#1047 - Jonathan Swanson - The Obvious Strategy to Take Back Your Time

How did you get started in thinking about time and delegating? So my first job out of school was working at the White House, and I worked for the president's top economic adviser. And I got a walk in the West Wing every morning, which was cool life experience, and I sat next to the president's executive assistants. And as you might imagine, the executive assistants to the president are really freaking good. And it set my bar crazy high for what this client EA partnership could look like. And so when I left the White House to start my first company, I asked myself the question, what if I had an assistant or a team of assistants that was as good as the president's? Obviously, I'm not gonna become president, but what else could I accomplish if I had that sort of support? And so hired my first, assistant that way and then set out on a journey to build the best team I could to see how it changed my life. What were the unlocks that you saw inside of the White House? Like, how how complex and big is the system of spindly octopuses with the tentacles and everything trying to help get the machine moving? I mean, it's insane. The president has multiple assistants as you might imagine. There's actually an entire department called advance that plans every minute of the president's life for months in advance. And so if he's gonna be in Brazil in three months, there's people deployed months in advance to go scope, prepare everything. And, you know, I think there's just kind of the level of optimization, which is one thing. But the thing that really struck me sitting next to the president's assistants is seeing the relationship they had. It wasn't just saving him time or doing tasks for him. At the end of the day, he would sit down, lean back in his chair, and be like, what happened? And he would talk to his assistant. And this was one of the people he trusts most in the world. There's all these other people jockeying for his attention, governors, senators, NSA chiefs, but this assistant is the one person who's just, like, got his back fundamentally, emotionally, psychologically. And you could tell there was a real psychological connection that was very valuable, beyond just the work. So it's a deep relationship of trust and kind of awareness, I suppose, because of how globally, connected that assistant is to everything? Exactly. Like, if you have an assistant there in your inbox, they're seeing the lawsuit that's coming, the person that's quitting, the money you just raised, the investor that rejected you, all the highs and lows that are shielded from most of your company and marks the White House, but that assistant sees all of it. And so they're on the emotional journey with you more than really anyone else. Okay. So jump to the end. That's the beginning. Jump …