Cory Blumenfeld: Stop Running Your Business, Start Owning Your Time

0:00Good afternoon everybody, Robin, I you be here from the localization fire site chat and welcome for another recording. Up today with this particular recording episode at number 268. Thanks for joining me on this journey. I really appreciate your time. We have a very interesting conversation coming up here on this dialogue with my guest of honor, but we'll get to that in a second. First, I have a message for one of my avid listener and his name is Estefan Langiel. Hopefully Estefan I pronounce your last name correctly. I know that's a Hungarian last name. Estefan, he's joined us always listens to us on his treadmill from the Barcelona area in Spain. I really appreciate that. Last time I was exchanging messages, I didn't know Estefan before, but he sent me a message on LinkedIn telling me that he listens to the channel on his channel. He's a treadmill and recently he's treadmill broke down and now we're looking for a pair person for that treadmill in Barcelona. If anybody is listening to this and like to help in repairing a treadmill in Barcelona, please let me know.

1:04Alternatively, we can regain our composure here and go back into the conversation with our guest of honor, which we are going to be addressing today and a very, very interesting conversation. Another Torontonian who migrated south, looking for a better weather and Corey Blumenfeld is the CEO and founder of a company called Lumoso is a company where we've got to get to know the company in a bit. But more importantly on the individual who behind the company, five companies, two exits, nearly $5 million raised an admission to give one million business owners their time back. Today's episode, it really about a question I've been contemplating with and I've been sitting with me after 30 years in the corporate world. What does it actually cost for you, for us as business people, when the calendar runs our life versus us running our own calendars versus us running our own time? And my guest has built a company called Blumoso as we mentioned earlier and specifically to answer that question.

2:08And the way he's doing it is by matching business owners with the virtual assistants that is right for them based on what they actually do based on their work, not just to fulfill tasks, what they need to do now. So it's something that every founder right now is an every business person with the demand on our time, with the demand on what we want to do. It's really getting really tricky with all of us schedules, picking the right conversation, picking the right time that you want to put in your calendar, it's becoming very, very important. So without any further ado, I'd like to welcome Corey Blumenfeld to the conversation, welcome to the conversation of Blumen, Corey and good to have you with me. Thanks for having me, Robin. I'm excited to be here and to chat with your fans from all over the world. I was just in Portugal, so not too far from Barcelona, stopped over in Madrid for a layover, I don't know if that counts, but excited to have a conversation and dive deep into this because I spend every single day thinking about what work, you know, what's going on.

3:22Should I not be doing how do I get my time back and I think about this for other business owners, right, we can't do everything to really live a good life, we can't be doing everything and we do need to take control of our time, even though it's maybe not possible all the time, and we can dive into that as well. Yeah, absolutely. I have to put in the work. How do you say this way of life? No, you know, everybody on this channel get the easy question first Corey. So the first question is the story question. What is your story? What got you to where you are? Where do I begin? I'll give you the like, try to make it two minutes. I grew up, my parents wanted me to be a doctor, my family wanted me a doctor. There was nothing else out. I was going to be my grandfather was a doctor. My aunt was doctor. So, you know, everything up until University, I went to the University of Lauri University, which is in Canada, representing. So, everything up until then was your doctor entered a pre-med program, prepare you for the MCATs, all that stuff. And, you know, my last year things were going on in my personal life before that, you know, I'd started stuff, right, in the summers as a kid.

4:29I was washing cars. In the fall, I was raking leaves in the winter, I was shoveling snow. You know, I was doing things entrepreneurial. My last two years of school, I started a business. That was my first business, but I didn't consider the business. We were repairing driveways. You know, there's a chance because you're in Toronto. I could have stopped by your house and asked you to repair your driveway, right? But there was no reason I didn't know. I didn't know, right, Corey? Maybe. You know, and I learned how to do that by watching videos online. So, you know, in my mind, I've always been an entrepreneur. I just didn't know it. Last year of school comes around, stuff's going on in my life. And I took a course entrepreneurship for science students. I just thought it was going to be an easy course, you know, like get the credit. You needed credits to get into med school. So take the credit. I felt fell in love with it. My friend was starting a business at the time. I had this amazing professor. He was a ran a business sold as company. And, you know, he, he was like to make, Corey, you seem so passionate about this stuff. You know, you can build businesses. And you can make impact. You can add a lot of value in this world. Like you can actually make a change in the healthcare system.

5:31It's like, well, everyone around me was telling me I had to be a doctor for sending that piece of paper. And then maybe I could, could make a difference because I used to come home with all these crazy ideas and say, well, what if we could do this? And it was all healthcare related. Anyways, that happened. I made that. I made a choice at that point. I was like, I want to be an entrepreneur. I can't be in school for another 10 years. I'm struggling. Like, it doesn't come natural to me. I can work hard. I have to work harder than everyone else. But this isn't my easy. So I, I did that. I signed up for a master's to buy some more time because I needed a team found my team. And then, yeah, that led me down the long journey of just really starting businesses. You know, my first business was working with hospitals and digitizing all of the education you leave a hospital with. I started that after six years. I called that my MBA because I knew nothing about business. From there, I built another business care. We became experts in US health insurance and financial planning from Canada. I know the Canadian healthcare system. But all the information was available online. And we learned how to be the experts and really help guide people, you know, with the number one cost in retirement, which leads to bankruptcy, which was your healthcare costs.

