Episode 148 Transcript
Heather Porter (00:03.689)
Lou, welcome to the show. I'm really happy that you're here and really looking forward to our chat. How are things going from your end?
Lou (00:12.505)
thank you so much. Thanks for having us, Heather. Yeah, not too bad. It's getting a bit crazy now, the pointing end of the year. it's all systems go here. Yeah. Yep. Very hectic.
Heather Porter (00:20.065)
It is hectic.
I think for everyone that I'm talking to, they're like, I just gotta hang in there for a few more weeks.
Lou (00:28.404)
Yeah, few more weeks please. No more work for a few, I've got enough. Yeah, no, it's fine. It's one of those crazy times. Yep.
Heather Porter (00:34.429)
Exactly. It is. So I always start our show.
by jumping straight into some tactical, tangible tips. And as we get to dive into you and your business and everything, it'll become very evident that you really help people with having more balance in their business. So I love our chat that's to come, but for now, what are three tips that you can provide on how to grow a business or get through those moments of overwhelm when you're growing your
your business? Like what are three things you can actually do?
Lou (01:14.114)
wow, three things. One of the hardest lessons I probably learnt and I still don't do it very well is looking after yourself. A lot of people will say that and I say that as the top one because if you don't look after yourself everything else falls away and everything else has the tendency to fall apart. And also your body has a way of telling you that's enough, you're pushing too hard and things like that because
As a newcomer to business, we want to do all the things we don't want to outsource. We want to make sure that everything's cost effective. So we tend to take on all of things, look after the clients plus try and grow our business. So the biggest probably thing that I can say is just make sure that you are kind to yourself, that you look after yourself, that you don't expect too much of yourself as well. Because I know as someone, a confessed people pleaser,
We take on a lot and we just wanna help everyone and support everyone, but at the same time, we don't help or support ourselves. One of the other things that I know that some, this is a very hard question for some business owners about outsourcing and investing in people and things like that. But one of the things that I have been so fortunate to have is a good team around me.
and to build that team around me. So to actually invest in people that see your vision, want to grow with you, want to come alongside you with your vision and things like that. So getting a good team and you need to choose them wisely. I had even a situation yesterday that threw me for six with a potential new team member. you just have to really, and trust your gut is probably one of the things that I would say if you are considering investing in a team.
Heather Porter (02:35.521)
Yeah.
Lou (03:05.25)
And the other thing that I would probably say as a top three is to remember your big picture, remember your why. There'll be days where you go, what the hell am I doing? This is too hard. I can't continue to grind. I can't continue to push. But if you have your vision and your bigger picture in mind and your why and your reason why you're doing what you're doing and your passion behind that. yeah, and taking stock from
Heather Porter (03:05.326)
Yeah.
Lou (03:34.188)
kind of where you've come from. Part of our thing that we do as a strategy is, you know, enter into awards or at the end of every year, we like to do a bit of a presentation to the team to say, you know, this is what we've done for the whole year. And last year there was, you know, thousands of emails sent to clients and it was just a really great exercise to put everything together to actually show yourself what you've achieved over the year, because you just kind of do the work and forget
set and forget type of thing, know, yeah. And I know with us, we do a mammoth amount of work for clients every week. And it just become, you get a bit complacent with how much you actually are contributing to their business. So to have that reminder and just to take stock and see that big picture and that, that those achievements is actually something that can help in those challenging times and the, and the challenging days. So they would probably be my top three. Yeah.
Heather Porter (04:10.181)
you
Heather Porter (04:17.199)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (04:30.98)
I really like that. I want to ask you one question on one of them. That's about your team. You said you have a team that you really rely on and a great team. How do you share your vision to them?
Lou (04:34.848)
Yeah.
Lou (04:44.61)
great question. I simply say, I'm very transparent in what I say and what I do. I fell into owning a business and becoming a business owner. I never really aspired to do that. I've heard people say no one ever really wants to be a business owner and they fall into it as well. But, but I truly did. I had no aspiration of doing it.
Heather Porter (05:00.742)
Yeah.
