"First things first? Get good people"
Meet Jamie Gilleland, the founder of MiSyte.com, a marketing company based in the USA. With decades of experience in building successful businesses, Jamie has learned the importance of focusing on personal wellness, time management, and a work-life balance.
Her mission is to inspire women to seek a richer and fuller life, beyond just their roles as mothers, wives, or CEOs.
Check out more interviews with entrepreneurs here.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET FEATURED?
All interviews are 100% FREE OF CHARGE
Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Jamie Gilleland: This seems suspiciously like the biographical question you’ve just asked, so here we go again… A lot of people ask me, “How’d you get here?” and the truth is, I never thought I’d need to be. I’ve built multiple successful businesses over the last three decades, and I have always thought things like my health, my time, and my personal life would magically take care of themselves.
Well, as I learned, they won’t! So, I began my own personal journey to discover how to refocus my efforts, reclaim my wellness, take back my time, and ensure I would not simply be another entrepreneur consumed by her business.
From that journey, which has already taken nearly two years, I’ve realized how many other women share this dream; continuing to grow beyond their roles of “mom” of “wife” or “CEO.” My mission now is to show how important it is for every woman to seek a far richer and fuller life – not just for family, not just for a career, and not just for some mythical “retirement plan.”
Every day, my own journey continues, and I realize it’s one that never needs to end – and I can change the lives of millions of other women as I go.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Jamie Gilleland: First of all, if they’re on my team, they’re aware of our achievements. That being said, over the last year, our biggest celebrations have stemmed from firing the right clients and reimagining how our company serves our true Ideal Client.
Along the way, we’ve certainly learned and gathered the metrics to be able to serve this new model client, but we’ve also dug into why we should be serving them, and why that is important to me and our team.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle keeping talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are adapting to the current shift we see?
Jamie Gilleland: Plain and simple: we try to avoid this by hiring people that have average skills and then giving them a clearly defined system that allows them NOT to be actualized from work, but I encourage them to live away from their desks.
All this talk of “quiet quitting” is coming from industries and individuals who have always implied employees and management should give “more” and never paid for it. Now new employees are refusing to do, and business leaders are trying to spin it.
Nonsense! It’s a problem because leaders tolerated it and employees volunteered to let it happen, and it seemingly became a standard.
For us? As we built the business, we took a page from Michael E. Gerber, author of “The E-Myth” and a dear friend, and we built systems that didn’t rely on egos and skills, but rather functional honest people intent on learning and growing (in life, not just their career)…
Here is a two fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
Jamie Gilleland: EASY! Michael E. Gerber and The E-Myth! Michael became a friend and a mentor to us and my businesses have never been the same. As a result, I’ve likely given 40 copies away and influenced the purchase of scores more.
In short, The E-Myth forced me to see the very shortcomings that I had lived in my private businesses up to that point. When I began working on systems (“on the business”) I found I was doing the work of leadership and not merely ownership and the results – a 12X increase in my business year over year – was shocking.
Likewise, when I began to do this real work of entrepreneurship, I recognized my quality of life improved and the improvements to my business didn’t take as much time as I had always feared. It made every action a win for me and my companies.
Christopher Hitchens, an American journalist, is quoted as saying that “everyone has a book in them” Have you written a book? If so, please share with us details about it. If you haven’t, what book would you like to write and how would you like it to benefit the readers?
Jamie Gilleland: Funny you should say this, and I believe its true… So much so that one of our businesses, Elk Mountain Publishing, is built exclusively for ghostwriting and publishing.
To that end, yes, I have been a co-author to my husband’s book Formula 567, and I am working on my own story, detailing my journey from the diagnosis of my brain tumor, to my first husband’s passing, to my eventual success years later using systems and automation and technology.
2020, 2021, 2022 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2023? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Jamie Gilleland: First things first? Get good people! Not the most highly skilled ones, but those who are functionally honest, operate with integrity, and those who KNOW who they are and why they’re on this earth.
From there? Give them a system and clearly defined goals and strategies and then? Lead them! Finally, really dig in to how your industry can adapt AI, automation, and technology to handle marketing, convert leads and prospects, and assist you and your team in managing tasks.
Ultimately, that was why we not only survived these last years, but also thrived.
What does “success” in the year to come mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Jamie Gilleland: Today, as I look forward to 2023 and beyond, my goals have shifted and been refined. I’ve worked with thousands of clients over the years and I’m drawn now to creating change in certain areas.
Women-owned businesses, for example, and those companies led by women who might never have realized a seemingly simple fact: they are not their company and their company is not who they are
I want to change that, because, like them, I was once consumed by success and my “need” to be a martyr as a CEO. There’s no need for that, and while many of my male clients with successful businesses have no challenge leaving “work at work” I see my female clients tragically assuming they HAVE to be mom, a wife, a leader, and a janitor all in the same day, and failing miserably – or wondering why their health and stamina is failing.
I want to change that, because I’ve been there, and it doesn’t serve you, your business, your family, or your clients.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Jamie Gilleland for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Jamie Gilleland or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
