How to delegate like a boss
Jordan Raynor sits down with Kristin Molenaar, Founder of YesBossVA, to talk about how to delegate well, habits for “starting days slowly,” and why less is sometimes more when it comes to consuming content.
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[00:00:05] JR: Hey, everybody, welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work not for their own fame and fortune, but for the glory of God and the good of others.
Every single week I'm bringing you a conversation that I'm hosting with a Christian who is pursuing world-class mastery of their vocation or talking about each guest’s path to mastery, their daily habits, their daily routines and how their faith influences their work.
Today, you guys are going to love this conversation I had with Kristen Molenaar. She's the founder and CEO of YesBoss, a virtual agency specializes in online business management so solo entrepreneurs can scale their impact without burning out. The business is doing phenomenally well. They're doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue while Kristen only spends five hours a week working on the venture.
Kris and I sat down and we talked about how entrepreneurs, CEOs, managers any leaders can delegate well and what's going on spiritually that keeps us from delegating. We talked about Kristin and I’s habits first starting our days out slowly. We talked about why less is often more when it comes to consuming content.
Yes, I'm suggesting you listen to more content. Listen to this episode to get the answer to why less is often more in terms of content. I think if you were to look at the most tweetable episodes of the Call to Mastery, this would be number one or two. So many nuggets of gold wisdom that Kristin shared. So please enjoy this conversation with Kristen Molenaar.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:52] JR: Hey, Kristen. Thanks for hanging out with me.
[00:01:54] KM: Yeah. I’m so excited to chat with you, Jordan.
[00:01:56] JR: Yes. We’re just talking about Scottsdale. Since I've had this meal, this is going back two, three years ago. I have said over and over again, “I think the best meal of my life was in Scottsdale, Arizona,” and I’ve traveled to a lot of places but there's this particular restaurant. I’m curious of you who’ve been there, called Sumo Maya. Do you know this?
[00:02:15] KM: Yes. Yeah, I know of the place and I just said to my husband about a week ago, “We really need to go there, because I don't understand Mexican-Asian fusion. What does that mean?” Maybe you could tell me.
[00:02:25] JR: I don't even know if I could probably describe it. It was the best sushi I've ever had. It was like totally off the charts. Yet, I don't even remember the whole meal of what exactly we got. I just remember being like totally blown away and I remember the greatest sushi I’ve ever had. Highly recommended, Sumo Maya for you and your husband.
All right. We restart at the very shallow end of the pool. Let's go all the way to the other end, the deep end of the pool. Let’s talk about a shared passion you and I have real quickly before getting in the meat of the conversation – adoption.
[00:02:55] KM: Yeah.
[00:02:55] JR: We both adopted children into our families. My wife and I just recently adopted a baby girl a few months ago. As Christians, I think we can all wrap our heads around or start to wrap our heads around the parallels between spiritual adoption and familial adoption intellectually. But I have experience that it's a whole other thing to actually experience that, to hold that child in your hands. Again, going to the deep and very quickly, how is adoption impacted your walk with the Lord?
[00:03:24] KM: Oh my gosh! Adoption in some way, but I’ll say, primarily, I am only a parent because of blindly following the Lord. My story is that I had said pretty much my whole life I'm not going to have kids. My childhood, I didn't like being a kid because of various things that were going on in my family. I hated being a child and I thought from an early age like, “Why would I ever subject another human to this? I'm not bringing a kid into the world. This is awful.” That sounds so dramatic, but that's really how I felt.
My husband and I got married when I was 24 and I was approaching 30 and I thought, “You know what? If we’re not going to have kids, we need to make a decision. This can’s be like, “Oh maybe.” If we don't decide, like our indecision will be our decision and is that really what we want?
I had always thought like maybe adoption, maybe. There are lots of kids in the world that need love. That was my thinking at the time. We went to information meeting and we were exposed to the needs of the foster care system and it completely broke our heart. We looked at each other and thought like, “How do we say that we won't even try to take steps in pursuit of helping this?”
So we just gave it to God. We said, “All right, Lord. We’re going to take one step at a time. We are banking on you closing the doors so that we can feel good about the fact that we pursued it, but you didn't make it happen.” That’s actually what we were thinking.
We took the very slow route. We took about a year to get licensed, and then we got a call on a Tuesday at 4PM and our son was dropped off on our doorstep literally by 7 o'clock that night. 2-1/2 days later, I was like, “Oh my gosh! I'm a parent.” Not in the fact that we now had a child in our home, but the fact that like, “Whoa! There is this tiny human that has my heart completely and I would lay on the railroad tracks to save him,” and everything changed.
[00:05:26] JR: I’ve been thinking a lot about the promise of Romans 8:28-29, “For I’m convinced that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” and holding my adopted daughter instantly, I had a new appreciation for that because the second she was ours, there was nothing that could ever separate her from me and my love.
If that's true of me as this woefully fallen man, how much more so with God? The promise of that verse just took on an entirely different me. I think I was like shocked at like the instantaneousness of that feeling, of, “Yeah. I would do anything for this child that is not my own flesh and blood.” Thank you for following the command to adopt and to care for orphans. It's a beautiful thing. It's not really related to the topic of the show at all, but anytime somebody loves adoption, I go out of my way to talk about it. All right.
[00:06:23] KM: Yeah. I am glad that you do. I’m glad that you do.
[00:06:26] JR: Let’s talk about this great business you’re building and let’s start high-level. What is YesBoss do?
