Adam Torres and Tarra Stubbins discuss strategic business partnerships.
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Show Notes:
The fractional model for experienced executive assistants can be a viable option for many startups and small businesses. In this episode, Adam Torres and Tarra Stubbins, Founder of Take It Easy Group, explore how Take It Easy Group is helping its strategic partners thrive.
About Tarra Stubbins
Helping others runs in Tarra Stubbins’ blood. She has been a personal assistant for over 20 years and still loves every moment of it. Tarra is often quoted saying that she has been put on this planet for one reason, and that is to help others succeed.
After ten years on the road supporting touring musicians and entertainers, Tarra created Take It Easy Personal Concierge Inc. in 2007. Tarra took the skills she learned out on the road and puts them to use helping her clients eliminate their To-Do lists on a daily basis.
Tarra is extremely passionate about time management and delegation techniques. Very early on in her career, she noticed that the celebrities she supported all had specifically detailed delegation and time management systems. She learned that these skills were exactly what helped the stars stand out from the crowd and become a huge success. She teaches individuals and organizations how to better use the 24 hours they have been given daily, to be more successful and less stressed, through keynote speeches and coaching sessions. Tarra leaves her audiences and clients with the inspiration they need to take action and become rock stars of their own careers.
About Take It Easy Group
Take It Easy Group is an experienced Executive Assistant Service Helping Seed and Series A Companies Scale for Success. Their goal at Take It Easy, is to keep you and your business organized and efficient, so you can focus on growing. The team of talented Executive Business Partners can help you to develop methods and efficiencies that will propel you to rocketship success.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today is a special episode. We have Tara Stubbins on the line, and she is founder of Take It Easy group, huh?
Welcome to the show. Thanks. All right, Tara. So looking forward to getting more into your journey and also to learn more about Take It Easy Group. And to get us started here, we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minutes. So, Tara, we at Mission Matters.
We amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Tara, what mission matters to you? Great question. I am definitely on a mission to empower upwards of over a million entrepreneurs unlock their own success through time management, better habits, better goal setting, kicking multi cap tasking to the curb, and all through my business of Take it easy group.
Wow, that, that’s a big mission. That’s a lot of people you wanna help. Love bringing on mission-based entrepreneurs to share why they do what they do, how they’re doing it, and really what we can learn from that. So maybe just to get us kicked off here tell us a little bit more about how you got on this journey of wanting to help entrepreneurs.
Yeah, that’s actually a great story. So it all started very, a long time ago, many, many years ago when in my past life I was actually a personal assistant out on the road to really high profile rock stars. And I was out there for about 300 days a year doing all those crazy requests that rock stars ask you to do.
And there was this one moment. Where one of the rock stars I was helping would always ask me to every time his toothbrush came out of his suitcase, he wanted it to be sanitized in a hotel dishwasher. You heard me right? So every time this toothbrush came out of this suitcase, I had to walk down to the hotel back in the kitchen and ask them to put this toothbrush through the industrial dishwasher.
So we were actually in this, like a really, really high upscale, high end hotel in Shanghai. And I was trying to communicate to the staff that I needed to put this toothbrush in their dishwasher, and I didn’t speak their language, they didn’t speak English, and I was having a really, really difficult time.
And I just remember standing there with like this toothbrush in hand thinking. There’s gotta be more to life than this. And it was kind of my like aha moment where I realized that I absolutely love helping people and I always wanna help people. I just wanted to help more than one crazy rock star at a time.
So I finished that tour and I came off the road and I opened up my first business way back in 2007. I had zero business background. I was a dirty roadie. I had no idea what I was doing, but I just had this mission of really, really wanting to help people succeed, save time, do whatever I could. So that business is actually still around today and it helps high profile, high net worth individuals basically manage their lives.
So what I was doing out on the road, but locally but I had, as I said, zero business background and back in 2007 there was no community out there for entrepreneurs like there is now. You really had to look for them, and entrepreneur was weird. Back then. It was like, Mortgage consultants and mm-hmm.
You know, it was like, it, it wasn’t what it’s today. Right. And I remember when the first co-working space opened in my town. I, I was in Toronto, Canada at that time, and when the first co-working space opened, I was like the second to join. I Wow. Volunteered at the front desk. I was like, in. In this community ’cause it’s what I’ve been craving for a few years and all my, you know, network and friends all were these other creatives and entrepreneurs like myself, and I could, I started to realize that they could only get to a certain point by themselves.