6:43We built that I exit that. And then at that point, I was trying to figure out what am I doing next. And the one thing I always wanted to do was put myself out there more. I felt like that was the missing piece. I need to be a more podcast. I needed to be creating content. And I just was always scared to do it. So I started creating content. And I loved it. It wasn't good at first, but I started writing on LinkedIn. And at that time, I also had taken on a contract position. And that was full time. So I needed to dedicate my time to that. So I was like, I need a virtual assistant. If I'm going to keep building my personal brand. So I brought on a virtual assistant. And it just we were thriving. We really connected. You know, I made sure they had all the resources they needed to be successful. And it started opening up conversations with other creators on the platform. And I kept hearing the same story. I'm struggling. I can't find a virtual assistant. I've gone through five of them. They're just not the right fit. You know, there's cultural differences. All of these things. And to me, there were none of those issues. And I had multiple virtual assistants at the point. So I was like, hmm, well, you know, I have this process and play some documenting. I'm managing them like this. And folks were like, can you do that for me? And that's, you know, as an entrepreneur, that's when the like ball goes off. What do you pay for this? And yeah, I'll pay for this. So I went to my virtual assistant said, hey, listen, I think I can make you some extra cash.

7:59You your family want to do this. She said, yep. And the rest of history. We've been doing this for a year and a half now. We have clients all over the world. And we were never expecting this. This was supposed to be like a little side hustle. Now we're supporting. I think we have well over 80 virtual assistants in the town pool. So, yeah, supposed to be a doctor in my parents. Probably not my mind. And now I'm an entrepreneur. And I guess how's your medical career going? You know, at least I got to, you know, I was in the healthcare space for a little bit. And now I thought I was going to be in tech for the rest of my life. And now I'm doing something completely opposite. And you know, at some point, maybe we'll build some tech around this. Like I do see kind of some problems. And that can be solved. But we've built a pretty cool solution. We have a really great process. And you know, we're helping a lot of business owners. And the most important thing is we're changing lives in the global town pool. And so, you know, we start with virtual assistants, but now we're focused on virtual talent. We can show many different rules and help support the management and set those folks up for success and give them something stable.

9:02So, Tori, it sounds to be like just for the audience here, you know, the story is very, your story is very interesting. And, and, you know, not knowing an industry and starting a company in it, it sounds like it's a feature, not a bug to be honest. I mean, five times doing this, you start from something, it's not like you're an expert in it in a specific industry. You just think from an entrepreneurial perspective, I see a possibility here. And knowledge can come along as I get into it. You know, after after five companies and two exits, do you actually believe that feature is is one of those, sorry, what, you know, that not knowing the industry is a feature in your in your DNA, if you want to call it that as a business. Maybe I think, you know, to look at you reflected on that in the past. Of course, that's all I do. Like, it's my life is reflection. It's one of my, you know, the things that I hold very close to my heart to always reflect. But, you know, the more I think about it and the more reflection out there, you know, for me, the reflecting piece and this, you know, the starting businesses with limited knowledge.

10:07It's a little easier for me, maybe. And I think, you know, there are certain things that we are natural at. And it's important to find those things. But, you know, the reality is in today's world with all the tools that are available to us. It's never been easier to learn. Right. So that driveway repair business that I had. I saw some folks doing it. I signed up for an odd job and saw them doing it. And then I watched some YouTube videos, right on how to do it. That information's available. You know, today with Claude and and actually be doing all the other LLMs. If you know and ask the right questions, you can learn how to do some pretty amazing stuff. So, you know, maybe parts of it, you know, the mindset of like, I just want to solve this problem came natural to me. But I think the reality is the information we need to solve problems. It's there if we know the right questions to ask and we can learn to do something. Now, maybe the solution isn't going to be there. And that's where the creativity comes from being an entrepreneur, but to learn how to do something to learn how to run a business. A lot of its trial and error. But, you know, understanding an industry. A lot of that information exists.

11:12Yeah. Now, from, you know, entrepreneurial perspective, just a philosophy itself, being an entrepreneur, being independent, you like an idea, you build, you build something around that idea to deliver a service. Sometimes you get attached to this idea, but you've done, you know, two exits and two times you had to let something go that you've built. How does that feel for you? I mean, you've built it. You've sold it. It's off now. You must have been attached at some point. Did it detachment in that body? I mean, look, it's always hard, right? And my first business, we're working on it for six years. You get to a point where you realize, I mean, you have to ask yourself, am I the right person to take this forward? Do, you know, do I want to see the sadding value? And I hope most folks are building something to create value, right? And there are different levels that individuals can take it, especially when you're learning and just starting out, right? It's being real with with ourselves. So yeah, it was, it was hard, but I think, you know, in the second time, it just, it made sense to go and pursue other avenues and to leave it in the hands of my co-founder, you know, the hardest thing as an entrepreneur is to make decisions, but the right decisions in terms of what is best for the company, because the company is not you, right? When you set up a company, it sits on the organism, right? When you incorporate, you are creating your own entity.

