Episode 285: The Power of an EA with Jeremy Burrows

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Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Jeremy Burrows. He's a longtime EA, international speaker, trainer, and founder of the Leader Assistant Community. And also, he is the number one bestselling book for assistants, The Leader Assistant: 4 Pillars of a Confident, Game-Changing Assistant. And he also is the host for assistants, The Leader Assistant Podcast. I wanted to have Jeremy on because so many of you have reached out to me and have considered or maybe have an assistant. And so having Jeremy on to be able to serve you and kind of get it from a different perspective, hopefully is going to be able to serve all of you really well. So whether you have an assistant, you're in the process of possibly getting an assistant, this episode is for you. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Jeremy Burrows. Jeremy Burrows, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thanks, Bradley. Good to be here.

Great to have you. Well, we always start with a background and origin story, and so love for people to kind of hear your journey and how you got to where you are today.

Yeah, thanks, Bradley. So I'm currently an executive assistant to a CEO of a software company called Capacity based out of St. Louis, Missouri. I work remotely from Kansas City, Missouri. I moved back here from St. Louis when I was in the middle of COVID just to, you know, convince my executive to let me work remote and got to move back closer to family and closer to my sports teams. So that was fun. But if you go back to my kind of early days of my career, I was an intern at a nonprofit organization and I was trying to figure out what the heck to do with my life. I was at, what I was maybe not so good at. And one of the things that happened was I realized, you know, I was pretty quick to reply to emails and pretty detail-oriented, and I could kind of take the big picture of where we were wanting to go and break it down into smaller chunks and, and kind of come up with a plan and, and project manage. So, you know, as I started getting into those things, I was like, man, I'm either really good at this stuff or the people around me are really bad at it. And I, over time I realized, you know what, it's actually a little bit of both. But that kind of pushed me into the project manager slash assistant type work and I remember reading an article, it was probably about a year or so into doing a little bit of part-time work, like assistant project manager work. And I read an article in the Harvard Business Review from Melba Duncan, and it's called The Case for Executive Assistants. And it was the first time I'd ever read anything that had defended the role of the assistant, but also shown it as a respectable career, and in some cases, in some industries, um, even a well-paying, uh, career. So I was like, all right, well, maybe this is something that I could latch on to, and I enjoy doing it, I enjoy helping others. And so, long story short, uh, that really changed my mindset and helped me see that, okay, this is actually a career that I could aspire to. And 17 years later, I'm, uh, I'm still, uh, helping people and trying to execute the vision of fast-paced, um, high-capacity, you know, board members and CEOs and, you know, Fortune 100 board members to athletes to pastors to multimillionaires. It's like All, all those types of people are who I love serving and love kind of being behind the scenes and helping them run the show.

That's awesome. Well, I've told this story on the podcast before, so I won't necessarily— maybe, uh, for listeners can go back and listen to the episode I did. It's maybe 5 or 10 minutes long where I talked about my, my very first EA. that I hired in 2015 or 2016, I think somewhere around there. Maybe it was kind of a blend of the two. And I had no idea what I was doing. And now looking back, my mindset has shifted so much that I honestly would not do business. As a matter of fact, I would go as far as to say that if I was going to do a joint venture or a partnership with someone else, that I would not do it unless that person had an EA. That's how I would not partner with them, because the EA allows them to be able to buy back their time to focus on the things that allows them to, to grow the business so much. I want to ask you, and this is probably going to take us down a lot of different places, there's, there's just a lot of hang-ups out here with business owners and entrepreneurs that they just don't know where to kind of get started. And so, fortunately, even after that first experience didn't go perfectly because I didn't know what I was doing, I did jump back in and have been able to kind of figure it out. From your perspective, and then obviously from you being kind of on the other side of what you've seen, what are some of the— what can you share with a business owner, entrepreneur that says, ah, you know, I mean, I want to, and I kind of get the idea conceptually, but I just don't even know where to, where to start. Where, what would, what's your thoughts around that?

