Tim Francis — A Masterclass On Finding And Hiring The Right People

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Flowchart with your boy, my.

Boy, Matt Wolf, Joe Fear. Hey. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of Hustle and Flowchart with Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

Say the whole thing or don't say it at all.

It's too many, too many syllables. All right, this is Joe Fear. This is Matt Wolf, and we are Hustle.

I'm the hustle, you're the flute. He has an identity crisis, obviously, so you screw flow.

We were supposed to be. I was supposed to say hustle, you say, and I say flow, you say chart, and we get a rap going.

We're the worst rappers in the world. So you know what?

Hustle, you say flow.

Hustle, Flow.

Hustle.

Chart.

There we go.

Got it. All right, so in this episode, Matt found his identity with talking with Tim Francis. No, really, in all reality, we spoke to Tim Francis. He is the founder of Great assistant and all around delegation team building.

Master.

Really.

I mean, there's a lot to it, but if you're looking to scale your business and you feel like there's some bottlenecks or you're just hitting this point of exhaustion of time, you know, you're working 80, 90 hours a week, you're not spending time with the family, the loved ones, or just experiencing life to the fullest like you wish, which is kind of the point of this podcast. He basically. And the reason I talked about the personality thing with Matt is we legitimately did who we are through something called the Colby test, for instance, but also working with Tim really closely. And in this podcast, you'll kind of expose some of the tools that he uses, the strategies that puts it all together.

Yeah, I mean, it's essentially. This is essentially going to be a masterclass in how to hire the perfect assistant for your business. I mean, Tim actually on this call, this is going to be later in the call, so make sure you stick all stick around towards the end. But Tim actually maps out. Here's how you post the job listings online here. Here's how you filter the best applicants. Here's how you filter those applicants that have just been filtered. Here's how you filter even deeper. Here's what kind of questions you ask them on the call. Here's what kind of assessments you give them to find out if they're good fit. You know, this is honestly, it's a masterclass in how to find the right people. And then we also discuss on, okay, once you have the right people, how do you actually be a Good leader yourself and direct these people and guide them down the right path. Because, you know, finding that right person is only 50% of the equation. The other equation, other piece of the equation is actually how you deal with them, how you train them, and, you know, your role in making them more effective in your business.

Yep. And yeah, before we kind of start it all off with Tim, you could check him out@greatassistant.com. that's where, I mean, this guy gives away amazing content in addition to what you'll go through here. So you'll just see the quality of stuff that he's given you. And I guarantee if you implement one thing out of this whole conversation, you're going to do something positive in your business and life. So let's dig into it.

Sounds good. Let's do it. Hey, Tim, thanks so much for joining us. How are you doing today?

Fantastic. The sun is shining here in Austin.

Texas, as it is here in San Diego.

I mean, San Diego right now is very, very hot. But my office is nice and cool, so we're okay.

Is Austin, is it pretty sticky this time of year out there?

No, it's. I mean, it's hot. It gets up north of a hundred Fahrenheit and not too humid so far, so I'm happy about that.

Yeah. Yeah. See, I was over here complaining about 100 and it's just like every day for you guys.

Hey, all we do is we jump on the little scooters, the motorized scooters, like the lime or bird scooters.

Yes, we love those.

And like, no kidding. I did 19 board meetings last week and a half. And so I was like in a suit and all the rest. And I get on these bird scooters or lime scooters. And first of all, you're not expending any energy, which is great, so you're not going to sweat from your internal heat. And secondly, all the wind going past your body just keeps you cool.

So it's perfect. You just gotta go faster and faster.

Austin's a pretty perfect place for that. Cause Austin's fairly flat too, isn't it?

Fairly flat. And the downtown is like very tight. So, I mean, it's not like San Francisco tight, but it's like I can get to anything I need to in like less than 10 minutes walking. So birding or liming all over the place is just like super fast.

Are those verbs now? Are we making them verbs now?

We definitely will be, yeah.

My, my life is full of liming and ubering and insta.

It's funny you say that because I think the first time we met up with you officially, it was in San Diego earlier this year. Traffic and conversion. Brad Costanzo came over, a mutual buddy and he birded away. I think he was in a suit or at least a tie or something. And I was just like, this is the weirdest looking thing ever. And he's just like, bye, bye, boys.

Yep, there he goes. Cool, man. Well, yeah, I guess let's kick this thing off. We met the three of us at a Rise 25 event in, in San Diego prior to TNC. And I think it was Jeremy Weiss, right? He was the one that actually told us to chat with you guys, you and your crew. It was like, see those guys over there? That crew, approach them, they will give you your stage advice.

But since then, yeah, we've opened up so many big ahas and totally revolutionized the way we work, Matt and I, but also with our team systems, all that stuff, goals. So thank you for that, for one, but give a little bit of backstory to just where you came from and then where you're at now and some shifts there.

Yeah. Thank you. And thank you for allowing my team and I to be part of your success story. You know, every single day that goes by, you guys are authoring an awesome story that is your success story. And to know that I'm a little part of that, or maybe a big part, I guess time will tell just how big it gets. It's. It's really special for me to be able to, you know, have a, to, to be an actor in your play, if you will. You know, it means a lot to open up your business to, to someone and to get some help. So thank you for that, guys.

You're welcome. Thank you.

So many Years ago, probably 10 plus years ago, I was sitting in my basement of my townhouse up in Canada and I had three roommates to help me cover all my bills.

But I was happy, you guys, because I was free. I was a full time entrepreneur and it was just like in a little way, it's like I'd made it. I didn't have a 9 to 5 anymore and the world just seemed like unlimited as my business started to grow and I got more clients. At the time I had a marketing company and I was excited to see new clients and new money come in. However, I didn't expect this shadow side to start popping up even bigger. All the time was all the minutiae. Invoicing clients and uploading podcast episodes and dealing with tracking codes. And landing pages and a lot of the, like, not sexy stuff that was fairly Rinse, wash, repeat. It really, really, really started to bog me down. And what was originally, like, felt like freedom. My business is now starting to feel like a prison. And I was just like, oh, this is no fun, right? This is no fun. So. And this is really not what I signed up for. So I got this idea because I'd read a book called the Four Hour Work Week, that I'm just gonna get an assistant overseas, and voila, Everything's gonna be fixed, right? I'm gonna be in the promised land. My Indian assistant is just gonna, like, take care of everything, and I'll get back to, like, making money, and the ATM in the sky is just gonna rain money on me. It's gonna be fantastic. So I got my assistant in India, and she was actually. She had great English, super good person, super talented. She was committed. It was all fantastic. But then a few of the challenges of overseas started to pop up. Notably, there was one week when she just disappeared altogether, and I had no idea where she'd gone.

Been there. Yeah.

Okay.

So it turns out that there was a political dispute, and.

The politician for her neighborhood got in a fight with a politician, a rival politician, who, turns out he actually controlled part of utilities or something, and he actually had the electricity turned off to her neighborhood.

Do you just think about living in that circumstance and trying to create a living. That's rough.

There's so much. We are so lucky to be where we are. There's so many things we don't even have to think about, like water that runs electricity that works. Like, you flip a switch and the thing turns on. Right?

Yeah.

So that was my first. Aha. That overseas maybe was not everything that it cracked up to be. And, you know, over time, I tried the Philippines, and I tried, you know, for four bucks an hour, and I tried Pakistan and Jamaica, in Russia, and just all over the world.

