The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 045 – The Key Ingredients to Great Chemistry Between Leaders and Their Assistants—An Interview with E.A. Help Founder Bryan Miles
Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. Well, hey everybody, and welcome to episode 44 of the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff, and I hope that our time together today helps you lead like never before. And today, I'm going to introduce you to somebody you may or may not know. His name is Brian Miles, and he is the CEO and the founder of, among other companies, EA Help. And it's all about, his company is all about virtual assistants. And I think for those of us who work with assistants, I was really anxious to pick Brian's brain because, you know, I'm not the most organized person in the world. Like I can be organized, but it just, it just frustrates me. And I have the privilege of having an incredible assistant that I've worked with now for almost five years, and she's great. And I want to pick Brian's brain, both for assistance and also for people who have assistance or hope to one day have assistance about what it is that makes for great team chemistry between an assistant and a leader and how leaders can get better at that. So I really hope this encourages you. And if you don't have an assistant, I mean, sometimes even volunteers are willing to come in and say, you know what, I'll give you five or 10 hours a week or you might even employ somebody like, you know, EA Help to give you a hand with that. So that's what today's podcast is about. I'm really, really excited about it. Now, a couple of things I want to share with you. First of all, thank you to everybody who got us to 200 reviews in iTunes in the US store and now over 50 in Canada. I just want you to know I read those reviews. I take your comments and your feedback super seriously. And I want to thank you for that. You guys are so incredibly encouraging and thank you to everybody who subscribes, everyone who rates the podcast, because when you do that, it gets the podcast out in front of more leaders. In fact, this podcast is consistently in the top 50 in the iTunes stores in the US. And that just means when people are looking for podcasts to see, they find it and it's just super. And I want to thank you. And a lot of you have been asking, Hey, who's up next? Because in September, we hit the one year mark of this podcast, which is great. And so we're going to have some fun things that we'll talk about. But I'll tell you a little bit about the guest list coming up. There's some people who've confirmed you'll hear a lot of people over the next few months, but we are going to hear from Barnabas Piper, who is actually John Piper's son and talks all about the impact of being a preacher's kid and how that really impact him. I mean, his dad was not only a preacher, his dad was famous, his famous. And so John Piper's son, Barnabas is going to be there. And I just love my time with Barnabas. Craig Grishell is going to be a guest, which is awesome. Ravi Zacharias, once, maybe twice over the next year, is going to be a guest. We're working on the second booking now. I just interviewed him last week in Toronto, was an amazing time going to bring you what he said to me. And also some insights from some other evangelists and kind of an evangelism apologetics episode that'll come up in a few months, Judd Wilhight has confirmed and blogger Jared Wilson. And man, we got a lot more who are going to be on the podcast as well. So I'm really excited about that and just want to thank you so much for being part of it. So what we're going to do today, one thing I want to tell you about before we sort of jump into the interview today, is if you haven't registered for the Orange Tour, I just want to encourage you to do that right now. You can go to orangetour.org, orangetour.org. And I think it's 15 cities this fall that myself, Reggie, Joiner, John, Acuff and other leaders are going to be in, I'll be in about half of them. And I think my tour stop should be up there by now, which ones I'm going to be doing. Really looking forward to hanging out with you and nothing gives me more joy than connecting with leaders. And I'm going to be running the senior leader track. So if you're senior leader, don't miss the Orange Tour. And because we're coming to your neighborhood, it makes it really easy to bring and affordable to bring the whole team. So I hope you see us on the Orange Tour this fall, just go to orangetour.org. And now my interview with Brian Miles, it's a lot of fun today to have Brian Miles on the podcast. Hi, Brian. Hey, Kerry, how are you? Good. We finally meet. We've sort of known about each other for a while, but it's great to actually connect. And thanks for being a guest today. Yeah, I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity. And it's nice to connect with you because it's like we know so many people, but we've yet to spend time together. So it's a great opportunity. North Point is your home church in Alfreda, Georgia. Yep. Do you go to like to the North Point North Point or one of the campuses? I now go to Brown's Bridge. Oh, you do? Most. North Point. But you were part of North Point. You were telling me back in '99, back when it was just like one auditorium and they just built and it was still a fledgling upstart church. Yeah, it was crazy. For me, it was the largest, at the time, it was the largest church I'd ever been part of. I was raised in Nazarene. And so for me, the largest church I'd ever been part of is maybe like 600 people. And so 2000 was like, what in the world's going on here? It's still a big church, but that's what North Point was back in the day, right? Yeah. Yeah. What an awesome preview I've had, you know, into how God can really leverage people that are committed to unchurched people and really just being about connecting people to a relationship with Jesus. I mean, I've had a really a front row seat at it for 15 years and my wife and I and now our kids, they're crazy about our church and, you know, it's just, we're very blessed to say that North Point's our home for as long as it's been. Great. But you don't work at North Point. Now, tell us a little bit about what you do. It's just the church you're a part of and it's part of your life. But tell us a little bit about your background because when you mention one company in particular, I think a lot of leaders will go, I know that company. Yeah. Yeah. I used to work before we started this company. My wife and I, I used to work for a company called Cogan. It's a church and construction company. Yeah. And I was on their management team for the last couple of years and was responsible for quite a bit of construction volume around the United States. We did a lot of renovation work and that new construction and I did that for seven years. And then before that, I was in software and various stints and marketing and sales. But in 2010, my wife and I were led to start Myles Advisor Group, which really was a very not creative name. It just, it was our last name and we were advisors and we were a group of two. There you go. Okay. My company, if you have it, is Currie Newhoff Communications Limited because I just couldn't be more creative. Exactly. It's like, I don't know. I don't know. We'll just call it that. Okay. So Myles Advisory Group, but you're better known by Meg Bookkeeping and EA Help, right? Right. Which I think EA Help is where a lot of people would go, I've heard of EA Help, but that's only like five years old. You're kidding me. I thought it would have been around much longer. No, we've had a skyrocket of a ride. I mean, it's about our business. It's been crazy. Yeah. But Meg Bookkeeping, you do bookkeeping for churches mostly? Yeah. Not for profit. Yeah. So back in early 2011, my wife and I, we joined a partnership with Casey Graham. Yeah. We basically