In my role as an OBM and an integrator, I talk to a lot of business owners—and successful ones. These are the five big issues that I’m seeing successful empire builders face and I’ll tell you how you can fix them.

I’m not talking about issues that only happen when you’re in a startup phase. These are issues that I see coming from seven-figure, eight-figure businesses and they’re all really easy to fix.

I want to give you insight so that if you are facing some of these, you don’t feel like you’re alone because a question I keep getting asked is, do you see other people that have this same problem? The answer is always, yes.

The likelihood is if you are facing a big issue, someone else is facing it too. It is not just a you thing.

This episode shares:

 

• The battle between impact and money: The two don’t always align. In fact, the two are tug of warring. 
• Keeping pace: When we are moving too fast, we lose strategic perspective and we generally lose quality.
• Reinventing the wheel: When processes have no context, you can be doing the same things over and over again.
• Busy without strategy: If you prioritise properly, things run a lot smoother and you reach goals faster.
• Owning the role of CEO: Focusing on unique contributions that only the CEO can provide to the business’s growth and direction.

 

The battle between impact and money

 

The first of the issues that I want to cover is the battle between impact and money.

As Empire Builders we want to create a big impact. Usually, this is what started us on the journey that we are on now. We have a big purpose. We want to change the world. We want to make a difference. We have a fire in our belly that fuels us and very rarely does it have to do with us.

Most of the time, it’s about other people. The impact that we have on them, the world around them, the relationships that they have, and the life that they live. With that, we feel a big responsibility. We want to do everything that we can to support them, to create that impact, to grow that impact, to help more people, and for us, it does not feel optional.

We’re driven, it’s something we must do. If we can’t do it, we feel like we’re not doing the right thing. We’re not living up to what we’ve been called to do.

So how does that impact when it comes to money? What I see so often with Empire Builders is they have this desire to create the impact and they know that they need money from a business perspective. The two don’t always align. In fact, the two are tug of warring.

If you’re focused solely on impact, then the money side tends to fall over. If you’re focused solely on money, the impact side tends to fall over.

Which means we’re left in this place where we feel like we’re in a constant battle of having to choose and it is frustrating. But I want you to think about it this way. When we’re in this battle, our focus is split. We’re either looking at impact or we’re looking at money and we see them as opposing forces.

But what if we flipped it a little bit? What if we shifted our mindset so that we looked at the two as a collaboration, the impact needs the money. So it is Batman and Robin. One can’t really exist without the other. If you are focused on impact and you don’t look at the money side at all, what you will find is you will burn out very quickly. Or you won’t ever be able to make the kind of impact at the level that you want because you don’t have the money that supports it. This isn’t about greed or just revenue generation or anything like that. This is about, we need to have the resources to create that impact. Otherwise, we will end up having no impact.

If we don’t consider the money and the role the money plays, the vital role the money plays, on creating a big impact, we will have no impact. Because you will burn out, and if you burn out, you’re not helping anybody. There is no business, there is no you. There is no showing up, there is no sharing what you know, there is no getting the cut through that only you can get to, because there’s no fuel for that fire.

Then if we look at it the other way, there is no money without the impact. That is because you’re an Empire Builder. You don’t do things in halves. You don’t do things, just to take the first step and run away. If there is no impact, there’s no money. That’s because, without the impact, you’re not in it.

That impact needs you, and the money will only come if that impact is being made because that impact is what fuels you. It’s what keeps you going. It’s what keeps you seeing these are the opportunities in front of me. If you’re in a place where all you have to focus on is money or making money, you’re not going to sustain what you’re doing, because that’s not why you started doing this.

It might be part of the reason. But I bet you it’s not the sole reason. If we don’t show you the impact that you’re having and you can’t see it unfolding, there’s going to be no money because you’re not going to back it and the money needs you.

When we’re looking at this battle of impact versus money, you need to flip your mindset and see it as it’s not a battle. They feed each other and each is just as important and that means we need to give each the right amount of attention. They both need our time and our commitment so that we can keep growing.

If we just focus on one, that’s when things get wobbly. So remember, we need to cover both bases. Make the time to cover both bases.

Keeping pace

Empire Builders tend to have two modes, that are default. So this is in terms of, without trying, one is moving too fast, the other is moving too slow. They’re the default. Until we start to rationalise and until we start to really commit to changing the way that we operate, that’s just the status quo.

But both of these have issues and have consequences.

When we are moving too fast, we lose strategic perspective and we generally lose quality.

Our focus becomes on speed or our focus becomes on immediate impact, immediate outcome and that just adds pressure. The faster that you’re moving, the more pressure that gets added, especially if it’s not backed with strategy, and there’s a whole lot of reasons that we move quickly. We’re excited. We feel like this is urgent and it needs to be solved right now. We can see an opportunity and we don’t want to miss it. There are lots of reasons. Sometimes we just feel anxious or we just want to feel like we’ve achieved something, so we move faster.

But very rarely is the outcome as good as what it could have been if we took a breath first. On the flip side, if we’re moving too slow, we start to lose opportunities and when I see empires moving too slow, most of the time it has to do with a decision. They need to make a decision about something, or they’re procrastinating doing something.

It’s that delay that misses them opportunities and it actually causes mental exhaustion.

Because even if you’re not doing it, you still know that you need to. You still know that there’s a choice that needs to be made, or there’s a thing that needs to be done. In your mind, in the background, that’s still sitting there. It takes that little bit of your energy.

Now imagine that. Ten choices. Fifteen. Twenty. That little bit of energy isn’t little anymore. Because it’s happening across all these different areas. Then we’re suffering the consequences of moving too slowly, of being unsure. So what we need to do is work out a better balance.

We need to know when to move quickly and when moving a bit slower is okay. The way that we do that is to know your core drivers. When I’m working with a lot of my clients, I usually am in on what all their goals are and I know them as people. So I know as people what’s important to them and I know from a business perspective what’s important to it.

