Smart Passive Income

SPI 408 — How to Hire the Right Help and Get More Time Back (without Driving Yourself
Crazy)

Bryan Miles Journal down all the things you'd like to offload. The things that don't
give you passion, the things that you hate doing, and don't even worry about at that
point prioritizing. Just get it out of your head and put it onto a sheet of paper, and that
really becomes kind of the pile of things ultimately to start to hand off. And then from
there, start to prioritize. What's mission critical...

Pat Flynn Let's face it, there's going to come a point in your entrepreneurial
journey where you're going to need some help, and to start off, it might be unloading
some of these things, like what our special guest today is talking about, related to just
the functions of your business that you need to get off your plate so that you can do
more of what you are good at, or so you can start marketing your product instead of
just working in it the whole time. Or so that you can actually be happy again in your
business. There are many different reasons why you might want to hire help of all
different kinds, whether that's somebody to help you manage your email to somebody
on your team to help you with web development or some other thing. But the most
important thing is that you need to know what you're getting yourself into, what can
you expect, how you communicate with this person, how do you get the most out of
your help, how do you make sure this person is still happy, how do you make sure
they're not going to leave, how do you make sure that they're going to do their work.
There's so many questions. And these are a lot of the kinds of questions that I ask
today's special guests Bryan and Shannon Miles.

They have a company called BELAY Solutions. They've been helping serve
entrepreneurs like us with finding quality help and hired help, from executive assistants
to bookkeepers and other kinds of things. And they're here today to give us the
lowdown on if you're just starting out with building your team. Or maybe you just hired
somebody, how do you best work with that person? How might you go even find that
person? How do you know if they're right for you? How do you manage them and make
sure you just don't drive yourself crazy doing so? All those things and more in today's
episode. So this will be a great one. Here we go.

Announcer Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it's all about
working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host—if
he could take you out to dinner, he'd take you to Puesto in San Diego—Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn What's up everybody? Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast.
This is session 408. My name is Pat Flynn here to help you make more money, save
more time, and help more people too. And one thing that comes with saving time is
having other people do a lot of work for you, something that I experienced years into
my business. I only wish I had done it sooner, but once I started to learn about what it
was like to offload a lot of these things in my business that still had to be done, I just
didn't have joy for it. And actually there were a lot of things that I still had joy for that I
knew I had to hand off. Once that started happening, I started to get loads of time back.
And if you're looking for loads of time back in your business or you're getting support so
that you can grow your business, well this is the episode for you.

Pat Again, we're talking with Shannon and Bryan Miles from Belaysolutions.com.
B-E-L-A-Y Solutions.com. So much to talk about. So much good stuff here. Here we go.

Pat Shannon and Bryan, welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thank
you so much for being here today.

Bryan Miles Thank you, Pat. We're super excited to be here.

Pat So Bryan, just first of all, thank you for you had helped me and a really good
friend of ours Michael Hyatt have an amazing trip, giving us some rundowns of things
that we could do in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And that was fantastic. So just publicly, I
just want to thank you for that. But also, thank you because on behalf of all
entrepreneurs out there, we need help. We are struggling. We need support, and
especially as our companies continue to grow, we can't possibly do everything on our
own. And there are some very clear things that you offer support with. So your work to
help us understand how to hire and find the perfect executive assistant and how to
work with them is so great. So just thank you for that. How does one even get started
with... Let's maybe ask you this: When would a person benefit from starting to think
about hiring an executive assistant to help support them?

Bryan Yeah, that's an awesome question, Pat. And first, thank you for this
opportunity. And we're thrilled that you had an opportunity to really enjoy a beautiful
place like Wyoming. But as it relates to entrepreneurs, for us, I think one of the big
things is when an entrepreneur really realizes that they're hitting the lid of their
personal capacity. Meaning, there are just not enough hours in the day or they know
that there's other things they need to be doing to kind of grow or scale their business at
whatever size, and they're just hitting that lid. And that lid is really defined by or there's
symptoms that kind of come alongside that. It's generally a person that's recognizing
that they're hitting the lid of the personal capacity.

Pat That makes sense. And Shannon, maybe to ask you, what are the usual
pushbacks on somebody? What are the demons in their heads saying when they know
they need help, but then they don't go get the help, and then they get burnt out?

