As the founder and CEO of McNary Marketing and Design, Joshua and his team help businesses discover and implement the best marketing and sales technology so they can sell more while doing less with ROI-driven results.
The Challenge
After over a decade of working in nonprofit and then the corporate world, Joshua collected actionable knowledge about business, marketing, design, and web development to help small- and medium-sized businesses, nonprofits, start-ups, and organizations.
And for the last six years, Joshua has juggled extensive work developing brands, marketing workflows, and business solutions to help clients develop marketing materials, sales and lead generation processes, interactive websites, and business plans.
In a word, he’s busy.
In the past, Joshua had worked with VAs from other firms – but, as he admits, he ‘wasn’t ready for it.’ Further, he discovered that he wasn’t funneled into a successful system that helped him identify how to use a VA in a way that created the ROI he needed.
But a year ago, he realized he was finally ready for some additional staff support – but didn’t want to hire a full-time person.
He needed a tactical ‘extra arm’ to help him get more done to add some hours back to his week – and BELAY delivered.
The Solution
“One of the main things I think BELAY does really well is help you figure out what you need for where you are,” Joshua shares. “I came into this with some ideas, but BELAY really helped me prioritize what needed to be done.”
The discovery process led Joshua to his VA Terri Melvin – a process he describes as “super successful.” Terri was not only a great fit from a cultural and personality perspective, but she was able to help him lift some “heavy boulders.”
He started with Terri managing his email and calendar. Joshua quickly found that Terri was so good at introducing apps that organized his inbox that he eventually didn’t need her processing email – so he reevaluated. Now, Joshua has Terri managing other tasks more related to clients’ billings and growth.
And as a man – and business – focused on ROI, he didn’t let something like a pandemic – which resulted in a temporary pause of services with Terri – make him lose focus.
“I came to BELAY maybe a little more prepared, a little more mature than the previous time, evaluating if I could get enough ROI,” Joshua says. “But I think of it as an investment – it makes sense if I can buy X number of hours back in my week, [and] it doesn’t have to be one for one either.”
Together, they looked for ways to streamline processes that, perhaps before COVID, made sense but now needed to be reevaluated to help the business run more economically.
“We’ve changed some of the things we’re doing,” Joshua shares. “Asking, ‘Can we subtract or what can we automate? We’re saying, ‘We’re going to just not even do these things we were doing last year at all.’”
“We’re going to start doing these things that make more sense for her to do now and continually evolve,” he continues. “So we can show the ROI – not just for this quarter, the next, but for every quarter so [we] can say, ‘Wow! I really gained value out of this.’”
The Results
Thankfully, the evolution of Joshua’s business shows no signs of waning.
“[We’ve] continued to evolve and we’ve shifted what Terri does for me and the business,” Joshua says. “And I imagine that we’ll continue to evolve because of various things that we’re learning on the way.”
But the biggest win?
“The main thing was, ‘Does this make sense at the end of the day? Does it actually buy me the time back – a half an hour in a day that I can read in the office or get to my kid’s game?’”
“And for me, [the biggest win] is creativity – being able to work on the creative side of things, even if I’m not billing for it,” Joshua says.
“If [Terri] hadn’t been here, I probably would’ve never gotten to many of the automation projects we’ve gotten to and completed. It just feels really good to know you have that support there – that you have somebody you can turn to cover a day or a week away.”
“Last summer, I went totally offline,” Joshua says. “I went up to Northern Minnesota. You’re totally off the grid outside of a satellite device – so [Terri] basically shifted what she did and became a little mini-me, kind of just doing any mitigation for me during that week. When I came back, everything was totally fine. And that’s something – I know I can lean on her.”