239: Daniel Ramsey — Get More Time Freedom from Your Business

Foreign. Hello again, everyone. Hi there. So today we're talking about time and process, how to work smarter in this kind of a time frame, how to get better, get some time back, bring some sanity back to your. To your life. Real practical tips and approaches for making things happen. That's our topic today. And so we'll get into it. Just a second. So, hello and welcome again, everyone, to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and scaling coach, Bill Gallagher. I want to remind everyone we've done hundreds of shows like this now, so we've got something on everything to do with people. Strategy, execution, cash, and the fifth decision that I like to talk about, which is all about what kind of leader you're going to be. We've got all of that and more@scalingcoach.com so go to scalingcoach.com, download our tools, get the show notes, subscribe there. You'll get more of our notices than if you subscribe on itunes or wherever you go. But we're happy to hook you up there. Also, if you'd like a coach, you find a coach in your area. Or you'd like a copy of the Scaling up book, we'll give you a copy of the book for free. Just pay the shipping and handling right there. Scalingcoach.com so, enough of that infomercial. I want to welcome the show. Daniel Ramsey. Dan Ramsey is founder and CEO of my Out Desk. It's a virtual assistant company with. Comments already from the gallery. My little brother, actually not little anymore, right. Younger than me, but he wants to be a victorious leader. My brother, Rob Gallagher, chiming in. Rob and his family. Lovely. His son is a total badass number five character in the Umbrella Academy, just renewed for a third season. Big in the news right now. Rob Gallagher. Shout out to Aidan Gallagher. Thanks for joining and chiming in. They're totally awesome. So anyway, and he says he's still very handsome. Oh, my God, he's so funny. Some Spanish press commented on Bob's handsomeness. All right, enough of our side things and personal nonsense. We're talking about Dan Ramsey here, who's founder and CEO of myout Desk. They work with people on outsourcing stuff. And Dan's been a past guest on the show. We've talked about working smart and working this time, and it deserves some more conversation. And so we want to get into this core idea. Dan, welcome to the show today.

Thanks for having me. And by the way, I love the Umbrella Academy. I mean, I love that show. It's a good one. Man.

Awesome. Well, that's my nephew, Aidan Gallagher in the show. He's a total badass. He's been a natural performer and artist from a very young age. You could tell what his future was going to be all out. So we're super proud of him and fun of Rob to jump on and chime in. So anyway, welcome to show. Where are you today?

We're in Sacramento, California and it's actually a little cold. It's a little cold right now.

Sweater now for the first time. Exactly.

Winter is here.

Awesome. All right, so we're going to get into this a little bit, but since listeners, viewers today may not have seen you before, I'd like you to talk a little bit about your background, how you got into this business of virtual or remote assistance and like that. And then, and then we'll talk kind of about some of the stories that you've got with, with what people are doing right now. That's so smart because I think there's great things to share that'll help stimulate our thinking.

So yeah, to give everybody, I mean, first I want to just thank you for being here and allowing us to come on the show. But for everybody that's listening, I want to give a little context to, you know, the company. We've served over 6,000, you know, businesses in the US and Canada and help them hire high caliber talent in the areas of sales, marketing ops and customers customer support, which I'm super excited about. But the business really started out of my own personal need, which is always the best businesses. Right. I was on my honeymoon in Guatemala, literally at the bar. So we're to set the stage for your audience. It's really a fun place. It's a Francis Ford Coppola resort. We're in Guatemala, we're in the rainforest like, and there's monkeys and we're in bungalows. And I'm, I'm three days married into this whole adventure. And wildly enough, you know, I found myself at the bar at one in the morning working on my business. And the bartender, he's, he steals my phone and he says, hey, what's wrong with you, dumb American, Why are you working? Where's your beautiful wife? Back in the bungalow. What's wrong with you? And at that moment I had this epiphany that I. Something had to change about my, about my life. And I had a business that owned me versus me owning the business. And so it was right at that moment that there was an epiphany. And we came back, my wife and I came back to the US after our honeymoon. And we sorely focused on the business creating systems and processes and so that we could actually, you know, leave. And we moved to South America for six months. And this is all before the Tim Ferriss four hour work week, by the way. This is all before that guy made this whole world famous with virtual assistants and all that. So we lived in Peru for six months and continued to grow our businesses and learned all of the mistake. Basically we learned how to systematize a business so that you didn't have to be there day to day.

