Read The Transcript Below:

Steven (00:52):

Hello everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services Podcast, Financial Professionals Edition. I’m your host, Steven Jarvis, CPA, and I am so excited for today’s episode, a good friend, first time on the show, but not first time talking about all things RTS Lisa Zeeveld from Belay. Lisa, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Lisa (01:13):

Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited.

Steven (01:16):

Yeah. For any of our listeners who were at the RTS Summit last year, you’ll recognize LZ. She was on stage with us. Belay was one of our sponsors and is coming back again for the Second Annual RTS Summit this fall in Phoenix. So we’re so excited to be partnering with BELAY again. Now, while Belay has a bookkeeping service, which might feel adjacent to taxes, that’s not really why we’re having you on the show to have a chat today because what we really want to talk about is how delegation can help advisors level up everything else they do. So Lisa, for the people who weren’t at the summit and don’t know your background, give us a brief introduction of who you are and what you do.

Lisa (01:54):

Yeah, thank you. So Lisa Zeeveld. I am the CFO for Belay. I actually did a short jaunt in investment banking, personal advisory, so I can sit here. It kind of feels like home to me. I love it. I love hanging out with you guys. It’s so much fun. And BELAY is focused on helping people delegate those things that they’re not getting the biggest ROI on. You mentioned bookkeeping, virtual assistant, marketing assistant, things of that nature. I’ve been with BELAY for 14 years. I was here right when it started, and so I have seen the economy change. I’ve seen the workforce change back when virtual wasn’t cool, when people, you’d say, Hey, we don’t have an office, and they go, what? I can’t believe this. But we knew that there were a lot of leaders out there, a lot of business owners who were struggling to find good talent and talent that was flexible. And so this idea came to be we didn’t want to offshore. That’s not where our heart was. We wanted to really find people here in the US who were hardworking, who wanted flexibility, and we knew that we had leaders who were looking for them too.

Steven (02:58):

Lisa, that’s fantastic. We’re going to dive into this conversation specifically of what financial advisors can delegate because we all like to feel like we’re these unique special snowflakes, and it turns out there’s a lot of overlap between what we all do. So I want to start with how do you personally use a VA and what are the things maybe that you’ve been doing this for 14 years, so maybe nothing surprises you anymore, but maybe what were some of those early things where you’re like, wow, this is a game changer to be able to hand this to someone else? Talk about how you use a VA.

Lisa (03:26):

Yeah. Well, it’s interesting. I said I started with the company 14 years ago. I actually started as a virtual assistant. Isn’t that interesting? So I really have the experience to talk about it from being the provider and also getting the benefits from a virtual assistant. So how do I leverage my virtual assistant? It’s all the things that you would think of. First and foremost, she’s helping me with my calendar and she’s helping me with my email. She’s helping me make personal appointments, doctor’s appointments. She’s helping me with gifting. She’s making sure all my travel is organized well, and I know where I’m going and I know how to get there. Even down to, this is one of my favorite things that happened. I think about a week and a half ago, it was probably seven o’clock at night. I had a breakfast appointment the next morning.

(04:11):

She was sending me screenshots of where the closest parking ramp was, how much it was going to cost me if I or not I could validate it everything down to the detail I never had to worry about when I got there. Sure, I had the address of where I was meeting, but parking is always a thing. So she’s taking care of all that. She’ll remind me if I have a special date coming up. Anniversaries, birthdays, she’s handling all those things for me. In addition to really acting as an extension of me. I’m a CFO, and so she’s making sure that board decks are being sent out. She’s working with my team to delegate. Again, really, the extension of me is what helps me do only what I can do. It really doubles the impact that I’m making within my business, and it’s helping me be a better person on the personal side of my life.

Steven (04:58):

Yeah, I love that description there. I appreciate that you emphasize there at the end that it’s helping you double the impact you have because that’s what this is all about. This isn’t just like, Hey, let me save a little bit of time so that I don’t have to get into that travel app. No, no, no. This is about leveling up what you are able to do by delegating those things that don’t necessarily have to be you. Lisa, one of the things that I’ve noticed as I talked to advisors, other professionals about this topic of having a virtual assistant or an executive assistant, is that for people who haven’t really thought of this before, it is a very foreign idea almost in the realms of, well, that’s not for me. That’s for the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. That’s for Fortune 500 executives. An example that comes to mind that’s really close to home for me because I do a lot of fitness things.

