Scale Your Business: Optimizing Virtual Assistant Services with Kris Ward & Rachel Eubanks

You can find Rachel Eubanks at:
Website: https://www.inspiretoengage.com/
Email: rachel@nspiretoengage.com

Rachel Eubanks Podcast Transcription

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Win The Hour, Win The Day, and I am your host, Kris Ward. And today in the house we have Rachel Eubanks and she is an amazing copywriter. She helps businesses make money by creating a loyal following and relationship. And she does that all through copy and we’re so excited to have her. Welcome to the show, Rachel.

[00:00:21] Rachel Eubanks: Thank you, CKis, for having me. I’m excited to be here.

[00:00:24] Kris Ward: Okay. So you’ve been on the show before and you delivered the goods and you had amazing talent and then our relationship changed and you started working with us. And so today I want to have you back because I want to talk about something that’s really, of course, near and dear to my heart is really about the power and the magic of virtual assistants and why, and you know what I’m going to.

[00:00:44] I’m going to say sidebar here. I don’t even like that we call them virtual assistants. So why can’t they just be assistants, but whatever that’s the coin phrase. So here we go. Why it was so important to me to have you back on the show is because you have a craft that you are amazingly excellent at, and you’re so talented in that particular area.

[00:01:02] And it’s so easy for someone like you to think, but Kris, you don’t understand. I have to do it myself. I have to see things. I have to come up with the ideas. I have to let them settle. There’s this whole copywriting process. And so I, this is not something that can be leveraged or delegated or reassigned. Was that, is that fair? Was that your mindset when we first started?

[00:01:26] Rachel Eubanks: That’s extremely fair. In fact, those many of those words are exactly what I said to you, Kris, and you push back and said, I don’t agree with you. And we’re going to slowly get there. And I’m going to I’m going to change your mind about that.

[00:01:42] And you did. Change my mind. One of the things that I learned from you and your program, the whole coaching is to start picking apart what it is that you do. And when you start picking it apart, and you start looking at the steps that you take a lot of times, you can then say, oh. I don’t actually have to do that step.

[00:02:08] Or, oh my goodness, wouldn’t it be so much better if someone did that step for me and then I didn’t start with a blank page. As a writer, the blank page you’ve written a book, the blank page is the scariest thing that you can ever face as a writer. And so one thing that my I actually call her my executive assistant.

[00:02:28] I don’t know if that’s an official term, but I like that better than virtual assistant as well because he does have her hands on so many pieces of my business. And so one of the things that my assistant does for me is that she doesn’t allow me to start a project with a blank page. She is, she does background research for me.

[00:02:50] She is using AI. That’s another thing too, Kris, that so many, anybody listening here your virtual assistant can become the expert at AI and can bring you along if you feel that you need to be somewhat educated. Or not. They also don’t have to bring you along. They can just become the expert. And it’s amazing at how you don’t have to start a project.

[00:03:17] Let me just say that you don’t have to start the project.

[00:03:19] So yeah, sorry for you.

[00:03:21] Kris Ward: And you bring up a really good point. Cause I remember having that conversation with you and you’re thinking, but Kris, I have to, when I’m doing research for my clients and all this stuff, and I said yes, you could do the research, but somebody could prep you for that and say.

[00:03:31] Here’s the list or here’s the 10 websites. Take a look. And now they’re all contained for you because I remember back in the day, I don’t know how many years ago it was. And one day I went into the office and okay, I’m going to do all this research on a Sunday. Cut to three hours later. I was like, Oh, I bought these really pure, pretty earrings.

[00:03:48] I was like, one website led me to another. And I forgot what I was doing. I’m like, okay, after the earrings are purchased, I’m like, I think it’s time. You’re no longer even close to productive, right? So you get in and then if nothing else, if you’re like me, a very flawed human being, you might be looking at, you end up in another website and you’re like, Oh, we should be doing that.

[00:04:07] Or, Oh, I don’t, and now you’re beating yourself up or thinking about other things. You just get lost, right? You get lost in the virtual forest. And so then someone like you, where we can’t have your brain power depleted because you so need the creative aspect. So you can’t be burning that out. If that is given to you in prep, and so I, what I was talking about, there’s always pre and post work and there’s prep work.

