#129: John McKenna (PeachTree VA)

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:00:00]:

We always say you're better off working on the business rather than in the business, because if you're in the weeds and doing things that you could delegate to somebody else, you're probably not focusing on what truly matters, which is generating revenue.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:14]:

Let's discover what people are building in the greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs, builders and those supporting them. You welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today I had the pleasure of speaking with John McKenna, the CEO of Peachtree VA, a virtual assistant staffing organization and also president of the Emerald Group, a premier mortgage recruiting firm based here in Cleveland, Ohio. John acquired Peachtree VA early in 2022 to grow their Vetted virtual Assistant offering. In the wake of a flourishing virtual assistant industry where entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses, nonprofits executive directors, land, other business models are often stretched thin, and using a virtual assistant can gain back some of their time, reduce their cost, and streamline their business. We cover a lot in our conversation today, from the ins and outs of entrepreneurship via acquisition and what that actually looks like in practice, to the nuance of this quickly evolving virtual assistant space, how to effectively delegate the implications of the gig economy, supplementing exhaustive land costly hiring processes and what comes next for Peachtree VA. As John continues to grow, the business from here focused on helping their clients focus on what matters most. So please enjoy my conversation with John McKenna after a brief message from our sponsor. Lay of the Land is brought to you by Impact Architects and by 90, as we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. Impact Architects has helped hundreds of those leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests on this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what the love. If you two are trying to build great, Impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free consultation or provide a free trial through 90, the software platform that helps teams build great companies. If you're interested in learning more about partnering with Impact Architects or by leveraging 90 to power your own business, please go to IA layoftheland FM. The link will also be in our show notes. So I'd love to start if we can just kind of unpack your professional journey, if there was a thread that tied your career together, let's pull on that a little bit and help us understand where you're coming from, where your interest in entrepreneurship stems from, Land, how you have navigated that whole journey.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:03:17]:

Absolutely. Well, first off, thanks for having me, my friend. I'm a fan of the podcast. You've had a number of my buddies on in the past, and you do a great job getting the Cleveland leaders out in this space, and we appreciate your labor of love. So my background is I'm a Cleveland guy, born and raised here, grew up on the East Side in the Heights, now live out in Pepper Pike. But I I, you know, after college, I kind of fell into the world of recruiting, which, you know, many, many people don't go to school to be a recruiter. It's kind of one of those industries where you just kind of fall into. So I found out that I was good at it, so I stuck with it. I worked mostly in the mortgage recruiting space for about 15 years. Worked internally for some large banks, both Chase and PNC, and then some large mortgage lenders. So I'd always wanted to do something for myself. I wanted to create my own thing. It was always in the back of my mind. Land about four years ago, I took that leap of faith and started the Emerald Group. So our main focus on that is mortgage recruiting, which is what I've always done. So I started off on my own. I was lucky enough to bring my brother back from California to come join me here. So he's been an integral part of the team, and we've grown that. I think we've got, you know, eight or nine recruiters with us here on the Emerald Group side of things. So I'll tell you, when you're going from kind of a cushy corporate salary and that jumping into your own thing, I don't know if I would have done it, if I would have known exactly all that it entailed. But I'm glad I took the leap. Certainly one of the most rewarding things that I've ever done. And there's never a dull moment, but it's fun. Every day is fun. I get up every day, look forward to what I'm doing. So that goes a long way.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:09]:

Well, I like that framing because maybe it's leading the witness a little, but I know where the story might ultimately lead. And knowing what you know, now having decided to acquire a company instead of start one, is that a consequence of some of those learnings along the way?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:05:29]:

Well, so, yeah, I mean, I started the Emerald Group, and that came with its own set of challenges. When you're starting a company, I'll tell you, the company I acquired is called Peachtree VA. Land we are a virtual assistant staffing firm. So I can tell you this, I wish I would have had a virtual assistant when I was starting my company, because there would have would have made life a heck of a lot easier. And there were a lot of things I could have delegated that would of helped me along in that journey. But when I acquired peach tree, it was interesting. I had never done it obviously, before, and it was something, it was another thing. The reason I did it is because if things aren't moving, I tend to get bored and stagnant, and I don't like that. So I was actually looking at acquiring something else in the recruiting space, similar to what I'm doing now. But I got introduced, luckily, to peachtree in the virtual assistant staffing world, and it was something that I kind of fell in love with. And our goals aligned with the former owner, and we were able to get a deal done. And it's been just over a year now, and it's been an awesome ride.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:29]:

So this entrepreneurship via acquisition model, I don't know if it's just the frequency effect, but it feels anecdotally to me like it's something I'm hearing a lot more about recently. And I think it's a really interesting approach and take to entrepreneurship. And I've been particularly looking forward to talking with you about it because you really have kind of gone through both sides of this journey through entrepreneurship, both from inception, land, scratch, and zero, and really creating something, but also running with something that has already had some real progress. So we can get to your kind of reflections. But I'm curious, as you were evaluating different opportunities, targets in the acquisition process, what was it about peachtree that resonated? What was the opportunity that you saw there?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:07:25]:

Well, the opportunity for me was it was a space that I knew little about, quite candidly, but it was something that the previous owner, she had built an incredible business, and she was doing everything herself, from all the sales calls to all that, but she'd also build an incredible corporate team that she had in place. And I really believed in that corporate team, and I had got to know them. And that was the goal. When you come into something, when you're not incredibly well versed in the space, you really have to lean on other people to make sure that it's a successful transition. So my number one goal was to keep that corporate team in place, which we did, and we've been able to add to it land grow. But yeah, I think when you were talking about, I mean, I looked at a number of other quote unquote targets, but the fact that this previous owner of peachtree had really built the mousetrap, so to speak, and she had all the systems in place, and she was so well organized that I couldn't even believe it. It gave me a bit of anxiety knowing what I did in my previous business, and I was nowhere near to the level of organization that she had brought on. So honestly, that was a godsend. And that made the transition land incredibly easy, because that just goes a long way with and I would tell this to anybody who's out there possibly selling a business if you can have all your ducks in a row, and you can have everything laid out there for potential sellers. That goes a long way because I looked at a number of businesses out there that were just a complete mess, frankly. So she had done an incredible job of that, and she had built a business that she didn't need to sell. It wasn't a business. It was a profitable business. She was just at a time in her life with some young children that she was ready to move on, and she didn't want to scale it. And I saw the opportunity, especially with my recruiting background. Land my recruiting firm that I already had, they did a little bit of recruiting, but this had kind of a built in client base of X amount of clients that were already working with Peachtree and their virtual assistant staffing. So I figured we'd be able to come in and have some natural synergy there. Land be able to do some recruiting work for them. So it worked out well, but it's been a fun ride.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:38]:

Well, we spend a lot of time here on the show understanding how it is to start something right from scratch. I don't think we've spent as much time understanding what it is to acquire another company. And so I'd love kind of from a rudimentary understanding what does that process actually look like, how do you handle the transition, and just the kind of mechanism of actually assuming ownership of another organization.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:10:09]:

Yeah, I guess to get the ball rolling, so to speak. I mean, her business was listed, so there was a business broker involved. Land I met with a lot of business brokers over my time when I was looking at other businesses, and I would say that many of the are people that I wouldn't want to grab a cup of coffee with. They weren't the type of people that you felt really comfortable around. But this broker was actually he seemed very ethical. He'd been doing it for 30 years. He just seemed different. And I had the gut feeling from talking with him that it was at least right to go down the path. So you've got to do a lot of due diligence in that. I just read a great book called Buy, Then Build by his name is Walker Dibell, I believe, and I wish I would have read it before I had purchased the business, but such is life. So you can put together a great plan when you're going through the exercise of doing the due diligence on the business. But at the end of the day, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth, right? So things are always going to go a little bit sideways, but that's okay. You have to adapt. You've got to be able to roll with the punches when you go down that path. There's certainly a lot to it. I mean, there's a lot of financing land legal that gets involved. Those are all things that are above my pay grade. But I was lucky to have a good team that could help me with that. And a lot of good local Cleveland people here that helped me. So I was very lucky to have those people in my life.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:34]:

How had Peachtree evolved since its original founding prior to your involvement? What is its kind of original story and impetus?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:11:44]:

Yeah. So they were founded in 2015. So the virtual assistant space is one that I didn't know anything about, quite frankly. I've got friends who live on the coast. And everybody seems to have a virtual assistant in these big cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco. And everybody knows what it is. My friends that I talk to out there. People in Cleveland don't really know what it is. So my job is to kind of get the obviously I want to get my company's name out there to Cleveland, but just the virtual assistant space in general is a big priority for me. So they were founded in Atlanta, hence the name Peachtree. Because everything in Atlanta is something to do with Peachtree. But she started off the old owner. Her name was Raquel Wilson. She's Incredible. She was a former virtual assistant herself, and she just kept taking on more clients. And she realized that, hey, I think I can build a business around this. So they had an incredibly loyal client base. I would say they were probably in probably 15 or so different states. They had VAS and, I think, virtual assistants in about 20 states. But, yeah, they had built up a really loyal clientele. Raquel was big in helping minority owned businesses and female owned businesses. And that was a real passion of her. So we've got a very diverse client base as well as very diverse group of virtual assistants. So, as I said, she had built a mousetrap. She wasn't ready to take it to that next level of scaling it. But she made that job easy by doing such a good job in her founding of It Land, running the business over the years.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:12]:

So now is probably as good a time as any. What are virtual assistants? What is this space? Kind of set the stage for us here.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:13:20]:

I get that question a lot, and a lot of people I talk to, they wonder if it's that thing that jumps out at the bottom of a website on the bottom right hand corner, if it's one of those things. But, no. A virtual assistant is a live person, somebody who is acts as an administrative assistant or an executive assistant. But the are rather than sitting in your office like a secretary in the days of old, they're working remote. They're working from their house and they work on a fractional basis. So some of them serve one client. Some serve a number of clients. So it is something that is really taken off. Especially since the pandemic. It's a great option for a lot of people out there that don't want to be full time w two employees. They want to have flexibility in their schedule, be it moms with young kids where they can do things after hours. There's a lot of benefits to it in terms of flexibility. So we provide dedicated support. I mean, our slogan is providing dedicated support for the dedicated leaders. So we are somebody that is helping. We wear a lot of different hats. Anything that can be done on the administrative level that involves critical thinking, we're a good partner for that. Land I would say the lion's share of our clients are solopreneurs and small business owners that are doing everything like I did when I started my business. I was doing everything from the accounting to the sales to the marketing. And there's a lot of those tasks that you can offload and delegate to your virtual assistant. So it really is a great tool for anybody starting a business or somebody who needs to. We always say you're better off working on the business rather than in the business because if you're in the weeds and doing things that you could delegate to somebody else, you're probably not focusing on what truly matters, which is generating revenue.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:03]:

Yeah, I think we'll spend a bit of time unpacking delegation and the types of things that you can run with there. I am curious because it certainly makes sense in the wake of the Pandemic that there's been a boon in virtual assistants. But I'm curious a bit about the history of it and kind of how it's evolved over time. One of the challenges I could imagine with a virtual assistant is just is the kind of relationship development piece there.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:15:35]:

Sure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:35]:

So I love to understand just kind of the evolution of the space.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:15:39]:

The space has been around for a lot longer than many people know. And there's different models. I mean, there are offshore virtual assistants that you can pay $8 an hour for in the Philippines land land that works for for some people. I mean, you're not gonna you're going to get in my opinion, you're going to get what you pay for there. It's more kind of task based things. There's not a lot of critical thinking, but if that's your price point, land you need X, Y, and Z done, then that may be a good option for you. But yes, developing that relationship with your virtual assistant is key. Our secret sauce, so to speak, is our matching process. First of all, the virtual assistants we're hiring are going through a rigorous vetting process. I mean, they are all US based. They're all college educated. So they've got a number of skills assessments that they need to complete before we bring them on as our virtual assistant. If you're working with a model where maybe an overseas offshore VA, you're getting matched with that virtual assistant and pretty much crossing your fingers and hoping that works. But we've got a whole corporate team dedicated to making sure that your work with your virtual assistant is going to work. Because our goal, let's call it what it is, our goal is to keep you as a client for as long as possible and keep you happy. Because the one thing we don't do is when you sign on with us, you're not signing a long term contract. You're month to month and you can leave at any time. So our goal really is to provide the best service for our clients. And we've been very fortunate. It's not really industry knowledge, but our retention rate is through the roof. I mean, we're over 95% of client retention, which is unheard of from other leaders I've talked to in this space. So if you do a good job for people and they value your service, they keep coming back. And I would say most of our new clients come from referrals from previous clients. So that goes a long way. If they're saying, hey, this has been a life changing thing for me in my business, you're going to tell your friends about it and we're here to.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:34]:

