Strategies for Consistent Business Growth as an Entrepreneur w/ Trent Stonehouse

[00:00:00] Yvonne Heimann: We’re back to yet another episode of Boss Your Business, and today I’m being joined by Trent Stonehouse. You overcame early hearing challenges, um, early on. Luckily, that was able to be taken care of. I wanna hear more about that. Um, and you began your entrepreneurial journey at 18 when you founded Versed Look, a successful, successful digital marketing agency, welcome to my brain twister, at 27, and you are using your experience to establish that Remote CEO Academy that you are running, offering actual strategies for business growth, as well as being known for your innovation in team building, delegation, and systems automation. Guys, we, you still wondering why I have him on today? What, what are we, what are we even doing? What are we? And you are also an [00:01:00] aspiring speaker, dedicated consultant, and empowering fellow entrepreneurs. Now, systems automation is, we already know why I brought you on, right? However, for everybody that’s listening, you know what always is going to be the first question, guys.

Early struggles with hearing impairment

[00:01:18] Yvonne Heimann: How did you get here? Especially this whole hearing loss in your young age. I’m like, it’s, it’s interesting. That was an interesting piece for me when I read your bio, because I hear, and there have that moments where I was working with, um, the hearing impaired community where it’s like, I can’t even imagine.

[00:01:38] Yvonne Heimann: The only thing I’m hearing is my own voice. Mm. So how, how did that come about and how has it impacted you?

[00:01:45] Trent Stonehouse: Um, that was, uh, a really, you know, difficult time. My earlier developing years. I was born deaf. Uh, I had only 30% of my hearing, my left, [00:02:00] and uh, and uh, was a hundred percent gone, pretty much in my right.

[00:02:04] Trent Stonehouse: Um, and it’s funny, my mom had no idea that I was actually deaf. And so she thought I was just doing baby talk until I was like five years old and she thought it’s just the cutest thing ever. And the doctor pulls her in and like, I was in the doctor like five years old and she’s like, he’s like, I’m seriously concerned about Trent.

[00:02:24] Trent Stonehouse: I can’t understand him. I think, I think he’s got a hearing problem. I think he might be deaf. And so we go in. Sure enough, that’s what happened. I guess my ear lobes and stuff didn’t like develop properly. I had to get tubes in my ear and so that set me back a lot because I was like watching Mels for the longest time.

[00:02:45] Trent Stonehouse: That’s how I was like, kind of learning everything. I still struggled to like, pronounce words still to this day, but, um, I was in ESL through elementary school, high school. English as Second Language, right? Meanwhile, I’m a born [00:03:00] Canadian citizen. English is my first language, the only language I speak. And, uh, meanwhile I’m an in ESL.

[00:03:05] Trent Stonehouse: So I had all that, like, I was getting bullied a lot. It was really hard for me to kind of, kind to like just get through life. Like, I was like always kind of, you know, that target for kids and, uh, and then there was just that struggle of trying to catch up. So I thank God for my parents. They, you know, they got me a tutor, helped me, you know, overcome that.

[00:03:28] Trent Stonehouse: So I was working, uh, with like teachers after school too, a lot. So that’s kind of how I caught up. And then, um, then, here we are. I kind of just gone to the entrepreneurial space.

[00:03:39] Yvonne Heimann: So you, you went right into the entrepreneurial at 18. Was that kind of always like the, uh, I identify with, don’t, don’t tell me what the fuck to do.

[00:03:51] Yvonne Heimann: I’m, I’m my own boss, right? So was that kind of the reason you went into entrepreneurial or just the [00:04:00] making things work? Because it’s like that’s kind of the story of your early life making things work. What, what brought you in?

Initial experience with entrepreneurship

[00:04:08] Trent Stonehouse: I mean, I think I relate to you on that as well. Like, Hey, I’m my own boss, don’t probably tell me what to do, kind of thing.

[00:04:13] Trent Stonehouse: So I definitely relate to that a hundred percent. Um, but I, it kind of fell on me because I’m, I’m a big nerd, so, you know, obviously, I like systems. I think, you know, probably have a little bit nerd in you too, right?

[00:04:26] Yvonne Heimann: Oh, hell yeah. I’m a recovering nerd, not like, I’m like, yeah.

[00:04:30] Trent Stonehouse: Okay. Okay, nerd so like I was all about like World Warcraft, uh, like League of Legends, that kind of stuff.

[00:04:37] Trent Stonehouse: And so, I got into, um, the live streaming space on Twitch TV. Mm-hmm. Uh, YouTube. I had, uh, 30,000 subscribers, 6 million views. Did that in about 24 months. And I was, um, probably one of the best in the game I was playing. And, uh, why did I call that early entrepreneurship? Because of [00:05:00] building that following.

