Episode Summary

In this episode of the Make Space for More podcast, host Melissa Swink is joined by her 10-year-old daughter, Ava, for a lighthearted conversation about business! They discuss the inspiration behind Melissa's virtual assistant company, the services offered, and the evolution of her role over the years. 

Tune in to hear their conversation, which also touches on hiring practices, experiences with team members and clients, and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. Melissa emphasizes the importance of impact in work and shares valuable lessons learned throughout her journey. You’ll gain a unique perspective of business through the eyes of a fifth grader!

Key Highlights:

• Experience an insightful mother-daughter conversation about entrepreneurship that brings business insights down to earth. Ava brought the questions to this interview!
• Discover how Melissa's business evolved from solo consulting to leading a thriving virtual team (and why that matters!)
• Learn what really makes the perfect client relationship tick (hint: it's not just about the work).
• Enjoy some sweet (and sometimes funny!) mother-daughter moments as they discuss what it's like to run a growing company.
• Find out why making an impact - both for clients and team members - is at the heart of everything Melissa does.
• Hear straight-talk advice about what makes team members succeed or struggle in the virtual assistant world.
• Gain an understanding of how structured workdays and clear boundaries help create a thriving business. Even a 10-year-old gets it!

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, I have a very special guest joining me. My 10-year-old daughter, Ava, is here and we have a fun and lighthearted episode prepared for all of you today. She has come up with a list of questions that she's going to ask me about my business.

some of our best and worst client and team member stories. So she's gonna get me to spill a little tea. So prepare, we'll probably share the good, the bad and the ugly along the way. Lessons that I've learned, advice I would give to new businesses. She's got a great list of questions prepared for me today. I'm feeling a little bit nervous because this is probably one of the most intensive interviews I've ever faced in my life. And I say that of course humorously, but before,

She begins with her questions. I would love to have her just introduce herself. Do you want to introduce yourself to our listeners and our audience today? Sure. So hi everyone. My name is Ava. I am 10 years old. I'm going into fifth grade. A fun fact about me is that I volunteer at an animal shelter. And what do we do at the animal shelter? We help, like we basically help the cats out. We play with them and stuff until they get adopted. Yep. Lots of cat care.

Yes, behind the scenes because that's a 365 day a year job just like it is taking care of pets at home. So we're there every other week and we started that at the beginning of the school year. Yep. So we're coming up on a year of doing that together. And of course you loved cats. I love cats. Way before then and you love visiting the shelter even before we started volunteering. is very true. Yes. You are of age now that you're able to do it on a more regular basis. So that's cool.

Okay. All right. Deep breaths. Fire away. What's your first question for us, My first question for you is what inspired you to create your business? That is a great place to start. So before I started my virtual assistant business, I was working as a process improvement consultant here locally in the Green Bay area. And when I was working as a consultant, my job was to help

businesses, figure out ways to work smarter, become more efficient, maybe get the work done faster, maybe save costs, and just overall run more smoothly. And so what I found though, when I was working as a consultant, was oftentimes I had ideas for business owners, things that they should do more of, things they could do less of, things they could do differently, but they were just so overwhelmed by all the work that they had to do on a day-to-day basis.

that there just weren't enough hours in the day to do all the things that I was suggesting or even that they personally wanted to be doing or they knew that they should be doing. And so as I was, you know, continuing to work with a consultant and it just became very clear to me that it was difficult for me to really make an impact because of that time constraint they had. I was introduced to the concept of a virtual assistant during that time and I didn't know what that was.

many people back 12 years ago, 13 years ago in Green Bay, didn't know what it was either. But I knew right away that it was the solution to help give business owners some extra help in their business where they needed it so that they could continue to do the things that they wanted to do. Yes, definitely. So moving on to my next question is what does your business do in general? Like what would you do to help your clients?

That is a great question. So we are a team of virtual assistants. So every member of my team has a very specific skill set that they use to help our clients in whatever area that they need help with in their business. So our clients are small business owners or they are leaders of nonprofits and they have more work that they can handle.

on the day-to-day basis. so they might even have a small team and their team is just too busy to get some work done. So we just are able to help them with work in very specific areas. So what those areas could be, administrative work, things like email or scheduling meetings or helping to follow up with potential clients, just all the different administrative things that need to get done every day.

We also do some marketing services as well. So social media, blogging, email newsletters, email campaigns, all sorts of different things we offer to our clients. Basically, whatever they need help with that can be done remotely, we're able to help in whatever way we can. That is very cool that you can do all that stuff. Another question is, what exactly is your role for your company? Like, what do you personally do for your company?

