We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marcey Rader a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Marcey, thanks for taking the time to share your stories 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 hired a Virtual Assistant five hours a week in my first year of business. In year two, I decided I needed more hours but didn’t have the funds to hire in the US, so I sought help overseas in the Philippines using Virtual Staff Finder. I hired a website specialist who did everything – admin, presentation design, marketing materials, and websites – for six years. She was full-time and felt like family. It was hard to scale as a coach, so I started outsourcing some coaching sessions to other coaches I knew and had used myself. Rather than just focusing on productivity, I could promote the program as an executive team approach with a productivity coach as the primary lead. We now have eleven coaches with subject matter expertise in multiple areas – presentation, communication, leadership, mindfulness, functional emotional skills, crisis management, digital wellness, systems, and belonging and culture in the workplace.
It’s worked out incredibly well that these coaches get clients handed to them on a silver platter, giving them a revenue stream without the marketing, we can grow RaderCo in a way I wouldn’t be able to solo, and it benefits our clients by not having to vet multiple coaches to complete a well-rounded program.
I hired my best friend two years ago to work as our Client Concierge. She’s the only friend I would ever feel comfortable hiring in this capacity because working so closely with your bestie can be challenging. We’ve managed to do it in a way that has brought us closer, and we’ve had fun doing it!
Marcey, 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 started my business in 2013 after 14 years in the clinical research industry. I knew nothing about running a business and was very naive. One of my best decisions was hiring a business coach in my first year. Since then, I’ve worked with multiple coaches and participated in programs related to business, marketing, and finances. I’ve also invested time and money into speaking and training, ultimately receiving the Certified Professional Speaker designation from the National Speaker’s Association, of which there are only around 850 worldwide.
At RaderCo, we provide health-powered productivity consulting, coaching, speaking, and training. We solve the problems of burnout and overwhelm by never-ending task lists, over-filled calendars, constant notifications, and insane workloads. We care about more than just making you more efficient. We want you to do it in a healthy way. In our always-on culture, it’s not just work-life balance; it’s tech-life balance.
Our approach to health-powered productivity and our wide breadth of subject matter expertise in various topics allow us to work together to solve problems upstream at the core rather than just focusing on tackling that to-do list or putting a band-aid on a gaping wound.
We’ve worked with companies as small as solopreneurs, start-ups, to Fortune 100 companies, and we have seen many iterations of what works and what doesn’t. We are a boutique firm that knows our lane and ensures we are the best fit before embarking on the journey with you.
Our latest offering is the Powered Path Playbook™ – a combination of analog and digital reflecting, planning, and prioritization tool. There is a one-hour online course and a paper tool. It’s perfect for business owners and teams to plan by year, quarter, month, week, and day. It’s also ideal for making 1-to-1s and reviews more effective.
Any fun sales or marketing stories?
My first book was Hack the Mobile Lifestyle: Six Steps to Work Well and Play More! It was self-published, self-edited, and boy, could you tell it! I had it for sale at a North Carolina Travel Association event. I sold 13 copies to a VP at Extended Stay America hotels. About six months later, the Director of Marketing called and asked if I would be interested in being their spokesperson! I rewrote Hack the Mobile Lifestyle to Beyond Travel: A Road Warrior’s Survival Guide (and invested in making it fabulous) and worked with ESA for two years. It was a wild ride, and I had no idea most people were not given such an opportunity in their second year of business!
How did you build your audience on social media?
I started on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube but didn’t like them. I am not against social media but I don’t want to be on it myself. Every marketing person said I had to be. Several years ago, I wrote a post that I would be LinkedIn only (I occasionally post videos to YouTube), and I’ve never looked back. What I realized was that the business I might miss by not being on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok wasn’t worth the joy sucked from me by having to spend time on those channels. My main clientele is on LinkedIn, and it works well for me. I don’t feel like I waste time. I don’t have FOMO or even JOMO. I have the JOOO – the Joy Of Opting Out – because I’m not missing anything.
If you’re just starting, don’t feel you must be on all the channels. Do the ones your clients hang out in and those that make YOU feel good to be on.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.helloraderco.com
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/marceyrader
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClrLgftfM456zDxHHG4AIiw
- Other: www.helloraderco.com/podcast
Image Credits
Kevin Seifert Photography