[00:05:00] Trent Stonehouse: So I learned a lot about social media. Yeah. And I learned about how to edit videos all at the ripe age of like 17, 18 years old. And then I was signed to a talent agency, a big one called BBTV. And they’re actually based in Vancouver, Canada. And they signed me up and I was working underneath them for a long time before you could actually earn ad revenue independently on YouTube. You had to go through an agency and so I was going, working through them. So I’m, I’m early days of Twitch and early days of YouTube, so that’s how I got started. So I kind of just went in that way and then it kind of just one thing after another developed into a business.

[00:05:35] Yvonne Heimann: This is, this is why we get along. Oh my God. I remember the old days when YouTube Pay TV started. We had clients that we got on, you know. How much streaming did we have at that time? And it’s like YouTube was just like, yeah, let’s become the new TV channel and charge for episodes and that kind of stuff.

[00:05:55] Yvonne Heimann: Oh my God. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, I remember those days.

[00:05:59] Trent Stonehouse: [00:06:00] Yeah. Yeah, right. Like those are early, early days. And so that kind of just led from there. And then, um, I was like, I can go bigger. Started a video production company, worked with car dealerships doing that, and then, um, and then I’m like a squirrel brain, so I got a new idea.

[00:06:15] Trent Stonehouse: I’m like, oh, let’s do that. Grab, grab it, grab it. Go, go, go. Right? And then, uh, I had this genius idea. Well, it worked and then it didn’t. But, um, I, uh, I started an influencer platform, uh, in a sense that we were helping Twitch streamers earn ad revenue, um, through their live streams. Cuz back in the day on Twitch, you couldn’t earn ad revenue, unless you were partnered with the platform. It didn’t matter if you had thousands and thousands of live viewers, you had to be partnered with the platform. And so people are missing out on thousands of dollars of ad revenue. Mm-hmm. So I brought, brought this platform in that anyone could watch an ad to support you at any time that they want.

[00:06:57] Trent Stonehouse: And it was right underneath the broadcast [00:07:00] and that thing went viral. 12 months. 12 months. We had a hundred thousand daily users on the platform and we had 6,000 influencers using it. So, it blew up. I went to the moon. We all wanna go to the moon, we’re gonna the moon. And I went to the moon, but I had no breaks and I hit that moon and I, I blew up to a million pieces, um, got shut down by Google right when I was in the middle of trying to close a deal with Tencent and uh, Verizon.

[00:07:25] Trent Stonehouse: So that was a really depressing time for me.

[00:07:29] Yvonne Heimann: So Google shut you down?

[00:07:32] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah, we, we got blacklisted, so I’d have to do a whole rebranding and everything. Lose all my progress. I was pretty much put all my savings, $40,000 into it. I was like, I’m not doing this again, and yeah.

Starting a digital marketing agency

[00:07:47] Yvonne Heimann: So what did you do then?

[00:07:48] Yvonne Heimann: Because I’m like, just look at the energy. You, you’ll not get bored on the couch.

[00:07:54] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah, I mean there I was just like beating my head on a wall and I was just like, [00:08:00] oh my God. I probably would not have been an entrepreneur unless like, if it wasn’t for my mentor at that time. My mentor called me up, came my mentor, but he’s like, Trent, you are great with social media.

[00:08:10] Trent Stonehouse: Great at making videos, great at getting like attention. I want you to come do some marketing for my company. I’m like, sweet. How much you pay? And he’s like, no, no, you’re gonna, you’re gonna start your own business. I’ll be your first client. I’m like, okay, so let’s do it. And so I started that up after that massive failure.

[00:08:24] Trent Stonehouse: And uh, you know, people loved it. And so I made a digital marketing agency out of it. And, uh, yeah. Last year we helped our clients generate over $50 million. And we are, yeah, we got, it’s a seven figure agency. I probably spend one to five hours a week on it maybe now. And so I’ve really built it into something incredible that I’m proud of and, uh, persevere.

[00:08:48] Trent Stonehouse: Kids, that’s what, that’s what it’s all about.

[00:08:52] Yvonne Heimann: Yeah. The only reason why people make it is because they stick with it. Yeah. Um. Having said that, I wanna dive a little bit deeper into [00:09:00] this, into this agency. So I’m assuming you started out boots on the ground, you’re doing the thing.

[00:09:07] Trent Stonehouse: Oh, I was broke as shit.

[00:09:09] Trent Stonehouse: I was like, I just went through a $40,000 failure.

[00:09:14] Yvonne Heimann: Guys, did you just hear that? Because we always just see the good things. We always just see the travel at the end of the horizon when things are taking off and things are great. No, we all hit walls. We all hit moments where it’s like shit is just hitting the fan.

[00:09:31] Yvonne Heimann: And this is the reason why the podcast is always marked explicit, right? Um, where there is moments, there is moments where we took a risk, things worked out great, and the universe is just like, fuck you. This is not your path. You are going somewhere else.