[00:04:28] Yes. And so if you’re given the prep and now you’re got your blinders on and you’re like, okay, I can look at these 10 websites she gave me on a list or the client’s last six things. I look at that and start the creation process. That’s completely different.

[00:04:43] Rachel Eubanks: It is so different. I’ll give you a specific example.

[00:04:46] I write copy for a lot of websites and so let’s say that I have a fitness website. I will go to my wonderful executive assistant and say, we’ll talk briefly about that project. And I’ll say, hey, this is how much I know, when the client I met last week, this is what I know. Look, I need you to come.

[00:05:07] To me with 10 to 15 really good websites that and I may even give 2 or 3 things like, hey, I’m really struggling with a tagline. I’m looking for a website. That’s not cluttered. I’m looking for 1 and my executive assistant is she’s got it and she comes back with better examples than I could find for myself.

[00:05:29] And often it’s extremely organized in a Google sheet. Ones that I like the tagline and she’ll list like five of them below it. Ones that really used buttons. Call to actions are very different. And she’ll list two or three below it. And so the task itself is even better than what I imagined.

[00:05:47] And then I, you’re right. I get a portion of doing the research. Cause I am literally looking through all those websites and I may not agree with what my executive assistant, I may hate the tagline, but it doesn’t matter. She brought to me all of these things that kept me from going down the rabbit hole myself and buying the earrings that you and I both know that’s never what I started out to do that day.

[00:06:11] Kris Ward: No, and let me jump in here. And even if you got some that you didn’t like, then you would be editing that and moving forward you get more and more.

[00:06:19] Rachel Eubanks: No, that’s what I was going to say. That’s that. That is a very natural part of the process. That’s what we all go through.

[00:06:26] And I don’t have to find. I don’t have to go down the three hour rabbit hole to find 10 or 15 more that I didn’t tell her that they had to be perfect. I expect for her to still be a very human person. She’s not a copywriter. When I talked to her in a scrum for 10 or 15 minutes about this project, I can’t bring her up to speed about what I mean for a tagline, but she was grabbing some that she thought was were doable.

[00:06:50] That would have taken me hours and hours to shift through all of that.

[00:06:54] Kris Ward: It’s a and then your brain would be fried. You’d be done.

[00:06:58] Rachel Eubanks: It’s just huge to go to a project and not be starting it by starting

[00:07:02] it. I didn’t start it.

[00:07:04] Kris Ward: Here’s another thing. Often people, this is something I’m, my pet peeve.

[00:07:08] People talk about being productive and I know for me for many years, I thought that meant going fast and increasing your output. When in fact, as most of my clients will tell me within the first month of working with us, they get 25 hours back a week. So it’s about working less and doing more and making more money.

[00:07:23] This idea of being more productive tends to sound like, putting in more reps, doing more pushups, getting up earlier and earlier, staying later and later. And so the output, so would you share with us one of the first conversations that we had about, cause you’re like, okay, Kris, if you’re gonna teach me how to be more productive, here is the line. Here’s what I’m not doing. And what was that line for you, rachel?

[00:07:45] Rachel Eubanks: My line, and you have brought this up several times, is that I told you that I refuse to get up any earlier than 4 a. m. because I was already getting up at 4 and I could not get everything done and but I refuse like I drew a lot of the same as like beyond 3:59 is too early for me.

[00:08:00] I will not get up any earlier. And you literally laughed out loud. Look at me. You thought I was crazy and the sad thing is I was being very serious because the idea that I could get as much done in less hours. Like I heard people talking about that, but it had never been a reality for me.

[00:08:24] And I really was just missing the skills because I was doing all the things that the self help books told you to do. And I, I find that they’re helpful set timers. State, keep block times that you’re doing the very similar task within that 45 minutes. I was doing all of those things, but what I was missing was the fact that another human can come alongside you and with some thinking and a change in how you go about getting your work done that you really could be more, I guess for the lack of a better word, more productive, but you could get more done is what I’m trying to say.

[00:09:02] Kris Ward: Yeah. And so all those hacks, they’re fine, but they’re like tweaking hacks. I think of them like Weight Watchers. It’s the super toolkits. We always talk about team time and toolkits, right?

[00:09:12] So showing you how to leverage your calendar, showing you how to do super toolkits and then having somebody alongside with you, your team. And it doesn’t matter if you’re one person or three or four, I’m all about lean teams. And that is the game changer. But all these things of setting a timer and stuff, those what you’re doing is trying to contain your discipline and discipline just erodes your battery.

