Episode 007 - Samantha Whisnant

Get ready for an inspiring interview with Samatha, a Digital Business Manager with a unique story. Despite having a degree in biochemistry, Samatha decided to forego the traditional 9-5 or medical school route and instead moved to Barcelona, Spain to start working online. With zero experience in online business or digital marketing, she began her entrepreneurial journey. Fast forward three years, and Samatha has built a $100K+ online business as a service provider and is now living in Amsterdam.

On the Model the Master podcast, Christin delves into Samatha's remarkable journey and uncovers the secrets to her success. Discover how Samatha overcame the challenges of starting an online business from scratch, and learn how she was able to turn her passion into a profitable venture. Get motivated to take your own entrepreneurial journey to new heights as you listen to this interview.

Transcript

Christin G. Gutierrez (00:00):

Welcome to Model the Master podcast, brought to you by Increpreneur where we believe the fastest path to personal and professional growth is to model those who have gone before us. I'm your host, Christin Gutierrez. Today we're speaking with Samantha Whisnant, a certified digital business manager and systems expert who helps growing entrepreneurs set up systems so they can organize and automate their businesses, allowing them to stay focused on their zones of genius. She's the owner of Systems with Sam. Welcome to the show. All right, so tell me a little bit about what it is that you do.

Samantha Whisnant (00:34):

So I'm an online business manager and a systems expert, and basically I just help business owners organize and automate the backend of their business so they can focus on growth. Some of my clients say that I handle the business part of their business and then they can do whatever that lights them up that they actually started a business to do the coaching or personal training or whatever that is that they started. I think it's so easy when we start a business to forget about everything else and all the hats that we have to wear to actually get the business off the ground, and it's easy to get bogged down into all the little things we have to do to keep the business running. So I kind of handled that, all those little things, the day-to-day things and also the big things that support them as they head to their next goals.

Christin G. Gutierrez (01:23):

That is amazing. So how does a CEO know when it's time to get some outside help?

Samantha Whisnant (01:30):

Yeah, I just kind of accidentally fell into it, I guess accidentally on purpose. I graduated from college with a biochemistry degree, so nothing to do with online business marketing. Never took a business class in college or anything. And then after I graduated, the next step for that is going to medical school or pharmacy school or some sort of graduate school, and I just didn't want to do that. I could not convince myself to take the test or send the application, and I really just wanted to travel. So I hitched a ride over to Spain with one of my friends who was going to a graduate program there, and I just went down a rabbit hole online of how to make money online. 

I started with teaching English and I stumbled across how to become a virtual assistant and help with writing blog posts and uploading emails and video editing. And so I took a course on that and from there that was over three years ago and I just have been working my way up since then and just have worked with a lot of clients for a year or longer where I've been able to learn their business really well and step into that management role. And then I've also had trainings in, of course, on how to become a manager and lead teams. So I've really been able to grow with a lot of my clients, which is amazing.

Christin G. Gutierrez (02:54):

Yeah, absolutely. So what systems should you have in place before you look for hiring outside help?

Samantha Whisnant (03:04):

Yeah, I think a lot of times when CEO’s come to me and they haven't hired anyone before, there's just a lot of overwhelm and frustration with what's going on in their business. It can almost feel like a rollercoaster where you're starting the day and you're like, I have no idea how this day is going to go. I don't even really know what I'm supposed to be doing today. You could find yourself getting lost in certain tasks for hours a day, and then you look up from your computer and it's 5:00 PM and you have to eat dinner and you're thinking, where did the day even go? 

I think that it's really important then to start implementing some things that'll kind of keep you better on track. And a lot of times hiring is something that will keep you on track because you are being accountable to another person. When we work by ourselves and we are starting our own business on our own, I mean it's so easy to do whatever we want because we're the only one that's, it's really affecting. Whenever you have someone else who's on the team and who you're talking to almost every day, then it becomes more important and more of a priority to actually show up and have priorities in your business and have goals and things that you need to get done and to stay focused.