And they were then starting to fail and I realized because of my kind of executive and personal assistant background, that it was because they didn’t have that strategic support behind them. Mm-hmm. Sure. You can hire, you know, friends, family. People online for cheap, that’s great and absolutely please do that for a certain point, but it gets to a point in your business where you really need that strategic support to help you get to the next level.
So that’s when I opened up Take It Easy Group to be able to really help support founders and entrepreneurs get to that next level of success. Wow. What a, what a great story. And I’m curious about like those early days when you, when you decided to kind of finally take that leap and go on that entrepreneurial path.
Like what was that part, like you, was it a little scary or like how did you deal with the, you know, the, the pressures of being an entrepreneur now? So back then I had no idea actually what I was doing or what was in front of me. So I didn’t know that I should be scared. I just jumped in with two feet and I was like, I’m going to make this work.
I’m a pretty determined person and I get that from, again, my kind of 10 plus years out on the road with those crazy rock stars. Never wanting to hear No. So I always had to figure it out then, and I kind of took that attitude and dove, as I said, feet first. Everything I had into this business. I also as you can probably tell, extremely passionate about helping others.
I’ve always said I’ve been put on this planet to help others succeed. And every day when I would wake up, I would think, you know, sometimes, oh, I don’t, I just wanna stay in bed today. I don’t necessarily wanna get up and. Figure out what to do with this business. But I would think about all these people that I could actually help make to the, you know, their dreams and their successes come true.
And that’s what really drove me. And again, I really had no idea all the kind of failures that would happen as I grew my business because I really didn’t have any of that background. Hmm. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about this concept in, in your business and, and the habits and really how all of this part, like how this manifested.
So you’re, I I, your background, by the way. I love it. I mean, and that example, I, I can tell you I’ve done almost, I don’t know 6,000 interviews and you’re the first person I’ve ever talked to with that story of having a toothbrush like you want up everybody on that one. So that’s awesome. So now when, when it came to like, like habits and this part of it and making that really your business and in goal setting and really helping entrepreneurs thrive, like why did you, I mean, a lot of different things you could have focused in on, why did you zero in on this?
Yeah, it’s actually really interesting. So as I was creating my own kind of procedures and figuring out how to run my own business, I. Step back and I started to look at what made the people that I supported so successful, what made them, you know, become a success and maintain their success. And I realized that I had a really cool opportunity because I was embedded in their lives and I could see firsthand exactly what they did, exactly, what they thought, exactly, who, you know, they asked the specific questions to.
And I realized that over those 10 years previous, that I was almost like a sponge. And I took in all this information. And I realized that the celebrities really, really successful celebrities that I supported, all of them were obsessively focused on their goals. Mm-hmm. And it was something that, you know, I was.
Obsessed with helping people, but I realized that I needed to turn that into an actual tangible goal to be able to make a success out of it. And I realized that the kind of one common denominator between all these really successful people was that they had a goal and they didn’t let. Anything come in their way.
So a lot of them would come from, you know, really bad backgrounds, really poor upbringings. Some of them came from great upbringings. They all came from different backgrounds, but they all had this massive focus on their goals. And whatever they did throughout the day was like the habits that they formed to be able to build and maintain and succeed in these goals.
So I realized that, you know, anyone can be a success if you really had strong goals and were incredibly focused on ’em and built the habits that you needed to build to. Maintain those goals. Goals and to reach those goals. And it’s actually really interesting because the habit forming slash productivity industry right now is worth over $8.4 billion.
Mm-hmm. So that’s a lot of people, apps, books telling us kind of that we need to build habits and that, you know, we need to, or helping us kind of track our habits. But there’s, I realized very early on that there’s nothing out there that will actually do the habit for us. That’s all up to us and our focus and our goals.
Hmm, what does it mean? And you don’t have to, obviously you don’t have to send any names and whatever you choose to draw from is up to you, not, not pushing you for any stories, but what does it mean to be obsessively focused? Because you’ve witnessed like the highest levels, I would argue, just based off of me talking to you for a little bit.
Like what does that mean to be obsessively focused? Yeah, so I always like to use kind of the general stories of like professional athletes. So if we think of you know, Olympic athletes, people trading for the Super Bowl or anything like that. We see that their goal is to win, to get the gold medal to win the Super Bowl champion, whatever it is.