And I really just. I just really got frustrated, especially also with the fact that it would take me, like, 20 minutes to explain something that would take me just five minutes to do myself. I'm like, what? There's no leverage here. Like, there's no return on my time, energy, and money. Why would I even bother having an assistant? So I kind of developed this, like, John Wayne attitude of, like, well, I'm just gonna do this myself. I can do it better. I can do it faster. I don't screw it up, and I don't have to worry about managing anyone else. So I went back to doing it all myself, which was great to relieve some of the frustration. However, my work weeks went from 70 hour work weeks to like 90 hour work weeks. Because now I was doing everything myself again. And I was good to grind that out. Like, you know, hashtag, respect the grind. You know, that's. I mean, that's what Gary Vee says to do anyways. So I was just like, oh, you know, hustle, hustle, hustle. So, you know, unfortunately, the human body has its limits. And not only was I getting really exhausted with just like 90 hour work weeks, every single work week, I actually had a few stressful things happen. Notably the real estate market. Corrected. In 2008, I lost around $100,000 of other people's money. I had to figure out how to pay that back. Someone that I thought was going to be a great teacher mentor to me told me $20,000 if I paid him that amount, then he would give me all of his ultimate secrets to being a great entrepreneur. And that ended up being a bust. Then I was down $120,000 and I had no way to pay it back.

It was a super stressful time. And the stress plus exhaustion. I developed an illness called erythema nodosum. Erythema dosum. It starts in your legs and it kind of creeps up through your body. And it'd be like if you rolled your ankle playing basketball, but it was like you rolled it like five times in a row and just kept mashing on it. And like the amount of swelling, like I had like grandma cankles. You couldn't tell where my calf ended. My ankle started and, and that just kind of spread up through my legs and then it actually went into my elbows as well. And I had no choice at age 27, 28, to just move in with my parents again for full time care. I couldn't work anymore. My business went to zero, thankfully not bankrupt. And my personal finance also went to zero. Well, actually it was like negative. Actually both were negative. You know, I was down 120 grand, right? And that was business debt.

And had my mom not paid my mortgage for me for three months, I would have gone personally bankrupt. It was that close. So as I was laying in bed day after day, I couldn't even use a laptop because my elbows were just so painful. And so I just laid there and thought. I just thought about life day after day, week after week, month after month.

And there was this one day, you guys, this is like this one day. I'll remember it for the rest of my Life. And I was like. I felt this warmth in my body and I heard this voice. And it was. It was quiet, but it was unmistakable. And the voice said, tim, is this what you really want? Any guys, like, that day, like, I think I met God. It was. It was like. It was so. It was like a moment that I wouldn't have been able to hear had I been caught up in my day to day. It was like I needed to be stopped and still for weeks on end just to have that, like, connect, like, connection to the divine. And as I felt that question, heard that question, like, I don't know if a second went by or a minute or an hour. It was like one of those times in life when just like, just like existence stood still.

And. And. And then, then there was another voice, even more quiet, even more. It was actually like. It was like meek. It was like a weak and meek voice. And that voice, I realized later was my own. And I said, yes, this is what I want. And in the days that followed after that, there were like all these dominoes that started falling in my head and my heart, my soul, my spirit. And I started to realize that up until that point, I had been chasing fame and fortune. I just wanted to be rich and famous and I wanted to shortcut every possible. I wanted every hack. I wanted every 80, 20 shortcut. I wanted like, just to, like, skip the shitty part and just like get the good stuff right. I was trying to cheat the process. And it dawned on me that actually it was through the process that I would end up getting everything I ever wanted in my beingness, in my doingness, and in my having. And in that moment, it just like, was revealed to me that for me, if all I got to do for the rest of my life was get a little bit better at entrepreneurship with every week that went by, that that would be one heck of a life to live, even if I never was rich, even if I was never famous. So I got to work as soon as I could kind of like, type again. I started learning about digital marketing, started taking on a few clients, not because I wanted a digital marketing agency, but because I just wanted to get better and I wanted to practice and get a few dollars along the way doing it. And then my business started to grow, and then I was like, oh, my goodness, I need some help. And then I hit that same plateau again. Am I going to go overseas? And I was just like, oh, my God, we're here again. This time was different though, because number one, there was no way I was Going to sell myself short or sell my dream short. When I was sick, I saw this quote. The quote said, hell is meeting the man I could have been. Hell is meeting the man I could have been. And I just went, there's no way I'm selling myself short. When the end of my days come, I'm going to meet the man I could have been. I'm going to be like, I know you because you're me. I will fulfill my potential in this lifetime as a man, as a son, as an entrepreneur, all the roles that I play, I will fulfill my potential. And if that means that I need to have to learn how to level up, how I find people, how I hire them, how I lead them, how I manage them, then so be it. Because there's no turning back on my potential and my dream. And there's also no turning back on me growing this company. And so in that moment, I said, you know what? I don't know how I'm going to afford a North American assistant, because they're definitely more expensive than overseas assistants. I don't even know what I'm going to delegate to them first. I don't know how I'm going to learn to control, like release control and trust them. I didn't know how to do any of that. But there was no turning back. There was no turning back. So I put in an ad for an assistant in North America. I ended up meeting a woman named Sarah. She started taking a few things off my plate. And because she was in North America, there were no problems with time zone. There were no problems with culture, and there were no problems with language. And the speed that I could hand things off just started getting so fast that I could now see my own time getting freed up. I could then go to my clients who are marketing clients and say, hey, I've got these ideas for your business. Would you be open to hearing about them? And at the time, I was charging 40 bucks an hour so I could. And they all said yes. So people that we were doing pay per click for, they were good for us to do their landing pages. And people that we were doing PPC and landing pages, they were good for us to do their website, their full website, and those then that would graduate into email marketing and then tracking and reporting and on and on. And it just grew. And I was generating more and more and more $40 an hour work for myself and paying Sarah between 15 and 20 an hour. And now there is this spread, almost an arbitrage of labor where I could make 40 and spend 15 to 20 make 40 spend. And that spread now gave me not only my time back because Sarah was doing so much for me, but also was giving me more money. And I could take that time and that money and now I could go and network at higher level events where higher level entrepreneurs were, so I could charge more for the exact same services. And it also allowed me to go and take other courses that allowed me to get better at what I do, which then allowed me to increase my hourly rate. And I mean, whether someone has a consulting business like I did or not, whether someone has an agency or not, whether someone has an e commerce business, an Amazon store, or a brick and mortar, I mean, that is the essence of entrepreneurship is leverage. When we can put an hour or a dollar in and get multiple hours back and multiple dollars back. I had finally put, like I call it the positive profit loop. I just did a video for Forbes on this, like literally three days ago. And I watched my hourly income go from 40 bucks an hour to 50 to 100 to 250 to 500 to $1,000 an hour. And it's still climbing to this day. And as that spread grew, now I had just way more cash to be able to go and invest in other team members and other software and joining higher level masterminds and advisory boards and on and on and on. The business just flourished. And so along the way, a lot of my entrepreneur friends were just like, good lord, man, how are you doing this? And how did you find such a great assistant? And so I was just helping entrepreneurs one by one. And then I just kind of looked around and I said, you know, there are other assistant companies out there, but none of them, none of them do it the way that we do. Which I believe is the total solution. And so I should just start a second company. So I hired five people, started a company called Great Assistant, and we've now helped place over 150 entrepreneurs. I'm sorry, 150 assistants with entrepreneurs. And here we are today. So it's been just such a journey of the outside for sure, as far as, like learning skills and tools and, you know, people on the outside of me. Ultimately, it's just, it's been just as much a journey of the inside, though, like a journey of maturing, a journey of saying, hey, I'm done fooling around with amateur hour. It's time to be a real deal entrepreneur. And I'm willing to do the heavy lifting to get there. And I'm also, I'm also like surrendering if you will to my business. Like, it's insane when people say, I don't really feel like doing that in my business. That's like saying if you've got a baby crying in the middle of the night, like my, my mentor, Keith Cunningham, one of, one of my mentors, Keith Cunningham, he always talks about this. He says if you're, if a baby's crying in the middle of the night, you don't get to say, I don't feel like it. Like you just, you take care of it. Because that's, that's just part of the territory of having a, of having a child. Well, part of the territory of having a business is there's just things that need to be done. And certainly over time we want to work to build a business where we are spending almost, if not all of our time in our zone of genius doing work that fills us up and we feel inspired to do. For sure. In the meantime though, like, that's like saying, I want the baby, but I want the baby to be already 25 years old. It's already gone through college, I don't have to pay for it. There's no growing pains and there's no college debt. Like, like that's insanity, right? There's some steps we need to go through to get to the 25 year old kid. And that is the same with a business and with an assistant is we just need to do some lifting in the meantime and it's actually good for us. Nobody can do our push ups for us to externalize what we see in our heads and to get into someone else's hands and to let them be a teammate with us. So just to wrap that up, it's been a journey of the outside and it's been a journey of the inside.

