I can’t believe we’re at Episode 40 but here we are! I had the pleasure of interviewing Jim Kelly, who is Executive Assistant to Michael Hyatt, the CEO and Founder of Michael Hyatt & Company.

Jim Kelly Michael Hyatt Leader Assistant Podcast

Jim has some great tips on calendar management, including my favorite tactic – the ideal week. He also shares tips on managing email, contributing to your executive’s success, and utilizing Michael Hyatt’s five levels of delegation.

Enjoy our conversation and happy 40th episode!

P.S. – Join the new Leader Assistant Slack Community to connect with hundreds of assistants from around the world!

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
LEADERSHIP QUOTE

The value of a life is measured by how much of it was given away.

– Andy Stanley

CONNECT WITH JIM AND THE MICHAEL HYATT TEAM
Jim Kelly Leader Assistant Podcast Michael Hyatt EA
About Jim Kelly

Jim Kelly is the Executive Assistant to Michael Hyatt, the CEO and Founder of Michael Hyatt & Company. Michael Hyatt & Company is dedicated to helping high achievers win at work and succeed at life. Jim’s main responsibilities consist of handling Michael’s calendar, email, and travel. In his spare time, Jim enjoys to read, run, and swim. He has been married to his wife Suzanne for 5 years and together they have a baby boy named Greyson.

SUBSCRIBE

Subscribe to The Leader Assistant Podcast so you don’t miss new episodes!

You can find the show on Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle Podcasts, Pandora, and Stitcher.

Join my email list here if you want to get an email when a new episode goes live.

JOIN THE COMMUNITY

Join the Leader Assistant Slack Community here, or the Facebook Group here for bonus content and to network with other assistants who are committed to becoming leaders!

LEAVE A REVIEW

If you’re enjoying the podcast, please take 2 minutes to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts here. Each review helps me stay motivated to keep the show going!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Jim Kelly 0:00
Hi, I’m Jim Kelly. Today’s leadership quote comes from Andy Stanley who says the value of a life is measured by how much of that was given away.

Podcast Intro 0:12
The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident game changing leader assistant.

Jeremy Burrows 0:25
40, we made it to Episode 40 I’m so excited. It’s been a wild and busy ride, but a fun one. Check out the show notes at leaderassistant.com/40. And be sure to join our thriving Slack community at Slack.leaderassistant.com Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in to The Leader Assistant Podcast. It’s your host, Jeremy Burrows. And today I’m super excited to talk with Jim Kelly. Jim is the executive assistant to Michael Hyatt. Jim, how are we doing?

Jim Kelly 0:59
Doing great, Jeremy, thanks for having me on today. I appreciate it.

Jeremy Burrows 1:02
What part of the world are you in?

Jim Kelly 1:05
For Nashville, Tennessee. So we moved here about three years ago, my wife and I. So yeah, we’re enjoying during the South. I’m originally from New York. So the South is a bit different than the New York.

Jeremy Burrows 1:18
Nice, nice. So what was your very first job? And what skills did you learn in that role that you still use today?

Jim Kelly 1:28
So my first job my first real job out of college, I had a few small jobs in high school and working through college, I worked at a pharmacy and worked at a golf course put my first legit job after college was working for an insurance company. And I worked as a junior sales assistants. And that pretty much meant scheduling meetings for the senior sales assistants, creating reports for them that they needed. I was pretty much their right hand guy for for anything that they needed, which is kind of what I do now as an executive assistant. So a lot of the skills that I learned in my first job, even though I didn’t really ever aspire to be an executive assistant, I learned in that first job right after college.

Jeremy Burrows 2:16
So how did you end up becoming an assistant? And kind of why did you end up doing it?