That means that when we’re having conversations I already know what the crucial pieces are here. I know where we’re headed. I know where we’re headed based on a business front and based on a human front. When there’s a decision that needs to be made or when there’s a really exciting opportunity that lands in our lap or a new thought that pops into our minds and the things that could develop to be, I have something to go back to because I can measure every opportunity or every decision against these core drivers. Is this something that is moving with us in alignment with those drivers and these goals? Or is it something completely off to the side? Because every time we choose something that is off to the side, it means that something’s taken away from one of our core drivers and are we okay with that? So often we can’t make a decision until we understand the consequence of that decision. Sometimes the answer might be, yeah, it’s actually okay in this scenario to take that opportunity and to do it and to do it quickly, because that actually feeds straight into what we’re doing.

But sometimes it just means you’re taking away focus, energy, and time. From the things that really need it now, that you’d already decided without emotion, without urgency. The more that we can come back and have that tangible, measurable plan to go back to, you’ll make far better decisions and you’ll be able to keep a better pace.

Because you won’t be constantly going between fast, fast, fast, or slow, slow, slow.

Reinventing the wheel

 

This is something I hear from people that I work with a lot.

“I feel like I’m reinventing the wheel. I’m organised, but even if I’m organised, I still feel like I’m doing the same things that I’ve already done. There has to be an easier way.”

Usually, this stems from Empire Builders trying to be organised and creating processes.

I’m an OBM and an Integrator, so I love processes. But I also know that the second that you create a process, the second that you document it, it’s pretty much out of date because time has moved forward and time changes things.

I also know that processes that are contained within a system have context and context is what makes your processes long-lasting. So we’re constantly reinventing the wheel and doing the same things over and over again, even though we have processes because those processes have no context. They don’t know how to function and be of use without you or the person that wrote them. We need to start looking at what are the systems in our businesses these processes support because that’s when we start to see systems of scale. That’s when we start to see a reduction in the impact of people changing roles or leaving or coming in. The impact of that. The reason being that the systems are not built for any one person.

They’re built for the business as a whole. The processes tie back into those systems. The two feed each other and that’s what makes them last longer because they can be done by anyone with any knowledge of that role because the context is there. They don’t have to know when to use this process, why to use this process, whether it’s this process or the other process.

If I change something in this process, is it going to affect a different process? Will it affect a different team? What will that do to the bottom line? There are all these things that happen within processes if you leave them without a system. Put them in systems and then the systems work together and the picture makes sense.

It’s that clarity that will keep your business driving forward and you won’t be reinventing the wheel anymore. The wheels are already there in motion, you might just support them and improve them.

 

Busy without strategy

The fourth thing is being busy but not strategic.

We’re Empire Builders, who like to be busy. Usually, it’s because being busy makes us feel like we’re closer to the impact we want to make, or we feel productive. But, being busy and being strategic are not the same thing, you might be doing a lot. Let’s be honest.

Most of our Empire Builders out there are doing a lot but it might not be the right thing. When we’re not focused on the right things, we go round in circles. At least that’s what it feels like. Whenever really moving forward, sure, we’re getting a lot done. We’re getting through a lot. I’m not really seeing the outcome of that and that’s because we’re being busy. I also want to add the context of what is business today might not be in a month. The things I do today that would be counted as busy things, that I’m not going to see the impact for, in a month’s time, they might be the right things, and I’d see the impact very quickly.

Therefore, in that scenario, they’re not busy anymore. The difference is the timing and the priority. This is how we fix our constant lack of time, even though we’re doing lots. We start to look at prioritisation. Priorities fix everything. If you know what to do when to do it, and why that we have to do it in that order, in that way.

You will get to your outcomes far quicker. It’s methodical. It’s planned out and you won’t burn out as easy. You’re seeing impact faster. You’re jumping a lot of hurdles when you do things in the right order. That’s just how project rollout works. That’s how operations work. If you prioritise properly, things run a lot smoother and you reach your goals faster.

If you’re in that position, what I really want you to do is take a look at where all your time is going. Really, where’s your time going? Before you go to do the next thing, think about why you’re doing that. What is the purpose? What do you want that thing to get you? Is that something that’s going to happen soon?

Or maybe is there something else that you time is better served doing and then shift. It’s okay to shift. It’s okay to change the scope of different things. Nothing ever has to be set in stone, especially if we wanna be constantly moving. Nothing ever stays still if we’re moving. So you’ve gotta be flexible and that’s okay.

Owning the role of CEO

 

The last thing that I want to talk to you about is owning the role of CEO.

You might be thinking, that doesn’t really sound like an issue. That just sounds like a dream, but can I tell you, I see Empire Builders spending way too much of their time doing other people’s jobs, not being CEO.

Not because they have to, but they do. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. Just because you can do it well, doesn’t mean that you should do it just because you can do it faster than someone else also doesn’t mean you should do it.

Not if you want to be the CEO, getting the opportunity cost in a business, there is only ever one CEO. There’s lots of workers. There’s lots of people in the organisation and they all have their part to play. There’s only ever one CEO. That means you have to choose, that means every time you do something that isn’t in your CEO role that someone else could be doing, you’re choosing not to do your CEO role.

Your time and energy are getting taken up by something that isn’t serving you. Someone else can do it. Whether they’ll do it as good as you, whether they’ll do it as fast as you, whether they’ll do it in the same way you would. Totally different story. But the truth of the matter is, only one person can be the CEO.

If that person isn’t you, no one else is doing it. What will happen to your business if they have a CEO who’s there most of the time but then sometimes just disappears? Things won’t stay on track. Things wouldn’t get to where they could be as quickly as they could if they had a CEO who was leading.

Every time we choose to jump into somebody else’s job, someone else’s task, something that someone else can do that is not a you-only thing.

We often desperately want to be CEO, but the reality is it’s harder for us to stay there. Or to work our way up to staying in that role, because it’s a new way to operate. It’s not the same as it’s always been. If I’m an admin assistant, there’s four admin assistants. There’s four of me. There’s more wiggle room for my role.

If you’re the CEO, there’s only one of you. There’s no fallback here. So, we have to operate differently. To do that, you need to start looking at your capacity and look at all the things that you’re doing. Can anybody else do any of those things? What are the things on there? Only you can do, nobody else, because they’re the things you need to be aiming to do all of the time.

