Read the Transcript Below:

Matthew Jarvis  00:33

Today’s episode is brought to you by our friends at Belay. For the last several years, Micah and myself have been using virtual assistants from Belay to take over delegation of all sorts of tasks, from clearing out email to scheduling travel to following up with people to booking a car-racing trip that Micah and I are going on shortly. All of this is handled by our virtual assistants at Belay. Now if you’re thinking hey, I’m not quite ready for a virtual assistant, well, you already delegate 98% of your life. In other words, you did not build the device upon which you’re listening to this podcast. So text the letters RIA to 55123. That’s 55123 to get a free copy of Belay’s ebook on delegation, and then you’re given the opportunity to talk to my good friend Theresa, who will help you find a virtual assistant that is perfectly suited for you. All right, back to the show. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Perfect RIA podcast. I’m your host Matthew Jarvis with me today returning to the podcast once again and you may remember her from the RTS tax summit last year of course, we will be attending the RTS tax summit again this year, September 25th to 27th in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona – Lisa Zeeveld. Lisa, welcome back.

Lisa Zeeveld  01:42

Well, thank you for having me. I love being a guest on your podcast. I cannot wait to hang with you guys in Arizona.

Matthew Jarvis  01:49

It’s gonna be a lot of fun. For those of you that are loyal listeners, which should be everyone you’ll know that Belay has been a longtime strategic partner of The Perfect RIA, provided virtual assistants for Micah, myself and now for Steven, has been a sponsor at our events. And I love Lisa having you on the show. One because we appreciate your support of the show. But more importantly because I view iyou like the Oracle of delegation when I’m thinking like how do I get better delegation, it’s like what would Lisa do and even Lisa before we hit record here, you were already blowing my mind again. I was like Lisa, we should talk about more things we can delegate. You’re like wait a second let’s talk about the peace of mind that this creates. Yeah, in your wallet. I was almost hesitant. So I mean, honestly, like, we can’t talk about peace of mind. There’s no ROI there. But like your studies are showing that’s like literally one of the highest benefits of delegation. So Lisa, let’s jump right in.

Lisa Zeeveld  02:36

Yeah, I know we were just sitting here having just a great conversation and I was like, you know every year we do a client survey, because ultimately we are here to make your life better, right? And so we want to know, like, Where can we improve? What can we do? And you know, from the beginning, what we kept hearing was, oh my gosh, when I use your virtual assistant, or when I hired your bookkeeper, I had just such incredible peace of mind. Right? Like peace of mind, I could go out and do the things that I valued the most. And it’s sort of funny, because here we are 14 years later. We try to talk ourselves out of that every single year. Well, I don’t know. You know, that we have other great staffing firms out there and they’ll tell you… We have a calculator that will tell you what the ROI is. If you delegate this, you can focus on the things that only you can do when your billable time is this much. Oh, that’s fantastic. But the crazy thing is every single time we do the client satisfaction survey, the number one thing that our clients say, is the best thing they get out of hiring one of our team members is peace of mind, and that they can do the things that they love to do. And right before you hit record, I said Yeah, because let’s think about it. If you started a business, you started a business to enhance your life. You didn’t start a business so only you would sit there and focus on your business right and you wanted freedom. You probably had a higher earning potential. You were thinking about all the money that you know when you’re ready for to retire that you could do with that , right?. So you’re building something. You weren’t thinking, oh yeah, I can’t work 80 hours a week. No, you don’t want that. And so we hear it’s like, hey, I can make it to my son’s baseball game now. Or I love adventure sports. And so I could train a little bit harder now than I was before. I can leave for two weeks and go on a sabbatical. We have we have leaders who leave for months and go on sabbatical and know that their assistant and our team has it covered. That right there’s really hard to measure because it’s a feeling but still today, the number one thing that matters the most.

Matthew Jarvis  04:40

That’s so fascinating. And for our listeners who aren’t super familiar with Belay, which if you’re not you can get Belay’s great guide to delegation text letters RIA to 55123. But Belay’s is not just like working like 10 or 12 people you guys have like an entire like a huge number of assistants you have a huge number of people entrepreneurs you work with like just give us a little bit on scale. So when do you say the number one survey response we get is peace of mind. This isn’t like 12 people you asked outside of the back door?

