Discover the importance of automation to work smarter not harder with Auto My Admin founder and true digital nomad, Becca Leisher.
Automate to Achieve Your Nonconformist Dream
With Becca Leisher of AutoMyAdmin.com
Your Host: Jim Nelson
Description
Becca Leisher is a true digital nomad breaking the mold of conformity by making the most of her skillset. Learn how her niche software development business is helping organizations automate processes to work faster and more efficiently. And, discover how Becca balances demanding work and living life to the fullest while exploring the globe and working from anywhere.
GUEST BIO
Becca Leisher used to sit at her desk job, listening to RV Entrepreneur and dreaming of a life in which she worked wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted, as much as she wanted, doing only work that she loved. Family members told her this dream was not possible. She refused to accept traditional work as “reality” and trusted her authentic, counterintuitive, and untested professional strategy to achieve her dream. Becca’s strategy was to use 9-5 jobs to discover the skill at the intersection of her passion and expertise so she could start a business offering that skill. At 29, Becca is the CEO of a legal tech company and she has achieved the life of freedom, health, and authenticity she dreamed of for years. She shares her story to ensure others know it is possible.
Connect with Becca:
RESOURCES MENTIONED
The RV Entrepreneur: How We Do It https://therventrepreneur.com/tag/how-to/
Zapier: https://zapier.com/
Buffer: https://buffer.com/
IFTTT: https://ifttt.com/
The One Thing by Gary W. Keller https://amzn.to/3UfSqUI
The Art of Nonconformity: https://amzn.to/3HCruXG
Derek Sivers: https://sive.rs/
Tim Ferriss podcast: https://tim.blog/podcast/
Naval Ravikant: https://amzn.to/3SirsZT
Tom Hodgkinson: https://amzn.to/3Sjvdyg
Listen to The RV Entrepreneur Episode #328
Listen and subscribe to The RV Entrepreneur on Spotify or in your favorite podcast app. Or, read the full episode transcript below. Leave a comment, or contact us with any questions.
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THE RV ENTREPRENEUR
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The RV Entrepreneur #328 Full Episode Transcript:
BECCA: I wanted to work wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted as much as I wanted, and doing only work that I loved. And people told me I couldn’t have that. And that’s why it’s called work.
RV LIFE: Welcome to the RV entrepreneur podcast. The weekly show for nomads, work campers, RV ers and entrepreneurs looking to earn a living or build a business while enjoying the RV lifestyle. This week’s host is Jim Nelson. Let’s settle in and enjoy the RV entrepreneur podcast brought to you by RV life.
JIM: And we’re back with the RV Entrepreneur, helping you fuel your nomadic venture to make the most of all your adventures. Jim here with RV life. And today we’re speaking with Becca Lesher, a digital nomad who is definitely breaking the mold of conformity, making the most of her skill set. Becca believes any mundane administrative tasks can be automated, and she can prove it with her administration, engineering, and perhaps a little hacking background, she’s now growing a niche software development business to help organizations automate processes to work faster and more efficiently. Now, I’m no programmer, but I have been using some of the AI apps and integration platforms available to automate some publishing and social media tasks for the RV entrepreneur news blog. If interested, check out the new How We Do It blog series for some tips and tricks. But Becca and I discussed the benefits of custom development versus using apps like Zapier, Ifft, and buffer. See notes for show links there, and we also share how they’re alike in some ways. Spoiler alert automation does not always mean set it and forget it. For this episode, Becca suggested the title you can have your nonconformist dream. So we dive into what this means and how you can achieve it. We talk about the importance of knowing your product features and being able to convey the benefits in a short, concise pitch. So we’ll get into all of that right after this one.
RV LIFE: Our RVing is more than just a hobby, it’s a community. When you join RV life, you’re not just gaining access to a suite of tools, you’re becoming part of a vibrant community of fellow RV enthusiasts. Share your experiences, learn from others, and make your RV journey even more memorable. Visit RV Life.com to become a part of our community and start making connections that last a lifetime.
JIM: Becca, thanks so much for joining me. Welcome to the show.
BECCA: Thanks so much for having me, I appreciate it.
JIM: Oh, it’s my pleasure. I really appreciated you filling out our summit survey, and I was impressed with what you’re doing. So I wanted to share that with everyone. But first, this is technically the RV Life Entrepreneur podcast. So I ask all my guests two questions. Kind of a quick lightning round to kind of get to know you a little better. When were you first introduced to the RV life and what does that look like now?
