The Truth About Mastery and Systems with Mikli Jorge

Dusti Arab 

Hello, and welcome back to Referral Worthy. I am Dusti and I am here with Mikli Jorge, who is a tech and systems automation strategist. Mikli, thank you so much for taking the time. I know it’s pretty late where you’re at. So thank you.

Mikli Jorge 

Of course I’m always happy to be wherever Dusti is. 

Dusti  

Oh my god, you’re the greatest. Okay. Mikli, tell me your origin story. I know little bits and pieces from hearing you and Lydia but that’s it.

Mikli  

Okay, so I think it was 2016 where I was working at a nonprofit but my son was just old enough to start school and like I wanted to send him to a really good school. And I was like, “My salary at this job is not going to make enough for me to, you know, kind of give my son the life and opportunities that I want to be able to give him.” So well, I did law school first in 2013-14. I was like, “No. I don’t like that.”

Dusti  

I had no idea you went to law school.

Mikli  

I know because if we go back even further, I got pregnant by the end of my third year of college. So fourth year of college, I had a kid and then my family, like I have lawyers. We have lawyers in the family. And they’re like, “Well, you have a kid, you want money, go try law school.” And I was like, “Well, I hate it. But I have a kid and I need to make money.” And then just give it a year so I did and I was like, “Fuck it.” I gave it a year I gave it a year.

Dusti  

And the answer is still hell no. 

Mikli  

So I found work in advertising then I moved from advertising to a nonprofit. And then I was like, “I need to find a way to make money.” And that’s how I discovered the internet. I don’t know, I think it was an ad that was served to me. And I downloaded an opt in for the first time ever. And in that box that I filled out it said powered by ConvertKit. What is the ConvertKit? And then I started reading ConvertKit articles. What is a Teachable? What is it? What is this? I just discovered the world. And I said “Okay, I can participate. Why not write the book?” Even though I thought for some reason I thought like I don’t know what skills I had. People say, “Well, what if I wrote a book?” I mean, so the book was my first ever real adventure into the internet. I wrote and self published a book. And it was on motherhood. It was I love you I love chicken nuggets and it was me saying I love you and then we started replying with and love chicken nuggets and motherhood. 

Dusti  

Oh my god. Okay, so you and I approached this, like the way we entered was actually very similar. And how fucking nuts are we that our first impulse to making money on the internet is “Oh, I should write a fucking book.” That’s the easy thing to do, right? Obviously I know now and I’ve got like four half finished ones on my hard drive right now that I can’t commit to finishing. Good God. But that’s so funny because mine was on motherhood, too. I was fascinated with the idea of minimalism and voluntary simplicity and how that could make motherhood easier because I was, you know, undiagnosed ADHD.

Mikli  

Goodness. I have to read your book. I need to get a copy of that book. You still have it?

Dusti  

No. Oh God, buried somewhere. Oh, no, I was like 22 when I wrote it and thought I knew everything. You don’t want to read it. I promise.

Mikli  

And through that book, because I was self publishing the book, I learned how to create a website. I created a website on Squarespace. I created a free chapter often download on ConvertKit. I learned how to do a transaction. How do I deliver the thing? And then and it was kind of like my, my launch goal was to pay for a quarter of my son’s tuition by myself with no help from my family, or anything like that. So I reached my launch goal of $600 and that was my first big success. And then I was like, well, now I’m out of friends to sell this to. I have exhausted my Facebook friends list, you know. At $5 a book though it’s like it’s gonna take a while for me to pay for the next quarter. And so in the beginning of the following year, beginning of 2017, I posted in a group that I was like, “Hey, I think I want to get my feet wet with client work. I’m new to the client work, but I’m not new to the industry. Here are some things that I’ve done before.” And then, you know, I referenced the website that I did. I referenced some Teachable things that I was playing with. In the process of writing a book I played with Teachable for a while. I referenced the graphics that I made, some copy that I’d written. I just really said, “Here’s my skill set.” I worked with ConvertKitand Squarespace and Teachable. And well,I was really lucky that people…that was the start, that was the start I started as a VA and then from there it kind of, as it does on the internet, it just kind of morphs and morphs and morphs. I leaned more into the stuff that I liked and was good at and away from the stuff that I wasn’t. It was hilarious. 

