Minter Dialogue with Chantel Ray

In this episode, I sit down with Chantel Ray, author of “Delegate Everything but Sex.” We explore Chantel’s unique approach to delegation and time management, discussing how she built a life that prioritizes personal time and family. Chantel shares insights on becoming a “time millionaire,” offering practical tips on simplifying processes, automating tasks, and identifying what to delegate. We delve into the importance of self-awareness in delegation, the concept of decision fatigue, and how to overcome common obstacles in letting go of control. Chantel also touches on the significance of passive income and challenges conventional expectations for working women. Throughout our conversation, we uncover valuable strategies for leaders looking to maximize their productivity and create a more balanced life.

Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.

To connect with Chantel Ray:

• Check out Chantel’s eponymous site here
• Find/buy Chantel’s book, “Delegate Everything But Sex,” here
• Find/follow Chantel Ray on LinkedIn
• Find out how to set up your passive income with Chantel’s webinar here

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Show in this podcast tab, on Megaphone or via Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, please go over to rate this podcast via RateThisPodcast! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at: MinterDial.fr, on Megaphone or in iTunes.
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Chantel Ray. Well, that is one heck of a name. And the, the book title that you wrote is even more of a heck of a name. If you, if you will, sort of in the realm of eye raisers, “Delegate Everything but Sex.” In your own words. Chantel, who are you?

Chantel Ray: Well, I would say I love to delegate. That’s what I. Why I wrote the book. It’s funny because everyone would come and they would see different things that I delegate, and they would be like, oh, my gosh, you delegate everything. I’ve never seen anyone who delegates more things than you. And then I would respond back and I say, yeah, I pretty much delegate everything but sex. Because people would say, is there anything you don’t delegate? And I’m like, yeah, I definitely don’t delegate sex. And so, that’s kind of where the, the title came from. And I think that happens is everyone gets to a place in life where they’re leading and they’re making money, and then they realize that they just don’t have enough time. And so, everybody has the same amount of time. And you can always make more money if you’re delegating properly. And so, I just really wanted to write a book that just helps people build a life that creates time for you and your family. And instead of becoming a millionaire, a lot of people have already passed that goal. Now they say, okay, I want to be a time millionaire instead of just a money millionaire or a billionaire. Becoming a time millionaire or time billionaire is kind of really where it’s at.

Minter Dial: It’s a, it’s a great concept. Chantel, this idea of the time millionaire, your subtitle is “How to Lead, Delegate and Become a Time Millionaire.” And I think it’s a very catchy, very appropriate whole idea. Though I do feel the need to say only sex.

Chantel Ray: There’s actually a few more things. I mean, obviously time with friends, time with family, time with my kids, you know, all of those things. But there’s definitely more things that I definitely don’t delegate. But I would say there’s so much that I delegate that people, when you, when you read the book, what will happen is you kind of go, wow, I didn’t even think about delegating that. Right. Like, there’s so many things in your life that you do that you don’t even think about. And I’ll give you a silly example for me, and one of them is blow drying my hair. So, I have someone at the house that comes over and will blow dry my hair for me while I’m either Working or, you know, doing other things. Because it takes 40 minutes for me to blow dry my hair. So, for me to spend 40 minutes blow drying my hair, that is absolutely not a good use of my time. And someone else can do it. And that’s just a silly example. But there’s so many of other things that people are doing that they wouldn’t even think about delegating out. And I like to open people’s minds to go, yeah. And once they hear it, they then go, yeah, that is silly. Why am I wasting time doing that?

Minter Dial: Well, speaking, hair is right up my alley because I worked in the hairdressing industry for 16 years, so I know a thing or two about hair. And I can see in your hair, a whole wad of thick hair. And I can imagine the workout that it must be to straighten your hair.

Chantel Ray: I mean, and it’s curly. My hair is curly. So, it’s like a real workout and a lot of work to get this hair straight.

Minter Dial: Well, hopefully you take care of your hair as well. Yeah. So, I mean, in, in, in. I have two sort of zones I wanted to go into. One was, what about delegating the writing of a book?

