IAM2074 – CEO Helps Agencies to Fulfill Their Client Work and Marketing Needs

In this episode, we have Amy Foley, an entrepreneur who started her own virtual assistant business and later evolved into Inbound Back Office.

Amy has over over 25 years of administrative experience in various industries. She holds a BA in Business Administration and a Master’s in Information Systems. She discusses how their company helps clients who wants to  scale their business without dealing with hassle of hiring.

The conversation highlights the importance of autonomy and ownership in one’s work and focus on helping clients and creating a positive work environment for their employees.

Website: Inbound Back Office
Linkedin: Amy Foley

Previous Episode: ceo-shares-the-evolution-of-a-virtual-assistant-business/

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Full Interview:

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Amy Foley Teaser 00:00

It's super if you use five minutes of our time, that's what we're gonna bill you. That's literally what it is, and I think it's super refreshing for clients to in this day and age of all of the subscriptions. And it's just, what if I don't use it enough and all of that? So we just took all of that stress out of their lives.

Intro 00:20

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.

Gresham Harkless 00:47

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. I have a very special guest back on the show today. I have Amy Foley. Amy, excited to have you back on the show.

Amy Foley 00:56

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 00:59

Yes, absolutely. You're doing so many phenomenal things. So super excited to jump in and hear a little bit more on all the awesome things that you're doing. But of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Amy so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

And Amy started her entrepreneurial journey in 2011 when she left her corporate job to have more flexibility and time with her family and started a small virtual assistant business. The business evolved with the help of her co-founder, Michael Reynolds, into what is now known as Inbound Back Office, which provides back office support to marketing agencies. Amy has over 25 years of administrative experience in various industries, including manufacturing, real estate, accounting, marketing, SAS, and many more.

She has a BA in Business Administration and a Master's in Information Systems. When she's not running her business, she enjoys spending time with her family, running, reading, traveling, organizing any and everything, and optimizing her health. And Amy was a guest on our episode 665of our I AM CEO Podcast. So super excited to hear about all the awesome things she's been doing since then. And they have loads of great information as well too on their podcast.

So I'm sure we'll get away to try to subscribe and listen to all the awesome things. But what I love about hearing her journey and her growth for the organization is that the virtual assistant business that she had has grown into so much more than I think what she anticipated. So super excited to hear about that journey. Amy, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

Amy Foley 02:25

I am. Let's do it.

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Gresham Harkless 02:26

Let's get it started then. So to kick everything off, let's rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on what you've been working on, how you got started, and we'll let you know all awesome things you're doing.

Amy Foley 02:35

Yeah. Yeah. So as far as how it all started, I in 2011, I did end up leaving my corporate job after my son broke his femur, and they wouldn't let me work from home. Of course, that was before work from home was really a thing. So they eventually did let me, and then I wanted to do it more because I realized it was so amazing. And they said absolutely not, so that's when I started looking for I initially was looking for, like, an actual job working from home, and I found one part time.

So to get my foot in the door and to feel what it felt like to work virtually for a company, I did that on nights and weekends, and then it turned into a full time job. Once I got really, efficient at my job, I had some extra time on my hands, so I thought, if I can do this for a company, like, I could do this for myself for other companies. So I went out looking on Twitter for other companies, and I found three people who were ready to hire me in the first week.

And I was like, okay. Now I gotta figure out what I'm supposed to do now. So I just made it up as I went along, and the they just kept referring people to me. I very rarely had to go out and look for clients, and that's when I realized that this is a real need. And I should probably try to make this into a business so that I could do it full time because I really loved it. And I was not loving my full time job at the time.

So I hired a business coach who let me barter with her because I couldn't afford her, and she gave me all the steps I needed to do to just minimal viable kind of business. I didn't want any bells and whistles, nothing fancy. I just wanted to be able to run the business. And she helped me so much. And when I had too many clients for the hours that I had in a day, I would hire a contractor to help. And then that just kept happening. And before I knew it, we had twenty team members and then forty and then fifty and then sixty. So it just grew super organically like that, and there was never any, I big goals. Like, I wanna make this kind of company. It just evolved.

