[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

Hello and welcome back to the show. This is Ted your host speaking with more actionable entrepreneurship advice. Now in today’s episode, we have Kris Ward, who is the founder of windy our wind today. She is a leading authority on time management and team building. And she’s even been interviewed by Wanda orginal sharks from Shark Tank, Mr. Kevin Harrington himself. After the loss of a husband, Kris returned full times will work as a marketing strategist, as she was true to see that her business had not only survived during her absence, but it was thriving. Today, she helps entrepreneurs create their winning teams, so they too can focus more of their energies on growing their business. In this episode, Kris shares how we can avoid being a solopreneur and how it does not necessarily need to be expensive to start growing a team. So guys, you know the drill. All tools resources, show us episodes are available on my website at Ted teo.com. That’s tdt.com. Now if you don’t want to miss a single episode, then don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast directory. Now, if you want to support the show, the best way you can do this is to share the show of a friend and leave a review now as a way to say thank you and to show my appreciation to you guys, if you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. Now let’s dive right in. Hi, Kris. Thanks for joining us today. So good to have you here. Oh, Ted, I’m excited to be here. I’m pumped. Kris, this thought of a simple icebreaker. Who is Kris board when she is not working? Oh, I

 

01:27

don’t know. That’s a pretty broad question. I guess I would kind of say what I learned a long time ago is you’re the same person before or five as you are after five. So I’m just as high energy I’m enthusiastic about anything I do. I believe that you should treat yourself like as if you are a business athlete. So I’m really into vitality taking care of myself fitness, so that I can perform the best during the day.

 

01:51

So Kris, you’re leading authority in time management and team building. And you’ve even been interviewed by one of the origin shark tanks, Mr. Kevin Harrington himself, could you share with us your journey and how you ended up starting your company, windy, our windy day.

 

02:04

So I was I’ve been in business over 12 years. And I started out and still am a marketing strategist. And what happened when I first started is I was working insane hours, like, you know, Oh, my gosh, I went, I would say good two years without any sleep. And all reports indicated that I wasn’t as charming as I thought I was, would you start going months and years without sleep? So I started to look at that and think, okay, you know, this amazing support system, everyone’s cheering me on with this new business. And I was just, you know, rundown burnt out and not particularly warm. So I started to look at, you know, how can I make something different and really to move the story along, I would tell you that I went from like 16 hours a day down to six. But it did not happen overnight. But it was hugely important. I started to examine, you know, everything just previously, how are these successful people doing it. So I made some immediate changes that we’ll unpack and talk about later. But it was really awesome that I did that because it was a couple years after that, that my husband had been diagnosed with colon cancer. And I was pulled away from the business for about two years. And when I returned after his passing, my existing clients had no idea of my absence they did, they were shocked. And it we just did not feel it was good for business. I didn’t want that kind of attention. I you know, I just really needed to zone in and focus on what I was doing. So when I returned, it was a real shock to my clients in the local business community, what had happened to my husband. And so these people started to gently ask me, like, you know, if I could help them with their businesses, like how did I manage that they were missing soccer games, working evenings and weekends. And, and so of course, with the respect for the fragility of life, and that I believe a business should support your life, instead of consuming it. I thought, okay, I’ll start to work with these people under the capacity of helping them manage and run their business. And that just kind of grew and more people wanted help. And then I thought, Well, how do I reach more people, because I just think business should be fun, and you shouldn’t be suffering. That’s not why you started this journey. So then I thought, okay, let’s write a book, and see if I could reach a more a wider audience. And it really just snowballed from there. And so now anything you see me do online is really about creating a movement again, where your business supports your life, instead of consuming, and that’s how it all evolved.

 

04:23

Kris, it’s only like a very organic journey where you went from being a market strategist to being a person who’s able to help her clients manage their business, what was the process of the transition, like you share that this happened during your two years away? Could you share a little bit more about this?

 

04:37

Oh, my heavens, well, I don’t know if there was secrets. There was a lot of learning curves and stumbling and suffering and just figuring out like, I think for me, and for most of my clients, the really big problem was people think, Oh, it’s great if you’re organized and stuff and I’m an organized individual, but sometimes what happens with that is then you just try to reorganize it and organize more and it gives you the false sense. That you could do something with that. But really, you’re not changing the infrastructure, you’re just it’s sort of like if you have a screw in the wall, and you’ve got a straight screwdriver, you’re just tightening and tightening it, you eventually stripped the screw. It’s not you’re not changing the tactic there, right? So I think for me, you know, I think the turning point, the real game changer. And what this means for you is, you know, you really, truly can have a business that supports your life, instead of consuming it, it was me starting a team, when I got my first hire, that’s when that’s when the game began, that’s when things started to change. For me, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this idea of working late every night and getting up earlier. And earlier, it was I was working so against myself, and I had no idea I thought it would save me money. But in fact, when we talked about the three DS, I was costing myself a lot of money, because we always talk about my company, the three DS are damaging overhead, delayed income, diminished opportunity. And let’s say, Ted, for simplicity purposes, you had a package you could sell for 100 bucks. And when you are working at 5678 o’clock at night, and you’re not getting those packages sold, that means you’re billing your company, 100 bucks an hour. And so that gets really super expensive. And we all think we’re saving ourselves money. But in fact, we’re billing our company, these insane amounts that you’d never pay for. And then being long to opportunity cost. Yeah. And then the other two delayed income, what does it cost you when you have a client that you’ve got June, but you could have gotten January Plus, if they gave you one referral, and then the most painful one is diminished diminished opportunity, when somebody says to you, oh, my gosh, I wish I’d known you sooner because we just hired somebody. And then you have to think about the cost of the lifetime value of that client. So the three DS when you don’t have a team, and you’re a suffer printer, really expensive.

