The Founder Bottleneck: How to Reclaim Your Time and Scale Faster feat. Tricia Sciortino

Speaker A: You are listening to the Beyond 7 Figures podcast with Charles Gaudad. Welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Growing a business can be hard, but it shouldn't be a struggle. The, uh, beyond seven Figures podcast is all about helping you build, grow and scale a successful business. Learn the stories and the strategies from top level CEOs and business owners from some of the fastest growing companies around the world. And here's your host, the expert in predictable profits, Charles Gaudette.

Speaker A: All right. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the beyond seven Figures podcast. You know, the benefit of talking to hundreds of business owners every single week is we get to see trends and where people get stuck and the frustrations and the pains and also the desires and the wants. And I think more recently a theme continuously comes up over and over again and there's this feeling of just, I'm overwhelmed. There's so much going on, I don't have enough time to get everything done. And the bigger frustration is that they know there are things that they should be doing to grow their company, especially with all the disruptions that are in front of us. With AI, there's some shifts and adjustments that need to happen to stay in front, but yet they're bogged down. They're doing things that they shouldn't really be prioritizing. They don't know how else to get out of it, whether it's invoicing or just all this like, back office type stuff. And even though they're getting it done, they might be putting in a 12 hour day, putting the head on the pillow at night, and they still feel like they got nothing done because you're really not moving the needle. And it's doing stuff that is constantly just draining their energy. And they're getting more and more tired. They're finding themselves working weekends just to be able to keep up. And rarely do I talk to somebody and say, you know, are you more busy or less busy than you were just a few years ago? Really? Do I talk? Do I hear somebody say, oh, I'm, I'm less busy because there's so much happening right now. They're just more busy. In fact, I hear them saying things like, I'm working harder than I've ever worked before, but I'm making less money? There's a whole bunch of reasons for it. One of them is we look at rot or return on time. And the rot is measured on are you spending the time in your business focusing on the things that you should be focusing in on. So as I thought about, who can we bring to you to talk about this very issue that would have experience not just with a handful of companies, but we're talking tens of thousands of companies because we see trends in other spotlights and everything else actually is Belay. And I bring Belay in here because again, they've worked with tens of thousands all across the world. And in particular we're bringing in Tricia, who's not only the CEO, but the coolest thing is she was actually their first employee. So. Tricia Sorrentino, welcome to the show, my friend.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thanks for having me. That's a great tee up to a great conversation I can't wait to have.

Speaker A: Let's actually. So you were the first employee. Uh, you hear all these stories all the time. You, you know, Google and the first employee, and then boom. What happened? Facebook and the first employee and, and all these other people that grew up with the company, starting with the founders and then turned it into something really substantial. What did you notice when the founders of Belay started and where did you see them getting stuck and how did they evolve to bringing the company where it is today?

Speaker B: Yeah, great question. I mean, honestly, it's a play I see all the time. So I think what's great about this story and about Belay is that the, uh, organization was born out of the idea that leaders are bogged down and back office support, and we could be the solution to that. But they were also those leaders. So they wanted to start an organization, but also knew, like, there's a lot that goes on, um, behind the scenes. You don't just lift a company and, and go sell some things. And all of a sudden there's clients and you're delivering services. There's so much behind the scenes that has to go on for all that to be true. And so they brought me on as their first employee to do, do all the back end operations. And so I was setting up CRMs and I was sending out proposals and I was launching all of our new technology so that they could focus on this new business that they were creating. And so I had the opportunity to sit in the seat where I watched two founders create something from nothing and got to be behind the scenes supporting how that was all happening. And it was great preview for, for me to watch the things that they did so well that we then replicated and brought to our clients, and then also watch them stumble along the way. And then I had my moments of stumble too. You know, watch them really over invest time, energy, and effort and really burn the candles at both Ends like every new business entrepreneur we do. But I also saw self correction very quickly.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: In that when something hit critical mass there was a conversation and a change. And so I think the biggest thing I learned is that change, change, management, adjustment, staffing the people you need like you. Revisiting that constantly was a huge lesson for me. Watching the organization grow up. We were constantly seeking the next great talent because they would have expertise we didn't. Um, and you're not going to go very far alone. So the act of bringing others in, delegating, hire great talent is what we were doing internally. It's also what we give people. That's also actually our service and so our services, we're providing talent and people for small businesses so they can do that exact same thing.