Gresham Harkless 04:48

Yeah. I absolutely love that. And I love it because a lot of what you did is in like, identifying even the need. I wrote down build a plan on the way down. Sometimes you're not sure exactly what to do, but you're like, I'm really passionate about this. It seems like there's something there, and you just lean into that from there.

Amy Foley 05:05

Yeah. For sure. And in fact so my very first client was a marketing agency owner, and I at that time, I was just taking anybody who needed help. And he and his team were willing to train me on all of their stuff so that I could help them. And once we were working together for a year, he came to me and said, hey. I have so many colleagues in the agency world that need this service, and it does not exist out there. What do you think about joining forces?

And I know how to build an actual company, like, with and with payroll and stuff like that. And you know how to do the hiring and are good at the execution. Gather, we could really make this a thing. And so that's what we ended up doing. That's how I partnered with Michael, and that just really took it off. And so I never marketing was never really anything I was super interested in. It was nothing I really thought about. But we just took that path, and it ended up working out.

Gresham Harkless 06:08

Yeah. That's beautiful when you, take those steps. I wanted to drill down a little bit. I know we touched on it a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you're working with your clients. Could you take us through what that process looks like?

Amy Foley 06:18

Yeah. So we work directly with marketing agencies, and we essentially are the back office for them. So we provide services, anything from general admin services to all the way to, like, website development. So any service that an agency needs to fulfill client work or to fulfill their own marketing needs, we can handle. So we're broken out into separate teams. Each team has its own manager, so they kind of they operate as their own kind of little companies, and they work directly with the clients, sometimes with the end clients, depending on the nature of the service.

And it's all on demand, which is really what our clients like with no there's no subscriptions, there's no monthly fees, not no minimums, stuff like that. Yeah. It's super if you use five minutes of our time, that's what we're gonna bill you. That's literally what it is, and I think it's super refreshing for clients to in this day and age of all of the subscriptions. And it's just, what if I don't use it enough and all of that? So we just took all of that stress out of their lives.

And another thing that kind of sets us apart is when I was starting, I would get a lot of people who would say, I can get cheaper help overseas or in another country or something like that. And to which I always said and stood by, yes, you can. And I've hired admins from overseas and they're great to a point. They're it's almost if you want higher level things, you and, like, cultural things and communication type things, like, you're just not gonna get that in a company overseas. And I've experienced that, so I can speak to the experience that they are probably having.

So, we always have people who will go try doing it that way, saving some money. And then eventually, they come back because they realize for this type of work, depending on the service and depending on what tasks they are. I'm not saying every single task is done better by a US company. Certainly not. But, overall, for what our agencies are looking for help with, need US people who are used to working for US companies and for US end clients. Like, they just understand how it all works of just a little bit better.

Gresham Harkless 08:46

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I'm sure you're having conversations with them might have that same type of uncertainty around how the things are gonna be executed. If they get all these leads and opportunities and close all these deals, how are we actually gonna make that happen? And to be able to have you as that back office as support probably is a very huge sense of relief.

Amy Foley 09:06

Yeah. For sure. And we have clients we have some larger clients who use us just to fill in certain areas where they might be lacking or maybe to cover a maternity leave, or we just lost a team member and it's gonna take us months to find a new one. And then we have other clients who are more like individual consultants who they wanna scale, but they don't wanna deal with any of that hiring.

It's a pain in the neck. And so they will use our company to scale, and so they'll use us a little bit at first. And then as they bring on more clients, they're using us more and more and more every month.

Gresham Harkless 09:42

Yeah. And that scale word is huge because I think it if you probably have a better idea of what you're doing, how much it costs expense wise, but then also too, this is how much you can have for clients and have all those things built out. It probably allows you to scale a lot better and probably a lot more predictably and strategically as well too.

Amy Foley 10:00

Yeah. Definitely. So yeah. And yeah. Like you said, it's I do often think about thinking back on, like, how it was built. And it was it was clunky. There was not any real strategy. It was and at the time, I'm like, this is probably the wrong way to do it, but it's working for me, so we're just gonna keep going. But now I'm realizing that there's no right or wrong way to do this, to be honest.

