Center Stage: Spotlighting Business Challenges
Center Stage: Spotlighting Business Challenges
141 - Discovering Your Genius Zone for Business Success with Emily LaRusch
Are you ready to tap into your genius zone? Our guest, Emily LaRusch, founder of Back Office Betties, shares her insights on how to discover the activities that leads to effective delegation for tasks outside our genius zone.
We also talk about team building and the vital role it plays in business growth. Emily brings her expertise to the table, providing tips on being a leader who nurtures and develops a team to fill the gaps in your business. We delve into the concept of fractional help, discussing virtual reception and fractional administrative services. We also put a spotlight on the critical factor that is often overlooked - mental health.
Want more from Emily? Go to www.backofficebetties.com/freegift to receive a free resource that can help your firm double its income!
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Speaker 2:This is Center Stage putting your firm in the spotlight by highlighting business owners and other industry experts to help take your firm to the next level. Hey everyone, and welcome to Center Stage. I'm your host, john Henson, and this week we are talking about what it takes to be a genius, and it's probably not in the literal sense, in terms of your IQ level, but in just how you work and how you are working at your most optimal level. Maybe our guest here can maybe explain it in a different way, but all of this is coming from our guest this week, the founder of Back Office Betty's, emily LaRouche, and she will really dive into this with us here in just a bit. But, emily, thanks for joining us again.
Speaker 3:Thank you, pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you were one of the very first guests on Center Stage a couple of years ago, so I'm really glad to have you back on here. I know you do a lot of work in the virtual receptionist space with Back Office Betty's, but you also just in some of the articles that you've contributed to our website over on the spotlight insider side. You have a huge focus on leadership and business development and what it takes to be a really good business owner. So for people who may not have caught you the first time around, tell us a little about yourself, Back Office Betty's, and just a lot of the things that you're passionate about.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. Back Office Betty's that's the easy one. We are a virtual receptionist and fractional administrative staffing company for small law firms, so we provide everyone from trained paralegals to executive and administrative assistants. We can do a variety of different things, like social media, things like that. So if you think of the administrative roles that need to get filled for a small firm, they want to run like a big firm. You need specialty people.
Speaker 3:We take care of those and personally, you hit on something that is really important to me and that's leadership development. And what's really important to me, more so than the business and the services we provide, is really truly mental health, and that's what we're going to talk a little bit about finding your zone of genius. Because growing up, just to be totally transparent, I didn't know what I was good at. I struggled in school. Most people would be really surprised that I was a little hoodlum and I just I was directionless. I didn't know where I was going because I had a genius zone, and so it's so important for me when I'm coaching and working with other entrepreneurs, to start there. Let's find out your genius zone, and then everything else is simple, and so I do work with the entrepreneurs organization accelerator program and do some coaching there. Inmates to entrepreneurs do some teaching there. And then I also guest lecture at Texas A&M and I work with them as well in their entrepreneurial department.
Speaker 2:Awesome, yeah, a ton of great stuff there, and so you talked about your unique genius zone. So what is that? How do you begin to even find out what your zone is?
Speaker 3:All right. So this is so easy, john. You just take a sheet of paper, draw a line straight down the middle and another one across and the upper left. You're going to write great, is it great? Great, it's something like that. So you write great. Then you're going to write in the next one you're going to say good like. Then in the next bottom left you're going to put good dislike, and then in the bottom right you're going to put Bad hate.
Speaker 3:And so what we're looking at is what you're great at and gives you energy, so you love, so it's so. That's what it is. You're gonna say I'm great and I love, so great love and what I'm good at, and I like doing what I'm good at, but I dislike doing what I'm bad at and I absolutely hate doing. And you just put Every task, every type of thing, whether it's public speaking, doing accounting, talking to customers, whatever it is fill in the boxes. Your upper left is your genius zone and when you work in there and that's all you're doing, you can 10x your results. And For me, when I figured this out in my business now, my team is so protective when I try and creep over to something that I might be good at, but it's not my genius own. They're like smack my hand, get out of here, emily, that's not your lane. Get back over there. Because they know we're gonna get the biggest growth for the company when I stay in my genius zone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's, and you know, especially for someone who's running their own business, you know, even if they're just starting out there, probably, you know they have to wear all of these hats. There's no way they enjoy doing every single thing right, you know? I mean, I'm even thinking about it just in my own role. You know the things that I'm kind of responsible before, but things I don't really particularly enjoy doing and, like you know, those are the things that I got to try to figure out how to get off of my plate, and I think delegation is a really big part of this and I think it's kind of you know, at least from where I'm sitting, it's kind of at the core of Kind of uncovering you know what your genius zone actually is. And so you know, I mean, like, how does someone Really start to try to get rid of the tasks that fall into those other three quadrants, outside of the things that they're great at and they love to do?