Jim Kelly 2:24
Yeah, so I became an assistant from it’s a funny story. I started following Michael Hyatt, who’s my my boss now on his executive assistant. So I started following Michaels podcast and his blog. About four years ago, my wife and I were training for a marathon at the time. And I needed a bunch of podcasts to listen to while I was training for this, this marathon. And Michaels podcast came up in my feed. I said, Well, let me check this guy out. And and I started listening to his stuff. And so wow, this guy is really just inspiring. And his leadership sounds a lot a lot like the leader that I eventually want to work for. So I started following him, I started researching his company. And I actually applied for a job within the company at the time, it was called intentional leadership. And I applied for a job within the customer service fields, because I really just wanted to jump on board the intentional leadership, Michael Hyatt and company brand, because it sounded so great. So whatever position was available, I wanted to jump on board. So I applied to this customer service job. I got pretty far in the process, but didn’t end up getting it. So I was pretty bummed about that. But I made some connections throughout the interview process. And they said, hey, if we have another position available within the next few months, we’d love to interview you again. So about six months later, I set the date on my calendar, I said I want to, I want to reach out to these people six months from now and show that I’m still interested in a position within their company. And it turned out that position that became available was Michaels executive assistant, it was Michael and Megan are co executive assistant. And I applied for the job and the skill set of an executive assistant really matched with my strengths. So like I said, I never aspired to be an executive assistant. But the skills that are required for the position really fit well with me. So that’s that’s kind of the convoluted story of how I got to where I am today.

Jeremy Burrows 4:31
Wow. So what’s what are a couple of those skills?

Jim Kelly 4:35
Yeah, so I feel like being very organized is a huge skill, the ability to fall through on tasks. We have an assessment that we use a lot called the Colby. Are you familiar put Jeremy?

Jeremy Burrows 4:50
Yeah, I haven’t done a lot with it, but I’m familiar with it.

Jim Kelly 4:53
Yeah, so we use it for our hiring process and one of those four basic categories that there are 10 thing for and one of those categories is the ability of follow through. And it’s just following through on tasks. So I feel like I’m really high on follow through, and I test really high on that particular assessment, on follow through. So Michael is very good with and a lot of CEOs are kind of similar in this way with giving me a task or having a vision for a task, but maybe not following it through to the end. But they’re kind of on to the next thing already. Or as I am really high on follow through. So I see a task through to the end. So that’s, that’s one, one vital component, I think of being a great executive assistant. And then another thing, just another component of being a rockstar EA, is is being servant hearted. And I feel like my my heart is to serve and to make other people around me better, especially Michael, in this case.

Jeremy Burrows 6:01
So when you’re being interviewed for specifically for that role, what’s something that Michael was looking for in an assistant that he saw in you, other than what you’ve already talked about?

Jim Kelly 6:13
Yeah. So I think so. So I talked about my first job out of college, which was in an insurance. My second job was with a university, actually, the university that I went to was my alma mater. And I was an admissions counselor for that, for that, from that university. And one of my roles as an admissions counselor was to book my own travel, as well as handle Lown calendar. When I was speaking, I would be speaking to usually three or four different high schools a day, I would be traveling to the northeast part of the United States. So I would need to know how long it took from one school to another. So it’s pretty intense calendar management. And that’s one of the things that Michael was looking for someone that can handle his calendar. So there’s no double bookings, he has enough time and between meetings. And I think that’s what set me apart in the interview process was I was really good at calendar management. And that position as admissions counselor helped set me up for for this position that I have now is Michael zi.

Jeremy Burrows 7:21
So what’s maybe one or two tips that you could share with assistants listening on calendar management,

Jim Kelly 7:29
I would say I love Greg McEwan essentialism book, if your leaders haven’t read it, or if your listeners haven’t read it, I would strongly encourage them to read it Greg McEwan essentialism. And one of the things that he says in that book is pretty much multiply everything. If you estimate a thing, a task to take one hour, multiply that by 1.5. So just everything and another half. So it takes an hour, if you think it’s going to take an hour, multiply that by 1.5. To say it takes 1.5 hours, just to give your yourself a little bit of buffer because as you know, Jeremy, probably everything that we think we could do and the allotted amount of time. Now we’re like, oh, man, I could have used another 15 minutes or I could have used another 20 minutes. So give yourself that margin in your in your leaders calendar. Because if you book everything up too close together, it just leads to stress, anxiety, and usually you have to end up rescheduling or rebooking. And that’s frustrating for you as the EA, it’s frustrating for your leader because then they have to move things around in their calendar or you have to move that for them, as well as the other people that you’re reaching out to that you’re needed to reschedule with. You’re just not giving them a wow experience. If you’re always rescheduling stuff. So that’s one of the things that’s the biggest thing. If you can allow yourself more margin in your calendar, it’s going to be huge.

