Dan Martell - 12 Hacks To Work With Your Assistant

00:00:00.000 12 strategies that work better with your assistant to buy back your time.

00:00:05.320 If you're not doing these things, you're spending time on things that are sucking your energy

00:00:09.600 that don't make you any money. See, I've been teaching people how to hire executive assistants,

00:00:15.360 train them to get more leverage so that they don't build the business that they grow to hate,

00:00:20.240 which unfortunately is how most entrepreneurs do it. And that's why I teach the buyback principle,

00:00:25.140 which is we don't hire people to grow our business. We hire people to buy back our time

00:00:29.460 because if we do the second, we get the first.

00:00:31.780 And an executive assistant is one of the highest forms

00:00:34.460 of leverage in your first hire.

00:00:36.860 Now, most people don't know how to do it right.

00:00:39.100 And that was my journey.

00:00:40.220 I had to like learn through trial and error

00:00:42.360 and having somebody make huge mistakes

00:00:44.600 and try to figure out what's the communication rhythm.

00:00:47.180 How do I get them integrated into my inbox?

00:00:48.860 How do I get my calendar work?

00:00:50.580 How do I make the whole system work

00:00:52.300 so they actually feel relieved, not stressed out

00:00:55.060 that somebody's just one email away

00:00:56.980 from making a huge mistake?

00:00:58.600 that's what i want to share with you and there is four key areas that we're going to unpack with

00:01:03.160 three strategies per area let's get into it the first pillar that i want to unpack is the inbox

00:01:13.480 you know a long time ago my brother called me up and he's like hey man i think it's time that i

00:01:18.280 hire an assistant i see what you're doing i see what you've done with clients how do i do this so

00:01:22.780 i sent him everything i sent him the processes the test project the profiling assessment

00:01:28.200 the whole thing and he actually went on and hired somebody and i remember a month later i'm at his

00:01:33.180 house and i'm like yo man how's the new assistant i'm excited to hear like how they're buying back

00:01:38.040 your time and he kind of replies with a bit of a sigh and he's like i don't really see what the

00:01:42.940 big idea is and when he did that i knew exactly where he missed his opportunity and i asked him

00:01:48.960 one question is your assistant managing a hundred percent of your emails that come into your life

00:01:55.040 or are you just CCing that person on tasks they need to do?

00:01:59.700 And he's like, oh, why is there a difference?

00:02:02.360 Yes, there's a difference.

00:02:03.640 Essentially your inbox is a public to-do list

00:02:06.540 for strangers off the internet on your time.

00:02:10.240 Think about that.

00:02:11.300 Your email is a sophisticated distraction machine

00:02:15.120 from people that you may or not know of

00:02:17.320 that are just asking you for time or your attention

00:02:20.580 or messing with your feelings.

00:02:22.260 So having somebody take that over is key.

00:02:25.040 but most people don't know how to get that done right.

00:02:28.180 There's three key strategies to really unlock

00:02:30.860 an executive assistant when it comes to inbox.

00:02:33.160 The first one is your folder structure.

00:02:35.540 You need to create a place where all the emails

00:02:38.660 come into one spot so that they can triage it.

00:02:42.280 And the key folder out of the finance one

00:02:45.060 and the to respond and all these other ones

00:02:46.660 that I break down in my book is the review folder.

00:02:49.640 And this is the folder where they will put all the things

00:02:52.600 that they don't know how to handle.

00:02:54.240 And as long as you have a schedule to meet with your assistant

00:02:57.560 to review that review folder,

00:02:59.120 nothing will stay there for too long.

00:03:00.760 And that's your opportunity to train them, to coach them,

00:03:04.620 to teach them how to think about your life

00:03:06.880 and have them process things for you.

00:03:08.960 Now, the second thing is the daily meeting.

00:03:11.180 It's the rhythm, it's the sync.

00:03:13.340 What do you review when it comes to your email

00:03:16.060 with your assistant?

00:03:16.900 So for me, it's always that review folder.

00:03:19.100 It's always doing a quick scan of things in the to respond,

00:03:22.380 which meant that these are her task lists,

00:03:24.380 things that they need to move forward.

00:03:25.800 And it's also the things that are in the responded folder.

00:03:28.780 So I know how they've been communicating

00:03:30.780 to the people in my life so that I can get comfortable

00:03:34.040 with them understanding more context

00:03:36.020 and doing things on my behalf.

00:03:38.240 Now, the third thing is the inbox SOP,

00:03:41.520 the standard operating procedure.

