Ari Meisel 00:00
You think about the expression like having the right tool for the job, and anybody who's ever done any sort of physical work, even if it's like putting a picture up on your wall, when you have the right tool for the job, it makes life so much easier, and it gets done better. And what happens a lot of times when people have a team they have a partner, is they try to turn that resource into a Swiss army knife. A lot of times, they'll get it done, but it won't be done properly, it won't be done as well as it could be certainly not as cost effective as it could be. And there's an opportunity cost to miss allocating that resource. You really do want to have the right tool for the job. Again, I'm not devaluing people by consider them tools, but they are resources, and you have to use them the right way.
Pete Mohr 00:43
Hey, it's Pete, and welcome to another edition of the simplifying entrepreneurship podcast designed to provide the tips and tools that will help you cut through the chaos, transforming your frustrations into freedoms for your business in life as a leader. And today, I had the opportunity to speak with Ari Mizel. Again, and he joined us a little while back for an episode and brought him back here today as we talk about setting up teams and virtual teams. And how do entrepreneurs get stressed out? And how do you alleviate that with your team, we talk about analogies of LIFO and getting things done setting up your external brain and the three W's. So we'll dig right into it here with Ari Mizel. Welcome, Ari, it's great to have you back here on the simplifying entrepreneurship podcast today. Yeah, and you know, one of the earlier conversations we had all around productivity and processes and stuff like that. One of the other key areas that I love in your book, it's all around team, and how do we have a team these days with everything that's going on? And all the different things? How do we do it? In mobile situations, when we're at work, not at work different people all over the world that are helping us out? And your chapter in the book on productivity was called teams our work and wanted to know, Ari, how do you define a team?
Ari Meisel 02:12
Yeah, so it's a good one, because I think, pretty much everybody who's in business has a team in some form or fashion. And in the traditional sense, like, currently, I do not have a team. I don't have anybody. Well, I mean, I actually just have one contractor working for me sometimes. But most people, I think, think a team is like the people you're regularly interacting with the people that maybe you're leading or delegating to, or that you're peers with. But you might be a solopreneur, but you're selling to somebody, and maybe you're buying from somebody vendors, you know, and you have customers and in my opinion, those are all a team in some way. Because the way that you communicate with them matters, the way that you project manager, the way you interact with them, needs to be consistent. So why not consider that a team. Because I think mentally that's a really important thing for people to not only shun the isolation that can happen with becoming an entrepreneur, but also to understand like, there's something bigger than them going on here. And they have to be sort of a part of that.
Pete Mohr 03:14
One of the things that you wrote, which I completely agree with, some of your team members are actually your clients, and your team at work. And I also will say, you know, I own some retail stores. And from that perspective, I also look at my suppliers as part of the team as well, you know, because they're a big part of how we put everything together.
Ari Meisel 03:33
Well, yeah, right. So put it this way, right. Let's say that somebody bought a pair of shoes from you, right? Yeah. And then they came in the next day and said, You know, I was running, and the shoe fell apart, and I hurt my knee. And I would expect that you would want to bring that back to the manufacturer to the vendor, and and get them involved. Right. So how is that not part of the team?
Pete Mohr 03:53
Exactly. You said, you only have sort of a part time person now, but I know you've run huge teams in the past. And like I said, with all sorts of people all over the world and putting all that together. And such a big thing has happened even since you know, in the last year and a half you were doing this years ago, and in the last year and a half people have made the shift and are starting to adopt it more, but this is something you've been doing for years and years and years, right? Yeah,
Ari Meisel 04:19
yeah, exactly. So I have had no team to a partner to 183 people working for me in 17 timezones down to seven again, down to three and now basically on my own, but I have 25 private clients, and I consider them part of my team in many ways.
Pete Mohr 04:40
Yeah. And and you have the access the beauty of the virtual team and all of the people that you know, and the and the sources that you have, you can ramp that back up or down as quickly as you so desire.
Ari Meisel 04:53
Right? That's the thing too is that especially like so one of my favorite resources for outsourcing is Bringing people as Fiverr. And yeah, I mean, I could have, you know, 20 people doing whatever I need done for whatever, you know, tomorrow on Fiverr, if I need to my last book that on productivity, I did that after I got rid of my team and basically disbanded this this past team. And I did that with completely outsource providers from the book designer to the creative space person to the writers, editors, all that kind of stuff. Now, I don't have those people working with me because I don't need them.
Pete Mohr 05:27
Yeah. And I mean, that's the beauty of that sort of thing with the virtual assistants. And you're, you're really tacking on when you need in your seasons of need the power that allows you to do that. And then when you don't need it, you can let it go.
