WS1324: Finding Quality Talent

EPISODE 1324

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:00.0 

Whitney Sewell (WS): It’s so crucial for somebody that’s being pulled a lot in all these directions, to have that person that’s helping you to determine what’s the highest and best use of your time.

0:00:12.1 

WS: Have you hired an assistant yet? If you have been listening to this show very long,

you have heard me talk about the major benefits of having an assistant. I’ve talked about many times how they can be virtual, how you can start it two hours a week and grow and build that position to help you flourish personally within your business. It has been a game-changer for me. I didn’t start with just a top-notch assistant like I have right now though. I want you to know that upfront. But today, you’re gonna get to hear a call that I had with a friend who was asking me about our process for hiring top-notch talent, specifically that assistant position. You’re gonna hear me go through the process in detail with some really good questions from him about the process that I hadn’t ever thought of before. I know it’s gonna be helpful for you if you are looking to grow and scale your business. I mean, we are growing, we’re filling many positions right now at Life Bridge Capital. And many of those wouldn’t be happening if I didn’t have the time to devote to some of those other positions, creating those positions, everything that goes around making those things happen. One key role for helping me do that is having a class-A assistant. I mean just top-notch. So, you’re gonna hear some things that I’m gonna talk through pros, cons, things you need to consider, so you can also hire top-notch talent.

0:01:38.1 

WS: I want to first, also, thank you for listening to the show. I appreciate you being with me today. I hope you’re listening every day. I hope that you are gaining value and your business is improving and growing because of the content that we’re creating and the things we are bringing out from guests. But we would also love to hear from you. We have some big changes coming up for the show and we’re gonna change the structure a little bit to hopefully provide better content to you. That is our goal but if there’s ever anything you would like to hear, anything you haven’t heard on the show, somebody specifically you would like for me to interview, email us at [email protected]. I hope that you have subscribed and I, obviously, would appreciate and be grateful for a five-star rating and written review, and please share it with your friends. 

0:02:27

WS: I get the question so often about hiring an assistant ’cause I’ve talked about it, I guess, on numerous podcasts. But I would say, first you mentioned like taking over your life, and it is. They are taking over a big portion of your workload, right? And it’s oftentimes things that you do that are not something that requires a ton of thought sometimes. And you want them to think, right? And not just be putting together widgets all day. They do have to think. A lot of times I’ll say, you have to be realistic about finding that quality of talent and what you’re willing to pay for it. So, I try to build the expectation of what is your time worth? If you could take a third of your time right now and go be with your family or go do something, whatever you wanna do. Then you can spend that time on higher-paying tasks in the business or building better key relationships or whatever that is. 

You have to figure out like, what is that worth to me so I can realistically think about what I can pay somebody or I’m willing to pay somebody. So, oftentimes you think, well, I’m gonna hire a virtual assistant for a few hours a week, maybe it’s 10 grand a year, 20 grand a year, and that’s fine. But you’re not going to get that type of talent that most people want with that kind of level of salary and time commitment. So, there are pros and cons to using an agency, a virtual assistant agency and hiring in-house. I would say there are more cons to hiring through a virtual assistant agency than hiring in-house depending on your long-term strategy for this role in this position. 

0:04:07.8 

WS: I did both. When I first started, I hired somebody that was two hours a week. It was many years ago but that was like my first assistant. Okay, she can get a lot done for me in two hours a week. Well, okay, that lasted about two weeks, and then, I needed eight hours a week. And then a month later I needed 16 hours a week or 20 hours a week. And obviously, very quickly, I need somebody full-time. But I went through a few people before I realize that and really was willing to see the value in having somebody that’s top-notch in that position. And so that first lady, she was really good. She worked for an agency but she ultimately had lots of clients and she couldn’t give me more time. So, I had to find somebody else. I found somebody else, a lady from Puerto Rico actually. She was top-notch. She was really good but she was a stay-at-home mother and all she could give me was 20 hours a week. Pretty quickly, I needed more than that.

