We recently connected with Samantha Whisnant and have shared our conversation below.

Samantha, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I’m originally from Oklahoma, smack dab in the middle of the US. I graduated from college with a degree in Biochemistry, with a plan to continue my education in a graduate program or medical school. The last year of my studies, I realized that I was not ready at all to commit to another 2-4 years of school and I was craving to travel and learn more about myself. I decided to take a “gap year” (that has now turned into 5? lol!) and move to Barcelona, Spain with a friend.

I had no real plan for what I was going to do so I started teaching English online to support myself and eventually learned about digital marketing and working as a virtual assistant from a random Google search about how to make money while living abroad. I had zero background in Marketing or Business and barely knew how to use a word doc, let alone build a business online. No one in my family is an entrepreneur, so I never had an inkling that this was even a choice for myself. But I thought, what’s the worst that can happen? I’m not going to be the one to tell myself no. I immediately started training to be a virtual assistant, while still teach English, and within 6 months, I had my first long-term client, and within 8 months, I was making enough to support myself full-time.

That was a little over 4 years ago and now, I have a six-figure business helping entrepreneurs streamline the back end of their online businesses and I run my business completely online from where I live in Amsterdam.

Samantha, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Sam Whisnant, a Systems Strategist for online, client-facing entrepreneurs. I help them clean up the chaos in their business and turn their behind-the-scenes mess into a thriving, organized, scalable business. I originally started out as a Virtual Assistant and eventually fell into content and copywriting, writing blogs, emails, social posts, sales pages, etc for mostly health and wellness brands. Then, I trained to be an Online Business Manager and started taking over more responsibility for my clients, handling the day-to-day operations, hiring, and team, and setting up systems to help them streamline their business. During my time as an OBM, I helped one of my clients scale from $20K months to $100K months, have $100K and $250K launches, and grow their team from 3 to 10 people.

Most recently, I have pivoted away from OBM work to focus solely on systems setups, where my team and I go into a business and revamp the back-end systems and processes so that they are set up to scale with more ease. We also work on creating funnels and automations to boost passive income. We’ve helped clients triple their 1:1 client capacity, scale from making $100 a month on digital products to $1,000+ a month on the same products, and set up their business to hold $100k+ months.

What makes my services different than working with a traditional VA or OBM is that I’m an expert in not only cleaning up your current chaos and creating an organized flow for how you’re operating daily but also setting up the processes and tech that will evolve with you as you grow. This isn’t a typical one time tech tool build-out or something you have to manage on your own – I am the one guiding, educating, building, and training you and your team in how to use systems holistically to connect all the dots.

My favorite thing that I help my clients with is understanding the foundational way to use systems in their business and setting up processes that they can run with and use again and again, even without me! Most clients work with me when they are on the brink of massive growth, but they know in the back of their mind that their business isn’t set up to handle it, they are struggling with hiring and managing team members, and they can’t possible see how they can hold hundreds of people in their world – even though they desperately want to. After working together, my clients rave about how much they learned while working with me and how much clarity they now feel they have with the back end operations in their business.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

During my 3rd year in business, I made my biggest pivot to date – going from working with mainly retainer clients to doing project-based work. This was more difficult than expected, but has taught me so much in a short amount of time. The biggest challenge I faced was from going from finding new clients every few months or so (and rely mostly on referrals) to needing to find multiple new clients every single month!

This required me to refine my marketing skills, selling, and offers. I had to relearn how to market myself, refocus on my target audience, dive deeper into my messaging, and get used to selling 10x more than I was currently doing. I also wanted to build out a more agency-type model, so I had to really practice delegating and stepping into the CEO role and being a leader instead of just running shit behind the scenes like I had been used to. I’m grateful for this time though because now I feel like I have a very solid foundation in my marketing, systems, and team processes, which I didn’t need as much before.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Referrals are always my best source of new clients! I love referrals because they are typically somewhat familiar with my work already, which helps quite a bit when we are on a discovery call. The best tip I can give around referrals and getting referred more is BE REFERRABLE. I have a “signature service” that is a very clear transformation and it is something I am now know for in my industry, which has increased my referrals greatly.

My second biggest source of new clients is podcast guesting. I love being a guest on podcasts because it’s like teaching a mini masterclass to someone else’s audience, and again, they are already familiar with your work once they come in contact with you!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.systemswithsam.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/systemswithsam/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/systemswithsam
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwhiz/
• Other: Podcast: https://systemswithsam.com/podcast/