Ari Meisel 05:42
Yeah, and what I think people really need to sort of keep in mind here and I don't want to I'm not by any means trying to devalue the people that work here, because it's quite the opposite. Yeah, sure. You think about the the expression like that, like having the right tool for the job, right. And anybody who's ever done any sort of physical or whether even if it's like, putting a picture up on your wall, like when you have the right tool for the job, it makes life so much easier, and it gets done better. And what happens a lot of times when people have a team, they have a partner, you know, an assistant, whatever it might be, is they try to turn that resource into a Swiss army knife. A lot of times, they'll get it done, but it won't be done properly, it won't be done as well as it could be certainly not as cost effective as it could be. And there's an opportunity cost to miss allocating that resource. You really do want to have the right tool for the job. And, again, you know, that's why I'm not devaluing people by concern them tools, but they are resources, and you have to use them the right way. Yeah, absolutely. I
Pete Mohr 06:39
couldn't agree more. Imagine looking back a year from now and realizing that you've just experienced one of your best years ever, things often don't just happen. They're planned. So if you haven't listened to the four part miniseries in season two of the simplifying entrepreneurship podcast around planning your best year ever, I encourage you to go back and binge them. They're four quick sessions, download the exercises that I outlined in those and do the homework. You don't want to have the same old year again, do you? Are you like me? Have you tried loads of planners and just not found the right one, I created the one page planner with the entrepreneur in mind. It's a fillable PDF format, so that you can either print it off and write everything in a binder or you can complete it on your computer or your tablet. So download it today at simplifying entrepreneurship.com forward slash planner so that you'll be looking back next year at this time with a sense of accomplishment and pride you've never felt before. Ari, one of the things in your chapter here that you've written that there are two ways that an entrepreneur or that entrepreneurs stress out their teams and dismantle community. One is inconsistency and the other is mismanagement. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Ari Meisel 08:01
I find that over the years, a lot of the work that I do is focused on protecting the entrepreneurs team from the entrepreneurs mind. Yeah, right. And it there's there's this joke that I always like to tell that is really a good example of that, which is why don't cowboys skydive? I don't know why. Because it scares the crap out of the horses. Right. And so in many ways, like the entrepreneur is the cowboy and the team is the horse like they don't want to go along for that ride. Yeah, you know, you have the entrepreneur who goes to some really cool conference, and they come back and they've got 55 new ideas, and they want them done right away. Yeah. And they want them now. And everyone's like, Okay, well, that's what you know, it's, well, you actually appreciate this too, because you're in a retail business, but LIFO and FIFO. Right, you know, talking about? Yeah, for sure. So for those who don't lastin first out, and first in first out, which is an accounting mechanism. But a lot of times entrepreneurs, it's lastin. First out, right, so the last thing that I told you to do is the first thing I want you to get done, and there's just no way to keep up with that. And that's why you get stressed. That's why a lot of entrepreneurs end up getting divorced, right? Because their risk profile their their tolerance for uncertainty is just so much higher than the people that they're with. So the inconsistency that comes with that, and people just end up finding you to be erratic at some point. And then the mismanagement is basically you're not clearly defining what you want done, you're not creating a vision, something cohesive, so that even if you were to bring in an idea that didn't necessarily make sense, they would know that that doesn't fit in right now. But more importantly, creating an opportunity for people to push back on that and say like, no, that's not the right thing for now. And this is why that's something entrepreneurs have a lot of trouble with.
Pete Mohr 09:44
I certainly can be can be squirrel brain, you know, where it's like squirrel squirrel, and and those kinds of things. And, and it's it's everything I can do. And I mean, I know I'm like that, but it's everything I can do to tame that down a little bit so that we can Talk about it and put it in process. And we've, we've set some processes around our business. So that doesn't happen. And my team knows enough that they can calm that down, let's say and, and put it into perspective. But people that listen to this podcast are entrepreneurs and business owners and that sort of thing, business leaders, and probably have this sort of mentality as well. What would you suggest to them to help them through that, so that they're not stressing out their team so that they're not going to cause these issues, give us sort of a process that you've aligned that makes that easier for them? Yeah, so
Ari Meisel 10:35
I have a whole framework called the external brain, creating external brain. And really, it's around three different phases of ideation, the first one being the ideation itself. So whenever you get the idea, being able to capture it very, very quickly, and move on and capture it in a way that it can come to sort of a central sorting location at some point later, that could be anything you really want. For me, it's Trello. So you haven't captured and then you have the sorting phase, which could be hours or even days later. And then you have the actual execution phase. And the ancient Greeks had this really great philosophy that you should always make a decision twice, once sober, and one stronk. And if the two match up, then you're good. And that's the thing is like, what you're creating in this situation is space, right? You allow the idea to marinate, you can think about it, and not just jump on an idea and move and go with it and waste a whole bunch of time and then not even know if it's a good idea. Yeah, when you do get to an idea that is really good and really baby big and meaty that you do need to deliver your team, then I have another process called the three W's, which is a worksheet that is uniquely, in my opinion, filled out by two people, the CEO, or the leader, the founder, the visionary, and the ops person or whoever is actually going to put it into play. And it's very simple. There's six boxes on it. And basically, you're coming to a meeting of the minds about not only is it a good idea, and it should be done, but when and by WHO and that is really key because a good idea is never a good idea in a vacuum. There's context to it, right? A good idea requires the right time in the right place, sometimes, or often. Just and everybody can think of examples of ideas that were ahead of their time, or were too late, or were introduced in the wrong situation, whatever it might be. There's no such thing as a good idea. It's a good idea in a vacuum, that and that context is something that's very hard to see, without another person's perspective, particularly somebody who's actually going to execute upon it, especially an operations person. Yeah, no, that's always a label from inside the jar. Yeah.
