Intro: 0:00

Welcome to The Summit. A podcast focused on bringing you the knowledge and insights for industry leaders. I’m your host Kyle Hamer, and I’m on a mission to help you exceed your potential. As a sales guy, turned marketer, I am passionate about building sustainable businesses. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 20 years, it’s like you won’t find it over-night growth scheme, a shortcut to success or a way to hack yourself. Nope . Success is the byproduct of hard work rate relationships and deep understanding done over and over. We’re here to help you unlock that success with some secrets from other people, one conversation At a time.

Kyle Hamer: 0:35

Welcome to The Summit. This is your host, Kyle Hamer I’m here today with my good friend, actually my new friend, Kristin Molenaar. Is that, am I saying that right?

Kristin Molenaar: 0:43

No , you did. Yeah , yeah , yeah. Just don’t overthink it. Go with it .

Kyle Hamer: 0:48

Well , just rolling right into that one. Kristin is a she’s a entrepreneur. Enthusiastic. She loves the mantra work more. No, no, no. That is definitely not how it goes. Work less. Make more. Isn’t that the way life’s supposed to be. She enjoys entrepreneurship so much that she wants to ditch the man at vanity metrics and just make connections. She’s the CEO of a company called yes boss, which is a digital agency that helps service-based businesses, book, podcast features. And today, guess what? We’re going to talk about podcasting, Kristin, welcome to the show. Thanks

Kristin Molenaar: 1:22

For having me. I’m excited to chat with you today.

Kyle Hamer: 1:25

Now the reason Kristin ‘s on the show today is because she posted this inflammatory statement on LinkedIn and it caught my attention. I don’t know how you, and this is the thing, like if you’re on social media and you’re not using LinkedIn, you’re crazy. You’ve got to put personal experiences on there and you got to get to people’s attentions . And her statement started off like this. So I decided that I was going to invest money in, get rich, quick schemes or no. Is it lazy, passive and passive income,

Kristin Molenaar: 1:56

Passive income. I fell for the passive income gurus again.

Kyle Hamer: 2:00

Oh , $4,000 later. What did you learn?

Kristin Molenaar: 2:06

The connection is still better than passive income.

Kyle Hamer: 2:10

What does that mean? Connection is better than passive income.

Kristin Molenaar: 2:14

Oh , you know, I think that at the root of passive income and that I would say the passive income that I rave or rant about is that this idea of passive income is that you literally can hide behind your computer. You don’t have to talk to anybody, you set up these things that just run on autopilot. You can remove the element of humanity from your business. And that drives me crazy. I think that if COVID taught us anything, it’s that we’re all starving for connection. And I think it just, you know, if I look at all the things that I purchased from passive income funnels as well, like, Oh my gosh, what a waste of a lot of money that I’ve spent. You, you mentioned LinkedIn, you know, I, a LinkedIn course that was obviously sold to me on path of passive income funnel, which it caught me. That was another , that wasn’t the $4,000 I was referring to. This is outside of that. But I spent $500 on learning how to do LinkedIn and this person who sold me the course even said like, you know, challenge for day, number one, post on LinkedIn and tag me and send me a connection request. Well, here I am, you know, six months later, she still hasn’t accepted my friend request. Still hasn’t acknowledged that I was part of her challenge. So I joined a different LinkedIn group that was like, Oh my gosh, a fraction of the cost. And now I’m in this like mastermind group where there’s tons of connection. And my business caught the attention of a wonderful podcaster that invited me to come speak on his podcast . Look at that.

Kyle Hamer: 3:44

Well look , and here’s what caught my attention. And this is, this is no disrespect to anybody that has a mastermind group, or that is a self-proclaimed grew that earned their stripes. But what caught my attention and it may just have been the day is I’ve just about had enough of an 18 year old trying to be a life coach or a marketing expert or somebody that’s going to transform my business with this $97 course. And I don’t like, I don’t mean that to be disrespectful to those people that have earned their stripes. There’s guys like grant Cardone and Tony Robbins . They have great products out there for helping people build businesses and income, but when it comes to passive income and I tell you what they write some really good sales letter and before you know, it you’ve shelled out a lot of money and the robots aren’t bringing it in for you, right?

Kristin Molenaar: 4:28

Yeah. Yeah. I hate you. You started it. So I’m going to keep going. I feel like this new business coaching and life coaching is become the next, like multi-level marketing of coaches, coaching coaches who coach coaches. And I got, I bought into one of those two years ago. I , you know, and so I keep talking about how I keep shooting myself with self in the foot, but, you know, I bought one of those and I realized as a service-based business owner, you know, I provide a service, a done for you service. I don’t actually do coaching or consulting at all. You know, I realized like they know nothing about my business. You know, I have a , what in my mind is a proper business that offers proper results. And yeah, it’s very frustrating to me, but people learn how to write a good sales page. They, or they hire a really great copywriter , right. And then he gets sucked into it because I think there’s this idea that we all want freedom in our business. We all want to be able to make money a little bit easier. Fortunately I have found ways to make money a little bit easier that doesn’t involve passive income. And also doesn’t involve hustling. I found this like, you know, meat , middle, medium that we can talk about. But you know, I think that the risk is when we go one extreme and then the other extreme and finding that gray area that’s, that’s where the magic lies.

