Ep 81 Transcript: How to Double Your Income by Delegating Smarter with Kirsten Graham

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I am being joined by Kirsten Graham. She's a CEO of Six Figure Business Coaching and she has built multiple successful companies while learning a very crucial lesson along the way. And that is that time is our most valuable asset as business owners. This is probably not a new thing for you to learn, but we're always trying to figure out, how do I get more of that time? And if we can't protect that time, then we're...

we're not going to be able to actually grow our business sustainably. So Kirsten actually helps business owners to gain visibility and authority through strategic video marketing, podcast guesting, helps you to understand how to create the landing pages, create the funnels, have those all done for you through our software VAs, helps you to understand your books, you're reading your profit and loss statements, having someone organize your financial so you know exactly where you're at and what you need to do financially to move your business forward through her bookkeeping VAs.

So all of these are intended to help to free up your time in order to focus on growing your income so that you don't have to balance between generating revenue, serving your clients, and growing your company. So we're going to be talking today about how we can break free from that. I need to be a solo CEO myth that ends up keeping you stuck and exhausted all the time. So Kirsten, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast.

Thanks, Shauna Lynn I'm excited. I could talk about these topics all day long. So you might have to cut me off. That's totally fair. But I mean, I think our audience is going to be really excited to hear what you've got to say about this because it's a common challenge. And I think, you know, I can't say this loud enough. And I know I've said it before. So if you're tuning in, not for the first time, I'm going to apologize, but not apologize for being a broken record on this. But the reality is that for some reason,

women seem to think that we need to do it all on our own. And like you've built multiple businesses. When did you first realize that the whole I have to do it all mentality was actually gonna hold you back from your success? Yeah, so my dad used to joke when I was little that I should join the army as long as they let me start off as a sergeant, right? So I have always been very good at delegating. I'm the oldest of three.

⁓ But when it comes to business, I've always been self-employed. I've mortgage companies that had large staff. I've had title companies, so a gym, so just lots of different businesses. But learning how to, one, your value shouldn't be tied up in what you can do. You don't need to do everything yourself. And I think that's where it really stems from is I have to do it myself or I have to know exactly how to do it before I can delegate it. And if you think about a franchise model, people buy franchises,

You don't buy a McDonald's because you want to learn how to flip burgers, right? You buy a McDonald's because it's a proven process. You don't need to know how to cook the food. You just need to learn how to manage people. And I think that's really important. And where women sell themselves really short is women are incredible managers and they're incredible leaders. And what we have found is that our clients keep their virtual assistants for ages because they treat them well. They build great relationships with them. And that's where it really becomes a win-win.

The VA has an awesome job. You know, our client has this great support and this team member on their team. So really it's about understanding that you can delegate things that you don't love doing instead of wasting hours or weeks or months of your year learning how to do something that you don't even want to do.

Well, I think one of the things that you kind of touched on was about understanding where their value is. Like, where is your time actually best spent? If you were to take an objective look, if you stepped out of the company for a second and you're an outsider looking in and you see that the owner of the company, the CEO of the company is the one who's like doing the bookkeeping, for example, or even answering the phone, is that really where you should be?

And there are some people who say, like, yes, I want to be the one answering the phone. Fine. All the power to you. There are things you can hang on to if you really feel you need to hang on to those things. But those things that as you're saying, those things that you're not really good at, those are the things that are going to zap your energy. And if it takes you three hours to do a bookkeeping task that could take a VA 15 minutes to accomplish, what is that doing to your time? You're draining your energy. It's draining your it's making you mentally.

fatigued because you're thinking about how you have to do this and trying to figure it all out. And I love how you say you don't buy a McDonald's to learn how to flip burgers. You don't actually have to know all the ins and outs. High level. Yes. You need to know what's going on with the numbers in your business. Absolutely. The people who are if you're just passing it all over and like, I don't know, money's just always there. And like, that's not the way it's great that they've got that autonomy and that you've empowered them to own the rule. But there's a difference between that and just turning a blind eye to things. So how do we incorporate

someone else into our business in a way that's going to feel good for us, like feel like, okay, yes, I can give this control up while also feeling like you're still a part of things. Right. So we first created our program, Love Your Profit, to help clients outsource their bookkeeping. That program is really about empowering the business owner to understand what is important for them to track and why it's important. Because, we think about bookkeeping as something like

Oh, I've got to my taxes. So I need it. Right. Right. Reality is it can tell you things. It could tell you so much about your business. Anytime we decide to roll something out, we do a lot of market research. And I think I did like 87 interviews, um, just to find out what people felt. And I was very surprised at the number of people who felt like they were afraid to ask their CPA a question, or if they did, they felt like they were taught down to, or they felt like they didn't even know the lingo to think about hiring a bookkeeper. So.