Help, I think that's really helpful context. I want to just kind of go back a little bit here and understand as you were navigating the transition itself, you mentioned that it wasn't quite set up or in a place where it could be taken to the next level, but obviously you saw something in its growth and its history. Land, its current state. What was this vision that you had for Peachtree where it could get you the previous owner?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:18:06]:

As I said, she was doing a lot. She was doing all the outbound sales calls, so to speak. She was doing all the marketing, but she wasn't doing any lead generation or anything like that. Literally every single one of her clients came from word of mouth, and they were coming to her. So I saw the potential with the machine that had already been built. If we could kind of go out there and develop some more lead generation and get our name out there, get the Peach tree name out there, land have, the more people we can get in front of and tell our story and tell what works, that goes a long way. So that was my initial vision from it. As I said, the vision was to keep the incredible corporate team in place. A lot of people from the corporate team came from one of the leaders in the virtual assistant staffing space, which has been around for a long time, but they were great at what they do in each facet of our business. So I really leaned on the to kind of help me understand the business and you kind of go through the process and figure out what's working. There's a lot of trial and error involved in it. But the goal is if you can keep providing good service to your clients and they're happy and they keep coming back every month and you're adding new clients and bringing on more business than going out the back door, then you're going to be a profitable business. And that's the model we try to follow.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:21]:

You had mentioned some of the points of differentiation, but I'd love to expand on that. In what seems like quite a crowded market, how is it that you're able to differentiate against other virtual assistant organizations?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:19:39]:

Sure, there's a lot of good ones out there. We'll start with that. I mean, there's others in Cleveland that do a good job that I know the owner of, but I would say for the larger ones out there, they may be owned by private equity. They're trying to hit certain metrics and goals. So everything is going towards that. We know how that works. I mean, they're spending $50,000 a month on marketing revenue and going out there trying to get leads. So our thing is we're not going to bring a client in just for a sale to get a number up on the board. We truly want to make sure that we're going to be able, when we're talking to a new client, we turn away more clients than we actually bring in just because we're not going to tell them that this is a great fit for them only to come in and see that our service doesn't work for them. I mean, for instance, work with a lot of law firms and we'll talk to a law firm and they're describing what they need done and we're going to tell them, hey, you probably need a paralegal for this or something like that. Because the VAS can do a lot of things, but there's also a lot of things that fall outside of their scope. So what sets us apart is we really try to be honest and upfront and ethical and just let you know what we can do and most importantly, what we can't do because that's important when you're bringing in somebody new. Because most of the clients that we're working with have not worked with virtual assistant before. So this is a new learning curve for them as well and we need to kind of guide the through the process and that's where we've got our team to help them ensure success once they get on board and to continue as long as they work with us.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:10]:

In that educational process. Knowing that a lot of the folks that you're working with from a customer standpoint have not worked with a virtual system before, what are some of the learnings that they'll have through this process? What are some of the misconceptions that people have about the space? Sure, what does that journey look like?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:21:33]:

And I would say most of the people we're working with are owners or solopreneurs land by nature. Those people are, I would say, kind of control freaks. I mean, I can tell you from being one that I fit in that box for sure. So the biggest way to ensure success is communication. A lot of owners that we work with, they've always done everything themselves, so it's tough for them to really explain what they need done. It's tough for them to delegate and take things off their plate because they're so used to doing it themselves. But we say this all the time, that if you don't have an assistant or a virtual assistant, then you are one because you really are doing a lot of that work and it takes up a lot of your time, quite frankly. And that is the biggest hurdle. And if we really do a good job from the onset of making sure that the lines of communication are open, that everybody's on the same page, that there's no such thing as overcommunication with your virtual assistant, especially at the beginning. So if you can make sure that those lines are open and everybody's on the same page and you're all rowing in the same direction, then it generally works out for the best for everyone.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:37]:

It's an interesting point because I think the relinquishing of responsibility is always a very difficult thing for someone, particularly in those roles, to enact and to do. When you're trying to understand if it is a good fit, what are some of the things that you're looking for there and what's fun about it?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:22:59]:

Is it's all case by case basis? Every business we talk to is unique and different and has different needs. But our team that runs business development and sales, they've been in the space for so long that they can tell within the first five minutes if it's going to be a fit. When you're having that initial consultation, a lot of times, if they're looking for a unicorn, if you will, they're looking for somebody to do X, Y and Z all across the map. We're just going to be straight up with them and tell them that, listen, there are certainly other avenues for you to go down that could probably help you with those duties, but we're probably not the best fit for you. But honestly, if there's anything in the administrative realm from whether it's calendar management, email management, social media, things like that, those are all things that we do well. As long as we can set the proper expectations with them and what they're looking for, then it usually falls into place pretty well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:57]:

So let's unpack a little bit of what typically can be delegated. I was thinking through this actually in my own experience and just trying to gauge some of these responsibilities that can be relinquished. What typically do you see is where a virtual assistant makes the most sense and offers up the most value.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:24:21]:

Well, sure and we're going to have to do this with you jeffrey because I know with everything you're doing, first thing we do is the VA checklist. So we go through all your system and this is a great exercise to do as somebody who runs a business, regardless if you're going to use a virtual assistant. So you're going through all the systems you're using and figuring out what is most important to your business. Land it really is an internal. You've got to look in the mirror. You've got to be honest with yourself and see what you're doing. Sometimes we encourage our clients to look back on their calendar the previous week and see what you've done. Where have you spent the majority of your time if you go back and do that? Land it all depends on your role. There's some business owners that are more involved heavily in the sales and business development and that there's some that are more operational minded. But if you find yourself where you're doing things where it's not best suited for you and it's not generating revenue for your business, then that's truly when you need administrative help. So, as I said, there's everything from I mean, I would say the main things to check the box are calendar management, email management. Those are always the two biggest things that people can come up with off the bat. Social media services, project coordination. And I can tell you, we work with a ton of salespeople that they are on the fly. They're having 20 meetings a week with clients out there, and each one of those meetings you've got to be prepared for. So my virtual assistant, for instance, she's always constantly doing write ups, getting me prepared for meetings that I'm doing, backgrounders on the clients that I'm meeting with. And then afterwards, if you have a zoom call with somebody, you're doing follow ups, same type thing, you're going through the zoom recordings and taking notes on that. It's literally there's such a wide scope of services that a VA can help you with it's. It really is amazing. And, and the good thing about, you know, our VAS are are multitalented. So, you know, 1 may be well versed in in some other skills and that that's a big part of our matching process, is based on your needs and their skill sets as well. So it's important that you're all in line with that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:25]:

I'd be remiss to maybe not call out the somewhat looming elephant in the room. And curious, your perspective on kind of the implications of AI here, particularly, I don't know, when you think about the human desire to automate tasks, sure, I know there's a distinct distinction between delegation and automation, but just curious, when you see kind of the capabilities of AI here, what is the implication for the virtual assistant space?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:27:01]:

Yeah, and that's a wonderful question. I mean, AI is the buzzword out there. Everybody's talking about it. I'm reading more. Land more about it. I use it. On my phone. It's amazing how far we've come in such what it seems like a short time. Land I can tell you this AI is great, I think, for certain tasks. And honestly, as I mentioned earlier, there is that virtual assistant model offshore where it's more kind of task based. I think what sets us apart here with the US based and college educated and highly vetted and matched virtual assistants, we really pride ourselves on being critical thinkers as well. So we want to form a partnership with our client. Land be able to not only work with the tasks they provide us, but we want to think outside the box and we want to prove our value. Land as I said, the goal for us as a company as well as our virtual assistants, if they like a client, they want to stay with this client as long as possible. It behooves them to do it because they want to continue to be employed by them. So I think the critical thinking and that's one of the things where we're not sure where AI is going. I mean, once AI starts critical thinking, then I think we're all going to be in for it a little bit, even more than we are now. I think that's going to be fascinating to see where that goes in the future here, but, yeah, for right now, for a lot of the copywriters, things like that, that's where I would be a little nervous if that's what we were doing. But I think the fact that our virtual assistants are out the and really critically thinking and helping thinking on the fly, doing things outside the box and really helping their clients there, I think that's not something that can be automated. So I think for now, we're in a good spot. But hey, you never know what's coming down the pike, right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:49]:

Yeah. Judgment being the key factor there.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:28:53]:

Exactly. Judgment it is. I've been fascinated by it. I read articles on it every day, and there's a lot of opinions out there about where we're going to go with this AI. And it's going to be certainly very interesting to see what happens.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:07]:

Well, it's hard to focus on things that are outside of your control, within your locus of control. What comes next for Petri? Where are you guys headed? What are you hoping to achieve here?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:29:20]:

So I bought the company in March of 2000. Land 22. My goal in 2022 was to, as I said, keep the corporate team in place, which we were successful. We didn't lose anybody. We just wanted to kind of right the ship, so to speak. When there is a transition, no matter what, there's always going to be some type of it's never going to go as smoothly as you think. But as long as I really prided myself on being transparent as a leader land telling everybody what my vision was for the company and letting them know that I valued what they did. And just because there was new ownership coming in, that didn't mean that we didn't still need you as a critical part of the team. So I think we were very successful in that we've added to our corporate team. As I mentioned, the previous owner was doing a lot of the business development and sales calls herself. I was able to bring on somebody in that role who's been a leader in the space. She was with one of the top virtual assistant firms out there. She's been incredible. She's well versed in the business development and lead generation space, so she's been a great ambassador for Pete Tree, really getting our name out there, and she's a wizard at the networking, land, all that. So she's helped us a lot there. But, yes, we righted the ship in 2022, and we were actually able to grow 25% in revenue year over year, even with that transition. So that was a huge win for us. Land 2023, we've got some lofty goals in terms of growth, but the good news is our team is we're completely staffed up. We've got everybody in the right positions where they need to be and all rowing in that same direction. So we've got, I think, 50% growth goals in 2023, and we're well on our way to hitting those. So we're certainly excited about it. It's been a great start to the year.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:02]:

Within Peachtree. As an organization, are you able to effectively leverage virtual assistants for your own organization?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:31:13]:

Absolutely. It's the first thing I did, and when I took over the company, I had never had an assistant or obviously never a virtual assistant. Land I was a beneficiary of having who I consider the best virtual assistant in the business. Her name is Alyssa Hutton, and she's my virtual assistant, and she also supports our business development team. But she was the old owner's virtual assistant, and she's incredible. She's been doing it forever. I mean, the things that she does and the efficiency at which she does them is incredible. I mean, things that would take me two days to do, she's doing in a couple of hours in the afternoon. And that's just what really moves the needle. So we use our talent pool of virtual assistants for all kinds of projects. They're obviously all working with our clients, but whenever we have something that pops up that needs to be done internally, we're incredibly lucky to have such a deep bench of virtual assistant talent that can do so much, and it really.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:08]:

Is a cool thing you had mentioned. The proof, I guess, is ultimately in the retention of customers over time. What has been the reception to the services that you're able to offer? Can you speak to some of the outcomes, examples, feedback that you've gotten from folks that you're working with?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:32:31]:

Sure, yeah. I think the biggest thing, as I mentioned earlier, referrals from our current clients. I mean, we have a very nice incentive for our current clients to send us referrals of people they know that business owners that would possibly want to use our service. And I would still say a large majority of our new clients come from referrals. And I think that's the highest compliment you could pay a company like us that you trust our services so much that not only are you staying with us month to month, but you're also recommending people in your life that you trust land value and want to see succeed. You're recommending our services to them. I mean, that's incredible. Just the fact that whenever anybody does that, it really makes me feel good about our team and the service that we're providing. I mean, I say it all the time. The service that we provide is worth far more than we're charging for it. And I think if you can stay true to that and if that continues to be the case, then you're set up for success for the long term. I think that's tried and true.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:28]:

How do you view the proliferation of what we'll call the gig economy and kind of temporary placement versus full time hires? And where the virtual assistant model kind of plugs into that world?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:33:45]:

Yeah, it's interesting. I get that question a lot. I mean, doing it for a long time, I mean, being a recruiter and a headhunter, I move around full time employees all the time. But there's a lot that comes with hiring on a full time employee, especially in your office. There's always going to be training and onboarding in that. But in terms of financially as well, it's very expensive to bring on a full time employee at 40 hours a week doing X, Y, and Z. I mean, one of the real beneficial things of our services, you're using it on a fractional level. You're using it only when they're doing work for you. So our virtual assistants, the second they start working for you, they're clocking in. You're not paying them to go on Instagram, you're not paying them to go to lunch. I think there's a heck of a lot. It may be if you're doing apples to apples comparison over a whole year, we're certainly going to be more expensive option. But for the efficiency that you're getting from it and the fact that you don't have to hire them on as a full time W two employee, that goes a long way. So the gig economy, we've seen it with things like Uber and Lyft and all that, it's exploding. I talked to a lot of our virtual assistants out there. Land a lot of them were incredibly successful in their own careers, and they just didn't want to do it anymore. They liked the flexibility of being able to work in that gig economy, work on their time, only take on clients when it fit for them. Land their life. Land I think that goes a long way with everybody. I mean, the way our society and life is these days, it's just a natural progression, and I see that only continuing to evolve.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:19]:

What are the biggest challenges that you foresee as you've managed the transition and are working to grow the company from here?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:35:30]:

A big challenge for and this is a challenge and an opportunity, I think. I think if you talk to anybody out there, there's the economy of this country, there's some things looming, and we're not really sure how that's going to go. So a lot of our clients are small businesses and inherently small businesses. They don't always make it. I've seen stats that a large majority of businesses that are started don't make it to year one or don't make it to X amount in revenue. So, I mean, we don't lose a lot of clients candidly, but when we do, a lot of them, they either lose their funding or their business isn't going to continue going on. So I would think that that's always going to be a challenge when you're working with small businesses. There's a lot of variables, a lot of things that can happen. But again, I think what else there's also an opportunity when as the economy, as we're facing headwinds in an economy, I think that fractional work like we do and being able to provide a service that's a stronger option for companies rather than bringing on people full time w two. So it's got kind of a ying and yang to it. I think there's certainly challenges with that, but within challenges always comes opportunity.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:36]:

From where I sit, when you reflect on both of the companies that you've grown over time to ask the startup versus acquisition question, what do you feel are the most transferable parts of those two journeys? What do you feel is most different about them and how has it been transitioning from one to the other?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:37:02]:

Yeah, well, there's certainly when you're starting something up, I mean, you literally are all hands on deck putting out every fire, and you're going 100 miles a minute. And again, that's where I wish I would have had my virtual assistant services a few years back. But I think with any good company, for a company to succeed, you really have to build it with the right people. As a leader of the company, you have to be transparent, and more than anything, you've got to be empathetic and you've got to be a good person. There's everybody that you're working with that's on your team. You really have to develop relationships with them. Land they need to know that you align with their values and make sure that you are somebody that they want to go on this journey with, because there's a lot of options out there. And whether it's you're starting a company who you choose to get in the dirt with or you're acquiring one, you got to make sure that all the people in the organization are people that you want to work with and want to go to battle with every day, because that's extremely important. If you don't have the right people on the team, and if there's not trust there, and if you don't all have the same vision and goals, then I don't care if you're starting a business or acquiring an incredibly successful business, then you're set up for failure there. So I think there's a lot of similarities in that, but there are certainly two different things, especially when if you're acquiring a business and as I said, you never know what's going to happen until you actually do it and you actually get the ball rolling. But that due diligence part of it is extremely important just to just always check it and then check it again and check it a third time. At some point, you got to take the leap and listen, not everything goes according to plan, but as long as you're diligent about it more times than that, I think it can set you up for success.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:55]:

For the things that did deviate from the plan, what surprised you most?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:39:01]:

When I acquired Peach Tree, I had a number in mind of, hey, I'm going to put this back into the business in year one, and obviously you want to do it as fiscally responsibly as possible. But as things came up, things came up where I felt like, hey, I need to put more money into this business because I want to grow in this area. I want to add some more parts to the corporate team here. I need this person. And those numbers never exactly match up like they do on the business plan. But as long as you are doing it with the right people again, and as long as you have good reasons behind why you're spending your money to build and grow we've turned that corner where it went a little longer than I would have liked the two to actually get profitable. Based on all that, I added in fixed expenses. But now that we've turned that corner, the fact that we have brought on the right people and we've got the team in place to build and grow for the foreseeable future, that goes a long way. It helps me sleep at night knowing that we're staffed up and in a good spot for the growth that we're targeting.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:15]:

What advice would you offer up for other folks in the area who are building, who are taking this journey?