Kyle Hamer: 5:51

Well, look in, in, in many ways, we’re, we’re super aligned. And , and I , what I have to say is is that if it wasn’t some sort of information marketing in some group guru that had a course, I actually wouldn’t be where I’m at in my career. I was a sales guy, turned marketer mostly because I was curious, I hated what marketing gave me from a sales standpoint, right? This was before sales enablement was a thing. I was like, I’m at this spot in the conversation. I just need my , my marketing materials or whatever to say this, so I can help move them a little bit further along. That was never anywhere to be found. So like, I began this like choose your own adventure quest to, to figure out how to sell better by using marketing. And I found a course and , and the irony is as the course, the name of the course was everything, you know, about marketing is wrong. And I was like, absolutely, that has to be right. And 20 years later, like looking back on it, like , it was probably the best $89 that turned into $249 that I ever spent. But none of it was passive. None of it was easy. It was all a lot of work. Right. It was a lot of teaching and practicing and developing skills that, you know, that seems really, really easy to do when you’re reading something. And it is common sense. Like you’re shaking your head. Yes. And you’ve been through it and you’re like, Oh , that’s a , that’s a lot more work than I thought it was going to be to put this on autopilot and make an extra $450,000 a month.

Kristin Molenaar: 7:19

Yeah. But , you know, and I , I think that you’ve kind of proven a point that I’m going to make. And that is that I do think that there is a place for courses. I think that what drives me crazy though, and I’ll use this LinkedIn course that I had purchased as I wanted, I bought it because I wanted to learn specifically LinkedIn strategy. Well, this person then gave me everything, but the kitchen sink and wanted to talk to me about like finding my ideal audience and doing the Brit , all these branding exercises and what a sales funnel look like. And I’m like, please just shut up and tell me what to do on LinkedIn. Like I purchased this to learn just about LinkedIn, but you know, I think that when you’re learning about something super specific, it makes sense though. I will also say that what I have discovered, and I need to continually remind myself is books will teach you the same thing and a book, an expensive book. You can get it for like $25. And I don’t know about you, but I finished books when I read books. I don’t tend to finish courses. I don’t know why. Another thing though, another place I do see for courses is I like buying courses that I give to my team because it’s a good way to hand over some kind of training that I don’t have to develop. I just purchased something that’s already developed, give it to my team. They learn how to execute something new. I think that that’s a wonderful idea, but you know, these courses that, that just offer everything. And sometimes I think overwhelm you so that you don’t take action. There’s also, you know, this message from people that are teaching, want to be entrepreneurs, that that’s how you get rich. As you create a course and told, you know, pick something that you’re passionate about, you can create a course about anything and you can sell it to anybody and get rich so quick. And it’s like, okay, okay. Was everybody in the world meant to be an educator? Like, no, we weren’t. So why are we teaching that as a get rich method for everyone under the sun? I just think of that as dangerous. And there’s so much saturation, it’s hard to weed through, you know , what’s good and what’s not,

Kyle Hamer: 9:19

Well, I look in , and I think I think your experience, my experience probably echoes a lot of people’s experiences. They go through those, but what, what the value is that’s come out of that is, it seems to me like, you know, you found a way through that, that that led you to yes. Boss, the business that you have now. So tell me about that journey and what is yes. Boss, like you said, podcasting done for you or podcasting promote , like what, what is it like? This is, this is I really honestly don’t know anything about it other than I saw your post. And I was like, Hey, this is this we share this frustration with the the funnels community. I’ll call it that. And I’m really curious to see how you built your business.

Kristin Molenaar: 10:02

Yeah. So my business, you know, I would say from 2015 to 2018 was pretty much just offering virtual assistant services. I fell into that because I tried to be an entrepreneur that was teaching my knowledge to other people. Like I started there. And it was really hard. I was doing all the things that all the gurus were telling me to do. And it was incredibly frustrating. I called myself a starving entrepreneur for the first 14 months until I fell into being a virtual assistant. So in I guess it wasn’t 2000 mid 2019, you know, I, I realized that my business didn’t really need a whole lot of me. Like my business really runs well by itself. Like I’ve invested a lot in putting together systems and having people there. And so my business runs really smoothly by itself. Not with passive income, but with people I’ll be really, really clear there. I have a great team. And so what, what I had discovered through that is that I believe that people are over-complicating business. I just was talking to so many people that heard about my business and how little I worked. And they were like, wait, what you, you really like, you don’t work that much. Like your business doesn’t need you. And so I decided, you know what, now I have freedom in my journey to go out and just talk to people about how entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be difficult. Like, and so my, what I wanted to do was I wanted to start getting on podcasts to talk about how we can eradicate entrepreneurial stress. This wasn’t actually a marketing like, idea. This is just like, I have time now and I want to do this. So part of the story though, is that I said I was going to start pitching myself for podcasts. Every time I did some initial research myself, I, I found that the mental game was really tough. Like I would compare myself to how big a podcaster was versus, you know, how big I maybe was perceived to be. And I ultimately wasn’t pitching myself for podcasts because of this mental struggle that was going on. And so what happened is six months later, my team said to me, Hey, Kristin , you know you haven’t pitched yourself in podcasts though . You’ve been telling us, you’re going to pitch yourself a podcast for six months. Like, how about you just let us do it. Like, how about you just delegate? Like you tell other people to do, like, why don’t you do that? And it’s like, Oh, okay. Yeah, I guess I should do that. So my team took over pitching podcasts for me, and right away started booking podcasts because they don’t have the same struggles that I do when it comes to, you know, the self-worth stuff that I was struggling with at the time. And what happened is I noticed that me being on podcasts started generating more business than we had previously generated. You know, the business was both mostly built on referral. We had tried ad strategies. We had tried, you know, all the opt-in sequences and growing all the ways to grow email lists. And it never really was all that fruitful for us. And so we’ve just depended on either networking or referrals. And what I realized is podcasting then became this like networking on steroids strategy. And I started to get tons of business by being a podcast host. So we decided as a company, you know, we knew we wanted to find like a niche that we could really like focus all of our efforts in. So we didn’t have to do everything for our clients. We wanted to drive for results. And so that’s how we started getting into what we do now. We exclusively do pitching for podcasts for our clients. So people that want to get on podcasts that as a podcast host where a done for you service, that’s kind of how it was. That’s the long story I suppose, of how it was born.

