Welcome to the Scaling Success Stories series!
If you’re new to this series, I ask online entrepreneurs questions regarding growing and scaling their business.
This is the series description:
You can get your fill of online business tips by reading the other interviews on the Scaling Success Stories page.
Interview with Kayla Sloan from KaylaSloan.com and $10K VA
It was my pleasure interviewing Kayla Sloan, founder of $10KVA & KaylaSloan.com. Kayla started a virtual assistant business and is a popular, go-to authority in the personal finance community. She helps entrepreneurs set up systems to streamline their business. She’s now teaching others how to successfully start their own virtual assistant businesses.
Check out what Kayla had to say to my questions!
Watch the Video Instead
If you’re on the run and would rather listen to Kayla and I chat about:
- The unique way that she took a side hustle to a full-time career
- Why systems are critical to all business owners
- How she decides to hire her own virtual assistants
- How she rebranded and changed her revenue streams
You can listen to the video!
This is a video recording and you can always watch it later.
If you’d rather read the transcript, it’s formatted below like all my other interviews.
1. Why did you start an online business and how does your passion still drive your business’ growth today?
It was kind of a roundabout experience for me.
I never set out to just have my own online business, let alone a business at all really.
I was working a 9-5 job. I had a lot of credit card debt and student loan debt.
I just took on a mortgage right after I graduated college. And so I was just really feeling financially strapped and looking for a creative outlet because my day job was just very monotonous and not very exciting.
So, I started blogging for fun about personal finance after discovering this whole community of people who were using their blogs to hold themselves accountable to pay off debt and save money.
I started blogging just for fun…I had no idea that people made money online.
And, when I first heard about it, in fact, I thought it was just a huge scam. I was like, these people are crazy, what are they trying to talk me into here?
I did a ton of research and asked a lot, a lot of questions. I’m sure my blogger friends at that point just thought I was really annoying. But, I asked them everything under the sun and then decided to just try it.
To see if it’s for real, or if it’s a scam.
I started working as a virtual assistant in 2014. And so I’ve been doing it five years now.
2. At what point did you realize that your business was “taking off” and that you could really make money from it?
So as I mentioned, when I first started out, I was kind of hesitant about whether or not this was something that was actually legitimate and if it was something that I could actually do to make money.
In my first month in business, I made something like $280 or something, working just a few hours for a blogger.
I continued to work with her for a few months afterward, and she actually introduced me to a friend of hers who also needed help.
It was a referral.
It was easy for me to land that second client.
Now that I had two clients, my client said…
I don’t know how much money you make at your day job, but I’m guessing that the two of us are probably helping you earn a good percentage of that in way fewer hours. I really could see you taking this full time because you’re amazing at what you do. I know lots of other people need your help. This is something you should really think about.
This was a client who kind of mentored me and helped me take it more seriously, which is kind of fun and I think a little bit unique.
After that conversation with her, I decided to go for it since it was way more fun than my day job.
If it fails, it fails.
I’m not going to just quit my job right now.
But, I am going to push ahead with my business to see if I can get it to actually be enough of a living to where I could quit my job.
The funny thing is that when my business was earning the same amount of money as my day job, I knew it was time to quit.
That very first client who really mentored me in the beginning stage of my business said…
If you quit your job, and then you end up losing a client, you’re not going to starve because I will send you delivery pizza.
That was just so touching because at that point, we had been working together for a year and we had been friends online before that. So it’s a friendship that developed into also a business relationship.
That was someone who was really willing to invest in my success just as much as I was investing in the success of her business.
3. At what point did you realize you were living the life you wanted to?
For me, it’s always been kind of a moving target.
I am a goal setter.
And I like to continue to push myself to achieve new things because I get bored easily.
Once I quit my job, it felt like every day was kind of a vacation.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have to work, I still have work to do for my clients.
But it was just like, wow, this is the life you have now.
And, since I am someone who kind of grows bored, a few months later, I knew I needed to do something different.
