Why You Shouldn’t Just Do it All Yourself, An Interview with Bibi Goldstein
An interview with Bibi Goldstein, on how clinicians can grow their business by assessing what they can automate, delegate, or eliminate. We explore the importance of getting rid of the tasks you don’t enjoy doing and benefit of creating more time for things you do enjoy (including getting some rest!). We also talk about how to balance spending money to outsource responsibilities in order to make revenue.
It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.
Transcript
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Interview with Bibi Goldstein, Founder of Buying Time, LLC
Buying Time, LLC founder, Bibi Goldstein is a time management and systems expert, speaker, co-author of Get Organized Today, Navigating Entrepreneurship and Business Success with Ease, where she provides information on establishing systems in every size business. She is an Infusionsoft Certified Partner and works with many entrepreneurs to automate and systemize their businesses in order to maximize their time. Her team proudly launched http://www.virtualassistantsuniversity.com in 2021 to provide an opportunity for the millions of people finding themselves needing alternatives to a traditional work environment due to the pandemic.
She is an active member of her business community in the South Bay. Bibi is current chair for the South Bay Women’s Conference, Board Member at the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce, Community Chair/Board Member at the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce, Advisory Board Member for Walk With Sally, a mentoring program and Past President and current Vice President of the South Bay Business Women’s Association, she served as a committee member and past chair for the Manhattan Beach Women In Business, past President of the Kiwanis Club of Manhattan Beach, and a member of the 2011 class of Leadership Redondo.
Bibi has strong lifelong ties to the South Bay community, she lives in Redondo Beach with her husband Mark and has a daughter Julie who is a hairstylist and a local entrepreneur.
In this episode we talk about:
- Who Bibi Goldstein is and what she puts out in the world.
- What people, specifically healers, get wrong in scaling their businesses.
- How clinicians can figure out what to outsource for their business and what to manage themselves.
- Understanding how to balance what outsourcing will cost you and how much it will make you.
- Important things new clinicians should know about scaling their business and action steps they can take now.
- The things clinicians should not outsource.
- How clinicians can do a quick assessment of what they need to automate, delegate, or eliminate.
- Understanding the importance of rest and doing the things you enjoy to help grow your practice.
- Getting over not wanting to outsource because of anxiety about how “bad” you’ve been doing it thus far.
- What Buying Time and Virtual Assistant University are all about.
Our Generous Sponsor:
Turning Point
Turning Point is a financial planning firm that’s focused exclusively on serving mental health professionals. They’ll help you navigate all the important elements of your personal finances, like budgeting, investing, selecting retirement plans, managing student loan debt and evaluating big purchases, like your first home.
And because they specialize in serving therapists in private practice, they’ll help you navigate the finances of your practice, as well. They’ll help you navigate bookkeeping, analyze the financial implications of changes like hiring clinicians or diversifying your income sources. They’ll even help you consider strategies like the S-Corp tax election.
Visit turningpointHQ.com to learn more and enter the promo code Modern Therapist for 30% off their Quick Start Coaching package.
Resources mentioned:
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
Bibi Demonstrating Delegation To Technology
Social Media: @buyingtimellc, @virtualassistantuniversity, @bibigoldstein
Relevant Episodes:
Mental Health Entrepreneurship
Don’t Take Tax Advice from Therapists
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Who we are:
Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com
Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com
A Quick Note:
Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.
Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.
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Credits:
Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/
Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano http://www.crystalmangano.com/
Transcript (Autogenerated)
Curt Widhalm 00:00
This episode of Modern Therapist Survival Guide is brought to you by Turning Point.
Katie Vernoy 00:04
Turning Point financial life planning helps therapists confidently navigate every aspect of their financial life from practice financials and personal budgeting to investing Tax Management and student loans. Visit Turning Point hq.com. To learn more and enter the promo code modern therapist for 30% off their quickstart coaching package.
Curt Widhalm 00:24
Listen at the end of the episode for more information.
Announcer 00:27
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist Survival Guide where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings to support you as a whole person and a therapist. Here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.
