Geoff Welch and Trúc Towns - The Importance of Delegation

Geoff · 0:00

I'm Geoff Welch, and my leadership quote comes from Simon Sinek, who said, Leadership is a choice, not a rank. Trúc: My name is Trúc Towns, and today's leadership quote is from Joe DiMaggio, who said, A person always doing their best becomes a natural leader just by example.

Speaker 4 · 0:26

The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident, game-changing leader assistants.

Jeremy · 0:42

Are you a strategic senior executive assistant thinking about what's next? Whether you're ready for a promotion or loving the job you're in, NOVA Chief of Staff's certification course may be just the resource you're hungry for. With over 400 students across 20 countries and rave reviews, students graduate from NOVA's hands-on, self-paced online course with the confidence, knowledge, and power to make the move to Chief of Staff for their executive. But don't take my word for it. Visit leaderassistant.com/nova to find countless testimonials, the course syllabus, and lots of free resources to support you in your career journey. Hey friends, welcome to The Leader Assistant Podcast. It's your host, Jeremy Burrows, and this is episode 285. You can check out the show notes for this episode at leaderassistant.com/285. That's leaderassistant.com/285. Today, I'm very excited to have two special guests. My first guest is Geoff Welch. Geoff is a small business trainer, coach, guru, thought leader, all the things. We'll get into that more and more, but then I'm also excited to have his executive assistant, Trúc Towns on the show. So welcome, Geoff and Trúc.

Geoff · 2:05

Awesome. Thanks for having us.

Jeremy · 2:07

Happy to be here. Tell us where you're at, Trúc. We'll start with you. What part of the world are you in? Trúc: I am in beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah. Love it. And are you from there? Trúc: I was born and raised here, right here in Salt Lake City. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. And what's your favorite thing to do when you're not working? Trúc: My favorite thing to do when I'm not working, I am big into fitness. Trúc: I am a lifter, functional lifter, and I also am a big movie buff. Trúc: We're super in a Shrek right now, so that's been a big movie. Trúc: We've been watching all the movies here in our house. Nice. And do you have pets, kids, all the above? Trúc: All of the above. Trúc: I have a two and a half year old son, who is just so crazy and fun right now. Trúc: Great time. Trúc: And I have a four year old pit bull. Oh, nice. I'm sure they have a blast together. Yeah. All right, Geoff, where in the world are you?

Geoff · 3:10

I am in Fairbanks, Alaska, where, no lie, this morning it was snowing and now it is sunny and beautiful. Like we can't decide what we're doing here, but yeah, born and raised here a little further west of everyone else today.

Jeremy · 3:28

Okay. Awesome. And what's your favorite thing to do when you're not working?

Geoff · 3:32

Well, you can see in the video here, but I've got a drum set behind me. I love music, so whether that is playing as a drummer or listening, that's certainly a passion and also I'm a big Yankee fan. So we get the baseball games in the afternoon here because we're so far west. So usually spending my afternoons, finishing my workday with the baseball game on is a pretty great way to go.

Jeremy · 3:59

Yeah, that's awesome. Do you have pets or kids or both?

Geoff · 4:02

Yeah. My wife and I have a 17-year-old and that's a whole new world, now that she's driving and all that good stuff. Then we have a Boston Terrier, three-legged Boston Terrier, tangled with a truck and walked away, but not with all its limbs. But he is a Spitfire, he is full of energy.

Jeremy · 4:25

That's great. Well, it's great to have you both on the show and I really want to just hear a little bit about how you two got connected. So maybe Geoff, tell us a little bit about your business and in your career and what you do. And then maybe even why did you realize you needed an assistant? And how did you find Trúc? And we'll go from there.

