Mary Elaine Baker - Delegate to Elevate: How Military Spouse VAs Help Entrepreneurs Stop Being Hostages to Their Business

Mary Elaine Baker  0:00  
Why did you take that position? Why did you start this journey to begin with, most people start it for freedom, and they quickly find themselves being a slave in their own business.

David Bush  0:16  
Welcome to the Business Builders playbook, the show that breaks down the systems and strategies behind Predictable Revenue Growth to win in business. In each episode, we're diving into the proven strategies that separate the winners who scale from the losers who fail. This show is sponsored by bdr.ai the AI powered business development platform that automates your outbound prospecting so you can focus in on closing deals instead of chasing leads. Let's get started. All right. Well, welcome everybody. My name is David bush, and today I get a chance to be your host and moderator on this important topic, on how to delegate to elevate in 2026 this is an important topic for me. I have spent the last three decades of my life started when I was just an infant, really refining the process of focusing in on my unique ability. I had learned this concept a long time ago from a coach by the name of Dan Sullivan who talked about, you know, focusing in on the two or three things that you were truly gifted, talented and unique at, and then delegating everything else, and that includes the things that you're excellent at, but maybe not uniquely gifted at, which is one of the hardest things to let go. But before that, you delegate the things that you're competent at, but you're not excellent or unique at it. And then there's those things that you're incompetent at, and I have used that funnel strategy, or that targeted strategy, for my entire adult life, and it is a challenge. And so when I had a chance to meet Mary, Elaine Baker, owner of VA, USA, expert at delegating and elevating, I was blown away by how she had made this process so simple, and I kicked myself for spending 30 years of my life not finding a person like Mary Elaine to guide me through this process, because there are things that you just don't know, that you don't know. And most of you, as entrepreneurs, C level executives and high performers, you know this stuff, but you continue to tell yourself that you know what you know, and so much of that isn't. So it's not easy to go out there and truly delegate or there's things that you think that can't be delegated, and just like me, you're not necessarily in a position to make those decisions effectively, because you just don't know what you don't know. So today I'm going to get a chance to put Mary lane on the hot seat. And she has a vast experience. She has mastered this. I mean, you could just look at the bookshelves behind her to know how highly organized and efficient this individual is, and her and her husband, Brett, are doing an amazing job with equipping senior level leaders, executives, small business owners, coaches and consultants with the type of support that they need so that they can delegate and elevate so Mary Elaine, thanks so much for cutting time out of your busy day to teach us all some of the principles that you've mastered over the years.

Mary Elaine Baker  3:19  
Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Let's get going Wonderful.

David Bush  3:23  
Well, for those of you that are here with us live in this interview, you can ask questions in the chat. I have collected questions from participants and just put in some really hot topics that we think are going to be appropriate for the audience that are watching this live or watching the recording. But if you have a question, throw it in the chat. We'll try to get to those in the order in which they're received. So Mary lane, just start with telling us a little bit of how you got into the business of helping people to delegate and elevate. What's the backstory, the origin story of va USA and Mary Elaine.

Mary Elaine Baker  3:57  
So my husband and I are a veteran family. My husband served in the military for about 13 years as an active duty Army Ranger, and we had a crazy military life, and I was actually a teacher for the first five years of our marriage. So with him being gone so frequently on deployments and trainings, I after about four years of doing that, I started to feel some burnout, and I knew that I needed to make a career change so I could have more time, freedom and flexibility to adapt to our crazy lifestyle. And we had two young children in daycare also, so I felt like I was operating as a single mom for most of our military life and career, which is the the theme for most military families and most military spouses specifically. So I left teaching. This is going to be a real short version of this story. I left education and became a virtual assistant. And so through that journey, I went from being in the classroom to serving entrepreneurs. I. I had multiple entrepreneurs that I was working for, all completely different personalities and very different industries, and I started learning the inner workings of how, not just how does a business operate, but what is going on inside the brains of the business owners or the high level executives, and it's, it's a mess in there. It's complex, so I

David Bush  5:26  
don't sugarcoat it. Just thought house really is, it's a mess. I like that, and it

Mary Elaine Baker  5:30  
doesn't matter what, you know I like. I said I had all different kinds of personalities that I was working with, but the common struggles were very similar. And what I realized was, not only did they struggle in different ways to delegate, but they also struggled with how to communicate effectively with me, how to use me. You know, I was a resource. I was a tool in their lives, and I basically had to teach them how to be able to use me properly and to be able to wield me as as a very powerful tool in their arsenal, to be able to improve their impact in their organization. So I am so blessed. I'm still friends with with those clients to these to this day, they're actually still clients of mine, which is so cool to think about. But through that journey, I realized what I experienced in my change in my career and in my military life, was that I wasn't the only one going through that. I had lots of friends that wanted to be taught. How do you do what you do, and how can you how can you find clients? And all you know, all of these questions. So what I created is what's now va USA, and I think of us as a matchmaking company. We're a relationship driven business. We're going out there to create and build long term working relationships and friendships very strategically. And we're here to be a bridge for the people, the very talented and values driven individuals who really struggle to find steady work that aligns with their lifestyle, and the entrepreneurs who are drowning and really want someone that they can trust to come into their world, and we Help them and teach them how to work best together. So we help them find each other, and then we help guide them on that process that can be very overwhelming for many people, on how to overcome the challenges of communication and delegation to get to traction. So we're investing in long term relationships, and that's what we've been doing since 2018 and we are so blessed to have created all of these jobs, and, more importantly, our community here at VA, USA,