Shannon Miles Yeah. There's a couple. One is obviously money. Can I afford to
bring somebody on my team right now? Can I project out my future growth in a way
that I can justify the cost? And then the other objection is oftentimes, I'm a control
freak. If I bring somebody else onboard, how do I know that it's going to be done to the
quality and level that I would expect? Those are the two primary ones, which I think a
lot of entrepreneurs struggle with because it's usually their dream, it's usually their
baby that they are moving forward with and trying to build and grow. And it can be
scary sometimes to turn over portions of that dream to somebody they don't know.

Pat And Shannon, how would you respond to somebody who says, "Well, I just
can't give up control." What's your sort of counter to that so that they understand that
this is the next logical best thing to do?

Shannon I would encourage them just to recognize that the level of control they
want to exercise over the business will equal the level of growth they're able to obtain.
So the more control they want to have over all of the aspects of their business, then the
less fast, less likely their business is going to grow. So it's just a trade off. You just kind
of have to decide if it's something that you want to see grow and expand beyond one
individual, yourself, or if it's something that you just want to maintain control and be in
every little detail and make sure that it's done perfectly.

Pat That makes complete sense no matter what kind of position you're hiring. I
mean, I remember when I started out, I needed a voice-over person. Eventually I
needed somebody to help me edit my podcast, and then I needed an executive
assistant. So there's all kinds of people that you can hire, but that's definitely figuring
out and understanding the time that you'll save. Also the time that you'll then have for
other and more important things and things that only you can do is really the key. And
that's what got me over that.

Pat Bryan, I know that your company Belay Solutions.com helps find a very
particular type of person for help. How do you define that person? What kind of roles
and responsibilities does that entail?

Bryan Well, at Belay Solutions.com, we have three different services. One is

obviously virtual assistants. And we do virtual bookkeeping, and we also provide web
support too. But specific to our virtual assistant services, we're looking for people who
really know how to anticipate the needs and think critically on their feet for our clients.
We have a pretty robust vetting process. We average about 2000 resumes a month that
come into BELAY, and so for us our talent acquisition team is constantly trying to find
the best people to represent us and represent our clients. And that's really where our
secret sauce is too. We find some really amazing people. All of our folks are here based
in the United States. So these are the types of people you'd be proud to have represent
you in an administrative capacity.

Pat When I first started hiring VAs, this was back in 2013, and it was for a lot of
repeated work that I was doing every day that I wanted to let go. And I started with
working with VAs from the Philippines. And that was a really great experience. I mean,
it was really nice time zone wise because I could sort of say, "Hey, do this." And I'd
wake up in the morning, and it would be done. But one thing that you just said that
really resonated with me was thinking sort of on their feet on behalf of the person who
they're working for. That's something that I never had experience with working with an
overseas VA. They did their jobs well and on time. But I never had somebody step up
and almost offer their own sort of support in their own way or ways to make things
more efficient. Is that the kind of person that you're helping to support with and find
and connect is the person who almost feels like they're a part of the company?

Shannon Yeah. That's the ideal goal. There are different organizations like ones
based in the Philippines, and even some in the States, that are very task driven. You
give them a task, they complete the task hopefully on time, and with great attention to
detail. But then there are companies like ours that offer a more relational, dedicated
assigned resource that's really going to learn who you are as a leader, learn about the
industry that you're in, the organization overall, interacting with other team members,
to really be a second version of you in the organization so that you're able to expand
your leadership and focus on those high payoff activities that are really where your
time and genius is best spent. So it's somebody dedicated to your account that is
extremely resourceful and can not only see, "Okay, there's a need," but, "Here's how I
think I can help fill that need."
Pat Yeah, that's the special type of person. I mean, I had to essentially early this
year or last year, I acquired the agency that was working for me because I wanted that
sort of feeling from the people who were working for me. They almost felt like part
owners of the company, if you will. They took ownership of their outcomes and whatnot.
So I'm very curious. I have a lot of questions here for those who are just starting out.
What might be my first steps, Bryan, related to: I'm overwhelmed, I'm at my capacity. I
need help. Regardless of where I might get that help from, what are some things that I
need to know about myself and my work first? How do I lay that out so I understand
where to find people?

