Barry Coziahr is a successful entrepreneur who build his businesses utilizing virtual assistants.

Barry is also a great conversationalist and was kind enough to drop a lot of knowledge for our audience. We hope you enjoy the show!

CEO Stampede Branding | Virtual Marketing Teams (Remote Personnel) | Strategic Lead Generation | Appointment Setting | LinkedIn & Social Engagement | Email Marketing | Websites | SEO | Google and Facebook Ads

Hey, what's up y 'all, it's Joey B. You know me. My name is echoing through the airwaves through the audio halls. I host the blind knowledge podcast and here we are right now.

I also own and run blind knowledge .com. We got 22 active podcasts. We got five free Lance really talented content creators, including my buddy Omari out there in the Bronx,

filming his first, very first full length movie series, romantic something. He won't give me all of the deets,

but stick around. We also got solo Requiem. It's going to be brand new. TFTAK is coming back. Adam's going to be back. It's going to be great. And we also actually,

we have a visually handicapped podcast as well called unseen critics. We do look to support that cause and hopefully we can find a cure for a blindness.

So basically here's what we're going to do. We're going to have on a fine fellow. I'm going to ask him some questions. He's going to have some answers. There may be a rebuttal or two and we're going to see how it goes,

but I think it's going to be really good. So here we go. And Barry, welcome to the show, man. Do you want to introduce yourself for everybody? Sure. Yeah. I'm Barry. Cause I got a bunch of different businesses that I run.

My wife's a full -time author and I'm living the life here in Clearwater, Florida. Living the life in Clearwater, Florida, colored shirt style.

That's the way to be, man. That's the way to be. So if someone was to ask you, you know, what do you do? Well, how would you answer?

Sure. Yeah. I've got a, like I said, I got a few different businesses. I've got a marketing business. I've had my own marketing business for about 17, 18 years.

And I've got a, I've got a virtual, two different virtual assistant businesses providing remote personnel from the Philippines. And, and then also my wife is an author,

a full -time author. So I've got a little publishing business. Nice. She's doing great with her books. Little, little, little, little publishing, little on the side kind of thing. Yeah. Then I end up doing,

yeah, in my marketing business. we end up helping, in my virtual assistant business, we end up helping authors because we gather a lot of knowledge from the different companies and businesses that we run.

Oh, sure, I'm sure. We just pipe that right into other people's businesses so they can do well as well. Right on, right on. So you're down for the cause. If other people do well and you're able to help them do well,

you do well. Yeah, I mean, I got quite a background in non -profit stuff. I've done non -profit stuff for many years and now I actually have a little team of virtual assistants who are helping me with my non -profits that I work with and so they're human assistants,

they're not AI. No, they're human people. Yeah, my virtual assistants are remote personnel. Yeah, so they're people that are working remotely and so I've got guys that are helping me with my non -profit stuff because I've got probably,

I don't know, at this point, I guess I have like 35 years in the non -profit arena as well. Wow. Wow. And are you originally from the Clearwater area or did you just kind of venture down here?

Venture down here. I grew up in East Peoria, Illinois and then I moved down to St. Louis, Missouri, lived there for about 20 years and then I've been down here in Clearwater for about seven.

Do you find that this area is, it breeds building businesses or do you find that it can be maybe an obstacle because of how chill and lax it can be?

I mean, I don't think that the area that you live in, well, I mean, I guess that's not quite the case. I mean, I guess you can have oppressive governments and oppressive regulations but beyond that,

