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Jamie Shilanski  

Y’all plan for this. What is the difference between follow up and nagging? Marriage. Welcome back TPR nation. This is Jamie Shilanski, an episode of worlds to conquer, and today I want to talk to both the leaders of the organization as well as their team members. So if your team members are not already actively listening to The Perfect RIA, you’re going to want to share this episode. Because I bet if you have one or more employees, they struggle with this topic habitually. So one of the very first thing Matthew Jarvis tells people when they say, Hey, I’m a solopreneur, which is just one person. You don’t really have the revenue yet to support hiring another person. What should I do? What is the best way for me to the very first person? Advice that he gives you is, go hire somebody. Go hire yourself a fractional a part time and executive however you want to structure it, however you can make it happen, but go hire somebody to do the tasks that are taking up a lot of your time that aren’t worth the revenue that you want to make. So you might be thinking to yourself, but I don’t have an hourly rate. That’s not how I’m paid. I’m paid on a quarterly basis. I’m making commission. Of course you are, of course, you are your financial advisor, all right, but we all have hourly rates, and it’s just math. We just back into it, right? So what you do is that you take the revenue that you’re earning at the divide it by the number of appointments that you have, not times that you’re playing office, and then tack on a couple of extra times that you have to actually do the work that you told clients that you were going to get done, and then you’ll come up with your hourly rate. So let’s just say, for conversation, your hourly rate is $100 an hour. And so right now, you’re making, you know, everything that you do that is client related is $100 an hour, and there are 2080 hour, King hours out of the calendar year. And so you’re looking at it, and you’re saying, All right, well, here’s all these laundry lists of tasks that I have to do. I have to, you know, update my insurance licensing. I’ve got to get my Eno. I’ve got to file for the state, you know, business license. Oh, gosh, you know, I need the irrigation person to come out and work on my sprinkler. I need to do all of these different tasks that pop up for all of us, no matter where we are at in our careers. Well, you look at that and say, All right, is this task is following up with the irrigation person, $100 an hour task. And if the answer is yes, go do that task. But if the answer to that question is no, this is just a follow up phone call to make sure the contractor is coming out, get it scheduled, make sure my spouse knows all of these things cool. Go hire somebody for $25 an hour to do that task. Now, Jamie, how do I find somebody? How do I hire them? Here’s tip number one, do not look in your gene pool to hire someone. Do not look at your family and say, Hey, this cute niece of mine needs a job. I have some of these tasks to do. They don’t need a lot of time. I only mean five or 10 hours out of the week. I’m gonna hire this person. Because when you hire that niece of yours and she’s, let’s just say, 1718, years old, and you’re trying to give her a fresh start, etc, what happens when the family has an outing that they want to go on, but you have work that you need to get done, or what happens when she wants to go to a concert or a soccer game or all of these different activities that are going to occupy her life. She is not going to treat your job as a real job. She will not do it that takes a certain caliber person and a certain caliber of a boss in order to make that person treat it that way. They’re going to see you as the aunt, as the uncle. They are not going to see it as real work you because you as the leader did not set up the expectation for it to be a real job. And by the way, by the way, I am one tough cookie, and when I parent, it is strict, it is firm, it I’m encouraging, I’m supportive, but there is no gentle parenting in this household. I am going to make sure that I am setting you up for success by being a better human being. My responsibility as a parent is to make you a good and functioning adult. That is my responsibility, and how you take those lessons is up to you. That’s my parenting philosophy. So when I tell you that they will not see it as a real job. I am speaking from experience that as hard and as candor and as fierce as I could be, I even tiptoed in with my own in different ventures that we have outside of our Ria, my own family members. I raised my niece as a daughter in this weird and maybe this is what all nieces are, daughter kind of sister relationship and my son, and they’re about the same age, you know, a couple years apart, and yet both of them will come to me with questions that they should not be asking me. And I have to stop myself, and I have to say, are you asking the CEO of this company what you’re doing as an employee, or are you asking me to listen to you as a mom or as an aunt, and then I have to check them from inappropriately entering into an area where they’re asking me for permission to work from home, for driving in late, for being able to go on this family trip. Whatever the thing is, you have to set yourself up for that. And if it happens to me, it will 100% for sure happen to you. And here’s the worst thing of all, you can’t fire them, because then you have to face your spouse. You have to face your mom, your dad, whoever it is, and know that you are the jerk that fired the family member because they weren’t doing the work that needed to get done. So when I tell you to look outside your gene pool, it is not just for your benefit. It’s also for them, because you are robbing them of the resiliency it takes to hold a job. Getting a job super easy, holding a job little bit trickier, and when you allow them to take all of these different privileges, you would not allow anyone else in that role to take. You have done them an incredible injustice, and you have hurt them from becoming a good and functioning adult. So if you’re looking for people to hire, I say, Look outside your gene pool. You guys already know we’ve partnered up with our friends at BELAY.  