IAM1032- CEO Oversees Growth of a Trusted Remote Staffing Company
Podcast Interview with Catherine vanVonno
Catherine vanVonno is the President and CEO of 20four7VA, a trusted remote staffing company. She oversees the overall growth and success of the company, leads the short and long-term strategies, and manages the company's finances. While it is certainly a challenge to work with staff from all over the world, her positive attitude and progressive leadership style enabled her to overcome the hurdles and establish a thriving and solid relationship with her team of 50+ talented individuals. On any given day, you'll find Catherine managing her global team right from her kitchen table, demonstrating one of the biggest perks of remote work. Before starting 20four7VA, Catherine worked in the healthcare management industry. She has a Master's degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and a Ph.D. in Research and Evaluation Methods with a cognate in Applied Statistics from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Catherine resides in Berlin, Maryland, and enjoys traveling with her husband in her free time.
- CEO Hack: Doing productive work and team building remotely
- CEO Nugget: Surrounding myself with smart people and listening to what they have to say
- CEO Defined: Leading the development and execution of long-term strategy of a company
Website: https://20four7va.com/
IAMCEO Exclusive Promo: ‘IAMCEO' to waive the $99 set-up fee when you hire a virtual assistant from 20four7VA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/20four7VA
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/20four7VA
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20four7VA
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/20four7VA
Transcription
The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!
Please Note: Our team is using the AI CEO Hacks: Exemplary AI and Otter.ai to support our podcast transcription. While we know it's improving there may be some inaccuracies, we are updating and improving them. Please contact us if you notice any issues, you can also test out Exemplary AI here.
00:14 – Intro
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:44 – Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Kath Catherine Van Vano of twenty-four-seven VA. Catherine, it's great to have you on the show.
00:55 – Catherine vanVonno
Yes. Good morning, Gresh, and thank you for hosting me on your show. I'm excited to be here.
00:59 – Gresham Harkless
I'm excited to have you on as well. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Catherine so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Catherine is the president and CEO of twenty-four-seven VA, a trusted remote staffing company. She oversees the overall growth and success of the company, leads to short and long-term strategies, and manages the company's finances. While it is certainly a challenge to work with staff from all over the world, her positive attitude and progressive leadership style enable her to overcome the hurdles and establish a thriving and solid relationship with her team of fifty-plus talented individuals.
On any given day, you'll find Katharine managing her global team right from her kitchen table, demonstrating one of the biggest perks of remote work. Before starting twenty-four-seven VA, Katharine worked in the healthcare management industry. She has a master's degree in industrial organizational psychology and a PhD in research and evolution methods with a cognate in applied statistics from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Katherine resides in Berlin, Maryland, and enjoys traveling with her husband in her free time. Katherine, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
[restrict paid=”true”]
02:04 – Catherine vanVonno
Absolutely. Let's get started.
02:06 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Let's do it then. So to kinda kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started with all the awesome work you're doing, what I like to call your CEO story.
02:15 – Catherine vanVonno
Okay. Great. My story or the story of my company really dates back to twenty-four. This was the time that I had resigned from my corporate career to become a stay-at-home mom, raising four children. At that time, that was a time really when there were several technological advances had made it possible for a new generation of companies to emerge. And these were called freelance marketplaces. It was where freelancers could post their resumes and, and companies could go and and search those databases for one-off projects. It really made it these marketplaces made it possible for small business owners to really tap in, to begin tapping into that sea-shore market.
Whereas originally without those marketplaces you were really dependent on your local community for any staffing for your company. And those marketplaces, if I remember correctly, it was Elance, I think was one of the big ones, oDesk, were really the main players. I think Fiverr popped up right around that time. But anyhow, when I had left my corporate career, my husband, owned and operated, several small businesses, and he was already using these talent markets you know, for and I think his focus was more on the technical side. It was, because he was an entrepreneur, you know, logo development for every company. He would go to these marketplaces for, website development.