David Bush  7:52  
yeah, so thankful for your service to our country, and also for all of your staff that is in that journey and sometimes an uncertain journey, and just spoke to one of her staff members today, and was just so impressed with just you know, how they've navigated all the change that throws gets thrown at them, and they're still doing an amazing job in supporting others as a part of their role with va USA. So if this show is resonating with you and you're ready to take action because you want to scale your business faster, smarter with more AI and technology and less labor. Check out. Bdr.ai, we help entrepreneurs and executive sales leaders to automate the grind of prospecting so you can focus your time on closing deals and growing revenue where you should be spending your time with AI powered data, digital outreach, automation and done for you prospecting systems, you'll connect with more qualified leads, book more appointments and build Predictable Revenue without adding more hours to your week or the week of your staff. Visit BDR today and discover how our AI prospect finder and digital BDR agents can help you to build your pipeline and your profits. Visit bdr.ai where business builders learn how to automate and scale their playbook. So our show is all about being a business builder and having a playbook for launching your business into a higher level of success. And we're going to talk a lot about the words that end in eight, which is delegate, elevate, communicate, validate, automate, all those eight words. But what are the biggest time wasting tasks that entrepreneur minded or entrepreneur, people should be delegating first, we talked about incompetent tasks. But what are the things that you're seeing as a common thing that you're just like if you are doing these things, and you are an entrepreneur that wants to elevate Stop. Stop doing that.

Mary Elaine Baker  9:58  
Before I tell you what some of those. Most common tasks are, I think it's more important to first start with some self reflection, because you have unique wirings, unique abilities. You were talking about this earlier and almost stopped. You said, Hey, you're about to steal my points here that I'm trying to make. But I believe that we're all born with some very powerful gifts, and it's important to understand what those gifts are, because through and I experienced this myself, what I didn't mention is, when I made the shift from being a virtual assistant to being a business owner, I basically had to go through the whole journey myself that my clients go through. So I got a taste of my own medicine. I got to experience exactly what it means to be on that other side of that fence. And that gave me a huge dose of of empathy, but it also gave me so much experience, and I'm still learning you know how to delegate effectively. But what I discovered through my journey was I was wearing way too many hats. And when you start a small business, you tend to wear most of the hats, and I kind of lost sight of where I should be spending my time. So over as your business grows, as I hope they all do, you know, you start naturally wanting to shed hats and delegate. So what I have, I still have to practice this is reminding myself, what should only Mary Lane be doing? Where what are my natural abilities and gifts, and then what am I currently spending my time on that's not aligning with how God wired me, and what's going to be the most impactful for the business and for the mission? So it's don't just do this one time. I think this needs to be done multiple times throughout the year, and part of that journey of understanding what that is, we do multiple assessments here. We get all of our clients to take the disc and the working genius. The working genius was created by Pat Lencioni. I think it's fabulous, but I love the pairing of those two assessments together. One is more communication driven, and the other is more natural gifts and abilities, and what's going to give you the most energy? So start there, and then do a time audit. How are you currently spending your time, and are these activities that you're doing lining up with how you're wired? So that will give you a great starting point. Now, I always say that the gateway drugs for any entrepreneur, for any high level executive, are communication management, task and project management, and then time or calendar management. Those tend to be the biggest time sucks. And then a lot of people are using their inbox as their to do list, which is a dangerous game to play. And so we try to work and make sure that you're getting out of that inbox. And a lot of your workload or open loops are a lot of times stemming from your inbox. And so an assistant can help kind of triage that and know where does this information need to go and what you actually need to pay attention to?

David Bush  13:27  
Yeah, I love that concept, because if you try to get into the focus of delegating the things that you don't want to do, while that may be a logical place to start, if you don't start with the things of, what is it that I've been gifted to do? What are the things that I've been uniquely designed and created and gifted, but also trained in some respects, to do at a high level, so that you can start focusing in on those unique abilities? And I'm going through the process right now. So I'm a client that is sharing some of my own journey with this but as I was meeting with the staff of va USA, prior to that, I went through this little journey. I went through the assessments, and I started to identify some of the strengths, and those are great reminders to me, and I've been in the industry for 30 years of helping people to delegate and to be a good coach, of helping entrepreneurs to scale, but I needed to go back through that process myself and remind myself, what are my unique talents, skills and abilities, and what are the things that I've been uniquely gifted to do, and what are the most important things to my mission, my vision, my family, my business. And get those organized first, because after that, then I can start getting more specific into getting rid of some of the things I want to delegate. So let's talk a little bit about what are the biggest challenges, or why do you think business owners struggle to let go of tasks and responsibilities.

