Good Neighbor Podcast: South of the River
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of South of the River
Good Neighbor Podcast: South of the River
EP#112 Virtual Assistants: The Hidden Heroes of Small Business
Sarah Neisen, founder of Neisen Consulting, shares how virtual assistants help small business owners handle administrative tasks without the financial and compliance burdens of hiring employees. Her journey from executive assistant to business owner demonstrates how organizational skills and life perspective can transform into entrepreneurial success.
• Neisen Consulting provides virtual assistance for small businesses needing 5-20 hours of administrative support weekly
• Services include email management, scheduling, invoicing, accounts payable/receivable, and CRM work
• Virtual assistants save business owners money on taxes, compliance, and employee benefits
• Sarah once organized an inbox with 9,573 unread messages
• The best virtual assistant relationships require minimal communication after initial onboarding
• When virtual assistants are doing their job well, the chaos never returns to the business owner
• Sarah started her business after reevaluating her priorities following the loss of both parents
• Neisen Consulting employs US-based virtual assistants, ensuring English fluency and time zone compatibility
• Sarah has been organizing things since childhood—alphabetizing her books and CDs at age eight
Contact Neisen Consulting at neisenconsulting.com, by phone at 952-688-6276, or email at info@neisenconsulting.com.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Mark Bratton.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to Good Neighbors Podcast number 112. And today I'd like to receive and share some good, old-fashioned organizational consultation from a friend that is truly meant to be. I'm pleased to welcome Sarah Nysen with Nys consulting how you doing today, sarah I'm doing well.
Speaker 3:How are you?
Speaker 2:oh, it's great. It's cold. It was windier in the hoot yesterday, but uh, that's why we all want to be indoors, I guess so winter in minnesota oh my gosh, yes, and thank goodness I don't have to be outside. I know you don't have to be outside. I know you don't have to be outside with the job you do either. So let's just jump right in and tell us a little bit about what you got going on there.
Speaker 3:So in October of this year I founded Nisen Consulting. We're a virtual assistant agency and we help small business owners everything from solo entrepreneurs, executives to small businesses that have maybe three, four employees who need administrative help. Anything back office like email, calendar management, scheduling, invoicing, accounts, payable, receivable and a lot of CRM work. A lot of people with their customers' relationship management we do a lot of CRM work. A lot of people with their customer's relationship management we do a lot of that as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, relationships with all those emails that we get every day. I suppose you have some wonderful stories like that you can talk about. Maybe somebody like me that has about 25 emails that I haven't looked at 25 emails that I haven't looked at.
Speaker 3:One of the most interesting inboxes I have ever inherited in my life had 9,573 unread messages in it. It was insane. It was probably the most unorganized and crazy inbox I've ever seen. It took a while to actually organize that, but we got through it. It took a lot, though 9,500.
Speaker 2:Wow, Divide that out by however many minutes it takes to read and respond and make a note. Wow, that was a whole year's worth of business in my life.
Speaker 3:It was essentially a year's worth of unread emails. But I told him just delete. Just delete everything over six months because nobody wants to talk to you anymore.
Speaker 2:True fact. I've used those. Maybe go back and get somebody's address or phone number that I forgot or something, but didn't move on. But wow, wow. So with that, though, I'm sure you've seen a lot of really weird things, but on our end, what are some of the myths and misconceptions that we might have with a business like yours, versus hiring Sarah and having you come into the office?
Speaker 3:You know hiring can be really really expensive, especially when you're a small business owner. You have a lot of the compliance. You have a lot of the taxes. You know you're dealing with Social Security payments. You're doing a lot of the compliance. You have a lot of the taxes. You know you're dealing with social security payments. You're doing a lot of things.
Speaker 3:When you hire a virtual assistant through nizen consulting, you're essentially hiring an agency which is, you know, a very simple business contract 1099.
