Jamie Jay Interview
SPEAKERS
Greg Voisen, Jamie Jay

Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen and the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from Springfield, Missouri. I used to live in Missouri, but I used to live in a town called Webster Groves, Missouri. Not it's a long way from Springfield. But we have Jamie Jay joining us. And, Jamie, if you would hold up your book, Quit Repeating Yourself. We're going to be talking about that book right there. And Jamie, and everything else, and I think I love with Jamie's website, it's just Quit Repeating Yourself.com if you want to go there. And I love his quote, right at the top, he says if you don't believe in your vision 100% why in the world would anyone else believe in it? Jamie Jay, the CEO of Bottleneck Distant Assistants. Jamie, I'm going to let my listeners know a little bit about us the founder and shareholder to bottleneck distance assistance founded in 2016. In 2016, a bottleneck is an outsourcing agency that assists leaders in cultivating and identifying remote based distant assistance. After 12 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. And as he said, He's unemployable. You couldn't you couldn't employ this guy? Well, that's a brief bit of introduction about you. But I think you have a story about the military yourself and kind of how you got here, and really, about why you would you know, you would get in this business and write a book about repeating yourself, tell us a little bit more about yourself. And really, your choice to write this book and help small entrepreneurs really figure out processes procedures, so they can make themselves more efficient.

Jamie Jay
First and foremost, Greg, thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate you. Sharing this time with me and allowing me to share a little bit of my story. Because I believe, I think I might be able to help some other people out or at least just maybe open up our treat some ideas for other people, because of some of the experiences that I've had, and what the beautiful part about each of us individually is we all have our own experience that nobody else in the world has had. There's a lot of similarities and things like that. But what I really appreciate is, is being able to share what it is that I've gone through and the journeys that I've gone because other people may experience pain and things like that, they may have not have experienced pain to the level of I've experienced, or they may have experienced it even worse than what I've done, but pink and stuff like that happens. And it's it feels just as painful to someone else based on their position. So the reason I wrote this book was because I kept getting a lot of the same questions asked of me. And I finally thought, I should just write a book. And I should just answer all these questions that I continually get asked. And I've been doing this now 16 years. So I've really learned a lot about the hiring process. And in creating a really positive culture, and how important it is to have systems and processes within your business. As a matter of fact, those are the three different parts to this book. That's the main reason that I wrote the book with the hopes that for the all the people that asked me the questions, maybe someone else doesn't even know to ask that question, but it might help them out and benefit them. Because we all know if you know if I've been there and done that and went through the trenches and worked hard doing something that someone else is now maybe just getting into, or they are blocked and can't seem to kind of overcome that. Maybe the gift of reading an excerpt from the book can help them kind of overcome that challenge.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, look, the devils in the details. There's as many Todoist applications and asana and all these kinds of things that are designed to keep people on task. Those are the tasks. There are methodologies out there. There's a thing that a guy has it productivity.com that’s called the bento box, right? Large, Medium small focus on what do you want to do? Are you going to eat the frog, the big one all at once? Are you going to do these all these things? But that's all in kind of every day each of us gets in that whether we like it or not. We step into a world of that because we're in technology world, and we have associated tasks for our day. And many of us don't delegate those How many of us do them and we're doing, as you'll probably tell people, you know, $17 an hour stuff when you're supposed to be making 125 an hour, right? But your book is entitled Quit Repeating Yourself. And you mentioned that coming up with the title and the name of the book was kind of an extreme challenge for you. Tell us a story about why it was so difficult for you to, you know, come up with that title, when it just seems so obvious.