You know, that is a lot that goes into it as far as hiring and delegating, but we really focus on empowering our clients to think about their bookkeeping VA as a team member. It's someone you brought on, we give you all the processes and the systems and you know, we've onboarded them and vetted them and all of that, but we really bang on. Like you said, I'm sorry, but not sorry, I'm gonna bang on about this, that you have meetings with that bookkeeper regularly in the beginning and maybe once a week.

and then it can go to once a month, but you are gonna be empowered to understand really where your money is going. Do you need to rate your prices? And so it's really been awesome to hear a lot of our clients say, I never understood any of this. And now I don't have to do anything, but I get to this great meeting and go over my numbers and ask questions and not feel like I'm stupid and to really.

you know, even just be able to talk about with my bookkeeping VA, well, should I raise the price of this or going through all of my expenses and cutting things out? Like subscriptions are the worst, right? You can have subscriptions you never use. And so we see a lot of people get rid of a lot of waste in the beginning with working with their bookkeeping VA. But it really is about.

Following a process is what we try to provide. So you can go online and hire your own person. You can go to an agency. What we do is a little bit different. We coach our clients and we train their virtual assistants for them. So it's a very different model. But we really spend the most time trying to empower our client to feel like that competent CFO so that when they go into managing their bookkeeper, you're not managing the tasks that they're doing. You're just managing the overall picture of where your money's going. And that enables you to make smart decisions.

I think that would give people so much more incentive to actually do it. Because I think it can be very intimidating as soon as you start looking at spreadsheets or talking about spreadsheets and, I need to go dig that number out and I to go find that receipt for this and I got to go figure all this other stuff out. And you're thinking that you need to get into all the nitty gritty details of things and all the nuances of things. And the reality is that you do need just high level. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm very much a fan of having

being able to have access to and being able to easily export and read where the money's going, not just categorizing a P &L. Right. Or it's like, you got this much in sales and this much in marketing, but being able to actually break it down. Like, how much are you spending on your website? How much are you spending on something, your project logistics or support or whatever? I remember I taught a class about profit planning a couple of years ago at one of the conferences that I was at. And one of the women in the class was saying how until she had done the exercise of actually going through and

outlining what her monthly expenses and revenue were, they didn't realize that they had rented like a dumpster bin several months earlier that they were still paying for. No one knew that they were paying, I think it was like six or $700 a month. And some companies don't notice that six or $700 a month, know, depending on the size of your company, you're not going to notice that. But that is going to add up and that is going to impact your bottom line. What could you do for an extra $600, $700 a month where that money could be?

diverted to whether it's just profit. Yay. Or if you actually diverted into a marketing campaign or whatever else. So I think that being able to have that access to that information is so key. But I love what you're saying about how they're going to be a part of the team and they're going to help to to give you what you need without you having to get so lost in the weeds on it. I think that's where people definitely get scared when it comes to that, for sure. Yeah. Our bookkeeper last month said

Oh, we're just, you know, we got through all of our numbers, like you said, not just the profit and loss, but looking at each category. And she said, oh, wow, you spent twice as much this month on software as you did last month. Well, we knew we had two renewals for Zoom and we pay it annually. So that made sense, right? So when she brought it up, I already knew what it was, but it was nice to go back and look at each of those categories to make sure we knew exactly what they were. And that's the power of it. Like you said, that $600.

It is so surprising to so many business owners how much money they're wasting and they don't even realize it. The other thing is, most bookkeepers don't say to you, hey, you have three or four different offers. Would you like to break the revenue down so you can see exactly how much money comes in from each of your offers, which I think is really important. So that's one of things we talk about is having your income broken down so you can look at it month after month and see where your money's coming from. And again,

If you're running a campaign, you can have your bookkeeper put that campaign specifically for that particular product or offer. So then you could actually track your profit and loss based on that individual offer. There's so many things can do. Yeah. Like you said, it's definitely very empowering once you have all that information and know exactly where your money is going. So now let's say that someone's like, OK, I've got the bookkeeping part figured out.

but where I could really use help is like you were talking about landing pages. I actually just had a call earlier this week and she was saying, she's like, I know that I need like a freebie otherwise known as a lead magnet or an opt-in. And she said, but I don't even know like how to build that. Like what is the freebie? then, and of course, you know, so we start talking further about this and like, well, there's a whole lot more that you need besides just, you know, a landing page and a freebie.

We need the whole sales funnel mapped out. We need to understand like what is the technology behind this? Where are people going and what are we leading them to ultimately? You can give a free thing away, but if it's not leading them anywhere, you're just wasting a whole bunch of time doing that. But this is where I think a lot of people get really caught up. And like I don't know if I can stress this enough, but you know, we just talked about bookkeeping. I was saying I said this before. My dad was an accountant for over 30 years and he actually handled my books when I first started my business. Thank goodness, because.

