Episode 280: Fireside Chat - Bradley's EA

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. So on today's episode is a kind of a background or a behind the scenes with me and my EA Lauren. And so I recorded this without her actually knowing that this was going to come on the podcast, but I wanted to give kind of an organic, uh, kind of a behind the scenes of what is it like to— for those of you that are going to be hiring your very first EA have thought about hiring your EA. We've gotten a lot of feedback, emails, text messages, people reaching out to me on Voxer about, you know, do you have a playbook for your EA, et cetera? Well, this episode is for you. So this is just a conversation that Lauren and I had about what is it like to work together? What are some of the best practices? What does communication look like? So we hope that this serves all of you. If you would like the EA playbook that she and I mentioned in this episode, just reach out to me. You can send me an email, reach out to me on some of the social media networks. Bradley@club.capital is my email address, and we'll make sure— actually, Lauren will actually make sure that you get that EA playbook. So without further ado, here's my conversation with my EA, Lauren. 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 going to be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business. 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Sign up at coachpeakconsulting.com and get your first full month for free when you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey everyone. All right, so it's Bradley and Lauren, my EA, coming to you. So we're going to shoot this little 5 to 10 minute video as kind of a training and introduction to some of the best practices and things that we've learned in working together. I know many of you Actually, at the time of this recording, we're in the middle of talking about buying back your time with our Blueprint clients and just how important that is. And the natural thing that comes from that is people begin to start thinking about, you know what, I think I need to get my very first EA if they haven't already. In fact, as we've been discussing this with our clients, people have been starting to discuss that. So we wanted to shoot this video and put inside of our playbook as an asset for all of you, because there are— have been a lot of things that we've learned, and certainly I've learned over time. I actually recorded, uh, my first EA— it's a podcast, uh, recording about my first experience with my EA, 2015-2016. As a matter of fact, Lauren, if you will, uh, add that, uh, Spotify link inside of our playbook. I think that would actually be really good for our clients, for them to go back and, and hear that story, uh, so I don't have to repeat that. But, um, Lauren, there's— I want to start off and ask you, you and I were discussing what are some of the key points that we want to hit so we can kind of get down to brass tacks and really help people with some of the biggest hang-ups and things not to do, some of the things to do with the EA. And I think we have to start with communication. We talk a lot about kind of our communication rhythms. And one of the things, you know, we talk about weekly team meetings, your one-to-ones, and then your quarterly performance reviews. But then if you have an EA, the one that is absolutely kind of a non-negotiable is the daily sync. And so I'd love to hear from your perspective the importance of the daily sync and just our communication rhythms, maybe some of the tools that we use and what that experience is like for you.

Absolutely. So communication rhythms are so important. First of all, find one that you like or two and stick to them. That way all communication is clear and they've gone straight through the direct line that they need to go so that your EA knows exactly what they need. Second, the daily sync is so important. It preps me for my day. I know what is expected of me every single day. I know when it's due, and I know Bradley's preferences on those as well. So without the daily sync, I think we would be missing things, that things are gonna fall through the cracks. This is just 15 to 30 minutes that you're gonna spend each day with your EA at the beginning of the day, I think is gonna be the best time to do it. So you are prepped, your EA's prepped, and they know exactly what needs to be done. Any projects that you're working on, long-term, short-term, or thing— personal things that you need done as well.

Yeah. How long is our daily sync, uh, document now?

Oh my gosh, I think there's maybe— it can range from—

well, think about it just on a daily basis. How many different tasks, projects, etc. are we touching on, on a daily basis in a sync?

25, probably. There's at least a running list of at least 25 things every day. We don't necessarily get to every single thing every day, but it is on there for us to constantly review and remember and remind.

Yep. Um, so I, I think a lot of people are going to, you know, they're say, man, a daily sync, is that really, is that really necessary? Remember, if you buy into this idea that the— you hire people to buy back your time, and that in turn grows the business. You don't hire to grow the business, you hire to buy back your time, and then you replace that time. I think it's the most important in business. It's the most important meeting that I have because ultimately I'm transferring tasks, projects, responsibilities, roles to Lauren so that I can focus on the things that grow the business. Maybe even Lauren, we can talk about that in, in just a second. But, um, on a daily basis, not even on with our weekly team, just you and I, can you talk about, because this is one of the biggest things that we want to express to people, is in creating the operating system for the business, building improving, iterating playbooks is something that happens daily. Can you speak to that from your perspective of what that actually looks like?