I don't think that the area you live in should be much of a factor and, you know, I mean, it's really up to you, right? Yeah, I'm learning that. Like, I'm from the Boston area originally, 15 minutes off of Boston,

born and bred, hustle and bustle, go, go, go, work hard, play hard. When I come down here though, I just want to relax down in St. Peter's. I just want to put my feet up but I'm learning that you know what I have to have that same mentality no matter where I am and just stay hungry and just enjoy enjoy the journey yeah it's good to have a schedule you know it's like yes definitely calendars are good for sure

having a schedule I mean I have a schedule I can't get up I remember I have a good routine I get up I go out and exercise for a good hour you know sometimes hour and a half in the morning you know I'm learning that is like just getting out going outside for a walk or going for a run on the on the elliptical you know or yeah get getting the heart rate up is so beneficial I do not touch my phone or electronics

for the first thing in the morning right I stay away from that and and so I go outside get some space get my head together you know and then I come back and I get fine fine Zen yeah yeah and I come back a busy I jump in I yeah and I work till a certain time and I try to end off you know because then I go spend time family and I got my time for you know personal development on the weekends and a good

schedule yeah that's beautiful and you get to make that schedule yourself yeah that's right yeah that's really I love I said that that's right I do damn right I do and I love that and I'm learning that it's so important to have a work -life balance it's important to have those moments where you need coaching like I've taken on some coaching myself just just to get more influences from others and and that's something

I'm learning in the entrepreneurial pool and field even people that aren't into digital media so much everyone kind of wants to help everyone and everyone kind of learns and grows from everyone a bit yeah yeah that's true so it's pretty cool but Barry the big thing we want to discuss today is virtual assistants right yeah so what's the big deal well what's what's what's the word here well I mean I guess I'll just tell

you my story is It's like, I had, I worked in, I told you I was working in nonprofits for about, well, I was in the nonprofit arena for about 15 years.

And then I decided I need to make some money, right? And I mean, a decent amount of money. Sure. Gotta live. Because then nonprofit is what it is, you know, you're not, you're not doing it.

I mean, I still do it today, but you don't do it, you don't do it for the money. So I started a business with my wife, a marketing business. She's great as a graphic designer,

web developer. She does all that stuff. He's copywriting everything. She's like a one man, you know, one person show. And basically, so I would had two full time jobs.

And so one of my one full time job was my nonprofit work, right? 47 hours a week. And what was that? Like, what was it? I worked in that.

I worked with character education, drug education, human rights stuff. Okay. So that's some deep stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty intense. So I mean, that's important to me. And so I didn't want to give that up.

So I had one full time job there. And I had a second full time job with my business. And so I, so I had two full time jobs about 80 hours a week. And you're starting, you're starting from the ground up with your business,

right? Yeah, I started from nowhere, you know, from nowhere. But within, you know, by the time we, we actually sold that business in St. Louis, we did that in tech for 10 years. And then we, we, we were up to like half a million a year or whatever it was something,

you know, it was, it was, it kept me going, you know, paid my staff. I had paid my staff out of that, right? Yeah, you got to keep going to pay those folks for sure. Yeah. All the stuff,

right? Sure. And but it was really rough. It was like, it was way too much, you know, I 80 hours a week and all those and all that, you know, and really wasn't enough to show for it.

Really, you know, as a result, he walked away with whatever paycheck I walked away with, which was okay. But it wasn't, you know, it was a lot of stress. and Not enough reward. So we moved down here to Clearwater and I kind of I made a big shift I sold that business.

I Kept doing the nonprofit work, but I basically like I came down here to Clearwater I actually outsourced my nonprofit work. I started outsourcing my nonprofit work I started I never no longer had physical employees in my office.

I have remote employees freelancers Okay, and people from the Philippines. What have you so I so I grew my marketing company And then about a year or so into I'm like, oh,

this is great. I've learned so much of the last You know 20 some years I'm gonna just get open a virtual assistant business as well, which is remote personnel and I said,

you get things done Barry damn. All right. So where do we go from here? So basically what I did is I had this Yeah, I started this company with remote personnel I started putting them in charge more and more things and giving them more responsibilities and we use virtual personnel at both my companies To grow those two companies we use Yeah,

my people are all from the Philippines. They speak great English. Yeah, so when you say grow your companies You're talking like marketing Bookkeeping like all of the all of the divisions that will come with our company Everything,

