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Delegate Your Administrative Burdens And Gain Your Time Back With Valerie Trapunsky [Episode 99]

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Do you feel like you have time for both your life and your business?

Many entrepreneurs struggle with this. Often, we get bogged down by lots of tasks and obligations, and it can be difficult to build leverage for ourselves and our business. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this episode, Doug C. Brown speaks with Valerie Trapunsky, the founder and CEO of Chatterboss. Doug and Valerie discuss why you should delegate tasks to others, the hidden costs of not doing so, how to balance your time to do the things you love, and more.

 

In this episode you will learn:

 

Episode’s guest – Valerie Trapunsky

CSS 96 | Delegating Burden
After spending 7+ years working as a top-level personal assistant and Chief of Staff for A-List celebrities, CEOs, and high-net-worth individuals, Valerie discovered that she could bring the same level of excellent service to individuals, entrepreneurs, and small business owners. This is the foundation that ChatterBoss is built on, which Valerie founded in 2017. Valerie is passionate about solving customer needs through smart systems, smart technology, and most important of all – smart people. Together, the whole ChatterBoss team has built a product that clients can trust to deliver personalized, reliable, and thoughtful service.
 
Visit her website: www.chatterboss.com

transcript

Delegate Your Administrative Burdens And Gain Your Time Back With Valerie Trapunsky

In this episode, we’re bringing in another wonderful guest. Her name is Valerie Trapunsky. She has a company that she owns called ChatterBoss.com. Valerie has been in this business for several years and she’s had a client base around for years. We’re going to talk about how you are losing and how you can gain ten weeks or more worth of time back into your life. I know that’s a bold promise but we’re going to talk about this in the terms of how to leverage through other people, how to do the leveraging correctly and how to avoid the pitfalls of leverage.

I can tell you that we don’t promote on this particular show but I did a bit of promoting because I believe strongly in the concept of what she does and I’m using the concept myself. The concept works well. Without further ado, let’s go talk to Valerie and get some time back in your life. Let’s get some time utilized in a more profitable and revenue-growing process for you.

Valerie, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having me, Doug. I love your energy.

Thank you. We’re going to talk about how people in business are losing, as you say, at least ten weeks a year, guaranteed. If that hasn’t caught your attention, think about it. Ten weeks per year, what does that cost you if you’re losing it? It’s easy to figure out. Take your company revenue or your net. Divide it by 52 and multiply it times 10. That’s your number. How are people are losing ten weeks per year? Valerie, please tell me.

Entrepreneurs, we’re an interesting bunch. We have all of these ideas. We go into business for various motivations. We want to succeed and make money. We are passionate about the product that we are creating and the communities that we are serving. With this nature of entrepreneurs, what we end up getting into is, “I can do it myself. These are the things that I have been doing in my business.”

We’re also always experimenting. What it means is that there is an administrative burden. Every business has an administrative burden. Entrepreneurs spend anywhere from 30% to 60% of their week bogged down with administrative tasks. With our nature, a lot of times, we start taking on that administrative burden little by little. The very first thing that you do in your business is administrative.

When you give birth to your idea, the first thing you have to do is register, do your trademarks, get your domain and so on. We start to train ourselves that these administrative things are part of our role as the CEO. Early on in our business, we have to learn to differentiate between the things that we should be doing as the CEO and the things that we should be getting administrative support with like from a remote executive assistant.

That’s an interesting concept. Some people are like, “Wait a minute. I’m a $180 million company. I don’t need that. I’ve already got that. ” Other people are going, “I’m a small company. I need somebody to help me.” We’re going to talk more about that too. I want to put this in perspective because I was once working with a company and I was talking with the CEO.

He said, “I’ve got to push our meeting off. I got to go get coffee.” I was like, “What do you mean you’re going to get coffee?” “I go down to the local coffee shop once a day and get coffee for the whole company.” I said, “Are you friends with these people like they are family?” “Nope. I’ve been doing this every day and it’s something that I do and I like to do it.” I said, “Do you like to do it or does it overjoy you?” He’s like, “I like to do it. People like it around here.” I was like, “Let’s figure out what it’s costing you per year to go get coffee.”