[00:06:31] KM: Yeah. YesBoss offers full team supports. We’re like a one stop shop for solopreneurs. Essentially, you could see us as like an agency who offers online business management, but what’s different about us versus hiring somebody that's an OBM, and that's the acronym that a lot of people use in our industry. The difference between hiring us as an agency and hiring a one-off person is that our clients are able to like capitalize on the entire team that we have in place. So not only are we like project managing and business managing, but we’re also doing all of that backend execution.
I think we’re a perfect solution and our clients have felt this way too. I think we’re a perfect solution for the entrepreneur that builds a business because they want freedom, but they’re realizing, “I know how to make money, but now I'm overwhelmed. So what do I do now? I didn't get into entrepreneurship to managing a complete company, a big team.” So we come in and we provide that team for them. Get rid of that overwhelm so that those solopreneurs can really step into like what’s that visionary empowered CEO role.
[00:07:33] JR: Yeah. What are the specific services that you guys tend to provide those solopreneurs?
[00:07:38] KM: Yeah. It’s a combination of the day-to-day stuff, which is like client management, inbox management, community management, content management, like all those day-to-day things that need to happen. Then it's also the digital marketing implementations.
For clients that want to do a summit, like an online summit, or pulling off a webinar, or need to do some kind of drips, email sequence or drip, video sequence, click funnels. All of those ways that you really drive traffic into your business. We help you put those systems in place and we help you manage the people that have come in.
Then we also do white label stuff. White label is like partnering with our clients to help them make money without having to do additional work that falls on their plates. Like an example of that is we have a client who is a speaker and author coach, and we do outreach packages for her clients. She's able to sell our service without having to do more work herself, which puts more profit into her business.
[00:08:37] JR: Yeah, that's smart. I love it. How did you get into this? What’s the founding story of the business? I'm sure this is wrapped up in your personal story, right? But what's the path that led to this business being born?
[00:08:48] KM: Yeah, entrepreneurial failure, and I will say downright failure, because I thought it was me giving up.
[00:08:55] JR: Those are the best stories. Those often birth some of the best businesses. Tell us about that.
[00:09:00] KM: Yeah, because I couldn't walk away from the fact that I am entrepreneurial and I couldn't turn it off. What happened is I left my last corporate job in late 2014 and I spent a year trying to make a coaching and consulting business, and the beauty industry happen, because that's where I had experience.
Now, granted I don't like the beauty industry. If you ask me about anything having to do with cosmetics or whatever, I’m going to say, “I don't know.” So it was not a very good fit, but I thought that it would make a good business because that’s where my expertise fell. So that’s what I was doing.
About a year into that process, I was finding that I was just struggling. I was doing everything the experts were telling me to do and I made like $5,000 for the whole entire year. I was living in my parents, or my in-laws’ guest bedroom with my husband and our two dogs. It was like suffocating me. I felt like, “Lord, I just don't know what to do.”
I don't feel like he – He gave me a lot of answers, but it wasn't just like, “Do this thing.” So I'm the kind of girl that's like, “Okay. Well, I’m going to knock on some doors and whatever doors open I’m going to go in them. Lord, I’m just going to look to you to give me peace where I need peace and close doors where I'm supposed to close doors.”
What I did is I went on a website called hiremymom.com. I wasn’t even a mom at the time.
[00:10:15] JR: I love it. Posing as a mom. That's an interesting choice. Yeah.
[00:10:24] KM: So funny. I went on hiremymom.com because I had heard from being in the entrepreneurial circles, like that’s where you go to find support, and I thought I’ve learned all this stuff about entrepreneurialism. I want flexibility. Maybe I’ll just help somebody else build their business because they know more than I do.
I picked up my first client in late 2015. That client is actually still with me, which is so wild. I picked up that client and I remember reading through the contract and there was like this clause in the contract that said that the work performed by the company, the subcontractors, the vendors, the this, that, whatever,” and I thought, “Ooh! You mean I don't have to do this work? I can build a team that could do this work?”
That’s what I started to do, and that’s the beginning of what I did, but I still didn't want to own what I did. I thought that this was like a means to make money, but not really what I was supposed to do. For the next three years – Yeah, three years. I also was dabbling in other businesses that I thought were my calling and were out right Christian because I thought like VA businesses aren’t Christian. I want to do something that glorifies God.
The results of that though is that I was able to build YesBoss to be mostly self-sufficient so that I could pursue these like callings. Then God told me in like summer of 2018, he said, “It's time to let go of all this other stuff and steward what I've given you.” It was like, “Oh! Okay.” Then it’s built from there.
[00:12:00] JR: That's amazing. What were some of those other things that you were doing that you considered outright ministry as opposed to YesBoss?
[00:12:07] KM: Yeah. They were good things and I feel like at the time God had told me – He did tell me to pursue them, but I was holding them with a tight fist. I don't want that like to say – I don't want to frame it in a way that they were like the wrong things for me to be doing. I think that I was executing in a way that I probably could've experienced less overwhelmed.
But the main one that I was doing was a community called Relevant Entrepreneur, and it was basically supposed to be education and community for Christian entrepreneurs. I’ve built what I needed. What's crazy is that even though the business – I think that business generated about $7,000 in two years. The crazy thing about that is the connections that I made with other Christian women have been incredibly instrumental in building me up as an entrepreneur.