It doesn’t mean that you have to be doing it all tomorrow, but you’re setting yourself a baseline and you’re understanding,  this is what my role should be. You’re starting to see the gaps and the opportunities to grow because if you’re doing things that other people could be doing, it means that you’re not spending that time looking at growth or impact or new opportunities.None of those things will happen unless you’re managing it.

As much as we can, we want to start building our team and bringing in the right people in the right roles where you’re not needed. Then we equip those people to do the best that they can do and it might look different to you and you know what? Most of the time, the results they get, they’re going to be better than the results you would have gotten because that’s their jam.

Your job is to be at the head of the table. We want to own the CEO role, but we need to understand what that really means and be practical about getting there because it won’t happen overnight. Just like success doesn’t happen overnight. Creating a little bit of a transition plan is okay. It’s practical. It’s saying, all right, I want to move forward. One step forward is still one step forward.

Wrapping It Up

So they’re the five big things that I talk to my clients about, that I talk to Empire Builders about, that I’m seeing right now in 2024. 

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The number one question that gets asked of Virtual Assistants and Online Business Managers is, what’s the difference between a Virtual Assistant and an Online Business Manager?

I don’t think I have met a person who hasn’t asked this question.

As an empire builder, you’re constantly seeking ways to work smarter, build your brand, and amplify your impact. But with the day-to-day tasks of running a business, it’s easy to lose time and focus on what truly matters: creating a lasting legacy and experiencing life to the fullest.

You’ve likely heard of virtual assistants (VAs) and online business managers (OBMs), but what’s the difference, and which one does your growing empire need? In this blog post, we’ll dive deep into the world of VAs and OBMs, exploring their unique skills, pricing, and involvement in your business. By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of which choice is the best fit for you: a skilled task-master or a dedicated growth partner.

 

This episode shares:

 

• Understand the terminology: An online business manager (OBM) is a virtual assistant (VA) who has specialised in business management, working remotely and utilising technology.
• Focus on the end goal: General admin VAs are primarily task-based, while OBMs look at the bigger picture, considering the entire process flow and system to achieve business goals.
• Distinct skill sets: General admin VAs have niched down into general administration, while OBMs boast high attention to detail, strategic focus, and operational project management skills, all based on a solid understanding of running a business.
• Training and development: General admin VAs typically train in skills specific to their service offerings, whereas OBMs consistently invest in broad skills that support all of their service offerings.
• Business management and operations understanding: General admin VAs possess a great understanding of their specific role, while OBMs immerse themselves in the client’s business, grasping the interplay of various components that make it successful.
• Depth of involvement: General admin VAs are usually ankle-deep in a business, managing tasks within their zone of genius, while OBMs are fully immersed, seeking ways to improve and grow the business.
• Relationships within your business: General admin VAs often build relationships with the business owner or manager, while OBMs develop relationships with all stakeholders, including team members, customers, and suppliers.
• Proactivity and initiative: General admin VAs are proactive within their contracted services, while OBMs exhibit hyper-proactivity across the entire business, anticipating challenges and seizing opportunities.
• Level of personal attention: General admin VAs typically have more capacity and a larger client base, while OBMs work with a limited number of clients, ensuring a high level of personal attention and commitment.
• Assessing your needs: To determine whether you need a General admin VA or an OBM, consider if you want someone to handle specific tasks or a fully-immersed growth partner.

 

Terminology

 

An OBM is a Virtual Assistant.

Dun, dun, dun. What does that mean?

When Virtual Assistants began, they were primarily admin assistants. They were people who had secretarial skills and when the internet became a thing, that’s when Virtual Assistants started to begin.

Over time though, the industry has grown and changed at the same speed as technology like this was founded on the internet. So as technology grows and expands, so does the industry and the people within the industry and the things that you can do within this industry.

So what a VA used to be known as is not accurate anymore.

There is the VA industry, and that is anybody who offers business services in an online manner. Remotely. Contractors.

There are lots of different specialties within that industry as a whole. An Online Business Manager is a VA who has specialised in business management and does their work online.

When we say VA, what we’re referring to is a general admin VA. Somebody who has niched down into providing general admin services across businesses.

 

My journey from admin Virtual Assistant to Online Business Manager

 

Now that we have cleared that up and we all know what we’re talking about, I want to share a little story.

For a long time, I was a general admin VA. At least I referred to myself as an admin VA.

One day, one of my clients said to me, “Leanne, you are not an admin Virtual Assistant.” And I was a little bit confused. If I’m not a virtual assistant, what am I?

They said to me, “you’re an Online Business Manager. The way that you see my business, the skills that you have, and the way that you run your business as well as my business, that tells me you’re not a admin VA. If you put what you do and what an admin VA does side by side, it’s very different.” And I thought, huh, this sounds interesting.

So I explored it a little bit further and what I found was amazing and then I transformed my business at that point because it made so much sense. I had been frustrated at the level of VAs that weren’t really running businesses, they just decided, I can use words, so I’m going to charge for it and getting compared to people like that, getting compared to $5 an hour cheaper services, thinking, but they can’t do what I can do. And it’s because we weren’t doing the same things. I wasn’t comparing apples with apples.

I would love to share with you what I really learnt and what the differences are between a VA and an OBM. There are 9 things we’re going to go through.

 

1. Focus on the end goal

• Admin VA: Task-level focus – timely and professional.
• OBM: Task and end goal focus – improve and upgrade processes to achieve goals efficiently.

An admin VA is primarily task-based.

They are exceptional at completing certain jobs or certain tasks in a timely or professional manner. They look at the task, they look at the extent of the task, they do it, they come back to you with a job well done.

An OBM looks at the bigger picture.

If we are looking at one task, we’re not just looking at that task, we’re looking at the whole process flow and we’re looking at the system around that task.

What’s the purpose of it? What is the way that we approach this? Is that the best way? If this task was done in a different way what would the impact be on the rest of the process? What do the pieces involved in this task and process do to achieve our end goals?

We (OBMs) want to see the bigger picture. We want to see everything within a business working in a system to support the business goals. So we’re looking at that entire machine rather than looking at the goal of the task.

 

2. Different skill sets

• Admin VA: General admin skills and/or niche skills.
• OBM: Admin skills, with a focus on strategic operations, project management, and a comprehensive understanding of running a business.

