We started 2020 with so much hope for the year ahead, didn’t we? In January, we introduced our theme for the year: stories of the amazing business owners we have the pleasure of working with every day.
The goal was to take all that we had shared in 2019 with our theme of Resilience, and demonstrate exactly how that resilience shows up in real life. We know that ideas and theories, like resilience, are great conversation topics, but since we’re entirely focused on execution, we wanted to show you exactly what it looks like in real life.
We kicked off February with Samantha, a financial advisor running a solo practice in a small town. She had decided to “fire herself” as her chief administrator so that she could focus more heavily on the work she does best - giving great practical advice. After just a couple of months, with her resilient team, who built her resilient calendar, Samantha discovered she was living a life she enjoyed much more - and making a lot more money.
In March, we brought you Adam, a busy real estate professional who was feeling burned out from running every single aspect of his business. We joined Adam’s team and helped him further solidify his resilient reputation with his online marketing. He also learned to delegate like a boss, turning over his listing write-ups, video editing, content creation, list management, follow-up with leads, and ongoing customer care to his resilient team. Adam was then able to continue to earn at an extremely high level while spending a lot more time with his family.
Of course, March brought a lot of other things, like some significant life and work changes due to the pandemic. Since Admin Slayer has been working remotely for years, we shared some emergency information about working remotely and managing your cybersecurity.
Life kept trucking forward despite … everything… and we were back on track in April with Nathan, a business transitions and insurance advisor working with clients in Canada and around the world. With endless events and a constant barrage of urgent client work, Nathan was overloaded and found he was spending far too much time dealing with calendar arrangements, data collections, and constant rescheduling. As an extremely client-focused advisor, it means a lot to Nathan to provide real personal touches to clients with gifts and thoughtful gestures that go above and beyond - but he was running out of both time and brain space for all of these. We helped Nathan create resilient systems, processes and helped him maintain his resilient pipeline to keep bringing in high-quality business. Of course, we helped keep his finances in amazing order as well. Nathan is hyperfocused on doing the most amazing job for his clients, which keeps them coming back for more. While travel is on hold, we’ve helped him transition to online services, and it’s been surprisingly seamless.
In May, Avalon’s story demonstrated how a great marketing agency can maximize resilient technology and delegation to improve her own emotional resilience. While Avalon is absolutely the strategy expert, we’re the execution experts, and when she learned that she doesn’t have to do all the leg work - just a whole lot of brainwork - she was relieved and has had so much more energy ever since.
Camilla runs an online retail operation, selling incredible scarves and jewelry. In June, we shared her story of first struggling with offshore virtual assistants (because she knew she needed the help) before taking a chance on the costlier - but oh so much more effective - team at Admin Slayer. We helped Camilla by managing sales, returns, exchanges, and customer inquiries, created an evolving procedure manual, and of course, her social media and expenses. Camilla was finally able to return to world travel (before the pandemic, thankfully) and the creative process that inspired her to open her own business in the first place.
In July, we introduced you to Blair, who leads a manufacturing company providing industrial safety products. Constant travel and not enough time to juggle the responsibilities of leading a 30-person team left him with mistakes that saw him stranded on more than one occasion in a strange city, without a hotel booking or a car. We helped Blair determine the best systems that would work for him, implemented them, and took as much off his plate as possible. We saved him an enormous amount of money on the cost of constant rebooking and cancelling while simplifying his overall experience so he was ready for every meeting, no matter where it was or at what time - oh, and he now only ever sees the emails that he really needs.
Melanie, our August lead character, helps executives grow their businesses and improve the quality of their lives. She works online - which was definitely a prescient option this year! - educating, supporting, and inspiring. She was losing opportunities (even a few clients) because she was missing emails, losing appointment bookings, and having a hard time focusing on business development. We helped clear everything up, including her finances, which helped her grow her business mindfully, in a lower stress environment.
In September, an expert insurance advisory firm decided they didn’t want to manage people anymore. They came to Admin Slayer to offload all the people management, so they could focus entirely on doing what they do best - earning. We helped them transition to a cloud-based system and improved their cybersecurity protocols while taking over all of their typical administrative tasks. Since we are indeed that good, they found that we were accomplishing the same tasks as their full-time person, but in half the time, and they were getting the benefit of all the experts on our team, instead of relying on just one individual.
October was a story that few were expecting: a travel agency keeping their business alive during a year where travel had basically stopped. Their key needs were in social media because Robert and Diane know that they need to be top of mind when the business comes back. We helped them transition their marketing strategy into diligent execution, and despite the conditions, they’re making enough revenue to keep the dream alive.
Finally, November was a story featuring our U.S. clients (that’s right - we’re definitely not limited by geography) who were attracted to both our expertise and our Canadian dollar. Like many of our clients, they had a great marketing strategy, but they struggled with execution. Finding the time and energy to create articles, newsletters, social media communities, and gather important leads from those areas was incredibly difficult - until we stepped in to help them execute their online marketing strategies.
We hope you enjoyed meeting some of the amazing people we’re thrilled to support. 2021 will bring its own challenges and opportunities (and of course, a whole new theme of articles we can’t wait to share). We’re looking forward to facing it all, head-on, using all the resilience that we keep building, and sharing it with you.
