Jaime Jay, Cultivating a Legendary Team Culture – InnovaBuzz 335

Jaime Jay, Botttleneck Virtual Assistants

In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Jaime Jay who is the managing director and founder of Bottleneck Virtual Assistants. The organization offers professional growth opportunities for ambitious leaders by creating an efficient and systematic approach to identify, hire, and cultivate team members who focus on specific roles and responsibilities. Jaime also hosts the Culture Eats Strategy Podcast and he is a prolific Live Videocaster, with several episodes of his videocasts each week.

In our discussion, Jaime and I talked about:

• Building a culture of empowerment in your organisation
• How to learn the biggest pain in your own market place
• The importance of documenting your processes.

David Shriner-Cahn in episode 276 introduced us to Jaime.

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Show Notes from this episode with Jaime Jay of Bottleneck Virtual Assistants

Key points and takeaways from this episode include:

• Do something as if it is the last time you are ever going to do it by documenting it. Do a screen record and document every single step of the process.
• You can set up your team quickly and get them up to speed with a system in place.
• Making yourself replaceable is the ultimate goal.
• If you’re doing something more than one time, you need a workflow.
• Workflows and processes are living and breathing entities within your business. You have to continue to update them, manage them, identify different friction points, and tweak them as you grow.
• The better you have your systems set up and the more training you provide early on, the more likely that your people would know if they’re doing the right thing.
• Education is a big deal.
• Social interactions and empowerment are important aspects of a legendary culture. 
• Empower your employees by having them lead your meetings or conversations and allowing them to make their own decisions. 
• You can empower your employees to make their decisions using the following questions as their guide.
  • Is it good for the company?
  • Is it good for the staff?
  • Is it good for the client?
• If your staff is not happy, there is no way that you could expect them to help your customers when they are in need or even do a good job at a high professional level that you want it to be.
• Highlight your people. Do virtual parties. Things like these are the epitome of a good and strong culture from a diverse group. Having that level of trust, authority, and connection on a person to person basis is a huge compliment to having a positive workplace even if you are thousands and thousands of miles away from one another.
• Bottleneck is not a transaction-based assistant. Bottleneck is an intimate and relationship-based assistant.
• One assistant could not be everything to everyone. It’s impossible for one person to do everything and maintain a high level of integrity that you want for your brand.
• Having a Dedicated Distant Assistant is having only one person who reports to you and nobody else. 
• All of Bottleneck’s dedicated distant assistants are trained in project management. They are able to delegate tasks that they are not very familiar with, to Bottleneck’s internal team of experts, and manage the whole process. When that project is completed, it goes back to your personal assistant to act as quality control, who checks everything and maintains the brand integrity that you value so highly. It is only then that your personal assistant will present the completed task to you for your approval.
• Create really good content and have fun.
• One of the most expensive things is mis-employment. If you’re not spending the time educating yourself on how to hire somebody effectively, you are going to drop the ball. Start doing some research and learn about this whole world of what a distributive workforce may be able to do for you.
• Data is king. Data is worth more than anything.

The Buzz – Our Innovation Round

Here are Jaime’s answers to the questions of our innovation round. Listen to the conversation to get the full scoop.

1. #1 thing to be more innovative – If you have an idea, test it out first. Ask around your colleagues and early adopters. Find out if you can get a couple of sales going, and if you can, then build it out.
2. Best thing for new ideas – Surveys. Surveys give ideas because you’re listening to pain points. If you listen long enough, it’s going to give you answers on how to best move forward with innovation.
3. Favourite tool for innovation – Hubspot and Basecamp.
4. Keep project/client on track – Set expectations and follow up on those expectations. Always have the next step. Always have a call to action at the end of every single conversation or interaction. 
5. Differentiate – Listen to what the market is telling you and be able to deliver upon their biggest pain point.

To Be a Leader

Even if you’re not looking to hire right now, document the process that you do day in and day out. This is super important if you ever do want to sell or decide to grow. You’ll never know, so start now and start small. You’ll be amazed at how much quicker you can transition either to sell your business with systems in place or hire somebody more effectively with a reduced learning curve.

Reach Out

You can reach out and thank Jaime through their website. 

Suggested Guest

Jaime suggested we have a conversation with Neil Sahota, author of Own the AI Revolution. So Neil, keep an eye on your inbox for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz podcast, courtesy of Jaime Jay.

Links

• Website – Bottleneck Virtual Assistants
• Podcast – Culture Eats Strategy
• Twitter – @BottleneckDA
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Instagram

Cool Things About Jaime

• He’s committed to “The Ripple Effect” of giving.
• He is also the Founder of the 3DayMBA, an event for small business owners.
• He’s an avid hockey player.

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