Ross Albers is the founder and CEO of Albers & Associates, a full-service law firm with multiple offices throughout Maryland.
About the Company
Ross Albers is the founder and CEO of Albers & Associates, a full-service law firm with multiple offices throughout Maryland.
Albers & Associates is a personal and professional development company that supports its employees to improve their lives, provide them happiness, and love them like family.
Its team of 11 attorneys, along with paralegals and support staff, provides individuals and families throughout Maryland with legal services, including personal injury claims, criminal defense and DUI charges, family law, estate planning, and more.
The Challenge
“I reached out to BELAY after I [heard] the CEO speak at a John Maxwell event,” Ross recalls. “[I] had been wanting to delegate things like email, travel [and] essentially all the things that I find to be low value for me that I could spend and waste a lot of time on.
“[Tricia] was talking about how she had been a Virtual Assistant and now was CEO, and how the company had helped her grow and take her business and career to the next level.
“When she spoke about email, that resonated with me.
“After, I walked out into the hallway and spoke with one of the representatives on the team, and I set up a call that following Monday.
“Within a month, I had been assigned a Virtual Assistant [Andrea Shead] – and here we are two to three years later.”
The Solution
“The initial relief was looking at my email inbox once in the morning and then not checking it until later that afternoon — and not feeling like I needed to be responding to every little thing that was happening,” Ross says.
“I made it sort of a test to see how many things I could delegate and how little I could actually do during the day. [I knew] I had somebody who, in the background, could be handling a lot of the admin stuff for me that would free me up to focus on higher-level activities.
“For me, [delegating] was not hard, but I see why, [for] most people, it's a challenge. But if they think about it, that's what's holding them back in their business is they don't trust anybody else but themselves.”
But Ross didn’t stop with his inbox.
He went on to delegate scheduling meetings with referral partners, paying personal bills, and ordering a cake for his daughter's birthday party to Andrea.
Because of his willingness to delegate and hit the ground running, Ross experienced ROI within the first week.
“The ROI is improving relationships with people in my company, people that we work with, people who send us business,” Ross explains.
“[I’m also] improving relationships at home with my wife or my children because [my VA] is able to execute on the things that maybe I forget to do or I don't want to do.
“Can you put a monetary value on it? It might be hard to say, but how do you value your time?”
The Result
“We're evolving now more [and Andrea] is getting into my CRM,” Ross says. “I’m finding as I meet new people, I need to get them into my pipeline, and that requires a data-entry function. It’s not worth my time to be the data entry guy for every business card or potential relationship. But that's a great thing for [Andrea] to be doing for me.
“And then, as part of our sales process, [I’m] having her reach out to set up the next step with the person, which is maybe a phone call, maybe it is a lunch, maybe it's an event or an invite to a golf event we're doing.
“From being in my email and organizing it to reserving hotels or flights, we're now letting her — and wanting her — to function on a higher level where she's beginning to interact with people that could refer us or become clients for our business. Not to mention, too, she's been great for our family.
“The more you [utilize your] VA, the more opportunities it gives you to execute the things that you want to accomplish, not only in your business but in your life because you're not thinking about how to do things. You're thinking about who is going to help me accomplish this.”
And Andrea also interacts with his team.
“She's like a team mom; that's the way I would describe her,” Ross says. “The VAs that BELAY recruits tend to have the same characteristics and attitudes. It's our job as the person hiring them to train them on the skills and things we need them to do.
“But somebody who has a great attitude and is a hard worker is responsive. Those are just characteristics that people from BELAY come with. The person who they're recommending to be your VA isn’t going to be somebody [you] can't trust, or [isn’t] responsive, or [doesn’t] follow through.
“That's, to me, the big difference where I would maybe go out and spend time trying to recruit somebody to be my personal assistant or executive assistant. BELAY has already done that for me, so I don't have to do it. And what's even better is they’re experts at it.
“So why am I not using their expertise to find the right person for me? We all know that if I were doing it on my own, I'd probably go through three to five assistants before I found the right one, but BELAY has found the right one in one shot. So I think there's the added benefit of that.”
By hiring a BELAY Virtual Assistant, Ross has gained immeasurable value.
“What you gain is a lot of what you give up,” Ross explains. “You gain a lot of your time back [so] that you can be thinking and working on the high-value activities that you ought to be doing. And that's only something you as the leader of your business can really do.
“It’s given me more time to focus on and think about the company's vision and our mission and where we're going to be headed.”