Yes, so I'm always touching a playbook, uh, or creating a new playbook, and not every playbook we have is going to be touched every single day, but we're constantly adding, growing, and adding more important information to each playbook. For example, we're working on Beat the Odds right now. That is a playbook we're consistently touching as we're developing this over time. So nothing is ever going to be complete per se, but it will be constantly worked on. Then when we're coming up with, when Bradley's coming up with new ideas, I'm going to create a playbook for that. There's a new task, I'm going to create a playbook for that to make sure everything is organized and it is set up the exact way that he prefers it to be set up.

All right, so second time you've mentioned this, I think it's good for us to come back to it, and that is preferences. There's preferences. Um, so whether we realize it or not, I didn't even necessarily want to for a long time allow myself to say no. I did have preferences. I wanted things to look a certain, a certain way. I wanted a document to look a certain way. I wanted our assets to look a certain way. I wanted things to be organized a certain way. I have preferences for the way that we communicate. I have preferences and all of these kind of things. And I think there's a lot of people that feel that way as well, but yet they're hesitant or gun-shy to— I don't know, I don't really know if I want to say that. I don't really know if I want to say, Lauren, that document is not— is, is the wrong font, or something like that. Can you just speak to that from your perspective and why you actually think that that's— it's actually healthy and important to be able to have that level of openness and transparency around just what, what it is that you prefer?

Absolutely. Uh, first things first, never forget that you have hired this person to do a job for you. So you absolutely need to be transparent with your preferences. The second thing, I, everybody is different. For me, my feedback style is just give it to me straight. Just tell me because it's not gonna hurt my feelings. I know that it's, this is business. This is not a personal thing. So find out your EAs. Style of feedback, and then that way you're, you can feel more comfortable approaching them about, hey, this document isn't in the, the preference style that I like. You need to change it. What can we do moving forward to make sure that you are doing this correctly? Now Bradley has set up a playbook for creating playbooks. If I have ever have a question about how something should be done, I refer back to a playbook because I know that that information is there and I don't want to waste his time and my time asking him what he wants.

Yeah. Let's talk about— that's great, by the way. Hopefully that gives people permission and, you know, very early on and then it's proven out this way. Ultimately, you build, you do build trust over time. I mean, you do, you, you, you absolutely do. But then the only way to trust somebody is you actually just have to trust somebody. I mean, you just have to give it to them and let them run with it, and it's not gonna be perfect. And then you come back and you, you say from, you know, a document doesn't look the way you want it to look, and you say, hey, that's not what I'm looking for. It needs to look like this. And it's like, oh, okay, great. And these little nuances, you know, build over time. I mean, we try as much as we possibly can to unpack not only my head, but the entire team's head and get that documented down into a playbook or into some sort of an asset like a video like this. But not always can you capture every little bit of nuance. And so you build that over time. But I want to ask you, I want to transition into— so there's this idea of like, okay, what are the things I get off of me on a daily basis? And it pretty much is everything that doesn't fit within my job description. Now on this, we won't necessarily— and she and I do not talk every day or every week about my job description. She knows that. Okay. So I have my job description, but she very much knows. And not only Lauren, do you know, but the entire team knows, look, these are the things that only Bradley can do. I mean, these are the things that only Bradley can do. Um, nobody else for a podcast is going to be speaking into the mic. Nobody else is creating and coming up with the content and the frameworks, etc. I mean, we get feedback on those kind of things. So can you speak to the importance of having both sides of transferring task responsibilities, etc., off so that I can focus on the things that ultimately I really love to do and, and that are really going to grow the business?

I'm looking at Bradley's perfect repeatable week on his calendar. I'm making sure that what his perfect repeatable week is. Creating, recording podcasts, leading Blueprint, leading boardroom. All of that is being taken care of on his side, and I'm getting tasks transferred to me through daily sync. So all of our communication is clear. His preferences are clear to me, and I'm making sure that he's doing the things only Bradley can do. I want him to follow his own lead of buying back your time. So I want to make sure Bradley's time is taken care of and that I am doing everything I can to help make him successful as well.