“Life is much easier for everyone when you have people around you who genuinely get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it.” ― Gino Wickman, Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

VAs have niched down into that general administration. So it’s across the board business admin.

An OBM has admin skills. Generally, we didn’t just start with all this knowledge and this capability. At some point, we’ve been in admin roles, we understand admin, but in a role of an OBM, that’s not our focus and it shouldn’t be our focus, because our jam is to have high attention to detail, a strategic focus, and looking at and managing operations.

We also have a really solid understanding of what it takes to run a business. A business as a whole, not just a piece of it or a niche of it.

What impact does the technology have on that? What impact does the team have on? OBMs will focus their energy on getting all of the pieces in a business established and working towards that big end goal.

Whereas admin VAs are exceptional to a deep level at their tasks.

 

3. Training and development

• Admin VAs: Skill-specific training or experience-based, often engage in annual training.
• OBMs: Comprehensive training, regularly updated, and a higher financial investment in their development.

Admin VAs will generally train in skills specific to their service offerings, to their niche.

They’re the things they do every day, or they rely on their previous experience in terms of administration and administrative tasks. They might change a little bit, but the whole foundation of what they do and what they are don’t change at a rapid pace.

A lot of VAs will do some kind of annual training, they’ll brush up on something that tends to be the pattern in the industry.

OBMs train in skills that support all of their service offerings and they update their skills regularly. As an OBM, I want to know how to make my business run better.

When I’m learning how to make my business run better, I’m learning how to make your business run better. So it has an ecosystem of expansion and education. OBMs will generally invest in more training and they will spend more money.

In that training, we seek it, we make it a pillar in our businesses, especially when our role is to lead and guide and know, we need to have the most up to date understanding of things that are going on in business world. OBMs don’t just schedule in annual training, we don’t stop training. What I mean by that is we do formal education and enrol in courses.

If you’ve got an OBM who’s not learning every day, they probably aren’t a good one.

Yes, I said it. Because when an OBM is faced with a new scenario or a problem, it’s their job to go and find a solution. It’s their job to be able to learn and adapt and make executive decisions as the business grows and changes.

Every day we’re learning all the tools and resources that will help grow your business to get us there. Put aside annual training time. We learn and we grow and we change every day. It is built in to our role. We will be learning how to run your business better and how to run our business better. So think about it. Every time I am upscaling or expanding my knowledge to make my business grow and run smoother, I’m getting all that same knowledge to do it for your business. Then when I’m doing that same thing for your business, it’s boosting my knowledge from my business and it’s this awesome little ecosystem that starts to happen.

OBMs will generally invest more financially in training because of how paramount it is to our role.

If you have an OBM who isn’t consistently learning or updating their skills or interested in what’s happening and what’s working today, They probably aren’t a very good one. We need to be curious. We need to be interested. We need to be invested in growth of ourselves and of your business and because of what we do is all about making sure the business is doing everything it can in an easy way to achieve its goals, we need to be equipped with up to date knowledge.

We need to know what’s working in business land right now. We need to know if something has changed between last year and this year. We’re core team members. If there is a problem, or if we’re looking at an opportunity where we need new ways to do things, an OBM will go and find the solution.

They will go and solve the problem and if they don’t know how, they will learn. That’s the idea here. It is not a situation where we see a problem, or we have this desire to achieve something new, and then we just stop and go, sorry, I don’t know. We need to be consistently learning and OBMs learn every single day, every day in my business.

I am learning. I very much, in myself, like to keep my skills up to date. I’m an avid learner, and I enjoy it, and I’m naturally curious. I’m, I naturally want to do the things better, and I want to learn how to improve, and I want to learn how to tweak things, or explore completely new options that flips everything on its head.

That gets a better impact. That’s the aim of the game here. So when technology moves as fast as it does, when people move as fast as they do, when team members have different personalities and change, you need to be able to grow and expand with all these changes.

 

4. Price point and pricing structure

• Admin VAs: $45-$50* entry-level hourly rate, with packages for set tasks and discounts for multiple hours.
• OBMs: Outcome-focused packages, usually starting at $75* per hour, reflecting their skills, knowledge, and dedication.

*As at 2024 in Australia

How much do VAs charge? How much do OBMs charge?

For general admin VAs in Australia, at the moment in 2024, the entry level rate is about $45-50 an hour at AUD. That’s for someone who has the skill to be an administration assistant.

Maybe they have worked in admin as an employee and now they’re going to do it in their business. So they’ve got that skill set, but might be new to the industry or new to running their own business. That’s the entry level. Anybody that is charging less than that hasn’t really invested in their business at all yet.

If they’re charging less than that, they are selling themselves short, and they’re not considering the expenses that exist running a business. But generally, someone entering this industry at the moment, $45-50 an hour, and they tend to charge in at an hourly rate. They also usually will do retainers where they’ll package up a bunch of hours and then you’ll get a little bit of a discount because you’re buying hours of their time in advance.

Some will then niche down into certain services. So they might have a particular skill. Let’s say they are in general admin, but they have a flair for design – they might then use that as an add on to their service. 

If you’re working with an OBM, it’s a little bit of a different structure. OBMs will be shifting away from charging an hourly rate because when you charge an hourly rate, you are putting all of the weight on the client. If I charge you an hourly rate, I’m saying to you how good I am at my job will impact how much you then pay for.

So if I take longer to do something because I haven’t bothered to increase my training, increase my skills, you’re paying for that. If you need a certain job done and it takes me longer and then you’ve run out of hours, well guess what? That job ain’t getting finished. Or you have to pay me more for it.

If we flip that and we look at the outcome, hey, I need someone who’s going to do this for me. I want this complete and OBM will then come back to you with that. This is how much that will cost, not a, this is how much time it will take. Therefore, this is how much it will cost. They’re factoring in if something goes wrong, if everything goes smoothly, if there’s additional costs or they’re going to have to work, different hours or whatever that might be.

They’re taking the responsibility for the outcome. Not you. So, when you work with an OBM, you’re going to get the result that you’re wanting. You’re going to get that thing finished or things happening the way they should without the price fluctuating. The other thing that you need to think about with OBMs is that when they are packaging up their services, they’re packaging up the level of knowledge and understanding they have about businesses, operations, management, and the level of responsibility and ownership that goes into that kind of role.