Lisa Zeeveld  05:06

No, no, no, this thousands. You know, we serve thousands of clients each and every year and over our 14 years of being in business tens of thousands of people that we have served and again across all demographics across all areas. So we are you know, East Coast or West Coast, we’re serving it all. And so when you think about just culture differences between our beautiful country, and areas that might be important to one person versus another and that’s still the number one thing that they walk away with and are grateful for Belay is that peace of mind of knowing that we’ve vetted everybody for them. We’ve done all the hard work, that we are a managed service. So hey, we’re people and we’re hiring people, sometimes things don’t work out, but you have someone to call, the client success consultant who’s like your account manager and he’s gonna help you work through it. You have someone that’s taking care of billing on your behalf like we’re trying to make this all super simple for you so that you do have peace of mind to continue to work on your business if that’s what your passion is, but also do things outside of that. So you can be a great whole person. We want to be whole people. And that means you got to be willing to let some things go.

Matthew Jarvis  06:14

I love that. You know, an example I always like to bring bring these two real specifics, right because sometimes I think oh yeah, peace of mind. Yeah, of course I have that. I want that. But a real specific example came to mind I was I was coaching a group of advisors just a few weeks ago. And a gal there said he said I can’t turn off my email alerts because what if a client emails me with an important item? Now we can have a discussion, and you and I have had that discussion. Wait a second, there’s probably nothing that important that you need an alert. But I don’t even need to argue that point. Right? That’s where we can say great if your clients are so reactive that you need to be watching constantly great news. Hire a VA, if you want to pay them to watch your email 24/7. That’s certainly possible but the peace of mind back to your point Lisa, are I can go into a meeting I can go to focus time I can go to my kids’ sporting event, I can go rock climbing, whatever my thing is and I don’t need to even have my phone with me. Not that I’m ignoring clients. I’ve given that task to someone who’s actually far better at it than I am and that’s that’s really the beauty of this high level delegation is like I’m not like just ignoring it. Right? This is where a lot this worry comes from Hey, there’s all these things I know I need to get to but if I’m being honest I’m getting to, I’m just hoping they’re not going to bite me. And Lisa what you’re saying is let’s bring someone in who is trained who is managed let them take care of that thing. So you can not worry about it and it actually gets done.

Lisa Zeeveld  07:34

Sometimes we’re our own worst enemies. I mean, I was sitting here right you know, and saying that without my assistant, I would work way too much. I would be way too reactive. And so I wouldn’t show up as my best self. So what my assistant is doing is she’s protecting me. Like in your example you use like, Hey, I can’t lay my phone down because I’m worried I’m gonna have a client who’s going to need me. I love that, we want to provide exceptional client service like yeah, amen to that. But, if you’re doing that all the time, your level of exceptional service like on a scale of one to 100, right, you might be an 80, because you just can’t continue to react like that all the time. But if there’s some lower level, exceptional things that your assistant could handle for you, right, because, you know, there’s going to be a certain handful of things that they can’t do on your behalf of course. They’re responding to things like hey, can I see a statement or Oh, I got a question about this, like, hey, they’re handling all that so that when you are needed, you come out of the gate and you have the best solutions for them the best reactions and you’re able to offer that exceptional service at a 100. Or let’s go beyond let’s go to 110. Because you have the energy to do that. When you’re spreading yourself too thin, you’re not acting at your best and you’re not giving your clients the best either.

Matthew Jarvis  08:53

Yeah, and we can even look at this from a risk management perspective. I love looking at the abundance mindset. You and I are on the same page, the piece mind, the time, the quality declines, but let’s look at it from a risk management side. I know Belay does a lot in bookkeeping. I was actually recently working with Stephen of course you know from Retirement Tax Services, stressing again the importance to advisors that every business owner has to, non-negotiable, has to have a bookkeeper if your CPA does it, great, if not, you’ve got to bring one in. Because from a compliance standpoint, we say well, I’ll get to that bookkeeping and then you miss a quarterly tax payment to the IRS or your payroll doesn’t get reported correctly or you get audited and the IRS says hey, substantiate all those deductions. And you’re like, Well, I have them somewhere. These aren’t just for fun things right? These are things that if someone’s not doing them, and you shouldn’t be doing that. But if someone’s not doing them, you’re gonna have a big problem. So talk to us about a little, about this peace of mind being more than just a mental headspace. Like it’s legitimate, like you can in fact, have peace of mind because these things are getting done.