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:40:25]:

I would say that don't be afraid to fail. At the end of the day, nobody wants to go back with their tail between their legs. But if you're going through the exercise of maybe acquiring a business and you've done your due diligence, trust yourself and trust your gut. I mean, that's what it is. At the end of the day, there's a lot of things that we all do in our lives where they could be considered a failure. But if you can learn from that that's the old adage. If you can learn from those failures, then there's really no such thing as a failure. Land that sounds cliche, but it really is the truth. But trust your gut and don't be afraid to take that leap because it can be incredibly rewarding. I'm of the belief that you never want to be sitting on your deathbed wondering, hey, what if I would have taken that chance? I wish I would have done X, Y and Z, because, listen, you take the leap, you do your best, you work your hardest, and if it's meant to be, it's meant to be.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:25]:

Yeah. I do love that mentality of the avoiding of end of life regrets. You want to have tried.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:41:34]:

Exactly. When I started my business, it probably could not have been a worse time to start. It just a sidebar. I mean, I had my third child on the way. As I said, I was leaving the cushy corporate job with a salary jumping into the complete unknown, but I scratched and clawed and was able to build it, and now I've been able to go on to this. So I was at that point in my life where I said to myself, if I don't do this now, I'm never going to do it. And I know people struggle with that all the time. I talk to friends that are in the corporate space that are incredibly successful, and inevitably, they always bring it up to me, I can't believe you actually did it. You took the leap. It's always something I wanted to do, and it makes me feel good that I tried it and just worked my hardest to get here. There's always going to be challenges. There's always going to be new things that come up, but there's always going to be opportunities that come up as well. So you take the good with the bad. Land you again roll with those punches.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:32]:

Yeah. No, it all resonates a lot. It's finding the right opportunities and being ready to run with them.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:42:39]:

Absolutely.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:40]:

Well, we'll close it out here and I'll ask our traditional closing question, which is pretty unrelated to what we're talking about, but is for your favorite hidden gems in the area, not for necessarily your favorite things, but for things that other people may not know about, but perhaps they should.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:43:02]:

So I'm Cleveland through and through. I was born and raised here, lived on the East Side most of my life. I lived downtown for a while. I mean, Cleveland just has so much to offer. There's incredible golf here, nature, all. That the one thing if I had to just pick that off the top of my head, I would say one thing I really enjoy doing is going to the Chagrin River with my kids. I've got a young family. I've got three children. I've got two boys that are eight and ten and then a three year old girl. And one of the things we love doing is just kind of hiking near that Chagrin River and we call it sticking, where we just walk around and mess around in the dirt on the banks of the river. And I can tell you, especially when you have young kids who are there's always a challenge trying to get them away from their screens or this or that. If you can get them out in nature and see hidden gems like that Chagrin River, I mean, I live in Pepper Pike and my parents are in Chagrin Falls, so it's kind of right in the middle of us there. And my kids look forward to it every week in the spring and summer. And it's just such a cool area. There's so many people there outside hiking, walking their dogs, people on horseback. It's just such a cool environment that a lot of cities don't have. So we've got a lot of cool things here in Cleveland, so I think that's one of them.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:16]:

It's a beautiful place for sure. Well, John, I just want to thank you again for taking the time to come on land, share your story and the work that you're doing with Petrie. I really enjoyed our conversation and so thank you, Jeffrey.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:44:31]:

Again, man, I'm a big fan of the podcast. I'm glad to have been on. As I said, you've had a number of my buddies on and you do a great job getting your message out, so we certainly appreciate you and everything you're doing for the city. It's been my pleasure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:45]:

Well, thank you. If people had anything that they wanted to follow up with you about, what would be the best way for them.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:44:52]:

To do so, our website is peachtreeva.com and my email is jmforjohnmakenna@peachtreeva.com. So always happy to talk with anybody. As I said, obviously the goal is to get Peachtree out that name out there, but the virtual assistant space is fascinating and it's growing. It's been blowing up for a while now. I really want Cleveland to know about it. If we can help great businesses in that process, that's a win win for everybody.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:23]:

Right on. Well, thank you again, John.

John McKenna (PeachTree VA) [00:45:25]:

Jeffrey, it was a pleasure. Thanks, man.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:28]:

That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to Jeffrey at layoftheland.FM or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or at sternjefe, J-E-F-E. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on itunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.