Chantel Ray: Yeah. And I did that. And what’s so funny, let me tell you this. When I wrote this book. Book, I actually voiced my own audio book. I didn’t. I. I wrote the book, but I did it all via voice to text. So, what I did was I got on Zoom. I actually wrote this book in less than 21 days. Okay. So, if, you know, there’s very few people that can write a book in less than 21 days. And here’s what I did. I literally every day for about 45 minutes, I got on a Zoom call by myself, and I just started recording. And I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Right? Like, everything that I wanted to say, and I just kind of vomited everything that I know about delegation. I didn’t put it in order. I didn’t make the chapters. I didn’t do anything. I just voiced what I thought for probably, you know, maybe 15 days in a row, I just got up and did that. And then the rest of everything else from the book was done for me. The title, I. I came up with the title, but I’m saying, like, the graphics and the design and putting the book together and making sure it’s grammatic. I. I have my degree in math, and I am the worst writer that there is. But I even told the guy who was my ghostwriter, I said, when you read the Book I want people to hear my voice. And every person who’s ever read any of my books will tell you 100%. Chantel wrote this book because it sounds exactly like her. And I said, if it’s not grammatically wrong, don’t change it. But. So, those words are for me. But I ended up deciding to voice my. There’s several book. Other books that I’ve written. I lost 30 pounds doing intermittent fasting. And so, I have a couple books that I’ve written, and I didn’t voice them. And the only thing about that is I feel like my. My passion, because I’m so passionate about this doesn’t quite come through if you have someone else voice it. So, there’s a few things where if you can do it 10 times better than somebody else, then I’ll go ahead and choose to do it. Like, nobody’s going to be able to parent my son the way I do. No one loves him the way I do. You know, there’s certain things, if you can do it 10 times better or even five times better, I might consider doing those things myself. But there’s very few things, if you think about it, that you’re going to do five or 10 times better than someone else could do it.

Minter Dial: I really appreciate those insights, Chantel. And as a writer, of course, I am quite intimately familiar with concepts and how you get to the books, but you obviously have a really good way and to go in your direction. I definitely felt your voice as I read your book. So, touché on that count. One of the things that I wanted to explore, though, is how does one identify what is, let’s say, the leisure piece, the undelegatable piece, versus the delegated piece. For example, gardening. You could delegate gardening to a gardener. However, I think there’s something most valuable about putting your hands in the dirt, contemplating nature, thinking about nothing, or, you know, just having a beautiful garden and being proud of that. So, just taking that small idea, how does. How do you architect what is to be delegated? I mean, obviously not sex, not your family time, but just to understand. Because, for example, I think writing for me is. Is for me a beautiful and worthy and rewarding activity. It may not be. Certainly not for you and for others neither. So, for every person to have different things that are more intriguing, more pleasurable. So, how do you.

Chantel Ray: That’s a great example. So, for example, if you said, you know, I actually. And I hear people say this to me all the time, and they’re like, well, I actually enjoy gardening, so why wouldn’t I do that? Why would I deleg that out? And I say to them, let me ask you this, would you do my gardening for me for free if I was your neighbor? Do you love it that much that if I was your neighbor and I said, would you do it for me for free? You would say yes. And if your answer was yes, then maybe I would consider doing that. But there what that’s almost like a scapegoat that people say and they end up doing that with all these other different things. And what I would say is, do you enjoy having dinner with your friends and your family the same amount that you enjoy gardening? And if the answer to that is yes, then I might consider doing that. But for me, I hate gardening. So, that’s not really a good example for me. But I, I can’t think of a lot of things that I would say. Like for example, I for, I love getting a massage. Like there’s, for me, there’s nothing more magical for me than getting a massage. So, I would say, would I rather get a massage or would I rather go gardening? What would fill my tank more? And if it would be getting a massage, then I would delegate out that gardening piece. Because when you get your life to the place where you’re only doing the things that either are the highest dollar producing activities that you can do, right? And, and I also say this, another important piece is because I think there’s this lie that people are like, only do everything that you absolutely love. Well, I don’t know very many people who every piece of what they have to do, they love. But if you can get your place to a place where at least 80 to even 90% of everything that you’re doing, you really do love and go. Everybody has at least 10 to 20% of little things that they have in their life that they don’t love doing, but they have to do it. And that’s where I really want to get people to. And I’ll give you an example. So, in my business, which is in real estate, part of a way that I make money, I make passive income, is through attracting other agents underneath me. So, I have a company where we actually merged it into a larger company and we merged it in. Our company was called Canzell and we merged with a $2 billion company called EXP. And so, now I make passive income seven layers down for anyone that I attract. Agent attraction is not something I’m super passionate about and I don’t love doing it. I just brought on A, an 80 person brokerage underneath me, I had a conversation with someone, I loved meeting them, going out to coffee, explaining why I do that, and then I’m able to attract those agents and that that firm is now coming on underneath me at, at exp. So, that was a really high dollar producing activity that I could do. Now if I had my choice of doing that versus getting a massage, I would probably say getting a massage. Right. But I still really enjoyed meeting that person, spending time with them, telling them all the reasons of why they should join me. And because that meeting, you know, I talk about $10 an hour activities, $100, thousand dollar and $10,000 an hour activity. That meeting for me was a $10,000 an hour activity because I’m now going to receive passive income from that one hour of a conversation from now until the, till the day that I die. Right. So, that our activity was a $10,000 hour activity and just looking at every ounce of your day and going, Was that a $10 an hour activity? $100. And when people, when I say that people are like, well, I couldn’t hire someone $10 to do that. It would cost me at least $25 an hour to hire someone else to do that. When I say $10 an activity, I’m basically saying anything less than $100. Right. So, you just have to evaluate your day every single minute and go, I don’t have that much time here on Earth. Like if you’re 50 years old, the average person they say is 74 years old. So, it’s like you’ve got 14 more years. Yeah. For when you’re going to die. That’s not that much time. Or 24. Sorry. I’m a math major. I have my degree in math. I just always say I can’t do basic math.

