Guests: Chris Ronzio, Daniel Ramsey
Recorded: August 14, 2019
Excerpt
Tired of playing catch-up with your virtual & remote staff? Having trouble keep everyone organized with team members on the road? Get business out of your brain make your organization easy to scale! Join us for this exclusive webinar with Chris Ronzio, the Founder & CEO of Trainual, as he walks us through how to easily & effectively document & delegate to your team.
Today’s teams are mobile and always on the go: so why are your processes & documentation stuck in the 20th century? We’re going to drill down on how to easily document the key parts of your business & effectively delegate tasks to your team – giving you the freedom to focus on high-level tasks crucial to your success!
Learn how to get mission-critical tasks off your plate with the confidence they’re being done correctly!
Chris is an investor, part-owner, and/or on the board of 5 companies, an Inc Magazine columnist, and the author of “100 Hacks To Improve Your Business.” He spent a decade building a national video production company that would net over $3 million and sold that business before turning 25. At that point, he started a consulting agency called Organize Chaos.
After working directly with hundreds of entrepreneurs, Chris and his team created the Trainual software tool to help organize small and growing businesses.
Transcript
00:00:08:04 – 00:00:31:21
Daniel Ramsey
Hey, everyone. Daniel Ramsey here from MyOutDesk. And we are really excited because we are going to help today. We’ve got a special guest, Chris Rosato, from Training. Now, here’s the thing. If you’re stealing or growing the problem in business, the biggest problem that you have is training. And so we’ve got a special guest, a guy that knows everything about that.
00:00:31:22 – 00:00:51:16
Daniel Ramsey
So we’re going to have lots of fun today. We’re really excited about this training. And obviously he’s had thousands of clients and they do this for a living. So that’s what we do is we bring people on this show to help you win in business, and I’m really excited about that. Before we get going, please, thank you for being here.
00:00:51:16 – 00:01:00:18
Daniel Ramsey
Just drop in chat where you’re from and your name. We love to kind of interact and there’s going to be lots of questions. Chris, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here today.
00:01:01:21 – 00:01:09:14
Chris Ronzio
Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited to chat about this. So I am sharing my screen as everybody starts to put their info in the chat there.
00:01:10:12 – 00:01:21:21
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah. And let’s, let’s, let’s give everybody a little backdrop like you’re a serial entrepreneur, like you’re a crazy guy, like sold the business, but by the age of 25. So you’re like, the real deal, man.
00:01:23:01 – 00:01:53:03
Chris Ronzio
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. So I started my first company when I was 14 and I made my first company to pay taxes. Obviously, I had the little kid businesses, the the landscaping and the house cleaning and lemonade stands. But when I was 14, had a video production company, grew that to doing events all over the U.S. and a couple of international events sold out when I was in my twenties, start a consulting firm grew that up and we spun off a couple cool tech products with other businesses, other partners of mine and train you.
00:01:53:03 – 00:02:01:07
Chris Ronzio
It was one of the tech products that came out of my consulting firm, so now it’s a total separate entity on its own and our 100% focus, which has been really fun.
00:02:01:20 – 00:02:10:23
Daniel Ramsey
Well, that’s crazy, man. That’s a really cool. How did you like what’s the like what’s the origin story of training like? Why did you know that this was something special?
00:02:12:19 – 00:02:33:14
Chris Ronzio
Yeah. So with my consulting business, we were working with all small companies that were growing, like under 50 employees, but growing quickly. And so we would go in and interview all their employees, figure out where the chains were broken and how to improve their workflow. And we’d put in different technology and tools and virtual assistants and anything to help streamline what they did.
00:02:33:14 – 00:02:55:19
Chris Ronzio
And as we tore apart their operations, the last step was always, Can you write down on the manual? Can you write down the standard operating procedures of the training and get everybody up to speed on the new way to do things? And so as we were doing that work, it was all Google Docs or word docs and Dropbox folders, and I was banging my head against the wall thinking, This isn’t how you train people.
00:02:55:19 – 00:03:12:05
Chris Ronzio
You don’t just scatter documents across them and hope they read it. And so that’s why we created Train. Yeah, it was just for our clients, just in-house. And so over a couple of years, our clients were referring the system out to people that were not consulting clients and they said, I want to train you, I want to use it.
00:03:12:05 – 00:03:17:00
Chris Ronzio
And so it was enough people asking that. I said, I think there’s something here. Let’s let’s give this a go.
00:03:17:15 – 00:03:22:07
Daniel Ramsey
That’s awesome. And when did you give it a go, for instance?
00:03:22:07 – 00:03:27:12
Chris Ronzio
Formally January 2018. So it’s been about 18 months at the time we’re recording this.
00:03:27:23 – 00:03:48:07
Daniel Ramsey
Nice. I love that, man. I love that. So you’ve got a really cool slide deck that we’re going to roll through. So if you’re listening, we’ve got Lenny from Hermosa Beach. He says It’s heaven on earth there where he’s at. So that’s awesome. Lenny, you. I love it. Yes. And the real issue and we got Tim from Seattle.
00:03:48:07 – 00:04:11:20
Daniel Ramsey
The real issue here is turnover is kind of the challenge of scaling a business, training new people to do it just like you is the other challenge. Because as you’re growing, the biggest concern is like, are they going to love on my clients the way I love on my clients? And and so we’re going to nail some of the really cool things today with you but let yeah let’s rock into it.
00:04:11:20 – 00:04:15:05
Daniel Ramsey
Chris Perfect. That’s us.
00:04:15:18 – 00:04:41:04
Chris Ronzio
You’ve, you’ve already done the intro, but, but this is the two of us. And so thank you for everyone joining to be here with us. Like Daniel said, I run train you all. It’s literally smash training manual together and you’ve got train your simple system for documenting what you do and so everything we talk about is going to come from my own personal experience doing this and the experience of our customers, which is thousands of customers in I think 85 countries now around the world.
00:04:41:22 – 00:04:42:23
Daniel Ramsey
So a million views.
00:04:43:07 – 00:04:58:13
Chris Ronzio
Yeah. So a big virtual component to what we do. So we’ll have a lot to talk about if at any time anyone has questions, just put them in the chat. We’ll address them either as they come or we’ll do some Q&A at the end. But I want to hear from you. So we custom tailor this as we go some good.
00:04:58:23 – 00:05:05:10
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, yeah. Perfect, man. And we’ve got Wendy from Tampa. Morning, Wendy. Thanks for joining us today. It’s off to.
00:05:05:16 – 00:05:08:22
Chris Ronzio
Seattle. I’m going to Seattle in a couple of weeks, Tim. Love it up there.
00:05:09:04 – 00:05:09:24
Daniel Ramsey
I’ll from you go.
00:05:10:14 – 00:05:26:21
Chris Ronzio
All right, cool. So here’s what we’ll cover today. First, we’ll talk a little bit about why documentation is important. Why do you care if you signed up for this? Obviously, you care a little bit, but I’ll give you some context and some things that you can share with the rest of your team to get them on board, because I know that’s a big part of this.
00:05:27:04 – 00:05:45:18
Chris Ronzio
We’ll go through the three biggest pain points that your virtual team is, face the manual manifesto, which is something I came up with and then we’ll talk about practically how do you get started? What do you document first? How do you actually capture your process? And then what can you do as some next steps today or tomorrow to get moving down that path?