Lou (05:13.362)
bit of a backstory, my husband and I both left our jobs for him, well he left his job to pursue his business and then I kind of went on the curtail of his ABN and we both had business, separate businesses at the time, we both left our jobs and burnt the ships so they say and it was such a crazy time we think back to that but I think letting them know that
Heather Porter (05:22.075)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (05:30.779)
Wow.
Lou (05:38.016)
you know, the risks stops with me, everything stops with me and bringing them on the vision of trying to help people and what we do actually makes a difference. Making sure that they get constant feedback like the client might give me feedback, but making sure that I tell them and transfer that to them to say, hey, what you did, they were really impressed with. And just we were fortunate enough to win one of the customer service awards because ultimately,
Heather Porter (05:56.657)
Yeah.
Lou (06:08.15)
That's what we stand for. We stand for great customer service. Everything else, anyone else can do everything else that we do. But I think what's different with us is our customer service because that is number one for us. So teaching that to the team has been relatively easy because they're very passionate people as well. And they're pretty much handpicked by me and by my husband who's also involved in the business and
Heather Porter (06:21.33)
Yeah.
Lou (06:35.126)
Just making sure that they're a right fit, supporting them, getting to actually know them too and giving back to them has helped build that loyalty and build that trust. And, you know, we do regular check-ins, we do regular performance reviews, not in the traditional sense, but just, you know, every three months we will check in and say, how are you going? What can we do better? What can I do better? Basically,
Heather Porter (06:42.458)
Yeah.
Lou (07:03.678)
as the forerunner of the business, what do you need, what are your goals? And getting them to know them personally is one of the things that I do try and do. And I feel that that then contributes to their ownership in the business. They get that buy-in, they go, know, yep, this is something I want to be a part of. And we know that it's not for everyone. Working virtually and remotely is not for everyone. Everyone loves to work from home.
Heather Porter (07:28.351)
Yeah.
Lou (07:30.678)
But it has its challenges and it can be quite different for people and some people suit it and some people don't. And that's perfectly okay as well. So, yeah. Yeah.
Heather Porter (07:36.682)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (07:42.763)
Got it. Thank you for explaining further on that because I had a sense that your team was really important to you and that was really helpful for you to expand on how you work with them. So you touched briefly on the fact that you fell into business. So I'd like to hear a little bit about your journey. What was happening in the past and how have you come to where you are today?
Lou (07:48.948)
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, thank you.
Lou (07:57.836)
Yeah.
Lou (08:07.33)
So I was working in government in the New South Wales government space before I became a business owner. And with the changes of government, changes of power, we found ourselves into a different form of leadership. And the leadership for me, my experience was quite toxic. So I made the...
big call after just being made permanent as well. worked casually for them for five years and they just appointed me to a permanent position and I was like, sorry guys, but I'm going with nothing to go to. had nothing to go to. But what happened was one of the directors that I used to work with, she contacted me and asked me if I'd heard of being a virtual assistant. And I said, I had never heard of anything like that. And when she told me, I was just like, man.
Heather Porter (08:40.413)
Wow.
Heather Porter (08:54.219)
you
Lou (08:59.668)
I just want in like, how do I get in? So that's when I kind of went to my husband and said, can you have two businesses on an ABN? Can I borrow your ABN potentially? So we kind of just started like that. And the great thing was she, she said, well, there's a method to my madness. want you to come and work for me for a few hours a week. I hadn't kind of started and I had a client and I thought, this is a bit interesting. And yeah, just, just worked, worked really hard to network.
Heather Porter (09:10.942)
Yep.
Lou (09:29.602)
and just tell people what I was doing. And that's kind of how I started. And we just grew from there. And one of the things that I've received fair bit of criticism over in the industry that I'm in, we made the important decision not to niche our services to clients early on. I found that myself, I hit capacity in six weeks and I had to make a decision of, is that it or do I bring people along?
Heather Porter (09:50.796)
Yep.
