From a Rock Star Virtual Assistant to Helping Coaches Increase Their Revenue

Jaimie Skultety, Marketing Strategist and Owner of Upscale You Business, was a featured guest on Time to Shine Today Podcast, hosted by L. Scott Ferguson.  

Jaimie was a virtual assistant who was and still is at the top of her game.  She parlayed that into setting up Upscale Your Business to help coaches and entrepreneurs Level UP their business!

Knowledge Nuggets and Take-Aways

• When starting a business, build an Avatar for exactly the customer you want to serve.
• Find something that you love to do and find a way to get well paid for it.
• When hiring a coach, ask what was their biggest oversight and how did they remedy it.

Recorded 6/9/20.

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CONNECT WITH US:
Jaimie Skultety:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimieskultety

Mark Kanty:
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Transcript

Jaimie Skultety  0:00  
Hey, this is Jaimie Skultety with upscale your business. And if you really want to learn how to level up your life, you should be listening to the time to shine today podcast with my friend, Scott Ferguson.

L. Scott Ferguson  0:12  
Okay, hey, time to shine today varsity podcast squad Welcome to Episode 90. And I get to bring on a coach of a coach. So basically, she is the person who has a company upskill your business that other coaches or sometimes entrepreneurs will go to, to really level up. And she's a neighbor of mine about maybe 20 minutes away from me down to Lake Worth, Florida. She's fantastic. Her name is Jaimie Skultety. And she just has some serious knowledge nuggets for you to really zone in on who you want to serve, and then really go after it. So here is my good friend, Jaimie Skultety.

Hey, Todd to shine varsity squad, Scott Ferguson, he and I have actually a kind of a neighbor of mine about 15 miles to the south of me, and Lake Worth, Florida. You know, I'm here in Jupiter, Florida. And it's kind of nice that we could actually have did this in studio, but unfortunately, we have to do it over zoom, which is just fine. But it's a good friend of mine here, Jaimie Skultety. She has the company upskill your business. And she what she does, it's different. A lot of my listeners here are coaches. And the coaches sometimes need to be coached I know that I do. And what Jaimie's company does is she will help coaches take their business to the next level. So all we're we're always talking about leveling up here. And so this is kind of almost a coach for a coach. And she has a phenomenal business platform, you have to make sure you visit upscale your business.COM But Jaimie Skultety is the founder of Upscale Your Business, which helps coaches and consultants with comprehensive systemize and results focused approach to marketing their business. Jaimie's clients ever reported. More ideal clients to work with and an average of 30% increase in revenue. And that is some serious credentials, people. So Jaimie, welcome to the show, please come on. Introduce yourself. But first, what is your favorite color? And why?

Jaimie Skultety  2:35  
Purple. It's calming and soothing. And it's pretty

L. Scott Ferguson  2:41  
brutal is his royal to its regal. Look at a lot of the Royal and regal stuff that they had back up above Game of Thrones. I'm weird like that. But it was for stuff that's really off. So give me the origins of upscale you actually take it back to or upscale your business and kind of tell us how you got there.

Jaimie Skultety  3:02  
So I started out my company actually righter than almost 11 years ago, the last three, the last recession that we had the economy tanked and I found myself without a job. So what was I going to do, I consulted with a coach who suggested I become a virtual assistant that spoke to me, I had spent well over 20 years in corporate as an executive assistant for a while. And I just loved the idea. And I had a website up within two weeks, and I was marketing and I had to figure out how to market myself. And that's really the origin story here is you had to figure out clever and creative ways that I could afford free. I jumped on like every free webinar I could get my hands on and I would try one thing and try another thing. And then I would start to share with the clients that I was getting from my virtual assistant business. All the strategies that were working for me, and then they would say, oh, could you do that for me? And I started to do it for them. And then they're saying, well, you're not just a task based virtual assistant, you are actually helping me to increase and improve my business. And so then this the idea of for upscale your business came along and I kind of transitioned away from being a virtual assistant. I started actually, on a side note, I started to coach other virtual assistants.

L. Scott Ferguson  4:13  
Wow.

Jaimie Skultety  4:14  
Okay, what I found there, though, unfortunately, they're not really a lot of them aren't willing or don't have the funds to invest in themselves. Sure. So, you know, the coaching space is exactly what it's exactly the place I want it to be because the clients I was working with, as a virtual assistant or coaches they were referring more coaches to me and and so that became my niche. And so now I consider myself a social media marketing strategist.

