The Success Behind Virtual Teams And Outsourcers with Felmarie Pastrano

Felmarie Pastrano Podcast Transcription

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Win The Hour Win The Day. And I am your host, Kris Ward, and I am super excited. We have a very special guest here today. I know I say all my guests are special, but they are. They are. I only bring you the best and today is gonna be even more interesting because, oh my gosh, can’t wait to dive in.

[00:00:17] Okay, so today we have Fel Pastrano. I wanna make sure I say that correctly. Fel, I can’t wait to chat with you. Fel, I hired for one of my clients in the Winners Circle, Kim and Fel and I were talking, she brought up some really fantastic points that I thought would be really meaty conversation and really give you guys additional behind the scenes of how this role plays out, having an outsourcer, a VA and again, I use the word outsourcer.

[00:00:46] It’s really important that I use that because that’s a key word when you’re doing Google search, all this stuff. But when you’re working with us, that’s the least of what they are. They are part of a Win Team, and they are the backbone to your success. So to me, outsourcer really undermines everything that they do.

[00:01:02] But for you guys, new to this, we’ll refer to it as an outsourcer. All right. Welcome to the show, Fel.

[00:01:09] Felmarie Pastrano: Hello, Kris. It’s so nice to be here. It’s most, it’s so nice to talk to you again.

[00:01:14] Kris Ward: I can’t wait to dive into this. Okay, so why have you here is because I take great pride in what I do with my clients, and what I do is I help them have less input and create more output.

[00:01:27] So it’s about them stopping from working so hard. Most of my clients look good on paper, but they’ve been working too many hours for where they are at this point in their entrepreneurial journey. And so then I help them set up some really basic systems and processes.

[00:01:41] Doesn’t sound sexy, but it’s really fun with the Super Toolkits. And one of the things I do is I find and help them train and onboard talent like yourself. So I matched you with Kim. So let’s start talking about what it’s like working with Kim. As I told you in the interview process, I said, I think you’re gonna find this experience very different.

[00:02:04] You are being brought in, not because we want somebody that’s gonna sit over there in the corner and do admin work and just put your head down and get it done. We’re looking for personalities. We’re looking for thinkers. Look working, looking for people with ideas. So I did sell that to you when we hired you or when we Kim hired you.

[00:02:21] We, we introduced you to Kim and she hires you. So tell me. What was your experience like previously? What did you notice a difference with Kim? Was I speaking the truth? Tell me what that felt like and what’s been going on there?

[00:02:34] Felmarie Pastrano: When I first met Kim, like I thought she’s a bit shy because the one conversing was only you and me, and then she talks very less.

[00:02:44] But when we met, like after a week without you like I thought that, oh my gosh, this woman is very amazing. Like she is a designer. She is so smart and as I was working with her for eight long months, I have seen how good she is at her job, but she does not make me feel that she is better than me. Like she treats me and Michael and Krista so good.

[00:03:14] Kris Ward: Yeah. And so what happens was you went through a 12 point hiring process, and then I introduce you to Kim at the end, and usually they go with what I say, but really she doesn’t. They’re just there to lay eyeballs on you and to give the final authority. So there’s not a lot of talking there.

[00:03:29] That’s more my game, and then I hand you over to her. But you bring up a really good point because we are all about what we call a Win Team. A what is next team, so the team can get you to what is next, and I firmly, passionately believe in that the problem with most businesses in the world is they are parent parentified.

[00:03:49] So it’s almost like your boss is your parent and you’re like a child or a student and they check on your work and it just doesn’t work. Where I believe if you do this well, I know on my team, I’m not, I’m the least brightest in the room. I think I’m pretty good. I think I’m pretty smart, but they are all smarter than me, and that’s what we want for all our clients.

[00:04:10] So you’re right, the whole philosophy is not for you to feel less than, is she? When she’s doing her job well, she’s gonna empower you and you’re gonna feel equal and like you have an equal voice, and equal contribution.

[00:04:23] Felmarie Pastrano: Yep. Yeah, makes sense. Like she’s very appreciative of the things that I do, and she makes me feel that I make things easy for her

[00:04:32] Kris Ward: Yeah. And so when we were talking earlier, you said you, the job is very different than what you thought because you thought you would be doing the typical VA stuff, just, tell me a little bit about that.