[00:09:47] Trent Stonehouse: I love that you’re, uh, you’re using colorful language cuz I use the same and I’m not sure if I’m ever good to go.

[00:09:53] Trent Stonehouse: So like, uh, all right.

[00:09:54] Yvonne Heimann: You are all good to go. We are cursing under YouTube. Everything is always marked explicit. Oh, we’re always, [00:10:00] always a little bit careful right in the beginning because we do live stream to YouTube. So guys, if you are producing a podcast, if you are producing content, be careful in the beginning.

[00:10:09] Yvonne Heimann: Don’t drop the f-bomb. Completely spoken out that often, yeah, YouTube does let you, but if you wanna make some ad money, you need to cut it down. So now we always have an explicit podcast.

[00:10:24] Trent Stonehouse: I love it.

[00:10:24] Yvonne Heimann: Okay, so back to the topic though, so that we can throw a couple more F-bombs in. You start out boots on the ground. You start out, I’m the entrepreneur.

[00:10:34] Yvonne Heimann: I am the agency right now. How did you make the path from I’m broke AF to, I’m traveling, which guys we will talk about. Yeah. How, what was that process? What’s, what was that path and how long did it take you?

[00:10:53] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah, I mean, it took me, you know, probably took me a solid 12 months [00:11:00] to start making a solid revenue from it.

[00:11:04] Trent Stonehouse: Probably, uh, I got about 12 months it took me to get it. Like I went slow at it, like, but it took me about 12 months to start making like maybe 10 grand a month, something like that. Um, and so I wasn’t the quickest up and coming thing cuz again I had to move so slow. Cause I was kind of put myself in a, in a tight spot.

The importance of reputation, service quality, and client relationships in business growth

[00:11:23] Trent Stonehouse: But, I, uh, I, I kind of just, uh, had a lot of focus on my reputation and on my service that I was providing, and that kind of carried me where people would just naturally start referring me. My clients became my sales team because I was doing such a great job at the, at what I was doing. But not only that, where a lot of people screw up, is that they start thinking about, oh, I need more business. I need more clients. I need more clients. But actually, the lesson I learned from my last startup was, if you want to go fast, slow the fuck down. And then what I did is I brought my attention [00:12:00] to, hey, going deeper into those relationships with my clients.

[00:12:03] Trent Stonehouse: And so, in fact, I got a real estate client. He started off paying me 400 bucks a month. I went dived really deep into that relationship and now he’s paying me four grand a month, right? He evolved over time and he’s referred business to me, right? So I instead, I, I, instead of just going like up, I kind of like spanned it out and like worked within what I had built already and it just kept bringing me more and more business.

[00:12:27] Trent Stonehouse: Um, and so that’s kind of how I accomplished all of that, like honestly, I’ve spent maybe five grand on ads over 4, 3, 4 years with this agency, so, yeah.

[00:12:43] Yvonne Heimann: Yeah. So how does life look like now?

Current lifestyle and business operations

[00:12:47] Trent Stonehouse: Uh, yeah, with, with what we’re doing at the Versed Look Agency, it’s awesome. Like, like I said, it’s one to five, five hours a week, maybe I’m put in towards it.

[00:12:58] Trent Stonehouse: Sometimes I’ll put more if I want to, but that’s [00:13:00] pretty much it, right? And so, I built it to a place where I wasn’t really needed. And that’s just all about leverage. Business is just leverage, right? At the end of the day, too. And so, you can get leverage through systems or you get leverage through building a team, right?

[00:13:14] Trent Stonehouse: Hiring people other people’s time. And uh, yeah, I just built an extraordinary team and they execute on what we have to do.

[00:13:22] Yvonne Heimann: What are you doing nowadays in your business? What’s your, what’s your focus? What’s your job in the business?

[00:13:28] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah. For the most part it’s, you know, looking at what we’re currently doing, um, and seeing if I can, um, you know, bring any kind of new value in terms of, hey, how are we managing people?

[00:13:42] Trent Stonehouse: I became more of like, it’s more of like becoming great at managing people. That’s like high level stuff. And then I brought on a business partner who kind of, uh, manages the, the relationships and networking and sales kind of aspect of things now. But, um, that’s my role for the most part.

[00:13:59] Trent Stonehouse: And you [00:14:00] can see like, not really a lot needed. I have a general manager, two project managers, and then underneath them are two different teams. And so, um, yeah, a lot of it’s just kind of like, looking at things. For example, I just built a new system where it’s, um, how it’s like a, a star chart for all of our employees so we can identify who’s performing, who’s got a potential to be a star and who is underperforming. If you are not a rising star or a star in our company, you are considered underperforming. Um, and so, um, we built a whole system that shows you our company, company pillars, our, our values, basically what I value. Mm-hmm. And I laid those all out.

