Boosting Efficiency and Finding Freedom: Kris Ward’s Entrepreneurial Insights

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the work at home rockstar podcast excited for today’s guest She is the author of win the hour win the day And, uh, what she does is she helps entrepreneurs to stop working so hard. So I’m very excited to be rocking out today with Kris Ward. Hey, Kris, you ready to rock?

Kris Ward: I sure am. I’m pumped to be here.

Tim Melanson: Love it. So we always start off on a good note. Tell me sort of success in your business that we can be inspired by.

Kris Ward: You know what? Recently I started to hear from a number of people, the nature of the work that we do, we help entrepreneurs, small business owners, coaches, consultants, really, you know, um, get to get their life back. And, and most of them, my clients will say they get 25 hours. Back a week within the first month of working with us.

And our whole foundation is often that we have learned from the corporate model, which is incredibly flawed. And so I never really saw myself working in the corporate world. Cause I thought what we did was sort of anti corporate, but a lot of people were saying, you know what, they really need some help in the corporate world.

Like, why is that so broken? [00:01:00] It doesn’t have to be. So, uh, so I finally thought, all right, I’ll listen a little bit. And so I, just one thing led to another. And so in the next. Couple weeks, I’m doing a very large presentation for Microsoft in front of hundreds of their people around the globe. So that’s exciting for me.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Wow. That’s a big company. Well, you know, there’s like with the corporate world, there’s some things that they do that, like, you know, we, we kind of should probably do in our businesses and then there’s other things that we definitely want to get away from. Right. But like, is there an example of something that the corporate world does right that we should be doing in our home businesses?

Kris Ward: What do they do that’s right? Don’t know. I don’t think they do as many things right as you think they do. I think that what happens is they have a bigger bandwidth. So it’s almost like I don’t know if you have Uh, an event where five people are coming [00:02:00] over and one is annoying or one person at the party drinks too much, you really notice that.

But then if you have an event with a hundred people, one person or even five or six people drank too much and make a nuisance, you don’t notice it as much, it gets diluted. So I think we tend to look at the corporate cause they’re bigger and they got a bigger budget. We don’t. We tend to look at that as a success, but then you’ll hear so often, which is shocking to myself, I don’t know if I’m the only one and you’ll see, oh my gosh, this 25 million company is now struggling.

You know, I used to watch a show called the profit and I found it really fascinating, similar to what I do. He talks about people process. And product. And sometimes you’d be dealing with a company that was making five, 10 million and they were in debt and it was all because of their processes. But you tend to think, Oh my gosh, you know what, if I just had more sales, if I just had more this, do you think that’s the answer to everything?

But it, it just gives you bigger and bigger problems if you’re not set up properly. So I think the shocking [00:03:00] thing is the corporate world. Is it’s a bigger family with a bigger mess?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I mean, that’s probably the same in our little businesses too. As we get bigger, we’re going to actually attract bigger messes, right?

Kris Ward: Well, isn’t that interesting? Cause what often happens is listen, we go from startup stage and then we get all pumped because so many businesses don’t survive that. I think the results are like staggering, like 90 percent fail there. And so then you’re like, startup gets to survival and stationary. And you’re like in a stationary staging thing.

Okay. I’m in business. I’ve been doing this five plus years, whatever. I’m making money. I’ve got some credentials. Fantastic. But what gets you here will not get you there. So getting from the stationary stage to scaling it, to being able then to have those passion projects and what’s that thing you want to make that bigger impression you want to make on your marketplace or that next product you want to get out.

And that’s where we really start to [00:04:00] struggle is. You know, getting that 1, 2, 3 clients that doesn’t create an infrastructure that doesn’t, that doesn’t allow you to be able to manage 30, how you manage 3 and 6 and an infrastructure, a playbook, things that work, don’t just fall into play. As you get more clients, they don’t.

What happens is you get busier and you run around like a crazy person. You onboard a new client and you lose another one and you panic and you go out and try to get more clients. And so you’re really kind of jogging on the spot. And that is why people come to me after, you know, being in business so long and saying, Oh my gosh, I look good on paper, but I’m working way too many hours for where I am at this point in the journey.

