The Steps Tasha Mayberry took to build a Six-Figure Systematized Business in One Year!

OWEN: My guest today is Tasha Mayberry and she is the President and co-founder of Social Media 22, LLC. Tasha, welcome to the show.

TASHA: Thank you so much Owen.

OWEN: So this show is all about getting entrepreneurs like yourself who have been able to successfully, like in your case you’ve been able to systematize your business so it runs without you successfully and you don’t have to be there all the time. Let’s give the listeners something that would encourage them to wait all the way to the end of the interview and basically listen and learn all the stuff you’ll be sharing today. What are some mind blowing results that you now experience as a result of going through that process of systematizing and automating your business?

TASHA: We can think of two things in particular. First we created a six-figure business in one year which is pretty mind blowing. And also by systematizing the business we really saw the results once everything was efficient. And in return we actually got 100 word of mouth referrals, probably over that by now. Those are the two main mind blowing results that we can share.

OWEN: That’s awesome. Going to a six figure in just a year, that is awesome. How will you as the company itself being transformed of systematizing your business?

TASHA: There’s multiple things, first and foremost I could easily work 12 plus hours before. There’s only myself, my business partner who was my husband, and we did hire one employee eventually. But 12 plus hours a day working on weekends just totally consumed, which is fine because we love what we did, but it does get tiring. Now that we have a good team in place we’re able to cut that down to eight hours or so, travel freely. For example I’m visiting my parents in Maine right now and we took all of yesterday to drive. So now we have that freedom. More important than our time is really making the clients happy. Once we have the systems in place the work is done with high quality results, and efficiency. The customers appreciate that. And then in return they also refer business to us, which is our model for growth. So it all works hand in hand. And lastly the cost, it’s really helped us reduce cost. Our employees are very efficient and we don’t get caught up with a lot of back and forth. We know exactly what everybody’s roles are doing. So in the end we’re saving a lot of money on payroll as well.

OWEN: That’s awesome. Systematizing the business is not just only benefit to the business. I’m wondering how has your personal life been transformed as a result of actually systematizing your business.

TASHA: As I mentioned before not working as many hours which is wonderful, having the ability just to say, “Okay, we’re going to take Friday off. We don’t have to work this weekend. It’s just a luxury know that your business can run on its own with our team in place without you having to be there 100% of the time. And my business partner is my husband so that alleviates a lot of extra stress that we don’t need. So it’s just been wonderful.

OWEN: You mentioned stress in the marriage and I’m wondering can you compare… We want you to be free emotionally on the interview so I’m wondering before you systematized it what kind of stress on the marriage did you experience? I’m just wondering.

TASHA: I can give an example. I would start work very early, both of us. At the time we recently had a baby and we bought a house now, but before we were living in a studio apartment which was literally one room and we were working almost side by side because that was our office as well. It was just very stressful being in that closed environment to begin with. But I would start working very early, 8 in morning and it would already be 8 pm. And of course husbands get hungry. So he was hungry. He was really big on family time and unwinding, and just me still sitting at the computer 10-11 pm and not having dinner on the table, something that really couldn’t be avoidable because we had to get the work done. It caused some tension. But now it’s just a lot better. We don’t have to do all those long hours and we can really separate our family time from work.

OWEN: That’s good. Since you have systems in place in the business and it basically runs without, I’m wondering what’s the longest time you’ve actually been away from the business?

TASHA: We’re very hands on. I choose to be very hands on. I like that. But we do travel to Russia a couple of times a year because my in-laws are over there. Last summer stayed for about 36 days, and I was able to here and there take a client call and check some emails, but not be totally 8 hours sitting and working. That was really nice. It could probably go longer than that but 36 days was the longest so far. But what’s nice is we can travel multiple times throughout the year. So it’s not just taking off a full 6 months, but maybe multiple times taking a week here, 10 days here, a month here. So it’s been really nice.

OWEN: That’s awesome. Let’s give the listeners some context regarding your business. What exactly does your company do and what big pain or problem do you solve for your customers?

TASHA: We work with a lot of startup companies or new businesses that want to get to the next level, whether it’s product-based companies or service-based companies. And we provide web design, SEO, marketing, PR, the whole shebang. What’s unique is we have an all-in-one approach. So we don’t just focus just on social media. We really start from the ground up starting with defining the business, the target audiences, the branding, designing the logo, the website, the SEO, and then moving the actual marketing, PR and media outreach, social media marketing, blogging, you name it we do it. So it’s really nice to have all of that under the same roof so companies don’t either have to hire internal teams to do all of this work and pay a lot of money in payroll, or just hire multiple companies on the outside that can just work with us and have it all in one place.

OWEN: How many full-time employees do you have?

TASHA: There’s five of us in total.

OWEN: Is your company profitable? What was last year’s annual revenue, and what are you planning to do this year?

TASHA: Gratefully we are profitable and last year was closer to about 300,000. And this year we’re on track to be about half a million dollars. And so yes, we are profitable.

OWEN: Congratulations. We’ve talked about kind of the benefits of you having systems in place, being able to free yourself from having to be bugged down by work and being able to travel and stuff like that and the business runs without you. But I’m sure that it wasn’t always like this. Take us back to when the business was not systematized and automated like it is now, what was wrong with it?

TASHA: My background is actually legal studies and went to school for it. I was almost on my way to law school. When the market crashed and I wasn’t able to find good work I had to think about what else am I good at. And that’s when I really landed into marketing and PR. I don’t have a degree in it or anything. It’s completely self-taught and self-discovered really. I’m happy this all happened because I truly love what I do. But when we first started we really didn’t have anything in place. We just learned how we went and created systems as we saw the need. In the beginning it was okay having a couple of clients. You could tend to all their needs and have a little extra time to figure things out. But once we started getting 10, 15, 20 clients that’s a whole different ball game. So you really need to be efficient, have all hands on deck, because you can literally spend all day answering emails. And then you never get to your projects and things don’t move forward. That was one of the big things that I noticed. I was constantly just in my email box without getting other things done. So it cost a big problem.

OWEN: And you said you had filled in multiple questions from employees and not being able to answer clients. So scaling basically made the need to actually, the fact that you were growing and scaling brought issues with it that you had to change things around. I’m wondering, was there a specific low point or a specific thing that happened that comes to mind that at the when that happened you were like, “No, I have to change things around.” If there’s something share it. Let’s learn from the story.

TASHA: Luckily we’re proactive. Immediately when we started getting backed up or definitely when we started hearing some feedback from some clients that wasn’t all positive. We met as a team and really made changes quick. Because as a company you only have your reputation. And once that’s damaged word can travel fast. So we knew we had to take action. As soon as a customer expressed a concern we would develop a plan to fix that immediate need. And we also communicate with our clients, just being honest and upfront. “We’re growing as a new business but you’re important to us. You’re our core client.” Just making sure that they know that. And if they can’t get me through email, because sometimes it would take me a couple of days to respond, which is a long time, now I can respond within an hour. But back then I said, “If you do need me feel free to text or use Google Hangouts.” Giving the clients another way of contacting me was really helpful.

OWEN: I get that there was not a specific moment where things just broke down and it comes to mind that you can say, “This was what happened.” You mentioned that when customers will complain, is there way you can just share maybe one or two complaints that they had then, so that we can see what that complain prompted from you guys in response to taking action?

TASHA: Sure. I remember one of our second clients, the lovely brand that we worked with, they were spoiled because they’re with us since the beginning. We would literally answer their emails and their requests probably within minutes. So then when we started to grow they noticed we were still answering within a couple of hours or whatnot, or maybe the next morning if it was later in the day. And they came back to us and said, “We noticed a difference in communication. You used to answer almost immediately.” And of course that’s not practical. You have to set expectations with your clients that you can’t always answer immediately but that was what they were used to. We just had to set the new expectation that we are growing, that they are important to us. And then what we did was we added our employee to all of the emails. So when the clients email me we don’t want it to get bottle necked by me not answering. So by adding another employee as a safety net, so Giselle sees that I didn’t respond. She can hop in there and make sure to respond, or she can ping me through that chat system and then ask me to respond.

OWEN: Okay. I just want to kind of give the listeners an example of something that happened and the direction you guys took to kind of solve it. What will you say back then was the very first step you took to systematize your business?

TASHA: Let’s see. The very first step was just defining everybody’s role. We were a new company and we could talk about our mentorship program later where we actually train each employee on how to do everything about the company. But once they’re actual employee they have a defined role. Just understanding what everybody does was the first step. But we didn’t really want to get stuck in the whole typical corporate way of functioning, like you’re in just this one spot. You can only do this. But it’s still important to define their role. And then we looked into tools like Dropbox. Because in the beginning we were just emailing everything back and forth and using our email to capture the records and then we save the documents on our own personal machines. So there wasn’t like a Cloud storage where everybody would just be able to access it. So that was an important first step.

OWEN: Defining the roles and then next start thinking about tools that would allow everybody to collaborate on the Cloud. And so what was the second step you took to systematize the business?

TASHA: We started identifying problems thinking about if customers are complaining about these things, why are they happening, what can we do better, and creating the action plan for that to really correct that. Because of course customer service is most important. And then we just use the action plan to bring on the tools and resources that we needed.

OWEN: Great. Were there any other steps that came to mind that you took back then besides the ones you’ve shared with us so far?

TASHA: Just overall like sitting down and especially bouncing it with the team has helped. But identifying the issue, like I said, finding outside tools and resources to streamline the work, and just creating that plan and executing it was the way that we systematized.

OWEN: Okay. There’s a lot of things that you had to do, but I’m wondering how did you prioritize what order of steps to take? How did you decide what systems or processes to create first, and what to create next? Was there some reasoning behind how you engage finding the solutions?

TASHA: Yeah, there was. Since we do so much in our company, from the web design all the way through to the marketing. We started with the feedback from the customers first. So we started with the needs of the customer. That’s always most important. And then we thought really proactively, like what else can fall from the cracks. Try to have a plan in place to avoid anything else happening, whether it be with communication, or work product, whatever it was. So that have helped.

OWEN: I’m also wondering back then how did you even document procedures or processes for the business? What tools did you use in this whole documenting how you guys work?

TASHA: As far as documentation we use pretty basic tools, Word documents, or procedural manuals saved as a PDF. But sometimes the most basic tools are the best. And of course we have email. We use Google Hangouts chat internally since we are a virtual company. Instead of buzzing the next office over or peaking in an office we just ping and chat and it pops up on our screen. So that works very well. And then also our internal mentorship program for new hires has worked tremendous. That has helped.

OWEN: Now that we’re even talking about the mentorship program let’s just go in and just talk about what exactly it is.

TASHA: Okay, sure. What we’ve found by searching for… As a business owner especially me where I have so much attention to detail and I like things just right it’s really important to pass that on to employees and empower them to sort of be like mini you’s if possible. We developed a 3-month mentorship program. And it’s a wonderful opportunity for the candidate and for us to make sure that it’s a good fit for both sides so it’s positive for them too. What happens is we hire them on and we train them on everything in the company from beginning to end. And they really get a chance to learn hands-on in that 3 months and show us their work. And if they excel then we bring them on as an employee. They get the sign on bonus, they start at $18-$22 an hour or whatever it may be. So that’s the whole concept of it. And we can know right away if it’s not working, which is nice. There’s a trial period in the beginning where there’s an agreement if it’s not working you can let them go. It’s nice because if you hire somebody on full-time 2 months later it’s not working you’ve already wasted full-time payroll and things of that nature. So it’s worked out really well.

OWEN: Even at that time when you were working on systematizing and automating the business I’m wondering were there any books or even mentors that had an influence on you and why?

TASHA: Definitely. I absolutely love Brendon Burchard. Amazing author, he has amazing programs. I just read all of his books. Jeff Walker, he has an amazing book called Launch which really helps to teach you to take care of one-on-one client work and turn it into an automatic service that runs on its own, or a product, or whatever it may be. I love [No audio 00:17:06] by Rhonda Byrne that has been very inspirational to me and just how we live personally and how we run our business. And I’ve actually based my new book off The Secret which is really nice. And then also lastly a book by Rachel Luna, Successful People are Full of C.R.A.P. And each word stands for something. So you should definitely look it up. It’s a wonderful book.

OWEN: Okay. And from a systems standpoint which of them had the most impact to try and educate you on how to systematize the business? I’m wondering which of these four books…

TASHA: Probably Jeff Walker’s Launch. He really teaches you how to take your expertise and put it into an automatic product or service that you can just at first build it whether it be an eBook, or a newsletter series, or video course, whatever it may be, and then have it run by itself. So you’re sort of working with thousands of people at once, but without you you’re one-on-one. So that’s really probably the best one.

OWEN: Okay. So is that one teaching you how to take a service and productizing it so that it’s done the same way regardless of who the person is? It’s not like customized service, is that what that book was teaching?

TASHA: Yeah, it’s like how to launch something. For example we’re creating a video course, PR star boot camp. So instead of us doing PR services the client can just go to that boot camp course and they can do it themselves or hire someone to do it. So it’s nice.

OWEN: Okay. What is the biggest challenge that you experienced? Because the thing is if we only talk about the things you did to systematize the business and don’t talk about the challenges you underwent during that time it will look like we’re not given the full picture. What was the biggest challenge you actually experienced initially when you tried to systematize the business and how did you solve it?

TASHA: The biggest challenge was probably replacing me.

OWEN: Why?

TASHA: I built the company from the ground up. A lot of what we do was self-taught, self-discovered. We’re just very creative over here which is nice because we’re all learning new things that you can’t learn on a blog or pick a book. And we’re just doing it differently than other firms which is nice, which means the clients have different things that they’re putting out. So that was probably the biggest one, and just the knowledge that I have but you can pass it on. That 3-month mentorship program, I would take some time and really train the candidate. Our other team members would help out. I would refer them to articles that I’ve written. And also our employees too they can reference the articles that I’ve written, books and things of that nature.

OWEN: I don’t want to gloss over the whole thing because it sounded like letting go and having someone take over with a challenge. I’m wondering how was it much of a challenge though?

TASHA: The company of course is our baby. So you just want to make sure when you do have those systems in place whether it would be your team or what not the end product is still going to be just as good, because this is your business, this is your reputation on the line. The client’s most important and their happiness. We would never want a client to be unsatisfied and leave us or anything like that. It took a little bit of trust in the team, trust in the system, but it has worked out very well.

OWEN: What was the second biggest challenge you experienced when you initially tried to systematize the business?

TASHA: Probably deciding what tools to use, there are so many different tools out there. You get inundated, they all sound so great. And then I know taking the time to do demos it’s very time consuming but it’s worth it. You can actually see what the tool does and match it up, is it really what you need. So we had to really do that to determine which tools are best.

OWEN: I’m wondering when you were searching for tools did you figure out a way to… You had a bunch of different tools, a way which you can gauge which one was the best one for you to use without having to go through the entire day morning stuff?

TASHA: Sometimes we would basically make a note of exactly the type of tool that we needed and what we wanted to do for us. And then we would go on to the website and you can always go to the features and benefits page and they have good bullet points. So just make sure that as long as that tool covers what you need then it’s probably a good tool for you. If it’s missing something I would move on to find another tool that has that.

OWEN: So the shortcut is come to the table with all the things you need from a specific tool and say which of them kind of covers all the things you actually need and that’s kind of the quick decision to say, “I’ll go with this one.”

TASHA: Exactly, and don’t settle on the first thing that you look for. There’s so many different options, really take even if it’s 15 minutes just to do Google search and see what’s out there.

OWEN: Were there any other challenges that we’ve not talked about that you experienced when you were trying to systematize the business? You mentioned during the pre-interview something about having a quality team. What was that and how did that play a role.

TASHA: Yes, that’s most important. You want your team to mirror the values of the business owners and just work just as hard. And luckily we’ve been totally blessed with an amazing team. They don’t just clock out at 5 and say they don’t care. They’re like on 24/7 and they’re just all in. We’ve been very fortunate. And I believe that the 3-month mentorship program really helped us identify these type of employees. I keep mentioning that but it was just so helpful.

OWEN: And I’m glad that you mentioned that because I’m wondering how did the idea for the mentorship program come about? Was there something that prompted it?

TASHA: As a startup we were making money but of course you always want to save money where you can. And in the beginning we just didn’t want to hire someone and pay full salary. We wanted to do a test run. And we initially called it an internship but using that term attracted people that wanted to do the internship. Yes, they wanted to do well but then maybe go back to school or going to something else, and we really wanted someone to do well and then stay with the company. So that’s when we changed the wording to 3-month mentorship. And that really just changed the whole feel of it. And we make sure during the interview that they are looking to move on with the company.

OWEN: Given all these challenges you mentioned so far I’m just wondering why did you even stay committed to the goal of systematizing your business?

TASHA: I used to be the Vice President of marketing and PR in the insurance world. I actually gave that up to start a business with my husband, best decision we’ve ever made. But it wasn’t easy leaving a career with benefits and all of that. But the business is our baby. It’s our livelihood. We love every second. We love what we do. So there was never a thought of giving up. We’d always make it happen.

OWEN: Let’s come to a more recent time in the story because we’ve been talking about the past, what you did to systematize it. But I’m wondering at what point in time in the story did you feel like the business was systematized and it can actually run without you successfully?

TASHA: We’ve been in business for 5 years going on 6, so probably a couple of years into it. The first year we were already starting to systematize it, but by the second year we had our employees in place and we were really on a roll, so I’d probably say about a couple of years into it. But we definitely started in the first year.

OWEN: Okay. One of the things I like to always do is give my listeners kind of a behind the scenes in your business how it currently works today. Let’s use an analogy like a conveyor belt. Imagine on one hand is somebody that needs an agency to help them with their PR, social media, and stuff like that. There’s a company that needs that help. And on the other end that conveyor belt is that same company or someone from the company, they’re raving about the work that your company does for them and how they like using you guys, and probably even referring you guys new customers. I’m wondering behind the scenes what are the different parts of your company that comes into play to make that transformation for this customer happen. And feel free to start from how you find this customer in the first place.

TASHA: It starts with my husband and I as the business owners of course, and then our managing team. And of course we have the processes and the tools, the customer service part, daily and weekly tasks, I guess the results and the reporting, and then the feedback. So it comes all back in a loop. But as far as getting clients, did you want me touch on that too?

OWEN: Yeah, go ahead.

TASHA: As far as getting clients, that starts with great service to your current core client. You just want to be the best. You can always go get more clients and make a ton of money, but really just focus on your core clients instead of trying to get 20 new clients. So that’s what we really did in the first year especially. Once you did really excellent with them, got them results had case studies, then there a referral is probably the next step, the word of mouth that they’re telling everybody. And then after that people are contacting us saying that they heard us from a specific client. And then of course we thank the client, maybe even give them a card in the mail with a $20 Starbucks card, something of that. And then they refer more because they appreciate those little things. And then us just reaching out to the person that they referred to and starting the process of finding out how we can help them. I guess that would be how we’d get our clients.

OWEN: I’m also wondering we’ve come through the systems you have in place that enable the employees know exactly what they need to do. So you have that mentorship program that you go through. And you have some other tools that you guys use. But I’m wondering is there anything else that we’ve not covered so far that would also help to let the listeners know what you guys have in place to let the employees know what they need to do besides the stuff we’ve talked about so far.

TASHA: We do train them through the mentorship which we talked about. They’ll learn all the ropes from beginning to end. So I just wanted to touch on that again, instead of just learning exactly what they’re going to be doing. Teaching them more than that, they appreciate it because they’re learning first and foremost. But also later down the road if you need more hands to help with blogging for example they already know how to do it because they were trained during that mentorship program. So it just helps the team really work together and help each other. But with each new client we follow the same process, except with the custom strategy, graphics, content, things like that. So that has really helped. Not really changing the foundation I guess you could say, but of course the content and everything would change. So that underlying foundation staying the same has really helped things be efficient.

OWEN: We got in tracking and verifying the results being delivered by your employees. What measures you guys have in place to do that?

TASHA: We do give constant feedback. We don’t really believe in a formal yearly review where we sit down and give them a report. We’re sort of like a modern company, very open, flexible. Instead we just give them feedback right on the spot. So they’re really learning as they go. We do that, and also just recognizing the reports from the clients. We give clients a report and say they got a thousand new fans on Facebook for that month. We know that social media associate person is doing a great job. Or if we got them in a couple of magazines and on TV then I know that Giselle who handles the PR is doing an excellent job. So that really has help. And we also have time sheets, I should mentioned that as well. They submit their time sheets and they love their hours, so we’d be able to see the type of work they’re doing and how many hours. And it just puts the whole efficiency in perspective. Are they doing things efficiently with their time and work productivity and such.

