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Scaling Without Burnout with Rachel Minion · Better Together

• Kelly Sundsvold: Hi everyone and welcome back to Better Together podcast. I'm Kelly Sunsvold co-hosting with my partner in business and life, Sean Sunsvold. Today we're on, our guest is Rachel Minion, a powerhouse founder of Rockstar Moon and the creator of Profit Multiplier Model, ⁓ done for you system that helps consultants and service providers scale without burnout, grow without hiring and automate without. losing their personal touch. After rebuilding her business operations during a make or break moment, literally 85-90 % of the critical role after a key employee left, she didn't just survive, she scaled. Today, she works with clients who regularly see revenue increases of 40 % plus without expanding their teams. Her approach blends smart automation with message clarity and sustainable growth. It's not just about surviving the chaos in entrepreneurship. It's about designing your business to thrive through it. So today we'll talk about what happens after burnout, how automation builds freedom, not distance, and what it really takes to scale your business without growing overhead. So let's get started. Welcome, Rachel. Rachel Minion: Thank you so much for having me. so grateful. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, of course. You're welcome. So let's just, you we talked a couple months ago. We were supposed to have our podcast recording sooner. I got sick. But I'm so excited that you stuck with us and we got to have a conversation. So tell us, like, how did you originally start Rock Star Moon and what was the problem that you set out to solve? Rachel Minion: So in 2010, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time. My family's company, I had been running that with them for a decade, closed. We were forced to close. It was the world of printing. And in DC, Maryland and Virginia, we were printers. And a ton of our business relied on government printing contracts. And the government stopped printing. That was that recession. Shawn Sundsvold: Thank Rachel Minion: So our clients who outsourced to us went from paying in 30 days to 60 to 90 to they're out of business or didn't know if they could pay. Our largest client, Ritz Camera, went bankrupt. So what do you do? In my case, most people did not believe that a woman in the printing industry could go run the business, go do estimating, go build the tech system, go do any of the things on the press floor, go work in the bindery and still... be able to do the things that you need to do to run a business. And hiring was really hard, especially in this industry. So I was sitting in the back of a beach condo that I had rented with some friends that was only supposed to be on the weekends because now I'm homeless and jobless. Eight people in a tiny three bedroom condo with two bathrooms. Shawn Sundsvold: Wow. Rachel Minion: It was only gonna be the weekends. It was supposed to be fun. I didn't realize that was gonna be full time. And I realized I needed something that I could grow my skillset that nobody would ever be able to take away from it. I'm sitting out, you see the beach ⁓ in far view, right? The stars are out, the moon is out. And I am behind Bottle and Cork, the greatest rock and roll bar that there ever was in Dewey Beach. And that's where Star and Moon came from. And I said, I have skills, now let's help clients grow. And I talked to a few of my printing clients and brought them on. And a few of these clients have stayed with me now 15 years, we're almost at 16 years. And with that, I started this with the goal of just a side hustle. The goal was never to be this is full time, this is what we're gonna do. It was just really, here's a skill set that no one can ever take away from me or say that I didn't do, and I will continue to grow that. In the meantime, I got. Kelly Sundsvold: ⁓ my gosh. ⁓ Rachel Minion: corporate jobs I moved around and I thought I had found my dream job. was running marketing for Division of Ticketmaster. Now, for those of you that are just listening, my background is full of guitars. Why? Because I love live music. There is nothing better. I can't play, but a great marketer. It fits really well with the Rockstar brand. So I'm there and I'm thinking, well, what do I do? ⁓ This... Kelly Sundsvold: Heh. Rachel Minion: know, side hustles taking up my time on traveling between LA and San Francisco back to Chicago where we're living. I don't have any time for this and had put a lot of clients on hold. luckily the pandemic hit for me because we first started with we all jumped on a Zoom and we heard from Pharrell and then the next Zoom we heard from Garth Brooks. So we think things are amazing, right? Next Zoom, 80 % of staff gets furloughed. And what do you do? Shawn Sundsvold: Wow. Kelly Sundsvold: ⁓ my. Yeah. ⁓ my gosh. Shawn Sundsvold: Whoa. Rachel Minion: So we go from Garth to Furlode and like I don't know how you get from A to B but that's when it hit me that was the kick in the butt that I needed. That afternoon I went full time for Rockstar and have been growing since and it's been quite the journey but it feels like it was just meant to be. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm like all those events had to lead up to you being able to go full-time with your business like it was just like almost like like it sounds like you were just like Stick it to the man kind of thing. Like I'm gonna go do this myself. Yeah. Yeah Rachel Minion: Yes, and like there are so many times where you're working for a company and you don't know should I go out on my own? Should I not? What do I do? There's no safety and security, all of those things. And it's scary to make that jump. It is scary to not know that your next paycheck is coming from anybody other than you going to generate it. Shawn Sundsvold: you Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So tell us a little bit about like the business model that you work with, especially because you've gone from a done for you model to a done with you model. And so let's talk about the differences of that. And when did you realize it was time to kind of shift that and shift what you do and how you do it? Rachel Minion: Let's talk about the differences of that. What did you find as you trying to shift that from different to new in a different way? Well, being that we started and it was starting in sacrifice almost, I would sacrifice myself to take on every referral and every client that came our way because we thought we had to, right? I didn't think about ahead of time and I didn't necessarily know that I had permission to build the business that I. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Rachel Minion: dreamt of, I just knew I needed to build a business to survive, right? And we do this from survival. And we're doing all this great work for clients that are all over the board. So how do you go from real estate to education to something totally different and be an expert in all of that and being able to do really well for your clients? There's no way to do that. So we niche down and we started just getting results for our clients. And it was a really long, hard look. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm. Rachel Minion: at what happened. Because we do very similar things, although mind you, the scale of activities, it's all over the map. Everything was ad hoc. But some of our clients, and those were all done for you, we got over a 42 % increase in revenue year over year. And they didn't have to hire anybody else. One of our clients, 52 % increase in sales. And he didn't have to hire anybody else for his team. Kelly Sundsvold: Wow. That's amazing. Rachel Minion: And the next client said to us, you know, right after we launched, we sold as much in that quarter as we had the entire previous year. So I had to take a long hard look at what we do and how we do it because there are so many more people that we can affect and be able to help impact who don't want it done for them, who want to have that input, who want to help grow their business, who want to have the knowledge on how to do this. And if we gave them the right tools and guidance, they could go double their business. Shawn Sundsvold: That's crazy. Mm-hmm. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you become, sorry, you become like the the industry thought leader on how to build the systems. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah. So. ⁓ Yeah, for sure. And I'm curious, you know, especially around like AI and automation, because it's such a conversation right now. ⁓ You know, what... Rachel Minion: Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: are you doing with them to help them kind of break it down to where they realize this is what they need? Because that's ⁓ a scary conversation, I think, for a lot of businesses, right? Because ⁓ don't know what they need, I think, a lot of times. It's like they hear this word automation and it's like, it's scary. ⁓ it's big. I have to learn a whole bunch of brand new things. You know, and you're talking about a done with you model that kind of brings them along and hand holds them. So tell me more about those conversations you're having with businesses and why you're really helping and what really is helping them kind of move forward in that. Rachel Minion: Well, let me give you an example that I think we can all relate to. Over the last, what, decade, almost every client has come to us in some way, shape, or form and just said, I just need social media. Right? Nobody ever needs social media, not in a B2B space. Nobody needs that. You don't need posts. You don't need these things. What do we actually need? And I think it's the biggest conversation starter as to what are your goals and where do we stand today? And the biggest problem in most cases is that your ideal clients don't know you exist. They don't understand your offer. They have no idea what you're talking about and you are screaming at them and they are like, please just go away. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: Mmm. Rachel Minion: So how do we fix that? How do we make you compelling? How do we get an offer that they understand in their language and that you are so good, people know about it because as consultants, we kick butt for our clients. We over deliver like nobody's business. But how often do we go write the case study after and celebrate that win and get the video testimonial so it can go sell itself? Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Rachel Minion: It never happens. So how do we get those right systems in place so we can do this on a continual basis and be able to move that needle forward? Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, absolutely. it's hard for entrepreneurs, especially if they're just getting started. We really resonate with your startup story having ⁓ that, ⁓ well, I have a choice. Either I can ⁓ go this ⁓ or can go on my own. And so all of those things really, really resonate. ⁓ But something you said about people just wanting Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Rachel Minion: I can't resist, or I can't stop coming. So like all of those things really, really grizzly. Kelly Sundsvold: you know, social media, like we wear so many hats as small business owners. We have to be a quasi expert in every single area from finance to marketing to sales to whatever janitorial services, know, like of that, you know, we have to know as small business owners ⁓ what so on that, ⁓ you know, like obviously we just talked about like, you know, business owners kind of just going like Rachel Minion: We have to know what the rules are. So on that, we got to start with the other side. I think we ⁓ to do is learn. ⁓ need to learn from who are ⁓ the ⁓ ⁓ thinking right now as they try to deal. Kelly Sundsvold: ⁓ I just need social media, you know, and like, but really what they need is leads or really what they need is maybe automations. What are mistakes that you see service based companies kind of making right now as they try to scale? Rachel Minion: I think right now we're trying to make this so friggin' hard. Like, ⁓ we could have had this, and ⁓ we can have this, and everybody's just doing something different. And then we don't look at the data to know what wins. So why not start at something that's much simpler? Pick one to two methods of how we're gonna generate leads. Now, if we're gonna do that, how can we automate that so that it gets more reach, ⁓ right? And then how do we look at what's happening? So we're consistently tweaking that. Because if we can nail just one, that's going to get you a better return than doing 45 things where your attention's all over the place and you're not paying attention. And that'll have these bells and whistles that you're never going to use. So I want to get back to basics and talk. What do you do? Let's get this. Let's nail down that priority. If you're going to go out on LinkedIn, great. Let's nail the message. Let's make people want to talk to you. Right? And what we do with our messaging, I now get nine qualified leads a week. I don't take them all as clients. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Kelly Sundsvold: Absolutely. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: That's awesome. Rachel Minion: ⁓ I want to make sure I'm fixing the right problems and that I'm talking to the right people, but I'm getting nine a week from what we do. Now, if I can do that for my client, great. Doesn't that change the entire game? Now, let's add on an additional account and scale that. Let's add the next account and scale that. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, how it's supposed to work, right? When you look at business like you, and I think a lot of business owners go through this, right? Where it's like, they have an idea of, we want to do 10 things great, right? And they go and they do all 10 and they don't get anywhere with any of it, right? Because they didn't learn the ⁓ system of the one thing. Rachel Minion: The basics of. Shawn Sundsvold: Right. And there's a lot of books about this that you find your one thing. Right. think it was Gary Keller that wrote the book called The One Thing and you figure out what that one thing is and then you start getting really good at it, you know, and repeating that process over and over and over again. And so as you've gone through this and done this, you know, I know in some of the backstory we've talked about, you know, losing an employee and how much that changed. Rachel Minion: What's that? What's the case? Oh yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: you Shawn Sundsvold: what you did because that person carried just so much responsibility in the company. And then when they left, you're sitting there with your hat in your hand going, my gosh, ⁓ do I do? And so how did that kind of change you and your business going forward? And you to more of this conversation. Rachel Minion: Well, here's what's interesting. When you're a small business owner, you do everything. Your hands are in everything, right? You're running the business, you're doing this, you're doing client delivery, you're here, you're there, you're the other, right? All these responsibilities. Then you bring on somebody to your team and you start entrusting them with those responsibilities as well so they can take stuff off your plate. Well, that's amazing. But what happens three years down the line when that person's ready to leave? That day was hard and Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Rachel Minion: You know, I'm really proud of her for saying, yes, this is, I've grown. I want to take this next step. I want to take this opportunity. And that's what we as business owners should want. That's what we should do, right? But that internal feeling of, my ⁓ Melvin came. And husband and I were having a conversation because ⁓ I want to take on all that work again. I didn't want to do it again. I was happy I didn't. He looked at me and he said, well, what if you could just automate it? Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, absolutely. Ha ha ha ha! Shawn Sundsvold: Hmm Rachel Minion: Automate 50 % of her, try it. What do you have to lose? And so I know stranger from working hard or having to drive, that's ridiculous. for... Seven days a week, working from 3 a.m. to 7 p.m. No breaks, maybe five, 10 minute lunches. I automated about 85 to 90 % of her job. I redid everything because we were working in such a reactive fashion. So every month it's like, oh my God, I need to do social, I need to do blogs, I need to do this, I need to do that. And then it's a scramble. Well, why? We already know we have to do that. We already know what the titles are. All these tasks should already be in the system. They should be automated with these pieces. Shawn Sundsvold: Oof. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Rachel Minion: Then how are we going to go out and give our weekly wrap ups to clients? How are we going to bring in dashboards? How are we going to do metrics? All of those things automate. Then client communications that you do on a regular basis, automated. Everything that's needed to be able to run a business successfully, automated. And not only do that, but build in everything you can to be so proactive so your team knows what's coming weeks in advance versus Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Rachel Minion: always being on high alert like, I forgot to do this and we forgot that sure there will be an emergency. if you're this proactive, you know for six months what's going to be needed, just do it. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. How doing that, because as I'm thinking about this and being to automate a lot of that, how has that changed how people work your company? Because now that there's so much automation, how has that changed efficiency? How has that changed planning? ⁓ What has been able to do for you and your company? Rachel Minion: I have enabled my team to get smarter, faster and better with all the automation, AI and technology that we use. And the bonus of it is we have time for training. We have time to learn new tech. We have time to investigate that. And then we go implement it and start getting results immediately for clients versus before it was, I have to do these things, these things, these things. And when do you have time to advance the business? ⁓ client wants to pay you for deliverables. They don't give a shit. They don't care. Kelly Sundsvold: Right. Rachel Minion: If you have six blogs that are written in 10 emails, nobody cares. They care how much did you increase their revenue, what's the ROI, and are you moving us forward? And if not, you're out the door. So make it easy, and we make it where we're not focused on just these little things, and that's all we care about. We're on the high level side of the world. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: I think it's, know, as business owners, we talk about, you know, getting out of the weeds, getting it ⁓ from being in the business to working on the business. ⁓ you say like building those automations has helped your employees to kind of take on that a little bit more of an ownership mentality and work on the business along with you to move it further faster? Rachel Minion: So now that I have done this it was no easy feat, three months after that I sat my team down and said, okay, now that I've redone all the processes, procedures, those things, what else can we take off? ⁓ else do you think we could do that we could automate and scale and that we could put a tech in place ⁓ now? Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Rachel Minion: and I gave them a week to think about it and we came back and had four new ideas. We implemented them, made that even better. And so now the goal is every few months we're gonna sit down once a quarter and just make sure that we're having those conversations because they're the ones that are doing things that they should not be doing. But they're doing it because it's what they've always been doing and that's what they were told. And before they were told just do it, not hey, think about this from a different perspective. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's shifting to critical business thinking rather than just being more like a robot taskmaster. You know, and you're doing this for your clients. You're automating things ⁓ your clients. How ⁓ in world of AI where people are like, AI is coming for my job, which actually we just wrote a blog on that. AI is not coming for your job. Take a lesson from Rachel. ⁓ it's, know, she's learned to expand her team using Rachel Minion: So I... Kelly Sundsvold: using automations and I'm sure AI is included in that. how do you help clients automate in ways that still feel human and connected? Rachel Minion: So we have clients who had never sent out emails before, but they had tons of lists, right? They had all those lead lists. They had old clients. They had referral partners. They have all these things. And what do you do? Well, let's start a connected type email approach. Then let's go to the next piece and let's add in and ask us anything. So now people can ask you anything about your business and whatever, submit it. I'll answer it. We'll email you back. We'll tell you what you need to know. Now, how can we just get these emails to go out on a regular cadence so that it's constantly nurturing? You remember the person's there and it's filled with this great information that somebody actually cares about. Another thing that we've done for a lot of our clients is call follow-ups. So you have the couple of emails, somebody books in your calendar, you have the couple of emails that go out before the call, right? Some text messages, it may be that. But what happens if somebody is not ready? Okay, let's put them in the long-term nurture sequence. Okay. Let's say that they missed the call. I have a sequence for that. Wait, let's say that we need to follow up with them in a month. Okay, we already have that ready to roll. Now, let's think about how do we get smarter on that sales process so that there can be something more impactful that the sales team is doing versus the admin. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, I think that's really, really good because so many of those small tasks, right? They slip through the cracks and I can speak for myself like I am the worst at that, right? Like those little follow-up tasks that you go, okay, that little list you got like, oh, follow up with this person, follow up with this person, send that email, dah, dah, dah. Rachel Minion: Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: You go through your whole day and it's like, you know, seven, eight o'clock and you go, dang it, I didn't send that. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. Like I'm, I'm the worst at it. So I love the, this conversation just around that alone. know, with rockstar moon specifically, you, you lean, you have a lean team. and you built a lot of systems around that. What advice would you give to founders trying to scale, you know, without hiring too early, ⁓ or too prematurely for a role? Rachel Minion: It's like, you know, seven, eight o'clock and you go to sleep. get to say, exactly. I'm delusional. I love this. the first time specifically. Okay. not firing too early, too prematurely. would say understand what your team actually does because I'm betting your team is drowning in admin work that they should not be doing. And if you could get a bunch of that off their plate with some automation, some AI, some smart technology behind you, then you've just doubled their capacity and you don't need to hire just yet. And do we put those people to work in smarter ways? where then they can keep helping you advance the business. They don't need to stop doing client delivery. But what if we could add in this type of wrap up for every week? What if we could add in this type of client communication? What if we could just implement surveys on top of this? What if we could X, Y, and Z? And the possibilities are limitless. If we give the team the foresight and the opportunity to what can we do? Your job is safe. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, you know, and that's part of your role as, you know, as the leader, you're leading from the front. So you're you're setting kind of like the tone for the entire team. So on that, what does what does leading from the front look like in a business that's built on automation? Like how do you keep, you know, encouraging your to kind of almost think ⁓ work themselves out of a job, but Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Rachel Minion: to work this out of a job, but have an opportunity to work with you. So I'll give you an example of what happened today. I was looking at where we were standing for SEO numbers, and I wasn't happy with the number of keywords we're ranking. And yes, I know things change, and yes, I know we're working on how do we rank for the chat engines as well, and what are we doing? But the strategies just didn't seem sound, and I give things a sniff test. Kelly Sundsvold: gives them an opportunity to grow with you. Rachel Minion: If I'm spending all this time and energy of a team member writing things and then we have to get it live and then we have to do this and we have to do that, like we should have some results. And if there are no results, then what? So I pulled up the results and started looking through and there was a major dip for one of our clients in keywords. And we didn't do much to change the website. We only increased it. We added in new structured data in different ways and God, that's annoying. So what happened? I don't know. So I brought it to the team instead of me digging in for six hours and trying to figure this out to then go further, because I just happened to pop into a client account. This wasn't even planned, right? It was like, ⁓ I wonder how we're doing. this rabbit hole led me to just bring this in front of the team and say, look, here are the numbers. Let me show you another website that we're working on that's exactly the same thing. And that went up. And we didn't do any work on that this month. So what's the difference from A to B? What do we need to do? Here's three texts that I'm looking at. Can you guys talk to your network, find out what their people are using? How do we use this smarter? What do we need to do to fix these problems? Because it's from A to B. What do we do? And they now have tasks to go do a little bit of research. They're gonna spend an hour or two apiece and. see what they can come up with so then we can have an intelligent dialogue on how we change the process moving forward. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. ⁓ I love that ⁓ so analytical like that. You're like, what can we dive in? What's the problem? What's the thing to fix? And I think as business owners, that's a constant for us, right? Like, how do we things better consistently to improve our business and things like that? And, you know, I was looking, ⁓ you know, looking through LinkedIn today and kind of understanding who you were, I'm going to ⁓ toot your just a little bit because you don't have just one business. You have five. Rachel Minion: You know, just get through practice today. Shawn Sundsvold: that you have either founded or co-founded. Like that is amazing to be able to go, okay, I've got this business idea. I wanna move it forward and you started it and you've grown it and you've put people around it to help it move. And you've done that multiple times over and over and over again. And what stood out to me with that and what I hope you can pass on to our listeners is if a business owner is stuck in the weeds, right? They're stuck working in their business. Rachel Minion: Okay. I have to explain the one-hundred-and-fifty-nine. So people are not meant to help it. We've done that multiple times. And let's do that. I hope you can pass on to... Our listeners is, business owners are stuck in the weeds. They're stuck working in the hands their business. Where should they start to be able spending their time working on their business? Because now you've done this five different times in about seven years. So what information can you pass along? What tips have you got pass along? Shawn Sundsvold: Where should they start to be able to start to spend more time working on their business? Because now you've done this five different times in about seven years, right? So what information can you pass along? What tips of wisdom can you pass along to someone? Rachel Minion: I like to blow things up. Shawn Sundsvold: Okay, I love it Kelly Sundsvold: I love that. Just start over. Yes. Rachel Minion: So let me give you an example. I run a nonprofit that we started that does chemo care kits to cancer