[00:12:55] JR: Then you had this business, YesBoss, that is just taking off, right? You’re doing six figures in revenue working five hours a week with the team of six or however many people you have. Did you just like wake up one day and be like, “Wait a second. This thing is like really working. Maybe God wants me to put all my eggs in this basket.” What was that like?
[00:13:11] KM: Yeah. It started with a fast and two month sabbatical from Relevant Entrepreneur for me to see, like really see things. I kind of opened my eyes, I guess. I needed to take some blinders off. I was blinded by ambition, I guess. I don't know what I was blinded by. I needed to take that off.
Then, yeah, I really just – It was just something I felt my heart through journaling and time with the Lord. At first, I was really resistant to it, because there is a lot of pride for me attached to, “I don’t want to be seen as a virtual assistant. I want to be seen as an entrepreneur, and God highlighted that for me, like, “Hey, who you are is not what you do. Who you are is what I tell you who you are. So stop putting all these biases on this.”
Then I remember sharing this information with some really good friends of ours and their response was hilarious. They said, “Man, if you weren’t a really good friend, we would have asked you if we could have bought your company like several years ago, because we couldn't understand why you weren’t focusing on the thing that was making bank and you’re barely doing anything to get it there.”
[00:14:19] JR: Amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, that’s so fascinating. I think a lot of people struggle with this, right? Being gifted one thing, maybe skills as an assistant, or skills as whatever it is, a writer, a marketer, being envious of somebody else's client. I think we spent a lot of time worrying about those things rather than embracing the gifts God's given us to do.
But the funny part of your story is that you embrace those skills as an assistant and God kind of gave you the desires of your heart, which was –
[00:14:45] KM: He did.
[00:14:46] JR: And build a business around that core skillset. As you master that core skill, you are able to build a business around that, which I absolutely love.
All right. You’re building this really impressive business. You’re pursuing master the art now of entrepreneurship and you're doing it in a way – I mean, the business essentially is helping other entrepreneurs and leaders pursue mastery of that craft, right? Freeing up their time to the art of delegation.
Very broad question; how can solopreneurs effectively delegate?
[00:15:16] KM: Yeah. We’ve spent some time over the last 18 months, because I now have an executive team. I have this two women on my team that we really like evaluate everything in the business and are growing the business together. We’ve been questioning like what is the YesBoss method? What's the common theme that we’re finding? What's going on here?
What we’re finding is the most effective for our clients is, first, really looking at what are the essentials in your business. I think that has to come first. I think the biggest hiring mistake that I see is entrepreneurs hiring because they're being told by marketers that there’s this thing that they need in their business, like I’m going to hire somebody to me do my social media, because I'm not consistent on social media and everybody's telling me I need social media.
Well, is that really essential to your business and the way to gauge that is, is that generating profit? If it's not generating profit, I’m going to challenge that it’s not essential.
Then from there, really distilling down, “Okay, what do I enjoy doing?” I also think another thing that a lot of entrepreneurs do that handicaps them is they assume that they have to be the one providing the money-making service and my story is proof that that's not even true. I don't provide any of that money-making service. Everybody on my team does. I don't have billable hours. My team does.
Like looking at what do you really like to do and then building a strategy around that and outsourcing all the other essentials that don't fall into the things that light you up.
[00:16:53] JR: Yeah. I love that. I know this is different for everybody, right? But what are the common themes? What are some of the most time-consuming tasks that are essential for entrepreneurs for that tasks to get done within their business but that they don't need to be doing, that they really should be and can be effectively delegating others?
[00:17:10] KM: Yeah, you’re right. I mean, the variety of tasks to this answer is so broad. Administrative stuff, like entrepreneur, shouldn't be doing that. That's going to take a lot of your time. I would even challenge like a lot of the processes that you need internally. You could be outsourcing those processes.
[00:17:27] JR: Like the design or the execution of those processes.
[00:17:30] KM: Both. Both. Yeah. Social media management and unless that really lights you up, like I don't think that that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs should be doing they should be showing up in a way that lights them up, but that day-to-day management, like a lot of that content management, those things that you find yourself doing over and over and over again.
Those are the perfect place to start. For people that have never delegated, I also believe that this is the easiest way to start, because as an entrepreneur, you have an idea of how to do it successfully. So that's like the safest way to delegate, because you know if somebody else is doing it the way you want it done. That’s a safest way.
Now, that’s not the only thing you can delegate. You don't have to know how to do it to delegate. There’s different levels of delegation, but, yeah, those repeatable things. Also, I would say the things that you run to to get you out of doing the things that actually affect your bottom line.
[00:18:25] JR: Interesting. That's a great point. What are some of those things typically for founders?
[00:18:29] KM: Design work.
[00:18:31] JR: Yeah.
[00:18:32] KM: There are so many entrepreneurs out there that love design, and like I get that. I love design too and I know this because I've fallen into this trap so many times. What I find myself doing is like I'm supposed to follow up with those clients, and instead I'm like, “Oh! Can I create some social media graphics? Because it feels good, because I can check it off my list and I feel really productive.”
But in reality, like that’s handicapping my business because it's giving me something to do that doesn't actually generate profit and like I'm shooting myself in the foot when I do that, and I see a lot of people doing that.
[00:19:05] JR: Yeah. I’ve led pretty significant sized teams, like a lot of experience delegating. But I think the biggest challenge I continue to have – So I’m going to ask a very selfish question. Hoping you can help me here. Is assuming that I have to delegate step-by-step instructions versus delegating objectives, right?