We did. We worked the numbers out. It turned out to be $436,000 a year it cost him to go get coffee. Some of you hearing this might be going, “That’s no way.” If you take what the company was doing and the numbers we were talking about, it was $436,000. I said to him, “I’ll come to get your coffee for you because it only takes less than an hour a day. I’ll hire somebody and put them in your company. You pay me the $436,000. I’ll pay them their $35,000 a year to go get coffee and I’ll net down an extra $400,000 plus a year.” That caught his attention.

This is what I’m hearing you say and maybe I’m magnifying it to the obscene. Over the years as I’ve been working with companies. Valerie, it blows my mind some of the stuff that they’re doing if they just focused on revenue generation during that time or profit optimization versus these routine tasks that should be with someone else. That’s how they’re losing their ten weeks per year.

I love what you say because a lot of the way that we approach remote executive assistant space is we do a lot of coaching with entrepreneurs. We get them to delegate even if it’s their first time delegating. We have this model. We’ll say, “What are the things that you should delegate?” It’s the things that you’re not good and all of us can pinpoint the things that we’re not good at.

Those are usually the first things that we are ready to let go of when we are ready to get support. There is then this other category of projects, which is the things that I may like to do, I may be good at them and I should not be doing them. This is what’s harder for entrepreneurs and CEOs to let go of. As you explained in your example and it’s brilliant, this person enjoyed going to get the coffee. Maybe it was a break for them. They liked taking the walk and they liked their barista. It was something in their day that they enjoyed. It’s harder to give up some of those things.

Some people enjoy the organization part. Some people enjoy this and it gets them into a groove and Zen mode. It’s harder to advise, “Get rid of the things that you like to do but you shouldn’t be doing so that you can go make more money.” The first thing is our revenue-generating activities. Do you enjoy those activities? Hopefully, yes. If that’s the case, when we look at the other things that don’t generate income but you are doing them because you like it, we have a consideration.

What else in your life do you like doing aside from spending time with your family and exercising? The bigger the organization, the higher the stakes. When you said maybe you’re amplifying this example to this extreme, it’s a brilliant example because it is true. The bigger the organization and the more limited your time, the higher the stakes.

The bigger the organization, the more limited your time and the higher your stakes. Click To Tweet

I don’t shovel snow or do lawn work. Here’s the funny part. I used to own a landscaping company so I like doing both of those things. With the pandemic, it was harder to find qualified people to do lawn work. They’re all busy and things like that. I was like, “I’ll get a lawnmower,” and I got a riding lawnmower. I’m out there riding along. I get back and it took me 90 minutes to cut the lawn. “How stupid am I?” That’s what I said to myself. The reason I say that to myself is that if I look at the numbers that we’re talking about, I don’t love doing the lawn but I like it because it’s a little Zen moment. You can get out there, put the head cups on and tune out.

I’m not trying to take the joy away from people when I’m saying my example and I know you’re not either. In this company’s case, they hired me to help grow their revenues and profit and optimize their sales processes. I felt compelled to point this out to the CEO. We’re not talking about stripping off all the things in the world you love. If you love to do yoga and you’re taking 90 minutes a day to do yoga, we’re not talking about getting an outsourced assistant to do your yoga for you.

It’s all trade-offs. What’s brilliant about the way that you are framing it is that if you’re going into things, keep your eyes wide open. I have a certain amount of the week that I’m spending with family. I have a certain amount of time that I’m focusing on myself and my business. I have some leisure activities. If bringing and getting coffee is your leisure activity, that’s not a problem. It should go into that category though, and then what’s the trade-off? What are you giving up? It’s the same for everyone else.

When we look at it in terms of blocks of time that we have in the week and we make those decisions consciously, what happens with that administrative burden is that it creeps up on you. In the very beginning parts of your business, you start to do it. You then start to train yourself, “I’m the only one in my business that can start to do these things.” That’s how that 30% to 60% grows over time. It’s a scary number.

CSS 96 | Delegating Burden
Delegating Burden: When you start your own business, the administrative burden will start to creep up on you. You will start to do it and think that you’re the only one that can do these things.