Curt Widhalm 00:43
Welcome back Modern Therapists This is The Modern Therapist Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy. This is the podcast for therapists and all the things we do the ways that we see clients the ways that we run our business. Our guest today is Bibi Goldstein, she has helped us put on the therapy reimagined conference last few years really helped us to up our game with that. And she is the owner and founder of Buying Time LLC, a lot of really good virtual assistant type stuff and helping us and helping you our audience to figure out some ways, the advantages of having to have a team to help expand the things that you do for your clients and improve your clinical practice. So thank you very much for spending some time with us.
Bibi Goldstein 01:33
I’m so excited to spend time with two of my favorite people.
Katie Vernoy 01:36
Oh, we’re really excited to have you too. And I have to admit, I am really excited about this conversation because I think everything, maybe not every single thing. But the foundational things that I’ve learned about delegating, automating running my business more simply, all of those things have been in conversation with you. And you’ve been your team has been my team since almost I began my business. And so I’m excited that we’re finally taking this opportunity to talk about this because the depth of your experience and knowledge, I think it’s gonna be a big source of relief for our audience, because I think this is something that’s really scary for them. So the first question we ask everyone is, who are you? And what are you putting out into the world?
Bibi Goldstein 02:23
Well, in the broad sense of who I am, I’m going off of the general titles. I’m a mother and a wife, and I’m somebody who enjoys supporting people. And that’s what I’m putting out in the world. I love the idea that what I do for a living, almost feels the same as what I like to do in my volunteer work and things like that in where you can support people through using your skill set and your knowledge to do something bigger and better with their talents.
Katie Vernoy 02:58
I love that I know, you could probably answer the next question with a very long answer. Because this is part of how you assess what what people need, but what to therapists and other small business owners because I know you work with a lot of different types of business owners, but helpers are one of the one of your hearts one of the people of your heart are their helpers. What do they do? What do they often get wrong when building or scaling their businesses? Well, first, I
Bibi Goldstein 03:25
could probably answer every question with a really, really long answer. You know, I, I’m sure that everybody who knows me would say that I have lots of answers for everything. But I think that the whole idea of what you went to school to become a therapist, you didn’t go to school to become a business person. And I think that one of the areas that many people get get wrong is that this idea that they can run everything by themselves, or that they can outsource everything, instead of finding that middle ground and the bridge that says how do I be a really great practitioner and a really great therapist, a really great coach, whatever it is, and at the same time, be able to build my business and grow my business, and have not have any knowledge of that, you know, everything from marketing, to accounting to scheduling all of those pieces, you go into that as a therapist thinking, I’m going to go help people. That’s what my world is going to be I want to go help people. And if that’s what you want to do, and help people then how do you do that and still make sure that the rent got paid and the lights got paid and all of these other things because you’re focused on helping people.
Curt Widhalm 04:51
How should people have that honest assessment about themselves, what they should outsource what they should continue to be doing for themselves. Have you work with people to help them find like, here’s where you’re wasting a lot of time or a lot of money or like, here’s where you’re just really not good at this and you should spend money to get somebody who’s better at doing this.
Bibi Goldstein 05:14
I think that there’s a couple of different things that people that we look at when we talk with many of our clients for the first time, the area that we focus on primarily is what is that thing that you hate doing? That is first place that we go. Because what we don’t like we procrastinate, all of us do in everything in our lives, right? If it wasn’t for my husband, laundry, laundry would never get done in this house, as I hate it. Same with cooking. But you know what, give me a sink full of dishes and I’m happy. And I can do do that, you know, you find those things that make you happy that you love doing but you outsource those things that you hate doing. So you start there, find those things that you hate doing. The second place would be find the things that you’re really not that good at. So you may not hate it, but you may not be so great at it, right? If you find yourself consistently making mistakes in balancing your bank register, then maybe it’s time to hire a bookkeeper.
Katie Vernoy 06:24
Yeah, that was the first one for me, right? Like I was like, baby, I have a whole drawer full of receipts. And I have not balanced my checkbook, basically, or my books for most of the year. So I hated it. And I was bad at it. So okay, sorry, back to your list.