Jeremy Burrows 9:04
Awesome. So I talked about the ideal week calendar a lot and when one of the first people that I heard talk about it was Michael Hyatt back in the day. Maybe do you have any tips or thoughts on just the ideal week concept and how you all utilize that?

Jim Kelly 9:24
Yeah, so we love ideal week, the way that Michael structures his week, he usually has all of his internal meetings on Monday and I’ll talk a little bit about ideal week as a concept and then I’ll go into Michael’s specific how he structures his week, but the ideal week is to lay out your week as if everything to be everything would work out perfectly. You know when would you have your your workout time when would you have your family time? When would you be doing your most important tasks when wouldn’t be you’d be doing your meetings throughout the day, when would you have lunch. And it’s just laying out the framework of what an ideal week would look like. So we do that. And we practice that on Michael Hyatt and company, for Michael, specifically, his Saturday and Sundays are his offstage day, or his days that he’s off, he’s not thinking about work. He’s not doing any work on Saturday and Sunday. And then Monday through Friday, he’s working Mondays are designated internal meeting days. So he has meetings with me, he has meetings with all his direct reports, he has his executive team meeting. So whenever a request comes in from our team, that says, Hey, I like to have a meeting with Michael, I know that I could be fit in on a Monday, his Fridays are for external meetings. So if a request comes in, from someone that’s outside of Michael Hyatt and company, I usually try and fit that in on Fridays. So then Tuesday through Thursday, he’s focused on his most important work. And for Michael, that’s creating content, delivering content, and then creating the vision for the company. So those are his three most important tasks. So that’s really what I try to focus him on, on the most those three tasks, because if he’s doing other things besides those three things, of creating content, delivering content, and the vision for the company, it’s not the best use of his time. So we try to structure his week that way.

Jeremy Burrows 11:34
It’s awesome. So how about email? How do you manage Michael’s email and assuming he gets a lot of email, and what’s maybe your number one tip for managing an executives inbox?

Jim Kelly 11:49
Yeah, he’s not getting as many emails, thankfully, as he used to, I believe, when he was the CEO of Thomas Nelson, he was getting probably close to 200 a day. But there are some great tools that we’ve utilized to kind of get that number down, as well as some systems that we’ve implemented. So to two hearts are two tools that we really utilize is same box. And then unroll.me. So same box and unroll.me, those two there filter systems that you can create within your email, and they filter certain emails. So if you have, for me, for example, I have Best Buy emails or Marriott Rewards emails, or send an email that for like a, an influencer, that I’m subscribed to, I could put those all in unroll.me. And then I set a frequency of when I receive this lump sum email with all of those different emails, so I’m not getting pinged. Throughout the day, becoming distracted by all these different emails on, I’m getting this one lump sum email, one time a day, and you can set your frequency depending on when you want to receive it. So that’s really helped cut down his emails. And Sanebox is kind of similar to that you set up filters, and then the emails get filtered through a certain email folder. And then we also have utilized spark. And Spark has been really great. And it’s an email system. It’s an email software that we utilize. And the best feature that I’ve found with Spark is that you could comment within emails. So instead of me messaging, Michael, back and forth, forwarding the email to Michael, then him replying to me that be replying to the person that initially sent the email. I can tag Michael, as a comment within this within the email through Sparx. System. Michael gets a pain for me. So say, so say Michael gets a podcast requests. And then I could tag Michael and say, Hey, Michael, we got this podcast request. I think it’s a really cool opportunity. But I don’t think it’s going to work for your calendar. She’s too busy right now. What do you think about declining lists? And he could comment within that thread of comments. Say, I agree, Jim, can you please decline this invitation? So then I could go back to the person and reply as myself and say, Hey, thank you so much for this opportunity. Unfortunately, he doesn’t work well for us at this time. So we don’t have to go back and forth with unnecessary emails, but we can all just do it within the thread of the comments within that while at the same time still seeing that email. Does that make sense? Yeah. Have you used spark at all?