BECCA: Well, I would definitely categorize myself more on the digital nomad side and aspiring RV, so I can’t wait to learn from you on all your RV experiences. I think I first got into it about ten years ago. I started listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast and heard Naval Ravikant. If you’re familiar with him, he’s been super inspirational for me, and that’s when I first realized that I could build a life that I loved, and I didn’t have to follow. What other people told me was this reality of a 9 to 5 existence that I was never really drawn to, and I had been working hard towards that goal for years and years and years, and I finally made the jump. February 2022 I quit my job and moved into the digital nomad life.
JIM: Fantastic. We have similar inspirations there. Tim Ferriss has always been a good inspiration to us. And what speaking of that kind of work, what does it mean to be an entrepreneur to you? What? What is entrepreneur mean?
BECCA: Wow, that’s a good question. At the end of the day, I think it means that you’re responsible for paying your groceries and paying your rent, and nobody’s going to do it for you.
JIM: That’s good. And we are responsible for all of the things that it entails there. Until we grow enough to get all those people helping us at someday, hopefully.
BECCA: Exactly.
JIM: What did you do in your previous life? You talked about a 9 to 5.
BECCA: Yes. I was an administrative assistant in the finance departments within tech, construction and Law, and I automated my job all three times.
JIM: Wow. And you took it upon yourself to do those things, or were you kind of given direction as to what automation meant? No.
BECCA: I had lived in a hacker house when I was in college. I had lived in hacker House in Silicon Valley, so there were me and 15 other engineers were sharing a five bedroom house, and it was one of the best things I ever did.
JIM: How fun!
BECCA: I must have been complaining about some tedious task, and one of my engineering buddies said, let me take a look. And he automated it in a couple of hours and I never had to do it again. And that taught me what could be automated. So then any time I had a job after that, I would bring him in and he’d help me automate it. And I just loved it so much. It is so satisfying to click a button and have your work populate perfectly on the screen. Something that maybe took you ten hours a week before now takes 10s. And it was so satisfying. So I left my job to pursue it.
JIM: Oh fantastic. And I agree, it’s so exciting. Since I came on board with the RV entrepreneur here, I’ve implemented automations through Zapier and getting things auto transcribed and transcribed. You know, and then drafted into blog posts and shared to socials. Just saving so much time and it’s exciting. We’re sharing those now in the RV news blog for those, but we talked about the 9 to 5. I often refer to how we fled the default life. You proposed an interesting topic for this discussion and it was you can have your non-conformist dream. So what is a nonconformist dream?
BECCA: Yeah, I think it’s different for everybody, but mine was. I wanted to work wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted as much as I wanted, and doing only work that I loved. And people told me I couldn’t have that. And that’s why it’s called work. Uh, they told me that my reality was not possible. And that’s why an opportunity like this to come on RV entrepreneur is super important to me because it is very, very important to me to share the message with people that they can have that, and if they want that, they can have it. And the only thing I forgot to add was that I also want to be rich. And so I’ve since added that to the list.
JIM: Well, rich is a relative terms. And it often, you know, we might often not make as much money, but much richer and more fulfilled in our lives in this lifestyle as I’ve learned, I do want to get into those processes and specific automations you’re talking about. But what were your biggest challenges that you faced when fleeing that default life? You know, you had a 9 to 5 job when you first transitioned. What were your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
BECCA: I really only had one that I think was super painful. I never expected, uh, starting and running a business to be easy. So anything on the financial or technical side like that was never a very disheartening challenge. But I didn’t feel like I had the support of my loved ones when I made that decision. And I was so surprised and I was so hurt. Yeah, that was probably the biggest challenge.
JIM: Is there anything you could have done to prepare that, or how do you recommend other aspiring entrepreneurs prepare to start their own business?