you know everything first off in any outsourced things that I shouldn't be spending time doing right like for instance I used to do a lot of my own Lead generation personally personally I would do the lead generation to put people in front of me so I could talk to them about their business and how to help them Okay,

wow very first thing I outsourced was that because I was I was really good at it So I wrote up those processes and the various things I did and I had an I assigned people to do that for me So instead of me spending time Looking for people I was spent time talking to people and so I got rid of that whole piece of work Right that huge amount of work of work that I've spent every day doing that,

and got it to another person doing it so I could spend on those key things that I need to do. There's this principal from this horticulturist and economics guy.

His name is Parodi, I believe it is. Parodi, okay. Parodi principal. I think it's what, I might be pronouncing it wrong. But it's the 80 /20 principal,

and it talks about how 80 % of the results come from 20 % of your efforts. Okay. So there are the key things that you could do. What are those key 20 % that you should be spending time on that would expand things tremendously?

So why did you, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just got to know, if you're really good at the lead generation, why was that the first thing you outsourced? Because, basically,

I needed to be spending more time talking to people. Because I'm doing the lead generation, though I'm talking to maybe three people a day, right? Yeah, you need the conversation,

the back and forth, yeah, I understand that. Yeah, I'm talking to three people a day, where now if I've got somebody else doing the lead generation, I can talk to seven. So all of a sudden,

I've, you know... Yeah, you maximized. Yeah, more than doubled the number of people I'm talking to. So that's that 80 /20 principal. So I took this key function and I put it over here and taught somebody else how to do it.

So I could do the even more senior function of talking to people and turn those people into customers. It's funny that you say that. I've met with so many great people over the last two years,

and I've had a few fellows that have much more experience in having their own business than they have told me. Yeah, you need to find a way to outsource some things,

eventually hire some employees to take care of ad sales and social media so you can do this better. back and forth. 'Cause that's what I love doing. I mean, that's the whole deal,

isn't it? - Yeah, that's right. I mean, I know a great way that you can use this to expand what you're doing, you know? But like, and there's ways that we've done it for people. But like, just to tell you, like to give you like,

there's two ways that I apply the 80 /20 principle. Remember, it's like 80 % of the results come from 20 % of the efforts, right? The small amount of, these small amount of efforts are the key things that you do the result in the big results,

right? So what are those, you know, it also means like, there's 80 % of the things you're doing that you could probably just get rid of and you'd be okay, right? - Sure.

- So like, so two ways that I apply that is these key things. What can I do to get somebody to back me up so I can do more of those key things?

- When you say back you up, you mean financially? - No, I mean like, back me up with work. Like work I need other people to do that helped me to accomplish what I wanna accomplish.

Like, so if I-- - Yeah, like a virtual assistant. - Yeah, exactly. So I got this, I'm really good with, I like meeting people, helping them and helping and giving them solutions. - Amen, brother. - Yeah,

and so like, and they can get that help and those solutions from me and I can give them a virtual assistant. So I need to talk to more people. So I don't need to talk to three people. I need to put somebody on lead generation working within my business very inexpensively because that's what we do,

we provide real inexpensive help. And those people that are, I mean, they're making great wage for their country but they're really inexpensive for us, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And for their country,

we're helping them support a family, right? - That's awesome. Yeah, that's important. - Yeah, yeah, and so, but for us, it's like 10, I can get you people a virtual assistant for 10 bucks an hour.

So-- - Yeah, no one's making the rent on that, man. - Yeah, yeah, but over there, they're actually paying rent for several people. - That's amazing. So you've gone, yeah, you've gone multiple times. multi national almost you've gone to different countries and worked through their economic scale Yeah,

we should use their economic scale. So we leverage we basically are helping them To make money that can help support a whole family But for us it fits in well with our economic system.

