We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sydney Arenas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sydney below.
Alright, Sydney thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One thing we always find fascinating is how differently entrepreneurs think about revenue growth and cost reductions – both can be powerful ways to improve profitability. What do you spend more of your time and energy on?
I have had Admin Boutique for 8 years now and we are currently re-vamping everything from branding to our customer base to how we manage our finances. Admin Boutique was my first successful business, but not the only one I started and ran throughout its existence thus far. I have an MBA in Entrepreneurship specifically and have started 6 other companies, I also support many businesses through our work at Admin Boutique giving me an insight into how others operate from a financial perspective. Revenue generation and expense management are two very important factors to any business and most entrepreneurs focus on one or the other primarily from my experience.
It is my strong belief that revenue generation is the most important factor for nearly any business and at Admin Boutique, it is what we spend most of our time on between the two. That is because revenue represents growth and whether or not our product or service is resonating with customers. However, this doesn’t mean that costs can be ignored. Expense management is a very close second because we can generate revenue and still lose money which is generally not the idea when it comes to having a business.
Like many in the last few years, the pandemic tightened our belt and therefore we have gone through a very thorough cost analysis recently. We examined all of our expenses and cut everything that wasn’t necessary, even generating policies for our contract workers that would pause their access to tools during gaps in our client’s needs of their services. We also have a cost analysis per customer. We had one customer who was not only treating us poorly but losing us money! It was very easy to tell this person we could not continue the contract once we saw the numbers and in turn, place our focus on serving the customers who are good to us both from a personal and financial perspective. And finally, we took everything in-house as far as managing our financials goes, hiring our own internal contractor to do so. This isn’t practical for every business, and as we do this for clients we would like them to continue working with us as their external team, but for us, it gave a much clearer picture of what was happening financially. I would suggest that once a year an internal audit is run to ensure that your external team is managing your money how you would yourself.
In the end, managing our expenses freed up the cash we needed to invest in revenue generation. Our focus is still on bringing in new customers and generating revenue, yet without cutting costs we wouldn’t have had the freedom to put our money where our mouth is and invest in customer aquisition!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce your company to our readers?
I started Admin Boutique out of a necessity I saw in the market. There are many small businesses, organizations, or busy individuals who need help part-time, by the hour, or by the project. When I graduated college, I was hired for a sales role which was a bad fit for my skillset and interests so when the founder asked me to support their non-profit on the side by managing events, I saw this as an opportunity to leave the sales role and start a business. I knew that there were many other circumstances out there where either the organization did not need full time or consistent help, but when they needed help they couldn’t operate without it. Because of my interest in business I found it fascinating to get involved in so many companies and help them run different parts of their operations. Admin Boutique is always looking for efficiencies or how to get the job done better than before. We care deeply about the clients we work with and treat each job as if it were a part of building our own company and we really feel that we are a part of the organization. Admin Boutique works as a team which is different than many other temp or administrative businesses out there. A client typically won’t just have one person working for them unless it is requested or it makes the most sense for the role at hand, but most of the time we have several people who work together to meet the needs of our clients because each one of us is best at one area of business. I am best at operations and my business parter is best at marketing, so we work together when a client needs both. For us it is really important to truly solve the problem or manage the task excellently, we aren’t just trying to make another buck.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I don’t believe business comes without constant change and I have never met an entrepreneur who didn’t have to pivot more than once in each company they’ve had. Sometimes these pivots are small and sometimes large, but you can count on an opportunity to pivot at one point or another!
During the pandemic we were losing clients as we had a heavy focus on in person work at a time when no one wanted to get too close to another human. Before the pandemic most clients were still the most comfortable working next to or at least meeting their administrative assistant in person and definitely preferred assistants from a similar cultural background meaning our workforce was all based in the US. I have traveled to 20% of the countries in the world and have worked with businesses from nearly just as many in other companies and all of my businesses have a virtual component. I am really comfortable with different cultures and working remotely with people in all different time zones but was never able to trasnlate this fully to Admin Boutique. All of a sudden though, the world shifted and people no longer seemed to have the same needs as before. We took advantage of this which in the end saved our company. My first hire was in Guatemala where I live part of every year and when I met my business partner with connections in the Philippines we quickly expanded there as well. Now we work with people from a variety of countries and as long as the work is of high quality then the clients don’t even seem to notice anymore!
There are two major perks to this massive pivot. The first was that our quality of work increased dramatically because we were able to hire people at top dollar in these other countries meaning they had more experience and overall were better at meeting deadlines and managing projects. The second which I have already mentioned is that it saved our business because our margins nearly doubled with just this one decision. We lost nearly half of our clients and were able to make up for it before regaining them. This gave us time to strategize on what we wanted our business to look like and who we wanted our clients to be. We actually wanted a completely new type of client and have been able to achieve that with a better workforce and more time to gain them becuase of our greatly improved margins.
Any advice for managing a team?
In any of my businesses I have the same philosophy about people. I see people as inherently valuable, I am no more valuable as a person than whoever is “taking out the trash” so to speak. I treat everyone with an equal amount of respect and tend to ask questions above making statements. I bring my team members into the decision making process for clients and the company and allow others the opportunity to contribute in ways outside of their job description. Not only does this grow a better organization with new ideas bringing with it opportunities for growth or high client satisfaction, but it also ensures that people feel good about their work. I have been known to fire clients for mistreating employees even if this means a massive loss of revenue for the company. That is because without my team, we wouldn’t be the business we are. I rely on my team members to meet deadlines and give projects their all, and I believe that if I am not treating them well, they won’t treat the company well either. When a business struggles with quality of work it can always be boiled down to how the team is treated. I don’t pay the most in the industry, but I pay fairly and reward for good work, and more importantly I treat people as I would like others to treat me. Caring about your team will in and of itself, maintain high morale. We celebrate together and overcome loss together, and if nothing else, it makes what I do worth my time and energy.
Contact Info:
- Website: adminboutique.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adminboutique/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AdminBoutiqueLLC/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/admin-boutique-llc/?viewAsMember=true
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/admin-boutique-austin-austin