Latest / Expertise Made Real / From a Revolving Door of Assistants to a Well-Oiled Machine: Lisa Simone Richards on Letting Go

Transcript

From a Revolving Door of Assistants to a Well-Oiled Machine: Lisa Simone Richards on Letting Go · Expertise Made Real

• 0:00
  What if the reason you can't delegate has nothing to do with your team and everything to do with the story in your head?
• 0:07
  Welcome back to Expertise Made Real.
• 0:09
  I'm Kristen N.
• 0:10
  Spencer.
• 0:11
  Today, Lisa Simone Richards is back to talk about the thing many experts find hardest, letting go.
• 0:18
  Lisa describes herself as a control freak.
• 0:20
  Whose life motto is, if you want.
• 0:22
  Something done, you've got to do it yourself.
• 0:25
  She shares the system that finally changed that from a thorough onboarding to a one page delegation tool tool to a weekly scorecard and how these things gave her some time back every single week.
• 0:38
  Let's get into it.
• 0:40
  Welcome to Expertise Made Real.
• 0:42
  I'm your host, Kristen N.
• 0:43
  Spencer, and you're listening to the launch series for this podcast where experts from different fields describe for us the exact moment where they tangibly noticed the expertise they had already been acting on for years.
• 0:57
  Because it took something or someone outside themselves to reveal how their experience could become expertise.
• 1:04
  Plus, each guest will give you tools and tips on how you can adjust your own expertise to reflect important lessons they've learned throughout the years.
• 1:13
  The value in each and every episode of this launch series runs deep.
• 1:18
  And I can't wait for you to dive in.
• 1:20
  So let's get started.
• 1:28
  So we're going to talk about something that might be a little bit difficult for some of us.
• 1:33
  It used to be super difficult for me.
• 1:34
  And I'm here with the amazing Lisa Simone Richards yet again.
• 1:38
  I'm so excited for this.
• 1:40
  I'm just going to go ahead and dive in with the question, are you ready?
• 1:43
  Let's do it.
• 1:45
  So walk me through the last time that you had to delegate something.
• 1:48
  I know we've talked a little bit about this before that you didn't want to let go of.
• 1:53
  And what decision that, what did that decision actually look like?
• 1:57
  Step by step.
• 1:59
  Okay, so let's go back to 7 years old.
• 2:02
  My favorite movie, the Little Mermaid, Sebastian the Crab.
• 2:06
  If you want something done, you've got to do it yourself.
• 2:09
  Literally, my life motto, Like, I can't stand some people butcher stuff.
• 2:13
  Honestly, not to be mean, I appreciate the effort, but like, I'm such a control freak.
• 2:18
  Like, I see how I want something done.
• 2:19
  In my mind, I acknowledge that I am not the best communicator.
• 2:23
  Like, I just, I'm just like, why aren't people in my head?
• 2:25
  Why don't they get this?
• 2:26
  So that is on me that I have a challenge like communicating and taking it from A to B.
• 2:31
  But delegation is something that I absolutely, totally struggled with just because I have that story of no one can do it better than me.
• 2:38
  And I will also put myself on blast.
• 2:41
  In 2025 I think I went through five virtual assistants.
• 2:46
  So personally I'm not a swifty but like love for all of those that are.
• 2:51
  But I do know that one song lyric, it's me.
• 2:54
  Hi, I'm the problem.
• 2:55
  It's me.
• 2:56
  Like yeah, that, that's not the assistance.
• 2:58
  I'm the common denomina in that one.
• 3:00
  So when it came to delegating I certainly realized that I'm the problem and I had the self awareness to do something about it.
• 3:07
  So I would say something that really, really helps me.
• 3:10
  A book I would refer to is a book called Buy back your time by Dan Martel.
• 3:14
  I loved reading that.
• 3:16
  I really enjoy watching his YouTube channel and he had a lot of really good content about delegating and bringing on an assistant.
• 3:25
  So when I looked for a new assistant in fall of 2025 after reading that book, I had 30, 60, 90 day plans.
• 3:33
  I had SOPs lined up, I had loom videos and everything.
• 3:38
  So I reached out to a new agency.
• 3:40
  They connected me with someone who I just had an intuition would be the perfect fit.
• 3:44
  We're coming up on our one year anniversary now.
• 3:47
  But she shared with me in 15 years of being an assistant, I have never had an onboarding like this one.
• 3:55
  So much credit to having read that book to help me like really button things up nicely and give her a good experience and tell her everything she needed to know.
• 4:03
  So when it comes to delegating for me, I think a tool that makes any delegation project easy.
• 4:09
  And this is something you can just download off the Internet.
• 4:11
  I'm always dropping resources.
• 4:14
  There is a company called Strategic Coach.
• 4:16
  It's run by another guy named Dan.
• 4:18
  This one is Dan.
• 4:19
  So Dan Sullivan.
• 4:21
  The Dan Sullivan?
• 4:23
  Yep.
• 4:23
  He has a one page PDF and it's called an Impact filter.
• 4:27
  And this is a delegation tool where you can write what the program, what the project story is, what the desired outcome is, what's going to happen when this project is executed successfully, what the cost is if it's not
• 4:40
  executed successfully and it puts it all into a one pager for the other person so that the expectations are crystal clear.
• 4:47
  So that's something that my assistant and I have locked into doing.
• 4:50
  We've got our 30, 60, 90 day plans.
• 4:52
  We always know what we're working towards.
• 4:54
  Um, I'll use the Impact filter tool, something that we've gotten really into because we're in the age of AI now and I absolutely Love me some clot.
• 5:02
  It's so helpful in running my business and using the back end of it is that we also do a weekly scorecard.
• 5:07
  Now I'm somebody who tends to be, I think I lean more into the visionary category.
• 5:12
  Like I have an idea and I want to do something new, but I know the follow through is my weakness.
• 5:17
  So I'm so glad to have somebody who helps me with that.
• 5:19
  But we also generate a weekly scorecard because Claude knows what our 30, 60 and 90 day plans are.
• 5:25
  So I'm often, often thinking in the short term, but it will remind me, but your long term goals are to do this as well.
• 5:32
  So having I get my own scorecard and my assistant gets her own scorecard and we both, well, I'm the one generating them, but I make sure she has mine as well.
• 5:40
  So we both, on a Friday will put in how we did with the week.
• 5:44
  We'll send in our end of week scorecards, it'll generate the next week for us and then we have that chance before the week coming up to be like, okay, she's working on all things E Com.
• 5:53
  I'm working on all things bulk sales.
• 5:55
  She knows exactly what I'm on, I know exactly what she's on.
• 5:58
  And it's really cool to see that.
• 6:00
  We have a 30 minute call every morning five days a week.
• 6:03
  And one of the things Dan Martell talks about and buy back your time is when you onboard somebody new to start off with the 30 minute daily sync, he calls it.
• 6:12
  And then your goal is to get down from five days a week to three days a week and then to get down to two days a week and we're there.
• 6:18
  Now I like having the opportunity in the space in my calendar to do a touch base, but there are so many mornings where we pop a WhatsApp and like, do we need a call today?
• 6:26
  No.
• 6:26
  Okay, cool.
• 6:27
  Now, I've been gifted an extra 30 minutes in my day and so has she.
• 6:30
  So that's a practice that's worked really well.
• 6:32
  And now it's just kind of like a Monday.
• 6:34
  Hey, this is what's up for the week.
• 6:35
  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we're typically like, you need anything?
• 6:38
  Nope.
• 6:38
  You?
• 6:38
  Nope.
• 6:39
  Cool.
• 6:40
  Friday, how do we do?
• 6:41
  And it's like just this really nice, well oiled machine now.
• 6:45
  Okay.
• 6:45
  I want to challenge something that you said earlier because you said that communication maybe wasn't the best thing that you're doing, but it sounds like you're nailing it on communication.
• 6:54
  So I see where there's opportunity for Improvement like again that type A alt always moving the goalpost.
• 7:01
  Like I can see where I could go from like maybe a 90 to 100 in some places.
• 7:05
  But yeah, no, there are some areas where I will acknowledge that I'm doing well.
• 7:09
  So thank you for reflecting that to me.
• 7:12
  And like okay, so I'm a visionary and an integrator.
• 7:16
  I'm one of those weird people that I understand both and my husband is a visionary and I work with a lot of visionaries so I understand all the things that you're saying.
• 7:26
  But I know that some of our listeners might be wondering how did you figure out that that was the system that you were going to use that would be good for you to break out of your delegation less
• 7:39
  bubble that you were stuck in.
• 7:41
  What was that process like?
• 7:42
  I think it was just coming across the right resource.
• 7:45
  So I'll say something for me as I'm I forever been a learner.
• 7:49
  I love, love, love.
• 7:50
  Like I was in the self help section when I was six when it was called that and it was in the basement of the bookstore.
• 7:54
  Now it's personal development.
• 7:57
  But I mean what I, what I learning something.
• 7:58
  I go deep in it.
• 8:00
  So I read buyback your time Dan.
• 8:02
  You should be paying me for this interview.
• 8:05
  But I read the book, I love the content in there and then I watched his YouTube channel so I could go deeper on the system.
• 8:10
  So that's the kind of person I am.
• 8:11
  I'm not going to just take it surface level.
• 8:13
  I'm going to keep going all the all the way.
• 8:15
  So yeah, I think just taking is, you know, I think there's so much information out there and a lot of it's free.
• 8:21
  So before I pay for stuff, I'm taking advantage of the free information 100%.
• 8:24
  And I went down that rabbit hole and it gave me everything I need and it's working out perfectly for us.
• 8:29
  It's so great.
• 8:30
  It doesn't like it's a side hustle.
• 8:32
  Maybe it's on how to train your assistant.
• 8:33
  Well, yes.
• 8:35
  Yeah.
• 8:35
  And I do want to mention for the listeners that now hiring by Dana DeVito is also an amazing resource on like how to hire the he teaches you how to create scorecards.
• 8:45
  Like I've been using it for the last few months and it's been pretty life changing.
• 8:51
  So just another awesome resource because can we really have enough of those?
• 8:56
  I mean.
• 8:59
  Oh you know what?
• 9:00
  I don't want to be someone who productively procrastinates.
• 9:03
  So I kind of limit myself.
• 9:05
  Like I have a book On Habits on my bedside table right now.
• 9:08
  Like, just.
• 9:09
  Just not yet.
• 9:10
  Don't.
• 9:10
  Don't just add one more thing right now.
• 9:13
  That's true.
• 9:14
  I'm curious.
• 9:15
  What.
• 9:15
  Can you say what book it is?
• 9:17
  Oh, yeah.
• 9:18
  I've taken lately to perusing.
• 9:20
  Like, I love being in a bookstore.
• 9:21
  So Indigo, I mentioned in either of this episode or a previous one is our local bookstore, but my husband and I have taken to just going around the library late.
• 9:30
  So in our local library, I came across a book by Jensen Chero, who we know from you're a badass.
• 9:36
  And she has a book called badass Habits.
• 9:38
  So I'm sure it came out, like, 10 years ago, but I was like, you know what?
• 9:42
  I liked you're a badass.
• 9:43
  And I liked, you're a badass at making money.
• 9:45
  And this is a free book.
• 9:46
  So I'm gonna read Badass Habits.
• 9:48
  Why not?
• 9:48
  So that's the one I'm gonna crack into next.
• 9:50
  But I'm really trying to just do a lot of fiction right now.
• 9:53
  Like, all I read are business books and personal development, and I love them.
• 9:56
  And now I just wanted, for the next, like, few weeks, just, like, read some silly fiction.
• 10:01
  That's what I want to really enjoy.
• 10:03
  Okay, so what genre of fiction?
• 10:07
  Oh, nothing.
• 10:09
  I like Sherry Lapina.
• 10:11
  She's, like, kind of murder mystery stuff.
• 10:13
  She.
• 10:13
  I read one of her books in four hours.
• 10:16
  Like, I couldn't sleep and then I couldn't go back to bed.
• 10:19
  I just finished yesteryear.
• 10:21
  It was okay.
• 10:22
  Okay.
• 10:23
  But yeah, some sort of, like, fictiony.
• 10:26
  So, like, cozy murder mystery type or, like, is it gore?
• 10:30
  Okay, it's a silly murder mystery.
• 10:31
  And if it's gonna be murder, it can't be anything that happens in real life.
• 10:34
  Like, if it opens with, like, a car accident or something, I'm like, no, no, no.
• 10:37
  I drive regularly.
• 10:39
  Like, I'm not reading this book.
• 10:40
  Yes.
• 10:40
  Nothing that's gonna add anxiety.
• 10:42
  Absolutely.
• 10:43
  Well, Lisa, let's say that someone is listening to this, and they're like, I need to get ahold of this person, this amazing woman who knows how to delegate and has all these amazing resources.
• 10:53
  How can they get in touch with you?
• 10:55
  Oh, my gosh.
• 10:55
  Come over to my website@pearlsparkpages.com and maybe something that would resonate with you is my blog on the website.
• 11:02
  It's called the female founder Diaries.
• 11:04
  So I talk a lot about the behind the scenes of building a business and building a team and the tools that I use to grow my company.
• 11:11
  So maybe you'll find some content in there that you enjoy.
• 11:14
  I love that.
• 11:15
  Well, thanks again for being on and I'm excited you're going to be on for one more episode so I will see you in that one.
• 11:21
  And now if you liked the episode, I'm going to make an ask because I wouldn't be a sales expert if I didn't.
• 11:27
  Would you please leave a rating and review and hit subscribe.
• 11:31
  In exchange, I'm going to give you my Find your wonder work system.
• 11:36
  It's five prompts, five minutes and names the thing that you're already excellent at but don't know to call a skill.
• 11:44
  This is basically a what do you do on autopilot except I've created it as a tool.
• 11:49
  So leave your review and then go claim your Reward@bitlyExpertiseMr.
• 11:58
  That's B I T l y expertisemr.
• 12:03
  And I hope to hear you or my guest, I guess in the next episode.
• 12:09
  Thanks.