L. Scott Ferguson  4:39  
Well, what were you doing before?

Jaimie Skultety  4:42  
Before my virtual assistant, yeah, before

L. Scott Ferguson  4:43  
you know when you lost your job.

Jaimie Skultety  4:46  
I was an executive assistant for many years for directly for CEOs of companies here locally and also in other places. I've had the background already to make it virtually. And the thing is, you know, I really loved doing what I did. I was Administrative I love that I'm very organized. And and it's a word I'm looking for.

L. Scott Ferguson  5:09  
You know just everything is a system I like systems, we call it me simplus and French. Okay, that was just told to me one day me supply says like organization you have everything kind of laid out and dialed in. Perfectly it. And so it was just a natural progression for me.

Jaimie Skultety  5:25  
But yeah, so I and then my last job was working with my parents because I had had an a child and a baby and they said, come work for us. And my mom and my stepdad and I went to work for them for about five years. So I got to take my son to work with me, all the perks of that, and I loved it. But again, when the economy and they had a furniture business, okay, but when the real estate market crashed, as I'm sure you could speak to, obviously, the furniture business did as well. So they have really retired, they're, you know, they're happy my parents, but I found myself was okay, now what you know, and I was so used to having the perks of being able to raise my son, and to be able to take time when I needed to if he was sick or something like that. So to be able to transition my business into a home based business where I can still raise him and do my work. I'm really the impetus for the whole thing. Sorry,

L. Scott Ferguson  6:18  
what was the aha moment that was like, Okay, I'm gonna I know I got let go from the executive assistant to go enroll into a virtual system that someone tell you about it? Or were you seeing other people doing it while you're an executive assistants that I'm going to take the reins? Or how'd that work?

Jaimie Skultety  6:34  
Yeah, so I had a friend who was in real estate as well. And she suggested she was very close friend of mine. And she called me about three years before the housing crash. And she said, I think you should be able to tell me at work one day, I think you should be a virtual assistant, I go, Well, that's nice. I said, that sounds interesting. But I've got all the perks of working for my parents, I'll probably own their business one day. I appreciate that thought, though. And she said, you know, and she was a coach as well. She's real estate, and she coach, you might know her as well to different person when I told her. But so I like the idea tucked in the back of my mind. And then fast forward three years, and I'm consulting with a coach a life kind of career coach, if you will, gotcha. And she suggested for me out of some testing that I did with her, you should be a virtual assistant. I said, Well, you're the second person to tell me that. So what was once by the way, I meant to say this in my corporate life, I always felt like I was at a party and somebody said, what do you do, I would try to minimize what I did. I was kind of saying, I'm just an executive assistant. I didn't have like a career title. I wasn't like, entrepreneur, business owner, I wasn't any of those things. So I kind of minimize my I felt minimalize myself, nobody did that to me. Sure. Um, but when I was able to then become an entrepreneur, that just, it was just sort of a step up for me. And it felt right. And so the coach and my friends were both right on target, and it just really lit me up and inspired me. So I knew that was the direction I need to go.

L. Scott Ferguson  8:02  
So that I love that. So your parents see you that you work for them for a little bit. And then you work for an executive system, what was your family's take on you kind of venturing out on your own? Were they supportive? Were they like, go get another job? Or what what was it if you don't want to share that?

Jaimie Skultety  8:20  
Not at all? No, they were actually quite incredibly supportive and still are. And actually, my stepdad helps me out quite a bit in my business. He does a lot of editing of some of my writing because he used to own a language school. So ya know, they've been my mother has always been an entrepreneur and always had her own businesses. So she was very excited. And she knew how excited I was by this. So now my family has been incredibly supportive and supremely proud of the, you know, the steps that I've taken, and they've seen me build something from nothing from Asher's to a very successful business. Not always been that way. You know, it was a struggle for a number of

L. Scott Ferguson  9:02  
you told us about that. Tell us about a meal that you had, that you feel forward and learn the most from something, there's got to be something that sticks out to you. You know, I mean, me, I was laying on my couch in a short sale that I had listed because I lost my old house, and I lived in someone's house. And I was like, literally listed the house and lived in the house while I had it listed. This is back in 2009 when the whole market crashed. So tell us a little bit about a fail. As you're getting up, you scale your business going. Yeah, so

