Kristin Molenaar (Founder of YesBossVA)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work not for their own fame and fortune, but for the glory of God and the good of others. Every single week, I'm bringing you a conversation that I'm hosting with a Christian who is pursuing world class mastery of their vocation. We're talking about each guest's path to mastery, their daily habits, their daily routines, and how their faith influences their work today. You guys are going to love this conversation I had with Kristen Molenar. She's the founder and CEO of Yes Boss, a virtual agency that specializes in online business management so solo entrepreneurs can scale their impact without burning out. The business is doing phenomenally well. They're doing hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue while Kristen only spends five hours a week working on the venture. So Kristen and I sat down. We talked about how entrepreneurs, CEOs, managers, any leaders can delegate well and what's going on spiritually that keeps us from delegating. We talked about Kristen and I's habits for starting our days out slowly. And we talked about why less is often more when it comes to consuming content. So, yes, I'm suggesting you listen to more content. Listen to this episode to get the answer to why less is often more in terms of content. I think if you were to look at the most tweetable episodes of the Call to Mastery, this would be number one or two. So many nuggets of gold wisdom that Kristen shared. So please enjoy this conversation with Kristen Molenar. Hey, Kristin, thanks for hanging out with me.

Yeah. I'm so excited to chat with you, Jordan.

Yeah. So we were just talking about Scottsdale. So since I've had this meal, this is going back two, three years ago. I have said over and over again, I think the best meal of my life was in Scottsdale, Arizona. And I've traveled a lot of places, but there's this particular restaurant, I'm curious if you've been there, called Sumo Maya.

Okay. Yes, it's. I know of the place and I just said to my husband about a week ago, we really need to go there because I don't understand Mexican, Asian, Fusion. What does that mean?

So.

So maybe you could tell me.

I don't even know if I could properly describe it. It was the best sushi I've ever had.

Okay.

It was, like, totally off the charts. Yeah. I don't even remember the whole meal of what exactly we got. I just remember being, like, totally blown away. And I remember the greatest sushi I've ever had. So highly recommended Sumo Maya for you and your husband. All right, so we starting at the very shallow end of the pool. Let's go all the way to the other end, the deep end of the pool.

Okay.

Let's talk about a shared passion you and I have real quickly before we get into the meat of the conversation. Adoption. Yeah, we both adopted children into our families. My wife and I just recently adopted a baby girl a few months ago. And as Christians, I think we can all wrap our heads around, or start to wrap our heads around the parallels between spiritual adoption and familial adoption. Intellectually, yeah, But I have experienced that. It's a whole other thing to actually experience that. Hold that child in your hands. So, again, going to the deep end very quickly, how has adoption impacted your walk with the Lord?

Oh, my gosh. Adoption in so many ways. But I'll say primarily, I am only a parent because of blindly following the Lord. So my story is that I had said pretty much my whole life, I'm not going to have kids. Like, my childhood, I didn't like being a kid because of various things that were going on in my family. I hated being a child. And I thought from an early age, like, why would I ever subject another human to this? Like, I'm not bringing a kid into the world. This is awful. That sounds so dramatic, but that's really how I felt. So my husband and I got married when I was 24, and I was approaching 30, and I thought, you know what? Like, if we're not going to have kids, like, we need to make a decision. This can't be like a. Oh, maybe, like, if we don't decide, like, our indecision will be our decision, and is that really what we want? So I had always thought, like, maybe adoption maybe. You know, there are lots of kids in the world that need love. Like, that was my thinking at the time. So we went to information meeting, and we were exposed to the needs of the foster care system, and it completely broke our heart. And we looked at each other and thought, like, how do we say that? We won't even try to take steps in pursuit of helping this and so we just gave it to God. We said, all right, Lord, we're going to take one step at a time. We are banking on you closing the doors so that we can feel good about the fact that we pursued it. But you didn't make it happen.

Right, right, right.

That's actually what we were thinking. We took the very slow route. We took about a year to get licensed, and then we got a call on a Tuesday at 4pm and our son was dropped off on our doorstep literally by seven o' clock that night. And two and a half days later, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm a parent. Not in the fact that we now had a child in our home, but the fact that like, whoa, there's this tiny human that has my heart completely and I would lay on the railroad tracks to save him. And everything changed.

I've been thinking a lot about the promise of Romans 8, 28, 29. Right. For I'm convinced that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And holding my adopted daughter instantly, I had a new appreciation for that. Because the second she was ours, there was nothing that could ever separate her from me and my love. And if that's true of me as this woefully fallen man, how much more so with God? The promise of that verse just took on an entirely different. And I think I was like shocked at like the instantaneousness of that feeling of, yeah, I would do anything for this child that is not my own flesh and blood. So I thank you for following the command to adopt and to care for orphans. It's a beautiful thing. It's not really related to the topic of the show at all, but anytime somebody loves adoption, I go out of my way to talk about it. So.

All right, yeah, no, I'm glad that you do. I'm glad that you do.

You. Let's talk about this great business you're building and let's start high level. What does YesBoss do?

