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Tim Francis is the Founder of Great Assistant, a done-for-you service that helps entrepreneurs get a great assistant.

For years, Tim had a stubborn attitude that he could work 80 hours per week and do everything on his own. All that changed when a sudden stress-induced case of Erythema Nodosum literally stopped Tim in his tracks at age 28.

For three months, he was unable to walk and asked himself, “What have I done to put myself in this situation?”

Putting his ego aside, he got over himself, learned to be a solid team-builder and delegator, and cracked the code to find a great assistant. Combining new delegation skills with his US-based assistant Sarah, he finally got the bottom 80% off his task list and focused on the top 20%.

This rapidly multiplied his consulting rate from $40/hour to $1,000/hour, while also reducing his overall workload. Today, Tim helps other entrepreneurs get great assistants so they can avoid all the pain and suffering he went through.

Some Topics We Discussed Include:
  • The frustrations of getting a great assistant
  • When to delegate to an assistant
  • The 360 Delegation
  • Reasons why an assistant would fail
  • Decision-making guidelines
  • The definition of “done” and what it implies
  • Useful hiring platform and tools
  • The perfect job posting
  • Tim's process of training assistants

If you are looking for a great assistant that can help get lower-value tasks off your plate so you can focus on the higher-value strategy and big ideas, visit https://greatassistant.com/.

About The Guest: Tim Francis

BWB Tim | Getting A Great AssistantTim Francis is the founder of Great Assistant, a done-for-you service that helps Entrepreneurs get a Great Assistant.

For years, Tim had a stubborn attitude that he could work 80 hours per week and do everything on his own. Despite working late nights and early mornings, he refused to release control to others, adamant he could do everything better himself.

All that changed when a sudden, stress-induced case of Erythema Nodosum literally stopped Tim in his tracks at age 28. For three months, Tim was unable to walk. Day after day he stared at the ceiling asking himself, “What have I done to put myself in this situation?”

One of his top takeaways was he needed to put his ego aside, get over himself, and learn to be a solid team-builder and delegator.

After years of struggling with finding an Assistant, Tim finally cracked the code. Combining new delegation skills with his new, US-based assistant Sarah, Tim finally got the bottom 80% off his task list, while he focused on the Top-20%. This rapidly multiplied his consulting rate from $40/hr to $1,000/hr, while also reducing his overall workload.

Today Tim helps other Entrepreneurs get a great assistant so his fellow Entrepreneur can avoid all the pain and suffering he went through.

Using “360 Delegation” to get lower-value tasks off my plate so I can focus on the higher-value strategy and big ideas in my business.

Looking for influencers in the eCom, expert / info-biz, and agency worlds who'd like to have a guest team simple strategies for better delegating.

The Secret To Getting A Great Assistant with Tim Francis

Today We are going to talk to Tim Francis. Tim is the Founder of GreatAssistant.com and Profit Factory.

We’re going to talk about really offloading some of the work that you’re doing that is not the most productive use of your time.

I don’t think I need to talk too much about the benefits of having an assistant and not doing everything yourself but we’ll talk a little bit more about that because it’s an easy trap to fall into.

I know I fall into it and back a couple of months ago, at the Traffic & Conversion Summit, I was invited to a small dinner with several other digital marketing entrepreneurs including Tim.

We sat down and we talked a little bit and we caught up a little bit more. When I found out what he was up to, it got me really curious.

I decided to invite him on the show to talk to you guys about some of the biggest problems that entrepreneurs face when hiring an assistant and reasons assistants fail and place to find good ones and how to manage them correctly.

I’m going through a growth stage in my business where hiring and delegating is a very important part as well. You’re going to hear me ask some questions that I want to know the answers to as always. I hope that he’s able to answer some questions for you as well.

If you get cut off and you want to hear more about Tim, you can go to GreatAssistant.com and check him out. Without any further ado, let me welcome Tim to the show. How are you?

I’m excited for you to help me get fat profits.

You’ve got to have profits, I love it. It’s good to have you on the show. This is not a topic we’ve actually covered. It’s one of the biggest topics out there, I take that back.

We’ve covered the topic of getting help in your business in the past with some of my guests like Mark Winters who is the coauthor of Rocket Fuel where he talks about the importance of getting an amazing operations manager and an integrator for the visionary entrepreneur.

This is a perfect segue because that how to find, in essence, your partner in running the whole thing. Correct me if I’m wrong, where you really focus is helping entrepreneurs, executives, and people get great assistants to help their lives run smoothly. Is that a good assessment?

Oftentimes, the very first person we need to hire, whether we actually do it or not is a different story, but oftentimes the persons that we need is someone who can almost act as a mini-me to keep plates spinning.

As entrepreneurs, we’re great at starting projects and we need someone to babysit those, make sure they cross the finish line.

What got me into the world of digital marketing, like a lot of people, I read Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Workweek, and for the first time in my life, I was turned on to the concept of virtual assistants and global arbitrage of labor.

He told me I can get somebody over in the Philippines or India for $3 to $5 an hour to do some of my tasks. I started to do it and then I realized, “This is not as easy or as efficient as Tim talked about,” although it was probably because I did a lot of things wrong.

I got into the business because I could do a lot of this outsourcing and I ended up not doing it. I became an accidental expert in everything because I didn’t know how to find great assistants.

I didn’t know how to manage them and how to work with them correctly and monitor them because that wasn’t my strength. As a result, I ended up doing a lot more things myself than I should have.

I probably would’ve been a lot further along in my career had I understood this early. Do you find that as a common problem?

I appreciate you sharing your journey. Don’t beat yourself up too much, Brad. Check this out. In fall of 2015, we surveyed 149 entrepreneurs. We asked them one single question, we said, “What is your single biggest roadblock or frustration in getting a great assistant?”

No kidding, nearly 100%, 98.7% had one or many of these big six concerns. There weren’t twenty concerns, there weren’t 200 concerns, there were just six concerns that popped up for every single entrepreneur. The first was, “I don’t know how to trust or release control.”

Number two is, “How much should I pay them? I don’t know how to make them profitable,” the money question. The third was, “I don’t have the time to train them.” The fourth is, “I don’t have the on-going time to manage them, or fix their mistakes, or coach them along the way.”

The fifth was, “I don’t know where to find them,” and the sixth and final of the big six concerns was, “I don’t know what to delegate.” You just rattled off three of the six and don’t beat yourself up too much, we all go through it.

It’s a part of the growing process because in the very beginning, depending on where you’re at, you don’t even have enough work for the assistant to do.