Dusti  

Okay, real quick. You were not lucky. You put yourself out there in a space where you didn’t know how things were going to be received. And you did it in a way that was clear enough that people were like “Oh, obviously I’m going to hire her” and you’d obviously built some trust up in that group for that to be possible. So don’t sell yourself short there.

Mikli  

I did. In the course of the whole book writing journey, I was super, super active in the group. And I had nothing to sell so all I was able to do is give, I guess. So that’s where I met Lydia, that group. I was you know, anything that I had learned five seconds earlier, I was helping somebody out in the comments and some other posts that I saw. Yeah, and that post, made my first big client. My first quit my job client was a referral from somebody who saw that post. Okay, so that client didn’t see the post. She’s in the group. She runs the group but she didn’t see the post. But she was asking in her circles, “Hey, do you know anybody?” and somebody was like, “I think Mikli is doing that.” And she knew who Mikli was, that person who referred me knew who Mikli was even though I hadn’t worked with either of them before. So I was like, wow, I mean, I didn’t know the dots looking forward, but I’m glad they connected looking back. 

Dusti  

Right? Well, and I think that speaks so much to just being like, first of all, being willing to put yourself out there but also, like right place, right time. You never know when it’s going to land and when the right person is going to see it because that’s actually, like with both of my larger clients right now. It was not a direct referral. Like I did not personally know the person who would end up becoming the client. I had met somebody else in a Facebook group back in like 2017 and that turned into a referral for last year. And I feel like that just speaks to the testament like yes, sometimes referrals can be slow, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to be lucrative down the road.

Mikli  

For sure, I mean that was me. I quit my job. I was able to quit my job and I haven’t gone back to an office since that first referral. That’s it. Yeah.

Dusti  

I love that. Oh my god. Okay. So when you started that business, obviously, so you started as the VA, and then over time I mean, you are…like I tell people that you’ve made me the Mercedes of automations every time I’m talking about it. I was like, “No, no, no. You don’t understand what Mikli made me though.” It’s so hot you guys. So you really are like, I mean, the best I’ve ever met at tech and automation work like this. So I mean, what do you wish you knew back then, given what you’re doing now and the specificity of it?

Mikli  

What do I wish I knew back then? I mean, maybe it was more of I wish I wasn’t so, I mean, still until now, so shy and afraid and tentative. I think maybe it’s that, like the knowledge that I learned, I’m happy the way that I learned that. I learned that through doing. I learned it from clients who took a chance on me, on clients who stretched me as like, you know, who were like, “It’s okay that you don’t know how to do this. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” I guess it was more because I was so new and because I was so, I always felt like I didn’t know what I was doing. And it showed. And sometimes I knew what I was doing and maybe I could just tell past Mikli, “It’s okay, you don’t have to be so shy. You can take up some space. You know more than you think you do.” I think it’s that. And you as a 30 something to a 20 something. It just takes so much less energy. You would not care so much about how you’re going to be perceived.

Dusti  

Oh my god for real. Okay, that’s, that’s incredible. So, I want to jump back real quick because I totally interrupted you. When Okay, so you mentioned Hillary, so I haven’t had Hillary on yet, but she’s going to be a part of this season one way or another. I will find you Presswood. But what happened when you met Hillary, in your business?

Mikli  

I was at a point where I was working with clients. And so I was a VA. I became a project manager. I was an OBM. But it was like my hands were on the entire business. I knew I was the right hands. I knew it like the back of my hand. They wouldn’t know their business as well as I knew their business. That was the thing that I was like, I’m always behind the scenes. I was always on retainer too. So I was just kind of just hiding back there. If I wanted to step out. Step out as what? I didn’t know what my thing was, and that’s what I reached out to Hillary for. Like, help me figure out my thing. And that was her. She was able to pull from me like “I think you like the tech.” I do like the tech. What if it was the tech? What if it was the tech and from there since, I doubled, tripled, quadrupled down on tech and automations and just been able to go both deeper and wider. And I didn’t realize there was so much of this world to enjoy and it’s been four years since that first coaching session with Hillary and it’s

Dusti  

It’s working.