[00:04:44] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah, exactly. When you hired me as a general virtual assistant, my thinking was, Oh, I’m just gonna be updating job lists.

[00:04:53] I’m just gonna be sending emails. I’m just gonna be encoding in the spreadsheet. But then Kim Russo, I dunno if she knows this, but she taught me a lot of things. Like I learned things I never thought that I would learn. Like CRMs, Honeybooks, ClickUp, SlowDesk. And even date year and in the long run, after months after, I even think that I am a social media manager because I run her Facebook group and I organize contents to be posted in her Pinterest, which is, yeah, I have learned a lot. That was a lot.

[00:05:33] Kris Ward: Yeah. And because what happens is, I don’t know if people would find this offensive. The term I have in my mind, so forgive me if it’s not, a polite one. It’s almost like a task monkey. So what happens, you’ve got this little monkey over there keen in the keyboard. Yeah. I’ll just do repetitive work, like i’ll, and it’s all not thinking work, it’s just typing in information.

[00:05:52] And that’s not what we’re looking for, as I said to you in the interview. And Kim is gonna train you on things, which by the way, doesn’t take much time because she’s got these super toolkits that we’ve taught her how to use, so it’s not like she took months and months to train you.

[00:06:05] It’s going to be easy for her to put those things in play and then those things are off her desk, and so you become, you have more and more independence. You become more and more helpful to her. She gets more and more freedom to do the creative work that really is what grows a business and scales a business, right?

[00:06:22] So yeah, we’re not into just that repetitive, go over here and move numbers from column A to B. That’s not what any of us are about at all. That doesn’t help anyone. That makes sense, right?

[00:06:34] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah, exactly. Like working with her is really very organized. Yep. I had clients before. They were really good to me. But then my experience with Kim right now is it’s very organized, like yeah. Like it’s there yeah, very organized.

[00:06:51] Kris Ward: And so let us not confuse the word organized, because often I tell people, I know for me for years, I’m a pretty organized person, but what would happen is when I would get behind in my work, I would just reorganize things, right?

[00:07:03] And really, that’s like having a screwdriver and a screw and you just keep twisting it. So you start to scr strip the screw and you’re not really making any impact. So it’s not that Kim is organized, it’s that she’s really leaning into those super toolkits. So what happens is the systems and processes are there.

[00:07:20] You can follow them, you can work independently. If anything, you think, oh, we can do this better. Then you just add, cuz we always talk about this, we talk about cueing our Super Toolkits and cueing stands, C.U.E – create, use and edit. So if you see something that there’s a step missing, then you just added to the Super Toolkit. Am I correct? Yeah, exactly.

[00:07:40] Felmarie Pastrano: We even use that. We have that saved all in our Click Up, like all the Super Toolkits.

[00:07:45] Kris Ward: Yeah, it’s fantastic. Okay. So you also talked too, that you guys have scrums. We’re very big about scrum meetings. So scrums are short, powerful meetings that allow us to collaborate. Again, they’re not meetings so that you can supervise somebody’s work. So you found the scrums helpful as well.

[00:08:05] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah, I mentioned that in our monthly training that I really found Scrum very helpful because initially I really do not know what Scrum is like you were the one who introduced Scrum to us. Like initially when I heard that, Hey, you’re gonna be having Scrum meetings every day, I thought, oh my God, I’m gonna be meeting with my clients every single day.

[00:08:27] Why not just send me an email? Why not just send me message? But then in the long run, I really found Scrum very helpful because I never had that before, right? And one thing I developed while having Scrum is that it’s not just only my bond with Kim, our bond with Kim, we also had to have our things organized in a regular basis.

[00:08:51] Like in that specific day. I already know what the task I am going to do because we meet during Scrum, which is just a very short meeting oh yeah.

[00:09:00] Kris Ward: Yeah. Fantastic. And I think you bring up a really good point is you’re so used to just getting emails, do this, do that. Do this. And then you don’t get a better, any deeper understanding in that relationship of what that person is looking for, because they’re just sending you these sort of cold emails.

