I always tell clients: think about what your average hourly rate is. Then think about the amount of time that you’re now spending, building some of your own systems. That time and effort could have been applied to making money. Not giving away that time and thus that money to do something that just doesn’t make sense for your business.
Tonisha Stalnaker is an expertise when it comes to business organization and management.
After spending ten years as a recruiter, Tonisha founded her company, Stalnaker Virtual Solutions—a full-system support agency built to support business owners with online system management by optimizing their operations and maximizing their team management.
“I don’t believe in putting a bandaid on a broken leg,” Stalnaker told Magnify CEO and Founder Julia Lumpkin on Instagram Live. “So if there’s a way that we can perform the full surgery and casting of the entry and the client’s business, we’ll do all of that as, as much as it makes sense for us to do.”
In this article, you’ll learn…
- The start of Stalnaker Virtual Solutions
- Tonisha’s support for business owners
- The common mistake with system management
- Must-have systems for success
- And more!
How did you get started with Stalnaker Virtual Solutions?
We’ve been around for three and a half years now, and it wasn’t always a team. It was me by myself for about a year and a half. I got my master’s in 2019 in the fall and I was like: I’m gonna work for a year, then that gives me a time to come up with a business plan.
I don’t know what the business is gonna be or what we’re gonna do, but it’s gonna be a business. And then like a couple weeks after I got my master’s, I got laid off. I took that as the universe’s sign to figure it out.
I’ve just been kind of looking at what I do well, and that’s what I started with. As time has evolved, you know, it’s definitely, it makes more sense now than it did January 6th, 2020 when it started.
Why would a business owner hire your team for system management and operations work? Why wouldn’t they do it internally?
It’s typically a couple of different reasons. Sometimes that’s just not their zone of genius. It’s gonna take them ten times longer to think of how to do it themselves even before they actually take the leap of faith to try to do it themselves.
At least a third of our clients are like anti-tech, and might not consider HoneyBook. But for somebody who’s like really like averse to getting into technology, that’s gonna be a roadblock. That literally defeats the entire purpose of that system, and that’s the same with a lot of CRM and project management systems.
Some of our clients come to us because their brain does not brain when it comes to those types of things. I am the same way with social media and email marketing. But then the other half are clients who technically could do it themselves. They are more than able, but they’re at a point in their business where it doesn’t make sense for them to spend their time doing that.
What is a common mistake you see with business owners who are trying to update their systems?
Most commonly, when I’m talking to clients especially in that first call, it’s a couple things.
One, not waving the flag sooner. A lot of times people come to us when everything’s on fire and that’s fine. But it causes us to have to course correct a bit before we can move forward. We have to go backward and put the fire out.
The other thing is shiny object syndrome. I think it’s almost worse sometimes for us in online business, because it’s so many different directions. It’s in our email marketing, it’s Facebook ads or Instagram ads. It’s people that we talk to and they post about the latest and greatest thing.
“Oh my goodness, I just did this in Zapier” and I just did this and I just did this. And the natural thing is, “Well, I should be doing this, too?” I’ll talk to clients that are paying for like 20 plus different platforms and systems and they’re using four of.
They might actually need one of the ones they’re paying for, but they don’t know enough about it yet, so they, they saw it. Somebody they knew and respected was excited about it, so they signed up for. Or they sign up the for the trial and actually put their credit card in, so now they’re paying for it. A lot of the mistakes I see is just shiny object syndrome really, really taking over.
From your experience, what systems or processes are needed in place to help a business owner be successful?
I always tell people you need a seamless way to send and get a contract signed. And everyone needs contracts. You need an easy way for people to pay you electronically and have that go into your bank so that you’re not chasing checks or cash for money. Some type of basic accounting system so that as business grows, you’re not chasing receipts at the end of the year when it’s time to do your taxes.
A business bank account. Some kind of way to organize your client information—I’m, like, at the very bare bones basics. You need those things to run your business. And if you want to really get the gold star and be as efficient as possible, you need at least one tool that can connect those things to take out the repetitive human touches that become your processes.
I always use my own business as examples of how I used to do things. As the business got busier, I started to be either the bottleneck or I was dropping the ball because it was too busy for me to manually do those things. Now I’m using a tool, like a Zapier to be able to make those six steps happen in one second. I don’t have to touch it at all, but it still gets done.
If you weren’t doing system management through Stalnaker Virutal Solutions, what would be your dream job?
I should have been a movie critic, especially like horror movies. That’s my thing.
Anybody that knows me personally will tell you that my season’s all year. Like I literally could name Christmas horror movies, Easter horror movies, Valentine’s Day horror movies. Like there’s a horror movies for every season.
If this agency thing hadn’t jumped off, I think movie critic.
Learn more about Tonisha and Stalnaker Virtual Solutions by visiting the website. Tonisha also offers one-on-one consultations for business owners who need clarity around their systems and operations before we even get into the nuts and bolt. Follow Stalnaker Virtual Solutions on Instagram.
