Supercharge Your Productivity with Guest Speaker Marie Mack

Hey everybody, welcome to the Course Building Secrets® Podcast. Today I have Marie Mack with me and I am so excited to have her on the show where we welcome and let's start us out by just giving us a little bit of your background what what you're into and, and just just a little bit about who you are.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. This is so much fun. I am REMAC I have a business called first cut to close. And we specialize in business systems and scaling for clients, primarily those who are increasing their visibility using virtual events. I have a background as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot, where I used a whole bunch of different systems and processes and checklists, and then found my beautiful niche online supporting online business owners as they're scaling. So yeah, that's a little bit about me. Okay. Wait a second, wait a second back in a

like, hold the phone. Okay, so, so here's the thing. So one of the things that we love to talk about on the podcast is like how people take their sort of their job, their vocation, their, their sort of skill set, and pivot and turn it into a business. So okay, so I've got to hear more of the story of like, so you're a helicopter pilot. Were in the military is at Blackhawk. Yes,

I was in the army. Okay. So

okay, so you did that. And then you're like, Okay, so now I'm going to take that skill set, and then turn it into a business. So yeah, like, walk us through how that happened? Because I think one of the things that, you know, we help people, you know, package their expertise, right. So how do you take what you're really good at your zone of genius and turn it into a business? So walk us through that? Because that is fascinating.

Yeah, absolutely. So it was a really fun story, I always wanted to fly, I found a way in high school to have the army pay for not only my first degree, but put me through flight school. And so I actually have an aeronautics degree because everybody needs a random degree in the world. But I met my husband in the military. And when we got married, we decided to start a family. And when we did, we both came up on deployment orders. And at that point, we had to decide are we both leaving our six month old brand new baby boy, which he would have been healthy and fine with grandparents, or are one of us going to stay home. And so I decided at that point to resign my commission and pretty much stopped my career as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot, to stay home with my son. So we have two beautiful kids. Now, after we had our family, I am a kind of a go getter, I kind of can't just stop. And so I have my two awesome kids. At the time that I started my business, they were two and four. And I was like, there has to be some other way for me to fulfill this need of like impact and power and like all the cool things that happen with business. So I used my skills I kind of started to tap into what do I do really well. And IT systems and processes. It took me a little bit to find that. But once I figured out that online business owners have amazing and fantastic and beautiful ideas that they need to get out there in the world. But a lot of them are visionaries, and it's perfect. We need them. What they don't have is how do I get to point B from point A, and I'm that kind of person that can create all the different steps. So thinking about all those things that happened before and my training, and then kind of moving into this space of I can create systems that actually get the visionary amazing skills out into the world. And now for the last seven years, I've seen business after business succeed because we're creating systems for them to be consistent in front of their clients, and then also increase their partnerships with other people. So yeah, that's kind of the that was like a nutshell of the story that my life.

But it's fascinating, because I just I just love hearing how people transition from kind of the thing to something else, and using your skills and gifts to be able to do that. Because as a pilot, I'm sure you have to be very methodical in terms of like checking the boxes and making sure everything is how it needs to be before you get up in the air. And so being able to take that and you do not want to be a visionary pilot, that probably is a bad idea where you're like don't pay attention to the details. Probably not good. And in fact, I don't want that to be my pilot. No.

Checklists are important at that point. Yeah.

Right. It paying attention to the details is good. Awesome. So tell me a little bit about how you show up with your clients. Do you have programs do You have certainly done for your services, what kinds of things do you do to help them with systems,

most of them are done for you services I have tried in the past, I'll say, like, I tried to do all the things they tell you to do, whoever the days are out there in the world for the large volume,

those days around the days, yes, the days, you know, I

tried to put together the course, I tried to do this thing I tried to scale it. And what I kept finding is, is that when somebody is really intimate in your business, especially with systems and foundations, and scaling, it creates a huge impact. And it's really hard for me to do that. And the way that I do things, if I have this group session, now I can talk about it with people. But at the end of the day, most of my clients I work one on one with, and then I have a team that allows me to scale out any of the processes that are happening, and then really provide that that service as we're going ongoing. Because once you create that system, some somebody has to run it either you as a solopreneur, or building a team around that. So that that consistency, and it's all about consistency in front of your audience showing up for them. And the bigger picture is just making sure that our guests, our hosts, our people that are working with our clients, love what they're doing every day, if they don't love doing blog posts, let's not do that. Like if you love being in front of your clients, and you love having those conversations, put all those other things that have to keep business going to a team so we can implement them. So I love doing the one on ones, I probably have five clients that I work intimately with. And we have you know, another however many that our team support. So it's a lot of fun.