So, you know, when I started learning about the idea of being able to tap into this global talent pool, it was really enlightening and exciting to me, because remember where I came from in this corporate mindset, working with an HR department and having to hire within a geographic boundary, for nonexecutive level positions. Really, you know, looking at these marketplaces and being able to go out of that bubble and be able to hire the best person, whether they be, you know, located in Fairfax, Virginia or, you know, in India, was just it was a really exciting concept. So fast forward to twenty-ten. So, you know, six years past, you know, working with my husband, we, did a lot of this hiring.
But it was also noticeable that these freelance marketplaces were really trending in the entrepreneur and small business communities. But it wasn't easy. You know it's time-consuming. Posting jobs, sifting through resumes, and interviewing candidates. I mean also there are a lot of scammers on these marketplaces. So you really needed to be a very keen interviewer to weed out the people who could market themselves well, but really didn't have the skill set to be that top performer that you were looking for. So, you know, that's what opened the door for an agency like twenty-four-seven VA to develop, where we were the experts in finding, vetting, onboarding, and training this freelance talent because we had been doing it, you know, for our family businesses for years.
05:25 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. I definitely appreciate that. And hearing, like, even the organic nature that the company and the organization were able to build alongside the opening up of the industry. It sounded as well too and being able to kinda realize that we aren't confined. And I think we definitely all probably to some degree know that now. Like, you're not necessarily confined to your doorstep or right outside of your doorstep to find talented individuals. You can look literally across the world. So that's why I love how this marketplace kinda opens up that opportunity, and you've been able to kinda, you know, build the business. If not, at the very least, plant the seeds to be able to build that great business that you have now.
05:58- Catherine vanVonno
Yeah. Exactly. Back then, nobody really knew about it. So it was it was something new then. And now it's it's much more commonplace, obviously. But, you know, back in twenty-four, very, very few. You'd be surprised. And you'd be surprised even today. Still, people are ninety-eight to the fact that they have this available to them.
06:22 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah. Absolutely. And that's why I love that you've been, for lack of a better term, you know, at the forefront of it. Definitely been, a first mover, it sounds like as well too. So being able to have that experience and that information. And as you, you know, are able to also see, like, where there might be, that's all those potential gaps, you're able to kind of fulfill those for so many, entrepreneurs and business owners and organizations. And so, I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear how you're able to kinda help out these, these clients and these customers that you work with. Could you take us through how you serve the clients you work with?
06:51 – Catherine vanVonno
Yeah. Sure. So, just to, you know, sort of define what we do. We know, are considered an offshore staffing agency. And when I say offshore, that means that we are sourcing talent or finding remote workers in non-US countries. And these countries have to meet certain conditions, you know their local labor rates have to be more attractive than US local labor rates. This allows us to pass on savings to our clients. You know, they would realize anywhere, you know, at a minimum fifty percent savings over hiring locally or US talent and it can go up to seventy-five percent savings that they're seeing. But but financial attractiveness of the country is only one thing that we look at.
We also focus on countries where English communication is common and the country has to have an interesting infrastructure that can support stable and reliable Internet and power supply. So, you know, that's our main focus. Our main focus is recruiting staff and finding talent in these places. And we can recruit for any skill set, that a client comes to us looking for. It could be a sales position, it could be marketing, it could be bookkeeping, it could be something in operations. So essentially any key support function that can be performed on a computer with an internet connection is what we can recruit for.
We are considered there are a variety of different agencies offshore staffing agencies out there our agency is considered a full-service agency, meaning that, you know, we do sup we run the gamut. Okay? So we vet the the candidates that we source for our clients meaning we skill assess them whether that be through training programs that our training team is offering or SME assessments, these are subject matter experts. You know we don't always have training programs for every skill set especially the more advanced ones so it'll be a one-on-one individual assessment but we vet them. We also provide training classes for our VAs, and VAs is just a term for a virtual assistant, the same thing as a remote worker.