Bryan Yeah, that can be a very daunting feeling. We've seen it with so many of our
clients when they first come onboard. One of the first things I like to share is just for
that person to take 10 minutes outside of their ordinary life, like in a different coffee
shop or not in their office or somewhere, and just journal down all the things you'd like
to offload. The things that don't give you passion, the things that you hate doing, and
don't even worry about at that point prioritizing. Just get it out of your head and put it
onto a sheet of paper, and that really becomes kind of the pile of things ultimately to
start to hand off. And then from there, start to prioritize. What's mission critical? What
are the things that are going to give me immediate relief, and then what are those
things that are nice to have? And then with our organization or with another
organization, they'll work with you to start navigating the mission critical things and
then work your way into those nice to haves.

Bryan For us, especially, in our organization, we have an account management

layer that kind of oversees that ever before you even interact with your virtual
assistant. So they'll guide you through that process. It's a pretty robust process. What
you put into it is what you get out of it. But for us, that's what we see as one of the first
things in learning how to like delegate and yield things up to other people to produce
for you.

Pat Shannon, what are some of the most common things on that list that pile of
things on a person's journal of things they want to offload? What are some of the things
you're seeing people offload more than others?

Shannon The most common are email and calendar project management because
they encompass so many back and forth things that a leader just gets bogged down
with. I mean, email, if you have somebody truly manage your inbox, you can get to the
point where you're only checking email a couple of times a day. And imagine as a
leader how you can grow your organization when you're not having to be in your inbox
more than 30 minutes. You're actually thinking critically about the business. So that's
really popular and common.

Shannon I think another is, customer service is so important for a lot of the
entrepreneurs that we work with. If you're not responsive to your customers' questions
or concerns, then it's a bad reflection on your organization. The practical application of
having a virtual assistant is not just email management but being responsive quickly to
those client requests or inquires. So their requests don't seem to fall into a black hole.

Shannon And then the last thing that we're seeing more as the industry
evolves—you know, we started Belay in 2010, so it's changed a lot in the last 10
years—we're actually seeing our client's assistants bring on BELAY assistants too. So
maybe they have somebody full time either onsite in their organization or remote, as
we are as a company. But their assistant has reached their capacity, and they want to
grow. But they don't have any bandwidth. So we're even now seeing another layer of
support in the organization where the leader's not having to take on another direct
report. But their assistant is getting the help that they need.

Pat Bryan, can you wrap my head around handing off email? I'm going to talk
more about this next week when I invite Jess on to talk about how we manage email,
my own assistant, and she's amazing. And to make sure you subscribe to stay tuned for
that one. But how might a person knowing that they're overloaded with email, but I
know that some of the pushback with email is, well, then it's not me responding
anymore. It's somebody else. Isn't that bad? Giving up email is so hard because that's
your one-to-one connection often with your customers. Can you help wrap my head
around how that can still be done gracefully and in a way that supports the business
and maybe doesn't hurt me?

Bryan Yeah. I mean, it can be done not only gracefully but professionally as well.
At Belay, we've identified six or seven different ways that you can kind of manage
someone's email inbox. For me, our assistant Hope, she serves as air traffic control over
my inbox. So on a given day, I probably get about 100 emails a day. But I'm really only
replying to about 10 or 15 of those because as an owner in a business, as a CEO or a
president, typically your job is... Your email inbox is more like a router. Your routing
things to other people to produce or to filter out. So you just learn that behavior, and
you give permissions to your assistant to reply on your behalf, to act like you.

Bryan For example, when I'm traveling and I've got 30 minutes in the car, I'll talk
to Hope who's our assistant. And I'll say, "Hey, let's run down my email real quick." And
I'll say, "Hey, reply like me, and then say this thing." She'll send it out and it's gone out
of my inbox. Or she'll just say, "Hey, I've got this. I'm going to run with it." And it's not
just an inbox too. It could be LinkedIn messages or social media DMs. There's a lot of
things that they learn your voice, and then they... Maybe like something you need to
read like a white paper, they can put that in a review folder for you to look at when
you're on an airplane or some variation of that. But it's completely possible. It's just
takes a little bit of time to understand the tone of the leader, and really the purpose
behind email is to communicate responsiveness because when we don't respond, it
communicates all the wrong messages. So we really work with our folks, our clients to
get this down quick, especially if that's something where they need relief.