12:31I think that's the biggest struggle for a lot of entrepreneurs. It's separating themselves from the business. The business has to have its own thoughts. It needs to act in certain ways. It has its own values. And so for me, with those two businesses that I exit, yes, it's very hard, but they were never, they were never me. It was a part of my life. But, you know, sometimes, you know, you have an opportunity to learn and to grow, right? And for me, when I've exited, there were a lot of things that I wanted to pursue and work on. And so I was able to separate and let go. And I left them in the right hands to keep growing. And as a business owner, that's, I think, the most important thing that you've achieved. You're good. Yeah, they continue to add value. Obviously, you know, financially, folks, folks want there to be some financial incentive. I get that. And that makes sense. And, you know, in, in, you know, one of those cases, it allowed me to continue pursuing entrepreneurship and build the next thing. So I'm grateful for that opportunity. But yeah, it's, I think, you know, as an entrepreneur, you just.

13:33You know, you're listening to, I'm listening to you and I'm shaking my head because in the localization industry, where we are, where I work, there was about 19,000 companies in the industry in total, you know, the number fluctuating up and down globally. I want to say 80 20 rules in this industry, 80% of them are small entrepreneurs, small individuals who are generally linguists, they decided to open a company and start something. And they become, the general feeling you get is what you just described. They become very attached to the business themselves. They become the business, not an incorporation, not a corporation, basically. It's them. If it's not them, there is no business. And that's very mature attitude to look at for more your perspective, for what you just said, you know, I, I'm not the company. I am, you know, it's part of my life. It's I invested a lot of time in it. But at the end of the day, I, you come to a realization that maybe it's better being with somebody else's hand. I brought it to where it is right now. Maybe plugging it into somebody else's either company or, you know, selling it to somebody else. It takes, takes it to the next level.

14:39And you've seen this in the larger corporations. You've seen we've seen Bill gate move along and move on and, you know, take somebody else takes it over from there. Microsoft I'm talking about. And many companies that the idea person has stepped aside and in one way or another, either by selling a company or exiting or just taking a different job in the company, but get somebody else to take it to the next level. You know, that's less than number one in entrepreneurship, in my opinion, and admirable to hear that from you, because not many people realize this. Even at early stage of their entrepreneurship journey. They still in your case, you did, but some people they go through, I don't know, their life trying to figure this out. Yeah, I just want to mention. Yeah, I think there's there's different types of businesses, right? There's businesses, you know, when you're building a venture backed business, you're building it to live on, you're building it to exit, because you need to bring an exit for folks. Then there are businesses that are one person businesses now, you know, the question you need to ask yourself is, do you want to exit this business? Like do you want to build something that you can sell or is it just a lifestyle business? And there is no wrong answer. You do what makes sense for you.

15:50So, you know, sometimes when it's when it is a single individual, it's a lot harder to not feel like the business is you. So there is a different mindset to it. And so I'm talking about a venture backed business, but, you know, there are still ways that you don't need to be doing everything. It just when you go and you're starting a business, you need to ask yourself, what do you want? Do you want something that lives without you, or do you want something that relies on you? And that's more of a lifestyle business. And that's cool. There's no right or wrong. Okay. Corey, let's talk a little bit about Blue Mo. So, you know, walk me through. If you don't mind for the audience who don't know, and I'm sure after this episode gets aired, probably a lot of people are going to be checking out Blue Mo. So, but for those who are no, no knowledge of the company, first time hearing about it, what does a new client, you know, when a new client come through their door, what does that matching the process look like before a virtual assistant ever sends the first email to someone? Just on someone's behalf. Yeah. You know, the reality is, I know there are a lot of business owners and founders that feel like they have no time or that they have to do everything that everything's on them, that the weight of the world's on them.

16:59And, you know, for us, we work with those individuals to give them their time back so they can focus on building the business or a life outside of it. When those individuals come through the door, right, some of them have worked with a virtual assistant in the past and just have not had a great experience or they've never worked with one in the in the past. They don't know how to manage them. It's just managing people's new and, you know, a lot of solar pernours. It's just them, right. And there's so much that they need to do. So, managing another person, it's a completely different role and a completely different job and it takes effort. So, when these individuals come to us, what we're looking to do, right, is if we are going to connect them to some virtual talent, we start with what role are they looking to fill, right. What are they looking to accomplish? What are the outcomes? That's probably the most important thing, getting clear on that, defining that early on. So we know what are the parameters like, what is the box that this person is going to play in? So we can actually make sure we're getting things done. The first thing, the next thing we need to ask her, okay, what are the skill sets that we need for this individual skill is super, super important.

18:02It is I'm not going to pretend it is, but there's things that are more important, right. You can have the most skilled individual in the world and bring them on paper. They check all the boxes. But if they don't have the communication style, you need the personality type, you need or the work style that works well with you. It doesn't matter what skills this person has that probably not going to succeed with you. And so when we are doing this, this is what I was telling you, but you know, we built it a pretty cool process. So we could build some software around and we've started to play around with that. You know, you get the right match. So everything comes down to the right match, the right fit. And that's what we aim to do. If we can do this, then we can really focus on giving an individual back their time, right. You only control the only way you get your time back is the person that you're working with, you trust them, right. And they have the resources in place and they're set up to succeed because bringing on our virtual assistant, that person needs to be set up to succeed. It's not just here, take this all and solve this problem for me. It's like we really need to have a system in place to to allow them to succeed and to allow you to succeed with them. Is Cory, is there a profile matching when we talk about profile matching here? Are you diagnosing the profile of your customer and you're diagnosing the profile of the VA? Is that a manual process or how do you how do you do the diagnostics? Are you collecting data on these people?