[00:14:42] Trent Stonehouse: We built it on Airtable. Great platform. If you’re not familiar with it. Yeah. Anyone listening, definitely get on Airtable, check it out. And what happens is, um, we kind of gamified it. Everyone’s got little card views and uh, and it shows you in front of everyone who’s a star, who’s a rising star and who needs to step [00:15:00] it up or get off the bus.

[00:15:01] Trent Stonehouse: And so that’s something I just recently developed. But like, that’s it. Like kind of just looking at how can we refine things. Yeah. So that’s what my, what I’m doing now.

[00:15:09] Yvonne Heimann: Now I’m curious. Do you also have a structure internally to support the team members that are not a rising star, where it’s like, okay, what, what is the issue?

[00:15:25] Yvonne Heimann: Why, why are you there? What can we do? What can we not do? Do you have something for that too?

[00:15:32] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah, absolutely. So, like, what I love about an employee star chart, and I really encourage everyone to do it, um, have some sort of thing like that, that visually your team can see is because it, it implements a psychological, uh, like a psychological process in, in your team. So when you’re exposed to everyone and everyone can see who’s a star, who’s a rising star, who’s gotta step it up. People are [00:16:00] gonna individually start to level themselves up. It’s called positive workplace peer pressure. Um, and so it’s a psychological thing and so people will able to step up or they’re gonna feel exposed and they’re gonna be like, I’m out.

[00:16:12] Trent Stonehouse: And then you know who to get rid of. Right. Cuz they’re slowing you down anyways.

[00:16:15] Yvonne Heimann: And so now I’m curious because some of, some of those pieces sound quite familiar to me. Are you running the company on a specific framework, on a specific system for that matter? So why I’m asking, because what popped in my head is the EOS system.

[00:16:35] Yvonne Heimann: Hmm. Um, the, the star chart and the approach to your values on everything is, sounds similar to what the e s system is doing, for example. Hmm. So I was curious if you are just fo if you are just following, which the EOS system for that matter, is a logical framework. When when I read the book through it, I’m like, [00:17:00] all makes sense.

[00:17:01] Yvonne Heimann: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We all know that. It just puts it nicely into a frame, but I was curious if this is an evolution of growing the agency or if you have looked into different business frameworks and system, how other people run their leadership and their, their team management.

The role of personal values in business

[00:17:20] Trent Stonehouse: Definitely learning these things over time. Um, it was, and like kind of implementing how I interpreted those things. So like Good To Great was a great book for me. The Power of People Skills by Trevor Thrones, uh, really introduced a lot of these kind of psychological things to me, um, and how to build a, a winning team for sure. Um, How we look and hold people accountable is strictly on our values, but more so my values. Because what we need to understand as business owners is you are the culture of the company. You are. If people don’t jive with you, they gotta probably go, okay? And so what’s happening here is [00:18:00] what I looked at from my company pillars was I didn’t want something that was gonna be some big badge on the screen.

[00:18:06] Trent Stonehouse: And when people walk into our office and say, that’s you guys, no, no. It’s literally what we hold our staff to. Mm-hmm. And so I looked at what pissed me off, and number one was, if you’re not proactive. So, are you gonna just leave things and be wait to be told, or are you gonna be proactive? So that’s one of the pillars that we judge you on.

[00:18:23] Trent Stonehouse: Second one is, um, are you communicating? How’s your communication? Are you leaving fires? Are you telling us when things are going on? Are you trying to hide shit? Mm-hmm. You know? Next one is, is, uh, that we use is um, basically, I’m trying to remember off the call here, but we have like five, and, uh, actually, you know what, I’m just gonna spill ’em all out right here.

[00:18:46] Trent Stonehouse: Boom. It’s, uh, like, I, I like it when people are like accountable. Am I going to [00:19:00] bed knowing that the task is gonna be done? Or am I thinking that, oh my God, and I’m sweating about this person, are they not accountable?

[00:19:08] Trent Stonehouse: Right? And then how’s their attention to detail? And then, are they difficult? Right? Um, are they, are they a pain in the ass? What’s their pain in the ass level? And I kind of rate everything, every single one of them on a one to five.

[00:19:23] Yvonne Heimann: Guys, if you are just listening to the podcast, what you are not seeing is I’m smirking over here because our values are really similar.

[00:19:32] Yvonne Heimann: Okay? Communication is my first value where I’m like, we all have our things. Shit happens. I am working with a lot of neuro, no, we all have a tongue twister today. Neurodivergent people where it’s like there is ADHD involved, there is anxiety involved and everything. I have meltdowns where literally just take two days off and I don’t leave the couch, and I honor that.

[00:19:59] Yvonne Heimann: But it takes [00:20:00] five seconds to send me a message and let the team know that you’re gonna be out for two days so that we can pick up the Slack. If that communication doesn’t happen, we got a problem. Um, and if it’s, if it happens in that moment or doesn’t happen in that moment, the same is gonna happen throughout the day.