 

06:53

So guys, as Kris has shared, don’t be yourself a printer, if you can try to hire the right people in your team and business along the way, you can’t do everything on your own. Now, if your business is growing, and you’re not hiring the right people to grow the business with you, if you’re trying to do everything on your own, in your business is going to suffer because you’re wasting the opportunities that could have come by in the first place. So Kris, could you share with us how you built your own team over the years? Well, I’ll

 

07:17

tell you, it’s really interesting. You know, the first when I was still going out to appointments and stuff, I went virtual long before anybody else, because I just realized, even if somebody was down the street, 10 minutes away, I could just hop on one Skype call and go to the next. But many years ago, when I was still going out to physical appointments, I would be sitting in, you know, a prospects office, and I’m writing notes and getting all this information about a package they want. And then I would leave. And I would promise hand to God, that when I got back to the office, I would put the notes right in their file right away. Now, that never happened. And if I was lucky, I got the notes in like Friday afternoon, if I wasn’t it was like the next Friday. And sometimes they would call and they want to ask questions at the package or something. And then you know what i would be scrambling or trying to read my notes that were meant for 20 minutes, not for two weeks. And my big fear was what if you miss quoted them under price myself or looked like I was trying to swindle them when in fact I would just wasn’t prepared, right? And so I thought this can’t be this cannot be. So what I did was I hired a transcriptionist. And I would leave the meeting, sit in my car talking to my phone for 30 seconds. And I would just talk and she would get these notes within hours, certainly 24 hours into my computer. Now here’s the thing. I don’t get it. But she loved doing this. She like 10 clients, it’s all she did. So she was really fast. And you don’t even need these services anymore. Because now there’s there’s products or or apps and stuff like that for this but at the time of it. Yeah, at the time this was cutting edge. So what happened was the weeks I did need her that’s great. I didn’t pay and the weeks I needed her for a lot. She was like 12 bucks because she was still fast. So I got all Friday afternoon back. I didn’t have stress. I didn’t misquote a client for like 12 bucks. And so what this means for you his people think that having a team is expensive, but the world is a magical place right now it is crazy affordable to build a what we call a winning team, what is next team so you can get to what is next

 

09:26

guys, as Kris has just shared, we live in a magical time in a world right now. You can easily find virtual assistants who can help you your various tasks. And outsourcing this may not even be that expensive as compared to hiring someone full time. You can pay them by the hour and you can look for various assistants who are specialized in different tasks. When you start building a team like this, you’ll be able to free up more time for yourself to do what you do best and grow your business. Now back to you, Kris, what advice would you have for an entrepreneur who’s starting to build out their team? What should they look out for if they want to do that winning team? Yeah,

 

09:58

that’s a great question Ted. It’s probably the most common question we get at our website, www dot when the hour when the de.com. And what I tell people is, sometimes it’s not even what you’re looking for, it’s what you’re not looking for. There is this philosophy where you’re like, Oh, I’m gonna get this person and I’ve got this mess, and they’re gonna help me clean it up like a 1950 secretary, like, I’m the doctor, and they’re like my work wife and stuff, that doesn’t work, adding people to chaos just creates more chaos, right. And I would also argue, Tad, that most of the corporate world throughout the world is a very parental FIDE system, and it’s upside down. So you hire somebody, and then you supervise the work they do, and you’re checking on them, which means you have more work to do. And you’re checking on them, like a parent or child or a teacher to student. And it’s time consuming. And that’s another thing people like, I don’t have time for this, it’s quicker to do it myself. So when you set up a winning team of what is next team really effectively, it’s really about strategy and leaning into what we call our super toolkits and making everything crazy efficient. It’s really about just not getting this one person that you think now, I want to tell you, it’s not about getting this one person you think’s gonna solve all your problems. So you can’t have a VA who does some of your social media, some of your graphics and email management, all this other stuff that’s going into many different directions. However, be really clear though, we get a lot done, I have a book, we have a podcast, when they are when the day podcast where we just talk about general, anything to get you to next week, it could be sales, social media, whatever, we’ve got a lot going, we’ve got, you know, private coaching, semi private coaching, we’ve got this Winner’s Circle, but I have a team of three, and that manages all of that. So I’m not talking about building a big team. But I’m talking about building an effective team, and understanding really strategically what the roles will look like.

 

11:46

So when we hire, we have to actually be very specific with who we want to bring in and what the clear deliverables are. But when we hire employees is so important to have the right systems in place to manage them. So What tips do you have entrepreneurs on this? What are the systems that they have to think about on implementing and how do they go about setting it up?

 

12:05

Yeah, that’s an excellent question. So we rely heavily on what we call super toolkits. So they’re kind of like the distant cousin of what people understand to be standard operating procedures slps, but slps are written, you know, really to cover liability. They’re not written by the end user. And they’re static. They’re not, they’re not evolving. So they’re super toolkits are very unique, and we created them. And what happens is, they allow you then to be in what we call the win formula, 6040 win formula, I believe that most entrepreneurs are in the web of admin, around 80 90% of the time, you should be in creation, mode, 60% of the time, and admin mode 40% of time, because being an entrepreneur is all about getting ideas to execution, whatever that is for you, if it’s your first book, or your second book, or starting a podcast or doing PR or starting group coaching, whatever it is, it’s about getting that idea to execution. Otherwise, you are just a separate printer, but you’re also self employed. So being an entrepreneur is about getting ideas to execution. And to do that, you need to be in the creation mode much more than you are. So those super toolkits are really like the backbone to everything that we do.

 

13:18

So Kris, what kind of mistakes to entrepreneurs tend to make when they’re building the teams?