Speaker 3:Well, I love fractional experts and so I've really built my company so I can use myself as an example. You know, when I realized that Doing the work of a COO is a small company, you're generally wearing several hats, right. So I was kind of CEO, coo and the COO role is not my forte, it's not where I'm great and I'm more in the strategic and visionary and thoughts and creativity, more marketing. And so what I did is I hired a fractional COO and who knew they were out there but you can get an entire executive team on a fractional basis. And so now I've got that. And then I also hired an executive assistant 20 hours a month. I hired one of our own as the cobbler with no shoes. I actually hired one of our own VA's to come on as my executive assistant and it's changed my life.
Speaker 3:And so Cameron Harold would say if you don't have an assistant, you are the assistant. So that's where he's always says to start, and I love that advice. So I would give the same advice start with an assistant to offload all of those things. And there's things like I was going on a Boating trip and I was responsible to bring the snacks, and so I tell my assistant. On this day, three months from now, I'm responsible for snacks. Make sure they're delivered to my house the night before Done. I didn't ever have to think about it again. She set it up. So everything from travel coordination to calendar management, to those personal things, too, that help make your life easier. I would start with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you brought up a great point. We actually had an episode all about, you know, fractional Help. You go back to episode 119 and check that out. Just talks about all the things that a fractional person can do for you. So it's really great companion to what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2:One thing I want to ask you about because you know it struck me very Interesting. You know you talked about how the, the coo role for you wasn't really your forte and and it might work differently in other firms. But I'm thinking about this you know it's like you Built back office beddies, you know, unless you structured it differently. You know, I'm thinking that the the operation side of things was managing a lot of those receptionist, building out those processes and stuff and like that's kind of the core of the business, right? And so you're basically saying, like you, as the founder of the business, didn't particularly enjoy handling that core part of the business and so for, like a lawyer out there who's like you know, oh man, I'm practicing, you know, whatever area of law they're in, but I don't necessarily like it's not what I enjoy doing.
Speaker 2:I'm good at it. Yes, don't enjoy doing it. I actually enjoy marketing my firm more than I actually do working on cases and stuff, and so you know, I think on paper it almost sounds like you need to get into another business, but that's not what you're saying. You can actually still keep your business and grow it and just delegate some of the stuff, even if it's maybe what you are known for or what you built the firm on originally.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Some of the most successful friends, entrepreneur friends I have. They're actually they're genius-owned as sales. Well, sales are great, but there's so many other components of running a business, particularly the core thing, and but that's not their genius-owned and so really it's about finding out where you sit and it doesn't matter because you build the team around you to fill in the holes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, and it goes back to you know what you talked about at the beginning. It's not so much about you being an executor of the work, but it's about being the leader and the developer of the people who are going to be able to do a lot of that work.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So I'm working with a longtime attorney. Right now. He's opening his first criminal practice on his own and so you know he's a little bit in his head and he's a friend. So we've been working a lot together and he's not great about asking for the upfront retainer. He really gets invested in their cases and wants to help. He is amazing at the research and the strategy behind the defense and so some of that upfront conversation like that's just not his forte. He's going to spend two hours talking to them and wanting to tell them all about the strategy he's thinking of and that's not the best use of his time when right now we need to be collecting the retainer and we need to be doing the initial agreements and so that's something that our team can take over for him. He doesn't have to do that and he can really focus on working on that strategy and doing the legal research that he's really good at and offload and kind of build that support team around where he is good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know another thing that you mentioned. You know I talked about the previous episode we did around fractional help. You mentioned that you guys do you know virtual reception and then fractional administrative. What is the difference there? You know, I'm assuming that it's a lot broader than just the virtual reception, but how do you know what is a fractional administrative person? Do that? Maybe just the virtual receptionist does not.