Christin G. Gutierrez (04:20):

It really does. Pretty soon you're only focusing on content and none of the day-to-day things are getting done and you have no time to actually work on things that will help bring income in and help you to scale.

Samantha Whisnant (04:34):

I recommend three systems to have in place. So the first one would be a content management system. A lot of our businesses, especially online, run off of creating content and a lot of times that looks like people may be waking up and then being like, oh, I need to post today. And writing a caption and throwing up together a reel and putting it on Instagram. And while that might not seem to take a lot of time out throughout your day, it is taking maybe an hour or so. And it's also taking out mental energy. Content is also typically the first place people want to hire out. That's the first place that I hired out help with just because it is so time consuming and it just takes up a lot of space in our mind of having to do it very consistently.

Christin G. Gutierrez (05:21):

It really does.

Christin G. Gutierrez (05:23):

Lean focusing on content and none of the day-to-day things are getting done and you have no time to actually work on things that will help bring income in and help you to scale.

Samantha Whisnant (05:33):

Exactly. And because a lot of times with content, that's kind of how we're making the money. We're posting content, we're attracting clients, we're growing our brand, especially with podcasts and YouTube and the long form content that takes even more time. So really getting clear on what your content creation process is and what actually needs to be happening for you to create content consistently. How many, what posts are you creating? Do you like to write the posts before you actually create an image or create a reel, or is it the opposite? Getting super clear on the process can make it so much easier to actually hire out either the entire process or just pieces of it. For me, at first, I am not a graphic design or at all, that is my weak point is graphic design. And so that was the first thing that I hired out was I was like, I wanted to create really nice carousels for Instagram, but I wasn't doing a great job and I didn't like it when I did it, but to be able to hire that out, I had to have the other pieces of content ready.

(06:38):

I had to have even the caption and a really good thought through outline for them to put in the carousel. So getting super clear on that first, and then you can bring in someone and you can see where your own roadblocks are. And then yeah, the second thing I recommend or the second system I recommend is a client onboarding system. Obviously clients are where - if you work with clients - that's where you're making money. If you're selling courses, how are you delivering your service or product to the people who are paying you and making that as streamlined and easy as possible so you can sell as much as possible without it hindering you. It's not hindering your growth because you're thinking, oh, every time I sell I have to go spend 30 minutes sending a contract and sending an invoice. And you don't have a process that you're going through. So maybe every client is kind of experiencing something different. And if you don't really have something that's automated, you might have some clients that get buyer's remorse because they're paying you and then they're not getting anything back right away. And then they're like, oh, well maybe this wasn't a good decision. Whereas when you have a process set up and automated, it really just amplifies your own confidence in your services.

Christin G. Gutierrez (08:00):

And that's really important that you're making sure that all of your clients are getting the same experience. Because if you're not doing that, you have no idea what's working and what's not working unless the clients come back and tell you, “Hey, I'm dissatisfied with this”. You want to make sure that everyone's having a consistent experience. And it's very important to put systems into place in order to do that.

Samantha Whisnant (08:23):

Yes. And then the third system that I recommend is just an email marketing system, at least getting some sort of nurture going on in there, having an email marketing tool at least set up. So whenever you are bringing on clients, you're also tagging them in your email marketing tool, you're creating that lead generation. You're just getting off of Instagram. I work sometimes with a lot of people who come to me and they say, yeah, I don't started that yet because I'm just not big enough or I don't know, I don't have a freebie yet. 

So it just seems, and I think everyone that has an email marketing system will tell you they wish they started sooner. I know I needed to but, I didn't start for two years because I had those same thoughts and I'm like, oh, if I would've started even a year sooner, imagine how much more my email list would've grown. Imagine how much my confidence would've grown. Even just sending newsletters consistently, it builds a certain confidence and builds a certain relationship that you have with your audience off of Instagram, YouTube, wherever you are. 