 

It’s like putting on weight. We don’t realize it is a little quarter ounce or a gram tube per time that we’re gaining. All of a sudden, 26 weeks later, we’re like, “I’m fat. I’ve got 15 pounds on me that I didn’t think of.” You don’t realize it’s happening. Everyone reading, I have a great, wonderful 42-inch lawnmower for sale that’s sitting in the garage that’s collecting dust. I’m not doing it again. I almost fell into the trap again.

To your point, it’s easy to fall into the trap. Snow season’s here and I’m like, “How are we getting somebody into it that’s reliable to come to take the snow? I’ll get snow plowers.” For $100, they’ll do my driveways, walkways and everything else. The reason I’m bringing this up is that we talk a lot about the 1% earners here. People who are driven to get to the top 1% of the earnest category. We talk about how to do that without burning out in the process.

One of the ways of not burning out in the process is getting other people to do exactly what you said. If we take and look at our time value as 1% earners, mowing the lawn would be 2,340 minutes. That’s what I figured out for the short season that I have here. I don’t live somewhere like Florida, but if you do it all year long, it’d be more than that. If you took 2,340 minutes divided by 60, which is the hour, that’s 39 hours.

I would spend a year mowing the lawn. How many clients could I find? If I was full-time focused for a full week, could I find 1 client that paid me $50,000, $30,000, $10,000, $150,000, $1 million, $2 million, whatever the company listening to this is at? The reality is why not pay that $100 a week, go make $50,000 and pay $2,600 bucks a year?

Peel off part of the $50,000 to go out to Hawaii. I’m still up $40,000 by the time I’m done and that’s my thought. If we’re going to be a 1% earner, those of you reading who want to be there, your time and how you use your time is one of your top five assets in the process. Valerie, could you please tell us what you provide for people?

ChatterBoss is a remote executive assistant service. We support entrepreneurs, business owners and CEOs by pairing them with a dedicated and on-demand remote executive assistant. What that means is that you have a consistent person in your business that is your right hand. With that said, you do not have to bring them on a part-time or full-time basis.

The way that we work is that we keep our time tracked from the minute down to the second. We ebb and flow with you as your business grows and as the needs of your business change as well. You get access to one dedicated assistant and they become your right hand, like a chief of staff. A lot of our entrepreneurs say that what their executive assistant feels like is a mini-COO.

From there, what happens is we become this entrepreneurial full 360 platform. You have access to your dedicated assistant. With that, you also have a backup assistant. Your backup assistant is there when your primary is sick or away. This is a unique model. Generally speaking, you have your executive assistant. They become your right hand. They know everything about you and you start to rely on them, which for a lot of entrepreneurs and CEOs is scary. You’re giving up control.

What’s scary is when your assistant goes on vacation, they’re sick or something happens, you start to get very worried about what will happen if this person is no longer by your side. That’s why we have this model. There’s a backup person. They’re also trained on your systems. They have access and can step in for each other. From there, your team also has the ability to grow. We have specialists on the team. If there is a need for copywriting, sales-related work, marketing or anything specialist-related, we have individuals on the team as well.

In addition to that, there is a large list of preferred vendors. For example, if you’re asking for a whiteboard video that needs to be created, this is a very hyper-specialized project so your assistant would have to go somewhere on Upwork or Fiverr and find that person. I say that because your assistant should not be the Jill or the Jack of all trades.

They can coordinate additional vendors but if you’re asking for a whiteboard video and the person never made one, certainly, they should not be practicing. That is not the best use of their time. Instead of going and doing the whole process of finding someone online, we have a trusted vendor list. The assistant who has supported clients with that particular task will say, “I’ve had a good experience with this person.” It opens up a shortcut to getting a lot of what you need to be done and it could be anything within your business that needs to be done now or needs to be done by someone else. Your assistant can coordinate it with you as your right hand.

For those of you who are longtime readers, we don’t pitch on this show. You’re the second person, Valerie, that’s ever pitched your company on the show. The reason I asked you to do this is that I know the power of what you’re offering. If I didn’t have executive assistance around me, I would be so stagnated in growth. I have three executive assistants around me who are outsourcing to other places. That’s the way we get things done here.

