Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host Roberta.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review.

A lot of our episodes do focus on leadership development and leadership skills.

However, my guest today, Samatha Cordero, is here to talk to us about providing virtual administrative and operative support to CEOs.

And she helps them find ways to better collaborate with their team and become more productive.

And she is the CEO of Auxo Business Services, which does just that.

And help me welcome her to the show.

Hi, Samantha.

Hi, thank you so much for having me here today.

Thank you for being here, welcome.

So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, so I am based in Denver, Colorado.

I am not only a business owner, but I am a mom and a wife.

I have two little kids who are three years old and almost 10 months old.

So I thrive in chaos so far.

I own Auxo Business Services.

I started that in July of 2020, when my first son was about seven months old.

And just trying to find how can I use my skills around organization and productivity and efficiency to best help those around me.

Okay, so are you saying that two little ones are responsible for you being in a business that organizes chaos?

Yes, they might have some influence there.

There's a lot of leadership skills you can learn not only as a parent, but from your children.

Children are born with this kind of fearless leadership around them.

And so they have influenced my business quite a bit, maybe more than I would like to admit.

That is amazing.

That is amazing indeed.

So before you founded your business in the middle of the pandemic, did you have a corporate career before that?

Yeah, so I did come from the corporate world.

I worked with a company that did software development for oil and gas.

And that was my first big introduction to Lean Six Sigma.

Prior to that, I had experienced in office management, in HR and in project management, kind of on the residential construction side of things.

But when I learned more about Lean Six Sigma, which for the listeners that don't know, that is a process improvement in management, a technique and approach, I really kind of fell in love with the process and how to kind of pick some teams and pick processes apart to make them more efficient, to find those issues and to collaborate on solutions.

So I wanted to find a way to take what I had learned from that and marry it with my HR background and my love for working with people and people operations and find a way to bring that into a space to help our CEOs and help our clients and help the smaller teams that maybe didn't have access to that kind of knowledge.

Right, so during the pandemic, especially in 2020, so that was the middle of the year, everything turning upside down.

Why did you think that was the best time to take a risk, to make a risky move by opening up business?

Yeah, I didn't think it was maybe the best time.

I think that I was blessed enough to be able to stay home with my son for several months, but I was getting a little bit restless.

I wanted to do something and I had an inkling that I didn't want to go back into the corporate world, especially joining while a lot of companies were still figuring out what their virtual and hybrid structures were.

Looking back on it, I have heard the quote that if you can survive winter, you can survive anything.

And so, looking back on it, I do view it as a great risk to be able to start doing a really tense time and grab some lessons during that tension.

But also it provided a lot of insight into the holes in corporate teams, right?

And how they could be better.

And it provided a gap in the market for how virtual assistance and that virtual operation support could be of use to corporate clients.

A lot of virtual work started being done in 2020, obviously, beginning of pandemic.

Did you have the foresight that literally the whole world is moving this direction now?

Not necessarily.

I thought that I am surprised with how much CEOs and managers have learned about balancing a virtual world and a hybrid world.

There are still companies that decided to go back into the office for five days a week.

So I didn't necessarily have a crystal ball that said a lot of companies are gonna jump on board with the virtual world.

That was a bit of a concern for me of how do I do something that can survive the market today, but also in the long term.

Luckily though, a lot of our clients and a lot of our potential clients have seen the value in a virtual worker.

They understand that they don't necessarily have to have someone in person supporting them.

And that someone that works from home or in some kind of virtual environment can be highly productive and still move their goals forward.

Yeah, we've certainly seen that because there was always this impression that if you stuck on your desk for eight hours, you're more productive.

And with the virtual space, it's like, is it the hours or the KPIs and the product that you submit to your boss at the end of the day?

What makes you productive?

Yeah, I mean, first off, we have to understand that only like 60% of our day is actually productive.

We lose quite a bit of time to distractions, and that happens whether we're in the office or at home.

We saw in the beginning of the pandemic that people actually ended up working more because they lost that commute time, and they just transferred the time that they would be in the car driving to the office to work.