We skill-match them with the client's job descriptions, and we facilitate the entire selection and hiring process, including interviews, payroll setup, and onboarding, and we don't stop at the onboarding. So once the VA is onboarded to the client, the client is paired with an account manager who has extensive experience. We've had many years doing this and developing productive and successful, client and remote worker relationships, because many of our clients are new to this environment, and they enjoy that level of hand-holding. We also have an IT help desk and an HR department, to resolve any type of issues that could affect worker productivity.
So, you know, in terms of full service, I mean, we're there for the entire relationship, between the client and and the remote worker. We started as a niche company and really grew out of the e-commerce industry. It was just a natural fit back then because e-commerce business owners were used to working remotely, with their customers. So, we started there but we've met since expanded into other verticals, and are now serving clients in a wide range of industries. I can say that our primary focus still remains in the small business sector, and in companies that are, less than or under a hundred, a hundred people.
But we are starting to see a rise in medium-sized business owners, converting, to a blended staffing model now where, you know, they'll keep their on-site staff, but supplement it with remote teams. And technology is enabling that nowadays. So, so that's really what we do. And we can be as involved as a client wants us to be. But the relationship is really between the client and their remote worker. We're just there to facilitate and ensure that it remains productive and positive.
11:10 – Gresham Harkless
Would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce? It could be for yourself personally or the business or a combination of both. But is it that ability to be full service and to be able to kind of understand the full process and then at the same time be able to fill those gaps and make those connections for those organizations to succeed?
11:28 – Catherine vanVonno
Yeah. I think that is clearly a competitive advantage that we have, for those clients that are looking for that security. We do have clients that have already been doing this themselves they've been pulling from the freelance marketplaces or they've been with other, staffing agencies. So for those, you know, I think one of our real selling points and really what separates us from everybody else is that our selection and hiring processes are risk-free. There's zero upfront cost.
So you will go to many companies and say, okay, well, you have to invest x amount of money and then we'll do the work for you. For our company, you don't do any of that. You come to us, client services specialists will get on a call with you, to discuss your business needs. They'll draft your job description and send it out for your approval. They'll work with our internal teams to source, vet and skill assess the candidates.
12:29 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
12:39 – Catherine vanVonno
Yeah. So I don't know if this is, a hack, but I thought about this for a few minutes this morning. But it is a critically important takeaway, in the new normal, that COVID has left us with, and that is that remote work is more accepted now than ever. And companies are finally realizing that productive work can be accomplished remotely, and team building can be done remotely.
13:05 – Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
13:15 – Catherine vanVonno
I can tell you that I've made it a point to surround myself with really smart people and to really listen to what they have to say. I learned early in the development of this company that I'm not the smartest person here. That there are people far smarter than I am, and that companies aren't built by one person. Companies are built through team effort.
13:39 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And so now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Catherine, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:50 – Catherine vanVonno
A CEO is responsible for the overall success of a company at every stage. You know, managing finances and resources properly, mentoring staff. But for me, my vision of my role not only includes that at this point, but it's also about leading the development and execution of long-term strategies. So I need to ensure the longevity of my company now.
14:15 – Gresham Harkless
Definitely appreciate that definition, Catherine. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.
14:29 – Catherine vanVonno
Alright. Well, you know, my final point would be to get a competitive advantage and give offshore staffing a chance. So, you know, give us a call, visit our website. If you wanna connect with me, you can reach me directly. I'm old school. Call me. I prefer a phone call. So, just call our main number. Just please be sure to let whoever answers the phone, let them know that you heard me on the I Am CEO podcast, and they will patch you through to me. If I am unavailable in a meeting or something, I promise I'll call you back.
15:08 – Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. Well, Catherine, truly appreciate that. We will have the links and information in the show notes. I like how you're old school but have new school technologies and you're mending them both together. So giving people an opportunity in a way to kinda connect with you is absolutely huge. And what you said about, you know, being aware of kinda trying new things or being open to that and leaning into that, especially during a time like this where there's a tremendous amount of opportunities that are around. I appreciate you for being and creating and building one of those opportunities as well. Appreciate your time, of course, and I hope you great rest of the day.