Christin G. Gutierrez (09:28):

And you have no idea, Instagram could be shut down tomorrow for some reason. And if all of your clients are on their platform, then they're not really your clients because you have no way to reach them. If Instagram goes away, they could shut your profile down and you lose access to all of those people. So it's really smart to be able to take them from that platform and then into your email ecosystem so that you can continue on to nurture that relationship, like you said.

Samantha Whisnant (09:56):

Yeah, exactly. You honestly don't know what's going to happen. And the other thing with that is you can't control what people see on Instagram. You can only play the algorithm so much, and honestly, the algorithm changes every other day now I think. So at least with an email you can make sure, okay, this is going in someone's inbox and someone has a way higher likely chance to actually read the content and learn from you or buy from you if you're selling email has a way higher ROI in terms of that aspect. So I always say start sooner because you don't know when you will need those, that community.

Christin G. Gutierrez (10:33):

Absolutely. And also you know, never know when something's going to go viral for you. Maybe it's not going to go viral and millions and millions and millions of people see it, but it could go viral for you. And if it goes viral for you and you have no way to capitalize on that, you don't have a free download, you don't have an email system set up, then you're just really missing out on the opportunity to start building that offline community of followers.

Samantha Whisnant (11:01):

Yeah, I totally agree. That's such a good point too. You absolutely do not know when a piece of content is going to hit and you are going to have that return. And I will say in my experience, I think the very first podcast I was ever on, I had just gotten my freebie setup and I'm so glad I did because I had a hundred people download it and without that, that's a hundred people that would have maybe followed me on Instagram, but would I have actually done with anything with it? No. So you don't know.

Christin G. Gutierrez (11:35):

Wonderful. So what's one of the biggest mistakes that new businesses make when hiring?

Samantha Whisnant (11:42):

I think just not getting super clear about what they're actually hiring for first because I think when we're so busy and overwhelmed, it's easy to just fall into, I need help. I need to hire someone. I need help by business code. Just telling me to hire a virtual assistant that can help with everything when in fact it's when you're just hiring someone and there's no clear communication to the effect of “Okay, this task needs to be done, this task needs to be done”, but there are no systems in place. 

That's another huge mistake. It is so hard to start working with someone else because all of our tasks and the way we do things, it lives in our head. As a business owner, we are the only ones who know how to actually run our business. And when we want to bring someone else into that mix, we have to have a lot of communication and we have to be willing to actually train someone and teach them what we know and how to do things.

(12:40):

So it's getting super clear on exactly what you're hiring for. And I'm talking like micro clear, not just like, oh, I need help with handling my clients. It's like I need help sending contracts, I need help sending invoices, I need help. Following up with people, listing out exactly the tasks that you don't want to be doing in your business and then hiring someone specifically for those tasks. And then also making sure you have those systems that we talked about and those processes in place so that when someone else does come on, you can show them and say, look here, this is my client onboarding tool, this is the process that I usually do. It's listed out, you can even just make a checklist. Here's a checklist. Make sure that whenever a new client is onboarded, these are the steps that you need to follow through.

(13:29):

And then on that note, it is so much easier for that person to just start. They can come back to you if they have questions. You all can redo the document a bit, they can add to the document, whatever their questions were. And then for the next person, if you have to have someone else do that process in the future, you have this living document that's exactly how to do things in your business. And then you can just say that and say, if you have questions, come to me and it's so much less time, less time off your plate, it's so much less stress. There's a lot of mental energy that goes with  hiring and onboarding someone and making sure they have exactly what they need and what they're asking. A lot of questions that can bring a lot of frustration to the relationship and you just want to kind of avoid that as much as possible.

Christin G. Gutierrez (14:18):

Absolutely. Hiring someone is supposed to make things easier for you. It's supposed to take some of these things off of your plate and allow you to focus on things that are more important or maybe more in your wheelhouse. Because let's face it, there's things that we're not great at and there's also things that someone else can do because we have something else that is more important that we spend our time on. And what's really hard is when you hire somebody, and it's supposed to be that they're helping you and they're relieving some of the pressure and the stress from you, but it actually can wind up being more stressful if you have no idea what to have them do. And now you're paying this person and you feel like, man, I need to find something for them to do. But you weren't clear on what it was that they were actually going to do. So you're trying to find these tasks for them each and every day just to occupy their time rather than figuring out what's the best way that they could help me. And it becomes a benefit in that way. It's a burden if you're not very clear on what it is that they need to do.