You’re still scrambling around trying to figure out what plates you’re going to spin, let alone delegating somebody else to keep spinning them, to use that analogy.

We were talking a little bit offline, once more I’m not going to harp on the benefits of having a great assistant, I think everybody understands. It allows you to do what you’re best at and to do more of it.

One of the things I’ll share with you and the readers that had a big impact on my thoughts around this, especially when it comes to giving up my money to have somebody else do something that I could easily do myself. $10 an hour work, $5 an hour, $20 an hour work, or whatever.

One of my former clients, one of my close friends and a former guest on the show, Kent Clothier who’s got a big real estate investment services business, he was hiring a nanny for his wife. His wife doesn’t have a job outside the house.

They’ve got their two kids, they make a lot of money but they’re still cognizant of this, “You don’t need to hire a nanny for me, you don’t have to pay her $20 an hour to do what I could do during the day.” He said, “You don’t understand, I’m not paying her $20 an hour for her time.

I’m buying an hour of my wife’s time, an hour of my wife’s life for $20 an hour, that’s a steal. That’s basically free. Why would I not buy more time with you? Why would I not pay that money to get the best out of you and make sure you’re in a great mood and not stressed out with the kids?”

It was a little epiphany. It’s the same thing if I’m hiring somebody to manage my emails, to do this. I’m not paying somebody $10 an hour or whatever it is for their time. I’m buying my time back at a discount.

That’s a huge epiphany and a paradigm shift that a lot of people need to make. I know when I made it, it got easier to let go of the poor strings.

I think there are two sides to that and the concept you’re talking about. It’s brilliant that you’re touching on this, is the idea of opportunity cost. It’s not just about what am I spending. It’s what am I not doing because I don’t have more time?

A lot of entrepreneurs died death by a thousand paper cuts and it’s ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there, twenty minutes here. I think that it’s not just about creating one list to say, “Here’s what I could outsource.”

It’s creating a second list, and the second list would actually help you understand if it’s the right time to get an assistant or not. I read The 4-Hour Workweek just like you did and I got an assistant right away.

I spend about $10,000 on wages and got nothing out of it because I didn’t do a good job of being a good entrepreneur in the first place. There is a time that’s too early to get an assistant, there’s no question about that.

This is the little exercise that I encourage people to consider, certainly make a list of the $10 to $20 an hour tasks and certainly, that’s what you could delegate. The second list though, is if you did have an extra five hours a week or ten hours a week, where would you go put that time?

If you can’t get a clear list of what the $50 to $500 or $5,000 an hour work is, then it’s probably too soon, because you’re just going to end up paying for an assistant and sitting around and not really knowing what to do.

That has been my folly in the past where I did that exact same thing. I had somebody on the staff for years and I don’t know, just stay on staff and keep taking my money, I’m cool, except for that exact reason.

BWB Tim | Getting A Great Assistant

Getting A Great Assistant: Oftentimes, the first person we need is someone who can almost act as your “mini me.”

For me, I realized because at that time, I first got my current assistant about three and a half, four years ago. I realized that because I had a marketing agency, I could just go to the same clients and offer them more services.

We already knew how to do Google Ads and we already knew how to set up websites and do email marketing and whatnot, however, some of our clients were only getting some of those services from us.

I realized if I had an assistant that took over the $10 an hour to $20 an hour work of processing invoices, running credit cards and work like that, that would free me up to do more of the strategy work with clients and the high level work like writing copy or managing more Google Ad accounts or whatever.

For me, it became a very fast direct straight line to how I could climb that 80/20 curve. All of us, everybody reading this blog has an 80/20 curve in their day-to-day work.

80% of the work that you do is in that lower tier of work and then there’s that top 20% that really is what makes the dollar sing and the cash register ring.

Have you read Perry Marshall’s book 80/20 Sales and Marketing?

Perry and I spoke together at the 80/20 Summit, which is an event my company put on and we’re doing it again. We’re doing it in San Diego this year.

Let me know when. That was a great book. Do you know that little chart he had in his book? It was like a grid of $10, $100, $1,000 and $10,000 an hour tasks. I copied that, printed it out, it’s on my wall just as a reminder, “Quit doing $10 work idiot.”

We’ve got our $50 an hour work which it’s surprising when you start unpacking. I think that’s one of the biggest roadblocks that entrepreneurs don’t realize is if you take pretty much any task, and you unpack it into what’s the strategy and what’s the high-level skill, and then what’s everything else?

You’ll realize that everything does have a strategy component. Almost everything does have a high-level skill component.

It’s everything else that you need to get off your plate, the setup, the coordination, the maintenance, the reporting, the customer and tech support, the common tasks, all of that tapes stuff.

If we take something like copywriting, you might say, “It’s impossible to delegate that to an assistant.” I challenge you with actually, it’s a tool we developed called the Magic Matrix.

It was something I realized that even if we took something that seems impossible to offload like copywriting, and we break it into the subparts, we realize, “Even if you had a copywriting client, there is an element of that client that’s customer support such as billing.”

There is a part of that client that is doing research or doing some setup of copy or making sure, checking the results of the split tests of the copy that you’ve written.

There are always pieces of work if we unpack it, that we realize is strategy and high-level skill and that’s probably what we need to hold on to, and then everything else probably does need to be handed off to an assistant.

As a side note, here’s how I use the 80/20 rule with a twist to get copy done. Think of it as the 10/80/10 rule, meaning I may have an idea for copying. I don’t work with an administrative assistant on this.

This is how I’d work with a copywriter. One of the worst things you can do, it’s expensive and it sucks for both you and the copywriter, is giving them a blank piece of paper with a concept, “Here, I’ve got an offer on weight loss, write me a sales letter video.”

Instead, I’ll be the first 10%. I get the framework, I get the hook, the story elements and what the offer is and the basic points. I’ll give it to them to do the next 80% and then they give it back to me to polish off the final 10%, so I’m really only doing 20% of the work.

I’m doing arguably the most important and the most expensive as the frontend and the backend because any good copywriter normally charges you $5,000 for a sales letter.

I got them to do it for $1,000. 80% of the work for a $1,000 because I took the hardest part off of their back because I didn’t mind laying out the framework and then polishing it up. I call that my 10/80/10.

You're reminding me of something Mike Rhodes taught me. Mike Rhodes is actually coauthor on their Ultimate Guide To Google AdWords these days.