Jeremy Burrows 14:58
You know, I haven’t used it but I Did did a little bit of research on it a year or so ago and thought it was pretty interesting, interesting concept. So yeah, definitely check it out again. Cool. So how do executive assistants contribute to an executives ability to lead, engage and inspire others?

Jim Kelly 15:23
So I would say, we talked about this, Michael Hyatt and company, this idea of the Freedom compass. And if you think about a two by two matrix, on one side, you have passionate and not passionate, and then proficient and Not Proficient. So if you can think envision in your mind a two by two matrix, if you Google the freedom compass, it will come up as well. But so your zones, there’s four zones within that matrix, and the ones that we tend to focus on our desire zone. So that’s passionate, and proficient, and then your drudgery zone, so you’re neither passionate, nor proficient. And I think the biggest role that an EA has, is helping your leader be in their desire zone, almost all the time. So for Michael, as I said before, those three things are delivering content, creating content, and vision for the company, leading our company. So my role as an executive assistant, is to get as much off of Michael’s play as possible, that is not within that desire zone. And that usually includes calendar management, expense reporting, dealing with travel, booking, travel, all of that, if there’s anything that I could take off of his plate, so he can focus on only he can focus on, I think I’m making the highest contribution to our company, as well as to Michael.

Jeremy Burrows 16:56
That’s awesome. I’ll definitely share a link to the freedom compass in the show notes, so people can check that out. What’s one tip that you might share to the executives on how to help them get more out of their assistant and really empower their assistant?

Jim Kelly 17:18
I would say the biggest thing is to if you go back to this as well, I don’t have you can google find five levels of delegation, Michael Hyatt five levels of delegation, we have a blog post article about it as well. But I think the five levels of delegation are huge. To help leaders as well as executive assistants get crystal clear on what type of project this is. So for example, level one delegation is, hey, I need this project to be done, I want you to research it, report back to me, and I’m going to make a decision on it. So That’s level one. And then gradually, it goes up to Alright, I want you to research it, come back to me with a recommendation. And then I’ll make a final decision. And then it keeps leveling up all the way, eventually you get to level five, whereas hey, I want you to run with this project, I have this vision in mind. But go with it, you don’t need to report back to me, I trust you. So those five levels of delegation are so helpful for leaders as well as executive assistants, the leaders on one hand, helps them maintain a bit of control that you’re not just saying, Okay, you have to run with this. I have to delegate this year, it gives them some baby steps along the way. And then for the executive assistant, it’s helpful, because it gives them clear direction on okay, you want me to research this and report back to you. And I’m not going to make a decision on this. So it’s just great communication between leader and executive assistant, sort of the five levels of delegation, Michael Hyatt, Google that or check the show notes. I think that’s the biggest tip that I could get for leaders and yes, together.

Jeremy Burrows 19:09
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s really helpful. Very, very practical. And then even just I’m sure, printing out those five levels and putting them on your desk or something to just kind of ingrain that in your system would be helpful.

Jim Kelly 19:22
Yeah, it is helpful. There have been times when Michael has and I don’t have them all memorized to a tee. I know them vaguely like I know. Okay, level one. Is this level five, is that level? Okay? What’s level two again, I actually have it saved on my, my screen so I can refer back to it. So when Michael does delegate something to me, I can look back and say, Okay, I know exactly what Michael is looking for in a level two, delegation.

Jeremy Burrows 19:52
Nice. So what’s it like working for a leader like Michael Hyatt who literally wrote a book on how how to effectively utilize and executive assistant.