Samantha Whisnant (15:19):

Exactly. And I think another thing that kind of trips people up is they think, oh, I have to hire someone for 20 hours a month or this huge retainer when in fact that's not the case. If you want to hire someone to just make Canva Graphics, you can do that. And that's five hours a month. And there are people who work out like that there. I have a friend who is a single mom. Working for her - all the mom wants to do is make Canva graphics - and that's it. She doesn't really even want to grow her business or offer all of these services or have an agency. She just wants to do what she likes to do. So there are people out there who you can hire for just these one off little tasks in your business every month or even just one time. If you want to create a freebie and you don't know how to set that up on the backend, you can hire someone to just set up the backend for you and be done. And that's okay. It doesn't have to be this all or nothing type of mentality. You can just let it be what is going to be the best for you.

Christin G. Gutierrez (16:19):

Yeah, absolutely. And we've heard them, there's like this formula where if you can hire somebody else to do this work for you for less than your hourly rate, you should outsource that.

Samantha Whisnant (16:34):

Exactly. And that's the way that actually works is if you have systems in place because a lot of times you have to think about the time, cost and energy of managing that person and answering questions and making sure that person has what they need to do their job. 

And another tip I always tell people is give it time. It takes time to really start working with someone. It's not going to happen instantly. You're not going to hire someone and then next week you're going to be like, oh my God, my life is great. I never have to do this again, and I have so much free time. That's just not really how it works. And so typically I say, give it three months, see if it's working, if it's getting better, if the relationship is growing, in some cases it's not and that's okay, it just maybe was a bad match or just you're not meshing well with the person, that's fine.

(17:24):

Then you can let that person go and move on to someone else. You know, you don't need to force a relationship, but you do need to give it time to actually grow and to actually make your life easier. And so whenever you are outsourcing, especially for the things that you want to get off your plate, because someone will do it for less than you have to have those systems in place and you have to give that person the enough time to actually learn what they're doing so they will be actually taking the load off of your plate and you don't feel overwhelmed with them.

Christin G. Gutierrez (17:55):

And it's so important to provide feedback, too, because if somebody thinks they're doing a good job because you are not making giving them any feedback, they're going to continue doing it exactly the way that they've been doing it. And that's just going to cause you to build resentment or be more likely to fire them and move on there. You have to give them the opportunity to make those adjustments and learn the way that you want it to be done. And the only way that can happen is if you provide good feedback for them and say, okay, well I liked how you did this and maybe on this you could change this and that and do this a little bit differently. But overall I'm really happy with the progress that you're making. 

Samantha Whisnant (18:35):

Yeah, exactly. And I think it's just very important whenever you're first starting with someone is buffering in that feedback time and probably not assigning something that needs to be live in 48 hours or something where that you're going to be frustrated because it's not perfect and they're going to be frustrated because they're doing their best. And so really when those first few weeks or even months or even months, just having the time starting with one or two really good, simple core tasks and giving enough time for that feedback and that revision and for that person to really learn how to do it super well, so then you don't have to do that in the future. And then you can move on to the next task where it's like, okay, and they will probably even be better about it by the time they get to the third or the fourth type of task because they've learned so much during that feedback and revision time for the first two.

Christin G. Gutierrez (19:30):

So considering your journey to being an entrepreneur, what's one of the biggest mistakes that you made and how would you fix that if you could go back?

Samantha Whisnant (19:40):

I think the biggest mistake I made on my journey was just not trusting myself on the journey or not being all in through the journey because I had a lot of imposter syndrome around starting my own business. That wasn't something that was reflected to me growing up. I lived in a very, very traditional household. My parents both had normal jobs. It was always very pushed upon me to go to college and get a job, and that was safety and being able to support yourself and entrepreneurship is not really like that. 

