I think in business, as you grow, you start to realize how assets that you’re creating can create other streams of income or solve other problems. And now what we do as business owners, we find a gap in the market, we find somewhere where a solution is needed, and then we create what solves that problem. And so if you’re already in A industry where you have the asset of the list that supports that industry, what other problems do they need solved?Because now you can use the asset. You already have to create another income stream that solves more problems and just keep doing that.

[00:04:51] So you’re right. I see people who are multi-business owners and own all different places. And there’s nothing wrong with that because then usually what they’re doing is they’re looking at this, the business operational thing as their nugget over and over again. It’s not about the widget, it’s the nugget. It’s the operation systems, not the widget. For me, I love community and I love growing list of people. So from that one base, how can we create multiple things? And that’s why you see it with me. So many different offshoots, but they’re all connected to the real estate entrepreneurial industry, for me personally.

[00:05:22] Now for one of our companies, we now also serve other industries. We have a whole medical division, for example, at REVA Global, but –

[00:05:28] A.J. Lawrence: Cool, because I was going to ask about how that fit in, but cool. In your background, in working as a real estate agent, now coaching, how did REVA Global kind of come about? Because I’ve been fascinated. One as someone who did, once I sold my agency six years ago, said I’m never going to have another office ever again. And I’ve been working with international talent, global talent all over the place. And I love some of the businesses that are being set up to create in different niches. So how did you come to REVA Global?

[00:06:00] Amy Ransdell: Yeah. So REVA Global, like what I was talking about how we find solutions that we can solve, the problem and solve. So the CEO of REVA Global Bob Lachance, we’ve both been in the coaching industry, or that’s been wrapped around the things we’ve done for almost 20 years, 17-18+, and having worked with thousands of small business owners in that process, right?

[00:06:20] These were all the coaching clients I’m talking about where small business owners per specific, most specifically within the real estate arena. And they would run into challenges all the time when it came time to scale, when they would get those overwhelmed moments that we have as entrepreneurs, where they hit the wall of overwhelm and they would start to lock down, procrastinates, hit the ceiling, law of the lid and not be able to really expand.

[00:06:42] And then they will go out find solutions in the outsourcing world then we would hear horror stories. And so we’re like, okay, how can we create solutions to help people scale up, create more efficient systems, create consistency for their business, with dedicated, trained hires that are not expensive and give them a better investment route for that and how do we provide that and solve the problems.

[00:07:07] So we set out with solving, what were the problems? So we became somewhat industry disruptive in the space of a virtual assistance that REVA Global, which is what we provide because we solved all the problems. That’s what it was. And so at the time, primarily, which was almost eight years ago now, and Bob was when it was originally started, it was mostly real estate entrepreneurs that we were serving.

[00:07:28] So the first, for several years, the majority of the training – free trainings and screening and hiring process that we did in our company were for people to support real estate entrepreneurs. And now that has since expanded, we now small business owners of every niche imaginable now that we serve, because the skills for small businesses don’t matter what widget it is. A social media admin, bookkeeping me, I can go on and on. Those are all things that we can support any small business owner with.

[00:07:53] A.J. Lawrence: I think definitely with COVID, I know that a lot of people who in the past would never even think about even remote employees are remote staffing. All of a sudden are going, oh, if I have to be remote, why not go fully global?

[00:08:09] How has, given that you’re adding services and adding industries I’m going to assume it’s doing well, but how is this going for you? How, how has COVID treated you guys?

[00:08:17] Amy Ransdell: Yeah, a couple of things. I’m just going to call the elephant in the room. When COVID first happened, we had a lot of our clients are business, small business owner clients, they know there’s uncertainty in the world. All of a sudden then everybody froze up for just a minute. We had a lot, like they were calling us saying maybe I should let my virtual assistance go because I don’t know what’s going to happen. And so they tend to want to cut ancillary services. But the majority of them know, because the first thing they thought, okay, this is the best hire I have for the cost.

[00:08:49] So if we’re going to head into some sort of uncertain environments, I’m just going to increase what I give my virtual assistants to do. And Hey, how can I add to my team? And again, thinking differently, right? So this year has, we’ve been able to serve so many clients because they are now in the headspace of everything’s virtual anyway. So we got past that objection, which was fairly common. And because we are in this uncertain environment where everybody’s looking at their bottom line much more closely, we’ve been able to be a cost savings of oftentimes 60-70% or more than what you would have hiring the same talent in your local market that worked in your office, where you have payroll expenses and all the other things that come with that. And with COVID they would combine the challenge of being together.