Minter Dial: Do, do some logarithms. Well, you know what, so listening to you, what it strikes me is, and, and here’s. I think really the good learning is to do an inventory of everything you do and apply some level of evaluation, whether it’s money or love, passion, reward, somehow that becomes your method of evaluating. What’s interesting too is you also have, let’s say, a process before you start delegating. And that I think the idea of delegation seems very enchanting. But you can’t just jump right into it. Right.

Chantel Ray: Yeah. I, I will give you an example of one of our good friends who’s really good at delegating. And I asked him, I said, what’s taking up a lot of your time that you hate doing? And he says, I Spend about five hours a week sending out wires. And he’s like, I haven’t delegated that because I’m too scared that, you know, for me to give all my wire, you know, he’s wiring like $100,000, 150,000, a lot of money. So, it’s big wire amounts. And he is like, I just haven’t been able to let go of that. And he’s like, but I’m spending probably five to seven hours a week minimum on that. And I hate doing it on top of that because it’s very detailed and I hate doing it. Well, again, you have to be able to find people. There are people you can trust. Think about your accounting person. There are high level people that you can trust. And that is 100% something that he should delegate out. He should not be doing that. And that’s a high-level item that, that he should delegate. And what’s holding him back from being able to do that is that he is. It’s a trust issue, right? He’s like not willing to trust someone else to be able to do that. So, you kind of have to go down the root cause. Most of the time it’s actually an ego thing where that one is a trust, right? But a lot of times it’s. It’s an ego thing where you think, well, nobody can do it as good as me, right? Or they think, well, by the time I explain to someone how to do it, I might as well just do it myself. Which that philosophy never, ever works. Because if you think about, even if it takes you 10 minutes to do it and it takes you 20 minutes to explain to someone how to do it one time, if that’s every single week or every day that you’re doing that, you’re compounding your time by explaining it one time. And I explain in the book exactly how you can make videos, exactly how you can make manuals where you delegate that one time to have someone else, you do it on video, show how to do it, take that, transcribe it. There’s different programs you can use, Loom and Zoom and all these different ones that will actually even write the manuals for you, you know, through AI now that you can just record it once on Zoom, upload it, or do it on Loom, it will actually make a policy and procedure manual for you when you recorded on Zoom one time. So, there’s so many different tips that I give on how to make these processes easier for you. And just I think looking at my checklists of some of the Checklists that I’ve created actually will give jog your brain on what you need to do for yours. I’ll give you an example. I saw some vision, a vision board of someone else that I really admire, and he wrote his down, but that just looking at his and mine were totally different, but just looking at his inspired me and made it so much easier for me to do. And so, that’s what I’m hoping that the book will do for other people is looking at that and going, well, maybe you don’t have hair, right. Maybe you’re bald. Right. But you look at my checklist of what I’ve delegated out, it really gives you some good ideas of what you’re holding onto.

Minter Dial: Well, not only do you provide lots of interesting nooks and crannies to go into, but you provide really interesting and appropriate, very practical solutions. And so, that was. That was. It’s the most helpful read in this regard. Chantel.

Chantel Ray: Thank you.

Minter Dial: What I was looking at just before, in my prior question was really this idea of what do you need to do before you start delegating everything? What sort of process do you need to put in place? Because even if, let’s say, we all want to delegate, there does seem to be some cleaning that has. That goes along, or at least some inventory checking. Understand what it is, what, what I. What I need to delegate and start from that and why I want to delegate it.