Yeah. So yes, boss offers full team support. So we're like a one stop shop for solopreneurs. So essentially you could see us as like an agency who offers online business management. But what's different about us versus hiring somebody that's an obm and that's the acronym that a lot of people use in our industry. So the difference between hiring us as an agency and hiring a one off person is that we, our clients, are able to capitalize on the entire team that we have in place so not only are we project managing and business managing, but we're also doing all of that backend execution. I think we're a perfect solution. And our clients have felt this way too. I think we're a perfect solution for the entrepreneur that built a business because they want freedom, but they're realizing, I know how to make money. But now I'm overwhelmed. So what do I do now? I didn't get into entrepreneurship to manage a complete company, a big team. So. So we come in and we provide that team for them, get rid of that overwhelm so that those solopreneurs can really step into. Like, what's that visionary, empowered, CEO role.

Yeah. So what are the specific services that you guys tend to provide to those solopreneurs?

Yeah, so it's a combination of the day to day stuff, which is like client management, inbox management, community management, content management, like all those day to day things that need to happen. And then it's also the digital marketing implementation. So for clients that want to do a summit, like an online summit, or pulling off a webinar, need to do some kind of drip email sequence or drip video sequence, click funnels, all of those ways that you really drive traffic into your business. So we help you put those systems in place, and then we help you manage the people that have come in. And then we also do white label stuff. So white label is like partnering with our clients to help them make money without having to do additional work that falls on their plate. So, like, an example of that is we have a client who is a speaker and author coach, and we do outreach packages for her clients, so she's able to sell our service without having to do more work herself, which puts more profit into her business.

Yeah, that's smart. I love it. How did you get into this? Like, what's the founding story of the business? And I'm sure this is wrapped up in your personal story. Right. But what's the path that led to this business being born?

Yeah, entrepreneurial failure. And I will say downright failure, because I thought it was me giving up.

Those are the best stories. Those often birth some of the best businesses. So tell us about that.

Yeah, because I couldn't walk away from the fact that I am entrepreneurial and I couldn't turn it off. But so what happened is I left my last corporate job in late 2014, and I spent a year trying to make a coaching and consulting business. And the beauty industry happened because that's where I had experience. Now, granted, I don't like the beauty industry. If you ask me about anything having to do with cosmetics or whatever, I'm going to say I don't know. And so it was not a very good fit, but I thought that it would make a good business because that's where my expertise fell. So that's what I was doing. So about a year into that process, I was finding that I was just struggling. I was doing everything the experts were telling me to do and I made like $5,000 for the whole entire year. I was living in my parents or my in laws guest bedroom with my husband and our two dogs. It was like suffocating me. I felt like, lord, I just don't know what to do. I don't feel like he, he gave me a lot of answers, but it wasn't just like, do this thing. And so I'm the kind of girl that's like, okay, well I'm going to knock on some doors and whatever doors open, I'm going to go in them and lord, I'm just going to look to you to give me peace where I need peace and close doors where I'm supposed to close doors. So what I did is I went on a website, hiremymom.com I wasn't even a mom at the time.

Posing as a mom. That's an interesting, interesting choice. Yeah.

Oh, so funny. So I went on hiremymom.com because I had heard from being in the entrepreneurial circles, that's where you go to find support. And I thought, I've learned all this stuff about entrepreneurialism. I want flexibility. Maybe I'll just help somebody else build their business because they know more than I do. I picked up my first client in late 2015. That client is actually still with me, which is so wild. So I picked up that client and I remember reading through the contract and there was this clause in the contract that said that the work performed by the company, the subcontractors, the vendors, the this, that, whatever. And I thought, ooh, you mean I don't have to do this work? I can build a team that could do this work. So that's what I started to do and that's the beginning of what I did. But I still didn't want to own what I did. I thought that this was like a means to make money, but not really what I was supposed to do. So for the next three years. Yeah, three years. I also was dabbling in other businesses that I thought were my calling and were outright Christian because I thought like, VA businesses aren't Christian. Christian. Like I want to do something that glorifies God. And the result of that though is that I was able to build yes, boss. To be mostly self sufficient so that I could pursue these like, callings. And then God told me in like summer of 2018, he said, it's time to let go of all this other stuff and steward what I've given you. I was like, oh, okay. And then it's built from there.

That's amazing. So what were some of those other things that you were doing that you considered outright ministry as opposed to? Yes, boss.

Yeah, so they were good things. And I feel like at the time, you know, God had told me, he did tell me to pursue them, but I was holding them with a tight fist. So I don't want to like, say, I don't want to frame it in a way that they were like the wrong things for me to be doing. I think that I was executing in a way that I probably could have experienced less overwhelm. But the main one that I was doing was a community called Relevant Entrepreneur. And it was basically supposed to be education and community for Christian entrepreneurs. I built what I needed. And what's crazy is that even though the business, I think that business generated about $7,000 in two years, the crazy thing about that is the, the connections that I made with other Christian women have been incredibly instrumental in building me up as an entrepreneur.