Jamie Jay
You know, and I have to thank Fiona Qualls because she was working with me at the time she was helping me with my marketing and stuff. And she says, Jamie, you always say, Quit Repeating Yourself, why don't you just name the book that and I'm like, that's a freaking great name. At that point, I was doing like the t shirt entrepreneur, and like, all these different things. And you know, I threw that out there to a couple of friends that are like, ah, that doesn't really. And so she, so I have to give credit where credit's due. That is all due to Fiona calls for coming up with that. And it was it was just amazing. But it really resonated. As soon as she said it, I was like, that’s it. No other. That's it, I will write to the publisher, I said, I got the name of the book. This is it. And it was one of the biggest challenges. Now a lot of times when you find success, there is success in some kind of a recipe where you repeat that success, right? So you want to repeat doing what's working. But always be able to explore new things where I came up with Quit Repeating Yourself. Just like if you're a programmer, they know dry, don't repeat yourself. So if you have a line of code here, you can always resource that code and reuse it somewhere else by you know, programming to work where you don't have to rewrite the code over and over and over again, because chances are mistakes happen. The reason I say Quit Repeating Yourself is stop doing the things that are not your best work. Stop doing the wrong things and focus on doing what's your best work. And what that means is a lot of people repeat themselves every single day for me, one of my biggest repeaters that I quit, and thankfully, so was checking my email. I spent 90 days I remember I mentioned it about 90 minutes a day on email. There's studies of the average person spending more time than that on email. For me, I thought that was a lot. But that's 90 minutes, I spent about 10 minutes a day on email now, because I've delegated that task, I've stopped repeating myself, do you realize how much time that saved me and a year, two and a half months, two and a half months of time, I've now found for myself. And I

Greg Voisen
Can apply that to being with your dog being with your wife doing the things you like to do, and enjoying life lot. And I think that, you know, it's one thing to like, shut the screen down and have dark time to just be creative. And it's really important that we take that time to be creative. And you have a section in the book, that culture eats strategy. That's it's been said many times, and a sad story of your mom being admitted to the hospital. And I think this is important because for everybody out there, there. You know, you're wanting to build an organization with people and processes and systems that the culture is vibrant, alive. And people are engaged. And they like what they do. If you would share this story with our listeners about culture and the hospital and your mom.

