Well, thank you so much for being here. This is very exciting. My first podcast is incredible. Thank you very much. For me, I think I've always been somebody that.
Strive. to achieve it. Just to do a bit more, I'd get to a point and go, okay, this is good, but I know there's something more there. So that, that was always me. And a few years ago I had a health food business and essentially tried to find a graphic designer, spent hours searching on Facebook, ended up on a job platform and ultimately ended up with a graphic designer.
and designs I couldn't use. They were terrible. And it was just so difficult being, being in a small business trying to create something. It's just seemed to be hurdle after hurdle. So if I knew that could be a better way. There had to be a better way to be able to find a freelancer who was good, who could really help you succeed in your business.
So, we connect health, wellness and fitness business owners with industry experienced freelancers. They're pre vetted, they're Australian based, they're really good at what they do. So that way, when you're ready to outsource, you've got somebody there, you've got the one place to go. to find who you need to grow your business, to work with you, to provide you really quality work.
Yeah. Oh, what a great story. And, it's so good to hear cause this is very different from some of my previous episodes where I've been talking about getting virtual assistance. So virtual assistance offshore. So this is a completely whole new thing around. supporting Australian freelancers specifically skilled to support health, wellness and fitness businesses.
So therefore now your strategy then is twofold for your business because you have to find the health, wellness and fitness business owners and you've got to build that relationship with them and you've got to, give them education and empower them to be able to Determine what tasks they need outsourcing to, so that they then outsource to your freelancers or post a job task to your freelancers, and then second fold, you've got the freelancers, which you've got to go out, find Australian freelancers that want to work with other health, wellness and fitness industry experts that are good.
That are prepared then to actually facilitate those tasks as well. So a twofold marketing strategy here. How exciting.
Thank you. We can use that word challenging, but yeah, but it is. Yeah, I don't like to do things in half, so instead of just a standard marketing strategy, I need two of them, which is good, but what I did learn when I was trying to outsource myself was it's not just about finding somebody, it's about knowing who you're looking for and having that education around, you know, what to look for in the particular person, who you actually need to do the job.
What questions to ask that, you know, that the questions that you ask to a graphic designer, what files am I going to get back for that particular image? They're things that I think if I had that knowledge when I went out looking for a graphic designer, it would have made so much difference.
So, the platform sort of evolved from just being that connection point to, you know, That education space as well. So having knowledge is power. So having that knowledge to outsource successfully is, it makes such a big difference.
I love so much of what you said there because knowledge is power a hundred percent and a lot of the time people don't actually know what they need help with.
So they'll say, for example, they need more sales. So they go, I must need Facebook ads. and they don't. They actually just need a marketing strategy because they actually don't have funnels in place or they don't have a content marketing plan. So understanding and actually knowing what they re, like what they really need is super, super helpful and important because that means they can then go find the right person.
And you and I always have this discussion, right? Because so many times people go, I want someone to manage my social media for me. So I need a social media manager. Okay. And what they're really looking for is somebody just to go on and make sales and get leads for them. And a social media manager is not somebody who generates leads and sales.
So talk a little bit about that for us.
Yes. So I think marketing is always one of our top five every single week. And the, I think there's such a huge confusion around, like you said, the difference between a social media marketer. in a social media manager. So a lot of people do think, or they'll, they'll ask, put a job through for, you know, I need more followers on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn, on Instagram.
So I need a social media manager. You, that role is actually a social media marketer because you need a strategy in place to be able to bring the new followers to you. A social media manager is. They're only going to manage, essentially, your social media. So, they're going to do the posts for you, they're going to create, the words for you, and they're going to interact with people commenting on your posts.
They're not actually going to create a strategy to draw more people in. They're just going to keep your current people happy. That's where I think our platform works great because we do educate you around that difference of who you're actually looking for. So I see it also a lot in the VA and OBM space.
If you need to streamline processes within your business, that's not a VA generally speaking, that's an OBM. Once the OBMs come, so an online business manager, once they've come in streamline all of your processes and they flow magically, then you can get your VA in to manage it all and look after it and keep all your customers and clients content.
Oh, a hundred percent. So a manager will manage whatever you have in place. So if you don't know, how to effectively communicate to your audience online. And if you don't know how to generate leads or have funnels or lead strategies in place, if you don't have like an appointment setting, a method in place, they can't manage it.
So they will manage it if you have it in place, but you've got to get it in place first. So this is why like a marketing strategist is so important first coming in, making sure that the business has its overall marketing strategy. It's got its lead generation funnels in place. It's got all its processes in place, its content marketing place.
And by all means, then go give that to the manager and say, this is what we've got. Now manage this.
Yes. This is our content strategy. Now you can create pose.
Yeah. And I mean, my, and the funniest part, the funniest, not so funny part is that they also want to pay absolutely nothing for this. So it's like, okay, we want to pay for a social media manager to come in and generate leads and do everything.
