ScreamingBox Technology & Business Rundown

Dave Erickson 0:00
Every hour you have a new thing added to your endless to do list. You are going crazy trying to do everything. But what can you do? On this ScreamingBox podcast, we are going to discuss how business leaders need to be able to delegate in order to scale their businesses. Please like our podcast and subscribe to our channel to get notified when the next podcast is released.

Dave Erickson 0:45
You got your startup off the ground, but now you are struggling with a to do list that seems to get longer and longer each day. What are you going to do? Welcome to the ScreamingBox Technology and Business Rundown podcast. In this podcast, Botond Seres and I, Dave Erickson, are going to delegate our questions about how founders need to be able to delegate in order to scale their business to Valerie Trapunsky, founder of ChatterBoss. As the founder and CEO of ChatterBoss, Valerie is deeply passionate about bringing the same level of assistance support that A-listers enjoy to startups and entrepreneurs, all while shining a light on the crucial role that assistants can play in running and scaling a business. As author of Delegate Nation, her mission is to provide an actionable guide for entrepreneurs to building frictionless, hyper-capable teams using an emotionally intelligent, human centric approach. Well, Valerie, when did you get interested in delegating things?

Valerie Trapunsky 1:44
Yeah, you know, I first started my career as an assistant and a chief of staff, and so my journey began with being delegated to, and I had learned what communication looks like, what's effective, what is not effective, a lot about what's not effective when it comes to delegation, and a lot about what is super effective when it comes to delegation, how high performers leverage delegation to reach the top echelons of the industries that they're in and become number one in the industries that they serve. So that's where my curiosity started with delegations, where my experience with delegation began. I then started ChatterBoss, and that was my first, really experience of delegating to others. And what was interesting to me was that I thought by spending so many years being delegated to that I would be a master of delegating, and it was not the case. So not only did I find myself not having the tools to delegate. I also didn't have much empathy for the people that I am delegating to, even though I was just recently in those shoes. So it really struck me, this phenomenon. I had walked that journey, and it was still not enough to be a good delegator and to have a clear understanding of, you know what it takes to get others bought in, to get others excited and to get others doing the work that you need to do to thrive together. And so that's been my journey, learning for myself how to become a good delegator, and now teaching others how they can delegate and be delegated to effectively.

Botond Seres 3:44
It’s quite funny that you mentioned that even though you've been delegated to for years; you're not quite as good at delegating yourself, which I think is a very human experience like, say, I think by the simplest example of this, we all watch so many movies and series and yet we would be terrible at directing them. But so I do wonder, if like, if you could say one skill or one practice that people should learn. What should they focus on first if they find themselves in the situation?

Valerie Trapunsky 4:25
I love,how you phrase it, about watching movies and not being a great director. I think that that's, that's really clever. I'm going to borrow it. When I was writing my book, I was thinking, what's the one thing, right? I'm writing so many pages, but what's the one thing that if people can walk away with, with one sentence, that would be enough, and they would have gotten something valuable that they can leverage for delegation. And for me, it was discovering the tool of over communication, especially in a remote world. But especially in a position like working with assistants, for whom there are not really templates. When you are working with an assistant, a lot of the work that you're going to be doing is based on your aptitude, their aptitude, your skill set, their skill set, your type of business, your personality, your moods, etc. And so it's much harder to delegate effectively to an assistant than I would say to any other position or individual that you have. And so I discovered that using the art of over communication, which means that you want to give the person the if you think about Goldilocks, you know, and she goes and she tests the difference, you know, and she's, she's looking for, like the just right. So I would say, give the just what feels to you, the just right amount of information for whatever you're delegating to right, whatever you, you know the task is, and then, from the space of just right, add another 10% of additional information that you may not have thought to give. So as an example, if I am asking my assistant to book me transportation to an event that I'm going to, the just right amount of information is my address where I'm going to, probably, you know, maybe the name of the event. What else does my assistant really need to know to complete that task? However, the art of over communication in that case would be, let me give a little bit more information. Maybe this is a gala that I attend every year, and what I actually know is that the city shuts down, and I have had an experience where I was late to this event last year. I don't have to, you know, go into the whole story of what happened last year, and you know how someone messed something up, right? That's over, over communication, but that extra percentage of giving relevant details about what I know about this to aid the person in not just getting things done for me in the way that I need to, but then also to become a strategic partner. Now that I gave them additional information, they could say, You know what, here is what I know about this, and it, and it encourages this back and forth to create a real partnership.