You know, in a similar story in Bali years ago, I was there on a business trip and for our other business we did a lot of still manufactured in Bali years later. But I was there working and connecting in on the beach, like a beachside place. And some guy harassed me. I'm like, no, no, no, this is where I work. And that was a very satisfying thing. Yeah, I love that. Long before the. So you've gone and then built this around this, building the tools and things to create kind of that lifestyle. But it's now like a pretty big business, isn't it? Right?

Yeah, we're really fortunate. We're on our way to $50 million. We've had our best year ever as a company. And you know, for the first time, Coronavirus actually has been. We've been able to serve our clients at a really high level because of Coronavirus because, you know, offices are closed, people are in space of need and talent. So we've kind of, we're just kind of lucky right now to be one of the benefactors. And being a fully remote company, it's been a positive thing for us.

Yeah. So much of our processes individually have shifted and then collectively our companies have shifted as well. So talk about then the software company in Texas that you've been working with and what they've done there and kind of how that's grown because that's a business that's tripled in not too long.

Yeah, yeah. Well, a friend of mine, his name's Nollie, he and I have known each other for 15 years and I've always, for the first 10 of it, I was always like, hey Noli, you should try our virtual assistants. You should definitely get into a space where we can help you get some leverage. And he always kind of didn't really want to like, he didn't, he was like hesitant in some way. And then he had pain. One of his leaders in his software company actually left his company and all of a sudden he found Himself back in a business that was a passive business for him, needing to do the day to day work. And so he was like, okay, Daniel, I absolutely need help. And so we hired Chris, then we hired another person, then we hired another person for him. And now our team, which is a fully remote team, created what we call a blended model where his US staff, the ones that are, you know, doing the programming and the high level driving revenue, are there. And our team, we're doing all the customer support, all the sales support, all the operational business stuff. And because of that, he had reinvested in the business and really kind of focused on growing that technology platform. And he's, he's literally seen a 300% increase since working with us.

Great. So this notion of changing the way that you work, I think is really so cool. And there's such an opportunity, like it's, it's disruptive. If you were used to working and just walking over and walking around and talking to people, that's not the case anymore. And, and Zoom does get fatiguing to be on like 24 7. We've heard from some larger companies where they've asked people to keep their cameras on all day long in this. Not that well, it'll be just like walking around because you could go look and then everybody's camera's on all the time and that kind of thing. You just say hi. But that's so uncomfortable to feel like you don't know who's looking at you at any given moment and you're self conscious and all that. But then there's the opportunity of I could hire people from anywhere, right. And work with people in anywhere. I just have to figure out and organize the way that I work.

What's interesting, Bill, is there's some surveys that are going around and 50% of employees that are working remote right now say. And if you're listening right now and you're a leader, you've got to be thinking about this. But 50% of US employees who are currently doing remote work, they're basically saying, hey, I never want to go back. I never want to go back to an office that's a tremendous amount of people in the workforce. And so my suggestion to everyone is, you know, you've got to be thinking about what your future infrastructure looks like, who's on your team, what that looks like, because, you know, things are changing.

Yeah, things are changing a great deal. And it's such opportunity when things start to change and shift around. Right. I mean, it's disruptive. But if you lean into the change. You can create something cool and new out of the whole thing.

I agree.

So personally as well, we've got this, right. I don't go to the store as much. I've driven past my hardware store a few times and been like, yeah, I'm not going to go in there. And then I go home and I order the part I need or the tool on Amazon and why am I not going in? I love our local hardware. We've got two in the area that are really cool. But every time I go by, there's a line outside, I'm like, I don't want to stand in a line to go to the thing. It's not Disneyland. Another business I don't really want to go to right now.

