IAM955- Consultant Helps People and Builds Businesses

Barbara Maheshwari is currently building the biggest virtual assistance hub in Europe – Remote Bob. She is a Go-to-Market Consultant, working across the UK, UAE, Croatia and India. Barbara was the youngest graduate from Executive MBA in Business school Cotrugli and she is passionate about helping people and building businesses.

• CEO Hack: Consistency and resourcefulness
• CEO Nugget: Never doubt yourself, focus on opportunities and keep going
• CEO Defined: Lifestyle and doing complete different jobs everyday

Website: http://www.remotebob.co.uk/

Personal:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbaramaheshwari/
https://www.facebook.com/barbara.krecak
https://www.instagram.com/ceo_in_heels/

Business:
Remote Bob
https://www.linkedin.com/company/remote-bob/https://www.facebook.com/remotebobuk/
https://www.instagram.com/remotebobuk/

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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[00:00:28.19] – 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.

[00:00:55.29] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. 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 Barbara Maheshwari of Remote Barbara. It's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:01:06.90] – Barbara Maheshwari

Hi. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:09.00] – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. Hopefully, I didn't butcher your last name too badly. And, before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Barbara. And Barbara is currently building the biggest virtual assistant hub in Europe, Remote Bob. She is a go-to-market consultant working across the UK, UAE, Croatia, and India. Barbara was the youngest graduate from the Executive MBA School in Centralia, and she is passionate about helping people in building businesses. Barbara, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:38.70] – Barbara Maheshwari

Yes.

[00:01:39.79] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I want to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take a case through your CEO story? What lets you get started with all the awesome work you're doing?

[00:01:50.59] – Barbara Maheshwari

Yes. When I was seventeen, I was on my own. I was, doing four jobs. I was selling ice creams, and, I was just watching these, movies and thinking how one day that would be me. And then, my first company was in, event management. I was just at the right place at the right time. I had a friend who got a job for Coca-Cola. She was working as a brand manager, and she was telling me that, she was, feeling so overwhelmed because, she had to organize sixty events in the summer, and there was no event management agency in our region, like, on the coast of Croatia.

So I just started helping her out, organizing events just to be a good friend. And then I registered a page on Facebook, and all the big brands from the capital were desperate to get any agency on the coast. Because it was like, what tourist season. So they had many, many events, and it was really expensive and complicated to send people from the capital. So, basically, in the first thirty days, I got big contracts with brands like Johnny Walker, Smirnoff, and Captain Morgan. I even did one event for Ernst and Young. We did some events for, like, the European Parliament. So I hired, around sixty people in one month.

[00:03:14.30] – Gresham Harkless

Nice.

[00:03:14.80] – Barbara Maheshwari

And that's how it all started. And ever since then, I've been, launching businesses, growing businesses, and consulting other business owners.

[00:03:23.40] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I appreciate that. Sounds like you're a serial entrepreneur. You have that fix and that bug, and you keep running with that. But I love how the organic part of everything that you started, I think, so many times, if we go through the things that we're passionate about or we see we see problems and we solve them, sometimes for those around us, it starts to kinda, snowball into other opportunities that we have as well too.

[00:03:46.19] – Barbara Maheshwari

Yeah. I agree. I think when we are, passionate about something, when we are not doing this for money, that's when things happen.

[00:03:55.90] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear about the remote bot. Could you take us through a little bit more about what you're doing with your clients there and how you serve them?

[00:04:04.30] – Barbara Maheshwari

Yes. So, it started when I was, working as a go-to market consultant. I was helping founders to, set up their business to grow it faster. And I noticed that most of them know what they have to do. But they all have the same problem, lack of time. It's simply like, not so many hours in a day, you end up dealing with suppliers, with admin, with forms, with contracts, invoices, searching for speaking gigs, generating leads. And then in the end, you get, like, one hour left for business strategy and for things that the director should be doing.