Christin G. Gutierrez (20:20):

It's risking at all.

Samantha Whisnant (20:25):

Exactly. And so really just leaning into the journey and being okay with the fact that I am not doing what I thought I would do when I graduated college. That’s fine. I'm doing something completely different than anyone in my family has done. I'm also from Oklahoma, which is not a very entrepreneurial state, so I don't really know many people doing what I'm doing that I grew up with. I know a couple, but a lot of times when I see people, they're like, what do you do? I don't get it. And it's this whole conversation and I'm like, you don't have to understand. It's okay. You're not my ideal client.

Christin G. Gutierrez (21:02):

And that's how life is: oftentimes people don't understand us and it’s kind of unrealistic for us to expect other people who are not entrepreneurs to understand us as entrepreneurs. If they're not able to see themselves having the same dreams that we have, then they're not going to understand our dreams. So yeah, I mean it's hard to be in a place where there's not a lot of other people who understand you, and I think that's why it's so important to build networks of people, whether that's online, if you don't have the people around you or searching out groups of people so that you can build these relationships to get that support and that encouragement because it's hard. It's really hard to be an entrepreneur and have no one around you understand. You have to be your own cheerleader and you have to keep going, and that can be really difficult.

Samantha Whisnant (21:54):

That's so true. I feel like I didn't even really enjoy the journey that much or really lean into it until I started putting myself out there and being involved in groups. I am a coach and have a few masterminds helping with system setups and things like that. I remember when I first started coaching, it was for one of my clients and I just asked her, I said, I would love to be a coach in this mastermind. She didn't even ask me in, but I put myself out there because I thought, this is what I want to do and this is kind of the direction I want to go in, so what a great place to start for this client that I'm already comfortable with. So it's allowing yourself to really put yourself out there to make mistakes. At first, my first couple coaching calls were not great. Looking back, I'm like, okay, could have gone a lot better, but I feel like that was really the catalyst for me just becoming more confident in what I was teaching. After that, I started showing up on social media differently and then I started making more templates and products and just really being confident in putting myself out there in my messaging, and I wish I would've started doing that sooner.

Christin G. Gutierrez (23:09):

Yeah, absolutely. I think that that's kind of a common theme among entrepreneurs: wishing that we had started things sooner, but hindsight is 2020. We have to work with what we've got right now and make sure that going forward we are quick to implement things when we know it really needs to get done.

Samantha Whisnant (23:28):

Yeah, it is so true. And now I don't hold myself back because of that. It's like, lesson learned. I learned a lot in my time when I wasn't putting myself out there, and so now I don't want to be in that position again.

Christin G. Gutierrez (23:40):

Yeah, we don't want to be looking back on this a year from now and wish that we had taken this step. That's why my motto is “take the next step” because without that next step, you are going to regret it. You're going to look back on it and you're going to say, man, if I had just taken that step, I'd be so much farther today than I am right now. And that's not something that you want to look back and regret.

Samantha Whisnant (24:02):

So yeah, no, I love that because that's something that I saw around that time too, just started realizing it's not about the really the end goal. Of course the end goal is super important, but to actually get there, it is just taking one small step. Even if when you're working on big projects and I'm working on big launches and stuff with my client, it's like, yeah, the goal is a $50,000 launch, a hundred thousand dollars launch, but what's the step that we need to take tomorrow to actually know, get us there?

Christin G. Gutierrez (24:33):

Absolutely. I think that if you are only looking at the end goal, the overall huge goal, it seems really overwhelming, but if you break it down into the small incremental steps that you need to achieve that goal, it seems so much more manageable and attainable.

Samantha Whisnant (24:49):

Yeah, 100%. And especially when you're doing something for the first time or something that's kind of scary to you, it is just looking at that next step and be like, okay, well I know I could at least write this email. I could write it. I didn't even have to send that, but I could write it. And then the next day is like, well, it's already written, so I guess I could send  it. It really is just taking one step at a time. So you are getting out of your comfort zone, but you are doing it in a way that is not as overwhelming.

