At Admin Slayer, we like having a theme for the year. We spent 2019 writing about resilience, something we wanted to help you develop - the ability to bounce back after extreme stress. Apparently, that was timely, given what 2020 has brought us.
This year, our theme is about demonstrating how we help our clients build that resilience, by supporting them in the work that they do, and taking over the operations, administration, and bookkeeping.
Our clients are really, really excellent at what they do - it’s why they are in business. What we often find is that our clients are not as excellent at - or even if they are, not excited about - the operations side of the business. By removing those necessary pieces of work from their plate, we help businesses remain resilient and in many cases, make more money.
Business operations remain the same - and our area of expertise - whether your business is financial planning, real estate, wealth consulting, digital marketing, retail, manufacturing, coaching and training… or, this month, investment counseling… Admin Slayer keeps our clients focused on the work they do best, while we handle the rest.
Introducing Summit Capital
Shaun and Ed head up an investment counseling firm that’s unusual in a number of ways. The fact that they’re experts with long, storied careers, that they have a full team with a professional board, an investment management committee, operations and compliance departments, and much more isn’t actually that unusual. What’s unique is that they invest quite a bit in their online outreach.
Years ago, they worked with a marketing agency that revamped their website, created a sales system within a malleable CRM program, shot a bunch of videos, set up their social media accounts, and designed a content creation program. It catapulted them to the top of the heap as far as online presence and brought in a lot of new clients.
What got tough was keeping it up.
The Challenge
Design and strategy are key to marketing. These are the actions that get new customers in the door, and if you don’t have a plan, you’re not going anywhere. Especially during a recession, it’s vital to continue to invest in this area, even if you’re wincing a bit when you write the cheque. At the same time, it can be really hard to keep it up. Creation can be a great deal of fun, and very exciting for many business owners, but so many times, it seems to fall flat. Why?
Any idea can be great, but without execution, it’s never going to take off.
That’s why we’re called Admin Slayer. We execute.
The marketing agency has known a few members of our team for years, and when they saw a potential execution issue coming up, they knew just who to call.
We started with a meeting between Shaun and Ed, Liz at the marketing agency, and our team. Shaun and Ed have a solid social media presence and really enjoy creating content. They write articles every month and create their own videos. The excitement stops right when it comes to getting it out to their audience.
Our team got busy. This is something we know quite well.
Setting up the Routine
We set up a system for Shaun and Ed. Each month, they take turns writing a blog based on the plan they created with Liz. We set up the documents for this, organize their online folders, make sure the time is booked in each of their calendars, follow up to make sure everything is done on time, get it proofread, and then return it to Shaun and Ed for review. Shaun usually spends a little time editing and then flips it back.
From there, we source images that fit with the brand guide that Liz has provided, adjusting these to fit with their company colour palette. We send three to Shaun and he picks the one he likes best.
Then, we publish these on the website and set up the newsletter to go out by email. Shaun often likes to take one last look at this before it goes and then - voila! It’s off to the races.
But, no, it doesn’t stop there. We publish the article on their social media channels, especially LinkedIn, from where they get a lot of business, and we re-share it on social media a few weeks later to ensure as many eyes are on it as possible. If this is an article that Shaun has marked as “evergreen”, we put it in the list of articles to share again next year, usually during a similar time.
A few weeks after the newsletter goes out, we look through the data that comes back and pick out for Shaun the names of those who have read and shared the article. He reviews it to see if these are people he has been in touch with recently, or if it’s an opportunity for him to reach out and connect with someone who either is new to the newsletter or he just hasn’t been in touch with for some time.
Shaun has a canned template in his email that we send out on his behalf. Usually, we’ll set these up with the client’s information and put them in draft form in his inbox. We add a timeslot to his calendar to review these, make changes, and send, and then have follow-ups scheduled a few weeks out, in case he doesn’t hear from them. We do the same sort of thing with likes, responses, and updates on social media channels. Sometimes it’s an invitation to join their email newsletter, and sometimes it’s an invitation to have a conversation with Shaun.
The system repeats monthly, and Shaun and Ed have found this to be one of the many ways they can continue to add to their business in a mindful way.
The Result
Since putting this system in place, Shaun and Ed have found that Admin Slayer can help even more. They liked having these tasks showing up with regularity in their calendars and knowing that everything would be handled after that. We started booking their meetings and managing their emails, communicating with clients, formatting proposal documents and client letters, creating useful templates, and managing their receipts and expenses. We even organize Ed’s family events, and coordinate with his spouse to ensure he’s showing up for date night!
While they have an in-house bookkeeper for the firm, Shaun and Ed each have individual holding companies that need regular bookkeeping, and our team took this off their hands entirely. At first, they felt this was something that they “should” do themselves, being finance experts, but they realized after a few months that not having to worry about this one piece meant they could focus their attention on the stuff they really like doing.
Shaun can now focus all of his attention on marketing and business development, the parts of his job he loves the most. Ed really prefers to spend his time managing portfolios and analyzing data. By removing operations management, bookkeeping, and marketing execution from their workload, they are bringing in more clients and serving them even more expertly than before.
Contact Us
If you’ve got the strategy and the plan, Admin Slayer can execute it - it’s what we do best. Want to talk about it? Get in touch here.