They are there to make the whole business run, to achieve the end goals, and that includes consistently reviewing what’s happening and keeping their eyes on everything. And then we tweak and we change and we address things when we need to, that’s what you’re paying for. So it is very hard to then say, Oh, you spent four hours thinking about my business. So I’m going to charge you this. That just seems silly. So this is why you’ll find OBMs packaging and doing value-based pricing versus an hourly rate. If you are really pushing for that hourly rate, I would encourage you not to do this. What you would be looking at though, is OBMs in Australia, who are entry level into being an OBM, you’re looking at $70-75 for a fresh OBM.

If you want someone who’s got some experience, you’re looking closer to the $100 mark. If you’re looking for someone who can integrate a whole business and be a strategic partner and see the gaps that you might be missing and hold a lot of the responsibility, you’re looking higher. So now you’ve got a little bit of a ballpark.

 

5. Level of understanding of business

• Admin VAs: Understanding from running their own business.
• OBMs: Immersion in the business world and a comprehensive understanding of their clients’ businesses or niche industries.

Admin VAs have a great understanding of their role. Whatever the service that they’re offering you is, they have an understanding of that task, of that process, of what looks good there and what doesn’t, but that’s where it kind of stops.

They have a general understanding from running their own business. But they’re not investing on bigger principles or learning how to make the business machine run to achieve objectives.

OBMs have the understanding of running their business, but they also fully immerse themselves in your business. They need to know how businesses run and run well and what makes them fall over, what makes them better in business land as a whole.

They’re never just looking at one little piece of the puzzle. We understand the pieces that make up a business machine. Because if you don’t fully understand all the different components that go into running a business to make it smooth, to make it easy, to have consistency in brand and delivery, to build an audience, to market, to have profitable services, to deliver exceptional customer experiences. If you don’t understand the different things that all work together in a business, to be successful, you are not going to be able to run that very well.

OBMs invest in these things. They’re the things that we’re constantly looking at and we’re looking at how each piece of the system is working with the rest and making sure that any change that’s made isn’t going to negatively impact the things that are around it.

We want everything to work cohesively in that bigger system. Then any changes, we anticipate what the impact will be and we make different decisions based on that, those things that we’re anticipating.

 

6. Depth of Involvement: Ankle-Deep vs. Fully Immersed

• Admin VA: Task-specific communication and touchpoints.
• OBM: Complete understanding of operations, culture, vision, and objectives, working closely with key players.

If you look at how involved in your business as a whole, an admin VA  will be ankle-deep. So, thinking that, let’s say, your foot is the task. That’s the level. They are exceptional at staying at the foot level in their zone of genius and nailing that.

They will come back to you and they will talk to you and they will improve everything within that task. They’re looking at that aspect. They are ankle-deep and they’re communicating with you for things at that level. And so when we’re focused on one piece. If you look at a whole cake versus just a slice, they don’t need to check in with you as much about one slice as it is in comparison to if they were to be talking to you about all of the slices.

That’s the difference here. VAs will check in and have touch points and be involved in the level of their tasks, but they don’t need to consider all the pieces around them.

OBMs are in the depths of that ocean with you, and yeah, we’ve got an air tank in case something goes wrong. We’re ready for the disaster, we’re prepared for the future, and we’re exploring with you. So we’re down, down deep, head underwater, fully immersed. If you think about it, OBMs need to understand your business really, really well.

If you want to improve something at that level, you have to invest the time and the energy and have an understanding of what makes your business work.

Considering:

• What does this look like?
• What are the known factors?
• What are the unknown factors?
• What are the things that make us amazing?
• What are the things that we need to improve?

We need to be in it and in it every day. We need to have that head underwater level of involvement. We need the frequency. We need the lots of touch points because all of that builds into our understanding of how to improve this thing and how to give you as the business owner, more time, more space, more freedom, the ability to create new revenue streams, to grow, to expand.

The ability to go on holiday if you want to without everything falling over. That can’t happen if someone isn’t fully immersed and dedicated. We need to get a full understanding of what happens, but also of the people, also of the resources, also of the audience, all the different pieces of that business, because then we can do our job better.

OBMs will have a far deeper level of involvement in your business. We are key players here. Your success is our success. We get very tied to what’s happening and things improving because we do invest a lot of our time and energy. into your business.

 

7. Relationships within your business

• Admin VAs: Build a relationship with the business owner.
• OBMs: Build relationships with the business owner and stakeholders, becoming a known and trusted entity.

An admin VA will generally build a relationship with either the business owner or the person that they’re working with – whoever is managing the VA within that business, sometimes it’s not the business owner because they don’t need to really work with anybody else. If they’re performing general admin services, they don’t need to know the ins and outs of every other team role.

With an OBM, we have to build relationships with the business owner and with all the stakeholders. If we’re going to have this level of involvement in this business and get really immersed in it, then we become a known quantity. We need to know who all the team members are. We need to get to know your audience and who they are, the customers and who they are, the suppliers and who they are.

We become a sticking point in your business and we start to cultivate a different culture within your business. So instead of you as the business owner, as the CEO, having to be the touch point for everything, you’ve got somebody else who can do that and to achieve that, we get sticky with everybody and we’re good at that.

People feel safe and secure when they see our face or see our name. They know who we are. They know that we’re close to you. They know that we’re as invested in this as you are. So there isn’t this, I’m getting, palmed off to some random person. We’re a known quantity.

Plus, we do build a really solid relationship with you because we have to. If we’re wanting to make sure the business is going in the right direction, in the direction that you imagine, if you’re able to achieve what you want to achieve, that relationship has to be good and it has to be tight, which brings us the level of initiative.

8. Level of initiative: Proactive Problem-Solving and Improvement

• Admin VAs: Initiative within their specialty.
• OBMs: Hyper-proactive, excelling in problem-solving, troubleshooting, and identifying opportunities for improvement.

An admin VA is proactive and has initiative within their contracted services within their specialty, and usually if they have a specialty, they already know what’s gonna play out. That’s their specialty. They’ve done this over and over again.

They’ll know if there’s gonna be sticking points that are going to come up because they’ll be similar sticking points to what happens in other situations. So they’re proactive and have initiative within their scope.