[00:20:16] Yvonne Heimann: So clear communication and open communication, so important. Same thing where it’s like, we are testing a lot of stuff. I’m like right now, especially with content, it’s the easiest ex to explain where it’s like we are working on omnipresence. Every single short form video on all three platforms going out every single day.

[00:20:39] Yvonne Heimann: We are testing stuff. Mm-hmm. Same with my team. Go test, go do. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Go play. There is no guilt, but we need to be accountable for the things we do. Mm-hmm. And then look at the data and adjust accordingly. Nobody’s, yeah, but you need to stick up to that. It’s like, if I fuck up with my [00:21:00] clients, I have to be accountable for it, but my clients also have to be accountable for the stuff that they screw up.

[00:21:05] Yvonne Heimann: So I love all of those values. They’re like really closely aligned to what we do too.

[00:21:12] Trent Stonehouse: Some people might have different values too. And like I would say to anyone, if you’re like, well, what would my values be? Just think like what pisses you off?

[00:21:21] Yvonne Heimann: The interesting thing is that, that I have realized with my fellow entrepreneurs as well as clients, um, there is often also quote what we think our values are. You can easily find your values of just what pisses you off and what do you need in a relationship. Mm. Now what I also do and what I often, what, what we are starting to implement also with the team is, my NLP value elicitation, where we have a process that happens really fast so that we do not listen to the [00:22:00] frontal lobe, but we actually go into the unconscious mind.

[00:22:03] Yvonne Heimann: Mm. Where it’s like based in different areas. Um, there’s a quick little process. It’s like whichever area you wanna take care of takes half an hour and I can give you the five to 10 top values that are sitting in here for how we make decisions. And it was really interesting the first time I actually done that for me, where it’s like, Oh, it explained why I’m making certain decisions or why certain patterns keep repeating themselves because I got that value in there that says, oh, you’re gonna do this because you actually want that and not that thing. Mm-hmm. So that has been interesting and has actually funneled a lot also into our business values where I’m like on, okay, I know what I need for me to be able to run and, and do the business and be excited about it and not burn myself out to, to also get [00:23:00] energy back from the business, and just combining those has definitely been a game changer.

[00:23:07] Trent Stonehouse: I love it. I love it. That’s, that sounds great. Like, because honestly we do, we do really need to figure those things out as business owners.

[00:23:14] Trent Stonehouse: And one thing I want to say, you know, since this is all about systems, right? Your audience is here to learn that a good system that I’ve implemented is tying in Slack with a, a tool called Geekbot.

[00:23:28] Yvonne Heimann: I saw that. So tell me about, about Geekbot, because I have not heard about that one yet, and I ha why do I have a feeling that’s AI?

[00:23:37] Trent Stonehouse: Okay, so Geekbot is not AI, but it is a phenomenal tool for you to pull out information from your staff. It can become your end of day and end of week, um, reports from your staff. So what happens is what we’ve done, we set up a bunch of different Slack channels, but there’s um, a Slack channel that just says end of day reports and end of week.

[00:23:59] Trent Stonehouse: And so what [00:24:00] happens is Geekbot messages all of your staff individually, privately and says, hey, how are you feeling today? What clients have you been working on? What, why you’ve been working on these things? What’s important about them? What are some challenges you might be facing? Anything going on personally in your life that we, you that might be getting in your way?

[00:24:18] Trent Stonehouse: We ask those questions and at the end of each day, they get hit with it. They fill it out and it goes into that Slack room and we’re able to see what someone’s worked on every day. We’re able to know if they’re wanting a raise, all these kind of things, and so that way we can keep retention. We can know when someone’s kind of fallen off a little bit and so we can help them out and pick them up.

[00:24:37] Trent Stonehouse: And so it’s a great tool to use to kind of, uh, collect and communicate with your staff without you having to go directly to them. It saves you that meeting, all of that kind of stuff. So it’s a great tool and you can use it for so much more too. Um, I can talk about how we use it for meetings and all of that, but yeah.

[00:24:57] Yvonne Heimann: I will be definitely digging into Geekbot, [00:25:00] but I know you guys are also using a whole bunch of other tools. So what are, what are some of those tools and processes that allow you to run your agency now?

Tools and processes

[00:25:09] Trent Stonehouse: Oh yeah. Well, there’s nothing I couldn’t do, like okay, our, our holy trinity is definitely Asana, Slack and Airtable.

[00:25:22] Trent Stonehouse: Those are our holy, holy trinity.

[00:25:25] Yvonne Heimann: Guys, you did, did not. You just, you did not hear the Asana word. You did not, no, I’m just joking.

[00:25:30] Trent Stonehouse: No, you don’t like Asana? You like Monday ?