Mike and I, we both spoke at Baby Bathwater and Mike taught me what he calls Hourglass. It’s exactly what you’re talking about that the first 10% of any task or project is leading the work, what is the vision, what resources do we need and whatnot.

You can move faster by cycling harder on your bicycle, but at some point, you can only bike so quickly and you need a different vehicle. Click To Tweet

The middle 80% is actually doing the work and then the last 10% is reviewing the work, whatever that means. In your case, it’s copywriting, that could also mean booking travel, that could mean setting up a website.

It really could be anything and I think that that’s the chasm that entrepreneurs need to jump. You and I were talking about the skills that got us here, will keep us, but won’t get us there.

At some point, you can move faster by cycling harder on your bicycle, but at some point, you can only bike so quickly and you literally need a different vehicle.

That’s the chasm a lot of entrepreneurs will get up into maybe a million in sales, maybe less, maybe more, but the point is the business is now cranking some cash. They hit the limit of what Mike Dillard and I at the same event were talking about this stupid human trick.

You’re really good and marketing got you up to $1 million in sales or $750,000 or $2 million whatever the number is.

However, at some point now, we need to transition to graduate from doing the work ourselves to actually leading the work. That’s where the tool that you and I were talking about, 360 Delegations comes in.

I want to dive into 360 Delegation because that I know has been one of my biggest hassles is myself. I may have the best assistant in the world but if I don’t know how to delegate, then I'm wasting precious resources and there's an opportunity cost of me.

I may as well not even have an assistant. It’s worse because you’re just throwing money away but I know that’s been my issue.

Going back, I mentioned this on our conversation. I know I mentioned the book Rocket Fuel, which is the relationship between the CEO and the COO.

In there, there was a passage that said, “People who are hive visionaries, you’ve got entrepreneurial ADD, you're all over the place, you’re a great idea man but you’re not exactly the best executor all the time.”

It says, “One of the best things you can do is work with, recruit and manage a team,” but you haven’t usually done that because you haven’t needed to. You do brute force of your own, just push through. I know that’s been a big thing for myself and it’s also one of the things I realized, you hit on it.

The skills that got me to where I'm at will actually keep where I'm at, they’ll keep me from rising unless I switch gears and learn some new stuff and delegation is one of those. Let’s dive more into this because it’s a topic that’s near and dear.

There are three reasons an assistant would fail and the third is that delegation piece. The concept I came up with is called 360 Delegation and it actually clicks perfectly and is complementary to Mike’s idea of Hourglass.

360 Delegation, it’s not software, it’s not an app on your phone. It’s literally a thinking tool. It’s a leadership tool so you can use it anytime you need to delegate something to a teammate.

That could be if it’s a slack message, text message and email, live face-to-face conversation, a Google Doc, any platform, any media.

For the audience, you can go to our other website ProfitFactory.com/360delegation and you'll see that I've actually listed everything on that blog post.

Some of our clients literally have their entire staff bookmark ProfitFactory.com/360delegation because it cleans up so many of the problems that come from delegating otherwise.

Delegation done poorly leads to tons of changeover where people have to stop what they’re doing and ask a question. It’s ping pong, ping pong.

It’s the classic, “Brad, are you available for dinner at 3:00 today?” “No.” “How about tomorrow between four and six?” “No.” “How about Saturday?” It’s just the back and forth, back and forth.

We can get rid of the problem of rework, which the second major drain on productivity. That’s when people do a perfect job, but build the wrong thing because we gave them the wrong vision or, maybe they didn’t have the skills in the first place. They made a bunch of mistakes.

The third big cause in project management is delayed delivery. Every time you have a ton of the first two, you end up with stuff just happening late. They have to pay rush fees and overnight shipping and all these, renegotiating contracts possibly with other people. It gets taxing.

We can solve almost 100% of those three big wastes if we can do a good at 360 Delegation. 360 Delegation has three parts, its vision, its resources and its definition of done. I list all this at ProfitFactory.com/360delegation. Don’t feel like you have to scribble a bunch of notes.

BWB Tim | Getting A Great Assistant

Getting A Great Assistant: You need to graduate from doing the work yourself to actually leading the work.

The vision includes what are we looking to get done, “What’s the timeline to start? Are there milestones or different deadlines along the way? Is there an ultimate drop-dead deadline at the end?”

This is a huge one, “Can you show me a sample of success?” When we can show somebody a sample of success, that instantly clears up a thousand questions. It’s like the classic “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.”

If I want to delegate to my assistant, her making a report, if I, even with a pen and paper, on napkin or something, just scratch out, do the headings that I want, “Here are the sub-points, here are the metrics I want you to pull, here's the dashboard I want you to build.”

They show we’re a sample of success, even if it’s low tech, no tech paper and napkin, at least now she can see a sample of what we’re talking about. The same applies if you're going to have somebody edit this podcast episode.

If you already gave them a sample example of Bacon Wrapped Business podcast and have them listen to it to get a sense of the kinds of edits, cuts, background music and everything, its exact same principle. Can we show our person a sample of success? There's more to vision but that’s a quick pass-through.

It’s important though.

It’s very important and a lot of entrepreneurs will say “This is such a drag. I don’t want to have to sit here and get all detailed then go through all this.”

You don’t have to, but if you're going to move from the middle 80% of doing the work to the first 10% of leading the work, your job actually is to do 360 Delegation. That is your new job. Your old job was to write the copy or edit the podcast episode.

Your new job is not to do those things anymore but is now to lead the work in 360 Delegation, the tool that takes you to the promised land. The second of the three parts after vision is what’s called the resource.

The list on the blog post that you’ll see handles about 95% of the situations. For two years now, I've been constantly adding to that list and now it’s quite comprehensive.

Thinking through the resources section, “Is there access that this other person is going to need? Who I'm delegating to? Is it website passwords, usernames and passwords?

Is there online storage that they need to get access to like a Dropbox account to get a file? Are there any other language barriers that we’re going to be facing?

Are there any knowledge gaps such as training courses that my assistant is going to need? Are there consultants that I need to connect my assistant to so she can go to somebody else who knows how to get the job done and she can just oversee the work?”

There are all these spots that different kinds of resources that people need to get things done. Sometimes it’s a checklist. Sometimes it’s a decision-making guideline. They have authority.

At the end of the day, if you don’t give somebody the resources they need, every time they’re missing a resource, they have to stop. If you can think ahead of time and say, “Here are all the resources you need. Spend up to $50.”

Tim Ferris actually has an example in The 4-Hour Workweek. He was working with the call center and he finally was overwhelmed by all their questions. He said, “If you can fix it for less than $50, just fix it. Don’t ask me the questions.”