0:04:59.7 

WS: She was great though, but it didn’t work out long-term because of that, that’s the only reason. Then, I found another lady out of Texas that was really good but she gave me about 30 to 35 hours a week. But then I found my current assistant after her. So, it took a few before I really realized the value of me paying this person really well as well. I’ll go through my hiring process, what I did for her. And so you’re welcome using the editor. I hope it helps you with whatever.

0:05:27.0 

WS: But ultimately, in our CRM, we’re using HubSpot and we’re transitioning to Salesforce actually, as we speak. So we’re using HubSpot and I created two forms where people can sign up but they mirrored each other. In one, I linked to my network. I sent out to my entire network, to everybody who’s been on the podcast. Hiring this role, here’s this form. It isn’t the exact same form but a different one out on Indeed and LinkedIn and places like that. But what I wanna do is I wanna be able to see where are the most quality candidates came from. So, they look the same but it allowed me to track from two different directions. You could do that, have as many directions as you wanted but I wanted to be able to see that and know that information. And so, it was important ’cause you’ll see as you start hiring much more people, it’s just helpful to know who came from my network versus Indeed or LinkedIn. It’s gonna depend on the type of position you’re filling and where that person’s gonna come from most likely. Like we hired an amazing asset manager and he came from my network. But my assistant, that’s a very different position, she came through Indeed. 

0:06:37.3 

WS: We launched an investor relations position, we just filled an acquisitions guy, I mean LinkedIn was really good for those. Even though we still do the same thing going out the whole network, that’s just kind of where they’ve come from. But for her specifically, we had probably, I think there were 600 or 700 applicants total. Who has time to go through

600 or 700 applicants, right? Nobody. And so, what you need to do is you create an amazing job description. And I have not seen DOPS yet but I would like to see it.

0:07:06.2 

WS: But you create an amazing job description, so obviously your amazing company, all the growth opportunities, all those things you need to talk about how the position will allow them room for growth and all that the culture. You’re gonna talk about all of those things. But in there, at the bottom, I had four tasks. The first two were mandatory, the second two are optional. And the very first thing was a 14-page questionnaire. I got that questionnaire out of “Topgrading” by Bradford Smart. I would highly recommend that book. It’s more like a massive resource. I did go through it completely but I probably use 20% of it. Topgrading is an amazing method for finding top talent.  There’s gonna be interview questions in there as well that I just, that I wouldn’t have thought to ask. That 14-page questionnaire is gonna be like a massive building block to go through your interview process also.

0:08:01.9 

WS: And I would say it’s so worth spending this time to do this right ’cause this person is so crucial to your operations every day. Like you personally, you need them to be top talent. So, that narrowed that down to, I think about 35 people actually submitted that 14-page questionnaire. Obviously, that saved me so much time, right? Okay, if you didn’t do it well, then you’re not considered whatsoever. So, I get these 35, I go through them and pretty quickly you can narrow them down. It’s not just the experience, but how is it presented. Some people took a highlighter or a marker and wrote on this thing, it’s extremely unprofessional. They did it, but I’m like, man, you took so much time to even write that stuff out but wouldn’t you at least use a pen and write really nicely. Or, just different things like, what was their presentation? Another lady redid my entire form. She wasn’t selected but she did. She took the time to redo my forms. It was more useful. It was just more user-friendly just to add value. So, I thought that allowed her to shine a little bit. She took the time to do that.

And then one of the other things, I know the 14-page questionnaire was the first thing but one of the other things that was optional was like a DISC assessment profile. But I made that optional. I wanted to see who would take the time to do that and actually send that to me also. And you wanna be very specific about where they send it to, how you want that stuff submitted. I think I requested it in a PDF format. So, the ones that are emailing me saying, “I can’t figure out how to make it into Adobe. Is it okay to send it to you in Word?” Mehh, it’s not. It’s not okay for you to ask me that. You’re gonna be my assistant, I need you to be resourceful enough to go make that happen.

0:09:53.9 

W2: But I’m not gonna put that in bold. I’m not going to highlight that. You need to pay attention to the fine print ultimately. I’m gonna make it obvious, I’m not gonna try to hide it. But I’m gonna make it…it’s just gonna be written there – this is the way I want it submitted, and here are the four things. And so I need you to have attention to detail.