[00:09:34] A.J. Lawrence: For sure. Yeah, I really do that. Being able to bring it cause there are so many, I think we’re looking at a time where the concept of how businesses work with talent or hearing there, oh, we can’t find people they’re all in and it’s no, there’s great people everywhere. It’s just, you have to be the right business to attract them. Things are changing. Where it used to be like, okay, anyone, everyone wanted a job because there was not enough now, it’s yes, there are a lot of people on the sidelines, but talent has choices.

[00:10:04] Amy Ransdell: It does, but you said something really important. I think it’s really clear too, when you’re wanting to hire someone, right? You have to be crystal clear as to who you’re trying to hire and for what purpose. And I think a lot of business owners, they sometimes don’t take the energy to really think through their hiring process and who’s going to be the right fit, really create what that role and responsibility would be. And what is the personality avatar that’s the best fit for that?

[00:10:26] I will say at REVA, for example, we are not a contract for hire virtual assistant company. We are, we’ve supplied team members, longevity hires. These are people that are going to become a part of your family for a long time to come, just as if you hired someone in your physical office.

[00:10:42] And so we do a whole, a matchmaking service, basically it’s like match.com for virtual assistants. So we interview the clients and elicit from them their values and what it is they’re looking for. And then we go into our hiring pool, which is not a pool of resumes, these are people who have actually already hired.

[00:10:58] We’re paying them, even if we don’t have a client to placed them with, who have come through the talent screening process and have excelled, right? So we know a lot about them, predictive index, disc profiles. We have their resumes, references experiences, and we put them through several weeks of pre-training, where they have to go through testing on all kinds of proficiencies so that we have a really good idea.

[00:11:20] So when a client says, they come through our intake process and says, I need a certain type of support, right? We can go into our pool and find the perfect, maybe two, three or four virtual assistants for them to interview. So they’re not going through a crazy process of interviewing hundreds of people and hoping they find the right person who do all that work for them.

[00:11:37] And, and so it makes it a really streamlined process and our retention for that reason is through the roof. We are industry disrupting in retention and the clients have already experienced and the VAs have a great experience. By the way, these are college educated, highly skilled, awesome humans, okay. They’re amazing. And they deserve to enjoy their job as much as you want to enjoy the employee you’re hiring. So we work hard to make that happen.

[00:12:02] A.J. Lawrence: Now is it predominantly Philippines or you all around the world? What’s your talent based?

[00:12:09] Amy Ransdell: Yeah. Currently for us, we are primarily Philippines. I want to leave that door open because we have other contract things, other places, but right now, Philippines is our primary markets. Now we love the Philippines. Okay. We love, love, love it because first of all, English is one of their primary languages. It is really the primary language and they love American culture. Okay. They’d love it. Right? So that means they get American culture. They get our spine, our jokes, everything it’s as if they live here.

[00:12:38] They are in fact, I have team members that work for me that know TV shows and stuff better than me because I don’t watch TV. And I’m like, so they, they really do love our culture. And then the core value systems within the Philippines is beautiful too. Family is very important. Their education is highly revered. Their, their work ethic is highly revered. So you put those things together and they make an amazing hire for our clients. And I say college educated. I have some people who work for me who are brilliant. They run circles around me. They are so much better than me. So many things and have learned things I’ve never taken the time to learn, be certified and things I’ve never taken the time to be certified in. You might be shocked and surprised when you hire, if you just take out the idea that they’re different, they’re not, they’re just like us. They just live on the other side of the planet. So it makes it that

[00:13:23] A.J. Lawrence: I could see it from a real estate where you could specialize in kind of understanding the types of jobs, the work, the talent that works there, because I had so much difficulty until I actually did hire a woman from the Philippines, it’s called hire COO, where she acts and finds people for other people. And it was like, once that layer happened, it was like, oh, okay. This is amazing. Now she does more. But yeah, that she doesn’t do that now.

[00:13:51] Amy Ransdell: So that’s kind of what we do. We have a whole team, that’s full-time staff members, that’s what they do. They’re out in the hiring pool, in the Philippines, constantly interviewing, constantly screening them. And when we find the good ones, we have a waiting list for people to come be an employee at REVA. And a lot of it has to do with our corporate culture. It’s so attractive. People are, they want to be at REVA and they never want to leave.

