Outsourcing used to be exclusive to big shot companies but now, even small to medium-sized businesses, entrepreneurs, and life coaches can explore the possibility of having a virtual team to support them so they can focus on the things that drive their business. Best-selling author, speaker, and successful entrepreneur Daven Michaels reveals his success in helping entrepreneurs face their challenges with outsourcing through a platform called Social Sonic. Sign in to his webinar on how to use this software and get his audiobook Outsource Smart.
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Learning To Life Coach – How To Become A Successful Life Coach with Daven Michaels
I have a friend with me. He is an amazing man. His name is Daven Michaels. He has made a career of living the American dream. He is an entrepreneur and he started his entrepreneur career at age fifteen. He has turned multiple passions into prosperous businesses and careers. He’s got all sorts of different records. He has a very different background from what he’s doing now. He has been a bestselling music and television producer, author, speaker and successful entrepreneur. He’s helped thousands of small business owners transform their businesses by showing them how to play ball with the big corporations and beat them at their own game. His book, Outsource Smart, has propelled him to the top of the bestseller list. He’s a New York Times bestseller, number one Amazon bestseller among many.
He has become an advocate for the small business owners and has appeared on numerous radio and TV shows globally. He has sold thousands of books worldwide. What sets Daven apart from many others is that he has applied his winning formulas to multiple businesses and has generated millions. He doesn’t teach from theory or basic motivational chitchat. He has a unique ability to evaluate almost any business very quickly and recommend practical solutions that can be implemented ideally by leveraging others. Daven’s experience has not gone unnoticed by the speaking world. He has spoken on stage with many people like Bill Clinton, Mark Victor Hansen, Les Brown, Brian Tracy and among others. Daven, I’d love to welcome you to the show.
Thanks, Christy. That’s a great introduction. I appreciate it.
It sounds like you’ve had an exciting life. You were telling me a little bit about the little trophies. Tell us about your entrepreneurial journey.
It’s an entrepreneur story and I’m sure you probably have an entrepreneur’s story too. I know you do, Christy. For me, I started my business when I was fifteen. I was extremely motivated. I wanted more than I grew up with, so I worked hard. I was designing clothing in the early days for bands. Most of my bands had nothing going, most were playing in their garage. A funny thing happened shortly after we opened for business. The MTV came on the air and changed the face of music and changed our lives. We were working with these bands that had very little going on. Within about 90 days, most of our bands had record deals. Within a year, they’re selling millions of albums. We rode that wave and it was incredible, especially at such a young age, traveling the globe with these bands that became very big. We found ourselves working with some of the biggest bands in the ‘80s and ‘90s like Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, Thompson Twins and lots of these bands.
From there, I sold that business and started a telecommunications venture. I had some great success. I sold it to a public company and took back stock. That moment in time changed my life. From there, I’ve done a whole bunch of different things. I’ve produced music and television for about several years, with those recording artists for a while. We started our outsourcing business, which is 123Employee. It was a rough road in the early days, the infrastructure wasn’t there but now, we have three centers. We have hundreds of employees and we work with entrepreneurs all over the globe and some of the biggest thought leaders on the planet like you, Christy. We do all the busy stuff in their business, from internet marketing, social media, telemarketing, back office stuff, all the busy stuff so they can focus on the income-generating activities in their business and the things that juice them and excite them. We love doing it. It’s a lot of fun. We’re all entrepreneurs. It’s a fun business.
[bctt tweet=”At the core of all entrepreneurs is a micromanager. ” username=””]
I always say that the biggest secret to my success is that I got clear early on the things that I’d love to do and the things that I hated to do. For me, I got clear that I want to coach, I want to write, I want to teach and I want to create because I love creating the marketing stuff. Any of the stuff that I have to implement, any of the website stuff, bookkeeping, any of the stuff that’s essential, social media, I don’t want to do those, so I have a team that does it. You’re providing a team for people. It’s amazing. It’s such a great fit because I train coaches and a lot of them don’t have a team that they can automatically do these things for them. It’s a perfect fit when someone’s starting out as a coach or speaker and entrepreneur, and they need a team. You absolutely need a team. You can’t do everything yourself. Believe me, I tried and it’s not fun. It’s exhausting. I found that I so much love my business and I get more done and I make more money and I’m more alive by what I do when I outsource this stuff that I don’t like to do.