So I decided to start. Initially, I was trying to find just someone reliable to handle these things for myself, and then I realized there's nothing like that on the market. I just decided to start Remote Dog and train these virtual assistants to, be able to do everything that the start-up needs to grow. So now, we are helping our clients to focus on their core business while we are handling all these repetitive admin and marketing tasks. At this point, we have two services. One is dedicated VA. Just your go-to person for a variety of tasks like that, Donna from Suits. And our second, service is fixed road packages.

So if you don't have time to delegate, you don't wanna be, in touch with your assistant daily. You just wanna come to us and say, I wanna improve, like, engagement of my social media pages. And we already have an action plan, pre-made packages. You'll get reports about the results every Friday. So it's quite convenient for at least three startups.

[00:05:52.19] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I appreciate that. I often say it's not the number of hours you have. It's how you leverage them. And as you said, like, I think so many times as business owners or start-ups you're trying to do all of the things and hold on to all of the things. But I think understanding as quickly as possible what your core competencies are, what your zone of genius is, and leaning more on that and being able to have, like, a great team like you've been able to build and create to be able to get those things done so that you don't have to give up either or you can do both and and and do it very, very well.

[00:06:25.10] – Barbara Maheshwari

I agree. Only when we delegate everything else, we can be focused and, excel in our business.

[00:06:33.69] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And so what would you consider to be what I call your secret sauce? The thing you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you unique. It could be yourself or your business or a combination of both.

[00:06:44.39] – Barbara Maheshwari

Well, I feel, the main difference is usually when you get a virtual assistant, you have to tell them exactly what to do and how. With us, it's not just if you tell us your goals and we already have an action plan. We already know exactly what to do, when, and how, and you'll just start getting results. And then on top of it, most other virtual assistant agencies are just, doing matchmaking. They connect you with the VA. In our case, we also have a project manager who supervises them and makes sure that they are on track, and that everything is delivered on time within the highest quality standards.

So, usually, when you get someone, you still have that feeling, like, do they understand the task? Are they on track? I have to check. I have to pull up. What is it gonna look like? In this case, we like, a remote blob, guaranteeing that it will be done. If we can't handle it, we will sort it out. So it's kind of that, safety net that you are getting.

[00:07:49.00] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And I think it speaks to, like, a lot of times when, you know, sometimes people say, oh, just, you know, hire a virtual assistant, and not realizing that there's, you know, different levels, I guess, to hiring a virtual assistant. And I think that you spoke to one of those aspects that a lot of people don't realize that they have to do, which is to check and make sure somebody's doing the work or also training the person. So I love that when you built everything, understood, like, those are some of the pain points that people have when bringing on team members or delegating, and you decide to build that directly in so they don't have those leaders to worry about that.

[00:08:22.10] – Barbara Maheshwari

Yeah. I agree. Well, we were doing a market research. Most of our potential clients were saying, well, I have so many things to do, and I have so many things that I would like to delegate, but simply feel that it would take longer to explain to someone what exactly is that I need. So that got us thinking about how to fix that problem, and that's how that's why we did everything in such small details that, even those clients who are used to micromanage and have everything under control can still be happy with the service.

[00:08:58.70] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's huge. I'm sure a lot of people who have had, you know, a hire that maybe didn't go as well as they would have hoped have said, why don't I just do it myself since I have to, you know, tell you how to do it and then redo it. You being able to understand that, hear that, do that market research, and, present a solution is huge.

So definitely appreciate that. And so I wanted to, switch gears a little bit, and I want 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?

[00:09:31.10] – Barbara Maheshwari

I would say it's just, persistence and resourcefulness. I have strong beliefs, and my favorite quote is that there is only one difference between successful and unsuccessful people. Unsuccessful people fail and give up, and successful people fail and try again. So I think, many people when they are starting a business, they're they are thinking, oh my god. What if it doesn't work out? It will be a huge disaster.

My self-confidence will be ruined. Well, they should be thinking, well, if it doesn't work, I have to do it and find a different strategy to make it work and do that as many times as you have to until you make it to big success. So I think we're just doing that and having these small celebrations, after we land some big clients after we get a big press release, like, celebrating and keeping that, energy and enthusiasm going.

