HUGH CULVER

Why you’re not ready to hire an assistant

Updated to Productivity on December 30, 2022.

I was in a car the other day with a radiologist and a neurosurgeon talking about hypertension. 

This conversation is actually not as unusual as it might sound. I volunteer for a local society that does trail clearing in a popular hiking and mountain bike park and many of the volunteers happen to be recently retired doctors. 

Back in the car, one of the doctors happened to mention that recently his medical partner, who is in his early 60’s, had a mild stroke. As we wound our way further up the dirt road to our work site my education continued. 

I learned that strokes are the second biggest cause of mortality worldwide and the third most common cause of disability. The scary statistics get worse. As you age your chance of a stroke doubles every 10 years after 55

There’s a checklist of health conditions that make you more susceptible to a stroke, like obesity, high cholesterol, and diabetes. But the biggest culprit – six times out of ten – is hypertension or high blood pressure. In my books, that’s worth paying attention to.

What’s interesting is that stress, in itself, is not the direct cause of high blood pressure. It’s what we do when under stress that leads to nasty results. We eat too much, drink too much, and move too little. Basically, we deal with stress by making unhealthy choices.

For me, stress starts with worry.

Ngoc Son Temple, Hoan Kiem Lake, Hanoi, Vietnam

I’ve had a lot of worries

There is a world of problems you can worry about – take your pick. You can worry that Ukraine will be pummeled into a tiny province of rubble, or that we’ve passed the tipping point with global warming, or the tiny spot on your chin is cancer. 

Or not.

“I’ve had a lot of worries,” quipped Mark Twain “most of which never happened.” Our mind loves a good worry. Like a dog chewing a bone, we want to turn our worry around, looking from all angles, poking and prodding until it swells up into something bigger than it really is.

I used to worry incessantly before every keynote speech. I’d worry I’d miss my flight or wasn’t prepared enough, or I would be greeted by the “audience from hell.” Trust me, when you have 60 minutes to educate, entertain, inspire, motivate, and get laughs from an audience you’ve never met before, any sane person would invent a long list of worries.

It was at one of those events when a fellow speaker opened an exit door for my worries. He suggested that audiences don’t want you to fail – in fact, they want you to succeed. “They want to see you having fun—enjoying yourself. That way,” he explained, “they can enjoy the ride with you.”

When I accepted the long list of what I could never control – my flights, the audience, the speaker before me going overtime – I was free to focus on what I could control.

Enjoying the moment. 

What your life will have been

In her book, Comfortable with Uncertainty, Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön tells the story of delighting in the preciousness of every single moment.

A woman is running from lions. She runs and she runs, and the lions are getting closer. She comes to the edge of a cliff. She sees a vine there, so she climbs down and holds onto it. Then she looks down and sees that there are lions below her as well. At the same time, she notices a little mouse gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries emerging from a nearby clump of grass. She looks up, she looks down, and she looks a the mouse. Then she picks a strawberry, pops it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.

Learning what to focus on, and what to ignore, seems to be the ultimate secret to living a healthy, stress-free life. “Whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment,” writes Oliver Burkeman in Four Thousand Weeks (a must-read for anyone over 50), “is simply what your life will have been.”

So, what are you focussing on?

What to focus on

You can learn a lot when you’re the dumbest one in a car full of doctors. I learned that strokes are a silent pandemic. And that hypertension is the leading cause of that pandemic. And I learned the leading cause of hypertension is stress. 

I was also reminded that stress is a choice.

We all have lions and tigers in our life. Maybe even a mouse or two gnawing away at something we value. Meanwhile, we have the moment.

Choosing what to focus on (and what not to) might just be the healthiest choice you can make.

Got this far? You might also like these posts:

Photo of eggs by Nik on Unsplash
Photo of Ngoc Son Temple by author
Photo of tigers by author

When I started my company I couldn’t wait to get an office separate from my house. “Then I’ll have made it” I thought.

Once I had the office I couldn’t wait to get staff to do all the work I was terrible at. “Then I’ve really made it!” I thought.

But what if you could grow your business AND never need staff (or an office outside your home)?

The world has changed and employee expectations have changed as well. Working remotely has become common and businesses are developing internal systems to better manage communication with employees they never see face to face.

So, before you start placing ads and booking interviews to hire your first assistant, here are 3 steps to go through.

1. Create an SOP

Job one for you, the boss, is getting out of nirvana dreaming of all your worries disappearing when Mrs. Doubtfire walks through the door and getting very specific about work that needs to be done.

I recommend you start with one list of routines, like billing, collections, sales, customer service, ordering, etc. that are done every week. For each of those you need an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure).

We create our SOP’s in Google Docs so they are easy to share and we give the person responsible authority to update the routine as they discover improvements.

Next you have your one-off, occasional, sometimes list. Don’t hire for these – they aren’t enough reason to add a person to your roster. Instead, outsource them.

2. Put a dollar on it

In business, everything has a cost and a return. Your job is to measure the actual cost of adding an assistant and the potential return to your business.

For example, if there is no direct revenue generation, then estimate the time you would gain to generate revenue through more sales, better prospect follow up, or customer service.

No returns means no need to hire.

3. Prove yourself wrong

The final test is to map out how you could outsource all the work (instead of hiring local staff) and then prove yourself wrong.

I did this recently and realized as much as I’d love to have an editor on staff, we are much better off outsourcing that piecemeal, in terms of convenience and cost.