Jim Kelly 20:03
Yeah, no, it’s a little bit intimidating. You know, when I first started with, with the company, I mean, I looked up to this guy. He’s an amazing leader, I only saw what I listened to you and saw on the podcast and from what I read about him, but and Michael is the real deal. He really matches his walk and his talk. It is, it’s awesome to see it’s inspiring to see a leader like Michael, we often talk about winning at work and succeeding at life. And Michael really does that. So well, he has a great family life with his wife, Gail, and his five daughters and nine grandchildren, he just has a great family. And then he does an amazing job at leading our company, he’s the best boss of I’ve ever worked for. So coming into that, it’s just amazing. I’m so humbled and grateful to be working with him. But it’s, it’s also a benefit. Because yeah, like you said, he wrote the book on how to work with an EA. So he has all these tips and tricks that I came into the organization. And he was teaching me as well as my counterpart, Susie Barber, who’s now our Senior Director of Operations, she was kind of my boss, initially, I serve to Michael, but Suzy was kind of my supervisor, and through Suzy, and Michael, it’s just been amazing. I feel like I’ve had a graduate school level education on business leadership, as well as being a great EA, thanks to those two particular.

Jeremy Burrows 21:43
So on the on the flip side, have you experienced any sort of interactions where people are maybe using you to try to get to Michael, kind of fairly well known in certain circles. So you know, I’ve talked about this in some of my podcast episodes where, you know, you work for somebody that maybe even if it’s a small town, and you’re working for an executive that’s well known in that small town, all the way to working for celebrity assistants often experience kind of a variety of dehumanizing interactions. You know, for example, maybe people befriend you because they want to get closer to your executive or they ask, ask how your boss is doing and not how you’re doing? And have you experienced anything like that? And have you kind of handled that?

Jim Kelly 22:39
I don’t think I have, but maybe I’m just so naive or ignorant of the fact that yes, I’m going to try to get close to me and or try to get close to Michael through me. So I haven’t experienced that, that I know of. But I have been somewhat guarded, there have been times in the back of my mind, where I’ve thought, is this, is this person being legitimate? And are they trying to get closer to Michael through me, and Susie, Susie, who I mentioned before, who was my boss, when I first entered the company, she’s been really great at that. There was one particular time where I’m thinking that maybe the person was trying to get closer and Michael through me, and I mentioned this to Susie, and she just gave me an advice. You know, you’re an adult’s, like you can make your own decisions. But just be on your guard. You know, there are certain people out there that are trying to get closer to Michael, and they will go through you to get to him. So I’ve been pretty guarded through it. But I don’t think I’ve gotten there yet. But like I said, I could be totally naive. And there could be for four or five people that I have connections with right now that are like, No, I’m trying to get closer, Michael.

Jeremy Burrows 24:03
Right. So what about maybe your biggest mistake that you’ve made as an assistant? And what did you learn from that?

Jim Kelly 24:11
So so the biggest mistake that I made was we were on a webinar, or we had a recorded webinar set to go out to our tribe. So if you’re not familiar with Michael Hyatt and company, we’re a leadership development company that puts on webinars and live events to help leaders grow their business, as well as to help them succeed and live a great life at home. So we had a webinar scheduled, it was set to be a recorded webinar, and Michael wasn’t going to be on it. And we had advertised it like that. But Michael was going to be on the recorded edition of the webinar. His face and everything because we had it recorded obviously. So we had that scheduled. And then I also had a meeting scheduled from Michael with one of the boards that he is a part of one of the committees that he’s a part of. And I just wasn’t thinking and scheduled these two at the same time. And with the Zooms system, you can’t do that. So what happened was Michael logged in to the committee meeting. And it says, there’s another meeting going on at this time with this login address. And Michael was confused. He asked me and I said, I don’t know anything about another meeting going on, you don’t have anything else scheduled. So he ended up canceling the meeting that was already going on. Turns out that was the webinar we had about, I think, probably close to 500 people on this webinar got kicked out all at once. And then somewhat, we utilize slack as our internal communication. People in our team are saying, Oh, my gosh, the webinar just shut down. Does anyone know what happens? And it turns out, we did it. I did it because I double booked us. I just wasn’t thinking that the two systems, the two meetings would conflict with each other that one would totally have to not happen to for the other ones who were so that was super embarrassing. I felt awful. We worked it out. We actually canceled the committee meeting rescheduled it. And then we’re able to jump back in on the webinar and have the recording still going. But man that was super embarrassing, so many people that are impacted. And it just for me, I take everything. You know, I have a high level of accountability and responsibility, and I want to do a good job. So when something like that happens, I just felt like I totally dropped the ball. And I let them Michael in our team. So from from there on, we changed some systems with our zoom accounts that there was only like a webinar Zoom account. And then there’s a Michael Zoom account and the two wouldn’t conflict. But Michael was super graceful he, you didn’t jump on me or anything like that. He was super understanding. But I was probably harsher on myself than I probably should have been.