Botond Seres 7:23
I couldn't agree more that's always; more information is always more better.

Dave Erickson 7:29
You bring up an interesting point about delegation and communication and with remote work, it's obvious, in some ways, remote work is a more focused communication, because your time to communicate is very, is usually a little bit more brief. Whereas, if you're just sitting around an office and you're talking to people, you kind of have as much. So you have to be more focused and more brief in remote communication. But a lot of work nowadays, even in the office, is now, in a sense, remote, because you could be in the same building as somebody, but you're communicating with a zoom call, even though you guys are in the same building. In over communicating or communicating to people about what you need them to do, one of the things that I think is a challenge for many people but others, is context. You know, if you're bringing on an assistant and you have an assistant, but they're not living with you every day, they're just getting tasks that you assign them. How important is it for context in those situations and, and how is it best to communicate the context of what the task is?

Valerie Trapunsky 8:44
It's crucial. And you bring up exactly the, the point that lots of people end up with failed relationships, specifically in this role, is that we are now used to this remote lifestyle, we're used to kind of like, let's get to the point, let's make it quick and and we're also inundated with so many what, what remote has allowed us to do is to switch from one meeting to the next to the next, so quote, unquote, seamlessly, that now, in a day where I would have really had maybe three conversations and some thought work. I now have seven or eight conversations there about completely different topics. I don't even have to go, you know, meeting to meeting, you know, room to room anymore. So it, what that creates is this desire to minimize the, the amount of synchronous communication, right? How many meetings have we been in just this week? It's already, it's Monday, one o'clock Eastern, right? How many meetings already have we been in this week? That could have been an email. Maybe we didn't need to get on them. And so this desire to minimize affects the relationships with the assistance, because people have the goal of, let me get the relationship to a place. Place where we never have to meet again, or we don't have to meet very frequently. You're going to know what to do. You're going to be in the background. You're going to kind of read my mind, and our relationship is going to work really nicely this way. This is not possible; name for me, one relationship that works in that kind of a way where it is just kind of one way communication, you never have to work on the relationship, and it works seamlessly. For some reason, the assistant role is the one that people think will succeed and thrive in this like, non communication environment when we know we cannot do this with our spouse, with our kids, with our parents, with our friends, with our colleagues, nobody. So we need to build synchronous time to work with our assistants. We also need to build the time into our schedule to practice the art of delegation. If we are thinking that delegation is something that's just going to happen to us by the mere virtue that we have an assistance, that's also where I see people having failed relationships. Just like if you want to get in shape, you make time to go to the gym. You make time for your goal setting. You must make time for delegation, and your delegation strategy for it to work.

Botond Seres 11:15
Well, speaking of assistants, I've always wondered, what exactly does an assistant do? Because it can’t be all just booking transportation and hinging pickups or the scheduling meetings. I always felt there's more to this profession, but I severely lack experience in that regard. So could you tell us a bit more about the day to day of office assistant work?