Bibi Goldstein 06:46
So what you hate what you’re bad at? And then I always try to get folks to look at those things that are not value generating, revenue generating. And when I say value, is it something that brings value to your client? For you to do those things? Does it matter to your client? If you’re the person who’s posting on your social media? Is that a value based thing, even though you love it, and you love being on social media, and you like being out there and doing these? Maybe that’s not the thing that brings value in traditional businesses, the the idea of revenue generating is the first place that we think that right? If, and this is always a tough conversation in the world of professionals, whether it’s therapists, attorneys, doctors, whatever you name it, we, you know, we support clients in all of those areas. I would say that you have to think about, can I make more money in this hour that I’m spending doing this? versus handing it to somebody else? Who would charge less than what I charge an hour? Yeah, it still kind of come away ahead of the game. And it’s it’s it’s a phrase that I heard a long time ago, and I continue to use, and that is not not, what is it going to cost me? But what is it going to make me say more about that? You know, that concept around if you charge $150 an hour, and that work that you’re spending an hour or two doing? You could be seeing somebody for that $150? Yeah, and you can pay somebody between 40 and $70, for an expertise at something, you’re still making money. And that’s the part that I think that we get stuck on as business owners, myself included, it’s constantly this Well, can we really do that? Can we is is that really in our budget? And well, wait a second, what is that going to free up? Yeah. What is that going to free up for me? And so when we think about those things, I think it’s super important for us to constantly look at what are our financial goals? And within those financial goals? Can we add some more hours where we can take away some of the administrative part of running our business
Katie Vernoy 09:17
in the tasks that I initially delegated to your team, which was my bookkeeping, I would spend a day, every couple of months trying to sort through it. And I recognize not only was it the hours that I could be either seeing clients and so getting that, you know, fictional $150 an hour or I could be marketing or I could be networking, or I could be resting. But when I was sitting there with the emotional load of this bookkeeping that wasn’t getting done or wasn’t getting done right, then I was less effective. And I also was spending way more time than the bookkeeper on your team was spending. And so for me, it’s It’s what is it going to make me? But also what is it going to free up for me and I love that concept. Because that concept I think is revolutionary. I think a lot of people won’t invest in their business, because they’re worried about the cost. And they don’t really picture what the final result is. And I think being able to think past, well, this cost this much, and this cost this much. And this cost this much, I think is a big step up for business owners.
Bibi Goldstein 10:25
Yeah, it’s so true. It’s amazing how, if you could stop for even a moment and recognize that, and I want to go to your comment about rest, okay, because you guys are in the, and I’m a strong believer in energy, right? So you’re in this, this field of space, where you’re taking on someone’s at someone else’s energy, in order to be fully there for them, and support them in their time of needing you. Yeah, how do you do that? It’s that idea of, you know, if your cup is empty, you can’t give to other people. And if that rest creates an opportunity for you to become better at what you do, I’m more efficient at what you do love what you do again, enjoy that, then that’s part of it as well. So yeah, it’s it’s that piece of just figuring out, yes, I can, this is the one thing that I can get off of my plate, that’s that, if everyone started with that thing that they hated. And the bookkeeping thing is a huge piece of that, Katie, we hear that all the time, it’s, well, I tried to recreate everything, and then I can’t remember because it was two months ago, and I can’t, you know, I’m trying to, like, decipher what I did with this. And I can’t find this receipt and these kinds of things. But our bookkeeper, the person on our team who does that she’s in the system all day. So she’s not having to shift gears. So that’s the last thing I’ll say about it, because that’s one of the areas too, that we find in productivity and efficiency is that when you have to shift gears from one type of work to another type of work, so you go from something that’s heart centered, where you’re with a client, and then you have to turn around and do something that’s more cerebral and more outside of your realm, the time that it takes us to switch, that’s why they tell us to turn off diggings and all of these other things, because those interruptions, those interruptions cost you seconds that turn into minutes that turn into hours that turn into days,
Curt Widhalm 12:36
I want to jump in here, because you’re talking about people who were really busy already, and you know, have maybe dug themselves into this time hole that you know, they need to free up a bunch of time. There’s also people who are starting out their practices or might have some of their time that allows for them to get sucked into all of these various projects that they don’t know yet that they don’t like or they do know that they don’t like, Can you speak a little bit more to people who are starting out their businesses too, as far as getting these systems in place, and why it’s a worthwhile investment, even if they don’t have those revenue generating hours ready upfront,