The great thing about having your own business, especially an online business, is that you can change it, you can tweak it, and you can make it different over time.
Your business is created around your lifestyle instead of your lifestyle having to be created around your business.
4. One of the biggest fears of outsourcing is trusting the people you hire to run your business the way you would. How did you overcome this and where did you find the right freelancers and employees to help you grow your business?
The interesting thing about the two of us, Drew, is that since we have the experience of being someone’s virtual assistant, at least in my case, it actually made me have higher standards than some other people would have.
Because I know:
- What should be done
- How it should be done
- To expect it to be done correctly
I think that’s very unique in being a virtual assistant myself and my also having a virtual assistant.
I feel like part of it was really just kind of luck on my part because a long-time reader actually approached me and asked if I needed help when she noticed that I was getting overwhelmed and behind on things that I used to do regularly.
I hired her because she did that.
It was the exact method I used to get my clients.
I still use a subcontractor for some of my tasks for my client’s work, and I have a virtual assistant that actually helps with my community and my course and all of those things that I have created as well.
So, I have a little team now, which is super fun, and kind of helps you change what you do.
I always tell people that if you like the actual day to day work, then building a team beneath you may not be the best fit for you. Because you’re not going to be doing the work yourself anymore.
You’re just gonna be managing the people who do the work. That’s a very different type of activity to do all day, every day.
But, when I talk with business owners who are wanting to outsource and they’re kind of nervous about it, the first thing I tell them is, do a trial like a trial period or test project to see if they’re a good fit before you just hand over the reins to your kingdom.
5. A common myth is that as you grow and scale your business, you have to sell your soul to make money, especially when you venture into paid advertising. How do you debunk this myth in your business?
I actually do very, very little paid advertising.
The majority of my business comes from referrals and organic things that I’ve built up over time in the past five years.
That said, I don’t think paid advertising is selling your soul, I think there’s a way to do it that is genuine.
You just have to decide what your priority is, and then stay true to yourself.
Stop comparing yourself to those people that make millions of dollars a month, okay?
Like, yes, we all want to get there. And I understand that because I want to get there, too.
But I’m not willing to do it and sell my soul to get there and to be something that I’m not.
I think I struggled for a while with comparing myself to people who offer similar products or similar services in our space. I finally just realized that it was kind of silly because there’s space for all of us.
There’s so much work out there — so much opportunity.
I finally just realized that the people who come to me are different than the people that come to you, for example, because we’re different people and we do slightly different things, even though we’re kind of in the same space.
There’s definitely room for you and there’s no reason to compare yourself to others even if you have a similar product or idea.
You and your competitors don’t have the same:
- Story
- Background
- Life experiences
If nothing else, you’re still going to draw different people into your hemisphere than your competitors do.
6. Why do you think most people fail to grow their businesses and what advice would you offer them to keep pushing, despite all the setbacks?
One thing that I have seen with a lot of my clients and struggled with myself occasionally, is the sense of being in control.
Especially if you start your business as a solopreneur and you’re doing everything yourself.
It’s really hard to begin to trust someone.
You have to realize that if you hire good people (the right people), then it’s still going to be a success.
And it’s okay if everything isn’t done the exact way that you would have done it.
The other piece of business advice I heard that I keep coming back to is that as a business owner, you really achieve success in building your team.
If you show up to your team meeting or your board meeting, and you’re not the smartest one in the room, you’re actually probably the least smart one in the room because that means you have all these smart people around you that are all working toward helping you continue to build your business.
7. How important has niching down been (no matter how hard it hurts) to your business’ growth and profitability?
I went through a rebrand a couple of years ago.
I started out in the personal finance blog space and talking about my own personal finances.
But, then I realized through conversations with tons of fellow bloggers, readers, friends, and family that people weren’t coming to me to ask questions about:
- How to save money
- How to pay off debt
They were coming to me to ask about how to become a virtual assistant or how to find a virtual assistant.