(05:42):

I used to be adamant that I paid for a $ 20-a-month gym membership and never would. Why would you ever pay more than $20 a month for a gym membership? Because they’ve got weights, they’ve got equipment. Why would you ever do anything else? I almost prefer not to admit what I spend on gym memberships now because I realized that for what I wanted to accomplish, I needed the specialty coaching, the specialty gym, and now I can’t imagine going back to only paying $20 a month for a gym because that’s hardly a gym at all. And so it feels like one of those things that you kind of have to take that step over, that hurdle, that mental barrier of thinking about what this can even be like. What’s your experience with that of getting people to shift their mindset to being open to this idea?

Lisa (06:22):

Yeah. Well, I think that as business owners and leaders, you’re always trying to manage your expenses, and so it’s really easy. I love, I’m a DIYer myself. I’m very frugal, CFO, you’d think I’d be frugal, right? And so it’s easy to think, well, I can just manage my email. I can just do these things on my own. So that’s the first thing I want to tackle is your listeners out there who are thinking that they can do it all themselves. What they’re doing is they’re missing out on that expertise. You’re missing out on a virtual assistant and executive assistant who has done this role for many years. Again, we like to think of ourselves as unique, special little snowflakes, but we’re not. And so you’re going to have somebody who’s going to come in and be like that trainer that you were talking about who can say, Hey, your inbox is a mess.

(07:09):

You’re missing opportunities here. Your calendar isn’t set up for you to work at your optimized level, right? Somebody to really protect you. My assistant does a lot of protecting of me, so I can focus on those high-dollar areas in the business. So first and foremost, if you’re that person listening and you’re like, ah, it’s too much money, I can do it all myself, you really can’t because you are gifted in a specific area that is not being an assistant. You’re not probably gifted when it comes to things administratively, and that is what these individuals love to do. They’re passionate about it. So find somebody who has that passion. Number two, you think, okay, I totally am on board with it, LZ. I know I need to delegate things, but I am going to look for an offshore solution or a tasking solution. Those are great in some scenarios.

(08:02):

I love it when people use tasking for personal things like DoorDash recently, I love this. You can tell them to go pick up something, they deliver it to your door. Now, they do that for all sorts of things. That’s a good task. You don’t need them to really know who you are. There’s not really any forethought to it. It’s just a task. They’re going to get it done. When you use some of these more offshoring or tasking services, that is really what you are getting. What I’m talking about here today is finding a partner for your business. My assistant is able to think of things before I can. She’s in there and she’s answering my emails just like she’s me. She has the knowledge and the gift to know how I’m going to respond to things, and she’s getting ahead of me. That comes with lots of experience. So I would say those two tracks really is you can’t afford it. You shouldn’t do it yourself, but depending upon what you’re looking for, and I have a feeling you’re going to be looking for somebody who’s an expert, you’re going to want to find a service who partners with you and that virtual assistant, that executive assistant has lots of experience to help you rise to the next level. 

Steven (09:09):

That segues into one of the things I wanted to talk about, which was my own personal objections to having a virtual assistant, which I mean, spoiler alert, I have a Belay VA and I love her. She’s fantastic. So I want to give you what some of my reservations were because we have great client service manager that’s probably not getting the role, but somebody on your team who helped facilitate everything, it wasn’t you directly. So you haven’t heard my objections before. I’m sure you’ll have all great answers to ’em because she did. How the heck are you going to find someone that’s a fit for me, and when on earth am I going to find time to train them?

Lisa (09:40):

Yeah, well secret out of the bag we get between four and eight depending upon the season of the year, 4 and 8,000 applicants. You just had to look of shock for those who can’t see you right now, 4 to 8,000 applicants a month, a month, those who are wanting to join and be a part of the BELAY team. So when you say, am I going to be able to find somebody who can support you? Absolutely. You have to think about where we are in our economy right now. People are looking for flexibility. They’re looking for a good work-life balance. They don’t want to sit in an office all day. They want to support individuals. They want to be a part of something bigger and something that matters with a company that has great culture that is Belay. And so are we going to be able to find somebody who knows exactly about your specific business?