We're up with to help them and so but I've taken this $10 an hour person Now I put them on to helping me with lead generation tasks So I can more than double the people that I'm meeting and then Yeah,

and then there's and then that 80 % that stuff I had to throw away that I shouldn't be spending my time on. Yeah, some of that stuff has to get done Some of it probably does. Yeah Like a bookkeeping for example,

I don't I don't ask me to do bookkeeping, but cuz I don't like it Yeah, I hear you man quick books and yeah, no, thanks, but there are people that love it. They love crunching numbers I know right those weirdos.

I don't get it. I don't get it All the power to them. Yeah, exactly. So I like guys from the Philippines that we plug in on those tasks That's great. I've got those those tasks being done still because they have to be done And you're overseeing things though still right you're you're seeing like with the progress that's being made maybe in marketing Or in bookkeeping or you know making sure the bills are paid like

you got a feel and a hand on there, right? Yeah, I've got yeah, I make that they all help me update and maintain reports In different areas I can see what's happening and they keep the reports concise so that I can you know And I keep my thumb on the pulse of all the different parts of the organization Yeah,

I mean I at this point I have like from from the point where I moved down to Clearwater To where I am now, which is about seven years. I've now got about 90 staff 90 staff and they're all out.

They're all in the Philippines Well, a bunch of them are in the Philippines and some of them were in some of them are in India and the rest of it here. Let me know if this is going too deep to into the secret sauce,

what people do is they pay me for the service, because one of the things you have to do is you have to like make sure you find high quality people, right? - Always in anything,

yeah. - Yeah, it's like it's really important. So we have all these tests that we do, we have like, we put people through a couple hours worth of testing, we do basically extensive interviews to make sure we find the best of the best,

right? Within this overseas. And then-- - That's gotta be tricky. - Well, it just takes work, you know? So I've got several people that's their full -time job is to interview and look at attributes.

- Oh, okay, the hiring manager, sure. - Yeah, but they're hiring people for my customers, you know? - Yeah. - We're then plugging my people into their business. And then,

yeah. - That is genius. I've never thought of it scaling a business that way, like you have, it's so simple if you think about it though, it's just like, we'll just put a person that's not me that's qualified into the role that needs to be filled,

right? - Yeah, exactly, like if you're doing, I mean, like it'd be perfect for you because you could, you know, we have a whole, and part of what I do too is I have,

I figure out how to do things and then I train them on how to do it. Like for instance, I have a, and I have fun figuring out how to do things.

And I have other people that also work within my team who figure out how to do things like that. I have one girl, she's great with chat GPT and she understands prompts like crazy.

So she-- - Oh, it's great. - Right, chat GPT just wrote my contracts for me. - Yeah, so basically she understands prompts and all that. right? So she's basically,

her job is to train other staff on that, right? And we have one person, all she does is write up successful processes. Like I have a really simple,

successful process where I can get you like, you know, anywhere from five to 12 appointments a week with people that you wanna talk to that are in your target audience.

- No, it's interesting 'cause I'm using a, I'm using a platform and maybe I shouldn't have bought this, but at the time I was like, I have no idea. 'Cause I'm not like, I can sell things to people,

but finding leads and like, I've never worked specifically in sales. I sold like New England Patriots tickets and Celtics tickets at a broker, but other than that, I needed a way to find leads.

So I bought Seamless, seamless .io. It's a platform that gives you leads. - Seamless .io, it's like, it basically finds people for you. It like goes through and finds names and all that,

right? - Right, contacts, yeah. And I haven't really ventured into it too much, but like-- - How much is Seamless, I'm curious. - So I don't know, they wanted to charge like 10 grand or something like that for the platform.

I talked them down to three. Yeah, which I thought was for a year's worth and with all the leads that I could get with it, I thought that was doable.

But honestly, I didn't totally know what I was doing. It just felt right because-- - How many people have you talked to as a result of buying? - At this point, so I'm just at that point right now,

where we're gonna start using Seamless. And I've really, I've only discussed, I mean, I've reached out to BetterHelp. I've reached out to, we did an ad campaign for DO speakers and DO technologies.

