Today on Hindsight Hacking the guys had a little fun talking Stanley Cup, racing in Denver, living in Alaska and oh yeah we talked business for a little while. Jaime Jay is a shareholder of Bottleneck Distant Assistants. Founded in 2016, Bottleneck is an outsourcing agency that assists leaders in cultivating and identifying remote-based dedicated distant assistants. After a twelve-year career in corporate America, Jay studied Business Administration and Management at Florida Institute of Technology and ventured out on his own as an entrepreneur in 2006. A veteran US Army paratrooper who received the Army Achievement Medal for Meritorious Service, Jay likes networking with big-picture thinkers and proudly proclaims he is unemployable. In his spare time, he enjoys playing hockey, camping, boating, playing guitar, shooting guns, traveling, and spending time with his wife, Sara, and their dog, Nikita. Many business leaders don’t know how to get out of their own way. In Quit Repeating Yourself, author Jaime Jay shares how he built a seven-figure business by focusing on the power of creating systems and processes so he could stop doing the wrong things and focus on doing his best work. After other business professionals kept asking him to explain what he was doing differently, Jay compiled his best strategies and systems, hoping readers could learn from his successes and his mistakes. Through personal stories and professional examples, he teaches leaders how to build a strong company foundation using small and actionable steps. Inside Quit Repeating Yourself you will learn: * How to build a positive company culture through effective leadership skills. * How to create systems based on company experiences. * How to improve recruiting and hiring processes for today’s competitive markets. Quit Repeating Yourself provides guidance for entrepreneurs, business leaders, and managers to help prevent unknown challenges from ruining their business. Connect with Jaime: https://bottleneck.online/ https://quitrepeatingyourself.com/ https://www.facebook.com/heyjaimejay https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimejay/ Connect with Cory and Ron: Head over to Https://profitswithpodcasts.com to find out more about how your can easily launch and monetize a podcast. Or maybe you would like to learn more by jumping on a call with the guys? Just book a time that works for you! https://calendly.com/hindsighthacking/connect?back=1&month=2020-11 And you can find Cory and Ron on a few social channels! https://follow.cool https://www.facebook.com/coryecarter Or you just want to check out their websites: Https://gethhm.com Https://impactorsmastermind.com
Today on Hindsight Hacking the guys had a little fun talking Stanley Cup, racing in Denver, living in Alaska and oh yeah we talked business for a little while.
Jaime Jay is a shareholder of Bottleneck Distant Assistants. Founded in 2016, Bottleneck is an outsourcing agency that assists leaders in cultivating and identifying remote-based dedicated distant assistants. After a twelve-year career in corporate America, Jay studied Business Administration and Management at Florida Institute of Technology and ventured out on his own as an entrepreneur in 2006.
A veteran US Army paratrooper who received the Army Achievement Medal for Meritorious Service, Jay likes networking with big-picture thinkers and proudly proclaims he is unemployable. In his spare time, he enjoys playing hockey, camping, boating, playing guitar, shooting guns, traveling, and spending time with his wife, Sara, and their dog, Nikita.
Many business leaders don’t know how to get out of their own way.
In Quit Repeating Yourself, author Jaime Jay shares how he built a seven-figure business by focusing on the power of creating systems and processes so he could stop doing the wrong things and focus on doing his best work.
After other business professionals kept asking him to explain what he was doing differently, Jay compiled his best strategies and systems, hoping readers could learn from his successes and his mistakes. Through personal stories and professional examples, he teaches leaders how to build a strong company foundation using small and actionable steps.
Inside Quit Repeating Yourself you will learn:
* How to build a positive company culture through effective leadership skills.
* How to create systems based on company experiences.
* How to improve recruiting and hiring processes for today’s competitive markets.
Quit Repeating Yourself provides guidance for entrepreneurs, business leaders, and managers to help prevent unknown challenges from ruining their business.
Connect with Jaime:
https://bottleneck.online/
https://quitrepeatingyourself.com/
https://www.facebook.com/heyjaimejay
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimejay/
Connect with Cory and Ron:
Head over to Https://profitswithpodcasts.com to find out more about how your can easily launch and monetize a podcast.
