IAM1935 – Co-founder Helps Job Seekers in Their Quest for Remote Work

Transcription:

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Laura Spawn Teaser 00:00

We specialize specifically just in listing positions in our database that have some component of telecommuting. So you're first brought to what we have, you can register and gain even more access. To all of our different job listings.

Intro 00:19

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:44

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we were purposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and what I like to call CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month, we are focusing on finishing it out, fighting the good fight and closing out the job. I think just as important as it is to start something, it's even more important in how you conclude it or finish it out. So if you think of the different things that you can finish out, everything from a project, it can be from a day, it can also be from a business in and of itself and it can also of course be for the year. So when you think of finishing out, I want you to really think of these episodes because what we're going to really focus on is the last question that we really ask, which is defining what it means to be a CEO.

And all the creative, innovative, and I think truly insightful questions that we received from this question is really what we want to highlight during the show. But of course, we want you to enjoy the entire episode and think about how you're going to finish things out and how you're going to finish things out strongly. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.

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 Laura Spawn of Virtual Vocations. Laura, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Laura Spawn 02:15

Thanks. Glad to be here.

Gresham Harkless 02:17

Glad to have you on. What I want to do is just read a little bit more about Laura, so you can hear about all the awesome things that she has been doing.

After spending countless hours trying to find and verify potential work-from-home opportunities, Laura Spawn knew there needed to be a better way to find legitimate remote work online.

That's why in 2007, Spawn co-founded Virtual Vocations, the web's number one hand-screened all telecommute job board. With Spawn as CEO, Virtual Vocations has helped more than 2 million job seekers in their quest for remote work. Laura Spawn currently lives in Oregon with her husband and three children.

Laura, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Laura Spawn 02:53

I sure am.

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Gresham Harkless 02:53

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Laura Spawn 03:00

Yeah. So, like you mentioned back in 2007, I had just had my third child. He was just a couple of months old and my husband and I were both actually in school the whole time. My husband was pursuing a medical degree and definitely tight on finances so I was continually looking for something I could do from home, just around taking care of the kids and our schedules. So I started looking online and I was spending upwards of 5 to 6 hours a day looking and it was just really frustrating.

I was coming across a lot of great jobs, not ones that necessarily met my skill set back then. A lot of them were Still the computer programming-type positions. Anyway, my brother, he was just finishing up his computer science degree, so we were chatting and I was telling him about my struggle and we were just brainstorming and kind of came up with the idea. If I was finding all of these great jobs, not necessarily ones that I could do, maybe somebody else could benefit from them. So from that idea, we just thought, Oh, let's put these up online and see what happens. See if people are interested and they weren't.

So yeah, he programmed the backend and I continued searching every day and we created this database of screen telecommute jobs. So that's how it all got started.

Gresham Harkless 04:26

Nice. I absolutely love that. And I feel like, I don't know if telecommuting and virtual working is widespread now, but I think it's definitely obviously edging and going towards that way, but you were definitely way ahead of the curve in 2007 to be able to see that and see that there's an opportunity there.

I love the fact that you weren't necessarily looking to create like a huge job board or anything. You were just looking for something for yourself. And then all of a sudden, all of these other people need the same thing and then, it seems like organizations and businesses as well.

Laura Spawn 04:53

Yep. It was just an opportune moment and it really ended up great because I wasn't finding a lot for myself. But at the same time, I thought someone's got to be able to use these and qualify for them.

Gresham Harkless 05:06

Exactly. So it worked out in the grand scheme of things. And so I want to hear a little bit more about Virtual Vocations. Could you take us through what people would see and how it serves the clients when they go to the site?

Laura Spawn 05:17

Yes. So when you first come to the site, you are taken to the database immediately of our jobs that will bring up, you can do a search just like you would on major job boards and it'll bring up search results of all different telecommute positions. We specialize specifically just in listing positions in our database that have some component of telecommuting. So you're first brought to what we have, you can register and gain even more access to all of our different job listings. At this point, our staff, we're finding around 800 jobs per day that we add to the database and that's after screening thousands at this point.

So we get those added. We have free courses on getting started telecommuting. We have ebooks and industry guides. We call them basically the more popular telecommuting industries. We've created some guides just for people in those careers. And then we also have our blog, which we post quite a bit of content on. I like to consider that mostly cornerstone content. It's all really in depth information on how to handle applying for jobs, online interviewing, all sorts of topics related specifically to remote work. So that's what people will find when they come to the site.

We've also launched in the last year a career services division where we have certified career specialists that can help rewrite resumes and your LinkedIn profile and cover letters, things of that nature.

Gresham Harkless 06:57

You might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This is what you feel distinguishes you or your organization, but what do you feel sets you guys apart?

Laura Spawn 07:05

So partly, there are a couple things that I would say set us apart. One, I think it is that we are a subscription-based site for job seekers and you don't see that mostly. Most job boards are free to the job seeker. And then their model is that they charge the employer. But we opted to charge the job seeker for the specialized vetted database of jobs. That allows us really to work for them and to make sure that every single job we add is vetted, is safe, legitimate. So that is one thing that makes this unique compared to when job seekers go and use the larger free job boards.

You're never quite sure what you're gonna get because most of the time recruiters and employers can just post, anything that they'd like. So there's not a whole lot of the vetting that goes along behind the scenes by the job board. But other than that piece, we also, I like to say we specialize only In telecommuting jobs. Like I mentioned before, I find a lot of job boards, they may specialize in remote work, freelance, part time jobs with flexible hours, but we require every one of our positions to allow some level of working from home.