Pat Gotcha. Anything to add, Shannon, on email specifically and how even I as a
leader can better equip the person I end up finding to support me?

Shannon Yeah. I mean, email can kind of be an intimate thing to envision turning
over. But I think the more your organization grows, the more demands there are going
to be on your time. And you really have to assign a value to your time as a leader,
figure out what it actually costs for you to respond to every single message. And then it
starts to become a little bit more palatable to say every message is important, but I
don't have to be the one to respond to every message. And you can probably go
through your inbox and distill down the types of emails you get into five categories. And
maybe you handle one of them direct because that's personal for you, and you want it
to be that intimate connection with your customer or whoever. That's fine. But then that
still leaves another four categories that can be handled by somebody else.

Pat That makes sense. How might I as a leader... Bryan, I'll point this one to you.
How might I as a leader better equip the assistant I hire for success sooner? Because I
know it takes time. I don't want to have anybody expect that they could hire somebody
and everything's going to be different and change tomorrow. It takes training. It takes
work. It takes patience. But how might I become more efficient with communicating
with the person as soon as I find them to get them up to speed if you will?

Bryan Pat, this is one of my favorite questions because it communicates the heart
of the leader trying to really make this make sense for them and for their organization.
The first thing is: one, tee them up for success. For example, gone are the days of the
old school, "This is my secretary," or, "This is my gal that does things for me." A good
client looks at their assistant like a work alongside partner. Meaning they serve as an
extension of who you are as a leader. And the more that you can communicate that
inside your organization and with partners and people that will be bumping up against
this assistant, the better you tee them up for success. So for example, if Pat is doing
something, if Jess does something on your behalf, then it says if Pat is doing something
but Jess is the one doing it. And that's a huge deal when you're working with
organizations or inside your team when you're trying to get things done. So really
seeing them as an extension as who you are as a leader is like one of the best things
you can do.

Bryan And then what we find a lot of leaders, they're learning how to delegate
when they work with our organization. So really it comes down to their willingness to
trust. And what we find is the quicker you can get to trust with somebody, and we call it
kind of "the speed of trust." The sooner you can trust somebody because you're going
to have to do it if you're going to do anything that's of meaning, then you're going to
have to yield up trust. And the sooner you see that in that person, the quicker you
extend that, the quicker your ability to be more efficient and scale administratively, it'll
just happen. It's really cool to watch. But I'd say tee them up for success by letting
them know that they are an extension of who you are, and you see them as your work
alongside partner.

Pat Shannon, as you're hiring somebody or vetting different people to support

you, and I know there's all kinds of different ways you can go about finding people,
whether it's from your network or a solution like yours or other places out there. How do
you know you got the one? This might be a very loaded question, but I'm curious to
know from your perspective how do you know when that person who has filled out the
application or is communicating with you that that's the right person to then dedicate
that time and effort to, to then get them up to speed and have them become a part of
the business with you? How do you know?

Shannon Yeah. So a light shines down from the heavens onto that person, and you
just magically get it.

Pat Right. I wish.

Shannon Wouldn't that be great? It can be difficult to know initially, and I think
sometimes we're waiting for the shoe to drop. Like, this is too good to be true;
something's going to happen. But I'll speak for my experience at Belay. We've been
doing this for a long time. So we've been able to figure out a lot of the soft skills, hard
skills, personality matches, resources that would make for a good match. So some of it
is working with an outside organization who does this all the time. If you're going out on
your own and trying to find somebody, I genuinely think it's important to like who you
work with, which sounds super basic. But you can tell sometimes if you're going to click
with somebody or if it's just going to be an uphill battle. If you're constantly having
miscommunications and things dropped, it's like I don't know if this is going to work
long term or if I want to put the time and energy into trying to figure it out.

Shannon So I think you have to like who you're working with, and I think you also
have to expect for there to be some mistakes and that that's not a reason to give up.
You can coach and work through them. But I don't know. I've had a lot of assistants
over the years, and I've always viewed an assistant for me as an opportunity for them
in leadership development. So a lot of my assistants have gone on to do other things
within the organization. So some of it too for me is just being able to see beyond that
current role and think, "Are they a good fit for the company overall, and will they give
me great support?" And then as the years go on, it may become obvious that they're
ready to move on to something else and you groom them in that direction.