BELAY is, you know, I think they’re running probably, if I’m really Canada, about it about an 80% success ratio on placing people with us, and that’s okay. I know that I hired a BELAY assistant to help me as well. And one of my organizations, I found that my executive assistant at the RA was getting overwhelmed with just what he was doing in that organization. And so when I have this other multi million dollar company, I needed somebody else to help me start executing and following up on certain tasks. I partnered up with delay and I hired at the time. I couldn’t conceive in my mind that I would need any more than, you know, maybe five hours of somebody’s time. We get 90 days into this, and she comes back and says, Hey, is there any authorization for more hours? Because I’m not getting everything done as quick as you want me to, because I’m kind of constrained by this. Now you can work with somebody or you can work with somebody exclusive. And I said, You know what, you’re smashing these tasks. I’ve got a ton more that I’m starting to give you, because I’m now engaging your competency level, and it was super high. And so I said, Yeah, absolutely. Let’s, let’s bring on some more hours. And so for that, I think I’m spending, you know, between two or $3,000 a month for somebody so that I’m spending between 24,040 8000 on an assistant in a part time capacity that’s working. And I’m saying part time, but I think she probably does about, you know, 50 hours a week. And guys, that’s exceptional. I’m not doing any benefits. This is a contractor. It’s a business. Write off. I don’t have to worry about any of those type of HR things, if you will. With this particular employee, I could just load them up with tasks and watch them smash through the list. Now, the reason I say it’s an 80% 80% success ratio is I did have a really great virtual assistant with  BELAY, but then, you know, as we just picked up our stride, probably four months into it, she was sitting for her thesis and needed to take off because she was getting her doctor in psychology, etc. She did a phenomenal job. It was great. We had to transition to somebody else, so I found that interruptive towards the work I was trying to get done. But that’s gonna happen, right? This is an indentured servitude. If I hired somebody full time in that role, I’m still going to run into that same problem. I have people leave, people move on to their prospects. People have babies, people’s husbands, PCs, whatever the excuse is, we’re still going to have that turnover. But guess what? I didn’t have to sit but in the interviews until the very end, when  BELAY had already sourced the type of person. And the very first thing that they did was they had an interview with me and see me just fly through what I was looking for. And then those candidates got to watch me and see if that was a good fit. Now that was really important, because if you are watching a video of me, recording and lining out all the work that you get done and what success like, what my philosophies are, doesn’t resonate with everyone. I mean, if I had a badge monitor to wear, it’s probably not play well with others, because I’m not suitable for all audiences. Not everyone finds this type of communication acceptable or calming or productive. They’re just not into it. Totally cool. I get that myself. I There are other people I can’t stand. I’d rather bang my head against a wall, then work with an individual just because I’m not connect with them on the way that needs to needs to happen. And so these individuals got an opportunity to watch me in action and then decide if that was the kind of role that they wanted to step into. So they were already a little bit familiar with got to smash through these tasks. So if you don’t know where to start or who to hire, hit us up at lifestyle@theperfectria.com We’ll make it into  BELAY. There are some other great programs out there. I used to be a really big fan of the mom and the mom program takes stay at home moms that are looking for part time jobs and puts them to work if you genuinely have 10 or fewer hours a week in which you just need help, that’s a great program. If you need somebody more robust. I don’t like it anymore, and here’s why I am so freaking sick and tired of talking to employees who are in school pickup lines. I don’t know why we all thought that we had to hand deliver our children to school every single day in this country, all of a sudden, but it is ridiculous. Every single time you know they’re like, oh, it’s only 15 minutes for my house. You are not taking a 15 minute break. This is not a 15 minute break to go pick up your kids. And you are lying to yourself if you think it is. Go read. Go study deep focus. Go