Mary Elaine Baker  14:55  
It really varies on the person and what their past experiences are. It most of the time, it's either one of these three things. They either have a fear of trusting someone because they've had maybe bad experiences with hires in the past, or there's just a fear because they've never had to let go or delegate before and and we become kind of protective over things that we have built created. We're protective over our reputation. We're protective over how how our people are treated. So when you're inviting someone into your world, it can be a very vulnerable experience, especially for the first time, you're kind of allowing someone into the guts of your of your business, but also into your brain. And that can be very uncomfortable, and there can be a lot of fear with trust wrapped around that. I think that's a natural reaction anyway. And then another is a frustration that I can just do it faster. I can do it better. Why delegate if I know how to do it and I or I've been doing this for 20 years, and the thought of letting go of it feels so awkward to me. I can't picture not doing this just because I've been doing it for so long, even when I know I shouldn't be doing it. So I think anyone is, anyone is normally going to be resistant to change. I think I find that more common than anything else is people normally don't like change, even if they know that they need it. And getting from where you are today to the vision of what you want to be tomorrow can seem very daunting and overwhelming when they also think about and how I have to train this person or I have to slow down in order to speed up. And the thought of having to slow down, it's giving me anxiety, or that's just, I'd rather just keep going. But the reality is, if you keep doing the same one, the definition of insanity is you keep doing the same thing, expecting different results. You're you're going to plateau, or you're going to just burn out. And I think that that you kind of have to get to that fork in the road to ask yourself, you know, is, is the risk worth the reward here? Though, you know, what am I saying no to? What's my opportunity loss here of allowing these fears or reservations, which are valid, however, if I just choose to just live in that fear or just ignore it, am I ever going to get to that future vision of what I want for myself?

David Bush  17:52  
I love the phrase that Zig Ziglar says is that one half of life is the word if. If you look at the word L, i, f, e1, half of it is if, and if we operate on a fear based mindset, which, again, and this topic, delegate to elevate. It's really easy to talk about, but there's a lot of fear around failure and what happens if somebody says the wrong thing, or what happens if it doesn't work out and I waste a lot of time and energy, and what happens if I don't so there's a lot of people that fear failure, but then I would say that there's also people that have hidden fears that wouldn't come out and say it even successful entrepreneurs about fear of success. What happens if I delegate these things and then I have to step into a level of discomfort, even though I'm uniquely gifted, talented and skilled at doing it. What happens if I fail? What happens if I have to incorporate a lot more high leverage activities, and those high leverage activities turn into rejection and failure, and I have to go in there, and I have to grow into becoming the person that I want to become, to have the success and elevate to a higher level of elevation. So just like climbing a mountain, if you want to elevate to a higher level, you got to let go of your current reality. You got to let go of the fear of maybe climbing and sliding back. And my brother, who's a co owner with me, with bdr.ai, he has a great mindset around delegating to elevate. He says, if somebody else can do something 50% as good as I can, I'm willing to accept the 50% that's not as good or that is causing a failures and mistakes, because that's the only way that I'm going to elevate. And what I've found, personally, testimonials of other people, is if you have a faith based mindset, you start experiencing the fact that there's people out there that do things 10 times as good as you, that you don't even know they enjoy it, and they actually enjoy doing things. So let's talk a little bit about because I know that you. Have a whole process for this, and we're going to have one of your I think we have a staff member here that's going to share a resource, and if they want to put that into the chat now or put it in later, but you have some resources that you're going to give to individuals that want to understand how to go deeper into the delegate, to elevate mindset. But how do you ensure that a virtual assistant or executive assistant is reliable and aligned with the individual that is bringing them on, or the business that's hiring them.

Mary Elaine Baker  20:30  
We use the phrase head, heart, hands, or, if you know Eos, it's also get it one at capacity. But I like to refer to it as head, heart and hands so ahead, an example I like to give is I know what a doctor does. I can tell you what they're responsible for doing, and I can tell you what success in a doctor role looks like, and what it means, but you do not want me to do surgery on you. Okay? So that is the hands that's the doing and the execution. So that's the difference between knowing on a head level and then being able to execute on a hands level. So that's the difference between get it and capacity. And then one it is, do, do my god given gifts and abilities line up with the responsibilities and duties of this role, of what they're wanting me to do. So when we are vetting and interviewing individuals, we're looking at, do they have these experiences, skills, time, and do they have a natural wiring? They go through a lot more assessments than just the disc and working genius, those are kind of the final two that we do for comparison sake, but they do a lot of other emotional intelligence assessments, hard skill practical assessments based on the roles that they're applying for, and obviously the background checks and reference checks. We cover all of that as well, but they interview with us multiple times. And the reason why is I feel like when you go into that first round of interviews, you're trying to make the best first impression as you can. So once you kind of go through multiple rounds, that mask starts to drop a little bit, and you get to know them a better and better, and you're also getting different team members perspectives on this individual, what I may pick up on in an interview, maybe, maybe very different than what someone else picks up on that second round of interviews with them. So when we come together and we're discussing the results of the assessments and their multiple rounds of interviews, we get a pretty good we're trying to get as close as we can to a 3d picture of this individual. Now, we cannot overlook the values alignment piece when we're getting to know you. And I'm saying you as in the client, the business owner, entrepreneur or the high level executive. We want to know your your wiring, and we also want to understand what values are most important to you. And it's not just you have the value of integrity or you have the value of like, one of ours is authentic connection and selfless service. We want to know, but what does that look like in action? So and this can be applied not just if you're hiring an assistant, this is, this is really just universal hiring practices that I'm sharing here. I encourage everyone, if you if you're hiring individuals, to not just know what your values are, but to break it down into the most practical day to day application of what does that look like in action, and define it. You know, this is how you This is how you're going to interact with our clients and create basically a positive narrative version of what this person is like, and then also create the opposite, the inverse. What does someone look like? At like? What do they do? What do they say on the negative side of that? And if you go through that exercise, I promise you, you'll remember people stories, and you'll hires that didn't work out, and it's because they demonstrated certain behaviors that went against your values you maybe you just didn't have words for it, or KPIs built around it. So we take them through this vetting process to make sure that we get as close to understanding their personal values and your personal values as well, and then we make sure that their head, heart and hands are aligned with what you're wanting them to do and the role that you're wanting them to play in your life.

