10X Your Productivity By Hiring a Chief of Staff

So if there's one role that I recommend small business owners consider adding to their team, it's a role called a chief of staff. Here's what it is and here's why you need one. So we're all familiar with the concept of an executive assistant. Let's talk about what a chief of staff isn't in order to better define the role. A chief of staff isn't somebody who's doing scheduling or managing your calendar for you. In fact, what a chief of staff actually does is work on things that are very important to the company, and they're often very important to you as the CEO or an owner of a business, but but they're things that could be done by somebody else and they should be done by somebody else so you can focus on more important things. I call these things the messy middle of tasks. They're too complex for an EA or somebody along those lines to own them, but they're also things that you could delegate to somebody else. They need to be done, they require a good amount of thought and problem solving, and also potentially connection with the rest of your organization, but they're things that you should probably take off your plate so you can focus on the things that only you can accomplish. So my current chief of staff, her name is Robin Smith. She joined me about a year ago. She works on high-level projects. There'll be things like, hey, I need to run a selection process for a new CEO. She'll partner with me on that. She'll spearhead and quarterback the whole thing and then incorporate me as makes sense for portions of that. And so she does that high-level thinking, problem solving. And for me, it's hugely powerful because this was stuff I used to have to do and now I can delegate it to her and ask her to run with it. And it gets done just as well or better than if I had done it myself. So if you think about it, this type of messy middle project, it's everywhere in your organization. There's something that needs to be done and there's nobody whose job it is to do it. And so you can drop one person in like this Chief of Staff really is like the firefighters call, a smokejumper to jump in there, solve the problem, get it done and move on to the next thing. Or if it's, you're familiar with Game of Thrones, they're the Hand of the King, right? They make things happen and it's essential and it'll accelerate everything for me over the past year. So I've just talked a little bit about the way I do Chief of Staff, but it turns out there's actually many different flavors of Chief of Staff across all organizations. But the one thing they do all have in common is they report directly to you, the CEO. In my case, I let the chief of staff have full access. They come to my meetings, they know everybody in the organization. She has access to bank accounts and the ability to see what my credit card bills look like. All of that is on the table, and she can only be effective in my world by having access to all that stuff. Our sponsor today is Regig, a platform designed to accelerate your search for a small business. Finding the right business to buy is one of the hardest things about being a small business owner. Regig users often get 5 to 10 calls per month with sellers interested in discussing you acquiring their business. Learn more about this model at rejig.com/gwa. That's rejig.com/gwa. Let Rejig do the calling and you do the closing. The key thing here is for a chief of staff to truly be effective in your projects, there has to be a level of trust and openness there. The chief of staff has to really truly have access to what's going on. So here are the characteristics I look for when I go to hire a chief of staff. Number 1, I want somebody smart. I just enjoy working with smart people. Number 2, they're going to make a lot of decisions. And these are projects that I I find in this messy middle area that I need to delegate to somebody who's going to make good decisions on them. I look for somebody who's gritty. So grit is people that have a strong level of perseverance and a high level of personal expectation of excellence. So I want that. I want somebody who's not going to quit. They need to have a strong attention to detail. I want them to be somebody who's really going to make sure that the I's get dotted and the T's get crossed. They need to enjoy multitasking. So done right, a chief of staff has got a lot of balls in the air. They're dealing with all this different stuff. So all that is super important as well. And they need to understand and be comfortable multitasking. They like the action. So I look for people who have a history of doing that. And then two more things. They need to be likable. So I choose chief of staffs that I'm going to enjoy spending a lot of time talking to. And then the last thing I really want to find in someone is, for me, the chief of staff role is a temporary role. You're in, you do a tour of duty, and you move on to your next thing. So I'm looking for somebody who's ambitious. And to me, ambition is not necessarily a good thing when you're in the individual role, but it is a good thing when you try to select for people. Ambitious people are going to come in, do a great job, and then want to be prepared to go go out and kill it in their next thing. I do the Chief of Staff role targeted at an early career young person. I like to find somebody who is on their second or maybe third job in their mid-20s. There are other people that when they put together their Chief of Staff roles, say if you're in a more sophisticated organization or a bigger corporation, you may look for somebody who is post-MBA or more senior or in their 30s or late 30s. Those are all different options there in terms of the type of Chief of Staff that you can put together and the profiles that you can look for. So the reason these young people really like this Chief of Staff job is a lot of times there opportunity is to go be doing a low-level jobby job, right? You're, you're a manager of something or you're an individual contributor. You know, you're not really exposed to bigger things. And if that's your goal as an ambitious person in your career, you'll be able to spend time at the highest level doing this chief of staff role, get exposed to all different type of things, and leave with two different things, I think, which is A, a bunch of new skills and knowledge that you didn't have before, but B, leave with proof points that you can show to the people that you've suddenly met with and worked with. They all know that you're suddenly suddenly like a real baller, right? And they're suddenly the very powerful people that you've worked with, both as the CEO and the reports and everybody inside and outside the organization. And that creates a network for you to where you can potentially, you know, leapfrog the normal levels of getting into new opportunities. So those two things are hugely appealing, especially for young people. And so for me, I ask folks to come in and do this chief of staff role for me for a year or two years or longer if they decide it makes sense for them. But then after that, I know that this is just a temporary thing. Hopefully before they leave, they're going to help me find their replacement, and then we move on to help them find their next thing. And it's a win-win for everybody. Okay, so let's talk about how to find a chief of staff. So I have a super, super advantage here because I've spent so much time building an audience and, and sharing stuff on social media. Finding a chief of staff for me is really easy. Everybody kind of knows me and I share a lot of stuff on social media to short circuit that and make it happen. And because people know me, I just tweet about having an open chief of staff job and I'll get tons of great applicants. So let's talk about some of the ways you can find a chief of staff. Otherwise. So there are two things I recommend you do if you want to find a chief of staff. Number one is network to get referrals. So network and ask around. And almost invariably, your peers, friends, colleagues, coworkers, they all seem to know somebody who's like a young hustler in their 20s who is a person of great opportunity and is really looking to get into a role where they can make a big difference. Another place you can look, so you can look internally as well. So you can go and say, hey, like Is there anybody in the organization who's an individual contributor now? And they use that as an option to recruit them and bring them into this role. And that's it. That's how I view a small business chief of staff. But these same principles can be used for big companies, little companies. And I'm greatly appreciative of you watching this video here on YouTube. We're having a ton of fun making these. If you would click the like button or as they say, like bang the notification button, the little bell. And if you enjoyed this video, be sure to subscribe and also reply in the comments below if you think it there's anything I got wrong or things that you liked in this video, I would love to hear them. Uh, we're trying to grow the channel here and get moving. So thanks a bunch.