Bibi Goldstein 13:18
it’s actually like the best time to to start with getting that support, you can hire a VA for even a couple of hours a month for a little over $100 and, and be able to take even just a few things that you know going in, it’s not what you enjoy doing. But it’s all about creating a plan, right? When you go to, you know, hang your proverbial shingle and go into business, there’s some things that you still have to do, right, you still have to set yourself up as a business, you still have to set yourself up as as an entity, you have to go to the bank and open a bank account, you have to do all of these things. And if people just made that idea of how can I start off with these things as part of that setup, when you are also new, one of the things that I always encourage people to do is when you’re small, it’s very, very easy for you to start to document your processes. document, how you want your phone answered, document how you want your client intake to go, document how you want to how you want your scheduling to happen, start documenting those things, because then that documentation makes it so much easier as you grow, to be able to either bring on Team bring on a VA and hand that to somebody. And with all of these great technology things that we have. Now. You can do your process documentation right on the computer, you don’t even have to write it anymore. You can do a video of it. And guess what That then means that if you start getting to a place where you are opening up a large practice, and you have multiple therapists, and you’re going to need multiple folks doing the same thing, you then have video training. So now they’re all hearing the same exact training, they’re all seeing the same exact thing. And there’s no differentiating, oh, well, when Kirk trained me on how to do this. And then when he trained Katie, on how to do this, he did fail to mention this part. And yeah, it’s all the same message, all the same content. Those are the two things I would say.
Katie Vernoy 15:37
Yeah, I think the piece that I took from what you just said, and in my in my experience is that people are worried to invest before they start making money. But I think sometimes when you do that, you’re able to actually create something that’s more sustainable, especially if you’re not over investing, I think there was a period of time I was like, I’m doing nothing. And you had mentioned, like delegating everything is probably the wrong idea, too. So maybe you can speak into that different, you know, kind of that differential of delegating what you need to but also recognizing what you don’t need to delegate or when when not to delegate.
Bibi Goldstein 16:13
Yeah, you know, I always think of things as sensitivity, right. So if there’s something that is sensitive information, like in, in, in some of the cases of some therapists, if you’re doing transcription of notes from a session with the client, it’s probably something that I would be careful in how and who you delegate that to. Sure, right? If it’s something that requires someone to have personal information, like social security numbers, or bank account information, or things like that, you know, I’m going to use the example again, with bookkeeping, because we don’t actually have access to that information. It’s all connected to the system, but we don’t have actual access to it, we can never, we don’t go into the bank account and, and are able to transfer money or anything. So that’s, it’s those are the kinds of things that I want people to think about is that those are things that I would hold on to, you know, a little bit longer in my business until there was like, enough growth that required that, hey, I need to hand this off to somebody now. And it’s time to hand that off to somebody doing payroll, having those kinds of just sensitivity information. But yeah, I think that also one of the things that you can look at, when, when you’re scaling, when you’re growing, and building your business, that you can actually be still in that, that role of being your the business owner and do some of the administrative tasks, if that’s what makes you happy, I’m going to go back to that over and over again, is that don’t take away something just because you think you should delegate it. And I can’t speak for the people outside of who I know that I’ve experienced this, myself included is that sometimes when we get into this, like what you just mentioned, Katie of, of delegating everything, you kind of lose touch with what’s happening. And you don’t want that. If you want to be connected, you need to have still some connection and still continue to do these things. You know, one of my greatest joys is depositing checks. Go Go pick up the deposit. Right? Makes me happy?
Katie Vernoy 18:32
Yeah, yeah. I think the thing that we’re talking kind of a little bit and around. And so let’s get specific to it is this idea of automating what you can automate delegating what you can delegate and eliminating what you can eliminate. And I think being able to distinguish between those three, and then also the things that you keep, I think that becomes the assessment that becomes really hard for folks. And what you probably don’t see because you’re not in these Facebook groups with all these therapists is that there’s a lot of shoulds, you should be doing this yourself, or you should be delegating it. And so not shelling the automating delegating and eliminating, like, how does someone do a quick assessment of that when they’re when they’re looking at their tasks.
