The Virtually Amazing Assistants Podcast

Unveiling the Power of Digital Asset Management with Paige Wiese

The discussion focuses on the essentials of digital asset management, including how to protect hosting services, domain names, social media accounts, and external software. Paige reveals details about her company’s unique service designed to track and secure these assets. She also explains why it’s so important for business owners and administrative staff to properly document and manage digital assets.

Later in the episode, Paige shares her story of transitioning from architecture to digital marketing, and how her passion for nature influences her business approach. She also highlights the role of mentorship and community in her professional life. The episode wraps up with helpful advice for administrative professionals looking to improve their digital asset management skills.
 

Full Transcript

They got the smarts. They got the drive. Making the world come with every task, all kinds of the, wherever they go, making it happen. Don’t.

Welcome listeners to another episode of Virtually Amazing Assistance, the podcast for assistance everywhere. And this week I am so excited to be talking to Paige Wiese. I hope I pronounce that correctly. I You did. I was told how to pronounce it. I thank you. Great. So as usual listeners, I have my crib sheet because Paige and I only met.

Few weeks ago for the first time when we started discussing what we were gonna discuss on the podcast. So I’ve got my crib sheet as I do every week and I’m gonna introduce Paige and then we’ll see if I missed anything. ’cause that can happen too. So Paige is the owner and founder of Founder and CEO of Tree Ring.

Digital and Tree Ring. Digital is a top ranked Denver based marketing agency that develops high performance websites and digital marketing strategies for businesses nationwide. I presume Nationwide means in the States, but we can talk about that afterwards. Maybe you’re gonna go global. So Under Pages, leadership Tree Ring Digital has helped thousands of businesses across various industries.

Streamline their online presence and more, and most importantly, protect their digital assets. And that’s kind of where we came into the conversation. They want to, they also are able to achieve healthy growth through data-driven marketing strategies. With 16 years of experience in the industry page, realized the importance of digital asset management and developed a proprietary service to track and protect crucial data points.

Ensuring brand protection and legacy maintenance. I’m gonna ask you what all that means in a minute. So I think I gave you a mouth. Yeah, we’ll, we’ll clarify that in a minute. Paige is passionate about empowering business owners and regularly leads workshops, speaks at industry events and mentors, entrepreneurs on brand protection and strategic marketing growth.

We could all do with a bit of that. I think she’s also committed to supporting organizations that uplift the community and proudly runs an LG LCC certified LGBT owned business and is a member of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council. So thank you for giving me all of that to say and welcome to the podcast page.

What did I miss or misinterpret? Phone with that. Oh, no, you’ve, you’ve gathered all, there’s a lot in there. I’m sorry it was so long, but you did great. No, that’s okay. We, we have to start somewhere. So yes. Digital assets. That was the bit where I said we’re going to, we, we, that’s where the conversation started because when we first talked, we were talking about the importance of having some way of monitoring digital assets.

So I think my first question, which wasn’t on my cheat sheet before, but just sprung to mind, is, what are digital assets? Let’s unpack that for our audience. What do you mean when you say we need to protect our digital assets? Yeah, no, that’s a great question. With digital assets, it’s gonna be like all of the pieces that make your digital presence of your company run.

So that can go into hosting and domain, which are usually the ones that people think of first and foremost, your email addresses, but then it gets into social media accounts, your Google Analytics, your Google Search Council. Those types of things. And then it also dives even deeper into what are the third party tools that you’re using for your website, the, or just your company to run and operate that are also operated through the digital space.

And more and more we’re seeing SaaS, we’re seeing third party, you know, tools, being able to streamline organizations, cloud-based stuff. Those are still digital assets within a company that are often overlooked. And then beyond that, you have, what are some of the risks and what are we doing for recovery as far as compliance, regulatory, and then you know, backups and recoveries and whatnot.

So your digital assets really span a wide spectrum of pieces, but so often when you hear that you think it’s domain and hosting, and that’s really where a lot of businesses are, are kind of missing what that looks like. It is interesting you say that because when you talked about digital assets, to me the first thought that came to to mind was all the images that I have and all the branding that I have and you know, all my social media posts.

That was what sprang to mind. In fact, I didn’t even. Think that it was my domain and my web host that might be known as a classed as a digital asset, but that’s just a naming thing. I think it’s, it’s, and I think that might be the same for many smaller business owners and even for the big. Corporates.