[00:09:17] But when you’re meeting with someone every day, even just for 15 minutes, it really gives you a depth and appreciation, a stronger relationship because…

[00:09:26] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah, exactly.

[00:09:27] Kris Ward: your face just lights up when you talk about your work. And that’s such a powerful thing is people say to me I had an outsourcer and it didn’t work.

[00:09:35] And I’m like cuz you weren’t set up for it. Like all the people that work with me or any of my clients, they’re so happy and they’re so invested and they wanna stay there and they love. They love the creativity and the independence in their job, and they love using their brain and coming up with ideas, and they love being appreciated.

[00:09:56] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah.

[00:09:57] Kris Ward: Yeah. Okay, so that’s a big deal. So the scrums were different for you as well? As the super toolkits. Now you brought up something that I thought was so refreshingly honest and powerful. The team was, the work was growing and so therefore the team needed to grow, so Kim needed additional help.

[00:10:17] Tell me what it was like when you thought somebody else was coming on the team?

[00:10:21] Felmarie Pastrano: Okay, so our team is growing. So initially we are only four. I’m the only Filipino VA there. But then Krista my very good friend, came into the picture. Now she’s a graphic designer. And what..

[00:10:37] Kris Ward: Okay, hold on, let me interrupt. She’s your very good friend now, but you didn’t know her from before.

[00:10:41] Felmarie Pastrano: Yep. Yeah.

[00:10:42] Kris Ward: Ok. Ok.

[00:10:42] Felmarie Pastrano: So she is now my very good friend, but before she got hired, I really did not know her. And the first thing I thought, Oh my gosh, I think I’m gonna lose my job cuz she is so good. But then along the way, while we work together, we meet like in our scrums together.

[00:11:01] Like she is, she’s so good. And that’s when I realize you are so great at choosing people like you’re so good at pairing a VA to a client and VA to VA. Yeah, it was amazing.

[00:11:18] Kris Ward: Thank you for that compliment. You know what, I do think it is one of my superpowers. I do have the ability to get the right personality with the right person, but I also do have a 12 step formula, and part of that formula is we do always hire personality over skillset.

[00:11:32] It’s called PASS – personality, action, strength and successes as part of our foundational formula for hiring. So I do have a very detailed process and but what you brought up is so honest is the fact that when somebody new comes on, you think, oh no, then I’m not doing my job right.

[00:11:49] If we’re bringing somebody no, that’s not the case. We’re going to bring somebody in to help you do your job even better, because here’s a thing, Fel and maybe you’ve had this in other jobs. So often somebody will bring on a VA and say, oh, okay, she’s really good at whatever. Let’s say she’s really good at, I don’t know, posting on Instagram, which is not a VA job, but anyhow, we’ll just give an example.

[00:12:11] And then the person, the team leader, my client, or myself, then you start giving them more more responsibility and all of a sudden, you’re giving them responsibility in a bunch of different areas. Now I’m all about having a small team. I’ve been doing this a very long time, and I have a team of four.

[00:12:28] Kim has an agency, a branding agency. So she did have three people before she started outsourcing. But traditionally, often I’ll start with people that have no team or one person or whatever, so anyhow, here you go. And you go to hire somebody and then it’s really easy to think, oh no they’re gonna replace me or I’m gonna be threatened by this and all this other stuff.

[00:12:49] But the reality is what we want is you to stay in your lane. We don’t want to dilute your capabilities, so maybe you’re good at A, B, C, but what happens is somebody goes, the fellow’s really good at this, and this. So then let’s get her to do that and that. And then six months, eight months down the road, they’re like, she started off really strong, but now she’s not really good.

[00:13:12] Cuz you got her going in too many different directions. It’s if you hire somebody to be a chef, maybe they specialize in barbecue. Now you have them making Chinese food, or maybe they’re a, they are a chef, but they’re not a baker. And now you’re like, oh, can you be the baker and this and that and whatever.