created Meg Bookkeeping and then eventually Casey moved on so that today we pretty much own Meg Bookkeeping, my wife and I and so through that process, we've invested heavily in churches, but mostly by managing their money on a day-to-day basis and then their payroll and now donor management and some other things that we're kind of getting into. And that's been an awesome business for us because our heart has always been working with wanting to work with the local church. I just, I personally feel like, and this is true with our virtual assistant business, EA Help, that a lot of pastors especially, what leaders do, they just get wrapped around the axle on the wrong things. Yeah. They need to get more focused on the things that God called them to do or, you know, and so one of those areas that they get distracted easily is in administration, which is why we have our virtual assistant business and then also with just bookkeeping. You know, no pastor was ever called to, you know, reconcile a bank statement, as far as I know. Yeah. As many have no idea how to do it and it's complicated. I mean, we are not a huge church, but I mean, this year we, God is going to entrust us as a church. It connects this church where I serve with about $1.8 million. Yes. My goodness. It is a lot of work to make sure that you steward that well. That's right. It is complicated. Now I don't do it. We have people who do it, but like I have to make sure it's done well and that helps me sleep at night because I mean, how would I know how to fix it if it was broken? Yeah. And look at this one too. You have great confidence knowing that your money, you're being a good steward of it. So you can stand up with confidence and know that when you ask the church for money, or you're doing new initiatives for the church, that you're being a good steward of it. So you can sleep well at night as a pastor, I think, in that process. Yeah. And they never give you a single class and seminary about like how to manage the books or any of that stuff. So that's been one area. We're going to focus in a little bit more on the whole assistance side because I think that's pretty universal and there's some interesting dynamics. Yeah. Were you one of the like, you know, were you one of the first virtual assistant people? I mean, there's Chris Ducker, who does a lot of work overseas in the Philippines, I think, is where he's headquartered out. But this seems to be exploding in the last few years. Were you guys one of the first or you're just one of the first in the church world? Or how does that work, Brian? Yeah. No, we, in 2010, we were very much the first ones out of the gate with our model of how you do a virtual assistant. Now Chris Ducker, super smart guy, but his model is more like a recruiter and that is a model that kind of gets, you know, ultimately the virtual assistant industry really sits on the fringe of the staffing industry. We orbit around. Okay. And so right now, best we can tell, there's about 180 firms globally that do this in the United States with arms. It's pretty small. It is. Like globally, 180? Yeah. Wow. And most of them are not in the United States. They're in Guatemala, Philippines, India, you know, they're not here because the labor rates are so high, but, and that is our model. So there's three, there's three ways. There's one, it's kind of the recruiter model, which is Ducker's way of doing it. There's a task-based model, which, you know, you'll hear guys like fancy hands or task rabbit. They're basically what they do to this task, but there's no relationship. In other words, I just need someone to ship out a thousand of these and you hire them for the job and your job. Yeah. And there's no, there's no connection. They're not integrated into your team. There's none of that. Our model, which is one that we've emerged and really been front to market with, is a relationship-based model. So we assign a dedicated resource to work with the leader in that process for our virtual system business. And so, we just knew that they would work one because I had used a virtual system oil company for seven years. So I knew how to do this. And I also knew tons of pastors that were completely unhappy with their current admin situation for whatever reason, and I just knew that that would work. And then, you know, about seven months in, a guy named Michael Hyatt showed up and he said, "Hey, I want to do your service," and we were going to just remain focused on churches. Yeah. And the minute he sneezed our name, I mean, our inbox filled up with sales leads. And today we work at 30 different verticals, very broad, very deep. We have multiple virtual systems working in, you know, corporations, you know, under master level agreements. We've got to just blast our business significantly. Yeah. Because I remember when Michael Hyatt, I had heard about you beforehand, but I remember when Michael Hyatt started talking about you. But I didn't realize like that was months into your existence, like you could really measure it in months. Yeah, it was seven months in, and it was, we were actually on vacation when it happened. And we were in Wyoming when it went all kind of went down. And my vacation quickly turned into a working vacation because everybody wanted to talk to us. And that really kind of became the firecracker that took off in terms of working now, you know, in healthcare and technology, and, you know, we work with high TV personalities and physicians and attorneys and authors and publishers, and, you know, it's just way bigger than church. Yeah. Yeah. And it's awesome because I think churches have a unique need from an administrative standpoint that we can fill. And today, I mean, there's just, there's very little that you really need somebody on-site form from an administrative standpoint, and the obvious one's kind of come to be in that process. But most things we do, even if you had a local need, we can hire a local runner that work with that virtual assistant to do that, whether that's dry cleaning or pet care or catering or whatever those things are. Seriously. So you can get that granular where your assistant might be, you know, I mean, Canada, my assistant might be in Vancouver, but you can get a local runner to do a task, like pick a lunch or whatever. It's just, we've taken the, we've really taken the excuse out of the virtual, and the reality is, is when you really press people, they're way more virtual than they'll, they'll even emit, you know, like, they're, they're Skypin with grandma, they're, you know, they're emailing to some server in California that's bouncing back to New York, you know, they're, they're listening to a digital voicemail, you know, everything they do is very virtual already. And then when they put that working component into it, they start saying, yeah, okay, this makes sense. Well, I have the scary thought sometimes, like, how do I do ministry without a computer? Like, I really don't know how to do ministry without a computer. And I know that's stupid because that's like a 20, 25 year old problem. Um, 25 years ago, everybody did without a computer and you just had coffee with people and you met people. But like so much of my life is online. I mean, we're having this conversation. One of our elders, when we planted our church, actually a mutual friend, David McDaniel, you know, David was one of our elders for six years and he did all of his meetings with one or two exceptions out of Atlanta and, uh, was a tremendous help to us. He'll be a guest on this podcast as well. I think later this summer, but, you know, so much as virtual and yet, you know, it still seems rather novel, at least it does to me to have an assistant who actually isn't employed at your location by your church or by your organization. Yeah, you'd be surprised really, I mean, the church world is a little bit behind just traditional business in that