They may not, if they haven’t got somebody in situ who really knows their stuff and is in charge of all of that, then they might not know it either. And, and, and our audience spans both the smaller businesses, VAs, who manage. Small businesses, digital assets, uh, and then assistants who work in larger corporations who may also have digital assets.

So it’s quite a wide playing field there that, that we can chat about. So where did the inspiration come to you for Tree Ring? Digital Tree Ring is an interesting name. Why? Tree Ring? Yeah. No, that’s a great question. With Tree Ring Digital, we named it that, or I named it that because. I was, I wanted something more outdoorsy to really reflect like me and what I enjoy.

And so, and especially being here in Colorado, it’s kind of a thing to do. And with that though, I was like, the tree rings represent growth, uniqueness, longevity. It tells a story. And so when we started, when I started looking more and more into like. What do the tree rings actually represent? It really fell in line with a lot of our core values and what we want to represent with our clients is how do we build those long-term relationships?

How do we see visible growth? How do we make unique plans and marketing strategies and websites for each client instead of a cookie cutter approach that’s the same? So that’s where the inspiration came from, was really kind of the meaning behind ’em. That’s, that’s fascinating. That’s really good. So you’re a, you’re an outdoor gal, are you?

Yes, I am usually right. Climbing your trail? Running? Yep. Yep. Get me into the mountains or on the side of a rock. That’s where I wanna be. Oh, that’s definitely where I don’t wanna be. I have a terrible fear of heights and my knees go wobbly and my stomach drops, and I, I can’t face that. So, so what inspired you to start tree ring and, and how has your journey been so far?

Where did you start from and how did, how did that trajectory go? Yeah, so I actually started with architecture. That was what my background is in. That’s what I went to school for. And it was right around the 2008 economy crash and for the US and really realizing quickly, uh, having been laid off twice by the time I was 22.

This isn’t really working for me. I was raised that we would have, you know, mostly one career your entire time and that’s what you did. And so I definitely kind of hit me pretty hard in trying to decide what do I do? Do I, you know, continue furthering my. Career down architecture, do I do something different?

And so I used that time to just kind of, what can I be doing? What can I be doing in the meantime to be making some money and decided to start teaching myself website design and development, which had no experience in whatsoever. I did have some experience in page layout, different things as it related to like the school newspaper, and I really enjoyed computers as a kid, so.

Playing with fonts and everything, you’d find me doing that just hours and hours and hours of sourcing fonts. So it kind of naturally came and fell into place. And from there, I, I spent a few years, you know, doing freelance website design and heard all of our clients really happy, but coming back saying it wasn’t working and wasn’t really converting the way that they wanted.

And that’s what really sparked me to dive even deeper then into. What are you doing for marketing and how are you tracking the conversion and if this is or isn’t working? And oftentimes the answer was no or nothing. And so that’s when I started teaching myself more and more with website design and or with the marketing as well, and then turned it into a full service agency so that we could really help the clients from start to finish.

That’s, that’s really cool because, for example, I have a graphic designer who designed my website, my main website. The other one I did myself, but the main one. And, and he uses a, an A builder, a guy. So Paul Designs and Jamie builds. Mm-hmm. And they don’t do any marketing. So I think that would’ve been, had I have been starting again now after all my years.

Doing this. That would’ve been a very, very enticing proposition to me to have all of that wrapped into one service because it’s, it’s kind of crucial, isn’t it, that the marketing kind of, because the website has to, well, one, one drives the other. It’s almost like a circle, isn’t it? It really is. And that’s what we’ve seen is, you know, there’s a lot of agencies out there, obviously, and they might advertise that they’re doing both.

But what will happen is I usually hear like, but we do websites ’cause we have to, you know, they don’t really want to be doing the websites. Yeah. And if you’re doing websites, very rarely are they like also then diving into marketing. But we really saw that disconnect with our, you know, clients. We don’t hear what they’re working on for marketing.

If they hire us just for websites and we’re also not one that’s like, Hey, you must hire us for everything. Like we have one set package and that’s the way we work. We’re really meeting our clients where they need to be, but when we do take that approach, it is interesting. How disconnected and how rare we actually like.