Valerie Trapunsky 11:41
You know, what you say is very common where there is this kind of view of what assistants do and who they are and exactly what you mentioned, people really see this like, tip of the iceberg. This is what assistants are able to do, or this is what their role is. There's a lot of it's almost like, mystery around the assistant role. So I'm glad that you asked this question, because not everybody asks it, but I believe many people think it. How can you truly leverage an assistance to the max so the assistant, as I mentioned, will work within your unique needs. So it just depends on, first of all, who you are as a personality, as a character and your business. So if you are somebody that's hyper organized, then the world of your assistants will look one way, working inside of your procedures very often, or co-creating with you. If you're an individual that is disorganized a lot, and no shame in that. I am this type of individual, and I think a lot of my inspiration for how to leverage relationships comes from that. And so when you are organized where you know your mind is a little bit more flexible, you're a little bit more creative, you will have your assistants day to day will look a lot like doing certain follow ups with you, doing certain things together with you. People, structured, for example, like me, like to do working sessions. Sometimes I call them babysitting sessions. This is my superpower. My superpower is knowing that this is the way that I operate, and letting my assistant support and so an assistant supporting me will look very different than an assistant supporting either that one of you will have, and in fact, many organizations will say, Let's get, you know, Botond and Dave, let's split an assistant. We work together. So let's split an assistant. You know, I'll do 10 hours and you'll do 10 hours, but the kind of person that both of you need it will be probably wildly different. The only thing connecting them will be the organization, but the way that you work is going to be different. And so that's the other thing that when I look at organizations, I say I like to pair people based on fractional support that they need, based on the individual, on the individual's needs versus a very long time strategy has been, let's get one person for the entire organization so, it could be really different, the day to day really varies. But a lot having to do, you know, with your industry and their skill set.

Dave Erickson 14:27
I think you brought up a kind of interesting point in our business. In a sense, our business is a little bit like virtual assistants, or in a sense that we have developers and our clients give them tasks and jobs and things to do in a especially in a team extension situation, whereas a project situation is a little bit different, where we help guide that process, but those skills and those personalities, we have always known that personality plays a very important and key role in the relationship between a person giving work and receiving work and then providing finished work. One of the ways that we were able to make sure that those relationships go smoothly, we've done a lot of personality testing of our developers, and we also test our clients to make sure that the developers are going to go into an environment that will succeed. It doesn't do any good to put a very detailed oriented developer with, say, a marketing agent client who's very creative and Lucy and not so detail oriented, that relationship is going to fail. Both sides will not be happy in it. And when building a team, you’ve got to make sure you have a point of contact that has a similar personality. It doesn't have to be the exact but you know someone who doesn't get annoyed by detailed work or loose instructions or whatever the difference is in personalities. How about you? How critical is, is understanding the personality of not just the client, but also the person doing the work? And what are your thoughts on doing that?

Valerie Trapunsky 16:16
It's absolutely crucial. The you know, you, you are spot on with how you've set up your model, in my opinion, because, you know, we operate very similarly. We want to understand the, the character, the personality, of both parties, because we want to set them up for success. Our vision as a company is a world where every entrepreneur has their dream team, and in order to have a dream team, what it looks and feels like is, minimize the friction and seamless communication. And so we understand that there could be stress in all the different areas of your life, but where, what we want to do is create an environment for both parties where there is no stress in this relationship. So that's what we feel motivated by and why we do what we do. When I look at for example, one thing that we do is we place Chief of Staff full time hires. And so if you think about our business, I'll place a full time Chief of Staff, which is the highest level of an integrator your organization can have. And then I have a team of over 150 fractional assistants that are working on 5, 10, 15 hours a week for our businesses and entrepreneurs to support them with their needs, those businesses that do not have a need for a full time Chief of Staff, but the idea is that they're operating in this similar type of way, being an integrator for your organization within the amount of time that's needed. When I think of these integrators, when I think about the Chief of Staff, when I think about the executive assistant and personality, they are very much there is a lot of benefit in having them have certain skills, traits and personalities that match the entrepreneur. And then there is a benefit to have certain areas be different, and that will be kind of custom built based on the individual and what their goals are, but sometimes what we need is a healthy dose of friction in order to accomplish our goals. And that's a conversation that I'll have with entrepreneurs. Do you want it to be easy and accomplish less of your goals or less quickly. Or do you want it to be a little bit more of a challenge, but you'll go where you want to go faster because of those differences. And so I find it fascinating, like my husband and I, you know, they say that for a healthy marriage, you want as many of the parameters to be similar, than different. My husband and I are, about half of the parameters were exactly the same and about half were on the opposite side of the spectrum. And so that creates a consistent friction point, every single time something happens, we have tools to work through it. But doesn't mean the friction ever goes away, because he sees the world one way, and I see it completely in a different way. But you have to say to yourself, is my life better because we are different? Are we better and safer parents for our child? Yes, right? Like, if it was two of me, we could lose the baby, you know, in the in the grocery store, but because my husband's so organized, right, we'll never lose the baby and so on, and so, you know, things like that, and you want to bring that consideration into the work relationships as well. Sometimes a little bit of uh friction is healthy.