figure out different books for you to learn how the brain works. Because if you know you have to know for something, then you are preparing for it an hour or 30 minutes mentally ahead of time. And then, even if you’re running out the door because you decide to do some task, in between that space, you’re still driving to that place. You’re returning phone calls, you’re picking up the kids, you’re waiting for the kids to come out like and I’ve never once seen a kid book it out of school without hugging or high fiving or talking to everyone like it summer camp like you’re never going to see these people again for another year. Get freaking hard. Let’s go. I’ve got stuff to do, and so I don’t like hiring moms that have those obligations right now. I find it really interruptive, and they’re not really focused on getting stuff done. Now, if I had somebody that was a great stay at home mom, and they just they knew that they could give me three or four hours out of their day, and this is the time they could focus. Fantastic, fantastic. There is a wealth of knowledge and skill set out there for those individuals. But do not deceive yourself. If you are stay at home mom, you cannot have the full time job also, I just, I really don’t think so, because you’re super distracted or sloppy, you’re either not paying attention to your kids or you’re not paying attention to work. You don’t get to have both. You need to pick which one it is. And I’m not saying you can’t balance it with somebody. I’m saying it’s incredibly hard, and I think there’s a lot of pressure on women in particular to be able to do it all, and we have to look at, what does it all mean? What are we actually trying to accomplish? And I’m a go getter. I’m a beast, right in that fashion, but I will tell you right now, if I was had little ones at home and was focused on them and their upbringing, their schooling, their education, all of those things I cannot get done most of my day, no way, no how, not without all the interruptions that are constantly coming. So those are the things that you need to think about. So if we looked at your hourly rate and we looked at hiring somebody for an assistant, that’s how we would do the math on it, and we would have them go do all those tasks. Why have them go do all those tasks? But Jamie, that’s an expense, and I’m trying to increase my revenue. Yeah, but you’re not increasing your revenue because you’re focused on all those other little trivial tasks. And you’re not prioritizing who you need to be in the next few years. You’re not thinking about, how do I get ahead and get where I need to be? When you get out of bed and you finish up your morning success ritual. The very first thing you should be thinking about is who I’m going to be next year. What does my income look like? What does my clients look like? What does my practice look like? What does my life look like? And designing things and making decisions on how you’re going to be proactive about your day instead of reactive about your day, that should be your prioritization. And if you can take a bunch of those remedial tasks and hand them over to somebody else and finish them so that way you can make decisions when you have all the information gathered. You guys total success. Move, total success. Move. The most successful people know how to delegate their time. They know how to delegate their time. It’s not because they’re lazy, it’s because they are simply evaluating what they need to do and when they need to do it. So there are times that you want to make decisions and do things for yourself. This isn’t a matter of, Oh, you just hire everything forever, you know, all this kind of stuff. I mean, I was looking at you guys, know, garage experts. So they come in and they epoxy or for Plus, they do these, like, European style cabinets. I mean, it is mouth dropping, gorgeous garage work. And so I had the guy come out and gave me a quote. And the quote to our garage was, like, $35,000 to install some storage shelving and to bring in a couple wardrobe European style cabinets and epoxy my floor. And I look at that, and I’m like, Dude, this is an afternoon for me, not the epoxy part. I’m totally going to outsource that, but this is an afternoon of having a Lowe’s delivery drop all the stuff on my house. I can drill the stuff into my wall. I’m not spending $25,000 doing this task. And I kind of like it. I like using the drill and doing that kind of stuff in my garage sometimes. And so instead, I just went through his list. I gave it over to my assistant. I said, Go price all these things out with a comparable product that’s locally delivered, and then tell me what the final price was. I found out that instead of $35,000 I could do it for $2,700 and I said, Great, have everything dropped off and delivered at my house, and I’ll get this done, and then we’ll schedule the epoxy part of it. That was a good resource of my time. She went and did all the grunt work. She did all the ordering, she did all that tracking down. And then when it arrives, I’m just gonna have to unbox it and then drill the stuff into the wall and set all everything up how I want it to be. But then there are times that when I, like have to change the battery on my grizzly Yamaha grizzly four wheeler that they put in the most like, I have to seven things to get to this battery, and I’m sitting down there and I know that I’m behind on my content, and I’m looking at this battery, and I’m unbolting stuff, I’m unclipping it, I’m trying to get