Bryan I'll add one thing to that too. I think it's also... I mean, there's a lot of people
that are incredibly skilled and enjoy doing administrative work. I know that's almost
impossible to believe. But they're out there, and there's a bunch of them. So what I find
is, regardless of whether the task is a professional task or a personal task, it's just they
have this can-do attitude because they actually like the work. And for me, that is just so
refreshing. So I think if you're out there and you're looking for somebody and you come
across somebody that's really gifted in this way and they've just got a very can-do
attitude about it, they're signaling to you that that's somebody that you could
potentially work with for a long time in the future.

Pat That was a big realization for me. I was like, wait, there's people who like to
do this? Because I would never. And that's what I had to realize—that I am not a person
who could ever do that, but they're also somebody who can never do what I do. But
let's work together for a greater good.

Shannon Right.

Pat I think that was key. As you were working with a VA, Shannon, how do you or
what are the things I can do as a leader to, number one, keep them happy, and number
two, keep them working hard?

Shannon I think outlining very clear expectations right out the gate is so vitally
important. It's really easy to miss an expectation that you didn't know was set in the
first place. So the more you can help scope the work and be realistic about what can be
accomplished, then the more likely they are going to be to knock it out of the park.

Shannon And then keeping them motivated, I think one of the things that is so
rewarding for an amazing assistant is when they are delegated the responsibility to
achieve something without being told how to get there every little step of the way. So
what we say is delegate the result, not the task. And a great assistant will see that as a
practical exercise of your trust in them. That you're bringing them into the why, you're
telling them why this initiative is important, and giving them some freedom and
flexibility to figure out how to get there while maintaining touchpoints and guiding and
removing barriers for them along the way. I think that's how you keep a great assistant
motivated as time goes on and work gets more complex.

Pat When you say set expectations, and I completely agree with that, how might I
set that expectation? Can you give me a clear, specific example of how I might
communicate something to a VA so that they know sort of what I want from them?
Shannon I think some of it goes back to the exercise Bryan outlined, where you're
really thinking through the things that you need to offload as a leader, and then setting
a prioritization to that list. So when you bring somebody on, an expectation to
communicate is, "I'm drowning in email and being responsive to my clients and my
prospects is very important to me. So the first thing I want to work with you on is
getting my email down to a place where I'm only responding to 10% of them. And I
expect it's going to take about three months for us to get there." So that's going to be
your number one priority.

Pat Gotcha. But it's not so specific as, "I want you to answer 75 emails per day,
give me a report at the end of the day."

Bryan You totally could do that, and I think that that... I mean, a lot of leaders do
do that. I think for us, what we're looking for, especially with Hope our assistant,
because we share an assistant today, and she's full time for us. But we're more
interested in communicating, this is why this is important. And this is something that
you can really contribute to help us as leaders in our organization, and so when we're
not around, if you know the why, the W-H-Y, then you can fill in the blank with the what,
when, and how when we're not around, when we're unavailable. So the more that we
spend time communicating why this is important, then all it really is is a list of things
that have to be accomplished. It's good to have a job description or a key result areas
like we do for every role. But ultimately day to day, those tasks, why they need to be
measured, can be summarized at the end of a week or on a calibration call with your
assistant on a Monday and a Friday.

Bryan But ultimately I think a leaders are looking for someone they can really hand
off things without having to kind of spoon feed the tasks.

Shannon And micromanage.

Bryan And micromanage them.

Pat We don't want to do that because then it kind of defeats the whole purpose of
finding somebody to help us get time back. You could spend more time doing that, and
I've had experience with that before. So that's fantastic. Thank you.

Pat In terms of, Bryan, communication, how am I communicating sort of

technically with this person and perhaps how often is a good cadence to do it?