I love this question because it has changed so much over the years. Because when I first started my business, when I first started my business and even for the first several years after you were born, I work on my own. So I worked with all of our clients and they would have conversations with me and tell me, here's all the things that I need help with. And then I would do that work. And the challenge was, that anytime that I went on vacation,

or maybe you were sick or there was no school or daycare closed, then it was hard for me to take care of you and also be able to help my clients. But then also, on top of all of that, I was full for clients because there were only so much time that I could work and I couldn't take on any more clients. I couldn't take on any more projects. So then I started growing the team. And so now today, I don't do client work.

Most of the time, I do some strategy work with our clients if they're looking for ideas, again, to run more efficiently, to work smarter and not harder, or if they have something new and exciting they wanna do in their business and they wanna create a plan, like an action plan, then I'm here to help with that. But otherwise, I no longer do the client work. So what I actually do is a couple of things.

I will focus on sales for our company. So if there is a new potential client who's interested in hiring our team to help with all the things that they need help getting done, then they're talking to me and then I assuming that they want to work with us, then I get them connected with our team. I make that introduction and make sure that they start working together. The other thing that I do a lot of is hiring. So I have to look for

team members who are able to help our clients. And so I do a lot of interviewing and then also helping with some of the team onboarding because once they start working with us, they needed to get some training to see how we work with our clients. So that is probably two big parts of my role. And then also I would say kind of marketing. So doing the podcast like this, helping to create content that's valuable to the people who are

watching the podcast on YouTube, listening, or reading our emails, all of that sort of thing. And then I do a little bit of accounting as well, behind the scenes, keeping track of financials and things like that. And then also I assume just hearing of all the things that you do, you also just help the business function? Yep, yes, very good. All the things that need to get done that I don't have anybody else assigned to, those usually end up.

working, those end up usually on my lap to work on. Question number four is what does an average day working look like for you? That is a great question. And some days are a lot busier than others when it comes to questions and things that my team needs. I try to respond to my team as quickly as I can. So some days if we have a lot going on,

I do a lot of that. But I would say on Mondays, that's kind of my day to just get a lot of work done. I don't do a lot of meetings on Mondays. I try and get set for the week and just kind of focus on our business projects. And then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have a lot of meetings. It's not uncommon for me to have six or seven meetings in a day because

Then that way I'm able to be focused and I'm talking to people because I found that if I would have a meeting and then I would have a half an hour, it wasn't enough time to start working on anything because I didn't want to lose track of time and miss my meeting. And I just feel like if I have two meeting days where I'm scheduled, like back to back, then I'm having those conversations. So then on Wednesdays, that's typically when I record this podcast and I'm also doing more business projects.

Also, and then on Fridays, oftentimes, especially in the summer, I am off so we can do things like go to Bay Beach. It's a local amusement park that's awesome and all the things that we like to do. And then during the school year, sometimes I'm off on Friday. Sometimes I'll work in the morning just to finish things up. So that's kind of how my week is structured. But I hope that answers your question for an average day. of what are the activities?

I definitely can tell that they just like to stay focused and on track. Yes, that's exactly right. Yes. So what do you look for in your team members when you're hiring them? I think first things first, on top of finding out what they're interested in and what they're good at, I like to have a conversation with them.

to just get to know them a little bit because one thing that I have found is that I want to work with people that I could sit down and meet for coffee or even have them at my house for dinner because we just get along. The conversation flows really smoothly. It's not awkward. They don't make me feel uncomfortable. And I actually have that, I apply kind of that same concept to our clients as well because, you know, again, we want to work with people that we like because it's way more fun that way.

So that is something that's super important to me that they're personable, but they're also professional and they're great communicators and they're actually fun to be around. That is the number one thing. And then what I do is I like to find out, I ask the question, what are the top three things that you love to do to help out other business owners or other nonprofit organizations? And they'll tell me things like maybe they absolutely love creating social media content.

Or maybe they say, you know what, I love to organize. So I love file organization. I love helping people organize their email. They'll tell me the things that they love the most. And I ask them to pick three and narrow it down. Like what are the top three things that you love? And then I'll basically kind of find out from them more about just overall what type of work that they're interested in. Maybe...

what their availability is, how much work they're looking to take on, and things like that. So those are some of the key things that I ask my team members about during interviews. Okay, well that is very interesting. Like why do you ask like their top three favorite things like that, you know, that they like to do? Because I want to send work to them that they like doing. So like

It's kind of like if there's a class at school that you really don't like, you probably don't want to do a lot of that class. Like you do what you have to, but it's not something you love. But when you think about your favorite class, like you could do that class for hours a day and it would just make you so happy. And you're probably really good at that thing that you like to do. So I like to send people work that they're actually excited about because they're going to do a really good job and they're going to be really happy doing it. Yes. And then they won't be, and then they won't like quit or anything.