[00:09:30] But yes, you were it’s still my favorite thing is you’re like, listen, and in your sweet voice, you’re like, I need to tell you no matter what you think you can do for me or my business, I cannot get up earlier than 4am. I was like, I can’t earlier. What the hell are you doing up at four? I was like, you know what I get?

[00:09:47] I get up when I wake up. Now, I tend to wake up somewhere around six, if I’m lucky, sometimes a little too early, or if I’m really lucky, a really good day of sleeping to seven, but I do not have an alarm. I get up when I wake up and you’re talking to me, but I refuse to get up before 4am.

[00:10:03] And I was like all right, we can, we are going to be fine. We are starting off in agreement. Okay. That was huge. That was hilarious. Okay. So what are some of the things that surprised you about? I also think too, when you’re coming from such a position of being really at a deficit with time and poverty as far as, yeah. You probably didn’t think you could afford help either.

[00:10:29] Rachel Eubanks: Yeah. The help is extremely affordable. And I have found that’s the beauty of technology is that you can work with extremely intelligent, very capable people all around the world. Yeah. And technology allows us to do that. And so the help has been extremely affordable, honestly, in many of the tasks that we have determined my executive assistant needs to do.

[00:10:56] But, between us talking, she and I talking. She’s more knowledgeable than I am. She’s faster. She brings more to the table on the things I’m asking her to do. And so it, in the end, it was affordable. I have, I’ve shared this with you already that I have been able to bring on several more clients this year and projects that.

[00:11:20] I would not have been able to do because I told you I’m not getting up before 4 a. m. I just had to draw and I would not have been able to do that without somebody coming alongside me and doing the parts of a project that I just didn’t really have to do. But I didn’t know that. And… And I did need some training and how do I pull apart my work so into steps so that someone else can take over those steps.

[00:11:51] And so it is very affordable. And in the end, I have been able to add clients and projects and I tell my executive assistant that all the time that. Thanks. Due to you running, keeping things going,

[00:12:05] yeah.

[00:12:06] Kris Ward: So again, I just want to mention that 4am thing because if you get up before 4am at some point, Rachel, there’s just no sense going to bed.

[00:12:13] So there’s no getting up. Let’s just eliminate sleep. So that is the point too. But what I want to say to you is that’s a thing is, I know I often say this and I, I’m not sure I say it well, but what I always talk about is doing, working less hours, making more money, but I think somewhere in the brain, people assume that you’re going to be going faster and setting timers and doing all this other stuff.

[00:12:33] And there is a different pace to when you work now. And I hear that from all my clients. It’s Oh my gosh, Kris, I was at capacity because I couldn’t keep up. And I was, and it, whether you want to admit it or not that you’re like, Oh my gosh, I’m I can’t manage more business or I’m going to bring on this new client because I need money and let’s have a lottery of which client’s going to get upset at me because some ball is going to be dropped.

[00:12:54] And you’re always under pressure thinking once I get past this next thing, but now you’re like, yes, I remember you saying one week, Oh my gosh, I just brought on two new clients and that would have derailed me for the week. And I would have been in panic next week because you can’t speed copywriting.

[00:13:07] You can’t say, okay, I’ll do that quicker. It’s not like cleaning the house.

[00:13:10] Rachel Eubanks: I don’t know if anybody listening will understand this, but I know you and I will because we’ve talked about this is that we all want more clients, especially if we have financial goals or needs, even at our home that

[00:13:24] Kris Ward: we’re human and we’d like pretty things.

[00:13:27] Rachel Eubanks: We do. And, but I remember being almost like the excitement would be there for a split second. And as soon as I got that, as soon as that email came and it was like, it’s a, yes, I’m like, Oh crap, what am I going to do now? Because I can, the exhaustion would just come over me because I knew, like you said, some ball was going to drop or if the ball didn’t drop, it meant that guess who was staying up all crazy hours trying to get it done.

[00:14:00] And then here’s the reality is my family is extremely important to me. Yeah, we know in the end. Sadly, I was going to get client work out, but do you know who was, do you know who was going to have to deal with a grouch and deal with, the lady who didn’t get any sleep and now who didn’t finish something that she said she was going to finish for her boys.