Jamie Jay
Yeah, I'd love to. And I'll first start off by saying to there's a gentleman His name is Brian Scudamore. It started wanting 100 got junk, ote brands, he's doing very well now. But when he started his business, he had 11 employees, and he walked in one day, and none of them are smiling. They were not happy to be there. And you know what he did? He fired them. He started over and he lost clients. But he started over and he's so happy that he did that. So there's a reason that the first part of my book is all about culture. Because I think you have to know what your vision is, you have to know what you aspire to achieve. And you have to be able to define what your mission is. So your vision, your mission, your unique core values and your provocative point of view. And there before I get to my mom's story, this is this is the I have to give this underlying theme of why I started off with this story. Because if you don't nail a culture and surround yourselves with people that are fighting to attack this vision together, they can do it in different ways. But as long as we're all charging that same hill, maybe it's you know, we're going around the sides, we're coming up the middle, we're coming up the back, we're doing it different ways, but we all know what that target is. That's a very powerful attribute to have to tie in your systems and processes and hiring and all of that stuff that comes along Hang with it. So the reason why I'm so focused on having a positive culture versus a very toxic culture or a culture that's different is the very, very simple thing that I realized. In the very first part of 2020. I got a call on about January 3. My mom had been administered to, admitted to the hospital. Okay, she wasn't doing very good health wise, she's in California. I'm in Missouri. And so I went out to see her and she couldn't breathe very well. And she was having a tough time. And I literally found out the morning, I called my assistant Raina, who's now our Director of Operations. I said, hey, my mom's sick. She just kept putting on us. Well, I gotta go. And we had a ton of stuff on the docket. Like, this was right before COVID like things were going great. And I said, she said, Jamie, proof. This one always gets me. So she said, Jamie, don't worry about it. We got your back. So I took off, just left. She canceled all my appointments. I flew out there. And as soon as I landed, like, my mind was going crazy. But as soon as I landed, I was like, Okay, wow, shoot, you know, there's no one running the company right now. So I pulled over on my way to the hospital after I got the rental car, and I said, Hey, Raina, you know, what are we she's like, don't worry about it, Jamie, I'll handle this stuff. Now, here's the kicker. I spent about three weeks there. And I thought, Oh, my mom had open heart surgery, she's gonna get better. So I stayed through the surgery and then stayed a couple of days after I said, Mom, I gotta get back to work. She said, I know, I get it, I get it, you know, and she's on a breather and all this stuff, it was very hard for her to breathe. So it's pretty emotional time for me. So I picked up, head back and come back to work here. The next day, I get a call from her doctor saying, hey, when you come back and said, I figured I'd come back in about a week and a half, two weeks, just gotta get goes. You might, you might want to come back sooner. And I was like, what? You didn't say anything I go she dying. She said, you might want to come back sooner. He wouldn't answer the question. So I'm like, great. So I said, I just got the worst call from the doctor. I gotta go. She said, don’t worry, I got your back again. And I'm like, and this time I wouldn't bring my wife out. Because at this point, I'm pretty scared. I'm doing my mom my whole life, right? Like my best friend. Like we got along really good. Went back out there. This is now middle of February, into February. And thank the Lord I went back, had a visit the night before she passed. My cousin came in. She was a nurse. She said Jamie, have you told your mom, it's okay to go because the whole family came in and my mom said, Am I dying? And we're like, No, you're good. Well, we'll get through this. And I now know much better understand what palliative care is. But she told me, Jim, you need to tell her. Well, the next morning, everybody else had gone home. It's about 632 when I wake up, because I hear a breath and then nothing and a breath and then nothing. And I was like, wow. So I went and sat next to her and grabbed her hand. And I felt she barely moved it. But I felt it. And I said this point, I believe it was about 635 or so. And Sarah had called me my wife and said, hey, you know, you want some coffee? And I said yes, please bring me some coffee. And I said, I said, Mom, it's Jamie, I love you. It's okay, I'm going to be okay. Two minutes later, she had passed. So it's almost like she was holding on. So I called Sara and I said, don't worry about the coffee, just come here mom just died. So that was a pretty challenging time for me to say the least. Family and all of that and going through that process. Now I had to kind of take care of her things. And that's why I really promote living wills. Get them if you don't have them for all of your loved ones and do it today. Do it today there. It's not expensive. If you don't want it to be you can literally go online, get a living will go get it, you know, by a? What do you call those people that record the documents,

Greg Voisen
And notary. Thank..

Jamie Jay
You so much, Lord MIT. Go get it notarized and then just put it in a file. If you don't want to change it later change they get it today. So longer story longer. This is now March 6 10th, somewhere in there. We're on our way back and COVID just now breaking out and I finally get back around the second week of March. And my company was doing better now. After me being through all of that chaos. Almost two months later. We have more clients. The company is running effectively. It didn't burn down. Everybody's happy everybody's still working hard, everybody kind of just opened when they did work for other people. That is an incredible culture. And that is something that I wished everybody could experience. That's why it's so important to surround yourself with people that are fighting for that vision. So that's why I wanted to kind of preface that story with my little story and overview about, well, you

Greg Voisen
Know, it's when you come to a point in life where you you’re, you're seeing your finitude you know, the end. In this case, I don't know all the circumstances buying your mother, but, you know, I lost two brothers in the last two years. So I understand and, and they weren't, they weren't real, you know, one of them was like 77, and the other ones 70. And, yes, being prepared. But importantly, your story here is about the culture that you create in your business. It's as much about those people stepping up, taking over and continuing to grow your business while you were away. And I think if every business owner could say, that's what I could do, you know, I'm just going to leave, I'm going to travel the world for three months, I'll be back and see how things are going. But most people are so attached, they can't. And you state that you created a movement called the ripple effect to make an impact on the world. Tell us more about the movement. And how are you involving and motivating people in that ripple effect, because your story was very compelling.

