I plugged my headset in and waited for the Zoom meeting to start. This was our first official meeting, to talk about the first post that we should put on Deleg8te, and I was excited to hear my client’s story.
Within a few seconds, he picked up the other end of the call. Despite being the morning of a Friday, he had a pep to his voice like he had just run a marathon but was ready for ten more miles.
The meeting begins. He explains to me that his new venture is based around virtual assistants, though I’m not quite sure what the driving force behind this idea is.
“Time,” he says as if the word was the only answer that I needed.
He goes on to explain how much he values the hours in his day, and immediately, it becomes clear to me that this is a family man I am talking to. The type of man that wants to get up in the morning and chase his kids around the house, ushering them to eat breakfast, and then dropping them off for school. Being present in the lives of his children and his wife is important to him, and he has no plans to compromise these moments for extra hours working on his business.
He also knew that he couldn’t put his dreams and visions aside to solely be a husband and a father, either. There needs to be balance. He needs to manage his time.
And this isn’t something that he learned overnight.
No one wakes up one day with the answer to how to manage all the hours between being a family man and being a business owner. After pouring his time, efforts, and money into several ventures, some failed and some successful, he realized that there was one piece of advice that continued to resonate with him. This was the one advice parroted back and forth between books he read, podcasts he favored, and gurus he followed.
He needed virtual assistants. A team that has his back and runs his business for him while he runs after his 3-year old son that put something in his mouth that he wasn’t supposed to.
Even though I was clearly hired to be his virtual assistant, I felt a little skeptical of his plans. “But aren’t you scared?” I asked him, “Aren’t you terrified of outsourcing your whole business to other people?” It seemed risky.
I fully expected him to unleash a barrage of fears at me, which was natural for anyone starting something new. Relinquishing control of your business is something that so many of my previous clients have struggled to do.
Without even a pause after my question, he says, “No.”
He goes on to explain to me that this isn’t his first time trying to start something new that would inevitably add a load of stress onto his plate. Just last year, he introduced a new product that was a painful and frustrating experience. He’s no stranger to the roadblocks and pitfalls that come with trying to start a business. Instead of fearing the inevitable, he welcomes them as challenges for his new team to help him overcome.
I nodded in respect.
Before closing up the call, there was one last question that I was dying to know. “So, why are we documenting everything?” From the moment he posted his job ad, he was transparent about the fact that everything we do was going to be put down on paper.
“My inspiration for business has always been the people that shared their journey with me,” he said. “Listening to Andrew Warner’s podcast and hearing interviews from other entrepreneurs drive me to do what I do. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now if it wasn’t for those people sharing their stories.” His voice lit up as he continued, sharing his favorite podcasts and interviews with me.
He explained that he wanted to give back to the community, showing them, with himself as the guinea pig, the raw, unedited process of starting a business.
He tells me, “Warts and all.”
He hopes that this becomes a place where other entrepreneurs can find motivation and true inspiration.
The call comes to an end, and I wish him a good weekend. This project was going to last, at a minimum, of a year long. I have watched businesses crash, stagnate, or skyrocket, within a humble 12 months. So we’ll see.
I’ll keep you updated on the journey. Enter your e-mail address below, and I’ll send our next update straight to your inbox.