00:05:46:05 – 00:06:05:16
Chris Ronzio
Now let’s get into it. So pain points, this isn’t the sexiest thing to do, the easiest thing to do in your business. And I think that’s why a lot of people don’t do it right. Like, I’m curious to hear from you in the chat. Where are you like have you done this? 0%, 100%. Do you have anything written down?
00:06:05:16 – 00:06:23:07
Chris Ronzio
Tell me in the chat while we go through this because I want to know what we’re dealing with, but it’s not. You know, when I talk to business owners, this isn’t the thing that you want to do every day. You’ve got to make the money. You think you’re running the business. And so taking time to work on the company might not feel like the most important thing, but it definitely is.
00:06:23:07 – 00:06:45:09
Chris Ronzio
We’ll talk about it. Okay. Number problem number one, assuming your virtual teammates are just plug and play solutions, I’m curious to hear from you. Raise your hand, type in the chat. Has anybody ever experienced this where you hire a service? You know, you hire a company like Daniels and you think it’s just day one, we’re going to hit the ground running?
00:06:45:09 – 00:07:06:07
Chris Ronzio
I cut the check. It’s good to go or even physically. You hire an employee in day one. They’re just off to the races. I know. I’ve made that mistake. So a myth, especially with virtual assistants, is that they’re already experts in everything. You know, you think as soon as you cut the check that you’re going to have the problem solved.
00:07:06:08 – 00:07:25:12
Chris Ronzio
But the reality is you’ve got someone that wants to solve the problem employee, virtual assistant contract or whatever it is. You’ve got someone that wants to solve the problem and has the skill set to potentially solve the problem. But they don’t know how you want the problem to be solved. And so what we have to do is help them and train them and we’ll talk more about that.
00:07:25:12 – 00:07:47:10
Chris Ronzio
But that’s a big problem. Problem number two is that you develop some face to face habits now, especially if you haven’t done this before, if you haven’t hired someone virtual before, you might be used to working in an office where you can just walk over to the next person’s desk or you just roll your chair back and slide over to the next person.
00:07:47:10 – 00:08:06:21
Chris Ronzio
And because of that, you develop a little bit of a dependency. And the myth is if something goes wrong, I can easily correct my team on the fly. Like no problem. I roll across the way where we’re we’re sitting next to each other. But in order to leverage a virtual team, you’ve got to be able to be more prepared because you’re not always connected.
00:08:06:21 – 00:08:27:06
Chris Ronzio
You might be working on different time zones. You might not be able to talk to each other in real time throughout the day. So you’ve got to be able to prepare a little bit more through training. And then the third thing, the third problem is if you haven’t utilized technology at all, I see Wendy put in here, we’ve got an sloppy manual, but it needs some work and updates and I hear that all the time.
00:08:27:19 – 00:08:46:20
Chris Ronzio
It’s like we put some work into this. It we’ve got some documents, I wrote some things down, but it’s not totally up to date and we don’t trust it. You know, if you did something so long ago that you’re not using it anymore, then it’s because you’re not use a lot utilizing the tech to keep it going, keep it updated.
00:08:46:20 – 00:09:04:15
Chris Ronzio
And so the myth is I just don’t have time to work on this. I don’t have time to document what I do. And of course, if you’re using some tech tools that we’re going to talk about in the presentation, then you will spend a lot less time and you’ll be able to just capture what you know. So let’s go back.
00:09:04:15 – 00:09:26:18
Chris Ronzio
We’ve got three things here. Assuming your team is plug and play, developing some bad face to face habits and not utilizing tech type in the chat. Which one is your biggest problem? What one have you been? Have what? What? What have you committed in the past? One, two or three. We’ll leave a couple of seconds here. How about you, Daniel?
00:09:27:05 – 00:09:48:18
Daniel Ramsey
I’m just going to jump in. We were just we’ve got big. He says number three is his issue. I was just on a call with a client who’s actually doubling their business every year and it’s super awesome when they come to us and say, hey, Daniel, we need help. We know exactly what we need. We have scripts, we have a training process and and we’re doubling.
00:09:48:18 – 00:10:17:10
Daniel Ramsey
And so now we just need the help. But that’s not always the case. It’s really rare for somebody to say, my systems are fully documented and we’re ready for a virtual assistant. And yet, you know, when that happens, our clients are really, really, really happy with the results. And so real quick before we get all the answers, because we got a lot of people actually answering, I want to allow people the opportunity to get a copy of our book.
00:10:17:22 – 00:10:51:16
Daniel Ramsey
We just finished it. Chris I don’t I can’t wait to share more information about that book, but basically it’s 12 years of running a virtual company and what kind of systems and processes you actually need in place. And so if you’re listening right now, you can text SVP to 31996. We’re going to jump back into the into the presentation, but we want to make sure that if you’re here with us today and you want, we can give you a free gift and kind of help you along your your journey as you’re hiring virtual talent and actually scaling and growing a company.
00:10:51:24 – 00:10:56:16
Daniel Ramsey
But we’ve got let’s see, it looks like maybe everybody’s on a three man. Yeah.
00:10:56:24 – 00:11:14:13
Chris Ronzio
Lots of three is so so this is, this is what we’re going to get into. You know, if you’re not utilizing technology right now, there’s probably a few reasons. Like either you don’t know about the tools or you don’t feel like you have time to dig in to the tools. You’re just not familiar enough with them and it feels like it’s going to take a lot of time.
00:11:14:14 – 00:11:35:15
Chris Ronzio
I don’t have time to document what I do. That’s what we hear a lot because it feels like you have to spend all this time creating and getting out of the space of doing whatever it is you do best, which feels unnatural, it feels painful, it’s like homework, and we don’t want that. We want to alleviate that. So what we did is we created this is kind of like the framework behind Train Y’all.
00:11:35:21 – 00:11:57:12
Chris Ronzio
We had already built it. We already are paying customers. And I sat back and said, When should you train? Why should you do this? And this is what came out of it. Do it, document it. Delegating simple process, but I want you to be able to share this with your teams because you should not document everything. I want to take that off the table right now because you don’t need to write down everything.
00:11:57:12 – 00:12:17:22
Chris Ronzio
You only need to write down the things you want to delegate. The reason you write things down is to delegate them, to get them off your plate so someone else can do them, to leverage someone else’s time and to free up your time. So if you go through this cycle first, you’re learning to do it. You are doing something the very first time and developing some kind of repeatable, consistent process.
00:12:18:03 – 00:12:38:23
Chris Ronzio
Once you know you’re doing it consistently like you’re not experimenting anymore, you did it the same way yesterday as you did today, and you don’t want to do it anymore. Your step, your next step is to document it. It’s to say, How did I do it? Let me write it down. Let me record it. How do I do it right in my mind?
00:12:39:11 – 00:12:49:14
Chris Ronzio
And then once you’ve documented it, you can delegate it. So if you do it consistently, you document it clearly, then you can delegate it confidently. And I’ve got this whole cycle. Go ahead, jump in.
00:12:49:20 – 00:13:08:04
Daniel Ramsey
Well, I’m the document question we get this is one of the questions and again, you know we’ve helped over 5000 businesses grow with virtual talent. But the documented question there’s a lot of gray area. So we’ve got you here today. I want you to clear this up for us. How detailed does it have to be? Because I’m an entrepreneur.
00:13:08:04 – 00:13:25:12
Daniel Ramsey
I’m crazy. You’re an entrepreneur. I’m all over the place. Like, how much detail like is it a step by step thing or is it like document all the alternatives out there? Because there’s a lot of in business, you know, there’s a lot of, you know, well, this happened. So that has to happen now.