Exactly, empower them to actually take some initiative on their own.

What I would call that is a decision-making guideline. I'm giving you a guideline on how to make a decision. That’s another example of a kind of resource we can give people. That resources section is super powerful.

The third of the three, after vision and after resource, the final is what’s called definition of done. Definition of done is, what do we need to see to sign off when this project is complete?

Are there contracts that we have to double-check if we’re working with a partner or if we’re working with an outsource person, or if we’re working with the client if we’re a service provider? Do we need to see some specifications nailed such as dimension of an image or a file format for a document?

Are there signoffs that have to happen from certain authorities including maybe me as the person who’s giving the delegation? There’s sometimes some question like, “Tim, it seems like some of the definition of done should be in vision,” don’t get caught in the semantics.

At the end of the day, we need to get what’s in our head and define success and provide the vision, resources, definition of done to the persons receiving it.

You may have the best assistant, but if you don’t know how to delegate then you are wasting precious resources. Click To Tweet

If you want to put the timeline in definition of done, fine. If you want to put it in vision, I don’t care. We just got to get it transmitted from us to them. That last thing I’ll say on this is 360 Delegation is a two-person exercise.

I don’t think that it’s just on the entrepreneur or on the assistant or the project manager, whoever’s receiving the delegation.

It’s about both parties taking a look at it and saying, “Brad, I would love to do this for you, upload your blog post to your website but as I'm thinking through this, I don’t have the username and password. Can you Last Pass me that information? Can you give me the login information?”

There are a couple of reasons why Brad, one person, will take things for granted and doesn’t realize the other person doesn’t have that knowledge or the access or whatever.

The second is that, you were talking about the difference between the visionary and the integrator from Mark and Gino’s book, Rocket Fuel, oftentimes, those two people have very different Kolbe scores.

If you, as the visionary are high quick start, low follow-through, which is what you would find in your Kolbe score, your low follow-through isn’t hardwired unless you train it. It’s not instinctive to unpack projects into smaller pieces that then become delegatable.

By having your integrator, assistant or project manager who probably should be high follow-through, they’re now making up for that lack of wiring in your brain to unpack things.

By doing the 360 Delegation together, you’re bringing your vision and your definition of done and we’re bringing the assistant or the project manager’s ability to unpack your brain in the project and so together becomes a successful delegation.

It’s something I need to be much more cognizant. I know myself. Going on the Kolbe score, I'm really familiar with it but there are probably some people out there who don’t. Do you want to touch on what Kolbe is because it’s super powerful?

A lot of people tell me it’s the most practical, useful of any of the cycle metric assessment tools that they’ve ever taken. That’s per opinion or whatever but nonetheless, it’s in the top echelon for sure.

From the outside looking in, you might say the Kolbe index is a personality test, that’s what it looks like from the outside. Once you understand just a little bit about it though, it’s actually not a personality index.

Why people do things is the combination of three circles, what’s called affect, cognitive and a person’s conation. I won’t go on too long, this will just be a quick flyover. A person’s affect, that’s their personality, their dreams, goal, desires, are they outgoing? Are they introverted?

Oftentimes, not always, but a big part of the chemistry that we feel between people is, do we have a match of personality? Myers-Briggs’ test is oftentimes used for the affective part of a person’s how they are.

The second is what’s called cognition or the cognitive part, that’s like problem-solving math. IQ test oftentimes address that. A lot of our skill is rooted in our cognition or the cognitive part of our brain.

The third part of the brain is what’s called conation and that is our working instinct. When I ask you, Brad, to solve a problem or accomplish a goal, what’s your instinctive way to go about that? Do you brainstorm a bunch of ideas or do you go into a bunch of research first or do you make a plan?

It’s how we instinctively go about things. I know you’ve got a high quick start score. If I said, “Let’s build a $100,000 business.” You’d probably say, “Give me a pen and give me a paper or whiteboard and we’re going to brainstorm 100 ways to make $100,000,” and you’d probably be phenomenal at it.

The bottom 80% might be ridiculous and not possible and completely unlikely but the top twenty might be really good. If we did an 80/20 on an 80/20, you’ll probably find your top four ideas weren’t just $100,000 businesses, they’d be million-dollar businesses, it’s brilliant, that’s your instinct.

I actually have a non-entrepreneur, believe it or not, Kolbe score. A lot of people are surprised when they hear that. For me, I'm about strategic plan. I want to do a bunch of research first and I also want to come up with what is the step-by-step and what’s the plan B, plan C if plan A doesn’t work out.

If you and I were business partners, you would be the visionary, I’d be the integrator. The problem arises when we don’t know what our own Kolbe score is and we start getting mad with ourselves saying, “How come I don’t have more follow-through on projects?

Why am I not getting things done? I start a hundred things and I only ever finish two.” It’s okay to be disappointed in the results or whatever but don’t misallocate.

Don’t think this is a problem of discipline, maybe it is but for a lot of entrepreneurs, it comes back to just you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

If you take your Kolbe score and you realize, “I’m not classic,” Brad honestly, 85% of entrepreneurs in my opinion from all the hundreds of sessions I’ve done, are high quick start, low follow-through just like you.

BWB Tim | Getting A Great Assistant

Getting A Great Assistant: Done is what we need to see to sign off when the project is complete.

Instead of beating themselves up and getting a better morning ritual and getting their habits on their side.

They just seem to realize it’s actually teamwork of hiring the right assistant or integrator or project manager that’s really going to get them their ultimate freedom. It’s not about meditating more on a better outcome.

I want to switch gears a little bit to some of the useful tools that you found, some people use Slack, some people use different communication tools. I know that the tools are not as important as the framework, the structure and the thought behind it.

Let me ask you this, places that you like recruiting from, tools you like communicating with, anything that people can run with and go, “This is really cool, this is not just theory, this is an application.”

Especially with my folks out there reading who’ve got a great assistant and they just want to do a little bit better.

I think the very first tool is 360 Delegation and people, it’s easy to sign up for a tool or a service and it’s harder to acquire a skill. That’s why it’s sexy to say “I want to go use Trello.” I encourage people to gain the skill and get a few reps in a 360 delegation, that’s a first place to go.

I think when it comes to hiring the Kolbe test, people come here to learn more about that at ProfitFactory.com/kolbe.

If you want to find out your score and/or have your assistant take it. As far as creating any kind of systems or procedures, which is something that people often ask us to have assistance to is, “Can my assistant create some procedures?”