Jeremy Burrows 27:23
Yeah, I’ve had. I’ve had similar things happen with Zoom before. It’s just like you forget that. Oh, yeah. You can’t have two zoom meetings at once on the same account. And yeah, I’ve had oh shoot moments where I’m like, Oh, I gotta go change the zoom on this one. Yeah, otherwise, yeah. So anyways, well, how about your How about the other side where you’ve saved the day or any crazy, you know, last second. Saving the saving moment? Stories? Yeah.

Jim Kelly 28:00
I would say the one that Michael talks about and, and I enjoy talking about the most is and some people might not do this as an executive assistant, but we don’t really separate work and, and personal life in terms of what an EA does. So I do a lot of Michael’s personal stuff as well. And one of those things that I do is book his date nights with his spouse Gail, and one years two years ago, it was her birthday. And I just went all out I planned this elaborate birthday extravaganza for for Gail. And I made Michael the hero kind of of the story. So I planned this great dinner for them. I sent Gail flowers, her favorite flowers. I got Michael a card from Publix. I brought it to him. And I said, Hey, Michael, here’s a card that I think that gal might like, write a nice message in it. So I gave him a card. We got her gifts. We got our Michael bought her new computer. So he was involved in that part. Got our new MacBook Pro. And then for like kind of a the top off of all of that was I created these date night questions for Gail and Michael to discuss at their date night or their their birthday dinner for Gail. And they’re just really deep questions reflecting on the past year. From what they said they both cried, reflecting on how great of a year it had been and some of the things that they had gone through throughout the year. And Michael messaged me the next day on Slack. And he was just wowed by the whole day because Gail was wowed. And he said Jim, you made me the hero of the day like thank you so much he went above and beyond just for Gail and for myself. So that was something that I’ll always remember, as, as just a highlight for me that I was really able to make Gail’s day as well as make Michael the hero of the story for the day.

Jeremy Burrows 30:13
That’s awesome, man. Yeah, it was fun. So let’s talk for a second about personal, you know, tasks. And it’s fun. It’s funny I do, I’ve always done both professional and personal. So I’ve been an executive assistant for 12 and a half years or so. And the whole time, I’ve had personal responsibilities as well. And so but there are a lot of assistants I found that are pretty have pretty strong opinions on, you know, keeping personal separate, and like, that’s not my job. And so I’m assuming that when you interviewed for the job, the expectations were lined out and clear that you would be doing personal tasks, right?

Jim Kelly 31:03
Correct. Yeah, it was lined out in the job description. And I was totally fine with that. Because at the same time, job description said, like, you’re going to be working close to 40 hours a week. So even though I’m dealing with Michael’s personal tasks, it’s not adding more hours to my my workload. So I was good with that. I totally, I totally get in, you probably agree, Jeremy, that, you know, you’re connected, you’re a whole person. So when I struggle at work, it probably impacts my home life with my my wife and my boy. Whereas if I’m struggling at home, sometimes it impacts work, you know, so So there are interrelated. So it’s tough to distinguish the two and really separate the two completely. But I feel like it’s, it’s more of a new school method. I know that my dad has an assistant, and they don’t they don’t combine work and personal, they keep them pretty separate. Which I feel it’s kind of a challenge, almost, because they’re interrelated so much, and I feel like it could serve Michael so much better when I know that I’m serving Gail and his daughters as well as an

Jeremy Burrows 32:24
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I just, it’s, you have one life, I even have one calendar, like a lot of people, even if they do personal assistant stuff. They’ll have two calendars, you know, a personal calendar, kids calendar, and then a work calendar. And I’m just like, No, you just need one calendar because you have one life.