[00:14:11] And so it does give our HR department a little leg up right, on the hiring side. But they are constantly doing that so that we have already on staff enough people to place very quickly with our clients, what they’re needing. So it’s like head hunting, but not really, cause we’re not waiting for the client to tell us what they want. We already know what the majority of needs of clients are. I’ve been doing it a long time. We’ve served hundreds, thousands of clients. And so we know, so we go out there looking for those buckets and then we already have them ready to go. So there’s no lag that can happen with other hiring services to where you’re waiting on them to work a notice somewhere else.

[00:14:45] Or I’m still moonlighting for someone else simultaneously or whatever, before they can actually work for you. With us, we already know if we’re placing them with you in an interview process. We know they’re available for you. And by the way, our VA’s too are not allowed to Moonlight. They’re 100% dedicated to the client they’re placed with for either 40 hours a week or 20 hours a week. There’s no competing. You don’t have to worry where time’s being spent and you don’t just get a virtual assistant, you get a team of support. So there is a client service manager, operations and quality that are also checking in with them constantly on their engagement or engagement. Is everybody happy? Is everything working all day for you?

[00:15:18] And because they want to make sure that everybody’s got what they need, you’re not even on an island by yourself. Once we give you a VA, we don’t just cut you loose and be like, okay, good luck. We’re staying with you throughout the process.

[00:15:30] A.J. Lawrence: No. And what I really like, because it gets back to who you are as an entrepreneur, you have some things you do that you’re a partner in, that you have other things you seem to be in a collective, the real estate agent, and then you have your own direct things. Like I was saying earlier, I was impressed with your building all around this real estate concept and supporting the real estate agents and then in the space, your own with obviously some offshoots that fit when the opportunity occurs. But this mix as being an entrepreneur,.I find that very interesting and more people doing. I know for me, it’s much easier for me to be my own stuff. I find playing with others is something I still work with and as partners and stuff. But how did that kind of come about for you? Because this is actually pretty cool. I think that you have some of your own direct things, you have things you’ve partnered, all this, and it all keeps fitting in once again to this overall concept you’re working on.

[00:16:24] Amy Ransdell: I think and I don’t want to speak for everyone, but for most of us who are going to go, who are going the entrepreneurial route, at some point we read some books that gave us that entrepreneurial dream or whatever it was and inspired us. And we have this thing in our head that entrepreneurialism is freedom.

[00:16:39] The reality is there’s a lot of hard work that comes with everything we do. Four-hour work week is a great title, but the reality is that it takes a lot more than four hours a week to get to where you can only work four hours a week on a business. That being said, is it absolutely possible and attainable? Yes. Okay. So for everyone that’s listening, if you work with me in the performance coaching side of what we do, which we work primarily with real estate entrepreneurs and how I have for 20 years now. We work with a lot of them and help ask the right questions to help them decide what is the most important part position for them to be playing in that company.

[00:17:16] If they are not a good CEO, then they should be bringing on a CEO. It’s owning and honoring what your strengths and weaknesses are. We play to our strengths, not our weaknesses and having that higher intention, a reminder, the purpose of what you set out to do in the first place. And if your higher intention was to not work crazy hours on the business, and you clearly know what your strengths are, then that helps you decide all the things to take off of your plate and to outsource and hire or partner with, or et cetera, and only retain what’s your best at, strongest at, the client, the company at the highest at, and enjoy. That there, if it brings you joy, great. If it doesn’t, then it’s probably needs to be given to someone else to do. And maybe that even means that you pull yourself back. You’re now just a smaller percentage of the company and it’s still running by others. But for everybody, that’s going to be like a fingerprint decision. It’s going to be highly unique for each person.

[00:18:07] And so as a coach, we don’t come in and say, you just do it this one way. We come and ask questions to help them decide what seems to be best. I am not the best at certain things. And so for some things I do, I just serve as a partner or I’m on the board or a voice. I don’t need to be that,

[00:18:24] In one of my companies, the thing I love to do the most, I wish I was only doing that. So we’re actually in a mission right now to hire talent, to pull me out of other managerial walls because they are not my joy center and we will make much more revenue if Amy is only in her joy center. So we’re going to go that direction.

[00:18:45] A.J. Lawrence: We have the joy center. I love that word. So I’m going to have to come back six months a year from now, we got to find out how the joy center was going.