Geoff · 4:52

Sure. So I have owned a printing company here in Fairbanks, Alaska for about 20 years. And as a result of doing that along the way, I began to get engaged with people around doing small business coaching. Helping people get unstuck, helping people figure out how to use their time well and figure out how to do the game of business and not lose their minds. Right? And so as those two things started to sort of like evolve in parallel, it became clear that I needed help. I probably should have been clear much sooner, but I definitely needed help. And so I enlisted a company that connects those two. I'm not sure if we're naming names here today or not.

Jeremy · 5:37

No, go ahead. I think I looked it up and I've had them on my podcast.

Geoff · 5:40

So yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So I became connected with a company called Belay. They had initially placed a bookkeeper with us. And I always knew in the back of my mind that like an assistant was something I was interested in and a bookkeeper was sort of the first easier step, because I knew what a bookkeeper would do. I still wasn't sure what I would have an assistant to do. But it became clear that I was just, there was too much going on in my world to keep it all straight. And I didn't want to have to do the process of locating and hiring and all that good stuff. So Belay can act as the intermediary that places somebody. And so yeah, Trúc and I got connected a little over a year ago, maybe 14, 15 months ago. And I mean, it has just been such a gift to have her support and to have her in many ways leading me as I'm learning how to delegate and how to work with somebody else. Like I think those initial months, there was a lot of her saying, well, what if we did this?

Jeremy · 6:46

Right. Right. That's awesome.

Geoff · 6:48

But yeah, no, it's been fantastic. And she's really helped me to have less of the administrative stuff on my plate, which can sometimes be a cop out for me. It's stuff that's easy for me to like, I like it. And yet it's not the best use of my time. And so she is a good person to remind me, I don't know if you should be doing that anymore.

Jeremy · 7:13

Right. Totally. Well, and as a side note, Belay Solutions is a great organization. I interviewed their co-founder and former CEO, he's no longer the CEO, but Brian Miles on this show, so episode 32, if anybody wants to check that out and learn more about them, that's a cool story. They have a great story and a great VA, virtual assistant firm going over there at Belay. So again, that's episode 32, leaderassistant.com/threetwo. So Trúc, tell us a little bit about your career and how you ended up at Belay or connected with Belay and then landing with your current role with Geoff. Trúc: Yeah. Trúc: So I have had a really long career in administration. Trúc: I was just doing actually really phenomenally as a funeral arranger, and all of a sudden I got pregnant, and my husband and I, we made the decision that it was really important to us as a family to have somebody with him full-time. Trúc: And so I took on that responsibility, and just a couple months in, I was like, you know what? Trúc: I really love working, and I really loved the career that I was in. Trúc: And so I did a really thorough search about my skills, and I went in to figure out a way that I could serve both purposes and show up for both roles in my life. Trúc: And I stumbled upon Ballet, which is a great company. Trúc: I mean, their acceptance rate is lower than Harvard's. Trúc: And if you're somebody like me, you hear something like that and you're like, yep, I'm going to apply for that. Trúc: That's where I want to go. Trúc: So I got in and Geoff is actually my second client with Ballet. Trúc: And they do such a good job of matching. Trúc: It's been just a match made in heaven for us. Trúc: And we've been doing, we've just been swimming along ever since. That's great. And how many hours did you start off with working with Geoff? And has that increased? Has it remained the same? Trúc: Yeah. Trúc: So we have stayed at 30 hours for the first year. Trúc: We'll see if we can up that as we continue to work out all of the fine details of delegation and how to get more stuff off of this plate.

Geoff · 9:50

Nice. And that part is certainly my goal because I recognize over this first year of really figuring some of this out, opportunities to take my businesses to a new level that will require more cycles from her as we go. But some of that is almost just like engaging with really a leader assistant, right, is a mechanism to find new opportunities that I wouldn't have seen for myself because I was carrying so many things on my own that now those things become obvious, like, oh, I should be working on this. I should be doing these things to grow my business. So, yeah, I think that that's on the horizon. Trúc, you should know that.