Yeah, that's a good thing to bring up because I don't have team members quitting very often. It does happen once in a while, or maybe we have to make some changes. But for the most part, many of my team members have been working with me for many, many years, which is really, really cool. Sometimes team members will take on a different job. Like they decide that they want to get a full-time job. Maybe their kids are getting older.

they're in high school and they decided that they want to work outside the home again now that their kids are driving and they don't have to be there for school pickups and things like that. That might be a reason they leave the team, but for the most part, our team members stay for a really long time. Wow. And this is one question where my mom is going to have to spill the tea. Oh boy. But what is the worst team member that you have ever had?

my goodness. Well, we have had, like I said, we have so many great people on the team. The good news is, is that we can spot a team member who's not a fit. I'm not going to say a bad team member. That sounds unnecessarily mean. We can spot them very, very quickly. So generally speaking, have the team members who don't work out, maybe are unresponsive where

All of a sudden, we'll send them some work, we'll assign them some work to do, and then we don't hear anything for a couple days, and then a week goes by, and we don't know if anything happened to them or what's going on because we all work remotely, so if there was an accident or something, I might not necessarily hear about it. And then, you know, all of a sudden, they'll resurface and then they might do the work.

and it's not done right or it doesn't get done at all. So I think our worst team members tend to be poor communicators, unreliable. I can think of one team member one time where she, it's been a couple of years. So we don't have too many bad team members that I can pull on for this. I have lots of interesting client stories over the years, but there was one where

She was newer to being a virtual assistant than she led us to believe in her interview. And so she would call me at like nine o'clock on a Saturday night asking me how to set up her Dropbox or why her Dropbox wasn't syncing with her computer. Like I was her tech support or something. Like it was very strange. And then when I would give her feedback on some of the work that she was doing with our clients,

She basically told me she's like well we run our businesses very differently and she was very offended and she couldn't Accept any sort of feedback or anything But at the end of the day, she didn't really know what she was doing. So once she once she left We had team members having to fix some of the work that she was doing because she was making a lot of mistakes I think that I I think that she Made it sound like she knew more than she actually did

And that I think can happen at any workplace where people will be very confident in an interview. And then when you actually hand them work to do, then it doesn't go as well as you think it's. And so basically like she'll ask for your help. And then when you give it to her sometimes, like for something different, it's like, she's like almost like telling you like, that's not how I want it to be.

Oh, the other thing that I just remember too, why I particularly mentioned this team member as the worst one was because then when I told her, like, hey, it's clear, this is not a fit. It was within about two weeks and we were like, this is not a fit, it's not going to work. She charged me an early cancellation fee. So it cost me, I think she did a total of maybe one or two hours worth of decent work and it cost me over $500.

that is... Yep. So... But that is just like one of the questions that she... It comes up. Yeah. It comes up. But team members, I don't really have anything super explosive, which is good. Yes. Definitely a very good thing. Yeah, because that could be really bad for business. So my judgment isn't that bad. Yeah. But yeah, anyway, that's one that stands out in my mind.

in addition to just general unreliability. On opposite terms, how would you describe a good client? Okay, so we're switching gears to clients now. Okay, my gosh. So just like our team members, we have so many really, really great clients. Our clients, just like us, are not perfect people, but they have a genuine heart for the work that they're doing in the world.

They know that the work that they're doing is making a difference and that their customers need what they're doing. So I love that. Those are mission driven businesses, mission driven organizations. But then they're also just people who are, they are high integrity. So they do what they say they're going to do. If they make a mistake, they want to make it right, just like we do. Like I feel like we all just work so

well together because those are all, we all share those values. And also that they genuinely want to learn how to delegate and they do want to work with the team. So they're willing to show up to calls with their virtual assistant. They're willing to trust us and share access to the information that we need in order to do our work because there's a lot of trust that happens when a client works with us because they have to.

you know, sometimes give us passwords to things so that we can log into a system and do the work. They have to give us access to files. They have to be willing to share information. So our best clients, I would say, are very honest about what they're good at, what they're not good at, and also allow our team to help them figure out how we can best work together. That's what I would say. and Lisa, you definitely love a trusting client.