BECCA: Well, when it comes for that particular challenge, I’ve learned it doesn’t matter so much to me anymore. You know, I learned a lot about myself in that process. I learned that I had this expectation of other people to support me and to like, emotionally support me and emotionally support my decisions. And that just came from my own fears and my own insecurities. And once I found this work that I loved, the life that I loved, suddenly people’s opinions didn’t matter so much anymore. And not only that, but when people start to see you doing well, then it’s easier to be supportive. You know, they were probably just worried about me. And in terms of how aspiring entrepreneurs can prepare to start the business, you’re going to need relationships, you’re going to need cash, and you’re going to need a skill. So relationships compound. And it’s incredible to me, whether it was the relationships I made back in that hacker house or how I got there in the first place, which was through an advisor who’s still an advisor today. It is absolutely incredible how important relationships are in business and how, you know, one relationship can bring you to the next and that can expand into ten. So you’re going to need those. You can start building those now. You’re going to need a skill. To me, it was absolutely urgent to figure out what I could do better than anyone else in the world as early as possible in my life, because truthfully, if somebody might be really good at it too, and they might be in a lower cost of living part of the world, and they might be charging nine bucks an hour for it.
BECCA: So it’s really important to niche down to something that’s valuable and that you love. So you can do it if you want to. You can do it 16 hours a day, every day and it doesn’t feel like work. And then in terms of cash, I made a ton of mistakes and expensive mistakes at the time that I could least afford them. So I listened to in order to prepare. I listened to Paula Pant and Dave Ramsey, things like that, to help me learn about frugality, and I saved up a lot of cash before I took the leap. And I’m really, really grateful I did. And I wish I had more because it allows you to take risks. It allows you to make those mistakes. It allows you to hire when the business needs it, even if sales can’t support it. Yet sometimes my engineers need time to build, so it’s not a great time to make a sale. That’s not what the business needs, but it’s helpful to have that that cash as you grow.
JIM: You know, you mentioned cash and it definitely helps to have that emergency fund and that buffer there. But I would even agree more that the most important thing is being debt free, because you don’t have that weight on your shoulders, that you know, you have that huge mortgage or whatever it is that’s keeping you weighed down. Right?
BECCA: Yeah. And debt. It’s interesting that you bring up debt because especially listening to these frugality podcasts, I was hyper resistant to the idea of debt, to the point of being judgmental. Like I was like, how are people in debt? And then things changed for me when I started a business, because besides the cash savings, the only other. Their option if I do need to bring money in. The door is selling equity and it’s super, super early in my business for me to do that. So I began to look at debt a lot more open mindedly and as a tool. You know, if you can take that money, take that cash and turn it into something more valuable than that interest rate, then, you know, it’s it’s helping you get to your goals.
JIM: Right. And back to the business side of things. You said niche down. And I believe the riches are in the niches like Pat Flynn says. And we have a very, very narrow pie wedge of a niche with our three legged pet community. But, um, you started off with a rather specific niche. Tell us about that. And are you still kind of niched down into any specific type of consulting or automations for folks?
BECCA: Yeah. So I think I was listening to the RV entrepreneur on my desktop in the office when I was putting my two weeks in. It was a really big, transformative time for me, and I was listening to RV entrepreneur a lot to get the inspiration and the courage to do it. And so, you know, I put my two weeks in and I had automated that last full time job in construction, and I thought I had created this really valuable service and software. And so I spent the next few months making cold calls and going to networking events, offering to automate this one specific process. And six months went by and nobody bought it. So I started waiting tables. I was running out of cash and working in construction. I had become fluent in Spanish, so I didn’t want to lose my Spanish skills. And and I said, well, you know, I need some more money. I’m gonna burn through my cash savings. And I picked up the phone and I called an immigration attorney in the hopes that I could, you know, keep up with my Spanish. And she offered me a part time job as an administrative assistant, and I automated that job, too. And so then I was like, let me try attorneys. And then the first attorney I ever called to offer custom automation software became my first client immediately, and he was the best first client I could have had.
BECCA: I’m super grateful to him, and I always will be because he gave me that shot. He gave me that chance for me to live this life of my dreams that I have. And I didn’t have any plan, really. I didn’t know exactly what it was that we would automate, but I just offered to automate administrative work, and he showed me what he did, and I built it for him. And then since then, I pretty much just turned it into a SaaS product. And I sell that one, that one, you know, automation service over and over and over. And being niche does help because you can speak directly to your customer and really understand their needs. So I’m thinking just like in the landing page, you know, like it says exactly what it is that I do, and I can continue to build new products and automate other administrative tasks and turn them into SaaS products. But I think I will continue the method of presenting it as like a super niche product that’s very specific to that customer. Even if I own multiple products under my brand, being niche allows people to relate, you know.
JIM: Um, you can definitely address their specific need for anyone who might not possibly know SaaS, you’re talking about SaaS software as a service, basically, right?
BECCA: Yes.
