Episode 352: The 3 D's
In this episode, the host introduces a practical framework for scaling business processes called the "3 D's": Do it, Document it, Delegate it. He explains why the order matters, contrasting permanent delegation (where the task stays with the delegate) with boomerang delegation (where the task returns to the originator). The host shares real‑world examples from his consulting work, such as running a web class and onboarding new clients, showing how performing a task oneself first uncovers the details needed for effective documentation. He emphasizes immediate, iterative documentation in a single source of truth (e.g., Word docs, checklists, videos) and how that creates reusable assets that enable permanent delegation. The episode also discusses the pitfalls of trying to copy larger companies without context, the importance of building a habit of documenting, and the cumulative improvements seen when processes are refined over many repetitions (e.g., a 13‑step onboarding that grew to 22 steps). The host concludes by urging listeners to adopt the 3 D's to free themselves from day‑to‑day tasks and focus on growth. The episode includes sponsor reads for Club Capital and Coach P Consulting.
Chapters
Hey everyone, so a couple weeks ago I was on a call with a client and we were talking around one of the key processes in his office, and the following came out of me that ended up being, or is now I'm referring to as, the 3 D's. And even some of our clients haven't heard this new concept, but I thought I would share it with all of you because he found it helpful. I ended up sharing it with several other people since then, and it's definitely going to become one of our key concepts, I believe, or a way to think about documentation of systems and processes. And so it's obviously called the 3 Ds. So what are they, and why do I think that this structure, this framework, is so impactful? Well, here they are. Number 1, it is do it. Number 2 is document it. Number 3, it's delegate it. Okay, I think the order and the sequence matters here quite a bit. There is a lot of convers— even I have done a podcast around Permanent Delegation and talked about the difference of permanent delegation versus boomerang delegation. Okay, now this is not going to be a long episode around that, but I've at least mentioned around delegation. If you've been in business any amount of time, there are so many different books and you've heard people say, hey, you got to be really good at delegating. I wouldn't disagree with that. What I think is key though is the fact that before you can delegate, it's got to be documented. And so the documentation that goes around along with the delegation, the handing off of it, helps the documentation to go from being boomerang delegation meaning you delegate something and it comes back around to you. We've all had that experience. Versus permanent delegation, you delegate it and then the person has it permanently. It's permanently delegated. Now, who doesn't want permanent delegation, right? So permanent delegation versus boomerang. But I think first to do that, to make that stick, The other things have to happen. Now, does that mean in every single one of the processes that you may be delegating that you have to be the one to do it? No, certainly not. But in this particular case, this was a specific key process that this business owner was running that he ultimately saw that down the road, meaning in about a year, he would no longer do. It's the right thing for him to do now. It won't be the right thing for him to do in a year from now. Now, as an aside, I think this is also applicable that when someone is way ahead of you in business, it can be great to look at them as for inspiration. My mentors and coaches would be that way. And so if I look exactly at what they're doing currently and then try to emulate that, it may not be the right thing for me to do. And so it was actually on this call and there was two different people and they're at two different, completely different stages. I mean, the one business owner is three, well, no, probably four times larger. Okay. In revenue. Um, customer count, etc., than the other. And if the one who is behind currently, right, there's no comparison to that. I mean, it's a way to keep score, but if that person just tries to do exactly what he's doing versus the things he did to get there, that's a recipe for disaster in my opinion, because I certainly tried to do that. Somebody has 55 team members or 100 team members and you're trying to act like what they do in that business. That doesn't make sense. It's kind of like reading a business book on a corporation and you're a small business owner. I mean, we can distill the principle that's helpful, but if we try to act like, you know, we're HubSpot here or some company that, you know, just sold to Google, or we're just not, um, it's a different context. Okay. So the bottom line is coming back to the point of the 3 Ds is in this case, he was going to do it. He was going to do the thing. He was going to run this process himself as the founder, owner, CEO, but he was going to do it. So then he could then delegate it because if he does it, he has all the details. He's worked out all the kinks. He's, he's built that system in a way that he can say, this thing works. If you just do this, say this, I'm going to train you how to do it. This is what I say. This is the email I send. This is the text I send. This is how I shake their hand. This is how they show up on Zoom, whatever, however you're doing it. Then I do this, then I do this, then I do this, then I do this. Now the person goes, oh wow, okay, that makes sense. Okay, I'll do that. Then I'll do that. Then I'll do that. All right, that makes sense. And now I can do it. Now it can be delegated. So the doing it part is something that you're probably already doing. It's then the documentation. And that's the key thing I think is important around this is that we think that we do something, we do something, or that there's, that there's going to be this other time that we're going to find