Another framework invented just out of necessity again is called Triple Path of Readership. A person can go to ProfitFactory.com/triplepathofreadership and it explains how to write a procedure.

The problem with procedures is number one, people think systemizing everything is the solution, it’s totally not. I don’t care what the EMyth says.

In the moments where it’s appropriate, Triple Path of Readership overcomes the biggest problems with systems and that is that they’re digestible, lightweight, easy to use, to learn and then secondly, adherence.

People sticking in these systems once they learned how to do them. Oftentimes, people read a procedure, go away and say, “I know how to do that. I don’t have to look at that anymore.”

Triple path of readership gets you big, way past those problems. Once you’ve got some of your procedures written and set up, I encourage you to use a Google Drive to set them up.

I’ve looked at other softwares and I still had yet to find anything that beats Google Drive as far as housing your procedures.

Obviously, managing projects, a tool like Teamwork PM and I’ve heard people talk about Asana, Podio and everything. I still like to host the actual checklist inside of Google Drive.

There is a specific way to organize them that makes it super easy. I developed a method and people can read about that at ProfitFactory.com/organize.

If you go there, you can actually download the templates that we use exactly for the different kinds of procedures and people can just start hit the ground running using that.

I mention there are three common problems and an assistant will fail. The first is, we hire the wrong person. The second is, we do a poor job on-boarding them and the third, which we’ve now discussed, is we do a poor job delegating to them.

A big part of making sure that we on-board people, which is our second of the three issues, is creating a hiring process and following the Google Drive method that I outlined at /organize.

You can see how to create on-boarding and training and whatnot, and have it already sitting in Google Drive for a new assistant.

Secondly, this is a huge hack, this is a huge shortcut. If your Kolbe score comes back and you’re a low follow-through like Brad Costanzo, do not try to write all the procedures yourself. Do not try to organize them yourself.

Brad wants to know, “Do I cut out the bureaucracy? How do I cut out the silly steps? How do I just really get down to the fastest path from here to success?”

A big part of the chemistry that we feel between people is if their personalities match. Click To Tweet

Whereas my Kolbe score, which has a higher follow-through, is much more, “How do I create order, structure and systems? Even if it’s a little bit slower, how do I unpack things? How do I close loops?”

There’s a time for each Kolbe score and when it’s time for the structure, the order and the rinse, wash, repeat, just get your assistant or your project manager to do it. Get your ops person, your integrator to do it.

You may be astounded to know this but for them, a perfectly organized Dropbox folder with the perfect hierarchy and consistent naming is so satisfying that they actually get off on it.

That may seem so weird to the low follow-through person so just go find a high follow-through person and a lot of that headache will come off your plate.

That’s so true as well. I have a degree of organization there but it goes off the rails quick and I thought about that many times. I just go organize my Dropbox.

In that case, you’re integrated to go organize your Dropbox, make sure that you use 360 Delegation, given the first 10% of vision of what you’re going for. The resources, make sure they get logged in the Dropbox, make sure they know what’s important to you, how we find the information.

From there, tell them the definition of done. What needs to be in one account, aggregate these three accounts into one account, “I need to make sure that all this is done in the next 60 days because we’re bringing on some other team members.”

Do that, Brad. Do a good job of the 10% of leading the work and let your high follow-through integrator or assistant, go to town with the middle 80%.

One more big question which is where do you find the best people? Where do you have success? I know there is not necessarily one right answer but there are so many ways to find help from Craigslist to Upwork and Guru.com and Hire My Mom and friends, family and referrals etc.

There are so many places that can be overwhelming. Have you found anything as a great place to start at least in the cherry-picking?

There are two parts to your question. One is, what country do I hire from? The second, what website do I go to?

I’ve hired from India. I've hired from the Philippines. I’ve hired from Jamaica, Pakistan, US, Canada, probably others I’m not even remembering except I’ve been hiring people for several years now.

Here’s what I’ve discovered. I had an experience with my first assistant, the one that I blew all the money on and she was in India. She went completely off the map for an entire week. I had no idea where she was.

I couldn’t get a hold of her, anything like that. Seven days later, I get this flurry of Skype messages, email messages, very apologetic. She was an awesome person. She was fantastic. There was no problem with her skillset, her English was amazing, she was awesome.

What had happened though was there was a political dispute and the government representative from a neighborhood got mad with the political person from her neighborhood. They got in this fight and guy A had the electricity turned off to her neighborhood.

For factors completely outside of her own control. I got thinking about if I’m going to hire someone and I’m going to trust them with my travel planning, they may need to have access to my credit card and maybe my passport if they’re going to check me in for flights, etc.

I need to trust this person that I could literally run a background check with a police authority I trust. If things go horribly wrong, which obviously I hope they never ever do, and I have to take legal action against this person, I don’t know how to navigate the Filipino, Indian or Pakistani legal system.

Do I have to bribe people? Do I have to fly there? They’re completely different time zones so of legal paperwork.

If there is something that was time is of the essence and it’s happening in a Pakistani court, do I never want to have to deal with any of that whoever my assistant is, that right-hand person that I’m giving access to my email, inbox, my calendar and has contact directly even in people in my personal life?

The number one of the six big issues, remember at the top of this episode, I’ve said we’ve talked about the first of the big six concerns was trust and control.

I get that other people maybe have different safety zones in their head of what’s okay and what’s not. For me, trust and control, I could take care of that. One of the main ways I took care of that was by hiring somebody from the US or Canada for that matter.

That’s my first bit of feedback. I know there are people out there that will go and say, “I’m making it work for $4 an hour in the Philippines with someone doing product listings for me on Amazon or rinse, wash, repeat, something.”

BWB Tim | Getting A Great Assistant

Getting A Great Assistant: Hiring the right assistant, integrator, or project manager is going to get you your ultimate freedom.

To them, bless them. I’m not here to trash the Philippines. I just know in my experience, when it comes to my assistant, that right-hand person, who is a crucial integrator project manager, email inbox handler for me, money handler, all the rest.

I absolutely want them to be American or Canadian with similar, same time zone, similar or same culture. English is the first language. Technology and infrastructure are all there.

I’m not worried about being distracted every ten minutes on a Skype call because a 1978 Honda CB50 with no muffler is screaming behind the background.

I can hear the Filipino person for the next thirty seconds of the conversation. That’s the country question and that’s how I handle that.

As far as websites to go to, in the past and actually where I got my assistant Sarah from, we used HireMyMom.com. That was a big step up from the absolute avalanche of unqualified applications we get from Upwork.