Right, right.

Well.

And I think as leaders, we have to start thinking about, you know, how are you? We're having our first virtual conference as a company. Now we're a virtual company, meaning everybody that we hire works remotely from their home. But for the first time ever, we're actually putting on a virtual conference. And so I'm sharing that because I think as leaders, we have to find different ways to engage. Now, Bill, you're gonna laugh, but our virtual assistants are actually doing TikTok entries into a virtual contest where they can win prizes and they get recognition. And so we have, literally, we have 1300 people making these really fun TikTok videos that we're going to share at our virtual conference. And then we're going to pick out a couple. And so one of our clients, her name's Avid. Avital. Avital. She actually runs a remote engagement company where you can ship out, like, drinks and you can make drinks with your team remotely. She. She's put together those little guitars, those mandolins, you know, and so, you know, she's shipping 100 guitars out, and then employees are on zoom, drinking coffee or drink or tea or, you know, real alcohol, building guitars together. So there's a lot of fun stuff that has come out of the.

Give a full shout out to Avital's company and all that. What's the company name? There is. I've forgotten.

Yeah, I forget too. I actually, I need to. I just remember her because we helped. I actually personally helped her onboard, her virtual assistant. Now she's hired three or four.

Look it up, Avital. So I talk frequently. I helped to develop the curriculum and train trainers that run the accelerator program worldwide and which is where we help companies get over their first million. And that program is run under the EO organization And within eo, there's getting coffee refill. Awesome. So within there's this accelerator program that we work with that uses the scaling framework. And Avital was the last person, the very last person I put in the day before the program started. And she is awesome, badass rock star and has really grown her business in a business that should have been had its butt kicked. She's pivoted really beautifully and created. So they do travel and tour and tours, which is a travel kind of related thing. But it's not just that. It's corporate events and other kinds of things and they've created these remote experiences now and pivoted beautifully and I just, I, I love Avital for what they've done. So shout out.

And she's a strong leader. I, I think she pivoted early. She knew she needed additional support.

Here we go. Yeah, she is a leader and creative and moving quickly and that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah.

She's a great example of a customer who was scaling and growing a business, had more demand than she could handle with her internal team. And she's picked up a couple of our virtual assistants and is just beautifully moving. And I'm guessing she's going to get past that million dollar kind of threshold quickly.

Yeah, she's doing really, really well and has done beautifully and we're proud has grown that. So Avital, the software company, and then individually each of us is changing the way that we do these kinds of things. What are you seeing people do that we can apply in our businesses?

Yeah. So every client that comes in, we. And it's interesting because I was just in a mastermind call and helping a business owner. He's in the Texas market and it's really interesting because he, he runs a baseball company where he gets thousands of kids together at parks and local, local fields and literally they put on a weekend tournament. Right. So they'll have 20,000 people playing baseball this weekend in Texas, for instance. And we were talking through some of his big challenges and he thought it was operationally he needed an event planner and we started talk it but the reality is his focus was, you know, he's in five markets right now and he wanted to go to 20 markets. He's really growing and scaling his business and so he's like, I need to hire an event planner. And you know, the, the group gave him feedback and everybody was kind of focused on, okay, well maybe you need a really good event because you create events, you know. And it got back to my turn to, to have this conversation And I was like, I hear that you have this opportunity to go to 15 new markets and really grow and scale your business. Why are you talking about the admin within your business? You should be hiring a virtual assistant. You should be hiring somebody at 30, 40, 50 grand a year to handle the project management stuff. But if you really wanted to scale and grow your business, you have to hire a leader who has had expansion experience. So when somebody comes in to our business, we go through a process where we identify the highest and best uses of their existing US based team. Like what's their, what's, what's their superstar stuff? Right? What are they best suited for? And then the next step is who do you need on your team so that you can actually double and grow your business and scale? So we'll talk through system and process, we'll talk through what tech stack they're in, we'll talk through some of their industry issues. Unlike you, we're not a coach. We do a single consultation to see if there's opportunity for a virtual assistant. But just like this baseball guy, I mean he has a platform where literally 20,000 kids in Texas are going to play baseball this, this, this weekend. And that could be a national, that could be a national, that could be an international business. He's figured out how to scale it and grow it in a region and now his opportunity is, you know, taking over the world with baseball and kids. What a cool, like what a cool business. And so we just help people focus on what really matters, which is growth, revenue, sales. And we try to let them give away everything else through virtual assistants.