00:13:26:13 – 00:13:44:18
Chris Ronzio
No, it doesn’t have to be detailed. It has to be detailed enough that the person on the other end does it correctly. And so the reason why we have these little arrows is that it’s an iterative process. You know, as you document something, you’re writing it down to the best of your ability. And when you hand it to someone else, they’re going to have questions.
00:13:44:18 – 00:14:01:12
Chris Ronzio
They’re going to say, What about this? Or They’re going to do something wrong. Then it goes back. The cycle goes back to re documenting and you update those, those instructions and say, oh, good point, I missed a step. Now you try it again, you delegated again. And once it’s delegated and done correctly, then you know the instructions are good.
00:14:01:19 – 00:14:23:10
Chris Ronzio
But then by doing it, by delegating it, someone might have a great idea and say, I think if we do it this new way, we can save ourselves 2 hours. And so you say, Great, let’s test that out, let’s try doing it that way. And now let’s update the instructions, let’s document it, and now let’s delegate it. So you want to do like the minimum possible documentation that is effective for your business.
00:14:23:17 – 00:14:27:15
Chris Ronzio
And we’re going to talk through four different ways to document a bit later in the presentation.
00:14:27:22 – 00:14:29:24
Daniel Ramsey
Nice. Okay, good.
00:14:29:24 – 00:14:48:09
Chris Ronzio
All right. So to give you an analogy, we’re all in the real estate world here. If I asked any of you, what’s the best way to build an asset buying or renting? You know, could you buy a house or rent a house for yourself? You know, which one builds some equity, you build some asset. What would you say, Daniel?
00:14:48:09 – 00:14:54:12
Daniel Ramsey
This is a this is a trick question. It’s not a trick question. That’s not your question. I’m buying. I’m always a buyer.
00:14:54:21 – 00:15:12:16
Chris Ronzio
I’ve had some people in the audience say, well, probably Reds. I don’t know. No. By obviously, if you want equity in something, you buy and you develop some equity in it because otherwise the payments you’re making every month, they’re not going to anything that you retain any asset. They’re just going out the window. Right. It’s the same with with documenting.
00:15:12:16 – 00:15:38:22
Chris Ronzio
So think of the teams that work at your organization. If you’re paying their salaries week over week, month over month, and they’re not writing down anything that they’re learning any best practices, you don’t have anything to show for the salary dollars you’ve been paying, then you’re renting, you’re renting your team. But if as you’re paying your team, they can document the things that they learned, the things that they know too.
00:15:38:22 – 00:15:56:10
Chris Ronzio
Bit by bit, build the playbook for your company. Then you’re it’s like you’re buying that knowledge. You’re building an asset that you as a business owns. So it’s a real simple analogy, but I always like to share this, especially with you guys, because you can bring it back to your teams and say, Look, what we’re doing is we’re renting our team.
00:15:56:17 – 00:16:01:11
Chris Ronzio
You know, we have nothing to show for it. We need to build an asset and that’s what documentation is.
00:16:01:14 – 00:16:33:01
Daniel Ramsey
Well, Chris, I would add, so we did one of these with Steve Murray, the founder of Real Trends. And if you’re listening right now, this guy did 730, he’s done 736 different valuations of real estate practices that have sold. And what he said is when he’s selling these things and there’s documented processes, he gets a higher multiple meaning he’s going to get a four or five X and and the ones that, you know, there’s no documented process.
00:16:33:09 – 00:16:57:07
Daniel Ramsey
The entrepreneur is what I call helicopter or delegator, you know, did you do it? Did you do it? Did you do it? We’ve all been there. I started out there. I think that’s just how it is. But he said when those helicopter delegates are out there and they don’t document the process and their systems and how to win inside their business, he says the valuation is is sometimes as much as half.
00:16:57:18 – 00:17:08:02
Daniel Ramsey
So if you’re with me, but the stakes for this is more money for your business and more profits over the life of your entire real estate career.
00:17:09:06 – 00:17:30:06
Chris Ronzio
And I’ll tell you, the number one ad we’ve had of all time in the last 18 months, our number one performing ad has a simple message saying, could someone else run your business? And I think inside, that’s such a powerful thing, because even if you don’t want someone else to run your business, like if something happens to you, could someone take the reins and keep it going?
00:17:30:09 – 00:17:45:15
Chris Ronzio
If one day you woke up and decided you want to do something new, would it be easy to transfer the business? And unless you’ve got a playbook of how you do what you do, there’s really not much to sell. Someone would come in and expect you to be attached to the business for as long as it took to transfer that knowledge.
00:17:45:20 – 00:17:47:02
Chris Ronzio
And that’s when multiples get hurt.
00:17:47:14 – 00:18:10:08
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, well, and that’s not a real business. That’s a that’s a high. Why call those highly paid jobs. And if you look there’s like there’s about 28 million businesses in the U.S. and and literally only 4% of them ever actually get over $1,000,000 in revenue. And I’m going to tell you right now, it’s the folks that document their process and systems.
00:18:10:15 – 00:18:32:24
Daniel Ramsey
And this isn’t the sexy thing in business. That’s the challenge that we all have is like, this is just not the fun work of getting new clients and closing huge deals and making channel partners and hanging out with somebody like Chris. It’s the hard work. It’s the stuff that actually matters and people. Yeah, well, look, if we could do this for you, we would if we could charge you to do this for you.
00:18:32:24 – 00:18:43:15
Daniel Ramsey
But there’s no way for me to look inside your head and pull out all of your years of experience. That’s got to get by you. Yeah, that. Yeah, yeah. See.
00:18:44:01 – 00:19:03:01
Chris Ronzio
Now it’s the same as, like, cleaning out your house or your garage, and some people might like it, but most people put that off and don’t want to do it. But once you’ve done it, you step back and you look at the space and you say like, Wow, I’m really proud. That sounds awesome. It looks awesome. I made great progress and it feels the same when you’ve got the things written down, you’re building this this playbook.
00:19:03:01 – 00:19:04:21
Chris Ronzio
So. All right, keep going.
00:19:05:12 – 00:19:18:06
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, let’s let’s roll. And and, guys, it’s cool. I’ve got my cell phone here. So five of you have already grabbed the copy of the book. That’s good stuff, man. I love that. How should I document? Ooh, that was my earlier question.
00:19:19:02 – 00:19:20:04
Chris Ronzio
I told you we were getting there.
00:19:20:10 – 00:19:21:15
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, let’s do it, man.
00:19:21:21 – 00:19:50:20
Chris Ronzio
How should you do it? How do you actually get your business out of your brain? There’s four things you can do. Four ways you do this text, video, images or files. So very simple. But text is just writing down the most complicated things. You want to be concise and use sections and bullet points whenever you can. The thing I would caution you against is only use text if you’re describing something that is really specific.
00:19:51:00 – 00:20:15:15
Chris Ronzio
Like if you want to train someone on a legal policy or you want to train someone on a harassment thing or something that’s very sensitive. That’s when you want to use text because you want to spell out things little by little by little. But otherwise, text isn’t the best way to train most people. So I would say use text when it’s really specific and really, you know, legal or H.R. oriented.
00:20:16:05 – 00:20:37:11
Chris Ronzio
Otherwise, if it’s text, it should be very concise. Here’s some bullet points, here’s a summary, here’s what I want you to know, and then move on to something more interactive. Next is video. Video is the easiest, most powerful way to share what you do, especially with virtual teams. This is where I’ve had the most success. So video can be either a live recording or it can be a screen recording.