[00:14:19] And so that to me is really sad and something I could, really almost tear up about because, I would have served that those clients and I did. But I remember just that exhaustion coming over me when I did sign a new client, that, that euphoria just didn’t last for very long. And I will tell you now with having a team and we’re just, we’re a very lean team.

[00:14:43] So it’s just me and my executive assistant now, like she and I are giddy. And we’re like we have processes for seeking new clients and we’re just happy. And you and I are talking right now and it’s a little bit before a big break that I’m going to take. And honestly, I am so thankful because I remember several years ago being angry because I knew that I was going to be working a little bit every single day.

[00:15:11] To get while the rest of the world was on a break. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to have to be working every single day. And there’s something to be said about days where you really do not open your laptop. That is like true rest, versus okay, I’m just going to get on it for just 30 minutes.

[00:15:27] That’s still like a… that P underneath the stack of mattresses, like you still just feel it. It’s like a, and so pebble in your shoe yet, or pebble in your shoe, it just rubs and rubs. And so there is power in getting back your time and having true rest days, having, knowing that a project is still running, even though you’re technically on vacation that day.

[00:15:51] Kris Ward: Yeah, so if everybody is off for Christmas, often I would see that as a time of okay, everybody’s off so they won’t email me so I can get ahead, right?

[00:15:57] Rachel Eubanks: Get caught up, yes.

[00:15:58] Kris Ward: I can get caught up. Or, oh, you know what, my family’s important, I’m gonna take vacation.

[00:16:03] So then you’re like an addict in the closet trying to bang off a few emails before everybody gets up, right?

[00:16:07] Rachel Eubanks: Exactly. That’s not vacation, is it, Kris?

[00:16:10] Kris Ward: No.

[00:16:11] Rachel Eubanks: That’s panic mode.

[00:16:12] Kris Ward: And then I call it snowbanking. Like when you shovel snow, you don’t get rid of it. You put it on either side to clear the laneway. And so what happens is before the vacation, you’re running around like a crazy person and afterwards you’re running around with cleanup and that’s just snowbanking.

[00:16:25] So again, you don’t come back refreshed, really having some relief and enjoying your family time and in the Zen mode it’s a whole different game. And I do love that you use the word team. Cause I talk about that all the time. I don’t want people to think a team means you managing them and a whole bunch of work and a whole bunch of money to me, a team can be one person.

[00:16:45] It’s the philosophy, not the number. And that’s huge, right? That’s a whole different thing. And also I think too, that most people, or maybe you don’t even realize this Rachel, because of the way we set everything up. Most people, when they have a virtual assistant or executive assistant, what they do is they end up just dumping the overflow of things they can’t keep up on, right?

[00:17:05] And then that person runs out of tasks or chaos to do, and then they come back to you and you find them more stuff, and you’re delegating, which you know I say is a lateral move, and then that’s more work for you. And so really, you just ping ponging back and forth where the setup that you have with the super scrums that we do and all that stuff, it’s just an ease and flow where you always are finding more time and bandwidth in your calendar and you can take on more and the quality of your work increases as well as your income.

[00:17:35] Rachel Eubanks: I agree. And when you were saying something, I was thinking about something that happened just this week with with my wonderful executive assistant, she came to me and said, hey, Rachel, I’m sending you an email. These are some ideas. We’ve got to talk about here. And when we come back from this vacation, and I was like, yes, ma’am, thank you for taking lead on that project, because in the back of my head, I had been so busy trying to…

[00:18:02] in the States, November, December start, honestly, in the States, starting around Halloween. It’s crazy. But and I just been so busy. Making sure that all of our projects got out before people were taking vacation around Thanksgiving now around Christmas and my executive assistant was already thinking about our team and thinking next level, and I had not saying anything to her about it. And so she said. We’ve got to talk about ideas. For the New Year things that we had purposely set aside because we had to survive November and December around all the different holidays and family gatherings.

[00:18:38] She’s oh, by the way, those need to come back. And if they’re not going to come back, we need to talk about wine. And so I did after our scrum meeting, I received an email from her that laid out everything we’re going to be talking about when we come back from this extended break.

[00:18:51] And that to me is so powerful. It goes back to that word team that you said that this is really a team. She sees that we’re moving forward as a group. And that is so powerful and it does take the structure and the conversations that you and your team put in place. It has been extremely eyeopening to me.

