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From Chaos to Clarity: The Katuva Success Model | LAYC 102
Episode 102 • 21st February 2024 • Seasoned Women Serious Business • Isabel Alexander
00:00:00 00:16:23

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Join us in Episode 102 of the Lift as You Climb Podcast as we delve into the Katuva Success Model, demystifying the process of matching entrepreneurs with the perfect virtual assistants. From recruitment strategies to personality-based matching, discover the keys to transforming chaos into clarity in your business journey.

- Introduction to the Katuva Success Model

- The challenges and undiscovered aspects of working with virtual assistants

- The journey from chaos to clarity: Tobe's personal experience with hiring virtual assistants

- The Empower Plus model: Creating ongoing support for clients and virtual assistants

- The vetting process: Skills, personality, and the importance of connecting on a human level

- Pro tips for hiring: Sample tasks, paying for value, and fostering a positive working relationship

- Adding value to clients: The role of training and technology in ensuring success

- Navigating the delicate balance between cost-effectiveness and treating virtual assistants with dignity and respect

https://learn.katuva.com/300-tasks-ebook?am_id=isabel425

https://learn.katuva.com/exploratory-call?am_id=isabel243

Transcripts

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Welcome to the Lift As You Climb podcast, where it's all about the

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journey and the joy of discovering who you are now, deciding who you want

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to become, and embracing your genuine identity, influence, and impact.

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In each episode, we'll explore how life's experiences have prepared us for what

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we choose to do next and how to create our Encore, write our own script, and

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star in the next stage of our lives.

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I'm your host, your Encore strategist, and transformation catalyst, Isabel Alexander.

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Hey there, everyone out in virtual land and those of you that are

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contemplating virtual assistants, I'm so glad to welcome you back today.

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This is the second in our series of interviews with Tobe Brockner,

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the founder of Katuva and we are exploring the different aspects of

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working with a virtual assistant.

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I'm so happy that I have this opportunity to have a conversation

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with him and really uniquely examine the do's, don'ts, the why's, and why

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nots of having a virtual assistant.

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We're coming up with conversations that you may not even have thought of yet.

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So I welcome you to stay tuned.

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If you haven't already.

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Episode 101 kicks us off and we'll explain a lot more about

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how I come to be in Tobe's orbit.

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Today, I hope that we will share with you some new insights and new perspectives.

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Specifically, we're going to talk about the process of finding, recruiting

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virtual assistants, not just any.

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What the right ones and how we transition from finding the right people to

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matching them up with the right clients.

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Enjoy.

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And at the end, make sure you stay tuned because Tobe's sharing some great stuff,

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and I welcome you to share this episode with everybody in your orbit that maybe

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needs to know a little bit more about how life is better with virtual assistants.

Isabel:

That's one of the things I promised everybody that I would have

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you on a couple of episodes of this.

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We're creating a series here right now.

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What are the different aspects of working with a virtual assistant that have not

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yet even been thought of or discussed?

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And I think today I may invent a few of those.

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We'll rewind a little bit,

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Tobe.

Isabel:

I want to start with how you find and recruit the VAs, but

Isabel:

that will be a lead into how do you match them with the clients?

Tobe:

Yeah, so we use various job boards and there are.

Tobe:

Specific job boards for remote workers and actually the biggest one is probably

Tobe:

it's a site called "Onlinejobs.ph."

Tobe:

Think of it as like a "Monster.com" or "Indeed" or something like that where

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you post a job and you have applicants come in and a lot of people will

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say hey, Tobe, why are you telling everybody where you get your VAs from?

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I'm like because that's just step one of 80, of how you attract and

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vet the right type of candidates.

Tobe:

I

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can answer that question by sharing a brief story.

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My first experience in hiring a VA, because I had been told about that

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website, and I dove in as the quick start to that I am and went, Oh, I can do this.

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And I contracted with somebody.

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In fact, I think I tried it three times, to be honest.

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I'm trying to forget it because it was a terrible disaster, because

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I didn't know what I didn't know.

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I didn't know how to screen, how to match the right personality

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and the right skill set.

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It wasn't anything wrong with them; the hires.