And I think that's the big thing. The inside is what's interesting because it does start on the inside for you. You had your own personal story. We've been there as well, where it's either a burnout or kids come into our lives, your priorities shift, your time constraints go a little tighter, and then it kind of more or less forces you to think differently and to reflect. And where would you recommend that? Cause everyone has all these journeys. Is there a consistent point where people kind of, I don't want to say break, but start that mental shift? Or can we, Is there a catalyst that can get them to that point quicker?

Right. So the question is, is there, are there some telltale signs of when someone should get an assistant? Or more so when their mindset is ready to, you know, to build a team and to kind of like surrender to the business.

It's more of the mindset is like, I would think step one and then the assistant. Yeah, it's step two.

Well, okay, so I think a book that nailed this better than any book I've read So far is MJ DeMarco's millionaire fast lane. And in that book he describes that there's two different mindsets. There's the producer mindset and there's the consumer mindset. And the consumer mindset is how much can I buy, how much bling can I have, how much vehicle can I drive, how much house can I own, how much party can I consume? And it's about consumption, consumption, consumption, like all the things you spend money on. And that can be a way to go through life. It's just a vastly different reality than someone who has a producer mindset. And that producer mindset is how can I build things, how can I create things, how can I offer things for value to the world, including the business world? I think that those are the two mindsets. I think there's a lot of really well meaning entrepreneurs, my former self included, who deep down inside wanted to produce great things and do good by our customers and whatnot. However, our thinking just got polluted by consumption mindset. And maybe we just didn't realize there was a difference between the two. And so when our thinking is confused, it's kind of like if you've ever gone skiing, whether it's snow skiing or water skiing, the second that those two boards underneath your feet, the two skis, you know, if they start to cross, it is like face straight into the snow or the water. Immediately if your feet start to split good, you know, God help your groin, it's not going to end well, right? So that alignment, that alignment of the skis being in the right direction and not confused really just does wonders to get us to where we want to go. And I think that, you know, be it because of media or because of all the hype on the Internet these days, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and whatnot around. Live the Lamborghini lifestyle, live the laptop lifestyle, etc. Etc. Our thinking has been polluted into, hey, consume, consume, consume, consume, consume. Buy my $67 course. And that that course might be a part of the path, but it's not the whole path. And so when someone gets frustrated at the end of the $67 course, that like, oh, how come I don't have like five strippers hanging off me two Lambos in a house in Hollywood Hills. How come that hasn't happened yet? And it's like, well, because there's a little more to it than, you know, the $67 course.

So you just crushed Matt's dreams, by the way.

Crushed Matt's dreams.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Yeah, yeah.

I know you guys far too well.

I know you far too well to know that you guys are past that stage. And, you know, I think it's just. I think it's just a maturity thing. You know what I mean? Like, at some point every one of us wanted to be a pro athlete or something like that. And for some of us it happened and some didn't, and that's that. And so, okay, next. What's the next chapter? And I think that until someone is ready to be in the producer mindset, there's almost nothing that I can think of to say or do to get them to switch over. Like, I think, I think the best teacher is reality. And I think that when a person has been in the consumption mindset long enough and their credit card bills are big enough, at some point you just kind of get to your knees and just go like, oh, my God, this mindset is not working. I need to shift. And that shift is from consumption mindset to producer mindset.

Makes sense.

I love that. I love that. Now, when we started working with you now, the process of the whole great assistant thing, which we're going to get into in a little bit, but the whole starting point behind it was through this assessment called the Colby. And the first time I actually ever heard of the Colby, to be quite honest, was I was listening to a podcast by a guy named Mike Dillard, and there was a guest on there named Tim something or other, and he was on there explaining what the Colby was. No, I actually heard your podcast on Mike Dillard's show and I heard about the Colby at that time. And my thinking about the Colby was, you know what, I really don't like the concept of these assessments because to me, this is like this self fulfilling prophecy thing. You know, if this assessment tells me I'm this way, then maybe I'll be more of that way. And then it might steer my brain towards being that person that the assessment tells me I should be. But, you know, we trusted the process. We took the Colby, the results were really amazing and eye opening and went, holy shit, yes, this just described me. But can you touch on what the Colby is and why you think that's important for pretty much everybody to take?

Yeah, so I. So I Mean the Colby is a tool within a wider constellation of tools, if you will. Some tools are better and some are not. Some have test retest reliability, others do not, and some are domain specific. So we'll tell you how you operate just in work or just in your family or just, you know, in your private time versus public time.

And.

And some are more not domain specific. I just want to make sure that I'm not creating a perception that it's like one tool fits all, if that makes sense. I think how the Colby is really unique is.

It has a 94% test retest reliability. So if you were to take it now and then you took it again in five years, it'll be like within one point on.

Each of the four modes is what it's called, because a Colby score like mine is 7635. So that's a Colby score. And. And there's really three circles. I learned this when I did the Colby certification course is there's, there's three circles that contribute to someone being a great fit for a role. And that includes, like, the assistants that we hire or the salespeople that we hire or even how we interact with our own jobs and in businesses. And so the first circle is what most people think of when they think of a psychometric test is actually they're thinking about a personality test. And a personality test would be something like Myers Briggs. And so I'm an entj or I'm an ENFJ or something like that. And the vet, from what I can tell, it seems like most of the assessments out there fall in that personality realm. And so that's like, what are your goals, dreams, desires? Are you extroverted? Are you introverted? That's very much in that first circle, which is all the affective realm. So then the second circle is more like a person's intellect. So reading, writing, arithmetic and reasoning. And so one of the most famous tests in that BallPark is an IQ test. An LSAT to get into law school is also very much in that realm as well. And if you think about it, most of the hiring processes that any you've gone through maybe in your lifetime and, or you hear about from big mega corporations like Apple or Coca Cola or whatever, there's a lot of, like, interviewing. And there's also like, looking at a resume. And a resume talks about our experience in our past, which tells us a fair bit about.

The first circle, which is affect, and possibly also their intellect, which is the second circle. And it might also tell us a lot about their personality. Like, in an interview, is this person personable? Are they outgoing and whatnot? What's totally missing from most hiring processes is this third circle, which is what is a person's working instinct. So whether a person knows how to paint a house or change oil or set up Facebook ads, you know, which is their skill in circle two. And whether they're outgoing or introverted, whether they're highly motivated or not, which is circle one. How does this person solve problems? What is the wiring of their brain around solving problems and accomplishing goals? And that's the third circle, which is called conation, and that's what the Colby test measures. And so somebody who's an entrepreneur, like the typical entrepreneur score.

Which is more. So Joe is much more about, let's throw some spaghetti on the wall and what sticks. We're going to learn this by doing 100 ideas a day. Just a total. Like. Like, it's like old faithful. Every 10 minutes, bing, there's a new idea. Let's go. Let's go do that. Let's go do that. Let's go do that. And I'm telling you, the world would not turn if we didn't have that kind of working instinct.