So then they had these really long days, people started to get burnt out.

So when it comes to being productive, I find that one, I need to know my own personality.

I need to know what distractions am I tempted to give into, what time management strategies work well for me, but also who is around me that can support me.

So in my case, as the CEO of my business, I leverage my team member and my assistants to delegate out.

I also leverage technology.

So we have a task management system in a CRM that we try to automate as much as possible to alleviate some of those trivial tasks.

And we also try to always evaluate our processes.

So we're always looking at what are the critical processes in our company that require us to provide good support to our clients or to keep things organized on the back end of our business.

And how do we make sure that that's always running streamlined, that there's no confusion, that we're communicating with each other.

So a lot of it is about self-awareness.

And then again, that communication and collaboration.

Self-awareness, a big one, not only for team members, but for leaders, for the CEO.

What would you think is the key to being self-aware and always saying, wait a minute, am I still on the right track?

There's so much work, especially when you're a business CEO, do you have time to have this self-awareness exercise, so to speak?

Yeah, when it comes to having that level of self-awareness, I think it's just important to actually time block that time on your calendar.

And a lot of that is going to be when you're reviewing your goals.

So when you're looking at your strategic goals that you've set, and hopefully you have those not only broken down for the year, but for the quarter, you can look at where is your time going, and is your time being spent on actually achieving those goals?

And if it's not, then you have to have the confidence to say no to certain tasks or to trust someone else that you can delegate those tasks to.

Personally, I have what I call a zero out and zero in routine.

So I like to zero out all the requests that have come to me that I haven't answered or zero out my inbox.

That also gives me insight on what am I spending too much time on.

And then I like to zero in on my goals and my priorities for the week or my priorities for the day.

And when I have that list of priorities, then I also throughout the day can kind of limit my distractions and say, no, I don't need to give into this right now because this is my priority for the day and this is what I need to get done.

If you're a CEO and you're listening and you think, okay, so the project and technical responsibilities, I've delegated those to the team, but all the administrative, many other things, what do I have an assistant for?

Would you sit and listen, wait a minute, what is she going to do in addition to what my assistant does?

Yeah, I think that would take a little bit of insight into what that company or that CEO's processes are.

What are your end result that they want to provide their clients with and what are their teams handling?

Sometimes your assistant is a rock star, and they are handling as much as they can, and they are super efficient, and sometimes they want to be able to grow.

Maybe they have an interest in HR or in operations, or they want to move from that assistant level to a chief of staff level.

Chief of staffs are very different than executive assistants, and they do more to support the leadership team and to help keep them on track with their strategic goals.

Your virtual assistant can be that part-time contracted support that can handle those miscellaneous requests that come up.

They can handle expense reporting or travel planning.

For some CEOs and managers, it can take 12 hours of administrative time when you're planning a work trip, from booking your flights, booking your car and your hotel, researching where you want to eat, and all those things.

Overall, it could take you 12 hours.

That's 12 hours you could have been spending on some high-value tasks or training your team or just kind of taking a breath, right?

So let's do a time audit.

Look at what you have on your calendar and really what shouldn't be there.

I think that sometimes we're afraid to say that something isn't worth our time.

And we have to realize that saying, this isn't worth my time is not the same as saying it's beneath you.

I'm all for getting down and dirty for doing the grind and getting work done when it makes sense and when it's appropriate.

But as the CEO of my company, it is literally not worth my time to do certain administrative tasks.

Those are things that are better delegated to somebody else.

And I have to have that level of self-awareness to say, okay, I'm not going to handle this.

I'm going to have a team member do this.

Right.

Because when you're the CEO, every one of your billable hours is very high.

So you don't want to spend time doing manual tasks, as you say.

And also, you need to be more on the strategic direction of the company, rather than the processes and the getting your hands dirty.

You have to look at, is my time worth being spent here, or should I hire someone who their billable hours are less than mine in order for them to take care of this?

Would that make sense?

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I mean, you can put a monetary value to your time in a lot of circumstances.