That was big. But right now, now that we're organized, now that I have everyone under the same distribution and everyone's on a contract and all the little things are kind of-- of filled, like the social media,

everything is kind of automated, now it's time for me to look for leads, which is actually perfect timing, Barry. Perfect timing for this thing,

man. - Well, we have a whole appointment making process, right? And I perfected it and I wrote it up as training, which we train our appointment setters on. So our appointment setters are able to,

so this is what we do for our clients, you know, we come out, we develop processes, we train our guys on it, or we make that training available so that your VA can then learn these different things.

And there's so much training out there. It's like, I, basically I was having trouble with the task, it was taking me, it took me several weeks. I was having trouble figuring it out,

like, you know, another person can figure it out. I was like, I didn't have time to really figure it out. - So it's the worst when you have the wall, right? It's just like, on to the next thing, I'll come back to it. - It was time,

you know, and their help files were awful, right, for this programmer trying to figure out. And so what I did is I went and I found a really good course that looked like it taught,

you know, taught the subject really well. I said, oh, perfect. Spent 20 bucks, gave it to my VA, said, great study, I knew she was super bright. She had it handled before I got up in the morning.

- Oh, that's great. - And so it's like, you know, I mean, yeah. - That exists very, very. You tell me, is that simple that that exists? I haven't found simplicity in two years.

I'm starting to see it on the horizon though. This is pretty cool. - Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's really, it's like, I mean, it starts with who, right? The right person, which we care for. And then we,

we have all sorts of great advice on how to plug in training or find, we can find simple training on just about anything. - So do you, do you teach people how to do it? Do you, do you sell a course?

Do you, how do you? you know what we do? What we do is we basically, by the way, the name of the company is called free time solutions, free time solutions. Cool.

I'll get that up there for you. Yeah. The whole idea of the company is to basically help you free up time, right? From the, from the things you shouldn't be doing to the great things you should be doing.

And then what we do is we basically, we find you a person who, who kind of is the, who's the kind of person you need for whatever tasks that you have in mind. And then what we do is we,

we help onboard that person, get them doing your tasks. And then we kind of coach you along the way, we coach them along the way to make sure that you're a great team. And,

and that they're just jamming, getting your stuff done. And they're like, okay, I got that under control. I got room for more stuff. And then we have, we have this little booklet, 249 things that a virtual,

that a virtual assistant can do for you. And, you know, you can go through there and figure out what else you want that person to do. And we can help them to learn that, whether,

you know, some way, you know, what through training that we might have available. And then, yeah, the way we go, and you start, you know, building up your team. And we have people that have now, you know, four,

or five, or even six virtual assistants that are working for them in different aspects from our team. Just getting stuff done,

you know, growing their business. Yeah. Yeah, that is something I definitely want to talk to you offline about for sure. I'd love to learn more about the interest, the iterosync. It's the little things,

I guess, I should say, because, yeah, I, right now with blind knowledge, we are turning a curve finally, where we're going to have ad campaigns. And now I can actually have ad campaigns,

because we have everyone together. Now I got to land them. Now I got to actually make it happen. Which I've done in the past, and you don't have a ton of experience experience doing it,

but I know how to do it. I have the templates to do it. I have the walkthroughs to do it. And just I'm gonna knock on wood and not drink that day, and hopefully it'll all go well. But if not,

I'm gonna need someone to do ad sales. So maybe a virtual assistant doing that. I mean, that might be where I have to start, too. Would you recommend that for someone like me in my stage of development?

- Absolutely. I mean, you should just see people. I mean, I don't know what your revenue, how you charge for your service or anything, but hopefully it's monthly where you're making money monthly off of whatever it is you're selling,

and you're getting the same income from that client every month. But given that, then you really need to see more people. So a skilled appointment setter who can reach out to the right target audience.

- It's the right people, too, Barry. - Yeah. - 'Cause there's only so many hours in a day, and I'll talk all day, and I'll listen all day, and then do the meetings and then shake the hands, but it's gotta be the right people.