Lou (09:58.88)
side with me and the journey. So I made the decision I wanted to grow and what I loved about it and what I still love about it is I'm able to provide an opportunity for other families. So you know we work predominantly with mums that are at home waiting for their kids to go to school or you know sitting on such untapped resources and they want the flexibility which is what we can offer them.
So it was such a great opportunity and that really excited me and lit me up and I was like, how can I provide more of this to other mums and other families? And we also work with neurodivergent people as well. Two of our younger girls are neurodivergent and we love that we can provide them with a safe space where they're not client facing, but they are amazing technical geniuses. my goodness, they're 20 and 21. So, you know,
Heather Porter (10:27.181)
Yeah.
Lou (10:56.448)
they can just, they run rings around all of us. So that was really important to me as well, but not niching was probably a really crucial decision that we made because I didn't want to limit what I offered people and I didn't want to everything just based on my skill set because I don't, I'm a generalist. I don't have a specific set of skills. I know enough to get me into trouble on a lot of things, but I don't, I'm not a specialist by any means. So.
Heather Porter (10:56.994)
Wow.
Heather Porter (11:20.568)
Ha ha ha ha.
Lou (11:24.694)
That's where I can source specialists if I need them. And I just thought that that business model lent itself more to growth opportunity and opportunities for other people as well.
Heather Porter (11:36.122)
I like that concept of not niching. myself in our business am very much the same. I tend to say to people, I just want to work with people that are kind. That's my niche. But yeah, you know, so it's, it's, yeah, I think you can attract people based on values and it doesn't have to be like a demographic interest or behavior, you know, sort of thing. So I love that you said that. Thank you.
Lou (11:47.296)
Yes! Yeah! That's awesome! I love that! Yeah!
Lou (11:58.858)
Yeah, yeah same I love that you align with that because a lot of people don't a lot of people are like well your mistake is you haven't niched and you're like I didn't want to so yeah.
Heather Porter (12:11.257)
You have to kind of listen to your gut and just, yeah, see what you want as well too. So tell me about your business. So what do you guys, what's the name of your business and what do you guys actually do in your business?
Lou (12:14.038)
Yeah. Yep. Totally. Totally.
Lou (12:25.548)
So we are called the Administration Agency. that we went through a brand change about three years ago. I was originally when it was just me, performance PA, but we knew that we needed to rebrand and reflect what we do. We offer a lot of different services, but predominantly where we kind of land and play a lot in is in the social media space, digital marketing space, governance and
Heather Porter (12:37.391)
Yeah.
Lou (12:54.796)
Just coordination really, I probably wouldn't say administration, even though there is a lot of that element, it's more coordinating and just having that one person where you can kind of go to and say, Lou, I need this, can you make it happen? Rather than having to go to three or four different people that can deliver exactly what we can, but you only have to tell your story once. So you might have needs for social media, you might have
business that needs policies, you might need some calling or you might need a document presented. Instead of having to go to four different people for that, you can come to us and just say, I need this suite of services. Can you provide it all? And I find that business owners really love that they can kind of see us as a bit of a hub and a bit of a package deal, if you will. So, yeah, so they do that.
Heather Porter (13:34.83)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (13:39.395)
Nice.
Lou (13:51.97)
quite often we start with someone and they find out that we can do a whole different range of services and they're like, this is amazing. Can we increase the scope with you and things like that, that happens all the time. And the tricky part of that is managing that for them. the other thing, they're probably our common go-tos, but we do a lot of different things as well. Like we might do graphics, we do websites, we do a lot of different stuff. So yeah.
Heather Porter (14:05.209)
really nice.
Lou (14:21.878)
There's a lot. A lot.
Heather Porter (14:22.044)
Amazing. So good. Is your team all onshore in Australia or do you have a combo of offshore as well?
Lou (14:28.404)
Yes, they are. No, when I be very honest, I tried when I first started, obviously, everyone with the cost effectiveness and I do not begrudge anyone that needs to, you know, do what they need to do as long as they're, you know, getting the support that they need. It just didn't work for us. The quality and the communication wasn't there for us. And that's one thing that we are very strong on the customer service, the quality control and the deliverables. So
And I wanted to support Australians. I wanted to support Australian mums and Australian families. the price, a lot different, a lot. We can't offer what they do for, you know, five, $10 an hour. But the quality is in what we do, which is why we charge what we can. Yeah.