19:16Yeah, so we collect data. We have an assessment. We also do interviews with the virtual assistants and we do different tests and trials with them. But yeah, we, you know, we were able to build it some very rudimentary tools. You know, we do have some software and that we built out on our end. It's nothing fancy, but you know, it's built out on our process that can analyze a lot of this data for us. So that allows us to perfect the match. It helps us do short listing. So yeah, we have internal tools that we built out for proprietary. So, you know, we'll build more around that. But yeah, it allows us to really assess what a good fit looks like. And for the for the audience, what we are talking about here, it is not an AI virtual assistant here. We're talking to human to human. Yes, now our virtual assistants that we work with, they are AI enabled. We call them the humans in the loop. Like we're not can do ignore the fact that the world's changing that AI is a big part of it.

20:17But, you know, we, what we believe is the virtual assistants are going to be the ones managing the systems, managing the AI employees, managing the AI tools that are built out. And that's what we look at. That's part of our assessment criteria that we actually look at. But can't you public you publicly committed to helping a 1 million business leader or business people person take back their life by using virtual assistants. What number are you at now? You know, well over 100 at this point, but you know, I think the other thing is when I say that number like, you know, the other thing I do is I speak to individuals every day. And I also put out a lot of content. So that mission is related to the content that I put out and I can't measure that at this point. But, you know, can I add value? Can I help business owners succeed? And it's not just about working with them necessarily. It's about providing business owners with the resources they need to take back their time. Is there any success stories there Corey? Like people like coming back to you and saying, hey, I've used your services. I've used your virtual assistant and you saved me X amount of time or you made my life a little easier. What was what was the reaction so far?

21:26Our whole business is based off of referrals. So, you know, we don't do any marketing that signifies to me that, you know, we are adding value that folks are willing to introduce us to people in their network because they trust us. In terms of time. Yeah, like, you know, we have clients that hand over a variety of different tasks. We have some case studies that we've published on this. But, you know, when you bring on a virtual assistant for four hours a day, for example, that's a thousand over a thousand hours back a year that you get to focus on building the business. And we have a lot of folks that have brought on, you know, folks full time part time. And that's meaningful time back, you know, there are a lot of tasks like social media management operations management dealing with clients. And we are supporting that we're doing a variety of different things. Heck, I look at my business. It's run by my team. You know, I can take a vacation. I have a lot of clients that, you know, we're unable to take a vacation before they had a virtual assistant because they had to be running the business 24 seven.

22:31And they brought on some they trust now they can take a week off without the business falling apart. They can take a sick day. Yeah, you can take six. You can take a six. Let's do a bit of a deep dive into the operator mindset. I guess this is where this is next conversation is going. You're just prepping you up here. You've worked across sales, ops and product inside your own companies. When you're building an operation and focused business, blue most of for instance, which of those disciplines you feel like you default to. I know we all have multitasking our mind and we can do anything. But which one do you feel like you default to? Yeah, so I've a PhD. I need to build a system. So that's kind of how this started like building out systems. You know, I don't have a specific framework that I follow. But what I make sure is that everything's documented. Things are clearly defined. There's clear instruction. So one we rely on documentation. That's super important. I make sure that we have our project management systems in place. So we're documenting important tasks. You know, the other thing is with the team. We're teaching them about defining the the you know the task that you know, are they urgent? Are they important?

23:45You know, like high medium low, right, and signing a deadline and a due date to everything right I think that's the most important thing and I've trained my team this. If I come to them with a task, the next question I want to hear from them is when do you need this by right so. We don't have any any fancy, you know, operational frameworks in place, but we've built a pretty fancy operating system in terms of clear rules and responsibilities. We have different individuals on our executive team that are responsible for a variety of different tasks. So when is only responsible for client success and dealing with the clients, the other persons responsible for dealing with the the the VAs in our talent pool. Another person is responsible for recruiting and sourcing. So so clear rules and responsibilities is another thing that I really promote with the team as well. So documentation, clear instructions. Really defining the tasks that we have to do defining the urgency level and then assigning a deadline to everything and then clear roles and responsibilities and clear ownership of things.

24:46And your company, the most right now, is it do you consider like in a physical location or you guys are virtual obviously and by the name virtual assistant, but you probably distributed around the world. But is there an office or do you just work virtually everywhere? My business partners in the Philippines, she was my first VA, amazing, amazing woman, shot Romero and I'm in Mexico. We have clients all over the world. It's it's really cool what you can build in today's, you know, business ecosystem. That's why you know in my mind, there's such a need for outsourcing. That's why we're in this space because you can build a business from anywhere you can have clients from anywhere and you can still succeed. And I've interviewed people like on this podcast who are in the outsourcing, I would call it an outsourcing business as you are. And they seem to do it as scale. Have you done that as scale yet or are you getting there? Yeah, we've been doing this for like a year. Oh, okay. It's grown pretty quickly.