Jaimie Skultety  9:31  
as a virtual assistant was really challenging, and I didn't have the money to invest in any coaching or anything like that, or specific VA coaching, I should say, and I do recommend that and that's why I became a VA coach. I had a lot of us come to me. But what was happening for me is, you know, it was kind of making the typical mistake of charging by the hour. Not not a very wise thing to do. I felt very trapped by that. I felt this. You know, I'm going to always have to have new clients every single month. In order to make up for any kind of shortfall, like, if clients bought a package of ours, let's say they would expect that if they didn't use all of them in a month that they could just have them ongoingly. You know, I'll just save those. And someday man over like, cell phone minutes back in the day, right? Exactly, exactly right, I really had a hard time, kind of figuring out the whole packaging and pricing kind of thing. And that model. And again, just started, found the puzzle pieces to put together that would actually bring the whole, all of my concepts together and grow, the marketing really became the thing that I love to do. Okay, I always said, If I could just get paid to market my business, I'd be really rich, because I love that whole, whole thing. And so I developed a whole program, a seven step system that goes by the upscale acronym. And each step of that program is right on the front page of my website. Right. So it's really taking all of those steps and putting them together so that we're building one thing on to the next. So I can help my clients, I, basically, I help my clients do all the things that I did to get me where I am.

L. Scott Ferguson  11:10  
So if I'm at a networking event, well, not right now. But because we're in like day 9250 of our COVID time here. But if I'm at a networking event, pressing flash meeting people, and someone's talking to me, and how would I know that they would be a, what would they say to me to know that they would be a good prospect contact or connection for you at upskill your business,

Jaimie Skultety  11:36  
that their coach or consultant number one, number two, they've been in business, maybe we kind of turn it around two to five years. And they've had, you know, they kind of tried it by themselves for a while, but they haven't really made the traction they want to make. They want to identify who who would be best served by what they have to offer, which I feel is one of those kind of slippery slopes, a lot of coaches and consultants, you know, when I speak to people in a comp consulting situation where I'm consulting with them, and I asked them, well, who's your target market, I typically get, you know, entrepreneurs, or people who, you know, have had a pulse or have a credit card. And so it's anybody and everybody. And it's really one of the first things that that we do in my business, and I have a partner who helps me with this is helped provide them some clarity on exactly who they serve.

L. Scott Ferguson  12:28  
So that helped them build an avatar for their, for their business. That's what I did. That's the people that are listening out there. That's what I did with you. And so I found you, is I built an avatar of people that have a commute to work, that are looking to maybe side hustle a little bit of their life, but also level up and bring on people like yourself to help them level up as well. So you help them build an avatar?

Jaimie Skultety  12:50  
That's exactly right. That's the first place we start is, you know, because we can't really do effective marketing until we get that nailed down. Okay. And it's amazing how many people just don't have that or don't even have the knowledge that they should. And you asked me what was one of my aha, and I'm going to refer back to this to your question here, which is that I didn't, I stayed stuck for a long time, more than a couple of years in the I help entrepreneurs. And when you look on like LinkedIn, and you and I talked about how LinkedIn is such a salad, or folios, very powerful, best place for marketing. If you if you put in the search bar entrepreneurs, millions of them come up. A lot of people have the thought of Well, that's great. I have millions of people to connect with. It's actually not a great thing. You want to get it down to the smallest

L. Scott Ferguson  13:36  
audience live. Right. Right. Dig in there. Yeah. So that's how I found you. Because I want to bring on people that help people level up. But then I was thinking, thinking, well, she helps people to help people level up level up. It's just fantastic. So if you some a new coach comes in, or a new entrepreneur or whatnot, and they you're starting to work with them. What is your kind of secret sauce, if you don't mind sharing of how you might help them find their blind spot.