Kyle Hamer: 13:44

So, first of all, I think there’s a couple of things. If you’re a podcaster and you’re listening in, or you’re thinking about getting a podcast , getting started, one of the hardest things to do when you’re dealing with human psychology is get over that, that moment of ego, you know, it’s like, do I have what it takes to be able to provide value? Or, you know, I’ve, I’ve never spoken about this before, while I seem like I’m a stammering idiot. And , and, and the reality is, is that it’s never as good as you think, nor is it ever as bad as you think, right. It’s just, it just is like the steps you take, you kind of have to meander through it. And what I think is cool about your story is , is that, you know, you started on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial stress and in doing so you created an entrepreneurial stress

Kristin Molenaar: 14:35

Until I employed other people to help me with it. Yeah, for sure.

Kyle Hamer: 14:39

And so like , there’s this irony in that in and of itself to me, but once your , once your team came behind you, it , it , it goes to say that all great podcasters, all thought leaders, they’re only as really as good as the team they have behind them. And you’ve got people that have grandiose, fantastic ideas. They’re sitting in a bar or a coffee shop. And the only people that know about them are the folks that come into those particular establishments . Likewise, the thoughts that guys like Joe Rogan or Howard stern, or like you know, people that have these huge followings, they’re only as good as the team they have behind them, right? Like they’re there. And so it’s really cool to hear you talk about my team got behind me, they filled up my sales and push away. You went talk a little bit about that, that strategy and what it means to be done for you hosting or done for you booking.

Kristin Molenaar: 15:30

I mean, what we tell people is, is you hire us so that you can generate leads in an hour per week. So, you know, we come behind you, we, we write your pitch. We do all the research behind who we feel is going to be a good fit for you. And our focus is really on pairing our clients with podcast hosts that are in alignment, you know, their businesses and their business mission, their business goals are in alignment with one another. Like I briefly said, you know, I feel that being a podcast host is networking on steroids. So for me, this is less of a traditional marketing play. I think the traditional marketing play would be, you know, getting on somebody’s podcast that has a massive audience, and you’re trying to sell to their audience for me, my play in my strategy behind this, as connecting with other podcasts hosts that there’s an alignment of what we do so that I can just expand my network. Like I love being a connector. I know that I love meeting more people. I don’t like doing entrepreneurship alone. Yes. I have my team, but my team only understands my business if they don’t understand entrepreneurship. So like connecting people with people like you, Kyle, like, that’s what I love. And so this is about forming relationships with people. I also think that the reason that this is such a effective networking play too, is because look, this we’re talking and you’re asking me about all the things that make me so smart. So you’re like learning in the very first conversation, why I am good at what I’m good at. If we were just casually chatting, like I couldn’t share all of these things. It would just sound like I’m talking about myself and I’m bragging, right? So like it works to be able to get to the root of like why you are, or are not a good collaborative fit or like a good referral fit, whatever. And I just feel like it establishes it establishes trust and authority. There’s a level of vulnerability. And so I guess that’s why I’ve found this to be so effective. And why I focus more on that connection instead of, you know, that traditional marketing play like the numbers game

