Hiring – The Big Mistakes Every Entrepreneur Should Avoid! with Kris Ward

Kris Ward Interviews Kris Ward – Trancription

START[00:01:20] Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Win The Hour, Win The Day Podcast, and I am your host, Kris Ward, always free to thrilled to be here. And today we have a unique guest. All right, listen carefully. Okay, you gotta pay attention. So here we are. Welcome to the show, Kris Ward. Ha, yep. That’s me. All right.

[00:01:43] Don’t worry. It’s not gonna be what I think is one of those boring, you know, when they just talk by themselves things, I don’t think that ever works. So the solo shows, I think that’s the technical term for it. What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna pull some clippings from other shows that I’ve been on and the questions I’ve answered and really just give you guys some information, I think is gonna be hugely helpful to move your business forward with traction. Now,

[00:02:10] before I do this, let’s take a moment because I’m not a hundred percent sure that you guys know my backstory. How did I come to be this Win The Hour, Win The Day person, because it’s not about productivity. It’s not about being efficient and all this other stuff. Right? I’m all about technical terms, day stuff.

[00:02:30] So here we go. Here’s how it came to be. So I started my business, oh my gosh 12 plus years ago. And my specialty was marketing messaging. And the first couple years I was in business, I worked insane hours, like crazy hours. my husband said I was always stealing from sleep, getting up earlier and earlier and staying later and later.

[00:02:52] And about the two year mark, I was kind of sat down and told I was losing some of my charm. And that was horrible to hear because the people that were cheering me on, oh my gosh, they were given so much for me to start this business. Like my husband and my family. It was amazing. And here I was clearly impatient and stressed out and exhausted all the time.

[00:03:15] So I knew I had to make a change. I knew I couldn’t grind it out like that for the next 10 years. That was just not sustainable. So I really went from working 16 hours a day down to six. Now that did not happen overnight. But you know, let’s move the story forward really quickly. That’s what I did. And luckily I did that cuz it was just a couple years after that, that my husband had been diagnosed with colon cancer.

[00:03:41] And I had been pulled away from the business for about two years. When I returned, after his passing, my existing clients had no idea of my absence, none. We just, we’re very positive in nature in this journey. We were private about it. We didn’t feel it was good for business. It mostly just was not where my energy was.

[00:04:00] I just, it just wasn’t, we had a lot of fun, him and I, and we did things that would be really positive life affirming for what we’re going through and we expected it to turn out well. So anyhow, so I returned everyone shocked and finally people started to sort of gently approach to me. I mean, even the local business community was shocked, nobody knew.

[00:04:23] And they started to say to me, Kris, If you could be away, we didn’t know, like then maybe you could get me to my kid’s soccer games. Maybe I could stop working weekends and evenings and ignoring my family. And so then I started working with bank existing clients under the capacity of building a life that, or a business that supported their life instead of consuming it, because I do believe business should be fun.

[00:04:47] And let’s be really super frank here. When my husband passed away, I lost an income and that take all the emotion outta this story and put practicality in place. I lost income. So if I had to, at that time, go out and write a resume, be charming and job interview and learn a new job. Not something you wanna do when you just lost your best friend.

[00:05:09] Right? So really super important life does have interruptions. It happens all the time in different forms and you need to have a business that supports your life instead of consuming it. So very important. All right. So let’s dive in. And let’s listen to here we are. I think this one actually explains itself. Let’s just dive into it. Here we go.

[00: ] So what makes me sad is when I see somebody and maybe they’re skipping meals and they’re suffering, you’re doing all this stuff. And then they have some fruit thing from like the coffee shop that they don’t understand. Like there’s 2000 calories in that, and they’re just tasting the wrong thing.

[00:19:36] And they’re like, oh my gosh, first of all, the whole grinded out mental mentality. But more than that, the whole, I just need to be more organized. I just need to be more focused. I just need to be more disciplined and all those things, first of all, discipline erode your battery.

[00:19:50] It wears you down, white knuckling. It isn’t gonna help. And then being more focused on what, like, to me, that’s almost like putting your hand on the stove when it’s hot and saying, you know what? I just, I just gotta focus. I just gotta be like, okay, I’m gonna put it on. It’s gonna hurt. But if I’m really clear, it’s this time it’s gonna be different.

[00:05:36] Okay. This next piece was an awakening. I had a moment and let’s just dive into it, cuz again, I’ll explain myself in this, but a moment I had that said, wow, am I doing this wrong? And it came in the form of like a light bulb at two o’clock in the morning, after incredibly long day.So let’s listen in.

[00:08:21] I remember back in the beginning where I called The Dark Years. I remember one night I’d been… I was working at two o’clock in the morning and I had been up since five and my husband used to say I was always stealing from sleep.