Chantel Ray: Yeah, I think that first you have to think about what are all the things I hate doing? Because if you truly hate it, it’s so much easier to delegate. But the very first thing that you have to do is I. I talk about first getting rid of some things. So, the first step is eliminating. Because there’s some things that you’re doing that are not necessary, that you actually need to do. I know for us, we had some different things on our checklist at work that we were having employees do, and we made these checklists, let’s say, 10 years ago. Right. So, now when I’m going back through some of these checklists, I’m like, we don’t need to do this anymore. And in your business, if you look at it, there’s all kinds of things that have evolved that you don’t even. This isn’t an unnecessary step. So, step one is to eliminate. The next one you want to do is you want to see how to simplify. Like some of these checklists I was looking at that we were doing at work, and I was like, 10 different steps. Well, with AI now and some different programs that they have. There’s so many new programs out there that can actually simplify some of the steps that you’re doing and then the next step is to automate them. Kind of like I was saying before, you know, when you have diff just even making the checklist yourself, you can use Chat GPT and put in make me a checklist for this, this, this, this and this and it will whoop you up one make me a manual for this, this, this and this and it will. I mean it’s unbelievable what AI can do now. So. And I know you’re the king of AI, so maybe you could even talk about some of the things that you’ve done through AI that have kind of simplified things because you’re the king of it.

Minter Dial: Well there certainly, I mean and I think it’s a fast evolving space and the ability to understand how to write the right prompt to what are the potential uses that you have. Plus there’s so many different verticals and niche types of AI is basically an AI for everything out there. But I’m not going to get into that. That’ll be for another podcast for sure. Chantel, let’s go back to this idea. So, you talk about eliminate get rid of things which don’t need. You know, things like, well, we’ve always done it around here. You know, I kind of heard that a lot when I was at work. When I take over a new job they would be like, well these are the meetings you have to go to and they’re why do I have to go to that one? And then the simplify that seems to be a little bit of a harder thing to do. I suppose you could ask ChatGPT to simplify my life, however, with regard to tasks and activities that I do. Simplifying it, what would give me kind of some tips or orientations around how you go around simplifying stuff.

Chantel Ray: Yeah. So, I’ll give you an example with man, I would say there’s two things that I see that I have a really hard time getting entrepreneurs to get rid of and one of them is checking their email. They don’t want to give up their inbox. And number two is kind of managing their budget and paying some of the bills and like the wiring instruction. Like the wiring and that kind of some of that little accounting stuff that they haven’t trusted. Right. And so, what I would say for that is with the managing the budget and paying the bills, I’ll give you an example we had when we were paying people, we had like five different Venmo accounts that we, we had different businesses. So, we had like five different Venmo’s for all these different businesses. We had five Paypal’s, five of this other. And then I started looking at it and I’m like, why do we have all these different Venmo’s? And they said, well, because you have to have different accounts to pay all out of the different businesses.

Minter Dial: And then I said, if I could one second. The Venmo for people who live outside of the United States, because it’s really a US focused thing. It’s basically a digital bank, a digital payment scheme. Right. Online.

Chantel Ray: Yes. Like Zelle. Do you guys have Zelle or anything like that?

Minter Dial: We may have Sell, but I, I hear Venmo a lot and it’s always frustrating because I don’t have a, an ability. You have to have a US phone to use Venmo anyway, that just so people are listening who don’t know about it. Anyway. Continue on.

Chantel Ray: Yeah, so. So, for Venmo and PayPal and all of these, the way that you can get around instead of having, if you have five different businesses, what you do is you can actually just have one account and then you pay for it by different credit cards. So, I was like, no, let’s just have one account and then pay for whatever you need to. If it’s for this business, pay for it out of this one. If it’s this business. Because having five different accounts makes it very complicated. And let’s simplify it down to one account. So, that’s a lot of times you need to have someone you know a little bit that can look at it high level and go, why are we doing this? This seems so complicated. We had a girl that was the director of operations with us at one point and she just made everything complicated. She put all these different. Everything she made into 15 steps, into just simplify it into two steps. And so, I always say if it’s not easy enough for a 7-year-old to do it or a 70-year-old to do it, then this process needs tweaking. If you look at the Apple products, you know, if you look at all of them, they make it so easy that a 7-year-old or a 70-year-old can do it. And if it’s not, we have to go back to the drawing board and really look at simplifying our processes.

Minter Dial: Right. So, you need to do all this preparatory work before you go into delegating everything. And then you have a. Another allegory that I like very much because I play a lot of tennis. I was a tennis player in my youth. You talk about your grip, your tennis grip. So, tell us about the tennis grip concepts and the idea of letting go.