I am a numbers person. have a bachelor of mathematics degree. I worked as an analyst for several years. I hate accounting. OK, these are two very different things. Let me tell you, do I love me a good spreadsheet? Yes. Do I want to do the bookkeeping? Absolutely not. Never. I hate it. I don't even like I don't even like talking to my bookkeeper. I'll admit just like if they have a question about something, I don't know, figure it out. Like I don't.

I wanted again, I want to know where my numbers are. want to know that high level. But if you ask me why I spent twenty two dollars on October 13th last year, I don't care. Like it's that's the part of the bookkeeping that I don't I don't love. And here's the thing. I'm not supposed to be a bookkeeper, obviously. And I think so many of us as entrepreneurs feel like, I've got to wear all the hats. This is entrepreneurship. Is it because I'd like to break that myth that we have to wear all of the hats and you were not meant to be

the bookkeeper. You were not meant to be the marketer. So when people are coming at you with sales funnels and lead magnets and opt ins and landing pages and all this different terminology, you're looking at them like they've got two heads. Okay, first of all, you should learn the terminology. Yes, but you don't need to know how to actually do each one of those things because let me tell you, if you are starting from ground zero right now, chances are whatever you're to put out there is not going to be successful anyway. Like you need someone who actually knows what they're doing. So this is something that your team

also assists with is all of that software stuff you said, right? Yeah, my business partner is very tech savvy. So we're very different, but we tend to attract people that are more like me. Like, you know, I, I joke that I swear at my computer and thread to throw it in the lake at least, you know, once or twice a day. So, uh, you know, I, I just don't enjoy it. Uh, but I love the big picture of it. I love thinking about how I want to, my funnels to work and what I would have done, but that took time to understand all of that. Yeah. So we, we had moved over to high level, go high level.

I want to say four, a little over four years ago. And we absolutely love the software. We've built tons of funnels, coffee chats, sales calls, lead magnet funnels, all these great funnels. And we wanted to share them with people. And at that time we couldn't do that unless we white labeled the software. So that's what we did. We white labeled it. It's called From Leads to Sales. You can check it out at fromleadstosales.com. But what we decided to do, because our niche is probably very much like yours. We focus on the solprenor. We focus on the person.

who doesn't have thousands of dollars to spend every month, but desperately needs help, right? The people who, if they get the help, eventually they can spend thousands of dollars a month, because they can actually grow a larger business if they can grow by themselves. So when people sign up for the software, they actually are paired with a virtual assistant who sets up the software. They connect it to their calendar. They get their emails going out. They do the A2 compliance so that they can get a texting number. So we do this, all of this setup for them. And then after that,

If they want a website built, it's very affordable. Like a five page website is $485. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ If they want to buy a block of time with a virtual assistant, it's $97 for four hours. So we really give them the support that they needed, a very affordable rate, which allows them to do several things. First, if you're like me, you don't want to do it, it can be done for you. But we have clients who actually book an hour, call a week with one of our VAs.

so that they do things together so that they can learn it. Or they might book a couple hours to learn how to do just the parts they need to do. So it would really kind of cater to people who want it done for them. They want to learn how to do it themselves. And of course we have some people that are tech savvy like Jeannie. And I think that's where strategy comes in. So we also host live weekly calls which allows us to talk about strategy. How can you use this? Like you said, you're building a lead magnet. Where is it going to go after that? What happens next?

⁓ So thinking about like I was talking to a lady today, she actually does, ⁓ she handles the contracts for real estate agents. So she's the coordinator, contract coordinator. And so we're talking about when she goes out networking. I said, you can have, first of all, you can take a picture with your phone of your business card and it'll upload it right to a contact in the software. And then you can put a tag on it. So she tags it networking.

What it will do is it will send out a message to say, I love meeting you at this networking event. I'd like to get to know you better. I believe in relationships and I'd to have you book a coffee chat. But because her ideal client is obviously real estate agents, she has a different tag that is networking real estate agents where she can send them an email, inviting them to a coffee chat, but it has different messaging. And that's what, know, that there's the strategies people don't realize as far as segmenting your list and how to segment it and why do you want to segment it and just talking that through.

So we spend a lot of time helping our clients discover what's the best way for them to use the software. And this is so important because it also goes back to if I'm doing it myself, I'm going to cut some corners most likely. So even though in your program you're showing, you're talking about how they can do it, literally do it themselves or buy a block of time for someone else to do it with them or collaboration. But the reality is that if you're just left to your own devices,

chances are you're going to cut some corners because it's just what we do when we're doing too many things. When we're wearing all the hats, we're not doing anything super well. So in what you're talking about there, I would be thinking, I'm like, cool, I went networking, I'm going to send out a message afterwards and I might even have it standardized or automated in some way, but it's going to be the same message to everyone. I'm probably not going to get into the details of, well, should this be different for based on my audience? But the reality is that I tell every one of my clients,

when you're putting any marketing material out there, whatever it is, whether it's literally you at a networking event, whether it's your business card, whether it's your flyer, you have to know exactly who's going to be receiving that and what the audience is going to be looking for. And if we, if we market to everyone, we market to no one, right? So being able to be specific on your messaging and what actually matters to them, because the reality is that real estate agents and what matters to them is going to be different.