00:20:37:11 – 00:20:59:10
Chris Ronzio
If it’s a live recording, it’s you with your webcam like this or your smartphone, and you just talk to the people. Now, one thing you might do is use your camera on your computer or your phone for something very personal. So say you hire a new virtual member of your team. You might record a little welcome that says, Hey, I’m Chris, I’m so glad you’re a part of the team.
00:20:59:10 – 00:21:18:09
Chris Ronzio
We really consider you part of a family. You’re about to get invites to our slack channel and email, and here’s what you need to know about the company. And I’m so glad you’re part of the team. Can’t wait to see you online. You know, like imagine the impact that a video personal message like that could make for the new person that’s joining your team when they can’t be there face to face with you.
00:21:18:09 – 00:21:37:06
Chris Ronzio
But they could still get to know you through a video like that. The next type of video you would use is a screen recording video. So a screen recording would be just like we’re recording this, this webinar, you can do this in your browser. I’ll recommend a couple of tools or you can do it and train yo. Of course, this is just recording whatever’s happening on your screen.
00:21:37:06 – 00:21:52:16
Chris Ronzio
So say you’ve got a CRM that you’re using and you’re logging calls or outbound outreach or something like that, and you’ve got a process you’re going through on your computer record that process in video rather than trying to describe it through text. That’s when you do use video.
00:21:52:16 – 00:22:16:11
Daniel Ramsey
Next would be, you know, here’s how I want to help people through this because dude, this is literally our biggest I think our company would be maybe ten x if we could help people right here on this this part. What I tell people on the video side and you can steal this if you like it, but record a video of the how, the what and the why.
00:22:17:03 – 00:22:49:15
Daniel Ramsey
And that’s the piece that they missed. They they might talk through, but it’s it’s not normal for you to talk about. Well, why do you sign in to this system? And why are the pictures over here and why is the process like that? But it’s normal to say how and what, but they missed that the why. So it’s really, really important that the how what and why is in your video and that you have a very quick this is the end result that I expect from this video.
00:22:50:16 – 00:23:13:05
Chris Ronzio
Yeah it’s it’s funny you say that. So this isn’t in this presentation but we teach our customers to set up any training with first the purpose, which is that why it’s that context, like why am I showing you this? This is the purpose of this process. And then next the targets which are by the end of this, here’s what you’ll be able to do so that as soon as they’re getting started, they know exactly what they’re going to get out of the content.
00:23:13:14 – 00:23:13:19
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah.
00:23:13:21 – 00:23:26:06
Chris Ronzio
And then at the end you’ve got a summary that as a recap, here’s what you just learned how to do. And so you take people through that that y and then you take them through the how all the steps and then you show them the what they should know how to do now.
00:23:26:12 – 00:23:49:07
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, yeah. Dude, you’re, you’re spot on and, and that’s the challenges documenting, you know, these things. I don’t know if this is in your presentation, but I always tell people, you know, don’t, don’t just don’t just create a bunch of videos. Do this as you’re doing the job so that it’s a real example. Like you don’t want to fake like a client thing.
00:23:49:07 – 00:23:57:09
Daniel Ramsey
You want to actually do a client thing because then you’re going to you’re going to remember all the important parts. I don’t know if that’s part of this, too, but that’s important.
00:23:58:05 – 00:24:25:14
Chris Ronzio
No, it’s great point. I don’t mention it in these slides, but I agree. You know, I was training or documenting for a finance role a couple of weeks ago. And as I was paying out a sales commission, I’m doing the same thing. I’m taking screenshots, some screen recording, typing up a little summary, and I built it out as I was doing it, which maybe took me an extra 10% of the time, but I was doing it anyway, so I didn’t have to go back and spend 100% of the time doing the thing all over again.
00:24:25:14 – 00:24:30:04
Chris Ronzio
I spent an extra 10% of the time just grabbing screenshots while I was doing it.
00:24:30:14 – 00:24:54:15
Daniel Ramsey
Well, and we’re just scratching the surface, guys, if you’re listening right now, I mean, there’s a whole process to this stuff and and this is why we have Chris on because nobody’s done more of this than him. And our our clients just consistently have this pain point. So we have an entire chapter in the book. And listen, the book is called Scaling Your Business with Virtual Professionals.
00:24:54:22 – 00:25:18:06
Daniel Ramsey
And if you text SVP to 31996, we’ll give you a copy. But it’s we have an entire chapter that says Virtual Playbook, which is this. And now, Chris, I think you’re going to be part of the book where it is and this video as like an extra layer of value for everybody who’s who’s listening here. Because we don’t I haven’t I don’t have them laid out like this.
00:25:18:06 – 00:25:22:04
Daniel Ramsey
This is this is phenomenal text, video, image files. I think that’s the right way to do it.
00:25:23:15 – 00:25:42:10
Chris Ronzio
Perfect. And like you said, we’re just scratching the surface, but let’s wrap these two up. So images simple. It’s really just screenshots or photos. So if there’s a photo that you have from maybe a company event or, you know, onsite at a property, you just flip or something, whatever is going on in your world share live photos because it just adds some interest.
00:25:42:15 – 00:26:01:14
Chris Ronzio
And then screenshots or things like, you know, here’s what the login page looks like. One trick is to use a software that draws arrows to things, because if you’ve got an arrow pointed at a button, it makes it a lot easier to comprehend if you’re going through it quickly. And then the last thing is files. So a lot of people start with training.
00:26:01:14 – 00:26:26:17
Chris Ronzio
That is just a folder of files and that’s horrible. So if that’s where you’re starting from, it’s great that you’ve got some documentation, but you can’t really train with files. You send them to someone, you don’t know what they’ve done with them. So we always say if you’re using files in your training, they should be one or two things examples of something done perfectly, like maybe a contract that’s filled out perfectly or an email template or something like that, or it’s blank templates.
00:26:26:17 – 00:26:43:01
Chris Ronzio
It’s things that people will need to reference and pull, and you want to give them that template during their training to say, Here it is. If you ever need to reference it, come grab a copy. So those are the only things I think should be in your training. Otherwise, keep your files out of there. Awesome. So here’s some of the tools.
00:26:43:23 – 00:27:15:01
Chris Ronzio
Again, we’re sharing this presentation, but we’ve got a lot of tools listed on here. Of course, you can do everything I’m mentioning and train your with, you know, screen recordings and putting in images and even animated gifs and emojis and things like that. But loom in screencast somatic screencast to five. These are great screen recording plug ins, drop the sketch, those are great screen grab tools, Wistia, YouTube, Vimeo, these are great places to host video, SoundCloud for audio, LinkedIn, SlideShare, I think they just renamed it.
00:27:15:01 – 00:27:34:13
Chris Ronzio
But for your presentations. So all these are tools you can use to capture what you know and then you just want to put it all in some place, like train you all to make training easy, beautiful. All right. How much should I document? You kind of alluded to this at the beginning, but how much how much time do you spend doing this?
00:27:34:13 – 00:28:03:10
Chris Ronzio
How much should you write down? So the example I give is my my wife got a new car a couple of months ago. And I’m sure everyone on here has gotten a car at some point. And so when you pick out a car and you finally go through the process of leasing or buying whatever you’re doing, they always take you into that little delivery room where they, you know, the car’s all polished up, looks all good, and they give you the keys and then they say, Do you want me to connect your phone?