[00:08:31] Right. Getting up early, earlier, staying later and later, and I realized. I, well, I realized he was right, but I didn’t tell him that. So don’t worry. I realized that I was working, that there were laws in the land. People fought and died for labor laws, labor protection laws that I now left a job that nobody could have treated me that way.

[00:08:51] And then here I was. Wearing myself down to a nub violating all labor laws upon myself going, oh, this is the freedom lifestyle running my own business. Like this is the exact opposite of what I had any inkling or hope of. So I think for a lot of my clients, listen, what happens is you left a job. You could still be at a job.

[00:09:12] We all left a job at some point. And then you think, oh right. Once I get this off the ground and the bell that I hear, ding, ding, ding, I want you guys to hear is if you find yourself saying, once I get past this next thing, once I get past this next thing you realize, oh, okay. I’m not in business six months.

[00:09:30] When do I stop saying that? So you always think there will be. Well, once this next thing. Oh, the holidays or the new website, or I got onboard these clients, there’s always something the last client that onboarded in our Winner’s Circle, he sent me an email through LinkedIn late at night. I guess that’s not an email, but he sent me a message to LinkedIn and said, listen, I’ve just put my kids to bed.

[00:09:51] And I find myself now. Putting in another couple hours, I think I need your help

[00:06:02] Now this next part, I think is incredibly important, incredibly important, because I think everyone does this and it is some very bad math that works against you having any sort of balance in your life, it works against you making money. It really dilutes what, at the very least your hourly rate, because, oh my gosh, the numbers are just way off and it’s frankly, frankly, it’s dangerous.

[00:10:34] First of all, I would say, if you think you’re working 55, Say 60 hours a week. I would argue you’re working 75 because you’ll say, well, no, I just get a headstart on my email Sunday night for Monday morning. That’s not work. Oh, Tuesday night I stay late. Cuz I have this training I’m taking, but that’s not work.

[00:10:52] Right. And so really anything that doesn’t have like a, I guess a client, right? Oh, that’s a sales call. I could be getting new client. That’s not work. Right. And if we look at that math as well, Ivy, what I would say is if you are working 55 hours, 60 hours, and we know now, though that’s really 75 and let’s say you’re making 10 or 20K a month, or you wanna make 10 or 20K a month.

[00:11:17] Whatever it is, let’s do some basic math, 55 hours a week, 20K a month. If you wanna make 40K a month, do you think your hours are gonna go down to 30? Like you got some funky math. That’s not working for you. So I guess that’s it. The clients I work, you guys know who you are out there. You look good on paper.

[00:06:36] Yep. A lot of my clients look really good on paper. And the sad thing is no one person knows how many hours they’re working. You guys know out there and that’s the job. We put it out in social media and because you are working past when your family goes to bed or you’re getting up earlier, you’re missing things out, missing opportunities or fun times with your family or friends.

[00:06:59] No one person knows how many hours you work and sometimes you don’t either, but boy, oh boy, is that costly? So here is another thing that a question comes up a lot when I’m being interviewed, because it’s the “D” word that everyone uses and they shouldn’t because it’s very limiting. It’s something that is sort of commonplace

[00:07:23] when you talk about efficiency, when you’re running your business or any sort of professional avenue. So listen in, because this is something that I hear every single day and it really is hugely counterproductive and just upside down, frankly.

[00:19:24] I don’t love the word delegate because to me that’s a lateral move. It has to come through you and go sideways. So I’m really about having what I call a W.I.N Team – a What Is Next Team so they can get to what is next. And when you have a W.I.N Team, it allows you to do instead of following the very parentified model that we’ve all been exposed to as

[00:19:44] employees and is still out there in the corporate world. And that model is you bring somebody on and then you check their work. And so it becomes like a parent-child, teacher-student type situation. And that’s where you start delegating work to them. But when we have things in play, like our Super Toolkits, which my clients tell me in the Winners Circle like SOPs and steroids, cuz standard operating procedures are usually written by the end user.

[00:20:06] They’re static in nature, and they’re just really there to cover liability, but the Super Toolkits are breathing, evolving documents that constantly compressed work so that we are constantly in that 60% idea to execution mode. So the first thing is I’m not a big fan of delegating because it has to come through you.

[00:07:46] Now here’s another myth that I want to dive into because this really leads people down the wrong path on a number of levels and makes you hoping and wishing for something to change that actually is gonna serve you anyhow. So let’s just take a listen.

[00:04:42] And one of the most painful things I think is when you’re working so hard at trying to fix something, but you’re trying to fix the wrong thing. So it’s not about being more disciplined, discipline actually erodes your energy and your battery power kind of deal and being more focused.

