Episode 247: Fireside Chat - EAs, Habit App & doing the things only you can do

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders. These podcasts are gonna be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business. I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it.

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Who knows, we might say something good. This is a fireside chat. This is what this— supposed to be. So, so Chris, you just hired an EA?

I did actually. Like, like this is more for like personal, um, personal tasks. Like for example, booking flights, booking reservations, that anywhere that I travel. Like for example, I have a, I have a surprise birthday trip for a friend tomorrow, and I had him make all the reservations and things like that. So yeah, like the way that I'm starting to see myself is like a quarterback, where rather than me being the one that does everything, I'm simply a director where I just gather people that are great at doing things and I'm simply the one like orchestrating everything.

Hmm.

I like it. So what was the, uh, so Chris, you hired an EA recently. So what was the finally the catalyst for you to say, okay, it's time for me to get an EA? Because it's ironic, this, this came up yesterday twice, and then I, no joke, just got off the phone with, uh, with my daily sync with Lauren, uh, a little bit ago, and we were talking about this very thing. In fact, we're probably going to put together a playbook. Maybe if some of you in our leadership community and you all would be interested in, uh, the EA playbook that I put together, um, that kind of has a job description template that Lauren and I work off of, let me know, you know, post in the comments. We'll make sure that we send that over to you guys. But like, for you personally, what was finally the thing that you said, okay, like, I, I, it's time for me to, to get an EA?

Releasing the amount of time that I'm spending on things that really aren't going to generate me revenue, essentially. Like, um, I think that I'm good at orchestrating things. Like, I, I have recently started to look at myself as the quarterback, and the quarterback is not throwing the ball and then running to go and catch the ball to go and score like the touchdown, right? Like, he, you know, he's typically the person, uh, and I'm not necessarily treating myself, but like, he's typically the person with the highest IQ on the team He's really like directing plays. Um, that's how I see myself. So like what I want to do is, uh, is assemble a team of people who are good at whatever, you know, task they're doing. They're great actually. And I'm simply orchestrating how they, how they work with one another. Yeah. Um, and essentially I like, I just found myself spending time on, once again, things that aren't going to get me where I want to get to, uh, in the fastest fashion. So I realized, hey, you know what, I can actually outsource this. Um, and I started doing that a long time ago. I mean, from graphic design, like, technically speaking, I could go into Canva right now, I could watch a YouTube video on how to, you know, create cool templates in Canva and everything, or I can hire somebody that's great at it. And people think that hiring, you know, like an EA or a graphic designer, etc., is, uh, expensive. It's really not when you have a global vision. Prime example, my graphic designer, Colombia, my EA, the Philippines, my web designer, Mexico. And like, you got to remember that there's top talent anywhere that you go. You simply have look, like, look for the right people and have a system in place to be able to weed out your talent. Um, because somebody is a, you know, has a title on LinkedIn of, like, you know, of an EA, it doesn't mean that they're your EA. Yeah.

How many hours are they working for you?

Uh, graphic designers working for, you know, for me pretty heavily, probably around— I mean, heavily in the grand scheme of things, probably like around you know, 10 to 15 hours a week. The web guy recently, um, probably 20+ hours a week. Uh, the EA, I just got him last week, and I, I'm only giving him like little tasks like booking flights. So I'm gonna ease into like into him. Um, one thing that I do have him working on, I don't know if you have, if you heard of the concept of the second brain.

Um, oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Uh, Tiago Forte.

Okay, okay, okay, beautiful.

Come on, Chris, you should know that I know about this stuff. Come on now. Yeah, yeah, I, I know, I, I, I'm all about, I'm all about that stuff. That's really good.

So I'm actually having him implement the second brain because I, I have had a video for months and I've been telling myself, hey, you know what, today after work I'm gonna sit down and watch the video and I'm gonna implement And really, it, it wouldn't take me a long time to implement the teachings in that video, max 8 hours. So like, you know, 8 days for 1 hour. And I'm like, I'll do it later, I'll do it later. Finally, I was like, you know what, like, let me just hire this guy, um, to just implement it, you know, for me. So that's really something that, uh, he, that he's been working on. It should be done by now, but, uh Yeah, so, you know, setting up my second brain in Notion.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, that's, that's where I'm at right now, like, when it comes to outsourcing talent.

