Molly Rose Speed: Business Growth By Staying In Your Zone of Genius

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When running a business, you're pulled in many different directions. Your time can be spent in many different ways. Your business grows more quickly when you stay in your zone of genius and allow others to support you in the other areas you need it. Molly Rose Speed is the founder of the Virtual Assistant Academy, which provides trusted virtual assistant solutions and tech execution serving busy entrepreneurs and business owners. From being a corporate accountant cubicle dweller, this military spouse launched her VA business to focus on what she loved, and to provide her location freedom while moving all over the country. Molly Rose is the go-to professional for some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the speaker/author and content creator industry. With so many in the real estate space looking to gain exposure as authors, speakers, and creators, hear from Molly Rose how you can grow your business by leveraging the support of others while staying in your zone of genius.

In this podcast hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:

• Being an entrepreneur and running your own business is a cool experience.
• The best part of being a virtual assistant or working virtually in a support role is flexibility wherein you can work at home or whenever you want.
• A lot of people need an assistant right now.
• Authenticity is important in social media.
• Don’t underestimate social media because it can get you more clients.
• Reach out to those people who need virtual assistance when getting your business started.
• Virtual assistant jobs could be long-term roles, mid-term or short-term project-based.
• If you're looking for a virtual assistant, it is recommended to have them for at least five hours a week.
• Start with a 90 days commitment and reassess when you're hiring someone.
• Virtual assistants don’t have a standardized task list because everybody is different and unique.
• Before hiring a virtual assistant, you need to be clear on what are tasks he/she needs to accomplish.
• For overseas virtual assistants, you need to be specific about what you’re asking them to do for you.
• A professional assistant is someone who can enroll in the vision of your business, comes alongside you, care as much as you do, and has autonomy.
• Having a virtual assistant who runs the back end for you is a great use of resources.
• Outreach virtual assistants find places for you to speak and help you network with groups.
• Once you get speaking engagements, your virtual assistant can support you with all your booking, travel, slides, or any follow-ups.

Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro to Molly’s Career
2:06 - How It All Started
3:36 - Key Things in Growing a Business
5:15 - Marketing Struggle: Getting Out Of Your Comfort Zone
6:19 - Becoming a Virtual Assistant
7:36 - First Client
12:31 - Virtual Assistant Academy
18:11 - VA and Real Estate Business Owners
21:03 - How to Find Molly

FOLLOW MOLLY: 
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https://www.facebook.com/mollyrosespeed 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC02y-Nkj2P7eBwsc-fI-HJw/about 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollyrosespeed/ 
https://www.instagram.com/mollyrosespeed/

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Full transcript here:

Mike Swenson 

All right, welcome everybody to another episode of The REL Freedom Podcast where we help people build time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. And one of the things that is really important for people to build time and financial freedom in real estate is to have a wonderful support system. And so today, we're going to be talking about leverage and support and how you can really build and grow your business on a strong foundation through the use of administrative help and virtual assistants.

Mike Swenson 

So today, we have Molly rose speed here. And she's going to share kind of her experience, how she's launched her business, supporting people in real estate and and other industries, as well. But then to just to hopefully give you guys some ideas of ways that you can leverage great support. Stay in your zone of genius, doing what you love to do, and are really good at and help your business grow along the way a little bit about Molly. So she is a strategic thinker with cultivated skills and online tech solutions, systems and automation. She launched her career from being a corporate account cubicle dweller to being an entrepreneur, and learning everything about that, and being the creator of the virtual assistant Academy, which provides virtual assistant solutions, and tech execution to busy entrepreneurs and business owners.

Mike Swenson 

And you are one of the go to professionals for some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the speaker, author and content creator industry, which is what we'll talk about a little bit about too, because there's so many people in real estate that travel around, they speak, they're on podcasts, they're doing lots of trainings, and webinars and coaching and that and so we can talk about how you can build and grow your business through virtual assistants. So long story short, welcome to the show. We're excited to have you.

Molly Rose Speed 

Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me here today. So much to unpack.

Mike Swenson 

Yes, yeah. So so why don't we just start with talk about your background and kind of how you got into this space of, of being a go to person and what's happened along the way?