An example, like we have this product. I sell these ads in my weekly devotional email called my reading list. Books that I've said I'm personally going to read these things, but somebody's paying for me to take a look at the book and agree to endorse it, right?
A few months back I was like, “Guys, we need to make sure that we have physical books, physical copies of all these books so we could share content of it on social media,” and I was really tempted to say when I gave that task over to my assistant, I was really tempted to say, “Okay, Caleb. Here are the step-by-step instructions for how to do that. You need to contact this person at this publisher, this person at the other publisher. Make sure we have books at least 15 days out, whatever,” and instead I said, “Hey, just make sure we always have the book one week out.” I don't care how you do it. I don't care who you talk to. Find the contact information, my email, whatever.
But that's very challenging for me to break that mindset of delegating well-defined processes versus delegating objectives. Here’s what we need to go. Figure out how to get there, because frankly you're more qualified than me to design the steps A through Z. What advice would you give somebody like me? Because I think there’re a lot of people that have this mentality who are hesitant to trust the delegation of objectives.
[00:20:33] KM: Yeah. You have to have a really good hiring process. Our hiring process is like seven steps, I believe. We, in our hiring process, create ways for people to show us their attention to detail. We purposely have created tests that people will trip up. There's something in there that like we either didn't give them instruction or we gave them conflicting instruction, like we these things in our tests.
After somebody's gotten through like a really rigorous hiring process, you’ve got to at least try and test them whether you can trust them or not. Because once you get in the habit of always laying out every single process and procedure for the people that you're hiring, they're going to expect that from you and they're going to come back to you. Because you've outlined it so like clearly and thoroughly, they're not going to feel like they can think for themselves. They literally have to follow your process. It’s kind of like calling somebody at customer service and you’re like, “Please stop reading this script. Just listen to me.”
[00:21:40] JR: Yeah. That happens really quickly, I found, with new team members, right? The way you treat new team members very early on, let's call in the first month, really sets the tone for how that relationship is going to go over the long haul.
[00:21:53] KM: It does.
[00:21:54] JR: Right off the bat, showing team members that you trust them. To do the job that you hired them to do with very little direction often produces the best results. I love good hiring processes. I have very rigorous hiring processes for Jordan Raynor and company for Threshold 360, the venture that I’m executive chairman of. I'm really curious what yours is, or maybe we probably don't have enough time to talk to the whole process, but what are some your favorite questions, tricks, throughout that process to find the best talent?
[00:22:21] KM: Yeah. I can give you a couple things that we do to help your listeners in their hiring process. The first one is that, in our job description, we’re really clear about how people need to either apply to the job ad or apply for the position. What I think is a complete waste of time is putting up a job ad and asking people to email you or you could be putting it like a Facebook group and having people direct message you. That’s going to be the biggest waste of time.
[00:22:44] JR: Colossal. Colossal waste of time. I can’t believe how many people do this. Yeah.
[00:22:48] KM: It’s horrible. I know this because I made this mistake, because like, “Okay. I need to be able to weed people out.” So what we do is we instruct people to either – Depending on which platform we’re posting on, they either have to respond, like send me an email and this subject has to be exactly what I’ve told them the subject should be.
[00:23:05] JR: I love it. I freaking love it. Yeah, keep going. Yeah.
[00:23:07] KM: Anyone who doesn't put that subject, I don't even open your email. If you're not interested in reading through the entire job post, like I'm not interested – I want people that are excited about what I'm doing. I want people that have looked at my website and said to themselves like, “Oh my gosh! I really want this job.” That's what I want.
[00:23:28] JR: We are kindred spirits and we could talk about hiring for another hour, because I really believe that the most important thing you do as a founder, as any manager, is hire. One great hiring decision eliminates a thousand other decisions that you have to make in the future.
I love the subject line thing. I've done something similar, and people just call me a jerk, but I’m like, “Whatever.” I'm screening for attention to detail. I had an assistant once, her name is Cortney, and she spelled her name kind of odd. It was C-O-R-T-N-E-Y. If somebody misspelled Cortney's name in an email, game over. You’re out. If you can’t spell somebody's name right, come on. Get out of town. I love stuff like that.
Okay. The whole point of delegation is free of time, right? To focus on the things that you’re uniquely qualified to do. I’m really curious to get your perspective in your role. What are those things for you? What are the things that you're never going to delegate?
[00:24:22] KM: For me, what I have found really energize me, and that’s how I know that that I'm in my zone of genius. When I'm done with it, am I like amped up to go and do those things that I have to do, like tax preparation? Because those things, like you just have to do them. They kind of suck, but you got to do them.
I look at like if I’m in my zone of genius, when I'm done doing it, I feel energized to continue to do the other things. What I’ve really discovered about myself is I love cultivating positive team environments. I'm a cheerleader and encourager by nature. That’s my jam. What I do is I love on my team and my team loves on my clients. I show my team how important they are to me. I ask them how I can support them. Not doing their job for them, but like what can I do? How can I help you through this client conflict, or how can I equip you to do your job better? That for me is my zone of genius. I just love having a team that I can love on and that they know that they are the most important thing to me.
[00:25:27] JR: And nobody could do that job but you.
[00:25:28] KM: No.
[00:25:29] JR: You’re the only one who could do it. What else? What else are you never going to delegate?
[00:25:32] KM: I'm never going to delegate – Well, I am going delegate, but still do it myself. I'll say this, education. I really love talking to entrepreneurs about the strategies that I put in place in my business and what we’ve seen clients put in place in their business.