So how do you know if somebody is ready to like build systems and process in their business? Like, what does that look like?

Yeah, I think if I'm going to be very honest, and hopefully this podcast is a great catalyst is that you, whoever you are business owner, you are ready right now to build a system. And you don't necessarily have to like hire somebody like myself to do it. It's just a matter of documenting what you're doing, and doing it consistently throughout. That can be that you open up loom loom is a free recording system and just saying, hey, when I do a blog post, I do this, I do that I do this, I do that, and creating those systems. Now sometimes, if the systems like creating an entire funnel that and it's actually going to push into your launch, and you're making, you know, however many 1000s of dollars from it, that might have to be honed in. And maybe that's the time where you really reach out to an expert like myself and say, Well, what are all the pieces? And what is the client journey look like? Because that client from the time that they see that page will indicate whether they're actually going to purchase at the end. So I find that people even once they start really seeing the power about a behind a system that's consistent, it's time for us to have a conversation and just see how we can help.

Yeah, that's great. And because I think that there's sort of this, you know, up until a certain, you know, maybe revenue mark, you probably could do it yourself. In fact, a lot of people are probably doing it themselves. And so they're like, oh, I don't need systems, I don't need process, because I just am the one doing it over and over again. The problem is just in case you're one of these people, the visionaries like you won't remember, two months from now what you did, so just make a video. She's totally right. But when they come to you probably they don't even know what they don't know, right? Like, it's sort of one of the things I was actually I recorded an episode this morning. And it was, you know, sometimes like, you can't see the label outside the bottle, right? So you need somebody to help you not only figure out all the parts and pieces, but kind of get out of your own way, in terms of setting things up, even if it's client journey, how to set up systems and process around that. Like, you may not even see it clearly because you're too close to it. And so that's probably what you deal with most often right is is helping people just kind of get out of their own way. If there is too much in their head or they're too close to their clients or they're too close to their process. They can't see that there's another maybe streamlined approach to get there.

Yeah, absolutely. And also not only like get out of your way, but the fact that when you are wearing every single hat that is in your business, you you literally cannot put your focus on everything the way that a team member probably can. And it's beneficial for your business. If you say I need you to take this and so people come to me and they say, Marie, I need you to do this. Just do this and let's come back to it. And they can be that final deciding factor or they can watch the process from the outside. But when you have so much going on, and I find this overwhelm comes in like, there's like, oh my gosh, I just can't like, whatever it is, is what it is. And our beautiful visionary people. They've been making it right, like they've cut and pasted and they started stacking stuff on. And then I say, okay, cool. Show me what you've done so far. They're like, well, there was this thing that I had over there. And there was a spreadsheet, and I gotta find it. Give me just a second. And, and so I love that. Yes, I know. And I'm super thankful that they started. But the productivity and the the, the ability for us to produce consistency for clients comes through that process. So if you're one of those beautiful people who has that spreadsheet somewhere that you need to find, put it somewhere.

I'm only laughing because I can't even share this with my team. Because my team is going to be like, Yeah, you're that one that you've like, I'm always like, yeah, I got this thing over here. Hang on, let me find it. And then like, two days later, I'm like, I still can't find it because I was distracted with something else. So did not mean to call you out. But oh, no, because, right, but but what's funny is, is that, like, I helped my clients with systems and process, right. So like, I could see their big picture and how it all fits together. But it is funny because I am much more on the missionary side and the strategy side. And so my team will, will chuckle when they hear our conversation. Yeah, that's awesome. All right, cool. So give us a tool, a resource, a book, something that has impacted your journey to getting to where you are today. Yeah, absolutely.