I mean, yeah, it'd be great to say my time is worth $1,000 an hour, right?

But you look at your revenue, look at your clients, look at your goals, and you can kind of figure out what is your time actually worth right now.

And yeah, delegate that off to someone that has a significantly lower hourly rate than you would if you were building things hourly.

And also, you spoke about burnout earlier.

Would you say that companies that use your services, is there an impact, a positive impact in lessening of burnout and stress by hiring the services of a virtual assistant?

Yes, because it's twofold there.

And on one hand, you are no longer handling those little tasks.

So you've not only freed up your time, but you're also relieving some stress there.

Those little tasks tend to be the things that we procrastinate on because we just don't feel like doing them.

But we know that they need to get done and they just add a lot of stress.

So when you can alleviate that and you have more time to focus on passion-oriented tasks or strategic tasks, then it's an immediate stress relief.

Additionally, when you're working with a virtual assistant that is very process and solutions oriented, we usually try to understand what our client's goals are.

And when we understand those goals, we can try to make sure that we're helping our clients stay focused on those.

So if they have all these requests coming in and they ask our virtual assistant to handle them, then we can say, well, what are the priorities for this?

How does this relate to those goals?

And so not only are they getting the stress relief from not having to handle certain things, they're also getting a stress relief from realizing that their goals are moving forward and they are being more productive.

Even if they don't feel as busy, they are being productive and they have a good barrier between that productivity and being burned out and overwhelmed.

That's right.

And do you know how they talk about how our brains process information?

We're all different or how we learn.

You know, some people, if you're a CEO who is very much a strategic, the big picture type, then wouldn't it be beneficial to then have somebody do the menial tasks while you think big picture?

Yes.

Yeah.

And sometimes, I mean, I know for myself, sometimes I like to get into the details on a task.

That helps me kind of zone in on some things, tune out some distractions.

There are moments where I like to just dive in and completely own a project or a task from beginning to end.

But for the most part, CEOs have some kind of visionary or creative part of their personality.

And so organization and attention to detail is not your strong suit.

And that's OK.

Lean into where your strengths are.

Lean into how you can benefit the company the most.

And then think about, OK, this person does have attention to detail.

They are highly organized naturally.

It's not something that they really have to work on.

That's just how they are.

It's better for them to handle this because they can probably get it done quicker anyway, right?

So give us one example.

If you say, OK, hi, Mr.

CEO, your house is chaos.

Let's organize it for you.

What is the first thing?

How do you step by step help the CEO get organized?

Let's talk about organizing first.

Yeah.

So from like kind of a holistic services approach, like if we look at all the services that we provide, we would start with asking the CEO what their goals are and what their challenges are and how they feel about their team.

From there, I would look at what their actual processes are.

And usually when we dive into that, we can discover where teams are not communicating, and we can look at where are the job descriptions that don't make sense.

Sometimes as we grow, it's hard as a CEO or a manager to stay on top of everyone's lane, right?

And then those lanes begin to blur.

We get those dotted lines.

We get people merging lanes.

And we need to take a pause and clean that up.

We need to have very clear lanes for each person to be in.

And that doesn't mean that we want to take certain responsibilities away from someone that they really enjoy or that we want to dilute the value of their job.

We just want to have clarity on who's responsible for what.

So as a CEO, whenever an issue pops up, you know exactly who you need to talk to, and you don't have to call everyone into a meeting to figure out what went wrong, right?

So we look at those processes.

We look at getting clarity around job descriptions.

And then from there, we look at, okay, what does it not make sense for your team to be handling?

What does it not make sense for you to be handling?

What are the things that you with the CEO really enjoy?

What do you not enjoy so that someone else can handle those for you?

So we kind of try to attack productivity from all facets and then create those processes and create the support structure around that so that not only the company can thrive, but the CEO can feel like they're thriving as well.

Sometimes we have to say, you want to embrace being CEO.

You want to enjoy it, right?

You have long left your solo-preneur or startup phase of life, and now you're a successful CEO, and you should feel the happiness and the joy that comes with that, right?