Kyle Hamer: 17:35

Well, and what I, what I like about that. So there’s a couple of things that I really really identify with with what you’re sharing there. One is, is this concept of show up and throw up, right? Like if you’re doing a traditional marketing, putting on a presentation at local AMA chapter or for small business group, a networking group, whatever it is like you stand up and you’re like, Hey, let me talk all about me and what I’m doing. It’s not a dialogue , right? It’s, it’s it goes back to that ego. And so it’s never as good as you think, and it’s never as bad as you think it just is, but it, it feels uncomfortable. It feels unnatural. Versus if you get in the right conversation with somebody on a podcast, it does become, it can become, it. Doesn’t always become, but it can become a fantastic dialogue. And for me, what’s, what’s really interesting is even though at the beginning of this conversation, we talked about raging against people who are, you know, young and have these masterminds and they don’t know what they’re doing this week. I’ve interviewed somebody who’s under 25 and has over, I want to say over 500,000 followers on Instagram. And they fundamentally say, look, while I have this huge following on Instagram, where I got started was Twitter. And, and for me, Twitter is where I generate business because I know how to have human to human connections. And then yesterday I was talking to somebody and we were doing a pre-call where we just kind of get to know each other before we hop on the op on the podcast. And this particular person has talked to SAS tech star after SAS tech star after SAS tech star . And I was like, man, you talk like to a small degree, like, you’re like feeling a little intimidated, this person, just talk to like some big name people in the software as a service world. Holy smokes. You know , when I looked at their podcast , they’ve only been podcasting for about a year. And so you, you know, to your point of finding the people that actually fit in your niche and the people that are good for you to have conversations with just seems like common sense. It’s like, Hey, let’s have a conversation about what you do. Maybe we talk about what I do, but at the end of the day, here’s an opportunity for me to express and share my point of view. It just, I mean, it’s like, it’s like sales calls where it’s not a sales call. It’s, this is pretty, it’s pretty brilliant, little, a pretty brilliant little setup.

Kristin Molenaar: 19:46

Well, I do say that that podcast conversation, like from a guest perspective, you know, I kind of talk people through, what does it take to have a good conversation? I say that think about three things. Like, what do you talk about in a discovery call with your potential clients? What do you talk about in your sales call and what do you talk about in your actual coaching call? Just talk about the things that come naturally to you. And I also say to people like, if you can’t say it off cuff, then you probably shouldn’t be saying it, you know, talk about the things that you know, it’s not, it’s not that intimidating. You’ve just got to be focused on being, I don’t know, for me, it’s be an open book, bring that human factor, you know, talk about, I mean, we started the podcast with me talking about like three times that I sucked at business, you know, like be , be open to talking about whatever, let the conversation just flow. Yeah. And , and I wanted to say to your point about the vanity metric thing, I think we just get so hung up on these vanity metrics. You know, we all want to talk about, well, how big is your email list and how many people have you talked to that have thousands upon thousands, or maybe tens of thousands of people on their email list . I had a good friend that had over a 10,000 people on her email list and it didn’t match revenue. And so, you know, I, I just realized that every time I fall into that rabbit hole of going after those vanity metrics, that induces tons of stress for me versus, you know, being connected with one right person could be incredibly profitable for your business. And then you can do it in such a way where you’re focused on that authenticity. You’re focused on that connection. You’re not constantly chasing after the next, you know, metric that will fuel your ego.

Kyle Hamer: 21:26

You know, and , and , and , and here’s the brilliance . This , there’s a couple of things you touch about in there. And that , that I think are brilliant. They’re brilliant because they’re simple. And I think they’re they’re missed in a major way by businesses today. When you look at the, when you look at the, the shift in communication patterns over COVID everybody, all of a sudden they have to be at home, they’re stuck in front of their computers. They’re, they’re consuming things through devices, right? There’s this complete loss of humanity. And then email after email, after email comes out and says in these challenging times and this new normal, and how are you today? But it’s like, that’s like Delta, you really don’t care how I am today. Like, you’ll need to ask me that. Like, I don’t care. Just tell me how you fall on the CDC guidelines if at all. But so it’s like companies like completely lost humanity in this effort to have seem relatable. And that’s, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s amazing to me how simple communication for large organizations, even small organizations get into the spot where it’s like, well, I have a hundred thousand people on my email list. I need to talk to all of them. And this is the message I need to send. All of them will, all of them receive it, like, will they re like not get it in their inbox, but will they receive it? Like, are they going to hear what you’re saying? Right. So that’s, that’s one big thing. The other thing is, is it’s interesting that I think is, am in what you’re talking about is this intentionality of not getting caught up in vanity metrics. So, Oh man, what’s , this is 2020. So I think it was 2008, 2009. My wife decided after we had our second kid, that she was going to start a business. She was a mompreneur much like yourself. And she was like, Hey, I’m, I’m interested in starting a blog. She didn’t start the blog to make passive income. She didn’t start the blog to build this giant community. She started the blog to share stories and create a catalog, or write a diary of things that were going on in her life. And in the first week it was like three people that showed up, right. It was friends and family, and they were begrudgingly showing up to the blog. Six weeks later, it was maybe 300 total people had come to the thing. Right. And you know , you start looking at those metrics and like, Oh, this is really discouraging. But because she decided to go be part of the community to be a human and started reaching out in natural and effective ways . This is far, far before podcasting was really a thing. She started going to bulletin boards providing value in like leaving comments. Hey, here’s how you do this. Or here’s they do that? Or here’s how I figured out how to solve this or his harvest to figure out how to solve that. People started coming in droves to her, to our blog. And by 90 days in right. So nine days in 90 people, maybe 90 days in 90,000 people a month.

Kristin Molenaar: 24:28

Wow. Wow. Because she was human,

Kyle Hamer: 24:33

She was human. That’s right.