That's I think core to something that we talk about again and again and again with our team. So we'll talk about the Gallup strengths, tools and what are your strengths and knowing and understanding what you love doing and what you don't love doing. And then we also will use a love and loathe exercise. What are the things you regularly do and in which column do they belong? So there are things that you really love doing and should be doing more of. And there are things of course that we also do for our well being. So there are certain tasks that I do I just really enjoy and I could give them away. And I do have people helping with some of them, but some of them I still do myself just because it feels good. It's not the best use of my time. It's less expensive to give that away, but I do. And then there are the things that you suck at and those are things that should be Automated, outsourced, delegated, or that you should just drop.

Right?

Yeah.

We have this process, it's a really fun. And you should use this with your customers because we serve a lot of the mid market, like the small and you know, the SME market, small and medium sized businesses. But we have our customers. Sometimes they come in and they're like, I don't know what I need, but I know I need help. And that's kind of the marker for us when we know we can help somebody. Like they're working weekends or on vacation like I was, or honeymoons, they're not getting to the gym, they're not eating healthy and their business is growing and they need help. That's how you, that's when you should call us. But we have this process called the sticky challenge, which is a super simple. You just carry stickies around and you write on the sticky, the thing that you're doing, the time it takes to do that thing. And then whether it's dollar productive or non dollar productive. And we had this great gal, this, her name's Cody. She runs South America investment things and she's like one of these people who controls billions of dollars in investment money. And she's, she's a customer of ours and she did this. And it's basically, it's basic time and task study, right? Any, any MBA school would call it a time task study. But if you do this sticky thing and then you put them in these two categories, well, that's marketing, that's sales, this is operations, this is customer support. And then you find the things that really drive the revenue and you do that for a week. You can get a snapshot, a really quick snapshot of what you're doing inside of your business. And that's a big deal. And so people, people really start going, oh my gosh.

That's very similar to the recommended love load. So sometimes we'll do love loathe within, within a workshop or a planning session. But, but the more formal, rigorous way is you go back to your team and you say, okay, everybody, just keep a list of everything you're doing in each column for the week. And you're using stickies, but we're just saying make a list. What are you doing? What do you love doing? What do you hate doing? You can look at your calendar, you can look at your photos, if you take a lot of photos on your mobile. But it's useful to notice because there's a whole bunch of things that we spend time on that that aren't necessarily productive for us that aren't super useful.

That's right. And when you have that list to your point, then you can come to us and we can say, okay, these 14 things we can absolutely do for you. And we can do it at a third of the cost. I mean, that's typically our customers. Like last year we did a survey. We saved our customers collectively over $55 million just in what they would have to pay.

You did that. It's also great that you tracked that and that you measured it because it gives you something not only to talk but, but like you get a sense of the impact of your work in that way.

That's right. And we get a sense of how value it is to our customers. Like when they say, oh my gosh, like the technology company Nollie in Texas, when he says, oh my God, I couldn't run my business without Chris, the first virtual assistant that he hired. Like literally, Chris does everything for him now in that business. I couldn't run my business without Chris. When a customer says that, that's when I know I'm winning. That's when I know our business is on purpose. That's how we know we are being successful in our mission, which is to provide indispensable virtual professionals to businesses that are growing and scaling.