Or maybe you would like to learn more by jumping on a call with the guys? Just book a time that works for you!
https://calendly.com/hindsighthacking/connect?back=1&month=2020-11
And you can find Cory and Ron on a few social channels!
https://follow.cool
https://www.facebook.com/coryecarter
Or you just want to check out their websites:
Https://gethhm.com
Https://impactorsmastermind.com
[00:00:00] CORY: Welcome to Hindsight Hacking, I'm Cory Carter
[00:00:17] RON: And I'm Ron Cool on this podcast we've packed. Hundreds of entrepreneurs. Hindsight tells you. With better foresight. Now, guys, if you want to know all about what we can do to help you focus on being you head over to get hhm.com, keep pushing through those ups and downs that we all will have.
[00:00:36] CORY: We're still going to have amazing conversations with amazing people. Hindsight hacking boils down to amazing conversations with some amazing people
[00:00:53] All right, everybody. Welcome back to Hindsight hacking. And today we've got the one, the only Mr. [00:01:00] Jaime Jay so if you don't know, Jaime is shareholder of bottleneck distant assistance founded in 2016. And it's an outsourcing agency that assists leaders in cultivating and identifying remote based dedicated, distant assistance. After 12 year career in corporate America, Jay studied business administration and management at the Florida Institute of technology ventured out on his own as an entrepreneur in 2006. Is it past a veteran army paratrooper, which we've got to talk a little bit about as well and received the army achievement medal for meritorious service Jay likes networking with big picture thinkers and proudly proclaims. He is happily unemployable. I added the happily in there, but I know we've we get to talk about that on the show a little bit. So at the end of the day, we're going to have a fun show and Jaime welcome. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:01:53] JAIME: Cory, Ron, thank you so much for having me. I'm super stoked and chat with you guys. And I have to admit, I love the [00:02:00] name of this show. It's fricking fantastic.
[00:02:03] RON: Well, we're excited to have you and I can't wait to like dive into, like, I know we talked a little bit before the show started, so I can't wait to get back into that conversation, but before we do, why don't you tell everybody a little bit more about Jaime.
[00:02:18] JAIME: Well, thank you so much again, a little bit about me. I was homeless after I got out of the army. I was also homeless twice as a youngster. My dad was a bit of a, an adventurer and a gambler, not gambler in the sense of gambling, but he gambled with his career a bit. And so, uh, we found ourselves twice, uh, homeless. And then, uh, when I got out of the army, the day I got out and came back, my wife asked for a divorce and said, I couldn't stay with her. Or her family. That was the plan until, you know, I was going to go to work for her step-dad well, I had nowhere to go there. I was with my army rucksack walking around Southern California. So it was a, yeah, it was a little interesting fast forward. Working corporate America for 12 years, for 11 years. [00:03:00] Tried to figure out how to get out of it. Learned a lesson about not burning bridges. So my first client, when I got out was the last company I worked for. I always share that with people, because I think it's really important not to burn your bridges if at all possible. I know sometimes you just gotta, you know, sometimes it just happens. It's kind of out of your control. And then, you know, I started trying, figuring out this crazy life of being an entrepreneur and now, you know, 15 years later, I'm proud to say that I am unemployable.
[00:03:27] CORY: I love that, Jaime all right. So I want to dig right in because your company bottleneck distant assistance. So you were, you were talking to us a little bit earlier and it was too good to, to not share, but you're, you're creating your own category. And, you know, I just would love to hear kind of how that came to be and what makes you, what makes it different.
[00:03:49] JAIME: Cory Thanks so much for asking that question. This is a near and dear to my heart. This is a big deal for me right now. A big deal for all of us here at bottleneck. And one of the challenges, I don't [00:04:00] know if you guys know, but there was a, there was a big pandemic called COVID. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if. But it devastated our company. We lost about 60% of our business and we had to figure out what to do. I am very proud. We never miss payroll. We continued moving through, but I mean, it was tough and I can imagine it was probably tough for a lot of people. However, we decided to jump in the trenches, put our heads down and figure out what we could do to get through this thing. and It kind of worked out to be a blessing, this the COVID thing, because there was a lockdown and people were kind of forced to come up with work from home policies or go work from home because they couldn't get into the office. And what do you think people experienced being sent home?
[00:04:45] RON: They had no idea what to do because there was no boundaries and they can like stay in their jammies all day.