So, narrowed it down to 35 or whatever that submitted that. I took those and narrow it down to about 12 that I thought, okay, these 12, I wanna move forward to the next round. So, the next 12, I personally called each of them out of the blue, no notice whatsoever, on purpose. I called them and they answered the phone. If they don’t, I’m thinking that I did not leave a message because I was just gonna call them back at another time and then I might leave a message. But I also wanted them to answer the phone. I wanna see how they answered the phone. I want to hear how they answer, their voice, how do you present yourselves. But then, I also say, – Hi, this is Whitney Sewell of Life Bridge Capital. Congratulations, you’ve been selected to move to the next round. Four tasks, I need you to complete before tomorrow. Okay, so immediately, what’s their response? How do they take that? Do they say, okay, I’m ready. I’m ready to do it. Or is it like, oh, well, yeah, I don’t think I can get it done by tomorrow. And they may have a legitimate excuse but I still wanna hear their response and how they handle themselves on the phone. 

0:11:14.3 

WS: So, I’m gonna take notes of all those things as we’re doing it. In my computer too, I have these 12, they have their own folders. I put all the documents they’ve submitted in their folder. I have a Googledoc in there as well. That’s gonna just be the notes that I’m taking about this person the more and more I learn about them, the more research I do. Because that entire time, before we actually get to the interview process, I’m creating a list of individual questions for this person, too. I’m gonna have a list of interview questions. But I’m also learning a lot about you that I wanna ask about, that I don’t wanna forget it. And when I get into my third hour of our interview, if I don’t have those things written down, I’m gonna forget it. So, I have all that stuff together per person. When I’m on the phone, I have that document open and I’m taking notes. You mentioned this on the phone, I may not say something about it right then or ask you about it ’cause it’s not really the purpose of our call. But I’m making notes about what you said.

0:12:06.2 

WS: So, I give them the four tasks. They need to be tasks that are obviously based around this type of role. I think one of the things was, create me a plan for my LinkedIn profile to connect with more people. Or, I have 800 unread emails in my important and unread portion of my email. Not everything but just my important and unread that I do need to go through. Tell me how we’re going to accomplish that. Then tell me how we’re gonna stay on top of emails, like show me what that plan looks like. And I came up with a couple others I don’t remember but it’s things that are like I would ask them to research and come up with anyway or things they would be implementing for me.

Then all of a sudden, you get to see how they submit those things back to you. Did they submit them on time? Was it like noon the next day? Was it midnight the next day? Was it before 5 PM? Was it laid out in a way that was easily understood? Was it something that we actually could implement? Even a couple of them may not have even finished, which was fine, because it was quite a bit to do it in that short amount of time. But did they still submit something? Did they still show me that they’ve done this amount of research? What did they give to me or do they just give up? And said, I can’t do it. So it just tells you a lot about that person.

0:13:27.5 

WS: But through that process, narrowed it down to four people, four candidates 

0:13:31

Hemal Badiani (HB): All four submitted everything? 

0:13:32

WS: They were probably at least eight that submitted something through that process.

Well, no, I would say it was more like seven or eight, at least that submitted, at least a portion or all of the four tasks that I gave them. Obviously, you take that and I narrowed it down to four people that I wanted to interview. `In that interview process, we did tandem interviews. So Sam, my business partner, and I, we did tandem interviews. Then, we have a Google sheet that we’ve shared that has all of our interview questions on it.

0:13:59.2

WS: And it’s pretty standard but this interview would take a minimum of three hours. It’s very detailed. I could have spent four hours easy on these interviews. So, those people need to know too that when you schedule the interview with them that you need to schedule at least three hours for this interview. There may even be somebody then that says, “Oh, well, that’s just ridiculous. I’m just not okay with that” and that’s okay. Okay, have a good day. You just saved me a ton of time, honestly. So, thank you. That is perfectly fine. 