Here's the thing I think it's useful now is I think that we're all finding new ways to do these things. Right. I do my best to order directly with a company if at all possible. I don't. Amazon's plenty rich enough anyway right now and they do offer certain convenience and value and ubiquity of presence and huge range of. So they're great. But if I can give the business more directly without the cut to someone, I want to do it. But I do want to shop online. Right. And I do want to outsource stuff. So I've got somebody who compiles our show notes, somebody else who proofreads, somebody else who edits the audio. They're all in different places, they're all not our full time employee. Now, Lucy, I just work with Lucy. Lucy just works with me primarily. That's a pretty dedicated resource in my world. But everybody else is working for a jillion other people and doing a lot of other things. And I have a little bit of their time to do things, whether it's my bookkeeping, my investment management, my social media, my website, our list management. What am I forgetting? There's a bunch of stuff that we're doing and I'm a tiny Tiny business compared to most of the companies we work with. But getting creative about this, whether they're regular employees, outsourced contract, that kind of thing. There are things that you're pointing out that we need to get done that it's not a whole job.

My suggestion would be to compile all that stuff. Like compile it. And then I bet we would have a solution. And I think the customers. The other piece that I want to kind of get to is like me, I owned a business that really owned me. They owned all of my time. And so when you think about like hey, what are you doing with your time and who do you want to be in life? How much time do I want to spend with my family? Do I want to work out? You know, you start thinking time is the only thing that in life that really matters and I'll trade a little bit of money for more of my own time.

Yeah. So I the what I love about this notion now for our listeners, we're not meaning to be a huge infomercial for Dan Ramsey here, my desk dot com. But they do this kind of work and we're not just talking about giving them this kind of. You go to lots of sources. There are a lot of people that do this. You do a great job and you scaled the thing really well. But there is opportunity in all of this and it's a multiplier. Right. Working with people in new ways, updating your processes is the way to take advantage of this time to 10x your business. And the fastest way to double your business is to play a 10x game.

Yeah, I want to actually, because it's not an infomercial for us. I want to explain some of the resources out there in the virtual assistant world. Number one, up. Upwork's a great place. We view it as a dating site. So if you need a project or you need something to do like upwork is amazing. If you're looking for marketing stuff, Fiverr's a great place. Those are two really good in our opinion. Dating sites or project management sites where you can find somebody to do the show notes or update your website or do these project based one offs and a lot of people go directly to the people on upwork. Online jobs PH is another good one where you can go direct and hire virtual assistants. There's just this market is growing like when we started 13 years ago. Bill, you'll laugh. I would walk into a room, I'd be on stage and I talk about virtual assistants. Somebody would come down the hall and say, and they'd grab the the microphone and say, Daniel, what's a virtual assistant? Like literally after I did a 20 minute presentation because nobody knew what it is. Now the industry is growing. It will be soon a multi billion dollar industry. And I think more and more businesses are discovering that they don't need a full time employee. Something that just happened. You'll love this. Florida just passed the minimum wage. So if you're a 16 year old working at McDonald's in your summers, your minimum wage just went from 9 bucks to $15. We have some wage increases going on across the country. You know, there's 22 cities that have a mandated minimum wage of $15. So the basic McDonald's flipper is now making $15. It makes the argument for a blended model even stronger.

You know, I know some entrepreneurs who are upset and wigged out about that kind of thing. I want to tell you to relax. Pay your people a living wage. You can't live on that lower thing and you don't want people in poverty working in your businesses. It's not a way to sleep at night. It's not a legacy you want to live. It's not good for our society and it doesn't actually make your business more effective. Now there are things that you want to outsource and blend and use fractional and so on and think about that. But be smart about it. Have the people that work in your business in that way and I totally support it. And if you look at the highest performing companies out there, we see a consistent pattern in some of them paying substantially above average. Goldman Sachs. Right. Outperforms stuff. I'm not going to quote the numbers right, but they substantially outperform their category for years. I don't know the latest thing, but they've also paid substantially more. Another one in the retail sector. Retail's one of the things we're talking about being really hard hit. But one of the companies that has outperformed and done better than any others, the Container Store. Right. Specialty retailer doing a higher margin, higher volume volume. So they do higher per square foot. They have more profit per employee and they pay substantially better. They take longer to hire. I mean it's a whole different relationship with our employees as relating to. And in this case we're really talking about any employee as being really an expert specialist in some area. Let's get somebody who's really great and have them focus on that and then pay them something really well. I can remember doing work in our house and I had some guys who did a Bunch of general things and you know, their productivity would go up and down and whatever. And then I had the tile guys show up and bam, they showed up and they did that tile in hours and they were done and out. Right. That's specializing and focusing and working at your like your sweet spot. Right. Shout out to another Andy Clark Clayton, author of a new book sweet Spot that we've talked about before. But this is this idea of working in your sort of zone of excellence, that thing that you really love doing and that you're best at.