Tim Melanson: yeah. And then even worse is that I think a lot of times, especially when a solopreneur, you don’t even really know how to track how many hours you’re working. It’s like, you’re always working,

Kris Ward: Yeah, or I would say worse than that, you, you, you don’t know [00:05:00] basic, you know, basic math. And by that, I mean, so many people will say, well, I come in on Sundays to get ahead of my emails. So that’s not work. Oh, I’m taking a course and I do that Tuesday night. So that’s not work. So then we disqualify all this work.

So I would say. Tim, if you think you’re working 55 hours a week, I would argue you’re working 70, because there’s all these things you’re not even counting.

Tim Melanson: You sound like my wife.

Kris Ward: Ah,

Tim Melanson: Exactly what she says. Yeah.

Kris Ward: that’s the point, right? You know, think of it like this way here, let’s do some basic math because I am really not good at math.

Let’s say. You make 10, 000 a month and you are working 55 hours and we’ve just qualified that if you think you’re working 55, you’re likely working 70, right? So if you’re making 10 K a month and you’re working 55 to 70 hours a month, if you want to make 30 K a month, do you think those hours are going to go down with your existing formula?

Tim Melanson: No.

Kris Ward: [00:06:00] Right? So you want to triple your income, but you don’t want to even work the amount of hours you’re currently working. Well, then we need to do something different. And that’s why I’m here.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Right on. Okay. We’re going to get back to that in a second. But first, I always want to talk about the bad note as well. So, you know, can you explain, can you share with us something that did not go well in your journey? And what maybe we can learn from that?

Kris Ward: Oh my gosh. What did not go well? Listen, we could do a six part Netflix series on what did not go well. So I really think it a little bit comes into my backstory so I could tell you that. So when I started my business 14 plus years ago, I started doing market messaging and the first couple of years I worked insane hours like a crazy person and my husband said I was always stealing from sleep, getting up early and earlier, staying later and later.

You know, when for the first time in my life, I said, start exercising. I wasn’t eating right. Cause when you’re running around like a crazy person, multitasking, doing all these things, you are seldom [00:07:00] shoving a salad down your throat with your left hand. You’re just, you know, consuming things on the go. And so I was told about the two year mark that I was starting to lose some of my charm because I was exhausted all the time.

And now I’m becoming short tempered and I’m just a hot mess. I look horrible. I was even cutting my hair shorter and shorter. So it would take less time to get ready in the morning. Yeah. It was just like a hot mess. Right. So I was like, Oh my gosh, this cannot be like, if he’s saying I’m starting to get a little edgy, not, not a good sign.

So I literally went from working 16 hours a day down to six. Now that did not happen overnight, but it’s to move this story along. What you need to understand is luckily I did that because it was a couple of years after that, that my husband was diagnosed with colon cancer, and I was pulled away from the business for about 2 years.

And when I returned after his passing, my existing clients had no idea of my absence. They just, it was not how we navigated his journey. We were very positive in nature. [00:08:00] And they started to say to me like, Hey, if you like, how could you possibly have been away? Like, and we not know. And if you could do that, maybe you could help us get to our kids soccer games and get our lives back.

And so that’s when I started to work under this capacity. One thing led to another and I wrote my book, but the book and everything that I do is based on. A couple years of me doing everything completely wrong under the premise of hard work would get me where I needed to go, that my superpower was speed, that, you know, go fast, go hard means you’re being productive.

And just fundamentally flawed, philosophies, really?

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And that sounds probably pretty common. And you already know that because your clients were telling you the same thing, right? Yeah.

Kris Ward: Yeah, I may be special, but I was not unique. And it’s, it’s just so easy to fall into that trap. I mean, I’ve worked with so many entrepreneurs over the years that, you know, I find that they now fall into one of five [00:09:00] categories, and one of them is a Russia holic. So I call myself a recovering Russia holic.