For us right now, we’re going to a different website that is bringing us an even higher caliber person and that’s FlexJobs.com. FlexJobs is extremely strict to get onto.

Just because our product brand is Profit Factory and then our program brand is Great Assistant, I have this email address and I'm not afraid to share it because Sarah manages it anyway. It’s Tim@ProfitFactory.com.

I signed up for an account with Tim@ProfitFactory.com, but the logo that we wanted to put on our hiring page was Great Assistant and the FlexJobs people got a little freaked out. They said, “Is this a scam?” because it’s a different name but they’re so sensitive.

Is this the admin of FlexJobs or individuals?

This is the administrator moderator for FlexJobs that approves employers to come on board and approves them to post their jobs. After that, when they saw that we’re an internet company, again they said, “Is this a scam?”

They’re so strict to the point that I think we got something like banned or delisted three times and then relisted three times because I had to explain. Great Assistant is a sub-brand of Profit Factory. We’re an internet business but we have legitimate clients. Here's an example of them.

In the end, it took me putting on no kidding, a suit, and I was willing to fly to wherever in North America to meet with someone to shake their hand and say, “Yes, I'm legitimate,” it didn’t get to that.

What it got to was me getting on a video call, in a suit, with somebody from FlexJobs for us to have a heart-to-heart about what my company really is.

At that they said, “We see what you're doing.” They ended up giving not special privilege but now we’re on the good list. My story’s a little more extreme. Other people can have less headaches with FlexJobs so go ahead and check it out.

Part of why it has such a good caliber of candidate is because it’s so strict for the employers. There are no multi-level companies on there. There are not fill surveys from home employers on there.

It’s real companies.

FlexJobs lives and dies by this one set of keywords, legitimate work from home jobs. They are so strict about that. When someone is coming, let’s say someone’s a middle manager at Coca Cola, maybe they’re a project manager even.

They have a child. They say “I want to work from home. I can’t do it for whatever reason with Coca-Cola,” maybe that’s going to change in the coming years but as of right now, it’s just not possible.

Legitimate work from home jobs, they type that into Google, FlexJobs comes up and they see all these legitimate, known entities that have their logos on there.

They go, “I can trust this.” Whereas this Upwork thing or Craigslist, I don’t know if the person that I'm applying to work with if they’re a one-man-band with some scammy site internet thing.

It’s just so much easier for higher level of people of business experience from corporate government or professional America to look at FlexJobs and say, “I trust this.” FlexJobs has earned that reputation by being so strict with employers. I’ll give you one last tip or two here.

Anybody who’s tried to hire online will see that if you do a Craigslist or an Upwork posting, buckle in because you’re going to get hammered with applications. We’re talking hit the refresh button on your inbox every five minutes.

Google drive is unbeatable when it comes to organizing your procedures. Click To Tweet

It sucks.

What can we do? This is another trick I developed. It’s actually out of Perry Marshall. I saw a version of this and I saw a way to upgrade it for our purposes. What can I do to filter out the BS and copy and pasters out there that aren’t really all that interested?

I developed something called the Perfect Job Posting and you can see what it is in its entirety if you go to ProfitFactory.com/perfectjobposting. What the Perfect Job Posting is, at some point in your job posting, you say if you're going to apply for this role, I need you to follow these exact instructions.

I need you to write me an email to this email address. The subject must say, “Insert your name from, insert your city interested in marketing job or assistant job,” or whatever it is. In the body, I need you to write me a five-paragraph email.

The first paragraph must open with, “Hey there TF, what’s going on up there in Canada? My name is,” insert my name, from insert city, applying for insert job.

In the first body paragraph, paragraph number overall, in blue Times New Roman twelve-point font, write me a three-sentence paragraph on why you think you’d be great for the job. In the second paragraph, I want red Verdana eleven-point and your second is why you think you’d be great for the job.

Third, in black Arial sixteen-point, the reason why you think you’d be great for the job. I want this two-sentence closing and do not attach your resume.

Make them jump through hoops.

If you think about it, Brad, we’re looking for somebody who’s high follow-through on the Kolbe index, someone who can follow instructions, systems, order structure. Look at the massive shortcut it gives us when you receive the emails to the designated inbox.

By the way, I recommend that you set up a dedicated email inbox that’s just for hiring and that way, you're not getting distracted in the middle of your workday with these hundreds of applications crashing your inbox.

Secondly, this is something else, with a custom email inbox, you can set up a vacation auto-reply on it that says, “If I don’t reply to you within three days, consider yourself to be out of the running. Thank you for applying.”

That cuts down hundreds of responses that you otherwise might need to give and it cuts down hundreds of follow-up email that you might get from people that you never intended to hire anyway.

From there, with the custom email inbox that we just used, it’s Jobs@ProfitFactory.com or something. Our vacation auto-reply setup, in two days, I can go in, look at all the 300 to 500 applications that have come in.

Because I have asked the applicant to use a specific subject line, I don’t even have to open all the emails. Anything that does not have the perfect subject line, I just delete it. Be absolutely ruthless.

If it’s wrong by a single character, put a little checkmark next to that thing and trash can it immediately. That will eliminate 70% to 80% of all bad applicants right away. You’ll be left with maybe 20 to 30 applicants, maybe a few more. From those, open them up and look at the body.

Did they nail the opening, salutation? Did they nail the red font, blue font, hoops to jump through? Did they attach resume because they’re not supposed to? From there, only those that have nailed the perfect job posting exactly get a reply from me.

I’ve just cut out 95% of probably all applicants and especially 95% are the bad applicants and it really brings me into focus on the top three to five that are going to be good. Now, I’ve saved myself literally dozens of hours of useless work.

From there, and obviously we don’t have time to get into the whole method we follow, with Great Assistant, our 90-days stick rate, how many assistants stick with their entrepreneurs after 90 days? Right now is 88%, which blows away the industry average which is currently less than 50%.

A big reason why is because we’re so strict in who we hire in the first place. I can’t get into the whole method of how we do it with Great Assistant, but I’ll tell you that once we do the Perfect Job Posting, make them jump through those hoops.

After that, we have a couple of interviews to confirm that there isn’t fraud going on. Somebody who’s a poor English speaker, who’s looking for a job but they have their good English speaker friend write all the application type stuff, believe it or not, application fraud is a real thing.

A couple of interviews, we have a couple of work tests as well that we make them do. We also have psychometric assessments where we have them do the Kolbe index and there's another one that we’re bringing online to further improve the match rate that we have.