Kristin Molenaar: 24:35

Hide behind her computer. Shouldn’t hide behind some technology. Shouldn’t hide behind some automation.

Kyle Hamer: 24:41

That’s right. She just was out there being herself, being helpful. And then she was like, well, gosh, we have all this traffic. I have all these things, you know, what would really be awesome. I would like to see this in the market. So she went out, she found where she could get the product manufactured and she made it and write it. She didn’t make it for the audience. She didn’t, she made it for herself right. Much like you in your service. And like, I made it because I needed it. Like it came because I needed it. And , and what ended up happening is is this product took off. She created a brand, she built a list, the list wasn’t hundreds of thousands of people. It was like maybe nine, 10,000 people, a social media and influencers. And that whole, like that was really groups. Weren’t even really a thing. They were just starting off with Facebook, like business pages. Like this is early, early, early stuff compared to what we see today. And we knew that when she would do a poster or a release or something, as it related to product, we could guarantee that at least twenty-five percent of her list was going to make a purchase because they had a human connection. They can, even to this day, even though she doesn’t have the business anymore, whether it’s in Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, whatever, like she still sees those people and they still have that interaction. And it’s been 19 years since that business has been up and going. So I think businesses and entrepreneurs sometimes get so caught up in creating something for a market that they forget to create and just be human.

Kristin Molenaar: 26:14

I agree. I totally agree. I totally agree. I , you know, I think that we, because of the people that are marketing to us are further along and like we said earlier, have teams behind them, we start comparing ourselves to what they’re doing, and we start trying to emulate what they’re doing, but what we’re not seeing is the beginning stages. You know, people aren’t talking about the beginning so much, we’re not seeing that beginning part of their journey. And that beginning part has do with finding your tribe. I mean, I guess that’s a catchy way to say it, but finding your people, connecting with your people. I, I think also that gives us longevity in our businesses. I, one of the things, you know, I talked about being an entrepreneurial failure for the first 14 months before I stumbled into, you know, building things from that virtual assistant foundation, you know, I was just trying to teach what I knew and it wasn’t out of like, I didn’t even enjoy it really. It was just where I had experience. And I think that you get trapped. There’s two things that kind of trap people is feeling like you have to teach something that you have experience in not to say that experience is bad. I think that’s good, but teaching, you can only do you know what you came from your corporate career to do. And then doing all the things to get that started. And so I burnt myself out in that way.

Kyle Hamer: 27:44

Well, in, in doing that, so that you’re right. A lot of people feel like, well, you only have practical application. Like I’m going to just do what I know. And , and it becomes, you know, Pete and repeat, and it just becomes really, really, really tiring. What what’s interesting, what’s interesting to me is how, I think you said, you know , 14 months of entrepreneurial failure but you, you challenge that or you compare that to what people like saying, geez, Christian, Kristin , it looks to me like, you know, you’re , you got your business set on autopilot. It’s just passive income, but they didn’t see the hours upon hours upon hours upon hours of you slaving away and missing meals and missing, missing sleeps or parties. It really like you just, you were, you were so involved, I’m guessing I could be wrong, but I’m guessing like you invested so much time, energy and effort learning that you found a different way in a different path, but it was, I mean, it was difficult, right? It wasn’t like, Hey, one day you’re like, Hey, I got this great idea. I bought this three 99. Course I applied the course. And then all of a sudden life was a breeze.

Kristin Molenaar: 28:58

Well, I say that I went to business for hard knocks. I mean, I did learn a lot in that 14 months. I also, you know, part of the story that I don’t share about too often, because I feel like it veers me too far off courses. Yes. When I started the virtual assistant gig thing, it was easy. Like I , I, it was, you know, I got, my first client got paid $15 an hour realized in that moment that I didn’t like the work that I was being asked to do. I was asked to write blogs for nursing, a nursing blog. So I outsource it to somebody who was in the Midwest, who was a college student that could work for minimum wage, realized that I’d rather make seven or $8 an hour doing nothing rather than $15 an hour, doing something that I hate and continue to grow that business. However, because I didn’t feel like success should be that easy. I then went and started another business and was spending, you know, five hours a week managing this virtual assistant business that was supporting my family. We were able to move out into our own place out of my in-law’s house and be financially independent, but it felt too easy. Like I just felt like, Oh, this can’t, this is a fluke. And so I started in another, another business worked, you know, 40 plus hours a week in that other business that made like, I think the first business I had where I was living in my in-laws made like $5,000 total. And then the second business I had made like $7,000 total. So I went and bright back to doing all the things rather than sticking with what was super simple, because again, I bought into, well, I don’t have an email as well. I don’t have a website. Well , I’m not on social media. Nobody knows what I do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I made it super complicated, but to be real, the service based stuff that I’ve done has always come really easily. And I think also because my focus was on, how do I bring in money, but money that requires as little from me as possible. That was my motivation. And so I was saying no to everything, you know, only doing what was absolutely essential. Then I don’t think that many people do that with their businesses because they think that the business is them. That it must be more complicated than that. I think there’s also worthiness stuff going on. You know, how many of us came from parents that worked hard? You know, I come from parents that worked in government that worked 40 hour or 40 years before they were able to retire. You know? So it’s, it’s different. You’ve got to think differently. When, when you decide to become a business owner, you’ve got to figure out the , the simple strategy and what motivates you.

