- How to manage your assistant?
If you are a crazy busy CEO that can't find time to even
breathe then this video is for you.
You know, when I started off in business,
I was always doing everything myself.
And really the straw that broke the camel's back was
when I was 26 I was in the office,
I was working 100 hours a week.
And every Sunday, I would go into the office by myself
for three to four hours just to process freaking mail.
Piles of mail would come in throughout the week
and I have to sit there and triage it.
After months of this, I just thought,
there's need to be a better way.
So I hired an assistant.
And their name was Lisa.
And she came in and she tried to help me
but I always felt like there is always more work to do
and I could have got it done it faster if I did it myself.
And this is where things shifted and I wanna share this
with you guys is I decided to start
videotaping my process and talking about it out loud
so that she could just watch the video without me.
And then what was cool is if something happened to Lisa,
if she was sick or she didn't work out long term
I already have the video to train the next person.
But that isn't the strategy I wanna share with you guys,
it's just the first beginnings of even
understanding that working with an assistant
was a good thing.
And then recently, I was an event and this guy presented.
His name was Tim.
And Tim shared and he challenged all of us.
And this is the first thing I wanna share with you guys,
he challenged all of us to give our assistants access
to our inbox.
And I got to tell you, for 15 years,
I have treated my inbox like it's a sacred location
of information.
And just wouldn't even think like that was a possibility
to have somebody else do that.
I didn't want somebody responding to my emails, et cetera.
And then he showed us a really great framework.
So I wanna teach you guys this.
So not only do you give access to your inbox
to your assistant but what you do is you create
a special tag or a folder depending on what system you use
that your assistant puts emails into for you to review.
So that means check it out,
all the new emails that come in your inbox,
you should never see, you should never ever, trust me,
slap you on the hand if you do this,
never check your inbox main area.
You should only be checking where your assistant filters,
based on conversations you've had,
the right emails that need your attention.
And everything else should be hers.
I mean, think about this.
Would you let anybody walk off the street into your office
and just interrupt you?
No.
Why do you allow yourself to be like that
or get treated like that with your inbox?
Every day your inbox is probably a public to do list
of other people's task or goals or needs of you
and you don't even think twice a lot of people do that.
So I'm gonna challenge you.
Not only one, give your assistant full access to your inbox
but then more importantly triage those emails
and only have one folder or a tag,
depending on what system you use,
that is just for you to review.
Everything else is up to her.
And then if you need to set up time to review that,
you can do that.
So that's number one.
Give your assistant access to your inbox.
Number two is build a system to process your email.
To me this is really important.
It's not only good enough to just talk to them
but actually write it down, talk about, like,
emails that have unsubscribe in it,
those going to certain folder called newsletter,
whatever it is.
You can start thinking about automated systems for emails,
for managing your calendar, for scheduling travel,
whatever it is you wanna sit down and work with her
to document the way you think.
Again, back to that example I gave you with Lisa,
videotaping what I was doing with step one.
But after that it was quickly documenting because, again,
you will sleep so much better at night
knowing that if God forbid something happen
to your assistant, somebody else can come in,
follow the procedures and get 70 or 80%
ramped-up by themselves.
It's really important that not only do you
do the videos or document the process,
but ensure you're doing it for them.
And then what's great and what's happened over the years
for me is allows you to scale out your assistants.
So you can have virtual assistants do
essentially work for your assistants,
she becomes the manager of all of these other tasks.
So that's really important.
Now the third thing I wanna share with you guys
is to have a weekly meeting.
Every week, you should be sitting down with your assistant
so that she can talk to you about the different
aspects of travel or your calendar or conflicts
or emails that she doesn't understand how to respond.
You need to give her that space, 30 to 60 minutes
where she can come to you
and you won't even have to think about it
'cause you know that it's scheduled and nothing
will get dropped.
Having that weekly meeting with your assistant is key.
And again, the outcome of that is to improve the systems
that she's documenting and be more responsive
and just sure things are gonna happen
where they respond a certain way and you're like,
oh my God, I can't believe you said that.
But that's okay.
For the very few times that happens,
the bandwidth increases and it gives your brain
to think about new ideas and strategies
and freeze up your time to spend with your family
or other co-workers or work on your business
is gonna be invaluable.
So the key, again,
I wanna wrap up by just recapping quickly.
One, give them full access to your inbox
and you can do that three different ways.
But more importantly, have them put the emails
that require your attention into a specific folder
and that is the only folder you look at.
Two, make sure that she's creating processes for you
to make sure there's longevity and training
long term if something should happen to that assistant,
you're gonna bring somebody else in
or even for her to scale out her abilities
by hiring other assistants to work for her.
Yes, this is a real thing.
I have that and it's amazing because it helps alleviate
a bunch of pressure and time on my primary assistant.
And then the third thing is to have that weekly meeting
where it's scheduled.
There's an agenda, you're reviewing things that she doesn't
know how to respond, you're talking about travel,
you're improving the systems or processes.
And that to me just allows you to have some clarity
and some peace of of mind knowing that it's there
for that purpose.
So those are the three things I wanna share with you.
I wanna ask you guys to leave a comment below.
If you don't have an assistant or if you do,
what would you ask that assistant to do today?
What could she help you with in your business?
There are things I know I'm guaranteed that you're doing
that you should not be doing in your business
and somebody else could be supporting you.
What are those activities?
What are those projects?
List those below as a comment.
Please like this video.
I wanna challenge you guys to live a bigger life
and a bigger business and I'll see you next Monday.