Jamie Jay
Thank you. Well, the ripple effect is amazing. And basically, the ripple effect is, you take care of yourself first health and your own backyard, your finances, and you have to put yourself in a position to declare that up. I know, it's time for me. And I believe you mean, I was homeless at a point in time, terrible credit rating, I didn't have anything, nothing. But I had to figure out a way to build it up so I can take care of myself in my own backyard. Then once you build up a little bit, you take care of your own self, maybe you can take care of some different things locally. And regionally, then as you grow nationally, then even hope for a ripple effect, a positive ripple effect growing globally. And I'm proud to say I've been able to achieve that. And what we do by the ripple effect is we teach this within bottleneck and even with our external distant assistants that work for our clients. We teach the ripple effect. And what that means is do something nice for somebody else. And then we'll always come back, always do something nice when we have extra interviews for people here and they go on to leave, I'm the first person that's going to sign a letter of recommendation if they are going on to live something for their journey, if they want to use bottleneck as a stepping stone to get to something that they truly want to get to. I'm all for it. If they are aspiring to be their own CEO one day and there, I'm want to help them get there. I think that's amazing is one of the questions we asked when we do interviews is, okay, what are you going to do when you leave bottleneck? And people are like, wait, what I really want to work? Well, what are you going to do when you leave? Because then that way we can do two things. Either we can define the role for them. Or we can help them on their way to get them to where they want to get to. Now the ripple effect is this, I do something kind for someone else to help them. They do something kind for themselves, for their community. And what's nice is that could be business. So I could help out a client by saving them time they earn more money, they do bigger things, they invest more locally, that other business can do better, because now more money is coming into this other business. They're paying their employees more. It's a ripple effect. And one of the stories I had we had a wonderful lady that worked for us, Christine, she was amazing. And she played violin and her goal was to go to Juilliard. Now, she didn't quite make it to Juilliard yet, but she did get to play in the Manila symphony. And we talked about a year, year and a half after she left. And she said, Jamie, I just want you to know the ripple effect is in full motion here. And I said, what do you mean, she goes, Well, I am now teaching kids that can't afford to play violin. I got some violins donated. So we meet once a month and I teach them how to play violin. So she's giving back to her local community. And she said, Jamie, I just want to say thank you for helping me learn what the ripple effect is all about. And now she's teaching that to others and hopefully that will just keep growing and growing and growing ripple effect. So that's what the ripple effect

Greg Voisen
Is. Well, I agree with you and obviously this show I do helps the homeless, everything that comes from this goes to the homeless. So all the ads that we put out for you and people and we do this together, because there's a minimum donation people make I'm out giving it to the homeless, but the most important thing is what will result All of our problems in the world, as you said, is empathy and compassion. The more empathy and compassion people have, and they understand that's a, you know, emotional intelligence quotient, the better the world is going to become, and the better their world is going to become. And in creating the foundation, you said that culture is king. But business leaders sometimes get lost. Where do you think business leaders should start and developing a new foundation to avoid getting lost?

Jamie Jay
Well, there's a couple of different areas. But what I think should be done is take some time. And, and I know this is crazy, and you've probably never heard this before. But say, take some time to think about thinking. This is crazy. I know. But just take some time. As a matter of fact, one of the my words of the year was focused finding opportunities by creating uninterrupted strategy sessions. Yeah. When use take some time to focus.

Greg Voisen
Do you know who used to do that, Jamie, sorry to interrupt, but I know, I just interviewed Stephen, Mr. Covey Steve Covey's son. Oh, wow. He just wrote a book called trust and inspire. And the podcast came out yesterday. You know, his father, they used to have hundreds of employees at Franklin Covey, they still do. And they would say, if your door is closed, and you're thinking, that's what we want you to do here. And just like you just said, is, you know, take time to think about your thinking. Because the reality is, it's that you want to call it distorted perspective, thinking that you want to readjust and recalibrate, to come back to a world of aliveness and wonderment and creativity and innovation, and all that. And that's what you're advocating. So I kudos to you. Thank you. Some companies allow their employees to think the cultures or their, you know, their they build the cultures around that. It isn't always small companies, because there's a lot of fear. That dominates that there isn't. It's a command and control environment versus a trusted inspire environment. But what I see is you've got to trust and inspire environment, versus command and control. Are you and ask those questions, right? Absolutely. So you say that in business strategy involves many moving parts, you also defined and shared five areas that can help identify the foundation of strategy. Can you discuss those five areas to our listeners, and what those areas would kind of help them in their business because your book is about quitting and quitting repeating yourself. So these are the foundational strategies that can help you with that.