Christin G. Gutierrez (25:21):

Exactly. Exactly. So what would be your number one tip, technique, or strategy for achieving success?

Samantha Whisnant (25:30):

Only one? 

Christin G. Gutierrez (25:32):

Well, I mean if you have a couple… but let's say you're talking to a new or aspiring business owner, what would you say to them? What would be your number one tip or technique or strategy that you could give to them to help them achieve success?

Samantha Whisnant (25:54):

Yeah, I honestly think it would just be start, like you said, just taking that next step and focusing on what you can do now with what you have now. And I see this a lot in systems is people come to me and they want these crazy cool automated systems, and I'm like, right, okay, but let's start with what you have now, which is not that, it's not that, and it's not that it can't be that, but let's like go back and prepare for, we can prepare for that, but we have to start with what we have now.

Christin G. Gutierrez (26:30):

We got to take the minimum viable product to market now.

Samantha Whisnant (26:33):

Exactly, yes. The minimum viable product. And so it really is just like, what do you have now? How can you start doing something, whether that is just a post on Instagram that is alerting to everyone that you are doing something different, whether it's setting up that one page free website from milkshake. You don't have to have these five page websites, you don't have to have all of these things that you see out there when you're just starting. And another thing is just don't get caught up in what you don't have. So you know, you could see Amy Porterfield have a million dollars and look at her and say, oh, oh my gosh, I want to do that. I want to be like her. But she's been doing it for 10 years. So really just taking into the context of those people who you want to be looking at their journey, learning from them, seeing how long it's actually taken them.

(27:27):

One thing I do when I find myself in this comparison mindset is I will go to someone's social media page and I'll look at how many posts that they've posted, so not how many followers they have or anything but how many posts they've posted. And more times than not, they've posted like 3000 posts. And then I look at mine and I say, okay, well I've only posted like 500 posts. Well, I still have 2,500 posts to go before I can even start to compare myself to that person because it is just those little baby steps. It's posting one time a day, or just doing one thing that takes 30 minutes or an hour every day, and you get there. That's that 1%. Like if you're driving a boat and you're going and you go one degree every single day, you're going to end up in a completely different direction, a completely different place then you would if you didn't do anything at all. 

Christin G. Gutierrez (28:23):

Absolutely. That's very true. Very, very true. Well, I really appreciate having you on the show today. You've been providing amazing value for our listeners. I just have one last question before you go. Would you rather do everything yourself but maintain control or would you rather outsource or delegate, but give up control of your company completely.

Samantha Whisnant (28:48):

That's a good question. Off the bat, I'm going to say I think I would rather outsource or delegate and give up control. I think for me, I'm not super tied to my company personally. I care about my company a lot, I built it from basically nothing. But more, I guess I'm more attached to the control of being an entrepreneur and being able to pursue different things in my life and having the confidence that I've built a business before I can do it again. So I'd almost rather just, if I came to it, I'd let it go and I'd be like, here you go, outsource, delegate it, and then this is going to be my time to potentially do something different.

Christin G. Gutierrez (29:41):

You just sit back and collect the money. Exactly. I mean, you don't have to outsource and delegate to people who don't know what to do. You can do it. You can outsource and delegate to people who are more qualified then you watch the company soar. 

Samantha Whisnant (29:54):

Exactly. And I mean, as a systems person, I'm all about outsourcing and delegating effectively and optimizing that process, so I'm sure I could have a great system set up for.

Christin G. Gutierrez (30:05):

Yeah, I think so. All right, well it was wonderful talking with you today.

Samantha Whisnant (30:11):

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. This was great.

Christin G. Gutierrez (30:14):

Yeah, absolutely. You have a wonderful day.

Samantha Whisnant (30:16):

You too.

Christin G. Gutierrez (30:18):

You've been listening to Model the Master Podcast, brought to you by Increprenuer. If you found value, please remember to subscribe and leave us a review. Until next time. Remember to take the next step.