Jeremy · 10:36

There you go. Okay, so I want to ask you both a question, and I'm going to let Trúc go first because I'm partial to assistance. But what was, you know, as you started working with Geoff, what was one of the most frustrating things about working with him? Maybe it still is today, but, you know, initially getting into it. Trúc: That is such a good question, and let me just start out saying nothing about Geoff frustrating.

Geoff · 11:08

Lies. Trúc: So awesome. Trúc: He's such a great, amazing guy. Trúc: But interestingly enough, the most difficult thing to get him to fully delegate to me was calendar management. Trúc: And so we would kind of toot along for a while, and then I'd start seeing stuff pop up on his calendar that I had nothing to do with. Trúc: And then I have had a couple of conversations with Geoff come to Jesus's, where it's like, what metrics are you using to determine, like, what appointments I'm going to take care of and which ones you're going to take care of? Trúc: And so we, it's still a developing thing, but it's interesting how something so little like that, where most executives, when you stuff into that role, it's just something that somebody else takes care of. Trúc: It's a muscle that Geoff has had to build over the course of the time that we've been together.

Jeremy · 12:10

That's great. Thanks for sharing and being honest there. And Geoff, I'll let you, you've got a chance. You've got the floor now. What has been something that's been frustrating as you've been trying to partner with Trúc?

Geoff · 12:25

Yeah, so I'm going to answer this in two different ways. One has been my own resistance, right? My own challenges. So, I mean, I joke that Calendar is my favorite app on my phone. So how do I let go of my favorite app? But the other part of it, though, has been the the navigating the 30 hour part of it. I really don't need much more than that. But the always on assistant, like if you think of somebody who basically is working the same hours as you in parallel with you all the time, there is a different cadence with that in terms of how quickly you can hand something off, how you can prioritize things throughout the course of a day. So part of what I've navigated has nothing to do with Trúc specifically. It's just really understanding here is the rhythm of how something that I would hand off to her, how when I'm going to get those things back and how quickly I'm going to get a response from somebody who has multiple interests in terms of like I'm not the only person that she's supporting. She does a great job of supporting me, but I'm still figuring out as we go. And the calendar, I think, is part of that. We at some point made a deal that anything beyond 24 hours is hers. I have the next 24 hours. If I need to reschedule the thing in my present day, I can make that happen. But I've got to let go of everything beyond 24 hours. And that's not always been easy for me.

Jeremy · 13:57

Right. Nice. That's awesome. Well, what's maybe been the moment or maybe share one moment where you guys are working on a project or you're working on a workflow, you're working on the systems and processes, maybe it's related to delegation and we'll talk a lot about delegation, where it was kind of like this light bulb of like, hey, this is a simple thing even potentially, maybe it's a complex thing, turns simple. But it was like that light bulb of, hey, I am really getting a high return on my investment of having an assistant. I'd love to hear from both of you as far as what you think is that moment or that, like I said, that workflow or that system that you adapted a little bit, that really was like, oh, OK, this is how I scale my time or this is how I scale my energy. Yeah.

Geoff · 15:05

Well, and what I've noticed is that there were a lot of, again, I've joked with my wife that I feel like I would be a good executive or a good assistant, which those seem like polarizing things. But I'm like an assistant is just the person who is an executive, like they're the person who's running that. And so I've always felt like I would be good at that. But the problem for me is that that means I want to do a lot of those admin things. Those are things that are of interest to me. So realizing that letting go of some of those things, for example, travel. When we first got into conversation about her setting up trips for me, I was literally like, Trúc, I don't understand how this would ever work. Like how do I ever tell you what I want from a flight? Of course, like two days later, it's like, oh, this is actually so much simpler. What I've discovered is letting go of many of those things has freed me up to do more thinking, to be like an executive's job, a small business owner's job is decision-making. You need space to think and to consider things. For me, I sometimes get a high off of output, out of creating something, and I've had to let go of some of those things to do the real work, which is I need to be making decisions and be charting a path for my organizations. One of the, this is going to be such a ridiculous thing, but one of those light bulb moments for me was, my manager and my printing company and I, we've been working on preparing some checklists for employee stuff and we were just stalemated. We would work on it a little bit, but we were never getting it finished because we were always comfortable renegotiating a deadline with one another. I was like, Trúc doesn't know how to do any of this stuff except for organize it, so I'm going to have her run point on this and she's going to reach out to you, Rhonda, and say, hey, I need to get this information from you and then she's going to reach out to me and get information from me because we're not going to cancel our meeting with Trúc. We're going to honor that commitment. So realizing that I could leverage her really to almost hold me accountable to my own choices in some cases was really valuable because we had a meeting earlier this week where she said, hey, these things, what are we doing about them? And it's like, yeah, no, that's so helpful to have that back pressure for me because I can rationalize lots of stuff and I got to tell her why, and that's uncomfortable. So she holds me accountable and that's incredibly helpful.