Lisa Zeeveld  09:49

For me, I mean, it’s it’s risk managing it, right so what I’m thinking here is that, gosh, there’s a lot of risks. And me not having an expert who’s going to take care of my books for me, you know? Sure. I mean, you’re going to be gifted in the area of numbers. You should be in this business, right? But the idea of you sitting here and you making sure your bills are paid and you reviewing things, that’s fine. You know, some of our best writers, right? They’re going to have somebody who’s going to be an editor or who’s going to come behind them, read things. Second look at everything. And that’s what your bookkeeper is doing. If you’re the only one who’s doing your finances, you’re gonna miss the details. You’re going to take some shortcuts because again, it’s not your gifting. You want to get through it, but your bookkeeper loves this. This is what they are paid to do. So when you get your set of financials, you’re gonna know things are gonna jump off the page that probably would not have if you were doing it yourself when I was at RTS last year, one of my favorite events all year, I offered a free consultation.

Matthew Jarvis  10:50

That’s right. Yeah, that was hugely valuable. Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld  10:53

And I say anybody in the room if you want me, I’m the CFO of Belay. If you want me to take a look at your financials, just go up and see me this is all confidential and let me look through them. You know, some people didn’t realize how much they might be spending on gifting. Right? I mean, gifting is a big thing, we want you to give, but it’s an in proportion is it in the right way. They didn’t think of it any different. Like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. But for me, because by the end of that few days, I had seen a lot of different financials, and I could all of a sudden start seeing trends. So I wasn’t giving away confidential information. But I was able to say, Gosh, looks like you’re gifting is a little bit high. Have you thought of other ways for you to show your exceptional service? So but if you’re the one who’s doing it, I mean, you’re right there you’re like two inches away from the information. Step back. Have a bookkeeper do that for you. You can still leverage your CPA that’s great, but then you’re getting a different perspective of it. You’re having an expert who’s taking care of it and you’re also protecting yourself goes back to risk management. That if you do get called up for an audit, you know that you have everything in line and it’s a lot cheaper to go through that when you have all your information ready to hand over, than if you’re digging for it and you’ve got to hire a specialist.

Matthew Jarvis  12:09

Yeah, it’s it’s both a lot cheaper and in the audit or we’re focused on risk for a second but the audit is much smoother. So I’ve been through I want to say more than my share of audits. But everyone has been audited feels that way from various different organizations from the IRS to the SEC. And when you hand an auditor a clean set of books, right there, it says that you’re a professional and the audit, the scrutiny goes way down. But if I just have one line item, right, it’s like expenses. Oh man, this thing is going to go forever. I even specifically had an audit one time Lisa. And they were asking about something really specific and they were getting ready to drill in on this thing. And I said you know what, great news. We have a service we use that  takes care of that. And the whole discussion stopped right there .They said, Oh, okay, done. Whereas they were getting ready when they had like their papers there. They were ready to go deep on this thing, and as soon as I said no, I have someone that takes care of it. Done, wasn’t a problem. Lisa I would love for you to speak to, and you highlighted this just briefly, both the skill set but also the mindset sometimes we have this head trash around delegation, especially about something as tedious as bookkeeping can really apply to everything. And we think wow, I hate doing this. Therefore everyone must hate doing this. And I would feel like a bad person. If I handed this dirty work like my dirty laundry to someone. And Lisa that’s not in fact the case.