Heather Porter (15:15.343)
I love hearing that from you. Back, you know, eight years ago, I closed down an agency where 90 % of our staff was offshored. And I just didn't like it. So many people, it's perfect for them as a business model, but it just wasn't for me. And now with what I do, I'm exactly like you. So it's really refreshing speaking to somebody like yourself where quality is really important. Communications, culture, all of that's really
Lou (15:28.193)
Yeah.
Yep. Same.
Mm. Yeah.
Lou (15:40.364)
Yep. Yeah. Yep. Definitely. Yep. Yeah.
Heather Porter (15:45.08)
important. So you mentioned going through rebrand as well, which I want to touch on quickly because as businesses grow and change, as you know, there's a moment for maybe where you're like, Ooh, I'm outgrowing ourselves and I might need to rebrand. What's your take on rebranding? Like, was it good? Was it hard? What if you were to do it again? What would you do differently?
Lou (15:58.86)
Yeah.
Lou (16:07.454)
it actually was really quite good. I find and I started originally in 2019 just before COVID. So if I've learned anything, if it's easy, it's good. Like if it comes really naturally and if it flows really easily, for me, I feel like I'm in the right space and I'm meant to be doing what I'm pursuing. And that's
was one that was really easy. I've heard so many horror stories about rebranding and things like that. And you know, how, how the transition to the new brand, how it was received and how it was delivered. But ours went really well. And that's where I knew that, okay, I was meant to do that. And it was the time to do that. So, but you know, to say that there wasn't a lot of tears or bloodshed almost is probably not, not
Heather Porter (17:01.12)
haha
Lou (17:03.668)
I wouldn't be honest if I was saying that it wasn't challenging because you have to change everything, right? So we had to change all of our documentation, all of our website, all of our Facebook, all everything had to be changed. But like everything, if you I'm a real to do person, I love my lists, I love my planning checklists. If I have one of those and I can chunk it down into bite sized things where I can just chip away at it for a certain time.
Heather Porter (17:09.533)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (17:25.629)
You
Lou (17:33.566)
that was really helpful. And I think one of the most important things that I've seen with rebranding is I gave myself a due date. So as long as I had a deadline to meet, I felt like I was in control and it didn't kind of get away from me as much as a rebrand can. So if you strategically kind of plot it out and just slowly just keep ticking away at your to-do list rather than looking at the whole thing as a whole.
Heather Porter (17:50.153)
Yeah.
Lou (18:02.804)
I find that that really helped us when we did that.
Heather Porter (18:06.441)
Nice. It sounds like it was a really brilliant success story of rebranding and provides hope for people that want to do it as well. So it's good.
Lou (18:10.592)
Yeah, it was. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's good.
Heather Porter (18:18.165)
Now I want to know more specifically, you mentioned and you touched on the services that you guys do, but could you think of like a case study or someone specifically that you worked with and paint the picture, the before and the after, when they came to you, what was their business like and then what did you do and what was the result of working with you?
Lou (18:26.647)
Yeah.
Lou (18:32.086)
Sure.
Lou (18:36.212)
Yeah, sure. So we've been working with Christian radio stations in New South Wales for the last four years. We work with five radio stations and they're community radio stations. So they're run by volunteers. They don't have a lot of support. They don't have a lot of funding in their listener funded stations. So they came to us predominantly for sponsorship. So to try and approach businesses to advertise.
Heather Porter (18:48.96)
Yeah.
Lou (19:05.824)
as a sponsor on the radio station so that they could get money and things like that and build their capacity. A lot of their systems were very archaic, very different in all of them, yeah, run very differently. I don't want to discredit what they were doing. They were getting some results, but what we did when we came in is unified and streamlined.
all of their processes, all of their digital media was updated, all of their assets were updated. We felt it important to implement things like regular communications, like newsletters and things like that. They were only doing them probably every three or six months, but we then implemented a monthly one. So part of the licensing is also being involved in the community. So we increased the community service announcements, which is where
they don't have to pay anything and communities can just let us know what events they have happening in the towns. know, Christmas is a great example of that with their carols and things like that. we're constantly providing added value to what we already offer for the listeners. So we did a lot of that. We revamped all of the websites to make sure that they had a consistent feel, a consistent front.