Speaker A: One of the things that always amazes me is in talking with a small business owner and that they have built a team and when I ask them about their assistant and they say oh we don't have one but they, they'll hire team members that help with the uh, the fulfillment of client obligations or maybe even something in support and so forth but they actually don't have an assistant themselves and they'll spend a couple hours every day doing things that could otherwise their be delegated. How often does that situation happen in front of you and what advice do you give to them?

Speaker B: Yeah, we see it every day. It kind of takes me back every time I hear somebody say they don't have an assistant because I actually can't imagine not having one.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I really do attribute like my success rising through the ranks of this organization. Started as a first employee, now the CEO, uh, we do nine figures annually. Like I, none of that would have been actually possible if I didn't have a great assistant by my side or I would be working 14 hour days. Like what would be possible would be so limited. But we see clients and business leaders come in and they want help. They've, you know, they realize they're too busy and they're doing things they shouldn't be doing and we're here to help them get unstuck. And even when some people realize like okay, I need help for somebody else to come in here to your point, they're they're looking on saving other parts of the business and not saving themselves. You know, they'll hire a marketer, they'll hire a sales guy, they're hire you know, an IT guy but they don't hire anybody to help them lead the business.

Speaker A: Well they often look at it and say well, I've got only a limited amount of budget, so I'm going to hire a marketing person, so to speak. Right. Because that marketing person is going to drive revenue. And what we need to do is we need to drive revenue, leads, pipeline, the whole deal. And so the missing part of that equation is if you think that hiring that person to drive revenue is more valuable than your time in order to drive more revenue and fulfill that vision, then there's another discussion we need to have. Because if you don't have an assistant, then you are spending so much more time doing that stuff instead of driving the business forward. And for many CEOs and many founders, they are, in fact, this is the way it should be. They're the most valuable members of that team. Their time is worth the most. But yet they may be doing something that an assistant could do for, I don't want to say pennies on the dollar, but, you know, for, you know, it could be 20, 30, $40 an hour, whatever that is, but they're doing it themselves.

Speaker B: Yeah, I like to say if you don't have an assistant, you are the assistant. So. Yeah. So you're paying yourself whatever your hourly rate is, you're paying yourself to be your assistant. That's the way I look at it. Because you are doing assistant work. You are doing administrative. You're spending two, three hours a day for some, could be more than that, doing executive assistant work. Except you're, you're billing it at your hourly rate versus bring. And, and honestly, you probably don't like that stuff. You know, most business owners don't like to be buried in the weeds of administrative tasks and work. But, you know, you could hire somebody at a, uh, fraction of your cost who actually, that is the type of work that's in their genius. They like it. Yeah. Uh, they're built to do administrative work. They're operationally minded. Like, they enjoy serving a leader. They enjoy checking boxes and helping things move forward. Like they're operators. Like, why would you not want that by your side? And I like how you talk about rot return on time. And that's just a huge, it's a huge one as it relates to working with an executive assistant. Like, what is your time worth? What are you spending it on? I know I don't want to spend any time booking, travel or any of those things, or in my inbox for that, that matter. There are other things that I need to be doing that are way more important.