- Yeah, yeah. Well, I meet people all day. I mean, I just basically reach. My appointment setter, I network with people all day long, right? - Same here, yeah. - That's why I have my days meeting brand new people.

And by making sure I meet business owners, 100%, and then, you know, I like a certain type of business owner, so we zero in a little bit.

So, but it's pretty broad field, and I meet people from coast to coast all day long. I spend probably more than half my time meeting people in the other half of my time running the business and creating on the business.

And so I'm meeting like seven people a day or whatever. But it's great, you know? It's like, it's so much fun to meet people. And then I tell them about what I do.

I find out about what they do. And then there's a certain percentage of those people people and you got to make friends I mean, I like the kind of sales if you want to call it that way where you make a friend first And then you kind of like then you go from there,

right? You get yeah, you make a mutually beneficial There's some sort of yeah, there's some sort of relationship. Yeah, there's a relationship built for sure That's that's what it's smooth for sure And then you tell them all about what they do and what you do and at some point they say,

you know I'd like to find out more about that like, you know, you go great And then for their turns into a sale as well and for me, Barry I'm finding that I only want to work with people and I can recognize it really quickly nowadays with good character That's really important to me.

Yeah, I can really spot a I can spot a black black eye or or or or just like someone That's just hmm. I don't know if I trust that person if I get that inkling.

I'm just you know, I'm just gonna move on Yeah, it's that that's yeah, I agree. That was that that was actually one of the nonprofits I used to work with was in character education and so Yeah,

it's funny cuz sometimes you run into staff that need help and so I actually use my nonprofit stuff to help staff They need to kind of that's your back on the right road Personally cuz people are basically good.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree 90 % 95 % But there are some scumbags and there are some people to the snakes that'll just take they'll take your idea Or they'll just take up your time or or they'll put you down or they're very negative and I I don't work well with that It's just if the vibe doesn't connect and there's nothing mutually beneficial then we're wasting our time kind of That's true.

It's a yeah, I think it's super important. I mean, you know people can change too. That's the most important thing too We just sure that's right We do a lot of testing with people that helps us to find out their problem -solving abilities their ability to follow instructions we do some testing that helps look at their character a bit and Personality testing and like Yeah,

we do all that and then if we find that person isn't a fit because one of those problems, we actually, we send them to some resources like the character education program that I have.

- That's very cool. - So they can like improve themselves. - Yeah, growth, 'cause people, you're right. People do change over time. Like we've all been through ups and downs and maybe have done things we don't,

or maybe we regret or wish we didn't do or wish we didn't say at the time. And it's all a learning experience and I'm learning for 29 minutes into this and for interview, I'm learning like a lot.

This 80 /20 thing is blowing my mind especially. - Yeah, 80 /20 principle is amazing. There's a great book on it by Richard Kosh, K -O -C -H. - Okay. - Called The 80 /20 Principle.

- I'll write it down in my handy -dandy legal pad, dude. - Yeah, it's great. It's a great book. It really gets into this like this whole concept of, yeah, it's like, it's pretty wild because, you know,

80 % of the problems in the world are also caused by 20 % of the people. - That sounds about right, yeah. - And then on the other side of it, the world has really made a much better place by about 20 % of the people too.

80 % of the good things happening in our culture are happening, are coming from about 20%. So you got like this, you got the 20 % on both sides of things,

right? - It's the people that make a difference. Like I'm learning that the people, that 20 % of the people that wanna collaborate, that wanna create, that wanna get their voice and their good stuff out there for the people,

you know? And wanna put the effort in. But I'm gonna spin it back real quick, Barry, to books. You have a book, correct? Let's talk about that real quick.

- We got this little e -book so far, and I got another one that I'm writing. The e -book is the 249 things that a virtual assistant can do for you. - Is this it right here?