Lisa Zeeveld  13:21

No, these people love it. You know, when we think about people in my family who are engineers. Right. Why did you pick an engineer out? All you have to say is the word Lego. Lego? Immediately. You know, it’s as an engineer or an architect. It’s somebody who loves to build. The same thing happens for teachers. When you were a kid, right? You’re all well, we would play school all the time. This is what we love to do. The same thing happens for people like me who love numbers, and who want to actually have them service and bookkeeping and finance. Like we just love numbers. And so it’s not that you’re handing over something yucky. It’s not an episode of dirty jobs. These are people who thrive in this environment and not only because it’s their natural gifts, you know, their gifting that something actually was gifted to them. That’s to say this is where you are going to excel at. But they also love helping small businesses. They know that there is an entrepreneur, a business owner out there who has really struggled to be able to do the financials, the struggle to be able to see where their expenses are at. And so when you think about giving this up to somebody, it really is somebody who is leveraging the skill set and elevating your business because they enjoy it so much. So yeah, get rid of that head trash throw it away. It’s not something that’s important.

Matthew Jarvis  14:49

I love it. I love it. Lisa, let’s talk about this from one other angle, which is this sort of myth that like hey, I’ll hire an executive assistant. I’ll hire a bookkeeper. I’ll hire whomever when. So like this idea of like when I get to x, then I’ll do it. But it sort of creates I’d be curious, have you seen this differently? I want to do this crazy. You never end up getting to x or x is always moving. And so you say as a small business owner, hey, listen, when I get to a half million of revenue or three quarters of a million or a million then I’ll hire a personal assistant. But either you never get to that point, because you’re doing minimum wage work, or you keep moving it like Well, when I get to a million to 1.5 million 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, and then your life just gets more and more frantic. So speak to as Lisa from your experience again, having worked with hundreds thousands of people now. Is there a spot where it’s too soon to get an executive assistant or a virtual assistant?

Lisa Zeeveld  15:38

I mean, obviously, you have to have a little bit of money in the business, right? Right. Yeah, you got to be able to write the check. But I really think of it like if you talk to some real estate investors, they’ll always tell you what when you make money in real estate and it’s when you buy the property. Sure, right. It’s, you know, because you’ve got to get it for a good deal. The same thing happens when you start to think about delegation. People wait, well, I’m gonna wait until I have more things to delegate. I’m gonna wait until I get a revenue number, right? It’s really not about that. It’s starting to train yourself especially if you’ve never leveraged an assistant before you’re not very good at delegating. I start with people and how they run their home. Do they still do their own log work? Or have they hired somebody to come in clean their home? Do they take this is really silly, but you want imagine like how many people kind of look at me. Are you okay to take your car and get it detailed, are you the person, are you the guy that actually has to drive through the carwash and you sit there and you vacuum your own carpets, right? It starts out with those little things because it tells me where your heart is and what that muscle is like. And if you’re like well, I can just do it because it’s cheaper when I do it, you’re gonna have a harder time. So the quicker you learn to delegate, start with those smaller tasks and grow. And that’s what’s great about Belay is we have all different types of packages. So you can start out at an entry level and grow over time. The more you get into that business and the more that you’re used to doing your own books, and booking your own travel and doing your own calendar, the harder it’s going to be to let go of that tight fist and say it is worth to give it up to somebody so I say the sooner the better as long as you can afford it, you know, you got to look at your bills, but But yeah, sooner rather than later.

Matthew Jarvis  17:23

I was just as you were explaining that the ability to get a fractional virtual assist our fractional bookkeeper, I won’t speak to how long you’ve been in industry I probably just a week or two right because you’ve been industry a long time right? Having fractional people that was not an option. I think the beginning of my career, and maybe yours. It was like if you wanted an assistant you had to find them yourself. You had to hire them you to train them, you had to work them full time pay and benefits. You were worried they were gonna leave. They had to keys to the kingdom. And so it was a huge right you’re talking about in today’s dollars, I don’t know 50, 60, $80,000 $100,000 with taxes and benefits versus be able to hire a trained fractional person who actually knows what they’re doing. And so I mentioned that because I think at this point, if you don’t have a fractional virtual assistant, it’s like not having an iPhone or a smartphone. Like listen, I just I’m not gonna do this thing. I gotta I’m gonna make my own phone or I’m gonna make landline calls. This technology available to us. It’s foolish to not take advantage of it.