Chantel Ray: Yeah, so I love playing tennis and I have this tennis coach and he would always say to me, should Chantel, can you please loosen your grip on the tennis racket? And I, I just, would always just hold on so tight to the tennis racket and I actually would get tennis elbow from it because I would hold onto that racket so tight. And he was like, if you want to really improve your swing, I know it’s counterintuitive, but you have to be able to let go so that you can have a better swing swing and be able to have, you know, a better follow through. And the same thing has to do with that control. Remember the guy I was telling you about who said, you know, I’m spending five to six hours, seven hours a week on sending out wires? Why? Because in his mind, he’s controlling that process. He hasn’t been able to let go of that because of some trust issues. And so, you have to have a conversation with yourself. You can have things in place. You know, all banks now have ways where you can kind of delegate some of that wiring out to an administrative person. There’s some things where you can hit approve on different things. You can have notifications every time something goes out. But him just looking at an hitting yes to approve is a lot easier than spending there typing all of these wires out. So, you can still put some things to keep yourself guarded. And I’m not saying, you know, willy nilly everything. I will tell you, I’ll tell you one mistake I just recently made with an accounting piece where I gave away too much control. One of our operations people wanted to be the main person on our account because she didn’t want to keep getting notification every time. You know, I had to be the one to authorize and authorize. And she’s like, I’m doing all the accounting. I should be the one to have the main person on this account. And she ended up leaving and then we had to redo all of the accounts. So, like, that was. I should, I’m. I am a very trusting person. And so, I, you know, delegate a little bit too much. But again, hindsight, I probably would have allowed myself to be the, the main one on the account and then we wouldn’t have to redone all those accounts. But I’d rather err on that side because again, I value my time. I don’t know how long I have here on earth. But with the time that I do have, I want to be able to use my gifts that God’s given me to my fullest. And anything I know that has to do with being very detail oriented, that just drains me. If I have to do any of that stuff. It literally sucks the life out of me and I can’t be as pumped up for my team as I need to when I’m being dragged in and nobody can. You have to figure out what do I love doing everything else. For the most part, I want to delegate.

Minter Dial: Yeah, this is going back to that inventory idea at the beginning and taking stock of what it is. And I get the feeling, I mean maybe I’m wrong, but it would be also an interesting way to think more about being self-aware and better understanding of yourself if you do this type of preparatory work.

Chantel Ray: Yeah, I would say even things. This is a big one. So, for example, property management for rental properties. I have been in the real estate business for a very long time. There’s nobody that could handle rentals better than me. I’m so knowledgeable, I know everything about it. I could do it in my sleep. Now do I have any desire for all my rental properties to manage them? No, not one bit. I don’t want to get a phone call at 2 in the morning saying my toilet’s broken. That’s just not what I want to do. So, I 100% delegate every bit. And not only that, I told the guy if it’s $1000 or less, I don’t even want to know about it. So, if the toilet, you know, breaks, just fix it. You have my authorization. If it needs to be done, do it. Anything more than a thousand dollars, go ahead and notify me. You can send me an email on the other stuff, but I don’t even want to know about that stuff because again it’s, I call it a drip. And anytime that something happens, I’ll give you an example. I’ll give you an example. One of my friends was like had this phone charger and they only had like two in the whole house and they were like sharing this phone charger and they could never find it. That’s an example of a drip. Like if you come to my house, there’s literally multiple chargers in every room. You never have to look to for a phone charger. I don’t care how expensive the Apple phone charger is. We definitely have, you know, multiple in every room. And if they have a, we have a guest, they have one, you know, because That’s a drip. Something that just is annoying. When you can’t find something or you’re always searching for it, you know, figure out what that annoying drip is and take care of it for the final time so you never have to think about it. My life is very, very automated. So, just even things like, you know, with my shoes, you know, I have even on the checklist, like, we go for a walk every day on the beach in the morning, and at night, I leave my shoes out there. They’re. Somebody washes them for me. I have my. My hair bands for my hair, so I don’t have to think very hard. Everything in my house is positioned so that I know what my daily routines are. And I’ve set even my house up. I have someone who organizes every little detail so that there’s no little annoying drips in my life, if that makes sense.

Minter Dial: Well, what it sounds like to me, Chantel, is you need to be extremely organized.