JIM: So it sounds like there was a lot of little hurdles during that first year. What made you decide not to give up? How did you keep on keeping on with this?
BECCA: Yeah, it crossed my mind, but never seriously. I always expected it to be hard and it’s so worth like the upside and the freedom and the growth and all the skills and relationships that I’ve built in my first year in business is so, so worth any of those painful hurdles. And I don’t know, I, uh, don’t understand marriage. I don’t know why marriage is so popular. It’s not on my roadmap, but it’s kind of what I envision people might feel and happily like as a happily married partner. Wherever now and then, you’re like, something else. Looks good. Nah. You know, like, maybe one fleeting thought as, like a human, you know? But you very quickly realize that this is the best thing. Like, I have the best thing. And I’m hoping it gets easier. Every time I talk to business owners, they tell me it gets easier. So that’s also gives me a lot of inspiration, as I’m hoping the first year is the hardest and it gets easier from there.
JIM: Along those lines, were there any specific like important lessons you learned about specific challenges you overcame during that first year?
BECCA: Yes, a ton under commit and over deliver. I think I was late like my first five clients that I took on, I was late every time. I continually underestimated the timeline, I kept thinking we were going to be able to deliver it faster than we did the previous time, when I should have just said exactly how long it takes. So managing expectations with my clients I think I hired too quick, like I felt pressure to grow quickly. And that can put a strain on cash too. And that’s just fear based, you know, it’s amazing how fear. And kind of spiritual, emotional, psychological blockers that are internal can affect your business. So they’re just as important to work on. And when I hired, it was a lot of fear based that I got to move quickly. But the truth was, you know, easy does it. And I was doing just fine staying focused. So I felt like it took me a year to, like, really prioritize the number one thing that is the lever for my business that can unlock growth. So just learning to make better decisions faster.
JIM: You mentioned the one thing, and that just rang a bell right now, because one of the books on my list that I recommend is the one thing I forget the author name, but he proposes a question which is what is the one thing you can do right now that by doing it makes other things unnecessary or easier, and then that just trickles down into, you know, your business, your finances, your life, your health and all those things. So I’ll drop that link in the show notes here, but let’s talk about automation in particular. So I mentioned automation processes where I use Zapier or Iftt or other buffer things that get automated. So you put a little work in the front end and they automate and they, you know, happen automatically. Automations people might be familiar with in like email management and drip campaigns and MailChimp and that sort of thing. But explain automation and tell me what business processes might be the easiest to automate. Some things you just can’t. You have to knuckle down and do it. So what kind of business things are easier to automate?
BECCA: Sure. So there have been reports from big consulting firms like McKinsey that say that 30 to 45% of administrative work can be automated, and that held true with my work. I was always able to automate like 14 hours of a 40 hour week job, about 30 to 40% of my job. I was always able to automate. And when you’re evaluating a process for automation, you want to look at something. A process has to be digital. Of course it has to be redundant. And then it often involves connecting two different software systems. So automation is easiest when you’re connecting two systems that are pretty easy to integrate with. So you’re thinking of big modern softwares like Dropbox, Google Drive, Gmail, Adobe, things like that. Excel. If you’re copying data from email and putting it in Excel, or copying data from Excel and putting in a PDF or copying data from your software system and sending it out in an email or putting it in a PDF report. If it’s the same thing over and over and over again, you can likely teach a bot to do it by teaching the same. If then logic that you would teach to a human administrative assistant, you can create essentially a digital administrative assistant that knows those same if-then rules and can do it for you.
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JIM: So we’ve mentioned a couple tools, but I wonder when it comes to automations in general, it’s obviously depends upon the particular type of process you want to automate. But are there specific productivity apps or platforms you recommend? Or do you need to be a programmer or hire a programmer to connect some of this stuff?
BECCA: Well, I don’t use the productivity apps or platforms. I’ve looked into them and I feel frustrated by like it’s to me it’s just easier to hire a developer. And not only that, but you wouldn’t build and scale a product on it. So to me it’s a lot more interesting. Like I have the theory that if one business has this problem, it’s very likely that another business has it. So it’s very much worth considering hiring a developer and scaling it out to sell to multiple businesses. And that’s not as easy to do. And it can be even more expensive, long run to do on like a drag and drop. No code platform.