Then you had this business. Yes, boss. That is just taking off. Right. You're doing six figures in revenue, working five hours a week with a team of six or however many people. So did you just like wake up one day, be like, wait a second, this thing's like really working? Maybe God wants me to put all my eggs in this basket. Like, what was that like?

Yeah, it started with a fast and two month sabbatical from Relevant Entrepreneur for me to see, like really see things. It kind of opened my eyes. I guess I needed to take some blinders off. Like, I was just blinded by ambition. I guess I don't know what I was blinded by. I needed to take that off. And then, yeah, I really just. It was just something I felt in my heart through journaling and time with the Lord. And at first I was really resistant to it because there was a lot of pride for me attached to. I don't want to be seen as a virtual assistant. I want to be seen as an entrepreneur. And God highlighted that for me. Like, hey, who you are is not what you do. Who you are is who I tell you who you are. So Stop putting all these biases on this. And then I remember sharing this information with some really good friends of ours, and their response was hilarious. They said, man, if you weren't our really good friend, we would have asked you if we could have bought your company, like, several years ago, because we couldn't understand why you weren't focusing on the thing that was making bank and you were barely doing anything to get it there.

That's amazing. Yeah. That's so fascinating. So I think a lot of people struggle with this, right? Being gifted one thing, maybe skills as an assistant or skills as whatever it is, a writer marketer, but being envious of somebody else's calling. I think we spend a lot of time worrying about those things rather than embracing the gifts God's given us to do. But the funny part of your story, right, is that you embrace those skills as an assistant, and God kind of gave you the desires of your heart, which was. And build a business around that core skill set. So as you mastered that core skill, you were able to build a business around that, which I absolutely love. So, all right, you're building this really impressive business. You're pursuing mastery, the art now of entrepreneurship. And you're doing it in a way. I mean, the business essentially is helping other entrepreneurs and leaders pursue mastery of that craft. Right. Freeing up their time through the art of delegation. So very broad question. How can solopreneurs effectively delegate?

Yeah. So we've spent some time over the last 18 months because I now have an executive team. So I have, like, this two women on my team that we really, like, evaluate everything in the business and are growing the business together. And so we've been questioning what is the yes boss method? What's the common theme that we're finding? What's going on here? And so what we're finding is the most effective for our clients is first really looking at what are the essentials in your business? I think that has to come first. I think that the biggest hiring mistake that I see entrepreneurs hiring because they're being told by marketers that there's this thing that they need in their business. Like, I'm going to hire somebody to do my social media because I'm not consistent on social media, and everybody's telling me I need social media. Well, is that really essential to your business? And the way to gauge that is, is that generating profit? If it's not generating profit, I'm going to challenge that. It's not essential. So then from there, really distilling down, okay, what do I enjoy doing. I also think another thing that a lot of entrepreneurs do that handicaps them is they assume that they have to be the one providing the money making service. And my story is proof that that's not even true. I don't provide any of that money making service. Everybody on my team does. So I don't have billable hours. My team does. So, like looking at what do you really like to do and then building a strategy around that and outsourcing all the other essentials that don't fall into the things that light you up.

Yeah, I love that. So I know this is different for everybody. Right. But what are the common themes? Like what are some of the most time consuming tasks that are essential for entrepreneurs for that task to get done within their business, but that they don't need to be doing that they really should be and can be effectively delegating to others?

Yeah, you're right. I mean the variety of tasks. This answer is so broad. Administrative stuff, like entrepreneurs shouldn't be doing that. That's going to take a lot of your time. I would even challenge like a lot of the processes that you need internally. Like you could be outsourcing those processes.

Like the design or the execution of those processes.

Both. Both, yeah. Social media management, unless like that really lights you up. Like I don't think that that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs should be doing. They should be showing up in a way that lights them up. But that day to day management, like a lot of those things that you find yourself doing over and over and over again, those are the perfect place to start. And for people that have never delegated, I also believe that this is the easiest way to start because as an entrepreneur you have an idea of how to do it successfully. So that's like the safest way to delegate because you know, if somebody else is doing it the way you want it done, so that's the safest way. Now that's not the only thing you can delegate. You don't have to know how to do it to delegate. There's different levels of delegation, but yeah, those repeatable things also I would say the things that you run to to get you out of doing the things that actually affect your bottom line.

Interesting, That's a great point. So what are some of those things typically for founders?

Design work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There are so many entrepreneurs out there that love design and like I get that. I love design too. And I have, and I know this because I've fallen into this trap so many times. But What I find myself doing is like, I'm supposed to follow up with those clients and instead I'm like, oh, can I create some social media graphics? Because it feels good, because I can check it off my list and I feel really productive. But in reality that's handicapping my business because it's giving me something to do that doesn't actually generate profit. And I'm shooting myself in the foot when I do that. And I see a lot of people doing that.