Botond Seres 19:53
What do you think about trying to reduce stress in a given relationship as much as possible? I think it is immensely important, at least in my experience, that it's remote working, one on one, because in person, work is a lot different. And by that I mean if, if I fold out to the colleague, there is a very easy mediation step. You just go to the water cooler and discuss it in like five to 10 minutes with remote work once that meeting is over, then that is over, and I do wonder if you can share some specific coping tools in that remote working?

Valerie Trapunsky 20:41
working. Yeah, so you know it's, it's interesting, because, on the one hand, we don't, I think you're right, we don't see each other as often. And what ends up happening, though, is it's almost like, it's the way that you describe it like the vision that I see is that you kind of, you start a conversation and you may never finish it right, and you're like, is it really important to finish it? So there's a lot of context that's lost in this remote space. We don't, you know, just as easy as identifying, you know, body language, and I'm not going to know you as well as I'm going to know you when we are working in person. So I'm not going to know certain nuances. And so one thing I can give advice in terms of, like, organizationally, what we do, because we bumped up a lot against a lot of friction, just I can say, as an internal team working remotely, we've been remote from day one, and a very useful tool has been working on our core values. As a team, we have defined together our core values, and we then work together to maintain those values. So what it actually gives us is a tool to look at, sometimes different personalities. If I have a problem with you, Botond, you know, and this is my personality, I'm going to tell you, right? I'm going to say, hey, we need a few minutes because something is really bothering me and I need to get it out of the way if I'm going to see your face on Zoom, you know, every single day. But some people will never say it. They will never say it directly. And so every time they see you, they are unhappy. Every time you message them, you trigger them, and they won't tell you. And so what we found as an organization when we do these core value sessions where we really encourage everyone to speak, everyone must say, where we can improve as an organization, where we can do better. And I find that that gives the space for those people who are less direct to add into the culture, add into the communication, and ask for some of the things that they need to improve the environment. So I think that that's the reason where, why we've, you know, enjoyed longevity with our key team members. We really try to give that kind of an outlet to everyone on the team.

Botond Seres 23:12
That makes a lot of sense. I mean, unless we share at least some values, it's not going to be a healthy relationship.

Valerie Trapunsky 23:17
And our interpretation of the values as well, right? Like you, one of our values is we care. And what we find is that we have everyone cares, but everyone cares differently, and we actually need to define how do we care and how do we not, you know, how do we show that we care and how we should not show that we care, because it goes to the extreme. So it's, it's been really fascinating work in that way.

Dave Erickson 23:49
I think that there is a balance that kind of has to be found and I think a lot of entrepreneurs are a little, are not very good at this balance. And that is the balance that if you have a completely stress free relationship, and the person you're working with has no pushback on anything. Essentially, you're surrounding yourself with yes people who will just say yes to everything, and everything you do is great and wonderful. Yes, you'll have an easy relationship, but you don't get a lot of value out of it, because, in theory, the other person you're delegating to, they have their own expertise, their own opinions, and sometimes they see things very different that could really give you an advantage. On the other hand, if you have a person who fights you on everything you tell them, then the relationship isn't very happy. How do you go about finding a kind of a balance that allows for the assistant to actually have input that is effective to the person giving them a task or delegating?