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I just wasn't equipped and I didn't have the processes that you have to

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make sure that the right people get matched, and what I love, and we'll

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talk more about your Empower Plus model later, how you create the ongoing

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support for the clients and the VA.

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it's tempting to go, oh, it's because I learned these techniques

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in school or, I read this management book and I became this genius.

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It wasn't any of that.

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It was just me being dumb for long enough to become smart about it.

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Quick anecdote, there's a guy that was doing a presentation once that I

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was watching and he was talking about How he finally came upon success and

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he was talking about all the failures that he had in the past and he was

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showing examples of all of the things that he had tried and he had failed.

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He just failed so many times that he ran out of things to fail on, and

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it, and the last thing that he hit.

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was the right thing, but it wasn't because he found that, it was because

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he found all the other things first and just ran out of stuff to fail.

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And so that's how I feel I stumbled on this process.

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It wasn't any real, genius on my part, it was more just the grit

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and determination and ambition to figure it out until, until I did.

Isabel:

For those who know me, they know one of my mantras is

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you're not starting from scratch.

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You're starting from experience.

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Each of those iterations of ideas, businesses, processes that don't

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work are contributing to what I call the our lifetime vault

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of tacit knowledge and skill.

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The failure that you have today is the building block upon

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which success is built in the future.

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And if you build enough of those failures and you get enough bricks so

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you can build anything, you can build a pyramid, you can build whatever you want.

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And so I'm a firm believer in that, but that's, that's really the secret

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sauce of how we made that happen.

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But the process; essentially do two things in the initial interview with the client.

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We try to figure out what skills do you need, what tasks do you need done,

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what are you trying to accomplish?

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And that sort of works backward from that bigger question of what

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kind of life do you want to live?

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What kind of business do you want to build here?

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Once we figured that out, we have the client take a DISC assessment.

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We have all of our VA candidates take a DISC assessment.

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And we match them up based on not only skills, but also personality and it

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doesn't have to necessarily have to be a match for the personality but you do

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need to be aware of what you're getting yourself into with a different person.

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So if I'm a high D dominance, which I am, I'm high D it would behoove me to

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look for VAs who score higher in S or C, which is steadiness and compliance;

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conscientiousness, if you want to call it that, but it's people who are

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more analytical, more detail oriented.

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Because I'm more of a big picture, think of chaos, and then I'm looking

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for order, I'm looking for that yin and yang, I'm looking for somebody to come

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in and tame my chaos, and so that's what we try to do in order to match them.

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So for context, we run an ad, we might get 30, 40, 60, we've gotten upwards of

Tobe:

90 to 100 applications for one position.

Tobe:

We're actually releasing some ads pretty soon.

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As I've been driving around town, I've every time I notice a Help Wanted sign

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or a We're Hiring sign, I take a picture of it and we're doing a collage of all of

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these Help Wanted ads all over the place.

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People are desperate to find workers and they can't find anybody to work.

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Our problem is we get way too many applications and we have to then sort

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through all of them, which takes hours and hours of time to go through those

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properly and arrange pre interviews and do all of the vetting that we do.

Tobe:

So that's step one behind the scenes of how we do it.

Isabel:

I I really was impressed with the opportunity you gave me with

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my first VA with you to interview multiple candidates that had been

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pre screened and pre qualified.

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Because there's nothing I liked least or less in my business life before, and that

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was weeding through applicants, screening out and reading between the lines of

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a creatively crafted resume, right?

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So I love the fact that you interviewed me first and found out what I thought I

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wanted to use a VA for in my life, then you opened up my aperture even more by

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providing me your handy dandy, I don't know, 300 plus suggestions for what a VA

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could do, and I went circle, circle, oh!

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So that opened it up even more for me.

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But then the icing on the cake was after you had screened the applicants

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against my personality, my DISC, my, what I thought I needed somebody to do

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for me, then you gave me the opportunity to have an intimate virtual meeting

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with each of them and get to know their personalities a little bit.

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I love the fact that I could see their face and feel like

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I could have a conversation.

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I could hear their voice and go, yes, this is compatible.

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I'm a little hearing impaired, so I had to be conscious of somebody's dictation.

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And as we know, the ending of that story is pretty happy because that

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VA has been with me now coming up to a year and it's been a good match.