[00:19:13] I think it’s been extremely eyeopening to my executive assistant to go oh. Oh, this is different and we can we can bounce ideas off of each other. There’s not one that’s just only in charge. So that was such a fun it was just a fun revelation. And when she said, Hey, and you’re going to get an email about the things that we need to talk about.

[00:19:34] I’m like. Yes, ma’am. Thank you for project leading that one.

[00:19:38] Kris Ward: I, you know what, and she does really well. We have a leadership program, as and your Stephanie, your executive assistant does really well in that. And that’s a big thing is what most people don’t realize is we have all been brainwashed.

[00:19:49] I didn’t brainwash. We don’t know anything better, but the corporate world throughout the world. The corporate, all corporations run on a very parentified system. So it’s like your boss or your supervisor, your manager, it’s like your parent, they check your work and they say, Oh, you did good. You did bad.

[00:20:04] And you’re not encouraged to speak up where they say, Oh, come up with ideas unless that idea isn’t a good one. And then you’re embarrassed. Or maybe the idea is such a good one that now you embarrassed your boss, or there’s all this weight being thrown around. But in our leadership program, With the VAs it’s so different there because I know for me, and I’m a lot of my clients, like yourself say this, Rachel, I feel like I have peers.

[00:20:25] So I come to my team with an idea. I’m like, okay, we’ve got this idea, right? Like I, when I came to Maura and said, okay, now we’re starting this accreditation program with the VAs where they’re going to be tested and we’re going to be doing all these things so we can improve that. And she was so excited and then she added some ideas and it was like I, when I got her approval to it and she said, that’s a really good idea. And let’s do this to this. I was conversing, having a, I was conversing with my peers.

[00:20:48] Yes. At the end of the day, I happened to write the check, but it changes the game and really empowers you when you are surrounded by, if not smarter people, at least equals instead of having this, Hey, here’s some meaningless tasks or low level data work you can be doing.

[00:21:06] Rachel Eubanks: I agree. And it, I can’t… until someone gets to experience what you’ve experienced with Maura and what I’ve experienced with Stephanie as far as your ideas, as far as them coming to you with great ideas and you realizing all of the weight is not on me. Yeah, you it is. It’s mind blowing. It’s hard to understand.

[00:21:32] And until you get to experience that and it does I’m the 1st 2 men. I know you will admit this too. It does take structures in place. Yeah, it does take some training on the business owners part and the executive assistance part, but it is, it’s. It’s powerful and it’s made me extremely happy and to just feel like I’m not in this thing by myself

[00:21:57] Kris Ward: and now you’re sleeping in. God help us

[00:22:01] Rachel Eubanks: or, and, you’re not talked about some of the 2. I am naturally an early riser. Yeah, but there’s a difference to choosing to get up early to exercise or to read or to whatever. There’s a difference in choosing to get up early instead of having to get up early. And the way you get up is a very different mindset.

[00:22:19] If you’ve got to get up to work to catch up, you get up at Oh, I’m so you know, I could get up angry and that’s no way to start a day. That’s not a way to start a day versus Oh my goodness I’m going to bed at a decent time. So I’m going to get up early and I’m going to exercise and all this stuff before everybody else in the house gets up.

[00:22:34] That’s a very different way. That and those mornings….

[00:22:38] Kris Ward: a quality of life

[00:22:39] Rachel Eubanks: yes, it’s so it’s just different.

[00:22:42] Kris Ward: Yeah. Oh my gosh. And I know so many people too, that they think that they’re going to lose control, but really what you do is get freedom.

[00:22:50] Rachel Eubanks: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. And I think one of the structures that you have taught us is the daily scrums.

[00:22:56] Yeah, because it is so different than and I keep saying that phrase so different because I guess it really is, but it’s not the same a lot of people communicate with their virtual assistants through email. Yes, it is very hard or through slack. You name whatever. Yeah, we want to, it’s very, it’s hard to create a team like atmosphere through only short Hey, did you get that done?

[00:23:24] Kris Ward: Hey, let me jump in for a second. Those are two digital mosquitoes. That is not communication. People say to me all the time, which platform do you use? I’m like, you don’t need that. I don’t use Slack. I don’t do whatever. If somebody needs to message me, you might be looking at two per week, right? Something bizarre came up, but everything is dealt with through our super toolkits and our scrums.