Speaker 3:But it really depends on what the particular need is for the firm. So we have one firm that has, I think, four or five different virtual assistants they're using, and so we have some that are specifically paralegals. They've spent most of their career as a paralegal, so these aren't just you know, administrative people. They actually have feet in a law firm, you know butts in seats, experience as a paralegal. So they are using those specific skills as a paralegal. And then another one might be doing more client care, so that might be more of a general administrative.
Speaker 3:So we have a team of different skilled virtual assistants and you can use, say you know, the client care. Maybe you want them doing check-ins and just touching base, maybe you only need them 10 hours a month. And in the case of Brian, my friend, that's starting up, he's going to go with a 10 hours of paralegal a month and virtual receptionist. So the virtual receptionist answers the phone 60 hours a month for, as little as you know, less than $400 a month for a brand new firm that's not getting a lot of calls and then for 10 hours of paralegal, it's like we're looking at like another $400.
Speaker 3:So less than $1,000 a month and he has reception and paralegal to augment where he's at right now and then we can always scale up as needed with either of the services and add on additional specialty specialist as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I love that you kind of talked about prices there, because that's the one another thing that I was going to ask you.
Speaker 2:You know, especially as you were building up back office beddies, you know you mentioned that you hired some different fractional thing. And I know, just in a lot of the conversations that I have with with small firm owners, you know the cost and the investment in things is always just one of the biggest fears or concerns that they have. You know, because they they're so worried about, you know, putting all of this money and investing into something and it flopping, or them not, you know, feeling like they get the most out of it. And so you know from your experience. You know, or you know, either what you've done in the past or even what you're currently doing right now. You know what should a firm owner expect in terms of like? How much would a fractional, you know, c O, o or C M, o, c, f, o, anything like that how much would that, you know, cost them and what kind of results or a timeframe, even like, would they reasonably expect to see?
Speaker 3:So for fractional executive team myself, the expense has been anywhere from $2,500 a month all the way up to about $65,000, $7,000 a month. And so I actually met with a great panel of women yesterday who specifically work with law firms. They do fractional CMO, so they would do something like they would manage the relationship with spotlight and so they would create the strategy for the company. And so that was one business. Another one's a fractional CFO, specifically again for law firms, and usually they're scalable up or down. I've used the same thing for myself a fractional CFO, cmo, coo and really built up my team that way.
Speaker 3:But I started with an assistant and so, starting low, I wasn't ready to have an executive team overnight, and so there was a period of time where I had to wear multiple hats as we transition and as we grow. But here's what I'll tell you when you're working in your zone of genius and you start off loading all that other stuff, if you have a good marketing plan in place so that you are bringing business in, you're going to 10x your business. It works. When you work the system, it works for you. So you've got to have some kind of marketing plan in place to be bringing in clients. You can't just say like I'm going to sit here and do these things that I'm really good at and do all the case work, but have no way to bring in new clients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and kind of bringing it full circle. I feel like you offload those items that are in those other three quadrants. You are now able to dedicate all of your time into doing the things that you enjoy and are good at, which means you can really scale in and really get a lot more accomplished, because I don't know how many people consciously realize how much of this other noise takes up so much of their time and really bogs them down and prevents them from doing what they actually enjoy and are good at.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Absolutely, and I'll give this. You know, I was terrified as well when I hired my first assistant. Am I going to have enough for them to do? Am I going to be able to keep them busy? Am I going to be able to pay them? And let me tell you, I'm on my fourth one now. I've actually made every one of them from part-time to full-time, you know, made them full-time employees and then kept okay, I need another one now. Now I need another one. And so the company continued to grow. My biggest fear was that I couldn't pay these guys, but every time I offload more, I am no shortage of things to do that are within my zone of genius, that are helping the company grow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that comes with, you know, just as a byproduct of a company growing right, you get bigger and bigger and you know more things come up. And one other thing I wanted to ask you about you know how you know, is there any sort of rhythm for maybe even updating your zone of genius or anything like that? Like, for example, like you say you sit down and did it right now and you maybe you have like five things in there and you just focus on those five things and then maybe like a year from now you know you've grown bigger and now maybe you're like that item number four, you're not as excited about it. You know, do you kind of just start that process all over again and look for ways to kick that out of the zone and delegate to someone else?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. I actually do review it every year. So every year we do an accountability chart review. The first time I did my accountability chart, john, I was sitting in about four seats, and so it was really embarrassing actually to be like, oh my gosh, we're such a tiny company that me and my other executive I was just me and her at the time we were sitting in all these seats. It was too many, and so we looked at it. We were like, which of these are in our least zone of genius areas? And then how do we get someone else in this seat who's a specialist? And, holy moly, it changed my life, it changed her life.