Chantel Ray: Yes, but I’m not that organized. So, like, I’m not a very organized person. But I love my life to be organized. So, that’s why I surround myself with people who. I cast the vision of what I want it to look like. And, for example, like, my sneakers, my flip flops, if you look at my house, it’s all labeled. You know, my favorite sneakers go here. This is where everything’s got a label. So, if I get a new cleaning person that came in that day or whatever, everyone knows where everything goes. And. But I didn’t do it. I just cast the vision for the person of what I want the house and how I want it to be organized. So, people thinking, well, I’m not that organized. You don’t have to be. I’m not that organized either. I’m very messy. I’m an extremely messy person. I’m just like. But if you come in my house at any one given time, it looks like an I. It looks like an open house almost at all times. Because I have someone that comes in and does everything for me. Because we love an organized, clean house. And I will tell you, you will run your business so much better if your surroundings are completely organized, clean, neat. I also do something where every week I try to get rid of at least five to seven items in my house every single week. Yeah, just eliminating things. Like, did I wear. Have I worn this in a long time? Nope. Get rid of it. Like, if your closet is very organized and clean and less. You know how they say less is more? It’s true. If you start getting rid of stuff, everything in your house, your life will just feel less clutter less, and you’ll feel you’ll be able to move so much faster. I always say, like, it’s like a flywheel. If everything is organized, you delegate. All those things people say to me all the time, they’re like, I’ve never seen. I don’t even know how you get as much stuff done as you get done. And I say it’s because of what I delegate, and it’s because of how I’ve organized my life so that I’ve eliminated this, I’ve automated this, all the processes. Like, even with our company, when somebody onboards with us, the onboarding process is so automated. I’m thinking about selling the technology that we have for this. Because it’s so automated, someone can fill out all their stuff, their name, their phone number, their email, and everything is all automated. On the back end, they can. The email is created for them through Microsoft. The, you know, the, their websites are all automated, everything. So, I paid one time for the web developer to create this software, but now when somebody onboards, it’s so automated, there’s like 15 things that are done all in the background that no human has to even touch. It’s all automated. And that’s where you can take your business to the next level.

Minter Dial: So to capture that thought, you had these 80 new agents. All they need to do is basically show up, and then 80 new profiles are immediately created.

Chantel Ray: Yeah, so they have like a backend profile. So, then their websites are created for them. They’re. They have different funnels that are created for them, their emails created for them. Their. Everything’s done all on the background by them filling out a form that has their name, their phone number, their picture, and then all that goes into the backend portal for them.

Minter Dial: It does sound very efficient. And I just wanted to pick up on, you know, maybe two things that are linked. One is this idea of creating videos to instruct somebody. And the reason why I was thinking that could be really useful is because a lot of these, the, the people who will be doing these tasks delegated by you for you, they don’t necessarily stay forever. I mean, you know, so we, in French, we call it petite man. The small hands that are doing stuff. And, and by nature, they, they grow, they grow older, they grow on, they move on. And so, but the fact that you have the video that does it already means you don’t have to redo the whole story if and when they leave. And, and the same idea for your Cleaners, you have everything noted. Where everything is, is my favorite shoes. The new cleaner comes because that happens. And then you already have the system, your vision in place. So, makes a whole lot of sense.

Chantel Ray: All right, I want to say one thing about, you know, as far as what goes on with. With the simplifying. So, just recently, the CEO of Starbucks actually made an entire adjustment to the Starbucks menu. So, what he said is he wants to get people in and out within less than four minutes. So, what he did is he completely went through the menu. And when people have too many choices, if you think about it, they were like, oh, should I get this one? Should I get this one? You know, it’s like the menu at California, not California Cheesecake Factory. It’s just so overwhelming. People could sit there and just take time and take time and take time, and they just don’t know what they want to do. So, simplifying even choices that people can make, that was a really great move on Starbucks CEO because he understands too many choices takes longer. He wants to get people in and out in less than four minutes. And he simplified the menu. And so, you have to go through your organization and go, do we have too many choices? Because we need to simplify this cliche.

Minter Dial: I mean, the idea of simplifying it, or it comes out of the problem of trying to satisfy every customer’s desires. And so, oh, well, I want mine to be with a, you know, half flat, this and that. Different. I personally get completely confused because I’m rather simple when it comes to my coffee, but I don’t have to worry so much. But I do look up these long boards with all these things like, oh, my gosh, I get. I get lost just in the proposition of much less what I want. Another thing you do and you write about is choice of clothing. And I wanted to pair it with another thought, which is, what is life about? And so, you say, well, I think it’s really good to simplify the choice of clothing. So, you can be like a Zuckerberg or a Steve Jobs, famously always in a turtleneck shirt and whatnot. And yet sometimes some other people would say, well, actually, the pleasure is getting dressed up or looking different or looking goofy or, you know, looking, you know, having different dress according to your mood. So, maybe this was one of those examples where you just wanted to put it out there on the board. You may or may not want to do it. You can do your own thing. But I wanted to just push back on that one and say, yeah, we all be wearing the Same thing.