Jamie Jay
Absolutely. And going back to thinking about thinking, this is one of those things that you can think about. Because you have in my opinion, the way it works for me, everybody's different. But if I have an idea or a concept, I have to come up with a strategy. And then I build my vision and mission into that strategy. And from there I can, I can really launch something that that I can believe in. Because it right before I go into these five things, there's one thing that needs to happen, aligning with strategy, culture, hiring, owning a business, there's one thing that you have to have. And that's passion. Because no matter what you do, as a business owner, business leader, Team Leader, whatever it is, no matter what you do, you're probably doing something that you have some kind of passion around, hopefully, no matter what you do, you're gonna hit some dark times. And I believe in the 7525 rule. If 25% of the time I'm doing stuff in the trenches and doing stuff like strategy and planning, like, like that stuff. Like, it's not a lot. It's not very sexy. This is stuff that you're doing when no one else is looking. But it's necessary. Because I know the 75% of my time, I get to talk to Greg, I get to, you know, go around and talk about my book, I get to spend time with my wife, I get to do the things that I love, and I thrive. And when I get calls from clients that said, thank you for helping me get my time back. That means the world this is this is why I do what I do. I thought at first when I did, I was doing it for the money, but it's not true. It is not true. It's to affect people's lives, the ripple effect. So if you can have that passion, it'll take you through the difficult times so that you can you realize hey, I'm gonna reward myself on the other end of this thing, because of what this is. That's why you have that vision.

Greg Voisen
I think they say that if you love what you do, you don't work. And I think the word work is, is really outdated. It's an old fashioned term that we use a vernacular that's there, I get that the most of the world's is workplace work, world, we work we work. But if you have the passion you have that you've exemplified so far, just in the last 20 minutes. It's not work for you. It's a love what you do. And to get there requires that people fine tune their own instrument to determine what it is that they do love. Just like you said, in my onboarding, I asked people, what are you going to do when you leave? You know, bottleneck. And they're like, what they're, you know, they're confused by that. Because you're not certain if that is the passion, they found a certain number of them are going to stay and say, well, this is the passion with Jamie, I'm going to stay here. I really, really liked this. But maybe it is that stepping stone. So you know, you create a, a systems driven Foundation. And let's talk about it, that's what you're about is creating systems for business that provides confidence needed to scale effectively. And so you just said, Hey, look, I moved in, I saved myself two and a half months of time, by outsourcing all my email to an assistant who helps answer that email, or however you did it, what advice can you give our listeners about creating the system that works? Okay, and now we're in the meat and potatoes here, this is this is like, okay, am I going to be able to turn off that screen and actually give myself two and a half months? And then what mindset shifts state has to occur for me, I guarantee you that bottleneck has the resources. But you need to bridge someone's fear of that, right? Because a lot of times they think, Jamie, they've got to answer that email themselves or won't get answered, right? You know, they think if they delegate it, and they delegate something, it's not going to get done properly. How do you ease the fear and then help them set up that system very easily

Jamie Jay
In one simple statement that I learned from Scott BB, do something as difficult as the last time you were ever going to do it. Say that again, document, do something as if it was the last time you were ever going to do it. Okay, Document. And for those of you that I didn't get to answer the five steps of the strategy, you can go to page 90 And my book of Quit Repeating Yourself. And you can see there,

Greg Voisen
Why don't you just say, why don't you just say the five steps real quick.