00:03:43.680 And here's how it works is as your assistant

00:03:45.920 is processing your emails and talking to people

00:03:48.380 and scheduling things and taking a lot of stuff

00:03:51.420 your plate you want them to document what they're doing right let's say you get an email from

00:03:56.300 somebody asking you involved in their charity create a response okay one where it's yes i want

00:04:01.420 to do this and one where it's not and have them add that as a template into your email system but

00:04:06.780 more importantly into the inbox procedure and the more they add to it the more they create the more

00:04:12.940 they respond to people on your behalf you'll be able to add all these different nuances and

00:04:17.820 and scenarios into your inbox procedure

00:04:20.520 so that they and future people can come into your life,

00:04:23.400 support you in your inbox

00:04:25.160 so that you have the folder structure,

00:04:26.680 you have the daily meeting for review

00:04:28.700 and the procedure to make that awesome.

00:04:31.320 The second pillar is the calendar, right?

00:04:33.740 My rule is nothing goes in or out of my calendar

00:04:37.320 without my assistant being aware.

00:04:38.740 Why?

00:04:39.580 Because they own my time.

00:04:40.860 When you can delegate your schedule to somebody else,

00:04:44.580 then you can be free of knowing

00:04:46.260 that you're doing the most important thing right now

00:04:48.820 and not be distracted.

00:04:50.220 Not wondering if something's gonna get missed

00:04:52.060 or something needs to be scheduled.

00:04:53.360 You can just give that to somebody else and they own it.

00:04:55.640 Now, some of you guys are gonna be freaking out.

00:04:58.240 I know that when I was building my company Flowtown,

00:05:00.440 my co-founder Ethan and I,

00:05:01.660 we had a hard time to schedule things

00:05:03.780 because I was the bottleneck.

00:05:05.320 I was the one that he'd send me an email,

00:05:07.180 we need to schedule this meeting.

00:05:08.460 And I would be like,

00:05:09.300 I don't wanna get back to him right away, right?

00:05:11.540 Or I don't know if I wanna do that.

00:05:13.040 I'm trying to keep my Fridays open

00:05:14.520 so maybe I can go skiing or whatever it was.

00:05:16.920 And eventually I brought in my executive assistant

00:05:19.620 and I realized that when it comes to calendar,

00:05:21.740 these are the three key areas you have to get right.

00:05:24.780 The first one is a perfect week.

00:05:26.580 You know, if you're gonna have somebody else

00:05:28.080 manage your calendar, then you need to give them

00:05:30.920 the blocks of time where you wanna do certain things,

00:05:34.800 where you wanna do sales calls,

00:05:35.960 where you wanna have team meetings,

00:05:37.160 where you wanna go to the gym, where you have family time,

00:05:39.660 where you have relationship time with your partner,

00:05:42.120 where you decide that you wanna connect with your friends.

00:05:44.520 And once you give them that scaffolding,

00:05:46.660 then they can easily review the demands on your time,

00:05:49.580 things that you've asked them to add

00:05:50.940 or emails that come to you to get scheduled,

00:05:53.540 and they can put it in the right place

00:05:55.300 in the right frequency so you don't feel overwhelmed.

00:05:57.680 You don't feel like somebody's just taking stuff

00:05:59.520 and you've always gotta be the filter.

00:06:01.380 So that's the first step.

00:06:02.600 The second thing is you need to make sure

00:06:05.080 that you review the calendar with them.

00:06:06.840 And I call it calendar complete.

00:06:08.540 When I look at my calendar on Sunday night,

00:06:11.000 I expect my calendar to be complete

00:06:13.340 from the previous Friday.

00:06:14.780 What that means is that everything that I need,

00:06:17.100 every meeting that was scheduled, all the details,

00:06:19.520 the calendar is complete,

00:06:21.360 so that now I can review all the projects

00:06:23.860 and the goals that I've set for my own life

00:06:25.620 and add any open spots, the projects

00:06:28.340 or the creative activities

00:06:29.780 that are gonna help move those forward.

00:06:31.100 And they could be phone calls, right?

00:06:32.880 But the calendar has to be complete for the following week

00:06:35.760 so that you can add your things

00:06:37.500 and make sure that it's designed

00:06:39.180 so that the activities to achieve your goals are in there.

00:06:42.680 The last thing is using your notes for context.

00:06:45.900 So in every calendar invite,

00:06:47.520 there's a description section, the notes section.