Yeah. So I've led pretty significant sized teams. I got a lot of experience delegating, but I think the biggest challenge I continue to have and so I'm going to ask a very selfish question, hoping you can help me here, is assuming that I have to delegate step by step, instructions versus delegating objectives, right? So an example, right? Like we have this product, I sell these ads in my weekly devotional email called my reading list books that I've said I'm personally going to read these things, but somebody's paying for me to take a look at that book and agree to end. Right? So a few months back I was like, guys, we need to make sure that we have physical books, physical copies of all these books so we could share content of it on social media. And I was really tempted to say, when I gave that task over to my assistant, I was really tempted to say, okay, Kayla, here are the step by step instructions for how to do that. You need to contact this person at this publisher, this person at the other publisher and make sure we have books, you know, at least 15 days out, whatever. And instead I said, hey, just make sure we always have the book one week out, period. I don't care how you do it, I don't care who you talk to, find the contact information, my email, wherever. But that's very challenging for me to break that mindset of delegating well defined processes versus delegating objectives. Here's where we need to go figure out how to get there. Because frankly, you're more qualified than me to design, you know, the steps A through Z. So what advice would you give somebody like me? Because I think there's a lot of people that have this mentality who are hesitant to trust the delegation of objectives.

Yeah, yeah, you have to have a really good hiring process. Our hiring process is like seven steps. I believe we in our hiring process create ways for people to show us their attention to detail. We purposely have created tests that people will trip up like there's something in there that like we either didn't give Them instruction or we gave them conflicting instruction, like, we put these things in our test. So after somebody's gotten through, like a really rigorous hiring process, you've got to at least try and test them whether you can trust them or not. Because once you get in the habit of always laying out every single process and procedure for the people that you're hiring, they're going to expect that from you and they're going to come back to you. And because you've outlined it to so, like, clearly and you know thoroughly, they're not going to feel like they can think for themselves. They literally have to follow your process. It's kind of like calling somebody in customer service and you're like, please stop reading the script. Just listen to me.

Yeah, yeah, that happens really quickly. I found with new team members. Right. Like the way you treat new team members very early on, let's call it in the first month, really sets the tone for how that relationship's going to go over, you know, the long run. Right. So right off the bat, showing team members that you trust them, right, to do the job that you hired them to do with very little direction often produces the best results. So I love good hiring processes. I have very rigorous hiring processes for Jordan Rayner and company for Threshold360, the venture that I'm executive chairman of. I'm really curious what yours is, or maybe we probably don't have enough time to talk through the whole process, but what are some of your favorite questions, tricks throughout that process to find the best talent?

Yeah. I can give you a couple things that we do to help your listeners in their hiring process. The first one is that in our job description, we're really clear about how people need to either apply to the job ad or apply for the position. What I think is a complete waste of time is putting up a job ad and asking people to email you. Or you could be putting it like a Facebook group and having people direct message you. That's going to be the biggest waste of time.

Colossal, colossal waste of time. I can't believe how many people do this.

Yeah, it's horrible. And I know this because I made this mistake. It's like, okay, I need to be able to weed people out. So what we do is we instruct people to either depending on which platform we're posting on, they either have to respond, like, send me an email, and the subject has to be exactly what I've told them the subject should be.

I love it. I freaking love it. Yeah, keep going. Yeah.

And anyone who doesn't put that subject. I don't even open your email. Like, if you can't. If you're not interested in reading through the entire job post, like, I'm not interested. I want people that are excited about what I'm doing. I want people that have looked at my website and said to themselves, like, oh, my gosh, I really want this job. That's what I want.

We are kindred spirits, and we could talk about hiring for another hour because I really believe that the most important thing you do as a founder, as any manager, is hire. One great hiring decision eliminates a thousand other decisions that you have to make in the future. I love the subject line thing. I've done something similar, and people just call me a jerk, but I'm like, whatever. I'm trying to. I'm screening for attention to detail. Like, I had an assistant once. Her name is Courtney, and she spelled her name kind of odd. It was C O, R, T, N, E, Y. And if somebody misspelled Courtney's name in an email, game over, you're out. Like, if you can't spell somebody's name right, come on, get out of town. So I love stuff like that. Okay, so the whole point of delegation, right, is to free up time, right, to focus on the things that you're uniquely qualified to do. So I'm really curious to get your perspective in your role. What are those things for you? What are the things that you're never going to delegate?

So for me, what I have found really energized me, and that's how I know that I'm in my zone of genius. When I'm done with it, am I amped up to go and do those things that I have to do, like tax preparation? Because those things, like, you just have to do them, they kind of suck, but you got to do them. So I look at, like, if I'm in my zone of genius, when I'm done doing it, I feel energized to continue to do the other things. And what I've really discovered about myself is I love cultivating positive team environments. Like, I'm a cheerleader and encourager by nature. That's my jam. So what I do is I love on my team and my team loves on my clients. I show my team how important they are to me. I ask them how I can support them not doing their job for them. But, like, what can I do? How can I help you through this client conflict? Or how can I equip you to do your job better that for Me is my zone of genius. I just love having a team that I can love on and that they know that they are the most important thing to me.

And nobody can do that job but you. No, you're the only one who can do it. What else? What else? Are you never going to delegate?