the rack off, because it has the front rack. And I was like, Wait, hold on pause. What am I doing? And I had to step back and say, Okay, I could spend the next three hours changing this battery, because lord knows something’s going to go wrong when it always does, and figure out how to do this myself. Or I could stop have my household manager, have somebody come out and change out this battery, and then I’m going to go record X amount of content or write X amount of articles that are going to bring in. You know, I know, every time I publish an article, how many prospects it’s going to bring in. And so I’m like, nope, stop. I’m now, I’m now wasting my time. This is not something that I’m going to dedicate towards doing. So this delegation of time needs to go through that filter. It needs to go through that filter of where am I in my highest and best use it. When does it make sense to hire somebody else to do work that they can do, but nobody can do the work that I’m doing. I can’t hire somebody else to go do what I know needs to get done, because it falls on me. I have a unique skill set, and so I know it’s not very easy for me to outsource that particular activity. So that’s the filter you have to use every single day when you’re looking at your tasks. And if you’re in that growth stage, if you’re in that building stage, if there are things, if you don’t have an executive assistant, and you want to double your income in the next year to two years or three years, what are you doing? There’s no way you’re going to make it happen. We all have the same amount of time. So now we get into this role of hire this executive assistant, but they’re not getting things done the way that I want them to get it done, or as fast, or they’re totally allowing the ball to drop all these kind of things. And so when I talk to assistants across multiple fields, what they say is, you know, I put it on my boss’s calendar. I’ve done everything. I’ve got a protocol in place. And before you hire someone, you need to flush out a communication policy. And this communication policy tells people how they can connect and how they can approach you on different subjects and the appropriate things to bring to your attention. And then this way you’re not getting bogged down, but don’t need your attention or don’t need to get escalated, because team members don’t know what needs to get escalated and what doesn’t. Here’s a great, trivial example. I told you, I have two executive assistants for two different organizations. One of them’s here in Alaska. One of them is in North Carolina. And I gave, I was kind of looking at my workload. And I gave the North Carolina some of my July Alaska plans, and I said, Hey, I want to go on this camping trip. I’m going to have this experience with my girlfriends. We’re going to need the boats. We’re going to need the kayaks. We’re going to check out the rivers. We’re going to do all of these different things. And then my family’s going to come down and join us. So I want to kind of tie this on to it, etc. And I said, please go do it. And she said, Okay, no problem. Well, she’s going through her filter of prioritization. And July was a long time away. And so she was like, Okay, well, I’ll get that done. Kind of the first part of July. You can’t get it done. The first part of July in Alaska, you absolutely cannot do you know why? Because all the slots are going to be filled. July is, if they’re in earth, it is July in Alaska, and it is the most extraordinary place to visit. But we don’t have a ton of resources. There’s one campground one. It has 50, you know, slots, 75 slots, whatever it is. And that’s it for where we were going. And if you don’t have a spot, you’re not there. And so I looked at that task and she wasn’t getting it done. I said, Hold on, whoa. I delegated this wrong person I need to give her in Alaska, because guess what? She knows. She knows she knows where things are. She knows how that it’s going to be booked fast. She knows the different ferry schedules. She knows when I say that, hey, we got to catch a boat to go across to catch Mac, then she knows that we’re going to need that transportation to and from there’s no cell service. There’s no phone, so there’s no way to call if we get out to these remote agents and we don’t have a pickup for the return. And so really looking at the prioritization of tasks and making sure who is doing what understands the assignment. And that’s an oversight that I had made, and I needed to stop and look at what was getting done. And this person does not understand the logistics of how this works. I shouldn’t have given it to him, my bad. I’m gonna take that back from you, and I’m gonna give it over to this other person. And here’s why I’m doing that, and the way that the executive assistant who had the work taken away said, Oh, that’s wonderful. I’m sure there’s a lot of nuances that I didn’t know about. I totally appreciate it. Here’s what I’ve done so far. Please let me know, and that’s how it needs to be approached with team members. They need to understand the how and the why. You’re giving them the work that they need to get done. But one of them says to me, Okay, listen, I am doing everything I’m supposed to do. I’m following the communication policy. I’m following our process for putting tasks that only my financial advisor, only my executive, only my leader, can get done, but they’re still not getting done. And then I’ve got vendors, centers of influence, clients, whoever following up with