Jaimie Skultety  14:05  
And we do that in a very comprehensive and very easy thing. And it's, and we offer this as sort of our introduction, if you will. So we offer anybody who's interested. And you'll, I'm sure you'll promote this at the end, I won't go too deep into it, but we give them a whole what I call an inbound marketing assessment. So if somebody expresses interest, we ask them for you know, their primary platforms, basically, we can get all of that right off to their website separately. And we will do a deep dive for anybody who's interested in discussing further now. They you know, they have to, you know, be willing to be in a place where they're willing to invest in their business and kind of take off their marketing hat so that they can stay coaching, right, toileting, but we always say you know, if you want to be a marketer, be a marketer. But back to the assessment is we will go and do a deep dive on other platforms, starting with their website, their LinkedIn or Twitter, their Facebook, anything else that we find and we will point out all the mistakes that they're making the same are probably overlooking that would probably enhance their business greatly if they fixed those things. And so, our hope is that, you know, they'll go, wow, this is really great. I now have a checklist of all the things I should do. Right. But that they'll go, I don't have time for that. And I don't really want to be doing I want to be coaching. Sure. So you know, our hope is that they'll say, Okay, I see pointed out a lot of my blind spots.

L. Scott Ferguson  15:28  
I need to work with you so that we love it. And that's part of the comprehensive package start when you start working with them then for no phone marketing. intro is our intro. Not the onboarding process. It's gotcha,

Jaimie Skultety  15:42  
Andre, what we can do for you kind of process.

L. Scott Ferguson  15:45  
Beautiful, no, it's a fantastic platform that you have here. And my coaches and in even entrepreneurs and even business owners should really, really look into upskill your business. Let's get in our DeLorean with Marty McFly. Let's go back to the 20 to 23 year olds, Jaimie. And what are you going to what kind of knowledge nuggets? Are you going to drop on her? to maybe help her level up? Maybe shorten your learning curve a little bit? What do you say enter with what you know now.

Jaimie Skultety  16:16  
Business wise, you're talking with personal space there. Let me think just you know, find your confidence find. Find something that you love to do. I've been having this discussion with my son, who's your point? doing it now.

Right? Exactly. Find something that you absolutely love to do this almost hobby ish, if you will, like it's a hobby that you just love, but that you're well paid for. Okay, yeah, that's totally.

L. Scott Ferguson  16:45  
That's beautiful. That's, that's good. I'd like to ask that because it makes people think because they've been down the road, you've, you've lost a security, you had to bounce back from it. So you've learned a lot during that time, just like myself, and I'm able to pay it forward with the people that our youngest, I've mentored on I schools here in the palm beaches and stuff. So know, when you're meeting a new prospect, is there any good question that you wish? They would ask you? Not a question. You have some? Is there any good question that you wish they would ask you?

Jaimie Skultety  17:18  
Um, probably along the lines of like, what was your biggest mistake? or What was your biggest oversight that you overlooked? Right. So that once you recognize it and have the answer, of course, is the I did I struggled with finding a niche. And I even argued the point that I shouldn't have to have a niche, I should be able to just market to the whole world. And I was really stuck there. I didn't really highlight that. I was there for a long time. I just didn't get it. Why would I need to limit my I found that whole conversation nation specializing in something to be incredibly limiting. And I thought why would I turn away business? That's not ideal for me. A lot of reasons for that. You know, because there's a ton of people who help entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, so what makes you different? You know,

L. Scott Ferguson  18:05  
when you have something, here's the question right there what makes you different? or what have you had happened in your life to fail? And how did you overcome it? Those are the two that I love, love, love to hear. So if you take your cell phone, computer, all the technology out of it out of this question, what are three things Jaimie cannot live without?

Jaimie Skultety  18:29  
My favorite rock star?

L. Scott Ferguson  18:31  
Is that

Jaimie Skultety  18:33  
from the 80s, Rick Springfield,

L. Scott Ferguson  18:35  
Jessie's girl, okay.

Jaimie Skultety  18:37  
Um, concerts, I guess. I mean, music in general. I'll say I do love to sing as well. Okay. What else? piece of technology out of it. But books I like to read. Love it. Yeah, I like to read a lot a lot about business. I also like to read biographies. I'm trying to think what else you said three things. Yeah, my relationship.

L. Scott Ferguson  19:03  
Love family and relationships. Love it. Those are genuine answers. I take that. So you've accomplished a lot in kind of a really short period of time. Love scale your business, you're helping people out what's the big capitalized, big, big thing that Jimmy wants to accomplish in her life?

Jaimie Skultety  19:22  
Oh, um, I'd like to I'd like my business to kind of run a little bit more automated Lee. You know, like, a lot of it is that I mean, I would like love to go to have a little more time to kind of step away from my business and, you know,

yeah. And, you know, I have a team so I love that I've been able to build a big let's think big. Come on.