Well, we certainly follow that philosophy. We pay three times the average salary in the Philippines. We give them healthcare, vacation times, benefits. I mean we do, we do two conferences a year. This year we're going to do our first virtual conference. I'm waking up at 2am in order to put that on for them during their day, which is super cool. But yeah, we, I'm a. Fundamentally I'm agreeing with you. The best way is to get the best person for the job, pay them well and then watch your business scale and grow.

Yeah, it's a different kind of thing than figuring out how to take advantage of people. Right. Like that's the kind of work and thing that we're. So any other resources? You are rattling off resources.

Yeah, I like there's a conversation here. As a, as an owner sometimes you can talk price and in the absence of value, price is the only thing. So we're very much a value driven company. We were purpose based. We want to have high caliber talent given to really growing and scaling businesses in the US and Canada, resources wise. I mean those are the three best ones. Fiverr for marketing, project management, upwork to do kind of multiple different. They've got tech people, they've got admin people. I mean it's a good direct kind of higher project company and then online jobs. PH is the low cost option like they you get if you've got data entry or something. That's not a super skilled quality kind of role but you just need that extra support. Those are the three best. And if people wanted to find out more, we could help them through a process to discover whether or not outsourcing is for them, whether or not a blended model would work. You just jump on our website and we're happy to go through it.

Yeah. And in its core it's this idea of thinking about what do you do best, what's unique to you, what's your special talent. And here's the other thing I think that's useful to note. You're not always the best judge of it yourself. It's really helpful to have somebody in a mastermind or forum group, a customer, a supplier, a coworker. Other people point out to you some of the things that you're really good at. Because we're so like self delusional. Right. I think I'm really great at this. I think I suck at that. And then somebody will tell us, no, it's the opposite. Like you do that thing and there are things that we do without even thinking about it that are so natural and we wonder why it isn't so simple for everyone else. And I've been had a few things pointed out to me in this last year. I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess is easier for me than for most people. I didn't think of that as a superpower.

Yeah. I call that my basketball analogy. Have you ever been like floor side with any NBA game? Like, and you go down there and then you look up?

It's not enough.

Yes. Well, the next time you do, just go up there and think of the story. Because I've sat on the floor looking up at basketball players. Even, even basketball players that you would consider as small, like 6, 7, 6, 5. You know, you look at them and they're giants. Right. So as entrepreneurs, sometimes we just think of ourselves as normal people. But the reality is there are a couple things that we do that are world class. They're NBA level talent. And so when you go to a basketball game next time just check it out. Because entrepreneurs, our brains work differently. How we process things work differently, how we solve issues is different. And what we're able to move through back and forth. So just know show that even though you think it's normal, you're probably like Shaq and a giant to some, to someone else.

It's true. And it's, it's weird at first when somebody points it out to you, but I think it's okay to let it in and be like, yeah, oh yeah, I am good at that. Thank you. And to own it. Because there are other things that you suck at. There are things that you and I, I all suck at. And if we could just spend a little more time. And this is fundamental to this. Love. Love. To this idea of outsourcing, to optimizing to the Gallup strengths work. This is the same core idea. Let's focus on what we love doing and what we're really great at doing and hang out there more. Yep.

Love it.