me. And when a client, and this is, this is really where you have to sit down with your team as a leader about it. When a client calls your office and they ask for financial planning advice that only you as a financial advisor can give to them, your team member is hearing that like a fire alarm, and it starts as an annoying beeping in the house. It starts as a smoke detector going off. And so they’re like, oh, there’s a noise. It’s super annoying. I need to change that battery. I’ve got to find out where it’s coming from. And then there you approach, and they give you the ladder, they give you the batteries. They do everything. They say, hey, it’s this smoke detector right here. It’s going off because you just come up there and change the battery, because I’m not allowed to, for whatever reason, and you go, oh yeah, yeah. Super simple, easy fix, no problem. Oh, hold on, I gotta go do X, Y and Z. And so when a client calls back for the second time or emails back in for that second time, that smoke detector has now become an entire alarm system in a hotel. We’ve all been in a big commercial building. Our hotel, the arm goes off, and all sudden, it’s not a every minute, it is a Evacuate now, and it becomes this great big burden for them, where it never was for you, because you saw it as a small task. You just needed to change the battery in the smoke alarm. You’ll get to it. But it’s not super important, or priority. And so when a client has to follow up with your office, it becomes an emergency to your team members, because now they feel that they are failing the client because you set them up for failure, you set them up for failure. And so they’ll say, You know what, I’m doing, everything I’m supposed to be doing, but they’re the ones interfacing with the client the most times, and they’re the ones the clients are not going to be nice to. Now, most of the time, we have a hard rule in our office that we will fire a client who is very rude to our staff. That’s a hard rule. If you’re not kind to our staff, you got to go. We have the discernment of working with who we want to but that’s not all of you out there. Not all of you apply that rule. A lot of you have first clients that when their name comes across the caller ID, your employees like freeze up. Their shoulders go up, they roll their eyes, they clinch their jaw, they make some small gesture that they don’t want to answer that phone because they don’t know what version of the client is going to be on that phone on the other receiving line. And if you don’t have that policy, you need to really evaluate their worth against against your employees. And we do this every couple of years. We’ll sit down and we’ll go over the client list and say, Hey, any of these names, if we saw on the calendar, are they giving anyone anxiety? Are we getting anyone dread? Is there any reason that we shouldn’t be working with this person because they don’t fit our values? And we go through that as a team. We make financial decisions like that as a team. Now the financial advisor gets the final call, but we do it collaboratively so that we all have the buy in. And guess what? Financial Advisors, for the most part, your team members, are going to help everyone. They don’t want you to fire clients. They don’t want to necessarily get rid of clients. And if they have the courage to tell you that this client no longer fits our values and they are awful to work with, I don’t want to communicate with them anymore, then you need to have the courage to have that conversation with the client and tell the client to knock their off, or they can go find somebody else to work with. You are building an enterprise. You should not hang your hat on one client relationship, regardless of account size. Think about your values, lean into them and make sure you’re practicing what you preach. So when a team member comes to me and says, Jamie, I’m just following up, then I know that somehow, some way, I’ve let them down, because they’ve already given me a task, and they’re now thinking that they have to follow up with me. And this puts a poise in a really uncomfortable position, and I have to push on people like, Hey, listen, I have a lot going on in my day, and I have a lot of thoughts in my head. So if I’m saying I’m counting on you not to let me fall all the way. You need to be my safety net. You need to follow up with me if I’m not getting things done. And that can be uncomfortable for a lot of employees, because it really kind of resets the hierarchy, the dynamics in the relationship, but if it’s done in a polite and respectful way, I’m so appreciative of it, because they just put it on my radar. And so here’s what that looks like. That looks like something being scheduled on my calendar. And then I have an emergency call with a client come through. I have attorney caller office. I’m going through legal forms. I’m doing something else that has taken away my attention from getting the task than every day. Something has hijacked my day that was more important than the task that I had in front of me. And this is where my team fails me, and this is something that I’m constantly talking to them about. So if they put it on my calendar and they know it’s not done, then they just stop. They stop right there in their tracks, and they don’t want to follow up again. Don’t want to nag me. And so they say, I really feel like I’m nagging you. And I said, Great, what’s the difference between nagging and follow up? It’s marriage. That’s the