Episode 86 Transcript

Heather (00:09.606)

Hello everyone, welcome to episode 86. All right, so I was thinking the other day about years back, something that happened to me that I thought would be very timely, maybe for some of you. So I, at the time, was living in Sydney. I wasn't too long in Australia from the States, so I'd probably been living in Sydney, I don't know, for a couple years, and I was working for a promoter.

 

who promoted events for speakers and I was working at an event in Melbourne, which is another area in Australia. Now here's a deal. My role was called the head of a director of crew, I think was my title. So I was a contractor for this, this promoter, director of crew. The reason why I had that role is because when I was working for Tony Robbins, I was

 

for some of my roles, I would train the crew on site at the seminars. And when I say crew, any large seminar, especially in personal development or speakers, the team that's on site are oftentimes volunteers, not all of them, but there'll be a specific amount that are volunteers that just show up to be back in the environment and to be part of the amazing energy of the event. So I had organized some of that for Tony Robbins. And then when I moved to Australia,

 

This one promoter was like, oh, we're growing really quickly. We need volunteer crew and we need somebody that has experience in the space to help put together the program. Program being, you know, applications, accepting people, putting them in all the different teams from sales to door guards, you know, checking the lanyards to customer service, to mic runners, to helping out with the speakers and backstage, to handouts in the room, whatever. There's a lot of different roles.

 

But anyway, my role is to screen the applications and then actually put the applications together and the whole program, right? And then ultimately get it off the ground, screen the applications, put people in the right teams, have team leaders, and then on site at all the different events, train them. Now that was an amazing role. And it's interesting how my role was the director of crew. So therefore my job was to look after them and make sure that there were great systems and everything.

 

Heather (02:33.98)

So there I am in Melbourne in Australia and we're at an event and I wanted to do something nice for the team. Now I learned this actually from the other crew director I worked with in Tony Robbins, Lauren Slocum was her name at the time. And she basically would do these handwritten notes to the team, which I absolutely loved. She'd spent a great deal of time doing it, but really beautiful.

 

you know, attention to detail, private little notes to everybody, how she noticed them, you know, showing up and doing amazing things at the event, et cetera. So I thought, you know, I really love that. And I want to do that for the team that I've put together. And I think this is, this is one of the first events that, um, I, you know, had in that particular role. So instead of having somebody on the team, cause I also had runners, right? So people that would pick up.

 

food and coffees for the team and the speakers. Instead of having them go off and get some cards, because they're locals by the way, and they knew the area, so they could easily just jump in their car and go off and get some cards that I could write in, I embarked on a journey. So it was lunch break and running events, if you've run events, you know they're exhausting. I mean, the lead up to the event, the bump in.

 

We're talking a seminar with at least a thousand people. So it's big. The bump in, the training of the crew, the management of all that prior, and then just the late nights, early mornings. So I, instead of having food and relaxing, I embarked on a journey in a suburb I did not know anything about. Back in a day when I don't even know if Google maps was a thing or it didn't really work. So I took off.

 

I thought, oh yeah, look, there's a suburb down the road. I'm surely there'll be a gift store or a shop that sells gifts or stationary or new shop or something. So I'm like, cool. I'll go and head off during lunch. So I make sure everything's good to go. People are, you know, good in case I was going to run a little later, whatever. You guys, I am walking down the street. It seems like it was around the corner. It was not. I'm walking. It was the middle of summer.

 

Heather (04:53.212)

It was disgustingly hot and humid. And if any of you know Melbourne at all, and if you live there, it's like a city of four seasons in one day. And you can have like rain one moment and then crazy heat the next. This was the heat. So walking in probably not the most comfortable shoes either to go find a shop where I can get gift cards. I mean, ridiculous. So.

 

Walking, walking, walking, sweating, walking, sweating, walking, and finally find this shop. Cars weren't that great, but it's the only thing they had and I'm like, that's it, I need something. So I grabbed the cards and I'm walking, walking, walking all the way back. I'm wanting to think I was gone for two hours. It might've been an hour, it might've been just over. I don't remember exactly. I just remember how horrible it was. So I walk all the way back to this huge venue. I get inside.

 

I still haven't had lunch and straight away, you know, things are hectic and picking up and everyone's participants are back in the room and everything's, you know, rocking and rolling. And I then go and sit down and then endeavor to write out the carts. Now that part I'm totally cool with. It makes sense. Cause I knew every single person there. Yeah. I mean, I could have gotten somebody else to write them, I suppose, but I wanted that handwritten note specifically to how I noticed each of the team performing.

 

So I then proceeded to, you know, draw or write all the cards. And that part was lovely. However, why would I, as the boss, the crew director, managing a team where I needed to be rested and looked after to manage the team of volunteers, I might add, so they didn't even have huge buy -in to the mission or vision of the company. They needed to be really looked after. Why would I take it upon myself,

 

to go walking down the street in an area I was not familiar with to get cards. Crazy. So in that moment, I had this sort of revolution, revelation, I should say, not revolution as well, I suppose, but a revelation. And that was around delegation. Somehow I was able to delegate.

 

Heather (07:15.356)

all the roles and the tasks that needed to happen on site at the venue. But when I needed this one little piece, I somehow didn't even think. It wasn't even wired into me to get somebody to go get the cards for me. A local who was already on the team whose job it was to run, be a runner, a gopher and get things. So there's this weird mismatch moment for me. And it's helped me when I've grown my business. I still fall back on the whole thing where, you know,

 

Oh, it's easiest if I just do it myself. But it's definitely been kind of an anchor and a memory for me of asking a better question of, am I the best person to do this? Not, am I gonna do it the best or the quickest, but am I the best person to do this? And for those of you growing your business, we can easily get in this trap, right? Today, I'm part of an agency mastermind group. So there's digital agencies.

 

mostly in the States, but all over the world. And we come together once a month. And today we had a mastermind call. One of the ladies in the group, she was saying, I'm just so tired of having everything come back to me. Like all the team is always asking me how to do things. The clients always want me to come in with strategy. It's just constant. And she goes, I'm absolutely exhausted and nothing seems to change. And it's because she's in that mindset of,

 

I'm the only one that can do that job rather than how do I stop and delegate and create systems and procedures to then allow me to be removed from the situation. And guys, this is a hard one, right? Cause if you're busy and you're right in it, sometimes you do have to just jump in and sort it. But in the long run, if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, disempowering your team and not allowing others to do things in your business. And also,

 

training the clients to be too reliant on you, you're just never gonna grow. It's always gonna come back to you needing to go out into the hot, steamy afternoon, walking in a suburb you don't know, picking up cards that you should never have been doing in the first place. Whereas your focus on writing the beautiful messages in the card is a perfect role for you to have, but not the going and the getting and the doing up until that point, right?

 

Heather (09:41.596)

So just remember that next time you're bombarded by customers or team, are you the best person to be saying yes to that particular thing coming in the door? Can you create systems and get team support around it? All right, that's it for this one. I'll talk to you all soon. Bye bye.