(10:33):

Maybe not, but we’re going to be able to find somebody who understands your industry and has worked with other leaders who are similar to you. So hands down, yes. Training wise. Oh goodness. Well, because we’re finding experts for you and individuals who have done this role, they’re going to come with their own set of skills, and what they’re going to do is they’re going to lead you. So it would be unrealistic to think that you’re not going to have to give them access to certain systems, understand your tone. It’s going to take a while for them to learn those things, but there’s not a lot of training involved. And to your point, your CSC, your client success consultant is going to be here to walk you along the process. We have great documentation, great guides to help you out, but really your executive assistant, your virtual assistant is going to be leading that charge.

Steven (11:22):

It blew me away how incredible this process was when I went through it myself, because I told myself that there’s no way BELAY is going to get this done because I wanted a virtual assistant to start in the beginning of March, during the middle of my tax filing season, I had a thousand other things going on. I basically just told the person, Hey, I’ve got basically zero time to spend on this, but I still need someone to come in and have an impact right away, or how am I going to feel my investment was worth it and not phased at all? The client success person, it’s like, don’t worry. We’re going to find you somebody. I’m going to have somebody. I’m going to have a candidate for you, probably multiple candidates by this date. Here’s how this is all going to work. I was like, good luck.

(11:56):

So we get on the call, and this is one thing that I wasn’t expecting that totally blew me away because you’ve mentioned that you’re looking for a partner. This isn’t just someone to do tasks for you. This person has to be a fit. And so we get on the call and the client success person clearly has done this a time or two because she says, Hey, Danielle, why don’t you tell (Danielle’s name of my virtual assistant. She’s fantastic.) Steven something interesting about yourself, which she totally planted, and it turns out that one of Danielle’s hobbies is free diving with whales.

Lisa (12:29):

Oh my goodness. 

Steven (12:30):

Now for everyone listening, that might just sound kind of random and different, but one of the things that’s really important to me in life is having fun adventures. I don’t free dive with whales, but I love going out and doing unusual things. And so immediately we had this connection where this isn’t just some random person who can open my email for me. This is someone I’m going to be able to connect with who’s going to be a partner for me and to the training piece of it, that’s exactly what my experience. You talked about the virtual assistant leading you. That was completely my experience. We had the orientation meetings that went a lot faster than I expected them to. Less than an hour was the first one. And she already had enough information that she was having an impact the next day. Yes, we had to continue to train and develop together as far as how some of those preferences were going to work. She immediately had an impact for me.

Lisa (13:17):

Yeah, absolutely. We’re looking for people who are coachable. That’s important. Hard skills are great, but there are a lot of people who could probably do the job. We want people who are coachable, who are humble and who are looking to serve. And so yeah, Danielle showed up and she’s like, cool, I got this and you already had a connection. And that is part of what we do. We have, I mean, thousands of stories, stories from one of the old ones was we had a physician who was raising chickens, did not know that we were going and placed him with a virtual assistant who also raised chickens. One I heard today was a leader who has a business that is strictly focused on helping women get out of situations that are not healthy for them. And then the virtual assistant helped run another organization that was similar to that. So we see this time and time again because we’re not just looking at things just in one avenue. We’re looking for truly that really good partner, and that is why we use technology to help make the match. But at the end of the day, it’s a human who does it.

Steven (14:17):

Yeah, absolutely. And that shows in the process. So Lisa, one of the other things going into this that made me a little bit hesitant to say, okay, how’s this really going to work? Was the idea of having a contract, this is still a BELAY employee involved when I deal daily with sensitive client information, with social security numbers and financial data and all of this stuff that before it’s always been, Hey, I’ve got full-time team members, and these are just, they’re mental blocks in your head. You just haven’t really thought through before. But talk a little bit about the types of industries that you have assistance work in and how in an industry like financial planning, you’re making sure you’re having qualified, credible candidates who are going to appropriately handle these sensitive tasks.