Jamie Jay
It's planning strengths and weaknesses, efficiency, competitive advantage. Those are the those are the five steps there. And I go into detail on those. And I don't want to waste too much time because we're limited here. But I go into those different steps there. But I think there's the questions that you asked right now it's a perfect launch off to doing something as if it was the last time you're ever going to do it. How do you get rid of the fear that someone else is going to make a mistake with your baby, with your machine with your system? Well, first and foremost, get out of your own way, get over yourself. I one of the hardest things that I did and still continue to do. Meaning that we've had people working in the company right now that are basically creating sales strategies and things and they're making decisions. And sometimes it's like, I'm not involved in that meeting, like, Okay, should I? But no, I, they're here for a reason. They're super smart. Why would I hire them if I didn't expect them to make decisions on my behalf? And so getting out of your own way is the very first thing to do. But how can you do that effectively, you need to get what's in your head out of your head, you need to document everything. So what I did is I came up with this little email campaign thing or this little email delegation tool. And basically what I did is I wrote in every time I wrote an email that seemed very familiar, and I wrote it down, so these are the people that you don't talk to, don't talk to my doctor, don't talk to my CPA, you know, this is a person I need to talk to, if this is personal, put it over here. And we have these little these little color coding things in my email. So when I wake up in the morning, I see a checklist of things that are just for Jamie, these other things have been handled already, because I've delegated those tasks now, because this happened overnight. No. The day you start should be today, to start getting what's in your head out of your head. The way that you do things in your business. You need to document them that way. This does two things and this is super fun. Powerful for any kind of delegation or creating systems, two huge things, the more tasks you delegate, and you document for those tasks, the more time is going to free up. So the two things that's going to help you with is number one, when you delegate a task to somebody that why doesn't, why wouldn't you delegate a task to somebody else? Why, what's the first thing that you would do?

Greg Voisen
Well, I think the biggest thing you're gonna find for most entrepreneurs is, and they're going to tell you this straight out, Jamie, their values don't match mine and their timeliness for possibly replying to someone isn't going to be as quick as mine would? Nor would it be as well thought out as mine?

Jamie Jay
Exactly. So that's the first thing you have to..

Greg Voisen
Change in the email going to be the same is the way in which I approached this with emotional intelligence going to be the same, versus giving it to someone who maybe doesn't quite have all those skills yet, but you're asking them to do it?

Jamie Jay
Exactly. If you don't, in essence, you don't trust them, right? You don't trust this person to respond. Because again, this is my baby, I don't want to ruin this isn't my business. This is my team. This is I don't want anybody else affecting me in a negative manner. I don't want anybody else to see my work come across differently than what I would promote it to be right. Therefore, number one, setting expectations. That's the first thing, and by you documenting exactly what it is that you do, and giving that to someone else, having them review that document and get back to you and say, Okay, I understand, Greg, that you want to send this email out to this party? And this is what you want it to say, is that correct? Okay. Yes, or that is correct. But add this and this and that, okay, perfect. This is the second thing, give time for them to learn to be able to extract data from your head, so that you can now delegate that effectively with confidence. Now, all of a sudden, when they come back, and they review that email with you, in the beginning, they're going to be reviewing a lot more time, you're going to be spending a lot more time with this person. But now you're building confidence, you're like, wow, yes, that's it. That's it. And pretty soon, you'll start seeing a lot of the stuff will slowly start coming off of your plate. And you're gonna have the confidence to now delegate even more responsibility, because now they're starting to learn your tone, your voice. And if you see me right at the end of the day before you and I leave, most likely, I will say bye for now, I have a habit of saying that. The reason is, because I hope we talk again, if you talk to anybody on my team, they will say bye for now, they've learned my tone, they've learned my voice. If right now you were to receive an email from my assistant, you would be hard pressed to know that email was not from me, other than the fact it says Ella, it's her picture. They're not me. Because we've learned each other's rhythms. And she's learned my voice and my tone, we understand the vision and the mission, what we're trying to do, and that comes through time. But that is probably the biggest thing and the hardest thing for people to get rid of. But once it actually happens, and it occurs, it's magical. It is absolutely magical.