And everything that they’re going to do on their day-to-day basis is going to drive them to the success of that goal. So some of the that end goal, so some of the musicians that I supported, You know, they’ve been a success for a very long time. But how did they maintain their success over, you know, their 50 year career?
And for them it was always driving new material, driving new, you know energy into their concerts, new, you know, set designs, lighting, video, whatever it is. But when they knew that they were gonna go out on, on a concert tour, they would put all of their effort into. How does a set list sound? How does this, how does my body perform?
You know? Mm-hmm. How healthy am I? How do these weights look? What does it like, what can I do to push the limits on this stage design? They would never sit still until, you know, after the concert was done. So it’s like, it’s what we all need to do as entrepreneurs, business owners, CEOs. To get to the next level.
It’s what do we have to do today to get to that end goal? Now, a lot of times people always say to me, well, does that mean I have to work like 16, 18, 20 hour days? ’cause they see, you know, athletes train unbelievably hard for very long days. Musicians will play all into the night practicing. No, I don’t believe that at all.
I just believe that you need to make sure that your days are filled with the right things, tasks, productive actions that will drive you closer to your goals. Hmm. So let, let’s switch let’s switch. Speaking of that, goals how do you approach the, the goal setting side of it? Maybe I like, I always like our, our our audience to walk away with maybe a tip or two or something actionable.
Like if somebody’s, you know, they’re sitting in their car right now or they’re in traffic or their at their office and they’re thinking about it like, yeah, I know I need to be better at this. Like, how does, where does somebody start when it comes to the goal setting side of things? Yeah, that’s good question.
So I know a lot of us obviously know how to set goals. Let’s say, you know, we make maybe, yeah, maybe I don’t, I never too few years. Well, I mean, we, we, for, you know, how much we forget, I, now that you say this, I’m like, when’s the last time I set, I wrote goals? It’s been a while. So I’m gonna myself, how, how.
I love that. So, yeah, so say our goal is to make a million dollars this year. You know, a million dollar profit or whatever it’s, we wanna do. So that’s great. That’s an actionable goal. It’s tangible because you, you have the number, it’s not, I just wanna be rich. You can’t take anything away from that. But, you know, $1 million by the end of 2023.
Perfect. You can actually break that down into more manageable steps. So the next thing that I like to do is make sure that you are on board to actually achieving these goals. So I’m a huge believer in stretch goals and I can get into in a moment why I love stretch goals. But I also believe that if you set a too high or unrealistic goal, you’re gonna let all those blockers in your life actually become blockers and you’re not gonna push past them.
So I like to set my goal of say, a million dollars by the end of the year, and then I like to think about all the things that may get in my way. So I’m gonna be really tired because I have to talk to a lot of people to get to that. I don’t know if I have the willpower to do that. I don’t know if I have the education to do it.
I don’t know if I have the team to do it, whatever it is. And then I like to look at those blockers and really, really think about them. And if you’re like, no, these aren’t blockers. These are actually just like little challenges that I have to figure out. I can do it. I’m still really excited for my goal.
Then you know that you’ve set the right goal. If you look at your goal, if you look at your blockers and you think, oh, I don’t know, and you start doubting yourself, that’s a great goal. But maybe not for this time. Maybe you’ll have to take it a little step down, maybe 500,000 by the end of the year, 750, whatever it is, and once you can kind of really feel excited and that you can push past those blockers, then you know you’ve set the right goal.
And I think a lot of people don’t do that step, they just like set the goal. They figure out what they’re gonna do on a day-to-day basis, but then life happens. It’s why, what is it? Three weeks into January everyone’s forgotten about their New Year’s resolutions. And it’s because life happens and it’s because we don’t think of the reasons in our life that are going to stop things to stop us or to from hitting those goals.
So I love being able to set a goal that you’re really excited about. That’s a little bit of a stretch that you can are, you know, confident you can get through whatever blockers come your way. You’re still really, really excited about it. And then I like to break it down into quarters. So I’m sure some of us have heard of OKRs, KPIs, how they really use the quarterly system to set goals.
So what am I going to do, you know, every quarter to hit my million dollars? So obviously divide that into four. What do I have to do? Okay, now, how many people, how many products do I have to sell in this quarter? How many people do I have to talk to to get to buy these? How many meetings do I have to now have on my calendar or whatever it is?
How many. Ads do I have to put out on social media? Okay, now I know that I need to create five social media ads, so I need five pieces of collateral. Now you have a task, which is awesome. Now you can put that task in your calendar and actually create systems where you’re working towards your end goal on a day-to-day basis.