 

13:22

Yeah. So it is, again, just throwing work at them without strategy and hoping they keep up and so many entrepreneurs, again, it’s not their fault, you’ve all been trained in the employee mindset, like that’s where the predominant part of your work experience comes from. So you’re following a formula that has been around for generations, and it’s extremely limiting. So what I would tell you is understanding that the, you know, hiring, the onboarding, and the training is so important, and the culture you’re creating is so important. We tend to think cultures are created like a bigger companies when you have larger groups of people, right. But in fact, when you have two or three or four employees, and you really need to be mindful of the culture, creating because it’s a very intimate group. So I think the biggest mistakes that people make are not understanding the significance of the onboarding process and the infancy stage of when you’re working with someone and how to set that up effectively.

 

14:27

What about team retention? So you just shared about importance of onboarding and bringing them into the team. But how do you make sure that they stay for the long run? So it’s not just enough about to hire, but you have to keep them engaged and valued, and to maybe give them a sense that they are progressing professionally. So how do you manage this and can you share with us?

 

14:48

Yeah, that’s really not hard. Because what happens is we’re, we’re we operate differently than most of them have ever worked for someone like that. So loyalty is really easy when you give people a situation Were there in creation mode more of the time when their ideas are valued when you’re encouraging them to think and contribute. I mean, because a big part of this is when I talked earlier about, you know, the 6040 win formula that you should be in creation mode 60% of the time, so to should your team, because all these ideas and ambitions you have your team has to be able to support and the only way they can support that is if they have room in their calendar. So for example, like my podcast, we were, you know, getting thrilled that we had like, 205 star reviews, and we’re like, Okay, so we’re getting close to that. We’ll put a banner up and Facebook, that’s what you do. Here we go. And then someone on my team came to me and she said, Kris, I found this other website. And there’s all these other reviews out there that we don’t know about. You have over 900 reviews. Now, just so you know, I’m a flawed human being Ted, I was like, oh, we’re so close to 1000. Yeah, now I’m like, I need 1000. But what happened was, there was this new there were places other like we didn’t know stitcher left reviews and all this other stuff, right. So we there was this website, new platform that collected all the reviews and put them on one place. Now, this wasn’t just me, I, when I brought this to the podcast community in different Facebook groups, I looked like the hero, I gave them the length, they’re like, Kris, you’re the best. But this was because she had time in her calendar to be in creation mode. Right. So what happened was, she got to look like the hero, she’s always, you know, 60% in creation mode. So it’s very thrilling and stimulating for her to be contributing and expressing her ideas. And so this is not a job she wants to leave. So retention is really not an issue for me or any of my clients

 

16:41

who said by empowering your employees, and giving them the ability to view just like you an entrepreneur, where they actually are creating something rather than just going through the doldrums of the same job over and over again, which is what most of us view when we’re not happy with our current employment situation. Now, Kris, you’ve shared that you previously had issues with time management, and now you’ve actually built a whole business around helping others managing your time. So can you explain to us what is windy, our windy day mean? Yeah, so

 

17:08

I think the big thing with time management and the problem I had was, I got a lot done in a day a lot. And I was the go to person for a lot of people. So I didn’t resonate with having any time management issues, because I’m like, excuse me, I get more done than anybody I know. But what my tactic was, was to get up in the morning and run as fast as I can, trying to race time. And if you read my book, when the hour when the day, there’s a couple of horrifying stories in there where I literally nearly lost my life, like, almost electrocuted myself quite seriously, because I was in a rush. There’s silly things like that. But what I would say to you is the biggest mistake I think people make is your calendar is your time bank account. And so many people put outside appointments on their calendar, but they don’t put their work on the calendar. They don’t a lot for the stuff they have to do everyday, like, including reading emails, right? So they what happens so many people will say, Hmm, they enter the day and they think they might think they have eight hours. But in fact, maybe they only have four because of all the stuff they have to do day to day because people say to me, oh, Kris, I remember that. I don’t want to put on my calendar. But it’s a lossing time. That’s the same as if you say to me, oh, Kris, my car payment comes every month. But I know that so I don’t count it well, the money is gone. So the money’s gone for the car payment, you know, comes out every month, same thing with your calendar, there’s stuff you do every day, great, you know, you have to do it. But you have to count that because that time is gone. And so if you don’t do that you can’t, you know, can’t improve what you don’t measure. And that’s where things when I really started using my calendar effectively and strategically. I was like, well, no wonder I was No wonder I was tired. You can’t do all this in a day, when you see it laid out that it’s a game changer.

 

18:52

So this is the whole idea of allocating time to everything you do not just a task that you want to do. And that’s the problem of a simple to do list that does not actually factor in the time that you take for the task that you’re going to do for the whole day itself. Right?

 

19:05

Yes. So now you’ve you’ve given me one of my trigger words, which I don’t believe in to do list because what happens is to do lists studies show are really great if you’re looking to stress yourself out, all behind in your work. So they have a purpose if that’s your goal. But what happens is to do lists do not have a single sequential order, they, they don’t give you any measurements of time, or a priority. And so you tend to chop through a few things to make you feel good, right? But you have no idea when you’re off the track. So you have this to do list and one thing might might take 20 minutes. Next thing might take two hours so that you can’t really plan that. So what I would say Ted is think about it like this. Let’s say you were going from a road trip to I don’t know from New York to California, you’re going to go from a car ride. If you had a GPS and a plan, it would tell you how many miles you could figure out how much gas you had what time you leave when you like when you arrive Anytime you stopped, it would adjust everything, you’d have a blueprint, you would have a plan, right? If you had a to do list for that trip, you’d have bring money, verse snacks, warm clothes, none of it would determine the outcome of the trip or how efficient the trip would be. So that’s the difference between what I call a GPS plan and a to do list. So to do lists, and there’s, and I’m not talking about now putting every single little thing on your calendar, I work in one hour increments that’s within the hour when the day. And it’s a little bit hard to unpack all of this in this interview, but I would tell you to do list is the last thing that should be running your business.