Now, that's a very different working instinct than someone like Matt's working instinct, which is much more like, let's get all the information, let's create a plan, right? And, you know, Matt's much more about, like, okay, so Joe's got this crazy idea. How does that work? How does this fit into the big picture? What's the strategic plan? What resources do we need? Right? And that's a different. That's a different way of taking care of business, right? You guys both are in the same business. You've got a lot of the similar skill sets. You got similar personalities. You're a super nice guy, super outgoing. You're hilarious, right? So your circle one and circle two have a lot of similarities. Not identical, but a lot of similarities. You guys have similar motivations, similar goals. So, like, everything's aligned. However, what's completely or. And what is very different is the third circle, which is your working instinct. And that's part of what makes you guys such great partners, is one guy's a strong starter and the other's a strong finisher. One guy's a great visionary, the other guy's a great implementer, right? And together you're able to plug in. And oftentimes what happens is we, as entrepreneurs and leaders is we will unwittingly, unconsciously hire someone who's the same as us. And that can be great if we're saying, oh, they're outgoing and I'm outgoing, so we're going to get along in our meetings. They know how to do AdWords and Facebook ads and landing pages, and I do, too, so we'll be able to speak the same language, and I can probably hand some things off to them. If, however, we're both visionaries that come up with a million ideas a minute, and neither of us has the follow through energy to actually complete things, we'll have a great time brainstorming. Nothing's going to get done. Or vice versa. If we were both really great implementers, everything would be super smooth, but the business would never grow because there'd be no new ideas. It's just one of those things where by understanding a person's working instinct, we can now strategically, methodically click the right people into the team at the right time so that this thing is not just magnifying the problems that it already has and magnifying the strengths it already has, but instead getting the right jigsaw puzzle pieces together. Does that make sense?

It's perfect sense. I mean, because this did open up. Because I feel, at least for us, it was great to first understand ourselves. So us individually, taking the Colby, it was very quick. I think it only took like 20 minutes maybe. And then you get this report. It's great. I actually have ours open right now. It's about 18 pages. And just that alone, you're going to figure out how to communicate with others, what your strengths are. Like you said, simplify, adapt, innovate, restore. But all these things kind of have more meaning when you start to apply it to your life or your business partner. You understand how they work, how they communicate. But then, like, you just touched on. What other person can you add into the mix that can shore up maybe something that's lacking or maybe support some task or project or something in your business with very similar strengths or, I guess, I don't know. How would you describe that if. Let's talk about an assistant now. You test everyone you screen.

How is a. I guess I'm curious on how you match these. Like, what are you looking for?

Okay. Yeah. So I think that one of the.

I think one of the most important elements to all this is us as the entrepreneur leader. How are we viewing the situation? So let me unpack that a little bit.

If we were to, say, the wide and large process of surgery, if that was just one big project, it would be impossible to actually Delegate anything to anyone, and the surgeon would be stuck getting all the paperwork, setting up the room, performing the surgery, cleaning it up, arranging the money, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Right.

As soon as we unpack surgery, though, into all the sub steps, and we've got a medical, medical records person who's taking care of the records, we've got a financing person to deal with the money, we've got a prep nurse, we've got a nurse practitioner who's getting the patient ready, and we've got a surgery nurse who's making sure the room has all the right tools. And now we can break this thing into a ton of smaller pieces, and now we can delegate it to the appropriate people for every role. So the world is literally a better place. A better place if we can save more people's lives, and how we can save more people's lives and improve their quality of life is if more surgeries can happen and more surgeries can happen. If we've got surgeons available to do the surgeries and we've got surgeons available to do surgeries as much as possible. If the surgeon is only doing surgery, the surgeon is not prepping, the room is not cleaning up, the room is not doing like 99% of the paperwork, is not taking care of the money. Like, if that surgeon can literally roll into the room.

Start surgery, end surgery, sign off on one thing and leave, and then go to the next surgery room and do the whole thing again, not worry about cleaning, prepping, paperwork, all that, the world is literally a better place.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs spend so much time saying, well, you know, that's not how I would tie the garbage bag to go into the garbage. So I just don't think I can delegate that. They spent. You know, we as entrepreneurs, my former self included, spend so much time worried about every single thing being done so perfectly that we're missing out on being able to offer surgery to the world like five to ten times more than what we're actually doing right now. So if we can unpack, whether it's setting up a website or managing a Facebook ads account, or conducting a podcast, if we can break it into the sub pieces and then figure out what parts of that fulfill these three elements, I want you, the entrepreneur, to be doing only strategy, high level skill, and high level access. So strategy would be like, okay, where are we going? What's happening? How are we going to make sure we've got the money to do it? Et cetera, et cetera. High level skill would Be like selling, negotiating, speaking. If it's an Amazon business, like picking products, if it's agency, then it's like meeting customers and maybe closing deals with them. If you're buying and selling businesses, it's negotiating, right? So whatever the handful of skills are that are high level skill that took you years to learn and master. Then thirdly, it's high level access. So if your assistant emailed me personally, I may not reply. However, if you guys email me or text me personally, I'm going to reply because you have high level access to me. Likewise, a doctor. Only the doctor can sign off on certain things. The nurses can sign off on a lot of things, but the doctor is the only one who can sign off on the final release or waiver or whatever. So that's what I mean by high level access. So if we can figure out what part of your day and what part of your tasks fulfill high level strategy, high level skill, high level access, we kind of put a box around that. Now we just need to figure out how we can take everything else and methodically, systematically, over days, weeks and months, get that off your plate. Off your plate, off your plate, off your plate, off your plate. And the way that we know who to give that to is by taking a look at the three circles I just described. If we've got something that is like we need a salesperson and they're gonna have to deal with a bunch of curve balls, and they're gonna have to improvise on the fly, then that's a different Colby score, that's a different skill set, and that's a different personality compared to once you've already made the sale. And we need to now, just like, send out a terms of service, and we need to send out an invoice, and it's the same task over and over and over and over again. That's a different skill set, that's a different personality, and again, that's a different working instinct. And so I think it's about us as entrepreneurs having a vision about what's the next thing I need to get off my plate. That's non surgical, right? Or non surgeon. And then from there, getting that on the plate of the right person who's in the middle of those three circles. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. And it relates to what we were talking about right before. This is unpacking your brain so you can get to that point that you're speaking about.

There's methods like, so Matt and I use omnifocus. These are for tasks that we're doing ourself or we need to consult with others and strategy, you have your projects, all that fun stuff. What are some methods that you suggest using to get to that point? Start unpacking.

Right. So we really want to focus on tasks that are simple to teach and simple to learn.

Tasks that take less than half an hour to get done. This is a huge one. Tasks that happen often. If you're going to delegate something that happens like once a year or once a month, that's not the right place to start. Down the road you might delegate that. But I mean, we're talking like what happens two to three times a week in your business. Let's focus there. We also want tasks that are not going to cripple the business if the assistant screws them up. So if we've got a low risk task that happens all the time, takes less than half an hour to do, it's simple for you to teach and simple for them to learn. Oh, my God. Load them up on those kinds of tasks and guess what? You've got two, three hours off your plate, like within a couple weeks.

It's so cool. Yeah, it's so easy after you just unpack. I think unpacking is that one thing that just a. It's going to make you feel amazing once you have it on paper in some list or some device there. And then the second part, if you, if you match that up with someone who can do that role, just as good, better, maybe not as good, but they can grow into it. I mean, like you said, you can't earn that time back. You just saved yourself X, you know, amount of time.

Yeah. And life doesn't know the difference. Like, it's so, you know, our bodies. Right. You know, if it's like, well, I'm on a diet now, so that Twinkie didn't count. Right.

Okay.