than someone else that she might meet. And again, her ideal client is actually a real estate agent. So the messaging that she's sending to someone who's not necessarily going to be a client is going to be a little bit different as someone that she's just looking to build an alliance with, build a bit of a relationship with versus someone that could be a potential either source of other real estate agent leads for her or someone who actually wants to hire her themselves. So I love that you're

that you can get into that segmenting with her. again, if she was doing that on her own, chances are she's going to cut some corners there. She's going to send one message out that's going to be less impactful. So she's still putting the same amount of effort into it, but getting less results. I think that's what's key to is that technically it's more work to do all these things, not when you have the support that you need to do it. Absolutely. We hear so often from our clients that being able to come to the live calls each week.

allows them to see what other people are doing and hear the questions they're asking. So you actually learn so much from somebody who's maybe two or three steps ahead of you. Or maybe they're in a different industry, but they've got a great idea for a quiz funnel or something. So we have to realize we're very isolated in a lot of ways when you're a solprenuer, but you're also bombarded by information online. So being able to be part of a conversation on Zoom with people is a very different dynamic than just having information come to you.

And again, we might be talking about this strategy like with this young lady, and that might trigger something in you, even though your business is different of what you could do. So those are the areas we lean into. Yeah, I'm definitely a big fan of group coaching. That's one of the reasons why I have a group coaching program myself, because you learn you don't know what you don't know. And yeah, someone else's question definitely triggers something. So I have a couple more follow up questions for that, but we're going to take a really quick break to hear this quick message and we'll be right back.

All right, welcome back to the Real Women Real Business podcast. And OK, so we've been talking about outsourcing your bookkeeping, outsourcing some of your marketing. We've been framing it about people who are maybe that's not their their high level skill. Maybe that's something that they're not as comfortable with. And so it's energy draining because it's taking so much effort for them. But what about the flip side of this? What about the person who's like, listen, I worked for 10 years in accounting. I can do my own books. But this business that they're building is a completely different business. Or listen, I was a marketing

manager for a number of years and I know how to do all these things or I know all the tech stuff like I actually know a lot of tech myself. I actually come from a computer science background. I knew I was making websites in HTML before they had website builders and so the challenge is I'm like well I can do all of this stuff. Why would I hire someone else? So what do you what happens when you've got that person who's like I can totally do all of this? How do you help them to to get over that mentality of like but?

Nobody's going to do it as well as I can, or I know everything that I'm doing. If I can do it, why shouldn't I do it? How do you help those entrepreneurs? So my business partner, her background's marketing. She's a graphic designer. Like you started building websites long before, you know, there were templates and things like that. And she worked for MTV. She worked for a large ad agency in London. But the reality is, is it the best use of your time? It always goes back to that. And our rule of thumb is

If she and I are talking about a new landing page or something that we want to have designed, and I can just see her lighting up like a Christmas tree, because she's so excited talking about all the creatives and everything. I always say to her, do you want to build this or do you want to delegate it? And she'll think about it and she'll say, you my husband's at a rugby match this weekend, the kids are gone. I would like to kind of sink my teeth into doing this creative thing. Maybe I'll get it so far and then hand it off.

Or she may say no, because we've got this big promotion coming and I want to stay focused on the tasks that I need to get done. And so we'll delegate it. What happens with that whole thing of I can do it better than everyone else. At the end of the day, if it's 80 % perfect, so to speak, not necessarily bookkeeping, but at end of the day, if something comes back and it's designed and we just have to give them a couple of tweaks, that's great. But what happens is when someone's on your team for a long period of time,

they can learn to design very much in a way that you like, but I cannot tell you the number of times that Jeannie has come back and said, my gosh, like this is 10 times better than I would have ever, like I wouldn't even have thought of that, and I love this. So remember when it comes to creativity, it really can be about her talking to that VA who's going to do that particular project and they're bouncing ideas off of each other, and then it comes back and it's like, it blows her away. So even though she can do it herself, it doesn't mean she can't delegate it.

The other thing is there are certain things in our business that drive sales. And what I find often is that it's safer to sit on Canva and do something than it is to have that follow-up phone call. Right. It's safer to spend five hours trying to learn a software to build, you know, something that could have been done at least at half an hour by VA.

