Farm Talk: Interview with Patriot Advantage

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On this week’s edition of Farm Talk with Paul Ward, Mary Elaine and Brett Baker join Paul to discuss The Patriot Advantage Personal Assistants (Now VAUSA: America’s Choice for Delegation), a service Paul uses and finds extremely helpful with his business.

Transcript

Farm Talk: Interview with Patriot Advantage

Paul: Hi everyone. It’s Paul Ward. And welcome to another edition of Farm Talk. Today, we are so excited to have Mary Elaine and Brett Baker with the Patriot Advantage. Welcome guys.

Mary Elaine: Thank you.

Brett: Thank you for having us.

Paul: And you guys are a virtual assistant company. Is that correct? You connect staff with people that need help throughout the nation. Am I getting that correct?

Mary Elaine: That’s pretty much it, yes.

Paul: And what makes you stand out from other virtual assistant companies?

Mary Elaine: Well, I would say our story is especially unique. We are husband and wife. I grew up in a military family and Brett was in the military for about 13 years. And the whole reason why we got started was because our life was very hectic, exhausting. And we were both experiencing burnout and at that time I was working full time as an educator and I dipped my toe one summer in virtual assisting, myself, and then we dove all in. So, it really changed our lives and we wanted to give the opportunity to our friends, to other military families who experienced the same pain points that we experienced. And it’s pretty much universal for the average military family so I would say that’s a huge differentiator between us and other virtual assistant companies out there. We’re extremely family-focused, family-oriented, and a very tight knit team.

Paul: Great. And would you say that you focused on military families, Brett, because of your background, too? I mean, you grew up in a military family, Mary Elaine, but Brett, you also being in the military, that’s kind of where you came together and said, “Hey, let’s create this niche and provide opportunities for military spouses.”

Brett: Yeah, you build what you know and everything that we built was based off the success that we had. We did it in a very small aspect. It was just her with her clients and then we saw the opportunity to provide this positive impact that we have in our own lives. And as far as why military spouses, there’s a lot of reasons why I love working with military spouses, but the biggest one is because that was us. That’s who we are. And we saw such a great opportunity for them. If you look at the unemployment rate and the challenges that military spouses face, it’s sad, really. It really is disheartening to think that these people who are serving their country are kind of robbed of some of the basic things that everybody else gets to experience. And it shouldn’t be that way. Military spouses shouldn’t struggle to find employment that fits their lifestyle.

Paul: Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned that, that actually catches me a little bit off guard because just for full disclosure, I’m one of your clients and I was floundering. I would just use the word floundering for four years before I stumbled onto Patriot Advantage. And your staff are amazing, I mean, I have to say that and it’s just the quality of the people that I have working for me. There are three people that work for me now, part-time, through Patriot Advantage. I couldn’t believe the quality of the people that work for me, it’s just a whole different world. So the fact that you say that there are people out there that need jobs that are military spouses, I would think that people would just be chomping at the bit to hire more of them. Honestly. I mean, that’s surprising to me

Brett: And you would think that, but I see it from the employer standpoint too. You have people coming in and you don’t know how long you’re going to keep them for and you’re constantly moving. So I understand why employers are hesitant.

Mary Elaine: Yeah and even just getting that resume, and you may not know they’re a military spouse. But if you looked at just the resume of an average military spouse, you see gaps in employment, you see a lot of bouncing around, and you may not have that backstory as to why, but normally that’s a red flag for employers. This person’s unstable for whatever reason, and they’re already at a disadvantage and that resume gets thrown out or put at the bottom of the stack.

Brett: Yeah, that gap in occupation really is a big one for most people. And honestly, it shouldn’t be. There’s usually a pretty good explanation for it. A lot of the time it’s, “Hey, I had two babies at home,” and why would I penalize somebody for doing what I think is the greatest thing you can do with your life is raise young people to be good citizens. So yeah, that’s part of why we built this. We understand the challenges that they face when people come to us hesitant about bad experiences they’ve had with other companies. It’s like, we’ve been in the trenches right there with you, we did it for 13 years. We know what it’s like to have your husband deploying constantly, well she does. I know what it’s like to be deployed. That’s just a perfect example. I can look at someone and say, “Hey, it’s okay you have a gap in your resume. It’s not a big deal. I understand why you had six jobs in six different states, it’s not because you’re running from the law. It’s because your husband or your wife was moved around constantly.” It’s understanding and being in their shoes is what helps us to connect and create a culture that’s been successful so far.