Speaker A: Um, I remember many, many, many years ago when I hired my first assistant I was nervous. I had a mentor. Uh, I'm a big fan. I mean, even though I coach other six, seven, eight, nine figure companies, I know the value of a coach because I always have coaches around me. I'm always hiring different coaches. And my coach way back in the day said, you need to hire an assistant. And I'm thinking to myself, I don't even know what I would have that person do. He says, trust me, you need to hire an assistant. Go ahead and start slow if you need to, but you will find that person will have more than they need to do. And I'm like, okay, oh, uh, fine. I got nervous, I'm going to go ahead. And so I was like, look, I'd like to be able to hire you. I don't really know what to do, what I'm going to have you do yet. So maybe can we do something maybe for like 10, 10 hours a week? Can I get you in there? Maybe just 10 hours a week? And so he was like, yeah, no, that's fine. We can start at 10 hours a week, no problem. And that 10 hours a week went to 20 hours a week and then went to 40 hours a week. And then before long I had multiple assistants because I didn't realize not only how much was I doing, but when I had the bandwidth to actually take a step back and think strategically. And all the different initiatives that we could do allowed, uh, me to be able to delegate more. But I couldn't think about how much more we could do or the other strategies or the other initiatives or anything else that we could implement or execute because I didn't have that time just to sit there and ask myself what else could we do. Instead I was busy reacting and working in the business. But then obviously it ended up working out, uh, quite well that I could bring on multiple assistants.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's an amazing testimony to what's possible. I think you as a leader, it's very easy to get mentally caught up in the day to day grind of running a business and all of those little things that you have to react to. But being clear and having time to think is probably the most important thing we can give our businesses. Honestly, I always tell my team, every leader that works at Belay has an assistant because I'm hiring them because they have a skill set that I'm tapping into. They're either an expert in whatever team they're leading, they have an expertise that they bring. They, they have a mindset, a perspective, a ability to think through things, discern Synthesize information like, this is what you hire in great leaders, not hiring somebody who can get their expense report in on time. And so I want to get the best out of my team. And so everybody here has an assistant because I want them spending the vast majority of their time actually doing the genius work in the field they were hired to do. And even at the top, as business owners, founders and CEOs, we're supposed to be strategically driving an organization. We're supposed to be casting vision. We're supposed to be looking six, nine months ahead. What's coming down the pipeline. Um, we're supposed to be thinking about innovation and AI. We're supposed to be thinking about future org charts and looking at forecasting. We're supposed to be the ones really focused on the revenue of the organization, the health of the team members, profits, margins, all these things that we're really responsible for that don't allow time for administrative back office work. So if you're doing the job as it's supposed to be, there's a lot to be done that does not need to be administrative work that's on your plate.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, you're absolutely right. And there's so many other benefits that go around with it now. There's also the positioning, and that is if you're coming across as a successful individual, and that's the impression that you want to make sure that your clients and so forth have is that you know you've done well and you are the one going back and forth trying to figure out the schedule and trying to do this and that and so forth. From a positioning standpoint, it doesn't line up very well. And to your prospect, the person you're working with, they go, wait a minute, why is he, or why is she spending so much time doing this instead of having somebody else in their team take care of it for them too? So there's a lot of benefits that go just beyond it. It helps you create that higher rot. It allows you to be able to work in the future and start thinking about all this, uh, the stuff that is going on right now more than ever. And the world is moving at a pace that is faster than it has ever moved in the history of mankind with AI. And it is moving so fast. And the disruptions are having at every angle we have the obvious disruptions, how it's disrupting client delivery, deliverables, how it's disrupting the employee. Then there's the disruptions that people aren't even considering, such as how it impacts the buyer's journey and what you have to do inside of that buyer's journey in order to make sure that you're positioned appropriately. If you're not focused in on, um, spending time keeping up with the rest of the trends and what's going on in the industry, that does put you at risk. The example that I often use with our clients, as I say, I want you to imagine for a minute that you're the captain of a cruise ship, and as CEO, um, you're the captain small. Many small business owners, they turn around, they go, you know what? I am, um, going to sit there and I'm going to operate the throttle, and I'm going to operate this steering wheel, and then I'm going to run down real quick, make myself a meal. Uh, the engine looks like there's smoke in the engine room. Let me go see what's going on in the engine room or whatnot. That means that now nobody's keeping an eye on the helm and the direction that you're going in. But then at some point, you run back up and you're fine. You're. But as you're steering and you're operating the throttle, you're paying attention to the first hundred feet in front of you, because that's all the time you have attention to as you become more strategic. And what you'll notice is those cruise ships, the captain stands all the way back, and they stand all the way back, and they let somebody else operate the throttle. They let somebody else operate the steering wheel. And what the captain's doing is they're looking at the map and they're saying, okay, let's see. We want to go from point A to point B. Are there any weather patterns that I should be aware of that are going to be coming in? That man's, uh, uh, forcing us to redirect. Uh, do we see any currents that we could take advantage of that's going to allow us to get from point A to point B just that much faster and easier and more profitably because we'll spend less money on gas and what are the other things? And the captain will do that, and they'll always be focusing in on the future. And then, God forbid, there's a rogue wave, something massive coming. Then the captain might say to the person operating the steering wheel, hey, step aside for a minute. Let us get us through this wave. And then the captain steps back and lets the team handle it. And that's very much how, uh, we should be approaching this as, as business owners focusing on the future. As you mentioned, it could be six months. As a small business owner, unless you're Amazon and they're six years. But as a small business owner is the minimum that we should be looking at. And then, you know, jumping in only when you have to. And that is a really critical distinction. So went all 80d there for a