sense because, I mean, they're approaching us with conversations like, okay, I don't, I don't want one assistant, I want seven and I, and I have a very specific need for each of them. And you know, it's, it's just they're, they're really starting to embrace us more and more and fortunately for us, I think our, our industry is still quite in its infancy. So I believe that there's, there's a great opportunity for our organization, but I think that we've really, we've developed a great set of best practices, I think is, you know, and, and our models, even, even, uh, is unique and this is how we've kind of tackled it with client management and account management and so forth in addition to having a virtual assistant. So walk me through a couple of things that would arguably be better by having a virtual assistant as opposed to, you know, just somebody higher and you pay a salary and they come to work every day or work out of their own home every day. Yeah. How did, how is that better? Just just walk because I do, I do think you're right. You know, the church is probably behind, we're usually five to 20 years behind everything anyway. So culturally, um, uh, so, so walk us through this, like just help me understand where the benefits. Yeah. You know, um, I know one practical way, I, I sometimes have people that have mixed feelings on this with me and that's okay. Um, but candidly, I've seen a lot of pastors have had affairs and, um, if you could put 800 mile, it must be crazily disproportionate. Yeah. Cause the ones I know about, right? So there's the ones that I don't know, but, and I can say this because I mean, I work with so many churches and I have so many lead pastors as friends, you know, I can say this with a sincere heart. I mean, when you, when you can put 800 miles between an assistant and the lead pastor, that's a pretty good way to mitigate some concerns that an elderboard may have. That's a boundary. That's a guardrail. Right. You're going to have to really work to have an affair with that person. Yeah. I mean, you can have it, you can still, you know, you know, it still could occur, you know, from a, from a technology standpoint, but, um, it is something that we've got phone calls occasionally for from, you know, concerned elderboard saying, Hey, we need to, um, end a relationship between a pastor and an assistant and we'd like to try your model. So let me get, we, we hadn't planned to talk about that. Do you know why that is? It's like, I've always wondered, why do so many pastors run off with their assistants? Um, is it, is it just the close relationship? The like, what is that? Yeah. I think, I mean, when an assistant is working really well with the leader, it's very good. It's a good rhythm. It's like a working partner, you know, you're, you're communicating well, you're executing, you're getting stuff done, you're working hard on stuff. And I think that there's just this natural attraction that happens in that process. And you can, if you're not careful, you can, you know, overstep that boundary and, you know, you're, you got a lot of things in common, right? You're talking about the same things. You got a lot to talk about and there's, you know, and then, and then you've also got some pastors that maybe, um, you know, they like to test the boundaries a little bit, you know, and, um, they're baited in a direction that maybe they shouldn't go and they take advantage of that. You know, and they know, you know, and I, I see a lot of pastors that, you know, they've got quite the following and that goes to their head a little bit and then they start to tease that out in other ways as well. And so I think, you know, there, there's that component to it as well. I really believe though, um, this doesn't cure it, you know, yeah, you'll find someone else. If it's not going to be your assistant, it'll just, if you're, if you're inclined to go down that path anyway, but unfortunately, yeah, because I mean, sometimes you'll spend more time with your assistant. I have an assistant. She's amazing. But I'll, I'll often spend more time with her than I will at home. Yeah. Just because, you know, it's eight hours a day or whatever, if you're in the office and you have to have guardrails. Fortunately. She's now happily married. I mean, she was single and now she's married. I'm very happily married and, you know, that hasn't been an issue for us, but you have to be on your guard for sure. Yeah. And I'm, I'm really interested in seeing marriages survive, you know, and, uh, especially ones around the pastor. So all of them. I mean, it's a, it can be a career limiting move for a pastor to be caught up in something like that. You know, yeah. I mean, you're, you're a whole world comes crashing down. Yeah. It really, really does. And, you know, worst your, your relationship with Christ, your family, your kids, I mean, all of that. And, and that should be good incentive. I mean, in addition to doing the right thing, but yeah, totally, I, I get that, like you're right. You know, I always think an affair only looks good to the two people involved in this. Exactly. All right. As a, those are the only people who are cheering. Nobody else. Your kids are not cheering. Your wife is not cheering. Which isn't cheering. Leaders aren't cheering. The people who follow you aren't cheering you. The only two people in the world who think it's a good idea, which probably means it's not a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So that, that, yeah. Okay. That's, that's a good thing. But, and you know, that was one of the questions I had. Many leaders seem to struggle with their assistance. Not that way, uh, sexually, but I mean, I know a lot of leader. I mean, that is true, but there's a lot of leaders who just go through assistance. Like boom, boom, boom. I've seen that happen with well-known leaders and not very well-known leaders and to find a good fit is really difficult. I know that's been a challenge for me over the years too. I currently have had my current assistant, her name's Sarah. She is, I know a lot of you have connected with her. You're like, oh, we like you, but we love Sarah. She's amazing. She really is, but like it is hard to get that fit. So do you see that pattern in the church where just a lot of the time it just doesn't work out in an employment relationship? I see that a lot, just a leadership period, whether it's a church role or not, you know, um, sure. Honestly, a lot of that is the common denominator and that is the, the leader. You know, the, the leader is the problem, not the assistant and I'll, yeah, I'm always the problem. That's what I've learned. Yeah. You know, and until you really recognize that this person is not meant to be a slave or a secretary, but actually a, a work partner to you that really is an extension of who you are, you have to really kind of change your mind in terms of what the admin role is to you. That's a lot of leaders don't do that. And so they, they continue to lord over that assistant and micromanage them and really sting it delegation, whereas a good leader will kind of get out the way of that and empower that person to, to really be an extension of who they are as a leader. When they do that, they start to realize that while I burn through, um, some really great assistance because I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's right. It's not about, you know, them serving you. It's about trying to figure out how to accomplish a common mission together. Yeah. Right. And they have a role and you have a role and yeah, their job to an extent is to help you do your role better, but you have to help them do their role too. And, and I think you're right when leaders aren't clear and I spend a lot of years not being clear. What does an assistant do? I don't even know what I do. So how, how can I, how can I help somebody else, you know, figure out what I do. So do you guys help with that? Do you help leaders find clarity around that? How does that work? Yeah. We, we quickly realized in this business that you just can't match up a great assistant with a leader and then hope for the best, especially if you want a long term client. So we've embedded in what we call relationship managers that are assigned to work with the EA or that virtual assistant and the client in that process. And it's a significant investment in our business where we're taking the long view that we're, we have to educate as we go. And by doing that, though, we, we share best practices for the things we know actually work in a, in a virtual relationship. So give me an example of some of those. What, what actually works in a virtual relationship? Well, as a student, they're going to sound obvious, but they're not, they're not necessarily intuitive to the leader. One is, you know, if you delegate, then that also comes with trust and, you know, I've heard Andy Stanley say at a bunch, you know, you've got to basically fill a gap of trust. And in a virtual world, there's big gaps. There's virtual. And so, you know, you email something out and say, I need this done instead of like lording over them every 30 minutes. Where's this at? Where's that? You need to basically set the expectation and then trust. You know, you need the coaching guide and, you know, set right expectations, but that big component is just trusting. And when you talk to a leader in business world about trust, it's, it's new news to them. Yeah. Yeah. Common sense is not that common. Yeah. And trust is not high. I mean, trust is weird in the church world. I think we often mistake grace for truth, you know, it's just like, we have this funky thing where we pretend it's okay, but it's not okay in the church world. But in business, it's just not okay, right? And so you're out there. Yeah. It's very limited, you know, and some of that's good. I mean, because I get it, you know, they're pressed for results and they need to execute, you know. Okay. So trust is one name, a couple of others, because this is going to be, I hope this is, well, it's already is, but this, this, I think can be helpful to everybody who's struggling with like, how do I get an assistant or how does this work out? So trust is huge delegation and being clear. Yeah. Delegation too. It's not just delegating tasks. I always say, and I, I try and do this really well. And I think my assistant would page, it would, would agree with this. I try and delegate results. Oh, you know, that's interesting because I don't. I think that she's a great person and all of our assistants are really amazing people. And I think that if you give them the result and you say, this is what I need, and this is, you know, I'm here to help you, but ultimately I'm not going to be around when you need to fill in the blank, you know, and if you have a question, I may not, may not be accessible. So if I tell them the result, then they can get there, it may be a little bit different than how I would have done it, but the result is, is achieved in that process. So I do a lot more in terms of delegating results than I do tasks. Boy, that, you know, that's really helpful. You just like, I could have gotten three years of my life back if I knew that phrase a while ago. I, you know, I talk about process versus outcome and so on, but you're right. You just want to delegate the result, like, you know, you do it ethically, do it fairly, but at the end of the day, this is where we need to be by Friday or next year or in two months and just get us there, whatever you need to do to get us there. You know, that's, that's fair and ethical, just do it. And I think that's what leaders care about, but we try to manage the process. Exactly. Right. And that's why we become micromanager. And I know why that is. I, I think it's out in four and a half years. The reason why leaders, good leaders end up being kind of task mongers is because the problems that they're trying to solve, that they're, that they have to solve, that their paycheck demands of them are generally problems that are three, six, nine months long. So if they can knock off something like book a trip somewhere or, you know, knock out something on a project that's a task, they'd feel a sense of completion, because otherwise they won't feel bad for a long time. Well, you're right. You know, that, and I know this about myself, counselor, so let me figure this out years ago. That's why I like to cut my grass. It's like it's long. Now it's cut. I go to church and it's like, I don't know what's going on. I don't, you know, clearly over time you see, wow, we have a lot more people than we used to, or, you know, there's baptisms or something, but it's so organic, it's so hard to measure. And a lot of us in leadership were results driven, right? So it's like, I just want to see this done. Yeah. And so that, I think that's what a lot of the reason why if you look at the nature of why good leaders end up becoming micromanagers is they just, they'd like to feel that sense of completion. And by micromanaging, they get that they would never admit that, but that's what's really going on. Yeah. That's good self-awareness. Anything else? Super helpful. Yeah. I think the other biggie for me is just early on in a relationship, and I think this is true, whether they're onside or not, is you got to just over-communicate. You know, you just, you have to, you have to break their threshold of communication. And that puts a lot of responsibility on the leader. You kind of get to a place where you, you know, you over-communicate enough and your assistant goes, okay, yeah, yeah, I got it now. And you need that because if you don't, then they're left wondering and the result side is important too, because when you say, okay, here's the result we're looking for. What you're doing is you're actually informing the why behind something. Right. And so they may fill in that blank with the why as long as they know the why, they know how to take care of that. And so if you, and when they start to kind of communicate with you, you should demand that of them as well as like, look, for a season of time, let's just over-communicate. It's going to be weird, and I'm going to be a little bit too thorough, but just forgive me as we're getting up and running, but then eventually we're going to click and it'll just, we'll be, you know, type an acronym to each other before too long. Yeah, you know, that, I went through that process with a number of staff, but particularly with my assistant where I'm like, look, you cannot over-communicate, you just can't. And if you're over-communicating, I'll tell you, like I'll let you know, like, whoa, stop. And we never hit that threshold. But now we have a system where she understands how I think, I understand how she thinks, she understands what results we're driving for. But like, I find, do you find with a lot of leaders, like with me, so much is intuitive, I can't articulate it, and so then it doesn't work out the way I want, but like, I haven't articulated it, and then I just get frustrated. And so a lot of that communication is designed to really make sure, okay, yeah, we are, you know, it's like planning a vacation, we're going to go to New York. Okay, do you mean state or city? Right. Right. Because if you're going to New York State and I'm going to New York City, we're going to have some conflict somewhere down the road. And I just assume that everybody knows what I mean, which is a terrible mistake to make as a leader. And I think that, but that's oftentimes what happens is because they're Grand Poobah, you know, they, they, they can make those assumptions because they can. And, you know, I think that that's the other big thing that we really coach our new clients on, our leaders is, you know, hey, look, you know, you need to be a leader worth following, which means that you can't ask that person to do something that you wouldn't do yourself. So, you know, if, if, if you expect like a two second turnaround on everything, then you need to be able to do that with your assistant as well, because, you know, you're going to gain respect if you can do that. And I, and your assistant's going to work that much harder for you because that's the expectation, you know, and it, and it's just oftentimes though, there's a, there's a massive standard placed on an assistant and there's not one at all placed on the leader because hey, I'm the leader or on the client. Right. There's no reports any, anybody and there's no rules and I make the rules and yeah, that's a mistake. Really. You should, you should never let your team out hustle you. You should never like, you should be willing to put in what you expect out from others. I agree. Yeah. And so I, we have to sometimes remind leaders that and we're very intentional in our sales process. I'm, I'm really, I'm thrilled with my sales team because we've given them permission to say no to prospects that want to be our clients. I was just going to ask you, do you fire leaders? We do. We get clients, I guess, to fire them by not having them become clients to begin with. Yeah. So we're very picky about the clients we bring on and that's worked really well for us because we've been slow to grow. And I mean, we've grown really fast, but we had a lot more train wrecks if we were. You could have been two X or three X. Yeah, I think so. But I mean, we could also add two extra three X train wrecks to, you know, so we've, we've kept the staff wear and tear down by protecting the front end of our business and saying no to certain prospects that we just know are going to be me monsters. So me monsters. That's so true. So you try to weed those people out. What makes an assistant great? What, what makes an assistant great at what he or she does? Yeah. That's a great question. I, one of the things that I've come to learn is very important. Is that a good virtual assistant can anticipate the needs of the leader and get out ahead of them. And it's one thing to have, you know, assistant that kind of gets things done and it's reactionary, but it's, it's like cooking with gas when you get a virtual assistant that's just way out ahead of you proactively, you know, hey, I saw this. I've already taken care of it. I just want to give you a heads up. Hey, that is, you know, there's a conflict on your calendar two weeks from now. What do you want to do? You know, do you want to reschedule that person? What's, you know, I think that we should do it this way. Yeah, I realized, you know, I checked in on your flight. The delay is going to cause you to miss your other flight. I've already taken care of it. You know, here's the new, here's the information and it's in a text message when you land. You know, there's. Yeah. Yeah. You know, just anticipating needs is a massively wonderful skill to develop. If you really want to be a great virtual assistant, that is very true. And I have an assistant who has become fantastic at that. I tell her all the time, I say, Sarah, your job is to read my mind. I don't even know what's on my mind, but like, and she's great at it. And that, that is a tremendous skill set when you know, oh, there's no surprises. Like, I don't like to get surprised. My life is complicated enough and, and it's tough to juggle. You reach a certain point where it's just, you know, your schedule is complicated. She's gotten to the point. I'm bragging on her here. So nobody tried to hire her, but anyway, but, but she's gotten to the point where she will, we always start our weekly by looking over my calendar. And she tells me how I'll feel. She'll say, okay, two weeks from now, you're going to be really stressed. Yeah. Here's why you're going to be really stressed. You got all these meetings, because I don't, I'm not a big fan of meetings. And she's like, okay, but then there's hope coming three weeks from now, you know, and then you'll like it a lot better. And she books everything and she sets that up. And she understands the rhythms that I need to be able to, you know, be effective at what I do. Right. Which that's great. That is a really good. I didn't have it overnight. Yeah. Oh no, that took years to get there. And you know, some of it is you do have rhythms as a leader that are, that are legitimate. And then there's the me monster. There's the selfish person who's like, I don't ever want to go to meetings. Well, listen, if you want to do the job you're supposed to do, you have to go to meetings. But let's manage that as best as we possibly can. And let's get you in the right meetings at the right time. And, you know, let's, let's make sure you have the things you need to do to succeed. But yeah, a good assistant understands that. And it took us, yeah, a couple of years to get there. Yeah. And I think too, you know, the other biggie for me is just emotional intelligence, you know, the, I know it's a fancy buzzword these days, but it really is a wonderful thing when you can have somebody that can see some very system of things that a leader will see and deal with and just be able to absorb that. It's just such a wonderful thing, especially because all of our virtual assistants, they have the ability to work both with that leader from a professional standpoint, but in their personal life as well, you know, we don't, we don't put up a big firewall between the two. And so for me, I mean, my assistant sees it all. I mean, everything, I don't, I have one person. I don't compartmentalize my life. I got one calendar and it's got everything on it and I've got one email and it's got everything on it. And so she sees the good, the bad, the ugly in that process. But she absorbs that stuff very, very well. And I know that some of the best compliments we've ever received around that area of sensitivity, like, wow, you know, she really takes care of some stuff that's ridiculously sensitive. And I really appreciate that about my assistant. That's a great assistant. That really is. So now, I know in church world, there are people, I can just imagine this conversation who are going, well, at my church, that would be a, you know, conflict of interest or in my organization. Like if you're running a privately held business, yeah, you do what you want, right? But in a church, I know there are people who would say, well, picking up your dry cleaning is out of bounds. Yeah. Like I still pick up my own dry cleaning, you know, when I get it done and for the most part, you know, on the other hand, Sarah will often go shopping and bring me stuff from meeting that I need, you know, if I need tea or coffee or something like that to host or entertain. Is there a line there? Or do you find really healthy relationships? It's just like, I want to help the leader succeed or how does that work? I think it's old thinking to basically put up the firewall between professional and private with the exception of large organizations that have to deal with things like that, you know, there's policies in place to protect sexual harassment or trends in a certain direction that's not good or gender bias or whatnot, for our business, at least, you know, and from a virtual standpoint, we really don't have to worry about that because, you know, they're taking care of stuff from their desk, maybe two time zones away, you know, but I just, I simply believe this. I mean, I'm a leader when I go home, you know, and I can't split the two apart. You know, I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm a friend, I'm a brother, I'm a son, you know, I'm a mentor, I happen to be a CEO of three companies, you know, and all of that stuff has got to fit into one calendar. And so, you know, so, and going back to the past example page, you know, she sent me an email, I think it was Monday morning, like, "Hey, don't forget Mother's Day coming up. What do you want to do?" And I said, I stuck an email and said, "Hey, thank you, I want to totally screw that up." You know, she has all my credit cards, I mean, she's got the keys to the kingdom, you know, she could do you in if she wanted it, sorry, but it's that recognition I could have spent another 45 minutes trying to figure out what to do, or I could just say, "Here, do this." And she took care of it for me in that process and don't miss this. That enabled me to have 45 minutes of productivity on the things that I know I should be doing to generate the result that's expected to me as a CEO of this company. Yes. And that's where I think it's old thinking then to just say, "Well, no, that leader needs to take care of that on their own." You know. Right. Well, the other thing that can help too, more and more my wife and I, Sarah books my social calendar now. It's like, "Hey, we want to have so and so over for dinner because my schedule's complicated enough that I don't know when I'm free and when I'm not." Yeah. And we've done the double overlap where I booked something on my own and then she had booked me for something work related and, you know, the calendar synced and it's like, "Oh, we got a conflict." And often I'll just copy my wife on a lot of that stuff too. So she's totally in the loop and a way we go or we need to pick dates or speaking engagements or whatever. And so it just all works better that way. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. So we see a lot of leaders that give up the ghost pretty easy on calendar management, you know, because it's an area where they can, they just, they know they stink at it and there's some of this more detail that can take care of it for them. The one that's a little bit harder to give a ghost up on is email management. You know, I probably get 100 to 150 emails a day, but I probably only reply to maybe 20. Wow. You know, my assistant takes care of that because I taught her how to communicate in my own way and she'll take things and run with it on her behalf, she'll take them and run with them on my behalf. I have a folder with her name on it in my inbox. I just throw it in there and I just know that's taken care of. She has a question. She asked me about it, you know, and that's a lot harder thing to give up or leader because they think that they're the only one that can communicate so that at the risk of not being responsive, they'll, they'll have a backlog of emails that they need to communicate on. Yeah. You're on my frontier. Yeah. That's what I'm struggling with. I went to a private public inbox thing a couple of years ago and even now my private inbox is hard to man. Yeah. Some days. Yeah. It's like not need new strategy there. Yeah. And don't, don't miss this too. I really believe this, you know, that you communicate all the wrong things when you don't respond. I agree. You know, it, they are left to fill in the blank with whatever it is that they're waiting on you for in that process. And so I, what we get compliments all the time about how responsive our company is and as I've set that up as a premium, we want to be very good at communication as a company and I have to set the tone with it. I have to be a good example in that process. So we're, you know, it's not too terribly long before you get a response from you. And you know, and if I'm on vacation, then I've, I've got that covered too. I've got my own ways to kind of mitigate that too in the process. Yeah. Do you have like a rule, just take curiosity, is it a 24 hour response rule, 48 hour response or I don't, or is it just, um, I don't put that on myself. I just know that I, I want to respond quick. You know, sometimes I don't want to, I don't want to have a clock on me for something I really need to chew on, you know, in that process and I don't want that stress on my assistant as well. Yeah. I just, just generally we need to respond quick and we need to, if it's a minimum thank you email or whatever it might be, it's just, it's important. I think the kind of have that, that mindset. Anything else that makes for great assistant. Yeah. You know, um, they need to have a little bit of a, especially virtual assistants, they need to have a bit of a personality, you know, they need to kind of, they need to have some virtual swagger or lack of better saying it. They got, and what I mean by that is they need to have an inquisitive mind, a problem solver. They need that they, they like the challenge of solving a problem. Critical thinking is a massively important thing in virtual assistant business because sometimes you're just handed something that is half baked and they need to figure it out and see it through to completion. So an inquisitive mind, a critical, critical thinking mind. I mean, those are the ones that we love to find in our resume stack, in our business because, and we, we test for that by the way, we're, we are insane with how we test our virtual assistants. Uh, but. Is that like patented or can you, cause hiring is a big deal, right? Whether you're hiring or not, like is that available for public consumption or that's like a private. Yeah. That's so, that is the secret sauce. Ah, there you go. There you go. Now we've got. So one day someone will break into the vault. Some awesome ways to that are really obvious when I would say them, but, uh, we asked them off. No, it's okay. No, I respect that. They're fun because some people don't clear our first gate of entry because they missed the obvious. Yeah. And, and candidly, that's, I mean, we, we, right now we're somewhere between, I think we get about 600 resumes a month right now. Wow. And so only a handful of those get through to testing and then, you know, basically onto our bench to wait for a client that we match in the process. We have to constantly have a conveyor belt of, you know, ready to go virtual assistants that we feel like can be matched really well with a client with unique needs. I mean, one day I may have a lead pastor that needs a virtual assistant for 15 hours a week. And the next day I need a, uh, you know, a fortune 500 CEO that, you know, needs a five hour week virtual assistant that manages second home. Wow. So there's, there's a lot of variability in that. So we have to have a lot of vetted virtual assistants ready to rock. Man. That's, that's great. Yeah. Sometimes I think, you know, to that point, to your point, the assistant has to be smarter than the leader. Yeah. At least in certain areas, you have to be able to outthink, think ahead and out strategize the leader to, to see the pitfalls and obviously the leader is going to bring some, some value to the table at some level, but it's probably not in the areas where the assistant does. Well, and to that point too, you know, Carrie, I would say this is, um, when you find an assistant like that, watch your productivity and your effectiveness of a leader, like go three, four fold, you know, it's just because you, you start to see them as your work partner. You know, they represent you, they're an extension of who you are. And you know, and candidly, they can do it quicker and faster than you likely as a leader in that process. So I mean, just, you shine when you've got a great virtual assistant to work with. Part of that I think too, and we're speaking to a broader audience, but I mean, in church world, which is what I know, I don't think a lot of church leaders really understand where they bring the most value to the table. There is a jack of all trades mentality in church world, particularly in small church. So I am still growing out of, and I mean, five years ago, we spent hours and meetings asking this question, where do I bring value to the table? And of course, the typical thing is well, nothing, you know, or whatever, but, but you do there. And we realize that my greatest addition to our mission is to bring great content to keep the staff healthy, cast mission and vision, like cast vision and to raise resources. And if I focus on those four things, connect, this does better than when I get distracted. And I might think I'm really good at like creatives, not that good at it. You know, I might think I'm really good at, well, that shouldn't be our artwork design. I'm terrible at that, but you know, I get input into certain things, but that is, that is not easy to figure out. Do you think that that helps clarify the relationship when the assistant knows what his or her role is and then the leader knows what his or her role is? Oh, for sure. I mean, yeah, I know we've worked in the law of churches to say like 500 in attendance, and that lead pastor is just, you know, he's preaching on Sundays and he's also a chief bottle washer. He's doing everything, you know, in the process. And so they don't have a luxury of starting to prioritize where the best, you know, but when you see a church, they start getting up close to 1,000, 1,200 and 1,300 in attendance. They can start to develop staff and kind of breaking through these glass ceilings of attendance and what that translates to in revenue so they can afford more staff and what not. That's a great conversation that we see them kind of go through at that point is, okay, let's refocus what I should do as a lead pastor in this church. And it's awesome to see that. But I think that has to translate to a really simple, in our business or in our company, we call them key result areas or KRA's. It's kind of like a job description, but really the statement starts like this, you're winning in your role when it looks like this. And so we just, so there's no question as to if you're winning and you're just killing it. That's what it looks like. And so if you give that to your virtual assistant and if, and if like a leader, you know, for example, you, if you know that these are the things that are winning when I'm doing these things, then you can stay right in that and you're not distracted and instead what happens, you start to empower others in the areas that you're not good at or you shouldn't be in, you know, process and that's what you know, it's, it's so true. A lot of people, everybody goes to work wanting to win. And so very few people feel like they actually do. So that's more secret sauce. That's really good. It would be good to clarify that's, that's, that's a public sauce. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. Good. Well, if you have a, if you have something public, we'll, we'll link to it in the show. Yeah. So is that like in a document form or a book form? We could certainly send a template, you know, that we use for our KRA's. I could, I'd be happy to share like a template with you that we use in our company. Great. You know what? We will put that in the show. Cool. Yeah. That's fantastic. That's super valuable. That makes total sense. But I think that's where a lot of churches fall down. I think that specifically what you were saying about the church of 500, where you're, you know, the leader, the preacher and also the chief bottle washer, I think that's why a lot of those churches will never be a church of a thousand. They just cannot, the, the leaders cannot break through that, that glass ceiling and you sort of have to behave like a church of a thousand before you're a thousand. Now if you have 50 people, that's a different story, you know, don't behave like a leader of a thousand people. You don't have a thousand people. Yeah. Sometimes you have to jump a stage to get there. How is technology, we're coming into the homestretch here, Brian, but how has technology changed the game? What are some best practices you've seen in, in the digital world for leaders? Well, I would have this business if technology had evolved, you know, 10 years ago this business could not have existed. You know, there's so many cool apps today. They're out there and just platforms in general that in a technical platforms that enable us to do what we do. I mean, oh, I have a, I have a head count of over, well over, close to 340 now, 340 folks, all here in the United States, all over the United States, but my, my headquarters is here in Atlanta, but we still have an office. We still all work from home. And so we're, you know, things like Google apps, I mean, that, that has literally created amazing productivity for businesses and have virtual capacity, you know, the backbone of that is insane and powers our business on the back end, you know, and I know Google's really happy to hear that. And it scares the idea that a server could go down at Google and, you know, all of us lose our lives, right? Yeah. But, but I, you know, it's, it's been a wonderful thing for us specifically in our business. You know, lately, um, you know, I'm really, I'm totally digging, um, one or list. Oh, yeah. Me too. I just, I, I just, I'm nerd enough on that one lately. We use Zoom for all of our web conferencing to, uh, and it's mostly because we need a lot of faces on a screen at one time and you can get up to 50 on there. Wow. And so we're, it's like a, it's like a, um, a Brady bunch on steroids. You know, you know, everybody's just, I'm switching to Zoom with some guys that coach. Yeah. That'll, that'll be good. And I love it. I mean, it's, it's worked really well for our company. And, you know, just the things that probably a lot of folks are already aware of, you know, we use base camp to manage projects, we decided that rather than having a bunch of, um, disparate systems that we barely know, we all agree on the platforms internally that we're going to use. And so we're, you know, and we just, whether, whether they're perfect or not, there's no such thing as a perfect piece of software. Yeah. So we just agree to work it and make it. Right. You're going to use base camp. You're going to use Google apps. You're going to use, uh, wonder list and zoom. And so those are sort of your, any others that are kind of like core to what you do. Because there are a million. I mean, there's a million apps out there. Yeah. I mean, we, we do a lot of content, um, in our business and then we, we just have a lot of things we get to manage internally. So we use Dropbox, you know, for that. And then, I mean, it's really, uh, I, I have, I have some really funny friends that like to say, well, hey, I think Siri's going to put you out of business one day. And I just laugh because I know it's not true. Really? Yeah. Oh yeah. Because, you know, oh, wow, if you could tell Siri to, you know, to, to do the things that my assistant does, then you will be the wealthiest person on the planet. And I just, Siri can't even spell the name of my wife. Yeah. Speak into it. So, so, but so I just know that while technology is great, it's the, it's the great person behind it that actually leverages the application for the benefit of others and, and, uh, you know, I, it's really, you just, I think a lot of organizations make the mistake of like letting people just try certain things out and, you know, you know, and that's fine. But I, we just kind of say, look, we're going to use this system and we're going to wear it out. And it's going to, it's not perfect, but it's what we use. Yeah. And then what people do is they, you know, they take a big deep breath and they go, okay. And that's fine. And then they're over it, you know, that's funny. This whole podcast is managed through base camp and drop box and I'm like, oh, not base camp. I used that before, but it was like the executive producers call. And now I love it. Like we wrote a whole book through base camp, got that whole project launched and it can be super helpful. Um, what are one or two things like if you're, if you're a leader who, who is working with an assistant right now or an assistant working with a leader, what are one or two things you think that they could start with