[00:18:58] Amy Ransdell: Love it. Let’s do it, follow-up.

[00:18:59] A.J. Lawrence: Yeah, this is very cool. I like this concept. Now, in looking, we’ve been playing a little bit on that. You are obviously an entrepreneur who has been raising her game. You’re really taking this. What do you see- you’ve referenced a couple of things like playing to your strengths, identifying the partnership- but really what are a couple of things that you think are most important for your journey now that you’re at this higher game. What did you have to do? It could be actions. It could be thought processes. What is it for you to go from where you were successful to now this new higher level? What was it?

[00:19:35] Amy Ransdell: A couple of things came out for me. So first of all, anyone listening, you going to the next level is not going to be comfortable. And the world, your universe is going to have to shift and change to support it. Okay. And that’s not going to be comfortable for the world around you either. Every time you want to go from one level to the next, that’s going to require energy, effort, complexity of thinking and experience you may not have had before. It’s going to ruffle the feathers of your environments. Those that are comfortable with where you’re at now may not be with you where you’re going to go next. These are all very important things to really accept and be okay with.

[00:20:08] In fact, I’m not to give a plug. Let me give a plug. I just read the book Winning by Tim Grover. And I will tell you that book, if you are trying to go from 7 to 8-figures, go get that book. I think everyone should read it. He is hardcore in your face about what it really takes to win. And I, I like his writing style anyway. He is not, I am a no excuses, no whining girl, so I actually really appreciate his style of writing cause it’s like that. But I will say, not to be cliche, but the biggest thing everybody has to do is we have to work on what’s right between our ears.

[00:20:39] Your mindset is everything. Where is your belief system? Your belief system is I am not worthy of 8-figures, or if your belief system is I’m not capable of that, then your unconscious mind will find every bit of evidence to support that you can’t. And it will hold you back, okay. So you first want to be really cognizant of that. Do the work to support your belief system as to where you’re wanting to go next instead of holding you where you are. And if you are hearing herself holding you where you are, you’re going to stay there. So get out of your own way and be willing to let things go, be willing to eliminate things, okay. Eliminate a lot of stuff, shining objects, no squirrels, no shiny pennies. Just lean in to where you said you wanted to believe. So check that belief system and then lean in, right. And be prepared for all of the toughness that comes with winning. I guess your universe will shift. I describe it to some people as when you’re driving along the interstate, you might be going 65 miles an hour, doing really well, good gas efficiency, traffic’s flowing, and then all of a sudden you decide to either go a different direction or scale to the next level. I describe business, as I said upstairs, and you’re running along and you hit the riser. Ooh, that hurt for a second. And then you’re like, oh, I got to figure this out much of the, of thinking, oh my gosh.

[00:21:52] All right. And we figure it out. And then we jump up and we run along the next set of stairs and we do really well. And then we’ll hit the riser again. You’re going to have those moments where you hit the wall and you’re like, Dude, I haven’t figured that out before. I haven’t handled that before. Oh shit.

[00:22:04] Now, what do I do? And so then you’ve got to jump out. The car example, I sometimes say if they don’t understand the stair example, I’ll use the car example. And I say, when you want to go to the next level, it’s like pulling the emergency brake all of a sudden while you’re going 65 miles. Now imagine that for a minute. Is it going to look pretty? No. Are you’re going to be a little freaked out for moments of that? Probably. Is your universe around you going to have to shift and change? Hell yeah. They’re going to have to get out of the way if they don’t want to be in the wake of your spinning on the interstate. And that can be what it is, and be honest with yourself about that.

[00:22:35] Do not give yourself some sort of rose colored glasses idea that it’s going to be simple and easy, and everything’s just going to work. You want to believe it will work, but understand that in process of how, as it presents itself, will be things that are new and challenging. Embrace that, but understand it’s coming.

[00:22:54] A.J. Lawrence: In your experience of going through that, how straightforward did you feel it was, and not so much your experience of that because we all know that it’s oh yeah, we’re going to do, and it just is ugly, but somehow you get on the other side and you’re like, oh, it’s better. Because in talking with a lot of entrepreneurs, I always find it so funny that some of them say that their transition points happen because of panic moments like, Oh, shoot, uh, partner, sadly, one, one partner, one person had their partner dropped out and they had been, it had been a nice, good business. And then literally, like everything was going to blow up and he had to change everything. And in doing so, actually made a much better business. Obviously I’ve known a few people who had COVID hit.

