Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Vision Pros.
Today's very special guest is Joey D'Onofrio and he's the founder and CEO of Virtual Concierge
Services.
And what better way to hear about Joey than from himself.
So Joey, please introduce yourself and tell us who you are and why you founded Virtual
Concierge Services.
Thank you, Barbara.
I really appreciate that introduction.
So who am I?
I played college sports, college baseball.
And I always tell people that that kind of shaped me as a business person because I learned
more about leadership, teamwork through playing baseball than I did through getting a college
education.
I guess I was kind of always entrepreneurial in that regard, you know, trying to play professional
baseball, playing in college, getting a business degree, being very interested in entrepreneurship.
That was like the new buzzword when I was in school.
And so some of my best times in the classroom or the best events that I ever attended were
entrepreneurship events where business owners would come in and talk about how they grew
their businesses.
And so I guess right after I graduated college, I wanted to grow a business.
I wanted to go into that realm through the stories that I heard.
And that's exactly what I did.
And I started and grew a family business.
We did property inspections, grew that from, you know, one to two people to we had over
30 employees under a million dollars in revenue to multiple million dollars in revenue.
And then in the process of that, I got started another business in the merchant processing
world where we took it from nothing and we utilized the home service space and provided
credit card services for the home service space and payment services for the home service
space and we grew that to a seven figure level in a two year period, which is incredible
if you really think about it.
So using that leverage that I had with the home service space, growing that to a seven
figure level.
And then I got out of it through a sale.
So the partners that I had started with bought me out, got out of the merchant processing
space, still in the inspection space and looking to get out of that through a seven figure
exit, which is kind of cool.
And now I have a passion as I was figuring out, OK, now that I'm I sold a business, I'm
in the process of selling another business.
What other ways can I help small business grow?
And I did some brainstorming, you know, like we sell.
Well, how can I help them?
Well, most people aren't educated on virtual assistance.
They think of them as assistance.
They don't realize that they can be full time employees.
And I want to come in and not just give you an employee, because what good is that if
you don't know how to manage them, if if you don't know what your needs are, if you don't
know what areas your, you know, your strengths or your weaknesses are for the business to
grow.
So we kind of come in as a consultant and not only do we help you place a virtual assistant,
but we help you with your systems and processes.
Hey, we're maybe where can you utilize somebody?
I think the the biggest problem and struggle for entrepreneurs is they think they have
to do everything on their own.
They don't know how to delegate.
They got into business because they're passionate about a service or a product that they're
providing and they don't necessarily know how to run a business.
Yeah, they're very innovative.
They know this product, but they don't know how to hire, how to manage employees.
And so we kind of try to take that headache away from people through virtual concierge
services.
And so that's a little bit about me.
So it's interesting because you made some big pivots and have some familiarity in some
of those industries because of my own pivots in life.
I'm curious, how did you figure out that being the virtual concierge was what you really
wanted to do next in terms of your vision?
Well, I think, you know, as I get older, you know, what I discovered is fulfillment comes
through helping others.
I truly believe that.
And so I see a lot of business owners struggle with growth, especially going to conferences.
I was a part of a podcast.
You're talking with business owners.
They are their biggest enemy to growth a lot of the times because their mindset just isn't
there.
And I have a passion for business.
I love it.
And I've done it pretty successfully.
And a lot of businesses never make the seven figure level.
And it's all in your mindset.
I am a firm believer that to get to seven figures, it's a mindset shift.
And so once you have that mindset shift, it becomes fairly easy, in my opinion.
But most entrepreneurs never make that transition.
I was talking to a woman just the other day and she's like, I don't even know what a virtual
assistant would do for my business.
I do everything.
And I'm like, that's your problem.
You're doing everything.
And you doing everything is not the best use of your time.
It's not the best use for your business.
You're starving.
You're stunting your business growth because you think you have to do everything.
And she's not alone.
That's so many entrepreneurs that think, oh, I have to do everything.
And they don't know how to delegate.
What do you see are some of the biggest challenges you see leaders face?
And you're absolutely right.
The coach and me is like mindset across the board.
They cannot get out of their own way.
But what are some of the other big challenges that you see leaders face as you are working
with them or even trying to help them understand what you and others who provide services to
business, smaller businesses can do?
Hiring.
Most business owners don't know how to hire.
They don't know how to interview.
They don't know what questions to ask.
It's amazing because now we're in virtual concierge.
All of our business owners interview their own VAs and they get to select which one is
best for their business.
And so seeing this process, you're like, wow, they don't even know what to do.
And so part of our process is guiding them on here.
Here's some questions maybe you should ask them because they don't even know how to hire.
They don't know how to manage people.
They don't know how to KPIs.
They don't know key performance indicators, how important those are to your business.
They think, oh, I fill in for the seat and I have them doing this work, but how do I
measure their performance to make sure that they're helping me grow?
And that's the key thing.
You shouldn't hire somebody unless there's a clear objective for growth or they're doing
something they're giving you back some time so you can then work on the more important
things in your business.
That's why you hire.
You shouldn't just hire to, oh, well, this is what my coach said.
I need to hire somebody.
Well, why are you hiring that person?
There better be a business reason why you need to bring somebody on.
And that's a lot of the things that people that business owners struggle with.
You know, oh, I think this is just the next step for my business.
They don't have clear understanding of this stuff.
And so that's what we try to help them discover through what we do and provide virtual assistance
to the businesses that we help.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.