Does that make sense? It all makes sense and and you make it sound so easy, but we all know that it it, well, I, I should say, I know it’s not easy and it takes a, it takes a coach, it takes a team. It takes a lot of people to help you with these things because it’s one thing to say you’re gonna do it, it’s another thing to do it.
So I guess this is a good, a good transition. I wanna talk more about take it easy group. So, Tell us about your company and maybe the types of individuals and or companies you tend to feel gets the most value out of working with you and your team. Yeah, that’s great. And actually that’s why habit forming is so why I talk about habit forming along with goals is because you need to create those habits in your day to day to be able to stick to them to actually reach your goals.
Mm-hmm. So yeah, take it easy group. We are a team of executive assistants that works fractionally. For companies that really wanna scale for success, but don’t necessarily need someone full-time yet. We’re remote. We have our, all of our executive assistants are based in North America, and we really operate more than just, you know, your traditional calendar inbox.
Managing assistant. We’re really strategic partners who sit, you know, virtually beside those founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs. Who really are just as excited about building the business as they are. So we bring over each EEA has over 10 years of experience and more. They love working. We love working with startups and new founders.
And really anyone who is on that mission to see their goals become a reality. To actually do it sustainably. So yeah, sure we can burn out and hit a million dollars, but how do we do it sustainably and really create that momentum to earn a million dollars every single year. Hmm. What is the, I mean, I’m a huge, huge fan of the fractional model.
I’ve seen it in like, for a lot of different things, whether it’s for, you know, a fractional C M O A C F O, a lot of different areas, and I, I feel that there’s always just this additional learning that. Comes from working with somebody that’s worked with or works with other companies. ’cause there’s learning, like there’s, there’s, there’s cross learning in, in positions and departments and all kinds of things.
So to me it seems like to work with someone in your group, because they’ve worked with other individuals and maybe that you kind of pick up some things and you have some, I feel like you’re, you’re almost like consultant at the same time because you’ve seen so many different things in terms of management and time and.
It’s not, it sounds to me like it’s not necessarily like a passive role. Okay, yeah. We can manage your calendar, that that may be part of it, but are you optimizing that calendar or what does this look like? Or I notice this, like, am I off on that or is it, is, am I kind of going down the right path? No, you are a thousand percent correct and you know, with the fractional model you can afford, anyone can afford a really skilled and experienced professional, whether it’s C F O C M O, or in our case in ea slash kind of chief of staff.
At a obviously fraction of the price. So for chief of staffs at say Google, they usually make upwards of $200,000 a year. A lot of startups obviously can’t afford that, so you can still get someone with that experience but for an exactly at a fraction of the price. And we love working with startups that are going through investment rounds.
And because we can see a lot of trends as we’re working with our other clients, so we can see, you know, now investors are looking for, you know, whatever it is. They definitely want money in the bank, not just a great product. Now we know that investors are keeping their. Pocketbooks closed and very tight these days.
So what are, what have we found with our clients that other clients that have worked in, you know, pitch decks or to get in front of people, what are those emails that we’ve been able to send to actually get on people’s calendars? So yeah, we definitely use a lot of the trends that we see with working with other clients and really again, be that kind of strategic partner and help people grow.
That’s awesome. Well, this is a great story and I’m happy to bring it to my audience. And that being said, Tara, so if somebody’s listening to this and they wanna follow up and they wanna learn more about Take It Easy Group, what’s the best way for them to do that? Yeah, they can find us at Take it easy group.com.
And we’re also pretty active on LinkedIn also at Take It Easy Group. Pretty easy. Fantastic. Wonderful. We’ll put, and we’ll put all that information in the show notes so that our audience can just click on the links and, and head right on over. And speaking of the audience is everybody listening, if this is your first time tuning into Mission Matters, Definitely hit that subscribe button.
We, we love bringing on mission-based individuals just like Tara on the line to share, you know, why they do what they do, how they’re doing it, and really what we can all learn from that. So we all grow together. The whole, the whole platform and what we do is all about collaborating and growing together.
Well Tara, I really wanna thank you again for making some time for us and coming on the show and, and sharing that. Story and all the stories you shared, and I’m gonna keep that one in, in my in my back pocket about, about, about the, the toothbrush story that’s now become infamous because I haven’t heard one like this yet.
But appreciate coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. I had a great time.