[00:23:40] People talked about how COVID completely changed their way of refocusing the business. Allowed them to touch into a deeper thing. For you, what’s been helping you?

[00:23:50] Amy Ransdell: So many things come up to me in that statement and I think as business owners we get do, we are susceptible to complacency, right?

[00:23:56] We’re susceptible to comfort. And so if things are moving along just fine, we may not even face a different direction or a better efficiency or a better streamlined way to go do something or even an asset we could or revenue we could be generating in a certain direction. We may not even be paying attention because we’re in a place of just complacency and not necessarily in a place of creativity and resourcefulness, because we don’t need to be.

[00:24:20] So what happens is that we have these need to moments, right? Where like the partner dropping out or COVID or whatever. And so all of a sudden it interrupt the pattern, boom! We can’t stay in that path we were just in. It’s the roadblocks, and a giant chasm in the ground. We now have to find a way to jump the chasm, go around the chasm. We have unlimited possibilities of how we can, but we now actually are pushed into a state of needing to be creative, resourceful, and solutions-oriented. Now that does also require, like I was saying earlier, a positive mindset that still has the belief system and the direction you ultimately wanted to go for your purpose and why. That’s very important or you’ll end up in a negative state and you won’t be able to find the solution around the chasm, and you and I both know that entrepreneurs will give up and quit because they couldn’t find the solution.

[00:25:09] So do yourself the favor of being solutions-oriented. But that’s the, that is the challenge, right? And by the way guys, this will happen, even if it’s not a major thing, little micro things happen like that too. And I will say, we were sharing about we get there anyway, celebrate that, celebrate every small achievement through the process, acknowledge and verbally so.

[00:25:29] Acknowledge out loud. Know what? That was tough. We found a solution. Because you’re telling yourself neurologically that you can, you’re capable and that solutions really are presenting themselves. So then you’ll start to prime and be more reflex ability to find more solutions, because I guarantee you, you’ll continue to have challenges at any point in your growth, even without a COVID incident or a partner falling out.

[00:25:52] And I’ve had those things happen to me. I’ve had partners crushed my business more than once. I have had severe things happen. If you knew my personal story, it will blow your mind. And I don’t, I never lost my belief system and I don’t see roadblocks as roadblocks. I see them as creative possibilities for how I can get up around, over or inside.

[00:26:11] We’re an under the roadblock, but that’s my belief system. And so I’ve done a lot of work from a performance and payment behavior standpoint to work neurologically on that. Okay. So that I can more quickly move through. Challenges will present themselves. And isn’t that cool. Everything was for you only if you allow that.

[00:26:30] So complacency prevents things from working for us because we’re not even trying, we’re just riding along, going through the motion and isn’t that great. I also say stay curious and stay growth-oriented, right? If you’re always curious and growth oriented, complacency is a little harder to fall into because you’re like, ooh, It’s getting boring now, which is also an entrepreneurial problem.

[00:26:51] A lot of entrepreneurs, we get bored quickly, which becomes the shiny penny.

[00:26:54] A.J. Lawrence: Let’s buy this company, let’s do this.

[00:26:55] Amy Ransdell: Shiny penny problem comes in. Boredom is not a bad thing, but boredom is a good trigger, right? If you’re a good self-awareness of I’m bored, that’s a self-awareness moment to decide why? What does that mean for your business? What opportunities could that create for you versus just finding a distraction? Okay. So distractions aren’t good, but, um, does that make sense? I don’t know.

[00:27:13] A.J. Lawrence: No, it does a lot. And maybe in playing, cause I’ve been going through your coaching. The descriptions, not the actual program, but the descriptions and stuff like this. And there’s a question I have. Bringing that mindset you’re talking about that kind of openness, that growth, how do you layer that with- how do I even say it- structural need to analyze? Meaning, that I’ve seen people who are like, oh, you have to do your daily, your weekly, blah, blah, blah. You review your quarterly or blah, blah, blah.

[00:27:41] You have this. But then yeah, all in five and all this planning structure. But then a lot of times when I talk to entrepreneurs who are successful, they find that structure or they use it but without bringing in that a mush. How do you balance that need for a structural review within that openness that you’re talking – this growth-oriented openness.

[00:28:03] Amy Ransdell: So a structural review and the sense of yourself or of your team?