 

20:36

So guys, don’t run your business on a simple to do this, what you should do instead is to allocate time blocks to the task that you want to do. And this way, you can actually know how much time you’re going to locate and how much time you have left to achieve each individual goal. And this way, you’re going to be able to better plan the day itself. Now, Kris, there’s so many tools and software’s out there that claim to help you to be productive. But what are your views on this?

 

20:59

Yeah. So you know, let’s go back to like a carpenter, like you could give me a hammer, it doesn’t mean I can build a cabinet. Right? But you could give a good Carpenter a better hammer. Sure. So I think in this day and age with tech, this is a big misconception where people think, oh, and I bought into it many years ago, myself, like, Oh, you buy this and nevermind that it’s expensive. But it takes you two or three months to learn it. But once you learn it, oh, it’s gonna change your life. And of course, three months later, it doesn’t. And you spent all that time trying to learn it, I

 

21:28

did it, I

 

21:28

did it, I know it right. And it was painful. What I would say to you is for myself, for my clients, for really the wealthiest people in the world, any tool that you’re going to use, most of them are free or next to free. There’s so like, the Google calendars is crazy free, like so most of the stuff is really free basic stuff. And also, it’s something that you can learn to use and implement, like I tell my clients, if you need to take more than 15 minutes to figure this out, then it’s not the right tool for you, right, because then it’s a distraction, and you’re going in the wrong direction. So it’s great to have a skill set or a talent. And you can have a tool like the carpenter maybe he’s got a power drill instead of a drill. But whether it’s a drill or a power drill does not make you a better carpenter, you have to have that skill set. So don’t be misled by shiny object syndrome in this world we live in where you think, oh, I’ve got all these options. And this will be a game changer. It’s just busy work.

 

22:27

So Kris, now let’s talk a little bit about your own podcast. What is it about? And what are you trying to achieve with it? Yeah, I

 

22:34

just like having an opportunity to meet like minded entrepreneurs. And it really is just to get you to your next one. Now. You know, I’m not preaching about what I’m talking about here all day long. It could be anything from sales to social media, anything, right? What I get a lot of praise on is that people listen to the show, and they can immediately implement something that they’ve listened to on the show. I’m all about tangible and quick takeaways. My whole philosophy is, you know, no fluff, big results for everything that I do. So for the show, it’s the same thing. Just join us when they are when the day and it’s a wide variety of topics, but stuff that you can implement right away.

 

23:13

No crispy Shavers. How has your background as a marketing specialist, shift the way that you think and react as a business owner?

 

23:19

Well, I think probably what people tell me my sweet spot is in marketing is marketing messaging, and I think being clear on your message. So I, I help entrepreneurs stop working so hard. And that’s a simple sentence. But it took me a long time to get there and figure out like, Oh, you want to tell people all these things that you do but simplifying your message is the biggest mistake that most entrepreneurs are still struggling with, they want 15 minutes or 30 minutes to explain to someone all the stuff they do and, and and that’s just really hard to repeat, and it’s hard for them to remember and pass on to other people that might be good clients for you. So I think, you know, the big thing about marketing is a lot of people out there doing all sorts of marketing, but just for me, it was being clarity of message really moved me forward, being really clear on who I help, how I help them. What’s the pain, I solve? Pain problem I solve and you know, who I want to work with just being super clear on that really allowed me to work with amazing people and get big results.

 

24:15

Now, Kris, if the listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation, what would you like it to be?

 

24:20

Yeah, it’s a game changer. If you have a team and you want to have what I call a win Team A what is next team and that ideas to execution is what being an entrepreneur is about. It’s not about paperwork or admin work. So getting your ideas to execution is what the game is about.

 

24:40

Kris, how can our listeners get in touch with you if they need your

 

24:42

help? Yeah, just reach out to me in any of the socials and tell me that you heard me on this fantastic podcast, a friend of Ted’s apps friend of mine, we do have a free gift. We’ve got this amazing thing. I’m huge. We just put it up there. It’s the secret to getting 200 free hours of admin work. We have in you, North America and Europe throughout the world, they now have a lot of high school Co Op students. So we had, we’ve had 30. But this year alone, we had four, six, something like that. So we got 800 free hours of, you know, somebody in grade 12 with a lot of tech skills. And so I created a manual how to get 200 free hours of admin work so that you can have Co Op students in your organization. So that’s a free gift to your audience. It’s free gift from Kris k, i k ri s oh my gosh, can I don’t know how to spell my own name free from Kris.com. And that would get you the secret to getting 200 hours of free admin work.

 

25:39

Thank you, Kris, for your generosity. And thank you for being here today with me and sharing all your great advice. It was such a pleasure. Oh, I thank you for your thoughtful questions and guys did was the wonderful Kris Ward with all her actionable tips on how you can build your own winning team. Now, don’t be a separate printer. Don’t take on the role of doing everything in a business. So learn to grow the team when it’s time, it doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive. You can always start by hiring some virtual assistants to help free up some of your time from administration work so you can focus on doing what you do best. And that’s growing your business. Now all the shownotes tools resources and episodes are on my website at Ted Teo calm, so why not go and check it out. If you’d like to support the show did the best we can do this is to share the show of a friend or leave a review online. And don’t forget about the Amazon gift voucher giveaway. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon now. Thank you so much in advance. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.