I’m going to talk to all the solos of the sales teams for the moment at the moment. If you don’t have a backup to the backup, you’re leaving yourself wide open. Believe me, I’m saying this from experience. I can tell two stories. One is I was using a small CPA firm. My CPA was amazing, off the charts and best of the bests but her husband got sick and she got sick. I thought it was all over.

They both got COVID. Six weeks later, they’re still sick. What do you do in that case? There’s no backup to the backup. Hard lesson learned. That backup to the backup thing that you’re talking about is invaluable. Imagine you’ve got somebody doing your proposals for you, those of you in sales. All the routine stuff that you know you shouldn’t be doing, even if you love it. Although I can’t imagine anybody reading this goes, “I love doing proposals.”

If you’re doing proposals or you’re getting information out or things that are there, all of that is taking away from your prospecting time. There has to be a point where you must say, “If I want to be a top 1% earner, I must leverage my time.” How do you leverage your time? If you’re paying somebody X per hour but you’re earning X times two, you’re doubling up on that, getting better productivity and you’re able to get the larger clients. It’s that simple.

What I’m hearing you say, Valerie, is it’s the difference between going to a service like Upwork or Fiverr and trying to hire a virtual assistant. This is an executive assistant who’s going to take ownership of the actual process of getting stuff done. I don’t have to think it through like I will with a virtual assistant. I got to train this person a little bit but they’re positioning more as an operations entity within my organization versus a virtual assistant where you can outsource.

There are a lot of conversations in the market. What is a virtual assistant? What is an executive assistant? What is a chief of staff? Essentially, there is a wide gap in terms of the kind of service and person that you can bring on, all of which you could call, for example, a virtual assistant. You can outsource out of the country and this would be your lowest-priced option per hour. Usually, people go to the Philippines and other countries. Your pricing could be anywhere from $7 to $9 USD an hour. Everyone has seen the ads. You can get a full-time, half-time person, $15,000 a year from different countries and this is possible.

When is this kind of strategy right in your business? Do you have very clear standard operating procedures? Do you have a lot of time to train this person? Are you a master delegator? Are all of the things within your business so clear that you are very comfortable delegating them out and you have a long leeway to train the person and give them feedback? Baking into that annual cost is the cost that will take you to do the training and the oversight. In a certain amount of time, you can mold that but it’s how much time you have and how good are you at delegating.

With ChatterBoss, our dedicated assistants are U.S. based. This was the strategy for a specific reason. I believe that your remote executive assistant should be in the country where either you are or where your business is. The reason for that is with the executive assistant role, there are no templates for this position. Some things end up more or less standard like email management and calendar management – some of the things that we all know can fall under the virtual executive assistant role.

Much of that position is customized to your personality, your particular work style, the kind of industry that you’re in and the kind of work that you do. There is a lot more opportunity to miscommunicate with your executive assistant than there is to miscommunicate with your lawyer or CPA. At least within any other industry, you have a limitation on the kind of work that is being provided to you and there are more templates.

As an executive assistant, I’m learning the things that you’re doing. I’m trying to anticipate you. Communication is very important. For that reason, I say your person should be a U.S.-based person if you’re within the U.S. They can delegate to people outside of the country. If you are here and your business is here, that is the model. We are looking to change the conversation about what executive assistants are.

A lot of people say, “VAs or executive assistants are task doers. They do as I say.” There are multiple layers to the delegation and you can get to that highest level of delegation where you say, “You know me and my processes. You are an expert. I trust you to do it.” That is the holy grail. All CEOs and entrepreneurs want to get to that point. It takes time to learn to delegate, flexing your delegation muscle. It takes time with that person that you’re working with but also it is important that you selected the right person or expert that’s going to bring their experience and skillset to this position.

I’m going to back that up. I’ve done a ton of outsourcing through different countries. You had said have SOPs in line, make sure you’re training, understand if you don’t have a long runway or you have a long runway. Are you a master delegator? Let’s face it, most salespeople and executives are terrible at this. I wrote down another one, culture fit. I can tell you story after story and I’ll tell a couple of them.