15:39 – Catherine vanVonno
Great Resh, one more thing. I think that we, more thing. I think that we are offering, a promo to your your listeners. I'm not sure what it is, but, I believe that it's, I think a waiver of what we normally charge a setup fee after the after-trial period of ninety-nine dollars. I think my team is waiving the entire ninety-nine-dollar setup fee. So you know, just to let you guys know that.
16:06 – Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. No. I definitely appreciate that, and we will have that information as well in the show notes so that everybody can take advantage of that. But thank you so much, you and your team for offering that. Again, I appreciate you, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.
16:17 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
Transcription
The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!
Please Note: Our team is using the AI CEO Hacks: Exemplary AI and Otter.ai to support our podcast transcription. While we know it's improving there may be some inaccuracies, we are updating and improving them. Please contact us if you notice any issues, you can also test out Exemplary AI here.
00:14 - Intro
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:44 - Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Kath Catherine Van Vano of twenty-four-seven VA. Catherine, it's great to have you on the show.
00:55 - Catherine vanVonno
Yes. Good morning, Gresh, and thank you for hosting me on your show. I'm excited to be here.
00:59 - Gresham Harkless
I'm excited to have you on as well. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Catherine so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Catherine is the president and CEO of twenty-four-seven VA, a trusted remote staffing company. She oversees the overall growth and success of the company, leads to short and long-term strategies, and manages the company's finances. While it is certainly a challenge to work with staff from all over the world, her positive attitude and progressive leadership style enable her to overcome the hurdles and establish a thriving and solid relationship with her team of fifty-plus talented individuals.
On any given day, you'll find Katharine managing her global team right from her kitchen table, demonstrating one of the biggest perks of remote work. Before starting twenty-four-seven VA, Katharine worked in the healthcare management industry. She has a master's degree in industrial organizational psychology and a PhD in research and evolution methods with a cognate in applied statistics from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Katherine resides in Berlin, Maryland, and enjoys traveling with her husband in her free time. Katherine, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
02:04 - Catherine vanVonno
Absolutely. Let's get started.
02:06 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Let's do it then. So to kinda kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started with all the awesome work you're doing, what I like to call your CEO story.
02:15 - Catherine vanVonno
Okay. Great. My story or the story of my company really dates back to twenty-four. This was the time that I had resigned from my corporate career to become a stay-at-home mom, raising four children. At that time, that was a time really when there were several technological advances had made it possible for a new generation of companies to emerge. And these were called freelance marketplaces. It was where freelancers could post their resumes and, and companies could go and and search those databases for one-off projects. It really made it these marketplaces made it possible for small business owners to really tap in, to begin tapping into that sea-shore market.
Whereas originally without those marketplaces you were really dependent on your local community for any staffing for your company. And those marketplaces, if I remember correctly, it was Elance, I think was one of the big ones, oDesk, were really the main players. I think Fiverr popped up right around that time. But anyhow, when I had left my corporate career, my husband, owned and operated, several small businesses, and he was already using these talent markets you know, for and I think his focus was more on the technical side. It was, because he was an entrepreneur, you know, logo development for every company. He would go to these marketplaces for, website development.
So, you know, when I started learning about the idea of being able to tap into this global talent pool, it was really enlightening and exciting to me, because remember where I came from in this corporate mindset, working with an HR department and having to hire within a geographic boundary, for nonexecutive level positions. Really, you know, looking at these marketplaces and being able to go out of that bubble and be able to hire the best person, whether they be, you know, located in Fairfax, Virginia or, you know, in India, was just it was a really exciting concept. So fast forward to twenty-ten. So, you know, six years past, you know, working with my husband, we, did a lot of this hiring.