Mikli 

It’s working. Thanks, Hillary.

Dusti  

Oh, that’s awesome. Okay, so these days, where are your clients coming from?

Mikli  

These days? Well, referrals. Last year was a particularly hard year. There was some, you know, illness in the family and money things. It was a weird year and I was in survival mode. I was doing the most for the least. The little clients that I did have all of my energy because I still wanted to show up for them. You know, all my clients and my family, and there wasn’t room for much else. And my marketing was, this was when Dusti told me to stop apologizing for not being able to show up. To show up when you can and where you can and not to apologize for it. That was last year. And I took that to heart and it was those referrals that kind of kept our family afloat. Like we’re here. I’m here. I’m talking to you today. Those referrals kept us fed and clothed and housed. I didn’t have the energy to market but I was like, I spent the past few years building up the goodwill you know, having ties with the community and maybe this time when I am not able to hold myself up by myself. Well, that’s when I was able to lean on friends and network and people. 

Dusti  

Yeah, you’re killing it. So I mean, there’s so many good things there that I’m hearing. One that even though you work fully online and in the Philippines, I mean you’re one of the only folks I know who was actually from another country and has managed to operate at this particular level. And not only subvert the whole narrative around like VAs in other countries and underpaying them and all of that, but you’ve done it in a way where you really have created something that’s is bigger than you now. Right? Like it’s like, you get to be part of this larger thing that can sustain your family.

Mikli  

It’s it’s really good. it’s great. I think we’ve gotten to a good place. And that goes back to what you said about subverting the thing about VAs, that’s its own podcast episode, I think. But that was, it was a tide I both swam against and ignored for some reason. Like I would still get hit, “But you’re in the Philippines. Why are you charging so much? Why is the landing page cost so much you’re just copy pasting.” Stop. But in the very very beginning of my career like that Facebook post, the first one that I said like “Hey, what if this was my rate because here in the Philippines, that’s gonna mean a lot to me.” And somebody DM me she’s like “One, raise your rate by at least five to 10 dollars. I might be shooting myself in the foot but raise it. Okay, you charge for the problems you can solve, not for your location as I do.” Okay, and I’m so grateful that that came so early in my journey, because since then, I took it to heart. I have screenshots of our conversation. And I have not charged for my location since and since day zero. So I haven’t been, which is really good. I’ve been kind of ignoring that and acting as if, not as if I didn’t live here because I do live here and I don’t hide it. But that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t factor into my pricing because it doesn’t.

Dusti  

Well, and it shouldn’t. There is no reason that it should. Because let me tell you as someone who’s worked with a fair number of stateside VAs, I never, ever, ever regret the money that I spend with you.

Mikli  

I’m glad to hear it. But yeah, I guess it’s that and then in its own way sticking up for being a guest at like I don’t always have the words at how Filipina VAs are being treated. But anybody that I kind of can get within my circle, if anybody’s being hit with these $2 rates like stop. No, don’t take the time. Anybody I can pass along that conversation to, I will. It’s like no. 

Dusti  

Okay, so switching gears a little bit. If you had to start from scratch today, how would you start your business? How would you get those first 10 clients?

Mikli  

Good question. Well, how scratch am I scratching, do I know anybody? Nobody?

Dusti  

Let’s say you still have your network and your skill set.

Mikli  

If I had my network and my skill set and I was starting from scratch. I would email. I would find the best fit. I would figure out okay, here’s what I can do reasonably well and chargeable for. Find ten people from my network and ask them if they need anything or know somebody who might. And I think sometimes they wouldn’t, but just floating myself back up the top of mind. I guess that’s how I’d do it. From zero? Yeah. I have the babiest of social media reaches but my friends don’t.

Dusti  

Amen.