We’re never invited onto marketing calls. If we built the website, they don’t talk to us about those things, right? So that’s where we saw a void and wanted to fill that gap of how do we have marketing talk to web and really look at the full customer journey from start to finish and make sure that we’re identifying what is and isn’t working, what is and isn’t converting.

So that we can see that measurable growth for our clients, and yeah, you’re correct. Even when we hire, we notice oftentimes designers don’t wanna touch development or don’t know how to do development. And the other way around, developers are really, really good at the coded side. They’re not always great at the design side though, and so we even had to structure that as we were, as I was building the company as to how do we get the right people in the right seats so that we know that they’re really focused on that aspect of it.

We see a lot of the designers and developers that don’t understand the server side, and that’s a side that we bring into the equation as well as our own hosting and servers so that we can better address even those technical issues. Yeah. That’s fun. That’s, that’s fantastic. I mean, I, I’ve, I’ve been doing this for, I mean, I got my first website, 20, well before websites existed.

I think my very first website was a very early, was, was prebuilt. It was all coded. There was no WordPress at the time. There was no nothing. Mm-hmm. And I wanted to have, I remember a, it wasn’t called a blog. But I wanted a weekly blog. I wanted a weekly article where I could post a tip. And, and they said, what?

I said, I want to be able to add a new page every week with a tip. So we did that and that really brought business in. And, and so that, that was a very, very early, early blog and I had, I had clients, I had one client phoned up and said, when can you do this for us? It wasn’t a, can you do it? It was a When can you do it?

Because I’d obviously demonstrated to them that I knew. It was word for Mac, I think at the time, and I was also unique in that there weren’t many Microsoft Office trainers on Mac at the time in the UK anyway. Yeah, Mac was less, was at that time was less prevalent in the, in the US I think Mac was always more popular.

That it was in the uk. So, uh, but that, but yeah, no, so, so that’s, that’s really interesting. And then gradually, now I’m on WordPress, so it’s a lot easier, but I still don’t really understand the backend marketing and the Google analytics and all of that stuff just leaves me cold. And I’m sure it leaves a lot, small businesses cold because you don’t know how to set it up, what to do, how to track it, what am I looking at?

Ooh, give me an Excel spreadsheet. That’s much easier. So, so what’s, what’s the digital asset management part of it? What’s this? This idea of this proprietary service that helps companies protect their digital assets. So what, what do you mean by that? Because I’m sure our listeners will be gonna be really interested in that.

It’s a great question and that it really stemmed from one, because we do offer such a range of services and have for so long, we really will dive into more of those questions that clients are like. Where do I go to get this answer? What is this message that Google just sent me actually mean as it relates to my website?

Or, Hey, I’m locked out of a social account. How do I get back into it? Or I had a developer who set this up and now I don’t know where they are. Why is my website down? I don’t know what happened. And unfortunately, a lot of support channels just say. Go talk to someone else, go talk to your developer, go talk to your marketing team, go.

You know, like you’re really not getting to the source of what is the issue. So we’ve seen so much of that, and I think a thing that our clients really appreciate about us is that we’ll look at every piece of it, no matter what it is. Is this a phony domain renewal, you know, scan, email, or is it a legitimate domain renewal?

And so they’ve really come to us as that trusted source to be able to say, what do I need to do? Or how do I recover what this is? But. To your point, there’s so many different aspects and for a business owner to try and keep track of all of that and what does that look like, and especially as you’re growing, especially as you’re bringing in virtual assistants, as you’re bringing in marketing teams, it might have been fine when it was just you starting a business, but as you’re growing and scaling, you do have more hands in that pot now.

And that’s where we start to see a little of that digital chaos start to happen of. I don’t know who set that up or I don’t know if it was set up or not. I don’t know if I have the login details to it. Something we often hear is, I think I’ve got the log login written down someplace. I’ll have to find it, you know.

We should probably have a little bit more formal, especially with something as it relates to logins, a more secure, a more streamlined, a more tightened up approach to track that. But then you start to introduce things like two-factor authentication. Who are admin emails? Who actually set that up? Are you the owner of the account or do you just have administrative access?

We’ve seen with WordPress that people come in, develop the site. They don’t give the client, like the end user, the business owner, full access, they’ll give them, say, editor access. And so then we get in to make an edit and we’re like, I, I can’t do anything till we hunt down. How do we actually get the right full access to a website?