[00:23:43] So those are digital mosquitoes and they’re just somebody’s, Oh, don’t even get me started on that. Sorry. So go ahead.

[00:23:49] Rachel Eubanks: Yeah. So the scrum, the digital and I will, I want to say this out loud, because I know that there’s going to be some people, there may be someone listening going. Are you kidding? I’ve got to put 15 to 20 minutes on my calendar every day, a business business day in order to meet with my to meet with my assistant.

[00:24:07] I thought the same thing. And it’s now something I look forward to. Does it, Hey, it’s like with anything, if all of a sudden you’re going to go to the gym, of course, you’ve got to block out time. It’s like anything. If you want changes, you have to make room on your calendar for those changes.

[00:24:21] And so I will just say the daily scrums are so impactful. When you were talking about losing freedom, when you’re communicating, the thing is it, something doesn’t get wrong and go for weeks and weeks and weeks, because guess what? If they if your executive assistant didn’t turn it into you exactly the way you envisioned it, you’re going to see him tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon and say, Hey, thank you for this.

[00:24:49] Thank you for this. Let’s go back and let’s talk about it. Maybe the STK needs to be altered a little bit. Maybe I didn’t do a good job explaining to it yesterday what the client was looking for. So you don’t end up with all this angst and anger two weeks later when you go to turn a project in and go, Oh my goodness this is nothing what I wanted.

[00:25:08] You’re just going to talk about the next day. So I think the scrum is very important. Back to your freedom question, because you don’t actually lose freedom. You just get to talk about the next day. Yeah. So it there’s no freedom loss. Just talk, adjust. Yeah.

[00:25:22] Kris Ward: Oh my God. So you covered some really excellent, phenomenal points, and I don’t know if this is fair because you’ve already addressed so many things, can you talk about maybe what was one of the biggest surprises for you?

[00:25:35] Rachel Eubanks: Okay. For a virtual assistant.

[00:25:37] Kris Ward: Yeah. Or for anything that we did or the fact that, when we talked in the beginning, you’re like, here’s the line, Kris, I’m not getting it before 4am. And I was like, and you’re like, you’ve all this stuff on your plate and you couldn’t get, you knew that you were the cap of your income was there.

[00:25:49] Cause you had no more time. You were exhausted. Out of time. And so I was saying all these things. It’s, I think probably so many of my other clients, you thought these are big ass promises she’s making like, how is she going to do this within the framework of what I have available? Cause your schedule is really tight and you had all this copywriting you had to do, which takes, as we said, when you’re creative writing, that might take two hours because you have to write, I know my book was the same way. So I think you thought I was making some pretty large promises.

[00:26:20] Rachel Eubanks: I did. There are several surprises. First of all, anybody that’s listening to this, that is considering. A virtual assistant, I do want to make a note if you plan on a virtual assistant. Like everybody else is doing, and you’re just going to communicate through slack.

[00:26:39] You’re just going to go through an agency. Yes. Kris could talk to you a long time about, about how that is not going to work out. It’s going to work out exactly how it’s worked out for most of your friends. Yeah. And at the same time Kris and her team have done a lot of research. Most of those agencies are not paying the actual assistant.

[00:27:00] Does not receive a large portion of that money. And so virtual assistant is one thing, getting a virtual assistant who is truly a team member is a, it’s something else. And there has to be structures in place. Your team has done that both for your client and then for any virtual assistants that are hired because your team recommended them. And so those are 2 very different things. And Stephanie has been a game changer for my business and and just for me personally.

[00:27:33] So I recommend this, the second route where you meet with them in person, you develop a team atmosphere and where when you pay them, your money literally goes to them. So that’s one thing, the second…

[00:27:45] Kris Ward: They’re so committed to you, like not only my team, but all my clients, I will hear this from the VAs and stuff. They feel so committed because they have such input. Like we all want to be valued for our work and they have such input and freedom there that so many of them said to me, I feel like it’s my company.

[00:28:00] And so they’re invested. We had this situation. I was on vacation and something happened with her website and more on my team. For freaking out, Evan was saying, who works with me, Oh my gosh, like Maura went nuts that this is happening. And I said, thank God we don’t have to pay her for how much she cares.

[00:28:17] Like she was like, this is an emergency. She was not having it right. It was like, I don’t know, it was stealing from her soul, but she sees it. And she said this, we did an interview with Maura on the podcast here. And she said, and she took it back in the interview. Cause she’d never said it before.