[00:13:28] And that’s okay. A little bit of it in the beginning. But what happens is so often people get diluted and they’re all over the place. So with you fell, we didn’t want you to get diluted. We wanted you to stay in your zone of genius. So Kim needed more support and she hired somebody else. Which allows you to stay where you are excellent at and have somebody else to work with.

[00:13:51] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah.

[00:13:52] Kris Ward: Makes sense?

[00:13:53] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah.

[00:13:53] Kris Ward: So now you’re no longer afraid of losing your job, correct?

[00:13:57] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah.

[00:13:58] Kris Ward: Okay. Give us the inside scoop. Tell us some more things that you’ve noticed that are different about the way that I help my clients run their business from, growing now you’re getting closer to a year with Kim from your previous experiences. Give, give us more.

[00:14:15] Felmarie Pastrano: So far like having you to bridge my connection with Kim makes it somehow easier because before I need to apply for a job with a lot of people, and I got camped multiple times. But then with you bridging my connection with Kim and having you to somehow guide

[00:14:38] Kris Ward: Oh yeah.

[00:14:39] Felmarie Pastrano: Your processes yeah it was really a great help because I don’t. It’s gonna be so organized without the things you taught us during our monthly meetings.

[00:14:53] Kris Ward: Okay, hold, let me jump in here. You bring up a couple really good points. I wanna unpack them. So I think what you’re saying is you are interviewed by me a couple times, but then once we get to that point, what I’m then supporting you and saying, okay, we’re gonna meet Kim.

[00:15:04] This is what it’s gonna look like. This is how I train them to run their VAs. You’re not gonna do overnight. So I then switched gears and support you. So then you’re not in a position of I can’t ask that question cause, cuz even sometimes people don’t tell you when you get paid.

[00:15:18] You’re like, I don’t wanna look like a, just about the money, but we all need money. Yeah. So then I tell you, okay, this is how they’ll pay you. This is how they’ll do this. So then you’re right. I switched from a process interviewer. Then I switch really to your support so you can ask me questions that maybe you wouldn’t wanna ask the person who is or is not hiring you?

[00:15:38] I never thought of that. Okay. So that’s helpful. And then we give you access to the learning center. So before you start with Kim, you know when you’re getting paid, how to track your hours, all those questions that sometimes are awkward to bring up, right?

[00:15:52] Felmarie Pastrano: Yep. Like all the questions I have in my mind, I don’t need to ask you or Kim anymore because it’s already there. It’s already laid down there like everything.

[00:16:03] Kris Ward: And then we started the WIN Team monthly meetings. So once a month, now I meet with all the VAs I’ve hired for my clients and give them additional training. So why don’t you talk about that? What I think the training was different than you thought it was gonna be. Didn’t, wasn’t it?

[00:16:20] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah, like I did not even thought that there’s other Filipino VAs. Like I thought it’s just gonna be me or it’s just gonna be Krista only the three of us. But then, oh, we, there’s a lot of other VAs. And from that perspective, I have seen that this people are really good from the like Yeah. How they talk. Yeah. Like they’re really very professional. And plus the things that you’re teaching us, you’re like feeding us with things which is gonna be helping us and yeah our job as VAs.

[00:16:54] Kris Ward: You bring in some other really good points and I’m sure people can tell by listening to you is your articulate, your smart, your English is excellent. Cause lots of times people will say what about the language barrier? And I’m like, we don’t hire people with language barriers. That’s not the issue.

[00:17:07] That’s not, that’s just not a problem. You’re dealing with really quality characters that are really going to add to your business. And I think the other thing what you’re talking about is, I am, when you showed up for their WIN team training once a month, I’m sure you thought it would be like technical stuff.

[00:17:23] Here’s how you load YouTube, here’s how you do this. But a lot of it is leadership stuff, so I’m teaching you sure how to show up to a meeting, how to get your voice heard, how to be more confident, how to manage somebody you work with, how you know how to present ideas that you’re not sure about, right?

[00:17:42] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah. In addition to that, you know what? You also helped me boost my confidence because before I thought that maybe listening to my client will be just, it’s good because I’m listening, but then you really pushed us, your VAs said, Hey, you need to speak. You need to speak. You need to be heard because you’re a team. A team cannot function without one. Yeah, you boosted our confidence.