[00:10:30.00] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I love that, and I appreciate that quote. And I think so many times people, you know, have, the wrong, I guess, perception of failure and not realizing that the people that become successful, become successful because of failure because they have those experiences, they learn from them, they pivot as you said. And I think I read a quote, I think it might have been Robert Kiyosaki, he said that I found out that nine out of ten businesses failed, so I decided to start ten businesses. And when you start to have that mindset and you understand that it's only gonna give you more knowledge and information to get bigger and better, and as long as you're drilled in on, like, I'm gonna be successful, you're gonna find a way to make that happen.

[00:11:08.20] – Barbara Maheshwari

Exactly. I agree one hundred percent.

[00:11:11.70] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. And so, I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client, or if you have to tell a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:11:24.50] – Barbara Maheshwari

I would just, say, never doubt yourself. I think, every one of us, reaches that point where you are thinking, like, do I need this in my life? Why am I working sixteen hours a day? Like, all founders that I know are doing that, are going to to that stage, and they feel that they are alone, that, it was something that they did wrong. But I think that's just part of entrepreneurship, and that's just a standard package. So I think it's important to remember if you reach that page, just keep going.

[00:12:00.89] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I appreciate that. I love how you said standard package because I think so many times, a lot of people, especially when they start stuff, they don't necessarily realize that, and I think that's to their detriment because if you understand that it is standard package, this is part of the process, while it does become frustrating and suck, you know, when it's happening, I think if you understand that's part of the process, that once you get on the other side, then, success will follow and you have those opportunities to grow and get better. But I think if we don't remind ourselves of that, we don't understand that it's part of the process, then, you know, a lot of times people stop before they get the opportunity to see that success.

[00:12:38.00] – Barbara Maheshwari

Yeah. And, also, I think, focusing on opportunities. And, I mean, it sounds silly, but, usually, people are saying, well, investors told me that I need to develop software, but I don't have enough funding to hire developers. And people see it as, oh my god. It's an obstacle, but you should focus on opportunities. Maybe you can get a cofounder that can develop the technology for you. So I think, like accepting no for an answer should not be part of your, strategy. Just like finding a way always somehow.

[00:13:13.79] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think there was a quote that I heard that said, you know, I don't need to increase my resources. I need to increase my resourcefulness. And that's finding those ways, finding those opportunities, as you said so well, of how to make it happen, whether it be partnering with somebody, finding an intern, or something like that. But you just roll up your brain sleeve, so to speak, and then you go to work and try to figure out whatever strategy can make that come to fruition.

[00:13:38.39] – Barbara Maheshwari

Yeah. Believing in yourself and believing that everything is possible, and then, we will attract it in our life.

[00:13:47.79] – Gresham Harkless

If you believe it's possible, then you can make it possible. So definitely appreciate that. And so now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Barbara, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:14:05.39] – Barbara Maheshwari

For me, it's a lifestyle, and I think it's the only, job in the world where you can do different things every day. It's like having a completely different job every day. One day you are dealing with finance. One day you are dealing with marketing. One day you are writing copy for your new commercial. One day, you are, hiring people firing them, or managing them. Like, it's crazy. I would say it's not even a job, it's a lifestyle.

[00:14:37.10] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Yeah. I appreciate that. And as you talked about that passion piece, especially if you're passionate about what it is that you're creating or creating anything in general, as most entrepreneurs are, they start to see opportunity after opportunity. I think it becomes that lifestyle that you talked about, and it's not something that,  you necessarily do. It's something that is who you are and it's, like, part of your being. And I think when you start to step into that and you understand that, again, it gives you that opportunity to kinda continue to create, continue to kinda see what you can do better and, and just snowball from there.

[00:15:08.50] – Barbara Maheshwari

Yeah.

[00:15:09.79] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Barbara, truly appreciate that definition, 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 a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

[00:15:27.29] – Barbara Maheshwari

They can just visit our website and remote blog. If they submit a contact form and mention, the name of, your podcast, they'll be entitled to some special deals.

[00:15:38.70] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I appreciate that. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too to make it easier for everybody. But appreciate Barbara for all the awesome work that you're doing, and your time today, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

[00:15:50.60] – 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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