Bibi Goldstein 19:16
So there’s a ton of automation out there. And I just want to kind of touch on on that. Because there’s, I think that there is also this myth that everybody thinks you have to hire a person, you have to hire labor to take something on. And that’s not the case. I mean, there’s so much technology, there’s so many apps out there, there’s so many things that can take on some of the things that you’re looking to do, but I’m going to go super, super simple for you. Perfect, perfect game. I developed a program long time ago called 15 minutes from overwhelmed to organized, okay. And one of the things that we did in that was we created a document that simply had a happy face and a sad face and a line down the middle of it. Okay, and when Encouraged in that program for people to, to sit down and on a weekly basis, have that and start to document those things, those specific tasks on whether it’s the happy face or the sad face of those of what they’re doing. Because then obviously everything that’s under the sad face, we can start to figure out, can we automate it? Can we delegate it? Can we simplify it? Or can we eliminate it? Okay. And those were always our four buckets. And once we, once you have it actually written down, it’s easier to figure out that, wait, why am I doing this? I don’t necessarily need to do this, because I can skip this step, and go directly to this to this other step. And so then that can be eliminated from one of the tasks but because, you know, we’re creatures of habit. Yeah, I’ve been doing it that way forever. You know, it always reminds me of the story of the pot roast, I don’t know.
Curt Widhalm 21:01
Now you got to go into that story.
Bibi Goldstein 21:05
The pot roast of, of why they would cut or the ham where, where they would cut off the ends of it, and put it into the pan. And they would say, Oh, my mom used to do it that way. So then they would go and ask the mom and then they they go down the line, they figure out that it was because grandma didn’t have pan big enough. And that’s why she cut off the ends for no other reason. But everybody
Katie Vernoy 21:27
was wasting a whole bunch of meat. Because that’s how it’s always been done. Okay?
Bibi Goldstein 21:34
So, because that’s how it’s always been done. And that’s the thing that we continue to do in our businesses, we do it in our lives, we do it everywhere. But we but finding those places that you’re just doing them because you’ve done it forever that way, doesn’t mean that that’s what that that’s that it has to continue that way, right. So finding those automation pieces. One of my greatest greatest automation success stories was a client who was a therapist who used to schedule all of her appointments via text message.
Katie Vernoy 22:11
There’s many who still do this, this is a really good example baby.
Bibi Goldstein 22:16
So we it took it took about a good 60 days and a lot of pushing and pulling with her to really start to see the benefit of it. And we put in an automated scheduling link. And we created it so that it went via text message. And it had a link for them to reschedule. It didn’t allow them to reschedule within a certain amount of time. It it when they scheduled. One of the other things that she absolutely loved that when they scheduled, they also paid. So she didn’t have to worry about sending them an invoice. She didn’t have to worry about any of that stuff. And I will tell you, she’s an example for me that I use often with testimonials, because she sent me one of the most beautiful notes, she had ultimately ended up moving out of the area. And she said, I don’t know what I would have done. And how I would have been able to grow my business the way that I did. She was able to add, I think 11 new patients to her practice within the first 90 days, by doing those simple things, just making it easier to schedule, just making it easier to schedule, taking herself out of the equation of scheduling and allowing for her to be fully present, instead of having to worry about payment and collecting payment at the time of the session. Wow.
Curt Widhalm 23:45
What you’re talking to here is also added benefits for the clients of not having to wait for somebody to get out of session to be able to return phone calls or worrying about the time of days. If I get out of session at eight o’clock at night, is it appropriate to be calling people back after that and being able to, like you said at the beginning of the episode, do the things that make you money, do the things that you enjoy and to have this not just as benefit for yourself but also for the clients that you serve?
Bibi Goldstein 24:16
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I applaud what you guys do for for a living, it’s to me not something that I could do. But I also know that there are people in the world who can’t do what I do. Right and that’s why it’s important that if you can stay in that place of being the support for them without having to worry about all the other stuff. It’s it’s so true Crt, you know, being there and being present for them in that capacity is probably easier than trying to think about I was supposed to return that while you’re you know with somebody or you come out to from a session. If you are somebody who can stay fully present with someone, you come out from a session and all of a sudden you’ve got, you know, 1520 text messages and messages that you’ve got to answer.