[00:04:50] JAIME: Exactly. No idea what to do, but then they kind of figured it out and they started saying you know what? I can kind of do this through communication. Now I know the future [00:05:00] of work, in my opinion is a hybrid. You know, some people are going to be going into the office. Some people go into the office part of the week. Some people are going to continue working from home and there's tons of studies out there now with all the data that we've collected, we meaning the world, all the data we've collected and figuring out, you know, how to be productive at home. So we had to sit down, I've been doing this remote based a distant assistant thing. It will before that was virtual assistant. And I'll touch on that if that's okay. But I've been doing this since 2006. So this was no new thing to us. We have been practicing this for 15 years, but a lot of people had a problem with hiring somebody remotely before this pandemic. And they thought, well, how am I going to know that somebody is doing something that they're not here in the office? Or, you know, and these are all the wrong ways to think by the way, because you shouldn't, you know, everything that we're doing, I think helps increase company's culture because you're not micromanaging, you're trusting more, you're getting into systems and processes, [00:06:00] which is what it's all about. And it was just a challenge. So. One of the things that we figured out was okay, we're working, working in this virtual assistant world virtual assistance. And if you Google that, you'll see maybe some results in AI, artificial intelligence or bots or on occasion. Yes. Virtual assistants can be associated with human being. But I feel it's more of a transactional based relationship, meaning that you're going to hire virtual and you're going to ask them to complete a project or a task or something like that in exchange for money and through most likely several iterations to complete this task and get it done up to your level of expectations, whatever that may be. You basically have a transactional relationship with this person, and that's really hard to get stuff done. And we thought, man, how can we categorically redefine? Or re-imagine the virtual assistant world. And Christopher Lochhead, the author of play bigger. Amazing friend of mine said distant assistance. We came in with social distancing, distant assistant. He goes, Jamie, [00:07:00] you've been, social distancing before social distancing was a thing. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. And I thought distant assistant kind of rhymes. I'm like, okay. I could probably get behind. And the reason that we wanted to come up with a new name is because now we're going to redefine working with every human being are a distributed workforce from a remote location. A distant assistant now becomes an intimate based relationship. So our dissonant assistance learn your tone, your voice, your brand, your vision, your mission. So if you were to send out an email or your assistance to send out an email, You would be hard pressed to differentiate whether that email came from you or your assistant, because the intimate based relationship. So we're really focused on that. And that's the difference between a distant assistant and a virtual assistant, because a distant assistant you're going to have with you for the long haul. The average of the longest person that's been with me is eight years. I have two people that are over six years. My assistant's been with me for three years. In the virtual assistant world, the human virtual assistant world. There's on [00:08:00] average at 38% turnover for us, we maintain less than a 5%. The big difference.
[00:08:05] RON: That is awesome. Like I loved the part where you're talking about understanding your voice, understanding your brand, you know, that's something we try to do for clients where it is like, Hey, you know, we do a lot of micro content for people. And it's like, we want to make sure when people look at their stuff, it's their brand. It's on point it's them. And it doesn't look like Ron and Cory did it. You know what I mean? So I really appreciated that. I know you re-imagined it. And we talked a little bit about COVID before, but how has your team like rallying around this new, new direction or this, this more essential direction that you have?
[00:08:41] JAIME: Woo so that's a great question. They are my, I don't know what I would do without them. I almost want to say family. That's how close we are. Our culture. Absolutely amazing. And, and I'm saying this, knowing that if anybody else on my team was sitting right here, they would say the same thing. Every single week, we have a team [00:09:00] meeting, a company meeting and every single week, a different team member on our team leads that meeting and then they do a training specific to their role and their responsibilities or not. We had bumpers and do a training on how to get the paint done well in the corners of their room, you know? Cause they painted their house that way. It doesn't matter. It's all about establishing their voice and the confidence for them to make their own decisions, which is powering. So they all make their own decisions as far as, is it good for the company? Is it good for the team? And is it good for the client? Because the company is not doing good financially or culturally, which is probably more important, which is more important. It's, I'll be hard pressed to have the team be motivated. Maybe they're missing payroll, or maybe they feel that their voice isn't heard, or if they come up, I didn't, I'd tell them to shut up. They're not going to feel comfortable coming up with ideas and voicing their concerns. And if they are in that state, how in the world can I expect them to take care of. And they all, every January they do their own job, role and responsibilities. They write exactly what they really like to do. And we found that's been really [00:10:00] fun. And a lot of people are scared to do that because I'm hiring you for a role. I need you to do this. Oh, what if they're really good at something else? And you don't even know it, why not embrace that and have them fulfill that role in your company and your agency and your business, whatever it is, and just see how wonderful they enjoy this work and how well they do at it. Heck we change roles. We pivot a little bit every January, and if they no longer want to do this and they really want to do this, okay, let's figure out how we're going to cover what it was. You were doing transition out of that and man have fun. So I think that's a big, big difference.