Right. So, like, our bodies don't tell the difference between, you know, a calorie coming in because we're on a diet or not on a diet. Likewise, like an hour is an hour. It really is. And whether we're doing something high value or low value, that hour will pass whether we like it or not. And so I think, like, instead of getting all freaked out about, like, what's the best next thing that I could delegate, I say just find something that you can delegate that fits that so you can just get that hour back. And even if it's like, it's, you know, only a 7 out of 10 perfect fit, and there's a lot of like 10 out of 10 perfect fits you're just not seeing yet, or you're just not delegating it, so be it. Get that 7 to 10 fit off your plate so you can get the hour back and go find the thing that's 10 out of 10. Like, don't get too worried about it. Like, let's just find something that pretty much fits all the things I just described and let's get busy. Let's get busy delegating that and just watch. Like, I guess it's progress, not perfection is really what I'm saying.

Yeah, right.

And so a tool, once you've identified a task. Oh, and by the way, the task can be business or personal. If you're spending a lot of time coordinating medical appointments or haircuts or dentist appointments, or on and on and on and on. Like, my assistant, I gave her a list of what I call approved vendors. This is another great tool. Create a list of approved vendors. Here's my immigration attorney, my tax attorney. Here is my accountant. Here's my bookkeeper. Here's my dentist. Here's my doctor, here's my other doctor. And here's my just approved graphic designers, Facebook ads, people, copywriters, whatever my kind of roster of people is, define that once and then create a Google Doc out of it. Share that with your assistant. And so when you say, can you please book me in to see the dentist? They don't have to stop what they're doing to say, who's your dentist? What's the contact information? No, no, no, no. It's already there. Approvalist of vendors. They can hit that, get you booked in and things keep rolling.

I love that.

So once we unpack and we identify the tasks that are candidates to being delegated, then at that point, this is an awesome tool. It's such an awesome tool. It's something called 360 delegation. So I invented this just like out of necessity because I was watching how much time was being wasted in the businesses that I was helping. And I knew there was a better way. Like there has to be a better way for people to talk to each other, that we can really get things tight and efficient. So I noticed that there was a ton of time being wasted when people had to stop what they were doing and ask for help or ask for some kind of a resource or ask for like help to make a decision. And I also noticed there's a ton of time being wasted when people had to fix mistakes that others had committed or they had committed. And I also noticed that when we got a lot of those problems, the rework and also the changeover, ping pong between tasks, that that would delay projects and that would create a third kind of cost, what I call delay of delivery. And so when you are like pushing things to the last minute or over the last minute now you got to pay overnight shipping, you got to pay overtime to certain team members, you got to pay a rush fee, right? You got to pay penalties sometimes if things are not in on time. Like the list just is unending of all the downsides of things getting done at the last minute or late. And so if we can cut down on those first two, we save on the first two and the third rework, the cost of rework, the cost of changeover, and the cost of delayed delivery. And we can solve all three of those with this tool called 360 delegation. So 360 delegation is simply saying vision, resources, definition of done in the vision, here's the timeline of what I'm needing things to get done. Here's what I want to get done, and here's a sample of success. And that's so huge, you guys, is like when. If you want a podcast episode edited, then just give a link to a podcast episode that was successful. If you want an invoice to be sent, include an example invoice so people can see what it looks like. Resources is the second part of 360 delegation. That's where we're saying here's all the resources you need, including.

Training how to make certain decisions. Like if this then that it's including, here's the money that you might need. Like maybe it's access to a credit card or you know, credits for istock photo passwords. It could be anything in there. And then lastly's definition of done is how do we know this thing is complete? Like, where are we storing the finished files? Is there, like, do you need your assistant to check with you to double check their work before it goes live? Do we need to check against the contractor with a client to see if they're happy for this thing to be signed off on what needs to happen for this to be complete? And so, I mean, you can do 360 delegation in a Slack message to someone. You could do it in a voice note. If you just wanted to speak it to someone, you could record a video. I mean, the platform doesn't really matter. You just need to make sure when you're delegating to someone else that it includes those three. And one of the greatest shortcuts of all Is I taught my teammates, all of them, including my assistant, but also my sales guy and my hiring manager, and on and on. We all know how to use 360 delegation. And so now if I share something that isn't fully clear, we can actually get on a call and do it together. And now we can make sure everything is complete before they start working and have to stop 10 times because Tim screwed it up in the first place. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah. No, I think it's solid. There's a lot there. I know that we can go down a big rabbit hole with 360 delegation, but I think just with that alone, you could totally. I mean, I feel like you could just, you know, kind of get a hold of your own life and also work with people more effectively, you know, when actually delegating things.

Dan Sullivan has a great quote from Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach. He says, how big could your business be if you mastered the art and science of delegation?

I love that.

That's.

That's an awesome quote. So I have one question. I have two little kind of rabbit holes I want to go down real quickly, and then I do want to talk a little bit about your great assistant program and give people an idea on that. One question I have, and this is something that I know is sort of a common objection when it comes to initially delegating and starting to add team members, is I know a lot of people are afraid to sort of add a new expense to their business. They're afraid to. They're afraid to look at, okay, this person's going to cost me an extra thousand dollars per month. I could just do it myself. You know, I know for us, for a long, long, long time, we didn't want to bring in any outside help more because of the financial burden that we perceived from it. And so what kind of advice do you give? And, you know, what's sort of your response to that when. When that's an objection that pops up.

So first I'll ask you what changed for you that you suddenly went, oh, this is the game has changed. I now need to go get an assistant.

That's an interesting question. I'm trying to remember the actual catalyst for it. I'm sure there was just some point where I went, ben, I'm putting in 12 hours a day, six and a half days a week. I really can't do this anymore.

Okay, so it's kind of like you fell to your knees and waved the white flag.

Yeah, probably. To be honest, we've had team members circulating through our business for 10 years now. So it's hard to remember a single catalyst from back then. But even now, we don't even have anybody full time in our business. It's just, you know, contractors that are working part time for us.

Okay, and how about for you, Joe? What was the moment for you?

I think the big thing, and this is actually what around the time we met you at TNC was I think we needed someone to wrangle not only ourselves, but our team and also help us prioritize and. And systemize ourselves and our business a lot more. Because I know at the time when we met you, I think that's when we started talking about we need a project manager. We need someone to just kind of handle that stuff where we can kind of stay in our zones of geniuses.

Right, okay. And so then what made it worthwhile to spend the money?

That was one. I think we just dove right into it because of this. The Colby, I think it was the understanding of ourself first.

Brought that up. And then after we understood ourselves, Matt and I being alike in many ways, but different ways of approaching or just day to day life, that's when we realized, okay, there's something great here, but there's something still holding us back. And there's more to be done, there's more to give, but we only have so much time in the day to actually do it.

Very cool. So I think on my path.

What hit me like a ton of bricks was when I shifted from viewing my assistant as an expense to viewing my relationship with my assistant as a profit center.

So profit center is when revenues are greater than expenses, then there's profit. So.