Paul: I dabbled with, I don’t know if I mentioned this to you, but I dabbled with virtual assistants in the Philippines and I know that’s a big kind of a topic. You can get cheap labor, but you get what you pay for, right? I mean, cheap is cheap. And I know there are some people that are having success with that, but there’s something about hiring people, of course, that are here in the United States and know our culture. And with my business in particular, it would be very hard to have people working overseas to talk the talk, right? So my employees are here in the United States, virtually, but they know the culture. So it would be very hard for somebody to use linguistics incorrectly if they don’t know the culture. So it’s definitely made a huge difference in my business I must say.

Brett: Absolutely. And even just the comfort and security level of letting somebody in another country, say they do something illegal, how are you going to prosecute someone in the Philippines? There’s just, you’re taking a lot of risks there. And I’m sure if I asked you, “what is your comfort level of letting your three person team into your world?” I’m sure you’re quite comfortable with it, but those people, you’ve developed that relationship. It’s not virtual, it is a real working relationship. It just happens to be through a computer or a phone.

Paul: Right. And we talk every day, I don’t talk to all three of them every day, but as needed. And we’ve never met in person. I’ve never met you guys in person, but I feel like I know you and I definitely feel like I know them. I mean, Ivy and Kristin, we were

Zooming twice this morning, which is very unusual, but at least twice a week. And then I’m texting them multiple times a day, emailing them, calling if needed – constant communication. Then of course, two of my assistants are on different time zones, right. I’m on the West Coast and two of them are on the East Coast and then the third one here is on the West Coast. But we’ve all made it work out with our schedules. And, of course your support staff are great too. Just making that transition work as well when people come on board. I never knew what a, what do you call them? SOP or an SOP. I mean, I never had any of that. I mean, when I filled out my application, you were like, “What are the three things you’re looking for?” And I said, “Organization, organization, organization. Implementation, implementation, implementation.” I know what I need, but I don’t know how to do it, so don’t ask! They got it done, just very high quality. staff, I would say. Now, how do you find, I mean yes you have your niche of finding military spouses, but how do you go about finding them? Or how did, I guess, how did you start? You probably created a name for yourself now where people are coming to you more than they were in the beginning, but how do people find you and how did that start out?

Brett: Yeah, so when we started, we personally know so many people in this position, so the first person that we hired to be our assistant as we started to build the business was one of Mary Elaine’s childhood friends who happened to be married to a man in Ranger Battalion that I work with. It kind of started there and just hinting about to other people, “Hey, who’s looking for work?” And then it’s the beauty of the internet after that, right? It’s social media. We are ingrained in this environment and society of military folks. For us it’s been very easy to reach out and find people. But you’re right, our reach has grown, and we do that personally by trying to attend more events and continue to build those relationships and connections throughout the military. But the biggest thing is social media is great and all of these communities are very, very close knit. Every single unit has their own spouse support chain. They’re all home. We have placement and access in this community and it’s, it’s been a, it hasn’t been challenging.

Mary Elaine: No. And partnering with certain nonprofits that line up with our values. I mean you can Google “Nonprofits that help military spouses or veterans find employment opportunities” and there’s a bunch of them out there. So yeah, finding people who want to work as a virtual assistant has not been a struggle.

Paul: Yeah. I really feel for them too. I hear their stories and, of course, my world is much different. My wife is a local teacher, so I see her every day. I work locally in the town that I live in. But, one of my assistants, her husband is in the FBI. And when there was that bombing a month ago in Pensacola at the military base, he got the call and he had to go to Pensacola for two weeks. And then another one, her husband is gone for weeks, if not months at a time and she’s at home with a new baby. It’s not easy for them, I realize that.

Mary Elaine: It’s not, and I think that’s something from the beginning we were very intentional about. Making sure that we weren’t just another company that even just matches an assistant with a client and says, “Good luck.” We are there to take care of them and know what’s going on in their lives. We want to know, and we do know when husbands leave and when they return, when babies are born, when someone’s pregnant, when there’s a crisis in the family. We are very connected with each other and intentional in making sure those relationships are strong

Brett: And what you’re talking about, that’s what makes military spouses such great workers. There’s a resiliency that can’t be learned or taught anywhere else. Like you said, if I tell people about just the day to day details of deployment or the training cycles and you can tell they’re overwhelmed and like, “Oh, I can’t believe y’all experience that.” Well that’s our normal, right? It’s amazing what the body can become accustomed to. You have these spouses that are used to just being left to their own devices, no support whatsoever, sometimes in the middle of the night, and they have to learn to pick up all the pieces and keep driving the ball down the field. All of a sudden, they become the person that’s doing everything for their families. That resiliency, that problem solving, that independence, you just get that anywhere else. It doesn’t exist until you’ve lived through these experiences and you’ve come out on the other side. If you asked me what’s one characteristic that you would like to see in all the people who work for you, it’s resilience. There’s no question about it because they have the ability to make mistakes or hit hardships and immediately bounce back and continue moving on, and a lot of people just don’t have that, and that is a rare thing.