Pete Mohr 12:39
So so just outline that cheat again, Ari, just so that people can think about it how it works.
Ari Meisel 12:44
Yeah. So there's six boxes, and it's really it's there's two columns of three each. Yeah. So you have what's the idea? And then why is it important? Why is it going that those two at the top are filled out by the visionary, right, and then the next four are filled out by the ops person. So then we have, when, and why. And then who and why, and the who could be someone on the team, it could be a skill set that's needed. So it could be a person it could be, you know, a Facebook ads person surviving, or maybe even an automation, right, right. Yeah, totally. Yes, exactly. And, and The when is really key the person be like, Yeah, this is a really great idea. It's not in alignment with our q3 goals. But I think that we should do this in q4, yeah. And then that kind of that document gets put into a Trello card or your project manager tool, and you can revisit it later. And it creates accountability, and transparency.
Pete Mohr 13:37
You know, I mean, it's a it's a great tool. And it's a simple tool. And that's what we need as entrepreneurs are simple tools that move the ball ahead. You know, Ari, our time is almost up here. And I want to make sure everybody can get a hold of you. And if they want to find out a little bit more about RMI Zell, what you do, and more about all this thinking. I mean, you and I have known each other for a few years now. But really a lot of a lot of the tools that you've taught me through our time, I continue to use, they're just wonderful ways of thinking about things. And using those tools are so important. And you have so many of them available on your website. So why don't you tell everybody how to get ahold of you already? Yeah, so
Ari Meisel 14:18
the best thing you can go to less doing are calm everything about everything that I do and have done. Is there a big part of what I think the number one tool in my productivity arsenal is asynchronous communication, right? So basically the opposite of what Pete and I are doing right now. And it's so important and so fundamental to what I do that I actually make myself available to people that way freely, so people can head over to Vox with RA calm, and they can get in touch with me directly asynchronously.
Pete Mohr 14:49
That's awesome. Ari, it's been a pleasure reconnecting here. I really appreciate the time you spent with me and it's great to have you back again today for a second episode on the simplifying on governorship podcast. So I want to wish you the very best. And thanks again for joining us.
Ari Meisel 15:05
Great talking to you. Thanks, Pete.
Pete Mohr 15:10
Another awesome conversation with Ari, in the previous podcast, if you haven't listened to it already slide back, we talked about his concept of Oh, a Oh, which is optimize, automate and outsource. And that's the framework that you put a lot of this stuff into, that we're talking about here today, when we're setting up virtual team members. And we didn't get into it in the conversation, but already set up a virtual assistant company. And that's the company that they had, there was like 182, virtual assistants across the world, helping people all over. So he's a master really at this, and how you can use virtual assistants to either ramp up or ramp down in different time. So it was really neat conversation, because I think most business owners have periods of time where they and you know, their seasons, as I mentioned, where they're really busy. How can you think about maybe including a virtual assistant or somebody from Fiverr, or from one of the virtual assistant companies out there that can come in and help you through those times or help you through whatever it is. And we've talked about this before, to that concept of who not how that Dan Sullivan and Dean Jackson came up with. So this is a great analogy here of using that sort of thing in our conversation today. Because we don't want to feel unhappy and unproductive or unclear with all this sort of stuff, we want to push the ball ahead. And using virtual assistants along the way can really help this set up your external brain, I love his concept of external brain and set up those systems that are going to help you get your thoughts out and put them into some sort of structure so that you can activate them through your business through either people that are on your team, or the people outsourced that can get those things done for you, too. So lots of great stuff. And think about laying out those three W's as well, the system that we talked about today, here and how you can use that in your business, right? All of these things, very actionable steps here today from Ari. That's what I love. The stuff that he talks about is like, oh, yeah, this makes sense. The frameworks are a big piece of what we do at simplifying entrepreneurship, too. And these frameworks work, I can tell you from my own experience, too, it helps you as we always say, We want you to have an even better business and entrepreneurial life. And these frameworks work in that way. So always remember, clarity creates confidence and confidence ignites momentum. These are what I call clarity tools that we talked about today. So if you liked today's episode, please review and rate it, share it with your friends, and most of all, subscribe to the podcast so you can hear future episodes. And for more information on my coaching and leadership programs, visit more coach. That's m o hr.co. Ach, more coach, or you can email me directly at p Tadmor. Coach, just connect with me as well on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook by searching Pete Mohr. Thanks so much for spending some time with our UI here today and until next time, make it a great day.
18:15
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