I needed to get to a place where I could pay Sarah 15 to $20 an hour, and I could take that hour that's been freed up for me, and I can go find a way to generate 40 to $4,000 an hour. And even if in the beginning, like I said, it was like sending invoices, it's very humble work. And it's not like I went and reinvented the wheel or anything. All I did was just go to my current clients and say, so that email campaign, that's working, right? And they're like, yep. I said, I think it'd be even more effective if we could send all that traffic to a landing page that was like custom for this offer. Are you willing to try that out? And they're like, well, yeah, you know, you've done great work for us so far. Let's give it a Shot and bingo. Now I've got more $40 an hour work. So I think that I also got my first assistant too soon. And I would say to anyone that if you don't see a path to doing more revenue generating activity, like high margin, like it's going to bring in cash, then don't get an assistant. This is too early. Just don't do it because it's not going to be a profit center. And so I think that's like the entrepreneurs that show up on my doorstep and they're like, Tim, my Facebook messenger, I can't get to people quickly enough and I'm losing sales or people that go, I've got like five ideas on how I could help my clients, but I can't implement them because I just don't have the bandwidth or the client that rise and says, oh my God, I totally know the next product I would create, whether it's a digital product or a product on Amazon. And I just can't get around to launching it. And it's like, so this is a true story. This guy's name is Jimmy and he's given me permission to tell the story. He's a client of ours and the first time he ever heard me speak about getting an assistant, he was like, you know what, Tim, love you, love your stuff and I'm not going to bother with it. The way that you describe getting an assistant is like a 50 to 100 hour process. Not doing it. I'm just going to go on Facebook, say, who's got a recommendation, took the recommendation, hired the first person that was referred to me, and we got to work. Lo and behold, like three or four months later, it turns out that we totally weren't a fit. We went our separate ways and I just got frustrated. So for another three months after that, I did nothing and I just went back to suffering as a solo solopreneur. Then I realized, Tim, that I could probably come back to you and ask for all your advice again. And I implemented the advice the proper way this time. And within six months I had not only hired a new assistant, not only onboarded them, not only trained them, but I'd gotten around to creating an online course that I had been wanting to create for five years. Finally I got around to doing it. And so in the next six months after that, Jimmy went on to putting an extra quarter million dollars into his top line sales. So what was the cost of him, you know, or what was the net effect of his relationship of getting a great assistant, not just anyone but Someone who's like fully vetted North American can play to eye level. All of a sudden now it's not about the 15 to 20 bucks an hour he was spending. It's about the quarter million dollars of new sales that he brought in. And that's what I mean is the relationship with the assistant, them freeing up your time is the profit center, even if then them in of themselves are the expense. And you know, it doesn't need to be a grand quarter million dollar story. For me, it was 40 bucks an hour compared to 15 to 20. Like it could be as modest as like a 10 to $15 an hour spread to make it a profit center. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And I think a lot of folks get a little scared away because I know we've spoken to a lot of people about great assistant and you and our process because. And it's A lot of people we know listen to this podcast, are good friends who are very successful entrepreneurs, but they still feel like it's almost routine. A lot of entrepreneurs get into is I'll just keep doing the same old thing. You know, it's getting me this far. And you know, they kind of, they just almost just take it for granted or they just don't think about what's possible and they know there's a better way.

But the fact that you can hire someone here locally in the US or North America for around $20 an hour and you're getting top, top level people that, I mean, these people should be running companies, you know, large, large companies, but they can literally run your company depending on whatever size you are at. It's totally game changing for us. Shannon, our ops manager. So, you know, we didn't really go for an assistant. We're almost like, screw it, we want to go for bigger. And it's worked fabulously.

Yeah, I'd say like a great starting point for an assistant is to be an assistant. And maybe you guys decided to just like veto that and skip that. I just think for everyone listening, start an assistant as an assistant so that they can get to know you, they get to know your products, get to know your customers and also the teammates. Right. There's a certain familiarity that needs to come know who your other vendors are. Like who are the graphic designers we can go to to get things done. And then after that, let them graduate, you know, if they want to graduate. If you want to graduate them, graduate them into doing project management. Or in the case of Matt and Joe, just graduate right on up to like savior of all Things, operations or something like that.

It's worked so far.

It's worked so far. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. That's great. I think that, you know, I think for me, like, I just think about that quote of like, hell is meeting the man I could have been. And it really brings around this idea of like, opportunity cost. What am I, you know, by us doing this podcast right here, right now, it means we're not doing something else. And you know what, it's actually as much as we all bitch and complain about email inbox, about, you know, having to work long hours, etc. Etc. It's actually easier to just go to your email inbox and semi mindlessly answer all the stuff that's coming in. It's actually easier to do that and put in the grinding hours day after day to do that than to stop and do some higher level thinking to say, how can I just make this go away altogether?

And like, as crazy as it sounds, it's actually easier to dig a ditch and, or write it 50 emails a day and, or do all the low level, no thinking stuff than it is to have the courage, the intellect and the vision to step out of that and say, okay, we got a game of Whack a Mole going on here. A great example from a great metaphor from Sam Carpenter who worked the system. We got this game of Whack a Mole here. And up until now I've been standing with the hammer in my hand whacking all these damn little moles that come up in the arcade game one after the other after the other, and it's an unwinnable game. It's just totally an unwinnable game. The game is literally designed for those little assholes to come up faster and furiouser with every single minute that goes by. So what would happen if instead of being busy, I were to zoom out and say, creatively, what could I do? What could I do to make all these little moles go away and I never have to whack any of them or like very few of them ever again? And that's when you realize, oh, what's this black thing sticking out of the back of the machine? Sticking into something white on the. Oh, that's a power cord and it's plugged into a white outlet. If all I did was walk over and unplug this damn machine, these moles would stop forever. I win.

Yeah.

And that's the crazy thing is we score ourselves on how we're doing as entrepreneurs by like, oh, I put in like 85 hours this day, you know, and I answered some 600 emails today. What did you do? And that's like the scoreboard on the whack a mole game. And that's like totally the wrong metric to be optimizing for.

Yeah, no, I love that analogy. That's a really good analogy. So the last thing that we want to kind of dive into is the actual Great Assistant process and what sort of things you take people through. Obviously, Joe and I went through the whole great Assistant process and you, you helped us find Shannon, our current ops manager. But can you sort of explain that whole process and what people would do and how that whole thing works, if anybody is interested in going through that process as well?

Yeah, definitely. So, first of all.

I think Great Assistant is designed to be like going to Starbucks through the drive through, where you show up at the first window, you say, I'd like a mocha fraca, whatever, chino grande venti thing. And then from there, like, you pull forward, you don't really know what the gnomes, like, Santa's workshop is really doing, and nor do you want to. You just want the mocha frappuccino, whatever at the next window.

And so there is some work for you as the entrepreneur to do. However, the whole thing's designed to take like 95% of the work off your plate. Now, if an entrepreneur wants to do it themselves, then let's talk about that. So here's as best I can in the time that we've got.

Here's kind of what we're doing. So first of all, our expectation is we're looking at roughly the equivalent of, say 50 to 100 candidates to find the winning assistant for Matt and Joe.

And the process would be the equivalent of like 50 to 100 hours.

Everything from writing the job post to hiring the person, like the entire, like, start to finish. And now obviously my team, we've got some economies of scale and so we're able to do it quickly. More quickly than that. However, if someone wanted to do it themselves, that's the first thing I would say, is expect to get at least 5,200 applicants. Don't just hire the first person you meet. Don't just get your sister in law. Don't just say, oh, well, little Jenny down the block needs some extra work on the weekends while she goes to college. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I think I've done all of those before.

Okay.

Literally sister in law as well.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, all right, so let that.

It's a progression. I mean, that's what got me here. So this is a good thing you're saying that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Maybe we can help someone else. And you know what? It's not that the sister in law is inherently wrong. It's just let's do a proper process to make sure that if you're hiring anyone, you're hiring the best person. If it happens to be your sister in law at the end of all of it, then you know, then that's a different story than she's convenient. So that's the first thing is 50 to 100 hours and 50 to 100 applications.

Second, and here's a great tip. Brace yourself, brace yourself if you are going to go post something on Upwork or hiremymom.com or any of the online job boards.

The percentage of jobs out there that are legitimate work from home jobs is pretty small. That when someone goes online and they type in work from home, they get hammered with network marketing, they get hammered with data entry, they get hammered with fill up these surveys from home. And they also get hammered with courses from people telling them how they can become an assistant. And none of those four categories are actual job opportunities to actually be an assistant.