JIM: So that’s very entrepreneurial. You’re looking at this as a way to develop a product that solves a solution. But I presume for those who aren’t programmers or want to work with programmers, if they know how to use those tools, they could then sell their service of applying these tools to meet other people’s needs. But it sounds like you’ve nailed something there and actually developing it as a product. So does automation really mean set it and forget it? And you create this thing and magic happens and you go for a walk. Or do these processes still need nurturing? How often do they need to be reviewed? Talk to us about like how much work is on the front end and then do you really just let it go? Well big laugh no.
BECCA: For my clients, I hope so. For me, no. Um, but before I dive into my answer, I’d love to hear. Has it been that way for you when you did it with Zapier or used a platform? Were you able to do it one time and never touch it again?
JIM: Absolutely not. No, these things require hand-holding, and sometimes they break. And not being the one who built it, I need to be the one to investigate, find out why they broke and fix those things. So automation is great, but it’s still not just passive. It requires less work, but it still requires work, especially on the front end. But then you can’t just set it and forget it. So tell me about your experience.
BECCA: Yeah, sure. So it’s definitely more work when you’re setting it up. And then from there it’s a lot easier to maintain. I want my clients experience to be seamless, so for them it should be set it and forget it. They should never have to worry. They’re handing off a process to us and they should never have to worry about it at all again. If I do have a bug, I reach out to them first. But on my end, the reason it’s not completely set it and forget it is. I work with attorneys and my work carries a tremendous amount of responsibility. I have the defendants lives. Their lives can be affected tremendously by their case. So it’s very important that everything is done perfectly and well. And the businesses, the law firms that I work with are entrepreneurs like myself, who started a business from scratch. So it carries a lot of weight in that I always want their business, their employees, their team, their clients, everything. I want everything to be perfect from them. And there’s there’s tremendous value in having a human eye look at it. So with automation, both the quantity is fewer and the quality of errors are better.
BECCA: So it’s you know, we do have bugs, but it’s like 99% of the time we don’t have a bug. And then on the quality side, when we do have a bug, it’s essentially the bot notifies me. It pauses. I go in and fix it, which generally takes 5 to 15 minutes, and then the bot proceeds. So it’s like if you had an administrative assistant that knew it was about to make a mistake, it paused. It notified you and asked for help. You fix it once and it never makes that mistake again. And then the other reason it’s not completely set it and forget it is. I reinvest so that I can grow the platform. So the same code that works for one client is not going to work for ten clients, and the same code that works for ten clients is not going to work for 100. So we’re constantly updating the code in our platform so that the current users have a better and better experience all the time, and so that I’m able to accommodate more clients.
JIM: You know, I had a mentor tell me once that when you’re in business for yourself, it’s all about wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat. What’s working? Fix it. Repeat it with someone else and you’re talking about growing it from one to 10 to 100. You mentioned niche again. And lawyers. Are you still specifically serving a particular type of client with a particular type of service? It was like submitting documents or something like that. Or are you reaching out to other industries?
BECCA: Long Terme? Definitely. Uh, so the way I think of it is, whatever the aggregate of salary spent on administrative assistance, 30 to 40% of that is my market. But some industries, the timing, the market timing is better than the other. So right now we automate court filing for criminal defense attorneys. Also, there’s like an extensive kind of discovery process which I can get into. So the first product is specific for criminal defense. Next I’m looking into helping solo firms convert their leads better. So a lot of solo firm attorneys answer their own phone so they can close their own sales. And our next product will help them convert those leads better so that effort is not gone to waste. Those are my ideas for within the legal industry for now. And the lawyers are ready to adopt so that software and that interest around automation is growing very quickly. And I’m interested in entering another market that has been slower to adopt tech and starting to expand it to another industry. Yeah.
JIM: Smart. It sounds like you’ve got a good onboarding process and nurturing your own clients through your product cycle. And once you have a client, it sounds like they’re ready for the next thing you have to offer. But with those long tum goals of growing outside that niche and or developing more clients, what are you doing about marketing? What’s working best to gain clients and and increase your business development? Are you also doing that yourself or have you hired that out and what’s working best?