So let's help you embrace it and not just endure it.

And not what we've been told should be, I'm a CEO now, I'm so busy, I barely have time to have dinner with my family.

For me, I've tried to build my business around some kind of work-life balance or blend so that my children, because they're young, know that I'm there for them, right?

For others, work-life blend looks very different, right?

You might have a family structure where it's okay for you to miss a few dinners here and there, but I'm sure there are soccer games or dance recitals or other things that you want to enjoy.

Or if you don't have kids, you just want to make sure you have date nights with whoever your significant other is or be able to have drinks with your friends and not be tied to your phone, right?

To actually be able to unplug or go on vacation and not worry about what's happening back at the office.

And sometimes I think people get really wrapped into that feeling of I am a CEO, I should feel busy, I should always be doing something.

And the truth of the matter is you've put a lot of work into building your company or to building your team, and it's okay to have those moments of relaxation.

Because we know that when we are able to relax, when we're able to unplug, then we come back more productive.

We come back with better ideas and more creative, right?

And so that's also a big goal for us, is to understand personally, how do you want your life to be structured and how can we best support you to be able to really unplug during those moments?

Yes, because a lot of them struggle.

They're on a beach in the Maldives and they're still on their phones trying to see if everything in the office is going well.

Yeah, if you have those processes in place and you've taught your team how to communicate and how to handle certain issues, then in theory, everything should be fine until you get back, right?

There shouldn't be too many fires that your team is not capable of handling.

Right, in your absence.

Now talk to us about actual process automation.

Yeah, when we look at system automation, we look at what are the different software or apps that you're using.

Most commonly, we're looking at your CRM, whether that's a Salesforce or an industry-specific CRM, and then your task management system.

So surprisingly, a lot of businesses aren't using a task management system or they're not using it to its full potential.

So when I say that I'm talking about the Asanas or the Trello's, in my case, I love monday.com.

So we look at how can we connect those systems to share data back and forth.

So with a CRM, how are you making sure that all the client information that the sales team has put a lot of effort into learning about the client in order to close the sale?

How are you making sure that we are communicating that with our operations team or with whatever team is actually delivering on that service?

So we want to connect those systems.

We want to make sure that we're automatically notifying team members when one part of a process has ended and the next needs to start.

So we can eliminate a lot of the email back and forth.

We can eliminate the need for some meetings when they're just status update meetings, right?

You can look on your task management system.

You can find the status or whatever recent comment there is, right?

So we look at what can we automate?

What are the things that take up a lot of your time that are really just annoying, right?

And sometimes those annoying things need to happen, right?

There's some level of communication around a task that just needs to happen, but how can we just automate that so it's easier for your team and you can spend less time on emails and meetings and worrying about something and more time actually doing the work?

Speaking of meetings, especially now that we're in this virtual hybrid environment, a lot of people complain about how majority, okay, I don't know the percentages right now, but majority of the meetings on Zoom are unnecessary to begin with.

I could have been doing my work.

Is it because some of those may be unnecessary because they don't have those automated systems to just feed information to each other?

A lot of that would boil down to that.

Now, I am a fan of some meetings, right?

Especially in a hybrid environment, it's important to make sure that you're bringing people together.

There should be times where everyone can see everyone's face because we all know that a lot of times tone can be lost in an email, right?

We fought with friends over Facebook messages that were misinterpreted because you forgot to put a smiley face.

You put a period at the end of that sentence.

Does that mean you're mad at me, right?

There are people that just are more direct communicators over emails.

So it's important that we still have some meetings to get together as a team.

There are some times where it makes sense to come together and say, here's the update on this project, or here's where we're at with this goal, right?

Even though I can log on to mymonday.com, and I can see our certain goals are labeled as on track or falling behind, it's important that I still have the time with my team to talk about that a little bit more in depth.

But there are quite a few meetings that happen simply because managers don't have processes in place for their team to update them on the little things or to kind of keep things moving along.

So a lot of meetings can be eliminated.