David Bush  24:54  
Yeah, and that there's so much to that that many of us haven't necessarily explored. Word as it relates to personality, styles, or their individual gifts, talents and skills and experience. You could look at a resume and say, yeah, that person has the experience, but if they don't share the values, and that's constantly creating drama, you know, those create some long days. And I remember Brian Tracy, the famous speaker and author said The Longest Day in an entrepreneur's life is the day that they lose trust in a key employee and the day that they terminate them. And a lot of times, we're kind of in a position where we can't let go of somebody because it's so expensive and challenging to train somebody new that we hold on to this like albatross around our necks that pulled us down versus doing a really good job on the front end. And obviously there's a lot of things that need to be learned to do the things that you're doing at va USA, to do things on their on their own, but people can do that. They can go out there and do the research. They can use the assessments, or they can leverage a professional organization like yours to kind of cut the line a little bit and have a little strategy that's already built in. So I want to jump into there's a question in the chat that says, Would you also say that a certain level of trust must be built in in order to delegate and to delegate effectively? So what's the process in your experience on how to build up that trust so that you eliminate the big failures or the big mistakes.

Mary Elaine Baker  26:27  
So it's, I mean, it's no surprise, every solid relationship is built on a foundation of trust. And when you're hiring someone, especially remotely, you know, that's my whole world is remotely, that can be especially difficult to create, and what we are wanting. One of the first milestones we're looking for is that trust is built and established there within the first 30 days. So one of the most common things that people like to overlook, because the tendency is when you hire somebody, is to get straight down to business and execution. You want to start training them. And we do. We start training right away, but we cannot overlook the relationship building aspect. You need to know what's going on in their world. What are their families like? Know what their hobbies and their passions and their interests are, because the more you really know someone and know how they best communicate and what their future goals are and what really motivates them and excites them or or what are current hardships maybe they're experiencing, the more you're going To be able to overcome challenges and conflict. We approach conflict head on, and we want we want to see it early. I know that sounds weird, but we have a team of coaches that help. As soon as you hire an assistant, they're working with you there. We're very collaborative. They're holding your hand and working with you, especially the first 90 days. It's the most critical time, but one of their primary roles as a coach is to mine for conflict, because we know if we can get the two of you to work together and be comfortable in healthy navigating healthy conflict together early and often, and that can look like you know, they submit a deliverable to you and you just don't like it, you would be surprised how many people won't say anything, won't say anything until six months later. So we help build and facilitate spaces and encourage and build confidence in navigating that conflict early and often and providing feedback and making sure that you're actually slowing down to get to know one another on a personal level, so but the proof is always in the pudding. That's what I say about when it comes to delegating. You will know based on the the output, the outcome of what you delegate, one of the cautions that I always give everyone in that why we have our coaching framework built the way that we do is that you may come in wanting you have your beautiful job description that we help you create. This is the vision of success, but we help you create a roadmap of how to get there. So we are looking for those milestones. Is broken up into 30 days, 60 day, 90 day. We take that vision of success, we break it out and create that roadmap of how to get there, and if and where hope is there, because they're experiencing these incremental successes and building confidence over time, and you are able to see it's not a big mess, and you're not sure if they're getting it done or not because you've given them a mess to get started with, you will be able to clearly see that the outcome is meeting your expectations. And so that builds confidence, but it also helps build trust. You know you're not going to hand over the keys. To the kingdom overnight. You want to see incrementally that they are going to follow through. They're going to do it with excellence, that the two of you are going to communicate well and navigate conflict well, and that you can provide that critical feedback, and they're going to handle it with grace and compassion. So that's not built overnight, but that is, those are some of the key things that we do to help make sure, especially by the end of 90 days, that this is going to work for the long haul, not just a band aid on a situation. Yeah.