Jeremy · 17:38

Yeah. Trúc, what about you? Trúc: I'd say one of my favorite moments in our engagement so far was one of our recent conversations where I was really able to step in and say, you know, what are your goals and how can I help you accomplish those by strategically putting those in your schedule? Trúc: I would like to step more into the role of protecting your time and making sure that we are prioritizing the things that are most important to you. Trúc: And so I love looking at the role as I love being in the position to really look at all of his operations, all of his businesses, all of the work that he's doing across these amazing these amazing fields that he's created, right? Trúc: And looking at it and saying, how can I make you more efficient and effective with the goals that you have set? Trúc: And so our most recent conversation, I'm super excited about because I feel like I'm really moving into a role of being a strategic partner. Trúc: And that is my favorite, my favorite position to be in.

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Jeremy · 19:39

Nice. What's your, if you had to put it on a billboard, Trúc, what's your definition of strategic partner? Trúc: Strategic partner. Trúc: I would say that my definition of a strategic partner is somebody that the executive has enough trust in to really have that back and forth conversation about decisions, about priorities, about goals. Trúc: Being in that position where you can give that feedback and be able to have that back and forth conversation is my definition of what a strategic partner would be. Well said. Geoff, how about you? What do you think of when you hear the term strategic partner?

Geoff · 20:27

Yeah. A lot of times, I think with delegating to an assistant, we're thinking very tactically, day-to-day, here are the actions, here's what goes on the calendar, this is how my day runs. Blowing that, pulling, zooming out, I guess, a little bit to say, how should my weeks work? How should the work that I'm doing on a daily basis be influenced by the goals that I have? I understand that, and I help other people do exactly that. For me personally, it's always a little murkier, because I've got feelings attached to it, and there are things that I'm attracted to and things that I'm repelled by. Sometimes it is really having that person that you can't, they're going to call BS on you, and they're going to say, actually, I think you're just avoiding this. Then you say, yep, let's put it on the calendar.

Jeremy · 21:18

You're right. Trúc: Yeah. Great. Well, let's shift gears a little bit, and I want to hear a little bit about your thoughts on delegation. How do you help people have effective delegation? How do you help people understand the importance of delegation?

Geoff · 21:42

Yeah. I think that as I've listened to your podcast, I often hear of leader assistants that are working with executives, and I think sometimes executives are primed to have an assistant. There's an expectation they will have an assistant and that delegating is part of their world. Small business owners don't always think in those terms. Very often, we've built something from nothing, and it's been very important that we're involved in it. It's been a part of how it all works, is that we're the central pin. The belief system that that needs to be that way is the first thing that has to be challenged because, Trúc has certainly opened my eyes to this in many ways, but as small business owners, our need to be central is influencing the ability for our business to grow. We are literally holding our business back or keeping it within these boundaries by saying it can only work if I'm the central figure. Getting to the point where you realize like an assistant can literally unlock possibilities for you, that you can't see today, right? There are things that are possible, but you are too stuck in the every day. Like to me, that's always the first step is helping a small business owner get out of this mindset of, but I need to be the important person, but I need to be the central figure. I think that that's huge because we're not always wired to think it's okay for me to give things away and for me to let things go.