00:28:03:15 – 00:28:26:15
Chris Ronzio
I show you how the radio works or you all good. And when I did it, I was like, Yeah, I’m good. I’m, I’m ready to go. And I drove off, you know, a few minutes later with my car. Now imagine how frustrating the process would be if they were like, let me show you how to change a tire and here’s how to put the windshield fluid in and, you know, trained you with all this stuff that you didn’t need at that time.
00:28:27:00 – 00:28:46:07
Chris Ronzio
It would feel frustrating because you just want to get it on the road. Just give me the keys. Let me let me start. Let me get at this thing. It’s the same in your business. So don’t over train people, especially your your virtual teammates getting started. Train them on the thing you want them to do this week, you know, and then work on the next training and work on the next training.
00:28:46:07 – 00:28:54:17
Chris Ronzio
You don’t have to train on 100 things the first few days because then most of it won’t stick. So that’s the first point. Anything you want to add to that?
00:28:55:17 – 00:29:20:01
Daniel Ramsey
Now, you know, here’s I love what you’re saying. It’s like having a library when they need it. But focus on the have to like that. I mean, I think that’s brilliant stuff. I think as entrepreneurs we always get like analysis paralysis, right? Well, if I’ve got a train, I got to I got to write a hundred different copies and I got to get, you know, like and that’s just not the requirement.
00:29:20:01 – 00:29:23:23
Daniel Ramsey
Just go slow and and do it over time, right?
00:29:24:06 – 00:29:46:23
Chris Ronzio
So make it easier on yourself. So there’s one thing that every single person in your company needs to be trained on, and that’s always where I tell people to start. So this is my college, my university. When I went to school before I was a freshman and the summer before I started, they brought all the students in for a few days to the campus and they gave us tours.
00:29:46:23 – 00:30:04:04
Chris Ronzio
They showed us where the library was, how to swipe our meal card, where our classes were, where the dorms were, and they oriented us to the school. And by the time I left, I’m like, you know, I’m wearing the swag, I’ve got the shirt and the hat, and I’m so proud that I picked the right school and I’m excited to go.
00:30:04:17 – 00:30:29:10
Chris Ronzio
And that is the thing that everyone in your organization goes through as they go through this period of having to learn what is this business? What do you guys do that’s different from other people? How do we communicate? What makes you, you? And so that’s where I tell people to start because it’s the stuff that you could probably get out of your head the easiest, and it’s the stuff that you’ll get the most ROI out of because every single person will go through it.
00:30:29:16 – 00:30:48:21
Daniel Ramsey
Okay, so let’s make sure we’re clear because we have a similar thing. So it’s no, it’s like train on your elevator pitch. No, your value proposition. Have objection handling documents for everybody. Know the market and the client that you serve are those like the that you would say.
00:30:49:20 – 00:31:18:11
Chris Ronzio
So so what I tell people is start with these five things and now at your company, if every single person is doing is dealing with objections, then yeah, build objections into your intro topic that you’re documenting. But if objections are specific to only a certain department or a certain role, then those come next. So the first thing that I say is just to welcome to the company that’s like the hold your camera up and in and bank someone for being a part of this taking this ride with you.
00:31:18:21 – 00:31:37:13
Chris Ronzio
Next is your mission, your vision, your values. This is just where are we going? What makes us us? What are our core values? Because you can point back to these later. If someone doesn’t feel like a total fit or you need to make an adjustment. So mission vision value is super important. Next, your founding story. Why do you do this?
00:31:37:13 – 00:31:57:00
Chris Ronzio
You know, if I if I met with you and we got coffee, I would say so. Like, how did you start this? It was the first thing you asked me at the beginning of the presentation. What’s the origin story? Right. Like everybody’s interested in that. And so documenting that one time is great because then you the system tells the story to everyone individually.
00:31:57:21 – 00:32:23:13
Chris Ronzio
Next, your key team members. Who should I know? Who am I going to bump into around here? Who am I going to see on Slack or on Skype? That’s an easy thing to document and then your company process overview. So I mentioned my first company was a video production company. We sold youth sporting event videos and so we would show up to a tournament where parents and their kids were kids are competing and there were judges that would judge the video.
00:32:23:13 – 00:32:45:21
Chris Ronzio
So if I just hired a camera operator and I showed them, you know, hey, all you’re going to do is set up a camera and tripod press record and go, you know, if I could teach them that. But if I didn’t give them the whole process of, here’s what we’re doing, we’ve got a table out there, we’re selling these videos to the parents that and the grandparents that live across the world and can attend.
00:32:46:05 – 00:33:05:24
Chris Ronzio
It’s really important that you’re zoomed out across the whole performer because our feed goes to the judges so that they can score this performance and we’re going to the Jumbotron for the audience. And, you know, like you want to give people that context of everything around what they’re doing. So don’t limit your training to just what that person’s doing.
00:33:06:08 – 00:33:24:09
Chris Ronzio
Explain how your whole system works. So this is this is what I always say is that this is the starting point. And then naturally, if you’ve got other things that everyone needs to know, you can bundle those into your orientation. But otherwise you’d be doing individual department or role training beyond this.
00:33:24:15 – 00:33:45:20
Daniel Ramsey
And I think I think the challenge is funny because when you brought this up, I was like, oh yeah, this is that this is the stuff. But most of our clients are sales organizations, so when they hire, it’s like in support of helping people buy or sell something. And typically it’s real estate or insurance or whatever. So yeah, this makes a lot of sense, the founding story.
00:33:46:11 – 00:34:03:06
Chris Ronzio
But even sales organizations, they have some of the highest turnover. And if you want to reduce your turnover, get your people more connected to this stuff. And this doesn’t have to take a lot of time. You know, this this can be the first hour or two of someone’s day going through all this, but it sets that foundation and then you get into the heavy sales stuff.
00:34:04:04 – 00:34:05:16
Daniel Ramsey
I love that. I love it.
00:34:06:15 – 00:34:24:03
Chris Ronzio
Okay. So we put together I saw you put this in the in in the chat here, but we put together a checklist which has over 150 sample topics. This is just a couple of them, but a lot of the challenge of writing down what you do is that you just can’t think of all the things that you need to write down.
00:34:24:03 – 00:34:36:10
Chris Ronzio
So going through this simple checklist, it says, Yes, I need to do that right now. Not relevant, not relevant or super relevant. Let me do that one. And it just helps the process along. So you can download this train dotcom slash checklist.
00:34:36:19 – 00:34:47:10
Daniel Ramsey
And I think that’s the biggest value because it’s actionable and you can download it right now and then you can begin this journey if you’re listening, I think is a big deal.
00:34:48:07 – 00:35:10:01
Chris Ronzio
Perfect. So the last thing we’ll cover is what can you do to get started? Of course, download the checklists, work on your orientation, but if you want to actually get a process out of your head, the thing you’re going to want to do is brainstorm all the all the things that you need to delegate. And so these are some next steps that that you can do.
00:35:10:01 – 00:35:40:23
Chris Ronzio
So first brainstorm by time period. So what I mean by this is think of all the things you do daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly. And just me saying that you, you’re probably thinking of things like OC weekly, I, I, you know, do payroll monthly. I run some reports for the business quarterly we pay in our taxes annually. I’m looking at raises, you know, like there’s, there’s things that you do just that you can jog by those time periods.
00:35:40:23 – 00:36:00:12
Chris Ronzio
So make a list for yourself. And if you’ve got a team that you’re trying to delegate some of their work, have everyone do the same thing, brainstorm by time period next thing, especially for those listening, if you’re hiring virtual teams, the I always keep a stop doing or two don’t list instead of a to do list add to don’t list.