David Bush  30:35  
So for those of you that are thinking about taking this on your own, you're going to want to have a communication plan in place, because it's going to be between you and that assistant that's going to be navigating the process. And so many of us, visionaries and integrators and high level performers, we oftentimes just do like the dump truck, and we back up the dump truck and dump all of these projects on the list of things to do, and that individual, the assistant, is trying to figure out priorities. And you know, what's the most important thing? What's the things that I need to spend a little more time on? And without good communication? You know, they say communication is the results that you get. If you don't get the results that you wanted, it's because that there was poor communication, and the fact that va USA has a coach, success coach, that's an advocate for you and an advocate for the assistant. Now there's great communication, great improvement. And you know, the assistants are basically subjecting themselves to coaching, which is not always the case when you go out there and hire somebody internationally, or hire somebody that's just in a position where they do VA support, they may be very confident in their ability to do things a certain way, but if that doesn't match your personality style, and you hire them based upon the validity that they do virtual assistant work, not because they're a good fit for your organization, that could be, you know, a low ROI. So let's talk about ROI, because there's a lot of people that have had experiences good and bad with virtual virtual assistants, and ROI can be, you know, comparative to what it is that the individual is looking for. But what is an expectation when you're talking to a senior level executive about bringing on additional support. Are you looking at a two for one, four to one? One for one? What's the ideal expectation?

Mary Elaine Baker  32:29  
Oh, ROI, like you said, it can mean different things to different people. A lot of times. Obviously, when you hear that word, you're thinking money. And so one of the things, if I if, if a client is coming to me saying, I want to know that I can afford this. You know, am I? Am I going to be able to see an ROI on this? Oftentimes I ask them, Do you know how much your own time is worth right now? And most people just don't. They haven't stopped to pause and think about, well, how if I were to charge my own company for my time per hour? What would my rate be? So and there's you can Google that you could probably get AI to help you figure that out, and you could get it pretty accurate down to $1 amount per hour, how much your time is worth. Then compare that to how you're actually spending your time. Where are your hours going? And if you are, let's say $150 an hour individual, and you're doing tasks that are maybe $40 an hour, then I would say automatically, you would get an ROI just because you could be spending and should be spending your time on activities that are worth your time and doing those things that only you can do, whether it's business development, building big relationships, doing more income, producing activities or recording videos that only your face can be on whatever that is, you need to make sure that you know you're actually spending your time and your own money, because time is money where it matters. So you'll still you'll automatically see our ROI if you do that well. Now ROI for other individuals could look like improving their health now I have time and margin to go to the and accountability no one thinks about when you're hiring an assistant that that actually is invested in you personally and cares about you and is aligned with your values, they're going to be protective over your time, and if you say, I need to go to the gym every week, they're going to make sure that it's in your calendar, and they're going to hold you to it. They're going to say, Hey, did you go to the gym? Just having someone in your corner, in your life to ask you that question, can make all the difference in the world for your health. Getting back on track, your lower stress level, if you are able to minimize or x out all. Some of those tabs that are in your brain, your stress level should lower tremendously. Mental bandwidth is an ROI. I think a lot of people don't really think about we have all of these. One of the books I'm reading right now, and it's fantastic. It's called redeeming your time by Jordan Raynor. He talks about all of those open tags as open loops in your brain, and the more open loops of all these things pinging at you and notifications throughout your day, they're bogging you down and it and you can't spend time and mental space to work on your business. So can you really put a price tag on your on your health, on your stress level, on the clarity of mind, to be able to focus on deep work, on your business. There's no one else in the company that can do that, but you so what are you losing out on? Is, I think the more important question versus what am I going to gain? What does that make sense

David Bush  36:05  
Absolutely, and I love the exercise that you walked us through there. So I just want to have everybody just take a break for a second. And this is a jotter downer. This is an important step, regardless of whether you choose to hire a VA and delegate to elevate, elevate in 2026 or beyond. Let's just go through this exercise. So how many hours a week are you working on average? This is a big eye opener, because if you are working 6080, 100 hours a week because you're trying to get it all done, that's costing you, not financially, but it's costing you relationships. It's causing you potential distraction from your health, your well being, your sleep. So it's important just to identify how many hours a week are you working, and then how many weeks a year are you working? And just take that number times the number of weeks that you're working, and that's how many hours you're working per year, and then take your income from last year, from 2024 and just divide that by the total number of hours that you're working, and that will give you your hourly rate. And that might not be a surprise to you, but I'm probably pretty confident some of you are going like, Man, I'm not earning that much per hour. Or you're looking at it going, how in the world am I spending my time doing things that are, you know, low payoff activities? Why am I spending time doing that? And if it's for personal fulfillment, like some people want to delegate mowing their yard, some people love mowing their yard. So it's not like you have to delegate everything. But so let's think about how we could get an ROI and then, like Mary Elaine talked about, is that, what is the price, or what's the what's the ROI of going to bed at night with peace of mind, knowing that things are taken care of, or what value, if I didn't know I was signing up for an accountability person to go to the gym, I might be second guessing my investment in VA, USA, but no, I'm kidding, accountability breeds responsibility. That's what Stephen Covey said. And if you got somebody that cared for you and your well being and cared for your relationships and cared for your family, because again, the people at va USA, these are all military spouses. These are people that care about their country, they care about their family, and they care about you. And I know the quality of people that va USA is bringing on board, and those people are going to be service minded people that are going to care for you probably more than you have cared for yourself in the last 12 months or so. That's what's probably got you watching this video right now, is you're thinking, I got to get out of this rat race, and I got to get to working on me, on my relationships, on my business.