Molly Rose Speed 

Yeah, so about 12 years ago, I say, I was a corporate cubicle dweller and my bio there. And I truly was, you know, the girl that was crying her eyes out to and from work with that 60 minute commute. This is pre pandemic days, you know, when we had to do that. And like many of you, my core value is freedom. And I knew that there was a better life out there for me. And that came in the form of creating ways for myself to make income doing some real estate investing, and finding passive revenue streams. And that kind of created what I am now doing today, supporting really incredible entrepreneurs, a lot of speakers, authors, consultants, some real estate agents, and also running a virtual assistant management company, where we train and place virtual assistants. So it's been a wild ride. I'm a military spouse. So that's also something unique about me. And, and most of our students, my virtual assistants are also military spouses. So that's my mission behind everything that we do as well.

Mike Swenson 

Because obviously, they're traveling a lot. And so they they like that position, flexibility to be able to do that, and you're pouring your time and your energy into clients. And to not have to uproot that when there's a location changes is wonderful. So yeah, it's a great combination of need versus, you know, plugging a hole that you can fill as an entrepreneur here, now, you building and growing your business, talk about how that works, we'll get into the details of how a virtual assistant can support but kind of you as an entrepreneur, growing your business, what were some of those key early things that were important for, for getting launched to where you're at? Yeah,

Molly Rose Speed 

when I started, the term virtual assistant wasn't what it is today. The term entrepreneur was even new kind of for our generation 12 years ago, my age group, and just learning that you could offer something that you're good at and make money for, it was a huge deal to me, you know, we were always trained to go to college, get a good job, do the corporate thing, get a 401k. But most of us, we don't want to do that anymore. So really retraining my brain to do that, and then just jumping headfirst into supporting a really successful public speaker. That was my first role.

Molly Rose Speed 

Also a financial literacy real estate guy sound familiar to this group, probably. And I just learned everything I could from being supporting him in a way where all he had to do was show up and speak to running his back end as websites is accounting is marketing. I just did all of it. And I became a really good jack of all trades, operations person. So that's kind of the role that I played a day. And then I trained an army of virtual assistants along the way. So yeah, it was it's been a really cool journey and also going from being this support person, which I still wear that hat sometimes to also, being the entrepreneur and running my own business has been a cool experience as well.

Mike Swenson 

I know for a lot of administratively gifted people, the struggle that they have with launching and growing businesses sales, right, or marketing and getting yourself out there because you you're comfortable behind a desk, you're comfortable helping and supporting and myself included. And so how did that work in terms of being able to put yourself out there and, and kind of, you know, step in an uncomfortable space to grow your business?

Molly Rose Speed 

That's a really great question. I think that that is probably one of the hardest things that I've had to overcome. And to do it, I just put myself in the most uncomfortable positions I could, and that was on stage. So I went from not even just picking up my phone and doing some social media posts, because that can be scary for some, right, that's marketing. But to literally getting on a stage and having to create my message and talk for myself, not for my clients, or on behalf of my clients, was the biggest way that I did that. So I just, I just went big. And now I've just been filling in the gaps. So but yeah, definitely a different role that I've played,

Mike Swenson 

talking about people that want to become virtual assistants. If you're out there listening to this podcast, maybe you have a passion for real estate, and yet you really liked the admin side, what are some of those pluses that people can can see becoming a virtual assistant and being in business for yourself, and yet helping others?

Molly Rose Speed 

Yeah, so having the the best part about being a virtual assistant or working virtually in the support role is the flexibility, we usually can work whenever we want. So stay at home moms, this is a fantastic career, military spouses, as we talked about, travel, people that love to travel, or you're living out of a van, which I did for a little while as well. The flexibility is the best. But then if you can tie it to an industry you love, you know, we have a few women on our team that are registered agents, but didn't necessarily want to go do that real estate agents.

Molly Rose Speed 

And so they worked on the admin side, and they're loving it. And they're being able to make really great money because they're really supporting amazing agents that are higher earning agents. So I think that that's kind of an interesting way to start looking at it. If someone's interested, like, what, where can you use your skills as a support person? And what industry can you apply to that you're passionate about? Or you have a background in and then you can 10 times this, this life for yourself?