I'm never going to delegate. Well, I am going to delegate but still do it myself. I'll say this education. I really love talking to entrepreneurs about the strategies that I've put in place in my business and what we've seen clients put in place in their business. So internally, we're developing, developing some educational resources for people that aren't necessarily a good fit to work with us one on one, but want to take advantage of, like, our hiring processes and understanding what it means to like, build leadership or to be a good leader and develop a good company culture. So we're putting together resources. I will always be a part of that. I will not. My team is going to be involved in it because they have a lot to bring to the table. But I love it. I love helping people come out of that overwhelm and realize that entrepreneurship doesn't have to feel like a prison because I feel like for some people it does. So I'll always be part of that as well.

I've heard you talk about your what would Richard Branson do? Question. So can you explain what you mean by this?

Oh, my gosh. So I say it like kind of facetiously, but when I'm looking at something that needs to be done in my business. So, okay, I'm an entrepreneur, so I have a lot of entrepreneur friends, right? And I have a lot of friends that are in marketing and they tell me, like, Kristen, you have to build like a personal brand or you have to have an Instagram account or like, you need to be focused on building your email list. So you tell me all these things and I just kind of look at them and I go, you know what question I'm asking in my mind is like, would Richard Branson do it? Like, yeah, if he liked it, but if he didn't like it, he wouldn't do it. And I'm sorry, but I'm not trying to be a solo burned out entrepreneur. I'm trying to build a company.

I love it. There's so many. I think it's hard to be an entrepreneur for that reason. You get so much unsolicited advice from marketers, from friends, from fellow entrepreneurs, and it can be overwhelming feeling like you're not doing a million things that you should be doing. But at the end of the day, you just got to look at the balance sheet, look at the growth, what's really driving the venture. Right. And just focus more resources there. So is Branson a big entrepreneurial hero for you?

You know, I think it all started because at the time when I said it, the first time I verbalized it, it was like, everybody knows who that is.

Yeah, right, right, right, right.

And he's like made it. So it's not. Not somebody that, you know, we all talk about. Like right now I feel like a lot of the people that are like the buzz people right now aren't necessarily. I'm not seeing them do really staying in their zone of genius and delegating as much as I would delegate.

That's interesting. All right, talk about your typical day. From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. What does a typical day look like for you?

Well, every other day I'm responsible for toddler wake up.

I love it. Yeah.

My husband and I do every other day. So on the every other day I'm doing toddler wake up at 8 o'.

Clock. You have to wake your kids up.

No, no, no, no, no. I wake up. When he wakes up, I wake up. But like I was going to say.

I'm like, this is a foreign concept to me. I don't, I don't understand.

No, I try and pray for him to sleep in as late as possible is what I do. And then the other day I stay in bed until probably like 9:30 or 10.

Yeah.

And just slowly wake up. So my morning time is, is usually my most precious. I know that I need to start slowly. That's been interesting in dealing with being a parent and God has like shifted me. Like, what does that look like? Because it doesn't feel slow. It feels a little bit chaotic when you're dealing with a child. So that's been interesting. But setting the attention that I'm going to start slow, that I'm not going to get bogged down by what other people are trying to bog me down with. Like, so the intent is to stay out of email. But sometimes email gives me. It's like an ego boost when I see that I need it. I'll be frank there. And then I usually am on like, I would say 50% of the time I'm on calls. So talking to potential new clients, which is not always on my plate. And less and less of it is on my plate because somebody else on my team is, is helping with sales. Too, Talking to my team. I have a team member, and probably we're growing our local team, but actually going to lunch with people on my team, I get together in person with them, and my work day is usually from, like, I don't know, like, 11 to 3. I get everything with work done between those hours. And you know what's interesting and I want to bring up is a lot of my time is spent thinking. That was weird for me because I felt like, thinking is fun when you're thinking about fun things. And it felt irresponsible to me, and I had to realize, like, hey, this is the greatest value as a visionary that I bring to the table. Don't get involved in busy work just because you want to make yourself feel productive. Do the thinking that's actually the hard work.

100%. So much wisdom here. So how do you do that? Like, where do you break away? Like, what are your habits to, like, cultivate that time to think.

Yeah. So I prayed for a bigger closet. God gave me a bigger closet. I sit in there with the Lord. I have a few different. You know, I have the Bible, and I'm reading through. I'm always reading through some kind of Bible plan. I have a journal, and then there's usually a few other things that I'm reading through. And the Lord said something to me that just. Oh, my gosh, it just pierced my heart in the best way. He said to me, like, hey, I want to sit here and strategize with you. Like, I created you to be an entrepreneur. And, like, I, like, bring that to me. Let's do it together. And he gave me the vision of a dad sitting with a little girl having a tea party.

I love that.

He's like, just, you know. And what I felt was like, just like a dad would sit there and have a tea party with his daughter because that's what brings her joy. Like, that's what God wants to do with me. And so I try to do that strategizing with the Lord. And I've found when I veer off course and I'm doing all the strategizing by myself, those are the worst ideas I have. And so I am intentional about sitting with him. I journal a lot. I read the Bible, and then I'm like, business planning. I'm like, the journal's on the front part, and then I'm flipping to the back page because I'm writing out funnels and all these ideas and these processes.