Mary Elaine Baker  38:51  
So, yeah, I mean some of our favorite, my favorite stories of just impact on people's lives is we have families that actually have their their father and their spouse be present on vacations. They never once open their laptop, never once check their phone to see what's going on at work, and can actually enjoy vacation with their family. And it makes me sad when I think about this like that was their norm for years, and for the first time, they actually the get the gift of presence with their family member, being able to actually leave work at work when they leave the office or their working hours, being able to actually put their phone away at dinner, being able to actually date their spouse, consistently being able to be present at their child's baseball game. There's a I keep going back to this in my mind, of why did you take that position? Why. Did you start this journey to begin with? Most people start it for freedom, and they quickly find themselves being a slave in their own business.

David Bush  40:12  
That's so good, we could probably go for a full weekend. So everybody clear your calendar. We're going to keep on going throughout the week. No, I want to get to these other questions. So I might put you on a little bit of a rapid fire here, because I know we promised these questions would be answered. So hot seat, quick answers. How do you train and onboard a virtual assistant effectively? Okay?

Mary Elaine Baker  40:37  
How do I at va USA? Or is there anyone in think

David Bush  40:40  
about it as a best practice? What would be the base basic foundations for a solid training process? And then if you want to explain a little bit more about how you guys go above and beyond that, that's fine, but give us a base foundation.

Mary Elaine Baker  40:53  
So I would always begin with the end in mind, what does success look like? What must they master and do consistently by the time they should be fully trained, and then create a pathway of how to get there and what time in a reasonable amount of time. You know our our baseline is normally 90 days. But if you're this is going to be more complex, maybe you want to do it four months or five months, but create, take what that success looks like, and then break it up in into a sequence that makes sense, schedule, regular time, especially in the very beginning, monthly to go over those milestones together. Are we on track? Are we off track? Has anything achieved mastery? Are we ready to add a new objective to this list for you to focus on in the next 30 days? I think if you do that in the very beginning, you're going to give your own self a dose of reality, of expectation, of what it takes to actually serve you and serve you well. Most people, if they have a job description, just start with, okay, this is what I expect you to do, and two weeks later, four weeks later. Man, why? Why aren't they there yet? I don't understand. But if you really took, took that job description and unpacked it of what it takes to get to that and consider it mastered, you'd be surprised, I think, on what that pathway looks like and how long it will actually take to get there. So create regular time consistently to go over that together and make sure you're crystal clear on what those expectations are incrementally to get to that finish line.

David Bush  42:43  
Yeah, one of my life quotes is, if you fail to create your own plan, chances are you're going to fall into somebody else's plan. And guess what your virtual assistant has planned for you? If they don't come from VA, USA, they probably don't have a lot planned. They're probably just going to act the way that they act, and they're going to do things in the way that are right for them, right?

Mary Elaine Baker  43:02  
They'll come with their own, their own, you know, ways of doing things which is great or and, or they're just going to be reactive to whatever it is that you're, you're, you're you're throwing at them day to day. And that comes with a lot of risk, I

David Bush  43:17  
think, yeah, and I think that what you're doing at ba USA is you're actually giving them an onboarding strategy, and you're working together with their success coach and with the client that you've partnered with bring on them.

Mary Elaine Baker  43:32  
We know that that training can be a lot, and it's a lot more than most people think it involves, so we've created classrooms for that. We have the coaching for that. So we try to alleviate as much of that as possible from our clients plate. And we know what, we know what excellence looks like, and we know how to identify it, and we know what it doesn't look like, and so we're there to help raise the flag in case something there's a misalignment or expectations aren't being met. Yeah.

David Bush  44:05  
Next question is, what's the difference between hiring a virtual assistant versus just hiring an assistant and having that person be an employee, staff member?

Mary Elaine Baker  44:15  
So if you have a brick and mortar in an office and you have full time employees, I don't remember what the stats are, but they're out there. Of if you have someone that's working on salary for eight hours a day, they're not spending eight hours of productivity in the business. It's it's a fraction of that that they're actually doing. So one of the big differences with us and are hiring someone virtually is that they are only clocking in and charging for the exact amount of time and effort it takes to complete that task or project for you, so you're getting Max productivity and efficiency for every hour that is being charged for. Yeah, most people, even if they think they want an assistant following them around everywhere, they don't want that they a lot of times, I think people think I have to have this person literally shadow and follow me into every room and everywhere I go, for them to really understand what's going on, but one that's so inefficient, and then you're allowing them to get in environments where they can get distracted. Because if you're in that environment and you're getting distracted, more than likely they're going to be pulled down with you. So having someone that's virtual a pro is that they're not getting bogged in in any of the office talk, any of the water cooler talks. They're not being, you know, dinged at from other people knocking on their door, pulling them away from you, so you get their full focus. And a lot of people don't think about that. But that can be very powerful.