Isabel:

Yeah,

Tobe:

That's a big piece of it, that whole vetting process, because when we

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do the interviews, as we cull from that initial big list, we cull the top three.

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And so you're really getting the cream of the crop of the people

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who came down that vetting process.

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And one of the things that I'm big on in the vetting process, this is a

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kind of a pro tip for your listeners.

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If they are trying to hire someone one of the things that you definitely

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should do is give them a sample task to work on based on those skills

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that you're trying to test for.

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And so we do that internally.

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All the candidates, we have pre interviews with them because we want

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to hear their English and we want to make sure that they show up on

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time and that they 'll keep their commitments and those type of things.

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Then we give them a sample task and actually pay them, out of my own

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pocket for that sample task to do.

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We give them all a sample task and I know that the client is ultimately only

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going to choose one, but I pay all three of them because it's very important

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to me that we start the relationship with the VAs on the right foot.

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Where it's, we're not here to take advantage of you, I don't view you as

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just a cheap source of labor, that's a commodity that's expendable, I value

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your time I want you to be happy and fulfilled and work in a place that's going

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to treat you with dignity and respect.

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When you think about, you've got these people are coming in, they've got families

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and they've got rent due and they got to put groceries on the table and all

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the same things that we're battling.

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The fact that they're 8, 500 miles away sometimes makes it easy to disconnect

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from the human element of that, which is another reason why we do Zoom calls

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in person on video, because we want you to be able to connect on a human level.

Tobe:

So those things are very important to us.

Isabel:

Thanks for reminding me of that, because if you're not familiar with

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this process, or you've had unsuccessful experience with VAs, the way that you've

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structured this puts the humanity back in the human relationship with this.

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It's really important.

Isabel:

You're right.

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This is not about hiring the cheapest person that you can.

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This is not about displacing someone in your own country or state who

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would have naturally because of the economy have a higher wage.

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It's about matching The right individuals and the right skill sets and then setting

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them up for success with the training and the technology to ensure that goes on.

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And I think that's the big eye opener for me.

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And I'm very happy to have this opportunity to share this with my

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listeners so that they understand.

Tobe:

As business owners, we have enough to worry about without worrying about

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staff and are they going to show up on time today and are they going to

Tobe:

do what they say they're going to do and are they going to, put forth more

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effort than I'm expecting or hoping for.

Isabel:

And not that, they're required to do that, but as we know, success

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in life dictates that you provide more value than what you're getting in return.

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That's how you climb the ladder of success in life, is by providing that

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value whether it's to your employer or to your customers or whoever it may be.

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That's something internally that we're constantly trying to do is figure

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out how do we add more value to our client base and give them more tools

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and more resources to make their lives easier, to give them more freedom

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to help them institute systems and processes that will allow that sort

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of disconnect of the working in the business and versus working on it.

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I hope you thought that was another great and resourceful interview with Tobe

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and that you're already thinking about how this information is transforming

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your life and business for the better.

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I'd also like to say thank you so much to the VAs on Tobe's team and mine,

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and all the others out there waiting to help you have one great whole life.

Isabel:

So stay tuned for upcoming episodes and more information, and of course,

Isabel:

be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes, and to like,

Isabel:

follow, and share with everyone else.

Isabel:

Thank you for spending this time with me.

Isabel:

I hope our conversation added value to your day and expanded your

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vision for your legacy and impact.

Isabel:

Please join me in increasing my impact and expanding my reach to even more

Isabel:

people by sharing this episode on social media, with friends, and leaving a review

Isabel:

on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Or channel of choice to catch all the latest from me.

Isabel:

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

Isabel:

Connect with me and others in our community Facebook group, the Lift

Isabel:

As You Climb Movement, where you can engage, be inspired by and grow

Isabel:

with a tribe of like-minded people.

Isabel:

As I evolve as a podcaster and spokeswoman for collaboration and

Isabel:

economic empowerment, your input and feedback are especially important.

Isabel:

To me, I welcome your suggestions and questions to hello@theencorecatalyst.com.

Isabel:

Until we meet again, please remember your success may be the foundation

Isabel:

for someone else's to together we can raise success ladders around the world.

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