Can you spend a couple more minutes talking about starting slow, starting your Day slow. I think there's a lot of wisdom in this and this is something I've recently adopted. Some new habits to try to do this. Well, what do you mean by starting slow? What does that look like? I know staying off of email, you mentioned that. But like what else?

Yeah, for me it has more to do with my mind and how quickly I'm allowing like the ideas and the to do list and like all this stuff flood in my mind. I was finding that it was creating a lot of anxiety for me. I would wake up and I would start in this like anxious, like there's this email and I got to get to this email and I got to do this thing and I got to do that thing. And what I've found is it's really like taking captive my thoughts and like is the thing that I'm thinking about something that I need to do because I'm feeling like I'm going to be behind or am I thinking things because other people have planted that thought in my head. And so for me it's really being mindful of what's going on in my mind. Like okay, right now I'm only responsible for waking up. Right now I'm only responsible for making breakfast. Right now I'm only responsible for sitting with my toddler while he eats and maintaining that like okay, just be in the moment. I'm not thinking about the business, I'm not thinking about those things. I'm thinking about in the moment.

Really.

I think the greatest benefit to me has been my ability to show up for myself, family and then secondary is my ability to not handicap my business. This is a weird one. I feel like my anxiety and feeling these like racing thoughts and the to do list and like all these things. I honestly have found that that handicaps my business because I have put together people and processes that know how to run my business like a well oiled machine. When I start inserting myself, I mean I feel like I've talked about. This is probably like the fourth time I've said that. My pride gets in the. I'm really finding that it's my pride that I want to be needed. So I'm like making myself be needed and that creates anxiety for the business. It handicaps it by not allowing the processes and the people to keep going and then it ultimately like puts more work on my plate which is counterintuitive to the kind of business I'm trying to grow.

We really are kindred spirits. We're speaking a lot of the same language here. I Think there's like this savior complex going on here, right? Like, I find that when I fail to delegate or when I insert myself into existing processes, a lot of times it's because, like, I miss being the hero. Like, I miss, I don't know, I just miss being relied upon and being seen as the savior of this business. And obviously that's sinful. Obviously that's my pride talking. But I think that happens for a lot of people. I think we love to feel like we're the ones holding up our businesses. And it just leads us into this trap of believing that we're the ones producing results through our business, which we're not. Right? And a lot of times it's working ourselves out. It's necessary to work ourselves out of these processes in order for the business to thrive. So on this topic of starting slowly, I had very similar thoughts, right? So I would wake up and I would immediately check my to do list for the day, check my calendar for the day. I haven't checked email in the morning for years and years and years. So I don't struggle with that, but I struggle with other things. And something that I found to be really helpful is, number one, like waking up before my kids. Because that was also stressful. Like when your kids wake you up, it's like, okay, I am working right away as soon as I hit the ground. Because I mean, parenting at this age, as you know Kristin, is hard work, right? So my kids wake up super early. They wake up at 5:30. So I get up at 4:45 right now.

That's early. Oh my goodness, super early. I get a super dad.

I don't know about that. But then the other thing is I just, I've stopped checking my phone altogether until basically like 7:15. So from 4:45 to 7:15, I don't check it at all. I check it one time before I sit down at my desk at 7:45 and then I'm good to go. But so huge endorser of the start slow strategy. By the way, have you read Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer?

I haven't, but I'm open to book suggestions. Slowly consume content. That's another thing that I'm very serious about is I. I try to limit my content consumption. So. But I'm open to book suggestions from you.

I love this. So I think I recommend this book on every episode of this podcast. It's so terrific. And we actually had John Mark Comer on the podcast to talk about the ruthless elimination of Hurry. So I Highly recommend it. Yeah. So this slow content thing, I want to ask a question there. Then I want to talk about this intersection of faith and work for you. So why slow content? Because I think there's a lot of brilliance in this. I've actually thought about setting a goal to read less in a given period of time. Tell me why you're so slow on content.

There's a couple reasons. I am very much a gut. Like, I do things based on gut reaction, and if I consume too much content, then I feel like I don't hear. What, like my own. Well, I was gonna say intuition, but really, like, the Lord prompting me. I've just silenced what he's telling me and started to listen to what other people are telling me. So there's one. The second one is comparison. Like, I. It is so easy to fall into that trap. And, you know, I'm constantly having to say, nope, we're not going to do that. Like, okay, are you looking at Instagram and are you starting to feel awful about yourself? Okay, time to turn that off. Like, stop doing that. That's something that I'm constantly having to remind myself about. And then the other thing is the very practical business lesson that I learned is we started with yes, Boss. We started doing summit packages. We don't do summit packages anymore, but we had packaged like this service, and I was trying to figure out, what the heck do I want to charge for this as a package? And I started to look to see what other people were charging. And the Lord is so faithful, he blinded me to it. I didn't know what other people were charging. I kind of looked like I didn't really, really dig, but I couldn't find it, and I needed to get stuff done. And so I thought, okay, well, what do I need to charge? Like, this is how much I need to charge hourly to make a profit. This is how many hours I know that this takes, whatever. So we built out a package that was $4,200, because I felt like that's what it needed to be. And I sold it like crazy. I sold it like crazy. And I was just like, this is awesome. I can't believe I'm doing this. And then six months into selling that package, people started to tell me, you know, you're, like, more than twice as expensive than anybody else I've ever talked to. And I was like, oh, cool. Well, I have confidence now that that's what it's worth. So, like, if you want to go work with them, that's fine. And so I'VE seen, like, the benefit really of that as well. Like, why do I need other people to tell me what I'm supposed to be charging? I don't. And there's so many people talking about, like, use this tactic, use that tactic. And because I'm such an essentialist, like, 90% of the time it's like, I don't need that. Like, I have an Instagram account with like a hundred and I don't know, maybe we have over 200 followers. And like, we drip content when we want to drip content. And like, I have so many people that are like, no, you need Instagram. Well, sorry, no, I don't. No, I don't.