That’s what everyone was coming to me for.
So, I was like…
Why am I wasting my energy and my time putting out this content that people aren’t even asking the questions about?
That’s when I really think I just kind of pivoted from personal finance into talking all about my experience as a virtual assistant and trying to help others replicate that success.
8. What do you attribute your success to and how do you explain it? Do you think the same strategies will help you reach your next monetization goals? Why or why not?
This is a really hard question because it’s something I’ve been asking myself lately.
My business growth has actually kind of been flat for the last year and a half or so. Maybe even two years. But when you look at where the revenue is coming from, that’s what’s changed.
To reach my initial business goal, I used hard work and hustle. I think that got me to nice-sized revenue.
But, if you want to take it beyond that, that’s where you have to look beyond just putting in more hours.
You have to look at:
- Systems creation
- Automation
- Creating a team of people
- Becoming more efficient
Also, changing those revenue streams to be less of the active revenue that requires time to be put in and creating more of those passive streams of revenue that can create revenue while you’re not sitting at your desk doing work.
I have to remind myself of that sometimes, because if I look at the total number, it looks like things are not changing.
But, if you dive deeper and look into those categories, I have made significant strides in the last couple of years to really change my business model to create one that is more sustainable for growth over the long term.
9. To scale, you really need to have a systemized business. What steps have you taken to build those systems and how do you optimize them?
I could really get talking about systems all day.
But I’ll try to keep it short.
Systems are my jam. I love systems!
I put systems in place for all of my clients that I work with as a freelancer or as an online business manager.
But, one thing I never did was put them in place for myself and put them in place for my business.
Going back to the drawing board and doing that myself has been a very interesting experience.
It’s just like the carpenter whose house is like falling down, right, because they’re spending all their time and energy building other people’s houses.
So, my focus right now is building those systems for my own business.
Part of that is:
- Doing an audit of where my money is coming from and where my time is going
- Strategically building the systems to basically take myself out of some of those low ROI tasks
- Automating what I can and passing what I can’t off to team members
It’s working well so far.
10. If you could speak face-to-face with yourself when you first started your business, what pearls of wisdom would you impart?
I should have higher rates to start out with and I shouldn’t work with everyone and do everything.
But, then I look back and think…
It was still a good experience because I had the opportunity to learn from every client that I’ve worked with, and every type of work that I’ve done.
I really don’t know that I would be sitting here right now in this position if I hadn’t done that.
So would I have changed anything?
Probably not.
About Kayla Sloan
Kayla helps entrepreneurs systemize their businesses so they can grow beyond their wildest dreams. She is the founder of $10K VA and Kayla Sloan. She’s also planning her first live event for later this year for serious entrepreneurs.
Interested in Learning From Kayla?
Kayla’s flagship course, $10K VA, teaches you all the steps to starting your own virtual assistant business.
It’s designed for people who…
- Want to work for themselves
- Need a little help deciding what services they’d like to offer
- Want to know how much to charge
- Are ready to build awesome client relationships
- Are serious about making their business legit
If this sounds like you, then $10K VA might be the course you’re looking for!
The best part of this course is that there are so many services to offer as a virtual assistant…there literally is something for everyone! And if you choose Kayla’s lifetime membership, you also get extra training and job leads!
Before you jump into the course, you can also check out Kayla’s FREE training on her 3 secrets to stop living paycheck to paycheck.
Purchase $10K VA today and get your business started!
Conclusion
Thanks for participating in my series, Kayla!
As you can tell, it’s NOT EASY growing and scaling an online business, but there are some things you can do to aid you in the process.
Inspired by Kayla?
Now, it’s your turn!
I assembled the Scaling Blueprint to show you how to…
- Outsource Effectively
- Systemize Your Business
- Shatter Your Revenue Goals
After working with six-figure and seven-figure clients, I know the difference between how they function.
Let me help you start scaling successfully.
Cheers to future success!