Valerie Trapunsky 24:56
It's a very good question. There's so many nuances involved and the biggest piece is going to be around the motivation and the goals of the individual that is coming in for the support. I've seen it go both ways. I've seen people who don't, I've seen entrepreneurs who don't want any input, just do as I say and that is one type of a relationship, right? And then on the other side is this relationship that, tell me what you tell me what you want me to do, or you just do whatever you want, and that's how you know, and I'll be very happy. And so there's a lot I would say that there's like, a big piece on it, like with expectation setting. My philosophy is that you can have a relationship that works with any personality type. Any personality can work with absolutely any personality type, if your goal between the two of you is if you have a common goal that you're working towards together. So that's, I would say, that's the big piece, and that's the expectation setting. So when I have clients and assistants come in, I always want to identify, what is the goals on both sides, and then we can merge them together, because I can provide coaching. I can provide I can provide an environment where anything works, the, any type of relationship combination works, I find that as long as you know the other person's personality and the way that they function, that's what really makes the difference. As long as you know what to expect from somebody, it makes a very big difference

Botond Seres 26:41
People who try to make the best of relationships, I don't think are very common. There is a reason we have more military personnel than people that help.

Valerie Trapunsky 26:52
Unfortunately.

Botond Seres 26:54
Well, I mean different people, different habits, I suppose. And you brought up a very interesting point, which is different types of work and like, and I do you think there is a bit more nuance to that? Like we like we can have a relationship where someone says that, okay, this is what we need doing. You go ahead and do it, then that's possible, but only if, then they don't come back and say that, Oh, you did it wrong. ‘Exactly.’ Because there's you can do something right. There's not enough information. That's the thing. Usually, I mean, personally, I like to start by discussing what is needed and what are some of the possible solutions or remediation steps. But I do find that it's quite difficult to do all this front loading before every exchange.

Valerie Trapunsky 27:59
You know, one thing that I have found as a useful tool, and again, it's around the expectation setting. If you have flexible expectations, then you can have a flexible delegation approach. So you can send a voice note, you know, you can, you can send a quick email. You can say it over a quick call, right? You can spend just a few minutes, if you are open to the outcome looking different than if you would have done it, right? You know exactly how you would do something a lot of the time. You just don't have the time to do it. So that's why you're delegating. So if you're open to, I'm okay with an end to this project, as long as it gets finished, but I don't care as much about how it gets done, then you can delegate that way. And exactly like you said, you need to have the space for the person, if they're good, they're going to come back to you, they're going to have certain questions, and they're going to go back and forth with you in this kind of a way. Now, if you are, if you have a very specific outcome that you're wanting, like nothing is gonna you're not gonna be happy with anything unless it's done exactly the way that you were going to do it, then you have to be a little bit more prescriptive, use loom, create the shell of it, and spend more time onboarding. So I think that we're all doing some kind of math all day long anyway, right? And the math that you have to do with delegation is, how important is this? Because some people who are perfectionists are going to say everything is wildly important. Everything has to be briefed in, in a very specific way and not everything is actually, you know, so we only have a certain amount of time in the day, so even the way that you communicate your needs and how much time you spend should really reflect what the outcome you're going to get.

Botond Seres 29:50
Well, in the end, I think it's somewhat of a fool's errand to expect us to expect someone to do the work exactly. I would do it because. Yeah, to explain it, and that's great for detail, it would take as much time as to do it myself.

Dave Erickson 30:07
Well, I mean, that's one of the barriers, or the hesitation that people have in delegating. I've had that experience a little bit in the past, where the amount of time it would take me to explain how to do something that I kind of came up with and did the process of to somebody else to get them to do it the way I want them to do it, takes so much time. It's quicker than for me to just do it myself. But that then gets you into a situation where, again, you're starting to limit yourself, because then you have to do everything, and the whole purpose of delegation is to have somebody else do it so you can do other things. Maybe that's a good segue into this kind of question. Can you kind of give some examples of how a startup or an entrepreneur or a business can leverage or use assistance to grow their business?