If you’re interested to find out what you are, you can check it out at frumprov. com. Free gift, free F R E G I F T from Kris. Free gift from Kris, K R I S dot com. And it’s quick, takes a couple of seconds and it tells you what your superpowers are and also what are some things you can navigate around because there are things that being fast at things has its strengths, but there are definitely a downside to that.

And I didn’t understand that for years and years.

Tim Melanson: Pretty sure I’m a Russia holic too.

Kris Ward: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Sounds like me anyways. And I’m sure that, uh, my wife would agree . That’s awesome. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about the, about the band. So now I, I know you mentioned, you know, trying to figure out how to triple your business and you don’t have that many time, that many hours.

Is that one of the ways that you can get more hours in your, in your day? Mm

Kris Ward: So we focus on three things. We would call your team, your time and your toolkits, right? So your team is [00:10:00] a big part of that. And a team is a philosophy, not a number. So you can have a team of one when it’s set up correctly. So one of the things that we do for our clients is find hire and onboard virtual assistants and you can get amazing talent for five, six us bucks an hour.

And. Why this really matters is because you definitely, no matter how specialized your work is, no matter what you’re doing, there is always pre and post work to what you do that you want to spend more time in your zone of genius. You want to avoid decision fatigue and attention residue while you’re running around prepping for all this stuff so that you can do this thing this afternoon that’s so important.

So a great way of bringing in more revenue is to have time, a larger percentage Of time to focus on the work that people are actually paying you for right as well as this means you have time to be going out and getting new clients because I often talk about the three D’s damaging overhead, delayed income, diminished [00:11:00] opportunity and let’s say, for example, Tim, that you sold a package.

Uh, for a hundred bucks. Every time you’re not out there pulling in some sort of, you know, doing whatever you need to do to get that package, being on LinkedIn, whatever it is you do, then you’re billing your company that hundred bucks, you know, per hour, you are the damaging overhead. And then the second one I call delayed income, how much does it cost you when you got a client in June that you could have got in January?

Right. And then what if they referred you to one person? And then I think the most painful one is diminished opportunity. When somebody says, Oh my gosh, Tim, I didn’t even know you did that. I just locked in with somebody else. And what does that cost you? The lifetime value of that, that customer, right? So having a virtual assistant that we find higher and on board, and then we put them through our leadership program and, and then here’s a powerful thing, and I’m going to cut you off before you even say it.

Often I will get the question of, hey, how do you learn how to delegate? And I [00:12:00] will tell you right now, right? That was going to be your next question. You don’t delegate. Delegating is a lateral move. The work still has to come through you. And that’s why people don’t like hiring somebody. They think it’s quick for me to do it myself and to set the tone.

them up and give them work and check their work. And that’s a, that’s a foundational flawed system based on the corporate model, which is very prentified. Like when you had were in the corporate world, you had a manager who was kind of like a parent and check your work and keep you in line and, you know, or a teacher checking a student’s work.

So the way we do it with our signature super tool kits and how we set up with daily scrum meetings, the, the wind team, we call them. The what is next team so you can get to what is next. They’re set up so that they work so independent and they have their own assignments. They have their own stuff and it’s not coming through you.

It’s relieving you. It’s giving you, well, my clients say 25 hours back a week within the first month of working with us. It gives you time back. It doesn’t take time away so that you can [00:13:00] then be supervising and delegating.

Tim Melanson: hmm. Interesting. Okay. So, uh, what would you say to someone who maybe likes doing that stuff? Like, what if they, what if they find a break from the other work that they’re doing?

Kris Ward: Well, I’ve yet to find that because I think what you like doing, whatever it is you like doing, if you like managing a team, great, but I’ve yet to run into a person. Usually what happens is whatever your zone of genius is, if you’re, you know, into, if you’re a video editor, you do social media or you, you know, coach businesses on how to get more sales or whatever it is you do.

You very seldom started a business to run systems or to manage a team, right? And so then you need more time in that lane to do what you do because you like doing it. That’s where you started. And also because that’s where you make money and you like making more money. And probably Tim, [00:14:00] if you’re like everybody else.

You like making more, you like making more money in less hours. So I haven’t had that issue. They’re usually pretty excited to stay in their zone.