- Let's see it right there, yeah, that's it. - Okay, cool. - Yeah, and then I'm writing another one called "World's Greatest Assistant." Assistant, but this book you can get right now. This is a little ebook that I put together. It's 249 things that a virtual assistant can do for you.

Very cool. And it lists out everything. I mean, just basically click through it and you kind of get all the ideas of what, you know, how you could utilize somebody to get them to help you.

And that's that link that the free time .solutions /downloads that's right there. Yeah, that's where they can get it. Perfect. Perfect. And you wrote it.

This is from your experiences? I put that together. Yeah, I put that together as a pretty extensive list, and it probably could be longer, but that'll be for version two.

I'll fill mine out later. But, you know, also we should show some love, a little bit of love, because you do have this production company with the books.

I believe you have a counterpart who has a book as well. Maybe we should plug her book a bit. Yeah, my wife. Because I was able to outsource so many things, she was a sales coach at Ink 500 Company.

Oh, wow. And so she was doing that. She established their sales coaching division. She was doing great. But because I was doing so well with what I was doing,

because I was growing the business, we were able to actually, a little over a year ago, take her out of her job so she could write full time. And so she came home and she started writing.

Now, she's a graphic designer, web designer, a copywriter. She does it all. She runs her ad campaigns, everything. And she writes, she writes Regency Historical Romance.

Which is totally different from anything we're talking about right now. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. But it's pretty cool. And you do have the production company, which is actually another accolade. Yeah.

Yeah. Because we've got a whole process there on how to you know, take a book and get it out there. I was just going to say, do you, you must have, you must have virtual assistants that just do it,

right? Yeah, she, she has virtual assistants. Oh yeah. That makes sense. You know, one of the things that we use at the company is a thing called an SOP. SOP stands for standard operating procedure.

So, uh, we write up SOPs for different processes within the business. So my wife has, um, has started, uh, developing these SOPs. We started developing SOPs for all the different pieces associated with,

with publishing a book. So the workflow, the entire format is in all the pieces of the workflow. And these SOPs are how we train our people on how to do different things.

So we put them through training. We then apprentice them. Because it's very, it sounds very meticulous, very on paper, step by step, the way it really should be done.

That's right. Yeah. Well, yeah, it takes that, it takes that. It's like, we go through a whole process of training people for their job. We invest, we invest in the people that work for us. You know,

and that's the other thing I could recommend is like, I mean, it's who, right? It's taking the time to, to train them as taking time to write up those processes. Right?

These are like three key things that I mean, you just have to do if you want to grow a business, you know. Yeah. And someone's going to do the work and it's almost impossible for one person to do all of this,

especially in any kind of time where you can pull revenue that's profitable. So it really, it does make a ton of sense. Um, oh, I can book, I'm booking a free strategy session right now.

Look at this. No, this is very cool. Um, and I hope we really helped out a lot of the audience out there too. Because I bet you most people have not heard of virtual assistants or if they did,

maybe thought it was like an AI or like a bot. Well, then why they had a bad experience because, you know, and then, and we go back to that who, you know, if you, I mean, Yeah. it takes a lot of work to do all that testing and really.

Yeah, yeah. And to have the meticulous, like make the workflows and make like the guidebooks and and really, you know, just to let go and have trust that someone else will be able to do it and do it well.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Did you find that that was a challenge at all? You know, or are you just like, you know, I'd take it. They take it away from me. I mean, sometimes it's that you have to let people do their thing.

Sure. Sure. And you could also like once. So we we said we handle that with apprenticeships, right? It's like after we train somebody, we put them underneath somebody who's successful.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, and have that person coach them. And then we started with a good person to begin with. We started with somebody with a high IQ, great aptitude,

all those skills. Yeah, you learn from example. We started. Yeah, we started with good, good raw materials, right? Then we actually gave them a great example. And then we and then we manage them on a daily basis and we coach and correct them as needed.