Mike Swenson 

And how does that person find that that niche or kind of find those first couple of clients maybe to get going.

Molly Rose Speed 

So lots of ways, there's agencies out there, I run one, but I'm a huge proponent of you know, the more you talk about it, the more you talk about it, and everyone, that's that's a broad term. A lot of people need a an assistant right now, I hear it all the time. So if you're, if your elevator pitch, if you will just remove the phrase, Hi, I'm Molly rose, I'm a military spouse, and I have a degree in finance that might be the old me when I was younger, is now Hi, I'm Ella rose, I run a virtual assistant company and I support really busy entrepreneurs, so they can scale their business and on all that, like, if you start telling people about that you got to dinner, and you're telling your friends about it, the next thing, you know, their cousins calling you because they need an assistant for their business or their Aunt is calling you, it just starts to happen.

Molly Rose Speed 

So if you can get really vocal about it, and just authentically share it, that's really important. And then don't underestimate social media, you know, it's a necessary evil for most of us, but, you know, announce this to people say, Hey, this is what I'm doing. Now, this is these are the top five things I can help my clients with. Reach out, if you know of anyone that's needing someone or pass this poster around those results, just doing those simple things. Nine times out of 10, you'll find a client if you're positioned, right,

Mike Swenson 

I grew up in a household where I was raised, you know, safe, stable job. 401k become a W two employee. And so that safety and security are things that a lot of times admin professionals, like when you're doing virtual assistant jobs, they could be long term roles. They could be mid term kind of short term project based. And so how do they balance? You know, when I'm looking for a client and I have somebody who has a need? Are you thinking maybe we just start short term, it works out well and develops long term? Or how do you balance the time of your relationship with that person? I think that's kind of the you know, the beauty that it opens up is I'm not tied to a W two employee for a long time. And yet if it works out, well, I can stay with them for a long time. But we'd love to hear just kind of on the length of work with with your clients.

Molly Rose Speed 

Yeah, I'd love to introduce the term fractional virtual assistants. So you're buying a fraction of someone's time so they might have a book of business of five clients that they support. Five hours a week, right 25 hours total, and you're buying a fraction of their time so that It gives it a low barrier of entry, not a huge commitment, I don't recommend business owners work with a virtual system for anything less than five hours a week, it just doesn't make sense energetically their investment in your business and vice versa. And then securing that time from them, meaning putting them on a retainer. So you're, they're guaranteeing that work for you, and vice versa.

Molly Rose Speed 

So I think that that's super important. But you know, get your feet wet, start with a 90 day commitment, and then reassess and put that on the calendar when you're hiring someone. So your 90 days, let's let's reassess your we're at good for both of you to do that. And then go forward into that. Several of our VAs do get hired as W twos as time goes on, it just works out and and they want it they want a full time person and works out for their business. But majority of the time people stay on 1009 for a really long time and prefer that.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah, well, and that's one of the things that I learned, you know, running the admin side of a large real estate team is, you know, when I was looking for work, it was kind of always that threshold of Do we have enough to bring on another full time employer employee. And the challenge with that is real estate's a seasonal business too. And so we didn't always have that same income in the winter, as we did in the summer, but yet we had full time employees. And so I learned, you know, a challenge there was I felt stuck in those dead times, but then was great in the busy times. And understanding that, yeah, you can have people that it doesn't have to be full time, like I kind of thought, if I'm going to take the work to bring somebody onto my team, it's somebody that I'm going to want to keep around for a while and have them full time. And here. It's so much more flexible. And so better for both sides.

Molly Rose Speed 

Yeah, absolutely. And even finding, you'll find that on the other side, the virtual assistant that doesn't actually want the 20 hours, 40 hours a week, they want just 10 hours, or maybe they're working another corporate job. And then this is their side hustle. There's so many people out there that have different situations. I've run into business owners that oftentimes don't hire because they think that they need to pay for 20 hours a week or 40 hours a week. And that's just not the case. So yeah,

Mike Swenson 

yeah. So it gives you especially people building and growing their business as they see these needs, you can plug a short term hole that could develop into something more. So it gives you as a business owner a lot more flexibility to where yeah, I'm not tied to a salary, I'm not tied to benefits. And at the same time, if it works out well, and you and you want to have that person do more you can so yeah, there's a lot of win win on both sides of the table. Yeah, yes, absolutely. So about the virtual assistant CAD Academy, for somebody that wants to build and grow their skills and kind of learn how that works. What's What does that Academy look like?

Molly Rose Speed 

Yeah, so when I started, there were very little resources out there, you know, we could YouTube any of the tech and software, which was wonderful. But as far as running the business and pricing and marketing yourself and identifying your ideal client, figuring out what your unique service offerings are, that wasn't there. So that's what I created out of this. And then I've added in the tech side of it, so that they can hit the ground running with the, you know, eight to 10 specific things that they need to know to get hired tomorrow as an example. And then it just grows, virtual assistants do a lot of things. So it's not like there's a standardized task list that we all have everybody's different, unique. So it's 10 on what you're interested in learning and doing.

Mike Swenson 

And to just to kind of pull off of, you know, your website for people that are like, I don't really know what they can do here. Right? It's it's inbox, schedule management, bookkeeping, travel management, customer service research, KPI, reporting, social media management, newsletters, and kind of various tasks. So there's so many things that they can do. And they can do a few of those. They can do all of them, some of them depending on what they want to take on. And if you'd have that need,

Molly Rose Speed 

yeah, absolutely. And then it just grows. From there, you might get advanced VAs that can handle website work, or course creation, if you're starting to do that, or speaker bucking like I was talking about before, and everything in between. So it's pretty amazing.

Molly Rose Speed 

And I think if I can give some advice to the business owner, you know, before hiring a virtual assistant, you need to be super clear about what it is that you're trying to get off of your plate. Oftentimes, business owners come to us and like, I need a VA, I'm overwhelmed. Well, what do you need them for? And do you have the time to actually onboard them a successful onboarding? So this actually works, right? Yes. Happens all the time. Yeah, I think really assessing that for yourself and being really clear in what you need them for now, next month, in 90 days and be able to hire to that, you know, you're starting here, but in 90 days, you're gonna have this expectation and and then you can find the right person.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah. And I think a lot of times, yeah, I mean, just speaking in real estate like People are so busy, they don't understand an investment of figuring out what I need to take off my plate is going to be well worth it. Because they're just like, well, I'm so busy, I can't meet about or I can't think about or I can't talk about it. But if you actually take some time, and plan it out and are like, Okay, what if I did have these things off of my plates? What more could I do? And take the time to find somebody, that's the hard thing to they don't want to take the time and have something not work out and then have to go back and do it again. So they just don't do it. Right?

Molly Rose Speed 

Yeah, or I don't have time to train and I don't, I might still just do it myself, it's going to take me longer to train. I hear that all the time. Well, if you record what you're doing for the next month, you know, use loom if you've heard of loom, it's a great screen recording tool. You there's your training deck, you know, you hire someone they log in, and then they have something to go off of. So even just starting there is a great place so that when you're you are ready, you have some type of foundation to train from,

Mike Swenson 

what would you say in terms of pricing for folks, because you've got virtual assistants in the United States, you really all over the world, all different options. And so if I was starting as a virtual assistant, myself to run my own business, how do I figure out what my pricing is going to be?

Molly Rose Speed 

Yes, so great point, there's a big difference between hiring a US based virtual assistant and an overseas virtual assistant and a reason to hire each group. So we'll start with overseas, amazing people overseas, but you have to be usually be very, very specific about what you're asking them to do. For example, I want if I'm working for a public speaker, and I want to pitch him to all the fraternities in Minnesota, I'm going to hire someone to go find every fraternity president in Minnesota and bring me back their email addresses, that would be something I would easily pay six, eight bucks an hour for and do it all day long, right? Very specific or graphic design, or just creating social media posts.