Internally, we’re developing some educational resources for people that aren't necessarily a good fit to work with us one-on-one but want to take advantage of like our hiring processes and understanding what it means to like build leadership, or to be a good leader and develop a good company culture. So we’re putting together resources. I will always be a part of that. I will not – My team is going to be involved in it because they have a lot to bring to the table, but I love it. I love helping people come out of that overwhelm and realize that entrepreneurship doesn't have to feel like a prison, because I feel like for some people it does. I'll always be part of that as well.
[00:26:27] JR: I’ve heard you talk about your what would Richard Branson do question. Could you explain what you mean by this?
[00:26:36] KM: Oh my gosh! I say it like kind of facetiously. But when I am looking at something that needs to be done in my business – Okay. I'm an entrepreneur. So I have a lot of entrepreneur friends and I have a lot of friends that are in marketing and they tell me like, “Kristin, you have to build like a personal brand, or you have to have an Instagram account, or like you need to be focused on building your email.” They tell me all these things, and I just kind of look at them and I go, “You know what question I'm asking in my mind? Is like would Richard Branson do it?” Like “Yeah, if he liked it. But if he didn't like it, he wouldn't do it. I'm sorry, but I'm not trying to be a solo burnout entrepreneur. I’m trying to build a company.”
[00:27:10] JR: I love it. There are so many – I think it's hard to be an entrepreneur for that reason. You get so much unsolicited advice from marketers, from friends, from fellow entrepreneurs, and it can be overwhelming feeling like you're not doing a million things that you should be doing. But at the end of the day, you just got to look at the balance sheet. Look at the growth. What's really driving the venture, and just focus more resources there.
Is Branson a big entrepreneurial hero for you?
[00:27:37] KM: I think it all started because at the time when I said it, the first time I verbalized it, it was like everybody knows who that is.
[00:27:43] JR: Yeah. Right. I love it.
[00:27:45] KM: And he's like made it. It's not somebody that we all talk about like right now. I feel like a lot of the people that are like the buzz people right now aren’t necessarily – I'm not seeing them do really staying in their zone of genius and delegating as much as I would delegate.
[00:28:03] JR: That’s interesting. Talk about your typical day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. What is a typical day look like for you?
[00:28:10] KM: Well, every other day I’m responsible for toddler wake up.
[00:28:15] JR: I’m loving it. Yeah.
[00:28:16] KM: My husband and I do every other day. Every other day, I’m doing toddler wake up 8 o'clock.
[00:28:21] JR: Wait. You have to wake your kids up?
[00:28:24] KM: No. When he wakes up, I wake up. But like –
[00:28:28] JR: As I was going to say, I’m like, this is a foreign concept to me. I don’t understand.
[00:28:31] KM: No. I try and pray for him to sleep in as late as possible is what I do. Then the other day I stay in bed until probably like 9:30 or 10:00 and just slowly wake up. My morning time is usually my most precious. I know that I need to start slowly. That's been interesting in dealing with being a parent, and God has shifted me, like, “What does that look like?” because it doesn't feel slow. It feels a little bit chaotic when you're dealing with a child. That’s been interesting.
But setting the attention that I'm going to start slow, that I'm not going to get bogged down by what other people are trying to bog me down with. The intent is to stay out of email, but sometimes email gives me – It's like an ego boost when I see that I’m needed. I’ll be frank there.
Then I usually am on like – I would say 50% of the time, I'm on calls. Talking to potential new clients, which is not always on my plate and less and less of it is on my plate because somebody else on my team is helping with sales too. Talking to my team. I have a team member and probably we’re growing our local team, but actually going to lunch with people on my team. I get together in-person with them.
My work day is usually from like – I don’t know, like 11 to 3. I get everything with work done between those hours. You know what’s interesting, and I want to bring up, is a lot of my time is spent thinking. That was weird for me, because I felt like thinking is fun when you're thinking about fun things, and it felt irresponsible to me and I had to realize like, “Hey, this is the greatest value as a visionary that I bring to the table. Don’t get involved in busywork just because you want to make yourself feel productive. Do the thinking.” That's actually the hard work.
[00:30:29] JR: 100%. So much wisdom here. How do you do that? Where do you break away? What are your habits, like cultivating your time to think?
[00:30:37] KM: Yeah. I prayed for a bigger closet. God gave me a bigger closet. I sit in there with the Lord. I have a few different – I have the Bible and I’m reading through – I’m always reading through some kind of Bible plan. I have a journal and then there's usually a few other things that I am reading through.
The Lord said something to me that just – Oh my gosh! It just pierced my heart in the best way. He said to me like, “Hey, I want to sit here and strategize with you. I created you to be an entrepreneur,” and like I, “Bring that to me. Let’s do it together.” He gave me the vision of a dad sitting with a little girl having a tea party.
[00:31:16] JR: I love that.
[00:31:17] KM: He’s like just – What I felt was like just like a dad would sit there and have a tea party with his daughter because that’s what brings her joy, like that’s God wants to do with me. I tried to do that strategizing with the Lord, and I found when I veer off course and I’m doing all the strategizing by myself, like those are the worst ideas I have. I am intentional about sitting with him. I journal a lot. I read the Bible, and then I'm like business planning. I’m like – The journal is on the front part and I’m like flipping to the back page because I’m writing out funnels and like all these ideas and these processes.