[00:28:32] And she half laughed. And she said, I feel like this is my company, right? So you get commitment from them. And again, we’re talking like five us, six us dollars an hour. And here’s the thing too, if you’re not aware of the fact that you don’t understand what this does for them, like more would say to me, I’m the breadwinner in my family now, because in the Philippines, it’s 10 a day for minimum wage. So when they’re getting five, 60 an hour, Oh my gosh. Like that changes their whole life, right?

[00:29:01] She has a car, only the upper class over there has a car. That’s a big deal. Most people that just on those would look to be very scary dirt bikes. But that’s a whole thing too. Like you’re really making an impact on their life and they are making impact on yours, but it’s, it is, it’s just so crazy exciting how the ripple effect and how this all happens.

[00:29:22] Rachel Eubanks: Agreed. The second point I would make, and I’ll be quick, is… calendars. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Calendars are key. And when I first came to you, you were appalled by several things before I wake up and my lack of a calendar.

[00:29:38] Kris Ward: I think you were using paper, weren’t you?

[00:29:41] Rachel Eubanks: Sure. I don’t know. Probably we’ll say give me, we’ll give me some credit for that.

[00:29:44] But and I still love a good paper calendar. I still write things down, but the reality is having something in order to make notes on your phone, digital send invites to people digitally is so powerful and it allows you to truly look at the amount of time that you have and turn down projects that aren’t, that really you don’t have time for and it’s not the type of money that you need or want and a calendar just really, it’s your, I think you may have said, it’s your compass

[00:30:15] Kris Ward: for, yeah, and I think to that point, most people don’t understand that 90 percent of people, you, especially in business use their calendar wrong.

[00:30:23] And what happens is you don’t understand that it’s your time bank account and the work we’ve done on you utilizing your calendar. It’s not about putting in every 15 minute appointment. That’s just nonsense and more work, but it’s about reading your calendar differently. And because then you’re right, you’ve said to me so and so called want me to do some work and looking at my calendar, I realized that’s going to put pressure on the other projects.

[00:30:43] So they’re either going to pay more or have to wait because it’s just like your, it’s your time bank account. When things are going to start bouncing in your bank account, like we got no more room for that. And yet, because most people are running off a to do list, they don’t understand the damage and what they’re doing to their business.

[00:30:59] And you cannot improve what you don’t measure and you don’t know where anything is going. So that utilizing your calendar, you’re right. That’s a really good point that you brought up. So again, team, time and toolkits, very powerful.

[00:31:09] Rachel Eubanks: Yes, very powerful. So those were two big things for me is finding a teammate that’s a virtual assistant and how to use your calendar because that calendar guides so many of your decisions and it helps you actually get sleep at night. Wake up at a decent time. Say yes and no to great projects, raise prices. So many of those things.

[00:31:33] Kris Ward: Oh my gosh, you were such a treat. I could talk to you all day, Rachel. You know that. All right. Listen, she was so nice to sharing the behind the scenes. Not everybody’s comfortable doing that because what happens with a lot of my clients is they look good on paper.

[00:31:45] They’ve been in business five, 10 years. They may have a podcast or a book and they have all these things, these accolades online, but nobody knows how long they’ve been working this hard or that they’re working way too hard at this point in their journey. So Rachel, I thank you for sharing this because a lot of people are not comfortable okay, I’m pretending I got it all together and that makes it harder to reach people.

[00:32:07] So I really praise you for being so open about this. And I thank you for that. On top of that, you are an excellent copywriter. Hey, if anybody wants to learn more about your amazing services, where can they find more of your brilliance?

[00:32:21] Rachel Eubanks: So you can find me, I own the business is called Inspire To Engage.

[00:32:26] And so you head to my website. You can definitely email me at Rachel@, so it’s rachel@nspiretoengage. Just all squish it together. Spell out the word to. com.

[00:32:42] Kris Ward: And we will put it in our show notes as well. Please share this podcast with a business buddy. Do not let them suffer on their own.

[00:32:49] Even if they haven’t told you anything yet, I’m telling you, business should be fun and it should support your life instead of consuming it and you have no idea how much you’ll be helping them. So please do share that with them. And we will also see you in the next episode. Thank you so much.