But you know, I'll pay you a hundred bucks a week. No idea. But the thing is, is that once you've actually paid, for proven strategies and like data driven decision making strategies, proven strategies with experts that have put, you know, lead generation strategies in place. And you have that set up, then by all means you can either go to Australians, you can go to offshore, you can pay less then for a manager to manage it.
So super important. Now another, kind of belief that I have is that you shouldn't be outsourcing any management services in your business unless you're a six figure business. All right. And I can say that because when I owned my health, wellness, and fitness centers, the biggest benefit for me was having learned from all the mistakes that I made from having to go in and learn what I needed to do in order to grow that business.
So that then when I did bring on my first PA personal assistant in Australia, I knew what she. had to do and I could oversee what she was have had to do. So I knew if she was pulling the wool over my eyes or not. I knew if she was screwing me over or not. Right. Because it's like, because she can't just leave them and like cross your fingers and hope that they know what they're doing.
And those learnings I learned in that whole five figure business stage up to six figures. So now I kind of say, you know, if it's for setup, If you need to set up something like, you know, set up a website or set up emails, you've got to make sure your vehicles are set up properly.
Yeah, definitely.
So if
you can't do that, like, and nowadays we've got no excuse. We've got ChatGBT, we've got YouTube, right? But if, if you can't do that and you can't afford to get someone else to set up, by all means do that. But when it comes to management stuff in the beginning, it's really important as a business owner for you to actually become confident as a business owner and skilled as a business owner, you know, and not try to outsource all of that.
So what's some of your experience with that?
Yeah, you're 100 percent right with that. It's, you know, knowing how your business operates is crucial first and you need to be able to build the business and you need to be able to, you can't do that. I don't think having an admin person first. And even looking for things like, investors, if that's the path you want to go down, so many investors will not even have a bar of view if it's just you and a VA.
They don't, they want to see that you have strategies in place, that you have people, operational people working for you and, you know, growth, BA, like we were saying before, is a manager. They're just managing the day to day, so you're looking for growth. So for me, for example, my, with my business, my first outsource was, , my branding.
, I can't draw a stick man to save myself, so branding was where I wanted to go. Then from there it was into the marketing side of it. I did as much as I could systems wise, with the website, things like that, but I did too get in IT support to help me connect things that they just couldn't do. They, I just could not for the life of me get them to connect.
It looked good, but though, and I think I would have spent so much more time with them. or wasted so much more time trying to get these systems to work and connect instead of just outsourcing them. It was just a lot easier. The growth side of is what sort of needs to be the initial focus.
And once that's up and going and growing, then you can look down to the path to the admin and that's the side of it you can hand off and then giving you more time for even more growth.
Yeah 100 percent but you can't outsource nothing to someone like you just can't and you need to be able to oversee them and the other thing is that if you pay peanuts you'll get monkeys and I see this all the time where they go oh you know I'll go and I'll get somebody to do this please please please you can actually pay less so for example even if you went on to something like Fiverr but for goodness sake if they don't have luck You know, a hundred positive reviews, don't use them.
And if they're not a hundred positive reviews for the thing that you actually want them to do, don't, don't use them. You know, so many people get caught and I go nowadays, you shouldn't get caught because it's so easy, you know, please, please, please always check people's reviews and make sure that, you understand the task that you want them to do,
that
you've checked, who they are and whether or not they can actually fulfill that task.
Actually let's go into that because you've developed a you've got like a post task list thing that you, that you give to help people basically write up a task or determine what tasks they need to outsource.
Yeah, we do. Going back to what you were just saying about understanding what you are actually outsourcing and I think that was one of my biggest downfalls with the graphic designer is I, only half knew what I was actually looking for.
So it, so the design I got back was not even what I wanted, but that was partly on me because I didn't understand what I actually wanted. So knowing and really taking the time to understand the job that you need done first is so crucial. And that could just be as simple as writing down the list first, instead of just jumping in and somebody and then essentially like I did waste money.
So, had I've had that education and that knowledge and taken that time to actually understand what I needed, that would have been made such a huge, huge difference.
I actually have a very funny, not so funny story that happens all the time that proves this. I will have people message me on social media and they'll go, Oh my gosh, I'm trying to grow my Facebook group.
I don't understand why it's not growing. I'm doing all these things. Can you go check it out for me? And they'll send me a link and they send me a link and the link is to their Facebook page. Now what you do on a Facebook page is completely different to what you do on a Facebook group. So here they are asking for help.
And they're using the wrong language straight off, which means if I'd given them advice, it would have been on a Facebook group. And if they'd applied it on their page, it would not have worked. So, so incredibly important that you actually know what it is that you're trying to do. Yes.
And being very clear, very, very clear in what you actually need to outsource.
We do have, another document that's available to download on the website as well, which is a job brief. And even if you're not using that to hand over to the freelancer, it really nails down and really digs into exactly what you're looking for to, to the point of how you even want to communicate with the freelancers.