Lisa (14:58):

Yeah, I mean just simply from the fact that your traditional business, they have financial information, like you said, social security cards. My assistant has my driver’s license to help me do things, make travel arrangements, and things like that. So there’s that level of sensitivity. And then you get into healthcare. Healthcare has HIPAA and all of the additional requirements that go around that, and even financial services a different level. So we’re going to look at is take a look at the client themselves and really understand whether they are mandated by a governing body that says, Hey, we have to make sure that these checks and balances are in place. Or if it’s just the normal business every day background checks, we’ve got NDAs and confidentiality agreements, kind of the basic layer of things. Then we’re also going to suggest are there password protector, password files, filing systems that you can use?

(15:52):

What type of firewall do you want them to have in cybersecurity? So we’re going to help you kind of navigate some of that depending upon what your business is. Ultimately, we want to make sure that we have set them up for success and you up for success too and sleep well at night knowing that your confidential information is safe. I do like to point out, because this is one area that a lot of people don’t know about Belay and our services, is that we are technology agnostic, which means that we actually cannot see any of your information, Steven, it’s all yours. We don’t have access to it. So when you think about just the visibility there and when we’re talking about risk management, you’re not worried about any BELAY team members. This is between you and your virtual assistant. We don’t have access to any of that, and I feel like that’s really, really important when you look at some of these other organizations who were funneling email through a system because they want to track hours and do all these things. You and her are a partner, and so you’re going to manage those things together.

Steven (16:51):

Lisa, you’ve mentioned a couple of times, Belay, helping people navigate these different steps, these different processes, and that’s really shown through to in my own experience, and one of the things we wanted to highlight on the podcast today, that BELAY is not a recruiting firm. You’re not finding someone placing ’em with me and saying, Hey, all the best of luck. I hope it works out for you, but you’re there every step of the way to help make sure that this is successful forever. We have a vested interest in making sure this is successful. And so it’s not up to me as the customer of Belay to say, oh, geez, what am I going to give to this person? You actually have resources around, here’s the kinds of things you can delegate. In fact, we’ve worked together on a resource specifically for financial advisors. I love how your systems work.

(17:32):

Our audience can actually just text in RTS Retirement Tax Services, the letters RTS, to 55123 to get a free copy of this list of things that financial advisors should be delegating. So again, that you’re helping them navigate, here are the types of things that can be handed off. And we worked together on this. And so as I started going through it, at first I was really excited. It’s like, oh yeah, I’m delegating a lot of those things. And then I got to somewhere I was like, Ooh, I need to improve here. And because we love pushing people to do more, I’ve got Matt and Micah both committed to, and I’m going to actually ask all of our presenters at the summit to commit to this as well, to fill out this delegation sheet to say, what am I delegating? So then we can compare and say, who’s the master delegator here? So super excited about it. Texting RTS to 55123. Lisa, what else would you add about just this idea of what do I delegate? How do I make sure I’m effectively using an assistant?

Lisa (18:26):

Well, I just wanted to go back a second when you were talking about that navigating part, it’s really taking it home that we are, this is a managed service, so you don’t ever feel like that you have to do this alone. Again, there are options for tasking. Go for it if that’s really your really simple, but the idea that that is what the CSC, the client success consultant is all about is that they’re the person that you can call to say, Hey, do you have any resources on how I can delegate more? Maybe it is this sheet right now, or maybe I’m looking for a bookkeeper. Or maybe we’ve even done where, Hey, I’m looking for somebody who is an expert in this area. Do you have any clients who do that? And so I just really want to make sure that people see this as not just I’m going to hire a virtual assistant, but they’re really, again, hiring that partner in that virtual assistant, but hiring a partner in Belay, they’re never going to be left alone to do that.