Speaker B: minute, but no, I love that story. I think, I think you're exactly right. I think, you know, business owners, most business owners we run into, they're doing all the jobs. They're steering the ship, putting out the fire, running the, Running the cafeteria. I mean, they're literally have their hands in a lot of places. And so they don't have time to. Well, first of all, they're completely burning themselves out. Uh, you know, they don't feel good. They're exhausted, they're working too many hours. You know, maybe personal life is suffering, health is potentially suffering because you're just giving everything you have to this business. And so the truth is, like, you just really don't have to do that. There's so many ways you can run a very successful, growing organization. If you surround yourself with the right parts and pieces, you can really do the job and do it really well and be focused on the right things. If you surround yourself with the right people and roles who support you, it can actually be a, uh, force multiplier. And it becomes like it's not even more, you know, SG&A. Or more cost. These people, these people are supporting you to allow you to grow and bring in more revenue. So I really even look at it as, you know, a revenue engine. Many years ago, when I first started this journey, I supported an executive. His name is Michael Hyatt. You know Michael?

Speaker A: I bet I know of him. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. So Michael was. And Mike, if you're listening. Hi, Mike. He was leaving Thomas Nelson Publishing and going off to start his own business, Michael Hyatt and Company at the time. And he was going to work from home. He was leaving the office. He was going to work from home and starting his business. And the first thing he did was hire an executive assistant, a fractional executive assistant. Me, 10 hours a week to just get started. So I came in and I watched Michael and have watched many entrepreneurs since then, like, start from the ground. And the very first hire was actually an EA was my first writer. Yeah, he was able to do what he's, you know, he's a writer first. Back then he was starting, he was blogging. Remember back in 2011 when blogs were all things. He was. He was Blogging and writing a book. And so he did not want to be distracted from that. So I was the EA coming in and handling like the inbox and people were asking him to come speak and I was handing all his speaker engagement forms and fills and I was saying yes and no to people on his back. I was his gatekeeper so he could have as much time, a week as he needed to write. And from there, you know, here we are 15 years later. Michael's been wildly successful, but he was just one of those people who was really set the tone for a lot of people think when you hit a certain threshold, oh, when I hit X million, maybe I'll hire myself an assistant. It's a reward for my success. He was one of the early adopters to say no, I, I need the assistant for the success. Um, I need them first and success will come after. Same thing with the founders of this organization. They hired me at the very beginning, before we had a client and leveraged me so that they could build success. And so I think there's a mindset shift around where do you hire an EA and when should you hire one versus thinking through it like this is actually a success tool to help me, me create success because I don't get buried in the administrative work there.

Speaker A: Well, we know the formula for achieving success is actions plus resources equal goal. So actions plus resources equal goal. And so when you're a solopreneur or even if you have a team, you know you do, it increases the amount of actions you can get done. And resources as an individual, you're only limited to how much you can do on the action side of things. The moment you bring on somebody like an assistant, now you're create that formula, you're, you're able to do more, you're able to get more actions done and you have more resources and so you're able to achieve that level of success. Now for many people saying, well, when should I hire it? You know, my recommendation is if you're saying I'm too busy, if you're saying I can't get certain things done, if you don't have time to sit back and think and strategize. And by the way, if you value your time, if you think your time is worth more, even if you said my time is worth more than a hundred dollars an hour, you know that's a no brainer cause you're not going to be paying an assistant anywhere close to that. But if you believe that your time is worth more than that, then yes, it's about time that you hire an assistant. The other part that I've learned over the years because I, um, I've made probably more mistakes than, than most people, is that hire somebody that's smarter than you, uh, at the job that you're hiring for. And that's any position in the company. If you're going to hire for an assistant, you want to make sure that that assistant knows how to be an assistant better than you do. If you're hiring somebody and you think that you have to train them on what it's like to be a good assistant and they're asking you, hey, what should I do? And then all of a sudden you're actually, that's the wrong hire. You need somebody that knows how to be an assistant better than you and can also help guide you and coach you through how to best utilize that person to get the most out of that relationship. That's the best type of situation.