There are so many gurus out there who try to tell you this is the best way to do things. You gotta get up at 4AM and do your cold plunge, do your journaling, and do all the things. And it's just, you know what? That's great for you, if that works for you, but this is what works for me. And I'm achieving what I wanna achieve, and everybody's journey is individual, I think.

Gresham Harkless 10:47

Yeah, absolutely. And I it's so funny you say that because I always say if you run your own race, you can't lose. 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 Apple book or even a habit that you have, but what's something that you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

Amy Foley 11:02

To be honest, it's something that I know helps me so much and I don't do it enough. I'm not sure the psychology behind it, so time boxing, because, essentially, scheduling out all of your tasks on your calendar. Because I have a to do list that is ten miles long, and especially in this the way that we work today, like, it's never, oh, we'll get to it tomorrow. It's just like this never ending list, and we just feel like we have to just keep plugging away at it to get everything done. It's never all gonna get done. It's just going things are just gonna keep being added to the end.

And so I found myself in getting overwhelmed just looking at the list and going, man, I have so much to do. So when I actually force myself and I do it to force myself, and I don't know why. I know it makes my life so much better, but yet I resist it to schedule out all of the tasks. So I can see realistically, this is what I'm getting done today around all the other things like appointments and eating, picking up kids, and things like that.

This is realistically what I'm getting done today, and I just have to make peace with that, and that's how it is. And it just brings such a sense of calm and also just to see, okay, this is what I'm working on right now instead of looking at the list and trying to figure out, like, what do I work on next? And I spend, like, fifteen minutes, like, trying to figure out the best thing to work on next. Like, it just it just makes it so much more calm and efficient.

Gresham Harkless 12:32

Yeah. So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? A little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you happen to a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Amy Foley 12:44

I always tell people to hire people better than you. I find that there's a lot of egos in business and a lot of people just love being a manager or a boss so they can tell people what to do. But what I learned very early on, and probably learned it from being an employee and realizing what not to do is that I hire people who have skills that I don't have and who are way better than me at what they're doing.

They're experts, and then I let them go do their thing. I don't get into micromanaging. I don't you come to me if there's something you need, but, otherwise, I'm getting out of your way, because that's what I hired you to do. And I have found that I have, certainly, we have turnover, but I have team members who have been here since day one. And so there's something to be obviously, that's evidence that they love that type of work environment where they are considered experts in what they do. They know that they were hired to be an expert, and I'm actually letting them be the expert they are.

Gresham Harkless 14:00

Yeah. And that's powerful to have that autonomy, that ownership as well too of the things that you're doing. So now I wanna ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And our goal is to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So, Amy, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Amy Foley 14:14

Being a CEO to me that means two things. Being able to help people with something that they need help with. I love being able to help, and that's been my mindset since the beginning. I've never been a, I need to make so much money. It's was always about helping and how many clients can we help. And, also, giving an amazing work environment for our people, because that is something that I was looking for when this all kind of started. And it was always my intention to make a way better work environment than I ever had. So those are the two things that really define CEO for me.

Gresham Harkless 14:55

Yeah. I love that. Amy, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best people can get on view and find about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

Amy Foley 15:11

Yeah. For sure. We so we have a podcast that I started years ago. I handed it over to one of our teammates to host for a while, and I have actually taken it back over. So excited to say that my first episode should come out shortly. So check out our podcast, and you can find that on our website, which is inboundbackoffice.com. And we're always looking for marketing agency owners to be guests, so feel free to sign up if you're interested. And I am very active on LinkedIn. That's the one social platform that you should find me on. You can just find me at Amy Foley.

Gresham Harkless 15:49

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much again, Amy, to make that even easier. Of course, we're gonna have the links and information in your show notes as well too. And I truly appreciate you, obviously, for taking some time out today, but I love everything you're building.

And I love the reason behind. I always say, we wanna know, of course, what you do because that's important, but we wanna know why you do it and hear your story and your journey. You hear the why. You hear why that impacts so many other organizations and marketing companies as well too. So appreciate you again. Appreciate your time, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Amy Foley 16:17

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Outro 16:19

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase. It's a community. Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at Blue16Media.com.

This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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