Steven (19:20):

Certainly appreciate that perspective there, Lisa, and you mentioned partnering in there, and so one of the things I want to highlight because almost 20 minutes into this episode, we haven’t really talked about taxes at all. And so I had loved being just super transparent about everything we do. We are very intentional at RTS with who we partner with. And so I mentioned at the top of the episode, we’re super excited that Blaze is coming back as a sponsor this next year, but we’re not having this conversation just because Belay is a sponsor of the summit. We’re having this conversation and we were excited to partner with BELAY because of what it does for advisors as we go down this list of things that advisors can delegate. The next piece we have to talk about is, well, what does that mean for the advisor? What does that mean for their ability to do things like implement and execute tax planning, to deliver more value to their clients, to spend more times with their family, to level up their own personal life? All of these things where the reason that we’re having this conversation that you and I are both so excited about is because we know what it can do for the individual engaging with this service to level up the rest of their life.

Lisa (20:21):

Absolutely. When I think about, again, kind of my background, I found that this was one area we always want to go deep in an industry. We want to go, Hey, where do we see that people need help? And for so many years, people thought that, Hey, my broker-dealers never going to allow this if they’re in that section, right? Hey, this is not going to be possible. Or How in the world am I going to be able to work with somebody virtually when I’m dealing with this very confidential, highly secure information? And for me, when I think of people who are making an impact in lives and in families, it is your listeners. And so we’re extremely excited to partner with you because I think that we can see the most value coming out of helping advisors learn where they can delegate so they can grow their business. We got a lot more families out there to help, and so if they’re able to increase their time, their book of business grows and we can make a bigger impact.

Steven (21:14):

Resonates for me, that gym analogy of before I knew there was a different way, I was perfectly happy with what I was doing, and I see that with people and virtual assistants with executive assistants that you might think you’re doing just fine without one. I promise you, you’d be doing way better with one. You’ll be blown away at what it allows you to do when you can start delegating more of these things.

Lisa (21:34):

My assistant is on vacation this week, and I literally wrote an email before we got on here and I was like, I feel like my arms are cut off this week because she just makes such a huge impact to everything that I do that now I’m having to think about like, oh, she can’t do that for me. So when you talk about you don’t even realize the impact that having this partner in your business is going to make until all of a sudden one day she wants to take some PTO and you’re like, oh my goodness, I used to do this all by myself. How is that a thing? The quality of my life has improved. I love my family. We’ve talked a lot about this, especially when we were in Vegas. I love my family. I’ve got adult children now, but I’m still present for them every single day. I could not be the CFO of a rapidly growing organization and still be present for my kids, still be a great wife, take care of my little dogs and all those things, and have time for me if I didn’t have a partner in the business who was watching out for me, that’s important. Somebody who’s on my side and what’s the best for me too.

Steven (22:36):

Yeah, absolutely. So much good stuff in there, Lisa. Our audience is very numbers-focused. We’ve got a bunch of financial advisors, tax planning nerds that listen to this. As you talk to people about potentially making the switch to working with a virtual assistant, how do you help them quantify, here’s the impact that you can expect to have? I know I used to be guilty of this, of telling myself it doesn’t take that much time to check my email. It doesn’t take that much time to book a flight. It doesn’t take that much time to change my hotel reservation. I had this whole list of things that in my head didn’t take that much time. So how do you help people with that kind of mental calculus of, oh wait, that is a huge time burden on me. It’s not just that I’m delegating to someone else, I’m delegating to someone who’s excited about it and who is way better at those things than me.

Lisa (23:19):

Yeah, I think that it’s really looking at, we like to call it a delegation matrix, and so what you’re going through is you’re just, and this doesn’t have to take long. I know there’s somebody out there going, great, you’re going to want me to do one more thing. I promise. It’s not. You can be sitting there with a cup of coffee or your back porch or even on your way to the gym, Steven, you could be sitting there thinking about this and telling Siri to write this note down, but start taking an inventory of what you do every just really quick 5, 10 minutes. You can sit there and kind of rattle it off, then look at the note and say, where are the highest value items at? And if you circle a handful of those, and there are 10, 11, 12 still on the list of things that are not high value, and 10, 11, 12 sounds like a lot, but it happens all the time.