Kyle Hamer: 31:40

Hmm . So what motivates you? That’s a great segue into some , some like personal questions. What motivate ?

Kristin Molenaar: 31:45

Yeah. I’m motivated by freedom. So for me, the reason that I wanted to become an entrepreneur is because I figured when I become a mom someday, I want to not have to work all the time, but I like making money. Like I am, I am money motivated. I like being ambitious. I like having that outlet. So I like working, but I don’t want to be so tied to my work. Like I want to be able to at the drop of a hat, be there for my family. Like, I want that flexibility. I think though, that, because of that motivation, I’ve been able to build a foundation in my business that now I am money motivated because I have that base. Like we’re financially comfortable. I’m not working a lot in my business. They could run without me. So now I’m like, well, let’s build on this and let’s make it to a million. And so that’s now the goal is to build up that finances, but it all started from that financial place. You know , I’ve read from a lot of people that talk, bridging the gap between like a hundred thousand and a million. And they say, you can hustle your way to a hundred thousand. You cannot hustle your way to a million. And so I found a way to not hustle my way to a hundred thousand. And so now it’s like, well, that’s kind of cool because now that I’m at that level, I don’t have to reteach myself how to build a business. That’s not dependent on me, but I don’t feel like a lot of people are talking about that, you know, in the hundred thousand dollar like arena.

Kyle Hamer: 33:04

Well, and I , what I think, what I think is interesting about that, cause it’s very similar to my experience in that you’re right. You can work really, really, really hard grind, white knuckle it. And unless, you know, unless you get a couple lucky breaks, you’re not going to go from a hundred thousand or even 200,000 to a million dollars as a solopreneur . Like you’re can have a nice, you’re gonna have a nice, comfortable lifestyle, 200 to 300 grand a year. Singular person may be outsourcing a portion of your tasks, but to go from a hundred thousand to a million, to two to five, you now are actually dependent upon how good is your team? How good is your flywheel? How, how much have you set up so that it’s frictionless may not be the right word, but where it’s, you know , friction free so that it scales. And you’re only looking at like, Oh, I need to go to the next, the next part. Well , I’m just missing this one particular piece. Let’s add this. And then you can go to the next level. And you’re right. There’s not a lot of people who are talking about that, cause they’re stuck at the grinding grow phase,

Kristin Molenaar: 34:04

Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we live in hustle culture. And so all of these things really play together. You know, the ego playing there and then feeling like you have to hustle to get to that level, perfectionist plays into it, not feeling like you can pass something to somebody else, you know, all these things really keep you stuck. And I think that’s where I’m thankful for my journey because this thing that is now my, my whole entire business, I was treating like this, you know, I hate to say it this way. Maybe I don’t hate to say it this way, but I was treated like my ugly stepchild, like, Hey , you know, whatever, but doing that enabled me, enabled me to be as efficient and effective as possible because I wasn’t focused on this perfectionism and that’s not what was fueling my ego. Now that it’s the only thing I do have to keep my ego in check, like, okay, Kristin, you can’t be the hero all the time. Like you’ve got to let the business do its thing because every time I interject myself into the business, ultimately I put kinks in, in a well-oiled machine. You know, I , I, I not, I should not be getting involved.

Kyle Hamer: 35:12

That’s that’s so talk about that just briefly, you said just now you said I put kinks into a well-oiled machine. What does that mean?

Kristin Molenaar: 35:20

Yeah, I think that that entrepreneurs are oftentimes the bottleneck to their own success. And you know, I think more often I talk about it as sabotaging your own success. I think that because we have to see everything that goes out the door we feel like everything has our name on it. We then slow down our own growth. And so I, I like to, I talk to people all the time that have teams are thinking about hiring teams and stuff, and you know what you need to do in order to prevent these things is allow your team to be your company. Like your company is not, you, you’ve got to see your company as a separate entity. When I talk to parents, I feel like this analogy works really well. A lot of us say like our business is our baby. Well, our babies eventually start walking. They eventually go to school. They eventually move out of the house. The goal in parenting is to create independence among our children, though, we’re holding onto our businesses. Like they can never leave us and we’re like babying them to death. And what what’s that? That’s a self-employment, that’s not entrepreneurship. I would say entrepreneurship is a V being a visionary leader that puts people and processes in place. And when you allow your business to be a separate entity, what I I have found happens is your business grows and flourishes beyond the boundaries that you are as a person. I would much rather have yes, boss be more capable than Kristin Moolenaar is because when my business is only what I am, I don’t have any freedom. I can’t let go of anything. You know, I don’t have a business that I could eventually one day sell. So it’s, you know, I , if I want to retire, then my business just by like, I don’t get anything from it. And so I think that, you know, that, that I, I think is another thing that kind of breed that , that cusp hustle culture breeds is like, you’ve got to do so much hustling that it’s all about you. And there’s no, none, not enough. People are talking about like working smarter, not harder. You know, I talk about work less, make more, it’s not a catchy phrase. This is a method, all energy . Like you’ve just got to change the way you think about business in order to grow something that is a company rather than a self-employed endeavor.