Bryan Yeah. It really depends on the leader, and it depends on the assistant and
what makes sense for that organization. I don't think there's any standard way. We do
know some best practices, and that's to calibrate on a Zoom call or if you have an
assistant that's onsite, meeting with them like on a Monday morning and a Friday
afternoon and just making sure on the bookends of the week that things are getting
accomplished. There's times when the leader owes the assistant things, and there's
times when the assistant owes the leader things. Or they're stuck on something, and
that's their opportunity to kind of calibrate. But then a lot of leaders like to do the ad
hoc text, email, phone call thing when they're traveling or they're in between meetings
or in between podcasts or whatever. So it's really up to the leader. But what we know
for sure that really works is the calibration. And then, several leaders like to have a
summary report at the end of the week saying, "Hey, this is what I accomplished. And
here are the things I'm looking for from you going into next week." It really is leader
dependent.
Pat That makes sense. Thank you. Shannon, let's say that I'm working with a VA
and things have been going great for a while, but then I start noticing that maybe
something is slipping through or falling through the cracks. How might I best
communicate with my assistant to lightly—or not lightly—sort of just communicate,
"Hey, we need to relook at this." How do we do that in a way that's not going to push
them away or upset them? How do we handle that?

Shannon Those conversations are so important because when you're working with
an assistant or anybody on your team, you're working with a person. And situations
happen and things change. What once work flawlessly can sometimes feel a little
clunky. So I think just knowing that when those misses happen, filling that gap with
trust and assuming that there's a reason and being able to go to the assistant and say,
"Hey, I noticed that you forgot to schedule this appointment that I asked you about.
That's really unlike you. Why the miss? What can we do to not have that in the future?"
And if you're talking every week, like Bryan mentioned, you can just make that open
and honest feedback part of your standing agenda. So that maybe you're looking at
things in the organization that can be improved, or maybe you're open handed and
saying, "What can I do differently as a leader to make you successful?" So that
feedback just becomes part of your vernacular. So then we have those misses and
those sometimes uncomfortable conversations, it doesn't feel so out of left field.

Shannon We encourage those conversations to happen sooner rather than later so

that it doesn't go unaddressed for a while, and then the issue just starts to fester
around the person and not the actual issue itself. And then if it's not resolved, misses
continue to happen, then I think you need to have the next layer of conversation to say,
"What's going on overall? Is this still something that's working for you? Is it working? It's
not working for me. So what do we need to do to either course correct or move on?"
And some of it can be as simple as, they're just overwhelmed and they need help. And
you need to take some things off of their plate. Some of it could be they've got personal
challenges that are prohibiting them from doing an awesome job.

Pat Bryan, how then does one understand whether or not—this might be a tough
question—to let somebody go? Obviously there's work to be upfront to hire the right
person and to communicate with them properly so that things are off on the right foot.
But I also know that, realistically, sometimes you're just going to have to make a
decision to let somebody go. And I know that I've spoken with people who are afraid of
hiring because they're afraid of letting go. And that's not okay because you need to hire
people to support you and the business and your audience and your life and your family
and all those things. But the worry about letting people go, having that stop you is kind
of an interesting one. So how do you do that?

Bryan Yeah. I think first off letting somebody go or freeing their future is
something that's I think incredibly hard. I think that it's necessary for a business, and I
think it's also necessary for the health of the culture because we hear Dave Ramsey
and entrepreneurship people, they talk about this all the time. If you have somebody
that's underperforming and you just continue to let it go, what you're actually doing as
a leader is you're sanctioning incompetence. And the problem with that is that
everybody else in the organization knows it too. So you're setting up a standard that it's
okay to slack or it's okay to miss deadlines or whatever that thing is. So, I think it's
important that you're clearly documenting. You're giving the opportunity. Like Shannon
said, you fill the gap of trust. I mean, heck, a lot of times it's not the person's
performance. It's the leader. A leader said something, or they did something wrong, and
they've led them down a path that's caused them to have problems. So sometimes the
leader's got to take a look and say, "Hey, did I inadvertently create this problem in our
business?"

Bryan So I think when the time comes if you feel like it's necessary, you got it
documented, that person that you're about to let go, you just have to be honest and
say, "We're about to have a hard conversation," and then do that. But it should never
be a surprise to them, ever. If it's a surprise to them, the leader's the one that messed
up.

Pat Anything to add to that, Shannon?

Shannon We've seen this done really well, where you can let somebody go and then
see them in the grocery store and say, "Hey." You're amicable and able to move on.
And we've seen it done really not well, even within our organization. And that is one of
the hardest things I think a leader has to grapple with is, is the benefit worth that. And I
would say in every situation when letting somebody go is done right or when there
were definitely opportunities for improvement, you've learned as a leader in that
process. That's a growing opportunity for you and oftentimes for the person you had to
part ways with.

