Lisa Zeeveld:
Welcome back, Bruce, to the One Next Step. All right. Are we ready to jump in for this final bonus question?
Bruce Ackerman:
Yep. Let’s do it.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Okay, great. If a leader is listening and getting ready to hire a virtual assistant, what are the most important things that they can do to make that partnership a success right from the start?
Bruce Ackerman:
So I think there’s an expectation that it’s going to take a little bit of time to also figure this out. If this is the first time you’ve had an assistant, at least for me, it probably took like four months or so before I was used to actually working with someone versus just doing stuff again and again. Even down to little things, like we talked about ordering something on Amazon, now I can just copy on the link and send it over and say what street address to send this to, but that before was hard to change that habit. So I think time expectation. And then I think the other thing is, how do you start to standardize all of this stuff? Because there’s a lot. And that’s why I think it just makes you wanna jump in because ‘Oh, I gotta give them the login. I gotta send the address.’ You know?
Bruce Ackerman:
So we set up an app called One, 1password.com. And basically, we started sharing all of our common passwords in there. And so that makes it easy so they can log into everything. That takes time to add these in, but like it makes it super simple for an assistant to jump in. And then we started compiling a list of things. So the first thing I did was lock myself in a room for two hours. If you want the trick, turn off your internet so you don’t get any notifications and write stuff down of what could they help you with you think? And then, what are the preferences? So there’s this like, okay. If it’s a flight, I tend to wanna sit as close to the front as possible.
Bruce Ackerman:
All right, cool. Here’s how I normally book flights. I like to look at Southwest and American, and I compare those two. Here’s my TSA Pre number. Here’s my birthday. Here’s my wife’s name and birthday and her account to log in to as well. So I started to flesh that out, and I probably had 50 percent of the way there. And then over time kept little by little, adding more. The team, the people who fly, anybody on the sales team that has to go somewhere. I have a Google Sheet now. It’s got their date of birth, name, frequent flyer numbers and email so that they can pull that out right away. So as much as you can standardize and write all that stuff down, makes it so easy for an assistant or a new assistant or however you wanna be able to structure it. I think created success too. And I’m not perfect at it by any means. I’m sure there’s more optimizations, but that seemed to help.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Yeah, no, I think that, I love that you went in and you put yourself in a room for two hours and you were committed to being part of the process, right? Like you didn’t expect your virtual assistant to be a mind reader and to already know all this information. That you were willing to put the time in to create a really successful relationship. And, from our experience, that’s one of the keys to having a really good relationship and for it to be long-term successful is for everyone to put in the time to get to know each other well. So thank you for sharing that with our listeners and giving them that bit of encouragement, that those few hours that you put in ahead of time is gonna pay dividends on the other side of it.
Bruce Ackerman:
For sure. Of course.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Well, thank you, Bruce. Thank you so much for just spending the day with us and answering questions and sharing all your wisdom. Again, thank you for your curiosity and for building a great product. And for just being a fantastic client of BELAY. We really appreciate you.
Bruce Ackerman:
Yeah. Thanks, LZ. Thanks, everybody.
Lisa Zeeveld:
All right, guys. Well, thank you so much for joining us for the One Next Step and for this bonus content. Be sure to join us next week for more practical tips and actionable tools to advance your business one step at a time. Start by making today count.