Speaker B: I could not agree more. I love that. I think that there's. We see a few things, you know, one thing that I would even add to the conversation is absolutely hire the assistant. Then we run into people who've hired the assistant and it's okay. And that's when you run into exactly what you said it's okay because you didn't actually hire the right assistant.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Either that person, they don't have the character traits, they don't have the foundational knowledge, they lack, whatever. There's missing competencies in that person. If you think your assistant is just okay, and this is mean, we have done this for 15 years. So we're, you know, somebody who's okay is not good enough. And so it has to be amazing. So there's that. And then the second part of it is we also run into leaders who hire the assistant. But. And I am one of these people. I'm a little bit of a. I, uh, like to hold control of things. I have a hard time letting go of stuff, you know. So I like, I like to say there's a little bit of control freakism in there. So there's a little bit of like, I'm going to hire somebody, but I'm going to like, you know, I'm still going to hold on to a lot because I'm. It's mine. Um, and we can't really let go. And there's a few different reasons why people have a hard time letting an assistant in. They're like, oh, I don't really know if I want them seeing all my emails. So like, well, why? You know, so there's, there's a lot of control freakism and trust that goes into hiring an assistant that we, we bump up against and, and really advise people that letting go of things and letting go of work is excellent leadership. And then extending trust to people without them having to earn it is also excellent leadership. Like extend trust. Trust somebody to do the right thing until they prove otherwise. And I think in most cases you'll find that people will prove you right and have earned the trust that you gave them when you give them access to your world, when you're letting it assist it in.

Speaker A: Yeah, and there's certain ways, you know, set certain guardrails and then, you know, given that opportunity with certain guardrails and then you could widen it as the trust expands. One of the things, you know, we just happen to work with some of the busiest people in the world and they'll look at something and go, oh, uh, you know what? It's going to take me more time to explain this to my assistant than it would if I just do it. And so they go ahead and they do it and it's 15 minutes, but it's something that they have to do 15 minutes every day nonstop. And they go, well, it's just, will take me more time. And then they later will say, but I also don't have enough time. But if we reverse engineer the math, if it's, if you think 15 minutes isn't a big deal and you only have one 15 minute interruption a day, you take those 15 minutes times five days in a week. Now we're talking about an hour and 15, 15 minutes, right? Did I do my math right? An hour 15. You do an hour and 15 minutes. You multiply that 52, uh, weeks out of the year, now you're talking about a lot more, you know, 50, uh, plus. So all of a sudden it's just that one little 15 minute has turned into over a week worth of work that now you, you could have extended your time. And that's just one little 15, let alone the fact that then you have the interruption, the start, stop, start, stop. And so, and most people are spending a couple hours a day doing things they shouldn't. So I tend to believe that if you want better answers, you could ask better questions. And so I learned that for a task that I do repeatedly, I'll turn around and I'll turn my loom video on and I'll walk through and I'll say, hey, I'm gonna show you what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, and I'll talk through and then I'll hand that over to the assistant. And the first and only system that I've built is the system for creating systems. And once I have the system for creating systems, then I send, I have that to my assistant. And then from there it's just, here's the video. Then they create the system and they log the system, and everything that we do is logged into a system. They create the system in the event that I have to replace the assistant or the assistant decides they won the lottery and they go somewhere else or whatever it is. I never have to repeat myself over and over again. And, and so that has become a really effective tool. And, and I know we're pushing against the clock, but I do have another question for you right now. Uh, we're talking about AI earlier and AI. I look at it as three ways. If you think about it like a graph. You can have AI do some of the work for you, and you could do well. You could do well. You can actually have the right skills and the right process and the work workflows. You could do well. You can have an assistant do the work for you. And again, you could do really well this workflows. And you're going to probably have a higher level of confidence that things are going to get done, because even if you have AI, you still have to manage the AI. So just something to be aware of. But then if you use the assistant plus AI, the geometric benefit, when you really look at that, is completely off the charts. And, uh, you take an assistant and somebody who is proficient in AI and start building the skills and the workflows and whatnot. Now all of a sudden, the level of productivity that an assistant has today compared to an assistant just a few years ago is night and day. So can we talk about the AI and how that part has, uh, influenced the work that you do now compared to just a few years ago?