Chantel Ray: Yeah. So, for me, Monday through Friday, every single morning, I wear the same outfit to the point that my husband says he’s. He jokes sometimes he’s like, yeah, see this outfit my wife’s wearing? He’s like, this is the outfit that she plays tennis in. This is the outfit she wears to work in. This is the outfit we go to church in. This is the outfit that she turns me on in. You know, like, it’s just the same outfit five days a week. Now I do make an exception on like Friday and Saturday nights. You know, we’ll go out for dinner or we’ll, you know, kind of get dressed up. And I sometimes will really judge it up and wear something kind of crazy. But for everyday wear, Monday through Friday, I am wearing the same thing. And I, again, I’m almost like a robot. I never even have to think about it. On occasion, on Friday and Saturday nights when I want to doll up, I will do something and get jazzed. But I don’t, definitely don’t want to have to use that brain power to think about what I’m going to wear five days a week for sure. So, I’d say one to two days a week max, I might change things up just a little bit and, you know, get fancied up and do something nice. But I don’t. I. It’s really about decision fatigue. So, there was a study done with these guys, and it was talking about people who got parole, and they said from 9 to 12 in the morning, the people who were doing parole, they were giving them parole all day long. And if you went to apply for parole after 12 noon, they actually, your chance of getting parole diminished greatly. And it was because they had decision fatigue. After they had to keep making these decisions over and over, they were finally just like, like, nope, no parole. I don’t want to hear about it.

Minter Dial: Easier to say no.

Chantel Ray: Yeah, easier to just say no. So, the whole idea is if again, it’s that drip. Every single decision that you have to make is you can only make so many. I’m telling you, every human only can make so many decisions where they just go, I. I’m done. I can.

Minter Dial: I’m.

Chantel Ray: I’m completely spent. So, to me, making a decision on what I want to wear when I already know this particular outfit looks great on me. I feel comfortable in it. I look happy. You know, I look great in it and I’m happy in it. So, why every day would I bombard myself with having to make that decision? That’s not a good use of my time. Every once in a while, I will do it to look fancy and schmancy, but I definitely do not want to do that. And if in your mind, you think, if I’m wasting that decision, especially high-level CEOs, you have so many decisions that you have to make. You have to be mentally sharp. You need your banned bucket to be full, and it surely shouldn’t be spent on, you know, one of the things that my husband, you know, he never makes a decision on what he’s going to eat because that’s already either made by our house manager or sometimes me. But again, that frees you up. Just think in your mind every time. I don’t have to make these piddly decisions. I now have opened up my bandwidth bucket and I tell people all the time, I see CEOs, and I’m like, I literally have had this conversation with one of my friends. I said, let me tell you what’s happened to you. She’s like, I don’t know what’s happened to me. She’s like, my bandwidth used to be here and now it’s like this. She’s like, everything is making me crumble lately. I just feel like I’m just like a. And I said, yeah, you know why you’re. Because you’re wasting your time on all these shenanigans that are stupid. Why are you making a decision on that? Why are you making a decision on that? You have decision fatigue. Knock it off. And she called me a couple of weeks later and she was like, Chantel, I’m wearing the same damn thing every day. I’m doing this. I’m not picking out my daily lunch. I’m not picking out this. She’s like, you will not believe how my bandwidth is now back to where it used to be. And if you look at it under those lenses, you’ll be like, you’re right, I shouldn’t be making these stupid decisions anymore.

Minter Dial: Well, under that premise, maybe just eat the same thing every time.

Chantel Ray: Well, but again, like, for me, I’d rather have it where I had. Like, for me, with my assistant. I like to give them five choices and then they could make, you know, they could make that decision. I know. I like this, this and this. So, you know, you can, you could even do with door dash. You could, if you decided to, like, have lunch delivered or whatever, you could have five things that are already pre programmed and then literally have it already programmed, and then you just go, today, I want this. And then you just have those things already set up. Or have your assistant order it for you.

Minter Dial: So I wanted to. You’ve mentioned your husband a couple of times, and it, I mean, of course the title of the book presumably included him in it at that level, but the idea of sharing the same philosophy, I’m just imagining how it’s not exactly. Not everybody has exactly your mojo and, and the journey that you and your husband had to go through or, you know, went through, maybe you already did it with great complicity. But even in work, you will find people that are organized differently, that do things differently, have different beliefs. So, just talk us through that selection piece with people who you’re close with. It can be an associate or husband in this case, what. What are the keys for making this work?