Jim Kelly 32:40
Yeah, do the same thing. And it gets if you have more than one calendar is sometimes gets a little tough managing it. Not to be like which calendar was that which calendar does this fall under. So I just feel like if you have one calendar just makes it a bit easier. Now, I will say that we have changed Michael’s calendar system a little bit since I started. And it’s it’s kind of been a game changer. And I’ve really enjoyed it. But it’s not, it’s not mixing or it’s not separating work. And personal. It’s, it’s separating his meetings, and his like front stage time. So it’s time that like he has to be on or he has a place that he needs to be at. We have one calendar for that. And then we have another calendar for we call Michael Hyatt tasks. So what I’ll do is, if there’s like a meeting that Michael needs to go to, I’ll put that on his primary calendar. If there’s a task that he needs to do, I’ll put that on his task calendar. And the task calendar is a little bit more flexible. It’s, it’s less overwhelming for Michael, what was happening was I was putting everything on one calendar. And Michael was like, Oh, my gosh, I am completely booked. I have all these meetings. I have to be at these things throughout the entire day. And I was like, No, Michael, you don’t like you actually only have like to meetings today. Everything else is tasks that I put in that I want you to do during this time block. But we’re flexible with that. So that’s been really great. Because Michael can now see like, oh, like, Jim has these three hours set aside for me to prepare, but it’s a little bit more flexible. So that’s that’s one caveat that we’ve been using with counter management recently with with me and Michael, that’s, that’s been really helpful.

Jeremy Burrows 34:39
It’s interesting. Yeah. So what makes an assistant, a leader?

Jim Kelly 34:48
That’s a great question. I say, if you if you do John Maxwell’s definition of of leadership, leadership is influence. And I feel like you just had such tremendous influence as an EA, I just when I got my position with with Michael, the goal initially was, I wanted him to become a better man, a better husband better father, a better leader. And by doing that, I’m influencing him. And by doing the things that I’m able to do for him, I’m able to influence him and lead him, which trickles down to his family and the team members of Michael Hyatt and company. So it’s just an amazing responsibility that we have as executive assistants to just influence our leader who is then able to influence other people on their lives, as well as our team as a whole. So it’s a it’s a great responsibility to have. And, yeah, it’s kind of like a stewardship. So a lot of responsibility. And we’re there to manage it.

Jeremy Burrows 36:04
That’s great, man. Well, we appreciate your, your influence in Michael’s life. And then the extension of that with Michael’s influence to many leaders and executives, but also to trickle down to the assistants because he’s always been a firm believer and, you know, advocate for assistance, and empowering your assistant and really utilizing an assistant, if you really want to lead well. So appreciate the work you’re doing. And thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be on the show and share tips with my listeners, and how can we find you online and support what you’re up to?

Jim Kelly 36:45
Yeah, so thank you so much, Jeremy, for having me on the podcast, I appreciate it. Probably the best way to find me and find the work that we’re doing is just Michaelhyatt.com. And you can find out all the information about our our products there. We have a book coming out in October, called Your World Class Assistant. So if you just type in world class, yourworldclassassistant.com. You’ll find out more information about that book. But Michael hyatt.com is kind of the landing page for all things Michael Hyatt and Company.

Jeremy Burrows 37:22
Awesome, Jim. Well, thanks again. And we will talk soon enjoy Nashville.

Jim Kelly 37:27
Thank you so much, Jeremy. Appreciate it.

Jeremy Burrows 37:29
Thanks again to Jim for being on the show and sharing your story and I’m really excited to be on episode 40. So check out the show notes at leaderassistant.com/40. leaderassistant.com/40. Also be sure to check out Michael Hyatt’s book your world class assistant. I’ve got it. I’ve started reading through it and I think it’s really helpful for assistants to read even though it’s written to the executive. So thanks so much again for listening to the show. Episode 40 is now complete and I will talk to you next time.

Podcast Intro 38:19
You on Apple podcast goburrows.com

Download FREE Chapters