⁓ my gosh, Kirsten, you nailed it with that. I think that is so true. We kind of feel like, this is my comfort zone. And if I don't follow up on that proposal, then they can't say no. Or, you know, it's just sort of this fear of getting out there. But it's so true, though, I feel like sometimes we kind of hide behind the busy work as opposed to doing the real work that's going to move our business forward. And that actually that was the next point that I wanted to ask you about is, you know, if someone's listening to this and saying, but.

that's going to cost me money and I don't have the money to give to them. Like how does this how does this help them grow? I think that's the big thing that we kind of keep coming back to is hiring a VA help getting these tasks offloaded will help you grow. But initially to people it just looks like money pouring out of their pockets basically. How do you help them with to overcome that mentality to get to where they're comfortable with this and seeing the growth aspect of it? Where does that growth come in?

So before I answer that, I will have to tell you, I had a client that said to me one day, you know, he's probably in his 50s. He said, I can tell you right now, I would go back to living like a college student on ramen noodles before I give up my VA. Like, right? So he was just joking. obviously he's a cash load. But like when you realize how valuable it is to have a person supporting you in your business, it changes everything. We've heard so many people say, I was so isolated and lonely in my business. And now that I have a VA, you know, I feel supported and I can have these great conversations about things.

things, I don't feel so alone. you know, as far as deciding if you're going to delegate it, you know, or should you do it yourself?

identify the four or five things that you do that truly brings in revenue. So whether that is really dialing in on your Facebook ads and just mastering those, whether that's out locally networking and meeting people, whether that is following up, follow-up is imperative for all of us. And just to give you an example, my VA applied to be on your podcast and we do six follow-ups. You said yes after our six follow-ups.

really? OK. Yeah, because I watch she documents what she's doing. So follow up is so very important. You and I wouldn't have met if she wasn't doing that follow up. Absolutely. And I actually can't even take credit because my VA is the one who's doing the booking. And I also know that we got a little bit behind because we were so blocked out for bookings for so long. So we try not to bring someone on and say, we're going to record your episode today. We're not going to air it for six months. So we sometimes will hold on to people that we actually want.

⁓ So in our defense, sometimes it's not about the follow-up, but you're absolutely right though, because I feel like so often I have won jobs because I followed up, because I didn't fall off of their radar. Because a lot of times we have every intention of going back to that email that we flagged in our inbox, but now it's three weeks later and that got buried and I just don't even see it anymore. yeah. And I'm embarrassed because I told you I'd reach out to you in a couple of days.

Right? Have you ever done that? Like, oh, yeah, Shauna Lynn I'll reach out to you like Monday or Tuesday next week. And that week goes by and then you feel like a schmuck. So you're not going to reach out, right? Right. So you're just going to. So and that I think that's human nature. But if you think about the four or five things that are actually going to make you money and you spend the most time doing that, when it comes to automation, I love automation. Yes. But I also have automation send me a text to say it's time to reach out to this person personally.

and then I call them. So you're automation in with good old fashioned just having great conversations. Yeah. Well, and even like, so I do have a marketing VA. And one of the things that she helps handling a lot of the marketing tasks. But you what I still do myself is I do majority of my own social media engagement. So I'm the one who, if you follow me, for example, at @ShaunaLynnSimon

Just a small little plug there. But if you follow me, I will send you a voice note thanking you for the follow. And it's not a pre-recorded thing. Like I'm going to, if I can, if I know what your name is, if your name is on your profile, I'm calling you out by name to let you know that this is being sent directly to you. Because what I do is I look at who's followed me. Every single person who follows me, I go and I see who's followed me. I check out your profile, I look at what you're doing and I send you a message to say hello because I want to make real connections. I don't want to automate that. But.

by having my marketing VA, I will admit I got a little behind on some of those messages before I brought her onto my team because I just couldn't do all the things. And so the thing that was we were missing out on was probably one of the more important ones. That is one of the most important things that I do. literally no one else can do it. I mean, I suppose technically I could get an AI program to mimic my voice and come up with something, but it's still going to feel disingenuous to me. I would still prefer.

to do every one of those little voice notes myself. And unless I get to millions of followers, which I mean, we can try at Shauna Lynn and Simon, you know, but unless I'm getting to millions of followers, I still want that personal touch. And even then I'd say that I'd still want to be doing that that personal touch because I love doing it. But that is something that is that where my highest value is as CEO. Maybe not, but I'm very much aware of what she allows me to do by taking certain things off of my plate.

Yeah, that's what the marketing virtual assistants do for our clients. They either edit their YouTube video or their podcast. They take care of audio editing. They upload their episodes. They take care of all the SEO. They repurpose that for social media content and schedule it. They set it up to go out to their email list. They do all of the backend and that does free our clients up just to do the personal touch. So you don't need to be the person uploading a clip about your latest episode, right? No, that can be done for you.