[00:31:50] JR: Can you spend a couple more minutes talking about starting slow? Starting your day slow? I think there's a lot of wisdom in this, and this is something I've recently adopted some new habits to try to do this well. What do you mean by starting slow? What does that look like? I know staying off email, you mentioned that, but like what else?
[00:32:05] KM: Yeah, for me it has more to do with my mind and how quickly I'm allowing like the ideas in the to-do-list and like all this stuff flood in my mind. I was finding that it was creating a lot of anxiety for me. I would wake up and I would start in this like anxious, like there's this email and I got to get to this email and I got to do this thing and I got to do that thing.
What I've found is it's really like taking captive my thoughts, and like is the thing that I'm thinking about something that I need to do because I'm feeling like I’m going to be behind or am I thinking things because other people have planted that thought in my head? For me, it's really being mindful of what's going on in my mind, like, “Okay. Right now, I'm only responsible for waking up. Right now, I’m only responsible for making breakfast. Right now, I'm only responsible for sitting with my toddler while he eats,” and maintaining that like, “Okay. Just be in the moment. I’m not thinking about the business. I'm not thinking about those things. I'm thinking about in the moment.”
Really, I think the greatest benefit to me has been my ability to show up for my family, and then secondary is my ability to not handicap my businesses. This is a weird one. I feel like my anxiety and feeling these like racing thoughts and the to-do list and like all these things, I honestly have found that that handicaps may business, because I have put together people and processes that know how to run my business like a well-oiled machine.
When I start inserting myself, I mean I feel like I’ve talked about this. This is probably like the fourth time I’ve said that my pride gets in the way. I'm really finding that it's my pride that I want to be needed. So I’m like making myself be needed, and that creates anxiety for the business. It handicaps it by not allowing the processes and the people to keep going. Then it ultimately like puts more work on my plate, which is counterintuitive to the kind of business I'm trying to grow.
[00:34:11] JR: We really are kindred spirits. We’re speaking a lot of the same language. I think there’s like the savior complex going on here, right? I find that when I fail to delegate or when I insert myself into existing processes, a lot of times it’s because like I miss being the hero. I miss – I don't know. I just miss being relied upon and being seen as the savior of this business. Obviously, that's sinful. Obviously, that's my pride talking.
But I think that happens for a lot of people. I think we love to feel like we’re the ones holding up our businesses, and it just leads us into this trap of believing that we’re the ones producing results [inaudible 00:34:48], which we’re not, right? A lot of times it's working ourselves – It’s necessary to work ourselves out of these processes in order for the business to thrive.
On this topic of starting slowly, I had very similar thoughts. I would wake up and I would immediately check my to-do-list for the day, check my calendar for the day. I haven’t checked email in the morning for years and years and years. I don't struggle with that, but I struggle with other things. Something that I found to be really helpful is, number one, like waking up before my kids, because that was also stressful. When your kids wake you up, it's like, “Okay. I am working right away as soon as I hit the ground,” because I mean parenting at this age, as you know Kristin, is hard work. My kids wake up super early. They wake up at 5:30. So I get up at 4:45 right now.
[00:35:35] KM: Totally. Oh my goodness!
[00:35:36] JR: Super early. I get up at 4:45.
[00:35:37] KM: You’re super dad.
[00:35:38] JR: I don’t know about that. But then the other thing is I stopped checking my phone altogether until basically like 7:15. From 4:45 to 7:15, I don't check it at all. I check it one time before I sit down on my desk at 7:45, and then I'm good to go. Huge endorser of the start slow strategy. By the way have you read Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer?
[00:36:01] KM: I haven’t, but I’m open to book suggestions.
[00:36:03] JR: There you go.
[00:36:04] KM: I slowly consume content. That's another thing that I'm very serious about, is I try to limit my content consumption. But I’m to book suggestions from you.
[00:36:14] JR: I love this. I think I recommend this book on every episode of this podcast. It’s so terrific. We actually had John Mark Comer on the podcast to talk about the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. So I highly recommend it.
Yeah. This slow content thing, I want to ask a question there, then I want talk about this intersection of faith and work for you. Why slow content? Because I think there's a lot of brilliance in this. I've actually thought about setting a goal to read less in a given period of time. Tell me why you're so slow on content.
[00:36:42] KM: There’s a couple reasons. I am very much – I do things based on gut reaction. If I consume too much content, then I feel like I don't hear my own – Well, I was going to say intuition, but really like the Lord prompting me. I've just silenced what he's telling me and started to listen to what other people are telling me. There's one.
The second one is comparison. It is so easy to fall into that trap, and I'm constantly having to say, “Nope. We’re not going to do that.” Like, “Okay. Are you looking at Instagram and are you starting to feel awful about yourself? Okay. Time to turn off. Stop doing that.” That’s something that I am constantly having to remind myself about.
Then the other thing is the very practical business lesson that I learned is we started with YesBoss. We started doing summit packages. We don't do summit packages anymore, but we had packaged like this service. I was trying to figure out what the heck do I want to charge for this as a package. I started to look to see what other people were charging and the Lord is so faithful. He blinded me to it. I didn't know what other people are charging. I kind of looked. I didn't really, really dig, but I couldn't find it and I needed to get stuff done. So I thought, “Okay. Well, what do I need to charge? This is how much I need to charge hourly to make a profit. This is how many hours I know that this takes,” whatever.