[00:25:31] Yvonne Heimann: No, it’s like my YouTube channel was all ClickUp based. ClickUp, no, it’s, it’s fine. Asana was actually the reason why I discovered ClickUp back in the day.

[00:25:42] Yvonne Heimann: I got so mad with them. However, did they finally release the multi-assignee feature?

[00:25:49] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can add collaborators. Collaborators, but there’s still like a main assignee.

[00:25:55] Yvonne Heimann: Really?

[00:25:57] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah. You know, you got a point.

[00:25:58] Yvonne Heimann: Really, [00:26:00] Asana?

[00:26:00] Yvonne Heimann: We’ll, we’ll, we’ll not, we’ll not start the Asana ClickUp discussion. Now, I always, I we always have fun with that. We always have fun with that. My audience knows the best tool is the one you actually use. Mm-hmm. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t miss up on the, on the chance of just…

[00:26:16] Trent Stonehouse: Gimme, gimme some credit here cuz listen this, before using Asana, I was using Google Keep. Right.

[00:26:22] Trent Stonehouse: That’s, that’s, that was like early days. That’s embarrassing. That’s embarrassing. And then I leveled up. I’m like, oh, Asana seems cool. And I just stuck with it.

[00:26:32] Yvonne Heimann: Now, now, now we just gotta move you over to ClickUp. That’s all. That’s all it does. We just need to move you over to ClickUp. There you go.

[00:26:38] Yvonne Heimann: Problem solved.

[00:26:39] Trent Stonehouse: Like we built everything onto Asana, like everything. Every kind of part of our department’s on there. And it integrates with Slack and for example, when our sales team, when there’s a client that’s about to renew, it alerts us. Asana alerts us in our Slack channel to our sales team. If someone’s turned or we lost the client, it alerts us [00:27:00] in that specific channel.

[00:27:01] Trent Stonehouse: If there’s a new client onboarded, we get alerted in that specific channel, all into Asana. And so we’re just like, boom, boom, picking up everything we need.

[00:27:08] Yvonne Heimann: And that what it comes down to is like the best tool to use is the one you actually use. However, guys, if you are listening and you are a ClickUp user, that’s possible on ClickUp, too.

[00:27:18] Trent Stonehouse: Boom. I’ll stop talking. I’ll stop.

[00:27:22] Yvonne Heimann: No, you, you’re totally fine. It’s just I love that banter between tools. Yeah. Again, in the end, seriously, seriously, as much as I love ClickUp, I’m, I will never force somebody to come to the dark side because again, it doesn’t matter what’s the best camera you’re going to use your damn iPhone because you have it with you all the time.

[00:27:45] Yvonne Heimann: What’s the best microphone you’re gonna use? The one you actually gotta plug in, right? It’s, it’s always the best tool to use is the, the best tool for you is the one you actually use. That’s what it comes down to. Absolutely. Um, So you were, [00:28:00] now that I got to play around a little bit, you guys are using Asana, Airtable, and Slack.

[00:28:06] Yvonne Heimann: Are there a couple other ones or is that pretty much what keeps the business running?

[00:28:11] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah, I mean, we use things like Active Campaign for like all of our emails, marketing, all that kind stuff.

[00:28:17] Yvonne Heimann: Same here.

[00:28:18] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah, active campaign. You can’t go wrong with it.

[00:28:20] Yvonne Heimann: The data, the data and the flows and everything, it just integrates so seamlessly.

[00:28:25] Yvonne Heimann: I, I left Active Campaign for a little while there for a lifetime deal, and I’m back. Yeah, I’m back.

[00:28:31] Trent Stonehouse: Welcome back.

[00:28:32] Yvonne Heimann: The deep data integration and everything, it’s just…

[00:28:35] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, you actually, you know what a tool that we use that not a lot of people know about, um, well maybe they do know about it, and I’m just like thinking I’ve got the secret sauce over here, but it’s called Cyfe.

[00:28:48] Trent Stonehouse: CYFE and that’s by Traject, the, the, the company. Do you know Cyfe?

[00:28:55] Yvonne Heimann: It’s the dashboard.

[00:28:56] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah. Okay. So you know it like, I’m like thinking I’m sitting on some secret sauce [00:29:00] here.

[00:29:00] Yvonne Heimann: It’s great, but like, no, it’s, it, it is not as well known as it should be. I just happened to dig into dashboards and, and I love data.

[00:29:09] Yvonne Heimann: It’s like, On my personal stuff, I follow my gut. But when it comes down to business, the only thing that makes for a serious decision and a clear decision is data. It’s numbers.

[00:29:25] Trent Stonehouse: A hundred percent. You cannot be a business owner and doing, I feel, or I think. It’s gotta be like, data driven decisions. You gotta have systems for pretty much everything.

The importance of having systems for everything in business

[00:29:37] Trent Stonehouse: If you don’t, what the hell are you doing? Like, you know.