So be prepared that by having a legitimate work from home opportunity that you're probably going to get like a flood of applications if you're really just kind of like generic when you go to upwork or hire my mom or wherever. So a great tip that anybody could do like right now in the next day if you're posting a job is to use the red font, blue font method. And I've heard a few different people come up with this idea. So this is not a Tim Francis original. 360 delegation is. But this, this one is not a Tim Francis original. And that's simply to put in your job ad. Like you know, if you are interested in applying, first of all, email this specific email address, use this specific headline and then do not attach a resume. And in the body in the first paragraph.

Give me three sentences on your first reason why you think you would be a great assistant for my company. Do that in blue font. 12 point. Verdana. In the second paragraph, include the second reason why you'd be a great assistant. Know exactly three sentences and I want that to be Red Courier 11 point. In the third paragraph, I'd like that to be Black Ariel 16 point and include three sentences on your third reason for why you'd be a great assistant. And again, do not attach a resume. It must go to this email address. And it must have the subject line.

I love that.

So by doing that, watch what happens. Number one, I don't even need to open a single email. All I need to do is just look at the hundreds of applications that come in or the dozens of applications that come in, and all I got to do is look at the subject line without even opening it. And if they have not if they can't even get the subject line right, for God's sakes, just delete them. They're done, they're gone, gone, gone and gone.

And you know what? Like, I would be as rigorous as to say if one character is wrong, right, just set up a filter.

You can just do all that work for you.

100%. Yeah, 100%. And also you can set up an autoresponder on that specific email inbox. So we actually have like a separate email inbox that's for hiring and that auto replies to everyone that sends in their info. And it just says, thank you for applying. Your application has been received.

If you don't hear back from us within 72 hours, you can assume that you've not been shortlisted. Thank you for your time, energy and talent for applying for this role. All the best, Tim. And so now everybody's getting a reply, so they know that it hasn't been, like, eaten by Internet gremlins. They feel like a certain amount of class and respect. And I don't have to be the one to manually do it, which is great. No one on my team has to manually do it. So now we've already shortened the list substantially and now we can just open the emails and start reading. And if any of them has a resume attached, or if any of them does not have the right font size, color, type, order, you know, if the paragraphs don't have three sentences apiece, they're done, deleted, just gone. And just be rigorous about it again, if someone can't get their first email, which is supposed to be their best foot forward, if they can't, if they can't follow instructions on that, they can't get that right. Either they don't care enough or they don't know how to follow instructions and either of those don't don't jive for me. So just delete those. Now, of those who are remaining now, it starts getting more hands on. And after that, I'm going to start applying some work tests and so I'm actually going to ask them to do some small, generic tasks. So, for example, create a birthday party event on Facebook and I need you to share that event with this person on Facebook, which is like me or Sarah or somebody like that. And I also need you to go into Google Docs and write me a procedure of how you created that birthday party event in Facebook. And so now I get to evaluate so much with that single work test. I get to evaluate how clear is their thinking, what caliber is their writing, do they know how to sequence information, do they even know how to use Google Docs? Right. So I get to reveal all of that to, you know, in with one simple, small work test. So you can see that I'm like, methodically building out these steps. In total, I think ours is at nine steps now. And there's interviews, there's work tests, there's the Colby index. We're doing some.

Cognitive testing through another test. We're also doing a skills test, we're also doing a personality test, we're doing a second interview, right? And on and on and on. So, like, literally every filter that we have through the process allows us to refine, refine, refine, refine, refine who's actually making it through. And because one advantage we have is we're doing it such scale, we're able to buy higher end tools. For example, there's these three tests that we have the assistants do beyond Colby, and the answers that we get in those tests, we actually have access to a database of over 300,000 other administrative, executive, and personal assistants who've all taken the same test. So we can see how this person stacks up not just against the 150 we've ever hired, but we're talking like an additional 300,000 people out there in America.

See, this is why you're so extremely leveraged all the way through. And literally, like, the result that Matt and I got from this whole process, I think there were like about 70 or 80 applicants for our specific role that was custom tailored per, you know, our needs, but with your system. And we. I don't know if this is good or bad, but we did just see one resume, which was Shannon's, and, you know, talk to her. I think we talked to Nancy on your team and said, nope, she's the one.

Yeah, well, we actually contacted Nancy on your team and we kind of went, this girl is like, so perfect for what we're looking for. And I know you had like one or two other applicants. Should we interview the other two applicants or, like, go with our gut that says this person is the perfect person. And Nancy said, if you're feeling that in your gut, go with them.

And so I think something that's really beautiful, what you said is like, we can't do 100% of the process for you, but we can do about 95% of it. 95, 96, 97% of it. So that all that you're left with, all that you guys were left with was in our gut. Do we feel like we have chemistry with this person? You didn't have to worry about technology tests or work tests or psychometric assessments or any of that. So we took care of the science of it, right? And then all you guys had to do was the last little bit to say, do we feel chemistry or not? And the problem is most entrepreneurs do only the chemistry part, which is only the last 3%, and they think that's a hiring process. And no wonder. Hiring rates currently for hourly workers in America, the success rate is less than 50%. You might as well roll a dice at this point, right? So our hiring success rate right now is at 86%, because, you know, which is like, more than 50% better chance of success simply because we've got this, like, this process. It's just this, like, massive machine that will filter people through, and only the best of the best fit end up at the bottom and ultimately placed in front of Joe and Matt for them to say yay or nay.

Yeah, no, I absolutely love it. And the process for us was super simple. We couldn't be happier just going back and forth with Nancy and her telling us, you know what, we've already filtered this down from like 80 to, like, three. And then us only getting on one call going, nope, this is it, we're gone, we're done. Process finished. You know, like that. That was just. Just thinking about the amount of time it would have taken us to go through those 80 plus people, you know, write the job at it in the first place, then go through all the 80 plus people, then filter down, then filter it down, then filter it down, then filter it down, then finally get on a few calls. Just the amount of time that probably took was now completely off our plate. So it was absolutely, totally, 100% worth the time, investment, everything else that went into it. But, you know, this. I'm sure we could probably talk about this stuff for. For another hour, but unfortunately, I think we're running out of time here. Is there one of the questions we like to ask everybody? And I know this kind of feels like a really quick jump to a different topic, but I want to ask you this before we got to get off the call. Are there any Other books. I know you mentioned one book earlier in the show, but are there any books that you find yourself recommending often or.

Circling back around to and reading once a year or anything like that?

Yeah, so I would say that, you know, a great. I mean, yeah, I think for me, it's kind of pieces like.

MJ DeMarco's Millionaire Fast Lane I mentioned earlier that really impacted me. I thought that the perspective and some of the tools that Sam Carpenter shared in Work the System was fantastic. In fact, I, you know, with all due respect to Michael Gerber and the E. Myth, I really think Work the System is a superior book as far as being, like, actionable and practical. And when you can take Work the System and you can combine that with an assistant that has the right Colby score, you can literally have your assistant build most of the systems in your business. So in my company, we have over 200 procedures that have been written up in Google Drive. They're all organized and named and tagged and everything. And I've probably written less than 20 of them, probably even less than 15 of the procedures in our business. And it's been Sarah and Courtney and our team that have built the other 185 because they had the right Colby Score and I gave them the right training so that they could go and do that. And, like, it's just like, you don't have to go through the brain damage. You don't have to go through the hard work. You don't have to go through the heavy lifting. You just need to know how to get leverage. And if you aren't taking a moment to step back and say what's important here and how can I just, like, once and for all take care of this? Or, like, once in a blue moon, you know, maybe I have to deal with it, but, like, largely get this off my plate, then you just never get around to it. Right. And so, you know, any of the books, like essentialism by Greg McKean, you know, great book around, like, what's essential. I think that's also, like, a great book around, like, the spirit of let's focus on what matters most and be okay with, like, letting go of a lot of other things that are.

They're important.