David Bush  46:02  
We know burnout is a major issue for a lot of entrepreneurs and senior level executives. You know, we're all given 168 hours a week. That's it. If anybody's found more, maybe you're going across the country and you're gaining hours back and forth or something, but most of us are just we're given 168 hours, and we need to use those to bring all of the things that are important to us together. Delegating will not eliminate burnout, because if all you do is delegate, and then you fill up your cup, like if you have a 32 ounce glass, and you put 34 ounces of fluid in that 32 ounce glass, you're still going to have a mess. So even if you pour out six ounces, if you put six ounces or seven ounces or eight ounces back in it, you're going to have another mess. So how does delegation and working with va USA actually reduce burnout? Is there anything that you're doing inside that process to make sure that that senior level person that has hired your services that they don't just go out there and add a whole bunch of stuff to their calendar that keeps them in that burnout phase. Wow.

Mary Elaine Baker  47:14  
There's only so much we can do to wrangle these visionaries and integrators, you know, we we we can't control you completely. We can support with accountability. Now that's also, you know, when you set when you meet with the assistant and the coach, you're not just telling the assistant what your goals and objectives are, but the coach is there also to make sure that they know what your goals are and what your vision is for that additional time freedom that you're going to have now what you do day to day, you know that's that's on you and on your shoulders, but I think if you actually took time to change habits, I think, identifying and knowing like, what are those habits that I'm doing consistently that are not serving me, or what are the ones that I need to start to implement in my life and doing just focusing on one habit At a time, I think would be very helpful. So one of the things that we do is we want to know if you have a goal for let's say it is every morning you want to spend an hour in prayer and reading your Bible and in reflection, or you want to take a clarity break once a week to be able to focus on the business and spend some time with just you and your notepad dumping all that on paper. Of course, we can help you with just getting it onto your calendar, but I think it would be more important to create, you know, tools and systems in your life, or reminders of making sure that, for example, that you you actually are setting that alarm on your phone you know you're you're letting your family members know. Hey, this is a new habit I'm trying to create, but we'll take that goal that you have and incorporate it into your weekly meetings with your assistant, and they can also ask you, are you on track or off track with this? If you're familiar with Eos, it's very it's the same thing. And so at the beginning of every meeting is, I'm David, my rock has been every day, my first hour of my day with God on track or off track, and if it's off track, let's add it to issues. Let's talk about what's happening. So obviously we can only do that with your permission and your buy in. But I would say, be bought in. Be totally bought in, and be honest. That's part of that vulnerable. Ability of hiring someone and letting them into your world, you gotta, you gotta be honest about where you're rocking it. But more importantly, where are those areas of improvement in your life that you would like to be successful in?

David Bush  50:14  
Yeah, I really like the idea of, you know, because so much of VA is around calendar management is to actually produce a ideal week calendar that actually says, This is my ideal week, if I could do things, if I could wave a magic wand. We all know that it doesn't go according to plan, but it goes a lot more according to plan, if you have one than if you don't, and you're just reacting to the crisis and the urgency and all of the tyranny of the urgent. So if you actually create a plan and say, This is what my calendar looks like, here's the blocks that I have, or the things that are the most important things for me, and you give that to your virtual assistant, especially if that person's been trained by va USA, they're going to give you that accountability and structure to make sure that you're on track or to give you that little nudge, and as a successful person, that may be, all you need is just that little bit of accountability that says, I don't want to tell somebody I'm off track, so I'm going to take the time and build the sacrifice into my calendar. And, you know, again, fail your way forward. You know, you win some, you fail, you learn some. Right? As John Maxwell likes to say, so I love that concept about just learning from my experiences and just improving the next week. And think about how 2026 could look if you had a plan, if you had a virtual assistant, and if you knew that that virtual assistant was going to do the types of things that you know that you shouldn't be doing, and they do them better than you. How much time could you free up? 10 hours, 15 hours a week, 20 hours, 40 hours a week. I mean, obviously, if you hire somebody full time, you got 40 hours a week of activities that are delegated to somebody else, and you can reinvest 40 hours of your time into things that are being done at a high level of excellence and a high level of skill and all all those things. So I we have three more questions, so I'm going to we got seven minutes, and I want to make sure we get all these answered. So based on we talked a lot about a lot of different mistakes that people can make when hiring a VA, but if you were to nail it down to your top three, and you can give them to me in 321, order, like the third one is this, the second one is this, and the number one thing that you should avoid doing when hiring a virtual assistant. What are those top three?

Mary Elaine Baker  52:28  
Okay, I would say not being clear on exactly what it is that you need and what that vision of success looks like. I would also say delegating too much, too fast, which we talked about, like not having that clear pathway and being patient, not being willing to invest in the relationship. Thing, this is going to be more than three. There are so many. Okay, you're going, I like it, not being willing to invest in the person and in the relationship. That is a two way street. You want to be able to trust them, but they also have to be able to trust you. So not investing in the relationship and not spending consistent time investing in it and then hiring in desperation, a lot of people say yes to the wrong person just because they need to fill the seat and they're drowning and they're overwhelmed. Honestly, that's probably one of the best benefits of getting an outside support person with hiring is that they're not in a desperate situation, and they're going to help you basically calm down and make sure you're not making an emotionally charged decision. So we I always say, if it's not a heck yes, it's a no. So don't settle for mediocrity. You want to interview someone and say and just be blown away that, where has this person been my whole life? And feel very strongly about it?