Mikli  

Um, yeah, I guess I mean, you know, this is also something that Hillary would tell me just do, just send the follow up. Just sending the email is something that I would avoid all the time. I didn’t want to do it. But that’s what I would do. If I had to, I would, “Knock knock, do you know anybody?”

Dusti  

“Hello, I’m here. I would like to fix your tech. I’m pretty give me money.”

Mikli  

“Anything you want to fix, improve or create?”

Dusti  

So good. Okay, so how can great systems and tech make a small business a referral magnet?

Mikli  

Oh, okay. One thing that I like to say is that a really good system is an extension of your imagination and your care. So I like to think of it as, like I think we get into this business because we care a lot. I don’t think I’ve met yet a business owner who doesn’t care about their customers and who doesn’t care about their clients. And we’re all human and it’s just kind of a lot of things to have in our hands and to have in our heads. And a lot of the clients, a lot of people who come to me, like when they ask for help I think is when their brains are full, whether they know it or not. Sometimes their brains are full, and they don’t realize that every interaction opens 20 new tabs in their brain. And it just kind of feels normal until Google Chrome starts to lag or crash. And so what point was I making? I was making a point. And so a system is like, Okay. Rewind to them coming to me. Their tabs are open. Google Chrome is starting to lag maybe it’s starting to crash or they don’t realize that they’re, you know, a couple of tabs away from lagging or crashing. And so this system is…I think, for me when we have our conversation, and it’s so important to me that I understand how you operate and how your brain operates and how you take care of your clients and how you want them held. Because then that gets translated into the tech where your clients feel seen, held, heard and valued, I think in the same way and now so are you. You are not bearing the brunt. You’re not, it’s not your burden. Sorry, words. But you’re able to take care of them without un-taking care of you, which means you can take care of them. Extra.

Dusti  

No, I think that’s perfect, Mikli, honestly because that’s really what it felt like you did for me. Because I remember when I came to you, I was just like, I had just gone through a huge restructuring of my business. I went from an agency model to a consultant model. And so obviously, all of my systems, all of my everything, I was basically starting from scratch and I knew that and I’m pretty technical for a marketer, like I knew that I could set up everything that I wanted, and I knew how to do it. But it had been like six months since I’d let everybody on my team go and it still wasn’t done and that’s when I called you. Because I was like, basically I want to just tell you everything that’s in my brain and then I want you to turn it into tech that works. And you did. I just, like, it’s so hard to find somebody who is like a good ongoing tech match. Like finally, I’ve been through like the wringer with VAs over the past couple of years and I just found somebody who I’m so obsessed with and she’s been working for another friend of mine for like eight years. So she was just like perfect. But when we worked together though, it was such a different experience because it was nothing like working with a VA. It was like working with a strategist who could make, you know, make lemonade out of the lemons that my brain was popping out at the time because it was a lot of lemons, let me tell you. But I mean even more so than that, though. I would actually love to talk about just for a minute here, Lydia’s systems. So Lydia Kitts has come on the podcast already. She’s done my website. You’ve definitely seen her work, you know, attached to some of the humans here. But so you and Lydia have known each other as long as you’ve been doing this, but Lydia’s like, her schedule has blown my mind since she told me it because she has like 15 working hours a week. And when she came to me back in like, I think it was early 2022 when we worked together, but that was the first thing that she said to me, was like, “Oh man, I want to do more right now. But I have to get Mikli in here first.” Would you mind speaking to some of the work you guys have done together to make that really tight timeframe work? 