Yeah, I mean, you know, to be blunt, the first thing I think of is, okay, if, if you don't know where to start with an assistant, maybe you, you have bigger issues with your overall vision for your business and your overall business plan. Like, if you have a clear business plan and you're solving a problem and you're ready to take that and run with it. I think it's a little easier to say, oh, okay, what would an assistant do? Or how would I integrate an assistant? How would I use an assistant's skills to complement mine? So first thing I would do is just make sure your, your business plan and your go-to-market strategy is, is input or in place. But also, you You know, what are you good at? Like, if you, if you don't really know where you should spend your time, then you're not gonna know what to offload to an assistant or where they can drive you to, you know, shape your calendar and bend your time on your calendar to fit what you're actually good at, uh, versus just throwing anything and everything on the calendar. So, I think the, uh, I think the big thing is you've got to figure out where you're going and what you're good at, and then you can figure out what needs to happen that you're maybe not as good at, uh, that you can bring someone alongside. And sometimes it's overwhelming because you're like, well, you know, maybe I've got 1 or 2 employees, maybe I'm by myself, and I don't want to give up my profit basically to hire someone. Uh, but you can start really small and you can hire a virtual assistant for 5 hours a week and you don't have to commit fully right away. But I think you'll see that if you hire someone that is experienced in assisting, they will pretty quickly, um, bring a lot of return on your investment. And then you'll, you'll see that, okay, maybe I should go to 10 hours a week, 15 hours a week, and eventually assuming your business idea is good and your business grows, you'll be able to bring on an assistant full-time in pretty quick turnaround.

So yeah, yeah, I would definitely say that that was a big learning for me, is that going with fractional EA at 10 hours— I, when I first heard that, and somebody listening to this today is probably going to have the similar thought that I did, which is, I mean, what are they going to be able to get done in 10 hours? Because that's a quarter of the time that I'm accustomed to with. And if you've not hired somebody that fractional— and I specifically personally use the word fractional instead of part-time. Part-time makes it— it doesn't sound as, as much as, as actually fractional. It's like, hey, they're a fractional team member there. I, I think of them almost like— and yeah, you and I were, uh, I know you're a Chiefs fan, so, um, I mean, clearly the, the best player on the Chiefs, one of the best players in the NFL, is, uh, Patrick Mahomes. Well, they still got to have a specialist long snapper right? They still have that person on the team that does those specific things. And so, um, having someone that's at 10 hours a week, you would be surprised how—

I, I was—

I still am surprised how much they get done at 10 hours, 12 hours, 15 hours a week, because I was so accustomed for years to having full-time. Now I want to go back to something you mentioned because I think it's worth us double tapping on, and that is This idea of, okay, well, what are the things I need to get off of me? Okay, got that. We can begin to kind of think through, okay, well, my scheduling and my inbox. Okay, those are probably pretty good places to start. But then I also want you to— and we will kind of deep dive on that in a second— but also, what do you know that you should be spending your time with? So if you free your time up over here, and begin to transfer some of those things off of you, if you've not actually said, well, these are the things I actually, I know I should be spending my time with, then you'll just end up going back into admin work. Your thoughts on that?

Yeah. And that's kind of my point earlier where it's like, if you don't know what you're good at, it's not really going to help you as much to offload tasks because you're not going to know what tasks to delegate. And so I think the, the— where can you get the highest return on your investment of your time and your energy? And that's where you should focus. And so if that means, you know, you need to be going to networking events and trying to meet new people and grow your Rolodex so you can start reaching out to people and building relationships and growing your business. If that means you need to hunker down and, and rent an Airbnb in the mountains and, and write a book because that's, that's the next thing you need to do in your business plan. You know, whatever it is, you've got to at least identify those points where when I spend my time on this, not only do I enjoy it, do I get energized? My creativity flows freely, all those things. But I actually, it actually helps my business more directly. And in the long run, it's better for my business. So for, you know, for me, an example of this would be, you know, I, when I first started my, my business with helping assistants and executives really resist burnout and lead well. I was writing blogs and this is before I was kind of in between jobs and I was like, I'm gonna start this business, see how it does, and then I'll get a real job if I have to. So I started writing blogs and then once I got my real job, 'cause I ended up realizing it was gonna take me a while to start a business, I didn't really have writing blogs, I didn't really have the time for it. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, but it just was a lot of time and energy. And so over a few years, I realized, you know what, something that— what's something that I could do where I'm helping the community and I enjoy it, but it also doesn't take too much of my time, you know, indefinitely, because I have a day job and I have two kids and all the things. And it was, and it was podcasting. And I thought, you know what, I could publish a podcast every week in a fraction of the time that it would take me to sit down and write a blog post. And so I launched my podcast in 2019, just published 230, I think it was episode 233. And you know, it's like, it does, it did require a lot of time up front, but now I've got it down to where it maybe only takes me a couple hours per episode instead of 10 hours per episode. Um, and my point is I realized that this is something that I could do that energized me, that was also with a limited amount of time I had to focus on my business. I can do this versus I haven't, I haven't really written a new blog in months, you know. Had to figure out what I was good at and what I could do to help the business based on the time that I had.