Leaning into, because again, that's one of the five things that makes you money is that personal contact you're having with people. And, know, hate to say it, but sales is the contact sport. And so you're not, making contact with people. You're probably not making sales. I think, yeah. And again, so many people are afraid of sales. think it's terrible or whatever, which is why they'd rather do all those stuff in their business. It isn't actually going to help them make sales. But I think when you think about sales is just, you know,

I offer this, if it's something you need, we'd love to have a conversation and see if we can work together. At the end of day, you're not strong arming anybody, you're not bullying them, you're just having a conversation. And if you could truly help them go from point A to point B, they're gonna hire you. Well, mean, sales is definitely a whole other beast in a different conversation, but I do really like what you're talking about there though, because I think this is key that sales does kind of sound like a dirty word for a lot of people, but I think...

If you're looking at sales as every relationship is transactional, yeah, it's going to feel icky. It's not going to feel right. I have a lot of conversations every single week with people who want to work with me or are interested in the resources that I have. And for some of them, it's a matter of here's a couple of great podcast episodes to listen to that I think will really support you. And others, it's a I think that my group coaching program is really the right next step for you or one on one coaching is the right next step for you.

But it doesn't mean that if you send me a message on Instagram, I'm not going to instantly say to you, so do you want to be a one on one client? Do you want to book your coaching assessment? Call with me like this. I don't directly go to transaction because first of all, I don't know you well enough to know what you actually need. I'm not going to make assumptions on that, but I genuinely just want to get to know people and build those relationships. And that's what that is a part of sales. So when you're saying sales is a contact sport, not every contact is sales, but every sale requires contact. Absolutely.

Yeah, I love the way you put that because again, you know, like the lady who was talking about out networking, but her target audience is real estate agents. Well, some people might think, well, why is she out networking? You know, why is she not just networking with real estate agents? But you know, all of these other people know real estate agents that they can personally introduce her to. Exactly. with her business, she needs services or products. So she's also wanting to buy from people that she's networking with. So it really is about relationship building.

And then I think if you sell with integrity, you're only bringing people into your business if it's the right fit for them. Then I think it's a win-win for everyone. I actually had this conversation with a colleague earlier today. She is the CEO of another business and she was talking about, she just launched a new branch to her business and was talking about some of the connections that she had made recently and how all those connections had come up. And as she's talking to us, like, you've got to, this is gold. You've got to put this into a course or something because

The way that she approaches everything, she doesn't look at everything with dollar signs in her eyes. She's not looking at like, what can you do for me? She's looking at what someone else is doing and saying, hmm, how can I support that? Well, what if you did this? And can I give you this idea here? And can we get together for this? And she's always looking at it from their perspective of how can she provide value to them? And with that comes sales. Sometimes the value that she can provide and the support that she can provide is by offering one of her services.

But she's not going into it like that. She's not looking at everyone like I almost imagine us having like those, you know, AI glasses on and scanning a crowd. And it's like picking out that this is a client. This is a client. You're like zoning in on them. No, no. Like you're looking at each person as how can we potentially build a relationship here? And some are going to go further than others. Some you're going to have a conversation with today and you might not talk to them again for another year. But then next year when you talk to them.

Now you figured out where you actually connect and where you're going to overlap your businesses. You never know where a connection is going to go, whether it's an old connection, a new connection, a rekindled connection, whatever it is, you just never know. And I think that when we take the transaction focus out of it, don't get rid of it completely. We all need to make money. is the big thing. We're not in business if we don't make money. And there are some days where I feel like I just give up.

whole lot of free resources this week, but I'm not quite sure where the income's coming in. And those are my goodwill weeks. And sometimes we have those weeks. Don't get me wrong, it happens. But at the end of the day, I do also have to prioritize and come back into focus and say, listen, it's great to be altruistic and want to help all these people. But if they can't afford what I have to offer, I have to draw the line somewhere. So we have to have some limitations to things.

So I don't want to say take the transaction out of it completely. We just shouldn't be leading with that because if you do, you're going to end up with mismatched clients or people who are unhappy with what is it? What is it you're delivering? You know, you're not going to be happy delivering the services or whatever it is that you're doing for them. So we want to make sure that that's aligned as well. Absolutely. And it's funny because, you know, everybody wants to build an online business. And I think about businesses, most businesses are online and offline businesses, right? So so I always like.

I always tell our clients, if you live in a halfway decent sized city, there's probably a million dollars in your own backyard. Right? So if you get out and kind of pound the payment, meet people, go to networking events, you I'm gonna meet you and you're not ideal. We're not ideal clients for each other, but we have, you know, the same types of clients. So we can refer to each other. can become, you know, affiliate partners for each other, whatever that looks like. So thinking about how, you know, you can just help each other. Or like I said, you know, going back to the lady who does the contracts,

for real estate agents, every person knows half a dozen real estate agents. Yes, you can't throw a rock in my town without hitting a real estate agent. right. And so, yeah, I was just telling her today, I said, I've got a list of a handful of agents I want to introduce you to just because I met her out networking. We've had a copy chat. We got to know each other. She's interested in the software. We've had a couple of conversations about that. Just brainstorming how she would use it with her industry. But I said, I'm one of my...