Lisa Zeeveld  18:18

100% Yeah, I mean, gosh, I can remember and this goes on to the service provider side, that after I started growing my family, I wanted to work part time and there was a lot of compliance around me not even being able to work part time in the industry. And I was told no, no, no, no, no we’re here was somebody. I mean, I had years of experience that I could, you know, give and partake in a business, but I couldn’t because as you mentioned, a long time ago, that wasn’t allowed. And so now you have you’re able to access that skill set in a fractional basis, not having that overhead burden cost of any of that and this person wants to work that much. So really is a win win. You talked about the bookkeeper and like feel bad cuz you’re gonna give them something you don’t want to do. Remember they love to do it. Your assistant as well. And they want to be able to do it within a certain amount of hours that they have, let us know here in Belay and so we’re finding clients that fit where they are in their life. So it’s a win win for everybody. And then if you want to grow a lot of our assistants can grow with you over time. We do actually even have assistants who are working nearly full time with other business owners because they were able to scale up with them. And then sometimes, hey, it’s a lean season, they can scale down to you can’t do that with a full time w2 employee.

Matthew Jarvis  19:42

No, you can’t and there’s sort of this myth that like, hey, I’ll find someone who lives in my town or lives next door to me that wants to do this part time that that doesn’t work. Like that’s so rare, like maybe that’s one in 1000 or one in 5000 versus a proven commodity. Lisa I want to share a delegation success story I would love to hear you always have really great ones. I love like you I love connecting with you like that’s why you and I had so much fun at the RTS seven we love connecting we love meeting with people, something I had previously been poor about when I meet someone like yourself at a conference I think that Lisa was she was really sharp. I want to connect with her again but then life would get busy and nothing would ever happen right and then those connections would be lost it would be a wasted opportunity. What my assistant now does is every time I come back from an event she asked me hey, who did you connect with at the event? I Geez I met this Lisa gal from Belay. She’s incredible. Cool. What book would you like me to send Lisa as a follow up? So now Reina my assistant every time I come back from event. Now who did you meet? I write down three or four people, what book would be most impactful for that person? stops by my house. But luckily my assistant is local. But this works whether they’re lccal or not, has me write a card and then puts it with the book puts it in cool wrapping paper things that my mind doesn’t work on and takes it to the post office and mails it. And so I just the other day got an email from a very important strategic partner saying I can’t believe you thought of me enough to send me this book. I love this book. This was so incredible. And in my mind, at least I was a tiny bit guilty of like, actually, that took zero effort for me in that one moment, but it did take effott, I’m gonna hire an assistant and I’m gonna give that assistant a priority of making these connections. So this is now like 10x in my life. Because I delegated something that I previously just wasn’t even even doing which I think is the like the the pinnacle everything you and I chat about.

Lisa Zeeveld  21:24

Oh, absolutely. I mean I say all the time that my assistant is amazing at gift giving. I want to be amazing. I’m giving away my secrets here. I want to be great at gift giving, but I just don’t have that talent. I mean, I think there’s some people who really just have that amazing talent. So their love language if you will. Yeah, exactly that love language but she is and so all of a sudden right like something I’m not good at she’s able to come out of the gate and I love that you’re leveraging Reina to do that because that is where the deep connections are made. Very few people send a gift. Very few people do a handwritten card, all of those things. And our assistants are thinking of that and they’re saying, Hey, I know this is what’s going to make a difference and it wasn’t relationships. I’m going to get out ahead of it. I mean, even my assistant you know, we talked about having a family. She helps me make my family’s doctor’s appointment. She’s keeping my family healthy. She’s keeping me healthy. You know, she’s making sure I don’t forget my mom’s birthday. Like those may seem like really little things but they just help you come across as a person of integrity and character, but things that are in there but that you’re just focused on elsewhere and really amplifies them

Matthew Jarvis  22:37

Lisa as you’re going through that list. I felt like you were reading like my lists because those are definitely things that I’ve had assistants do like hey, it’s Mother’s Day coming up. You know what flowers would you like me to send you anything specific or I’ll take care of that and sometimes we get stuck we should be curious your thoughts I know I do. Sometimes we get stuck on this like Hey, I should I should be the one that remembers this. I should be the one that schedules my kids doctor. I should be the one. But to your point Lisa, you mentioned like with the gift. That’s that’s just not my area of genius and so me like staying out of my area of genius is not helping anyone if I can find someone for whom that is an area of genius, and I spend more time in my area of genius, then the entire world is a better place. And so I think we’ve got to get out of our own head trash our own way of like somehow I’m doing a bad thing by delegating I’m really doing the best possible thing I can by delegating.