We outsourced one time our software offshore. The gentleman that was here was my partner. He had a lot of software experience. I now have a lot of software experience. I get a call from the owner of the outsourced company in Poland that we were outsourcing. He said, “Your business partner is mean.” I said, “What do you mean he’s mean? He can be direct but I don’t know him to be mean.”

He said, “Half of my software crew and your team here is in the back room crying.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” I called my partner and he goes, “What are you talking about?” I called back the Polish team. I go, “This is what I heard.” He goes, “You can’t do that here.” I’m like, “This is a normal conversation in the U.S.” We want to know the culture of where we’re we’re outsourcing. With my software company in Poland, they’re amazing. But I understand the culture now.

Two reasons. 1) I married a woman from Poland so I understand the culture. 2) She helps me with the culture when I don’t understand it. It’s vastly different from American culture. Culture fit. I’ve done this in South Africa where I’m trying to pay people more money than they’re asking for and they won’t take it because their government, according to them, will tax them on other government issues that they don’t want to deal with.

If you’re dealing with a country like Asia, they have different cultural values from people in Europe or the United States. We all want the same thing as people but there are different cultural values. If one doesn’t take into account that other cultural value, that’s going to cause a lot of friction and we don’t realize it. I love what you said because you get that culture fit as well. I want people to also understand we’re not talking about you needing to do this full-time to get the results from an executive assistant. We can do have one part-time and a lot of times they can do it way faster than we can do it.

I’m going to use myself as an example. When I go do an episode like this, I have people who have already put the notes, links, questions and everything together. We’re not scripted but they even put questions and points of interest. If I had to do that, it would take me two hours. They do it in about twelve minutes because they’ve got it down to a system. What that means is I could do five episodes a day if I wanted to. We have that many responses coming in. They’re spending an hour putting this together. I would be spending ten hours doing the same thing.

Here’s the crazy part. They’re nineteen times better than I would be. This is the value. When you’re looking at this, ladies and gentlemen, he, she and they who are reading this episode, give high credence to where are you putting your time. Is it giving you the ROI that you are looking for or are you sabotaging yourself by taking on the things that you shouldn’t be taking on? If you want to be in the top 1%, you’ve got to use your time wisely.

It’s about how easy or difficult you want to make this journey for yourself. People that are delegating out for the first time, you’re going to make it for yourself much harder if you go into one of those other routes because it requires a certain level of expertise. That’s something to keep in mind. There’s another concept that we talk a lot about.

When you were describing this experience of you doing this show where you have the ability to step into a Zoom, have that conversation, leave and all of the other pieces are done for you, the first thing that comes to mind about your experience and also my own when things like this happen is how luxurious, amazing and grateful am I for the life that I am living where I have the power to choose. We are living at that time.

Some of us are still grappling with, “I have to make it hard for myself. If I’m going to succeed, it has to be hard.” I’m one of those people. There is a short, direct, easy path and then there is a rocky path that’s very dark. Oftentimes, I go there. Here in the remote executive assistant space, if you’re in that mindset, you’re getting ready for your next year and you want to make it easier. You have those two choices.

I also think about white space. Anything that comes into our space is something that we are thinking about. It’s a perfect example of your show. For a lot of CEOs and entrepreneurs, this is where we go. When I start to do the editing, I get curious, “What are the other ways that people do editing?” It’s not just about, “I’m going to do the editing.” I have the possibility to bring myself to become this editing expert because it’s very fun.

That’s why it takes you longer sometimes. We are usually not individuals that go A, B, C and D. We are individuals whom a lot of the time think about something. We have to protect ourselves from the kind of initiatives and activities that we take because in whatever activity we’re going to do, we can bring into this creative territory and we have to be careful.

CSS 96 | Delegating Burden
Delegating Burden: Entrepreneurs don’t just go from A, B, C, and D. They look for shortcuts or other ways to do things, and that can take up a lot of time. So you have to protect yourself from going to that creative territory.