Speaker 3:When we started filling in these other roles with people who loved it and were passionate and the one I'm really thinking of is finance. So I just got our finance girl shirt says a freak in the sheets and it's got the Excel logo. I mean because she is legit a freak in the sheets, she nerds out on it, she's high on life when she gets to work in there. And for me and Caitlin we were just like, oh my gosh, kill me now. This is horrible. So it's amazing when you start filling in those roles and just get yourself out of one thing at a time and look at it every year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean it's such a great example because I mean, like even right now, as we record this, I've actually had to take back over our administrative and finance duties internally here on a temporary basis, and one of the things that I was actually kind of hesitant about doing that is there was just some finance tasks in there that I just did not enjoy doing and that, you know, you talk about the zone of genius. You know balancing or you know reconciling credit cards and bank accounts is just I hated doing that. But then there were some other aspects of it that I actually enjoyed. You know there was a lot of spreadsheets in that.
Speaker 2:I need to probably find one of those shirts for me where, you know, I just enjoyed being in there and that was totally fine. I was totally happy, you know, taking that stuff back. But you know we were able to outsource some of that stuff to a bookkeeper and so it wasn't, as you know, it's not as draining or even draining it all really right now for me to be having those extra tasks. Even though it's more work on my plate, it's still in that zone of things that I enjoy doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I mean it's like there's no limits what you can do when it's something that you actually enjoy doing, Right, and so that whole saying of you're never going to work a day in your life.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, you know and and that's and that's really where you want to be as a business owner. You know, and you know the the kind of concept of working on your business instead of in it and all that, and so I think this is a really good tool that can help people really visualize it and, you know, build a roadmap for helping them offload a lot of that stuff and really set the right expectation. So I really appreciate you coming on and talking about that. Could you let everybody know just what Backoffice Beddies has going on and all the services that you guys provide for people? One more time yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3:we are a virtual receptionist and virtual assistant including legal assistant staffing company. We help take the risk out of doing all the recruiting, hiring, training and helping to augment the staff on small law firms.
Speaker 2:Awesome, and I know that your team had given me a link to go to that is in the show notes to go check out the resources, and we'll expand on that more in the show description. So you guys definitely go check them out, check out everything that they've got. You know, definitely one of the things that I fully believe in is that you should not be answering your own phones. You should absolutely be delegating that often and having someone handling that for you, and I know you guys do a lot of really good work over there. One final question for you before we wrap up here. If you had one final piece of advice for our listeners, what would it be?
Speaker 3:The same thing I tell all the texts they and M kids. Get your mental health right, because you're going to be told no, you're going to be rejected. All of your childhood wounding, maybe your ego will get in the way of your happiness and your business. So find your zone of genius. Live in bliss.
Speaker 2:Awesome, love it. And yes, I love the mental health note Definitely something that isn't touched on enough, but it is. It is really, really important to just keep in mind and have those discussions and go see a therapist if you need to. It's really great. So that's going to do it for us this week. Thank you so much for continuing to listen. If you have not done so yet, please leave a rating and review. It really does help the show out more than you could ever imagine. That's going to do it, emily. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3:My pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to learn more. Go to spotlight brandingcom slash center stage.