All of that happens before our entrepreneur client who’s hired us to get them an assistant ever meets their top one to three matches.

BWB Tim | Getting A Great Assistant

Getting A Great Assistant: You need to get a “mini-me” of you first so that you can climb that 80/20 curve.

 

You can see it’s a whole hiring process that we go through and the tip of the spear is the Perfect Job Posting. If someone didn’t want to hire us and just wanted to do it themselves, that single tool will save them literally dozens of hours of work.

By the way, I just posted on the Facebook machine, I said, “I'm interviewing Tim Francis right now about how to find work with Great Assistants, any questions?”

Chris Clothier asks, “People(me) have trouble giving things up. How do you identify what you’re willing to give up and not willing to give up? Is it smart to hire someone of high quality in the areas you’re trying to hold onto in order to help you have confidence to let go?

The way to identified tasks is using what we call the Magic Matrix so you go to ProfitFactory.com/magicmatrix. It’s literally like a tic-tac-toe diagram and you can write any task, any tool or any project.

Task in the smallest unit, a tool will oftentimes have multiple tasks assigned to it. If a tool is sending an email broadcast, a tool like Infusionsoft has many tasks underneath it like send email broadcast at a contact process or credit card or whatever.

A project is the highest level that we might delegate to an assistant or an operations person and that project will have multiple tools and tasks underneath it.

It doesn’t matter if we’re at the task level or all the way up to the project level, we write that across the top and then going down, we would write strategy, high-level skill, setup and coordination, maintenance and reporting, customer and tech support and then, common skills.

We just run down the list. If the task is sending email broadcast, what’s the strategy of that? When are we going to send it? To which audience and what are we going to sell? That’s the strategy.

What’s next, what’s the high-level skill of sending that same email? High-level skill is probably the copywriting. Underneath that, setup and coordination of sending an email broadcast is getting the copy up into Infusionsoft and scheduling it to go out.

What’s the maintenance in reporting on that? Maintenance in reporting would be reporting back on how many opens did we get and click here's did we get.

What kind of tech and customer support on that same email? Possibly, some responses that we get or maybe, there’s nothing at all if it’s just a content email.

Lastly is common skill. Common skills are like, what could you hire the twelve-year-old kid from across the street to do? Usually, it’s like running errands, mowing your lawn, setting up your dining set, those are common skills.

In that case, there are no common skills for this particular task. The point is by taking this single task of sending an email broadcast and unpacking it into these six different levels. Now, we can see what can be delegated and what can’t.

In almost every single situation to you, Chris, and obviously to you as well, Brad, anything that strategy and high-level skill you’ll usually want to keep yourself. Everything below that, usually you’ll want to delegate to an assistant.

The very first person to hire is your assistant because we need to get a mini-me of your first so that you can climb that 80/20 curve. Then, it’s time to start getting the main specific experts like a copywriter to do some of the copywriting for you.

It makes no sense to go hire a copy cub for $50 an hour to take over the copywriting part of that email broadcast when you as the entrepreneur could be doing that $50 an hour work and instead take the setup of the email broadcast or the maintenance or the reporting of that email broadcast.

Which is the same 60 minutes and have that handed off to an assistant for $15 an hour. That’s why a mini-me is always the first step is because you have so much $10 to $20 an hour you’re doing yourself. We’ve just got to get that off your plate as the first step.

That actually reminds me of one piece of advice that a friend of mine gave me years ago, who was great outsourcing, delegation and hiring like this was one of his biggest strength and systems, etc.

He was one of my first hires, obviously, your assistant but one of my first hires basically recruiting manager or assistant because I want them to understand me.

Their primary goal is to then hire because if you can get somebody. I want them to assist me but I want them to assist me with a very strong core goal is you going to learn the hiring process. We are going to hire some more people etc. not to do your job but to offload all the little stuff that you’re learning.

You have to learn them enough from me for you to be able to hire it done. One of the very first things I do is make sure that they understand they’re going to be a recruiting manager at least as well as my assistant.

That being said, that’s a good segue to tee it up for you and a little bit more how you work with people because all of it is awesome, it’s all needed. It’s also for a person like myself who a certain 6292 on the Kolbe score.

People think systemizing everything is the solution. It's totally not. Click To Tweet

Magic matrix, that’s cool. How to organize all these other sheets? Can I get somebody to do all this for me? I need an assistant to help me find an assistant. That’s what you do though, right?

Yeah, we offer a done for you service, where we will do all of the advertising for an assistant. We will do all the screening of the hundreds of applications that come in. We will do the Kolbe testing, the work testing, the pre-interviews. We will do all of that.

We will present you the entrepreneur with one to three top-shelf candidates that most likely will stick. We got an 88% stick rate right now.

Beyond that, we go another step further because we’re not just a matching company, we’re also a training company.

When an entrepreneur becomes a client of Great Assistant, we’ll also provide the entrepreneur with some training on how to do Magic Matrix and how to be a good delegator.

We also provide training to the assistant on how do things like taking over your email inbox. Some of the basic tools of whatever it is you’re using, if it’s WordPress or Infusionsoft, parts of customer service or whatever it is that you need in those first few tasks, to win the first five hours a week back for yourself.

We take care of coordinating that training for the assistant so you don’t have to be spending hours upon hours surfing the net trying to find YouTube videos to train your new assistant on how to do things in the very beginning.

On top of that, we’re not just a matching company and a training company, we also provide on-boarding help as well like consulting. Nancy on our team will literally seat on Skype with you, the entrepreneur, and with your new assistant.

She’ll work with you as you go through those first few 360 Delegations so that the two of you can build the skills, the tools, the confidence and the rapport between the two of you to really hit the ground running together.

We provide all three prongs, the matching, the training and the consulting to help you get off the ground. It really tackles all three of the main issues that happen with assistants fail and those are hiring the wrong person, doing a poor job on-boarding and doing a poor job delegating.

We actually fix all three of those issues. We don’t have a 100% success rate like stick rate. It’s 88%, which blows away the industry average.

However, it’s not 100%, we know that. We offer a 90-day replacement guarantee that if you’re part of the 12% that doesn’t stick with their assistant for the first 90 days.

Sometimes, it doesn’t work out because somebody gets pregnant. Sometimes, it’s a great match otherwise but life changes happen. Even in that scenario, we’re still going to honor the 90-day replacement guarantee to get a replacement assistant.

What is the best way to get a hold of you more and find out more information, GreatAssistant.com or you’ve got something else?