[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

Hello and welcome back to the show. This is Ted your host speaking with more actionable entrepreneurship advice. Now in today’s episode, we have Kris Ward, who is the founder of windy our wind today. She is a leading authority on time management and team building. And she’s even been interviewed by Wanda orginal sharks from Shark Tank, Mr. Kevin Harrington himself. After the loss of a husband, Kris returned full times will work as a marketing strategist, as she was true to see that her business had not only survived during her absence, but it was thriving. Today, she helps entrepreneurs create their winning teams, so they too can focus more of their energies on growing their business. In this episode, Kris shares how we can avoid being a solopreneur and how it does not necessarily need to be expensive to start growing a team. So guys, you know the drill. All tools resources, show us episodes are available on my website at Ted teo.com. That’s tdt.com. Now if you don’t want to miss a single episode, then don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast directory. Now, if you want to support the show, the best way you can do this is to share the show of a friend and leave a review now as a way to say thank you and to show my appreciation to you guys, if you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. Now let’s dive right in. Hi, Kris. Thanks for joining us today. So good to have you here. Oh, Ted, I’m excited to be here. I’m pumped. Kris, this thought of a simple icebreaker. Who is Kris board when she is not working? Oh, I

 

01:27

don’t know. That’s a pretty broad question. I guess I would kind of say what I learned a long time ago is you’re the same person before or five as you are after five. So I’m just as high energy I’m enthusiastic about anything I do. I believe that you should treat yourself like as if you are a business athlete. So I’m really into vitality taking care of myself fitness, so that I can perform the best during the day.

 

01:51

So Kris, you’re leading authority in time management and team building. And you’ve even been interviewed by one of the origin shark tanks, Mr. Kevin Harrington himself, could you share with us your journey and how you ended up starting your company, windy, our windy day.

 

02:04

So I was I’ve been in business over 12 years. And I started out and still am a marketing strategist. And what happened when I first started is I was working insane hours, like, you know, Oh, my gosh, I went, I would say good two years without any sleep. And all reports indicated that I wasn’t as charming as I thought I was, would you start going months and years without sleep? So I started to look at that and think, okay, you know, this amazing support system, everyone’s cheering me on with this new business. And I was just, you know, rundown burnt out and not particularly warm. So I started to look at, you know, how can I make something different and really to move the story along, I would tell you that I went from like 16 hours a day down to six. But it did not happen overnight. But it was hugely important. I started to examine, you know, everything just previously, how are these successful people doing it. So I made some immediate changes that we’ll unpack and talk about later. But it was really awesome that I did that because it was a couple years after that, that my husband had been diagnosed with colon cancer. And I was pulled away from the business for about two years. And when I returned after his passing, my existing clients had no idea of my absence they did, they were shocked. And it we just did not feel it was good for business. I didn’t want that kind of attention. I you know, I just really needed to zone in and focus on what I was doing. So when I returned, it was a real shock to my clients in the local business community, what had happened to my husband. And so these people started to gently ask me, like, you know, if I could help them with their businesses, like how did I manage that they were missing soccer games, working evenings and weekends. And, and so of course, with the respect for the fragility of life, and that I believe a business should support your life, instead of consuming it. I thought, okay, I’ll start to work with these people under the capacity of helping them manage and run their business. And that just kind of grew and more people wanted help. And then I thought, Well, how do I reach more people, because I just think business should be fun, and you shouldn’t be suffering. That’s not why you started this journey. So then I thought, okay, let’s write a book, and see if I could reach a more a wider audience. And it really just snowballed from there. And so now anything you see me do online is really about creating a movement again, where your business supports your life, instead of consuming, and that’s how it all evolved.

 

04:23

Kris, it’s only like a very organic journey where you went from being a market strategist to being a person who’s able to help her clients manage their business, what was the process of the transition, like you share that this happened during your two years away? Could you share a little bit more about this?

 

04:37

Oh, my heavens, well, I don’t know if there was secrets. There was a lot of learning curves and stumbling and suffering and just figuring out like, I think for me, and for most of my clients, the really big problem was people think, Oh, it’s great if you’re organized and stuff and I’m an organized individual, but sometimes what happens with that is then you just try to reorganize it and organize more and it gives you the false sense. That you could do something with that. But really, you’re not changing the infrastructure, you’re just it’s sort of like if you have a screw in the wall, and you’ve got a straight screwdriver, you’re just tightening and tightening it, you eventually stripped the screw. It’s not you’re not changing the tactic there, right? So I think for me, you know, I think the turning point, the real game changer. And what this means for you is, you know, you really, truly can have a business that supports your life, instead of consuming it, it was me starting a team, when I got my first hire, that’s when that’s when the game began, that’s when things started to change. For me, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this idea of working late every night and getting up earlier. And earlier, it was I was working so against myself, and I had no idea I thought it would save me money. But in fact, when we talked about the three DS, I was costing myself a lot of money, because we always talk about my company, the three DS are damaging overhead, delayed income, diminished opportunity. And let’s say, Ted, for simplicity purposes, you had a package you could sell for 100 bucks. And when you are working at 5678 o’clock at night, and you’re not getting those packages sold, that means you’re billing your company, 100 bucks an hour. And so that gets really super expensive. And we all think we’re saving ourselves money. But in fact, we’re billing our company, these insane amounts that you’d never pay for. And then being long to opportunity cost. Yeah. And then the other two delayed income, what does it cost you when you have a client that you’ve got June, but you could have gotten January Plus, if they gave you one referral, and then the most painful one is diminished diminished opportunity, when somebody says to you, oh, my gosh, I wish I’d known you sooner because we just hired somebody. And then you have to think about the cost of the lifetime value of that client. So the three DS when you don’t have a team, and you’re a suffer printer, really expensive.