But it was also noticeable that these freelance marketplaces were really trending in the entrepreneur and small business communities. But it wasn't easy. You know it's time-consuming. Posting jobs, sifting through resumes, and interviewing candidates. I mean also there are a lot of scammers on these marketplaces. So you really needed to be a very keen interviewer to weed out the people who could market themselves well, but really didn't have the skill set to be that top performer that you were looking for. So, you know, that's what opened the door for an agency like twenty-four-seven VA to develop, where we were the experts in finding, vetting, onboarding, and training this freelance talent because we had been doing it, you know, for our family businesses for years.
05:25 - Gresham Harkless
Nice. I definitely appreciate that. And hearing, like, even the organic nature that the company and the organization were able to build alongside the opening up of the industry. It sounded as well too and being able to kinda realize that we aren't confined. And I think we definitely all probably to some degree know that now. Like, you're not necessarily confined to your doorstep or right outside of your doorstep to find talented individuals. You can look literally across the world. So that's why I love how this marketplace kinda opens up that opportunity, and you've been able to kinda, you know, build the business. If not, at the very least, plant the seeds to be able to build that great business that you have now.
05:58- Catherine vanVonno
Yeah. Exactly. Back then, nobody really knew about it. So it was it was something new then. And now it's it's much more commonplace, obviously. But, you know, back in twenty-four, very, very few. You'd be surprised. And you'd be surprised even today. Still, people are ninety-eight to the fact that they have this available to them.
06:22 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah. Absolutely. And that's why I love that you've been, for lack of a better term, you know, at the forefront of it. Definitely been, a first mover, it sounds like as well too. So being able to have that experience and that information. And as you, you know, are able to also see, like, where there might be, that's all those potential gaps, you're able to kind of fulfill those for so many, entrepreneurs and business owners and organizations. And so, I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear how you're able to kinda help out these, these clients and these customers that you work with. Could you take us through how you serve the clients you work with?
06:51 - Catherine vanVonno
Yeah. Sure. So, just to, you know, sort of define what we do. We know, are considered an offshore staffing agency. And when I say offshore, that means that we are sourcing talent or finding remote workers in non-US countries. And these countries have to meet certain conditions, you know their local labor rates have to be more attractive than US local labor rates. This allows us to pass on savings to our clients. You know, they would realize anywhere, you know, at a minimum fifty percent savings over hiring locally or US talent and it can go up to seventy-five percent savings that they're seeing. But but financial attractiveness of the country is only one thing that we look at.
We also focus on countries where English communication is common and the country has to have an interesting infrastructure that can support stable and reliable Internet and power supply. So, you know, that's our main focus. Our main focus is recruiting staff and finding talent in these places. And we can recruit for any skill set, that a client comes to us looking for. It could be a sales position, it could be marketing, it could be bookkeeping, it could be something in operations. So essentially any key support function that can be performed on a computer with an internet connection is what we can recruit for.
We are considered there are a variety of different agencies offshore staffing agencies out there our agency is considered a full-service agency, meaning that, you know, we do sup we run the gamut. Okay? So we vet the the candidates that we source for our clients meaning we skill assess them whether that be through training programs that our training team is offering or SME assessments, these are subject matter experts. You know we don't always have training programs for every skill set especially the more advanced ones so it'll be a one-on-one individual assessment but we vet them. We also provide training classes for our VAs, and VAs is just a term for a virtual assistant, the same thing as a remote worker.
We skill-match them with the client's job descriptions, and we facilitate the entire selection and hiring process, including interviews, payroll setup, and onboarding, and we don't stop at the onboarding. So once the VA is onboarded to the client, the client is paired with an account manager who has extensive experience. We've had many years doing this and developing productive and successful, client and remote worker relationships, because many of our clients are new to this environment, and they enjoy that level of hand-holding. We also have an IT help desk and an HR department, to resolve any type of issues that could affect worker productivity.
So, you know, in terms of full service, I mean, we're there for the entire relationship, between the client and and the remote worker. We started as a niche company and really grew out of the e-commerce industry. It was just a natural fit back then because e-commerce business owners were used to working remotely, with their customers. So, we started there but we've met since expanded into other verticals, and are now serving clients in a wide range of industries. I can say that our primary focus still remains in the small business sector, and in companies that are, less than or under a hundred, a hundred people.