[00:10:37] CORY: Love that I love that culture is like top of mind and you know, it's, it's really funny, Ron and I being in the corporate world prior to this as well. That was always a big deal, but it took us a little bit to figure it out when it came to our. Which is virtual assistance, but distant assistant, right? Like it came to, took us a little bit to find the [00:11:00] person and then to develop that culture and to not have it be transactional. And now we've been blessed. Like it's been, I mean, it's, I'd say it's been a good six months plus where nobody's left that we've, we've brought on and, and it's pretty exciting to have that team. but What is your process when it comes to finding the right people? Because like you said, it's some people weren't used to it and had trouble finding good people when it came to their, you know, going virtual going remote. Right.
[00:11:33] JAIME: So This is the golden question. This is the question that everybody wants to find in the United States. It cost $4,129 to hire somebody, but you can Google that and find it all over. Do you have any idea how much it costs to fire somebody
[00:11:48] RON: twice that much
[00:11:49] JAIME: nine months salary up to nine months salary. It's not inexpensive to hire somebody it's actually the other way. And then the [00:12:00] other thing is when you first hire somebody. You're going to almost double your workload. It's tough to hire somebody. So with that in mind, knowing how to, what to expect, uh, when you bring somebody on, because when you bring somebody on their way down here, you're up here because you've been working there, you know, what's going on. They have to not even, no matter what kind of expert they are in whatever field or they're really good, or they've got a ton of experience, they have to learn what you expect and how you use a certain software. Because you can have the same software that they're trained on or certified on, but guess what? You may want them to use it in a different way. So they have to learn what you do. So that first 90 days just know you're going to be spending a lot of time trying to get them up to your level. But what the cool thing is, once you do get them up to your level, you now gain the confidence saying, okay, they got this stuff down. You know what? I might be able to delegate them a little bit more responsibility, but to get to that point, to answer your question long story longer, it's all based on trust. This [00:13:00] kind of hiring thing. How in the heck can you trust somebody in the very beginning? You hardly know them. Trust comes through confidence. And so if you have an onboarding process where you have to have somebody jumped through some hoops you're looking for them to pay attention to details. So we have a pretty thorough vetting process that we go through where only 23% of our candidates actually passed the application process. We have a little tiny section on one of our, on, on one of the applications and it's real small. It says, Hey, tell us a joke at the end of your video, tell us the joke at the end of your video. Some people tell us a joke in the beginning. Some people don't tell us a joke. That's what we call a red flag. And we simply don't hire because of that. They may be the nicest people in the world, but. And what our clients are looking for is details because a lot of our clients want to delegate the mundane details of their work. So they can focus on doing their best work, right. Stop doing the wrong things. You can focus on doing your best work. That's our provocative point of view. And we try to instill that. [00:14:00] From the very beginning, we do reference checks. We do background checks. They go through three different interviews with three different people before they're ever brought on board. Now I realize not all companies have a infrastructure set up like this. But it's really important to have them go through some tests, do some tasks, see how they complete that have conversations with them and see how they interact with you. The thing that I like is I don't care if you have any experience or tons of experience, it's all about the personality. And even probably more importantly, the character of this person, because you cannot teach or train personality or character, you can train systems, processes, software. And my assistant, oh my gosh. I don't know what I would do if Raina left, but she was a nurse before she came to work for me. She didn't have the experience as an executive assistant, but she's killing it. And I love her personality and she wasn't my first choice, by the way, I hired somebody else two weeks before. And who had tons of experience because Rayna [00:15:00] did. And I called Reno and said, please, please, please come to work, please come get, can you please go to work? And she did. And it's just been magical.
[00:15:08] RON: No, that's, that's so true. I mean, we we've put this into our business, but you know, Cory and I both, you know, when we were in the corporate world hired for personality, you know, I could teach anybody how to do what I needed them to do, but if I didn't enjoy their company or think that. Can like be a good team member. Like it didn't matter if they knew how to do the job. So I love that you said that I'm going to, I'm going to totally switch it up for a second. And for people that are not watching the video on YouTube, I'm not sure why, but we're going to talk about a couple of things. Cause I've never seen a, like, I think you're just a big hockey fan. We're just going to talk about this for a second, because you have a Blackhawk shirt on you're drinking out of. A blue shirt, you got blue stuff in the background and I'm pur I'm not sure who's on your hat, but
[00:15:56] JAIME: Washington capitals.