Speaker B: Yeah, it has totally been a game changer. It really has been a force multiplier for my assistant and for our assistants. You know, now we're, we're vetting to hire assistants that know how to leverage AI to provide quicker, faster, better work for their leader or client. And so we, we view it as an amazing tool because to your point, AI still has to be managed. Now you can have your assistant manage it if you so choose. But like, for me, my assistant, because of AI, has really been able to step up. Well, first she got promoted to like a senior executive assistant, because now what she's able to handle for her is even way higher level. So she isn't just accomplishing tasks and booking travel and expense reports anymore. She's actually helping me prep board deck memos. She's helping me do diagnostics of sales performance by running data through AI for me. Like she has become like a chief of staff staff to me, where she's. They almost become like your mini coos where what they can handle or do for you is so much more advanced than they were able to accomplish before. So you get the best of both worlds. You get all the back office administration done, but then you have somebody who can actually next level it for you. Like I just, I sent her a voice memo prompt right before we. I jumped on with you and I said, hey, I need your help with something. Can you take this? I just hired a new person. Take the training plan and the job description, run it through Claude and tell it to pump out its 30 and 60, 90 day goals for me. Can you get that for me? And then can you put the goals into OKR format and present it to me and let me review them for my new hire? So my assistant is doing this for me. So she's like, you know, taking all these pieces, running it through AI for me and then by the time we hang up here in my inbox will be this document that she's created that's going to help me train this new hire. So it's just superpower.

Speaker A: It really is, it really is. And it's only going to get better from here.

Speaker B: Yeah. And uh, she's working on creating automations for us. So here, I'll give you another quick example. So we meet as a leadership team. We're fully remote. So all of our meetings are virtually. We use Zoom to have our meetings. Zoom AI has been amazing. You know, records, it gives you transcriptions. You can now set up Zoom to pull out action items out of meetings through its listening. So that's. She's been using Zoom AI, but now Zoom AI is actually. You can connect Zoom AI through AI to Asana.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So Zoom AI through Claude into Asana is actually extracting action items from a meeting and creating tasks inside Asana for follow up items for, for things that were talked in a meeting. Like and again, this is something she's setting up for us because in the past, right, two years ago she would have been taking notes on a meeting, she would have been deciphering action items. She would have been logging into a task management system, saying, oh, uh, I'm signing this to this person, this person has to do this and we're going to give everybody their tasks. This would have taken her hours worth of work and time and discernment. And now she, on my behalf, is leveraging technology to make that a very automated experience. So again, it really has leveled up her ability to support me and how we run the company.

Speaker A: It's amazing. And, um, I'm glad you said that, because AI last year was really just more about writing content and some data analysis. Uh, but now we have to think differently in terms of automations and workflows and, and skill development and so forth. So AI has taken on an even bigger, for lack of better words, we'll just say role. It becomes a more effective tool and then next year it's going to be ending. By the end of this year it's going to be even more insane. So this is, uh, an area which is really important because everybody's going to be measured by an ROT or return on time. And if the assistant you have now is not using AI at all, then the return on time is going to be at one level. But then compare that to somebody else that can get maybe four or five or even ten times more productivity at a faster rate. That person's ROT is much, much, much higher. So if you're competing against people who are at one level and another one at 10 times rot and so forth, then you're at a disadvantage if your competition has a higher return on time than you do. So it's just another way to look at it.

Speaker B: Yeah, totally agree.

Speaker A: Now, we are coming towards the end of our session today. When you think of your experience growing from the first employee all the way to now the CEO of an organization, a very successful organization, and the tens of thousands of people that you've worked with all across the globe, and you look at these commonalities, what would you say is your biggest best tip for the founders that are listening right now that want to go beyond seven figures? And I'm going to challenge you that this best tip goes beyond hiring assistant. I think we know that part. So let's go for what is the next best tip?

Speaker B: The best leadership tip I would have is, and it won't be about an assistant, it'll be about learning how to hire excellent talent, people that are smarter than you in whatever role that is. And let go, let go, let go. Don't carry it all, let it go. Like I feel like it's very mindset is let some stuff go, hire talented people for whatever that means. It could Be a head of marketing. It could be an hr, whatever that means. Hire excellent people, train them well, let things go. Otherwise you will literally be the limitation on the growth of your business. You'll be not bring talent in. You have to find great talent.

Speaker A: It's funny. All of all the successful people that I have met, all the successful people that I have interviewed, more commonly than not, they credit their success to having a great team. Having a great team. And for people that are a little gun shy for hiring a team, I know that I carried this false idea that I would be a glorified babysitter, that team has headaches and all that other stuff. What I realized is that was, was just the culture that I had created. It was what I tolerated. It also had to do with how I hired incorrectly and also how I have to take ownership in that I didn't set them up for success back in the day. But when you do it right, it is a total game changer. Game changer.