OWEN: Okay. Since you have all that free time now because you systematized the business I’m wondering which specific area in the business are you now focusing on and why.

TASHA: We started a magazine which is very exciting. We launched a magazine and we get a lot of advertisements and spots because this is our catalog in that magazine for products. And we do work a lot one-on-one with clients which we do love but it takes a lot of manpower, a lot of time and payroll, just everything. About a year ago we said we have to work smarter so that’s why we started creating things, like for example the PR Star Boot Camp Course. That’s going to be coming out soon. There’s also a marketing course that we’re going to do next to essentially teach everything that we do and that we’ve learned on our own to other people. And of course my book just released, the book Dream Big Achieve Bigger: 7 Steps to Attract Anything You Want. That’s on Amazon right now. So that’s pretty exciting.

OWEN: And that’s all awesome stuff because for instance right in the book you wouldn’t even have the chance to write a book if you didn’t have freed up time to actually do that.

TASHA: Exactly.

OWEN: That’s good. What is actually the next stage of growth for the business. What do you plan to achieve next and why?

TASHA: We want to bring on two or maybe three more team members. We do like to grow gradually to make sure each and every client is taken care of. That’s most important, so bringing on a couple more people. Also we work with a lot of startups, people that are just starting out. And that’s why we really keep our pricing competitive for them. They don’t have much cash flow so we’d like to work with bigger companies, medium sized to even large companies. And so we’re working on that currently. As we do have a team in place we can definitely handle that. And continuing with the magazine which has helped a ton of exposure. And really we want to get back to doubling our revenue each year which we did in the first couple or a few years. So that’s another goal.

OWEN: That’s awesome, as we come to the end of the interview I’m wondering the listener who’s been listening all the way to this point what will you say is the very next step they should take in order to transform their business so that it can actually run without them just like yours does. What do you think is the very next step they should take?

TASHA: Just take a step back and identify are you getting hung up on emails all day long or is there a lot of back and forth and unnecessary work. Identify those areas of work and see if you can turn that into an automated product or service. It could be a ton of one-on-one work with clients where you could really automate that whether it be a newsletter that helps them or video course and whatnot, just like we’re doing with our boot camp course. But just looking at what you’re doing now and see how you can transform it. And also have a great core team and quality employees you definitely want someone that mirrors your values in business. And just get people that are really on 24/7, not literally but just if they were called upon they would be totally for it. And also the mentorship program, that has worked wonderful for us and I would recommend anybody doing that. And I forgot to mention before we start them off about $10-$15 an hour. And then after they excel, because they kind of have to prove themselves for that 3 months, then they sign on with a full salary after the 3 months.

OWEN: That’s awesome. As we come to the very end of the interview I’m wondering is there a question that you were wishing I would’ve asked you that I didn’t get to ask you yet. Go ahead. Post the question and give me the answer.

TASHA: Let’s see. All your questions were amazing. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. I have another question. Probably I would say setting yourself up for success. And whatever you do in your personal life or setting up your systems for your business, going into it first, believing and knowing deep inside that you can do it, you can make it work, eliminating all the self-limiting beliefs inside, and just having gratitude for the littlest things. If you’re just grateful every single day then you’ll attract more things to be grateful for, and even in your business. That’s just one thing that I would like to add because it really has helped us.

OWEN: That’s awesome. Now I’m speaking to you the listener who’s listening all the way to this point. If you’ve enjoyed this interview I want you to do one thing. Go ahead and leave us your honest feedback on iTunes. To do that go to this URL. It’s a short URL that will direct you to iTunes, podcast channel. It’s sweetprocess.com/iTunes. I want you to leave us your positive review or your honest feedback, hopefully a positive one and a 5-star review. And if you’re at that stage in your business where you’re tired of being the bottleneck in your business and you want to get everything out of your head so your employees know what you know and you can actually assign tasks to them and track them all the way to completion, well, feel free to sign up for a free 14-day trial of SweetProcess. Tasha, thanks for doing the interview.

TASHA: Thank you so much Owen.

OWEN: And we’re done.