00:36:00:17 – 00:36:25:12
Chris Ronzio
And these are the things that you know as I’m doing something and I’m like, man, I never want to do this again. I don’t like this at all. I don’t get joy out of this. I need to find another way to get this done. I put them on my to don’t list and then when I’m going to hire that next person, I look at that list and I can cluster things together and see a theme and say, Wow, I’ve got like these four things that I think a new employee could really tackle.
00:36:25:12 – 00:36:44:07
Chris Ronzio
They don’t have to be here to do that. So start to keep a list, then it makes it easier to delegate. When you do have that person you might have forgotten about the thing from three months ago next to things. So your inbox is, I think, the most accurate representation of what you have to do in your life in your business.
00:36:44:19 – 00:37:05:03
Chris Ronzio
So look through your last two weeks of your sent mail, very specific. And the reason I say this is because you might have a lot of stuff coming into your inbox that you just ignore. It’s not you know, it comes in, you ignore it. But if you look at your last two weeks of your sentence mail, you’ll see the stuff you’re actually engaging with.
00:37:05:08 – 00:37:25:00
Chris Ronzio
And then you can pull out. What? What were they asking me for? What was I sending to them? What was I doing? What was this task? Really easy to start to build up what your role looks like today. And then same with your calendar. I keep everything on my calendar like date night. Last night it was on my calendar, you know, vacations, appointments, meetings, calls, things like this.
00:37:25:00 – 00:37:47:01
Chris Ronzio
Of course, everything’s on your calendar. But one thing you could do is log reality on your calendar. So when a meeting ends, it was supposed to run for an hour, it log it in for 45 minutes, adjust it, go back at the end of the day and adjust it to the time you actually spent. Because then in just a couple of weeks, you’ll see where your time is going and it will be a truer match to what you’re actually doing.
00:37:47:13 – 00:37:47:20
Daniel Ramsey
Yep.
00:37:48:09 – 00:38:06:21
Chris Ronzio
Next, try the hit by the bus test. This might not be in the next 24 hours, 48 hours, but this is like as if you just fell off the planet, disappear for a day, go on vacation, take a day off, read a book, whatever it is, your team might panic, but then you’ll come back and figure out what.
00:38:06:21 – 00:38:17:21
Chris Ronzio
What did they need you for? What? What went wrong? You know, nothing too urgent probably happen, but it’s. It’s a fun little exercise. One I should probably do again soon. I haven’t done it in a little while.
00:38:17:21 – 00:38:23:18
Daniel Ramsey
I was like, Wait a minute, can I do this right now? Can this is giving us a day off, you guys if you’re listening.
00:38:23:18 – 00:38:25:02
Chris Ronzio
To everyone day off.
00:38:25:08 – 00:38:25:18
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah.
00:38:26:20 – 00:38:51:12
Chris Ronzio
But, but really it’s it’s it’s interesting. If you disappeared and it wasn’t expected, you can log, you know, you can go back and say, well, why do people need me for why? Why didn’t this work? Well, and then just a reminder, crowdsource it. This is not 100% on you. It’s a shared responsibility with everyone in the organization. And so you need to document the things that only you know how to do.
00:38:51:12 – 00:39:00:02
Chris Ronzio
But if everyone is doing that and everyone is writing down the things they know how to do, it’s kind of dividing the workload and you make progress a lot more quickly.
00:39:00:12 – 00:39:21:06
Daniel Ramsey
You know, in fact, that’s what we do for folks. When you hire a virtual assistant, we say document right now what you need to get off of your plate. But then push the responsibility to our virtual assistant to help iterate yourself through to the best process you can possibly get. The one that takes the least amount of time.
00:39:21:06 – 00:39:31:05
Daniel Ramsey
And, you know, I think that’s worked out really well for a lot of people who have started from zero. And then now their their business is fully documented.
00:39:31:05 – 00:39:52:19
Chris Ronzio
I’ll share a fun question. When I was doing my consulting business, one of the questions we’d interview everyone and ask everyone was if you had some kind of top secret person that either, like worked at your house or was under your desk in like a secret compartment that did a lot of the work that you’re supposed to do.
00:39:52:24 – 00:40:14:04
Chris Ronzio
What’s the stuff that you would have that person do? Because it gets people in a different train of thought where I’m not asking you to delegate things, I’m not asking about your productivity. I’m just asking like, what’s the stuff that, you know, secret scenario you wish someone else did? And that becomes the list that would be great to pass off to someone virtual or to automate with software.
00:40:14:04 – 00:40:17:05
Chris Ronzio
So everybody’s got these things. You just got to tease them out.
00:40:17:13 – 00:40:38:17
Daniel Ramsey
I love that question. We’ve got one of our awesome virtual professionals on this called again, please type that question out. It’s it’s awesome. I want to make sure our audience is that because I think it’s a killer question that’s another hiring of you heard our dog our DOT office dog this part I love it but here’s the thing.
00:40:38:17 – 00:41:01:23
Daniel Ramsey
People, you know, we’re hiring. I mean, it’s insane how many people we hire every month. But one of my favorite coaching things for our clients is to just choose questions. When you’re hiring that activate their active listening, they have to tell a story or it’s situational or something. Don’t ask the students? What have you accomplished in your career over the last ten years?
00:41:02:04 – 00:41:05:22
Daniel Ramsey
Boring, right? I mean, and that’s such a great question. You know.
00:41:07:02 – 00:41:16:17
Chris Ronzio
Totally and yeah, I think we’ve got a lot of these questions. Actually, my mind is going off creating what kind of thing to download then can I create? But I agree. It’s all about the questions.
00:41:16:17 – 00:41:25:11
Daniel Ramsey
We should collaborate and do. Like here are the top 20 virtual assistant questions to ask when hiring for remote teams like we just do.
00:41:26:09 – 00:41:50:10
Chris Ronzio
Yeah, cool. All right. So kind of just to summarize here at the end, you know, we talked about this at the beginning that this is what train your does train yours online training manual helps you automate your onboarding and training. And so everything I talked about in this presentation you can do in train your you can outline, right, all your policies and procedures, but instead of just like a document, you can include videos and photos and HTML and more interactive content.
00:41:50:16 – 00:42:09:12
Chris Ronzio
You can do quizzes and tests to make sure that everybody understands what you’ve communicated and then you group everything by using tags to do a certain role in the business, so that next time you hire someone with that position, it’s just one click to give them everything they need for their job. Very simply use. We’ve got an app as well.
00:42:10:14 – 00:42:22:15
Chris Ronzio
So yeah, happy to answer any questions about this or the presentation. But that’s our mission is just make this transfer of knowledge easier so everyone can build a playbook or an instruction manual for their business.
00:42:22:20 – 00:42:43:23
Daniel Ramsey
I love this. Chris. What do your clients grew up like? If you could be that elf on the shelf on their shoulder while they’re training? Like, what are the what are the things for us? You know, my out ask, you know 5000 clients we have some of the top real estate and insurance and mortgage teams across the country.
00:42:44:18 – 00:42:49:21
Daniel Ramsey
What do what would you what what what don’t what should we not screw up?
00:42:51:09 – 00:43:20:03
Chris Ronzio
That’s a good question. So I think one of the things people screw up or struggle with is because writing things down is not the burning fire in your business is not the most urgent thing. If you try to spread it out over a long time, it becomes harder to you, reduce your chance of success. Whereas if you dedicate a day to say, I’m going to make a huge impact in this right now, I’m going to get 60% of the way there and roll it out to all my team members.