GreatAssistant.com is the place to go. If people have questions for me, they can email me at Tim@GreatAssistant.com or at Tim@ProfitFactory.com, it doesn’t matter. We talked about both.

As a final note, I want to let everybody know getting an assistant allowed me to go from charging $40 an hour as a consultant to $1,000 an hour.

It was me just literally doing exactly what I’ve told you, finding the bottom 80% of tasks that are $10 to $20 an hour in our work and creating that second list for myself which is the top 20% of work like what Perry Marshall talks of, climbing that 80/20 curve, and then finding and replacing.

Finding what the bottom 80% task is, that’s $10 an hour or $15 an hour and it’s simple stuff. This is not rocket science. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.

The first task I handed off to Sarah was uploading podcast episodes to iTunes. That’s how the whole process started. It was just single task.

Overtime, doing that again and again, and realizing for myself, spending time to coach an assistant is not BS work, it’s not a distraction for my main work. It’s my new job because I’m moving from doing the work to leading the work. Coaching is a huge part of that.

By going through that process and getting more and more time to focus on the top 20%, it allowed me to find bigger clients, attend bigger masterminds, which made me more money, which then I could turn around and go to even higher level masterminds and be away from my desk for longer stretches.

I’ve gone away to Hawaii for eight days not on business but as a personal vacation. I turn on my phone once for ten or fifteen minutes in the middle of the trip just to make sure nobody died back home.

BWB Tim | Getting A Great Assistant

Getting A Great Assistant: People who are entrepreneurs are oftentimes high quick start, and high quickstarts are oftentimes phenomenal at reaching out.

 

Aside from that, my phone was off. No email, no text, nothing. The best part of all and I didn’t foresee this until it happened. When I came home, there was no welcome home and an avalanche of 500 emails.

This is possible. Take it from somebody who’s done it. I know it, I live it every day and we help entrepreneurs get there every single day as well. It’s a few extra steps than before I work what makes it sound like, but it is possible.

I think of it the same. There is an adage with health, pay whether it’s your investment like money or your time and energy. Health now or pay for sickness later.

If you’re not willing to do the work now, go to the gym, eat healthy, etc., or hire a personal trainer, you’re going to be paying for drugs and doctor bills and all these other stuffs in the future.

It’s the same thing either. If the opportunity cost really is what you’re losing, you’re going to pay now with time, energy and money to get to learn this, to get it right or you’re going to pay later on with missed profits, missed opportunities and all that other things.

I appreciate everything you’ve been saying here and I’m happy to call you a friend. I’m happy to have talked to you several times and looking forward to even potentially working together here in the future. As I expand my team, there may be some opportunities.

I encourage everybody else out there to check out Great Assistant, check out the resources in the pages that Tim left.

Tim, last question I want to ask you. Is there any nut you’re trying to crack in your business, your life right now? Is there any skill you’re trying to learn or resource you’re trying to gather, a person you’re trying to meet, a challenge you’re trying to overcome?

Like a nut you’re trying to crack, is there anything going on that myself, my audience, etc., may be able to jog our brains and help you?

That’s a very generous question, thank you. People who are entrepreneurs are oftentimes high quick starts and are phenomenal at reaching out and meeting a ton of people, networking and building their network of partners very quickly.

I’m far slower at that and I would rather sit in the lab, be the integrator to myself and work on my thinking models and fine-tune the Swiss watch rather than throwing a bunch of spaghetti on the wall.

What it means is what I need right now is introductions to people who want to find the freedom, that comes from having a great assistant. Everything I’ve shared in this episode, I would love to be able to share that more.

If anybody’s got another podcast, if anybody needs a live speaker at a live event, you can see I’ve got a ton of very actual insight and tools that people can take. I have research to share and very evidence-based.

If there are any stages, any YouTube channels, any podcasts, any businesses that want me to come and speak to them or their employees, anything like that, help spread the word, whether people hire us or not ever.

I could think there are a lot of people out there who are entrepreneurs who started with a dream of freedom only to discover that their business is worse than when they had a job.

They’re working longer hours, they have less freedom and the thing is it’s a few skills and tools away from being able to fix that problem.

Likewise, there are also a ton of people dying for legitimate work from home jobs that would love to be your assistant. If you’re not getting the assistant, they’re missing out as well.

Everybody is better off. Entrepreneur and assistant, when we get the right people and it is so clichéd, but on the right spots on the bus doing the right work and it’s also doable.

The more I can share that word with people, help people get what they really want, whether it’s says an entrepreneur and an assistant. Obviously, the better I feel and the bigger impact they can make and the more profitable my business becomes.

There’s also a saying. If you don’t have an assistant, you are one. I appreciate you stopping by the show. It’s been an epic episode. I hope everybody learned a lot and goes and checks out Tim’s services, his content. You have given a lot over on GreatAssistant.com and ProfitFactory.com as well.

Thanks for joining me and we will talk soon. To all of my audience, if you’ve liked this, share it and send me happy emails, frustrated emails, challenging emails, what are you going through to AskBrad@BaconWrappedBusiness.com.

Important Links:

Other Links Mentioned

 

About The Guest: Tim Francis

BWB Tim | Getting A Great AssistantTim Francis is the founder of Great Assistant, a done-for-you service that helps Entrepreneurs get a Great Assistant.

For years, Tim had a stubborn attitude that he could work 80 hours per week and do everything on his own. Despite working late nights and early mornings, he refused to release control to others, adamant he could do everything better himself.

All that changed when a sudden, stress-induced case of Erythema Nodosum literally stopped Tim in his tracks at age 28. For three months, Tim was unable to walk. Day after day he stared at the ceiling asking himself, “What have I done to put myself in this situation?”

One of his top takeaways was he needed to put his ego aside, get over himself, and learn to be a solid team-builder and delegator.

After years of struggling with finding an Assistant, Tim finally cracked the code. Combining new delegation skills with his new, US-based assistant Sarah, Tim finally got the bottom 80% off his task list, while he focused on the Top-20%. This rapidly multiplied his consulting rate from $40/hr to $1,000/hr, while also reducing his overall workload.

Today Tim helps other Entrepreneurs get a great assistant so his fellow Entrepreneur can avoid all the pain and suffering he went through.

Using “360 Delegation” to get lower-value tasks off my plate so I can focus on the higher-value strategy and big ideas in my business.
Looking for influencers in the eCom, expert / info-biz, and agency worlds who'd like to have a guest team simple strategies for better delegating.

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