That's really that I think I've held on to that because that was my initial goal for myself was that freedom of working from home. So I think that's a really important part of it and in a part that we've always held on to is making sure that is a part of every single job listing.

Gresham Harkless 08:47

I think that's absolutely awesome just because I believe that, with the way the world is going and things are moving, like you said it's hard, I think even for job seekers. When they're applying for a job, which you don't even know if it's really a legit organization or a legit company or legit job, or even if it's in alignment with what exactly they're posting as well.

So they get the opportunity to tap into your team and your expertise as well to understand that, yes, you have a subscription model, but at the same time, you don't have to lose that time, which is usually everybody's most valuable thing by trying to figure out is this legit, or is this not right?

Laura Spawn 09:19

And that's exactly what it is. We do receive questions from people, asking why? Why do you charge? And that's exactly what we say is this is a time-saving tool for you with your job search. First a lot of the jobs that we screen and list are available in other places, but that takes time to go search and find them.

So that's our service.

Gresham Harkless 09:43

Yeah. I love that.

Laura Spawn 09:44

Yeah. I think most people find that pretty helpful.

Gresham Harkless 09:47

Yeah. I definitely think in the grand scheme of things, when you go and apply for different things, and then you go on a job interview and you realize it wasn't anything close to the description, or it wasn't even exactly what it was supposed to be. I think sometimes rather than go down that route, you have an opportunity to essentially be a partner to understand that you're getting quality, which is always of importance.

Laura Spawn 10:07

Yes.

Gresham Harkless 10:08

Nice. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app, a book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Laura Spawn 10:17

Goodness. Over the years, I've tried many different things. I've read a lot of books. So when I was thinking about this, I realized at this point in my life, especially now that my kids are older, they're not the little kids they were when I started the business, at this point, I like to just set aside a little bit of time each day before I really get going working and just not always like the apps calm and head space.

I use those, but I don't do one thing every day or the same thing. I transition or switch it up between walks and quiet meditation or just something to get my brain clear before I really dive into my projects. So I think in the past I was always just busy, busy, busy and on the go and diving into everything as soon as I could. And it's made a difference to slow down a little bit.

Gresham Harkless 11:12

I absolutely agree with that. I love that kind of example just because I'm the same way where I do a lot of variety. But at the end of the day, I would like the same goal, which is to get that kind of quiet time or that alone time to make sure before the day takes a hold of you that you can take hold of it.

So whether it be like you said, the different apps or the walking or whatever, as long as it's being done and it's hitting the goal, I think that's important so I love that .

Now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop to a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Laura Spawn 11:41

Oh, so I would tell myself not try to learn how to do everything myself, manage every part of the business. Don't try to become an expert on every area of marketing, content writing. Don't be a one-person show and just  find people to partner with or surround yourself with people who have expertise in the areas that I didn't.

Then a big one, I think for me, especially as the business has grown is to not be afraid to say, I don't know. Even as the CEO or the business owner, it's more important to be able to say, I don't know, but I'm going to figure it out where I'm going to find someone who does. So I think that's probably what I would tell myself is to create more partnerships for the long run.

Gresham Harkless 12:33

Yeah, I absolutely love that CEO nugget. And I think like right in alignment with what you were saying that a lot of times I feel like you even get a stronger connection with people when you say sometimes you don't know. So it helps to know that you don't know everything, but having that kind of will or that desire to go try to figure out how is also is great.

But I think a lot of times people get a connection with people who say they don't know, I'm going to try to figure it out.

Laura Spawn 12:55

Yep. That human part of all of us. that, just it's okay to admit that you don't know everything.

Gresham Harkless 13:00

Exactly. Exactly. Now I wanted to ask you and I know you touched on this a little bit, my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on the show.

So Laura, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Laura Spawn 13:12

Oh, so to me it means like along the same lines of what I was talking about as far as the golden nugget is. I guess being a connector because as far as I guess across the years as we've grown in our team has gotten bigger and bigger. I find myself more in a role of where I'm talking to my employees in one area of the company and connecting them up with other, people in another side of our company that are maybe handling the job research, they are connecting them with our content writers and then helping find new services that would help our business grow, just brainstorming.

So at this point as CEO, I find myself having a lot of conversations with people in all different areas of business and kind of just connecting all of us together so that we're all striving towards the same goal in the business of continuing to grow and ultimately finding more telecommute jobs for people.

Gresham Harkless 14:12

Absolutely, I love that definition and that perspective because at the end of the day, not being caught in every single silo, but understanding like the big picture, understanding what the mission is and being able to make sure that's executed as best as possible. So I love that definition as well.

Laura, I appreciate your time. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and our listeners know. And then how best of course, they can find out about you in Virtual Vocations.

Laura Spawn 14:36

If they want to connect with us, our team can definitely be found online. We have social media presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. We're very active and responsive there. Also, I just invite people to come and search on our site, register. Even though we are a subscription job board, we have an entire section of free positions that we also list.

Then we also have our weekly employer posts on our blog and those jobs are all available and free as well, whether you are a paid member or not. So I just invite everybody to come check it out if you're looking for more control in your personal life, your schedule, your career, you'd like to be at home more.

I think it's a great resource to take a look at and check out. We're always trying to improve it and help job seekers.

Gresham Harkless 15:31

Absolutely. I appreciate you. I appreciate your time and we'll make sure to have the links in the show notes as well. Just so everybody can check out all the awesome things you're doing, blog content, everything you're creating.

I appreciate you again. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Laura Spawn 15:44

All right. Thank you so much.

Outro 15:46

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.

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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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