00:06:50.240 I essentially ask my assistant

00:06:52.500 that whatever I need for that meeting,

00:06:54.680 if it's a link to a project file,

00:06:56.520 if it's a resource file, if it's a booking confirmation,

00:06:59.420 if it's literally everything, the context,

00:07:01.840 if it's a podcast interview,

00:07:03.140 I wanna know who I'm speaking with,

00:07:04.540 what are the questions that they've sent ahead of time

00:07:06.380 for me to prep on.

00:07:07.560 That way I know that the calendar's got the context

00:07:10.580 for me to move forward,

00:07:11.920 so I can go from meeting to meeting to meeting

00:07:14.080 and quickly ramp up before I have those conversations.

00:07:16.980 It saves me a lot of time.

00:07:18.060 Now, I'm gonna give you a tip.

00:07:19.840 If sometimes other people schedule with you

00:07:22.400 where your system might book a Calendly link

00:07:24.700 in their calendar because you've requested the meeting,

00:07:27.280 then you can add a second meeting called Notes,

00:07:30.180 and in the description of that,

00:07:31.860 which is coinciding right along the original booking,

00:07:35.720 you can add all the information

00:07:37.380 for the context to that meeting.

00:07:38.980 So oftentimes I'll ask somebody for a meeting,

00:07:41.620 but by the time I have that conversation,

00:07:43.680 which could be two or three weeks,

00:07:45.300 I'll forget what it was about.

00:07:46.900 So my assistant will put notes in there and tell me,

00:07:50.740 they'll literally copy and paste the original email

00:07:53.460 in there so I can see that and go,

00:07:55.160 oh, there's notes for this conversation.

00:07:56.780 And I'll read the email, get the context

00:07:58.800 and be able to show up with perfect information

00:08:01.220 so I can really deliver for that person.

00:08:03.080 Number three is travel.

00:08:05.340 When it comes to understanding where I am

00:08:08.760 and what I'm doing and who I'm talking with.

00:08:10.760 There is a special person in my life

00:08:12.620 that needs to kind of know what's going on to synchronize.

00:08:14.920 And that is my wife.

00:08:16.120 Now she doesn't care who I meet with.

00:08:17.960 She doesn't want to be the last person to know

00:08:20.640 that I'm meeting with her sister

00:08:22.080 to help her with her business

00:08:23.260 or her best friend to help her business

00:08:25.240 or another friend to work on a charity thing.

00:08:27.620 Like she just wants to be informed.

00:08:29.440 And oftentimes because my life is pretty chaotic,

00:08:32.940 I've got a lot of different business interests

00:08:34.620 and I'm always moving forward really fast.

00:08:36.960 I don't always know and I don't manage my own calendar.

00:08:39.760 So as it pertains to travel, booking flights,

00:08:42.960 seating arrangements, all that stuff,

00:08:45.080 we delegate that to other people,

00:08:46.980 but I had to create tools to allow me to make sure

00:08:49.680 that everything was in sync.

00:08:51.200 And I wanna share those with you

00:08:52.460 because if you're struggling right now

00:08:53.880 with having somebody else book your travel

00:08:56.440 and schedule your hotels

00:08:57.800 and trying to get different people synchronized,

00:09:00.000 you're gonna wanna implement these three.

00:09:01.800 The first one is the preloaded year and it's a template.

00:09:04.800 You can click the link below

00:09:05.760 to download my whole workbook for Buy Back Your Time,

00:09:08.200 and it's included.

00:09:09.580 Essentially, it's a one-page document

00:09:12.160 where I can look at my whole year at a glance.

00:09:14.760 It's every day is a little dot on this month,

00:09:17.840 and there's 12 months on this page.

00:09:19.680 And at a high level, I use my iPad and I highlight things

00:09:23.240 and I circle them and I put in where I'm gonna be,

00:09:25.880 what I'm gonna do, if my wife's doing stuff, 1.00

00:09:27.880 if we've got our family vacations,

00:09:30.320 if it's my events that I do, some key launches

00:09:33.860 or whatever it is, it's all the big stuff.

00:09:35.860 On her part, our family, it's integrated into one place.

00:09:38.940 And any times we're talking to somebody

00:09:41.080 about like going on a trip or speaking at an event,

00:09:44.200 I always pull up this document

00:09:45.940 so that I can see at a glance my whole year in one spot.

00:09:49.480 And it helps her as well

00:09:50.540 because I have it synchronized on my phone.

00:09:52.300 Very simple, she has a link to it.

00:09:53.840 She can go, oh, Dan's mountain biking this week.

00:09:56.340 Okay, we're going to do it the following week.