And if more founders just understood deeply the 8020 principle and the principles of essential, I could tell you've read essentialism by Greg McKeown.

Oh, my number one favorite.

It's in my top five easily. If more founders just got that. So you'll appreciate this story. One of my investors at threshold360 once asked me, they're like, hey, as we're evaluating other CEOs of other startups, like, what's the number one quality to look for? And it was a pretty easy question for me to answer. I was just like, yeah, the number one skill you can have as a founder is the ability to discern the essential from the noise. That's it. That's 80% of running a venture. It's just recognizing that pretty much everything is unimportant. Right? Yeah. So kudos to you for figuring that out. Hey, Krista, how does your faith motivate your pursuit of mastery? How does your faith make you you ambitious for your work?

Yeah. So I see my role as an entrepreneur. I see it as an act of obedience, but I also see it as an act of worship. It's both of those things for me. God created me to be a business owner, and it's my obligation as a child of God to steward that which he's given me. And I feel like that's what I'm doing. I also, my faith impacts what I do in the way that it's so important to me to treat everybody that I work with with respect and to really not be shy about my faith and worry about my faith crippling business growth. Because I've been there before. What I've seen is really taking ownership of the fact that I'm a Christian and the fact that I want my business to for God's glory. I've witnessed and experienced God's involvement in what I do. My Eyes have been open to things that they weren't open to when I wasn't asking God to help me. God really, truly is the CEO of what we do. I don't take action if I don't feel peace about it. If we're not supposed to work with somebody and it doesn't make sense to me, I'm frank about it. God is just responsible for all of this. And I mean, even to the point where one of the people on my executive team, she said to me, she said, we were talking about our name. Like, yes, boss. Yes, Boss was this name that was like, I don't know, I need a business name because apparently I'm a business. Like, all right, we'll give the name. This happened, you know, before I had the team that I have today. And I thought, okay, yeah, yes, boss. Va. Sure, let's go with that. And so Paige said to me about a year ago, she said, our name is yes, Boss because we always say yes to the Lord. It doesn't have to do with our clients. We're not saying yes to. We're not like yes men saying yes to all our clients. But really, we're saying yes, boss to the Lord because he's the boss of what we do. He's at the center of what we do. We do it because he wants us to do it. We serve the people that we're supposed to serve because that's who he has for us. So really, it's interesting because I never thought about this business as a Christian business, but God has gotten more glory as a result of me saying yes to this business than anything else that I've ever done.

I love that. I don't know that I've ever gotten up on this particular soapbox, but since you mentioned it, I will. There's no such thing as a Christian business. Please stop using this term. Right. Like, we are Christians who run businesses, but there is no soul of a business that is being saved by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Right? Like, we are just Christians called to build great things for his glory, for the good of others. And I know what people mean by that phrase, but it's always rubbed me the wrong way. But you are building a tremendous business that glorifies him because one, you're revealing his character, as I would argue the first entrepreneur, as I argue, and called to create. But you're also just loving people. Well, like loving customers. Well, loving employees. Well, you're loving your neighbor as yourself by building a great company. So we exchanged some emails prior to this conversation. You mentioned in one of those emails that following Christ has allowed you to be a risk taker, has empowered you to take risks. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, I think I've talked about a lot of it already. And I'll kind of point back to what I was saying. And being able to say no to all the things that people are telling me I need to say yes to, that has felt very risky. I've had people look at me like, you're gonna fail. This is not gonna work. You're not thinking about the right things. It's like, well, I'm sorry, that's not what God has for me right now, period. That's just not. I'm not supposed to do that. It's also allowed me to own who I am. Like that whole Richard Branson thing, it really boils back to like, who did God create me to be? What passions did he give me? What skill sets did he give me? I'm going to do those things for his glory and not do all that other stuff that the world is telling me that I need to do. I've also been able to be bold in I can't believe I'm going to talk about this, but like firing clients and deciding that I don't want to work with people because their values don't align with my values. And you've got to treat my team a certain way for you to stay in my circle.

I'm assuming you don't mean that all your clients are Christians, correct?

No, they're not. They're not.

But mistreating your employees, that's. It's game over for you.