Tim Melanson: Nice. Okay. So now, what about, uh, I think one of the things that I hear the most often about delegating is, like, giving up control of things like your inbox. Is that something that, uh, you hear often? And is that something that you should be doing, giving up control of your inbox?

Kris Ward: Yeah. So that’s a great question. So again, I do push back on the word delegating, but what I would say is the inbox is so minor and so it’s very, most people have that idea. You don’t, first of all, you don’t need to start anywhere where you don’t want to start. Right. Right. So, that’s not a problem. And I would also say really in the scheme of life, your mailbox, you think it’s the big deal, but you really just, it’s something that you have at the end of the day because your whole day isn’t planned and you’re running all over the place and so then you, then you look at [00:15:00] this email as this great big burden, but it wouldn’t be if you had other things in play.

So, I would say it’s probably the least of your worries. We would start somewhere else first. Even if it was a bigger issue or bigger fish to fry, I would say, well, that’s fine. Let’s get you some space over here till we’re ready to deal with that. You don’t need to do it in any particular order. When I work with my clients, we start with, it’s very customized.

We start with where they are. What’s the biggest pain point. And we just started doing relief, relief, relief, and they get time back more and more time. And we move on to the next thing into the next thing.

Tim Melanson: So let’s talk a little about the cash flow, because I think, I think that’s probably another big barrier is, oh, well, I’m not making enough money right now for myself. How am I going to be hiring somebody else?

Kris Ward: Yeah. So what I would say, first of all, we live in a magical time. So we’re talking about people that are five, six US dollars an hour, right? So that’s really not even a Starbucks coffee, right? And then [00:16:00] also on top of that. Because, you know, when you’re hiring somebody with a different options that we have now virtually, you’re not even hiring them with a real commitment.

So what I find is we start you off slow because why we’re not an agency agencies will find. You somebody give you a VA and, but you’re not set up for that. And that’s why it becomes problematic. And so a couple of things, if it usually doesn’t last, cause you’re not ready for them and you don’t know how to manage it.

But if it did the moment you end that very expensive contract, you lose that VA. So we do find hire and onboard virtual assistants for our clients, but we do that because we want to get to the real work. And we just don’t want that learning curve right up front. We will. Do things for you for speed and then with you for independence, right?

So you can do it later yourself. But what I would say is then you can bring somebody on a couple hours a day, two, three hours a day or whatever. You might be looking at a hundred bucks a week and I guarantee somewhere in your [00:17:00] life, you’re wasting a hundred bucks, even if it’s cause you’re working late at night, you just order pizza instead of going to the grocery store.

So I really, truly do think, um, Very quickly the first week it pays for itself, but then we get things off your plate that allow you to be in that zone of genius. So you’re not the biggest damaging overhead in your company and then you start bringing in revenue. I mean, we had one client, if I may tell you this quick story.

Kristine came to me as a referral. Somebody referred her to me. Now, I’m not saying this is okay. It does happen a fair bit. She missed her first appointment. It’s often, sometimes my clients do because they’re just all over the map, their hair’s on fire. That’s why they need me. I don’t say it’s okay, but I, whatever.

So then she missed the second one. I’m like, all right, I’m out. Who’s the fool? She begged me to take the third appointment. And I knew the person who referred it to me really well. So I’m like, okay. So now I didn’t even know this upfront. She started working with us. This came out later and we’ve got real clippings from our sessions, like on LinkedIn, a [00:18:00] website.

It’s not even a revised polished testimonial. But she said when she started working with me, she was on different things for sleep because of her cortisol and her adrenaline, all this stuff. She was working insane hours. And she just said, Kris, I just have too much work. That’s another thing. So many people think I just, it’s, you don’t understand, there’s just more work than I can manage.

It’s not about me. It’s the work. And she said, I don’t know how you’re going to help me. Because I help companies that are five, 10 million. set up with systems to sell. They have to get ready to sell their business. And I help them with those systems. And I’m like, well, I don’t know, but I’ve never failed yet.