00:09:57.820 Or we'd love to go to this thing

00:09:59.380 with a couple that we just met,

00:10:00.740 but we can't do it because we're going to this other event.

00:10:03.160 So having a one pager helps with everything.

00:10:05.880 The second thing is what we call trip files.

00:10:08.660 So trip files are essentially a Google doc

00:10:11.300 that's created anytime we travel.

00:10:14.320 And what it has inside of it is the accommodation,

00:10:18.240 the transportation, the information about where we're going,

00:10:21.660 what are we doing while we're there, some high level agenda.

00:10:24.380 And it's always linked up in all the calendar invites

00:10:27.480 so that if my wife's like, you know, 1.00

00:10:29.220 who's picking us up at the airport?

00:10:31.340 I won't know that because my executive assistant

00:10:33.120 managed it, but the information is always in the trip file.

00:10:36.680 So what we have is an ongoing Google doc

00:10:38.880 with all of our different trips and vacations and et cetera.

00:10:42.360 And we highlight the date and we link it to the trip file

00:10:45.540 so that we always know where to go find the one

00:10:47.800 for our next trip.

00:10:49.020 And it's added in all of the calendar entries.

00:10:51.320 And it's just a template that my assistant copies

00:10:53.620 and paces, puts all the information that's in my inbox

00:10:57.000 into this one document and my wife and I know where to go.

00:11:01.140 The third thing I'm gonna encourage you to add

00:11:03.520 is a weekly sync with your executive assistant

00:11:06.600 and your partner.

00:11:07.880 I have to do this because again,

00:11:10.120 I'm not aware of everything that's going on in my life.

00:11:12.600 And part of that weekly sync is really scanning forward.

00:11:15.680 What are we doing the next two or three weeks?

00:11:17.940 What's going on with childcare?

00:11:19.740 How are you gonna go to that event?

00:11:21.520 And I'm doing this event.

00:11:22.760 And having two busy entrepreneurs in the same family,

00:11:25.440 it requires this level of coordination and conversation.

00:11:28.820 Because I'll tell you,

00:11:29.660 When we didn't have this weekly sync meeting,

00:11:31.920 we were always tripping over each other.

00:11:33.680 We'd always have moments where some person

00:11:36.120 was supposed to be driving a kid to some event

00:11:38.340 and the other person's like,

00:11:39.180 well, I've got this talk I got to give,

00:11:40.780 or I'm going live, or I'm shooting my podcasts,

00:11:42.940 or I'm creating content for YouTube.

00:11:44.860 Whatever was going on,

00:11:45.860 it was always us stepping over each other.

00:11:47.860 And we added this weekly sync and it solved it all.

00:11:51.000 A very structured agenda.

00:11:53.100 We review the key items, our travel, our weekend schedule,

00:11:56.700 and anything that we need, we can action it off,

00:11:59.340 get it, put it in there and it is ready to go.

00:12:02.580 The fourth core pillar is communication.

00:12:05.340 If you've had an assistant in the past

00:12:07.360 and they didn't work out,

00:12:08.600 it's probably cause you didn't set up a rhythm

00:12:10.840 to communicate that allowed you to stay in sync

00:12:13.680 for the person to understand your preferences

00:12:17.100 or build context, what I call a context map

00:12:19.580 about your world to be able to respond

00:12:21.880 and move things forward without your involvement.

00:12:25.640 So if you don't have these three things,

00:12:27.940 This is probably what's holding you back.

00:12:29.720 These are advanced strategies that I know,

00:12:32.360 if you have an assistant today,

00:12:34.220 will unlock a new level of communication

00:12:36.600 to allow you to get more freedom and buy back that time.

00:12:39.640 Number one is you have to have a daily sync

00:12:42.260 with your executive assistant

00:12:43.540 to review what's going on in your life.

00:12:46.040 You need to give them the context, the conversations.

00:12:48.660 You have to explain to them what that email means.

00:12:50.660 You have to explain what that person means to you.

00:12:53.940 You have to tell them the story of how decisions were made.

00:12:56.960 And essentially what happens is over time,

00:12:59.740 they will understand how you make decisions,

00:13:02.780 who's important to you, how do they get work done?

00:13:05.720 If they need to work with a legal team, a finance team,

00:13:07.860 your travel agent, whoever it is, your estate lawyer,

00:13:10.720 these are all things that an assistant

00:13:12.380 can help broker communication, move projects forward

00:13:15.620 if you have a daily sync that unpacks the nuances

00:13:19.280 for how you want them to interact with those people.