You know, I think, um, I think one, as, as you were talking, I wanted to kind of get your thoughts on this, and this one definitely we didn't prepare for, okay? So you answer this one genuinely, um, I think, uh, from my perspective, your role is so pivotal. While, uh, like technically your title is Growth Assistant, which really falls into the reason we come up with that is there's two main roles that you have, which is one is, um, being my EA, and two admin assistant. And the reason I say specifically admin is that there's a lot of things that you're involved with and doing that you would say, well, that's not really an EA task, that's really more on the business side. And so we kind of blend those together as a growth assistant. So I wanted to get your thoughts around you just being able to share your own feeling about your role and contribution to the entire organization. I know that you, you know, enjoy being able to help support me, but your role is so much bigger than that. It is all ultimately trickles down to the impact that, you know, the new team member we just onboarded all the way to our clients.

Etc.

And so part of it is obviously helping to be able to set me up for success. Yes, I understand that. And the owner, we get that. But also the fact that you really are doing so many things that are— that support the business. You really kind of are a linchpin in the business and you really are seeing it from all the different angles. You see it from my side, the client side, the team side. And so just your thoughts around that and the role that you've play in the organization.

Yeah, absolutely. So yes, it is really great to support you as well, but it's also great because I, I do enjoy interacting with the clients because I love to see them engaged in the OS and the business as well because it works. And I want to make sure that you're getting all of the assets everything that you need to be successful too. It feels good to help people succeed and to learn. So I really enjoy that. From the team side, I mean, we really have— I think we have the best team. I enjoy working and collaborating with Bradley, Ellie, Courtney, and now Elizabeth. Um, I just spent a week or so onboarding with Elizabeth and compiling all of the documents that she needs to be successful. Again, that's touching on playbooks. I've created playbooks for Elizabeth, and those will also be consistently changing. Um, I enjoy working in and being Bradley's EA because, well, he's made me a better EA through the system, the Blueprint system, as well. So it's really, it's an enjoyable experience. But for your EA to be successful, I would say organization, communication, your expectations. And just to touch on, and I know this is not going to be the first time that you've heard this from Bradley, I highly suggest your EA use Notion to stay organized. And I, I think it's just a wonderful platform. Um, it's helped me. It's— if you take the time to sit down and learn it, it will open so many doors for organization for you and for your EA.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Um, yeah, I, I think that You know, even the example of you onboarding Elizabeth this past, this past week or a couple of weeks ago, did we have an onboarding playbook? Yeah, we did. Did we follow that? Sure. Did we add a bunch to it? Oh my goodness. We've added so many things to it. So the next person we onboard, that experience will be better for them. And then the next person we onboard after that, it will be better for them. And so it just gets better all the time. We get better all the time because as we go through, we're just unpacking so many things and we're saying, you know what, actually, I think next time we could do this. We are just recording videos, welcome videos. And, you know, sometimes I have these good ideas. I'm like, hey, let's shoot a, shoot a video. And I asked Elizabeth, how awesome would that be for you to have had a video of the entire team? you know, given 60 to 90 seconds of introduction to all of them. And you get to meet the, you know, Ali, our podcast engineer, people like that you would never normally get to kind of interact with on a daily basis. And you get to kind of see everybody that's in the Business Growth Curator ecosystem so that if you hear somebody's name, you're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. I know who that is that you're referring to, etc. So, You know, it's, it's never going to be perfect. And that's the good thing. And it's never going to be done. That's the thing is that if you kind of let go of this idea that you're going to go build the OS, you're going to build, build all these playbooks and that way you can check the box of all of them. It just doesn't work that way. Okay. And that's both. It can be very liberating to you whenever you realize, yeah, there is no finish line. There is no finish line. We're teaching other people, and yet constantly, every day, we're creating or updating, improving upon playbooks. And the reality is, when I think about it, 3 years from now, of what the OS is going to look like compared to what it is today, oh my goodness, we'll look back from where we are today and thank goodness we were playing, you know, at the kindergarten level compared to where we are, uh, right now. Um, any final thoughts, Lauren, uh, around kind of just from your perspective as the EA on any best practices or things that you would think you would like to share with, you know, a business owner or maybe their EA if they're watching this that could be helpful to them?

Just pick those communication channels. I think just making sure that you're able to communicate with each other clearly, uh, because it's not going to be just daily sync in the morning and we're done talking for the day.

What are the two that we primarily use, just so people know?

Slack and Voxer.

Slack and Voxer. That's right. Yep.