25:46So we're just in the process like, you know, every business you're always learning and growing. We in my mind, we've perfected the model now. And so we're in that. No, you're ready probably right? Yeah, we scaled something before like focused on like task work, but you know, we learn quickly. It's harder. It was it wasn't the right model. And now we have a model that is right for scale. We have the systems in place right for scale. We have the team in place right for scale. So so we're ready. You know, business has has grown quickly. Our talent pool has grown pretty quickly. And now, you know, you just want to keep fueling that it's all food strapped. So we're funding growth internally. Because I've heard a lot of companies not just individual. I mean, assuming you work one on one basically with your customers, right? So you're not doing, you know, large organization wants to you outsource say 100 VA in their in their in their in their on in the corporate umbrella for instance. Are you not there yet? I'm assuming, but you're doing business one on one with individuals. Is that how it works?

26:48Yeah, so we work with solar,preneurs and founders and small businesses. You know, obviously the goal is we want to go up market to fill. You know, placements for businesses, but you know, we're really focused on on who we serve right now. But yeah, we we target solarpreneurs and small medium businesses start. I heard there was a company here in in Canada. What was that last year last year? And they had I think about 200 admin assistance. And you know, they take different titles. Obviously in this world. And they outsourced all of them to Argentina, I believe. And yeah, but that, you know, this is why I'm referring to because sometimes there is a large large organizations that decide, you know, you know, one category specifically to what you do. It is not needed to be inside the company and they decide to take it outside the organization.

27:48Maybe there are something there that you probably can play a role in. And if you want me to introduce a few people now that we connected on the tin, let me know if you see something that interest you. And I'm really happy to do that. That would be amazing. Yeah, for us look, my vision as a founder, our goals to like bring the vision. And so for me, you know, we're starting with folks in the Philippines. But ideally, you know, I really do want to expand globally. I want to bring meaningful and fulfilling work to folks across the globe. They have the skill. They have the talent. And you know, we'll get there. We're going to take it one day at a time. And, you know, we want to work with really good companies. But I know we have to start small. And so we have to, you know, we're focused on back office positions and front office positions. But we'll get there. We'll get there. We have some really good people on the. So I have a question for you. I don't know if you can answer that for me. Yes, for me. Is that I was just to the podcast with a gentleman out of Australia. Two, three weeks ago. And he specialized in talent, recruitment and identification, identification recruitment in Africa.

28:55So the question would be is for you, is are you hard set on the Philippine, why the Philippine and can you expand beyond that? Yeah, business is all about trust. Okay. So my first virtual assistant became my business partner. And she lives in the Philippines. So it makes it easier to understand the culture. Because it's to pretend that culture doesn't play a role in business would be in my mind. I would think ignorance. So that makes it easy. I've so when I trust that that owns that part of the business. And, you know, that's clear to her role. I ideally would like to to expand into Africa, Pakistan, India, South America, you know, that is the goal. I don't want to be limited by geography. And now we're just really focused. And, you know, over time, we will expand and be able to support folks and bring meaningful work to folks in different geographies. We just got to take it one day at a time. Rome wasn't built in a day. So we're working to build Rome without the collapse.

29:57And, you know, we will plan to we plan to get there. We used to say Rome was a built in one day until I saw the first, I want to say, large construction project out of China. It sounds like they can build, they can build Rome in one day. Nowadays in China, I don't know, but it seems like they're very modern construction tools to defeat that whole. Rome wasn't built in one day theory, but nevertheless, you have 70,000 followers on social media, congrats by the way. And it's real asset when you're trying to build something or you're in business of many sort nowadays to have that out there, right? So from, you know, for you, for you, do you use social media for content, lead gen, or something else completely. Yeah, I mean, there's this. It's all of the above, but this is a whole philosophical thing, right? Like what is the purpose behind it? There's many different things, many different strategies for me. I put a content there because I enjoy it. That's the truth. Like it helps me build my confidence. It helps me be a better leader. It helps reinforce my beliefs.

31:04Because if I write it there, it's out in the world and I can make it happen or it's just like this is what I believe. Now the reality is with social media, whether you're even just selling directly through it or not, you know, that social proof does matter to others. We can pretend it doesn't, but you know, the number of followers people notice it. And you know, the first thing people do, first thing I do, at least maybe not everyone, but the first thing I do when I'm meeting with someone is I check their LinkedIn, I check their Instagram. I want to see who they're connected to, who they know and what they put out into this world. So, you know, I might not directly sell through my content and say, click this link. Here's my offer, but I do know when I get on to calls people already know who I am. It makes a lot easier to sell. So yeah, Instagram, like the social media does play a big part in my sales strategy. I just, I'm not one of those individuals that uses it all the time to be like, buy my product. I'm like, meet me. I'm, I'm, I'm Corey and this is what I'm doing. This is what I believe. And if you want to work with me, that's great. Contact me. Let's have a real great conversation and see where that goes.