So yesterday I was on a call with a business owner, um, uh, Keith, and, and then also I was talking to some, uh, talking to someone else, Matt, about, about an EA. And it was really interesting is that both of them kind of came up— there was this one common thread that I want to share, and I think would be helpful for our community, is that they both basically said, I think I can get— I— one of them was struggling a little bit more with what the EA was going to do, like what the EA was going to do specifically. And then the other one was struggling with, okay, now what am I supposed to be doing? And I actually think that that's the same coin, two different sides, and both of them are important. Somebody listening to this right now can probably say, yeah, I could rattle off 10 different things that I would have someone who is my EA at, you know, 10 hours a week or whatever that may be, um, to be able to do. They could do my payroll, they could check my run, you know, handle my emails completely, they could manage my calendar, etc. I think it's also just as important, maybe even more so, for you, for, for the business owner or the leader, uh, such as yourself, Chris, to think about what are you going to do with the additional time that you have. So see, it was interesting, you were saying, um, hey, I, I feel like my job is to be the quarterback, and my job is to, you know, in that analogy, to be able to pass the ball, right? Call the play, get people, get, set the team up for success, etc. Not necessarily to run the football, certainly not to block, not to catch the football, etc. So you're really clear on what that is. Well, one of the business owners was like, I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing, which I actually thought that was very open and honest for him to say, okay, I have this additional time. He kind of openly said yesterday, you know, it was the day after Memorial Day. He said, I looked at my— I didn't have anything on my calendar. And he said, I'm not so sure I knew exactly what I was supposed to be doing with that open time, which was really— at least he had an awareness to say, here's this whole day, I could have left the office at 11. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing to actually move the business forward. Well, that's a really good conversation to have. And so for him, he was like, you know, I really want to scale my business to $1 million in top-line revenue, and he wants to do it by You know, the next 3 to 4 to 5 years, something like that. Okay, he can get there. We start to think about what are the $250 to $500 an hour tasks that only he can do. There's only a handful, right? There's, there's only a handful. And now this came up on a Fireside Chat with, um, with Munson a few weeks ago, and we were talking about that. But I think for our audience to just actually begin to try to ask yourself that question, maybe even do a thinking time session around that, about what are the tasks that only I can do? I mean, we have obviously a lot of insurance agents, agency owners that listen to the podcast, and then there's— but there's other business owners too. What are those things that only you can uniquely do at that hourly rate? So if you take your, you know, let's say you made $200,000 last year, well, your hourly rate is $100 an hour, roughly, give or take, you know, your effective rate. And so if you think about a fourth of that is $25 an hour. So if you can get something off of you that you could pay somebody $25 an hour or less to do, which if you've got an EA in the Philippines, you're more than likely paying somebody a lot less than that per hour to do it. Um, then you're getting a minimum of a 4x return on your time and on your money. What are your thoughts on that?

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So one, absolutely, like, like I was just, I was just gathering as you were speaking, I was just thinking about, um, one, books that you and I have, have shared with each other, and two, um, what I am doing now that I have the free time. Um, so when trying to get to know what you should be doing with that free time, there's a great book, um, that we share with each other a long time ago. I don't know if you remember the— I think it's called The Road Less Stupid.

Oh, that's my favorite book.

Yeah, yeah. So essentially, like, the gist of that book is that you are your own therapist in a way, because you do have to ask yourself questions. And it's not a typical question like, how are you? No, it's like, it's like, what are some, um, like, what would happen in, you know, in my business today that would devastate me? Question 1. Question 2, it's like, how can I prepare for it? You know, it's, it's all asking, it's asking very insightful questions. And I'm not, I don't quite recall if they talk about time, but I feel like By you asking yourself similar questions like that, you know, like for anybody that hasn't read the book, strongly recommend reading it. I'm definitely gonna be like rereading it every year just because those are timeless questions. So that's one thing. Two, I would say if you're struggling to, and this is also me speaking to me, by the way, if you're struggling to figure out like what to do with your time, One, going back to the second brain, you can always look at your values and then be like, hey, well, family is like a big value for me. Now that I have, you know, like more free time, maybe I can spend time with my family. Or health is a big value for me. Now that I have more free time, I can actually spend time working out because the whole point of being a business owner, in my opinion, is not just to make as much money, make as much money as possible. Um, there's just like quality of life and whatnot. And, and actually having more free time, stepping away from the business so that you can act, so that you can focus on other aspects of your life that maybe you were neglecting before, can actually have a much bigger impact on your business.

Um, oh, for sure.

