I was recently interviewing Carlos Samaniego on my podcast. If you don't know Carlos, he’s a tax expert, but before that, he was an Army medic and a paramedic. He told me something about human survival that changed how I look at my to-do list. In a crisis (like a car wreck), the average person does one of two things: 1. They panic. 2. They freeze. Carlos called this a biological glitch. When the noise gets too loud, your brain hits a "pause" button to save energy. Here is the kicker: Your brain treats a messy business the same way it treats a car wreck. When you have 500 unread emails, a stack of tax notices, or a CRM that looks like a disaster zone... you don't "grind harder." You hit The Freeze. You stop opening the mail. You stop making the calls. You stare at your screen for three hours and accomplish nothing. Carlos said the person who survives is the one who keeps a "Calm Voice." In a crisis, the person who thinks most clearly wins. For me, that "calm voice" isn't just a state of mind. It is a system. It is having a remote team that handles the "Doing" so I can stay in the "Thinking." When the friction is moved to a system, the noise stops. When the noise stops, the freeze melts. I want to hear from the group. What is the one "trigger task" in your business that usually makes you hit the pause button? (For me, it was always looking at messy bookkeeping. I’d see the numbers and suddenly feel like I needed a nap.) Drop yours below. Let's see if we can find some patterns.

They hire a rockstar, set up the SOPs, and everything is perfect. Then, 6 months later, the quality dips, profit leaks, and the founder starts thinking, "Maybe I just need better people." It’s usually not a people problem. It’s Operational Drift. Human biology is wired to find the path of least resistance. Like water running downhill, your team will subconsciously find shortcuts to save energy. If Tiger Woods needs a swing coach to keep his form from drifting, why do we expect a $15/hr VA to stay elite with zero feedback? Here is the 3-step system I use to keep my teams on the sidewalk: 1. The 10-Minute Huddle: A quick daily sync. We don't talk about the weather; we set the "line of play" for the day. 2. Real-Time Guardrails: We use Slack to catch "micro-mistakes" while they are happening. If you wait until a weekly meeting to fix a bug, you've already lost a week of profit. 3. The EOD (End of Day) Report: Every team member sends 3 bullet points before they log off: When the system is strong, average players perform like pros. You stop being a "manager" and start being a "coach." Is anyone else struggling with "SOP slippage" right now? I’m curious how you guys are keeping your remote teams consistent once the "honeymoon phase" of the hire wears off.

I was talking to a 22-year-old who is currently looking for work. She told me she won’t even look at a job that pays less than $80,000 a year. The kicker? She has zero skills. No real experience. She just felt that was the "starting price" for her time. It hit me right then: the local labor market has officially detached from reality. For a long time, I felt like I was failing because I was overpaying for "meh" results. I thought I was a bad leader. But I finally realized I was just fighting a battle that was rigged against me. So, I decided to stop fighting and exit the local labor war entirely. I started looking past my own zip code. What I found changed everything for my businesses. I realized I could find people in places like the Philippines or Colombia who: 1. Have college degrees and high-speed fiber internet. 2. Have way more "heart" and loyalty than the people down the street. 3. Cost about 70% less than that $80k entry-level hire. But I learned the hard way that you can’t just "dump" tasks on a site like Upwork and hope for the best. That’s how you get ghosted and end up with more work on your plate. The secret isn't just the person—it's the rhythm you put them in. I use two simple "Management Minimums" to keep my team running at a high level in about 10 minutes a day: - The 10-Minute Huddle: A quick video call every morning to stay on the same page. - The EOD Report: A simple note they send before they log off telling me what they did and if they’re stuck. The fear of "going global" goes away once you have that loop in place. It’s the only way I’ve found to get high-quality work at a price that actually lets the business scale. I’m curious - is anyone else seeing this "Entitlement Gap" with local hiring, or have you already made the pivot to a borderless team?

We’ve all been lied to about remote work. The big CEOs on the news are screaming about "Return to Office" because they say remote workers are lazy. They say you can’t get anything done unless you can see the person in a cubicle. That isn't true. What is true is that most founders are accidentally sabotaging their own teams. I recently talked to a guy named Jose. He’s smart and super organized. He hired VAs from everywhere... the Philippines, India, Ukraine, South America. He gave them SOPs. He gave them training. And yet, they still failed him. They stopped checking in. They missed deadlines. Productivity leaked out of his business like water through a sieve. Jose wasn't the problem. His hires weren't the problem. The problem was a "Ding-Dong Ditch" management style. Most people think they are delegating, but they are actually abdicating. Abdication is when you drop a task on someone’s porch, ring the doorbell, and run away. You’re orphaning your projects and hoping a stranger raises them for you. If you want those "average" hires to perform like $150k-a-year executives, you need to stop orphaning your tasks. You need the S.T.G.A. System. This is the system that turns "okay" employees into rockstars. Here is how it works: 1. Support (The "Island" Killer) Remote work is lonely. When people feel like they are on an island, they stop caring. Support isn't just "answering questions." It’s making sure they feel like they belong. If they don't feel connected to you, they won't feel responsible for the work. 2. Training (The 6th Grade Rule) If your training is too complex, your team spends all their brain power just trying to understand the words. They have no energy left to actually do the job. I tell my clients to write training for a 6th grader. If a 12-year-old can’t follow your steps, your training is too dense. Simple training reduces "cognitive load." It lets your team focus on the result, not the manual. 3. Guidance (The Gymnastics Coach)

A business owner told me recently: “I found two VAs for less than the cost of one. They even threw in a free month of content.” Sounds like a win, right? But here’s what most people miss: When you pay someone $3/hour, you’re not buying talent. You’re buying survival mode. There’s real research on this. It’s called the Cognitive Load of Poverty. The data shows that constant financial stress drops a person’s effective IQ by about 13 points. That’s the same as pulling an all-nighter… every single day. It doesn’t mean they’re not smart. It means their brain is constantly "overheated" trying to solve: - How do I pay rent? - What if I get sick? - Can I afford food this week? - If your team is stuck in that loop, you aren't getting strategic thinking or long-term focus. You’re getting reaction mode. Just enough effort to survive the day. That’s why “two for one” often feels like zero. Brains work better when they aren’t in crisis. When you pay someone enough to live, they can finally focus on helping you win. If you want to see what a fully-supported, professional VA looks like (and the specific "Strategy Workflow" they use to save you 10+ hours a week)... I’m happy to share it. Just say “send it” below. 👇