friends who's an agent on Saturday, we're going boating and I'm going to talk to her about you, know, because I know so, but I, but what will happen is when I talk to my friend Michelle and I say, you know, I know Alison really well, she's awesome. And she does this. If you need this, you might want to check her out. There's a very good chance she will have a conversation with Alison. Because she trusts you and she trusts your recommendation. Absolutely. And you're also not going to put in that effort though, if you haven't had some conversations with Alison and feel like

she's going to be a good fit. She's operating with integrity. You don't have to work with someone to know how they operate and how they're going to treat any referrals that you send their way. So you want to make sure that that's going to be a good fit. OK, so let's say that someone is looking to do some outsourcing, whether it's to your company or to another company, whether it's a marketing VA, bookkeeping VA. What are some things that they should be looking for to ensure that it is a good fit? Because I do think that when it comes to VAs, sometimes

There's sort of this it's a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand, there's so many VAs out there these days. And on the other hand, though, people are like, I don't know how to find a good VA. And so what you end up doing is taking the first what I call warm body that comes your way and latching on to me like, OK, cool. I'm looking for a marketing VA. I found exactly one marketing VA. You're it. And and that's not to say they're not going to be a good fit. But how do they know in their conversations that that is that's actually going to be a good fit for them? So I would always say hire slowly, fire quickly.

So you really want to start with having a detailed job description of what you want that person to do. You need to have clarity on that period. After that, you can create a job post and you want to make sure that job post is very clear on what hard skills and soft skills they need to have to do that job. And then I would say spend a week or two interviewing and doing second interviews. I think as women, we get excited about people and we really like them. So it's very easy to just say, oh yeah, I'll just hire you.

but you're not doing yourself or your business justice. As a CEO, we have to invest the time. So you can also ask them to do a small task for you to see how they work with you. But definitely invest the time to hire the right person. That's number one. The second thing is have an onboarding process and training process lined up before you hire them. You don't wanna bring them on and be like, let's see, what are you gonna do here? So have the structure. And I don't know who.

I heard the same before, don't know who said it, but if you do something more than three times, and it has more than three steps, document it so you can delegate it. start creating processes around that. So if you have a certain type of, know, certain way you edit your videos and you want them to edit like that, that would be easy to show them what you've done and what you want. ⁓ If you haven't, you haven't had your own videos edited, you know, maybe you could show them other people's videos. Hey, I like this editing style, I don't like that.

So you have to communicate with them what you like. They're not mind readers. But the other thing is on the flip side of that, if you hire someone and you realize really quickly it's not a good fit, just say, you know, I'm really sorry. This isn't a good fit. You know, I just, it's not working and I want you to free you up so you can go find something that's a better fit for you. And I can find someone that's a better fit for me. So make those decisions, but also don't think that you're terrible at hiring or you know, that outsourcing is horrible, right? So it's interesting because over the years,

you know, also as a business coach over the years, I've helped so many people understand that when someone leaves, you could often hire a better person. So even if this person leaves and you think, my gosh, you know, my business is going to fall apart because this is my lead manager who takes care of my 25 other employees. My business is going to fall apart. The reality is it won't fall apart. And the chances are you can hire someone better than that person simply because over the years you've gotten better at hiring.

With each hire you get better. And you also can, you can look at that job description again and dial it in based on what that person was or was not doing. So, and I hear it all the time, like I was so upset or I was so devastated and so and so laughed. And now I've got this person and it's been six months and it's, it's regenerate, it's re-energized me and it's changed everything. So whether you're a solprenor, hiring your first VA or whether you're a big corporation, hiring is one of the most challenging things you will do.

but it's also the number one thing that's gonna let you scale your business. Yeah, and I definitely agree with all of that. I think that having that clarity as to what is it they're going to be able to be doing, understanding what is it you're looking for in terms of a fit and not being afraid to make a change when it's not right. Yeah, absolutely. And even like the onboarding aspect of it, I know a lot of people get really stuck on that, ⁓ but what you were saying about, like I say the same thing if you-

For me, it's actually if you've done something more than two times, document it because once you've done it twice and I'm not just talking about documenting for delegating, I don't want to think about it the next time I do it. I don't want to think about how I need to do it. So I'm going to write it down so I can follow those instructions because there is nothing I hate more than like, how did I do this again? What am I doing for this? But there we have so many tools that I I've been creating SOPs in my business pretty much since its inception. I opened my first business back in 2008 and I've been documenting things ever since.

and I even know what the term SOPs was when I first started doing it. But now I know, standard operating procedures for anyone who else is like, I don't know what SOPs are. ⁓ But these are your standard operating procedures. But nowadays, you know how easy it is to do a screen share video, get that screen share video transcribed, pop it into AI and get your SOPs created? Seconds. all you have to do is talk your way through doing an actual task. It's pretty much that simple.

