# How to Push Past Barriers of Growth

- Podcast: Evolvepreneur® (After Hours)
- Host: Mechelle McDonald
- Guest: Tyler Leber, Co-founder of Coconut
- Published: 2022-11-08
- Length: 17 min
- Page: https://podcast.coconutva.com/barriers-of-growth-evolvepreneur

## About this episode

Mechelle McDonald talks with Tyler Leber about building Coconut VA without outside funding and why delegation stays a constant struggle. They cover the visionary and integrator split from the book Rocket Fuel, automation, the goal of reaching 100 VAs, and using vacations to expose what still depends on the founders.

## Key moments

- 0:00 Introducing Tyler Leber
- 1:17 Time, money and cash flow
- 5:41 Visionaries and integrators
- 8:01 Learning to delegate
- 11:26 Automation and human capital
- 12:29 The goal of 100 VAs
- 13:43 Vacations as a strategy

## Transcript

**Mechelle McDonald [0:01]** Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Evolvepreneur After Hours show. I'm your host, Mechelle McDonald. My mission is to help entrepreneurs make a difference and navigate the messy world of startup or relaunch, commonly called a pivot. Join me today where we dig deep with our guests and get you the best concepts and strategies to fast track your business. For this episode entitled How to Push Past Barriers of Growth, my very special guest is Tyler Leber, who started his entrepreneurship journey in college. He found a visionary business partner who had just started a small market research firm. They joined forces, grew the business, which was acquired in three years. Following this, they co-founded Coconut VA, an ethical virtual assistance firm. They also founded a staffing agency, which they grew to 750,000 annual recurring revenue within one year. Tyler also loves talking about automation, delegation, and work-life balance. Tyler, welcome, welcome. Thanks, appreciate it. You're very welcome. So, of course, we have to start off. You love talking about work-life balance, so we are putting you on the spot. If you could have more time or more money when it comes to your business, which would you prefer and why?

**Tyler Leber [1:37]** Great question. At this point, I would actually say more money. Like I mentioned, you know, we do so much with automation and delegation that we're getting more of our time back right now. And so now I would actually, right now, I would choose the money. Okay. Awesome. Good answer.

**Mechelle McDonald [1:56]** So now that we're talking about money, when it comes to managing finances in business, whether from a capital perspective, sales, or revenue, it can either make or break a company. Would you agree with this statement and what has been your experience with this in the business world?

**Tyler Leber [2:18]** Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, definitely the, I guess the main challenge of starting a business is making sure that you have proper cash flow. You know, lack of cash flow is one of the big reasons why people just drop out of their business or, you know, don't have the motivation because the cash flow isn't coming in. And so, yeah, we, my co-founder and I early on decided that we didn't want to take on any outside funding. But then that made it, you know, that just brings new challenges. And so I think, you know, any scenario where you're trying to get money into the business, there's going to be different challenges. Right. And so we just didn't want anybody else making decisions for us or making, influencing our decisions in the business. And so, you know, for us, it was making sure that we had a proven business model. And so we took a lot of our learnings from our market research firm and kind of applied that to our new business, Coconut VA, and did a lot of market research and just, you know, validation before we ever put a dime into building a product or building a service and, you know, hopefully avoiding, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the too many losses.

**Mechelle McDonald [3:29]** Yeah, sounds good. I really like how you mentioned that you took your skills and the experience that you both had from your market research company and brought that over into your virtual assistant company and how that was able to actually influence that in a positive way. And it reminds me of speaking with another entrepreneur and they mentioned how people don't think that companies or persons from other industries, like you can actually come together, solve a problem, help each other. We always kind of feel like either we're in silos or we're being competitive, but you actually show it that there was a way to merge that made your second company or your other company stronger. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

**Tyler Leber [4:16]** And like, like you say, you know, at the core, a lot of businesses, you know, use a lot of the same software, use a lot of the same systems. Like there are, you know, basic things in each business. Like customer service reps, or, you know, maybe that you don't use that, but a lot of people do. And like all different things that are commonalities, like even, you know, project management software. So, I mean, that's one big thing that I tell a lot of other entrepreneurs is, or entrepreneurs, people that want to get started is, is just get started. Like, you know, start on monday.com or Trello and like start getting practice with to-do lists. And, you know, eventually when you do hire somebody, you just practice delegating and like all of that practice, all the mistakes. You're going to make are going to lead to you being more successful, more quickly in the future. And so, yeah, I mean, we made tons of mistakes in our first company and hopefully made a few less mistakes in our,

**Mechelle McDonald [5:08]** in our second. And that's really great advice that you gave in regards to delegation, because often we are so used to kind of organizing our own time. We're just like, okay, I have this system. This is how it is. Like this just works. And so when we hire someone, like a lot of entrepreneurs, they lack the skill of being able to delegate. They're just so used to doing it themselves or just like, you know what, I want it done this way. So I'm just not even going to bother. But the thing is, is like, it really slows the entire progress, you know, and, and your, your business isn't growing.