One of my friends, he's like a— not even a videomaker, this guy's a filmmaker. Like, this guy has made like documentaries on living in the Arctic Ocean to boxing to interviewing like top entrepreneurs all over the world. Um, last week he put out a video, um, where he just randomly in Mexico City, of all places, actually randomly just— he would see this guy just quietly go on a walk every day, and he would see him on the way to a coffee shop before getting started for work. Um, and eventually he just stopped the guy and said, hey dude, who are you? Like, I see you every day. Like, I'm sure that we made eye contact before. Like, what's going on? Like, what's your story? And then this guy has been on the Lewis Howes podcast, he's been, uh, a TED Talk speaker, um, he's been on like multiple— oh, he's like, like Deepak Chopra wrote like the foreword for his book. Wow. I mean, like, this guy is like a huge deal in the world of meditation. And he knows an awful lot about meditation, but coming from a— like, coming from the everyday person perspective. He doesn't consider himself a monk. He's not a monk. He's simply a guy that's great at meditating, and not in the— I just sit down and like stare into nothing, and you know, my life is better. Like, he's actually very practical about it. And where I'm going with this is actually a line that he had, um, where he said, people are not accomplishing things because they're too busy being busy. So I feel like, you know, one thing that I definitely don't want to do is say, is say like, hey, well, I now have, you know, 2 more hours of, of time Let me just fill it up with more things. Like, let me find other useless tasks and like, let me do those tasks. You know, it's like, it's no, like, okay. Like realize that, like realize that you have those 2 more hours. And once again, only focus on things that Bradley and only Bradley can do. Like Bradley and only Bradley can excel at. Like not just do—

Yeah. There's only, there's only a handful. There's only a handful, right? Yeah, there's only a handful. Uh, like I created my job description. Like, I, I don't know if you have one for you, but like I have my job description and everybody— I believe in the accountability chart top 5. And so like I have my top 5. And, and so if you're in our community and you want me to send, you know, a template of what my top 5 is, I, I can put the link in there if people want that. But Um, anyway, so because I had to think through this very thing to take it from like, okay, conceptually, what should I do to like, what actually are the only things that I, that I should, should be doing? And what are the 5 most important? I mean, are there other things? Yes. But Lauren and I talk about like every single day in our daily sync. Okay. What are the things that we need to get off my plate so I can spend more time doing this, spend more time doing, doing these things. Um, so I totally agree with you. Hey, so I got a cool app I want to share with you.

Cool.

All right, so, uh, it's super— like, it could probably do other things, but this part is like super simple. So it's called Habit. Have you seen this? Have you seen this app?

I'll look it up right now.

All right, so like, if you're watching it here, I'll pull it up here. Let's see, I can get it.

There you go.

Look, there it is.

Okay.

So there's— I've got 5 things on there in no particular order. Show your work. Okay, so that's— show your work is either for some people posting on social media. I'm terrible at social media. That's like not my thing. Like, so share your work, either post in your post on social media, like document, you know, just document your journey. On social media, um, or in your community. Okay, so like I have some communities, um, on Circle and other places, and obviously we got, you know, our podcast leadership Facebook community now. Um, so show your work, be posting content daily. Number 2, sweat. So I used to put workout, but like now I actually put it as just break a sweat. And I got that from my dad because years ago— now my dad does not adhere to this now, so he may listen to this, but Dad, if you need to take your own advice He used to say, son, if you just break a sweat every single day, you'll be healthy, you know? And so he's actually was kind of profound. So it's like, all right, break a sweat. Number 3 is review my 10X vision. So basically I go into the Notes app on my phone and I look at what is the vision I have for my businesses and for my life and do it every day. And that actually has been so helpful. Now for some people, they may say, review my goals. Okay. I don't typically love to use the word goals for me personally. Number 4, do 5 opens a day. So 5 opens is opening up conversations. Now, some people would call that sales, and it probably is, but that could be a DM, it could be a text message, it can be an email, it could be an outbound phone call. So I'm trying to do 5 opens a day. And then number 5 is read 10 pages of a book to feed my mind. So anyway, those 5 that I do, every day, which is, or, uh, well, I'm trying to do every day. I'm trying to build a habit to it. And so this app is like really super simple to do. I'm sure it does some other fancy stuff, but this has actually been helpful. Do I do my 5 opens? Do I read 10 pages of a nonfiction book? Uh, did I review my 10X vision or my goals? Did I break a sweat? And did I show my work? Those 5 things. So that's what I got on mine. It's been actually pretty helpful. I've been using it for about 2 weeks.