Yes, you might want to throw in some screenshots and there's a little bit more to it. But at the end of the day, it's incredibly easy to do. And even if all you have right now is the screen share video, if you are hiring an admin, well, guess what? Send it over to them to turn it into SOPs. They can take it to the next step. Again, this is where all that growth comes in. But I don't want the onboarding or the idea of, you know, document all the tasks or any of this to hold us back from being able to move forward, because I think that sometimes we get paralyzed.

by the my gosh, hiring is such a beast. It can be, but when you're hiring a VA, what's nice though is that you're not hiring someone, you're not bringing someone in who's never worked in someone else's company before and seen things from the inside and dealt with some of the chaos of being one of the first hires. Like they are accustomed to doing this and they're going to adapt and adjust and make your life easier. Bring them into the fold. If it's messy, it's messy, but you'll be messy together. But as long as you have

some ideas to what it is you need them to do, let's get them going on it because the more they can start taking off your plate now, the easier it be for you to be able to send other things their way as well. Absolutely. love the fact that you, SOPs, we joke they're not sexy, but they're so necessary. once you learn to use them and to lean into them, like you said, if I have to do something, I don't want to have to go figure it out again.

Or if I want to tell someone else to do it, I can just say, here, it's already been documented, go do it. But yeah, it's incredible. I kind of think of that as like the backbone of a business. The SOPs are the backbone that can help you really build and grow. The other thing is they're not ever really fully finished, right? Things change. have to be updated. No, and that's why I always say do it in like a living, breathing document or something that can just be easily updated. Don't worry about getting them perfect. But making sure that, they're

you're documenting things all along the way, but it doesn't need to be this immense, ⁓ you know, intense task that's just taking all of your focus. Like it's just to do it as you're going because you're going to. I love my SOPs and you will learn to love them, I promise. But I don't ever want people feeling like that's going to keep them from doing anything like, no, no, no. The SOPs actually help you to do more, I promise. ⁓ So this has been really, really helpful. You've actually got a resource that.

can help them to double their income with a marketing VA. kind of taking our conversation a little bit further. It is at Outsourcingforbosses.com. Just tell me a little bit more about that resource.

I'm gonna stop and pause because it's been a while since I've looked at it and Jeannie and I just talked about updating it. yeah. We're in middle of a whole new rebrand, but yeah, it's gonna talk to you about what tasks of EA can do or what marketing you should consider having them do. I think with AI coming on the scene, it's gonna be more important than ever for us to really be in our content. I think it's been that way for past four five years, but with AI, you're gonna start seeing a lot of the same content that AI is writing for everyone.

There's no longer going to be social and social media. It's going to be bots talking to each other. So I feel like videoing or podcasting is a great way for you to show up and share your personality. And we do talk a lot about that in that document. I couldn't agree with that more. mean, even if you don't like being on video, there are so many ways that you can show up on video without showing up on video. It's not the same as it used to be. There's a lot of different ways that you can be visible and very real. And yeah, take a little bit of the AI.

out of, yes, we're all using AI. And if you're not using AI, you should be because you don't need to be a hero here and use all of your energy and your time. AI can be a support, but AI needs to be personally driven still. So I think we're definitely going in that direction. AI does not replace a marketing VA, just to be clear on this. But they use lot of AI. Absolutely. That complements it for sure. Yes. There's definitely opportunities here.

Kirsten, this has been wonderful. really appreciate you coming on and sharing so much information. This has been so incredibly valuable. If someone's listening to this episode and you want them to take one thing away, maybe it's one action item or one just nugget of takeaway item, what would you like that one thing to be? Just write down the four or five things that you do in your business that really drives revenue and then figure out how you can spend more time doing that.

Sometimes it's eliminate. I love the saying eliminate, automate, delegate. What could you eliminate? Sometimes we do things that don't even need to be done. So free up your time to focus on those four five things. And then once you've got that dialed in, start thinking about how can I delegate the other things off of my plate so I can spend time really growing my business. So true. And the things that you are really high value at and passionate at as well.

are the things that are really going to move you forward. So you want to make sure that you have that excitement for it. So if something's dragging you down, we want to start delegating those things. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Kirsten. It has been such a pleasure having you on the show. appreciate you joining me today. Thank you so much. I had a great time. Amazing. So listen, if you're listening to this episode and what we're saying here is resonating with you today, I really hope that you will allow us to continue to be a part of your journey. Don't forget to tune in again every week. We drop new episodes every Tuesday at 7 AM Eastern time.

Don't forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcast. And of course, as always, if you've really enjoyed this episode today, the best way to not only show your support for this show, but also for your fellow women entrepreneurs is to go ahead and share this episode with someone else that you know really needs to hear this message today. It would mean a lot to us and I'm sure would mean a lot to them as well. And until next time, keep thriving.