Katie Vernoy 25:09
Yeah, I think the the level of overwhelm that a lot of therapists will put up with for a long time. And whether it’s bookkeeping, or scheduling or billing or any of these other things that have to be done, but don’t necessarily have to be done by you. It blows me away, because there’s this hesitancy to spend some money on it. But I’ve also had folks say, well, it’s such a mass, I would hate to have someone else do it. I would hate to put that on someone else. And what you just said about what you do well, and what we do well, like, can you convince folks that you actually want to clean their stuff up?
Curt Widhalm 25:48
And that they should get over the embarrassment of like, here’s how far behind I am? And I don’t want to admit this to everybody. Well,
Bibi Goldstein 25:55
it’s kind of like when the the cleaning people come, right, everybody, everybody picks up before the cleaning people come, but there’s not the whole reason why you hired them. Yep. Right now, they’re good at what they do. So let’s let them do what they’re good at. And the fact is, is that more and more for me, it’s become easier just and that’s just because of experience and time and being able to get people to understand that it’s not about judgment, it’s about creating space, right? So when we create space, we create space for ourselves, to do the things that we need to do in our life. I do the same thing in my business. Now, I don’t do client facing work on Fridays, I have blocked off my entire day on Friday, so that I could create space in order to continue to work on my business, or you know what, go get my hair done, go get my nails done, do whatever the whatever I want to do in that moment, right? So the The fact of the matter is, is taking getting people to take that first step and not thinking about what it looks like. We love it. I love what what Katie said about you know that, that, that I we do enjoy cleaning up messes. That’s just Unfortunately, the case, but it’s super satisfying. Yeah, I was just reading a statistic about the pimple doctor, right? Like how people love those videos. And I’m like, it’s so gross to me. And I could never do that. But people are so focused on those things, right? You like, it’s this feeling of satisfaction for somebody, for, for me, and for my team, when we can take something from what was considered tangled and a mess, and create something from it, that gives somebody that I’m going to sit back in my seat and take a deep breath and go, Wow, I didn’t think that was possible. It’s huge, especially automation. You know, client intake is a big part of what you guys do, you know, processing that whole. I will tell you one of my biggest pet peeves of going to a new doctor or going someplace is that when the first thing when you sit down, you got to spend the first 10 minutes filling out those forms. Yeah. Right. And it’s like, well, wait a second, why can’t you make the process so much easier by having those forms, be online forms, have them fill them out, they can print them, sign them, and bring them in with them so that they aren’t spending that first few minutes doing that. There’s little things like that, and how my team’s brains work that they can see that sometimes people can’t see in their own business.
Katie Vernoy 28:52
And I think it really speaks to just a very different level of expertise and not even knowing what they don’t know, you know, simplifying within your business, automating delegating, eliminating hiring folks to do things like that’s just so out of the realm. And so I think it’s something where people really understanding how a VA company works can be very helpful because I think oftentimes they’re like, Hey, I’m going to have my friend like, do something and they need a couple extra bucks. And then you’ve got you don’t have the expertise behind it, or you have to train them and you’re training them on the inefficient system that you had created. So you want to you want that expertise. But I guess this is just a very long way around to asking, why did you create a VA company? What does your company look like for getting to that point of are going to ask where people can find you, but like, tell us a little bit more about what that actually looks like for Buying Time.