0:14:33

WS: Something that also Brad Smart in Topgrading, he encouraged you to do from the very beginning is to let those candidates know that they are gonna have to schedule a call with you and their current employer. I did not do that, but I can definitely see how that could work. I mean, he wants you to do it too. But what happens is like A-players, they’re gonna want you to talk to their current boss. They’re not gonna shy away from that typically. If they do, they’re gonna probably be able to share with you a good reason. Like, I had a couple of people that said, well, I’m okay, ’cause I think we did have it in some documents, and a couple of them brought up that said something like, “I’m fine with you talking to him but I’d like to know I pretty much have the position first”. And they wanted to give proper notice on those things but I’m fine with scheduling that but I would like to know that when they know that I’m leaving that I have a place to go ultimately. So, we could work through that.

0:15:30.3 

WS: But it’s more so cutting the fact that people that are like, “Oh no, you’re not talking to my employer”. So, that’s helpful to narrow that down early on. But in that interview, you’re gonna go through so much of that 14-page questionnaire that I was talking about. And that’s gonna cover depending on how old they are and how much work experience they have. Let’s say they’re 25. You’re gonna even talk about high school. What did you do in high school that’s above and beyond what everybody else did? Tell me about how you conducted yourself in high school. What were the highlights? What were the low points? Who was your worst teacher? Why was that person your worst teacher? What would that teacher say about you? If I talk to them right now, what would they remember about you? Even the top teacher as well.

0:16:16.5 

W2: You’re gonna talk about supervisors the same way. Let’s talk about college, and then you’re gonna talk about that professor the same way. Well, the worst professor. Why would you say they are your worst professor? Why is this one you’re best? Did they excel? Did they have jobs while also going to school? It’s like, you get to see that they were so driven. They were doing all this at the same time they were also in school, they were able to get all that done, they were still able to graduate with honors, which isn’t a must. But I mean, they did that while also working full-time, all these things. So, you just kinda put all these pieces together but if there’s somebody that’s, let’s say they’re 50 and they’ve had numerous really good roles, I’m probably not gonna go back to high school, right? So you just kinda have to judge that away that a little bit. But you are gonna go through maybe even high school, the college, if they were in honors, first job. Why did you take that? What were your goals with that position?

0:17:14.2 

WS: Up to like the last position, who is your supervisor? What would they say about you if I ask them this? But a lot of that you’re gonna learn and have laid out for you in that 14-page questionnaire. That’s crucial in that interview process. But then the interview questions that he lays out, there are so many things that I wouldn’t have thought of either. You’re gonna learn about what motivates them, you’re gonna learn about so many things. I was trying to remember some of the good questions. But it’s broken down into so many different things. And then actually what I did was I took that book and I took a picture of those pages, sent it to an assistant of mine and said, type this up so I can use this. 

So, go through the interview. Obviously, I don’t offer them a position right then. But for us, we interviewed those four people, and I think my assistant now was the second interview. I’m positive she was the second interview. And Sam and I both knew right there that she was the one. Like, we knew she had lots of energy. Any question, she was just very open, seemed very honest, very blunt about what we needed to know. But her energy level was just really good. It was just obvious compared to the others. It was just a drastic difference. And I’ve heard other people mention when they’re doing these interviews, if they don’t have energy, we just don’t hire them. So, that was important to us. Obviously, the rest is history, bringing her on board, getting her started.

0:18:47.8

WS: But if they’re willing to go through that, they’re above most, the willingness to do good work for you. And they want the position, they want the position. And actually, I interviewed, I think a couple of people also who have been in an executive assistant role for a long time. They would probably be very good with administrative types skills. They’ve been doing it for a long time. However, I would say they’re almost too seasoned to some extent. There’s no energy. They’re not really trying to figure out new ways of doing things. It’s just kinda set in some ways. Not that all that’s bad, but I really wanted somebody younger that was really driven and that’s what my assistant now is. To the point now, like I am already planning this, I’m gonna have to hire another assistant probably in six months. Because we’ve already promoted her. Trying to remember her title now, it’s not a Director of Operations, but it’s like, she even presented this to me. This is how gung-ho she is. Probably two quarters – so I do quarterly reviews with all the employees – and she even presented the last quarter. So, yeah, two reviews ago, two-quarter reviews ago that, hey, what about changing my title? Because she’s already doing a lot of these other things, and I thought, I haven’t really thought about that. 