patients across the US. I have only fundraised basically from my network. Now, this has been five years. We have done almost 4,000 chemo care kits. Let me be really honest. package, almost everything is donated in some way, shape, or form of what's in our care kit. Even the port pillows that go into it are sewn by my mother-in-law, by the women's club down the street, by makers all over the US that have, I have asked for help and I have gotten it. But shipping is $8.50 every package. I did not create a nonprofit to keep the US Postal Service in business. If every dollar I raise only goes to shipping, I'm doing something wrong. And that was me being in the weeds and in the business center. I was so frustrated because Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Rachel Minion: I'm not fundraising for the betterment of somebody's life. I am fundraising to keep the postmaster general happy. And the price of postage is gonna keep going up and up and up and up. So I blew up my business. And no, this is not the first business I've blown up. I said, what if I could just reimagine this to be able to get a much bigger impact without Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And what did blowing it up look like? Kelly Sundsvold: You Rachel Minion: this horrible problem that's sitting in front of me, right? If I could just take dynamite today, blow it up, what could this look like? And so sat down and started figuring out options. So the first thing that we did is we created a corporate giving program. There is corporations all over the US who do give back days. So why not help them coordinate how to make their own chemo care kits? We are happy to then help order all the things for them with a donation, right? Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Rachel Minion: get them the pillows they need, they can kit it and give it to a local cancer center. Now we've just tripled our impact. Kelly Sundsvold: There you go. There you go. Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Wow, okay, great idea. Rachel Minion: Okay, that's step one. And step two is there are people who are able to afford the shipping costs. So why not just put the $8.50 shipping costs, if you would like a chemo care kit, absolutely go for it. Now we started off and it was really small. And I was so happy with this being such a small organization because everything I had to do, I had to fundraise for it. It started off being $25 a kit. for us to get that out the door. So I didn't wanna open it up to too many people. As a marketing company, like I was not marketing that business at all. There was no SEO, there was no nothing. If you found us, it was a miracle. Like it was great, but we were doing maybe 20 to 30 a month. Somehow, some way, some shape, some form, January of last year, about a year ago, were featured at the top of Cancer Care News. We don't know how we got there. Shawn Sundsvold: Wow. Rachel Minion: I have no idea. There's nobody who's ever written me back. That went from 20 to 30 a month to 350 to 400 requests a month. Then how do you fundraise to do that? Because there is a need. So how do you do that? So there was a pressure that came on. I scaled that business overnight because yet again, I had to blow it up. It couldn't be the manual things I was doing. Blow it up, add an automation. How do we do these things? Automated emails. I take in the form, I process it, do this. I click on this, check it's done. Shawn Sundsvold: Wow. Yeah. Rachel Minion: Great. How do we automate shipping? Done. That's handled. Then how do we get you your shipping number? That's handled. So we overcame that problem, but then it's like, how do we afford to keep going? Cause you can't. Like the money will run out in some way, shape and form and a donor isn't going to want to say, I want to pay for postal service. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rachel Minion: So you can see there's multiple iterations of blowing things up, but you have to know what the real problem is. So you can say, all right, dynamite, now let's go to work. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. And identification of the problem is such a, it's the point, right? And I there's a lot business owners that there's that fear of ⁓ blowing up system, right? Or that, you know, or that it with, I can't do that. Right. And one of the things that you mentioned in that conversation there is how do I, right? You started it from a, is this possible? Right. Or I know this is possible. How do I do it? Right. And, and, and mentally that gives you so many options, right? Because you're not sitting there filtering out. I can't do this. I can't do that. I can't, I can't. It's very limiting. Right. So how do you, what was there anything specific you did to kind of get past the fear of blowing it up? ⁓ so that you could keep moving forward. Rachel Minion: can't think of that. So, what is the specific idea that as the speaker of the day? So, one of my, we went to an executive retreat and during this executive retreat, I was trying to figure out what do I want to do with one of the companies that I'm running. And it was hard, it was stressful, it wouldn't scale. I don't know what, you do. I don't know how to do it. I, you know, I went there going to be inspired and the first presentation that day, Jerry was talking about the first thing you have to do. You got to burn the boats. And I was like, Whoa, wait, I'm not that guy. I don't, I love to blow things up, but I don't, I don't know if I'm ready to say goodbye to everything. I don't know if I'm ready to close the business. I'm not ready to do these things. So I created a way that I could test. Shawn Sundsvold: Mmm. Yeah. Rachel Minion: and get real world data to show that I was moving in the right direction before I cut