So anyway, so before I lose my train of thought, um, um, I would say the punchline for, you know, for this conversation among everything that we spoke about actually could be: stop setting goals, start setting habits. Because it's so easy, like, you yourself can get a dopamine rush actually from being like, you know what, this year I'm gonna go to the gym, you know, at least 3 times a week. I'm going to, I don't know, hug my family every single day. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do all this to— like, you can spend hours designing this ideal life, and I promise you, it's been proven already, like, you yourself are going to get a rush out of it. And even when you tell people, you also get a rush of it, because by you telling people, you know, if they're your friends or so, like, so-called your friends, they'll be like, oh my God, that's great, I'm so happy that you're gonna do that in the future. But it's like, you're actually doing that, so like, why are people happy for you? Like, I mean, great, cool that you have those goals, but like, mind you, I've— I'm guilty of this, by the way. Like, I've done this. And recently I started hanging out, thank God, you know, with people that are like in their 20s. I'm not even joking, venture capitalists, like multi-millionaires that made money super early uh, thankfully through crypto actually. And they're not just like, like crypto bros that just, you know, made like a little bit of money from a pump and dump and then like are driving rented Ferraris. Like, these are guys that are like literally are multi-millionaires in USD, um, and they're just, they're thinking on another level. Like, for example, Gary Vee is part of their like network. Like, they speak and have calls. Like, they're basically And basically something that one of my friends posted yesterday was, uh, you don't, you don't decide your future, you decide your habits. That one punchline alone, you know, like, I was just— took me aback. I was like, first of all, this guy is like in his freaking early 20s, killing it already at life, like, and the level of clarity that, that he operates at is just next, next level. And it truly hit me, like, stop talking about your goals. It's, it's cool to have that north, north star that you're following, but really what matters is this practice right here, like tracking your habits.

We have, uh, I have tried so hard to get James Clear to come on the podcast. We're going to keep trying. He's a hard-to-get— he's a hard guy to get to come on the podcast to talk about Atomic Habits. Um, but we'll keep trying. We'll get it. We'll get him one day. But I'll tell you, another book I recently read is The Power to Change by Craig Groeschel. Great, great book on, on habits. He drew from Charles Duhigg's book on habits, James Clear's book on habits, and then his own, just kind of his own experience around habits. And so I know a lot of people listen to his podcast, and he's got an incredible podcast himself. But his book, Power to Change, is a really awesome book on habits too. So, well, we'll post— I'll post in the chat a screenshot of— in the comments on the Habit App tracker. And then if people want some of those templates, then they can comment. We'll put it in our podcast, uh, community. So, all right, Chris, anything else from you, my man?

Last thing, um, once again, like, it's okay to have that North Star that, you know, like, that technically speaking, like, that would be your goals. Um, I would revisit it in the same fashion that you're doing it, yeah, which is every single day. Like, every single day before getting started, like, you know, like, know what you're working for. And like, as a form of meditation, for example, there's a book that I'm reading right now, it's called, uh, How to Break the Habit of Being Yourself by, uh, by Joe Dispenza.

Oh yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually screenshot— I think we tried to get him on the podcast. Is that good?

Oh, it's life-changing, man. Life-changing. There's not a whole lot of authors that talk about meditation and things like that, or just like mental health, that I personally like listen to, um, or believe in. And this guy is just Next Level, The Real Deal. Basically, like, one of the things that he talks about is, is like, people, people always say thank you after some— after something happened, like, hey Bradley, thank you for opening the door or something like that. Like, um, but like, there is very little difference between like the quantum realm and the physical realm, you know? Like, the only difference is the fact that we can see things. But then if we only lead ourselves by the things that we can see, touch, and feel. I mean, our senses are so limited that like we're essentially only capturing like 0.00001% of actual reality. So it's like, rather than saying, you know, thank you for the things that you already have, like be grateful, like be genuinely grateful for things that you want in your life that you just simply haven't actualized yet. But you have that vision. So for example, like, like a quick example would be like you saying, hey, uh, I'm thankful because of the fact that today I get to, uh, I get to leave my office at 12 PM because of the fact that I have a team in place that, uh, that I know will be able to give me, you know, free time so that I can focus and spend time on my family. I'm thankful for my— let's just go like materialistic for the red Ferrari that's sitting in my garage right now that I'm gonna get to drive later. I'm thankful for, you know, having a routine with my family every single weekend where we all get to spin the globe and pick up, you know, put a finger on the map and then we go to where we land. Like something like that, you know, like, uh, uh, it's okay to do that for like, you know, 5 to 10 minutes a day every single day, but then Once you actually do that meditation, go and actually work on things that will actualize what you just visualize, what, what you just meditated about.

Yeah, I've got— I, I have not— I have not been able to get into a consistent routine with meditation, and it is something that I've wanted to do. So maybe we can talk more in another episode about making that a habit, right? I mean, we're talking about habits, and so how do I make that actually a habit? It's interesting because I don't get— I don't turn off things just because they're woo-woo anymore, per se. I just have not been able to find the thing that I can lock in and say, yeah. I mean, I guess it's kind of like when people say that they don't know kind of what they would think about in thinking time. When it— for their business, I'm like, okay, I get that. But for me, my brain is going so much all the time that I do realize if I could get to a place where I could shut it down for 10 minutes or 15 minutes. And so, yeah, maybe we can— I'll do some research on that. You and I can chat, and then I'll report back to people in the podcast whether or not it was helpful for me or not. I'll do my own, like, experiment on it. Okay.

That's great, man.

All right, that's the pod.