Kyle Hamer: 37:47

You know? And , and, and here’s the irony of that particular statement, by the way, I agree with you 100% on everything you just said, the irony is a 100%, not a hundred percent, but almost all of the courses that I’ve ever consumed that are online, like were coming, coming full circle here. What do they talk about? They talk about mindset, but the mindset of hustle, the mindset of grit, the mindset of grind in , and to me, it seems like you almost have this counter-intuitive mindset in that if you want to grow, if you want to succeed, if you want to scale, it can’t necessarily about grit, be about grit. It can’t necessarily be about grinding. It can’t necessarily be about, you know, white knuckling it with your, your baby that you’re raising into a company. It’s, you’ve got to let it be what it is and, you know, be there to step in and help pick it up if it falls down or you know, but, but ultimately your identity and mindset, can’t be tied up a hundred percent into that. That’s, that’s, that’s really cool to hear,

Kristin Molenaar: 38:48

You know, what, what the, the courses are also teaching is all the things that you need to do for your business too . When you look behind the scenes and these really successful course creators, are they still doing it for themselves? Like, why aren’t you talking about hiring somebody? Like, why are none of these course creators saying like, Hey, buy this for your VA, but no, it’s like, you need to do the content. You need to be consistent. You need to be disciplined. Well, I’d like to say for me , if just one person can hear this, like, I’m not a finisher. If you’re not a finisher either, that’s fine. Yes. You need to have consistency in your business, but do you know how many people out there are consistent? Do you know how you can hire people and you can pay them to be finishers in your business? Like, let let’s do that. Let’s leverage the opportunities in front of us. Not feel like we need to become something different. Like, it’s all about figuring out the strategies that work with us. Like I’m a procrastinator and I’m not a finisher, but I still am a successful business owner. I’ve just figured out how to hack the system. That’s the cool thing about being the leader is you get to figure it, you know, make the system work for you.

Kyle Hamer: 39:57

Where did, where did yes. Boss come from?

Kristin Molenaar: 40:00

I don’t know the name you’re asking about the name. Right?

Kyle Hamer: 40:07

I , I, you know, I , I tend to, I tend to look at what people have in their , in their frame and like, you’ve got fixed this next. And I’m thinking based on everything you’re telling me, I’m like, Hmm , she’s probably, Kristin ‘s probably going, no , this is either being delegated to somebody. Like, you need to go fix this next, but then, but then like I raise up and I’m like, like a boss. Yes, boss come from. Like, that was just kind of what flew . I was like, what , where did that come from?

Kristin Molenaar: 40:31

I kept getting clients. And I was getting them as myself. I had had another business name that was from, you know , the coaching and consulting that I did. And so I brought everything under that, but that was like, so unrelated. I just was in like in a hurry, like I just needed another , like I just needed to do something else through wrote down a bunch of different names. That was the one that got voted on by some friends and close family. And it just kind of stuck, stuck. It stuck, it stuck. So, you know, honestly, I don’t know. And now sometimes I look at it and go, but I’m not going to say yes to everything. Like, I’m definitely not a yes woman. I’m probably the opposite of that, but I’ll find you a yes person. Like I’m good at that.

Kyle Hamer: 41:17

That’s well, I look at , and I think, I think there’s some of the most powerful things you th the two most powerful letters in the entire English language I think are in and out, right. We in marketing specifically, I think marketers say yes, more than they say no. And they should probably say more no more often. So I think it’s cool that you’re like, no, no, no, no, no. I’ll find somebody else to say yes. Cause there’s plenty of people out there that are yes man or yes, woman. Now you have something in your repertoire that you, you know, you touch on, which is this, this idea of the simplest sales funnel. What is that like when you say, you know, a simplest sales funnel in the world, one that, you know, you can spend five minutes on or five hours on and it just creates revenue. What is like, if I’m, if I’m a solopreneur or I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a small business owner and going, okay, you’ve got my attention. What is this funnel?

Kristin Molenaar: 42:16

Yeah. When I started doing podcast guesting, I thought that I needed to have a funnel in the background. You know, that’s what everybody says. And I understand that there, there is a there are all of these elements to sales that you’ve got to have. You’ve got to have visibility, you’ve got to be able to nurture. You’ve got to be able to sell. You’ve got to be able to fulfill and you’ve got to be able to retain, right? Like those are some rough breakdowns of a sales funnel. And so, you know, most people, what they do is they put together a freebie offer on their website and then they’ve gotten nurture sequences in their email. And then they’re stuck with like, okay, crap, how do I become visible? Right. Like nobody’s going to these things, Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? Well, this is what I’ve found. When I show up as a guest on somebody’s podcast, I am becoming visible. I am nurturing. Oftentimes I’m SA selling. And it’s kind of crazy because even though we built those backend funnels for me being a podcast guest, what I found is that a very, very small portion of people opted onto my email list because the people that are ideal, clients are people that are ready to take action. They don’t want to learn all the nuts and bolts all themselves. They hear me talk and they know like, Oh yeah, I need that thing. So what has happened for us? And what we’re seeing happen for our clients is that either the podcast host hires our company, or what happens is the podcast host knows somebody who needs our services and the selling all happens like in this call, like, as you are talking. And so it, you know, I stumbled upon it very honestly, but it’s so wild how you can do all of those things within one conversation. I said earlier, it’s like a discovery call a sales call on a coaching call if you do it right. If you show up and offer enough value and really, you know, be like I’m an open book is what I want to say. Be an open book about everything, and then have a relationship with a person that has interviewed you and maintain that relationship. It’s kind of amazing how this sales funnel becomes like this thing that just kind of naturally happens .