00:43:20:08 – 00:43:43:11
Chris Ronzio
Then that becomes the solution, and then it’s easy to just add to it over time, updated over time. So I think it’s, you know, you just you’re never going to be done. This is an ongoing thing to update your processes as long as your businesses evolving, which everyone should be, but make some effort at the beginning to get a few people together and say, We’re going to build it out today or we’re going to build it out this week.
00:43:43:19 – 00:44:00:16
Chris Ronzio
We’ve had so many great of companies saying, We did train you all day. We all got around the table and we all got our laptops out and we filled the thing up and it’s amazing. And then, you know, there’s other people that say, oh, this is just kind of like, I’m going to plug away at this an hour a week, but then it’s hard to rollout.
00:44:01:04 – 00:44:10:03
Daniel Ramsey
So it takes forever, is what you’re saying. So you’re suggestion is just get in there like a ninja, do it as quick as possible and do all the heavy lifting fast.
00:44:10:15 – 00:44:35:03
Chris Ronzio
That’s the way you get the instant ROI is put your orientation in there, put your most burning processes that you want to show someone in there, because then you roll it out and everyone knows this is the place. I look for those answers. One of the most valuable things we have is a really powerful search. So you search for something that comes up with all the videos, all the screenshots, all the the how to lists and and it makes it easy.
00:44:35:03 – 00:44:46:08
Chris Ronzio
Just like that car example I gave when I need to figure out how to change my tire, I pull the manual out of the glove compartment and I flip to the page and there it is, you know? And so that’s what train you all is for your business.
00:44:46:20 – 00:45:08:01
Daniel Ramsey
That’s kind of cool. Let me ask another question. We have this thing called the seven figure business roadmap. And what it is, is we broken the like a normal entrepreneurial journey into six different stages, stage one and two. You’re kind of a newbie, stage three and you’re in the we do it stage, and that’s when you’re starting to hire people.
00:45:08:06 – 00:45:29:18
Daniel Ramsey
You’re starting to kind of grow your business. You understand your market, who’s your ideal client, and you’re just kind of you’re getting traction, right? You’re you’re doing 700 to $1000000 in revenue. And then obviously that they do it, which is $1,000,000 in revenue and above, you know, you’re in the path is how do I get to a point where every year I’m netting $1,000,000?
00:45:30:01 – 00:45:36:19
Daniel Ramsey
So in that path I we and they. When do you believe training makes the most sense?
00:45:38:07 – 00:45:58:05
Chris Ronzio
I would say it’s right in between. I and we as the minimum point, because if you’re the only one doing the thing, then you’re, you know, writing it down. It’s it might change tomorrow. And so you know, you don’t want to write things down that are experimental and ever changing. You write things down, like I said, when you want to delegate them.
00:45:58:14 – 00:46:21:17
Chris Ronzio
And so if you’re bringing on members of your team and you’re taking a few hats off yourself and passing them to someone else, you need to get that knowledge out of your heads. That’s when it starts. But the one exception is if you’re building a, you know, maybe you’re a second time founder or a serial entrepreneur, you’ve done this before, you know, the importance of systems and you just want to crush this thing from the beginning.
00:46:21:17 – 00:46:37:23
Chris Ronzio
Then you might start with the playbook and say, I’m going to build this thing out. I’m going to I’m not bringing on these positions yet, but I already know this. I don’t need to go experiment. So Let me just build out the playbook and then I’m going to bring people on. So we’ve seen both, but it depends on your skill set.
00:46:38:07 – 00:46:51:15
Daniel Ramsey
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. What’s the feature that your clients love the most about training? Like, what’s the thing that everybody raves about that says, Man, this is really kind of transformed our business there?
00:46:51:23 – 00:47:12:09
Chris Ronzio
I would say two things. First is the auto assignment. So once you tag things to a role, it’s very easy to say, you know, one click, I’m bringing on a new person, here’s their email, here’s their role invite, and then they get the full sequence of the order that you set to go through everything. So It just makes the delivery really easy.
00:47:12:23 – 00:47:36:12
Chris Ronzio
The second thing would be the tracking. So you instantly know by percentage, whatever one has completed, and if they haven’t completed 100% of the materials, it will prompt them to come back into the system until they do complete it. And if you update something, it takes someone’s completion score from 100 to maybe 93%. And again, it starts those prompts.
00:47:36:20 – 00:47:48:03
Chris Ronzio
So as your business and your processes are changing, you update them in the system. It automatically updates all your people. So I think it’s really the the automation and the the tracking that people love.
00:47:48:22 – 00:48:11:03
Daniel Ramsey
One on one question that I have, like what’s new? And, and one of our clients, he’s got a crazy business. He actually and he called in and we helped him and what he does is he connects colleges with businesses and they create like, like a little kind of what’s it called when you do an internship? Yeah, you go internship.
00:48:11:08 – 00:48:31:11
Daniel Ramsey
So he creates internships for colleges and businesses and like a matchmaker. Right. And hired a virtual assistant. We’re helping them grow that business. But he’s doing something called experiential learning where and I wish that was around when you and I went to college. Right. Because, you know, we it was all theory in college. But I’m wondering what’s next in training?
00:48:31:17 – 00:48:39:00
Daniel Ramsey
What’s the new frontier? And what are you guys looking to innovate towards moving forward?
00:48:39:00 – 00:48:59:22
Chris Ronzio
Yes, a couple of the areas we’re working on is making it easier to extract knowledge. So that’s where bots and artificial intelligence and and things like that can make our system interview you in the same way I used to as a consultant. And getting that knowledge out of your head into the system is the first challenge that we’re we’re tackling with tech.
00:49:00:04 – 00:49:29:01
Chris Ronzio
And the second is delivering the knowledge exactly when you need it. So rather than you needing to use the search feature and go into the system, you might just be in your browser on a certain site and it pops up with some suggestions of processes you might need to know on that page. You might be having a conversation in Slack or through Gmail, and it’s suggesting the things you might ask a question to a manager and and a voice recognition system in the in the room can answer the question more quickly than a manager can.
00:49:29:01 – 00:49:38:04
Chris Ronzio
So it’s about the the tech is enabling us to record things more easily, to capture things more easily, and to deliver things more on demand.
00:49:38:13 – 00:50:00:06
Daniel Ramsey
I love that and I love that. Listen, if you’re if you’re on this call right now, we’ve got about five, 10 minutes left and right. Now’s a great time to ask Chris questions while we’re waiting for those questions. Oh, here we go. We’ve got a code. Never mind. I didn’t realize we were 50% off first month. Oh, Chris, tell us about this.
00:50:00:06 – 00:50:22:03
Chris Ronzio
So. Yeah, so I figured I could leave this up while any questions come in, but the, the, you know, our program starts at $99 a month for the whole company. We’ve got different program or different levels and tiers, but it starts at 99 bucks a month for the whole company, not per user. Really easy to get started. And so we’ve come up with a 50% off code.
00:50:22:03 – 00:50:44:05
Chris Ronzio
If you just put in my Odesk when you’re signing up, you’ll get half off your first month. You also get a free 14 day trial so you don’t have to pay anything for the first 14 days. Your next month is 50% off and then hopefully you’re getting a lot of value out of the system six weeks and so so yeah, we put that together and if anyone has any questions, I’m happy to answer them.