everything down. Because if I don't have the data, don't know. And it's just me creating in a bubble and who knows if this is gonna be better or worse. Who knows if somebody is gonna care about it, right? So for example, corporate giving for the nonprofit. Who knows if that was gonna work, but I put it up online and immediately Valvoline Instant Oil Changes called me and Waystar called me and we then got Shawn Sundsvold: Mm. Rachel Minion: well over a thousand chemo care kits out the door in three weeks. Shawn Sundsvold: That's awesome. Rachel Minion: Right? That was my test. Then I said, all right, now let's test. If I turn off the, you get it for free and you're on a wait list for forever. I just turn on the order form. Let's see what happens. I still get 20 a week of requests that are paid. thought it would go to nothing and people would hate me. Like I really thought I was going to be the most hated person in the world. And it didn't happen. And Kelly Sundsvold: you Shawn Sundsvold: Wow. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Rachel Minion: We're getting the kits out on a regular basis. People are paying for the shipping. I don't have to think about that. And every single fear that I had, like we tested it and it worked out okay. Now, had we tested it and I was like written to and told how terrible I am and all those things, yes, we would have to figure out something else. But because I tested it in a very controlled situation, that worked. Shawn Sundsvold: ⁓ yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Rachel Minion: And the old model, gone. It has to be. one can afford that. But now this new model, it works and it's working really well and it's fully automated from the back end. So there isn't much that I have to do. So I don't have to spend a ton of time on how do we make this work. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can really like extend your reach beyond you and what your team can do and what really any human can do and you're making a difference. I mean, and again, this is on top of your full time job that you have with your business, you know? So like even that, like you're able to make a difference in, you know, like everybody wants to leave a mark, you know, make a difference. Like I do inherently think like people are good on the inside and want to. do something to change the world in some way, whatever that means. And for you, it's helping cancer patients and you found a way to be able to stretch your time because your time is limited. know, your time is limited. There's only 24 hours in a day. We all have that. And you've been able to kind of stretch that 24 hours to be able to do something that makes a difference, involves other people, gets other people involved. You know, like these people putting together these cancer kits like ⁓ Rachel Minion: And for you it's all about observations and your... 24 hours to be able to do something. I don't. Kelly Sundsvold: You're giving them a system that they can give back and feel good about doing that. And yeah, just, it's, see the loss here. Like this is just such a win-win. You're providing more opportunities for more people to get involved with automation. It's not AI stealing my job. It's you're producing opportunities for jobs that wouldn't been there if it wasn't for automation and AI. ⁓ Rachel Minion: last year. ⁓ And it's scary and it's okay that it's scary and you're like I have no idea if this is gonna work or not I have no idea if this is an idea that I just came up with but let's test and see So then it can calm down all of those nerves because I never thought anybody would pay anything Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there was people out there with money that wanted maybe didn't have the time. They probably should call you about automating their jobs, but ⁓ they didn't have the time, but they had the money that they could ⁓ you know what? I have $16. I can get two care packages out or whatever, you know? And so that, you know, I don't know. I think it's just a really it's an upside down way of thinking about technology ⁓ and rather than looking at it. Rachel Minion: ⁓ huh. Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: Hmm. Kelly Sundsvold: hurting us individually where we're expanding what we can do also involve a whole new village of people. ⁓ I love talking with you Rachel. I really enjoyed our intro-call. I love what you do. I want to like pick your brain about several things. So I'm sure we'll be in touch. But what so somebody who's listening what's one message that you hope listeners take with them after hearing this story ⁓ and then on that Rachel Minion: Yep. Kelly Sundsvold: How can they get in touch with you? Rachel Minion: My message is start before you're ready. Because there's no way you're ever going to know if something's going to work or not. So you will never be ready to go launch. you're ready and it's perfect and all those things, you have missed the date of launch. Because now you're not going to make tweaks. So go start, see what you can do, test your way into it, and it'll figure itself out. The way to get in touch with me, you can go visit rachelminion.com. Kelly Sundsvold: Mmm. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm. Rachel Minion: or Rockstar and Moonduck. Kelly Sundsvold: Awesome, awesome. And I'd love to be able to set up a link. We talked about your nonprofit as well. So we'll touch base, but I'll definitely be able to, I'd love to put that in ⁓ the comments as well. So that way people can learn about both nonprofit and your automation company as well. So Rachel, thank you so much for being on this podcast and ⁓ sharing your story today. I appreciate it. Rachel Minion: Perfect. Thank you so much, I'm so grateful. Thanks. Shawn Sundsvold: Thanks, Rachel.