Jeremy · 23:22

How do you sort through which things you should delegate and which things you should keep on your plate?

Geoff · 23:33

I think that there are two facets to this. For some people, there are things that they probably shouldn't be doing that they love so much that it can be hard to let go. And in some cases, it's like you need to keep a little bit of that, or you've given up everything you enjoyed about this, even if someone else could do it for you, and now all you do is stuff that you hate, and that's no good either, right? But really, it's identifying, like, what are the key elements of growing your business, or of making your business work for you, so that you don't just have a J-O-B, you don't just have a job, right? But you actually have a business that is doing something, it's giving you more of something that you want. How do you get more of that? And are the things you're doing on a daily basis driving that or what usually happens is there's like, yeah, about 20% of what I do every day is really enriching me. It's really giving me, helping the business to be the thing I want it to be. There's another 80% that are distractions, that are interruptions, that are all these other things that I'm frustrated by because the story that I believe is that's the nature of the work. There's nothing I can do about that. That's just how it is. And then someone like Trúc comes along and they're like, actually, I can take care of that for you. And you say, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a little unsettling. I've been doing this so long. Now I feel dumb for having done it for so long.

Jeremy · 24:57

Yeah. So, Trúc, how about you then? How would you talk to assistants listening all around the world? You know, it's kind of a two way street, in my opinion, where you're delegating some things back to Geoff and you're saying, hey, you know, you hold them accountable and say, hey, what's going on with us? You were supposed to do this, you know, or, hey, I can't really do this for you, kind of task management there. But you're also receiving tasks that he is delegating to you or the team is. So what's your advice on delegation for assistants listening? Trúc: Sure. Trúc: The lens that I always look at it through is, what are the items that only my executive can do? Trúc: What are the items that only Geoff can do because of his level of expertise, his level in the level in the company? Trúc: What can only Geoff do? Trúc: Because basically anything else can be delegated. Trúc: And so speaking to what Geoff was talking about where he's kind of an admin guy, he loves that stuff and very realistically, he can probably run all of his businesses and do all of the admin stuff and still be awesome, right? Trúc: And so throughout the course of our engagement, it's been more about teaching him the perspective on these items. Trúc: OK, so if you love this thing, at what percentage can you delegate it? Trúc: You don't have to delegate it all. Trúc: But if you could delegate some of it, let's let's determine what percentage that is, because that's going to make you more effective and more efficient. Trúc: And so once I kind of put a lens on and look at all of his processes in that way, it allows me to really pick apart how I can be the person that allows him to be more efficient and more effective at the things that actually push the needle in the company. Great. And then have you been able to bounce back and delegate things back to someone else or have you had to outsource to different specialists or anything like that? Trúc: That's actually an interesting question. Trúc: Some of the things that we play around about is things like graphic design and different items like that. Trúc: Because I think as an assistant, right, you have to have a certain level of confidence, even when you don't know how to do something. Trúc: Right. Trúc: So to me, he delegates it and I'm like, I can do it. Trúc: I can figure it out. Trúc: Not a big deal. Trúc: Right. Trúc: But there's been a couple of different things that I've had to kick back or he'll kind of take back off my plate because he's like, you know what, maybe there's a different person that can do this a little bit better than you, not because you're not great. Trúc: Right. Trúc: But because I think that it's both of us, right? Trúc: It's a feedback loop where we're both giving each other feedback on how we can be more effective and efficient at our job. Nice. Well said. Love this. This is great. Lots of note taking going on right now. I can tell those listening. So, Geoff, I know some of the assistants listening are at large corporations and Amazon and Facebook and all these big companies, and this is a whole different world. But I work at a company with 120 employees or so, and I know there are plenty of assistants out there right now that work for a small company, and they work for even a family office, a small investment firm, etc. What's the one thing that if they're like, hey, I want Geoff to talk to my executive and help them with something in this small business, what's one thing that you really drive in and walk these small business owners through? Just to get their juices flowing when it comes to, okay, how can I maybe outsource and reach out to Geoff and see if you can help our small business team, or what are the things that I should be looking out for and thinking of when it comes to trying to help my executive of the small business, small organization succeed? Yeah.