Build a whole team of specialists. Think playing chess, not checkers. Right. In a chess game, each piece has special powers and abilities, strengths and value that we use uniquely in checkers. Everybody's indispensable. Right. Everyone's a pawn in checkers, really. And this is the idea that we're looking at with our business. Just as we want in strategy, the business, to be a specialist, not to try to cover everything and compete with everyone, especially, especially when you're in this high growth phase, but to be unique and different and focus on what it is that you do. Well, the same thing's true with all of the people on our teams. What is it that should be within it? How should we reorganize? Right.

Yeah. Well, it's such a great time. As you were talking, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is such value for the audience. Because it's November, we're making our strategic plans for the next two, three years. And we're also thinking about, about, gosh, what happens if there is a second wave? What are, what are we going to do for our business? Some people are having their best year ever and others are struggling. And so this is such an appropriate time to be having this conversation. Who's on my team? That's probably my favorite question. And you go back to the basketball analogy. No, no billionaire who just buys a basketball team says, I'm going to manage that basketball team. The moment they put the $10 billion down to own that NFL team or the basketball team, they say, who do I need to hire in order to win the NFL or win this championship? Right. And as business owners, that's the mindset that we need. Who do I need on my team for 2021, 2022, so that I continue to crush it, grow and scale and have the dream life that we've always wanted because. Because that's why we started a business.

Good side call out here in what you said, if you haven't yet planned, scheduled and booked an annual planning session, I recommend that you spend two or three days. You could spend as little as one, but make sure you spend at least one day with your team reflecting on 2020 and planning out 2021 and your first quarter, the first 90 days, how you're going to launch, how you're going to get into things. This is really critical and just. You may be still in the middle of trying to finish the year strong and navigate this thing. You may be dealing with uncertainty and fear and doubt about what's happening in the world and Covid and politics and all that kind of thing, but take the time now to say, okay, is this going to occur in, like, November, December? Am I going to throw this into January? When am I going to do this? Optimally, book it now and then start to organize yourself around it. If you've never worked with one of our coaches or facilitators before to do your annual planning, we're super happy to help you set that up and do that very simply. You can drop us a note infocalingcoach.com or go to scalingcoach.com, get in touch with us there and say we're looking for somebody. And. And you could now call on coaches to work with you from anywhere around the world. So I have teams that I work with in the Middle east, in Asia, in the Pacific, across the U.S. canada, Europe. I work with people all over the world all the time. And you could get someone, not necessarily me, but it's fine if it's us, but from our 200 roughly scaling coaches around the world to help you. And if you've never done that before, for the first time ever, without even traveling, you can do the entire thing online using our online planning tools and zoom and that kind of thing, and have a fun, engaging experience. You could also do it in person. Some of our coaches are working in person. Some are doing outdoor events that we've done a bit of both. But you can then be a part of it instead of trying to lead it. And you can actually participate in the planning instead of being the one trying to organize people and having to start every conversation. You can get the last word instead of having to have the first word every time. And it'll totally change your life. Really worth a shot if you haven't done that. So I know this is the time that we make sure that everybody's scheduled the people that we regularly work with. But I'm shouting out to our listeners who've never done it before. This is a great time to get in touch with us and, and pick someone to help you do it for the first time. If. If that's what's there for you, I love it.

And I think that third party validation, I don't know about you, anytime I want a change in my family, I hire somebody and I have them say it. Because if you try to push change, you know, my wife, I'm like, hey, babe, we need to do X, Y and Z. She's like, I don't want to hear you because it's coming from you. You hire a coach, and the coach says, hey, let's go do X, Y and Z and she's like, oh, yeah, I want to do it. And so I think there's some power in that third party endorsement. That outsider coming in, giving perspective and reflecting back what the most important steps are. I know it's been impactful for our business and I'm a big fan.

Yeah. So we've covered an awful lot of stuff. Let's just look and recap then. So if you want to double your business, right, start to think 10x, start to expand greatly and imagine how you'd get things done and that'll lead to that faster doubling. So don't just plan and think to this one level, expand well beyond that and then start to organize that. You'll create systems and approaches that scale. Building these processes and systems will help you get to where you want to go and give you the capacity to do that and to focus more on what you love. You been hammering that a little bit and I think what.