Well, you did write a book though. So tell, tell me about the— tell us about the book and, and how that came about and what was the inspiration, uh, around that. So it's not like you haven't been writing, right?

Yeah. So the funny thing is I had written all those blogs kind of early, but like between my job, between jobs, and then kind of at the beginning of, of my startup, which I was hired number one and now we have 115 people or so. But basically I was, I had written, I realized at one point I had over the past 3 years prior that I had written like 80,000 words or something in my blog. And so I was like, oh, okay, I've actually got a bunch of material already. So that kind of helped me get motivated to say, oh, maybe I could start to put this together into a book. But the real reason that I, the kind of tipping point was I was having these coaching calls and I was doing speaking engagements with assistants and getting messages on LinkedIn from assistants all over the world with all these questions and challenges and what, what was encouraging them and all these things. And I was like, I'm having the same conversations over and over. Why don't I just put this in the book? And that way I can reach more assistants and help more assistants. And so then that's when I was like, all right, I've got an, I've got 80,000 words written. I've got kind of an outline now of what I think I want to just kind of put together a guide for assistants, whether you're a brand new assistant or an assistant of 30 years. I think there is something in the book that will at least encourage you and, and challenge you to think differently about how you do your work. Um, so yeah, I, I was like, all right, let's do this. And then I just, I do it in seasons, so I kind of There was a little bit of a— it was during— well, okay, so I published it during the pandemic. Like, that was not planned. But what was interesting is that whole lockdown, everybody doesn't know what the heck's gonna happen, nobody's really been able to do much work. Um, that whole season gave me, gave me more time in the, in the editing phase and all that. So it's kind of— I kind of lucked out in a way. With my day job kind of being on halt with the whole world being on halt. Um, so yeah, anyway, that's how I did that. And then I'm, you know, thankfully it's been a great journey. I published it in 2020 and I just passed 1,000 ratings on Amazon, which is one of my goals for the year. And now I'm like, well, I still got 5 months left in the year. I gotta figure out a new goal.

So yeah, that's awesome. Well, congratulations on getting 1,000 ratings on Amazon. I mean, gosh, congratulations on, uh, on publishing the, the book. I actually just, uh, it's something I've been wanting to do. You made a comment that I had never really thought about, uh, and I wrote down, and I'm gonna do it right after this, is, um, getting away, um, in renting an Airbnb. And I've got some time at the very end of the year, and I— one of my objectives really for next year, so it's not this year, is to at least begin to get out, maybe not a full book like you produce, but at least some sort of a mini book. And, and I thought, you know what, yeah, that's actually a really good idea. Go take 4 or 5 days and get away on an Airbnb. So even just that tip was actually really helpful for me. And I was thinking to myself, yeah, that's whenever I could actually go and do some annual planning myself and kind of get away. So I'm good. I'm actually going to do that. So that was actually really good. Good takeaway.

Yeah, I hope you enjoy it. And I think the other thing I will say though about the writing was once I had the outline and I was like, all right, I'm gonna do this. There were chunks of time where like my family was out of town, so I just hunkered down and I would just write all weekend. But in general, the best tip I heard, practically speaking, for writing was to just do a little bit every day. And so Yes, it's— I enjoy those times where you can sit down and you can just 3 or 4 days in a row, that's all you're focused on. But if I'm, if I'm honest with myself, the writing a little bit every day is what really kept it moving forward and helped me actually finish it.

Hmm.