Valerie Trapunsky 31:03
Absolutely, we are living in a world today as your business is, is built on right how much, how many square feet would you need to do the kind of work that you're doing? How much hardware would you need to do what you're doing if this was 2030, years ago, there, you know what possibilities are now open to you that would not have been open before. And so with that, every person who has a computer or even a cell phone can have a business, and so you have this boom and rise of solopreneurs that are wildly successful, not just like achieving success for themselves and creating wealth for themselves, but really generating opportunities for others to benefit and to create wealth for themselves from the business that was created. And we have so much choice and so much freedom now in terms of how we design our businesses, there are so many models out there, but the big thing that a key for, like, when we're talking about, like, who is on our team is, do I hire full time employees, or do I go with business process outsourcing? And so I believe in the blended model where you are anyone that you truly need, like one individual's brain space, and you need them for 40 hours a week then of course, you bring them on as an employee. But I also believe that we know that 30 to 60% of any individual's time, yours and anyone on your team, is spent on administrative work. Can you eliminate for your team that 30 to 60% of admin work so they could, so you could get 100% of their mind space to only focus on their zone of genius. So by doing that, you've actually taken one employee, and who would have been working, you know, 70% of the time on the work that they should have been doing, and you've created 100% of their capacity by delegating, having them delegate out to an assistant. So for me, we have 12 employees on the team, but we have 16 assistants that support these 12 employees and, the I would say we have five departments. Every department has an assistant. And in fact, I have one department that's running on assistance alone, which is our operations department. So I think that that's a, that's a crucial strategy, because business, you know, to have business, is becoming more and more competitive, and we have to find ways to be as efficient as we can. And so the business process outsourcing and having each team and department have assistant support will really separate people that are, that are running with the highest efficiency.

Dave Erickson 34:12
What are the other barriers to delegation for entrepreneurs and others besides, they can't do it the same way I can do it or something like that, is kind of this thing about the fear of losing control if you delegate everything to other people, you're no longer in control of your company or what's going on and so entrepreneurs and others may feel a fear of losing control if they delegate too much of their work to others, right? Do you have any kind of feedback or advice for that, getting over that fear?

Valerie Trapunsky 34:50
Yeah. I mean, when you say it, it's, I haven't phrased it this way before, but I think that you, you worded it so perfectly. Um. Um, like, what's at the core of that fear, right? Like, what's really at the core of someone's not going to do it as good as I do? And on its face, it's that, right? That, like, I would have done it better, I would have been more successful. In fact, it's probably fear of success. So you think that you are, that you are protecting yourself from a fear of ,from failure, but what you are actually doing is you are sabotaging your success, and you're sabotaging your growth. So there's something in the mindset that you fear getting too big. You fear because in order to grow, you're going to have to be out of the day to day, and you're going to have to let go of as many things as possible. So that's probably at its core. Now that I, now that I analyze that with you, in this way.

Dave Erickson 35:57
A lot of business and a lot of things. You know, entrepreneurs are pretty stressed out and they're afraid of everything. But you also have entrepreneurs who are very, you know, strong egos and very much into, you know, they are the key to everything, so it's harder for them to delegate as well. Those are all kinds of barriers to that. On the other hand, I like to go back to the, kind of the core concept, and that is, you know, the only way that you can grow your business is to, quote, grow your business. And it's not just a growth in sales or a growth in revenue, it's also a growth in structure, a growth in the number of people that are doing things for you. And again, you know, as an entrepreneur, you try to be good at everything, a lot of things you learn as you're developing the business, but there's also a lot of stuff you're not experienced at and that you don't know. And I think one of the main resources of assistants that I don't think it's talked about enough, is what are the new skill sets that they can bring into a business, or new experiences they can bring into a business? Maybe you can talk a little bit about that, and maybe you have some examples of where that happened to you.

Valerie Trapunsky 37:13
Yeah, it's, I think this ties in nicely to the conversation we're having earlier on, having complementary skill sets, complementary personality types and styles. So you can, when I do like, an audit of what you should be delegating, you have to first look at the things that you do not like to do and delegate all of those things out first, if it's finances, things that haven't gotten done in your business, you know? So, so then, you, you'll bring on individuals that can fill in all of those gaps. And a lot of the time, assistance can do much more. They're much the role is so much, more flexible than we've ever imagined. So you can have assistance come in and do project management, as I mentioned, I have an entire department that only runs on assistance, and that's my operations department. So what does that say? Project Management, team management, SOP creation and management, really, all of that runs with a number of individuals that keep things running and most organizations will think, I need to bring on a full time project manager in order to handle that. Most organizations will not invest in a full time project manager, and most organizations will settle for the fact that their team is not efficient, or even worse, say that your team is lazy or unorganized or just doesn't do things in the right way, when the truth is we all need an integrator. Every organization needs an integrator, and needs some cohesive way to keep things running, and that's where really your assistant can come in and really shine inside of your organization.