[00:15:58] RON: So you have [00:16:00] multiple teams going on. So tell us about that. I know it's super random, but I have to ask and I have to ask.
[00:16:07] JAIME: So yes, I am now entered into my 46 year playing Hockey I met my wife, playing hockey at the local rink today is hockey Friday. So we're going to be, after we done recording here, we head off to the rink and we play hockey together every Friday. So we absolutely have fun. I grew up in Alaska. There's not much else you can do in Alaska other than play hockey. And I'm just a huge fan. Now I'm a big Washington capitals fan, and this is a winter classic shirt that I'm wearing Washington capitals versus the Chicago Blackhawks, Washington won good deal, Washington one and, uh, the Stanley cup in 2018 and the wonderful St. Louis blues. My second favorite team won in 2019. So I've had a couple of great back-to-back years there it's been fantastic. I love it so much. I'm affiliate I've I've skated. Usually once a year, we skate in a big tournament with the St. Louis blues alumni, and we help raise [00:17:00] a lot of money for charity. And so I was the liaison when the St. Louis blues won the cup in 2019. I was in liaison to bring it to Springfield, Missouri. So I got to spend my day with the Stanley cup and some former players of the, of the St. Louis blues. And we went around and shared the cup at, at, you know, bass pros here in Springfield. And we went around to the different bars and stuff, bringing the cup. And it was one of the funnest days that I, and I got the city awarded me with St. Louis blues day, bringing the cup and they gave me this. I forget what you call it. A got it somewhere here. Here's a nice official thing for like, you know, say proclamation or they give to me with the professional proclamation for, for your St. Louis blues day, which is now an official day here in Springfield. So it's a blast. We get this, we have a limited edition wine bottles back here for the blues and stuff. To say I'm not a fan. Yeah. I really, really enjoy it.
[00:17:55] RON: Did you touch the cup? I guess that's the question?
[00:17:58] JAIME: Absolutely. I have [00:18:00] proof, Itouched the cup. You're not supposed to raise the cup unless you were on the team.
[00:18:05] RON: Right, right, right.
[00:18:06] JAIME: Yeah. I know this, my wife didn't know this. No, she raised the cup.
[00:18:12] RON: No, she did not.
[00:18:14] JAIME: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no,
[00:18:18] RON: That's like 45 years of bad luck right there.
[00:18:20] JAIME: There's no proof of that.
[00:18:22] CORY: There's no blackmail happening.
[00:18:24] RON: There's no pictures of her going ahhh
[00:18:26] JAIME: There maybe a picture but it's it's not public, but it was, it was, oh yeah, not only incredible. I mean, it was so cool seeing all the kids get to see it. I think it was 6,000 people came to bass pro it, I mean, there was lines if, if you've ever been to Springfield's main bass pro where it started it's huge facility and it was just, there was just people wrapped around. And it was, it was unbelievable.
[00:18:52] RON: That's cool.
[00:18:53] CORY: Wow. What, what a neat experience that is so fun. All right. Well, let's, let's get back on topic, Mr. Ron. [00:19:00] I know you have a show. And so tell us a little bit about, uh, stop the bottleneck in your business. And is it just, is it just a video show? Is it a, you know, more like traditional podcasts? You know what I think you and Sarah both are, are the co-hosts of that one. So, but yeah. Tell us a little bit about that show and, you know, maybe we'll, we'll get into that.