Okay. So we started working together within the year. We, she, her income went up four times, four times, and her hours went down to one fifth. And within the year, she went to Costa Rica for a month with no wifi and the VA we found for her ran the business. So all I’m here to tell you is, This is why you’re not making money is because you’re jogging [00:19:00] on the spot and your profits aren’t growing Because you don’t have yourself in a lane to be making those profits It’s almost like you’re running in the wrong direction even faster.

Tim Melanson: Right on. Okay, so now it sounds to me like part of your business is actually finding these VAs, and that’s awesome, because one of the things that I’ve, you know, myself, my clients, you know, all of us, uh, when we’re looking for this overseas help, Whether it be like a Fiverr person or whether it be a virtual assistant, there’s a couple issues.

One is you don’t know this person. This person’s the other, like, how can you trust them? Uh, so there’s a bit of a barrier there. But then the second one is what if they just disappear or what if their work is not up to quality? Like, I’m sort of hearing that you’re taking care of some of that vetting. Are

Kris Ward: Well, we, yeah, we take care of all of it. So what I would say is, first of all, we’ve got a 12 point hiring process with a 90 percent retention rate. So they stay. [00:20:00] Secondly, what I would say to you is we do help you work very closely with you and them in our leadership program. We get them set up. And trust will come.

You don’t need to trust them overnight because it’s, it’s going to slowly grow their hours, going to slowly grow. And then what I would say is what if they take off? Well, I will tell you they don’t take off when they work in our system because they love it. They feel like so you’ll listen to my podcast when the hour, when the day where I’ve interviewed a few of my team members or people that for my clients teams, and they feel like they have their own business because they have such autonomy and their ideas matter.

And they’ve never had this role where They were collaborating and doing all these amazing things because people tend to just dump on VA’s like task puppets and the work is just repetitive and redundant and very low level. So we have a whole different philosophy. Then also too, with our signature super toolkits, what happens is, you know, if somebody had to leave, um, you know, two stories, one was [00:21:00] we had somebody on our team who had been with us for years.

And when the lockdowns were lifted and stuff like that, she found out she was our social media manager. She found out, Hey, I applied to be international student in Canada, like two and a half years ago. And I’ve now been given six days to get my butt from here, the Philippines to Canada. Now she wanted to stay on with us because she loved working with us so much.

I’m like, well, that’s not realistic. Right? So, okay, no problem. Post out, I did my 12 point hiring process. I brought Maura on. Within the week Maura was up to 80 percent capacity because we had the Signature Super Toolkits. So not only can we bring somebody on, we can promote people, we can do whatever, we’re not bing banging around every time something happens or if somebody’s sick or if we want to promote somebody we suffer or if we, somebody moves on we suffer.

Because in that case it’s really like having a car that can only drive in good weather. You know, if your business is always banged around because of this next thing happening [00:22:00] or the holidays or whatever, then you got a car that you can only take out in sunny days. And how effective is that? And to your point, Tim, I did have somebody reach out to me.

She was not my client. She reached out and she was like, Oh my gosh, I had a VA. Like you said, Kris, and she worked with me for quite some time. And now she just left overnight. And I’ve been up all night crying because I don’t know anything about my business. Well, I say, Um, that is like having that secretary in the fifties when you were a doctor and Ethel knew where your keys were.

You don’t have an infrastructure. You have a person that you’re dependent on and that’s not a business. So the way we have it set up is a, they’re unlikely to move on. They will love their job because it’s a different setup and B, should they move on or something happens or best case scenario, you promote them to super tool kits, take care of everything.

Tim Melanson: Oh, love it. Okay, cool. So let’s talk about those Cool. Right. Well, what are the tools that you use for success in your [00:23:00] business then?

Kris Ward: Yeah, so our signature super toolkits are a big component and what they look like is really like SOPs, standard operating procedures on steroids. So SOPs, the problem with them historically is they’re not written by the end user, they’re static in nature, and they’re mostly there just to cover liability.

In addition, Often training gets muddled in with that. So then you’re like train. Oh yeah, I know how to do that. I know how to do that. So you’re trained then to skip steps because they’re all messed up together. It also takes a really long time to make them and then they become outdated really quickly.