00:50:44:13 – 00:50:53:13
Daniel Ramsey
How would they get how would they get a hold of like what’s the best place for them to, you know, like find out more information if they wanted to take the next steps with your company?
00:50:54:06 – 00:51:20:07
Chris Ronzio
Yeah. Just go to train all AECOM train usually like a training manual train you welcome. And you can see case studies and watch videos and there’s links to sign up for that free trial everywhere. You just put in this code to get started. If you have questions, you can email us sales or support at train Yoakum, but sales at train Yoakum is we’ll get you to someone to do a specific demo or jump on a call if you’ve got questions.
00:51:20:22 – 00:51:27:05
Chris Ronzio
There’s also live chat on our website. You can use the chat, but we’re here to help and and see if it’s a good solution for everyone.
00:51:27:13 – 00:52:04:14
Daniel Ramsey
I love that. I love that one. While we’re waiting for questions, we had a couple of questions come in. You’ve answered them. What I want to do. How would you onboard somebody new into your platform? Like, I guess the thing that I’m wondering is like how much learning should they do, how much watching videos should they do? And then when should you start having them do some of the things like and I know that’s probably job specific and it’s industries specific and all that, but I wanted to get an idea of like, what’s a best practice that you help people when you’re onboarding, you know, the thousands of people you’ve helped on board?
00:52:04:14 – 00:52:23:20
Chris Ronzio
Yeah, great question. So the what we do in-house is your first week, you’re learning about the company. You’re kind of an observer. Your second week, you’re starting to do things with a person. You might be shadowing someone on calls, you might be, you know, putting together a draft of something, but it’s not you know, it’s not rolling out.
00:52:24:00 – 00:52:36:15
Chris Ronzio
So first first week as observer, a second week is just kind of a collaborator. And then by the end of your first month, you’re an individual producer that you’re putting things out on your own. So that’s kind of a really rough timeline we.
00:52:36:15 – 00:52:42:13
Daniel Ramsey
Use, and it probably varies depending on the complexity of the job and all that.
00:52:42:13 – 00:53:09:16
Chris Ronzio
But yeah, sure. But we but we see that first week as the, the orientation to the company, the department, the role just kind of getting acclimated to the business. And so someone might spend their first day in training or their first two days and train all and then they might be working with some other coworkers or catching up on material or watching videos or, you know, other things to just educate them about the industry and get them ready there.
00:53:09:16 – 00:53:40:02
Chris Ronzio
Next week they might have some meeting schedules, some calls, schedules, shadowing other departments, a little cross training, and then they’re starting to get assigned some projects that, you know, would be quick wins. You know, like I’d like you to do this by the end of the next week or by the end of your first month. You know, like we brought on someone for a video and it was, you know, you go through this backlog of clips and cut together this one little thing, or we brought on a copywriter and it was put together this case study from something we already shot, you know.
00:53:40:02 – 00:53:44:02
Chris Ronzio
So it’s a quick win that they can do. And then from there, you’re building in complexity.
00:53:44:11 – 00:54:10:03
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, what I know. I’m asking you all the questions that our clients ask us. So feel free to be like Daniel. That one’s not fair. But this one, how quick should somebody start relieving pain or taking advantage of opportunity within a business? In your experience? And I know this is crazy, but like, is it six months before they’re making impact?
00:54:10:03 – 00:54:21:24
Daniel Ramsey
Is it 90 days? And a lot of people say 100 days? I’m just kind of curious because you’ve seen this on a regular basis, like when would you say somebody should add value?
00:54:21:24 – 00:54:43:12
Chris Ronzio
Yeah, it’s funny. I’m I’m I can’t reach it. It’s on a table right in front of me. But we’ve got this chart that’s kind of like the ramp up time over someone’s first 3 to 4 months. And it’s and it is like a 90 day process to get someone fully 100% productive. So you can’t expect that day one, everything is going to go perfectly.
00:54:43:12 – 00:55:03:00
Chris Ronzio
And this is especially true with virtual teams. You know, there will be quick wins, there will be bright spots, there will be high points. There will be impacts made or opportunity that you can that you can see is throughout the process. But, you know, expect it to be a few months before someone is totally dialed in and just crushing it.
00:55:03:11 – 00:55:24:24
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, we tell we tell people literally 90 days before they’re feeling any relief from the pain that they’re on. Walter had a quick he’s he’s wondering you guys should put together a full training manual sample and that would be extremely helpful to him. I’m not sure what your thoughts are around that.
00:55:26:05 – 00:55:47:16
Chris Ronzio
Yeah. Thanks, Walter. So it looks like maybe you’ve done a trial or you’re in the system. So we have this the train, your basics, which just teaches you about training you also it’s a course on the VA system just to give you a framework for how things and teach you about the system. At the same time, we are rolling out 20 new templates for all different things in your business.
00:55:48:09 – 00:56:11:10
Chris Ronzio
As, as an example and also working to put together industry specific demo accounts so that we’d have a real estate industry demo account that you could CFO built out account or you could see a, you know, a retail account or you could see a marketing agency account. So we’re working on all of that. I definitely appreciate the suggestion.
00:56:11:10 – 00:56:34:04
Chris Ronzio
In the meantime, look for the templates because they’ll be full built out templates you can use plus a separate subject. That’s an example of a completed one. So things like the orientation template and an example the, you know, tech, all the it in your business template and an example your employee handbook template and example. So look out for those.
00:56:34:17 – 00:56:55:23
Daniel Ramsey
I love it, man. I love it. Okay. Hey, guys, work where? We had another comment. We’re using the templates from Chelsea. She is great, by the way. You’re getting products with your people. I love that. And we’re we’re going to be done. We’re wrapping up. I want to circle back to why we’re doing this real quick. And Chris, I want to thank you for being here.
00:56:55:23 – 00:57:19:23
Daniel Ramsey
You’re you’re obviously a wealth of knowledge. I Think this is a good format for anybody who’s thinking about hiring anybody to kind of follow again my out as helped 5000 different businesses grow and scale if you want to see this video and others jump on our website my out as dot com you can request a consultation. What we do is a double my business strategy call.
00:57:19:23 – 00:57:42:12
Daniel Ramsey
So like what we help people do is get high caliber talent and scale like 100%. That’s what we do. This is such an important topic. But the reason is because if you’re an entrepreneur and you ever want to actually sell or make lots of money or grow or what we help people do scale. You have to document your stuff.
00:57:42:20 – 00:57:45:04
Daniel Ramsey
Chris, what would you like to leave our audience with today?
00:57:46:24 – 00:58:05:21
Chris Ronzio
I think I would go back to this slide. So how to get started? You know, this isn’t something that you can put off and and just expect to get to it eventually. It’s and realize that if you just start doing something that it’s going to make a huge impact in terms of your valuation, in terms of an exit multiple, in terms of your your time available on a day to day basis.
00:58:06:03 – 00:58:10:14
Chris Ronzio
So just start making your list of what you’d like to delegate and write something down. That’s what I believe.
00:58:10:14 – 00:58:35:01
Daniel Ramsey
You have to write something down. Chris, it’s been great to be with you today. I appreciate everybody kind of joining this call. Definitely check out the list and you can start at training. Okay, forward slash checklist and just appreciate you, man, for sharing all this value with people today and being willing to just be an open book and and help people grow and learn.
00:58:36:07 – 00:58:40:23
Chris Ronzio
Thank you. It was great to be here and I appreciate everyone’s time.
