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Listen "How Bean Ninjas CEO Meryl Johnston Built A Global Virtual Powerhouse"
Episode Synopsis
How Bean Ninjas CEO Meryl Johnston Built A Global Virtual Powerhouse
Want the transcript? Download it here.
In this episode, Matt and Barbara speak to Meryl Johnston, the CEO, and founder of Bean Ninjas.
Some of the areas covered include:
Meryl’s journey from a consulting firm to global, systemized, online business and the perils behind bringing in virtual contractors before you have your processes in place.
Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.
In this episode:
1:20 Meryl Johnson the founder and CEO of Bean Ninjas
3:38 The power of systems and processes
4:29 Building a business to scale
8:38 Key Tools or Methods to manage your team
10:24 Wrike
12:06 Systems, tools, and Processes as the front driver
13:30 The Strength of the machine
14:01 Team Meetings
17:07 Concept of the Lunch and Learn
18:02 Virtual Christmas Celebration
20:43 Local knowledge vs Overseas Knowledge
24:39 Training Guide Procedures
29:27 Highlights of the show
33:14 External Leverage
35:09 Top 3 Learnings working with Virtual Team
Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.
Barbara Turley: Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show. I'm joined by my co-host Matt Malouf as always. Hey Matt.
Matt Malouf: Hey Barb. How are you?
Barbara: I'm good. And you?
Matt: I'm excellent. Yeah, I'm enjoying a sunny day here in Sydney after what's been a very, very wet sort of week down here.
Barbara: Yes, unusually so for Sydney. But the Sydney sun is back, which is awesome.
Matt: It is, it is.
Barbara: Yeah. So we're back, guys, doing one of our interview series, which we love doing. We love when we find interesting business owners that are building virtual teams and can really add value to our listeners and to ask quite frankly about how they're doing things. So today's guest is someone who's become somewhat of a friend of mine, Meryl Johnston, and she is the founder and CEO of Bean Ninjas, which is a bookkeeping, financial reporting, and education business. She's also a chartered accountant. She's host up her own podcast, the Bean Ninjas podcast, which I definitely can recommend listening to. And she's also a big surfer living on the Gold Coast, the beautiful Gold Coast here in Australia. So welcome to the show Meryl.
Meryl Johnson the founder and CEO of Bean Ninjas
Meryl Johnston: Hi Barb. Hi Matt. Great to be here.
Barbara: Good. So listen, why don't you just give us the quick rundown, Bean Ninjas. What is it? Why did you start it?
Meryl: Well, Bean Ninjas is a bookkeeping and financial recording business, and before starting Bean Ninjas, I was running a consulting firm, not very cleverly named MCJ Consulting, my initials. And I was doing project accounting work and quite quickly found the business difficult to scale. It was hard from a cash flow perspective, with project work being lumpy, and it was difficult to build a team. And I looked at some other business models out there and the kind of business that I wanted to build, which was recurring revenue, it would have processes so I could scale the business and I wanted it to have global potential. And then I looked at my skill set, which is accounting and thought about how I could marry the two together, my skill set and the kind of business that I wanted. And that's where Bean Ninjas was born.
I founded the business with a co-founder who had a similar vision of creating a global business and a business that we could run from anywhere in the world. So that was where it started.
Want the transcript? Download it here.
In this episode, Matt and Barbara speak to Meryl Johnston, the CEO, and founder of Bean Ninjas.
Some of the areas covered include:
Meryl’s journey from a consulting firm to global, systemized, online business and the perils behind bringing in virtual contractors before you have your processes in place.
Let us know what your key takeout has been from this episode and join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.
In this episode:
1:20 Meryl Johnson the founder and CEO of Bean Ninjas
3:38 The power of systems and processes
4:29 Building a business to scale
8:38 Key Tools or Methods to manage your team
10:24 Wrike
12:06 Systems, tools, and Processes as the front driver
13:30 The Strength of the machine
14:01 Team Meetings
17:07 Concept of the Lunch and Learn
18:02 Virtual Christmas Celebration
20:43 Local knowledge vs Overseas Knowledge
24:39 Training Guide Procedures
29:27 Highlights of the show
33:14 External Leverage
35:09 Top 3 Learnings working with Virtual Team
Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you’re not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.
Barbara Turley: Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show. I'm joined by my co-host Matt Malouf as always. Hey Matt.
Matt Malouf: Hey Barb. How are you?
Barbara: I'm good. And you?
Matt: I'm excellent. Yeah, I'm enjoying a sunny day here in Sydney after what's been a very, very wet sort of week down here.
Barbara: Yes, unusually so for Sydney. But the Sydney sun is back, which is awesome.
Matt: It is, it is.
Barbara: Yeah. So we're back, guys, doing one of our interview series, which we love doing. We love when we find interesting business owners that are building virtual teams and can really add value to our listeners and to ask quite frankly about how they're doing things. So today's guest is someone who's become somewhat of a friend of mine, Meryl Johnston, and she is the founder and CEO of Bean Ninjas, which is a bookkeeping, financial reporting, and education business. She's also a chartered accountant. She's host up her own podcast, the Bean Ninjas podcast, which I definitely can recommend listening to. And she's also a big surfer living on the Gold Coast, the beautiful Gold Coast here in Australia. So welcome to the show Meryl.
Meryl Johnson the founder and CEO of Bean Ninjas
Meryl Johnston: Hi Barb. Hi Matt. Great to be here.
Barbara: Good. So listen, why don't you just give us the quick rundown, Bean Ninjas. What is it? Why did you start it?
Meryl: Well, Bean Ninjas is a bookkeeping and financial recording business, and before starting Bean Ninjas, I was running a consulting firm, not very cleverly named MCJ Consulting, my initials. And I was doing project accounting work and quite quickly found the business difficult to scale. It was hard from a cash flow perspective, with project work being lumpy, and it was difficult to build a team. And I looked at some other business models out there and the kind of business that I wanted to build, which was recurring revenue, it would have processes so I could scale the business and I wanted it to have global potential. And then I looked at my skill set, which is accounting and thought about how I could marry the two together, my skill set and the kind of business that I wanted. And that's where Bean Ninjas was born.
I founded the business with a co-founder who had a similar vision of creating a global business and a business that we could run from anywhere in the world. So that was where it started.
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