**Tyler Leber [5:41]** Right. Exactly. And there's a, there's a book called rocket fuel that breaks like entrepreneurs down into like visionaries and integrators. And so like, you know, people that have the big ideas, then people that kind of execute. And so that's what we talk about all the time is like, you, you need to delegate so that you can continue working on what you're excellent at, you know, being a visionary, like you can't get stuck in the day to day. Like some founders, like you say, kind of get addicted to the grind, to the, to the day to day, like, oh, I made this system and I love doing the system. But like, no, like that once you made the system, go to the next thing, like build the next process, build the next company, even, you know, like you need to keep moving forward and not get stuck in that day to day.

**Mechelle McDonald [6:23]** Absolutely. Cause you know, sometimes you can do that and you lose a vision. You even lose yourself just caught up in the moment of it. And you're almost, you know, sometimes you take a step back and be like, wow, is this, is this still my business? Is this what I had started off? Because I feel like it's kind of like ventured off. Right. Yeah, definitely. And I also like how you mentioned, um, you know, the visionaries and those who aren't right. And it kind of reminds me of how you can classify persons who are starters, but not finishers. And then people are finishers and not starters, because it both exists. And a lot of people don't realize that. So you have those persons, like they champion, they champion it all the way. Right. They started going hard, they're going strong. And then they're just kind of like, I don't know how to execute it.

**Tyler Leber [7:08]** Yeah. Yeah. It's so true. And that can be, that can be dangerous. And what's, I think what's kind of hard is right now, at least maybe it's always been this way, but I feel like those starters are usually the ones that are kind of glorified in the media or, you know, LinkedIn or culture just in general is like, you know, they have the big ideas and like, you know, they have the big ideas and like, you know, they have like, that's just, I don't know, the sexy thing. Like that's the attractive thing. Like people want gravitate towards those kinds of people, but not so much on the finisher side, the, you know, the integrator side and like, you need both. Like, that's the point of that rocket fuel book is the most powerful partnerships are when you have both of those people.

**Mechelle McDonald [7:45]** Yes. And I liked the book recommendation rocket fuel. Everyone write that down. Definitely have to check that out. So you and your partner have grown Coconut VA exponentially within a year, which is remarkable. Congrats on that. Have there been challenges along the way and which ones stuck out to you the most?

**Tyler Leber [8:07]** Yeah. I mean, kind of going along the same vein, one that I definitely want to point out is just being able to delegate. And it's just, it's a, it's a constant struggle because, you know, like in our, in our first business, in the market research business, you know, Eric, my co-founder, he was the one that really started it and he felt like, you know, there's nobody else that can do this. Like I know how to evaluate these, these other startups and like, I know how the process works. And, you know, so he was kind of afraid to delegate. But really it's just putting those steps down onto paper. And sometimes it's an incredibly complex process, but once you start, you know, noting down, like, okay, I did this step and like, I made this decision and this is the criteria I use. Like that's when it's really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Powerful. And you can start to delegate that to somebody else or teach somebody else that process. And so like in, in Venture Validator, our first company, we had like a 300 step process. Like we spent way too much time building it and like, we didn't need to do it in that, you know, in that depth, but it was a good practice to realize like, okay, everything in our head can be put down onto paper or onto a spreadsheet and then taught to somebody else. And so the, you know, that helped us a ton starting Coconut VA kind of getting into the habit but it is still a struggle. Like you still have to sometimes kind of step out of the day to day and realize like, okay, why am I still doing this? Like, this doesn't need to be done by me, but for some reason I keep, I keep doing it like sending invoices for coconut VA for the longest time for the first, however long I was still sending invoices and like, why am I still doing that? Like I could be doing other things that are more worth my time.

**Mechelle McDonald [9:49]** Yeah. And I think too, what it calls to as well is having a level of trust. And also vulnerability, right? Because you, you almost feel as though you're handing over a part of your business, even if it, if you feel like it's only like 5%, 2%, it still feels like, okay, I'm handing this over to someone who is not the co-founder, someone who doesn't share my passion. And so you may even have kind of like that little panic moment in your mind. Yeah. Oh, definitely.