BECCA: I love that question. My business has grown through cold calls and referrals. So the attorneys, a lot of attorneys, answer their own phone so I can connect directly to the decision maker for one. For two, they’re super busy. So generally they make a decision in two five minute phone calls. So it’s really low cost, low time in order to acquire my clients that I’m able to speak with them directly. And because they’re so busy, they’re very low maintenance. Once their bot is in place, like sometimes I miss my clients. Like I kind of wish they would call me more, but most of them, once they’re automated, like, I don’t ever really hear from them unless I check in and make sure they’re doing okay. Honestly, I haven’t had to market at all, but it takes a lot for my current product. It’s a very custom. It involves a lot of customization, so it takes a lot longer for the engineers to build. It takes them about a month or two to build, and it takes me two five minute phone calls to sell. So that’s a huge time differential. And I haven’t even had to get into marketing.
JIM: But with that short decision process, it sounds like you really need to hone down your messaging and have your elevator pitch. You have to know their pain point for one and address it within that short time frame. So how did you kind of refine those pitches? I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs don’t want to pick up the phone and call, but if you’re calling someone who’s making the decision, what tips do you have for someone to kind of identify their own solution and sell it?
BECCA: Right. Well, you will learn. I didn’t know what to say when I first called and I was really scared to call, and sometimes I still am. But I know since I’ve gotten clients and they’re happy with it, that gives me a lot more confidence to go out and call because I know I can help somebody else. And then in terms of refining the message, I think you learn about the culture of your customers as well. So attorneys, my experience with them, they’re they’re super direct and they’re inquisitive. They don’t want small talk. And often they’re expecting a prospective client when when I call. So I just say, hey, automate mdec filing.
JIM: You’re speaking their language.
BECCA: Uhhuh. Yeah. I say exactly what I do and that’s it. Nothing more. But your clients. Maybe they’re more chatty. I don’t know, like you’ll learn how your clients speak, and I encourage you to emulate that.
JIM: So I’m going to jump ahead here just a second. Um, no offense here at all, but is being a young female an asset or a liability when it comes to cold calling and outreach and business development? I mean, a programmer especially. So how do people react to you when you call?
BECCA: Yeah, I think it helps more than it hurts. I think it being young and female definitely helps with cold calls and conferences. Yeah, I think it helps on the business development side, it’s not going to close a sale, but it might open a conversation and I’m fine with that.
JIM: Especially when you wow their blow their socks off when you start dropping big terms and actually know what they mean, right?
BECCA: Absolutely.
JIM: So what topics, uh, besides automation, do you nerd out about evolutionary psychology?
BECCA: Are you familiar with that?
JIM: It sounds fascinating.
BECCA: It’s so cool. This is like my number two nerd topic besides automation. I’ll talk about either of these two things all day. Evolutionary psychology is mating psychology. So essentially our bodies are just vessels for our DNA who have. The only goal of survive and reproduce. And so many of our decisions are based on that. And it can be unconscious unless you kind of study evolutionary psychology, then you get to watch the world make these decisions and hypothesize how much of it is coming from this. Survive and reproduce instinct and men and women, because they have different reproductive capabilities, they make decisions differently. They’re drawn to different things, you know, and it’s just super fun and interesting to watch.
JIM: So that’s fascinating. And if that’s the case, how did starting a business on your own affect any of your own personal relationships?
BECCA: Um, well that’s different. That’s like different entirely from like the evolutionary psychology stuff, I would say with my personal relationships. I mean, we talked a little bit about how I learned about myself, that I had these expectations of other people to support me. So when I first started, anybody who supported me in my entrepreneurship and was encouraging of it, I loved them. And if anybody I perceive to be discouraging, I resented that. But a lot of that was either my own fears or insecurities or theirs. But it did make me. I found my tribe, I would say. So in pursuing this life of authenticity, I found other people that are fit and spiritual and ambitious and have designed their life in order to prioritize those things. And that was one thing I never really expected. When I started a business, I thought a lot about the work and the lifestyle, and I never would have expected to have all these new relationships in my life, whether it’s clients or mentors or whoever. It is about people who share these similar values.
JIM: You definitely need that support. I’m at the other end of the spectrum. I am one of those halves of a married couple who’s been working with my wife for 25, 30 plus years, and we have our own things that we do, and we work very well together. But being on the road, what are some of your favorite travel experiences since, since you’ve started the business?