Yep, and we know that that trust is gained over time as well. Doing what we say we're going to be doing and protecting the information that they give us. And we have contracts also that we both sign saying that information is confidential and that we're going to respect their privacy and we're not going to share very important information about their business for the world to take it and steal it.

That starts with Yeah, information. We just go tell a friend. Yep. Absolutely. My mom's going to have to spill the tea again. tea. But different this time. What is the worst client that you've ever had? So there was somebody who jumped right to the top of my mind.

And some of my team members and former team members will know exactly who I'm referring to when they listen to this. there are times, and maybe sometimes a red flag when I'm talking to a potential client is when somebody is extremely desperate for help right away. Like, can you start this afternoon? Because they're just so overwhelmed and they're so buried.

I say that that can be a red flag and that was what the case was with this because this particular person just really thrived on chaos, not only in her business, but in her personal life. Now, chaos is normal. Having some disorganization, having some overwhelm is normal, but this was kind of to the extreme. When this person had first met me and we had a conversation about how my team could help her,

She called me later that night and said, I have a speaking engagement tomorrow. Can your team build a landing page for the offer that I want to share with the audience at the end of my presentation? And we come from a place of yes. And this is another thing that I have learned also is that's a red flag that we have a speaking engagement tomorrow and there's no landing page and.

Like this is something not that I wouldn't work with this client, but this is not something I would agree to. But we came from a place of yes. And so I got a hold of one of my team members who I felt would be the best person for the job. And she's like, yes, I am available tonight. I can put together a landing page. Well, come to find out this client did not have any information to give to our team for the landing page. They also wanted

basically a sales page written about their offer. They had about one sentence of information about what their offer was going to be. And it was really, really hard to pull that off in, you know, the night before a speaking engagement. that definitely sounds like a hassle, like just to try to do all that stuff. Well, I thought the information, there was going to be more information and there wasn't. So the team was trying to come up with stuff.

last minute and we came up with something basic to at least capture names and email addresses and things for people to be interested in working with this person. But she wanted something that was like those really long sales pages and our audience probably knows what I'm talking about. So that was the first thing that happened. And she was super grateful. But just the expectations and the information given in the timeline was just not realistic. Then we also realized that this person

I wouldn't say had a drinking problem, but this person definitely liked to party. And so this person would come home from the bar at two, three in the morning and call her VA as she was going through her mail and asking for things like, why did my Sirius XM go up $6 a month? It should be cheaper than that. Can you call them and pretend to cancel and see if you can get me a deal? These are the kinds of things they were calling my team member about in the middle of the night.

It was just very strange. One other really funny thing that happened with this client, and there's so many other confusing things that happened, but she needed us to send a headshot for a speaking engagement. And we went into her Google Drive and we went to the folder headshots and we found naked pictures of her in that folder that I'm sure we were not supposed to see.

and she kept insisting that the headshots were in that folder and she didn't believe us until we had to show her. These are not your headshots. So there were lots of crazy things that happened. We worked with this person for probably about three weeks. I'm sure my team probably knows many more things that happened, but it was just a lot of chaos. was a lot of unrealistic expectations. was, you know, one day she's on top of the world and the next day the world was ending, I think.

I hope she's taking care of herself because there were definitely, there were highs and lows there for sure, but it just wasn't a fit for us. Yeah. That's all the tea I'm going to spill there. Time to put the wig back on the teapot. Question number nine is what projects do your clients ask you to do the most? what overall, like what is a project that

you see a lot. are two, but number one hands down is I would say these are all three related. management, calendar management, and project management. Those three things often go hand in hand because so many requests come through via email that it's not only just reading an email, it's like

Oh, I need to schedule with this person. It's because they want to get a meeting on the calendar. Oh, that person approved that proof for that project. So now I need to go on to the next part of the project. There's those three. I would bundle together. We do a lot of that. That's just a lot of organizational work. The other thing that comes up a lot is social media, because a lot of clients know that they need to be on social media and post consistently.

I'm not even going to say frequently depending on the platform, but social media, it's something that you need to keep up with and you need to do on a regular basis. And they just don't have to them to do it themselves. So they want quality content that is created with our help. So those are the two that I would say. Question number 10. This is just kind of just like a hard question.

What is your favorite thing about your business? Like overall, it could be like what you do. It could be something that you don't do. Just one thing that you love about it. And it could be like some clients are just dumb sometimes. We don't have too many of those days. Thank goodness. You know, there certainly is entertainment from time to time. Most of the time it's pretty even keel.