[00:19:18] JAIME: Yeah. If you guys ever want to be a guest, please come on. I love it. So it's, it's a live stream. So I, we just counted not too long ago. I've been podcasting for almost eight years and we found out I did over 850 episodes. It was amazing. Wow. And you think back on you're like, holy cow, that's a lot of fricking episodes. So I used to do podcasts and you guys know from podcasting, post production is killer time-consuming and I'm all about systems and processes. So I would delegate that, but still it's, you know, you talk to somebody and say, okay, your podcast will be out, you know, maybe next month or, or maybe two months, because you know, we're a little bit backlog tear or maybe cause you batch, you do eight shows in a day. And then [00:20:00] it takes a while to, and I was, oh man, it was really time consuming. And a lot of my guests would come on. When's the show coming out. When's the show coming out. I want to do this thing. I want to do this thing, or I I've a special event. I, you know, can I get this to come out on this day and all of that kind of stuff. And it got pretty time-consuming so I, I kind of shifted over to live streaming. Absolutely freaking love it because everything was produced and it's done like. You know, it's just done. And so we've been doing that and every Tuesday and Thursday, at the time of this recording, we have a show at 2:00 PM live stream on LinkedIn, live YouTube and Facebook live or Facebook, whatever you call it. And then we write an article for that, you know, the show notes, and then we share that stuff out and I'll send it out the newsletter and all that, which is a lot of fun. December 8th, we're going to move it to just Wednesdays. So I'm going to be doing only one show of the live with bottleneck, where we help stop the bottleneck in your buisness and then every Friday, like right after we're done here, my wife and I are going to jump on every Friday at 10 o'clock central. And [00:21:00] we just chat about, we have a special edition of live with bottleneck called a weekend review with Jamie and Sarah. And we talk about our business. What happened this week? What did we do wrong? What did we do? Right? How did we overcome those things? What we're doing next week. And then we give a couple shout outs. So we were like, Hey, we just wanna give a special shout out to this person. They really helped me this week. Or sometimes we'll say, Hey, shout out to this person. Sorry. We ran out of time for Ya, You know and I get that from Christopher Lochhead. We just like to have some fun, but it's just a special way for my wife and I to kind of chat about the business. And give other people ideas and insights into where we've made mistakes or where maybe we've done really well. And hopefully that can help them or someone could chime in and say, Hey, have you thought about doing that? We kind of dig that stuff. It's fun.
[00:21:43] RON: I love it. And we did, we did live for a long time. Where it was just super easy streamlined it's live. And it actually helped in our post-production just because we just don't edit anything. It's like, it is what it is that that's the end of it. [00:22:00] But I'm going to continue down, not talking about anything about the show. I'm going to talk about your background because it looks pretty cool. Like I'm, I'm looking at it and you got a bunch of stuff on there. I got a bunch of stuff on there. It looks like you have a, you have some kind of truck back there, like. Oh, talk to me about the psychology of why you put stuff in your background. Cause I know why I do it.
[00:22:21] JAIME: The Big rig, the big rig. He, he, uh, Pat Maroon so his nickname is fatty Patty and like nobody thought he would ever make the show the NHL, he actually ended up making it and he has three Stanley cup rings three out of four years. He's gotten a Stanley cup. The guy is just amazing. And he's such a nice guy. He's just, he's just a great guy. So I have all this stuff back here. My wife and stepdaughter made this on-air thing for me. And I just like having the stuff back there, it's kind of nice, maybe conversational and of show some things off, you know, I can see
[00:22:57] RON: what is the, two circle things.
[00:22:59] JAIME: [00:23:00] So this.
[00:23:01] RON: And if you're not watching on YouTube. This is probably boring So I apologize.
[00:23:05] JAIME: It's a thermometer and a barometer, and what's really cool about this is I guess you'd call him my stepfather stepfather. Father-in-law no, there we go. Father-in-law my wife's dad made this for us and it's because we're into boats and stuff like that. It's
[00:23:20] RON: nice.
[00:23:20] JAIME: It's pretty cool. He's a woodworker. So I just kind of put things back there to have fun with. And I can't wait. Cause I got a big background that was designed by our team and that's going up on the wall. So I ordered that that's coming in. I wish I had it for y'all now, but it's exciting because it's going to kind of do it kind of shows everything. I've have my team up there, but it's all kind of cartoon characters. So I have the team up there and I have my wife and I play in hockey up there and I had quit repeating yourself, the book up there just to kind of bring all of it together in the background. So. Should be fun.
[00:23:50] RON: Love it
[00:23:51] CORY: so funny. It totally reminds me of, of Ron. At one point I had like nothing in my background and runs like, you need to add this and you need to add that
[00:23:59] RON: Yea you gotta have [00:24:00] stuff.
[00:24:00] CORY: Totally gave me a lecture on adding little pieces of
[00:24:02] RON: I got little toys I got stuff.