[00:29:41] Yvonne Heimann: And you can’t scale. Mm, yes. It there, there is. And no matter if you wanna keep your business or if you wanna sell your business, you are gonna work yourself off and crazy and burn yourself out if you don’t have systems behind it because you’re gonna be sitting here and what do I do need to do next?

[00:29:57] Yvonne Heimann: And you can’t offhand. You’re suddenly gonna spend [00:30:00] three times the amount of time hiring somebody and, and getting them into the system because you gotta teach them. Then they try to do and remember, and then you gotta fix it again because you don’t have it written down.

[00:30:12] Trent Stonehouse: You’re speaking my language.

[00:30:14] Trent Stonehouse: Hey, like, you know, I, I saw your YouTube channel. I’m like, yeah, I gotta connect cuz like, uh, you’re speaking my language here because number one, like, like, it’s not, it’s not difficult setting these things up or learning it. It might, like, whenever we see systems or a lot of people see some kind of, oh, I gotta set up this tool and I have no, I’m not tech savvy. A lot of today, you don’t have to be that tech savvy and just sit down and do the work if you plan on doing this long run, like, you know.

[00:30:43] Yvonne Heimann: You know what the interesting thing is, and guys, simply because we are on the topic, it’s the thing that I literally, regularly, 95% of the time run into when it comes to ClickUp.

[00:30:55] Yvonne Heimann: ClickUp is really versatile. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that you manually have to set [00:31:00] up rather than something like Asana, where the structure is more rigid than what it is in ClickUp. It’s a blessing and a curse. But believe me, when clients come to me and they’re like, oh my God, ClickUp is so crazy, I already know exactly what’s happening.

[00:31:17] Yvonne Heimann: They don’t have their system down. And where I’m going with this guys is you don’t have to know all the technology. You don’t have to do all the things. The thing is, your technology is gonna become way easier no matter what you use, when you actually know what the hell you wanna do. And the only thing to know what you need to do is having your systems and your workflows down. Mm-hmm. You can take that anywhere.

[00:31:44] Trent Stonehouse: Yep. A hundred percent. Like I love that you’re saying this too, is like you just have to know what you’re wanting. Like what’s that? What do you need? That’s the biggest thing. What do you need?

[00:31:54] Trent Stonehouse: And if you don’t have it in you to build it out yourself or figure out what [00:32:00] platform to use, hire someone. And if you’re like, oh, I can’t hire someone, well hire from maybe the Philippines. That’s where I do all my hiring. That’s a whole nother journey. But like we have like 20 employees and they’re all offshore for pretty much, and you know, they build a lot of systems for me now I just kind of tell ’em what I want and they go kind of build it.

[00:32:17] Yvonne Heimann: Yep. But it’s like, again, it comes back down again to, they are not gonna know what they need to build if you don’t know what you need. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. It’s like hiring somebody to build a website, but you don’t know what needs to be on it. It’s the same, same dam thing guys.

[00:32:35] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah, exactly.

[00:32:36] Yvonne Heimann: However, again, there is people out there that have done this.

[00:32:39] Yvonne Heimann: There is people out there like Trent, who is running the agency. Me with staff, where we know what questions we need to ask for you to figure out what you actually need. Yeah. Because even though we all want systems, we all want processes, one big thing for me is, yeah, you can copy my stuff. Don’t get me wrong.[00:33:00]

[00:33:00] Yvonne Heimann: But you are thinking differently than I’m thinking, right? I’m a creative but still type A, whereas, other people think a little bit different and you can take that process, but you need to adjust it to how you actually work and what you want to do. So yeah, there, there is another soapbox of mine where it’s like, great, you can go get some templates and some processes out there, but there is not one solution that fits all.

[00:33:25] Yvonne Heimann: You always need to polish it and actually make it yours.

[00:33:28] Trent Stonehouse: A hundred percent right. You gotta, you gotta work within your means too, right? But you know, that’s why I brought up CYFE. Cause I thought like, hey, let you know, know your numbers. Mm-hmm. It’s a good platform, but even a better one than that one is, uh, Plecto.

[00:33:42] Trent Stonehouse: You could check out too. Plecto’s are like another great dashboard.

[00:33:45] Yvonne Heimann: How do you spell that?

[00:33:46] Trent Stonehouse: Um, actually P L E C T O.

[00:33:51] Trent Stonehouse: plecto.com

[00:33:53] Yvonne Heimann: Something like that. Guys, as always, you know it’s, I will. We’ll figure it out. I’ll check the link and it will be [00:34:00] in the description. Now, with figuring out your own path and your own things, you have some goodies for the audience on figuring out your applicant’s strength and weaknesses.

[00:34:13] Yvonne Heimann: Mm-hmm. So you got a little bit goodie for the audience when they’re ready to hire.