Geoff · 29:35

If I'm speaking directly to assistants, the thing that I would say is always look for the pain. You're always looking for what are they frustrated by? What are the things they complain about all the time? Because when I'm working with clients, they want to come on and say, well, this is not working and this is yada yada. In every situation, they're thinking about fixing that one single symptom. I'm like, but there's a deeper problem beneath that makes that symptom happen. Usually, it is something like you get interrupted all day long because you don't have documentation. The person who is looking for an answer has nowhere to go but you. Those are problems that we've invented for ourselves. Ears open, like assistants that are listening and that are paying attention to what is the pain my executive is experiencing and how can I begin to feed that back to them and say, are there opportunities then to drill down into that so that you're not having the same kind of thing? I've got one client who she doesn't want to have to manage her employees. That's the gist of it, right? She needs someone between her and the management of the employees. That's what we've been working on. It's, well, okay, what do we need to do to get that person in place so that your day isn't occupied by this, that, and the other that has to do with employee management? On the surface, once you start talking about it, it seems really obvious. But to a person like this, they're just saying, my days are really annoying because I have to keep dealing with all these problems that must be a necessary part of this. And I've just come to understand by interacting with Trúc, none of it's necessary. It's all a choice or a story we believe about what we're going to do. So I think assistance can be really helpful, not just in doing the work that gets delegated, but paying attention to what those pain points are and offering those reframing perspectives. What if you didn't have to do that? What if that wasn't a part of your day-to-day experience? Would that be better? Because the assistant can really, again, help steer and help push someone towards that better outcome of, this is off your plate, there's somebody else who can help you. So what Trúc has helped me to do really just by interacting with her consistently is realizing that my role is now not to do any of the stuff in my company that I used to do, but it's to lead a team of people who are doing those things. I have a very small team, really, but I've got a little printout in my office of this little org chart. It's not about hierarchy, it's about, I need to see the faces of these people who are not necessarily around every day to know how I can best leverage them so that we can all get the right stuff done.

Jeremy · 32:33

Great. So Trúc, what's your version? I know the kind of tagline for Geoff and his website and his bio is to help small business owners overcome overwhelm. So what's your encouragement or what have you learned working with Geoff and his work with his clients to help you as an assistant overcome when you're overwhelmed? And how would you encourage the assistants listening to overcome their overwhelm? Trúc: That is a great question. Trúc: And I think just piggybacking off of what Geoff said, if you really pay attention to those pain points, right? Trúc: And you write in your book, it's not just about solving problems. Trúc: It's about solving the right problems. Trúc: And really our job as assistants is to really always have our ears open and being in tune with the environment and the situation, because that's going to tell you exactly what you need to be paying attention to, exactly where your efforts need to be applied and what metrics you need to use to be able to measure the impact that you have in that engagement or in that relationship, right? Trúc: And so, always being very self-aware. Trúc: I think that the way that I view engagements when it comes to VA and executive relationships is how you are assessing and viewing your executives' perspectives and how we can make that perspective the most efficient and effective perspective for them, right? Trúc: And so, being in tune with how your executive sees things and what he thinks is most important is going to help you figure out what problems are the most pressing and where you need to put all of your time and what tasks would really push the needle for your executive. Trúc: Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. Super helpful. Awesome. Well, Geoff, do you have anything else to add to that?