And then we also started seeing so many clients locked out of things. They give us a call and say, I don’t have that. Or I, you know, I don’t wanna use that service anymore, but they’re gonna take everything with them. And so the proprietary side of the digital asset management. Really comes into how do we gather?

All of these digital assets and put them in one place for you. And yes, you’re right. That even includes like stock or not stock or Yeah, stock photography, hired professional photography and videos. It includes your logo design, graphic design, all of that. And yeah, by the time we start talking to somebody about, Hey, what are you doing here?

They start realizing there’s way more than I can handle. We’ve identified at least 300. Points of like digital assets that need to be collected. And when you start to break that down and ask, you know, a business owner what that looks like, it’s a lot. And typically they’ll like, oh, our marketing team handles it, our website team handles it.

But what we’ve learned over the years is not one person is taking ownership or control. And so while your, it might be handling some, they’re not handling your social posts, and while your marketing team might be handling your Google AdWords. They’re not usually handling your website and who’s watching and making sure it’s all staying compliant.

And so that’s where we put together the digital asset management of how do we put this all in one space and have someone finally take ownership and work alongside your team so that we’re not necessarily replacing, but filling the gaps and making it easier so that if you have an employee leave. You’re not dependent on what do we do now?

How do we recover? We have a plan set up and in place so that we can quickly, you know, have that still stay up and running. That’s really, really, really cool, and I can totally see the value of that. I’m just thinking I’m, I’m launching a new course in September. By the time this goes out, hopefully that course will have been full and will have been delivered, but I’m launching a new course, so I am busy in social media.

I’m busy creating videos. I’m busy doing this, that and the other, and I’m very chaotic at saving things. And I realized today I was looking for something, I couldn’t find it. And so I think, you know, you, you know, and I’m very la I’m lazy. I’m sure lots of other people are like me. I can’t be the only lazy person around in this.

I’m not lazy generally, but I’m lazy in this respect. And I realized I was, I was creating a spreadsheet to name. The sections of a video, I’m, I’m pre-recording, um, a session for an online conference. Not, not my thing, but I have to give them a one hour video and I’m recording it in segments and I’m naming the segments.

And then I forget to name the line in the spreadsheet, the same name as the name of the video. And then of course, nothing matches up. And when I come to find it later, ’cause I. Gave up and stopped ’cause I got really tired. Then I have to find all the bits and put them together. So I think I, I, I’m definitely seeing a value for, for all of this.

And so, so what’s your proprietary service called? Does it have a name? Is it a, is it, is it an a named thing? Oh, so for us it’s a brand, like a digital asset, brand protection service. And so that’s gonna be where we do a digital asset audit. And just figure out what all do you have? What do we need to be tracking?

I mean, one thing that I know comes up too from time to time is just even your plugin licenses, are you still paying for plugin licenses that you don’t need? Are you paying for services within your hosting platforms that are just upsold that you don’t need? So like we’re really trying to identify where are all of those different gaps?

What do you have in place? And really, for us, we like it because it allows us. Not just to create that streamlined approach in a more efficient business, but it’s also letting us start to really understand and say like, and identify like, you don’t need this. Why are you paying for it? Yeah. How can we save you money here?

Why do you have three tools that are doing the same thing? Or do you have systems in place of like what, who should be setting up that email or the account every single time with one set email? So it allows us finally to get deeper into a business and really identify. What those gaps are and how we can be of best service with the knowledge and tools that we have.

And then from there, going into an ongoing service that’s gonna be more about what is, you know, happening with your hosting, your maintenance, your compliance. Let’s have quarterly check-ins so that when things are turning over on your team, we’re still aware it’s not just a set it and forget it kind of service because things happen often.

And so how do we, you know, start to be more involved in that conversation So that, I mean, we get the call of. Oh, why is this site down? And we’re trying to figure it out and we’re like, you didn’t tell us you acquired a new business. That would probably be the first phone call to make would be to your, you know, marketing and web team to sell them.

We decided to make this change and so we can actually make sure and prevent these things from happening. So we’re also, you know, on there for that ongoing so that we can prevent. Those sorts of down times instead of, you know, having to be more basically, how do we be more proactive instead of reactive is really what we’re trying to do.

Yeah, I, I think it’s a, a, a really, really important service. Now, in your bio, it says that you are also somewhere it said that you are also a mentor and a speaker, and you’ve empowered many, many business owners. So what are the key challenges that you see them facing today? How do you help them overcome those challenges and where, what, what sorts of platforms do you speak on?