Paul: I think that’s one of the things that I noticed early on was just their dedication too. One of the mistakes that I made early on was I hired an assistant and she wasn’t virtual, she was here in the office, and I was absolutely amazed by all the people that she worked for. It was like, “Wow, you worked for him and you worked for her and you worked for them? You’re hired!” I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. Then about four months go by and I’m like, there’s something missing here. Again, I had never hired anybody, but there’s something missing here. I don’t know what it is, but stuff just isn’t getting done. And I look back and a lot of it was my fault, but I went back, and I looked at her resume and said, “Oh, here’s the pattern. She worked for each of these people for six months and then they just kind of quietly, they didn’t fire her, but they just let her go.” So, two more months go by and I just say, “Well, I don’t really have any more work for you.” She just didn’t have the dedication that I experienced immediately with military spouses. It’s just a radical difference.

Mary Elaine: Yeah, it’s that level of investment. That’s something we look for, You’ve experienced our milestones and what we’re looking for at 30 day, 60 day, 90 day – if that individual is not completely invested in your success and absorbing it as their own success at that point, it’s just not going to work. Those are things that you can’t put down on a resume. It’s definitely more of an art to pinpoint that. 

Paul: Do you guys have to turn people away or  that just doesn’t happen too often in the military spouse world?

Brett: Clients or assistants?

Paul: Assistants. I’m sure you turn some clients away.

Mary Elaine: Oh yes. Both.

Brett: Oh yeah. We don’t struggle with finding people who want to be assistants. At the end of the day, even if they were all perfect fits, we have more assistants than we have clients. I hope maybe one day it’ll be other way around. We want to create jobs for military spouses. We’re not a nonprofit, it is a business and we have an obligation to our clients to deliver the absolute best product that we can and we’re going to do that. It takes time, it takes vetting, it takes getting to know people. I have to be able to look you in the eye right now, you’ve never met me and say, “You can trust this person that you’ve never met, and you may physically never meet in person.” I have to be able to say that to you with confidence. I am a man of my word. I’m not going to say something that I don’t believe in and that just part of the deal. We send a lot of people away and I wish we could give everyone a job who came looking for one. We try to send them to other places, there’s a lot of resources out there for military spouses to help them get on their feet or find that career that they’ve just been missing. 

Mary Elaine: Any business, you’re not going to be the best fit for every single person out there. That’s a two-way street.

Paul: It’s interesting, I don’t know if it’s a California thing, but we’ve got a homeless crisis here with just people living on the street. More-so in LA than up here in Ventura. Living on the freeway and under overpasses and in city parks. I think LA alone has like 60,000 homeless people. We just kind of stumbled onto it, but my assistants were very excited when I said we were going to team up with a nonprofit called Many Mansions. They provide housing to veterans’ families and they’ve got I think 50 facilities throughout Southern California. One of them is dedicated to veterans’ families here locally. Their ears just kind of perked up when I said we were going to team up with a housing organization that helps veteran families. A lot of these veterans are suffering from PTSD or whatever they’ve got going on and have fallen on hard times to where they were homeless and now, they have a home again. It’s kind of a neat connection that my assistants, who are scattered throughout the United States, get to work and help support people who are homeless and veterans here locally. I never thought about that before.

Brett: Yeah, I think it’s fantastic. We have great assistants, but we also look for people to do business with just like you. We want to know that our team, the people we care about, are going to be working for clients that are morally upstanding, that have good values and that see greater purpose in what they’re doing other than just running their business. That just makes it more fulfilling for them and all of us. I think what you’re doing is fantastic. A lot of people are doing good, but few people really want to throw their hat in the ring.

Paul: Thank you. Where do you see the company going in the future?

Brett: Up. 

Mary Elaine: Nothing but up.

Brett: We just hit two years. It’s been extremely fun and it’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride. It’s been a lot of learning experience. We’re feeling very, very good about where we are. We’re very excited about this coming year. I think the sky’s the limit, but at the end of the day, our goal is to maintain a tidy business that holds onto its culture and that continues to care about its clients. We would rather keep it small and keep it intimate and continue to have what we have now then try to blow the top off of it and let it get sloppy.

Paul: Yup, that could certainly happen if you get too big, too fast. I’ve certainly learned that. Well, thank you guys. I appreciate this very much. It’s been great talking to you and, again, I just appreciate what you’ve done for me and my company and my business and helped me get organized and helped me implement. My staff are amazing and I certainly could not do it without them. I just really appreciate them and appreciate you and as I continue to grow, I’m sure I’ll be continuing to call on you in that capacity.

Mary Elaine: Thank you so much for trusting us and for being a good friend.

We’d love to hear from you! As always, feel free to email Paul@homeandranchteam.com.