Like, if I don't send an invoice to a client, we don't get paid. It's important. It's just not appropriate anymore for me to be doing that work in my business. Once upon a time, it was, but it's just not appropriate anymore. It's not BS Work. It's not stupid stuff. It's important. It's just not appropriate anymore for me to be doing it. So that essentialism is a great book for that big picture One Thing by Gary Keller also in that same kind of world.

Yeah, those are all great books now. So the. There's two resources I want to give them at the very least. Now I think you have a resource where they can go and take the Colby and then also there's a resource where they can go work directly with you to help find an assistant. Do you want to share those real quick? And any other resources or links you might want to point people over to?

Yeah. So thanks for that opportunity and the shout out. If someone's interested in kind of digging more into our methods, I put together something called our delegation toolbox. And that's@greatassistant.com toolbox and that's greatassistant.com toolbox and when you go there, you'll see that there's a handful of different links. And so one of the links is 104 tasks you can delegate to an assistant. They're not the only things you can delegate to an assistant, but it's hopefully just going to stimulate some thinking around what's possible. The 360 delegation tool I talked about earlier, there's a link right there as well. I also include a link to the seven Steps to Email Freedom. So it's how I got rid of my email inbox. I read and respond to less than 15 emails a week. That's the method of how to make that happen. So there's a handful of free tools there to help anyone to kind of get further along on their path, you know, to build more, to do more, to get back to doing the work that you love while getting rid of the work that you hate. So that's one. Yeah, great, great, great resource there. And then on that Same website, great assistant.com people can click if they're wanting to book a breakthrough call with myself or someone from our team to see if our program would be a fit or not for, for their business.

Perfect, Tim. Yeah, and, and we don't. We're not lying one bit. This is highly recommended. It's saved so much time. And as you just described, Shannon, just for us, as Sarah is for you, is now, you know, procedurizing, if that's a word, and automating, you know, all building all this stuff that we know we shouldn't just be in the middle of. So there's a lot of stuff that just once you unpack your brain, you know, you're going to start highlighting a lot of stuff that you're just like, I got to get rid of this. Someone else has to do it. My time is better leveraged elsewhere. So thank you so much, Tim, and check out great assistant and all the links. They're going to be in the show notes as well, if it's easier for you guys. Listening. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the opportunity. Appreciate being here. Thanks, guys. And I'm proud of all your success. You guys are kicking butt.

Hey, thank you. All right, man. I'll see you later.

That was so good.

Thank you so much for listening to that episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we just did.

Wow, that was game show esque of you.

Very game show.

That was good. Now, Tim. Tim just laid down a master class in basically how to grow your business with the right people, with the right system, strategies, all that. So hopefully you got a lot from it and you took notes, and if you didn't, we will develop a little cheat sheet for you. So that'll be in the show notes. So check that out. But definitely, I mean, Tim is the real deal.

Yeah. So we wanted to make a little, like, unique outro for this episode and kind of give a little bit more story behind Tim Francis and how we got to know him and what he actually did for us. Because we touched on it a little bit in the episode, we wanted to dive a little bit deeper and really kind of explained our sort of journey with Tim. So we actually met Tim at Traffic and Convert, what was a Rise 25 event that was happening around the same time as Traffic and Conversion here in San Diego. And a guy named Jeremy Weiss introduced. Introduced us to. To Tim. And so we got talking to Tim, and Tim just kind of. He almost felt like. Like a mind reader, right? We were sitting there talking to him, and he's like, you know what? You are X, Y, and Z. I can just tell by your personality. And he was, like, kind of calling out elements of our personality and was noticing things in us. And he asked about our. Our Colby score, and we're like, no, we've never taken our Colby score. So we went back to our hotel room, or. No, I think we're. No, we didn't have a hotel. We went back to the. Wherever the conference was, and we. We took the Colby real quick and we compared our notes, and we told Tim and. And Tim's like, oh, this is awesome. Come over to my apartment and I'll. I'll give you a consultation based on what your Colby scores were. So we sat down with him. He explained Joe's life better than Joe can explain it. He explained me better. I can explain myself, and kind of talked about, you know, how we work and what's most effective for each of us. And we were just sitting there going, like, he's in our head.

What is he doing? Yeah. And even cooler is he combined us. Like, okay, here's how to work together most effectively, too. Yeah, yeah, that was the cool part.

And so he started asking questions about what we needed in our business and things like that. And it led into us deciding to proceed with him and use his great assistant program to. To hire somebody into our own business. And the process was. I mean, on our end, it didn't even feel like much of a process. Right. I think we filled out a couple questionnaires right in the beginning, and that was probably the most. Most time we put into the whole thing was filling out those couple questionnaires in the beginning.

I think we spoke to Nancy once to kind of get to know us. And Nancy kind of assists with this whole hiring process, the vetting process, and she understood who we wanted the most in our business. That was ended up being Shannon. But we wanted someone who was not really an assistant, even though, you know, Tim says, like, kind of recommend starting there. We wanted someone that was more like a project manager, ops manager, and help us with our systems.

Yeah. So that whole process, though, after that initial survey and after initially talking to Nancy, they just basically went to work, and we would get little updates from Nancy through email, and I think she said we had something like 80 plus people apply. She helped us narrow it down to, like, five that she interviewed. She. From the ones that she interviewed, she narrowed it down to three. And then she actually picked her top pick and said, talk to this person.

Person first.

I think this person nails it on the head with what you guys are looking for. So we talked to Shannon, our current manager, and basically went back to Nancy and Tim and said, yep, the other two that you had lined up just tell them we already found the right person, are Shannon's.

It.

We literally had to talk to one person on the phone, and they nailed it the first try.

And I think this whole thing, it took maybe about two and a half weeks, maybe it was three. Uh, but either way, now it's from, like, start to finish. And in the meantime, what's really cool is when you sign up, you get some extra training as well. So what Tim was talking about on the podcast is, you know, delegation 360 is is or is it 360 delegation?

360 delegation.

Yeah, that's it added backwards. But it's amazing because it preps your brain before you start to work with this new hire. So you are pretty prepared to basically delegate to them, work with them as an effective team member and have them take on some of these vital tasks. So a lot of that unpacking that Tim explained inside of the episode is really what you're starting to test them with. And that's what we did with Shannon. You know, you have a little trial period, which is really nice. He has a, a nice little way to make sure that they are a good fit without you having to pay anymore, which is super cool too. So I guess what I would challenge you is think about your current business. If you're hitting roadblocks, if you feel like you're working too much or you're just not doing the most effective things in your business and you're looking at your dollar rate or your, you know, your take home pay and you feel like that can be leveraged, like Tim explained, then I would definitely reach out to great Assistant. You know, they are not going to be the cheapest option because obviously you can go try to hack the this yourself. But like Tim said, it's going to be about a hundred hours and a lot of, a lot of failed things. You're probably not going to, you're not going to have the oiled systems like he does. He's got this process down and that is no joke. That's speaking from experience. So definitely check out great assistant.com not you can start a chat with those guys. They'll actually hop on the phone. Super cool people.

Tell them you heard about them on the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

Of course. But yeah, but if you just want to learn more, he definitely has a ton of content out there. Or if you just Google, you know, Tim Francis, our great assistant, you'll see a ton of his videos are actually really, really helpful. Very similar to the podcast here, but definitely go start a chat with them. It's worth your time and it's worth the money, the investment. You will make it back just in sheer time saved that you can never buy back. So go check it out. Thank you for watching.

Listening.

Listening. It's listening. Then I'm watching.

And hopefully you're enjoying these episodes because if you do do us a big favor, go to hustle and flowchart.com and subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review that helps us get more earballs on this show.

We, like.

We try to. We're. We're trying to collect earballs here.

Yes, we are. We have a jar, actually. It's in the corner. You're getting creepy. All right, all right.

Thanks for tuning in. See you later.