Heather Porter (20:23.402)
Nice.
Lou (20:34.134)
developed policies and stuff for them. the scope for them, sorry, I'll just backtrack through from sponsorship to digital media, to governance, to looking after the sponsors, to becoming an integral part of their fundraising. So we do a lot of different services for them and it's evolved over time. We've supported the CEO many different occasions from
Heather Porter (20:51.093)
Okay.
Lou (21:01.14)
sponsorship to license renewing to ACNC applications to grants all this type of stuff but one of the things that we're probably most proud of is that we were able to successfully raise over $130,000 for the five stations collectively which was yeah which before that they had a collective total of about 30 so and we implemented a lot of different practices with that and I won't say one thing
Heather Porter (21:19.602)
Lou (21:30.664)
absolutely stood out from that because I believe it's like a bit of a journey because we increased the communications because we told them a lot about what we do and why we listener funded and why we need to ask for donations and things like that. Educating the audience a little bit bought that growth and just communicating and as I said adding back to them so not asking all the time but also giving was a big component of why we were so successful.
Heather Porter (21:37.572)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (21:51.406)
Yeah.
Lou (22:00.61)
And just really taking the time to understand where they were at, what we could bring to the table and how we could help them improve in their services. So that's probably one of the biggest ones that we made a difference for. The other client that I would suggest is we actually ran an event space from that's based in Queensland in our little remote Dobbo area.
Heather Porter (22:26.616)
Yeah.
Lou (22:27.04)
And that was really lovely too. That was a lot of fun. We implemented a lot of different things for them, a whole new booking system, a way that they took all their inquiries and just really implemented a really robust process for them that improved their inquiries like twofold. They were able to communicate because they weren't getting to their inquiries either in a timely manner because they were just too busy.
And one of the guys said to me, I don't want to do the admin. I just want to cook the food. That's what he was passionate about. And that's what we find with a lot of business owners. They have that passion, but they don't want the admin that comes with it. They don't want to have to take care of that. They just want to do what they love. And in this case, it was him cooking. He was like, Lou, I don't want to do any of that stuff. I just want to cook amazing meals for everyone. So we took care of all of that stuff. And by the time he got to that client, all he needed to know was what they wanted served on the day.
and how many people there were and we took care of everything else for them. Yeah, it was fun.
Heather Porter (23:28.152)
You really, you guys really do everything. That's incredible. You just let the business owner shine. So yeah.
Lou (23:31.486)
Yeah, I know. I think that's the problem. Yeah, we try. We try really hard to do that. Sometimes, you know, it's not all roses. Sometimes we don't nail it. If I'm honest, sometimes we've really missed the mark, you know, and not by fault of anyone's really, as you would know, being a business owner, sometimes it just doesn't fit. Sometimes, you know, the resources aren't right. Sometimes it's not the best experience.
Heather Porter (23:46.801)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (23:54.278)
Yeah.
Lou (23:59.818)
And I'm sure that we haven't nailed it 100 % of the time. But the thing that I'm very proud of is that we always try our very, best. And we always have great intentions and integrity about what we do. So as long as we're adhering to those kind of values, we're happy at the end of the day.
Heather Porter (24:15.111)
Thank you.
Thank you so much for your honesty as well. I would be concerned if I actually really heard from somebody in business and they said, yeah, a hundred percent of our projects are fantastic. just we're human beings. Yeah.
Lou (24:21.312)
Yeah
Lou (24:29.759)
No, not at all, not at all. And sometimes, exactly. And sometimes, you know, you have to push it. I'm dealing with a situation now where the last three months have been tough, you know, but I'm still pushing through. And I think that's the thing. And, and, you know, we've had situations where we've had to call it and say, look, it's just not working out for either of us. And they have found that remote work hasn't suited their business because they hadn't kind of caught up with that curve. But.