And I would make sure if you choose Slack to have a clear way of communicating through Slack as well. Channels. And then also again, just make those expectations clear. No one can read your mind. And again, you're paying for your EA to help you. And if those preferences aren't how you want them, let it be known, make it clear. It's not gonna hurt anybody's feelings because in, in the long run it's only gonna frustrate you and you already have enough on your plate. You've hired an EA, you have enough going on. So be clear with your preferences. We wanna make sure our job is to make sure that you are happy. And if we know, if we don't, don't know that you're not happy, it's not going to help anybody.

Yeah. Um, do you want to touch on real quick— I just realized we did not kind of interweave here with personal tasks. Uh, just this morning, um, I'm going to be going out of town this week, and we have a 3-day playbook that's created that's quite lengthy of projects and tasks and things that we're actually in about an hour from the time of this recording, we're going to be going over as a team about kind of setting the team up for, you know, about a week or so for me to be gone— a little less than a week, actually— that the team's going to be doing. But one of the items we added in there is personal, uh, for my, for my son, um, something that you're going to be doing some research on and kind of doing some planning, uh, for as well. And so I'm just using that as a, as an example. There's been plenty of other ones. Uh, maybe you can even share a bit, just kind of briefly high level around even the summer vacation, etc., that you helped to set up. And, and that has nothing to do really with business except helping to buy back my time, which then leads— which has everything to do with business. Does that make sense? Right. And so yet— so can you just talk about that? Because I know some people are going to have a real hang up, um, male or female, about having their EA to, to do some of those things?

Um, I would say don't have a hang up on it. Again, it's our job. Um, I actually really enjoy doing those things, especially for Bradley's kids, because I get to be a little more creative with it. Um, especially for Cooper's birthday coming up, like I'm gonna look into possibly a party bus. We don't know yet. So it's definitely give your preferences, even with your personal things. Another one, for example, I take care of Bradley's haircuts. I know he likes to go every 4 weeks. Um, I know what time and I know exactly where the location is. So I set those up. I know what his preference is on that. Same with Cooper's birthday party. I know what his preferences are on that. And then from there, I'm actually gonna create a playbook for Cooper's birthday party so that Bradley can review everything I've put together. So, and then as soon as I'm done with it, I'm gonna shoot it off to him, even if though, even though he's away and I'm gonna finish it before he comes back. I'm gonna send it for him just to review. He can write me notes or he can just get back to me whenever he gets home.

Yeah. And the, the value to me is unbelievable because at the end of the day, from like, whether it's just to use, you know, for my kids, uh, in the family, the experience and the value comes from the trip itself. Not that Cooper is like, wait a minute, did you, did you plan all of this? Did you do this? I mean, I mean, obviously you tee it up and you kind of give some of those things, but just being able to be there and say like, man, this was, this was a great experience, allows me to be able to focus on some other things too that, that really grow the business versus sitting there and researching this and what about this and calling all these places. I mean, that's, that's several hours of work that otherwise could have been used to pour into our clients. It could have been used into creating a new asset. It could have been used to onboard a new client. It could be used to create new content, etc. I mean, there's so many different things I could have been doing with that time. And then secondly, even like with the haircuts, I mean, they just That's a— I'm glad you brought that up because that's kind of an example of something, you know, going from trips all the way down to something that kind of happens on a regular basis. Um, and, and you know where to put that in my perfect repeatable week, which is great, right? You know where to put that in and, and, and, and you just put it in there. And even the, the place that I go, uh, opened up a new location and you said, hey, they opened up a new location, do you want to go to this one? And I said, no, just keep the same one because I like this same person that's going to be there or that's at the, the original one. And so those little things, I really love the fact that you, you think ahead, you think ahead on certain things, which is really big. Oh, I do have to ask this. So what has been— I am, I am, I hope that I'm good to work with. I hope so. I try to do as much as I can to make it a good experience. But I know that it does take a special person to be kind of on the team because there is a lot swirling around me at all times. Personally, multiple businesses, a lot of things kind of going on, a lot of balls in the air at all, at all times. And sometimes it can get to be quite a bit, you know. And then there's, there's like, what is that experience like for you? Um, and for somebody that is in that same, uh, boat, multiple office locations, involved in a lot of personal stuff, etc., uh, I mean, they're just— and they're pushing harder and harder and harder. What is that like for you to be able to then like, man, I'm stepping into that world and I'm managing all of those, those different things? What is that like for you?