An OBM has to have hyper-proactivity across the entire business. If we are taking ownership of a business as a whole, and our role is to keep all of the wheels spinning and keep the business moving in the right direction, the level of initiative that we have is paramount.

Online Business Managers need to be able to:

• Think about how to keep that business moving, how to be strategic in our thinking, the things that we’re doing, the opportunities that are there, and then being able to present them back.
• Make decisions on the fly.
• Troubleshoot.
• Proactively anticipate where some of those cogs in your system might stop working. What’s going to happen if this falls over? Is it likely to fall over? If so, what are we going to do about that? Or should we be doing this a completely different way?

An OBM should be coming to you with solutions and coming to you with, hey, we’ve had this problem. This is what we’re going to do about it. Hey, there’s this opportunity. Have you thought about doing it this way? Rather than waiting for you to lead them.

It is that level of initiative and investment that really makes a rock star OBM.

That level of commitment, understanding, being able to think strategically at that big picture level. There is value in an OBM.

Someone who can partner with you to grow the business, change the business, who can look at multiple pieces moving all together and be able to get them all better to get a better result.

 

9. Personal Attention and Capacity

• Admin VAs: Typically have multiple clients.
• OBMs: Carefully choose clients who value their dedication and style, seeking a long-term partnership.

Personal attention is when you look at the capacity of admin VAs versus OBMs.

Admin VAs will generally have more capacity. They do smaller jobs, so they need more clients. The client base is bigger, so your interaction with them is smaller because that’s all that’s needed.

As an OBM, we have to choose our clients very carefully and we have to make sure that we can align with them, that we get along, that we have the skills and the relationship with you to be able to get the business where it’s going and for it to be enjoyable for you and for me because I’m going to invest a lot of time in this.

The other thing you want to think about here too is, if I’m going to be this level of committed, I can’t do that with lots of people. I can’t run 20 different businesses, at that level of commitment on my own. I can’t do it. I would never be able to understand those businesses as well as what’s needed for you to get the value.

I have to limit the amount of people I work with and if I’m going to do that, I want it to be the right people.

I want it to be the people that are going to be able to get the result, that we’re going to be able to bounce off each other, that we’re going to have complementary skills, that we’re going to have opposing skills, so where you’re incredible at something, the opposite, I’ve got covered.

So that you can be you and use your inspiration, follow your vision, be the leader and the CEO. Then I can do the things that I’m fantastic at and keep everything driving towards that vision. There are times when there will be a need for different skills. There will be times where there is a need for people who operate similarly.

There will be personality factors that come into it. You do not want to work with an OBM who you can’t communicate well with or who it would do your head in if you had to talk to them every day. There’s nothing wrong with them, but the way that people communicate and the different personalities we have, these things matter to a successful business relationship with an OBM and a good OBM knows that you don’t want this constant friction that’s not based on two people being wrong or not knowing what they’re doing.

It’s just personality matches.

When we’re working with our clients, we want to build happy, easy, fun relationships, people we are stoked to be aligned with, because we are going to spend a lot of time together.

When OBMs are looking at their client base, we’re really looking for people who are in that next phase. They don’t want somebody who just needs a task done and needs it done well. They want someone who is in it with them, who is capable, highly skilled, has initiative and marketing nous, who can get fully involved in their business, in their team, who can help create strategic plans and provide objective opinions.

You do want the sounding board. All of these things are what an OBM will do and do well. But to do that, you have to have a really good relationship with them. And it can take time to build that, but it all starts with that initial, Hey, do we actually like each other? Can I actually do what you need me to do?

Do we understand each other? Does this feel good? Because otherwise it will all fall over. And then all of a sudden your key player is somebody that you can’t stand. Nobody wants that.

So how do you know what you need? And if I put it very simply, and yes, I’m simplifying, so do not hold me to this is, the ultimate rule. It’s just a quick indication.

Wrapping It Up

If you are looking for a highly capable experienced OBM, come and book a call with me and my team at Audacious Empires. I would love to talk to you. We work with six, seven, eight figure business owners who are ready to step out of the day-to-day and to take the mantle of CEO and to work on inspiration and growth and let somebody else take care of the daily operations. So that you’ve got the space, time and freedom to be who you are. I hope that this has given you some clarity on the different things that define a VA and an OBM.

There are more, but what I wanted to do was give you a solid picture with enough information so that if you need to make decisions about where you are and what you need, you have now the knowledge.

If you’re grappling with this, use everything I’ve said as a quick checklist. Go through that and use it as an evaluation. Do I want this or do I want this? Do I want this or do I want that? And it’ll tell you what type of support is available to you. 

Over to you

Do you want someone who is going to come in and do a job and do it well? A VA. Or do you want a fully immersed growth partner? An OBM.

 

 

 

Need help creating amazing client offboarding experiences?

We’ve got just the resource for you.

Embark on your path to becoming a six-figure Online Business Manager with our comprehensive FREE roadmap. Gain insights into key strategies, and build the confidence needed to align your service with the value you bring. Don’t wait.

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Links you’ll love:

• FREE: 9 Steps to Six Figure OBM Roadmap
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• Listen to all Audacious OBM Podcast Episodes 

Recently I was invited to speak at Do It Day in Melbourne and it was all about setting up your plans for the year and getting some things done in that day that were really going to move the needle.

My presentation was titled ‘How to get twice as much done with half the amount of time’, which, sounds very elusive and it sounds very attractive as I wanted the audience to walk away with something true and something that they could implement and use immediately.

This episode shares:

 

• Systems thinking: Being productive and building a culture of productivity.
• Solving problems in isolation: The danger of solving problems in isolation without considering the broader business impact.
• Adopting a systems approach: Looking at all the cogs involved.
• Benefits of systems thinking: Adopting a systems thinking approach increases productivity, efficiency, scalability and reduces dependency.
• Gradually integrating systems thinking: The long-term impact of systems thinking is increased productivity.

 

Systems Thinking

I’ve seen a lot of different tactics. I’ve seen a lot of different theories. I’ve tried lots of things and I’ve been behind many seven-figure business.

The one concept that has become my favourite and that I think is the most effective when trying to be productive and build a culture of productivity, is the notion of systems thinking.