Lisa Zeeveld  23:24

100%. Yeah. And then like you said, it’s a muscle once you start to utilize it, it just continues to grow and it gets so much easier. And then you start looking for things. I do this with my assistant on a quarterly basis. I asked, you know, because our assistants also want to grow. Yeah, but there’s not necessarily like a lateral moves. Like, oh, I’m gonna go from here and I’m gonna run an office. Like when we were in the office, we’re back in the day again, I’m aging myself, but you all want to be this. I’m gonna go here. And that’s really not a thing, right? And so but there’s tasks and there’s skill sets that they want to grow in or things that they just love to do. And so by sitting down with my assistant on a quarterly basis, I can say hey, of this past three months, what did you love doing and what do you want more of. Okay, and all of a sudden, I happen to know that my assistant love puzzles. She likes figuring things out, right? So like, a good research, you know, tasks. She’s like, just give it to me. I want to get in there and I’m gonna dig into it. I love that stuff. She also loves to plan events. So if we’re doing a team meeting, she wants to handle it all. Well I think events are fun too. So it’s really easy for me to veer off and get like really distracted, but I know that she loves it. And so it’s being a great leader, that’s what I do. So I did. I give her more of that. And then job satisfaction starts to go through the roof because she loves it. And so having those conversations about the areas that they’re really good at and the areas that they really love to do help you develop that muscle and so you start doing it more and more and more as you get more creative, too. All of a sudden, she’s like, Hey, I’m gonna do this and you’re like, No, you have the skill set to do that. But it’s having that open dialogue will help you additionally delegate more.

Matthew Jarvis  25:05

I love that. So that’s that’s a check and you do on a quarterly basis since we’re on that topic, Lisa, tell us a bit more about the cadence you use and you recommend with assistants, right. So as far as check ins or communication back and forth, what have you sort of found to be the best for that? So you’ve got this quarterly check in, I obviously check in more often than that. Could you give us some insights there.

Lisa Zeeveld  25:25

Yeah, I mean, I do a weekly zoom call with my assistant. So just get on a quick zoom call. I have a full entire virtual company. So people out there listening, you’re thinking I don’t know if this whole virtual thing is for me this remote work. We’ve done it for 14 years. We’re not a brick and mortar, we’re even me as a CFO. I don’t have an office I’m right here in my home today. And so I love to see people’s facial expressions, their body language, so we’re going to do zoom. On occasion we might jump on the phone, but mostly it’s zoom we’re going to do that every week via zoom. Okay, and what and if you don’t have an hour, that’s fine to give it 30 minutes sometimes it might just be a 15 minute check in, but you’re really going to see like what’s happening during the next week, next seven to 10 days, where are you thriving? Where’s he or she? Is there anything else that they can take off your plate, things of that nature. So that’s like the weekly check in, that you’re just gonna do I also have a task list that keeps rolling. I happen to use Google Suite and so it’s super easy for me to have tasks. When she’s on my email, she can have tasks for me as well. But then those quarterlies are really tied with what we want to call like a planning meeting, when we’re going to give just a little bit of extra time if we have it in the calendar, or we’re not going to talk about the routine things and we’re just only going to spend an hour talking about planning because again, time is of the essence here. But this is where we are going to do a good check in and say I call it you know, promises and expectations. And we started this from the beginning like I promise to always give you as much information as I have. I expect you if it’s not enough to ask the questions back to me. And so we sit down for these quarterly so what we’re going to do is we’re going to go through that list of promises and expectations and she has them for me to, or vice versa. And then we’re going to find out what’s working what’s not working and are there any things that both of us need to delegate sometimes she has to delegate to other people on the team, you know, because her role is growing. There’s things that maybe I need to delegate but she doesn’t have the skill set to do where can I put those things, but it just helps us grow our relationship helps grow trust, which you need to have because I would say she’s an extension of me. Those quarterlies helped to build that trust and to grow her skill set, while giving me additional peace of mind because as soon as you gain a little bit of extra space in your day 100% Something else is going to try to fill it’s not a one and done. It’s not a delegate and be done like that. So it’s going to be more things that I can delegate to her when certain things are just antiquated and old and you don’t need to do them anymore. Maybe there’s no ROI. I used to delegate that to you. There’s no ROI on it. Let’s stop doing it all together. So for the quarterly do for us.