But for her, it was about being taken more seriously when she’s taking all these. She’s helping us figure out what CRM we’re gonna use, or what company we’re using for healthcare. She is doing a lot of these things. I mean, she’s conducting, making sure all the websites work, and she has a lot of those skill sets as well. We call her our Operations Coordinator, and that’s what she’s doing. And I’m grooming her as well to handle all of our KPIs for all of our departments. She loves those things, she loves doing that as she thrives on them. So, I’m like, I don’t wanna hold you back. I can see that you’re gonna move into this role. And so I need to find another system but guess what? She’ll help with that whole process.

0:20:54.0 

WS: But it took that level of detail initially to make that happen. To find her, ensure she’s a good candidate. And I would even stress that if I do those four interviews and nobody really stands out, I probably start it over. You know what I mean? So for me, again, it goes back to knowing what you want this person to do for you. And you could be all over the place. It’s very different when I needed somebody to say, edit an audio video for a podcast. I can replace that task, the skill sets pretty easily.

0:21:24.4 

WS: But somebody that’s ingrained in my email, ingrained in almost my family life to some degree. I just had a hard discussion this morning. I just said, you know what, I see. And then over the next few months, I have a lot of travel coming up. Typically what happens if I’m traveling say, Wednesday through Friday, Wednesday through Saturday, well, my Monday and Tuesday’s to the max just maxed out. And then the next Monday, Tuesday will be maxed out as well ’cause I’m trying to get caught up. But that also means I don’t see family for weeks at a time almost, except for Sunday. And then I’m just in the office 12-15 hours a day and so I just stressed to her this morning, I’ll do that and I don’t even think about it. I’m just like, what’s the next thing? Let’s go forward. But it’s not okay. My family is not okay with it, my wife is not okay, and I don’t wanna be okay with that. But I can get in that groove. But she’s my gatekeeper. And so I told her, you know what, any into more podcasts,  that may be on the show, we need to put them on a list and say, I just can’t do that for a while. I talk on the appointments that come up for me that I just said like, you know what, we’re just gonna have to stop doing it for a while. Not forever, but at least for a period because I still need to be at home.

0:22:37.5 

WS: My whole point is keeping the main thing, the main thing. What are my priorities? My family, my kids are so important. And then you think, are they? You know, when I’m spending 15 hours a day in the office but she helps me with that. She says no to all these people so I don’t have to be the bad guy. So, I keep pushing her and then she’s really good at that, better than I am at saying no. But that’s her job. She’s my gatekeeper anyway. But that’s why too, it’s so crucial for somebody that’s being pulled in all these directions to have that person that’s helping you to determine what’s the highest and best use of your time.

0:23:17

WS: I know I just shot a ton of information at you but what questions do you have right now, or could I help you with?

0:23:22

HB: I have three pages of notes and I would still like to, first, request for this recording ’cause I can go back and listen to this. Because at some point, I need to listen more and stop taking notes. Thank you are recording this. But, yeah, so one thing, when you started your journey, how much did you know what you wanted her to do and how much was vague or ambiguous?

0:23:45

WS: That’s a great question and I’ve not thought about that. But I would say, at first, you’re not gonna know everything that she’s gonna do for you. However, you can get a pretty good idea. Like, if you just take today and tomorrow and write down everything you do, I bet there, they’re very detailed. If you write down everything you’re spending time on, there’s probably half of that that somebody else could do for you. You may have to spend a little time training them but think about the investment of that time for months and months or years that you’re gaining back by somebody else handling that. So, you’re just not gonna know everything. But initially, I did know numerous tasks that she was gonna do. Obviously, email is a massive thing for me. It’s such a time-waster for me. I can spend so many hours every day on email. So, hundreds and hundreds of emails coming in but she goes through those.