 

It takes seven individuals minimum to put this show together and put it out. That’s not including me so there are eight. There are seven people administratively between production. I see so many people go, “I’ll edit my show and do this and that.” I say to them, “What are your goals?” “I’m a solo entrepreneur and a consultant. I want to have $1 million a year.” I’m like, “You’re not going to get there editing your show.” They’re like, “What are you talking about?” With this white space, light bulbs went off in my head.

We’re taking a family vacation and I’m like, “Let’s go and stay at Vrbo, in a nice place.” I’m up there and I’m like, “That place is nice. Do we want to bring the cat with us or do we want to leave the cat at home? Do we want to fly or drive?” I’m off looking, “If we’re going to drive, that’s a long drive. We got four drivers, no problem but let’s go rent a car.” I go to Enterprise, rent a car and start going back to Vrbo. 1 hour and 15 minutes later, I still don’t have this flipping Vrbo picked. It’s all that white space.

When you’re saying this, it makes me laugh. Sometimes you go to the rocky dark space and it’s a tendency to do that but I can tell everyone that’s reading this that when you have somebody doing this for you, I would’ve had 3 to 5 choices in the Vrbo that I could have had. It would’ve been narrowed down and shown me why and why not. I could have made a decision in probably five minutes. Book this one and then that one gets booked. I don’t have to deal with it. That’s the power of what we’re talking about. When you say at least 10 weeks, I suspect people are spending way more than 10 weeks losing time.

I believe that we have only a certain amount of creative energy that we could spend in a day. We have to channel it into the areas that make the most sense. You can get creative about choosing which car you’re going to rent and that’s how you’ve used up that limited energy for the day or week. Success comes to us when we are balanced.

People only have enough energy to spend in a day, which needs to be channeled into areas that make the most sense. Click To Tweet

There is something that I noticed that we’ve been talking about throughout this entire conversation but I don’t know if it’s zeroed in for people that there are business activities that you can delegate out and that’s something that we’ve been starting to get more comfortable with. There are more conversations that people know. If you’re not delegating, it’s kind of wrong.

I don’t want to say what’s right or wrong but if you’re not delegating right and you want to get to a certain level of success, you’re not going to get there. We’re starting to get comfortable with that idea in the business area. All of the things that you’ve mentioned, a lot of them are in the personal space. We don’t always think to delegate out the personal stuff. For a lot of people delegating anything personal, there’s this feeling about it.

If you want to get to a certain level of success, you're not going to get there if you don't delegate. Click To Tweet

Sometimes people feel like it’s taboo, especially when it’s things related to our family, children and spouse. “Is this correct? Can I get support with what my spouse is asking me for if I know that I’m not going to do it and my spouse needs it?” If you start to take an audit of both the business and the personal stuff as well, where can you make your life easier and smoother?

If you are spending a lot of time in the business and then family life, home life and personal life start to take a toll and we’re not putting our energies into the things that make the operations run there, then we’re not going to perform our best in our business. It’s not possible. There are so many things on that personal end that you can start to delegate out vacation planning.

We have a lot of times when assistants are looking for activities for kids, summer camps and all of those registrations. Let’s say you’re moving so you need to re-register a ton of stuff. Anything that’s on your plate goes back to white space. Anything that we know that we have to do but we haven’t done lives somewhere in the back of our heads, even if it’s something very tiny. I can give you a very short story. We have a client who ordered a candle. The candle came broken into a bunch of different pieces. She put the candle on the table.

Every day, she looks at this candle and thinks, “It’s not correct that I got a broken candle. I could throw it in the trash and I won’t think about it anymore but that doesn’t feel good because I paid for it and it’s broken. I can’t get myself to throw it away. I don’t want to pay assistance because the candle was $15 and I don’t know how long it’s going to take the assistance to return it or reach out to the vendor. Every day when I look at this candle, it’s a small bit of failure. I am not doing it. It’s distracting me.”

It’s stopping you from all of the other things so you have to make a choice. Either throw it away or delegate it out if you’re not going to do it but it has to be taken off of your physical desk. That’s all of the other small things in our mental space we need to clear out so we can have that white space for ourselves.