Actually I'm, I think I'm going to add a little. I want to add value to you guys. So system and process doesn't have to be hard. One of the things that we do in the virtual world is we simply do a zoom call.

Yeah.

Share screens and talk about the how, what and why as you're doing the task.

Yeah.

And literally that's all you need for a system and process. Your virtual assistant or your team members can then document the steps and people get hung up. I'm like, what do you mean I've got to document it? I'm like, if you want somebody to do it just like you, you have to document the system. And it doesn't have to be hard. We call that play pause due simple way to do a system.

So shout out to system documentation tool Trainual that we featured before and a number of our teams use Trainual. Trainual combines this online documentation like a wiki with learning management system that trains and keeps people up to date with things. They put that together in a thing called Trainual. And we've had Chris Ronzio on at least once before, maybe a couple times. So find that episode or check out Trainual, tell them we sent you and buy me a drink the next time we're in person.

Perfect.

Trainual. So we love Trainual and what they've done and they're a great company. But they also have people, if you've got complex processes, processes. They've got people, I don't know if they're on their team or their outsourced resources, contractors that help them to document the processes when the company. So you can not only use the trainual system, but you can get them to help you to get the stuff loaded. Because getting started with a system like that is a challenge in and of itself. Right?

Yeah. And then you have the system for the rest of the of the work. You know what's interesting too? It's that documentation that when you go to sell your business, you go to raise capital, that, that documentation and process that makes your business valuable. And so I love I, I, I know Chris, I I know Tranial. A lot of our customers use it. It's a great resource and tool.

Awesome. What else have we got? So, and then this idea of putting people in the right role, so understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are and focusing more on of it, that is so valuable and so important. So playing chess, not checkers, right? Know what you are, know where you should be deployed. And as the leader or on the leadership team or as one of the leaders in the company, understand not only yourself, but the people on your team where they best and everybody get really open and think about that approach. So for that we not only do the Love Loathe exercise, we also do Gallup strengths assessments and we'll map the team and look at, you know, where does this team naturally do. And then if you have a larger company, like, you know, sometimes we work with companies of a thousand or more people, we can do the teams and layers of teams and start to look at how each of them are organized and what are the dominant strengths in each in each one of them.

I love it. It's a great process.

So before we get into some final things, let me give a reminder to everyone. You'll find the show notes, the downloads, the tools and all that kind of stuff here@scalingcoach.com also send us a note to infocalingcoach.com if our show helped you. It helps us if you give us a review like, you know, give us a like subscribe. If you subscribe either@scalingcoach.com or YouTube or iTunes or Stitcher, wherever you get Your podcast, podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, whatever, we're like everywhere, then you will get them every week. And we're doing two a week now. So we have a tip on Tuesday, we have the interview show on Wednesday and we're getting ready to add a third show. I'll say more about that later when we get to launching that. But we'll be getting real with some some new content there. So we've got more coming your way now. But all of that and Those downloads@scalingcoach.com and you can find that there. I want to give thanks to Vern Harnish, the creator and author of the Scaling Up Framework and the original Rockefeller Habits. Our show is produced by Lucy Summers, who's working in the background, interacting with people in the chat and that kind of thing, queuing things up, scheduling, getting you ready, producing, releasing the stuff after the fact. Our audio gets edited by Albert Burge at podfly Productions and and our show notes are written up by Ayn Kodina and proofread by Tim McGowan. If you want to get information about Daniel Ramsey's company, it's myoutdest.com, we'll put it in the show notes as well. Myoutnest.com is where you can check him out and see if their work is useful for you. And all of the links to all of those other services that Daniel shouted out will be in the show notes as well. So lots of great content and that kind of thing. Dan, so much thanks to you for coming on again and and giving us some quick hits of things that we can use right away in our businesses.

It's been my pleasure, Bill. Thanks for having me.

Awesome. Thanks again everyone for listening. Keep scaling up.