[00:28:06] A.J. Lawrence: All the above. I always like to say, okay, I got to go bottoms up, reverse pyramid, where it’s like, all right, I’m getting feedback from the team and everything’s coming in. I have to keep everything up, but then I have to also make sure that I’m aligned with myself. I’m like, am I actually doing what keeps, as you said, brings me into my joy box. Um, I am going to use that.

[00:28:28] Amy Ransdell: But it’s important, right? Joy is one of my favorite words. Half my Christmas ornaments say Joy. So first of all, I’m going to maybe ruffle feathers with this, but certain structural things balance, okay. So balance is a myth that everybody needs to follow the same structure.

[00:28:44] A.J. Lawrence: Yes.

[00:28:44] Amy Ransdell: It’s different, it’s a fingerprint thing. It’s going to be different for everyone. Everyone has a different strategy style, decision-making strategy, all that. So you can’t necessarily, it’s not one box. Now, the other side of that though, is I would say for all entrepreneurs, we, and we’re the worst for this, especially those of us that are visionaries or wanderers. We tend to really be out here in the clouds or all about the ideas. And we don’t get down into the measureables and the metrics.

[00:29:09] And then you got your operational type thinkers who are all about measurables and metrics, but they lose track of where they’re going. Like they’re up in the clouds. They’re not up above seeing the bigger picture, so they’re more of Yogi bearers. You don’t know where you’re going to end up someplace else. So they’ll get the metrics every day, but they’re not seeing that the company is actually going way off track. So I would say that a lot of you guys, you have to be willing to wear both hats. If you don’t have a partner that can wear the other hats.

[00:29:33] And I would say, get crystal clear and reminding yourselves weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, what is the destination for your company. It’s higher purpose? It’s higher intention, right? It’s why and its purpose, which is not measurables and metrics. This is more of its purpose. And then you want to reverse engineer down into what are the measurables and metrics that are your non-negotiables, what performance metrics are your non-negotiables and now yes, clearly assess that everything else goes to that you can’t reverse engineer into what you do each day, each hour, each team member does each day if you don’t have a clear destination. Everybody’s just going to walk around sick and their thumbs up and Woo, we’re going for a ride. And before you know it, you’ve got it for a ride way over here and you can’t keep the company going.

[00:30:17] I’m not saying this is easy, okay. Again, I love to be the voice of this. This takes massive discipline to do what I just said.

[00:30:26] A.J. Lawrence: It does. And I think practice, and I think I know for myself and for a lot of other entrepreneurs, I’ve talked about, it’s finding that balance because yes, if there’s a gazillion people who would tell you, you need to do X, Y, and Z. And it’s my biggest frustration out there. It’s no, that’s a good idea within structure and context and your resources, your own place and all that, but not everyone should.

[00:30:50] You have to find your own. And I think, yeah, I love the way you brought it in because it is hard work. I find it impossible. It’s been working with my team to build the intention of the company and I have all these concepts in my head. And then when they ask me, I’m like, oh yeah, to make it. So we’re really good. We create value. We do these things and that, and they’ll look at me and go, what does that mean? And I’m like, yeah, that’s the work. From inside here where it’s all so simple to like, Actually beyond that, it has to mean something.

[00:31:26] Amy Ransdell: Yeah. And it is really hard to regurgitate as entrepreneurs, what is in our head. But you really must, you must be able to help all of your team understand what the company values are. If you’re not clear on what those are, you need to get clear. And we do a lot of performance work with leaders of organizations, because they’re having some in, not in fighting maybe, but just confusions among the team. And they’re hitting a wall and they’re not, things aren’t jelling.

[00:31:49] And a lot of times it’s because none of them even know what the values of the company are. And it’s because the leader doesn’t know. And so we’ll do work with the leader and a performance coach inside to help them crystal clear on what those are. And then we elicit the values of the team and through a mediation process, help their values match the leaders.

[00:32:05] And if they don’t match the leaders then they don’t stay. But I want to go back though, to something you said about the word "should". I love Tony Robins talks about how you "should" all over yourself, right? Should is an emotionally abusive word, it absolutely is. And even if you’re using the word should on yourself, catch yourself as to how you’re using it, in what context.

[00:32:23] And we put so much pressure on ourselves and we sometimes lose our ability of critical thinking when we just work towards the pressure statement of "I should", instead of measuring everything against our higher intention and our chorus, our resources, strengths, weaknesses, money, manpower, time, and energy direction.