But we are starting to see a rise in medium-sized business owners, converting, to a blended staffing model now where, you know, they'll keep their on-site staff, but supplement it with remote teams. And technology is enabling that nowadays. So, so that's really what we do. And we can be as involved as a client wants us to be. But the relationship is really between the client and their remote worker. We're just there to facilitate and ensure that it remains productive and positive.
11:10 - Gresham Harkless
Would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce? It could be for yourself personally or the business or a combination of both. But is it that ability to be full service and to be able to kind of understand the full process and then at the same time be able to fill those gaps and make those connections for those organizations to succeed?
11:28 - Catherine vanVonno
Yeah. I think that is clearly a competitive advantage that we have, for those clients that are looking for that security. We do have clients that have already been doing this themselves they've been pulling from the freelance marketplaces or they've been with other, staffing agencies. So for those, you know, I think one of our real selling points and really what separates us from everybody else is that our selection and hiring processes are risk-free. There's zero upfront cost.
So you will go to many companies and say, okay, well, you have to invest x amount of money and then we'll do the work for you. For our company, you don't do any of that. You come to us, client services specialists will get on a call with you, to discuss your business needs. They'll draft your job description and send it out for your approval. They'll work with our internal teams to source, vet and skill assess the candidates.
12:29 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
12:39 - Catherine vanVonno
Yeah. So I don't know if this is, a hack, but I thought about this for a few minutes this morning. But it is a critically important takeaway, in the new normal, that COVID has left us with, and that is that remote work is more accepted now than ever. And companies are finally realizing that productive work can be accomplished remotely, and team building can be done remotely.
13:05 - Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
13:15 - Catherine vanVonno
I can tell you that I've made it a point to surround myself with really smart people and to really listen to what they have to say. I learned early in the development of this company that I'm not the smartest person here. That there are people far smarter than I am, and that companies aren't built by one person. Companies are built through team effort.
13:39 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And so now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Catherine, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:50 - Catherine vanVonno
A CEO is responsible for the overall success of a company at every stage. You know, managing finances and resources properly, mentoring staff. But for me, my vision of my role not only includes that at this point, but it's also about leading the development and execution of long-term strategies. So I need to ensure the longevity of my company now.
14:15 - Gresham Harkless
Definitely appreciate that definition, Catherine. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.
14:29 - Catherine vanVonno
Alright. Well, you know, my final point would be to get a competitive advantage and give offshore staffing a chance. So, you know, give us a call, visit our website. If you wanna connect with me, you can reach me directly. I'm old school. Call me. I prefer a phone call. So, just call our main number. Just please be sure to let whoever answers the phone, let them know that you heard me on the I Am CEO podcast, and they will patch you through to me. If I am unavailable in a meeting or something, I promise I'll call you back.
15:08 - Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. Well, Catherine, truly appreciate that. We will have the links and information in the show notes. I like how you're old school but have new school technologies and you're mending them both together. So giving people an opportunity in a way to kinda connect with you is absolutely huge. And what you said about, you know, being aware of kinda trying new things or being open to that and leaning into that, especially during a time like this where there's a tremendous amount of opportunities that are around. I appreciate you for being and creating and building one of those opportunities as well. Appreciate your time, of course, and I hope you great rest of the day.
15:39 - Catherine vanVonno
Great Resh, one more thing. I think that we, more thing. I think that we are offering, a promo to your your listeners. I'm not sure what it is, but, I believe that it's, I think a waiver of what we normally charge a setup fee after the after-trial period of ninety-nine dollars. I think my team is waiving the entire ninety-nine-dollar setup fee. So you know, just to let you guys know that.
16:06 - Gresham Harkless
Absolutely. No. I definitely appreciate that, and we will have that information as well in the show notes so that everybody can take advantage of that. But thank you so much, you and your team for offering that. Again, I appreciate you, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.
16:17 - Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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