So with our standard, with our super tool kits, what I would tell you is they’re really easy to make. They constantly expand or give you back time on your calendar and the ease of use you And the simplicity in what we call queuing them, creating, using, and editing them makes it really breathing, dynamic documents that you lean heavily on that save you brain power that just constantly create [00:24:00] efficiency, not just for you, but also for your team because everything you do creates more work.

So like when I was all excited that my book, When They Are, When The Day Was Done, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is great. There should be a parade of my honor. I finished a book. Like. Why fireworks did not go off was beyond me because I thought it was a big deal. Excellent. And then I have this false sense I’m going to get all this time back.

The big project’s done. Well, no, now I need to pitch to get on podcasts and then I need to find time to be on all these podcasts, you know? And so every time you do something that you think is exciting, it goes to the next thing and the next thing and you need more time. And not only do I need more time, but.

Somebody on my team needs more time to help me with this stuff. So that’s why you want the super toolkits because they’re constantly giving you more time and more efficiency, and you’re not subject to human error. And business is not run on memory. So you don’t want to be remembering things. So that’s a big, you know, part of our client success [00:25:00] and the ease of use of it all and, and having the ability to finally work school hours are the super toolkits.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I love the name. Super Toolkit. Sounds awesome. Right on. Well, that’s, that’s really cool. So it is time for your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business right now.

Kris Ward: That’s exciting. Okay. Um, well, I guess it is exciting that we’re getting a little bit more into the corporate. We have made some major adjustments. We’re always looking to up our game. So we do have the leadership program for our virtual assistants. So now we have really increased some of the support that they’re getting.

So what happens is when we bring us, let’s say I was working with you, Tim, and we find you a virtual assistant, and then we put them through our leadership program. And. We’re teaching them all kinds of things. So as I’m teaching you about the super toolkit, I’m teaching them as I’m teaching you about how to have effective scrum meetings every day, I’m teaching them and now we’re doing it so that, you know, every week they can submit a super toolkit and get it [00:26:00] audited so that they can learn faster how to make them and improve them as of while they’re doing that, they’re getting super toolkits in their business that just.

You know, makes it even more viable quicker. So really, we’re just really, um, turning up the, I don’t know, amping up the engine in the car of our leadership program.

Tim Melanson: That’s really cool. And so, okay, when you find a VA for someone, is this a dedicated VA to them or do the, you sort of like use some of your hours for your VAs for different clients?

Kris Ward: No, no, no, we never do that. And I’ll tell you why we, we get that question a lot. And you would too, like if you were working with us and somebody said, Oh my gosh, your virtual assistant is amazing. You know, would you consider sharing some hours? Well, that’s like me saying to you, you know what, you seem to really get along with your wife.

And, uh, so I’m wondering, would you share her? Right. Well, like, no, we have worked on this communication. She knows what this means when I say that, like she’s trained for [00:27:00] this infrastructure. So not only do we not share them. But also when I’m hiring somebody for you, Tim, they’re going to not have other responsibilities because you’re likely going to really love them and their hours are going to grow into part time to full time.

So we don’t even have them having part time jobs somewhere else, but no, it’s not like I have a VA and they do two hours for you and two hours for somebody else. That’s not it at all. They’re going in. They are learning your business, we’re going to make them really succeed and you’re going to hunger. I mean, we just had a client of ours, we just assigned a new, they just got their first VA through us.

And so it was like two hours a day. It’s now we’re like three or four weeks in, and now they’re up to five hours a day just because they’re getting so much done. He says he’s already paid for himself for the month because now he missed something on LinkedIn and the VA caught it. So now he got a new contract and there’s just all these little loose ends that get lost in a busy day.

So no, they tend to increase their hours pretty quickly because it’s such a successful setup. [00:28:00] So it’s not something we share. Like we, you just don’t share your team around.

Tim Melanson: So what’s the the minimum number of hours that you’d be hiring a VA for? Or that I would, we’ll say.