Kyle Hamer: 44:41

It sounds to me like relationship selling is, is definitely your forte. But it also sounds to me like, Hey, you know, people talk about getting people to like know and trust you, right? That’s who they buy from, what better way than to drum up a conversation where you’re the subject matter expert, have the dialogue go back and forth. You get a chance to be engaging, charismatic, showcase what you do know, and then take somebody through the process where they go, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well, who am I going to go talk to? Am I going to go talk to the person that I just interviewed? And that was the expert and that I had a really good time chatting with, or am I going to go try and figure out if somebody else out there under this, this universe ecosystem of , of companies, like how much time is that going to take? So it, it, it makes a lot of sense. It’s super simple. And I , I just, it’s, it’s, it’s so simple and obvious. It’s crazy.

Kristin Molenaar: 45:39

It’s so simple that I didn’t know it was going to work this way. I truly, I truly didn’t know. And it felt like magic. And then, so we started doing it for some of our existing clients, like, okay, is this something that just like, Kristin kind of has like some kind of magic with, or is this a universal thing? And I’ve found that it’s, that it’s universal. But what I love is I think that a lot of people in the service based industry, because they don’t think of themselves as educators, they think of themselves as more of the doers. They that’s like an untapped an untapped audience that should be doing this or an untapped market that should be doing this because the nature of a done for you service is the kinds of clients you want to attract are people that want to just delegate to you. So if you talk about the importance of delegating, if you show them that, you know, what you’re talking about, that ideal client is like, he don’t teach me in, you know, five weeks worth of email content. Like, can you just do the work for me? So that’s why specifically I love working with service-based providers because we can get you to show up and you essentially establish thought leadership, and then people hire your business to do that work for them.

Kyle Hamer: 46:52

It makes perfect sense. I mean, it, 100% makes perfect sense. Final thoughts, like leave li like you have any more truth, dimes and nuggets of gold that you’d like to share with the guests.

Kristin Molenaar: 47:05

I mean, I think that what I would just like to say is that if there is somebody listening that feels like entrepreneurship is complicated and it’s stressful, and you know, you’re going to bed at night thinking like, maybe I should just get a job. I think you’ve just got to evaluate what you’re doing. Like, how are you marketing your business? How are you monetizing your business? How are you showing up? Are you these things? Because that is what you originally set out to do, or are you doing them because somebody told you, you need to do that. You know, I built my business to the first hundred thousand without a website and without social media. And if I can do it, you know, somebody that was entrepreneurial failure, getting hired as a $15 an hour virtual assistant, if I can do it, you can too. We’ve just got to put everything on the table and be willing to chop out anything like literally anything. If it doesn’t fit, if it’s not in alignment than it needs to go, don’t fall into the trap that you’ve got to do all the things in order to be a success. You don’t, you don’t, you’re in control. You can build this business the way that you want to so that you can have the life that you want to have.

Kyle Hamer: 48:16

Hmm . Wise words. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for having me. So if somebody wants to get ahold of you, Kristin, the 32nd commercial on yes. Boss, what you do and how to get ahold of you.

Kristin Molenaar: 48:29

Yeah. So if you are interested in generating new leads, by having conversations on a podcast, it’s fun stuff. I love this. I’m obsessed with it. It works. You can check out yes. Boss va.com. And then if you wanted to hang out with me, the only place that I hang out is LinkedIn. We don’t do any other social media. This is me practicing what I preach. I don’t need to be everywhere. I am only on LinkedIn. And because the spelling of my name is so unique. I’m the only one that shows up when you type in Kristin Molenaar. So I’m going to take advantage of that for a while . Find me on LinkedIn and check it out.

Kyle Hamer: 49:01

That’s awesome. Well, thank you again for being a guest. That’s been, it’s been awesome to hear your story. Have you on the show for those of you who are listening in don’t don’t forget to subscribe, like share, I mean, all that normal jazz stuff that you’re supposed to do, but before you do anything else today, make sure you scroll down into the comments are not the comments, the description, click on the links that are in there. Go like Kristin, go find her on Facebook or not Facebook. Excuse me, LinkedIn, go leave her a message and say, thanks. Because I think today there’s been more insight in how to grow your business, not grind your business to the top, but grow your business without hacking it without building a bunch of infrastructure without having to work yourself into the ground. This has been the Summit podcast. I’m your host Kyle Hamer . Thanks for tuning in. And until next week, keep on hustling.