You don't have to spend an hour and a half in meetings.

You don't have to have three hours of back to back meetings if you have those processes in place and you have the systems in place to support that.

When we spoke earlier, you mentioned that one of the jobs of an assistant is CEO's hope for is that you read their minds, which makes me a little scared.

It makes me think of Meryl Streep on The Devil Wears Prada.

How she would go, is there a reason my coffee is not here until she died or something?

Is that what CEOs are really expecting from assistants?

No, I think Laura said that our assistants can read our minds.

It means that we have an assistant that we trust to handle a lot.

So we've shared some information with them before.

So they have a special insight to not only what our goals are, but what our preferences are.

They have an insight to how we communicate.

I know my assistant, there are times where I'm with the team and I'm very happy, go lucky.

Let's have the energy up.

And then there's times where I'm with my assistant and I'm very much of like, da-da-da, very direct, here's what needs to get done.

When she has the insight into, I'm not upset, I just need things to get done, or I only have the time to give you 20% of the information on this task, but I'm pretty sure that you know the emails that are going on around this or you've seen the task board or you've seen my goals around this, that you can figure out the other 80% around this task.

That I think is what I'm referring to.

When she can start to anticipate my needs, again, around my preferences and my goals, it kind of starts to feel like she's reading my mind a little bit.

And I also want her to be able to keep up with all the ideas that I have going on.

And so that's what I mean.

We're not talking about a Devil's Wear Prada moment, even though I love that movie.

Love it.

No, I also wouldn't encourage a CEO to communicate with their assistant that way, right?

Our assistants provide so much value to us that it's important that we have, I think, a more appreciative stance toward them.

I would certainly hope they did it for theatrical reasons, and that's not a reflection of real life for sure.

It sounds to me like the assistants are more than just task doers.

If you have that insight, it sounds to me you are going to have qualities like, take initiative, you are more of a facilitator, not just a I do admin work and keep quiet type.

Am I right?

Yes, absolutely.

I think when we first start with our clients, it does start out that way of more of like, here is the checklist, here are the things that I want you to handle, please go do them.

But when you are working with a quality assistant that understands communication and organization, as you start to work together more, you can start to really grow with them and they can really partner with you behind the scenes on kind of anything and everything.

So for instance, we have some of our assistants handle the warranty process for a residential construction company.

And so they are not just kind of checking things off.

They're really following the process for that warranty claim, understanding where that house lands in their 30, 90-day or a one-year warranty frame, right?

So we've worked with that client for quite some time, so we really understand how their business functions and how they want their customer supports to be.

So yeah, again, in the beginning, it can be more of a task, do or checklist type of relationship, but I would hope that as you work together more, that they can start handling more and more for your company.

Right, which means there's also growth in the responsibility, in the job of being a virtual assistant.

Correct, so sometimes we do want to be mindful of what is the current team that you have in place.

Sometimes it does make sense for your W2 employees or whoever is on your staff to be handling certain tasks because we want to be a support system, right?

We don't want to step on anyone's toes, but there are administrative tasks that are a little bit more high level that your assistant can learn to handle as well.

So there is quite a bit of growth opportunity and a lot of our assistants start to learn a little bit about process improvement as well.

So they can start to weigh in, even if you haven't worked with me directly on process improvement and efficiency, your assistant can weigh in a little bit on, hey, you have this new system or your CRM is capable of doing this.

Maybe this is something we can automate and they could provide a little bit of advice around that as well.

What would you say are some of the key communication qualities that a CEO should have in order to work very well with your team of virtual assistants?

I think that being patient, being understanding and providing clarity is all something a CEO or a client could have to have a successful support relationship.

So being patient, meaning understanding that even if our assistant has great insight into whatever your industry is, we recognize your company and your team is unique.

So we need to have a little bit of time to understand what are the processes that you have, what are your preferences, and how exactly should this assistant be functioning within your team.

To be understanding around, you do have to communicate some things.

You do have to time block some time to actually communicate with your assistant and tell them what's going on and what all you need.

And then also to provide clarity.

If you are not clearly telling your assistant these are the expectations I have around something, here are the timelines I expect around this, or here's my feedback and this is why I found this one thing to be wrong, then you're not setting your assistant up for success, which means you're not setting yourself up for success because then you don't have someone that you trust to delegate tasks to and that they're going to get something done in a quality way.

So again, patience, understanding, and effective and clear communication.

With that, the flip side as well, should the virtual assistant, if something goes wrong, or if a mistake is made, or if they're not clear about what they need to do to support the CEO, should they also possess those qualities and communicate freely?

Absolutely.

I mean, communication goes both ways.

So when my assistants reach out and they have an issue with their client, they aren't sure about something, we talk through it, we're like, okay, well, what was happening before they told you this?

What's all the information that you might have around this project?

What are their goals around this?

And then to think through, okay, if you were the client, how would you want this to be done?

And so I do encourage our assistants to come up with some kind of solution, but then to take that back to the client and say, this is what I produced based off of the information I have, but I was a little unclear if this is what you were expecting.

Could you provide some feedback or could you provide more clarity for me for this specific task, but also for the future?

Mm-hmm.

It sounds like a collaborative relationship.

Would you say so?

Yes, I would say so.

Again, it kind of depends on what are the needs for that client.

Sometimes processes are very much of a checklist, and sometimes there is a little bit more collaboration, especially if our assistant is handling a lot of the back-end office management or operations needs for the clients.

It is collaborative.

And I think collaboration really supports a very successful relationship.

It is going to help both sides understand what the goals are, have clarity around things, come up with new ideas and better ways to do things.

So when we have that collaboration, that's when we really see the most success with our clients.

So, Samantha, if any CO is listening, and we've spoken about Devil Was Prada, if they have three assistants, one gets coffee, one deals with their home issues, and one does the administrative tasks, and they think, I have more than enough assistants, do I need Samantha's services still?

What would you say to them?

I would say we might want to look at your processes and what systems you have in place.

Do you need three assistants?

Can we consolidate that?

Not that I don't like your assistants, they might all be amazing, but do we need three different people?

And maybe the answer is yes.

Maybe they all have great specialties, and areas of focus, and we want to hold on to them.

But we also would want to look at what are the processes around what they're doing, and what are some things that we might be able to automate?

Or how can we provide your assistants with more tools and training to be a better rock star for you?

Surrounded by three rock stars.

Yeah, and then you feel like you're on top of the world and you can conquer anything, right?

Is there anything else that I should have asked you that I never did that you'd like to share with us today regarding the work that you do?

You know, I think that we've covered a lot.

I always, though, encourage CEOs to take time regularly throughout the year to look at their operations, look at their processes, and look at their team.

But also, even if your team is not as productive as you think that they could be, they're probably still producing some really great work within that, so appreciate them for that.

Take the time to reflect on how much your team has contributed.

And then when we look at your processes and your systems or virtual assistant to support them, then we're just looking at how can we take your team to the next level.

So none of it is to frame anything in a negative light.

It's all about how can we just make this a little bit better?

How can we put the cherry on top of your already amazing sundae ice cream?

Exactly.

Oh, that's my favorite.

And then last words of wisdom to a CEO who ideally wants to have this seamless work environment and support.

I would lean into your vision for your company, lean into what your strengths are, and then lean into how you can trust the people around you to support whatever that simple vision is for your company.

Words of wisdom from Samatha Cordero, the CEO of Auxo Business Services, which provides virtual administrative and operative support to CEOs, small and medium sized teams.

Thank you so much for being on our show today.

I've really enjoyed having a chat with you.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

This has been really fun.

And before you go, where can we find you on the interwebs?

Yeah, have you started our website, which is www.auxosvs.com?

That stands for auxoservices.com.

You can find more about us.

You can find our LinkedIn, or you can find ways to contact and connect with us.

Excellent.

www.auxosvs.com.

That was Samatha Cordero.

Thank you so much for being on our show.

Thank you.

Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review, and we'll be with you next time.