Kris Ward: I would say like we always start off slow. So no matter what I would be looking at, you know, minimal, like say two hours a day to start off. But I think if you, if you think, you know, and again, we’re looking at a hundred bucks a week, but if you say, look, Kris, I think it’s going to be quite some time before I go like full time, I would argue a.

You’re probably still going to get them up to four or five hours a day. You have, cause you’ll just find them so useful. Um, and also full time isn’t really what it used to be. Like people would consider a job 30 hours a week, full time. It’s no longer the 35, 40. Like if, if they got to work for you 30 hours, they’d be thrilled because those other five, they’d be driving somewhere.

To go to an office anyhow, right? So I would argue that, you know, you could have quite a happy relationship with them working between four and five hours a day. That would be something that would [00:29:00] work for you and them. Um, but a minimum I would say is two hours.

Tim Melanson: I like, I like your, your plan too, because what I’m assuming, you can correct me if I’m wrong, is that you’re also sort of like, Helping both the business owner to figure out what it is that they’re supposed to give to the, to the, uh, to the assistant. Right? So that, you know, they’re not sort of like wondering, oh, what do I what work do I give?

You sort of have a formula for that. Right.

Kris Ward: hundred percent and I work closely with you on that on daily and see what you’re doing and customize it to your project to your work and say, Hey, do this and give them that. And then I, I’m, we’re supporting them on the other end so that if, you know, so often they’re dealing with crazy entrepreneurs running around Monday, do this and then Tuesday, read a book and Thursday, do this.

And so if they can even say to me, like, listen to every day, Tim has got a different idea, he’s sending me a different direction. So then I know that. And I can say, okay, Tim, let’s really focus on this one thing. So I’m working from both ends. [00:30:00] Also, when I’m teaching you, like, I don’t care how smart you are.

If I’m teaching you about how to create super toolkits and let’s say, Tim, you are the smartest human being I have ever met. And you’re going to, when you first learn it, retain, let’s, let’s say 70 percent of that. Then what happens is you’re trying to teach them what Kris said. And so that 70 percent turns into 40, if I’m lucky, because it’s new information to you.

And maybe you’re a bad teacher. So if I’m

Tim Melanson: It’s like the telephone game or whatever.

Kris Ward: yeah, yeah. It’s like a bad copy of a bad copy. Right. And so what I do is I’m teaching you about super toolkits and I’m teaching them about super toolkits or, you know, so that way it’s like, ah, you’ll both come from a different position of learning and you might even learn from each other instead of you trying to find the time to give them a diluted version.

So we really cover it from every angle.

Tim Melanson: So, Lynn, like for that, that two hours, like what, what would be like, you know, maybe the top two tasks that, that, that would fill up that time?

Kris Ward: You know [00:31:00] what? There’s a thousand things that they can do. And what the biggest thing I would say is, there is always pre and post work that you don’t understand. That you think, oh, I am the one that have to do this. And I’m like, no, there’s always pre and post work. And there’s always a lot of redundant work.

So, you know, And there’s work that you think, ah, I know I should do that. Like, do I have an efficient onboarding process when my, when I start with a new client or every time I get a new client, I’m like, oh yeah, they like to know this. And now you’re passing it together, piecing it together. I would also say it’s really simple.

When you start to do things, I’ll say, Hey, let’s just do a loom video or screen capture. They’ll get it transcribed. They’ll start doing a basic super toolkit, and then we’ll teach them how to do that properly. But here’s a quick example. Another thing I hear all the time is, well, my work is very different.

You don’t understand. I can’t get the help. So we had someone that came to us and she was A designer, she says, Kris, I go in, I see the room, even another designer, the, her big thing was so often people just have [00:32:00] too much furniture in their room. It’s more about editing. And she goes, that’s just what I see when I show up.

No one can help me with that. So I’m like, okay. So we looked at her processes and her average appointment was about two and a half hours. Now, when she first got there, she’s asking the client questions. She’s getting some information, which again, when we really looked at that, I’m like, do we really need to do that sitting in the client’s home?