Shannon I just think that it is worth the risk, and we get asked all the time, "How do
I know when it's time to bring somebody on?" It's usually sooner than you're ready.
Sooner than you're comfortable in doing that. And I think it's because you really got to
challenge yourself as a leader that it's going to be a growing opportunity for you when
you bring somebody on and when you're letting them go.

Bryan Yeah. When someone says, "I'm afraid of letting people go," and they
haven't yet made the hire. I mean, the truth is, entrepreneurs just need to understand
that anything of size or scale takes people, not a singular person. It takes a team of
people to go to that next level and to grow their organization. So, we're all around
people all day long. It's important that we take good care of them. But at times you do
have to make the hard call that's for the best benefit of everybody else that's going to
remain there.

Pat I know when you have groups of people working together, especially so
closely and on really important projects, oftentimes personalities can clash sometimes.
And you as a leader have to know how to sort of put out fires or manage those
conversations. How do you approach... I'm not saying this like it happened for me
personally. I just know it's always going to happen when there's groups of people and
just we're having these conversations so we know what to look out for just in case. And
I appreciate you being here to help me sort of survey and ask these questions. But, how
does one manage sort of quarrels that might happen within your team professionally as
a leader?

Shannon When conflicts arise in our business, we encourage the team to look at
whatever they're arguing about as the problem, not the person they're arguing with. So
what we say is, you put the issue on one side of the table, and then the team gets on
the other side of the table together and looks at the issue and let that become the
problem, not the person on your team. Because one of the things that we encourage
within our organization is that somebody is the contrarian. We don't want every idea
just to be an awesome idea, and we should totally do that. We need to be like, "But
have you thought about this, and let's look at it from this perspective." And even just
somebody naturally being the contrarian can seem like tension or friction in the group.
So we try to encourage the team not to view it that way, but it's a natural part of how
we operate as a company.

Pat I like that.

Shannon Yeah. And it really helps it not be isolated around a person.

Bryan What Shannon's talking about, we have conflict norms in our business, and
that's the first one. We actually called it this and we train it to welcome the contrarian.
We have two more. One is the TSA rule, which is if you see something, you have to say
something. Because it's vital to the success of our business to do that, which
sometimes can create a little stress on folks. But if you see something, you need to say
something. And then the final conflict norm that we have at Belay is that we hunt the
elephant. So if we're in a meeting and there's a giant elephant that walks in the room,
and sometimes that's me, they have permission to hunt me down and to say, "You
know what, I'm sorry. Just because you're CEO doesn't mean that we necessarily agree
with you." And we welcome that throughout the organization, and by basically saying,
"Hey, there's an appropriate way to have conflict or conflict norms in our business that
gives them handles to do that," so that it doesn't turn messy and people get all ticked
off, and then you're dealing with a spiraling culture. Instead you're creating a healthy
culture where debate is welcome.

Pat I love that. I think that's great. Again, that goes to sort of setting
expectations, not just for deliverables but for culture within the company. To bring the
conversation back to something positive, not that this stuff wasn't positive, but it's
important to talk about. I know you've worked with many people and have provided
services for many that we know, and people who have been on the show before, like
Michael Hyatt. And he is at the top of his game, and he's got this amazing team as well.
You've helped him provide solutions as well, and that's inspiring to me because I am a
big fan of Michael, and he and I are good friends. We go fly fishing together. But can
you speak to future thinking for those business owners and the audience right now
thinking about hiring, what opens up for us as a result of having the right person and
the team behind us to support our goals? What are some of the things that Michael has
now been able to do as a result of freeing up his time and just other clients that you
might've worked with?

Bryan I think Mike in particular, he can accelerate his business. Specifically for his
organization, we served him multiple assistants. So it's not just a one and done or it's
just one assistant. We have plenty of organizations across the country that deploy
multiple assistants working inside their organization in different capacities. So I think
when a person approaches something like this, this does not have to be a temporary
solution or a bandaid over administration. This can be a long term play for how you
resolve administration in your organization. So it can be something that you can grow
into. Like Shannon said earlier, now we're seeing assistants that need help with
assistants. So it's completely possible regardless of whether it's remote or somebody
that you have that's onsite or you have a different provider that you find.