Cause there is so many different ways. But yeah, so that's sort of one side of it as well, but yeah, so with jumping back to what we were saying before with the. different jobs. We have a job list essentially, which we've, so we've collated all the data from our website, which is the top 20 tasks that are commonly outsourced by health, wellness and fitness business owners.
Social media manager and social media marketer are actually all both in there as they are nearly every week. , it really gives you the. Full list of the common tasks that you can outsource. Whether it is your admin side of it, could be, whether it's your email management, whether it's email marketing, that's another really popular one that we've seen quite common nearly every week, is your email marketing strategy, because email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools out there.
But it needs to be done right. It's, it needs to really hit home and there needs to be changes and tweaks as I know, as we've worked on for quite some time to, to get it right. But yeah, the list really just helps you identify the areas that You can outsource and you can go, Oh yeah, I hadn't even thought about outsourcing my email management.
Just things like that.
Yeah. And you know, I always say to people, the number one thing that I always teach is getting people off social media. And that means getting them into an email list. And again, one of the most common things that I get on a daily basis is, Oh, I'm looking for a Facebook ads person.
And the first question I'll ask is, do you have email marketing in place? Yes. And they go, why are you asking me that? And I said, just answer the question. And they go, no, you should never do Facebook ads without having email marketing in place. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Because there's no way that you can, retarget those people.
There's no way that you can remarket to them. You've lost those leads forever and you just keep paying, you're
paying,
you just keep paying. So again, you know, and the thing is, is that if you go to a Facebook strategist, a Facebook ad strategist, Not all of them, but many of them will want you to do Facebook ads with them because that's what they'll do.
And they might, they may recommend doing email marketing, but they're scared that you're going to spend your money on getting email marketing set up and they're going to lose your job. So instead what they do is they go, no, no, no, no, we can do it. We can do it. And they do it, but it can never work the same.
It can never work unless you actually have email marketing in place. So, so super important that
it's honestly, it's one of my, pet hates. And I think it's a reason I'm so passionate about the education side with my business and connecting businesses with really good, honest freelancers, because in, especially in the Facebook group, some of the really big ones, which we won't mention, but, you know, people will put on there, Oh, I'm looking for somebody to do some ads for me.
Oh, I can do that. I can help you. Yeah, we do that. But What are the ads going to do? You don't have, your website's not even functioning correctly, your email marketing is not going to, like you said, it's not going to re target them, it's not going to bring them back in. We need, How many touch points now?
Oh, it's up to like 21 or something.
It's insane. Exactly.
So a Facebook ad, which what you might get two touch points and that's the end of it. It needs, and that's what I hate is that so many people will go, yeah, I'll help you, but it's not investing your money wisely. And that's, it makes me really angry that people take advantage because small business is so hard to start with.
You know, it's such a roller coaster ride that You want to invest in the right places and in the right people. And so many people out there will take advantage. And it just really irks me. And some
people will say, yes, they can do it. And it's something that they've tinkered with over the weekend for their next door neighbor at some point.
And now they'll go, I'll do that for you. So at the end of the day, I believe it's your fault. Cause if you're not doing your due diligence and you're not checking their testimonials, if they've got no testimonials, there's a problem right there because they should be happy people out there. there. I do want to say though, going back to Facebook groups, we do have to be a little bit careful, with Facebook groups cause there, there is this thing called pods.
So for example, in the women's Facebook groups, if we all belong to a pod, we might each have one industry. And when we see that person say, if somebody goes, I need somebody for Facebook ads, you'll have 20 people jump in and go, Oh, use Mary. And they've never used Mary, but they're in a, they're in a pod where they.
Pitch each other and they refer each other online. Yes. And they actually haven't used that person. They're just referring them. So I think, again, you've gotta like understand that's the truth of what's happening out there. Correct. You know, I don't get massively referred online. My clients occasionally will see me.
But if you go to my website, there's over 280 reviews. There's video reviews. I've got screenshots from clients, you know? So there's, there's that social proof. There's that credibility behind there. But again, you know, you've got to do your due diligence as a business owner. Crystal, thank you so much for coming today.
That was absolutely awesome. Could you just tell everyone again, your website, and what you do so that they can connect with you there?
Yeah, absolutely. So our website is. It's just the worksource. com. au. We are at the worksource everywhere, every platform. And yeah, we connect health, wellness, fitness, business owners with industry experience freelancers so you don't get stuck with somebody that cannot help you and you are investing in the right people in the right time.
Yeah, that's awesome. So if you are a health, wellness and fitness professional, you definitely want to jump into her Facebook group where she supports you in that Facebook group in helping you to determine what's what tasks you need outsourcing with. And if you are a freelancer and you love to provide an Australian freelancer and you'd love to provide, health, wellness and fitness, entrepreneurs and business owners with good service, it's you can contact her as well to be part of, part of a freelancing team.
Yes. We're always looking for new, good freelancers. Yes, definitely.
Excellent. Thanks so much, Crystal, for joining us. This is another episode of the Meaningful Marketing Podcast. If you haven't already, please click the follow button and rate us. Thank you so much.