CSS 96 | Delegating Burden
Delegating Burden: Throw away your distractions or delegate them because they have to be off your desk. Your mental space has to be clear as well so that you can have white space for yourself.

 

There is a third choice. You could leave the thing as is and it will cost you $10,000 over the next year. You’re spending all your time and energy in that process. Valerie, I could talk with you all day, as we both know but I’m sure you’ve got other things that you’re going to do. Thanks for giving us some extra time here on the show. Is there anything that we probably should have talked about that or whatever that may come to your head or did we cover pretty much everything?

We did such a good job, Doug. I feel complete.

Go to ChatterBoss.com and check it out. I’m going to leave us with a little funny story. This is something that I used to do. I don’t like clothes shopping. I’m wearing an L.L.Bean thing here and my wife does all of the shopping. She takes care of it. When I was single and I needed new clothes, I would go to a clothing store and I’d find a lady that I’d look at and go, “I wonder if she’d go out with me.”

I would walk in there and say, “Hi, I need to buy all new clothing. Would you help pick it out for me?” That woman would help me buy these clothes or I’d go to a different store and I’d do that. Every time I did that and I went on a date, do you know what women said to me? “You’re one of the best-dressed men I’ve ever seen.” If I picked out what I thought I was supposed to have, I don’t think I would’ve got a second date.

The reason I’m bringing this up is no difference between that crazy little story in our business or anything we do in our personal life. We need to stay in our zone of genius and let other people who are in their zones of genius do things for us and therefore we create the ultimate leverage. Valerie, thanks for being here on the show and bringing your A-game. I appreciate you being here.

Thank you.

What did you learn? A) Maybe you shouldn’t be doing some things. B) Maybe you’re doing some things that you’re doing now that you shouldn’t be doing. C) Do you like what you’re doing or not? If you like what you’re doing and you’re outsourcing it and it’s costing you a ton of money, then a ton of time, maybe you shouldn’t be doing that as well. If you’ve got that out of this show, this was very successful. If we can get our brains thinking in a way of leverage, how do we create more leverage again and again?

That leverage allows you to open up free space for you to do other things that are far more valuable in the growth of your business. If you want to be in the top 1%, you want your company to be in the top 1%. Utilizing time is your biggest asset. You can throw money at something and make it happy with money but what if you only had to throw a quarter of the money at it because you are using the time more efficiently to drive the revenue up?

I wrote down a ton of notes. I love this thing about white space especially. When you get into a task, what are you doing? In other words, is the task something that you’re going to innovate on and it’s going to be like, “I planned on five minutes?” Now, it turns into 55 minutes and you lost almost 1 hour of your time. If you’re doing those types of things, think about it this way. What’s an hour of your time worth? If it’s a personal net, take your annual income, divide it down and figure out what an hour is.

If it’s your company revenue or company profit, figure out what that is. Make it a little painful if you have to because that’ll allow you to say, “I can’t keep doing that in this direction. I got to go in that direction.” If you like this topic or you have a topic that you think you would be an expert on or you know somebody that’s an expert and you like to suggest the idea to the show, please send an email to YouMatter@CEOSalesStrategiesPodcast.com. We’ll review the idea and get back to you.

If it fits, we’ll talk about it. If it doesn’t, we’re going to get back to you and let you know that it wouldn’t be a fit. If you want to get into the top 1%, in other words, you want to take your earnings up, you’re somebody who sells. Whether you’re a CEO, a business owner, a sales team or a salesperson or you have a business and you want it to grow in revenue, profitability and productivity, efficiency and effectiveness, reach out to me directly at Doug@CEOSalesStrategies.com. Let’s have a conversation to see if what I can do for you can help you as well.

In 2023, we have something coming out called the 1% University where we’re teaching people how to be in the top 1% of sellers worldwide. If you have an interest in that, please reach out to us as well. Until next time. Go sell something. Sell it today if you can. Play win-win. That means they win and you win a long-term gain. Sell with ethics. Be the first to disengage if it’s not right for the other person. Help somebody solve a problem or gain an opportunity in their life. Make them happier and it’ll make you happier. Life will be happier all the way around. To your success.

 

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