[00:24:04] Yeah,
[00:24:05] CORY: this is so funny. So Jaime I'm, I'm going to try to keep this conversation from being derailed because I know Ron keeps taking us to left field. So I'm going to, I'm going to bring it back, bring it back hindsight. We're our goal is to hack your hindsight, to give our listeners clear foresight. So I'm going to ask you a little bit about that and I want to relate it to you lost 60% of your business. You talked about play bigger and the impact that that made and basically creating your own category within the distant assistant world. How did you go? Not only from. You're getting back to zero. After losing that business during this pandemic, how did you go to exceeding where you were? Like, what, what was that thing that you learned? And you're like, gosh, if I would've done that three months sooner, we would have, who knows where we'd be now or two months in or six months or whatever it might be. What's that, what's that advice you can give [00:25:00] everyone
[00:25:00] JAIME: Corey, thanks for the question. This, this actually, yeah. Hindsight, right? Holy cow. If I could have, if I, I had to go through what I went through to get where I was and get where I am now, you know, thankfully I was homeless. I still say that to this day. Thankfully I was homeless because that made me who I am today. And it gives me a different perspective that many people may not see, but we all experienced challenges in our life. Just like I experienced with maybe you've never been homeless, but there was a time in your life that you were challenged. But you thought, man, this is the toughest thing. You know, I lost my mom last March. That was extremely hard. All of this stuff started coming up. And if I had hindsight 2020, the biggest thing that I did was documenting doing something as if it's the last time I was ever going to do it. That's the biggest thing, delegation, roadmap. He got to create a delegation roadmap because even if you're not planning on hiring, you don't have a team. It doesn't matter. The second you start documenting the systems [00:26:00] in your business. Anything that you do that's repeatable should be documented. Start building the workflow library, start getting ready to hire the very first day you start your gig if you're an entrepreneur and it's just you, it doesn't matter. Start preparing yourself to hire. And that way when, and if that time does come and you do want to hire somebody, you can basically take what's in your head. You don't have to guess on whether or not something's going to be able to do the tasks up to your level of expectation. You're going to know because you've documented everything that you do in the way that you do it. whether it's Managing your calendar, checking your email, doing your bookkeeping, whatever it is, accessing your onboarding in your CRM. Doesn't matter. Take the time to document that stuff. Cause it takes a long time. It's taken us nine months. We're launching as the time of this recording. It's almost Halloween here. It's 2021. We're getting ready to move into November Monday, November 15th. We're rolling out this new [00:27:00] program we've been working on this thing for nine months, nine months of documenting processes. Automation. It's not easy, but I tell you. I am so happy that we went down this road. And if hindsight looking back, I had done this years before, guess what? We wouldn't have been in the position and lost all that business, even though it was some of it. Wasn't our fault. We had companies close. Right. They couldn't do it. Right. However, we could have found a way around that. Thankfully not thankfully that happened. Right. We look at the, the silver linings there and what did we learn out of that? And how are we going to be able to fix ourselves? Well, I say we're not recession proof or recession ready.
[00:27:40] CORY: Oh man. Documenting and creating that delegation roadmap that like genius right there. That is probably after over 200 plus episodes of this show. That's probably in the top two of my favorite responses to that question.
[00:27:55] RON: Absolutely. Absolutely. I wrote it down. . [00:28:00] It's huge it's huge Oh my gosh. So we talked a little bit about. You teased November 15th. I'm sure people are like clamoring that they want to be involved with. With that launch, how can they get involved? How can they get around what you're doing and how can they be a part of that.
[00:28:19] JAIME: Well, thank you more about us by going to bottleneck.online. That's our website, but a lot of this stuff that we're talking about here that we're rolling out is how, and it's all free. By the way, you can go and learn how to effectively hire somebody, prepare how to hire somebody. Get up with all the templates that I talked about. We have templates and believe it or not systems and processes for every. Right, right. All of that's free. So if you're thinking about hiring somebody, if you want to do something like that, reach out to us. W I'm happy to share the onboarding strategies, the links, the templates, all over. And this is a lot of work, nine months worth of work. And what's nice about it too, is we're rolling it out on the side of our DA's are dissident assistants so they're actually being certified. They come to us as a virtual [00:29:00] assistant. We certify them as a distance assistant and they're learning everything that we're teaching our clients so that when they get together, you know, they're ready to manage their email and calendar and all that kind of stuff. We have, we have email and calendar cheat sheets. So if you guys won't learn how to do that, guess what? Here's a cheat sheet for you. Oh, it's just so much. To get organized like that, but yeah, that's all of that stuff is free.