 

06:53

So guys, as Kris has shared, don’t be yourself a printer, if you can try to hire the right people in your team and business along the way, you can’t do everything on your own. Now, if your business is growing, and you’re not hiring the right people to grow the business with you, if you’re trying to do everything on your own, in your business is going to suffer because you’re wasting the opportunities that could have come by in the first place. So Kris, could you share with us how you built your own team over the years? Well, I’ll

 

07:17

tell you, it’s really interesting. You know, the first when I was still going out to appointments and stuff, I went virtual long before anybody else, because I just realized, even if somebody was down the street, 10 minutes away, I could just hop on one Skype call and go to the next. But many years ago, when I was still going out to physical appointments, I would be sitting in, you know, a prospects office, and I’m writing notes and getting all this information about a package they want. And then I would leave. And I would promise hand to God, that when I got back to the office, I would put the notes right in their file right away. Now, that never happened. And if I was lucky, I got the notes in like Friday afternoon, if I wasn’t it was like the next Friday. And sometimes they would call and they want to ask questions at the package or something. And then you know what i would be scrambling or trying to read my notes that were meant for 20 minutes, not for two weeks. And my big fear was what if you miss quoted them under price myself or looked like I was trying to swindle them when in fact I would just wasn’t prepared, right? And so I thought this can’t be this cannot be. So what I did was I hired a transcriptionist. And I would leave the meeting, sit in my car talking to my phone for 30 seconds. And I would just talk and she would get these notes within hours, certainly 24 hours into my computer. Now here’s the thing. I don’t get it. But she loved doing this. She like 10 clients, it’s all she did. So she was really fast. And you don’t even need these services anymore. Because now there’s there’s products or or apps and stuff like that for this but at the time of it. Yeah, at the time this was cutting edge. So what happened was the weeks I did need her that’s great. I didn’t pay and the weeks I needed her for a lot. She was like 12 bucks because she was still fast. So I got all Friday afternoon back. I didn’t have stress. I didn’t misquote a client for like 12 bucks. And so what this means for you his people think that having a team is expensive, but the world is a magical place right now it is crazy affordable to build a what we call a winning team, what is next team so you can get to what is next

 

09:26

guys, as Kris has just shared, we live in a magical time in a world right now. You can easily find virtual assistants who can help you your various tasks. And outsourcing this may not even be that expensive as compared to hiring someone full time. You can pay them by the hour and you can look for various assistants who are specialized in different tasks. When you start building a team like this, you’ll be able to free up more time for yourself to do what you do best and grow your business. Now back to you, Kris, what advice would you have for an entrepreneur who’s starting to build out their team? What should they look out for if they want to do that winning team? Yeah,

 

09:58

that’s a great question Ted. It’s probably the most common question we get at our website, www dot when the hour when the de.com. And what I tell people is, sometimes it’s not even what you’re looking for, it’s what you’re not looking for. There is this philosophy where you’re like, Oh, I’m gonna get this person and I’ve got this mess, and they’re gonna help me clean it up like a 1950 secretary, like, I’m the doctor, and they’re like my work wife and stuff, that doesn’t work, adding people to chaos just creates more chaos, right. And I would also argue, Tad, that most of the corporate world throughout the world is a very parental FIDE system, and it’s upside down. So you hire somebody, and then you supervise the work they do, and you’re checking on them, which means you have more work to do. And you’re checking on them, like a parent or child or a teacher to student. And it’s time consuming. And that’s another thing people like, I don’t have time for this, it’s quicker to do it myself. So when you set up a winning team of what is next team really effectively, it’s really about strategy and leaning into what we call our super toolkits and making everything crazy efficient. It’s really about just not getting this one person that you think now, I want to tell you, it’s not about getting this one person you think’s gonna solve all your problems. So you can’t have a VA who does some of your social media, some of your graphics and email management, all this other stuff that’s going into many different directions. However, be really clear though, we get a lot done, I have a book, we have a podcast, when they are when the day podcast where we just talk about general, anything to get you to next week, it could be sales, social media, whatever, we’ve got a lot going, we’ve got, you know, private coaching, semi private coaching, we’ve got this Winner’s Circle, but I have a team of three, and that manages all of that. So I’m not talking about building a big team. But I’m talking about building an effective team, and understanding really strategically what the roles will look like.

 

11:46

So when we hire, we have to actually be very specific with who we want to bring in and what the clear deliverables are. But when we hire employees is so important to have the right systems in place to manage them. So What tips do you have entrepreneurs on this? What are the systems that they have to think about on implementing and how do they go about setting it up?

 

12:05

Yeah, that’s an excellent question. So we rely heavily on what we call super toolkits. So they’re kind of like the distant cousin of what people understand to be standard operating procedures slps, but slps are written, you know, really to cover liability. They’re not written by the end user. And they’re static. They’re not, they’re not evolving. So they’re super toolkits are very unique, and we created them. And what happens is, they allow you then to be in what we call the win formula, 6040 win formula, I believe that most entrepreneurs are in the web of admin, around 80 90% of the time, you should be in creation, mode, 60% of the time, and admin mode 40% of time, because being an entrepreneur is all about getting ideas to execution, whatever that is for you, if it’s your first book, or your second book, or starting a podcast or doing PR or starting group coaching, whatever it is, it’s about getting that idea to execution. Otherwise, you are just a separate printer, but you’re also self employed. So being an entrepreneur is about getting ideas to execution. And to do that, you need to be in the creation mode much more than you are. So those super toolkits are really like the backbone to everything that we do.

 

13:18

So Kris, what kind of mistakes to entrepreneurs tend to make when they’re building the teams?