Heather Porter (24:39.058)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (24:44.424)
Yeah.
Lou (24:59.746)
But yeah, so it's not all roses, it certainly isn't at all.
Heather Porter (25:05.744)
Thank you for sharing. It's yeah, thank you. That's important that you shared that. I want to talk about the future of what you do in your business because I think the thing is obviously change is always going to happen. We can either embrace it or we can get scared of it and it can bring us more anxiety. There's a lot of change out there in what we're doing. So fill me in like what's what's the future of your business look like the trends that we should consider and how you're going to handle them.
Lou (25:13.346)
Yeah.
Lou (25:19.36)
Yep. Yeah. Yep. totally. Totally. Yep.
Lou (25:34.306)
Yeah, that's a really great question and one that I don't have a very good answer for, but you're exactly right. It changed. I used to think that I was actually really good with change, but it turns out I'm not. I used to like, yeah, I think innovation, I mixed innovation with change. And I'm like, I like to look at things and continuously improve them, but don't change them too much. yeah, it's very weird. can't.
Heather Porter (25:46.535)
No.
Heather Porter (25:59.035)
Yep. Yep.
Lou (26:03.71)
I can't explain it. think there's been a, mean, COVID was what it was, but for us in our industry, it proved that virtual and remote work is very doable. And it's a very great opportunity for small business owners or even large business owners to look at how they work differently and their business as usual very differently.
Heather Porter (26:28.138)
Mm.
Lou (26:29.908)
I know that there's been a bit of a change now with people and businesses wanting to move from the hybrid models and from work from home and bring people back into the office. But I always, I always kind of think of my old boss from ages and ages ago and work from home was like the biggest taboo thing that you could ever say to him, you know, I'm not paying you to watch days of our lives and do your washing and stuff like that. But you know, the stats are there that it's proven that, you know, you can be more productive at home and,
the work balance life is a lot more productive and the increased demands for that. I think we will continue to see that there's so many people getting into virtual assistants or contracting work or things like that because we proved that we can do it. Like people can work from home and still be productive. And I think that that will continue to rise and I think the demand will continue to rise.
I think that the demand also for specialised skills is going to increase as well. And I definitely think that flexibility is something that's not going to be leaving us anytime soon. In fact, it'll probably increase. A lot of the studies at the moment are showing that the Gen, I can't remember what they are, Gen Z, the 20 and 21 year olds, they don't want to work.
the traditional hours. They don't want to work nine to five. They don't want to be bosses. They don't want to do anything like that. you know, that generation that's coming through the workforce is actually really changing and shaping businesses. there's a real, there's real friction around that, I think. And I don't know what that will look like in the next few years, but we will continue to offer that flexibility. We will continue to work with the team that, you know, we have and potentially bring on new ones and
And one of the things that I've been really grateful for this year is the amount of people that actually want to work with us. So, and that's really important to me, as you mentioned before, you know, building a culture that people actually are happy to come to work and people are really passionate about what we do and how we help people and things like that. So continuing that culture is really important for me and that will be something that I will strive for for the next however long I'm in business.
Lou (28:54.356)
And just, you know, educating people is important as well. Clients, staff, team, everyone about what you do, because the question is, well, what do actually do? I get that asked all the time and I still have not nailed my pitch. I cannot for the life of me, nail a pitch and say, I freeze every time when someone says to me, what do you do? And I think it's because we do so many different things. And I often say, answer it with a question. And I said, look, I'm really sorry, but what do you need?
Heather Porter (29:15.692)
you
Yeah.
Lou (29:24.276)
is more my response. How can I, you know, I can kind of show you what I do if you show me what you need. I can kind of, it's, it's, still haven't nailed that after five years. So if you've got any suggestions, let me know. But, but, that's probably it. And just my aim is just to build stronger client connections, community, you know, team that's, that's on the radar for TAA for the next few years. Yeah.