David Bush  54:08  
Yeah, I love that. I like the P's that say, problem process. You know, what happened? What do we want to have happen? What's missing, what's next? And focus

Mary Elaine Baker  54:20  
on my goodness. David, the number one thing, the number one thing, hiring based off of the resume and their experience only they Oh, they can do the job, but ignoring their character or not digging in deep enough to understand what their personal values are, you'd be surprised how many people we have interviewed when we asked them, you know, what are your personal values? They can't even articulate it. They've never even thought about it before. So making sure you're when you're interviewing, you're incorporating that in. Into your process to ensure that you're checking for those character and values based questions that are aligning with what you're looking for and who you are and who the organization is.

David Bush  55:12  
I want to make sure we get that link in the chat. So whoever has that link, I want you to put it into the live chat. We'll put it in the show notes for everybody that has got it recorded. Yeah, thanks, Kelsey. And so take a look at that link if you're live with us, and you can get more information on va USA and specific resources. What are the what's inside the link? Mary lane, just so that I'm clear,

Mary Elaine Baker  55:35  
well, it's a delegation journey. So if you're struggling of understanding, you know, what can I delegate? What does that look like? We kind of walk you through that journey, and then we give you a bunch of ideas on things that you can start taking off your plate.

David Bush  55:50  
Wonderful, fantastic. I remember you told me that earlier, and I forgot. Sorry. So the final two questions, and we just have four minutes left before we wrap up. How do entrepreneurs know that they're ready to hire a VA, I know you just mentioned, you know, not in a, you know, scramble last minute, you know, half to situation, crisis. What? How do they know when they're ready to make the investment of time, energy and effort into bringing that virtual assistant on?

Mary Elaine Baker  56:19  
It's a making sure if you are the bottleneck in any way, then you have to figure out how to get yourself out of the way there. You need to delegate for that role inbox and calendar overwhelm if you're spending so much of your time being reactive to notifications everywhere it's it's time to delegate. And then, if you are honest, in building out a true accountability chart for your organization, how many times is your name appearing in those boxes. How many boxes is your name in? And when you look at that like if you actually put a name to every single hat that you're wearing and you don't currently have someone hired for it, that means your name is there in that box. Start prioritizing that list. Okay, what it what would be the most impactful thing that I could hire for tomorrow that would help me to start shedding these hats? Most people need to identify. What are those hats that I am wearing, and what position is this wonderful?

David Bush  57:39  
Well, I'm gonna end with one question, but I'm just imagining this concept of this person that's climbing this mountain, kind of a like a mountaineer that's climbing Mount Everest, and they have these weights that are backpacks, or they're strapped to their body, and they're trying to carry these weights up to the top of The Mountain. Every one of those weights is associated with a responsibility or a task or something that has to get done. So if you were to give one piece of advice for entrepreneur Cliff climbers that are out there trying to elevate the mountain of success in 2026 What's your one piece of advice for them to scale the mountain of success and to have extraordinary outcomes at the end of 2026

Mary Elaine Baker  58:33  
stop doing everything by yourself. I think a lot of that can be tied up into pride and ego, thinking that I can or I should, that just because you can carry that weight doesn't mean that you should be carrying it by yourself. We're not designed to live this life alone. We're not designed to run businesses on our own. And I think if we take an honest look in the mirror, we have to admit that we need a team around us. So I would, I would stop thinking that you have to do everything and be humble enough to admit that there's only a few things that God designed you to do well, and know what those are, and pursue those with everything that you got. But to do that, it takes time to slow down and actually carve out time for reflection and strategic planning.

David Bush  59:36  
So good been so valuable. You know, the word me starts with the M, but if you turn that M upside down, it turns into we. And I think that all of us could turn me into we with just one other person that can add value and bring resources and fill in the gap. And I really encourage everyone here to go take a look at the link. It's included in the show notes that's inside the chat. Reach out to va USA, learn more about what they're doing. I'm sure that the resources that we've shared today and the download that's included in the show notes or in the chat are going to be helpful to you to delegate and elevate and Mary lane, thanks for the work that you and Brett are doing, not only to empower the lives of virtual assistants that are military spouses all over the world, but to also be able to help all of the people that those people are working for to delegate and elevate and impact their world. So thanks so much for joining me looking forward to our future connections and opportunities.

Mary Elaine Baker  1:00:40  
Hey, David, thank you everyone.

David Bush  1:00:44  
Thanks for tuning in to the Business Builders playbook. If this episode gave you some plays that you can start running in your business today, hit subscribe and share with another revenue leader who's tired of the pipeline grind. Building Predictable Revenue isn't something you figure out alone. Whether you're looking to automate your prospecting with bdr.ai, or you just want to talk through the growth challenges you're facing, reach out. We help business leaders just like you to build systems that actually scale. And if you're ready to stop being your company's Highest Paid Prospector, let's have a conversation. Reach out to us@bdr.ai until next time, let's keep building. You.