Shannon It's funny, Pat, we actually started working with Michael Hyatt in the
summer of 2011. Like, shortly after we started our organization. And ironically Bryan
and I were with our kids. I think my mom was on that trip too, in Jackson Hole. We were
heading to Jackson. It's a magical place, and Michael tweets that he's looking for a
virtual assistant. Does anybody know an organization to work with? And several of our
clients were like, "Oh my gosh, we got to jump on this opportunity." But think about
where he was at that stage. I mean, he was just building what we now know as this
huge organization where he's helped so many leaders focus. This was way before the
journal, way before his organization's grown as much as it has.

Pat I think this was when the Platform University or his book Platform was just
coming out.

Bryan Yeah.

Shannon Yeah. And he had not been away from Thomas Nelson very long at that
point. So from the beginning, he viewed having great, high quality help as essential to
growing his business. It wasn't, "Well, let me build this business, and then I'll get help."
It was, "I can't build this business until I get great help."

Bryan Yeah. And I think what happens too, and we jokingly say when people hire
us for Belay, we want to ruin them for life, because it's that same thing. When you have
a really great virtual assistant and you see how they're actually giving you relief in
professional things and personal things, it's literally like that time when you were in
coach and you got to get up and go to first class. And you're sitting in the first class
seat, and you're like, "Oh, I'm ruined forever."

Pat It's kind of like when I went on the Disney Cruise. I can't do any other cruises.

Bryan Yeah. I mean, it's just your ruined. Mike wouldn't mind me saying this. Back
in 2011 when we talked on the phone, he had just left Thomas Nelson. He was at a
place where he needed really great help, and he knew what he had before in a different
capacity as a leader. But now in kind of startup mode, entrepreneurial world, he needed
that level of help as well. And I just think that it serves a really good example as he
scaled up, that other people can do this too. Regardless of what size of organization you
want to have or the dent you want to make in this world, it's certainly something that
it's completely possible. And frankly the reason why we started our company was to
help our clients climb higher, and that's the meaning behind our name too.

Pat That's really great. I love that. Shannon, where can people go to learn more
about your services and what you have to offer there?

Shannon Yeah, they can check us out at BELAYSolutions.com and find out about the
three core services that we use and some of our processes for how we vet clients, and
match, and all that.

Pat Awesome. Both of you, Bryan, Shannon, thank you so much for coming on the
show today and helping us out and role playing with me as a leader who I now have
experience with assistants and teams and how important they are. But I wanted to do
this for those who are listening who just, they know they need it, and they don't know
where to start and have no idea what they're getting into. So thanks for painting that
picture for us and equipping us with tools to be successful.

Bryan Thank you very much. We're certainly grateful for this opportunity, Pat.

Shannon Thanks for all you do to help entrepreneurs. It's amazing.

Pat Thank you.

Pat All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Bryan and Shannon Miles
from BELAYSolutions.com. You can check them out. You can also check out all the
resources and links mentioned at SmartPassiveIncome.com/session408. This
conversation also just made me feel very grateful for the team that I've built and have
found and for everybody onboard on TeamFlynn, just thank you for supporting. And I
couldn't be and do what I need to do without you, especially Jess as well. Who, guess
what? We're going to be talking with next week. Many of you already know Jess
because you've interacted with her and communicated with her either at a live event
that I've been at or via email. I hired Jess a long time ago to help me with email. She's
grown into a much bigger role as my executive assistant and helping me with so many
things. We're going to talk about what all those things are, how we sort of choreograph
our work together, and how we communicate with each other, how we continually
improve, and how she helps me offload a lot of things that I just don't want to do
anymore. But also how she can also enjoy the process too. So that's going to be a great
one too.

Pat So make sure you stick around, hit subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks
again to Bryan and Shannon for coming on today to share their wisdom with us. And
good luck to you, because hiring is amazing, but it's also difficult and hopefully this has
helped you, even a little bit. And if you want to get more information from this show,
again make sure next week—an interview with Jess. She's coming. We're going to rock
your world. Hit subscribe if you haven't already, and as always, #TeamFlynnforthewin.
Peace.

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