Greg Voisen
Well, so you're in essence saying that you're allowing them to get into your head and learn the way you would do something. And then from a repetitive standpoint, you say stop repeating yourself. You're creating and or drafting. In this case, maybe templated emails or emails that could be used effectively, to answer certain emails that come in. So again, two and a half months is a lot of time. It can give you a nice vacation and more time with your family, and time to do the things you want. You speak about workflow, and you said that you break the workflow down in two parts, the how, and the what ifs. Speak with the listeners about the two parts and why they're important in every business process.

Jamie Jay
Thank you for asking this. This is this is pretty easy concept. But it is time does take some time to complete this. We have all of our tasks documented for every single task we have in our companies, including writing a book now I actually did I actually documented how to write a book during the time of me going through that process. But basically what it is we have two different workflow documents that we have for each task. One is the how to that's the step by step. How do I do this step one, go to this site. Step two, put in your login credentials. Take a little screenshot every time you click the mouse button since we are now such a tech in environment, every time you click the mouse button, that's another step. Don't skip a step. It's really important because if you give that task to someone else, they don't need to be asking you Hey, I got last year we didn't At Forest, oh, you know what, go here and do this, make sure you're very clear, making sure it's third grade simple. The what ifs are. Now all of a sudden, during some processes or some workflows, there is other parties that need to take, do their part in order to complete that task. So in instance, say it's an onboarding task, and you've reached out to a potential client and you said, hey, you know, when would you like to set up your appointment? Well, what happens if they don't respond? How much time do we give them? So what if so, if they don't respond, do this within three days, if they do respond within three days do this. So we actually document and have the what ifs? Yes, no, for every single thing. And then we finish off every single task with an identifiable signal. When I was selling websites, I always had scope creep, meaning that I sell somebody a website, and they always want one more thing. And one more thing and one more thing, I can never really get them to wrap it up. And I said, this is costing me too much money, I got to figure out a better way to do this. So what I did is I came up with a deployment kit. And in the very first meeting I had with this person, I said, okay, at the very end of this website, build, I'm going to send you a deployment kit. As soon as you tell me that you like the website, I'm going to send it to you when you receive that deployment kit. Anything else you need after the reception of that deployment kit will be an additional fee? Is that agreeable to you? Yes, I never had scope creep again. So we do signals for every single task, we delegate with the what ifs and the how tos

Greg Voisen
Are a great strategy. And you know, you have a delegation roadmap. It's a very helpful tool, speak about the delegation roadmap a little bit more, and how does it help us? And why should a business consider using a delegation roadmap? I don't have a picture right here of your roadmap. But for my listeners, you hold up the book again, you're gonna buy the book, and you'll get your delegation roadmap,

Jamie Jay
You will you can get the delegation roadmap, we have a free delegation roadmap, it's just in a Google Drive, you just simply make a copy. You don't have to put names in or anything like that. It's just a free copy. But basically, what it is, is this could be part of that deep thinking that we were talking about focus, finding opportunities by creating uninterrupted strategy sessions, take some time, get a cup of coffee Saturday morning, whenever and let your family members know, or whomever else is there. No, hey, on Saturday morning, I need an hour, just give me an hour, you know, and especially if you want to stay in good graces with your spouse, let them know about a week in advance that you plan on doing this. And there'll be good instead of telling them that morning when you should be outside gardening or doing something else, right. But the delegation roadmap is really cool. And it's simple. You simply list out every single task that you do in a given day, every single one, take the trash out, make phone calls, check my email, list those all out and assign two values to each of those. Number one, is that something you must do? Or can you delegate this? And number two, is it something that gives you energy? Or does it drain you of energy, the beautiful thing is everything that you must do that gives you energy, those are usually the things that you're going to spend your time on, that you're truly passionate about. And that makes you the most money or give you the most enjoyment out of life. For all the ones that have the that you can delegate that drain you of energy, those are usually the things you dislike doing the most. Now all of a sudden, you have a task list of all the things that you can delegate, and also drain you of energy. And now you prioritize that. Now maybe you have 20 things, oh my gosh, there's so many things I have to get done, take 19 of them and just get them out of your mind for right now. And focus on number one, what is that highest pain point? Now figure out a way to document what it is you do normally that just as nails on a chalkboard for you, so that you can delegate that task away, and then get the gist start working through it. 2345. And pretty soon before you know it, you have your own workflow library, so that when you are ready to hire somebody, you can now delegate that and they're going to be able to perform that task exactly the way you would because you wrote out the workflow for that.