So what are—

can you give— I guess I'd love for you to kind of share this, both sides. What are some of the most common mistakes that you see that executives, owners have with their EA? So that's one. And then maybe give the kind of the flip side of that, which is what are some of the biggest best practices, things that you have seen from a principal perspective to say, hey, these things really do work?

Yeah, I think the biggest mistakes— I'll kind of go to two layers here. So at the deepest level, the biggest mistake is you've got executives who are power-driven control freaks. Maybe they are, you know, high ego oftentimes and really uber-confident and And what this can do is, one, if the executive is actually attaching their worth as a human being to how much power they have or how much control they have, then they're going to— on the flip side, you're going to see the assistants who, as, as an assistant, I've dealt with this as well and still do wrestle with it. But most often when I talk with assistants, they care more about— they care less about power because they're like, I like being behind the scenes, I like supporting, I like doing this. However, they really care often about approval and affirmation from those they work with. So what does this mean? You've got an executive who's power-driven and you've got an assistant who's affirmation, approval-driven, and this can create a toxic environment because The executive sees that the assistant wants their approval and will do anything they say, and the executive wants more power. You see how that just kind of back and forth? It's like a, it's a never-ending toxic circle. Um, so my, my point of that is that's the, that's the number one, like, the root of the mistakes that executives make with assistants is they manipulate and abuse and use them to get more power. And they, and they, if they feel that power slipping away or that control slipping away, then they snap at the assistant or they blame the assistant or they, you know, cause the— they micromanage or all the different, different things. At the, at the surface, that's kind of at the source root level of, of most of the problems that I see with with executives and assistants. At the, at the surface level though, simple things like, you know, it's funny, it's like you can explain everything in detail. You can say, hey, here's exactly what I want done. Or you can say, this is the end result, now figure it out. And there can be an extreme on both sides where you've got executives who are like, all right, here's what I want done, and then I don't want to talk to you for 3 weeks, and I want you to come back and say this is done, you know, like that kind of an attitude. Then you've got executives that are like, I want to talk to you every day, 10-minute check-in, I want to hear every single update, and where they're overbearing and they're micromanaging. And so there's a balance for assistants and executives where executives need to trust their assistants to do the work, and they need to be able to offload and delegate results, not just tasks. Like, hey, why do I need to do this? Why? What's the vision behind it? So that they, they, the assistant has more context. Um, but they also need to kind of give that assistant space. And so what I tell the assistants is you need to ask clarifying questions. So throughout the process, before— and before you ask those clarifying questions, make sure you have an answer to them, or what you think they're going to answer, uh, before you just throw something at them and you don't have a suggestion, and, and they're— and you kind of, you know, catch them off guard. It's not really helpful for the conversation. So answer your own question, but then ask clarifying questions of the executive. And so if the executive can give the assistant permission and space to ask those clarifying questions along the way, then the executive can kind of have a hands-off approach and let them work it out and figure it out, but also have an open door policy where it's like, hey, if you get stuck or if you need clarification, please, please come to me. And so I think that's kind of how you can combat both sides, the micromanaging, overbearing executive that's in everything, and then the one that's absent and just kind of, you know, hard— you can hardly get a one-on-one with them. It's been— and I've talked to assistants over and over where they're like, I haven't had a one-on-one with my executive in months. And it's like, That's, that's the other, the other end of the spectrum that you do not want to do.

That's, that's hard for me to— that, that's hard for me to even imagine. Uh, I have a daily sync, uh, with my EA every morning, and I think of it as from a business perspective. Okay, so I don't mean this from— I was going to say it's the most important meeting I have, obviously your family, but like, you know, we're talking about business here, we're talking about work, we're talking about our careers. Let's So I think it's the most important meeting because at the end of the day, I'm transferring off so many things to get her to, to give her the context, to give her the nuance that she needs to move so many initiatives forward that if I didn't do that, that ends up just kind of coming back to me. And there's just so many new nuances and ideas and playbooks and other things that get updated and or created on that call. That it's hard for me to even imagine that, that would— that somebody would go months without, right? One-on-one. And whenever I'm at— I'm on a daily, you know, call, and, uh, and it's 30 minutes. 30 minutes. Now, you know, I'd say that's an 80% period of, uh, 80%. But like, to me, that's one of the most important, um, and when I share with somebody is that, hey, this needs to be something that, that you're doing on a daily basis. I just had a client who, uh, maybe 2 months ago hired an EA, and, and I told him this very thing. I said, okay, great, then here's the, here's the assets, but you need to start having a daily sync. Well, they didn't do it, and they just this past week started having daily sync meetings, whatever you want to call them, huddles, check-ins, whatever. And he said Oh man, yeah, it's so much better because there's so many— not as many open loops that I feel like I'm out of a, you know, uh, I don't know where, where things are. I actually do know where they are now. And I thought, well, I told you, that's, that's what it has to, you know, be. Um, yeah, so I think what you mentioned there is really well said. And I understand that there's different personalities of the executive, uh, of the owner, of the entrepreneur, and then you've got to match that with the right personality with, with the EA itself. So any other best practices that you can think of that are for somebody that's going to get started? Any other things that you think that are really cornerstone or key points for them to consider?