[00:18:07] Kris Ward: Yeah. You’re not a team by yourself. You know what, that is so good. It’s, this is so much fun for me because I put these things out and I had these ideas. But of course, until people like you tell me how they’re received, it just warms my heart because, A – I think business should be fun. And the people you work with sha fun.

[00:18:23] Felmarie Pastrano: Exactly.

[00:18:24] Kris Ward: And we should all love our jobs.

[00:18:25] Felmarie Pastrano: Exactly.

[00:18:26] Kris Ward: And I, what I, another thing I often say to people, in bigger companies, let’s say you’re in an ocean liner and you’re in a big cruise boat and there’s 500 people there, and something happens. Something happens, you hit a iceberg.

[00:18:40] Sounds like the Titanic, but you hit something and there’s a problem with the boat. You find the people hopefully, that look like they are good problem solvers, that they can help get this situation and maybe out of 500 people, maybe there’s gonna be 50 or a hundred people that are, are the go-to people that are gonna get you out of this pickle.

[00:19:00] But when you’re in a canoe with two or three people, you better have amazing talent. So if there’s a hole or a problem in that canoe boat, you need all three people to really be good at what they do. And so this is what I talk to my clients in the Winners Circle is we want your team. It doesn’t matter if it’s one person and you, we want it to be spectacular because you have less resources.

[00:19:24] You’re in this little canoe boat and you wanna make sure that everybody has a lot to contribute and that’s why, we put you through that process of all those tests and stuff that you probably didn’t even know you were being tested, but there was a lot of little mini micro tests that I gave you during the process.

[00:19:40] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah. I did not even notice that. What? That’s 12 steps already? Like I thought it’s only around three or four. Yeah. But then what? That’s 12.

[00:19:50] Kris Ward: There’s little things I do Like when I, when we first met and I was like, oh, she’s got, okay, I like, so I say to you, this is a quick interview to see if you make it to the main interview.

[00:20:00] Can you tell me why you think you’d be a good fit for this job? And then when you started giving me answers of substance and quality, and I thought, okay, great. I wanna interview her. One of the first things I do then is I give you an email and I say, this email is different than the one you have. Please follow up with me.

[00:20:17] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah.

[00:20:17] Kris Ward: And let me know, whatever. And you would be surprised, Fel, how many people just automatically send it to the old email? I have told you. So it’s not even like you can say, oh, you put it in the email and the email populates the old email address for you. So I told you it’s a different email address.

[00:20:32] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:32] Kris Ward: So I’m, I am testing to see if you’re listening and because that’s what I’m hiring you for, I’m hiring you for somebody that has a good eye for detail that can hear things. Or you know what? Here’s my other pet peeve. You don’t know how many times this happens to me. I will say to you, if you notice, I say your name twice.

[00:20:50] I say hi because it says it right there on Zoom, right? So I go, Hey Fel, it’s great to meet you. Fel, this is a quick interview to see if you make it to the main interview. Fel, can you tell me why you think you’d be a good fit for this job? So I say at least. Sometimes three times, and then sometimes these poor people that have been given scripts or just don’t know any better, they’ll say, okay, no problem.

[00:21:12] First I wanna introduce myself. My name is Fel and I really think I’d be a good fit for this job. And I’m like, you’re, you know what? You’re done. You didn’t listen to me. If you can’t listen to me, then what if I give you real instructions that really do have complicated steps that are not just your freaking name? You know what I mean? Come on.

[00:21:30] Felmarie Pastrano: No greetings.

[00:21:31] Kris Ward: Like what? If you can’t even hear your name, what? What are you gonna do when we’re really up against the wall running this small business, trying to make decisions. So I do all kinds of little things like that, that are very minute, but they do tell me a lot about the person.

[00:21:45] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah.

[00:21:46] Kris Ward: So yes, you did go through 12 steps. Okay. So we’ve got a few minutes left. Tell me, oh my gosh. So you have no ambition to leave Kim’s job. You’re staying there for quite some time, that’s for sure.