Yeah, so week 1, very overwhelming for sure, but I was like, for me, this is what I'm doing. I'm figuring it out. The thing that Bradley did for me is he took the time out of his schedule, which I know the whole reason you're getting an EA is so you don't have to do those things anymore. But if you take an hour each day for the first week Set up Zoom meetings, walk your EA through your preferences, take the time to train your EA. That helped tremendously. The other thing that Bradley does was he definitely pushed me to be a better EA. He did do that, and I'm very thankful for that because I've learned personally, I've grown, and I've become better. So If you're constantly challenge your EA, they can take it, they can handle it. And if they, if they mess up a little bit, let them know, fix it and move on. But there's always so many things swirling around. I thrive in that personally. I love it because it's always something new. Nothing is monotonous. We're always changing. I love our meetings. I just, I have fun with it.

Awesome. All right. Appreciate you, Lauren. Well, I hope that conversation with Lauren served all of you. If you would like to get a copy of the EA playbook that she and I talk about around some best practices, the, this video and even this recording will be linked in there along with our daily sync template that we use, et cetera. Just shoot me an email, bradley@club.capital. Lauren, shoot that over to you or connect with me on one of the social and networks, and we'll make sure that we send that link to you. Big shout out to our podcast sponsors: Autopilot Recruiting, Coach P Consulting, Today@Pro, and Club.Capital. Today@Pro— look, if you, you have seen, heard me talk a lot about the importance of scoreboards and having dashboards and tracking of your numbers, but you want to do it with a system that's going to sync seamlessly with your CRM, that's where TodayApp Pro comes in. Go to todayapppro.com, todayapppro.com. If they allow you to be able to build in word tracks that you want to use right into the system, so it's not like that they're having to— even if you have a playbook for your word tracks, you can take the things that you've created in your playbooks and be able to embed that right into the TodayApp Pro system, which is absolutely phenomenal. And it's something that your sales team members and your service team members are going to be able to use on a daily basis. They are absolutely phenomenal to work with. The integration, the UI/UX experience is phenomenal. Go to, go to todayapppro.com. We talk a lot about the importance of attracting and developing and retaining A-players. In fact, when we think about in the team and the principles and kind of the structure that we use is how do you attract How do you develop and how do you retain? And that's why we partnered with some of the absolute best. Autopilotrecruiting.com, autopilotrecruiting.com, are going to help you to be able to take over a part of the process. So even if you're possibly wanting to find your very first EA, you can take the playbook that we've created, give that job description, which has the template in there, give that job description, fill it out. And give it to someone at your recruiter at Autopilot Recruiting, and they can go through and help you to recruit for an EA, a sales team member, marketing, even a service team member, account manager, whatever the title that you may have. They'll be able to help you to recruit, go through the initial process, screen through the resumes, the part that we know that you don't love to do. They're able to help you to do that. And then once you get them on board, We know we have to develop them. And yes, it is so important. You heard Lauren talk about on our episode the importance of training and developing. And yes, I did spend time doing that because I think the onboarding process, which today, uh, excuse me, which Autopilot Recruiting can certainly help you with that. But once you get past that onboarding, you gotta have world-class ongoing training. And that's exactly what Coach P is able to help you and especially your team members to do. Team members love to be able to hear from other team members who are doing it at the highest level. Go to coachpconsulting.com. Coach P consulting dot com. And of course, our longtime partners Club Capital. Go to club.capital. We use financials on a monthly basis to be able to see not only how we're doing versus where we were last year, but also against what we forecasted. So having a number— if you anybody ever heard me, uh, talk about— I didn't think I did a podcast on this, solo, called 350 Pounds. And the idea was that if somebody 350, you don't know whether or not they were, uh, 700 pounds a year ago, or they were 175 pounds a year ago. And the same is with your financials. If you said, you know, I made $60,000 was top line revenue last month. That means nothing unless you have that number in perspective. Well, where was it a year ago? Was it $75,000 last year? Or was it $30,000 last year? And furthermore, what did you project that number to be this year? And that— all of that data needs to be at your fingertips so you can make better decisions. And that's exactly what Club Capital does at the highest level, and they are the largest for insurance agency owners in the country. Go to club.capital. All right, everyone. Lakazette, hope this served you. If we can help you, let us know and we'll be sure to send you our EA playbook. Till next episode, lead well.