 

13:22

Yeah. So it is, again, just throwing work at them without strategy and hoping they keep up and so many entrepreneurs, again, it’s not their fault, you’ve all been trained in the employee mindset, like that’s where the predominant part of your work experience comes from. So you’re following a formula that has been around for generations, and it’s extremely limiting. So what I would tell you is understanding that the, you know, hiring, the onboarding, and the training is so important, and the culture you’re creating is so important. We tend to think cultures are created like a bigger companies when you have larger groups of people, right. But in fact, when you have two or three or four employees, and you really need to be mindful of the culture, creating because it’s a very intimate group. So I think the biggest mistakes that people make are not understanding the significance of the onboarding process and the infancy stage of when you’re working with someone and how to set that up effectively.

 

14:27

What about team retention? So you just shared about importance of onboarding and bringing them into the team. But how do you make sure that they stay for the long run? So it’s not just enough about to hire, but you have to keep them engaged and valued, and to maybe give them a sense that they are progressing professionally. So how do you manage this and can you share with us?

 

14:48

Yeah, that’s really not hard. Because what happens is we’re, we’re we operate differently than most of them have ever worked for someone like that. So loyalty is really easy when you give people a situation Were there in creation mode more of the time when their ideas are valued when you’re encouraging them to think and contribute. I mean, because a big part of this is when I talked earlier about, you know, the 6040 win formula that you should be in creation mode 60% of the time, so to should your team, because all these ideas and ambitions you have your team has to be able to support and the only way they can support that is if they have room in their calendar. So for example, like my podcast, we were, you know, getting thrilled that we had like, 205 star reviews, and we’re like, Okay, so we’re getting close to that. We’ll put a banner up and Facebook, that’s what you do. Here we go. And then someone on my team came to me and she said, Kris, I found this other website. And there’s all these other reviews out there that we don’t know about. You have over 900 reviews. Now, just so you know, I’m a flawed human being Ted, I was like, oh, we’re so close to 1000. Yeah, now I’m like, I need 1000. But what happened was, there was this new there were places other like we didn’t know stitcher left reviews and all this other stuff, right. So we there was this website, new platform that collected all the reviews and put them on one place. Now, this wasn’t just me, I, when I brought this to the podcast community in different Facebook groups, I looked like the hero, I gave them the length, they’re like, Kris, you’re the best. But this was because she had time in her calendar to be in creation mode. Right. So what happened was, she got to look like the hero, she’s always, you know, 60% in creation mode. So it’s very thrilling and stimulating for her to be contributing and expressing her ideas. And so this is not a job she wants to leave. So retention is really not an issue for me or any of my clients

 

16:41

who said by empowering your employees, and giving them the ability to view just like you an entrepreneur, where they actually are creating something rather than just going through the doldrums of the same job over and over again, which is what most of us view when we’re not happy with our current employment situation. Now, Kris, you’ve shared that you previously had issues with time management, and now you’ve actually built a whole business around helping others managing your time. So can you explain to us what is windy, our windy day mean? Yeah, so

 

17:08

I think the big thing with time management and the problem I had was, I got a lot done in a day a lot. And I was the go to person for a lot of people. So I didn’t resonate with having any time management issues, because I’m like, excuse me, I get more done than anybody I know. But what my tactic was, was to get up in the morning and run as fast as I can, trying to race time. And if you read my book, when the hour when the day, there’s a couple of horrifying stories in there where I literally nearly lost my life, like, almost electrocuted myself quite seriously, because I was in a rush. There’s silly things like that. But what I would say to you is the biggest mistake I think people make is your calendar is your time bank account. And so many people put outside appointments on their calendar, but they don’t put their work on the calendar. They don’t a lot for the stuff they have to do everyday, like, including reading emails, right? So they what happens so many people will say, Hmm, they enter the day and they think they might think they have eight hours. But in fact, maybe they only have four because of all the stuff they have to do day to day because people say to me, oh, Kris, I remember that. I don’t want to put on my calendar. But it’s a lossing time. That’s the same as if you say to me, oh, Kris, my car payment comes every month. But I know that so I don’t count it well, the money is gone. So the money’s gone for the car payment, you know, comes out every month, same thing with your calendar, there’s stuff you do every day, great, you know, you have to do it. But you have to count that because that time is gone. And so if you don’t do that you can’t, you know, can’t improve what you don’t measure. And that’s where things when I really started using my calendar effectively and strategically. I was like, well, no wonder I was No wonder I was tired. You can’t do all this in a day, when you see it laid out that it’s a game changer.

 

18:52

So this is the whole idea of allocating time to everything you do not just a task that you want to do. And that’s the problem of a simple to do list that does not actually factor in the time that you take for the task that you’re going to do for the whole day itself. Right?

 

19:05

Yes. So now you’ve you’ve given me one of my trigger words, which I don’t believe in to do list because what happens is to do lists studies show are really great if you’re looking to stress yourself out, all behind in your work. So they have a purpose if that’s your goal. But what happens is to do lists do not have a single sequential order, they, they don’t give you any measurements of time, or a priority. And so you tend to chop through a few things to make you feel good, right? But you have no idea when you’re off the track. So you have this to do list and one thing might might take 20 minutes. Next thing might take two hours so that you can’t really plan that. So what I would say Ted is think about it like this. Let’s say you were going from a road trip to I don’t know from New York to California, you’re going to go from a car ride. If you had a GPS and a plan, it would tell you how many miles you could figure out how much gas you had what time you leave when you like when you arrive Anytime you stopped, it would adjust everything, you’d have a blueprint, you would have a plan, right? If you had a to do list for that trip, you’d have bring money, verse snacks, warm clothes, none of it would determine the outcome of the trip or how efficient the trip would be. So that’s the difference between what I call a GPS plan and a to do list. So to do lists, and there’s, and I’m not talking about now putting every single little thing on your calendar, I work in one hour increments that’s within the hour when the day. And it’s a little bit hard to unpack all of this in this interview, but I would tell you to do list is the last thing that should be running your business.