32:07And that's why I do personally, I do this podcast because it feels to me like this is a natural progression of what I did in the past. I didn't read. It wasn't really a tough thing for me to do to start a podcast. Because you always talking to people you always meeting with people. It wasn't something I had to really make an effort into it. I enjoy doing it. It's not something pays me to do. Nobody pays me to do this. It's just me volunteering to have conversation with people, which is passionate. So really, I'm not, I'm not doing anything extra to from an effort perspective here. So I really enjoy, like yourself, I really enjoy the content. We just passed 300,000 downloads since the last last year. And we're now averaging close to 2000 downloads a day when I never thought we'll get to 2000 downloads a day on this podcast. But I really appreciate all the effort that the, that you know, everybody puts into it specifically the guests. I mean, nobody shows up to these things. You know, hey, Robin, let's, let's have a conversation. I'm sure there's some preps that takes, takes place here. So. No, I know how much work goes into this stuff. I work with folks every single day. It's not easy. And putting yourself out there isn't easy, right? You're opening yourself up to a lot of criticism. Right?

33:18It's great. I told you how I end the call. We won't, I won't ruin that surprise. But, you know, I do that every single day on on Instagram on LinkedIn. And people make fun of me Fred, like my friends, but you know, like the truth is, I think there's nothing more important in today's business world than putting yourself out there. We are all whether we want to admit it or not, right? Like I wouldn't, if you were to ask me am I a content creator? Am I an influencer? I'd say no, but I'm a business owner. And therefore I am a content creator, whether I like to admit it or not. So I'm going all in on creating content because of that. I have to put myself out there for my business to succeed. Whether I'm one person business or, you know, a corporation, you look at, you know, the example, click up. Have you heard a click up? Yes. They are a task management project management software. They came into a really competitive space. There were incumbents in that space and they weren't at all those incumbents, but they came in. And their strategy was content. They use content to get into a competitive space. And, you know, the reality is what you're doing is great because, you know, if you think about it, there are a lot of folks that might not have the best product out there, but they're putting out content and making people believe in them, making people trust them. And that's what content does you build trust. So it's like, if you're not creating content, if you're not doing the things that you're going to do that you're doing.

34:31If you're not getting those downloads, you might lose out to someone that's willing to do that. That doesn't have the product that you have the service that you have. So I give you a lot of credit for doing it because it's not hard, but it's vital in today's world. And you know what you touch on a very important topic we talk about all the time is trust nowadays is a hard currency to be honest with you. Yeah. There's a lot of fakes out there. And, you know, everybody who is trying to find their voice or, you know, put their stake in the ground on any idea or any business type. The only way you can do this nowadays and I have a couple of conversations coming up here in the short term where we talk a lot about this is you have to differentiate yourself. You can't send in in males anymore or LinkedIn direct messages and people are not answering people are not answering their phones. You call people and they think it's a spam. It's just crazy world out there. And now it's yourself you either have been introduced or nobody's answering you. And the only way you're going to be pre introduced to any conversation is by creating something authentic.

35:38Yeah, I know exactly. I want to send calls my phone and like how did you get my number I don't give my number to anyone. Even it's yeah, it's super like I'm writing an article on this that's coming out tomorrow like trust. That's what it's on trust is business is just one giant trust fall. That's the title of the article and and you know everything we're doing everything that it takes grow businesses about earning trust whether you're creating content, whether you're on a sales call, whether you're looking for referrals. Like the quickest way for us to build trust right that like that's what we need to figure out because trust again trust is built over a day. It takes a lot of time. And but you can lose it very quickly. So what we need to figure is what can we do to build trust in largest number of people in our ICP and how can we do that quickly. That's where the content comes comes into play for me. That's why I do so much of it. No, you've raised nearly $5 million across across your companies is blue most venture backed or is a bootstrapped or something between does it doesn't matter how a company is funded.

36:45Yeah, so so for us I've made an effort like the conscious effort to bootstrap this you know the money that we we earn I make sure everyone gets paid and then I put it back in the business. So it's bootstrapped and for me that's kind of the direction that I want to go right now and we're growing we're growing. But yeah, it was that a choice or circumstance choice. I haven't tried to raise capital you know like to me I think that it's important to maintain the growth and in the culture that we have that that we focus on on growing the way that we're growing now. Maybe that changes in the future, but you know we don't need capital outside. I know I know you come from Canada and you yourself you living south now south of the continent. I want to ask you the language question. So does you know I'm assuming your VA's work probably cross client profiles cross time zones cross languages.

37:48From a cultural perspective. How do you address the language side? Well, I mean the majority of our client the when the right match when we talked about the right match before it comes down to also the requirements so if a person needs an individual to speak a different language that's what we have to ensure happens now because we're primarily in English right now again it's just focused in the future we can do more but right now we needed to focus on English as our primary language. We make sure that every individual that we're working with has the level of English that is necessary to succeed in the role but it would be the same for for other. Other languages we would ensure that an individual has the capability to support their client in the language that is required. Now, Corey, you mentioned earlier that AI is being used and human in the loop, I guess you refer to your services from a VA perspective, but nobody can deny that AI tools are getting better and good every day.

38:52It's one of those non static kind of technology keeps evolving. Where do you see this thing going? Yeah, you know, I think with AI like we're not going to ignore the AI is there I think AI is great it improves a lot of workflows. I think that it also gets rid of the work humans don't want to be doing nobody wants to be copying and pacing nobody wants to be doing repetitive mindless work. There's no fulfillment in that. So I think it gives people an opportunity to do more right I also think that it it's opening up the you know the global talent pool you know people are looking towards outsourcing as an option now because you can give an individual. Wherever they're located on a tool and they have the skill set they have the ability to run them for you. And you know the cost of living is as low or in certain areas right. But you know I think AI you know people say I might disrupt this market I think that AI is is opening up this market it's creating a need for folks to to outsource to run these tools to support these tools.

39:57Because they can do more right that's also the other thing like if your capacity goes up there's more work to be done right if you can work faster you can take on more clients people still crave the human experience you know I do think that there's kind of a lot of hype surrounding AI right now it's real hype but like hype that you know it's going to replace humans but it's that just type you know once we start noticing the patterns people start craving human experiences. So I think there are rules like customer success client success we are going to crave real life customer success client success because nobody wants to talk to a bot it frustrates me every time it's just like the first thing I say when I get onto one of these systems give me the human place the bots not solving my problems frustrating me. So yeah it just it really depends but you know I'm not worried I'm actually very optimistic because I think that AI opens up the global market because this this is a tool for folks to use it's a tool it's it's not a replacement and the yeah we can allow it to you.

40:57How do you how do you ensure quality protection in terms of preventing for instance client burnouts from bad matches and and that happened have you seen this before. Yeah this this is this is the value add where we come in right like a lot of clients don't want to look for they don't know who to look for the red flags and it's hard for them to make a decision if someone's not the right fit so yeah we've seen it a lot and we we come in there and we help support the client to find an individual that is better suited to support them. And you do performance monitoring Corey throughout the process. Yeah you know we're on top of it we're we're checking in you know every client that we work with gets a team lead they get access to our executive team the team lead is there helping manage and sending the the virtual talent up for success and checking in on them helping them project management so in doing that we're able to do that we also collect feedback every month about the individual with the client so we can understand if this is still the right fit but we also know the red flags look for us so if we notice any of these red flags we'll go to a client and we'll be let them know.

41:57Hey I don't know if you're noticing this but this person might not be the rest of the right fit now you have a couple of options you can stick with them and see if they they improve or we can start looking for a placement and that's okay if you want to replacement so yeah we get them options. Yeah I do personally I and just sharing this out of personal level I do have a virtual assistant and she is in Philippine as well so I'll be working with her for I don't know three four years now more than well. And she handles many tasks for me obviously I use everything from AI to virtual assistant you got a lot of things on the go I am running a podcast but I also am the founder and CEO the company called America sales of marketing and I operate in under n49 networks providing fractional I want to call it sea level support to small medium businesses from fractional managing directors that are fractional CEO or fractional CRO. Depends on what these small companies requires and so there's a lot of many many moving pieces that I need to have or there's no way human possible way to handle all of it so I really appreciate Sylvia's workshop out Sylvia and she's she's located in in the Philippine great great great person to work with I've been so lucky to have her on my on my team for so many years so now from my from my perspective I guess the question becomes from

43:22from your from your experience how can something like this help not just me many people like me in in this space yeah you know the reality is our time is limited we don't get it back and so I do believe in putting in the hours when it comes to business I think it's important but I think it's important to determine what is it that you need to be spending your time doing versus what is it that you can have someone else supporting you with right you've made a conscious decision and I'm going to do it. And you've realized you can't do everything it sounds like you do a lot of podcasts you have your business you create content and I'm assuming you've determined like these things are important but they don't need me doing them and you know when it comes to working with business owners are goals to give them their time back so they can focus on growing the business or life outside of it because that is just as important to grow the business you do need to feel fulfilled you do need to enjoy the fruits of your labor so that's how we're having a lot of fun.

44:22So Corey you know just I think from for those people who are listening to this say I'm interested in this but you know how do I trust somebody to come into my business know everything about me and really let them in so it's a psychological thing right so we talked about trust earlier so how do you how do you know from your if you're talking to a perspective customer how do you convince them to let go of all this fear and get somebody into their network and in their world and help them out yeah it's not easy. You know to be to be completely honest you have to be ready you have to know you want this and you have to be willing to to set so enough for success now how do we get them how do we get them ready well it comes down to the right match and what I'd say to them is you're not handing off everything to start especially if you're so in that that is skeptical think small what is the smallest thing that you can hand off that you feel like you don't need to be doing it takes a while for a person to get you right they're not just going to understand you overnight now the right individual

45:22is going to come to you with the right questions they're going to be the right fit for you they're going to have the right personality work style communication style that alone will help disarm you you know for example I had a client this week come to us and said he was I love this being you know what the VA said to him it's like it sounds like you need someone to mother you like and and to like call you out for you said this to him and he was like this is exactly what I needed to hear I needed someone to push up against me we knew this about this individual based on his personality type but the VA did that and in these small little moments they they build trust you know we have other VA so that work with clients that are very sentimental very family oriented right and they're they're sending pictures of what they're doing on the weekend like it's these small little moments of building trust right that's the other thing it's like how do you build trust how do you connect with your client so when you focus on the right personality communication style work style you can build back that trust like trust isn't always

46:22just coming down to getting the work done important it's important but it's also you know connecting with a person on the same like vibrations it sounds like you build a methodology for trust and you pass it along to your VA's did I get that right we're trying every single day we're getting better and better and better at it but yeah you know our our model is proving to to work and really help business owners find the right fit someone that they can trust we can't guarantee trust but we are going to do everything in our power to help build that trust and nobody can walk off the side of the street and say hey man trust me that's not going to work you know I've always used this I mean trust is earned a lot in a lot of cases I mean some people trust right from the get go but you know there are so many bad stories out there I suggest not to but you need to you may want to experiment with the trust a little bit to develop a trust but you write it takes it takes a bit of an effort on both sides to develop the trust you want to be a willing customer to develop a trust and you want to be a I'm assuming your VA needs to allow for that trust to develop using their own action exactly right and you know it's great that we're having this conversation because this is what I'm my my blog tomorrow is going to be on trust is earned and trust is a huge part of this right and you know I think for the right virtual talent they they understand this

47:49and that's you know what the when people have failed and it happens occasionally it's that they weren't focused on the trust they were they were focused on on the wrong things I understand that you know there's reasons why people are doing that but trust goes both ways right the VA is earning the trust of the client the clients earning the trust the VA because you know what to be honest a lot of virtual assistants have been screwed over they they it's hard for them to trust in other countries because people have not paid them people have treated them poorly you know they're used to this and that's why you know like I feel fortunate that the freelance world the core it's very it's very and a pandemic now in terms of how people are being treated they hire these individuals it doesn't matter what the skills are and but there is a sort of a pattern in mistreating these freelancers because out of sight out of mind you know if you hire somebody next door to you in the same city or in the same town they can drive up to your office to say demand things but if they are in different country that leaves a little bit of a freedom to help people are treated and I think it is you know this is me thinking out loud here with you on the on the podcast I think we should have another metric how does the VA or the freelancer community in general think about somebody who is not paying them correctly or discounting their invoices or not paying them at all in a lot of cases or mistreating them in some cases

49:13yeah I you know this is not something we should I think we should loudly speak against to be honest with you because these people is never respects me can you do in a great they do in a job you agreed to get a job done you agreed on a price with these as customers and we should pay these people yeah we're going to change that that's why like what compels me to this space it's like I've seen it I've had people not pay people blame the VA's and saying well I don't want to pay for this it's like excuse me like it's not like that these are people they have families like you don't just get to say I don't feel like paying them right you would hate if someone did that to you like come on you reaction yeah so we're changing that that's my goal we want to bring equal opportunity to the global town pool we know we can do better I know I can do better it's not perfect right now but it's getting better we're learning and we're building something like it's as I said Rome's not built on today so we need to take it step by step we know where we want to take this business we know the model we want to have we know we want to give

50:15the talent more and we will it's just a matter of time I have a couple more rapid question for you if a business owner listening right now to this conversation and just maybe they are at a moment where just before they finally decide to get help what is the one thing you want them to hear from you today that would probably tilt that decision to get help yeah you know if you feel like there's a couple things that I think about right when it comes to when is it fun ready you struggle to like you feel like you can't take a sick day like if you were to to be sick everything would fall apart okay if you feel like you couldn't go away on a vacation for one week and things would fall apart right that that is a sign my mind like to ask yourself could you take a vacation tomorrow would things fall apart do you feel like you need to be included for everything now that is that's someone that needs some massaging right like if you feel like you need to be involved and you keep hearing like it's like I can do this better I need to be like why am I still doing everything yeah we need to work with that person and help improve them but I really the question I'm really leaning into today could you take a sick day tomorrow would things still run without you

51:26could you take a vacation would things still run without you those are the people that we want to come and help that we want to support because we want them you built a business for freedom not for it to be a jail right the business is not a jail it is it's a freedom like it's a I feel so fulfilled that I get to work on a business every single day I love it it's a privilege but I also know that I need to be able to walk away from it yeah yeah yeah absolutely where can people find you learn more about blue Mosul and figure out whether this is the right fit for them yeah you so first place if you're looking for for virtual talent or virtual assistant our website bluemozo.com BLE mo so calm you can find me on LinkedIn send me a DM there you can find me on sub stack you can have a newsletter there taking my time back you know I'm also on Instagram so come find me there I'm always happy to answer any questions look if you come reach out to me I'm not going to try to sell you if you have real honest questions I'm going to try to deliver as much values I can so I'm happy to answer it it's not going to turn into a sales call just want to reach a million business owners and give their time back like that that's what it's about absolutely great and as we come to the end for our conversation is there anything else that you like to add Corey that we have not yet addressed no that's that's it it's you know I

52:44told you how I end a call so once we get there that that's the one thing we need to address we'll do a little bit of a wrap up here and we'll do they we'll do the close you and I so absolutely and for the audience I want to thank you so much for joining me and Corey on recording episode 268 I really appreciate your time thanks for listening in if you're coming on our podcast channel thanks for listening in if you're coming on your YouTube channel thanks for watching us and also just I noticed lately that you guys like the blog where I summarize all these conversations and put them in an archival form and speaking of sub-stack I'm also on a sub-stack is the blog post is integrated with sub-stack so anything I post on my website it goes into blog sub-stack as well so the blog post is robin a ub. blog where you can discover all these conversations that we've had since the launch of the podcast two three years ago again thanks so much and Corey should we close it oh yeah let's do it all right buddy I always do the end every call boom I like that thank you so much Corey I really appreciate it thanks for the audience and see you guys at the next episode thanks

53:51everybody thank you