Geoff · 34:54

Well, just that, I mean, she used the R word a handful of times, and I think often it could be easy to think of this working with assistant as a transactional kind of thing. I have work I need to give this person. It is completely relational. And that has been, I think, the foundational part of how Trúc and I have worked well together is that we just really we have kind of a similar sense of humor. We had a great, great rapport right off the bat. And that aids so much in, in the process because I'm giving all of my most precious information to this person, right? And in some cases, we're having conversations about the things that are really difficult for me. How do I get where I need to go when these things are challenging me? And that's hard to do with somebody that you don't trust. That's hard to do with somebody who doesn't have that social capital or relational capital with you. So that relational component is so important. And formal, informal, there's a lot of expressions of that. But ultimately, it is a relationship. It's not just a transact. I'm not just swiping my credit card at the gas station. This is a relational experience where we're both learning about each other and constantly upgrading how well we can work together based on how that relationship works.

Jeremy · 36:17

Yeah. Love it. Well, I want to speaking of working well together. The last question I have and thanks again for being on the show. It's been fun. But the last question I had, you know, Geoff, you're in Alaska and Trúc, you're in Utah. So what's each I want to hear from each of you. We'll start with Geoff. What's your number one tip for working with someone in a different state, working remotely?

Geoff · 36:47

Okay, so I'm going to give you a cheeky one, and that is work with someone in a state that is farther east from you. Because every morning I get up and all my email is handled. It's all organized because she's already been at work before I got up this morning. That may be a cop out, but that certainly is part of it. But I think for us that like routine interaction, we will definitely have weeks where there's sort of less maybe emails being exchanged or, you know, text messages. And it always is a little noticeable when you're like, oh, hmm, we sort of have have been a little out of sync with each other in terms of that timing. Things are getting done, but we're not necessarily interacting. I think having it probably depends on your personality, but having that drip, drip, drip every day of some sort of interaction, some sort of exchange. I do think it's valuable and sometimes I'm better at than others, but I think it's really helpful when you're not ever going to be in the same place at the same time. Trúc: Yeah.

Jeremy · 37:44

Trúc, how about you? What's your number one remote work tip? Trúc: Oh, this one, I guess is more tactical, right? Trúc: It's just you got to over communicate. Trúc: You have to communicate and then communicate again and make sure that your communication was communicated correctly, right? Trúc: Like that's that's been the key for us. Trúc: And I think throughout a relationship, there's ebbs and flows, and sometimes you're better on it, and sometimes you're not as good, right? Trúc: But continuing to just plug away at your communication skills is the best. Trúc: And I'd say also choose an executive that you like, because that just makes your life so much easier. Yeah, that's a good one. I'll piggyback on that one for sure. Definitely find an executive you work well with that respects you and that you complement each other and all that, and then you can sky's the limit in that situation. So awesome. Well, Geoff and Trúc, thank you so much for being on the show. What's the best place for people to reach out and say hi and learn more about what each of you are up to? Trúc, you go first. Trúc: Okay. You did. Trúc: You did. Trúc: You can find me on LinkedIn at Trúc Towns, or I'm on Instagram and Facebook with the same name. Trúc: And I'm pretty responsive. Trúc: So reach out, say hi. Trúc: Perfect.

Geoff · 39:16

Yeah, I'm at jeffwelch.com. That's G-E-O-F-F-W-E-L-C-H, little different. And I mean, I have an anti-overwhelmed playbook that people can grab at jeffwelch.com/playbook. So if if ever there's a VA that's like my my executive needs to be reminded to use me more. There's some things in there that will direct them back to you. So that could be a good thing to grab for them, too. But yeah, that's probably the best place to to learn more about what I'm doing.

Jeremy · 39:49

Perfect. And I'll put all those links in the show notes at leaderassistant.com/285, leaderassistant.com/285. Geoff and Trúc, thank you again so much for being on the show. It's been a great conversation and I wish you and your strategic partnership all the best.

Geoff · 40:08

Thank you.

Speaker 4 · 40:10

Thank you. Trúc: Appreciate you. Please review on Apple Podcasts. Trúc: goburrows.com.