 

20:36

So guys, don’t run your business on a simple to do this, what you should do instead is to allocate time blocks to the task that you want to do. And this way, you can actually know how much time you’re going to locate and how much time you have left to achieve each individual goal. And this way, you’re going to be able to better plan the day itself. Now, Kris, there’s so many tools and software’s out there that claim to help you to be productive. But what are your views on this?

 

20:59

Yeah. So you know, let’s go back to like a carpenter, like you could give me a hammer, it doesn’t mean I can build a cabinet. Right? But you could give a good Carpenter a better hammer. Sure. So I think in this day and age with tech, this is a big misconception where people think, oh, and I bought into it many years ago, myself, like, Oh, you buy this and nevermind that it’s expensive. But it takes you two or three months to learn it. But once you learn it, oh, it’s gonna change your life. And of course, three months later, it doesn’t. And you spent all that time trying to learn it, I

 

21:28

did it, I

 

21:28

did it, I know it right. And it was painful. What I would say to you is for myself, for my clients, for really the wealthiest people in the world, any tool that you’re going to use, most of them are free or next to free. There’s so like, the Google calendars is crazy free, like so most of the stuff is really free basic stuff. And also, it’s something that you can learn to use and implement, like I tell my clients, if you need to take more than 15 minutes to figure this out, then it’s not the right tool for you, right, because then it’s a distraction, and you’re going in the wrong direction. So it’s great to have a skill set or a talent. And you can have a tool like the carpenter maybe he’s got a power drill instead of a drill. But whether it’s a drill or a power drill does not make you a better carpenter, you have to have that skill set. So don’t be misled by shiny object syndrome in this world we live in where you think, oh, I’ve got all these options. And this will be a game changer. It’s just busy work.

 

22:27

So Kris, now let’s talk a little bit about your own podcast. What is it about? And what are you trying to achieve with it? Yeah, I

 

22:34

just like having an opportunity to meet like minded entrepreneurs. And it really is just to get you to your next one. Now. You know, I’m not preaching about what I’m talking about here all day long. It could be anything from sales to social media, anything, right? What I get a lot of praise on is that people listen to the show, and they can immediately implement something that they’ve listened to on the show. I’m all about tangible and quick takeaways. My whole philosophy is, you know, no fluff, big results for everything that I do. So for the show, it’s the same thing. Just join us when they are when the day and it’s a wide variety of topics, but stuff that you can implement right away.

 

23:13

No crispy Shavers. How has your background as a marketing specialist, shift the way that you think and react as a business owner?

 

23:19

Well, I think probably what people tell me my sweet spot is in marketing is marketing messaging, and I think being clear on your message. So I, I help entrepreneurs stop working so hard. And that’s a simple sentence. But it took me a long time to get there and figure out like, Oh, you want to tell people all these things that you do but simplifying your message is the biggest mistake that most entrepreneurs are still struggling with, they want 15 minutes or 30 minutes to explain to someone all the stuff they do and, and and that’s just really hard to repeat, and it’s hard for them to remember and pass on to other people that might be good clients for you. So I think, you know, the big thing about marketing is a lot of people out there doing all sorts of marketing, but just for me, it was being clarity of message really moved me forward, being really clear on who I help, how I help them. What’s the pain, I solve? Pain problem I solve and you know, who I want to work with just being super clear on that really allowed me to work with amazing people and get big results.

 

24:15

Now, Kris, if the listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation, what would you like it to be?

 

24:20

Yeah, it’s a game changer. If you have a team and you want to have what I call a win Team A what is next team and that ideas to execution is what being an entrepreneur is about. It’s not about paperwork or admin work. So getting your ideas to execution is what the game is about.

 

24:40

Kris, how can our listeners get in touch with you if they need your

 

24:42

help? Yeah, just reach out to me in any of the socials and tell me that you heard me on this fantastic podcast, a friend of Ted’s apps friend of mine, we do have a free gift. We’ve got this amazing thing. I’m huge. We just put it up there. It’s the secret to getting 200 free hours of admin work. We have in you, North America and Europe throughout the world, they now have a lot of high school Co Op students. So we had, we’ve had 30. But this year alone, we had four, six, something like that. So we got 800 free hours of, you know, somebody in grade 12 with a lot of tech skills. And so I created a manual how to get 200 free hours of admin work so that you can have Co Op students in your organization. So that’s a free gift to your audience. It’s free gift from Kris k, i k ri s oh my gosh, can I don’t know how to spell my own name free from Kris.com. And that would get you the secret to getting 200 hours of free admin work.

 

25:39

Thank you, Kris, for your generosity. And thank you for being here today with me and sharing all your great advice. It was such a pleasure. Oh, I thank you for your thoughtful questions and guys did was the wonderful Kris Ward with all her actionable tips on how you can build your own winning team. Now, don’t be a separate printer. Don’t take on the role of doing everything in a business. So learn to grow the team when it’s time, it doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive. You can always start by hiring some virtual assistants to help free up some of your time from administration work so you can focus on doing what you do best. And that’s growing your business. Now all the shownotes tools resources and episodes are on my website at Ted Teo calm, so why not go and check it out. If you’d like to support the show did the best we can do this is to share the show of a friend or leave a review online. And don’t forget about the Amazon gift voucher giveaway. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon now. Thank you so much in advance. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.