It’s an interesting time that we live in now. You’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time. I have too. When we started our entrepreneurial careers is very different than it is now. Now, because of technology, in theory, if you wanted to, you could do everything in your business. You could do the sales and the distribution in the market. You could do it all, but you would need a 72-hour a day. It would be impossible. Many entrepreneurs at the core of who they are, and even I am too, we’re all micromanagers. What happens is when you micromanage your business, you’re going to be stuck in your business. You’re never going to be able to scale your business. Instead of being fun, it’s going to be a real burden. The great thing about outsourcing is that it allows you to get all the new shot off your plate so you can focus on the income-generating activities in your business and the things that juice you. It’s exciting.
What would you say are the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs face in today’s society?
I think the biggest challenge is what they face when it comes to outsourcing. At the core of all entrepreneurs is a micromanager. Being able to relinquish some of that control and delegate and outsource is a huge deal. The two challenges that we find entrepreneurs have when it comes to outsourcing is one, they run out of things for the virtual assistant to do. Two, they get too busy to manage. That’s a huge challenge. Matter of fact, we’re always asking our clients what they love about the virtual system, what they feel might need some work and so on and so forth. We also ask our employees the same thing.
For our employees, the one thing they hate the most is not being busy. The reason why is because about 65% of our workforce comes in at midnight and works until 9:30 AM, because 65% of our clients are in the US and 35% the rest of the world. Our employees want to come in, be busy and then go about their day. The worst thing for them is when they have nothing to do. What do they do? They fall asleep at their desk. If you remember the last time you fell asleep at your desk, you probably woke up and went to bed. Our employees don’t have that luxury at work. They just want to work and be busy. You and I are going to do a webinar. On that webinar, I’ll show a whole bunch of different strategies to keep your virtual assistant busy and also to make it easy to manage your virtual assistants. That’s something we’ll definitely share on the webinar.
I know that you came out with a big software launch. Can you tell our audience about that?
Life Coaching And Outsourcing: Now, because of technology, in theory, if you wanted to, you could do everything in your business.
At the end of the day, in our business, we are always selling human capital. That’s what we do, but we do a lot of other things to bring people into our fold. When I started the business, nobody knew about outsourcing for small businesses. Big companies were doing it, but small businesses knew nothing about it. They didn’t know how to do it, if they should do it, nothing. That was a big challenge for us because we didn’t have a market. We realized early on that if we want to have a market, we would have to create, chisel out that market and we did. We did it through education. We started educating our prospects on how to use virtual systems to grow their business and as a result, we ended up getting clients. That model we still use now but we’ve expanded it.
I believe that the biggest challenge that most entrepreneurs face in their business, probably two biggest challenges. One is time and one is leads or more business coming through the door. We are always looking at ways to help people with those challenges. We created a software platform. We spent two years in development and then we released a platform called Social Sonic, which turns your social media into a CRM, Contact Relations Manager. It’s like having Salesforce or Infusionsoft, but you have 300 million contacts under the hood because it integrates with social media. It’s pretty intense.
What we did is we gave people this software, but we gave them a virtual assistant to run it for them because we know they’re too busy. If we gave them the software, they wouldn’t do anything with it. We give them the human capital to do it. We launched the Social Sonic. It’s been huge. I looked at the amount of leads we’ve generated for our clients since inception, I think it’s over 80 million. It’s amazing. It‘s been exciting. On the webinar that we’re going to talk about, I’m going to share and peel back the curtain and show people how we’re generating massive amounts, literally unlimited leads in social media. It’s pretty cool.
It doesn’t matter what business you’re in?