0:24:36.7 

WS: And then we have a method where she tags. There’s like four or five different tags that she uses. That way I know emails that I need to respond to right away or investor email that I need to get back to personally right away. Even that, I’m shifting to somebody else now. But there’re still certain investors that only wanna talk to me and I’m okay with that because maybe they’re a really big investor of ours like I do have a relationship with that. You know, we’re good friends or whatever it may be. And she’s been learning that. She knows the investors who we need to talk to them personally. And it takes time, some training, but initially, whether it’s email and just organizing my email and calendar management was massive for me. That was one of the first biggest things that she tackles. But now, it’s like any kind of research that I need done. We Voxer a lot. So it’s a walkie-talkie app, and that’s a big way that we communicate. We use Slack as well but Voxer’s pretty convenient for me. I can be going on the road and just push a button, just walk, you talk and I record things. Or I can be on the plane, this happens a lot where it’s like I’m cut off from the internet most of the time when I’m flying. But I’m reading a book or I have all these ideas and I’m Voxering all these things to her that I’m having ideas about. She documents all of that and then we talk about it during our meetings. You know you had this idea or you said you wanted to start doing this. And then she starts to implement those things, or she connects to that team member. She just says, hey, Whitney really likes this. Is this something we could start doing? Or have you thought of this before? Whoever that team member is. 

0:26:09 She does the same thing with emails. There’s tons emails I don’t need to see but she knows who on the team to send them to to keep that ball rolling. I don’t need to slow it down. So to answer your question, you’re not gonna know. You’re gonna have a list of things now but all of a sudden when she’s on your team, you’re gonna start seeing things every day, it’s like, Oh, they could do that. Then you’re gonna start documenting that in your next meeting with them. Okay, we’re gonna set up a process for this thing. And maybe within two weeks, you’re handling that completely.

0:26:41

HB: Amazing, amazing. The other thing was sharing. So, did you share the assistant with the partner or someone else? 

0:26:48

WS: Great question. So, I always say what’s gonna determine that is your long-term vision for this position. And so, I did not. She is dedicated to me. She’s doing a lot more for our team now because I’m almost grooming her for a bigger position because she’s that talented. She’s that motivated and I don’t wanna hold her back. And I’ve shared this with her and saying to my business partner, you know what, I would like for her to just be my assistant forever because she’s that good at it. But she’s probably not gonna stay there forever because she’s gonna want to go do bigger things. And I want her to. I wanna keep her.

0:27:22.0 

WS: So, I’m grooming her for bigger things but I did not share her. Sam has his own assistant, a full-time assistant, as well. But even she handles almost like a transaction coordinator position. Sam is in charge of the entire acquisition process, and so his assistant handles a lot of that transaction process. She coordinates a lot of that. So, she’s not only his assistant, but she’s learned a lot about the acquisitions process, and she handles a lot of that in between the attorney or the lender and back and forth, she’s handling and pushing the deal forward in a big way. So, we’ll probably hire a full-time Transaction Coordinator in the future, near future, but at least for a while, until we fill other positions and we have ton of more deal flow and doing more deals. She’s learned a lot, and so she’s kind of been dual role. Mine has also been dual role but it’s been very different parts of the business. I would say his assistant had to develop those skill sets. She didn’t know anything about acquisitions when she came in whereas my assistant, she already knew a lot about say website. She alteady knew a lot about different things that she could start helping us internally with from previous previous positions that she had had. And so, you think through that a little bit. But depending on their skill set, their motivation, there’s probably gonna be other things that they can do for you or your team that you just won’t know yet. But you could share them. I would just say, too, it’s gonna be harder for that person to know you specifically and just to do as good a job as an assistant. But you may not have them as busy as we do doing other things as well. So, I don’t know, you have to determine that. But that is an option, you could share them with one other person. I probably wouldn’t go more than two people as far as him being an assistant. But you or the other person’s calendars may not be as crazy as mine, or travel as much as I do. Like, she does all my travel, my hotels, rental cars, flights, all that.

