Outsourcing Case Study with Mariah Seacrest-Comer

“[Outsourcing} just makes sense. If you can do more in your business because someone else is helping you, it’s an easy, easy decision in my book!”

By day, Mariah works full-time as the program manager for the Civana Wellness Resort and Spa located near Scottsdale, AZ. But in her freetime, she’s a thriving entrepreneur with help from a fantastic virtual assistant in the Philippines. Mariah coaches individuals in health and wellness locally and internationally through her accessible online programs. She offers certified mentoring in everything from pilates to meal planning. The full scope of Mariah’s services can be found on her user-friendly website, WellthyBoss.com. Her tips for successful outsourcing can be found below.

 Background:

• Mariah ‘kind of fell into’ the wellness industry in the backend. She was nominally healthy when she was young. She travelled as a musician for a while and she was a Philosophy major. “Everything I did I was sitting or it was something that had me stuck in my head,” so she had to be proactive about going on walks, hikes, and being active in general. 

• Mariah started her career in business development and worked with several non-profits doing fundraising and eventually program development. When she worked for the American Cancer Society, she found herself working extra long hours. She also realized that when she took care of herself, she could work the longer hours, feel better, do more, and be in a better mood. It made her want to do more and more physically. 

• Got her yoga and personal trainer certifications and ended up loving physical fitness more and more. 

• Aha moment – working with The American Cancer Society, Mariah was exposed to a lot of the health statistics and saw how lifestyle plays heavily into the development of diseases.  ⅓ of cancer deaths can be prevented just through diet and exercise alone and yet there is a discrepancy between what we know about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and how we’re actually living. So she wanted to get more involved with helping others maintain a healthy lifestyle.

• Expansion into online wellness: Mariah moved to rural Alaska for her husband’s healthcare job. ‘There wasn’t a whole lot for me to do there.’ So she started learning about blogging, the online space and online marketing, and she loved it. So she combined it with wellness, her other love.

• Also works as a program director at Civana: a brand new wellness resort concencept that integrates the mind, body, and spirit connection experience at a price point that’s accessible to those who need it the most.

About WellthyBoss.com:

• Teaches how to make wellness part of everyday life. “Getting super practical about practicing healthy habits.”

• Teaches Meditation, Nutrition, Meal Planning, Barre, Yoga, Pilates, and Balletone online and in person. Mariah also offers the ‘Fitpreneur’ program, where she coaches fellow fitness professionals on how to extend their businesses to the online market.

• She loves what she does and she believes in it. When she’s getting good nutrition and taking care of her body, she’s more productive, in a better mood, and can serve those around her better. That’s what makes the wellness pursuit really worthwhile.

• She loves to work with motivated ‘go-getters’ who know that they’re going to perform at the top of their A-game when they’re taking care of their bodies.

• WellthyBoss.com has evolved overtime, “The cool part of running an online business is that you can pivot really easily. I love being able to work in the online space with that.”

Some of Mariah’s Wellness Programs:

• The 7-Day Reset Program – online barre, yoga, pilates with daily mindfulness exercises
• Boss Body System – a more comprehensive health coaching, overall healthy habit makeover program.
• Meal Planning Mastery – helps clients get more organized in the kitchen with their meal planning
• Fitpreneur – coaches and mentors other health and fitness professionals to help them integrate and leverage the power of the internet to expand to online teaching or market what they’re doing in person.

Professional Advantages of Wellness:

• The benefits of physical fitness are not just mental, emotional or physical. Research (not just from the fitness and wellness industries, but also from leadership and productivity industries) shows that those who engage in regular healthy habits are more creative and more productive.

• One study shows that people who are active on a regular basis on average earn 9% more than peers with the same skills sets who are not active. 

• Mariah is a certified meditation instructor through ‘Chopra;’ they have a whole foundation dedicated to research on the benefits of meditation, namely: creativity, feelings of wellbeing, feelings of being connected in a positive way to others. Those who meditate are also less emotionally reactive (which is an important trait when working with professional teams).

• Even journaling, as a part of wellness practice, has been shown to be a huge indicator of overall creativity – which translates into new business strategies, original sales angles, problem solving, and the creation of new products/services.

On Outsourcing

• Mariah originally heard about outsourcing through a podcast with renowned wellness instructor, Chalene Johnson, of whom she’s a big fan. She also listened to an interview with John Jonas (founder of OnlineJobs.ph). Both made sense and piqued her interest.

• She hired her first assistant about 4 years ago.

• “It just makes sense. If you can do more in your business because someone else is helping you, it’s an easy, easy decision in my book!”

What does Mariah’s VA do in her business?

• We focused on Mariah’s ‘go-to’ VA, Liden. “She does anything in my business that I don’t personally have to do.”  

• For example, Mariah may ask her to edit workout videos, manage email lists, help with live certifications, send out email templates, travel research, marketing research, reach out to potential clients and more.

Thoughts on Recruiting:

• The blessing and the curse of using OnlineJobs.ph is that there’s such a big pool of candidates. There are so many good candidates, it can be overwhelming.

• Write a very specific job description. 

• Do a blend of looking at profiles and waiting for responses to job posts. 

• Mariah filmed an introductory video to help candidates feel more connected to her and get a feel of what it would feel like to work with her. In the video, she also shared more information about her business.

• Then she had her favorite candidates create a video for her. She asked them to introduce themselves, explain why they wanted the job, talk about their skills and qualifications, and talk about why they wanted to work in her industry.

• “I like to work with people who are passionate about what we do. I want to see if there is interest in the industry and learning the content that I’m teaching as well.” She got some really fantastic videos back, and it helped define who would be a good fit. 

• She narrowed it to two candidates, so she hired both for two separate projects to help her decide which to hire long-term. “In the end, Liden was such a star.” Liden works 10-20 hrs/week right now, which is more time than Mariah works herself some weeks (since she also has a full-time dayjob).

• More on the video Mariah requested from her job candidates: Every application video was a slideshow with pictures of themselves and examples of  their work and their responses to my questions – creating a video kept them in their comfort zones without the intimidation of a live interview. 

Communicating with VAs:

• As far as the language goes, Mariah found a VA with flawless English, so there are no issues there!

• For training new skills, Mariah creates a Screenflow video explaining the process, uploads that to Dropbox and then sends Liden an email or lets her know on WhatsApp. If Liden has a question, she’ll email back. They use WhatsApp for regular communication – Mariah checks-in first thing in the morning and at night to make up for the time difference. 

• They share platforms through an encrypted password system, so Liden can have instant access to everything in the business that she needs.

Additional advice for outsourcers

• “I’m a big advocate [of outsourcing].’ She recently did a presentation on ‘how to outsource’ with business friends. 

• One of the main concerns is, ‘What if I don’t have enough work for my VA?’ Once you start getting into the mindset of, ‘oh, someone else can do this,’ you realize how much of your business you don’t need to be doing yourself. You can free up so you can really focus on strategy and business growth as opposed to day to day operations and administration.

• “So for those who might be afraid of, “oh gosh, I don’t know how to hand it over’ — just start!”

• Start with one small thing in your business. Maybe it’s your managing  email lists, video editing, changing up your social media templates, sometimes it’s the small things that add up and create free time when you outsource them! Then you’ll have a life again!

You can check out other stories from Thomas and his coaching business, FastTrack FBA & JR Fisher on Business and Outsourcing by signing up for an Onlinejobs.ph account. 

You can also learn more about how to get started on hiring Rockstar Virtual Assistants.

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