difference. The person that nags nags you is normally your spouse, because they’re telling you to do something over and over again. You’re like, oh my gosh, stop. I don’t need you to do this, but if I’m paying you to keep me on track, if I’m paying you to make sure that I’m always fierce and at my best, then follow up habitually with me, but give me enough information to make a decision. And so this is where it goes wrong. This is where employees get it wrong. And they’ll say, Hey, I’m following up with you. Let’s take this one, for example. This in my I don’t understand. I beat my head against the wall every single year. I am trying so hard to relinquish control over doing the Christmas presents for our office. I’m a really intentional gift giver, and so I’m really deliberate about what we send our clients for Christmas, and I’m trying so hand that over to two people in my office, and they they just, they don’t see the whole picture, and they don’t think how I think that’s okay. And so you think it’s really easy, oh, it’s just a Christmas gift. Well, no, it’s not so easy. It’s a Christmas gift that I want you to think from the end and back into. How’s it being delivered? What’s the budget for it? Does it exceed what we’re allowed to give clients? What is the client going to do with this item? How’s it being packaged? How’s it what’s the sentiment that goes along with it? My Christmas letter always matches the Christmas gift that we sent to you. I am looking for high value impact down to the date I want it sent to. I want it sent the second Saturday, so they’ve got I want it to arrive on a Friday or Saturday of December, and so that means that by the eighth, ninth or 10th that’s in the mail. We’re getting in the mail, so that they have it. Why do when do most people go through their mail in their packages? It’s kind of like an end of week activity for a lot of people. And so I’m never sure it’s being delivered at a time. They have reflection that it’s coming to the end of the work week, and they are really looking at that. And this is most often when I get the greatest comments from clients like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe this. And then so much of me, thank you so much. And so for whatever reason, my team cannot see that concept as well as I can. They’re they’re trying to, they’re really, really trying to. And so we’re backing into this whole process. But where they fail is they said, Okay, you know, they recorded a loom video, and this blew my mind. This is the freaking drove me nuts. So they recorded loom video, and they’re like, Hey, we thought it through. Here’s the end experience. And they did a great job, kind of they said, This is what we’re recommending. Here’s all these links, here’s all of these different things. This is what it’s going to look like. So they had corrected every mistake they made in the past. They still weren’t thinking it through, but they corrected the mistakes they had made in the past, but the loom video didn’t catch any sound, and when they watched it, there was no audio. So what they did was they went into at minute two, I’m going to show you this, and at minute three, I’m going to give you an example of that. Oh my gosh. Rerecord the video you wasted all of my time watching, and I’m not going to go read like loom already gives me a transcript. If I wanted to read what you had to say, you wouldn’t have recorded Lou. You would have sent me an email. And so I said, Guys, are you freaking kidding me? This is sloppy. Go do it again. And so they do it again, and I still don’t have all of the information to make a decision. So when you’re following up with your boss, with your leader, are you giving them enough information to make a decision. Here’s another, just super easy example. Hey, we have fall surge coming up. Do these dates work for you? And you’re looking at the calendar, you’re like, oh, yeah, okay. And now here’s what the what the assistant should have said, Hey, we’ve allocated seven weeks to fall. Surge, you’re going to see five appointments today a day. You want Fridays off. You have x amount of clients. That means we have X we’re going to not be able to see 10 of your clients this fall. Is that okay with you? Oh, no, it’s not okay. I need to see all of my clients. Great. Is there one or two Fridays you want me to allocate doing more appointments? And I’m like, actually, yeah, you know what? I’ve got something planned date night that night. So let’s do this one. This one, you are not giving me enough information to make decisions with. If you come to me and say, Hey, there’s not enough Appointment Slots this fall, is there not enough because we’re short by one, or is there not enough because we’re short by 100 I have no information to make a decision, so you’re bringing it to my attention, but you’re asking me now to go do all the work to figure out the answer. If you go through you’re an intelligent person, tell me what the things are so I can make a decision and tell you. And once you get to the area that you don’t know how to make a decision, that’s when it gets elevated to me. So you coming to me and saying, I need five more appointment slots, which Friday might work for you to be able to work half a day, whatever. Now I know what decision I have to make, but you didn’t give me originally all of the information. So look at all of your tasks and your activities that you’re going up and you’re following through with your advisor on here’s another great one. Your insurance is due for