So my favorite thing about my business, I think is that it's the impact that we're making. And we're making impact in two different areas. And this is something that I didn't even realize fully until like within the last year. So my favorite thing overall is impact. So I know that we are helping our clients and they're really grateful for our help because it's a relief to have.

somebody that you can trust helping you get things done. That's a big deal. And then also, I love that we're able to create work for so many great, talented people. So I like both sides of it. I like giving work to people who are responsible and they're very smart, they're very skilled, and I love the work that we do for our clients and the help that we're able to give them.

And then question 11, what tips would you give to someone who wants to start a business? It could be big or small. or even new to business? just. my gosh. What tips and just what we do get. I will say this, that when you are starting a business or you're very new in business, it can be really overwhelming because there's so much information.

and you don't know what information to follow and use and what information is just probably not best for you. There's also no shortage of things to pay for when you're starting a business because depending on where you're starting, you might be needing to buy a computer to get started. You might need to rent an office space. You might need to get a building depending on what kind of business it is.

You need to get customers and so then you're out and you're networking and you're trying to meet people. Like it's just, it's so overwhelming. So my number one best tip would be to find a business coach or a mentor to help you get started. But with the caveat of knowing that I would personally hire someone who has done the thing that I want to do.

They have, or they have maybe not the exact thing, but they have accomplished or grown their business to something that I would like mine to be one day. So that you're getting advice from someone who has done it. Because one mistake that I had made early on when I started my business, first of all, I tried to do everything myself and figure everything out myself. I would read books, I would go on the internet, and I'd try to sort it out. And you spend a lot of time.

trying to research and then make a decision. And everybody has to start somewhere. I have also made the mistake of hiring and working with and taking advice from people that maybe weren't the best role models for me in that they were also just sharing a lot of things that they learned from books. didn't have, they weren't teaching me things that they learned themselves.

from their own experience. And there's a big difference in that. So seeking out mentorship from the right people who have experience that you can learn from, I think is huge. The other thing is, is that I think that if you're considering starting a business, I think that you need to, there are like small business development centers, there is SCORE organization, there's a lot of great resources to help you learn how to start one.

But I think the most important thing is that you want to figure out what problem your business is going to solve for the world because that is far more important than, how much money can I make? Because eventually building a business is hard, so you need to believe in what you do. And you also have to have others who believe in what you do who are willing to pay for your product or your service that you're selling. Yeah, think also I don't have experience in

this stuff, but I would say like just kind of off of things like would you want people like I don't think you would want friends on your team. that's an interesting one because for me like you know, I just might want to like yeah friends might be like if they don't do something wrong, they might just be like whatever she's not going to be mad. Yeah, but

But then you consistently do that and what do you think about like friends? Hiring friends and family and working with friends and family. That is a tricky one. will say that I tend to not do as I probably wouldn't hire a friend or a family member only because if it didn't work out, then if there were hard feelings that would make family gatherings and you know, getting together with friends kind of awkward.

depending on your relationship. I would say if you are going to work with any friends or family members, just make sure that you have working agreements or contracts like you would with any other client or team member that you would be working with, just so that the boundaries and expectations are very clear moving forward. But yeah, it can be a sticky situation. It can be a risk hiring a friend or a family member because if something isn't working,

Are you going to be hesitant to say something because you want to keep the peace versus what's best for your company? Yeah. That's an interesting thought. that is definitely. Anything else before we wrap up? These have been good questions and I'm trying to answer them in simple ways that make sense for everyone basically. For a 10 year old. So simple a 10 year old can explain it. Yeah.

Is that wrap? Yeah, I think that's all I have. Okay, I can relax now. I am off the hot seat for the rest of the afternoon. Hopefully she's looking at me like she's going to ask me some more questions about stuff. Probably like what could we do next and can I go here and can I go there? You know, mom life. But anyway, thank you so much everyone for tuning into today's episode. I hope that you found some golden tidbits that would help you and your business and where you're at in your organization.

or maybe even laughed about my difficult client story. Hopefully you had a chuckle with that too. So many great questions that Ava came up with today. So I'm really grateful to create this episode with her. And I want to share with you all too that we have so many fantastic guests coming up over the next few weeks. You definitely are going to want to subscribe or follow the podcast so that you're alerted when we have a new episode releasing. And so you can tune in and

learn from people in the trenches who are there growing their businesses, growing their organizations, and learning more about the things that they are delegating, the things that they are focusing their time on, because I think that's really, really interesting to learn from people who are in it along with us. So, Ava, thank you so much for joining me today. You're welcome. You're the best. And I had a really good time. And we'll be back with another episode next week of Make Space for More. Have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.