Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Selena Thiele. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Selena, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Our goal as a company is always to treat every person like they’re special, whether they’re a client or one of our virtual assistants. Now, this doesn’t sound that different from the industry standard, but when you’re talking about an agency, the emphasis tends to lean towards speed and efficiency over specialty instructions. While maintaining the highest level of productivity is important, effectiveness can take a hit when you try to fit everyone into the same box. Finding that happy point between bespoke customization and rote assembly line means everyone feels cared for and supported versus trying to pretend people are ‘plug & play’ software.

For example, something like helping check emails is generally considered a relatively basic task, but my business partner and I attack our emails in very different ways, so having someone treat us the same is not going to work. I like my emails grouped in conversation mode, my partner prefers her emails listed individually. If we’re coordinating a project and a message is archived in my partner’s inbox means she still has access to the previous message that included the work she was going to complete. In my inbox, doing the same process means I think everyone has dropped of the face of the planet or I’m spending quality time with my search bar results.

A client with ADHD had hired a virtual assistant agency previously that insisted the best way to handle their inbox was by putting everything into folders and promptly set up a range of folders based on how they did it for other clients. This is not wrong and works great for a large number of people. For this client, however, with the way they work, as soon as the messages went into a folder, they stopped existing and important messages were missed. We were able to combine a few standard practices into a process (the colored flags/tags featured heavily) that worked for the client and assistant that still reduced time, stress, and frustration.

You can take this concept and extrapolate it to any number of tasks that are considered “basic,” like social media management, paperwork organization, CRM Management, scheduling updates, etc, and see where individual preferences can make the difference between a system that gets integrated to everyday use instead of being abandoned after a few frustrating weeks. Standardizing processes is necessary as companies grow, but creating SOPs that can be adjusted to the realities of individual needs means building something feasible for everyday use and the future to come.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Selena started in the administration world young, helping with filing projects at her mother’s office in grade school and helping her father’s business with bookkeeping and customer service in high school. In the corporate work force, she found herself in the position of handling a wide range of projects and issues since she had an ability to find creative solutions to new issues in the changing marketplace. Selena went into business for herself in 2016, but ran into the same issue many small business owners end up with – trying to do too much on her own.

In 2019, Selena teamed up with her business partner, Alyssa Griffiths, to found Office Mercenary under the concept of helping companies, executives, and their own workforce grow and succeed through a combination of tried and true practices put together in creative ways. Building on the desire to be a “one stop shop” for business owners and executives to get the help they need, Office Mercenary expanded to include both standard virtual assistant services (including general administrative, customer service, and marketing and social media management) and online business management services, such as system and process development, team management, and product and event launch management. It’s important to everyone at Office Mercenary to get work done in the best way possible, but equally important to tap into joy and laughter because we want others to love what they do and are building as much as we do.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Selena had been working as a solo virtual assistant for awhile, but was getting back into networking after having to spend some time on her health. Alyssa happened to be at this event with her husband and his company, a website and back-end tech stack development company, and she was the in-house graphic designer. We had a lot in common, both personally and professionally, found the “Office Mercenary’ concept hilarious and appropriate, and saw a lot of room to work together between the businesses. They started hanging out regularly and sending referrals to each other. In short order though, Selena had to admit she couldn’t take on any more clients for awhile, but Alyssa had another idea: to team up.

Alyssa knew she wasn’t being as effective as she could be at her husband’s company and didn’t really love graphic work, but did love systems, processes, and admin. So, would Selena be open to teaming up under Office Mercenary?

Selena had always been a hard no when it came to running a team, but had been softening up on the idea recently. It just all seemed like a lot to manage people and get work done though, so had put it out of mind until then. She said yes.

And a good thing. Alyssa’s husband had already bought the domain name in his excitement and no one wanted to have the conversation about how to transfer it over.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Team management feels like a huge hurdle to clear, but can be hugely rewarding.

The first step for us managing our team was to get everyone on and effectively using a platform where we could track key performance indicators. This gives room for regular conversation about what the team as a whole and individuals are doing well and where improvement might be needed.

The second step is to have the conversations. Having KPIs, but never discussing them is a recipe for frustration and disaster. We ended up on having individual conversation once a week. It allowed us to make sure we were clear about our expectations and get regular check ups on how team members were, professionally and personally. Giving room to hear about the personal struggles allows us as a company to watch for issues and be sure we can pick up the slack when people are going through hard times. It also opens up conversations about what people really want: how to do they want to grow, what they like doing, where they’d like to be. The ability to support when things go wrong, before it effects the bottom line, and foster growth opportunities means keeping good people longer.

For team morale, we like to get people about once a quarter. The Office Mercenary team is fully virtual, so this tends to mean Zoom holiday parties where people can drop in and pop back out as desired. Sending party favors for games or other small tokens in advance means everyone feels more connected. Some of the team does live near each other, so we spend time together in person when possible. Finally, things are expensive, so combining words of appreciation with even a small bonus for a job well done, let’s people know they are cared for.

And finally, the biggest item for us is to be honest with your people. This does not mean brutal honesty, or being mean. It does mean being able to admit that a change is going to be hard, but you believe it’s going to be better in the long term because of your list of reasons. It is being able to admit, as an owner, when you didn’t get something done and asking for grace too or when we have struggles that affect the company, and therefore its people. All this, in our experience, translates into your team believing and respecting you, which increases morale and loyalty, and keeps everyone invested in success.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://officemercenary.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officemercenary/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OfficeMercenaryServices
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/selenathiele/

Image Credits
Office with teal wall art photo credit – Drew & Alyssa Griffiths Other photos – Zach Brophy