Mikli  

Whoo, okay, so Lydia’s was fun. Lydia’s was almost all behind the scenes. Like very Lydia-focused tech instead of like customer-focused tech. And we built her an auxiliary brain. Those were her words, an auxiliary brain in ClickUp. And so we took all of her processes and, this is a Lydia thing, she has them all down to five minute increments, so wow. So we put them all and we created almost like ClickUp templates for new projects. So that’s one, ClickUp templates for new projects. And then we put things, like if let me see if I can remember the build with Lydia. We made little tweaks to make it so that when she looked at ClickUp, she knew exactly what she had to do, where to get it, who it was for and all of that. And she could find the tasks and sort them the way she wanted to see them. So tasks for example, had a do date and a due date. So DO and DUE. I need this done by Friday, but I have to start working on us starting Tuesday. They have been categorized into energy levels one, two and three so that Lydia can choose, “Do we knock out the low energy ones now? Okay, this is like a level three kind of day, so this is all that I’m doing.” And then I also asked Lydia, “I am transferring these tasks to pick up based on the document you gave me and I’m copying the time estimates over how’s this gonna make you faster? Like this is the same amount of time, right?” And she’s like, “Uh uh, because I’m not looking for anything anymore. Everything is linked. I’m not trying to figure out how do I set that, you know, what was the document for this again? What is the template for this again? No, it’s included. The SOP is in the tasks. So if I wanted to delegate it to someone, all I had to do is reassign it on ClickUp because that particular task has instructions built in on how to do the task.” And I also set her up with a workload view because she was so tight on those three hours a day so that she can see when she was approaching her limit, because she said she had an app for dribble booking people. It’s just like, “No, no, I’m overworked.” So she knows like, “Okay, I’m green here, but I’m yellow over here. So I can take one more client here as long as it doesn’t extend into here.” Like that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. And we made some things automatic. So if Lydia didn’t have to do them, let’s say let’s not do it. So if a client schedules a call, their strategy call for Tuesday, all of the tasks move. So after the strategy call Lydia does this stuff then let the project move forward or back depending on when the call is. The client’s feedback is due in 14 days, but the client gave it back in three. Okay, the project moves. And so that sort of stuff keeps it the dynamic version of it, also. I guess it’s just kind of what allowed Lydia to sit at her desk, open up today’s to do list and be like, here are the things that I’m knocking out today. Done.

Dusti  

God, sorry. Thank you so much for that. It’s so hard to like fully appreciate these kinds of systems and the level of care and personalization that goes into it until you hear all of the specifics like this because I mean, I remember the thing that Lydia had told me was that she ended up waiting like for ages for people to turn in all of their pre work. And that was one of the things where I was like, “Girl, that project does not start until bitch gets you all the shit.” Like I did. That was one of those things where, and it’s so funny because I was actually the bad client this fall. Because I had a minor existential crisis about my copy, which I know there are people listening who will understand exactly what I’m talking about. I ended up making almost zero changes, by the way. I wrote a new about page and that was it and I didn’t give the rest to her. Um, but like, just the idea that like, she didn’t have to be waiting on them for everything. And it’s similar to when you were operating as the OBM, as the right hand person, like, you just end up in such a state of reactivity in your business and that’s like, that’s when all that resentment starts to build up, I feel like.

Mikli  

Yeah, waiting to be told versus being in charge of, “Here’s what I’m doing today.”

Dusti  

Yeah, right. Ah, okay. So last question. What makes a business referral worthy to you, Mikli?

Mikli  

Oh, my goodness, good question. I think it’s the client. It’s a combination for me of like, the client experience of working together, the results that you get of working together, and honestly, liking the person. I think that I can, oh, wait, rewind. I’m trying to think this is not something I rehearsed during the drive. What would I refer somebody? I would refer somebody out to you if I could trust that they would take care of you the same way I would take care of you. Like if I know you’re in good. I’m not going to refer somebody out if I’m not sure what’s gonna happen when I do. So I want to know that they’ll care for you the same way I care for you, and then they’re gonna do work. The work that they’re going to do is work that I can vouch for. I think, for me, it’s that and that they are a genuinely nice person. Like I won’t refer you a meanie.

Dusti  

“I won’t refer a meanie.” I am obsessed with that.

Mikli  

Here’s a gem who does amazing work and you will love each other. That’s who I would refer. Those would be businesses to me who are referral worthy, I think.

Dusti  

Mikli, thank you so much for coming on today. If folks want to learn more about working with you, where can they go find you?

Mikli  

My website is over at HeyMikli.com and my Instagram is the same, @heymikli.

Dusti  

Wonderful, thanks so much for joining.

Mikli

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.