Matthew Jarvis  28:11

I really appreciate that you share that something that’s really helped and and I think all of the platforms now have it Google meet or zoom, all of them have these little AI notetaker things which are sort of mixed like I don’t like them enough to send them to a client like they’re not a good recap for client, but they’re a really good recap for those assistant meetings. So I have my assistant I do the same weekly check in and then I’ve asked Reina to go back and say just look at the summary and make sure that everything we discussed got onto your list. Because Lisa like you I like to talk fast. We go through a million different things. But I want to make sure I’m setting my assistant up for success, not failure. So there’s ever a time where like, Hey, I told my assistant to do x and it didn’t get done. That’s where I always wanna  take a step back I’m like, Alright, Did I did I set them up for success? Or was that like a passing comment mid three other thoughts that of course they of course they missed so that that’s a tool I highly recommend for everybody.

Lisa Zeeveld  28:57

And speaking of you know, AI right. We’re starting to hear more and more about it. The great thing about our assistants and our bookkeepers here at Belay as we’re leveraging the latest technology, we also know is that it takes a human to make that technology work at its best. And so if you’re thinking of like, well, I don’t know I’ve got this automation that runs in the background and you know, it works just fine. No, this is taking it to a different level. And your assistant is going to use a technology to get more hours out of his or her day. But it’s just a tool in their toolbox like you said, and those promises and expectations help with that too. Because you’re gonna see. Being a leader is like a mirror. You’re gonna see really quickly you know, if you have any faults or areas that you need to improve on and allowing your assistant to kind of give you feedback in those weekly meetings or quarterly or however you do it is only going to set you up for success.

Matthew Jarvis  29:55

Well Lisa we could go on this for hours. In fact we have at the at the Tech Summit last year. Again this year the tax summit, but what are some specific action items that come to mind that our listeners could take action on right away? Anything that comes to mind for you, Lisa?

Lisa Zeeveld  30:08

Absolutely email, calendaring. Those are super easy. Travel arrangements, those are difficult. Especially if you are budget conscious and you’re looking for the right price and the right time like just hand that over. That’s super easy to do. You know, if you’re following search, you got to get them in your calendar, right? They need to be able to know how to do that. And as you and I talked about any of those personal appointments, easy stuff to start to get rid of dentists, doctors, you know taking a look at gym memberships and things like that, they can schedule it, handle it all for you. You’re gonna see immediate ROI there. Number one in the form of dollars. Yes, we got a calculator for that but also the thing that is harder to really put $1 in and that’s your peace of mind.

Matthew Jarvis  30:53

It really is. The other action I would get everybody I mentioned this a little bit earlier texts the letters RIA to 55123. You’ll get Belay’s ebook on delegation, which Lisa and I were talking before we hit record. This is really like the checklist of the bare minimums like everything that comes on this list. You almost need to take this download this and use it as a self assessment. Because if every single thing on that list isn’t delegating, you’ve got a problem. Like you need to call Billy today like not tomorrow today and get this in motion. So Lisa, so much appreciate your time. Thank you so much for the insights. I love this checking in quarterly one of the things that you love doing promises and expectations. Always a pleasure to talk to you and we’ll be really excited to see you again in September 25th to 27th at the Tax Summit, and for all our listeners until next time, happy planning. Before you leave a quick word from our sponsors. Hey everybody, I want you to take a quick look around your office and on your desk. There should be the Retirement Tax Services desktop tax guide. And if it’s not there, or if it’s not current, meaning you didn’t download it in the last month, go to retirementtaxservices.com and download the desktop tax guide. This is a must have resource for every financial advisor committed to tax planning