We built out a package that was $4,200, because I felt like that's what needed it to be. I sold it like crazy. I sold it like crazy and I was just like, “This is awesome! I can't believe I'm doing this.” Then six months into selling that package, people started to tell me, “You know, you’re like more than twice as expensive than anybody else I've ever talked to.” I was like, “Oh! Cool. Well, I have confidence now that that's what it's worth. If you want to go work with them, that’s fine.”
I’ve seen like the benefit really of that as well. Why do I need other people to tell me what I'm supposed to be charging? I don't. There’re so many people talking about like use this tactic. Use that tactic. Because I'm such an essentialist, like 90% of the time it’s like, “I don't need that.” I have an Instagram account with like 100 and – I don't know. Maybe we have over 200 followers, so like we drip content when we want to drip content, and like I have so many people that are like, “No. You need Instagram.” Well, sorry. No. I don't. No. I don’t.
[00:39:03] JR: Right. No I don’t. If more founders just understood deeply the 80/20 principle and the principles of essential – I could tell you’ve read Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
[00:39:13] KM: Oh! My number one favorite. Yeah.
[00:39:17] JR: It’s in my top 5 easily. If more founders just got that – So you'll appreciate this story. One of my investors at Threshold 360 once asked me, they’re like, “Hey, as we’re evaluating other CEOs of other startups, what's the number one quality to look for?” It was a pretty easy question for me to answer. I was just like, “Yeah, the number one skill you can have as a founder is the ability to discern the essential from the noise.” That it. That 80% of running a venture, it’s just recognizing that pretty much everything is unimportant. Kudos to you for figuring that out.
Hey, Kristin, how does your faith motivate your pursuit of mastery? How does your faith make you ambitious for your work?
[00:39:59] KM: Yeah. I see my role as an entrepreneur. I see it as an act of obedience, but I also see it as an act of worship. It's both of those things for me. God created me to be a business owner and it’s my obligation as a child of God to steward that which he’s given me, and I feel like that's what I'm doing.
Also, my faith impacts what they do in the way that it's so important to me to treat everybody that I work with with respect and to really not be shy about my faith and worry about my faith crippling business growth, because I've been there before. What I've seeing is really taking ownership of the fact that I am a Christian and the fact that I want my business to be for God's glory.
I’ve witnessed and experienced God's involvement in what I do. My eyes have been opened to things that they weren’t open to when I wasn't asking God to help me. God really truly is the CEO of what we do. I don't take action if I don't feel peace about it. If we’re not supposed to work with somebody and it doesn't make sense to me, I'm frank about it. God is just responsible for all of this.
I mean, even to the point where one of the people on my executive team, she said to me, she said – We’re going to tell you about our name, like YesBoss. YesBoss was this name that was like – I don't know. I need a business name because apparently I'm a business, like, “All right, we’ll give the name.” This happened before I had that team that I have today and I thought, “Okay. Yeah, YesBoss VA. Sure. Let's go with that.”
Paige said to me about a year ago, she said, “Our name is YesBoss because we always say yes to the Lord.” It doesn’t have to do with our client or us saying yes to – We’re not like the yes men. Saying yes to all our clients, but really we’re saying yes boss to the Lord, because he's the boss of what we do. He’s at the center of what we do. We do it because he wants us to do it. We serve the people that we’re supposed to serve, because that's who he has for us.
Really, it's interesting, because I never thought about this business as a Christian business, but God has gotten more glory as a result of me saying yes to this business than anything else that I've ever done.
[00:42:19] JR: I love that. I don’t remember that I've ever gotten up on this particular soapbox, but since you mentioned it, I will. There's no such thing as a Christian business. Can we please top using this term. We are Christians who run businesses, but there is no soul of a business that is being saved by the gospel of Jesus Christ, right? We are just Christians called to build great things for his glory, for the good of others.
I know what people mean by that phrase, but it's always rubbed me the wrong way. But you are building a tremendous business that glorifies him, because, one, you’re revealing his character, as I would argue, the first entrepreneur, as I argue and Called to Create. But you’re also just loving people well, like loving customers well. Loving employees well. You’re loving your neighbor as yourself by building a great company.
We exchanged some emails prior to this conversation. You mentioned in one of those emails that following Christ has allowed you to be a risk taker. It’s empowered you to take risks. Can you talk about that?
[00:43:21] KM: Yeah. I think I’ve talked about a lot of it already and I’ll kind of point back to what I was saying. Being able to say no to all the things that people are telling me I need to say yes to, that has felt very risky. I've had people look at me like, “You're going to fail. This is not going to work. You’re not thinking about the right things.” It’s like, “I'm sorry. That's not what God has for me right now. I’m not supposed to do that.”
It’s also allowed me to own who I am, like that whole Richard Branson thing. It really boils back to like who did God create me to be? What passion did he give me? What skillsets did he give me? I'm going to do those things for his glory and not do all that other stuff that the world is telling me that I need to do.
I've also been able to be bulled in – I can't believe I’m going to talk about this, but like firing clients and deciding that I don't want to work with people, because their values don't align with my values and you've got to treat my team a certain way for you to stay in my circle.
[00:44:31] JR: I'm assuming you don't mean that all your clients are Christians, correct?
[00:44:34] KM: No. They're not. They’re not.
[00:44:36] JR: But mistreating your employees, it's game over for you.
[00:44:40] KM: That is nonnegotiable for me. As a business owner, one of my greatest joys is cultivating a positive team environment. Clients can ruin that. The wrong clients can ruin that. I know that my success is more dependent on my team and how they feel than it actually is on the clients who are treating my team very well. That’s felt really risky for me. I mean, even to the point where I’ve told my husband, “Hey, babe, I have to – I’m going to let this person go and I’m like feeling all the nerves from it. I just want to let you know, like be praying for me, because I have to have a tough conversation.” This has happened twice.