So it's like that's how you that's how you make, you know, it's like we think about it like a pro pros out there in the world. They they go to practice. They go to spring,

they go to spring training. When I play guitar, my man, I've been playing guitar for over 20 years. I still look up things. I still look to learn things. I might even take a lesson sometimes.

That's great. No, that's exactly right. I got I like I said early in the beginning of your personal development every every weekend. Yes, I'm personally working on myself. And it's more than swimming,

right? Yeah, no, it's like it's not actually I exercise every day. But that's not that's not what I'm talking about. Like right here, you know, it's like, yes, I'm reading. I'm like, you know, I'm not to the zen like to kind of disconnecting in a way.

Yeah, I'm studying. And then I did the morning thing, the exercise I disconnect every day, every single day. But then I also like dig in and I started studying, you know. know. I practice in my very skills and I get better at it,

you know. - Barry, this has been amazing. I had no idea that this interview was just gonna be like so informative. I really, I really appreciate you coming on, man. This is great.

If you could break it down. So can you name all of your businesses for us, just so we know like how, like how awesome virtual assistance has actually been for you? - Sure,

Stampede branding. I think it's my marketing company. We've got two virtual assistant companies, Team Builders and Freetime Solutions.

Rogue Press, which is our publishing company. And then we have, we also have a small vitamin company on the side, but that's with my mother -in -law. We help her, it's called Sunshine Vitamins.

She's got a virtual assistant too. - That's amazing. So once you figure out how to get to A to Z, and let me ask you this actually, are you always the one to figure that out? Like how to get to A to Z,

and then it goes, it gets passed down to a virtual assistant, or is it kind of like a? - No, no, you gotta, you gotta write, you gotta teach other people how to do that too. So they can,

'cause otherwise, you know, the way that-- - 'Cause then you're back in it, right? You're not the 20%. - The only way to expand is to come up with, you know, sometimes there's great books that I've read that I have people read.

Sometimes there's processes we write up. There's apprenticeships, there's leading by example, showing people how to do things, but you have to like teach other people how to do those functions too.

Like we just started really just training and bringing on sales people. So now we've got a number of sales people within the organization, besides I'm not the only person meeting and selling people. - Right, right.

So you're expanding in that aspect as well. - So yeah, because you have to, you basically have to like train people on these different things so that they can take over the work. - Dude,

thank you for coming on, Barry. This was killer. This was killer, man. And by killer I mean super awesome, super awesome. If you want to get in touch with Barry,

I'm just going to throw up your link in LinkedIn here if you don't mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's another place you reach me on LinkedIn. Barry Cozire,

not Desire, but you will desire him. Barry Cozire. He is on LinkedIn. I'm so glad we actually finally got the time. I knew there was some back and forth scheduling, but we made it happen.

I am definitely going to look to get some kind of coaching or some consultation or just a meeting with you as well off offline. And I would recommend anybody else out there that's looking to streamline is interested in virtual assistance,

interested in anything we touched on in this interview. Definitely contact Barry. Hey, you can contact me and I'll get you in touch with Barry. I don't mind at all. I'll swing you right over there.

Not a problem at all. Barry, anything else you want to leave us with? Yes, it's great. I mean, yeah, Greg, the only the only safe thing to do in life is expand. So you know,

how are you doing it? Do it unless it's the belly. The belly shouldn't expand too much. But the business should. The business is definitely should, man.

Barry, this was so enjoyable, man. Thank you so much for coming on. Then we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, man. Yo, yo, that was cool,

man. Barry Cozire, who knew branding, virtual assistance. I was taking notes. I hope you guys were taking notes too. This was like a whole, this is a 101 to 201 and a 400 level class,

dude. But yeah, definitely check him out. He's on LinkedIn, Barry Cozire. Definitely check in free time .solutions /downloads or just go to free time .solutions.

Just Google free time .solutions. You'll find it. And if you can't find it, it just ring me and I'll get you there and that kind of wraps up our interview for the day my name is Joey B and I will catch you later have a good one peace