[00:21:56] Felmarie Pastrano: Hopefully, yeah, I’m very happy, like I’m at the happiest point of my life because the team is like a family.

[00:22:03] Like we even talk things about not Inside the work. Yeah. I’m just so happy. So I hope I stay there for a very long time.

[00:22:12] Kris Ward: I’m sure you will. She’s quite happy with you. But yes, that is the goal. Business should be fun people, there is no reason I absolutely adore my team. They are fantastic. And whenever I’ve had to, like I had one client.

[00:22:30] And something that she was, her VA went off on mat leave and she was a little bit older, so she was considered a high risk pregnancy. So her husband didn’t want her to work anymore, blah, blah, blah. So we had to replace her Va, and she was all like, oh my gosh, Kris, she was so great. What are we gonna do?

[00:22:45] And I’m like, it’s a process. These are individual people and they’re all amazing, but we didn’t just get lucky with that one person. We have a process and you will be just as happy with the next person. If not happier. And she loved the new person we got. So it’s not, sometimes people will see, talk to somebody on my team and they’ll be like, can you share her?

[00:23:07] Do you give her enough hours? No, that’s not it. It’s a process. We can get you somebody. You don’t need this person. This isn’t like we, you got lucky. If Kim feels lucky, but we have a process set up so that we can constantly deliver this quality of talent like yourself.

[00:23:27] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah.

[00:23:28] Kris Ward: She’s nodding cuz she’s not very good at you you dunno what to do when I compliment you. You have to know too Fel, the first day I interviewed you that day, there I, what I do also is, here’s a little ninja trick. As in the invite you got, I let you know that you could be waiting up to 20 minutes because what I do is I do batch interviews.

[00:23:47] So I’ve got that day I had 30 people in the Zoom meeting, and I just let them in one person at a time, and I give you a super quick one or two minute interview to let you know if you go to the next stage. And here’s the thing, I’m all about being kind. So the people that are not going to hear from me, I say, listen.

[00:24:05] If you hear from us in the next 24 hours, you’ll know you made it to the main interview. Cause I don’t want anybody waiting. I think that’s mean. Are they waiting a week or two weeks or is she busy? Did I get that job? I think that’s sad and mean. So I always tell everybody, if you hear from me in the next 24 hours, you’ll know you made it to the main interview.

[00:24:22] So that’s it. 24 hours they’re off the hook emotionally fine. But that day that I interviewed you, I interviewed 30 people. And you were it, you moved on like you made it out of 30 people. So you need to own the fact that you presented so well. You were articulate, you were professional, you showed up, ready to be interviewed, you were confident, you had personality, and that’s what got you to the next stage in the stages after that. So own it my friend.

[00:24:51] Felmarie Pastrano: Thank you so much, Kris. Thank you for the compliment.

[00:24:55] Kris Ward: Okay. Fel, you have been an absolute treat. Thank you for the inside scoop. We found your honesty be to be refreshingly honest and just, I’m so glad we did this cuz you and I were just chatting one day and I was like, you bring up some really good points. I think we should have you on the show. You looked a bit surprised.

[00:25:12] Felmarie Pastrano: Exactly. I was like, what? They’re just talking here and then you’re inviting me to the podcast.

[00:25:18] Kris Ward: Yeah. So you had this job that you thought you’d be over in the corner quietly getting emails occasionally from your employer, no real relationship. And now here you are, being heard around the world, talking about your job experience. So we, I can’t wait to see where you go in the next year.

[00:25:35] Felmarie Pastrano: Yeah. And hopefully I’m still with Kim.

[00:25:38] Kris Ward: Oh, you will be. Come on. Stop Hop. Have confidence. You own this. All right.

[00:25:42] Felmarie Pastrano: Okay. Oh, I know that I’m still gonna be with Kim.

[00:25:46] Kris Ward: Yes. Yes, you will, okay. Everyone share this show with one business buddy. It’ll make such a difference for them because they’re just banging it out by themselves, isolated, working so hard. No one person knows how hard they’re working. Share it with one business buddy and make a difference. All right.

[00:26:01] Friends, don’t let friends grind it out, and until then, we will see you in the next episode. Thanks so much.