He’s like, “Well, but can you keep them? Are you sure you need to let them go? How much money is that going to mean?” I can't make a decision based on that. We have values that we have to live by and my team has to be treated a certain way.
That has really – God has really honored that and I've just been blessed by what he's done with, I think, my obedience and not allowing those clients to stay. We have also experienced saying no to clients like before they ever sign with us, because I just didn’t feel right about it. That felt risky as well.
[00:45:56] JR: Yeah. It is risky, but a lot of wisdom there. But also I think that's one really practical way that you glorify God and being obedient to just treating people well. When you're the CEO and you’re largely responsible for what clients are bringing in, that is a direct impact on the lives and the well-being of your team when you're in a service business like you are in. I commend you for that. That takes a lot of courage. That is really hard to do especially when you're far in a really profitable client. I've been in that position before.
[00:46:24] KM: It’s scary. Yeah.
[00:46:26] JR: It’s scary. All right, Kristen. As we wrap up, three questions I love to ask every guest. It doesn't like you’re reading a ton, which I respect actually. I love that. But which books these days are you recommending or gifting the most to others?
[00:46:40] KM: Yeah. Number one is always Essentialism and it has been for about three years.
[00:46:45] JR: I love it.
[00:46:46] KM: Oh my gosh. Everyone needs to understand this principle.
[00:46:50] JR: What’s number two?
[00:46:51] KM: Number two is Run Like Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz, and he something that gave me permission in a way that I was like, “Ooh! I like this.” At the end of his book, he said, “When your business is running like clockwork, you’re probably going to feel a bit bored and like you’re going to have to resist the temptation to create problems and insert yourself because you're no longer the hero.” Then it was like, “Oh, yeah. I'm doing this right.”
It was nice to hear from a business expert, because I consume so little, that I hadn't necessarily built this framework because of what somebody told me to do. It was the spirit working within me and me taking one step at a time. It was cool to hear that. I think that that's really good for people as well.
I think that, as entrepreneurs, once you learn marketing strategy, you can apply it a million different ways. You don't need to learn a new marketing strategy. What you need to learn if you haven't already is what does it mean to own a company? What does it mean to put processes and people in place? That’s the kind of stuff that I think the entrepreneurs need to spend more time diving into.
[00:47:59] JR: All right. What one person would you most like to hear talk about how their faith influences their work?
[00:48:05] KM: Marshawn Evans Daniels. I'm trying to think if I’m mixing up her last name. Oh my gosh! She’s just a bold woman of God. She has a pretty substantial size Instagram account that I follow and I'm like, “Girl –” I don’t know if that’s the way I should say it, but like it’s like a girl crush kind of. It’s like, “Oh my gosh! Everything she says is so good.”
I love the way that she just boldly says truth. How she boldly talks about kingdom principles and how they tie into entrepreneurship. Yeah, I just greatly admire her.
[00:48:43] JR: What kind of business does she run?
[00:48:44] KM: I think she's a – Most of what she does is she speaks, but then she teaches other people how to speak for God's glory. I feel like I need to make sure that I like put her name in the right order.
[00:48:57] JR: Yeah. I’ll have to check her out.
[00:48:58] KM: Yeah. Marshawn Evans Daniels.
[00:49:01] JR: Okay.
[00:49:02] KM: Oh! She is on fire for the Lord.
[00:49:05] JR: You've given up bunch of great nuggets of wisdom that I really hope people are paying attention to this episode so much that this is gold. Leave us with just one. If you had to boil it down to a single piece of advice, to somebody who like you is pursuing mastery of their craft, entrepreneurship, or really anything for the glory of God and the good of others, what would you leave them with?
[00:49:26] KM: If the Lord’s called you to entrepreneurship, trust him to guide the steps. You don't need to look to a million different people to tell you what you should be doing. Yes, God is going to use people to help guide you along the way, but like let him lead that charge. Make God the CEO. That means that he's involved in your strategizing. You're doing it for his glory because you’re honoring your time. You have your priorities in order. You can trust him, and do that. Do that. Trust him.
[00:50:00] JR: Yeah. That’s good. That's good. Hey, Kristin, I just want to commend you for building such a fantastic business. I have a lot of respect what you and your team are doing at YesBoss VA. Thank you for freeing up so many entrepreneurs to do the work that God created them to do by doing the work that you were created to do, and thank you for serving your customers and employees through the ministry of excellence. Your work is incredibly important even if you never shared the gospel with a client or a team member. You are loving your neighbor as yourself and you're doing it really well
Hey, if you want to put Kristin's team to work for you, you can visit yesbossva.com. Kristin, thanks for hanging out with me.
[00:50:39] KM: Thank you so much. It’s been an honor and a privilege. I love this conversation.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:50:44] JR: I hope you guys enjoyed that episode, and if you haven't already read Essentialism, what are you doing? I think I recommend this every single episode of the show. Hey, if you're joining the Call to Mastery, make sure you subscribe to the show so you’ll never miss an episode in the future. If you're already subscribed, you know what I'm good ask you to do. Go take 30 seconds and review this podcast on Apple Podcast, wherever you review podcast, so more people can find this content.
Hey, thanks for listening to this show this week. I’ll see you guys next time.
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