that they're like, we got a lot to grow in here. Yeah. So we've, we've got to make some improvements where, where's a good place to start with that? Well, you know, one that's overlooked often, um, by church leaders, um, not so much in business role, but by church leaders is that, um, their virtual system can easily be doing sermon prep, you know, out there researching, uh, getting, you know, basically adding oomph to, you know, the background and the research for sermon prep or a series that they may be doing in that process. And that's, that's one that, uh, lead pastors have been surprised to see a virtual assistant actually do for. Yeah. You just shocked me. You just shocked me. Wow. So it's, you know, it's, it just works. Wow. So it works as we work with some very, um, highly esteemed universities where we work with professors and, you know, high-end professors that have virtual assistants that go hunt down stuff that's insanely detailed, you know, to the molecular level. So I know for fact that, you know, our, our assistants can easily do this for lead pastors in the process. Oh man. Uh, that's good. That's a new category for me. Yeah. Wow. So, you know, another one too. I still feel like is very doable, um, unless you're just a control freak is you can give up the ghost on your email, you know, there's, there is a way for you to respond to only the things that you can respond to and give up all the other stuff so that you write responsive as a leader. And, um, that's, you know, we're seeing a greater adoption of our clients because we, we preach it to them. They hear it from us and we coach them in that direction and so they, they give it up. But it's not necessarily the first thing that they do, you know, calendar management's the obvious one. Um, you know, there's a lot of things like my assistant, she'll hunt down, um, you know, project status updates, you know, give me an update on this. Go talk to my team and go, you know, or go talk to our team and get this information or manage projects herself, you know, thorough, deep project things that she's looking into or hey, we need that. We need to get that last number for our dashboards that we're, we know what our numbers ended for the month, you know, so that there's, there's a, there's a bird dog component to this that she's actually easier to get that information than when I ask for it in some instances because she's asking for advice. That's true. Isn't that true? Well, that's good to know too. And the other thing that I think is encouraging because I mean, there are some churches that a budget for this, but I mean, you'll work on five hours a week, right? Yeah. It's like, if all you need is five hours a week, let's start there. So if you're in a small church context, you know, it can be expensive for putting in tens of thousands dollars a year to hire a part-time employee, whereas maybe all you really need is five really structured hours a week. So it could be a starting point for somebody as well. Our heart is always shared with you earlier is to, was to work with the local church. So our pricing for churches and Christian nonprofits is just less than if I'm working with a large organization or a for-profit and we, we've done it on purpose. Because we, you know, I am sensitive to tight budgets, you know, I was a startup once and I, you know, I totally respect that. And, but I also think that when you finally do the math and you understand employment burden cost that a person's more than their wage and they add that up, they're going to quickly realize how inexpensive our solution really is. And there's a reason why rich people buy airplanes in a fractional format. You know, it's no different in this instance, you can fractionalize your work and it can be a great caliber person. And here's one of the things that I never thought could happen in our business day one, but now I know factually, we replace people that are working onsite in an admin capacity, our project management capacity that had been working 30, 35 hours a week. We replace them with a 15-hour week virtual assistant. Yeah, that is crazy, isn't it? Yeah. But it's true. It's so is. I mean, because there's no water cooler, there's no long lunch, there's no like chatting at the desk. There's unnecessary meetings, I mean, there's surf in the web. I mean, when our assistants sit down the work, they want to get back to what they need to do elsewhere, too. So they want to focus and get it done and it just, it blows my mind, but it really is the productivity just through the roof with our company. It's good to know. Well, Brian, thank you. People are going to want to be able to find you online. Where's the easiest place to do that? I got a few places, Twitter is a great place to go at Brian Miles. Also I have a blog on my own where I attempt to talk about leadership and other things like that. It's Brian Miles.me. Okay. And then, of course, our virtual assistant business, which is where I'd love for you to go more than me. ProcessesEAHelp.com and then our bookkeeping business that we mentioned earlier is magbookkeeping.com. Great. We will link to all of that in the show notes. And Brian, this has been tremendously helpful for I think a lot of leaders, a lot of assistants and a lot of organizations generally. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I'm so sincerely grateful for this opportunity. I love seeing what you're doing and how you're helping leaders in church world. I mean, I just think it's cool. So I appreciate the opportunity. Brian, thank you so much. Thank you. Well, that was a great interview with Brian and I really enjoyed getting to know Brian. I hope you did as well and he's got some resources that are free. He's got an e-book that I would love for you and he would love for you to have as a complimentary copy. It's called nine reasons to rethink your approach to staffing. And then he's also got a really helpful infographic. The infographic is called know your employee burden costs and it's actually great for like executive pastors, finance people, chair boards, that sort of thing, just to actually think through the actual cost of a payroll. So that's available in the show notes and you can find the show notes at karaenohoff.com/episode45. Hey, and if you haven't registered for the orange tour yet, make sure you do that. Just go to orangetour.org and you can register today. Great place to bring your team and I'll see you at a lot of those stops this fall on the orange tour and then next week we are back with Gina McLean and she is going to talk all about why being the kids ministry director might be the most important position on your team. Now she didn't say that. I said it and I've heard it from a growing number of senior leaders and no senior leaders we often tend to be like, oh, kids men, we'll just hire someone and you know, then we don't think about it again. I think you're going to be super challenged by Gina's conversation next week. She is a super bright leader. She is currently at Faith Promise Church and prior to that was at lifechurch.tv with Craig Grishel and watch that ministry scale from a handful of people to like thousands over multiple locations. She is so smart and we're going to talk all about that. So make sure you don't miss it and the easiest way not to miss it is to subscribe. Just hit the subscribe button. It's free and you can do that on iTunes, on Stitcher and on TuneInRadio and why don't you do that right now because the next Tuesday, the next episode and all the others that follow including the amazing guests I told you about at the beginning will be in your inbox for free every Tuesday without you having to do a thing. So anyway, thanks so much and we'll see you next Tuesday. I hope this helped you lead like never before. You've been listening to the Carry Newhof Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. [Music] (gentle music)