That is a non negotiable. For me as a business owner, one of my greatest joys is cultivating a positive team environment. Clients can ruin that. The wrong clients can ruin that. And I know that my success is more dependent on my team and how they feel than it actually is on the clients who aren't treating my team very well. And that's felt really risky for me. I mean, even to the point where I've told my husband, hey, babe, I have to, I'm gonna let this person go. And I'm like feeling all the nerves from it. Just wanna let you know, like be praying for me because I have to have a tough conversation. This has happened twice. And he's like, well, but can you keep them? Like, are you sure you need to let them go? Like, how much money is that gonna mean? And I, I don't like that. I can't make a decision based on that we have values that we have to live by and my team has to be treated a certain way. And so that has really. God has really honored that. And I've just been blessed by what he's done with, I think, it my obedience in not allowing those clients to stay. We have also experienced saying no to clients, like, before they ever sign with us, because I just didn't feel right about it. And that felt risky as well.

Yeah, it is risky, but a lot of wisdom there. But also I think that's one really practical way that you glorify God in being obedient to just treating people well. Right. Like when you're the CEO and you're largely responsible for what clients are bringing in, that has a direct impact on the lives and the well being of your team when you're in a service business like you're in. So I commend you for that. That takes a lot of courage. That is really hard to do, especially when you're firing a really profitable client. I've been in that position. Yeah, it's scary. All right, Kristin, so as we wrap up, three questions I love to ask every guest first. So it doesn't sound like you're reading a ton, which I respect, actually. I love that. But which books these days are you recommending or gifting the most to others?

Yeah, so number one is always essentialism, and it has been for about three years.

I just, I love it.

Oh, my gosh. Everyone needs to understand this principle.

What's number two?

Number two is Run Like Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz. And he said something that gave me, like, permission in a way that I was like, oh, I like this. At the end of his book, he said, you know, when your business is running like clockwork, you're probably going to feel a bit bored and like you're going to have to resist the temptation to create problems and insert yourself because you're no longer the hero. And then it was like, oh, yeah, I'm doing, like, I'm doing this right. And it was nice to hear it from a business expert because I consumed so little that I hadn't necessarily built this framework because of what somebody told me to do. It was the spirit working within me and me taking one step at a time. So it was cool to hear that. So I think that that's really good for people as well. I think that as entrepreneurs, once you learn marketing strategy, you can apply it a million different ways. You don't need to learn a new marketing strategy. What you need to learn if you haven't already, is. Is what does it mean to own a company? What does it mean to put processes and people in place? Like, that's the kind of stuff that I think that entrepreneurs need to spend more time diving into.

All right, what one person would you most like to hear talk about how their faith influences their work?

Marshawn Evans Daniels. I'm trying to think if I'm mixing up her last name. She. Oh, my gosh. She's just a bold woman of God. She has a pretty substantial size Instagram account that I follow, and I'm like, girl. I don't know if I. If that's the way I should say it, but, like, it's like a girl crush kind of. It's like, oh, my gosh. Everything she says is so good. I love the way that she just boldly says truth, how she boldly talks about kingdom principles and how they tie into entrepreneurship. Yeah. I just greatly admire her.

What kind of business does she run?

She runs. I think she's a speak. Most of what she does is she speaks, but then she teaches other people how to speak for God's glory. And I feel like I need to make sure that I, like, put her name in the right order.

Yeah, I'll have to check her out.

Yeah. Marshawn Evans Daniels.

Okay.

She's. Oh, she is on fire for the Lord.

So you've given a bunch of great nuggets of wisdom that I really hope people are paying attention to this episode. So much of this is gold. Leave us with just one. If you had to boil it down to a single piece of advice to somebody who, like you, is pursuing mastery of their craft, entrepreneurship, or really anything for the glory of God and the good of others, what would you leave them with?

If the Lord's called you to entrepreneurship, trust him to guide the steps. You don't need to look to a million different people to tell you what you should be doing. Yes, God's going to use people to help guide you along the way, but, like, let him lead that charge. Make God the CEO. That means that he's involved in your strategizing. You're doing it for his glory because you're honoring your time. You have your priorities in order. You can trust him. Do that, do that. Trust him.

That's good. That's good. Hey, Kristen, I just want to commend you for building such a fantastic business. I have a lot of respect for what you and your team are doing at yes, Boss Va. Thank you for freeing up so many entrepreneurs to do the work that God created them to do. Do by doing the work that you were created to do. And thank you for serving your customers and employees through the Ministry of Excellence. Your work is incredibly important. Even if you never shared the gospel with a client or a team member, you are loving your neighbor as yourself and you're doing it really well. Hey, if you want to put Kristen's team to work for you, you can visit yesbossva.com Kristin thanks for hanging out with me. Me.

Thank you so much. Has been an honor and a privilege. I love this conversation.

I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. And if you haven't already read Essentialism, what are you doing? I think I recommend this every single episode of the show. Hey, if you're enjoying the Call to Mastery, make sure you subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode in the future. And if you're already subscribed, you know what I'm going to ask you to do? Go take 30 seconds and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts Wherever you review podcast so more people can find this content. Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. I'll see you guys next time.