You know, with notes on your lap. No, we don’t. So we broke it down. And not only were we able to get her appointments down to about 45 minutes, and not only did it make it much easier on her brain, cause she went in and she was then just doing her zone of genius. It was easier on the client. So the paperwork there’s pre and post that we broke down that took up all this time.

She didn’t realize. And she said, Oh my gosh, now she stacks her appointments in the mornings. And then she’s doing all these big MC and. Speaking gigs, dealing with home and garden channel, all kinds of stuff. She got big opportunities, you know, Brian Balmer and all this stuff she’s met now. And she’s like, Kris, I wouldn’t have done that in a [00:33:00] million years because it took my whole day.

So there’s always stuff. That’s what I do as I look at your stuff and I say, okay, let’s, let’s look at this. And we figure it out. We just constantly give you relief, relief, relief, and you just get more and more time back.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve found that just the process of thinking about How to delegate something, right? It’s like, it just activates something, right? It starts to all of a sudden. You’re like, okay, this part right here. So you sort of separate things a little bit because I think probably what I’m hearing from this client is that.

They had it all, like, jumbled up into one class, right, where they go in, they had the, you know, the relationship building with the client, and all that stuff all happens all at once when that could be separated. I mean, there could be an onboarding form that they fill out to answer most of those questions, right?

I mean, there’ll be some zoom. But anyway, just thinking about the delegating is not only going to make it easier to delegate, but it also makes it easier on you. You [00:34:00] start to come up with better systems.

Kris Ward: Yeah, well, what happens is when you start something like, say, she got her first client, she went in and she does the designing and you get so excited, then she thinks, Oh, I’ll offer this service. And then it kind of this circle starts to expand and expand and expand. And you don’t realize it’s only this little thing in the middle is what you really need to do.

Right. And you can’t. I mean, recently I was somewhere, I was kayaking, I was putting some suntan, uh, suntan, uh, sunblock on my back and, you know, I thought I had it all covered and I see in the mirror the next day, oh, well, that’s the spot I missed on my back because I couldn’t see there, right? It’s just really hard to be

Tim Melanson: own business.

Kris Ward: on it.

Yeah. You can’t see the prescription when you’re in the bottle

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Right

Kris Ward: your zone of genius. This is a whole nother thing. This is a whole career, you know, bringing and hiring and onboarding people and infrastructure and systems is a whole nother career. And so when you think I’m going to do this in between bouncing around on [00:35:00] my to do list and my zone of genius is over here, you know, it’s like I have a client.

She’s a train, the train, like she, she’s an international dog trainer. She trains other dog trainers. How to be dog trainers. I’m like, well, give, why don’t you give me a few dogs and see how I do? Right? Like you’re trying to do what I do in between all this chaos. Then, you know, how about you give me a busy day and a few dogs and see how well I train them.

So that’s another thing is people don’t understand. This is a matter of you being organized. That’s my big thing is so many times I hear coaches, consultants, small business owners or founders saying, well, if I was more organized, if I had more discipline, well, first of all, discipline erodes the battery, wears you down, but these are not character flaws.

This is another career and you can’t dilute yourself. You have to stay in your zone of genius because that’s where your money is made.

Tim Melanson: Right on. So how do we find out more about this? So what’s the process?

Kris Ward: Yeah, so you [00:36:00] know I hang out a lot on LinkedIn. You can reach out to me there and say, you heard me on this fantastic show. We’ll become fast friends. Or you can check me out at Free gift from Kris.com free, F-R-E-E-G-I-F-T from Kris, KRI s.com. There’s some goodies there, like I talked about that personality quiz.

Also for your audience, Tim, I put up a new version of my book, so grab it quickly cause it won’t be up there very long. Um, but yeah, so you can have some fun there as well.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. So free gift from Kris. That sounds like a good place to start. Right?

Kris Ward: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Thank you so much for rocking out with me today, Kris. It’s been a lot of fun.

Kris Ward: Oh good. Thank you for trusting me with your audience.

Tim Melanson: No problem. Right. To the listeners, make sure you subscribe, rate, and comment, and we’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast.