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Mastering Delegation: Building Systems That Scale with Jamie Jay · Better Together

• Shawn Sundsvold: Hey everyone, welcome back to Better Together, the podcast that shares the stories, the lessons and practical advice from founders and leaders that can help you improve your business. I'm your host, Sean Sunsvold, along with my partner in business and in life, Kelly Sunsvold. Today we're joined by Jamie Jay, founder of Bottleneck Distant Assistance. Jamie has spent over two decades helping business owners build remote teams and more importantly, helping them figure out how to actually delegate. which is something most, if not all of us, were never ever taught. His story isn't just about business growth though. After losing everything during the 2008 crisis, Jamie had to rebuild from the ground up. That experience shaped how he approaches business today, focusing on creating companies that are resilient, scalable, and not completely dependent on the owner. Now through his work, he helps entrepreneurs step out of the day to day, build stronger teams and create businesses that don't rely on them for every decision. So Jamie, thanks for being here. Welcome to the show. Jaime Jay: Hey, Sean and Kelly, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be on and share a little bit about my story. Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome. Well, we're excited to hear it. know, we're recording it's taco Tuesday and Cinco de Mayo today. So, you know, hopefully you're going to get a chance to take on some of that ⁓ tasting food today. ⁓ let's do, let's start. ⁓ have and Cinco de Mayo. So every, you know, every Mexican restaurant today should be full of, full of people, full of people. So. Kelly Sundsvold: Yes. Jaime Jay: ⁓ yeah, can't wait. The planets have aligned. It's Taco Tuesday and Cinco de Mayo. Kelly Sundsvold: Yes. ⁓ Jaime Jay: Absolutely. Shawn Sundsvold: Well, let's start with this, right? Let's talk through, you know, your current business, Bottleneck Distance Assistance. For people who are hearing about your business for the first time, what is it that you do and how are you helping businesses? Jaime Jay: Well, ⁓ and one thing that I that's really helped me to is switching to a dynamic microphone. And that's good, too, because it won't pick up my AC. If my wife's in the background, you won't hear her. But the condenser microphones are the ones that that, you ⁓ with guitars and Kelly Sundsvold: so nice. Shawn Sundsvold: They pick up everything. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, I should have had, I know, should have had Sean buy it. I bought this microphone, so... Shawn Sundsvold: Former sound engineer, right here. Yeah, so. Jaime Jay: ⁓ good deal. Well I digress, I'm sorry. Shawn Sundsvold: You're good. So we can just pick up. So tell us about bottleneck digital assistance. Jaime Jay: Yeah. So, was actually born because I was, not only ⁓ self but described by ⁓ my friends as the bottleneck to, to my business and was having a hard time growing it because every single thing went through me. And so was part of a mastermind group at the time and I've been using, assistance. ⁓ we call them distant assistance. we've been. sourcing them for over two decades now from the Philippines and I've just never really run a business without their assistance. They're unbelievable. And the guy that was running the mastermind says, how are you getting this great help? And I said, well, yeah, you know, what are you looking for? He goes, well, I really like an executive assistant. And I said, sure, no problem. There you go. And he goes, man, you should turn this into a business. And I said, really? You mean I won't have to build websites anymore? Yeah. So I did that, turned it into a business in 2016, and then we formalized it as Bottle Necklace and Assistance in 2018. ⁓ it's been going great. ⁓ we provide dedicated, highly human beings that work any kind of a administrative support role, ⁓ such as assistants or project managers, success managers, which is really good for sales support, customer service, social media, bookkeepers are huge right now. A lot of people looking to kind of delegate their books. started that and launched it ⁓ it's just been great. We've gone through several iterations, had lots of challenges, of course. And ⁓ it wasn't for Christopher Lockhead, Kelly Sundsvold: you Jaime Jay: and category design, I think we probably would have lost our way, but I'm a big category designer. ⁓ I absolutely love it. And that's why we created our own category called delegation intelligence. And it's a framework that is built around effective delegating. So I've never seen anybody that's graduated an MBA in business or anything like that ever take a class or learn about delegation. And that's one of the biggest challenges I see today is a lot of people, they think they may know how to delegate, but They don't, there's an art to it. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: Definitely. And I'm Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, delegation can be one of the hardest things leaders have to master, right? you run out of time and you're like, well, I'm trying to scale this business, but I'm working sunup to sundown and I'm tired. And so it can really lead to burnout, which is not great for obviously the owner of the business. So when someone comes you, what's usually going on in their business other than needing to delegate things? Jaime Jay: So most likely in ⁓ pretty big phase. So they've been around for a while. They're making over seven anywhere from million to 50 million is where we really focus in on. Their biggest challenges though are, we it the founder's trap. And that is where kind of ⁓ little things start happening. But every decision still comes through them. They don't trust somebody to do it. They think, ⁓ I can do it faster myself. I'll just get it done. Or they don't want to give their credit card to somebody or they don't want to give, you know, specific information because it's their baby and the challenge, the cha and a lot of them have systems and processes that they use every single day, but they don't realize that that's weighing them down. And it starts to be, you know, it's a bunch of little problems in the beginning, but the more they keep going, the more that founders trap. is that hole that they're going to be finding themselves falling into. I would say it's just chaos. And if somebody leaves their organization, they're like, oh my gosh, what do I do? That's happened before quite a bit. You know, we just lost this person. I need to hire somebody really quick. Whoa, hold down. You know, so they have a lack of systems and processes in place. And I think they're just, they're just overwhelmed and it's just getting to be too much for them. I think that's, that's probably the core. Shawn Sundsvold: you Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Jaime Jay: of when somebody's ready for us. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome. And let's talk on subject of delegation just a little bit, right? Because I think... for I can delegate versus what is it that I keep. Jaime Jay: Yeah, love this and we have man we dove into this. This is so delegation ⁓ a really way of figuring stuff out because it gets in your head is just doing brain dump. That's the easiest thing I can tell anybody is just sit down. If it's it's on Saturday, tell your family, your kids, whomever. ⁓ Hey, I need an I need two hours. I just want to block this down or Hey, I'm going to go. And the reason I say this beforehand is because there's a lot of plans. You won't want to say, Hey, I can't do that right now. I'm going to do this, right? That might, I love my wife, but I want to make sure I plan correctly. Right. it's, it's really good to really schedule that and plan for it because it's that important. So what you do is grab your wine or your coffee, your tea, water, sodas, whatever it is, and just be by yourself and just brain dump, or you can bring your team in and brain dump with them. because a lot of times when you do a team brain dump, things come up you didn't realize that was a bottleneck in the first place. you write everything down that you do on a daily basis, anything that's repeatable. And what you'll find, ⁓ soon as you spend some time doing that, all of a sudden you'll start getting some more ideas and you start getting some creative juices flowing because all of that angst is now out. And everything that you do, you assign two values. Number one, Is it something I must do or can I delegate this to somebody else who can do it just as good? Or number two, does it give me energy or does it drain me of energy? And what I like to create is a subset task list that everything that drains me of energy and stuff that I can delegate. Now that list is getting smaller, right? for every single item on there, do I have anywhere written down ⁓ in a video form, anything like that? A lot of times I like to turn on my zoom and I just record on the screen as I'm I'm going through it and I say, go up here to log in, you click there, enter your username and passwords. Then you go over to the left side of the screen over here and click on this for a new client or something like that. And it's been really, really helpful because then you take care of it right away. I always say do something as if it's the last time you're ever going to do it. So imagine that task where you're kind of like, want to do this, but ⁓ got to do it. It's part of the gig, right? Shawn Sundsvold: Mm. Jaime Jay: those things if you do it one more time and you document it so you can start documenting and setting up your delegation library you start documenting one thing at a time and now three six months down the road when you have all of these things documented the way that you do them it's much easier to bring somebody else on so you can be confident in the fact that hey they're going to do it the same way that you are and most likely as they take over they're going to probably find ways to figure out how to improve it and become more efficient and proficient at whatever activity it is that they're doing because technology is always changing. They're going to find some way to make it even more efficient for you. So that, that in and of itself is, is one of the main underliers for delegation. And then there's a quick four step framework, in delegation intelligence. Number one, name the task. Number two, confirm the instructions. So Kelly, if you were to give me a task, I would say, Okay, I understand you want me to send an email to Dr. Dre and you know, whatever and put this in there. Is that correct? And you're going to say, yes. Now, all of sudden you get more confident because I just repeated back what you instructed me to do, but it also gives you an opportunity to make sure that I heard you right. And if I misunderstood something or misinterpreted something, you can clarify it right then. So what I'm going to do as a dedicated distant assistant is now I'm going to go back. I'm going to write all this down step by step down to the click of a mouse. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Jaime Jay: mouse click and then I'm going schedule a time with you for step number three for you to review and approve the workflow. And then step four, which is really important, this is where 99.9 % of people fail, create a signal. What is that signal? A signal is what action needs to occur in order for everybody involved in that particular task to know that it's been done. lot of it's done like in, you know, task management software and things like that, but if you don't have a process set in place, that's why we designed Shawn Sundsvold: Hmm. Jaime Jay: the delegation intelligence category so that you can just follow the steps there and you won't miss anything. So sorry to ramble, but I just think those things right there are really, really key to getting you to that next level of becoming a functioning delegator. Kelly Sundsvold: Honestly, that was an excellent step-by-step for a business owner. So if you're listening, you know, go back, take notes, because honestly, that was a great checklist for people. I love the idea of recording. We do that with Loom, with our VAs. it's honestly, it was life-changing. And one of the things too that we did is I would take the transcript from Loom and I would put it into chat GPT and say, okay, create an SOP based on what Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: my video transcript is. I just discovered that, but I love the ideas that you just came up with. think that is so, it's gold for business owners. So let's take back just a little bit. Take us back just a little bit. What did your career look like before you started? Jaime Jay: Well, before that, I had my own agency. We did a creative web agency, and I had a real estate-based advertising agency we do marketing and brand guidelines and things like that. ⁓ then prior to that, it was Corporate America. For years, I was in Corporate America. It took me 11 years to figure out how to get out. But it was really neat. ⁓ The day left, I started my new company, and my very first client was the corporation that I worked for. a great segue and launch into my entrepreneurial entrepreneurial spirit and so it's been gosh yeah 20 22 years 22 years now that I've been on my own so it's been it's been a blast Shawn Sundsvold: So I know we touched on this in, you know, early on in the story there, but, you know, there was that moment in 2008 where you just magically got to kiss everything goodbye. Right. So walk us through kind of what happened there and what that taught you and how that led you to where you're at right now. Jaime Jay: Yeah, great question. yeah, 2008, the housing market, the crisis just, I lived in a place called Stockton, California at the time. And one in three homes were, it was the number one city for the most foreclosures. One in every three homes foreclosed. Well, what was my agency work at the time? It was real estate based. had all real estate agents and mortgage companies and you know we put out a magazine you know distributed that to 12 000 people a month and i think we had like 72 clients at this point within three months we lost all of them every single one froze they stopped advertising and i didn't know what to do i had to cancel the magazine we you know we we had we lost it all. I ended up losing my I had a little studio apartment ended up losing that and at the ripe age of 38 had to move back in with my parents. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm. Jaime Jay: ⁓ after doing everything I could I tried so hard to keep it all together I was even ⁓ I got to the point where one of my friends drove an hour and a half to give me a bag of groceries because I I had like 36 cents to my name and that cents was changed from buying a loaf of bread the day before and that 36 cents was all I had left so I was like trying to slowly eat stuff and it was brutal and I'm like I'm not giving up, not quitting." then after he delivered that package, I was like, ⁓ man, thank you so much. God bless, know, thank the Lord we had good friends and good people around us, around me at the time. And I just said, you know what? It was one of the toughest things I had to do, but I went ahead and boxed it all up. And ⁓ I hate that for people that work so hard for their life and they build something and they're not able to be in a position to sell or do anything like that. And it's a, it's a shame, especially for entrepreneurs, you know, ⁓ having You know, it's whatever we create, that's what we have, right? We don't have all the other stuff like you get working in retiring 20 years, 30 years later. And so that's one of my focuses too, is I wanna make sure that when someone's building their company, ⁓ building it with systems and processes in place so that if something like this happens, ⁓ not necessarily like. like foolproof way. I mean, your company still could falter, ⁓ know, if there's the right event that occurs and the right ⁓ is there, but at least we can minimize the risk of it, right? ⁓ And why systems and processes are so important. Not only will increase your value, your ⁓ valuation, it's also there for something for you to fall back on should you need to. And it's just, it's, I don't know, what I learned from that. I said, ⁓ never want to be in that position again, obviously, but if I am, I'm going to do everything I can in my power ⁓ prevent that from happening or at least minimize the risk. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, yeah, it's risky already to step out on your own. And, you know, we've had elements like the day I walked out of my full time job, we had lost like two of our clients and I was like, what am I doing? my gosh. And, you know, you get confident and you think I can do this, ⁓ you and then I was like, okay, that's okay. We got Sean's job and a month later, Sean lost his job. I was like, wait, I accident on my own. like, you know, like it just, you know, it just does a number on your mental health and your mindset. And, you know, I'm panicking through the whole thing, you know, white knuckle, but we're like, you know what? We can do this. And it's, it's hard, you know, especially when, ⁓ know, like you shared, which thank you for sharing that, like the cash runs out and then, you you rely on your family or your friends to, you know, bring you some groceries or have a place to stay. How did those experiences really shape the way that you approach business today? Jaime Jay: So, and so you do know, I've been homeless three times in my life. I was homeless once as a kid when my dad lost his job. We lived in a 1979 Brown suburban, Chevy suburban for ⁓ quite a ⁓ I had get a job at McDonald's when I 16 so that we could food. And of course, ⁓ got a job at so we get the food from McDonald's. And then, I was able to save up enough money to where we could get a hotel twice a week. So instead of staying in the truck all week, we, you know, two times a week, I made enough money because you don't make much McDonald's, especially back in 1986. There was, it was not much. think my checks were like 130, 140 bucks or something like that. so ⁓ those experiences that make me go, man, I never want to do that. When I got out of the army, I found myself. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Jaime Jay: I came home, my wife at the time said, asked for a divorce the day I got back. And she talked me out of getting out of the army to spend more time with him. So here I am another time when I'm low on funds, getting out of the army, $386, $386 I think it was. And so I'm walking on the 91 freeway with my duffel bag and my rucksack and I'm out there, you know, stopped at ironically McDonald's again, bugging, begging for money. Someone someone bought me two cheeseburgers. and, ⁓ yeah, I just took a little bite of those. So that's one thing as, you know, we say prayers a lot before we eat, but every time I eat, I'm like, wow, I think, thank the Lord, because that was brutal. I hated that. I, it's so uncomfortable. ⁓ I like sales period. ⁓ And I am out there, you know, begging for food from people. So what that done for me now is it's just given me ⁓ a real, ⁓ real life's lesson on how valuable we have. We make our time that anything that we do. So many people take this stuff for granted. So many people take, you know, their business for granted and they don't even really think about it. You know, if something happens, they can call family, right? I didn't have that. My brother passed away in 2005. My mom has now passed away. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Jaime Jay: My stepdad, the guy that got us in trouble, went to jail. He passed away. My real dad is still alive today, years old. God bless him. But I have that. Like my wife, she has an amazing family. And ⁓ it's so neat see that because ⁓ we didn't that of close-knit family growing up or anything like that. And I think a lot of people don't understand that, it could be really, really hard for those people that are kind of alone. And I take any ⁓ day granted. Anything that I do, I don't take for granted. ⁓ And that's I'm so motivated to ⁓ design this delegation intelligence, and pass that along. You'll never see a trademark on that. I don't want a trademark. I want people to adopt it. I want them to use it. I want them to build a system. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Jaime Jay: so that they can stay confident in knowing that, hey, they're going to build an amazing life. They're going to build an amazing family and potentially maybe even be able to gift what it is that they've built and continue it on down the road and give it to family or sell it off for security. It's just, it's a, it's a big motivator for me. So you a question there and I know I ⁓ went on the, ⁓ on on the, ⁓ the there. ⁓ But just, it's, it's a big, huge, massive thing to me. Shawn Sundsvold: we as a couple have gone through some similar things right you know when ⁓ you know I I ⁓ was briefly before we got the show talking some of the real estate stuff we do you know like but ⁓ there a moment where you that all disappeared for us, you know, for five years, six years, where that money just wasn't there. You know, we just kept paying into it to keep it going. You know, when ⁓ back surgery happened and we weren't sure if I was even gonna survive through it, right? And ⁓ I can remember the day. I can remember everything that happened that day, you know? And I mean, there's just those moments that they just change you forever, right? And so I appreciate you sharing all of those. business owners, think, especially even in their business too, know, we a lot of things for granted in business sometimes. So ⁓ what it that, you know, ⁓ when ⁓ are with all these different business owners, what is it that you think that they underestimate when they're trying to grow and to grow their business and to make these changes? ⁓ You what are they underestimating when they're trying to do that? Jaime Jay: I think they're underestimating. I don't even, I don't know if it's underestimating. Well, they're, they're maybe underestimating all the work that needs to be accomplished for sure. Even if they write it out. you guys know this, right? ⁓ and Sean, you've launched something. It's gone out there and you said, ⁓ crap. We forgot to do that. Or, my gosh, I didn't know that was going to happen. Right? Like ⁓ that. you have to factor in the unknown. That's always going to, going to be there. But I think maybe, maybe Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Jaime Jay: Even a little bit further, one of the things that they don't realize is what I was talking about that founders trap. tiny things happen and you just kind of brush over it. Okay, don't worry about it. I'll get it done. Let me do it. I'll do it faster. Right? That is the worst mindset you can possibly have as a business leader. ⁓ the reason why is because now everything is funneling through you, everything, ⁓ the decisions they have to come through you. Why? Why can't, why don't you have the confidence to delegate this to something else. Or at the very least, start building out your delegation library. Now I call it a library like like you, you know, we take videos and you start putting them in there, how to do this, how to do this. And by the way, another helpful 10th hint, we never put more than one task in one video. So because sometimes people will put all these tasks and the videos an hour long. And now whoever's gonna watch that video has got to go fish through it for the one thing that they were looking for on how to do it. So it's really important to name the tasks, right? Like our name, task, confirm the task, review and approve the task and create the signal. It's really important to name those tasks, create a library, do folders in your Google drive. doesn't, you know, it's free unless you have the Google business, but be really, really clear on that. The reason, the reason why, and I'll go back, but the reason I bring that up why it's so important is that when's the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. Shawn Sundsvold: Yesterday, yeah. Jaime Jay: Yeah, when's the second best time to plant a tree today, right? It's the same thing with systems and processes. A lot of people don't know that they have to document all this stuff. And I say have to because you have to. not a you should it's you have to do this. If if caveat, if you want to grow a business, right, it has to be documented in a way that is easily accessible that everybody can understand. ⁓ And think ⁓ it's one thing that most founders. When I say most, I'm like 95 % most founders miss. And that's going to come back to bite them in the rear when they start getting real busy or when they're the Michael Jordan of the office leaves the team, right? Now what are we going to do to score? You know, so got to think about that stuff. And, and a lot of people don't like doing it. They say it's like nails on a chalkboard. E-Myth, right? E-Myth Revisited, a baker. ⁓ do you get someone ⁓ to like ⁓ passion of baking? Let them start a baking business. Then they're going to hate baking, right? Unless everything's documented. So again, I sound like a broken record, but I really want to push that home because if you're going to grow your business and you're not documented, your processes, ⁓ man, you're going to find out the hard way that, you it's going to be really tough to grow. You'll keep repeating yourself. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: For sure. what's something that you believe now about business that you maybe didn't believe earlier in your career? Like I'm thinking you came from corporate America. You you've had a lot of ups and downs. Like what's something, ⁓ maybe it's a mindset, but something that you believe about business that you didn't believe earlier. Jaime Jay: Well, believe this or not, when I was a little kid, I remember I was probably 14 or 15. We were coming home from a, I used to race motorcycles, motocross, and we were coming home from a race and we were going through downtown Irvine. I'll never forget this. And I looked up at the big sky rises and I saw one light on and it must've been 10 or 11 at night. It was a late night. And it was, and I said, man. I wish I could have a corner off. That's what I want to do when I get older. I real busy. My stepdad was a big controller ⁓ a big construction company. I thought, man, ⁓ tie. I look at all those guys and the cars and all that stuff. Corp America taught me ⁓ how I ⁓ don't that. ⁓ And careful what you wish for because you just get it. Now I live... in a cabin that my wife and I built on 70 acres in the beautiful Ozark mountains. And got Starlink here so I can talk to you guys. I can still get all of my work done. And second I'm done with the work in here, I go out on the land and do the work. And I have a lot of fun and passion with that. So I basically designed a life that I love and I spend it with people that I love most. My beautiful wife is just amazing. And ⁓ I just I that's probably what happened is ⁓ I thought in my head I had a picture of what success look like and it was so far from what me as a person thought success was after I experienced it. So I kind of had to reimagine, go back to the drawing board and go, what the heck am I doing? Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a. I know I'm going through my own kind of coaching process right now and starting to figure that out of like, you know, here's the vision I had when I was 30, you know, or 35 and now I'm 47 and it starts and it looks a lot different than it did 10, 12 years ago. Right. So it's starting to figure out, what do I really want my life to look like the next five years, 10 years, 20 years, you know, that, that, and it has to be based on what's important to me. And I think it takes a while to sort of get to that point. where you start being able to filter out what's important to you versus what society tells you should be important. Jaime Jay: percent. Be real, right? be real. ⁓ Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah. So for, you know, for people who are listening right now and business owners, entrepreneurs, especially, you know, maybe they feel stuck or overwhelmed in their business. And I'm sure you've come across people that are in that place with what you do. what do you tell them? How do you help them get started on getting past that? Jaime Jay: Brain dumps, that's my go-to. another way, we do have a free tool. So if it's okay, I'll shamelessly give it a little plug. ⁓ It's called delegation IQ blueprint. And what's really neat about it is it incorporates AI and all that stuff, but it helps you identify your bottlenecks. You take about... Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Jaime Jay: maybe three, five minutes, answer seven questions. You can talk into it, which is better, or you can type. The reason I like when you talk into it is because now your vernacular comes out and that it's very data rich and data, you know, I forget what you call it. There's a term for it, data enrichment. And you answer questions. ⁓ And what it's to do is it's going to build a report for you and it's going to say, okay, this is who you are so that you know, we understand who you are. These are what your challenges are. These are how you overcome the challenges. These are the role or roles that you can hire to support challenges so that ⁓ can delegate the work. And if you do this, this, this, this, and this in six months, this is what your business is going to look like. So it does a really good job of extracting bottlenecks. And then it will, on a side note, will take another report, send that to sales. And it'll say, hey, this is how you need to talk to this person because this is their pain points and this is what they're really having challenges with. So focus heavily there. And then it sends one off to the recruitment team and says, this is the kind of personality this person is. This is the kind of personnel we need to match them with. So that has overall increased our, um, our length of stay here from five months, 670 % from five months to 39 months on average. our average client stays with us for 39 months. And we don't have any contracts. It's month to month subscription based. then we've reduced our turnover rate from 38.6 down to 8.7. So massive drop in turnover since we started implementing this tool. ⁓ basically we just built this tool around all the questions people always asked us. That's what we did. We just took all those questions and threw them all into this AI pot, you know, with ⁓ or five different pieces of ⁓ software from AI software and It really turned it into something nice. So use that. That's a really good tool. When first come to us or they're looking around. ⁓ And nice part about it is they don't need to work with bottleneck. This is going to give them some really good direction. Maybe it's too soon for them. Maybe they don't realize how much work it is when you start growing that team. You know, that, ⁓ my gosh, things are going to be so much easier. Is it? It's actually the first 60 days and it's been, there's so many studies out there. But the first, it used to be 90 days, we kind of shrank it down to 60 days now. But the first 60 days, if get ready, because you're going to be double working. And that's the other mistake that I think founders, CEOs, managers make when they make a hire is, yep, here's the manual, read the manual. Here's your training. Do that. We'll do training for this week. And then, you know, we're done. But I can only do it for like 15, 20 minutes a day. That's a major red flag for us. So we find all of this stuff out in advance. And if someone says that to us, we'll either explore an opportunity to work with them based on, hey, this is the life lessons. We've I've been doing this over two decades, hired over 1000 people, I know what I'm talking about on this stuff. And if you go down that road, and you don't want to commit to it, or you don't have enough trust in the beginning to start delegating stuff and giving them access to everything. It's, it's really going to come to bite you in the rear. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, yeah, that's, ⁓ that's thank you for sharing that and sharing the tool and I'm imagining it's probably on your website, right? Yeah. Do you want to share that real quick? Yeah. Nice. Jaime Jay: It is. Yes. Yes. just go right there. Right there on the top. Yeah. Bottleneck.online. ⁓ should see it right there. We'll say check out the delegation roadmap or delegation IQ blueprint. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, that's awesome. So what's been one of the most rewarding moments in your journey so far? Jaime Jay: Well, besides being on your podcast. Kelly Sundsvold: so sweet. Jaime Jay: Well, you know, I think it's just the little things. There's been no big huge moment. It's been a bunch of small wins, small challenges. You know, was Military I'm a veteran. And I went to Military CreatorCon, which is ⁓ a ⁓ new of for military veterans and veteran-connected creators. and got to meet so many amazing people, had so many great stories. I was fortunate enough to speak and I did a fireside chat with ⁓ Lockhand as a keynote and we talked about category design. We did a whole day category design intensive and that stuff just fires me up ⁓ we got a standing ovation. I couldn't believe it. ⁓ it's just, see, like that's a little thing that is, it's a really, it's a lot of fun ⁓ there and meeting new people and seeing old friends. my gosh. ⁓ I remember when we did our first work back 12 years ago, you know, that's kind of neat seeing that come kind of full circle. I wouldn't say there's any one one thing right now, but just experiencing life with my wife, my daughter, her our grandchildren. It's just the whole thing. And that's why, quite frankly, I don't believe in work-life balance. I call it life balance because if in one of other things I was talking about this with Lockhead, Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Jaime Jay: when we were there, we're like, he's, he's like, yeah, ⁓ you, Jamie. And I'm like, love you, Chris, you know, he goes, man, not enough business people say that. And he goes, if you don't love what you do, why are you doing it? So if you're going to be working with people, why not work with people that you love? And I quite frankly, I love that. I think it's fantastic. ⁓ you know, I'm, I'm a hugger, right? I don't mind that at all. And I want, if I get the chance to work somebody, I re like, if I reach out to them and call them, I want them to know I'm really reaching out and calling them. I'm not just doing it to like tick off a to-do list. Like I really care. And I think that's something that is kind of, it's just kind of culminated from all the little wins and what I've lost and the challenges that I've experienced and all those obstacles that we've overcome and the bones and the bruises and the knockouts and all that kind of stuff. just, it's that old saying, if you fall down, just get back up. ⁓ Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Jaime Jay: get back up. You don't need to do much. Just get up. Right? And that alone keeps you going. And that's kind of, I think, I think that's maybe an answer to your question, Kelly. I'm sorry, but think that's it. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Appreciate that. I, you know, all those things we go through, think it teaches us how resilient we can be. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, thank you. Shawn Sundsvold: right, like, you know, if I made it through this challenge, you know, or that challenge that I just went through, the next challenge will be that much easier, you know, because I made it through whatever was the challenge before, you know, it's just that kind of that, you know, that checklist of, okay, I made it through that, I can make it through this, you know, I made it through that other thing, now I can make it through this, you know, it just teaches you how strong you can be. Jaime Jay: Yeah, you know, something of it too is. And there's the 80 20 rules 75 25 people think about that way. But one of the things I think of is it might even be 90 10 because I really love what we're doing. But 80 20 is 80 % of the time you're doing something you absolutely love. Right. Maybe that's being on a podcast. Maybe it's speaking at an event. Maybe it's you know, getting written up in Forbes, right? Like those are some really cool things and exciting that come from a lot of hard work. But 20 % of the time, you still have to do something. Right. You can't delegate Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Jaime Jay: of existence. ⁓ there's things that I have to do. I have to hop on sales calls or I have to look the books every once in while with the book. Like, ⁓ I get disease. ⁓ I that the mud trudging. That's the 20%. But the reason I'm so motivated to go in and do those things where I have to really amp myself up for that, because I know I'm going to reward myself for the 80 % or the 90 % that I really love doing. So I always have something to look forward to. ⁓ And think that's good way that keeps me Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah. Jaime Jay: rocking and rolling. Shawn Sundsvold: ⁓ Jamie, this has been a fantastic conversation. Really enjoyed it. How can people find you if they want to learn more about you, your business, maybe ⁓ how they need help getting some VA's and delegating awesome work? How can they get in touch with you? Jaime Jay: Yep. Well, you can't miss me if you walk by me. I'm 236 pounds and I usually wear a cowboy hat or a hat and a big beard. So you can find me if you're bumping into me walking around. But if you're not and you're on the interwebs, you can go to bottleneck.online. I launched a new substack and I give away a lot of this cool information. I was going to do the paid and then I said, no, I didn't do that. So it's all free. And I wrote, you know, just things about it's called the founders trap and it's a lot of fun So you can go look at sub stack if you're if you're not on there yet highly encourage you to do so It's a it's a pretty fun platform. And then Yeah, the delegation IQ blueprints good anywhere on social media If you like what I talked about today, can buy my book. It's called quit repeating yourself I think it's like 99 cents or something like that. And you buy the book anywhere you go buy books from and yeah I'd love to chat with you and to anybody and answer any questions they have. I'm also really good at just talking and helping you out of problems if you get into problems that. It's no pressure here at all. If you do end up wanting to hire an assistant, my gosh, we'd love to support you. my goal is let's see what we can do to clear the chaos and ⁓ or escape the founder's Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome. Awesome. Well, Jamie, thanks so much for your time. Like I said, really enjoyed the conversation. I think there's a lot of good insights here that a lot of business owners can take away and learn from and apply right away. So appreciate that and your time and look forward to talking to you again in the future. Jaime Jay: Yeah, it's always better together. Shawn Sundsvold: Absolutely. Kelly Sundsvold: Thank you so much. right.