Bibi Goldstein 29:45
So Buying Time has been around since 2007. There was a lot of different types of conversation but we started as a like a personal assistant service, I will say it was more in the realm of we used to walk dogs, buy groceries. You know, do Those kinds of things. And over the years, and the main reason why we started it even was we start I started to do some research I was working for in the transportation and logistics business. That was my career for 20 plus years, I worked as a regional manager, and I traveled a lot. And when I traveled, I have four siblings. But we all kind of took our own sense of responsibilities with my mom, when when my dad passed away, and my mom, being an immigrant, didn’t deal with a lot of the financial stuff. And so she had written checks that were too large utility companies and things like that. And we were just trying to find somebody to help her because she, we had had to take her license away, and she couldn’t do some of these things on our own. And that started me on this trajectory of Wait a second. There’s nobody out here that does stuff like this. So that’s how this company started. Fast forward, we ended up with a client who is an attorney, who was like, Can you help me with PowerPoints? And I’m like, Yeah, I used to do that all the time. And then I, but I found all of these things, you know that, and I did not know that the virtual assistant universe existed. And that’s how I found it. So I we fast forward to transitioning to 100%, virtual wi today, which used to just consist of a couple of us, and a cell phone is now a team of we’re up to 12 of us now. Wow. And we have every type of support from customer service, email management, bookkeeping, automation specialists. We have a web developer, we have a graphic designer, we have project managers, we have people who specialize in what they specialize in. And then myself, who I love doing strategy with clients, I love helping them figure out, you know, what, Curt was asking, Where do I start? How do I get something out there? So that’s really how this kind of became born. And today, this business looks so different than I had ever imagined it could be, right? Yeah, I wanted something that allowed for me to continue to support people. Because Katie, as you know, giving back to my community and being a part of some of our local nonprofits, my husband Oh, is a part of a nonprofit, like, there’s so many organizations for me that are huge here in the South Bay that I love to support. But I like to support them with my time and my expertise as much as I support them with my dollars. That’s important to me. So I really created that and I’m, I’m a very vocal person when it comes to women’s issues in general. I so disheartened with what’s happening right now in the world, with so many women unable to work. It’s there’s just there’s a lot of things I think that we can do as, as an organization, my company donates a ton of my team’s time to these nonprofits. So the company itself is has really kind of evolved into exactly what I want it to be now, in that place of being able to support people who have the means to be able to have that support in order to support the people who don’t,
Curt Widhalm 33:33
Where can people find out more about you and the services you provide.
Bibi Goldstein 33:37
They can go to our website buyingtimellc.com or there they can actually email into our team as well service at buyingtimeLLC.com or they can check out our new passion project, virtualassistantsuniversity.com.
Katie Vernoy 33:56
Tell us just a tiny bit about Virtual Assistants University.
Bibi Goldstein 34:01
So Virtual Assistants University is this thing that came from the whole idea of what’s happened right now with women being out of work, we wanted to create an opportunity for people to take an embrace their own destiny, not rely on someone else. And the virtual assistant world continues to grow in a lot of ways. And I think that we’re going to see a huge shift with many people. And so we created this university that allows for people to have support curriculum, and, and the ability to have a resource to build their own virtual assistant company. And that was something for me that was hugely important in that creating opportunities for people to take their skill sets. Because not everybody who comes to us is our cup of tea and we’re not everybody else’s cup of tea, right? So that’s why there’s so many beers out there. And there Are people who really want that one on one, they don’t want a full team. Like, like what I’ve built, they want a one on one VA and we want to build as many of those as we can and help to support them. They have Lifetime support with us in our Facebook group so that they can build that business the way they want to. So that’s it’s very, very new, very new. We’re, we’re, it’s a passion project for me right now.
Curt Widhalm 35:28
We will include links to all of the stuff in our show notes. You can find those over at MTSGpodcast.com. And until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Bibi Goldstein.
Katie Vernoy 35:39
Thanks again to our sponsor Turning Point,
Curt Widhalm 35:42
We wanted to tell you a little bit more about our sponsor Turning Point. Turning Point is a financial planning firm that’s focused exclusively on serving mental health professionals to help you navigate all the important elements of your personal finances like budgeting, investing, selecting retirement plans, managing student loan debts and evaluating big purchases, like your first home. And because they specialize in serving therapists and private practice, so help you navigate the finances of your practice as well. To help you navigate bookkeeping, analyze the financial implications of changes, like hiring clinicians or diversifying your income sources will even help you consider strategies like S corp tax election,
Katie Vernoy 36:20
And for listeners of MTSG you’ll receive 30% off the price of their quickstart coaching intensive just enter promo code modern therapist when signing up. And don’t forget to visit TurningPointhq.com to download your free finance quickstart guide for therapists. Thank
Announcer 36:37
you for listening to the Modern Therapist Survival Guide. Learn more about who we are and what we do at MTSGpodcast.com. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter. And please don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss any of our episodes.
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