L. Scott Ferguson  19:43  
What do you want? Your business?

Jaimie Skultety  19:45  
Yeah, I want to be the premier place that coaches go to for all of their marketing expertise.

L. Scott Ferguson  19:52  
Well, that's there you go. That's an honest answer. You want to be the go to alright Jaimie, what's the definition of a life wallet?

Jaimie Skultety  20:03  
Being able to more than pay your bills, have a nice, you know, be able to pay your bills comfortably and be able to you know, take trips and have just enjoy your life. So that's one thing and let's see here, life well lived you know that my child is happy, healthy and successful, whatever that looks like and that's not in a monetary way, which I understand is enjoy prosperous prosperity mine. Yeah. birdie everything and all the pillars of life. Yeah. And in general, everybody that I love and everybody in the world Actually,

L. Scott Ferguson  20:39  
yes, I know, especially in this time. So there's, we kind of slowly wind things down, we go into what's called our level up lightning round. Okay, and it's there's five or six questions I'm going to ask you. You have like five seconds to answer and you and I could talk for 1520 minutes on each one of them. It's not it's gonna stump you. It's just copy your head which just spit it out. You're ready. Okay, here we go. What's the best leveling up advice you've ever received?

Jaimie Skultety  21:07  
Get it target market? Love it.

L. Scott Ferguson  21:09  
Okay. Sure. One of your personal habits to contribute to that contributes to your success.

Jaimie Skultety  21:16  
personal habits and mapping out my day first thing in the morning? I don't do it. I don't answer a single email without having my entire day mapped out in an app. I love it. Yeah.

L. Scott Ferguson  21:28  
Other than your website, upskill your business and of course time to shine today.com that's my shameless plug. What is another website or intercept internet resource you'd like to go to the level up?

Jaimie Skultety  21:39  
I'm Amy a two of them. Amy Porterfield and Marie Forleo.

L. Scott Ferguson  21:44  
Both of them are great. Yeah. Okay. Not the flavor of the month, not the what you're reading now. That's some book that everyone talks about. What what's the one book that resonates with you that if like mine is the travelers gift by Andy Andrews changed my life? Like, what is that book for you?

Jaimie Skultety  22:02  
Hmm. Question. Um, well, I just read Marie Forleo his books. Everything is figure out audible. And I mean, I really read any book you'd hand to somebody if they're in the doldrums. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Love it.

L. Scott Ferguson  22:17  
What's your favorite charity? And organization you like to give your money and our time to?

Jaimie Skultety  22:24  
Thank you children.

L. Scott Ferguson  22:25  
There you go. Love to hear that. And last question. What's the best decade of music 6070s 80s or 90s 80s? Springfield. I love it. I love it. Jimmy How can we find you?

Jaimie Skultety  22:40  
www dot upscale your business.com and you can email me at Jaimie@UpscaleYourBusiness.com

L. Scott Ferguson  22:53  
an inbound marketing assessment or something? That's what we can offer is it somewhere

Jaimie Skultety  22:59  
it is it's a scale your business.com slash asset assets asset so as an ETF

L. Scott Ferguson  23:07  
Alright, folks, this that's going to be in the show notes. All that down there. So Jaimie needs to do one last thing for me. Could you please leave the time to shine squad with one party knowledge nuggets that you want them to take with them and internalize to help them level up.

Jaimie Skultety  23:27  
Find your finders special face, find who you help, will you are uniquely qualified to serve, gain clarity on that, and then everything else will will resonate from that your marketing. Everything you do will speak to that audience.

L. Scott Ferguson  23:44  
That's amazing that find your special space almost like find your specialty, where you're where you're passionate about, like you said it's hobbyist, if you will, to where you're going to have fun with what you do every day. And that's what folks that's what Jaimie does every day she doesn't really work she serves. She's helping people level up or level up their lives. Make sure you check out the show notes with all her contact information. And also the inbound marketing assessments that will be in there at upscale your business comm slash assets but that'll also be in the show notes as well. And Jaimie's seems very humble. She's very hungry and driven. She levels up her health levels up her wealth. And Jaimie, you're part of our squad now. Thank you so so much for coming on.

Jaimie Skultety  24:30  
Thank you very much for the opportunity.

L. Scott Ferguson  24:32  
Excellent. Have a great day. i

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