Speaker 3:It's very simple. Um, so really, when you're looking in that five to 20 hours a week range which is where most of our customers are I would say 99% of them are five to 20 hours of administrative help per week you're going to be saving a significant portion of just your compliance and your taxes, maybe a little bit more per hour than you would pay an employee. But on the other flip side, you know there's no social security, there's no Medicare, there's no unemployment, there's none of that and there's none of the paperwork that goes with it either. You know, if you're a tradesman and an electrician and you need somebody to come in and schedule your appointments for you and handle invoicing, so you get paid, answer those phone calls so your voicemail is not full. You really only need somebody five to seven hours a week and you don't want to be hiring somebody and taking on all that extra compliance and fees and taxes. It's a lot easier.
Speaker 2:But, sarah, I got to see your smile, I got to see your face. I got to see at the coffee pot. How do I get past that? I need to see this person pot.
Speaker 3:How do I get past that? I need to see this person. In the end, people are very happy the less they have to talk to us, because it means that we're really saving them the time and it's not like there's no communication there. You know, a lot of times when we talk to people, the onboarding is, you know, a great part, but it's also the most frustrating because that's when you're kind of showing your VA, your virtual assistant, what you need done and how you need it done. After that it's a real email or text relationship. Basically, you know hey, here's my invoices for the day. Hey, here's who I helped today. It really, really, in the end, saves people a lot of time without having to look at people all the time.
Speaker 2:That's one of those myths that you know an owner has all the time. Well, geez, you know, I just need to see you once in a while and you can't work from home anymore. And I really value and I know I've talked to many people that the value. And then the other myth I've always heard is well, we really don't know what they're doing, so do you have a backup that you personally do, or how does that work?
Speaker 3:I always say you know when they're not doing their job, because it's very obvious they're taking the chaos from you. If the chaos ever comes back, it's when they're not doing their job. It's when you hardly realize that they're. There is when things are going very well, and that's the whole purpose of a virtual assistant is to take all of that paperwork, all of that compliance. You know the invoicing, the emails, the phone calls from you. So you're not doing all of this at your child's football game or midnight. It's getting done during the day, during the week, by your virtual assistant. So you can just live life. You know business owners have lives too.
Speaker 2:Well, that leads us right into perfect session is uh, you know you work hard, you've built this team up and you've got people working for you. You also have your own life, sarah. So what do you do in your spare time besides uh, travel the world?
Speaker 3:well, I do get to travel the world next year. Excellent segue, Mark. Excellent segue, yes. So next year in March my husband and my son and I are going to be taking one of our bucket list trips. We're doing a transatlantic cruise. We're going to go to the Azores and Portugal and Spain. But yeah, we love travel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's when you're going to come back to me and I'll be your virtual assistant for some time. Very good, I'll be ready for that call.
Speaker 3:I promise I have a backup for when I'm gone um, but you know, otherwise I'm I'm kind of old-fashioned I. I have a treadle sewing machine and I sew vintage clothes and I have a loom in my basement and a spinning wheel. I love it. If I'm not on Zoom, I'm at a treadle sewing machine.
Speaker 2:People don't really understand that. We all have lives too, and many times I know you work with a lot of executives and people like that You're on a little island by yourself. So to me, inviting a virtual assistant sometimes can be very, very good because I don't want to see anybody. But man, do I need that assistant? So I get it. I get it. But we also need that time off so we can go do our own thing too and be with the kids and all that kind of stuff. So that's beautiful. I love it, love it. So with that and I know we've chatted a little bit in business and time but is there anything in your life that caused you to go this route, besides your 9,573 emails that you took care of for somebody? But what was your life challenge or something that moved you and said I need to do this?
Speaker 3:So I was an executive assistant to a bank CEO and the job was fine. It really was. I liked the people there and that was actually the hardest part about leaving. It was just, you know, they wanted me to be a receptionist and an executive assistant and I didn't feel like I was doing either job well and there's just a lot of stress there that I really didn't want and I really didn't need in my life anymore.