Speaker B: Uh, agree, like, don't lower the bar. Keep the bar high. Find the people that meet the bar. And so you might run across people. We get this wrong. You know, it's a 50, 50 shot when you hire people, sometimes you hire great people and they exceed your expectation. Sometimes you hire people, they meet it, and sometimes you hire people and they don't meet it. But, uh, we should never lower the bar because we think we had a wrong expectation. We just didn't hire the right person.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, there's hiring the right person. And the one thing that I will say is that I look at it, maybe you disagree. 50% of it has to do with leadership and management. 50% has to do with the person. Right. If I hire an assistant. But I'm not clear on what success looks like. I'm also not clear on what failure looks like. I don't provide them with feedback that helps them get better at their job. I just expect them to know what I'm thinking about. I expect them to read my mind and all that other jazz. That's a failure in management. That's not a failure in the, in the assistance. So there's always I. By default, it's 50% is the person you hire. 50% is a management. If you can check all the boxes on the management side of things first, then you know whether or not you made the right hire or the wrong hire.

Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree. We've run into so many clients. We're like, well, she's not meeting my expectations. And the question is always, well, did you even set them. If I called her right now and asked her what the expectations were, would she recite back to me something so clear that she just decided not to meet or did maybe you not exactly set them, you know, and it was always like, well, I guess I could have been more, you know, forthright with what I really wanted or what, what I expected. And maybe I was a little loose. And uh, to your point, people can't read your mind. So sometimes a missed expectation is we miscommunicated or under communicated something, not that somebody didn't do a good job or didn't try and do a good job.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think people are getting better even through AI. You know, people realize even through AI, they give a prompt and they put it out there and well, there's the two different types of people. You're going to get one type of person that puts a prompt and they get a bad response and that person goes, AI doesn't work. AI sucks. You know, but that's the person that probably struggles with the assistant. And then there's the person that you know, uses AI, gets the feedback and then goes back and forth. Uh, actually this is what I meant. They go back and forth. Those people generally will do much better because they understand the feedback loop and how to better communicate what a successful outcome looks like.

Speaker B: Yeah, just like you have to train AI, you have to train people.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean all AI is, is like it is another. It's just a, it's a digital form of a team member, but it's still a team member. It's just a digital form depending on uh. Yeah, and that could open up a whole other rabbit hole that play around with at another point. But Tricia, this has been great. I've, I've really enjoyed this. Now if people want to learn more about blue and the different services and whatnot that they offer that will help them get out of that founder's trap. Where do they go and where do we send them?

Speaker B: Yeah, I say go to our website, belaysolutions.com all of our services are listed on there and uh, honestly you can connect with me personally, trisha shortino on LinkedIn. I try and post content that's helpful tips on getting out of the busy leader trap. But we're here to help support leaders who are ready to just bring on great team members to help them focus

Speaker A: on scaling the person that's a little gun shy and doesn't know what to, how to work with an assistant or what they should get them or if it's their first hire. Do you offer resources to the person?

Speaker B: Well, so here's one of the things that I'm always proud to say is that every client client we work with has a client success consultant. So when you hire Belay to find you a great assistant or we also do financial solution services, we have fractional CFOs, accounting, all that. Every everybody gets a client success consultant. Their job is to give you every resource you need to figure out how to delegate, how to work remotely, tips, tricks, access. They're your coach. They are your coach the entire time they're working with you and your assistant to make sure that you're doing. They're holding you accountable to delegate the things you said you would. They're making sure the assistant is honoring the work that you've delegated to them. So we stay with you through the duration of your engagement because we know having accountability and coaching and consultation throughout the journey is important and helpful. And we've been doing this for so long, we have so many resources that we're constantly sending out to as well. Delegation tricks, ideal work week, hacks, time management hacks, you know, Eisenhower box of delegation, you name it, we've got it all.

Speaker A: Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. So I encourage you to check them out. Belay Solutions. B E L A Y Belay solutions. Go check them out. Also, you know, connect with Tricia. Trisha Shorentino. That's S c I o R T I n o. So connect with her over on LinkedIn and you'll be able to get more tips, strategies, and information on what you need to do to increase your rot or your return on time as well. Check us out@, uh, predictableprofits.com Again, that is predictableprofits.com if you're asking yourself questions like, how do I grow my company faster more predictably or less dependent on me, we'll help you out@prEDICTABLEprofits.com this is Charles Cadet with my new friend Tricia Sorrentino, and I will see you in another episode.

Speaker B: It.