You need help…

person marking check on opened book
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“You want a map but we won’t give you one, sorry. The reason? We don’t have one! If we knew what to do, we’d tell you (but if we told you, you wouldn’t be valuable anymore).” from Graceful by Seth Godin

I had just hired an assistant. She was part-time. There was a meeting in the office, a meeting of assistants. A mastermind meeting and she could not attend so I went to the meeting to see what it was all about.

As I listened (and that’s about all I did) I heard a common complaint. For most of the hour, they complained about “the boss” and how he/she had not given them a checklist. They said they could do the job if they had a checklist to follow.

Toward the end of the meeting, after I had listened to this, I asked if I could share something and was invited to talk. I said I was grateful for being allowed to participate and I had an observation. It occurred to me that a checklist would be valuable but as an agent, I was not organized enough to create one.

That was why I needed an assistant.

We all have our strengths and being organized is usually not one of them for an agent. I have an advantage in that I was an engineer for a long time before I became an agent but it is not usually in an agent’s wheelhouse.

My assistant was the best. She filled in the weaknesses I had, gave me the “whitespace” to think and be creative. I was not forced to watch her and make sure she filled out the checklist because that was her job. In fact, she wrote down the checklist and kept the up to date.

The point? Find someone that can do the jobs you don’t do well. It has to be someone you can trust and someone that will fill in your weak spots. It ought to be someone that enjoys the details and likes to make checklists.

Do this and you will have more freedom.

Jerry