[00:04:59] What does that mean? Being more organized, actually being organized can be quite a deficit and it has been for me in the past and some, my clients, cause what happens is if you are organized type person, it’s almost like taking a screw and a screwdriver. You just keep reorganizing. You sort of like strip that screw.

[00:05:06] So what happens is you guys are out there working so hard and you’ll hear yourself say this, and if you hear this. Oh, my gosh, this is such a warning bell. Once I get past this next thing, ding, ding, ding, ding. There will always be a next thing. So Doreen to me, it’s about running around thinking that somehow, can I squeeze more juice out of this hour?

[00:05:29] Can I grind this out? Can I get up earlier, stay later and that’s not changing the infrastructure and that’s when you’re trying to keep up to the growth of your business versus scaling your business. Those are two completely different things. 

[00:05:55] The growth of your business is so often what you’re chasing. When in fact you should be scaling your business. So we believe in the W.I.N Formula, which means that you should be in execution mode, 60% of the time, not trapped in the web of admin like so many are, this isn’t an expensive job. This is you being an entrepreneur or a small business owner. And to do that, you always need to be moving onto your next ambition

[00:08:06] Now we get into a question about hiring. I love this one because there’s so many layers to this. One is first of all, we live in a magical world right now, where you really truly can afford to have resources and help that you would’ve never been able to afford 10 years ago, especially as a small business.

[00:08:29] There are just opportunities out there for talent, for affordability, having people that can work with you just a couple hours a week and they can have other businesses they work with. Whereas in the past you need somebody, let’s say you even needed a video editor.

[00:08:45] But you only needed them two hours a week. Well, you’d have to give them at least 10 hours make it worth their while their commitment, them driving over to your office, that kind of thing now. Oh my gosh, you just have the world at your fingertips and it’s so crazy affordable.

[00:09:01] So this question is in response to being asked about hiring and you guys let me know. I read every single of you because I think this could definitely be a show all on its own, cuz there’s so much  that could help you with this one. So let’s take a listen.

[00:08:06] So many people, first of all, don’t understand that hiring is a whole thing on its own. It’s not something you do when you’re stressed out and you’re behind and think, okay, I’ll get some help.

[00:08:15] That’s a whole thing. And we’ve been doing it for a really long time. Now we’re not a hiring agency. There’s a whole bunch of problems with that. It’s just something that we do as part of our package. It’s kinda like you need running shoes to get to the gym. That’s… I’ll help you pick up your running shoes, but we’re really here to get you in shape.

[00:08:31] Right? Sure. So we do help you hire, train, and onboard your W.I.N Team, but here’s the thing when people are hiring on their own, one of the biggest mistakes they make is they fall prey to the corporate thing that’s throughout the world, which is a very parentified system. So you hire somebody. You give them work.

[00:09:19] And here we start to just talk a little bit about what I call school hours. We should all be able to work school hours, long weekends, much longer summers cutting out, whatever four o’clock, school hours. That should be the ambition. So here I’m talking about my passion for school hours and some of the things my clients say. 

[00:17:03] So let’s talk about school hours. So what I would say too is you wanna be able to not only work school hours, but you wanna be able to fulfill your ambition and creation element, because that’s where the pain comes in. When you’re one side of the bridge and your idea is on the other side.

[00:17:22] And you just can’t cross that bridge or it feels like the bridge is moving further away. I’ve had so many people say to me, Kris. I feel like a pilot driving a bus, or I feel like I should be swimming in the pool and holding onto the side? Or I feel like I’m throwing darts at a dark board, but the lights are off.

[00:17:39] I don’t even know where the board is. Right. So that’s the frustration. And I believe that not only should your business support your life and not consume it, but I believe that business should be fun. And then none of that sounded like fun. 

[00:09:43] Okay. So I hope you enjoyed that. It’s always fun to have me on the show and just remember. Yes, yes, yes. You don’t need to be a sufferpreneur, all right? You do not. And I also call myself recovering rushaholic. So if you’re just trying to outrace time and rush through the day, that’s not serving you either. You’re skimming over things.

[00:10:04] You’re not getting depth. There’s no traction. You miss out so much. And my clients tell me that all the time in the Winners Circle when they start to sort of take a breath and they say there’s so much clarity, so much creativity, so much… they just see the next step. And it it’s just so exciting.

[00:10:19] There’s such a calmness to it that they thought previously before, that their greatest strength was their ability to go fast and get things done. But at. You’re just skimming, just like a rock skimming over paw. You’re just skimming over stuff. You’re not getting any depth. So anyhow, see you in the next episode and keep the reviews coming.

[00:10:39] We read every one of them. We love them so much. It gives us so much insight. Thanks again. Bye.