renewal. Would you like to renew it? What insurance can I have a copy of the declaration policy? Can I see the specifications? How much is the insurance? What are the terms that I could pay it on? You know, give me all of the information that I get to make a decision on okay? And think of it like this, as a team member. If somebody takes you to a restaurant and there’s no menu, and the waiter comes up and says, What would you like to have for dinner? How are you going to make a decision? How are you don’t know what they serve. You don’t want ingredients they have, and you’re going to start rattling off, hey, I’d love to have around it too. Actually, we don’t do that here. Okay, great. Well, what do you do? Well, we do other things, other things. What are the things? Let me make a decision and tell items. All right, second of all, be consistent. If you do not have a weekly meeting with either your team lead, your integrator, your CEO or your executive assistant. Put it on the gosh darn calendar, because there are things you’re thinking that you need to articulate to someone, or questions they have their best solved, not going ping ponging back and forth in text or slack or email, but rather ask an answer. So put it on your calendar. Make sure you’re giving them all the information that they have to be successful. And then as a team member, you must be consistent, you must follow up habitually, not every day, give somebody time to do it. And so the way I like to look at this is, if it’s deadline sensitive, they better be on me to get it done. And if it’s not deadline sensitive, it goes on our weekly meeting. Hey, I’m just following up, making sure so and so got X, Y and Z, I don’t see that’s completed. Do you want me to put this on your calendar for a future date or time? Just had a meeting this morning where I was super frustrated with our marketing squad because we’ve got a July Guess what? They they need everything by July 2, and the person who’s responsible to giving it to them is traveling, so they have one day to get this information back to the marketing team in order for a successful launch. That’s not enough time. That’s not enough time. And so they’re like, Well, we did have it on his calendar. And I’m like, okay, great. And when he missed that deadline because he had another fire he had to put out, who followed up and who made sure it got brought back to his attention? Nobody. Nobody did it. Nobody had done it. They were telling me right then and there. Nobody followed up. And I’m like, a failure. You need to put it back on the calendar. You need to follow up habitually, consistently and respectfully. And then here’s how I like to do it. Hey, this is my third time I’m following up on this matter. I want to make sure we’re not approaching the area where you’re getting frustrated by it. Is this task still a priority to you? Ask the question is still a priority me? Because sometimes I’ll give my assistant something that’s like an 8pm Oh my gosh. I really like to do X, and I’ll and I’ll write it down. I’ll fire it off so it gets out of my mental head. And then they’ll come back and say, Hey, listen, this is my third follow up. And I’m like, Oh, that wasn’t important. That was not important, sorry, scratch it, you know. And so we need a space for that to be and a space for our employees to respectfully come back and ask us to make decisions and when it crosses a line, when they should stop, when they should stop, following up when it’s no longer important, because they don’t know everything you give them is supposed to be important, and they need you to help set the priority of the task, high, medium, low, one through 10. Where are you at with the tasks and the things that they need to accomplish? Increasing your productivity, increasing your revenue, being hyper efficient, being able to delegate your time and discern what’s worth your attention and what isn’t worth your attention. Those are all unique skill sets that you have to develop, and you gotta align yourself with the right type of people to get those tasks done and then set them up for success. They want to succeed. They don’t want to stop they want to be absolute rock stars. But the biggest problem honey, it’s probably you. You are probably the biggest problem in your office, you just don’t know it. So go talk to your team members. Have these candid conversations, give it space and dialog. Be the problem solver, present the problem. Great. Here’s the solution. And if you’re the team member and you’re trying desperately do you your job, but guess what, honey, you might not be doing it efficiently, either you might be asking questions that somebody cannot answer because you did not give them all of the decision making material. If you don’t know what information they need to make a decision, ask the question. Just say, Hey, I’m gonna go gather this information in order for you to make a decision. When I present it to you, what do you need? What do you need? And then you know what? We’ll stop and we’ll rattle off and tell you exactly what we need to go and do those things. You are capable of greatness, but you got to communicate. Use your words, use your words, and everyone, stop everyone’s feelings. Let’s go be extraordinary. Let’s go be our best. Let’s have these type of frank conversations that allow and empower us towards greatness and our future selves. TPR nation, this is Jamie Shilanski, an episode of Worlds to Conquer. 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