Yeah, I think the number one thing, the first thing that I do with executives and their assistants, and really, or if you're an assistant and you're starting with a new executive, this is like step one, and it's called the ideal week tactic. And so you sit down with your executive, or you, if you're an executive, you sit down with your assistant and you walk through, all right, I don't want to do any, any external meetings on Monday morning and Friday afternoon, or I want to have no meetings at all, internal or external on Fridays. I want to have focus Fridays. You know, you walk through every day every hour and you say, all right, I want to, I want to check email during this 2-hour block, or I want to have all my one-on-one direct report meetings on Tuesday mornings. You know, you walk through everything and you include, you know, personal things like, hey, you know what, I want to come in late on Wednesday because I have a workout, or I want to leave early on Tuesday because I have a date night with my wife. Like, you, you go through every single Preference that the executive has on, hey, if I could just snap my fingers, this is how my ideal week would look. So you do that, and then once you do that, the assistant can go and they can put it in a spreadsheet and then they can put it on your calendar eventually. And then from there, it's the assistant's job to kind of help you funnel requests and meetings and, and focus deep work sessions into those slots that make the sense on the calendar. Now, it's also the job of the assistant to keep an eye out for, hey, you know, there's a priority that is really time sensitive, and we need to break the rule of no meetings on Fridays. Because if we don't schedule it this Friday, then that sale is not going to close by the end of the month, for example. And so there's always that, that balance of, you know, it's kind of like in music, you know, music theory, you learn how it works and you learn the theory and then you learn how to break the rules. And so that's what the ideal week is. And then you, you really have to adjust it. Like you have to be willing to adapt it. Your first version of the ideal week could literally be a 2-hour block from 3 to 5 PM at the end of the week on Friday afternoon. Hmm. And that's it. And then you, you know, try that out for a few weeks and then you add another 2-hour block. Of no meetings on Wednesday afternoons, or, you know, and you just kind of build it that way. And then always revisit, always revisit. So there are seasons where the ideal week just goes out the window and we don't even abide by it because we're raising, you know, we're trying to raise $10 million for startup, or my executive's got to meet with 500 investors in 3 months, you know, like there's times where you have seasons like that where it just goes out the window. But I always try to come back to, all right, let's get back to no meetings on Fridays, you know, internal meetings on this day, et cetera. So that's, that's, that's the number one, like if you don't have some sort of ideal week system in place, then what's gonna happen is you are just going to throw any, all those inbound requests you're getting for your time. You're just going to throw them on your calendar whenever, and that's not, that's not, uh, very sustainable in the long run.