Speaker 3:I kind of come off of a couple of really hard years and really had to reevaluate a lot of what I wanted out of life and what I wanted to do, and I realized I didn't want to work for somebody else anymore. I wanted to do something and build something for myself. You know, you lose a parent and you lose two parents in three years and you realize, you know life is a lot shorter than you expect. You might as well just start, and that was what happened. I ended up with my bachelor's degree this last year and I was kind of evaluating my job and realizing I just didn't love it and I decided to leave and start something that I loved. This is the second business that I've owned and I knew I enjoyed being a business owner before, so um Kind of had an epiphany that I do really love administrative work. I love working in the office. I just want to do it for myself.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's an awesome little story because there's so many people that don't get that opportunity to go and just quit and try something. Definitely not go into a different business where you really don't know if it's going to work. You've heard about it, we've heard about virtual technology is awesome but doggone. It's just tough. But I I applaud you big time for for making that move and I know you're doing well and we're going to keep growing this for you, with you. Um, so what? What's one thing that, as we kind of wrap up and move on, that you really want to share? That would make somebody remember who is sarah nyson I always laugh, and my husband does as well.
Speaker 3:Um, I was the kid that organized her cds and books when she was a child alphabetically, deep down down. I was always meant to. Yeah, I was like eight and organized. But I mean, you have to organize them alphabetically, Otherwise you'll never find them in the stack of books that I had. So he thought that was hilarious.
Speaker 2:When I told him that and he's like you know, being an administrative assistant and an executive assistant is kind of like what you were just meant to do- so that also shows how good you are and you pay attention to that because you're absolutely right, whether it's by color, by address, by name, by date, whatever it is, it's so much easier if you can dig into the head of that executive and you know what they want and they'll be able to find it easy. And that when they applaud you and say, oh sir, thanks so much, I was looking for that and I spent three months trying to find it and I now I found it in 20 minutes or three seconds, perfect, perfect, well, um, anything you want to share about your business or anything right off hand, then, um, then I definitely want you to tell everybody how to get ahold of you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we're growing. We serve pretty much any business owner in any industry solo entrepreneurs all the way up to three, four employees who need five to 20 hours of administrative assistance per week. We have people in every industry you can imagine. We have virtual assistants all across the US and they are all in the US, so you get somebody who is English fluent and in your time zone Very nice perk. Not everybody who is virtual is within the US and sometimes they can be kind of hard to get a hold of, but we make a point to make your life easier and be easy to get a hold of for you. And if you want to find us, we are on the web at nizenconsultingcom, and also on Facebook and LinkedIn under Nizen Consulting.
Speaker 2:Well, you mentioned about the English part of it. Are you going to move into some of the other languages and get some virtual assistants that can help both folks?
Speaker 3:We do have a couple bilingual assistants. They are bilingual Spanish and one is bilingual Serbian.
Speaker 2:Nice, Very nice. I get that every once in a while in my world of publishing. It's you know, you get somebody, you walk into a business and you go hello and you look at them and they look at you. Okay, so I can get it, but that's great, that's a great service. So, Sarah, why don't you tell everybody again where to find you phone number, email, the whole works, and then we're going to make it a wrap.
Speaker 3:You can find us at nisenconsultingcom that's N-E-I-S-E-N. Consultingcom at nyzenconsultingcom by a phone at 952-688-6276, or by email at info at nyzenconsultingcom.
Speaker 2:And I think everybody should check you out. I'm guessing you can give a free first little consultation and evaluate how you can help. But man good, give sarah a call, shoot her an email, I'm sure she'd love to say hello to you. So with that we're gonna wrap up the good neighbors podcast with nice and consulting thanks for listening to the good neighbor podcast south of the river.
Speaker 1:To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPSouthoftherivercom. That's GNPSouthoftherivercom, or call 952-592-3737.