Heather Porter (29:52.674)
Wonderful. Well, it's a huge testament to you that you have been able to attract remote workers that want to work with you based on your culture, because that is one of the hardest things you can do when people are not collectively in an office day in and day out. So that says a great deal about how you run your business and really truly incredible. And what I'd say to the pitch, gosh, I think you help business owners absolutely.
Lou (30:07.19)
Yeah
Lou (30:10.988)
Thank you. thank you. Yeah.
Heather Porter (30:19.832)
you allow them to do exactly what they love to do. And you, you, you do that by taking care of all the things that they don't, but to, bring it full circle, full circle is, and then you end with the pitch saying, so what do you need? Yeah, I love it.
Lou (30:22.955)
Yeah.
Lou (30:28.096)
Yeah. Nice one. Yep. Yeah, that's right.
Lou (30:35.39)
What do you need? Exactly. And it's funny because we have the tagline of, you know, helping you with the momentum to move forward. And that's what we want to do. You know, we want to empower the businesses to go, you know what, we know that it's tough wearing all the hats, but you don't have to, you know, and it's more affordable than what they think most of the time. So.
Heather Porter (30:46.851)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (30:52.353)
Absolutely.
Heather Porter (30:59.288)
Well said. And speaking of that then, where do people find out more about you, Lou, and the services and how do they come into your world?
Lou (31:06.474)
Yeah, yes please come into my world. Our website is probably the best place to go to and it's administrationagency.com.au and on there we've actually got a checklist that you can download if you're wondering what we can do and what type of things we support with there's a checklist that you can download that'll give you 50 tasks that we can immediately help you with and I touching on that I had a local client the other day actually and it's the first time it's ever happened where she
printed off the download and ticked everything that she wanted to talk to us about. And I was like, that's amazing. It was great. It was good because you never know like what people think of it. But she came to the meeting with it and she said, right, I want to talk to you about this one, this one, this one, flip the page, this one, this one, this one. I was like, this is amazing. So, but yes, so if you're worried about or wondering what, not worried, wondering what we can help you with, I encourage you to go and download that.
Heather Porter (31:41.538)
I love it.
Heather Porter (32:03.726)
Perfect you guys, that's where you go to head off. Get that PDF, administrationagency.com.au and as we start to wrap up, are there any last words of wisdom or advice that you'd like to leave people with?
Lou (32:15.522)
Mm.
Lou (32:19.138)
What would I like to leave people with? I would look, I'm very honest. I am not an expert. I just love what I do and that's helping people. You never know what people need until you ask. And I always ask the question of, know, tell me, talk to me, what do you need? And building that trust, think serving people is very close to my heart. So, and that includes my team.
making sure that I serve my team to the best that I can. Celebrating small wins I think is huge as well and that's probably one of the biggest pieces of advice that I'd like to leave. Just celebrate those small wins because it can be a rubber of your joy when you focus on what you haven't done or what you think, you know, I haven't done this yet or that was a crap day or geez that sucked or something like that.
so easy for us to be so hard on ourselves and speak negatively and fall into that imposter syndrome. Every day I fall into that and you've got to bring yourself back out of it. you know we actually have an active board on our Slack channel. We use Slack a lot and talk to the team a lot throughout the day and we have a celebration board where people and it's so uplifting because
Heather Porter (33:38.684)
Mm.
Lou (33:44.658)
even the smallest things that you know I've got all the content done for December for this client or you know this today I achieved this and it's just really motivating for all of us and if you're having a bad day or if I'm especially having doubts or finding myself a bit challenged I'll go back and read that or look at the presentation that we did last year and go you know what we have
Heather Porter (33:56.243)
Yeah.
Lou (34:07.174)
come so far and built so much and done so much for clients and that's something to be really proud of. So celebrate your wins and take it easy on yourself.
Heather Porter (34:18.099)
Thank you so much for those words of advice. That's a really brilliant way to finish the episode. And thank you for being here, Lou. I've loved our chat and all the jewels that you've shared with everyone. Thank you so much.
Lou (34:23.094)
Yeah, it's been fun. thank you. It's been fun. Thank you.