[00:32:40] We have to measure things. There is no shoulds. Yes, you should do your bookkeeping. And yes, like those things, but when it comes to ideas, direction, hiring, firing, you’ve got to go measure against the decisions that you’ve made and allow that to be your filter. That’s really important, but I, listen, I, I feel you, it is very hard to take what’s in our heart and pass it over.

[00:33:04] And so my last tip on that subject is I’m going to go you’re and be like, oh, you’re just glitching yourself, but don’t expect the people on your team to be where you are, okay. You own it. It’s your business. It was your baby. It’s your art, your birthday. You took the risk. You went for it. Okay. So in your heart, you’re operating at a 10, 11 to 12 in a 1 to 10 scale. And it’s crystal clear in your head. Don’t presuppose that they understand what’s really in your head and your heart and don’t expect them to come to the level you are. Right. At most, most of the time, even excelling team members are going to be the seven or eight on the scale. They’re not going to be where you are.

[00:33:44] Okay. But you still got to get as best as you can at explaining it and then keeping them on track with what that culture and values are and what your mission statement is. All those things, how that’s explained to the public, because obviously everybody that’s touching your company is how the public’s going to respond.

[00:34:00] But do understand that it’s a constant thing and you have to spend time and energy on, or your leadership team does, and then even you with your leadership team. And then just also, don’t be arrogant to think that everybody’s going to be a 12, just like you. They’re not.

[00:34:14] A.J. Lawrence: And I think one of the things, and just from what you’re referencing, that I found difficult, but I think is this idea that it really isn’t easy, but as you do it, it’s all skills.

[00:34:25] Not that they become super easy and you’re like, ah whatever. It’s that as each time you do it, you gain a little bit more capability, a little more familiarity with what it is. So getting into that process gets you even further along as an entrepreneur.

[00:34:41] Amy Ransdell: Absolutely. From a neurological standpoint, it’s like when you play the violin the first time, you’re not going to be a virtuoso. But you play the violin every day for four hours a day, for years and years, and it becomes autonomic. And all of a sudden you’re really good at it.

[00:34:55] So it’s the same thing. You’re right. We have to create the neural paths and muscle memory to be able to do those things over and over again. And they do become easier than the last time, because now you’ve got the muscle fiber and a little neuroplasticity to support the next direction you’re going, because you’ve done it a little bit before.

[00:35:14] And if I’m climbing up the mountain, every step I take becomes a little bit easier, right? It doesn’t mean it’s still not hard. You’re right. You support having stronger reflex and prime in your mind to make decisions more quickly. So where something might have been a really difficult area for you to make decisions in, the more you make decisions in that, just like with the violin, eventually the making the decisions there becomes a snap of a finger versus you spending 24 hours over thinking on it.

[00:35:42] It just still allow yourself that, Hey, coming back to something, we were saying, celebrate that achievement. This is very exciting. If something was a difficult thing for you to do, and now it’s becoming simpler and faster and more reflex for you, acknowledge that for yourself. Okay. This is a really empowering, it will just prime your minds want to do more and more to become really good at that. So, celebrate.

[00:36:05] A.J. Lawrence: Celebrate. I kind of have a big question I find, that very hard I believe to define, but it is so important. You talk about sticking to your strengths, finding your joy box. You were saying that one of the things about the entrepreneur is making sure that they know what their goals and how, you know, the direction so they can share before. But on top of that, not just what you’re trying to do, but how do you define success? What is success to you?

[00:36:32] You’ve talked about celebrating successes along the way, but I mean, do you define it as the land of plenty? Or do you define it as let’s just, we do what we do because of what we can get from it, but how do you define success?

[00:36:47] Amy Ransdell: I love this question. This is one of those ones where I want to sometimes run and avoid. I’m a very transparent person, but here’s the thing. So I want to just caveat this by saying, cause everybody that’s listening right now, they’re asking themselves what is success?

[00:37:00] And there is no right or wrong answer. Everything is right. As long as it’s right for you, this is really important. So I would say don’t judge anyone. Don’t judge anyone’s measure of success. Don’t judge where they are on the ladder compared to you or where they are in the chapter of their book compared to yours.