Greg Voisen
Well, I reflect back on an interview that I did, with Dr. Jim lar, the power of full engagement, and Jim Lehrer says there's only one thing that we really have to do well, and that is energy management. And what you've spoken about is the depletion of energy by doing tasks that you either don't like or you're not good at. So let's just say you're not good at it. Versus those tasks which you excel at and your you really love doing which energize you. They give you more energy, they don't deplete your energy. And so if you were to leave the listeners with three main points to take away from the book, what would they be? And how do you recommend that they possibly just use these tools to transform their business and their lives and their perspective about life?

Jamie Jay
Thank you. Thank you for taking business and lives. Because I don't believe in work life balance, I just believe in life balance. Because if we're not passionate about where we're working, that's going to affect our life. There's no difference. It's one life. And we need to take advantage of it. To answer your questions. The first three things. First one, I encourage you to get the book, it's a relatively quick read. It really is. And it is, it's fairly topical. So it's easy, I think, for people to absorb. The second thing is, figure out what it is you want to do, what is your vision, you could have a vision, a mission, core values, but you don't necessarily know them. If you can't knock those out right off the top of your head. It might not be right for you. So maybe that would be the first thing I go through reimagine what your vision is, what your Do you really want to do, where do you really want to be? The third thing is once you do that, start designing your life by going through a delegation work. Checklist don't delegation roadmap, I'm sorry. Once you go through that delegation roadmap, I think, three, I think there's gonna be three things that are going to appear in your life all of a sudden, number one sense of accomplishment, number two direction, and maybe number three, some clarity, all of which goes in line at a time in this recording, which is April 2022, National stress Awareness Month. Yeah, these are things that trigger stress every single day, because there's always something on that to do list that you it's just gnawing at you. And it's preventing you from releasing a little bit of creativity. So yeah, those are probably be the three things. So…

Greg Voisen
Jamie, if my listeners wanted to get the book, we're going to put a link to Amazon, we're also going to put a link to Quit Repeating Yourself.com. There'll be a link there, you can get the book there, order it now. Those charts you talked about that are on Google Drive? Is there a way for them to get it without them getting the book? Or do they need to get the book and then

Jamie Jay
Get your what there is a way and I I'll have to have my since it's in the link? I don't have the because it's a it's a little bit longer link, I think, yeah, let me let me figure out, and I'm happy to send them so you can put them in your notes or whatever.

Greg Voisen
So we can put them in the blog. And then people can virtually, you know, up to see have a tool that they could use and then we can put a link to buying the book. But I always think, you know, sometimes people like to see stuff and it's a good opportunity. It's something you've used over and over. So great. We'll make sure that that goes up. Jamie, thanks for being on inside personal growth, sharing your wisdom, your knowledge, your expertise, about life, living life, and loving your work. Really loving what you do and creating a culture around you. That supports you doing what you love. I think that's so important. And it's been awesome having you on again for everybody. The book is Quit Repeating Yourself. Jamie J. And he's been joining us today from Springfield, Missouri. Thanks, Jamie. Thank you, Greg.