So I'm going to share the four hour workweek. Mostly, it's been out there for a while, Tim, I can't remember his name. But there we go. And I, when people think about that, like, there's no way I can do a four hour workweek, well, probably not friend, no, maybe you can't. But that book allowed me to hone in on how I protect my time, which is one thing that I didn't have. When I started, I wasn't protecting my time. So I had another interview earlier today as well. And in that space, you said I loved your reply message, my auto reply comes back. And my team, each one of our email addresses has the same auto reply. And it's just one little thing that I got out of the four hour work week that allowed me to say my time is important and precious. And I I intentionally tell people who are reaching out to me that your time is important to me. So I'm going to put all my focus in but it's going to be at this date and time. And so there are a lot of other things like streamlining or outsourcing or just a couple of things that allowed me to find hours in my work week, which is great, because when I can stop my day at a reasonable time, and go and bake a cake with my daughter. Yeah, I'm gonna put up that auto reply and say, I will chat with you tomorrow, my friend. So that's just kind of one of those resources that although you might not get to the four hour workweek, there's still a whole lot of valuable information inside of

there. I love that. Yeah, one of the questions I usually ask, when people tell me that they're a mom is because I have three children and, you know, running multiple businesses and doing all the things is like what techniques and tips do you have? You just said a couple for how to set those boundaries. Because I think that as successful women, business owners and moms, we really have to, we have to look at the world a little bit differently. So do you have any other insights that you would give to those parents who are out there who are sort of grappling with that?

Yeah, I think there is a fair amount of grace that has to be given to anybody that works in an online virtual space. i This is my office, this little square that you see I work here all day, every day, I'm in a room inside of my house, I never put shoes on. But at the same time, it also allows me and if it if it right now, if my child walked in because they can open the pickles, I would just do that I can still be the person that I am in my business, and have my children be nurtured in that same way. So I think I just present a space where yeah, like things are gonna happen, the dog is gonna gnarrk Knock at the door for some reason scratch or something and the kids will come in, I do my best but at the same time giving yourself some grace that this is who you're going to be working with to right like I'm presenting who I am to my clients during this time as well. And although I protect this as much as I can, if I need to take half a second because a child is crying. I'm gonna do that and I'll be right back. And so I just think that there's a present. It's a healthy way to start a relationship with a Client when you can just say, This is good, and you're important. So are they. And so

it gives them permission, right? It gives them permission to also do those things. And I think that that's sort of, you know, there's, you know, COVID, obviously was not great, but there were some gifts. And I think that was one of the gifts is that it gave people more permission to do to show up authentically, instead of you know, like that. What was it like the CNN ad where the guy is sitting there, and his kids come in and he shuts the door? You know, like, it's all on? Yeah, it's all on camera. Like, we don't do that anymore. And we don't have to pretend that we don't have a family and other things going on behind us. And so yeah, so I love that. That's, that's super helpful. Asana gives

our power behind us, right? Like, these are my, this is my why this is why I do this. This is why I work from home. This is why I choose this lifestyle is because of them. And so when I can gift my clients the same, to say, oh, yeah, how's your daughter today? Or how's the dog? Or, you know, I know you are going to an appointment. How did it go? Like all of those things are not disconnected from the fact that we're super productive online. So yeah,

yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Very cool. All right. Great. So where can our listeners find you to learn more about you what you have to offer and in in just be able to interact with you?

Yeah, absolutely. My biggest social media is LinkedIn. So I am Marie Mac at LinkedIn, which is kind of exciting. So you can find me there. I also have my website, which is first cut to clothes.com. And for skeptic clothes has a whole lot of information about how we serve people, including a couple of freebies, including my supercharge your productivity, download. This is a three part training where I just help people create those systems in a really easy way using Trello. So I hope you find me there.

Awesome. All right. Very cool. Thank you so much for joining us today. And for all of you out there. Make sure you check out all of her things that will be out on the show notes.