Yeah, that’s a great question. So the challenges often are. There’s just so many things to pay attention to. Where do I start? What do I do? What do I focus on? Right? There’s so many social platforms. Do I need to be on ’em all? Everyone’s telling me I need to SEO, it’s getting harder and harder, and now it’s really, really changing with ai.

How do I stay up with it all? Right? And it, we really take more of that approach of like, what is your business though? You don’t need to be on everything. You don’t need to be doing everything. How can we really identify? What’s gonna like move the needle the most at this moment and then get into the next piece.

Okay. Now that we’ve created that part of the foundation. How do we push it a little bit more? Are we tracking the right stuff? But that’s really, you know, one of the biggest things is I’m, everything is coming at me in so many directions. I don’t know what it even means or what I need to do with it, and I don’t know where to go to find that information.

So that’s the biggest challenge that we see with clients. As far as speaking, it’s a lot of workshops. It’s a lot of associations and different things where, you know, I. I started my business knowing nothing, as we talked about at the beginning, and I really took advantage of the local community workshops and resources and really found out how many free resources are available.

And so for me now as I’ve grown in 16 years in business, I’m more about how can I give back and share what I have learned? Because I wouldn’t be where I’m at if I didn’t have the mentors that I had along the way. And so really, you know, finding those platforms that we can continue to educate and help them get that understanding without, you know, costing an arm and a leg.

Yeah. Now I’m gonna ask you a different question now because I don’t know what it means. So it says that you have an N-G-L-C-C certified LGBT. I know what the LGBT BIT stands for, but what’s the N-G-L-C-C? Is that an association? Yeah, the N-G-L-C-C is a great organization, so it’s the national L-G-B-T-Q Chamber of Commerce.

And so they’re coming in to advocate for minority owned or LGBT owned businesses to have a seat at the table with you, if you will, with corporate. So how do they’re really focused on putting LGBT owned businesses with the certification in the room with corporate, which is a really rare opportunity.

Yeah. And really, you know, helps us. Make those relationships with the supplier diversity teams and helps us, you know, get our name in front of corporate that we may not really be able to do due to our size, but we can still have some really great fits. We’ve been able to help a handful of corporate organizations because we were able to have a seat at the table or be in the room because of that certification.

And so it really is, you know, a way for businesses to be able to also, or for consumers even to just be able to support minority owned businesses. So Paige, one last thing. What is one tip that you would give to our very wide audience of administrative professionals to help them excel in their management of either their business or their client’s business or their corporate business’s digital assets, even just to know what that is.

I suppose it’s the first thing. Yeah, no, for, for assistance and administrative roles, I think one of the most important pieces is document making sure you are documenting everything as you go. Whether it’s how to use the tool, whether it’s how you set it up, whether it’s who’s the two factor authentication on it, whether it’s when does a credit card expire and whose credit card’s on file.

Those are all pieces that in that role. We’ll really help you stand out and shine because a lot of ’em are like, cool, the task is completed. Let me move on. But you’re really not helping the businesses in a way that could be just a few extra steps. Go a really long ways and really help set up for success.

And then it really positions you to be more of an expert in your space and someone where they want to keep coming back to using and like, wow, I didn’t even have to ask them to do that. They did it. It will be really well received. But I would say that just as much as you can document along the way. Even just recovery down the road of like someone asking a question, you are no longer wasting possibly unbillable time trying to find that because it’s right there at your fingertips.

You can go, yep, here’s the answer. And now again, they’re even more impressive. Like, wait, you already knew that? And so that’s what my tip would be to administrative professionals would be document everything as you go. That’s a really great tip and the, the, the administrative professionals in our audience, I’m sure if they aren’t ready, we’ll be doing this from tomorrow or whenever tomorrow is when they listen to this.

So, Paige, this has been fascinating. I think I could chat to you for ages, but as we said before we came on the call, for me it’s evening and for you it’s morning and I need to go and make dinner. So otherwise I should have one hanger. In about half an hour’s time and that’s not a good, that good thing to can’t have that.

An angry people are not good. So Paige, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and listeners, thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Virtually Amazing Assistance, the podcast for assistance everywhere. And I’ll see you with another episode next week.

Bye.