[00:29:20] CORY: Wow. That's that is so good. Yes. We'll definitely have that in the show notes for everybody to hit the link and head on over. But Jamie, I've got one, one final question for you today. Culture is a big thing for you, personality. I mean, I know we've talked about that for all of us, but if just one last final piece of advice for. You into speaking to the entrepreneurs. When you go hire somebody, do X, let them do X what's. What's that last piece of advice that you want to give,
[00:29:54] JAIME: ask this question. This is my favorite question. So when you're talking to somebody, this is going to help you with [00:30:00] character and personality. And also I'll tell you the two things. Ask this question. What do you want to do after you stop working here? The powerful question is number one, you're going to, they're going to be like, wait, what? No, I really want to work here. No, no, no, no, no. What do you really want to do? Because number one, it's going to tell you what they're truly passionate about. Right? And you might be able to help them get there. Number two, if you don't have a role design about what their true passion is, maybe you can design a role so that they stay with you longer. That's a really powerful question when you're hiring
[00:30:35] RON: I love that. I love that. I love that. All right. So one super grateful you spent time with us today. We're thankful that we got this other than the books and you'll be seeing us for sure. In, on November 15th. Cause it's, it sounds like a ton of value and we will make sure everyone knows and hears about it and is ready to go. So why don't you tell everybody one last time? The [00:31:00] website to go to.
[00:31:01] JAIME: So you can go to bottleneck.online and thank you again. And I just wrote a new book called quit, repeating yourself, how today's leaders are using systems and processes to build their business the right way. And so you can go learn more by going to quit repeating yourself.com. And you guys, I'm going to be sending you out a t-shirt because you'll be on my official world book tour launch. It'll be, it'll be fun
[00:31:22] RON: we'll wear it all day long.
[00:31:25] CORY: All right, Jamie, definitely a pleasure, a blast. Thank you so much for joining us today. And I can't wait to see you next month. See your launch and you know, hopefully, hopefully continue this relationship that we started because yes, it was a blast Ave and I'm so glad we were able to do this today.
[00:31:40] JAIME: Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Cory you guys are awesome. I'm so glad you guys took a, took a chance and had me on
[00:31:47] RON: love it. It's been a great conversation, man. Thank you. So much.
[00:31:50] CORY: Oh man, Ron, that was a lot of fun. And I knew when, when I found Jamie online through Facebook messenger, because that's how we find some random people. I [00:32:00] knew it was going to be a lot of fun. And then your internet didn't work that first time we were tried to have the conversation and then we scheduled it for a time. We never have podcasts interviews, all the things were stacked against, but it was still a lot of fun. Jamie was an awesome guest and we learned a lot of things, but first let's talk about those takeaways.
[00:32:19] Oh, yeah.
[00:32:20] RON: So number one, hire on personality. You cannot train personality. That that is something I believed in for years and years and years. And I know you have to, so that's one. The other one that I freaking loved was document what you're doing. Document your SOPs before you need SOPs so then you can just go, this is what I do. That was freaking brilliant. I was like, ah, I gotta do that.
[00:32:43] CORY: Yeah, you and I, both, we, we hire somebody we're like, all right, how do we get the information from here? From our head to, to their
[00:32:52] RON: document documents
[00:32:54] CORY: so, oh, that was, that was a good one. What else?
[00:32:57] RON: Personality.
[00:32:58] CORY: Yes. Personality [00:33:00] and document. Yeah. Well, I mean, his whole company talks a lot about character and culture. Like it's so good. And, and you and I, and we, we had a rough time at first because. We're all about culture and the corporate world. We were all about that personality. We're all about surrounding ourselves with people that we liked, but it was tough to really transition.
[00:33:22] At first when you're talking about people that they're across the world, not, not necessarily remote in another state of like they're across the world in a different country with different time zones, they're going to bed when we're going, getting up for breakfast, right? Like there's all these different things that you and I took a minute. To figure out how is that same principles that we learned in the corporate world match within the virtual assistant world or a dedicated assistant, direct assistant? All of the stuff I can come up with, but Jamie has created his own category. To [00:34:00] separate a normal virtual assistant that is transactional to become true employees as if they were in the same room with you and become that family, that culture that you can build, that culture, that, you know, an Erin Kennedy who created noodles, a company built people in the room. He can, he's helping build this. Across the world with your remote employees. So I loved it. It's such a good conversation. Can't wait to do more with Jamie andbut for now everyone, thank you all for listening, watching, and being part of our community.
[00:34:34] did you know that hindsight acting media agency? We do all things podcasts from launch if you're already doing 10,000 downloads in a week, we handle everything. All you have to do is record it and forget it guys. If you're launching a podcast, get with these
[00:34:47] FEMALE: guys, I could not honestly hit the charts without them.
[00:34:51] MALE: I'm not getting paid for this, but working with both of you, the professionalism and the system that you guys had for launch the podcast [00:35:00] you guys killed it.
[00:35:01] RON: We want to help the impactors create an impact by just letting you be you and not worry about all this other crazy stuff. Connect with us. All the links will be in the. Do you next time go create an impact.