(24:07):

Then you need to be focused on bringing this partner in your business. When we think about how much you can charge per hour, the impact you’re making on, again, because it’s not just all financial, it’s what the impact it’s going to be on your wellness too. None of us want to get to the end of our life and go, wow, look at this. I work really hard. It’s like, what kind of impact did I make in my life? And the simplest way to do that is just writing down what you tackle every day, every week, and then going through that and saying, where is the highest value at? And if there’s other things on the list, those are the things that you should be delegating.

Steven (24:40):

Yeah, such a great simple way to get started on that. And again, you’re struggling with ideas of what you’re going to delegate, text “RTS” to 55123, and Lisa just has a list for you. We’re going to have a lot of fun at the summit, turning that into a little bit of a friendly competition. Okay, how do we all stack up? I’m excited for that. And Lisa, you’re going to be back at the summit this year, September 25th through 27th. For anyone who hasn’t signed up yet, go to retirementtax services.com/summit to get signed up. Well on our way to the event selling out this year. So get your seat quick because we are going to run out of space. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Lisa (25:14):

Cannot wait.

Steven (25:16):

Lisa, as you think about the conversation that we’re having today or just things that you’ve seen have an impact around this topic in general, what are action items that you would recommend to advisors who are looking to do more in their life by either delegating more to someone already on their team or by finding a virtual assistant to work with? 

Lisa (25:32):

I think that if you open up your email and you’re overwhelmed by what you see, if your calendar’s a wreck, if you can’t lay your phone down at the end of your workday, whatever that workday looks like for you, but if you’re walking around with that thing and you can’t enjoy dinner, you can’t go out with friends because you feel like you’ve got to answer every single thing that comes in, that’s usually an indication that you’re exhausted. I don’t love the term burnout because I think that it has a whole bunch of different connotations these days, but I think it’s just that we overwork. And so the easiest thing for me is that I got people all the time go, I don’t want to look at my email or Don’t look at my email. I’ve got a thousand emails in there. I mean, right away, your executive assistant is going to go in there and she’s going to organize it, and you’re going to open up your email, and it’s only going to be the things that you can handle that you should be working on. Everything else is going to be out of there, and you’re going to look at your calendar and you’re going to be excited what’s on there because you’re going to fill it with things that make you money and you’re going to fill the things with make you happy. If you have those two things right there, man, I mean, what can get better? The world’s your oyster at that point.

Steven (26:36):

Hey, Lisa, we keep coming back to email, but it’s such an impactful one because the first time that my assistant gave me, instead of me having to go in sort through my email and say, oh, what do I do first? What’s the priority? The first time I just got a summary of, Hey, Steven, there’s these 17 things you need to address. These are the only three that really need to be addressed today. These ones I could probably address for you. If you just give me a little insight. These ones I think you can delegate to someone else. That’s all you got to do. And it’s like, wow. Now that’s a total game changer. It’s totally different experience than that moment of, do I really want to open my email and deal with all this? So that’s just one example of things that can get delegated.

Lisa (27:11):

And your assistant is also going to learn what is the best way to communicate to you. So my assistant and I, we’ve recently gone to looms and videos and even voice texts because sometimes it’s a little bit harder to sit there and go, lemme type all this out, or whatever. And so voice texts and videos are super, super helpful. Again, she was going on vacation. She created this whole video for me. Let me know exactly where I was going to be this week, what I needed to tackle first. Great. So if you’re somebody like, oh, there’s another email to read, no, we can even simplify that for you. It could be a voice memo when you wake up in the morning. She’s already got it there to take care of.

Steven (27:44):

So much great possibility here. Well, Lisa, I really appreciate your time and coming on the podcast. Can’t wait to see you in September in Phoenix. It’s great having you on.

Lisa (27:53):

Thank you so much for the invitation. I’m really excited. We already talked about this. I’m really excited. Cannot wait for September.

Steven (27:59):

Going to be such a great event. So yeah, retirementtaxservices.com/summit to get signed up. If you haven’t already, you can text RTS to 55123 to get that delegation checklist. And we’re going to have a lot of fun with that at the event. So, Lisa, I will see you in September and for everyone listening until next time, good luck out there. And remember to tip your server, not the IRS!