I want to ask, I think that there's a lot of, uh, I was this way, I was very much this way, uh, myself. And so I'd love for you— I, we touched on it briefly but not really from this angle, that we get in our head thinking, ah, I don't want to send that to Lauren, I don't want to send that to my EA, I don't want to send that to Jeremy, you know, I don't want that, that's, that's something personal, you know, that's my kid's birthday, so I'll, I'll do that, etc., etc. And so we start to get in our head. And so what I'm saying is, is that I think that we want to make it a great experience for the EA as well. Okay, we want it to be like, oh, they, they enjoy working for me. That, you know, some, some people may not feel that way, but I mean, I think the vast majority do. Like, they want it to be a good experience because you get intimately involved in their life and know what's going on, etc. Can you just talk about that angle, um, whether it's not just personal tasks? I mean, I think that's part of it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on, but also just, just like how we as entrepreneurs, business owners, can be really great to work for, for our EAs?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think setting expectations is the biggest thing. So if you're expecting personal assistant help, for example, then you need to have that in the job description, and then that's going to help you feel comfortable, you know, assigning them a task involving your son's birthday. Because that's part of the agreement. That's, that's what they signed up for, and it's, it's expected. It's in the— it's, it's not a surprise. So that's, that's, that's the big thing there. Um, and then, and where even if it's not personal and you're hesitating, oh, you know what, I feel like this is a task, it's going to be really painful, and, you know, I would hate doing it. And I feel bad, you know, assigning it to them because if I would hate it, I'm sure they would hate it too, you know. And so you just have to again set expectations and, and sometimes even redo an audit and rethink, okay, well, why, why are we doing that anyway? Like, if I would hate doing it, does it really even need to be done? And if it does really need to be done, okay, then you cast that vision and say, hey, listen, this task is gonna not be fun, but the reason we need to do it is because ABC, and those things happen to be on the person's job description of, like, for example, for me, my executive says, you know, my goal, 3 goals in life are to stay healthy, stay married, and stay in business. And he says, you know, Jeremy, your job is to is to help me stay healthy, stay married, and stay in business. So what does that mean? And people are like, well, wait, you know, that shouldn't be your job. You're, you work for the business and whatever. And, and my whole thing is when I've supported CEOs, the, they have one life. And so I'm gonna help them manage their energy and their time both professionally and personally. And so to stay healthy, it's like, all right, I'm not going to schedule that 7 AM meeting on Wednesday because he's got workouts Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I don't want to— he already has to miss some of them for travel, and I don't want to have to miss more just because I couldn't find another slot for a sales call. And, you know, another, that's stay healthy. Stay married would be simple things like don't book a board dinner on, on date night, you know, like work around as best I can, try to— when he, when he has to travel, try to schedule it around his date night so we don't have to break up his family's calendar just so he can go on this trip. And so that's the stay married part. And then the stay in business, it's like, all right, well, you know, pretty simple business, uh, for, for staying in business, there's pretty simple list of, you know, you grow your revenue, you cut your costs, or you raise, you raise capital, or all of the above. And so what are we doing? What's priority? You know, is it cut, finding ways to negotiate with vendors and cut some of our software costs? Is it, you know, there's this big conference coming up where he'd have a lot of opportunities to meet with potential clients. So I'm going to prioritize that. Or, you know, he's got 100 investors that he wants to reach out to in the next 90 days. Let's just focus our time and energy on that. And so that's kind of the stay in business bucket.

Man, that was— that's worth the price of admission right there. I love all three of those. Those are— that's really, really good stuff. Yeah. So you can tell him that there's a lot of people are going to steal that one for sure. That's awesome.

Yeah.

Uh, Jeremy, uh, really enjoyed the conversation. What's, uh, how can people find out about your podcast and the, and the book and, uh, just a little bit more about what you're doing?

Yeah, thanks, Bradley. The, uh, podcast is called the Leader Assistant Podcast, and you can listen to it on Spotify, Apple, you know, Stitcher, Pandora, wherever you listen to podcasts. And then the book is called The Leader Assistant: 4 Pillars of a Confident Game-Changing Assistant. And you can find that on Amazon or any major book retailer. And if you want to just kind of one-stop shop it, uh, you can go to leaderassistant.com and you can reach out, say hi, uh, send me an email or reach out to me on LinkedIn, listen to the podcast. Uh, I definitely enjoyed some or, you know, lots of my conversations that I've had. But one of my favorite— well, I'd say my top 2 favorite episodes were one, I interviewed Libby Moore, who was the chief of staff slash executive assistant to Oprah Winfrey for years. And then I interviewed, um, Conan O'Brien's assistant, uh, Sona Movsesian, which was a fun one. And then more recently, I interviewed former special assistant to Michelle Obama. Her name's Chyna Clayton. And she was really, really fun to talk to. And that was, I think that was episode 227 or something, but you can go to leaderassistant.com, click on podcasts and check those out.