00:13:22.160 The second is what I call rerouting communication.

00:13:25.440 So often time, I've got hundreds of emails coming at me.

00:13:29.220 I've got dozens of messages

00:13:30.740 through social media platforms coming to me every day.

00:13:33.600 And what I've learned, and it's one of my rules,

00:13:35.520 that you will teach people how to treat you.

00:13:37.720 And if somebody messages you over SMS or WhatsApp

00:13:41.200 or Facebook to coordinate something,

00:13:43.480 and you're like, man, I really wish

00:13:44.760 they would've emailed me so I could have this interaction

00:13:47.380 in my inbox with my assistant,

00:13:49.000 I'm not the person they should be asking directly

00:13:51.060 because I don't know.

00:13:52.080 But you keep replying, you taught that person

00:13:54.980 that that's how they should communicate with you.

00:13:57.640 So what I do is I reroute.

00:13:59.040 When somebody messages me like my buddy did today

00:14:01.340 and he's like, hey man, I want you to speak

00:14:03.160 at our October event, I can screenshot that,

00:14:06.300 reply all, loop in my assistant on text messages

00:14:09.540 or Facebook or email, and just post that screenshot

00:14:13.100 and then leave my context

00:14:14.620 and then move it to email with my assistant.

00:14:16.860 And she now knows to understand what the request is,

00:14:20.280 that it's something I want to do.

00:14:21.800 And that subtly cues the person to know,

00:14:24.940 oh yeah, Dan likes when I email him, right?

00:14:27.200 And you can politely remind them like,

00:14:29.040 hey, always better to email,

00:14:30.740 that way it doesn't get stuck on me.

00:14:32.520 That's the reroute process.

00:14:34.220 The third is closing the loop.

00:14:36.160 And this is something you need to ask your assistant

00:14:38.360 to do every day and check that it gets done

00:14:41.200 because most entrepreneurs have a hard time letting go

00:14:44.660 because they're worried that something's gonna get dropped.

00:14:47.920 And what happens is at night, you're laying in bed

00:14:50.260 and you're thinking about your day

00:14:51.540 and you're like, oh geez, did they reply to that?

00:14:53.680 I didn't see that email.

00:14:54.460 Now, oh no, did that get scheduled?

00:14:56.280 Or, oh my gosh, I have that big opportunity.

00:14:58.080 I wonder if anybody got back to them.

00:14:59.560 Or, oh my gosh, I'm flying next week

00:15:01.300 and I don't think I booked whatever it is.

00:15:03.540 Those are the open loops that will drive you crazy.

00:15:06.960 So what I asked my assistant to do is,

00:15:08.920 and we have a private Slack channel just for us,

00:15:11.200 and she'll post closing the loop at the end of her day

00:15:13.680 to write down all the things

00:15:15.680 that she got done or moved forward.

00:15:17.440 It's not a micromanagement thing.

00:15:19.020 It's just a way for me to quickly scan and go,

00:15:22.040 oh, cool, all these things are done, good.

00:15:23.960 i only honestly check it when i have a question because i don't want to bug her and then that way

00:15:28.440 she has almost like a personal accountability process to kind of work through and get things 1.00

00:15:34.040 done and just kind of leave them there as kind of fyi's so i never have to wake up in the middle

00:15:38.440 of night and go like oh did we ever book my mountain bike for that mountain bike trip and

00:15:41.960 then go find out like oh there it is okay got done last week perfect closing the loop is a powerful

00:15:47.560 strategy to free up your mind and trust your assistant to keep moving things forward now if

00:15:52.120 Now, if you want to take things to another level,

00:15:54.260 be sure to pick up a copy of my book,

00:15:56.360 Buy Back Your Time, Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom,

00:15:58.680 and Build Your Empire.

00:15:59.860 Because in my world, an empire

00:16:01.360 is not this big, crazy, scary thing.

00:16:03.960 It's literally a life of unlimited creation

00:16:06.940 you never have to retire from.

00:16:08.520 And that's what I want for you.

00:16:09.700 So if you're sick of building the business

00:16:11.260 that you grow to hate,

00:16:12.380 be sure to get a copy of my book

00:16:13.840 to unlock opportunities in so many ways

00:16:16.580 to show up as a leader,

00:16:17.860 to really buy back your time and build your empire.

00:16:21.720 As per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger life and a bigger business, and I'll

00:16:25.040 see you next Monday.

Dan Martell - May 15, 2023

12 Hacks To Work With Your Assistant

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