**Tyler Leber [10:18]** And actually even going back to the beginning of Venture Validator, my co-founder, Eric hired, I think it was a friend or just a colleague to, to Venture Validator. And he was kind of the first employee, but like you said, he didn't really have the trust enough to, to get delegate to that person. And then I came in and I feel bad saying this, but yeah, he fired that guy right away and hired me because of that trust. Like, you know, I give you something and by the end of the day, it's done. Or, and like you did even more beyond that, like you really do need to look for that. And that's what we look for in our internal team is like, you know, can you get this done, but then also be even proactive and like, okay, what else can I do?

**Mechelle McDonald [10:56]** And just like taking that next step. Yeah. And, you know, it's really important. I like that both of you keep that in mind in regard to your staff, because people may not realize this, but I think a really good entrepreneur does. And it's that, you know, the biggest, most important capital in a company is human capital because they make the brand. They are who your customers remember, who they see. And as you stated, they are the person who is the most important person in the company. Right.

**Tyler Leber [11:26]** Definitely. And yeah, I mean, kind of going into automation a little bit, like there's, you know, that human capital is so important. And so we believe in like everything that doesn't need to be human. Like, let's see if we can have a robot do it or like Zapier, you know, that's a common automation tool. Like all of these little things that kind of bog down people, like, let's see if we can get that out of their hands so they can focus on, on being one-on-one and being, you know, face to face with, with clients. And giving that great customer experience. Because like you said, like that's, what's really going to stick with somebody at the end of the day.

**Mechelle McDonald [12:01]** Yeah. And that's also a really awesome combination of having the automation. So a person feels like, okay, I can send in a ticket. I can do a chat right quick, you know, and I have to wait for someone to call me back. And so to get that, but of course, if they need that, like one-on-one person to person interaction, you cover that as well. So that's beautiful. Being able to have that full perspective. Right. So of course brands and companies always want to expand. So we want to know what is your goal within the next six months for Coconut VA?

**Tyler Leber [12:37]** Yeah. I'd say in the next six months, our big milestone is to get to a hundred VAs. So right now we have, I think 54, 55 VAs. And that took us about a year. And so we're doing a lot more content marketing and a lot of ads, Google ads, LinkedIn ads, all of these different growth strategies and methods. And so we're hoping that, you know, in the next six months we can add another 50 and get to our, get to that 100 mark. And that'll probably bring us up to, you know, somewhere above $1 million of ARR.

**Mechelle McDonald [13:10]** Very nice. Awesome. So we're not too far away and I'm sure that the marketing that you all are looking forward to is going to make a difference as well. Yeah. So of course, because of the convenience that Coconut VA offers, we'd like you to tell our audience how they can learn more about this experience and connect with you and your co-founder. Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, coconutva.com is probably the best place to start, but yeah,

**Tyler Leber [13:37]** feel free to email me if you have any specific questions, tyler at coconutva.com. And one thing that we're putting out pretty soon is a vacation laptop-less newsletter. So we kind of, Eric, my co-founder coined that phrase, vacation laptop-less. And so that's the goal is to have founders to be able to, like we've talked about, get out of the day to day so that they can focus on the high level, you know, high impact tasks. And part of that is actually taking vacations as a strategy to get to that point. And so Eric and myself, we've taken several vacations even early on in Coconut VA, not because, I mean, it does help with burnout and all of that good stuff, but it's also a strategy. It's very intentional because we see, can the team handle everything without us being there? And like having the team note down, like, hey, I couldn't move forward because Tyler had this login or he had the answer to this question. And so then we come back, we get this list of things, hey, this is what we need to automate, delegate, or, you know, make some kind of training on it. So next time we take a vacation, we don't have to think about anything, you know, happening back at home because, everything's running smoothly. So, you know, again, tying that back in, we're putting out a vacation laptop with a newsletter in the near future. Again, that'll be on coconutva.com, but you can sign up there and start to get some tips and tricks and strategies that have worked for us. Awesome. Thank you. That really sounds very exciting.

**Mechelle McDonald [15:17]** So of course we have appreciated your insight on delegation and automation, and how both of these things are key to a successful business. And honestly, even just as an entrepreneur, knowing that as you say, that you can take a vacation, you can take a step back from the office when burnout begins to happen and know that you have chosen like the right staff, put the right systems in place, keep it working, keep it going and hitting those goals. And of course, we're looking forward to the Laptopless Vacation Newsletter. Awesome. Thank you. An definitely so everyone sign up for that and you know become more confident in taking vacations in your business additionally we thank you tyler for being a part of another awesome guest episode of the evolve for nor after our show before you go if you like this episode we'd be very grateful for a five-star review and recommend this episode to a friend or two make sure you subscribe for future episodes at evolve for nor secrets thought show right now until next time and if you are an entrepreneur make a start on your next great idea today okay