It doesn’t. I haven’t found a business yet that will not work with Social Sonic. Certainly, somebody is going to stump me at some point I’m sure, but not as of yet. I’ll tell you the funniest one was we had a person that was in the dating niche. He was like, “Could we use this software?” because he wanted to share it with his people. He said, “Can we use this software for guys to find girls to go out with?” I said, “I don’t know.” I went back to my team, we played around with it and it turned out to be the coolest use and one of the most robust uses of Social Sonic. So far, we have not found a business where it wouldn’t work and it can even help you meet your ideal mate, which is interesting.
We can use more of that. You are the go–to person in the field of outsourcing. What is the biggest challenge entrepreneurs have when it comes to managing a virtual employer team?
Those were the two that I alluded to. One is getting too busy to manage. I’m going to share with people how not to get too busy to manage and then running out of things to do. On the Webinar that we do, I’m going to show people how to have an endless supply of lead gen strategies and tactics for your virtual assistant to do on a regular basis. That would be huge for their business.
[bctt tweet=”At the end of the day, in our business, we are always selling human capital. ” username=””]
I know you and I are going to do a webinar for everybody. Along with that, Devon is going to give everybody a webinar that’s with he and I. Then you’ll also receive a copy of Devon’s book in audiobook, which is Outsource Smart. You can sign up for the webinar and get his book. Any other things that you want to say before we shuffle them over to our Webinar?
Like you, I have the privilege of speaking on stages all over the globe. If you know me personally, which you will certainly after the webinar that Christy and I are doing together, you’ll learn that I’m a natural inquisitive person. I love people, it’s a characteristic. My dad had it and he passed it onto me. If you hang out with me, I’m going to ask you a lot of questions. I speak on stages all over the globe and I always ask entrepreneurs this question that is, “What’s the biggest challenge that you’re facing in your business now?” Although I always receive a myriad of different responses, it always comes down to two.
Number one is time. When I ask entrepreneurs, they always say, number one is time. Let’s face it, time is finite. There’s only so much to go around. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. I get that. The number one challenge for entrepreneurs is time. They need more time. The second challenge they always say is the need for leads or business coming through the door. I have to tell you if it if you asked me, I would say that’s number one, but most people say number two. I believe if you can get the marketing dialed in your business, if you have a ton of leads coming through your business, if you have a ton of a business coming through the door, if your bank accounts are overflowing with money, then I think that you can buy yourself probably out of it about any challenge in your business. You can find somebody that can help you and you can pay him lots of money and they’ll help you out.
On the webinar, I’m going to share and show with everybody, how we’re using Social Sonic to generate a mass amount of leads and how we’re using virtual assistants to do all that processing. It’s going to be a huge eye-opener. If all you do is show up and take copious notes, you will leave with those tools to generate massive amounts of business for your business. It’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s going to be edutaining, so it would be very interesting. At the same time, we’re going to have a lot of fun on the webinar. Jump on, get registered and it will be a blast.
Thank you so much, Daven. I appreciate you being here.
I appreciate it too.
Life Coaching And Outsourcing: If you can get the marketing dialed in, then you can buy yourself out of any challenge in your business.
Check out the webinar. You want to definitely know what Daven has to say and to get his book. If you’re an entrepreneur in any kind of business, this is for you. You’re absolutely right. I would say that no matter what business you’re in, you want more leads, you want more customers and you can certainly buy more time when you have that.
I’ll throw in one more thing too. I know most of your tribe, Christy, are entrepreneurs. If you are not yet, maybe you’re looking at becoming a coach but you’re not a coach as of yet, this will be for you as well. If you’re looking to start something new, you’re in the right place. If you’re already having established businesses, we all help you grow that business.
Be sure to sign up, everybody. Let us know what you’re taking away from this. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur because I know there are many of you that either are a stay-at-home mom or you work for somebody else. Let me know what you’re taking away from this as well. Thanks again, Daven. Thanks, everybody.
Thanks, Christy. We’ll see you all soon on the webinar.
Thanks.
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