I thought this was quite funny when I first heard it because my brain went straight to computers and really complex maps, computer diagrams, systems, blinking lights. That’s where my brain went. But when applied to productivity and made slightly less geeky, it actually really works. So what is this notion of systems thinking?

If you were to imagine your business as an entire system, as an entire machine. (Picture all of these cogs all connected in together). Systems thinking is when you do two things. One approach is when you take the approach of looking at all of the cogs at once from a big picture view, as well as looking at the individual cogs in a micro view when you’re trying to implement something new, create processes, and make decisions. What this means is that any one cog only is as good, productive, and effective as the cogs around it. 

Solving Problems in Isolation

Something that I’ve seen many, many business owners do is fall into the trap of coming up with quick solutions and fixing a problem based on one cog.

Imagine we’re in the cog. The cog can be a person, it can be a process. It can be an objective, it can just be a problem that’s occurred.

If we’re looking at something in micro, we’re looking at a cog and let’s say something has gone wrong in this process. Part of this process is broken. For example, my new members aren’t getting their second follow-up. Let’s say that’s the piece that’s falling over. Now that’s not great, because what is the impact that has, that has? It’s going to increase our churn rate, which we don’t want. So in my haste of, okay, how come we haven’t followed our process here and people are leaving or people, our members are getting less engaged because we don’t have that second follow up. So something’s wrong with the process. What can we do to fix that? I know. I am going to get Susie from the admin team to change this process and to start calling people and I’m going to make sure that on the second of every month, every person is checked and people who haven’t been called get called – instant solution. The problem is fixed, looks good, sounds good, let’s go with it.

But I’ve looked at that in isolation. What I haven’t considered are the cogs around it. So what is the impact? Susie is already at capacity. So adding this to her plate means she’s not going to be able to do something else, which will have a flow on effect, 100% guarantee. It’s okay, we’ll work that out when we get to it. What else is going to happen? Okay, on the second of every month, we’re going to start making all of these calls. But also on the second of every month, our membership team pulls all of our members to do a planning session. Let’s say this is what’s going to happen for the month. This is what you can expect. Is there anything we need to do to help you? Let’s say that happens on the second of every month. Now your members, some of them, not all of them are going to get two calls. They’re going to get one from Susie saying, “Hey, just checking in, making sure you’ve joined the group. Do you know what we’ve got going on this month?”

Then they’re going to get a call from your member team saying, “Hey, let’s do a check-in”. 

We’ve impacted the member team. Imagine the backlash that they’re going to get when people start saying, “I’m confused, I already spoke to you today”. We’ve impacted Susie. We’ve impacted the other cogs that will have to bear the weight of Susie not doing what Susie was meant to do because she’s now calling people.

We’ve impacted the members, which all in all, is going to do the reverse of what we wanted so that we could reduce our churn rate and keep our members engaged. The solution that we’ve implemented, although it seems good on the surface, when you look at the things surrounding it, we start to see these holes and the impact is actually the opposite of what we are wanting.

Two calls in one day and nothing for the rest of the month is going to increase that churn rate. It is not going to decrease it. People are not going to like it and it’s going to feel clunky and the business doesn’t really know what they’re doing. So it has the opposite impact and this is where systems thinking like that very niched-down example, but I wanted one that you could follow along and understand, but it can apply to so many different things.

Adopting a System Approach

Systems thinking is about when we come up with the solution, it’s looking at, okay, here’s the different solutions we could have. Now, what is the impact of these solutions, of this plan, of this process, on the system? Then you start to look at all the cogs around. So we’re looking at our one cog, the cogs that are next to it, and the big picture as a whole.

It’s a layered approach.

Although it can seem quite complex when you’re going, Oh, I’m going to have to make all these considerations and I’m going to have to be, write really extensive processes around things. This is going to take ages. It actually doesn’t. So it is a mindset shift and it is something where when you start doing it, it gets quite quick. Depending on the complexity of what you’re doing at the time, that impacts how much investment time you need. So for a task, at a task level, sometimes at a process level, that’ll take you five minutes to do this thought process. It is just getting in the habit of doing it. It’s a bit different when we’re looking at a business vision or setting, yearly goals and looking at the impact on the system and the resources, the process that are needed.

 

Benefits of Systems Thinking

In an everyday operational capacity, the cost is nowhere near as high as the benefit it will bring. Hopefully that explains to you what systems thinking is. You might be wondering, why should I invest my time, effort, and energy into trying to understand this concept and then implement it?

Okay when we’re looking at systems thinking, We are creating a business that is not reliant on any one person, process, or task. It is creating a business that has considerations of multiple pieces. In that comes position. So let’s take documenting processes, for example. When I document processes and create SOPs, and this is the same thing that my team does, we look at that process and the context of that process.

So the context is everything and that’s where the systems thinking comes in. Why do we do this process? When do we do this process? Who is it that is impacted by this process? What do we want to achieve by doing this process? And what are the steps? And we want to think about things as we’re documenting from that system perspective.

When we’re creating things, we’re not creating them for one person. We’re not creating a process with these five steps, because we know that’s the way that Jane likes to do it. We’re creating it from the perspective of Jane’s role. Let’s say Jane’s role is customer service representative. What is the best approach for the customer service representative to take? To execute this process with the knowledge, experience, and understanding that a customer service representative has, what is the process they would take? What is the knowledge they might be missing? Who else does this process impact? Hey, customer service rep, if you see these four things, you might want to go and talk to the accounts payable team, and they’ll be able to help you with the next piece.

So what we’re doing before someone’s even picked up that process to do that job? They will know if this is the process they’re meant to use, they’ll be able to track what they’re trying to achieve with it, they’ll be able to see the scope, the start and finish, they’ll already be able to identify the next steps that are needed or how to troubleshoot if needed, because they know the flow and effect. They can see the impact if they don’t do their piece correctly. If I don’t do my bit, it means that accounts payable is going to be impacted and all of a sudden, the way that I view this task and the way that I view my role in completing this task has changed. I have become part of that system.

It’s not just me working away to my standard, it’s me helping the business achieve a bigger goal.