0:29:19.0 

WS: Even if Sam’s going, his assistant will usually do his travel but they still have to coordinate those things ’cause we’re going to the same place often or having meetings with different people. She coordinates that, she knows my calendar. I know I need to be, I’m gonna land at this time, I know I gotta get the rental car but then I need to be at this restaurant by this time, and that person also knows they need to be there. Or, if I’m running behind, she takes care of that. Connects with that other person. An example I love using too was, I was supposed to fly out Sunday afternoon, one time recently. And I was gonna have a rental car but my flight was delayed. Instead of getting in like 8PM, I was getting in midnight. Well, the rental car place is closed. So, while I’m traveling, she already knew – this is even Sunday afternoon and I try to tell her, don’t work the weekends. I don’t want you to have to do that – but she messages me proactively and says, I see your flights are delayed. I’ve already contacted the rental car place and got that taken care of. This is what we’re gonna do. So, I almost can’t teach somebody to be proactive like that. That’s why you wanna see that energy and you wanna see their drive a little bit. So, we talk about goals and where she wants to be, and I wanna help her get there. Even if it’s not my assistant but she’s gonna help train the next assistant in a big way.

0:30:38.0 

HB: Personal stuff, credit card payments, and all that crap that we spend time on, do you use her for that? 

0:30:47

WS: Yup, good question. So we use LastPass. LastPass is how I share passwords with everybody on the team, whether they’re in the Philippines, whether they’re in the States, they never see the password. But it’s worked very well for us to be able to do that. And I’ve not had any major issues where I’ve had to revoke somebody because they’re doing something crazy. That hasn’t happened, thank the Lord. But even with her, that’s how we share passwords, but she pretty much has access to – she doesn’t see my bank accounts or personal credit card – but she does have my personal credit card, like the numbers. She has my personal checkbook out of my personal checking account. She has numerous business account checkbooks for business counts. And I have a separate email that any time I have a bill, like my electric bill for my house. When I set that up, I have a separate Gmail account that’s just for my bills.

0:31:39.0 

WS: And she monitors that and she also pays all those bills. Even myself, my personal cell phone or all those things, she monitors all that and pays all those bills so I don’t have to mess with that. But there’s a separate email, my personal bills go into those emails when they’re due or whatever. And then she goes in and takes care of them. But like I said, she has a checkbook that’s for my personal checking but then all numerous business accounts as well. She handles those things for us and pays those bills. There’s an attorney that’s local here that I’ve known for many years that she’s created numerous entities for us and gives counsel on different things, she can pay that, take care of those things. I don’t have to be involved in that. And so any time that I find something, it’s like, okay, this has taken me a lot of time. Is there any way Josie could do this, you know, my assistant? And I try to determine. But yes, she has access to those things. Not all my personal… even a few personal business accounts, she doesn’t have view access to. She can spend out of them but she doesn’t have view access to some specific things. But others she does because it saves me a ton of time for her to be able to see those things. And I can say, hey, did we pay for this? Or, hey, did this person charge us or whatever? She can go look and see. 

So that’s very helpful. 

But yes, email, of course. I do have a separate personal email account that’s outside of Life Bridge Capital altogether that she doesn’t have access to. So, if I’m emailing with somebody about whatever things that I just don’t want anybody else on the team to know about, then I’m gonna use that account. Or maybe it’s just something personal that I don’t want the team to know about, her to know about, whatever that may be, I’m gonna use that account and I’m gonna try to make sure that person knows to use that account as well. But my email though, my work email, there are still things in there that I might prefer, nobody saw. Some of that I have had to just get over though ’cause I do trust her because it saves me a ton of time.

0:33:35 

HB: Amazing. Super duper helpful. You’ve been very generous with your time. I really, really appreciate that. Really grateful for helping enable us to hire a rockstar. And more importantly, laying out the foundation where we can hire multiple rockstars as we grow. So, thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

WS: Thank you for being a loyal listener of the Real Estate Syndication Show. Please subscribe and like the show, share it with your friends so we can help them as well. Don’t forget, go to the LifeBridgeCapital.com where you can sign up and start investing in real estate today. Have a blessed day.

[END]