We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Abby Martinez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Abby below.

Alright, Abby thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

I never imagined I would have a team when I started my business. But I wouldn’t have it any other way!

One of the most frequent questions I am asked is… “how did you grow your team”. I get a lot of curiosity when I share that I have a team of 13.

My path to hiring a team began when I left my teaching career to be able to have more flexibility with my kiddos. I decided it was time to take the leap and during Covid in 2020 I left teaching and went all in as a creative virtual assistant. It wasn’t long before I realized I was doing work far beyond the expected VA work and I would soon discover online business management. I quickly moved my business in that direction, gaining an OBM certification and booking out with OBM clients. Every aspiring business owners dream, right? Right… until you realize you have more than you can handle and it keeps coming. I realized that the way that I served business owners wasn’t what most business owners received when they hired a VA or an OBM. Story after story of hearing disappointed, frustrated business owners who desperately needed help but they couldn’t find it, the idea of an agency was planted. “Who me? No way!” But once a seed is planted it often grows.

I knew then and there that I had the capability of filling a gap in the marketplace. And if you’re were in the online scene in 2020 and 2021 you know it blew up and more and more business owners needed support. So I decided to dig in and build what would become a thriving agency that supports nearly 35 business owners at a time, and saves them over 4,000 hours per year.

Bringing on a team was a scary idea at first, how will I be able to transition my clients to work with team members and not me? I was terrified that my business would fall apart. But after hearing from multiple clients saying they really didn’t mind someone else working on their account, as long as my backing was there. So the building began. I hired my own OBM to help me get things in place and to start hiring. Luckily for me, during the early days of my business before I started the agency, I created a virtual assistant training program called VA School so I already had quite a few students I had taught myself. That was a great next step for me in beginning to hire. I started with the students I had built trust with to start building the team.

The scarier part at the beginning was when we needed to continue to hire and I had already hired the students I’d trained that wanted to work in the agency model. So we put the application out and the interviews began. I will say that the biggest thing I would do differently in this process from the very beginning is be hands on. I was so busy that I relied on my OBM for the hiring and while she was great at interviewing, I think there was some misalignment of who we hired early on. I think its always best for the business owner to be IN IT when hiring so you can’t look back and say “I wish I had been more present during that season”.

The other big thing that was really helpful when we brought on our team was having extensive training materials and a learning library for them to access. This is an added bonus for our team to be able to have access to trainings that they may not have otherwise had. Creating a strong onboarding process for your team members will take you a long way.

I also want to say that when it comes to hiring you need to know if you need a contractor or an employee. Do you research, look at all the logistics, laws and finances of both models. For us, we went with the subcontractor route which has been beautiful for our team. I often see business owners doing 1 of 2 things… waiting too long to outsource, or hiring employees too early when they should have hired contractors.

I know it can be scary not knowing if the person is going to work out, will they represent you well, can they get the job done. All the thoughts will come up when its a season of growth in your business. But thats where the growth happens. We can choose to make the hard decisions and watch how beautifully it all unfolds (even the crappy parts, those are for your growth too). Or we can choose to stay where we are and not fulfill the call to expand the impact.

If I were to do it again today, I would focus on consistent, slow growth at a sustainable pace. It’s easy to get caught up into the “never enough” vibes of the online space. I think it was a mix of my determination and also the online space climate with how quickly my company grew. While it has been a huge blessing, the growth, as it allows me to make a greater impact both externally for clients, and internally for my team and my family. Those early days were some really hard days. I think sustainability is key to everything. You don’t have to let your business run you. It took me a while to find my footing with the right balance.

Abby, 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 a small town Iowa girl who studied Elementary Education at Iowa State University, went on to get my Masters of Education from St. Thomas University in Houston TX and taught for 7 years. I am a wife and mom to 2 littles.

I have always loved entrepreneurship from a young age. I started my first business when I was 10, it was a jewelry business and I would sell at local markets and eventually had an Etsy shop. In college I fell in love with photography and spent nearly 7 years as a part time photographer shooting weddings, engagements, seniors, and families. As much as I loved entrepreneurship I grew up in the generation of “get your college degree and get a 9-5” to be set for life. I always felt like something was wrong with me when this path never felt like it was enough for me. After 3 years into teaching I had my first kiddo and I knew I needed a change. It would take another 4 years to figure out what that change was. In 2020 I left teaching to pursue entrepreneurship. I had hoped to go full time as a photographer but during Covid everything was cancelled as we all know. So I tried out virtual assistant work and realized all my years of trying different business had given me a solid skillset that I knew would help others. So I went all in!

Shortly after leaving my teaching job, within 3 months I had replaced my monthly income doing VA work. I realized that I was doing more than a typical VA and found the Online Business Management role and dove into that certification. I transitioned from VA to OBM and the clientele kept growing which led to the building of the agency.

I have since become a certified life, leadership, and executive coach as well as an enneagram coach along with my business strategy/systems and ops skills I am able to help business owners in a really powerful way. I personally coach and consult as well as build systems for clients and my team does the day to day virtual assistant task based work or the online business management work. We love to partner with creative business owners who desire to have a well-balanced business and they’re ready to grow in a sustainable way. Business owners come to us when they realize they can’t and don’t want to wear all the hats in their business any more. From social media, admin, launch management, system builds to so much more we can meet clients where they are in their journey to scaling.

I am most proud of the fact that I have built a thriving agency and provide jobs for women and moms who also desire freedom and flexibility. Our mission is two fold, externally we want to impact our client’s lives and allow them back time and peace of mind. Internally, we strive to empower our team to also be able to put their life and children first while still being able to use their gifts and provide income for their family. I never thought I would lead people in this way, and its my favorite thing about my job. I love people, and I love getting to be a great example of leadership and grace.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Hands down the best and most effective strategy for growing our clientele has been to SERVE PEOPLE WELL. There are too many businesses in the world throwing out empty promises. Be a person of integrity, show up and do the work really well and the referrals will come.

To this day, our business has grown organically through the word of mouth of our clients. Sure we will have a few people find us online but primarily its all via referrals. We are just now starting to consider any type of paid advertising as we continue to scale up.

I can’t stress this enough, have integrity, let your yes be your yes, take radical responsibility for the results you’re promising clients and SERVE PEOPLE WELL. The rest will fall into place :)

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest ways I was conditioned, as are many people my age, was that college and working a 9-5 for someone else was the only path to a successful life. This was deeply engrained in me that it kept me in a job that I was outgrowing for too many years too long. While I loved my students and teaching as a concept, the education landscape was sucking the creativity out of me, but I stayed because I was fearful of what would happen if I left. Would I be able to provide an income for my family? Would I get clients? Would the whole thing fall apart? It took the first few years of my business being successful for me to rewire this way of thinking. In the early days when something would go wrong the negative though pattern of “this will all just fall apart because there is no way for this untraditional path to be successful without the backing of a corporation/or in my case school district”. But after time, coaching, and consciously looking for the evidence of proof of success of the business I have been able to unlearn this lesson.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wellbalancedbusiness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/well.balanced.business/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abby-martinez/

Image Credits
Nicole Determan Photography