Chantel Ray: Yeah. And what’s funny is I have turned him into a delegating master. So, he wasn’t like that when we first met, but now he, on certain areas, he will kind of surpass me. And I’ll give you an example. So, for example, with our cars being cleaned. So, I, I just. He wants to get his car cleaned every week. And to me, that’s just too much, you know, because I don’t feel like my car needs, I don’t drive very much. I work from home. So, I just don’t feel like the car needs it that much. And so, he’ll have it, he has it on autopilot where the guy comes, he doesn’t even think about it. The guy comes same time every week, car cleaned. So, like, for me, I did that, but I had him, the guy coming once a month. And so, now he’s like, nope, we’re having it once a week, and it’s on autopilot. The guy comes, he doesn’t even have to think about it. Same time, same day, you know, that kind of thing. Because see, again, if you wait until you, your car needs it, then you have to send a text, hey, can you clean my car? No. If it’s every single week, to me that’s too much. But he’s on board. And I’ve actually turned him into a delegation monster because he is really. There’s certain things he’s taken to the next level on that with delegation. And I love it. I mean, I, I, we are definitely on the same page. And, and I will say this, okay? I want to, I want to really address women for just a minute, okay. Because it really bothers me that the expectation for women is that are working 40 hours a week. Let’s just say that they’re working 40 hours a week. And Then they are then responsible for doing all these other things. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard work, all this other stuff.

Minter Dial: Motherhood.

Chantel Ray: And yes, motherhood, it’s just. And then they’re so stressed out. In my opinion, you should not have more than four 45 to 50 hours worth of responsibility at all. 40 is, would be ideal, but maximum 45 to 50, that means that when it comes to whatever things that you’re going to do yourself, if you’re already working 40 hours, don’t have more than five hours worth of things that you’re responsible for. So, for example, like going to whole foods, I do 95 of my grocery shopping is done by someone else. But 5% of the time I enjoy going to Whole Foods and seeing kind of new things that are out. Anything that I’m not doing on Instacart or something like that, I actually enjoy going. And sometimes the house manager goes to the grocery store. So, again, it’s a matter of looking at your time and either you as a woman need to decrease your hours or you need to delegate the things that you’re doing and you shouldn’t be working more than that. And I think having a sit down conversation with your partner and saying I’m going to reduce my hours at work or I’m going to delegate these different things out because it’s again, living a life that you’re completely stressed out. Doing laundry, doing all those other things is for the birds. You don’t want to do it.

Minter Dial: I have last quick question and I, I don’t run over, but it strikes me there’s always a chicken and the egg story. You know, I don’t have the money to do this. If you had, if you did do it, you pay for it and then you get the time. You can actually get more value added. But for someone who’s retired where the income is sort of no longer generated by work, you obviously have to have enough retirement money to do all the delegating because you’re no longer producing money. I mean, you know, if you have enough money with the interest coming out. How do you, how do you foresee that for you?

Chantel Ray: Yeah. So, someone, for that they would go to ChantelRay.com/passive and I have about eight different ways that I currently make money in passive income, not just in real estate, but all kinds of different areas. And I’m super passionate. That’s another area I’m passionate about is people making passive income. And even when you’re retired, there are so many ways that people can be making money that you have to Start thinking outside the box to say what are all the different routes that I can make money passively so that I can still have a good income that can make money. And I tell people you 100% have to come up with passive income ideas. And let me give you an example of why. My grandmother lived to be 102 years old. She lived in her house and died in her own bed. And she lived she with no extra. She had people cleaning the house and stuff like that. But I’m talking about full time help in the house, not until she was 100. But if you think about it, if you hired someone at $25 an hour times 24 hours, times 365 days a year, that’s over $200,000. That’s what you need. And every person, their goal should be that when they die that they die in their own bed. And so, you don’t know that you might, as you get older you need extra help. So, you need to be at least making $200,000 a year to in passive income so that you can have that kind of life so that you’re not having to live in a retirement home. So, I teach you all these different things that are again completely out of the box that people don’t think about. Let me tell you this right now at Chase, if you have your money at Chase, you will make 0.01% in interest. That’s ridiculous. On your money. You should not be having your. A lot of these people are just keeping money in their bank account and making 0.01% interest. That’s not okay. That’s not being a good steward with your money. You have to learn these different techniques of what you can do to make money passively. And that’s another area I’m super passionate about teaching people what to do.

Minter Dial: To say, I have an account at Chase, I better watch out. All right, Chantel, where can people go? You mentioned your site chantelray.com how can they get your book?

Chantel Ray: And then Yes, I have two sites they can go to. One is ChantelRay.com and then again for passive income@ChantelRay.com/passive. And then the book is “Delegate Everything but Sex.” They can go to delegateeverythingbutsex.com or go to Amazon or anywhere books are sold.

Minter Dial: Fabulousness. Well, we have to, we have to do some things like you know, tap the name into the URL but go grab it. Go, go, go, go. Activate that. Go read it. Don’t delegate it. Go read it. It’s a great read. Chantel thank you for coming on.

Chantel Ray: Thank you so much for having me. It was a blast.