The other thing that it allows us to do is by looking at things as part of the system and not being customised for any one piece, it allows our processes to grow and to contract. So it is super scale-friendly. If we’re always considering the things and the impact that happens on a system, it doesn’t matter who is in what role. Doesn’t matter if Jane takes time off and Peter replaces her. Because we would expect Peter to have the knowledge and understanding of that role and when we’re designing things like that, there isn’t this overhead of, but where’s all the information I need to actually do this? Because the knowledge, the understanding, and the context are built into the way it has been designed to operate.

We start to get all of these efficiencies happening. It reduces the number of questions that people need to ask because they’re answered already.

You’ll see big businesses have these big, massive organisation charts. Now, have they always been that way? No. Do they stay that way? Also no. Organisation charts in big businesses are something that grows big and then they look at it and go, right, this isn’t working for us anymore. So they call, contract, refine, and get smaller. Then they build it back up. Then they cull, contract, refine, and get smaller. Part of the reason that they’re able to do this is because big organisations do not operate based on one human. They very much need people to be able to come in and out without the quality of what they’re doing being impacted. So they have to operate in a way where they’re offering. A consistent service, consistent product, maintaining their reputation, despite what the internal workings or internal structure of that business is.

Gradually Integrating Systems Thinking

If I’ve sold you on systems thinking, and you’re like, okay, I can see why I might be interested in this, or why it might be worth exploring. What impact does it actually have?

The long-term impact of systems thinking is increased productivity.

Time is money. The more efficient we are, the more effective we are, the more productive we are with purpose, we’re more profitable. We have less sunk time costs.

All of the training and retraining and the friction that gets caused by clunky processes or things not moving in a smooth manner, will disappear. Plans getting made that then overlap with other things that are already in place and then you have to rework things, that all gets eliminated when you look at things in a systems lens.

You’ll get less spot fires because we’re not just solving one tiny cog’s problem at a time. When that is a problem, we already are proactively thinking about how it’s going to impact the rest of the system and the solution that we pick is likely to be very different than if we were just focused on that one cog. That’s not to say that the solution is going to take longer to concept or to implement. It’s just a different way of thinking. So it’s a different choice. Therefore, there are fewer spot fires that occur once that’s implemented because we’ve already factored in some of the other things that we might not have thought about before. There are less mistakes.

If we’re looking at, okay, that all sounds great. How much is this going to cost me to do though? What is the cost to implement this in my business? Really, there’s a few things. One, there’s a conversation cost. Systems thinking and operating in a systems manner with a systems approach is not achievable by just one person. It is a team approach. The business has to do it together and you have to get your team on board. There is a conversation that needs to happen. There’s an explanation. There’s a, “hey, this is why we’re doing this. This is why it matters to you. This is how you can operate in this new way”. So there’s that conversation and then the hand-holding that goes with it to kind of lead people through what it looks like on a day-to-day basis.

There’s the mindset shift. So systems thinking, its biggest piece is the mindset shift and quite often when there’s a mindset shift, we shy away because it’s something we have to consistently commit to until it becomes a habit. So it’s a cost that is worth mentioning, in my opinion.

Then there is the time to implement it. If I were to look at someone and say, “Okay, let’s come to your business and let’s implement a systems approach”. I would not be saying to them, “let’s rewrite all your processes in one go. Let’s do this audit, and that audit, and then completely overhaul everything”. This is not what you want to do. That is going to end up in a massive cost of time and money to whoever is going to help you do this. But do it as you go. So if you can get your team on board and explain it to them, whoever does that next piece of their job, ask them to look at it through a systems lens. Ask them to upgrade that process, ask them to think about where the gaps are in the way things are operating and start to build in these systems on the fly.

Do it as you go. And then it’s easier to catch everything that’s left and fix those as standalone.

Wrapping It Up

So when I say that this is a whole business approach, what does that mean? It means there’s lots of things that make up a business. There’s lots of things that contribute to business operations and to operating efficiently and effectively, and to have things feel good and have a culture that isn’t stressful or filled with pressure or making many mistakes.

When we’re talking about a whole business approach for systems, we want to look at the process level. We want to look at a task level. How do I do this task? Where does this task fit within the entire process? We want to look at a project planning level. So when we’re looking at, let’s say, a quarterly project, can be a big beast.

What’s the systems approach for this project? What should get considered? What shouldn’t be considered? What’s the impact? Where does it fit? What’s the priority? What are the resources? Where what strain is this going to put in other areas of the business? Where does this project plan fit in the whole scheme of my end goal for the business, of where we’re going for the year?

Are we on track? How is that consistent? We want it to be part of the system. At the end of the day, once this project is complete, is it something I’m going to do again? How can I build it in a way that it’s very easily repeated? And then, the same with business goals. You know where you want to get your business to and when you’re determining business goals I’m going to set this goal, but what is the impact of that goal? What does that mean? What does that mean for all of my cogs? Are my cogs in the right places? Do I have the right resources? Is something missing? Is something going to get stuck somewhere and I’m never going to be able to achieve that goal?

If we look at all the pieces throughout the business, as you come across them with a systems lens, you start to make better decisions and you start to become more productive and you give your team what they need so that they can be more productive. Without it being hard, and that is the beauty of systems thinking.

If there is one thing you want to implement today, to have a business that’s not reliant on any one person, including you, Google it. Look it up. Come and talk to me. Send me and my team an email. helpme@audaciousempires.com I would love to chat to you. I would love to come and boost your operations.

But ultimately I’d love you to explore what systems thinking and a systems approach might look like for your business. Hope you found this helpful. 

Need help creating amazing client offboarding experiences?

We’ve got just the resource for you.

Embark on your path to becoming a six-figure Online Business Manager with our comprehensive FREE roadmap. Gain insights into key strategies, and build the confidence needed to align your service with the value you bring. Don’t wait.

Hungry for more? Yearning to fast-track your journey to a successful, 6-figure OBM career? Our OBM Academy is here for you. Gain access to exclusive support, invaluable resources, and the tools you need to sharpen your skills and elevate your OBM career. Don’t miss this opportunity.

Links you’ll love:

• FREE: 9 Steps to Six Figure OBM Roadmap
• Join the OBM Academy
• Listen to all Audacious OBM Podcast Episodes