Botond Seres 38:57
It almost sounds like we could all. We could think of assistants as part time employees, in a way.

Valerie Trapunsky 39:06
Fractional support, exactly.

Botond Seres 39:09
Oh, okay, so it sounds like I got the right idea then. So we hear you wrote a book recently, Delegation Nation. What was the experience of writing a book like? How did it feel?

Valerie Trapunsky 39:28
Yeah, um, writing a book is was similar to having started a business, which is the feeling of, I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm discovering a lot, and it really forces you to deal with so many kind of, I like to say the cockroaches in your head, right? So that you can. Um, have success. So I started the business because I wanted to have that level of, like self reflection. And writing a book was, I think, at times extremely triggering, at times very defeating and it was all this like conversation in my head. So, I really the process took much longer than I had thought, I think, and that's most authors who write a book. It's you know, you make a plan, and you know the plan is, you know laughs at you, and you restarted many, many times. So that self discovery journey was priceless. It took close to two and a half years from idea to finish. So, yeah, it's yeah, and, you know, and anything that you start that you don't finish, just like all of the tasks that you really should be delegating to your assistant, where you can, it takes brain space. So not, it's not like two and a half years of writing, but it's two and a half years of just having it sit in your head, which is, which could be so painful. So, you know, I say to anyone who is, like in the process of writing a book, or hasn't finished their book or pivoting their book, if it's in your head, you have to get it out. You have to give birth to it. There's no other way. Can't stay inside,

Botond Seres 41:25
right? And to elaborate a bit more on assistants as part time employees, in a way, I was wondering, is it normal for assistants to assist multiple people, or is it more like I don't like full time work, and therefore I'm an Assistant type of deal.

Valerie Trapunsky 41:44
So one there is, just in general, this, like, I think it's a, it's a, it's a challenge in the marketplace for entrepreneurs, where they're looking for an assistant, where they say, Look, you know, one is like, what was the motivator for your assistant to be an assistant? assistants, the good ones that you want to be working with our career assistance by their profession, right? So you're going to be looking at people not not that said, Look, I have a laptop and I want to travel and so I'm going to be an assistant. There's so many people in the marketplace like that. That's why I say it's a challenge for entrepreneurs, but there is assistant as a profession, assistant as a career trajectory and a passion for this backbone and integrative support inside of the organization, and that's what we look for. So when you are considering, you know, assistance that there are, for many different reasons, where people will work in the type of organization as chatterbox versus going full time. Some people would like to support one executive or principal full time. There are positives and negatives. The positive is that you can completely integrate into that person's role, you can be completely their right hand, and you can really live their life and provide this like you, when I was doing that kind of a role, it's a lot of pleasure to be able to you start to read the person's mind. So it's just as fun as it is for the person to receive that. It's very fun to give that because you feel like a magician, right? So that's one side of it. The other side of it is that very often, you become so enthralled in that person's life that, at least what I've had, in my experience, you start to lose parts of your own life, you know, depending on how, how full that role is and how demanding that role is, you can really completely lose yourself, your preferences, etc, so like that's an extreme. People may choose to work as fractional assistants because it provides flexibility, it provides variety. And so you have an opportunity to learn and to serve in a number of different areas. And so people who thrive in, in learning new things, in being able to, you know, have their hand in a lot of different projects, really get excited about being fractional support for a number of, of different individuals. And it provides, it provides variety. It provides also, I think, a little bit of a buffer. Because look, for example, the relationships where you're 100% in, right? If you're working full time, supporting and like one individual as their assistant, that's way more time that you spend with your spouse, with your partner, with your parents, with your kids, like way more time that is such a almost draining relationship, like it's fulfilling but equally draining, right? And so when you divide the energy between a number of people it creates this, sometimes more healthy version of this role. So it's it's very appealing to a lot of people.