[00:37:17] There is none of that exists and somebody is going to be just as thrilled to succeed because they’d become, I don’t know, the best horse wrangler in the United States. And somebody else is going to measure their success because they were an amazing parent and raised some beautiful humans to become amazing humans, and that’s their measure of success. And someone else are only be satisfied when they hit nine figures, then someone else will only be right.

[00:37:38] So it’s going to be very different. For me personally, it’s all about impact. And success to me is how many people have we been able to positively impact. That’s success to me. And yes, revenue is important because it makes things move and it creates grease in the engine and it creates opportunities and it creates the ability to impact more. But to me, my personal measure of success is that "have we had positive impact on as many as we possibly can in all of the capacities that we’ve been given the abilities to?"

[00:38:09] My coaching program, for example, we use a phrase called Be powerhouse, and we also have powerhouse real estate and people sometimes just assume we mean houses, right? Because you guys do investments in brokerage stuff and so forth. And we do a lot of that. But to be a powerhouse in my world, and this is where success ties together for me is that I, as a personal belief, I believe I was given an unlimited power when I was created. And I have the opportunity to live to that to an unlimited way. And so I have been charged with the abilities and all the resources around me to be able to create a very strong house or foundation for my personal power. And for me, I want to use that to impact others. So as long as I’m utilizing my foundation, all network, knowledge, faith, you know, tactical solution, all the things to be able to do that, then that’s success.

[00:39:04] And if I can step back one day and look back and say without regret, I really utilize the gifts given me to be able to do that. That’s for me what that means, but please, if you’re listening, allow success to be whatever that is for you, just whatever it is, everything’s right.

[00:39:21] A.J. Lawrence: That is so cool, Amy. Thank you. And you’ve really shared a lot of great stuff for me and for the audience. Focusing on your strengths, we hear that again and again, but I think for entrepreneurs, it’s-

[00:39:35] Amy Ransdell: We don’t do it

[00:39:36] A.J. Lawrence: It’s the fire. We put out fires and then all of a sudden it’s oh wait, oh, what are you? I’m a fireman. I like that. And I love, and it’s going to make me smile every time I say it. But building your company so you can be in your joy box. That is something really powerful to go in there and it’s just fun to say. And then last that idea of making sure you have your understanding of the direction, but then as you said, taking it further. What does that direction mean as success to you? And then filtering it through all the way.

[00:40:09] You’ve shared a lot of very cool things. I’m going to be going and writing notes and getting on the slack channel with my team. So thank you so much. I would love to have you come back as definitely I want to know what happens with the joy box.

[00:40:21] Amy Ransdell: I would love to tell it. You have an amazing audience. You know, these are my, you guys are my people, those that are listening. You’re out there. I applaud you. I celebrate every one of you that you have decided to go after being entrepreneurs and building something that’s in your heart to build. And I think that’s a beautiful thing. So hope to connect with a ton of your listeners and absolutely love to come back. It’s an honor to be here. Thank you.

[00:40:44] A.J. Lawrence: Yeah, definitely. As always, we’re going to put all the links for you for your programs, for your different things. If you’re looking for virtual assistants and you’re in real estate or medical, that will be there, all of it on the show notes down below.

[00:40:57] Amy Ransdell: To all business owners, so make sure if you’re listening, it doesn’t matter what type of business you are. I have a chiropractor where we do in these medical, but not technically, we just do all of his appointments. We have a VA that does all of his outbound marketing and all of his appointments setting and appointment follow-ups, right. We have a guy who owns a tire. He’s a family business and a tire place. They sell tires. Anyway, it is a virtual assistant support those questions on their bookkeeping. Anything that can be done by phone or computer, it can be done by highly skilled trained or educated virtual assistant. Okay, 90% of what you do is done by a phone or computer. That means 90% of what you do. You don’t need to do anymore.

[00:41:34] A.J. Lawrence: That’s a good money quote too. So Amy, thank you so much.

[00:41:38] Amy Ransdell: No, thank you. This has been great.

[00:41:40] A.J. Lawrence: Everyone, can’t wait to talk with you again. Have another great episode soon. This has been talking to Amy and so much we’ve learned. Thank you. And we’ll talk again soon. Bye-bye

[00:41:56] This episode of Beyond 8 Figures is over, but your journey as an entrepreneur continues. So if we can help you with anything, please just let us know. And if you liked this episode, please share it with someone who might learn from it. Until next time, keep growing and find the joy in your journey. This is A.J., and I’ll be talking to you soon. Bye bye.