That's awesome. Yeah. Thanks for giving those specifics around those, because I'm going to go and check those out myself. I think I would love to get kind of behind the scenes of those people and what are some of the little tidbits to pick up. So that's awesome. Appreciate you, Jeremy.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Well, I really enjoyed that. Hopefully that served you. As I said at the beginning of the episode, whether you have an EA now, you're considering getting an EA, I thought having Jeremy on was going to be really good for all of us to kind of see it from a different angle and different perspective. I think a couple things that stand out, obviously I left that at the very end where he said, hey, my, my, uh, leader said I want to stay healthy, stay married, stay in business. I love that. I thought also to whenever the discussion— which I think if you really think about it, there's quite a lot there to be able to say, what are the things I'm going to get off of me? But I've also done the work to know what I'm going to fill that time back with. And to me, that was big for my own personal journey, is that you can kind of start to go through inbox and calendar, and those two things in and of themselves are pretty massive when you actually begin to fully transfer those tasks off of you. But also then, what am I going to fill that time back with? And what is your CEO job description? And have you— do you literally— I mean, I mean, not in theory, in your head, have a job description for you? So whether you're an insurance agency owner, whatever, and I just use CEO You could put CEO, founder, business owner, entrepreneur, whatever you want to— whatever you call yourself, agency owner, whatever that title is. Do you have your job description? And do you have one to where it says, these are the 5 most important things that I should be doing that both light me up, give me energy, but also grow the business? Ironically, at the time of this recording, it just happened to land. We were going in, in, uh, with my clients, and we were doing this very same thing. We were going over what we call the buyback principle. Um, and so the buyback principle is we grow, uh, to buy back our time, not to grow the business. Or we hire to buy back our time, not to grow the business. And that in turn grows the business because we're filling that time back with the activities that actually grow. But you have to do the thinking behind it, the actual work, to say, well, what are those items? And what are those, those items that are let's just use round numbers— $100 to $250 an hour work. Well, there's not many of those tasks that really land at that level to say these are the things that are really going to grow the business. And so have you done that work? So I really enjoyed that conversation with Jeremy. Make sure you go to Amazon, pick up his book, or listen to his podcast. I'm actually going to go and listen to some of those episodes, um, that he mentioned at the very end right there, because I'd love to kind of get behind the scenes of Conan, Oprah, etc. If you're an insurance agency owner and you want to be able to set your goals, you want to be able to track the progress, you want to be able to see the results on a daily basis, but you want to do it with a software that's going to connect to your corporate system, it's going to be seamless, it's going to be corporate approved, and you're going to be able to put all of the different word tracks that you use on a regular basis— that's exactly what Today App TayaPro does. As our newest podcast partner, we're really excited to be able to have them with us. They have the absolute best UI, meaning the user interface, the user experience is second to none, and they're constantly adding updates on a regular basis. So if you have not checked out TayaPro, if you're still using Excel spreadsheets or you're on an older software system that seems complicated and overwhelming to you, to your team and it's not something they're using on a daily basis, go to todayapppro.com. Todayapppro.com. So at the time of this recording, we just had David and Alex to come on a 2-day MBA that I hosted and they were fantastic. I mean, they're so good at what they do. And as you all know, they've been longtime partners of the podcast, go to coachpeaconsulting.com. We've got so many rave reviews from the time that, you know, whether it's a podcast that he's been on here or the time that he was at our 2-day ABA. But go to coachpeaconsulting.com if you want to get kind of behind the scenes of what it takes to, to grow an insurance agency to across 3 locations with— oh man, who knows at the time of this recording how many team members he's up to, but a lot. And actually what it takes to really scale a business, he's going to give you a peek behind the scenes. Go there. but you also need to be able to start— if you're going to start scaling at that level, you're going to have to bring on some pretty amazing A-players onto the team. There's no one better than Autopilot Recruiting. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. Autopilotrecruiting.com. Lastly, as you begin to scale, you're going to want— even before you scale, maybe if you're— I was going to say, if you're going to scale, you're going to start looking at your financials because you start to grow top-line revenue. But even if you're going to start making the decisions of how you're going to scale and what that actually looks like, so you can see where the cash burn is going to go, you need to be able to have great financials to be able to make really good decisions off of. That's exactly what Club Capital is able to do. Go to club.capital. All right, everyone, till next time, lead well.