The importance of understanding one’s own strengths and weaknesses before hiring others to fill those gaps

[00:34:18] Trent Stonehouse: Oh, absolutely. You know, when it comes down to hiring, first question, you know, one of the biggest question is like, who? Who? And, uh, and from what? Yeah. Right. And, uh, the big thing here is we gotta figure out what your, who you are first.

[00:34:34] Trent Stonehouse: Right? You gotta figure out yourself. And actually, I had a client, um, he’s, his name’s actually shout out to him. Agent DK, he’s one of the top producing real estate agents out in, uh, Toronto. Um, and, uh, the guy’s a beast and he was saying to his, uh, team the other day, or he was giving a talk and he was just like saying, um, you know, he didn’t start really excelling until he figured out what [00:35:00] his personality type was, right?

[00:35:02] Trent Stonehouse: He talked a lot. He was like that. Influential type. So he is like out there just talking a lot to boom, boom, boom. And he wasn’t slowing down and listening to his clients. And so once he learned that, oh hey, yeah, those are my strengths. Oh yeah, those are my weaknesses, he was conscious of it. Mm-hmm. And so he then didn’t let those weaknesses overtake him.

[00:35:21] Trent Stonehouse: And now he knows, hey, maybe when you hire. You can hire to fill your weaknesses. And so get in line with what your, uh, what your weaknesses and strengths are. You can look up a bunch of free personality tests out there, DISC, Myers-Briggs, whatever. There’s a bunch of free ones out there. Or if you wanna go next level, it’s work styles.

[00:35:42] Trent Stonehouse: Know your work styles. So the difference between work styles and personality tests is that personality tests like DISC, focus on a number of things. Your trauma, your education, so, your social wealth, your biology, all these things play factor in who you [00:36:00] are. Like you could have a new trauma tomorrow and you’re a different person.

[00:36:03] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah. You could get drunk tonight, you’re a different person.

[00:36:06] Yvonne Heimann: Yeah. He got the truth.

[00:36:08] Trent Stonehouse: Right? But there’s one. There’s one part that does not change. And that’s your work style. Mm-hmm. If you hate puzzles and you get intoxicated, you still hate puzzles. Like you’re not like, oh, screw puzzles. Right. That’s the thing.

[00:36:22] Trent Stonehouse: So, uh, I would encourage anyone to do a work style survey or a personality test, anything like that. I have a free tool of my own that you can use, uh, that’s remoteceos.academy/workstyles, and it’s a free survey and you just do it and it’ll tell you who you are and then that way you can start leveraging a tool like that for your hiring processes and start getting rid of what you suck at or what you don’t really enjoy doing, right? Because that’s tends to be the things that aren’t natural to us.

How understanding your personality type can change your perspective and improve your efficiency

[00:36:56] Yvonne Heimann: And guys, seriously, that changes a lot. [00:37:00] I’ve been digging into a lot of personality types and really getting kind of like that permission slip per se.

[00:37:06] Yvonne Heimann: Mm-hmm. For I’m best reactive. Put me on a stage, put me in front of people, bring on the issues, I will solve them all. Mm-hmm. That’s me. However, when you are community building, you need to be proactive. You need to get people to actually ask those questions. Mm-hmm. Guess what? I just hired for that and we are working on that.

[00:37:29] Trent Stonehouse: Nice. Let’s go.

[00:37:30] Yvonne Heimann: So bringing somebody on that has that trait of bringing people in to engage them, to ask the questions, I think all of us that, that are educational and more reactive have that trouble of, why don’t you just freaking comment on my YouTube videos and ask the question? Mm-hmm. Why aren’t you coming into my Facebook group and asking the questions where you know you’re gonna get some serious answer rather than the drama on a public Facebook group? But that is a whole nother, no whole nother soapbox. [00:38:00] We are not gonna get into this. Not today, guys. Instagram Stories is for my soapboxes. Where can people find you?

[00:38:11] Trent Stonehouse: Yeah, I mean, they can find me over on my Instagram.

[00:38:14] Trent Stonehouse: That’s at Instagram. Uh, Trent Stonehouse, my name, T r e n t, and then Stonehouse, S T O N E House. Or you can connect with me on YouTube, which is youtube.com/trentstonehouse. And then if you’d like to connect and look at my companies, that’s just remoteceos.academy.

[00:38:31] Yvonne Heimann: And as always guys, you’re gonna find all of the links in the show description wherever you are watching, listening or reading.

[00:38:40] Yvonne Heimann: Trent, thanks so much for joining me today. This was way too much fun. I might gonna have to have you on for a second episode at some point.

[00:38:46] Trent Stonehouse: Let’s go. I’m in it.

[00:38:49] Yvonne Heimann: And guys, I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye, everybody.

[00:38:52] Trent Stonehouse: Thank you so much for having me. Thanks.