Molly Rose Speed 

And these are the words that you want. And these are the colors right, versus a US based VA, you're really hiring in my especially for my group, a professional assistant, someone that's going to enroll in your vision of your business and come alongside you and care about it just as much as you do. And be able to have a little more autonomy and and just take care of things for you. That's the goal, right? Do things without being asked, of course, there are their their regular task lists as well. So there's a big difference there. US based post pandemic, I'm seeing around $25 an hour, if you're hiring them directly, agencies charge a little bit more. And it's, it's well worth it if they're really efficient, and professional about their business.

Mike Swenson 

Now, before we run out of time here, I want to just touch on in the real estate space, there's so many talking heads and, and you've got your personal brand, and you're doing whatever you're doing in real estate, whether it's as an investor and an agent, and, and all that and you're trying to build your brand. And that's an area that you really focus on. So talk about that if I'm somebody that wants to build and grow my brand within the real estate space, as you know, to speak at seminars, and and that sort of thing. And on stage. How do you help those folks?

Molly Rose Speed 

Yeah, I think virtual assistants can really serve agents, especially those that are speaking but it really doesn't matter. It's kind of like the same way I explained the VA talking about themselves with their services, but even more visual for in success results driven for real estate agents. So if you're not out there, on social or in your community, or you know, doing events or speaking from the stage, you're really doing yourself a disservice. Because when people sell their homes or messing in real estate, they want the best of the best, the trusted experts. And nowadays we need to show up online as that person. So having a virtual assistant run that back end for you is a great use of your resources, I believe and something that they're totally meant to do.

Molly Rose Speed 

So that could look like you recording a seven to 10 minute video a week and then transcribing it into a blog, putting it out on all your socials creating many quotes and assets and just kind of waking up that so that people in your community see that and go, Oh, I know that guy he's showing up on all my socials. Right like that's kind of how that could work as an example.

Mike Swenson 

And how does that work in terms of you know, getting people on stage for events, networking and finding those How can you help accent their business in that way? Yeah,

Molly Rose Speed 

I think outreach virtual assistants doing outreach to find places for you to speak and or helping you network with groups that you've already been in with, you know, if you're part of organizations, you know, building helping build that relationship. And then once you do get an engagement, they can support you with all your your press kit handle your booking, your booking your travel, doing your slides. any follow up you need to do you know the networking that happens afterwards. All of that can be handled by them. So there's a lot Other things that they could support you with, if you're a speaker,

Mike Swenson 

I think to even kind of helping with that, with that brand, you know, what's your message gonna be? Because you have to kind of have that consistent message to build that reputation to be that go to person as well and kind of deciding and honing in on what that could be.

Molly Rose Speed 

Yes, absolutely. I think if we're, if we're not, there's so many people out there talking. And if we're just kind of saying the same thing, they are not identifying ourselves as an expert in a specific part of it, you know, short term rentals or mentor, whatever we talked about it, you're kind of doing yourself a disservice, it doesn't mean you won't get the other deals. But I think if you can just come at it from a different approach or a different demographic or area. That's a good way to start.

Mike Swenson 

Awesome. Well, there's so many kind of surface level things that we talked about today, both from you, being an entrepreneur, supporting people, and building and growing your business, to also giving you know, people in the real estate space, that ideas of how they can have that leverage. So how can people reach out to you and find out and learn more about what you're doing?

Molly Rose Speed 

Yeah, so if anyone's interested in becoming a virtual assistant, my academy is virtualassistantacademy.com. If you're looking to hire a virtual assistant, and one a professional approach, consults, complete console, from start to finish to find the right person the first time. It's virtual assistant, management.com. And then my name is Molly rose speed, I have a website. I'm on social everywhere. So I would love to connect with anyone. And if anyone has any questions, feel free to reach out.

Mike Swenson 

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I think there's, there's so much value here in what you can provide for people and really help entrepreneurs build and grow their business. And you know, so many times they're trying to juggle all these things and do things that frankly, they're not good at. And so you can help accent them, so that they can focus on doing what they love and really being in the zone of what they'd like to do and make money doing to help their business grow. And so that's why I like having you know, folks like you on the podcast talking about supporting their business because that's how you can build and gain wealth and real estate is through having great support. And so, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your your wisdom and your experience with us.

Molly Rose Speed 

You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me.