Dave Erickson 45:09
We have developers who want full time roles and only one project, right? But I have more developers, a lot more developers particularly the senior level developers, and ones who are really experienced, they prefer shorter engagements or part time work, or working on two or three projects at the same time, because it seems to give them variety and it gives them a different experience. So I can see the same with virtual assistants, there are probably some who like one person and just want to do one thing, and then there are others who like the variety and like having multitasking and doing things right. Maybe you can talk a little bit about ChatterBoss and how you go about your business of providing virtual assistants, and the types of companies and businesses that you're working with and prefer to work with.

Valerie Trapunsky 46:05
Yeah, so we support entrepreneurs, executives, small businesses. We support a lot of you know, we really support the gamut from solopreneurs that have been operating for that are just getting started, to startups that have gotten a lot of funding, and they're going to plug in a system into every department and be super efficient and be super laser with their with how they hire for headcounts and overhead expenses. So the way that we work is a two assistant model, which is unique, we will provide your, a dedicated assistant and a Support Assistant. They work together to ensure continuity inside of these operations. Because what happens like, let's say you don't have an assistant. Well, who's the assistant you because you're handling the administrative burden. But what happens when you do have an assistant, and your assistant is away for a week on vacation, you're back to being your own assistant, and you are losing that efficiency. So with us, you get a two assistant model, and we will pair you on all of the things that we talked about, the personality, the skill set, the needs, all of that, we really create a very detailed plan and roadmap to success, and that's what really sets us apart from other organizations. It's not just about the pairing. The pairing is crucial, but it's also ensuring that you know where you're going, what your goals are, how to set up that scope of work and, and have a consistent success. So how we do that is you also have a relationship manager that is like a delegation coach, and this individual is there for you. They work as assistant success and they work as client success to support the both parties and ensure that they have the best relationship possible. What we also have on our team are specialists. So the specialists are copywriters, they're designers, they're bookkeepers, and so they're individuals. So where assistants are generalists by profession, we have specialists that are also on the team as well. What we believe is that the assistant function where you know if the Jill or the jack of all trades is outdated. What you really want is somebody that, you want your generalist, but when there are tasks that are specialists, to delegate them to those individuals that should handle that, because that's a shortcut. So we also really encourage not just for you to delegate well, but for your assistant team to delegate as well, so that you have maximum efficiency.

Dave Erickson 48:45
We know that you've written a book, Delegation Nation. Maybe you can talk a little bit about it, what kind of ,in it, and who is it for?

Valerie Trapunsky 48:54
So, delegation nation, I wrote, we spoke earlier about this surprise that I felt that I didn't have the the same empathy that I imagined being in the role of delegator as I did when I was being delegated to so I had a lot of honestly, professional failures, delegating in the beginning, hiring assistance. I feel like I stepped into every possible landmine that was possible. And so from there, I wanted to write a book to merge the perspective of assistant and entrepreneur. I wanted to set it up in a way that, you know what, if you're in the beginning stages of starting that relationship, that if you read, if you didn't read anything else and you only read this book, you would be set up for prime, healthy communication, and you would have success with your assistant, so very focused on tactical things that you can do to ensure that this is the best working relationship and you have a long term you have a long term partnership, and so just merging that perspective. So every chapter is written both in the perspective of the assistant and the entrepreneur, to give each of them something to think about on how to and how to work together in a way that cuts down on potential miscommunication, friction.

Botond Seres 50:22
Valerie, thank you so much for walking us through all the options and strategies that business owners can use to delegate tasks to assistance.

Dave Erickson 50:29
Well, we are at the end of the episode today, but before you go, we want you to think about this important question.

Botond Seres 50:36
What tasks do you want to delegate in your business?

Dave Erickson 50:39
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