BECCA: Yeah, after. Let’s see. I got my first client September 2022, and then I got two more December 2022 and I had some free time while the engineers were building the bots. I had just gotten, you know, first couple some cash in the door, and I jetted off to Tanzania and I spent most of my time there in in Zanzibar. I spent about two months last winter in Zanzibar, and I was in this town called Piaget, which is like a playground for, you know, people in their 20s and you just ran around barefoot all day and all night on the beach and at the bars, and the time zone was amazing. Heading out that way was amazing in terms of running the business, because my clients were asleep all my daytime so I could get up and hike or go to the beach, and I could swim, and I could explore Africa all day without ever worrying about really being connected to internet or like a phone call or anything like that. And then they woke up and started interacting with their bots around 4 p.m. my time. So by that time I was already kind of just hanging out with my friends, or maybe going out to dinner in case a client ever needed anything. But I was super available. And, you know, the food and the culture and the humans out there are just amazing. It’s one of my favorite places.
JIM: That does sound amazing. And it kind of brings to mind the whole live work balance thing, trying to, you know, we all have to work hard to enjoy this life, that we love to play hard. So do you have any tips for how to dial that in?
BECCA: Yes. I’m so glad you asked that. Yeah. So have you listened to Naval Ravikant at all?
JIM: I have not, you’re gonna have to spell that for me later, okay?
BECCA: Yeah, I definitely recommend him. And I’ll send you guys my website because I have everything I know I list like the resources and thought leaders on, on my personal site. But Naval Ravikant essentially says if you find work that you love, you can work all day and it doesn’t really feel like work. You know, it feels like play. At that point, you become very, very, very competitive because if your work feels like work to somebody else but it feels like fun to you, it’ll be harder for them to compete with you. You know, you’ll have the passion and the motivation to persevere when things are hard. And that has absolutely been true of me. People ask me how many hours a week I work and things like that, and I just don’t know. And I don’t track it because I work when I’m feeling really motivated and hungry or something needs to be done for the business. And when I’m tired, I rest. And I think that’s really valuable to the business. And I can’t even say that I’m this expert on work life balance, because I love my work so much that I don’t feel like I need to balance it, and having the freedom of time and location is super important to me. It was really, really important to me that as early on as possible in my life, I didn’t have to ask another human permission to take time off or to go to Tanzania or go to Puerto Rico, like, I just, I need to be wherever. I want to be. I need to be somewhere sunny and warm in the winter.
JIM: We could dive down a hole rabbit hole on a whole other podcast about passion and purpose. Because I agree, I probably put in more hours than I ever used to, but I’m passionate about what I do so it doesn’t really feel like work all the time. There’s still aspects of it and those I try to automate.
BECCA: Exactly.
JIM: We’ll get the show notes to include some links, but you mentioned thought leaders. Does anyone else come out to mind that solopreneurs or anyone just getting started might want to tune in to or follow?
BECCA: Sure. So I mentioned naval. Derek Sivers is great for writers and entrepreneurs. If you’re interested in the evolutionary psychology stuff. I learned all that from Dwayne Welch, and then two of my favorite resources are thought leaders, especially for this community. Tom Hodgkinson is great. Are you familiar with him?
JIM: Not personally.
BECCA: Okay, so he wrote How to Be Idle and the Freedom Manifesto, and I love like social commentary on work and consumerism and all this stuff. So it’s two really great books on the importance of downtime and idleness. And I guess the detrimental focus or unnecessary focus on work in our society that I think would be great for this community. And lastly, the Art of Nonconformity by Chris G. That was a good one, and that was one of my first reads when I first quit my job and started the business.
JIM: Those are all excellent resources. I am a Derek Sivers fan, and I’m going to make sure we get those links in there. Where can people best find you and connect with what you’re doing there?
BECCA: My website for my work right now is Auto Madman com auto mi admin. Com and my personal site is Becky Cheese.com.
JIM: Vega thanks so much for joining me. We’ve got lots of golden nuggets here that I’m sure will help our audience out. So best wishes and what you’re doing you’re clearly doing something right there.
BECCA: Thank you Jim I really appreciate you guys having me.
JIM: Talk about the nonconformist dream. Becca is definitely living it with what she’s doing at Artemis admin comm. What’s your takeaway from all this? Share this episode and tell a friend or let us know in the RV Entrepreneur Community Group on Facebook. Mine is that you definitely can have the life you want to live. It just takes some work. But if you’re doing what you love, it doesn’t always have to feel like work. And if you do feel like you’re working a bit too hard, take a look at what you can automate to work more efficiently and get your work done faster so you can get out there and make the most of this RV life we’re all working so hard to enjoy. Speaking of which, be sure to check out the RV life podcast with Dan and Patty for more fun stories, adventures, and plenty of RV ING tips and tricks at podcast RV Life.com.
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