time to document. Like we're going to set aside 6 hours on a Friday to do nothing but document processes. It's just not going to happen. So with that client, and then even with one of the clients I met with this morning, I said, hey, you got to do the thing. And then as soon as you walk out of that, you go back to that. He's going to use a Word document. You go straight to that one source of truth and say, okay, what did I do well? What do I need to add? I actually, you know what, asked this question, should have asked this question. Today I ran a web class, and to— this kind of goes along with the, um, episode I did last week around the Masters and the iterative process of that. And I happen to, uh, refer to even the, the web class that I did, or that I do twice a month with that. And just today, as soon as that web class was done, I had a notebook out next to me. And this is— I've learned this, right? This is not me because I have it perfect, because I, I had to learn the hard way. So write it down. I'm like, oh, I need to, I need to actually, I need a slide for that. I need to improve upon that. And so I would do it and then I go in and document. So immediately today I was like, all right, I need to add this slide. I'm going to delete this slide. I don't like that. That's out of order. I'm having to skip those slides. Why don't I just take them out completely? This one's incomplete. I need more visuals here. And so I'm improving upon it. So the next time I do this again, first part of May. It will get better than the one I did before, and then the next one. And the same thing can be true, especially if you're in an industry that you're running the same plays over and over and over and over and over and over again. Okay, you're doing the same things. If it's auto insurance as an example, and your team's doing— they're doing it 6 times a day, right? Or 5 times a day, or 4 times a day, or whatever. And if you multiply that over then it makes sense to have a documentation of that key process. And when I've shared that with some people, like the thing, what is the most important process you run? It's like, how do you get clients? Well, you've been doing that now for 10 years or 5 years or 2 years or 15 years. Let's take that thing. We're doing it already. Let's just document what we're doing. Okay. We just document what we're doing and then we can begin to delegate it now. Um, what I'm specifically referring here to a lot of the times is the things that the owner or the founder of the business, the entrepreneur, him or herself wants to get off of them. Okay. Because I spend— this also works if you're going team member to team member, it does for sure. But in the context of this podcast, we're referring to things that you do that we need to get off of you so that we can then fill it back with the things that are really going to grow the business. And in both cases, for both of the, the people I'm referring to, they said, yep, I'm committed to running this process for the next 12 months. And I also see that by doing it, that I can see how I can back myself out of it. 'Cause if I do it and document it, like one of the ones I, uh, somebody I spoke to today, I said, how many, how many are you going to run in a week? In this particular case, I ended up being appointments. And he said, you know, I'm about to run 4 or 5. I said, okay, so you're going to do 200 of them. And he was like, yeah, I guess, I guess I never thought about, about that. But yeah, I guess I'm going to do 200 in a year. That's 200 opportunities for you to walk out of that meeting go straight to that document improvement. You tell me that if you do that every time, you add a sentence, you add a structure, you add a question, you say, you know what, instead of doing this, do this, and it's 5 minutes. It's 5 minutes. And that's the part where I think that I also had to learn, when am I going to find the time to document this stuff? Bradley, you're not the first person that says systems and processes. My goodness gracious, everybody says it. I'm not going to find the time because I did it myself. I would put hours on the, you know, and say I'm going to document. And then even sometimes I would even get in front of the computer and I'm looking at a blank Word document. What am I going to— where am I going to start? We use— you get the habit of it. You begin to kind of build the, the, the muscle, to flex the muscle, so to speak, of doing this. But if you do it, then document what you just did. Then you can begin to delegate. And that's the plan. That's how to begin to back yourself out of some of the things that you're doing in the business. Do it, document it, then delegate it. Where I think for sure me, I went wrong with this is I immediately went to delegation. I'm just going to delegate this. I'm going to get this off of me, get this off of me. You know, Bradley, you were even saying, you know, back yourself out of the day-to-day. So I'm just going to start delegating air traffic control. The problem with that is and that, that sequencing of it is when we do it that way, we start to delegate it, but it becomes boomerang delegation. It comes right back to us because they don't have an asset to go back to that then says, this is how you do the thing. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Now they're going to come to you and they're going to need training for sure. But if you can point to look at a Word document, go through it and say, okay, what part of this are you getting stuck? We have a, um, with, uh, where there's a transfer happening, um, with one of our key processes. Actually, honestly, onboarding. It's onboarding a new member. And it, um, so Courtney is acquiring this entire system and it's pretty complete, um, complex Not in that it's hard, but it's just a lot of moving pieces to do it right. As a matter of fact, it's specifically 13 steps. Did I plan on it being 13 steps? No, it just ended up being 13 steps. Um, so how many, how many steps is it for you to onboard, um, one of your customers? Anyway, back to the point. So Courtney was going through and she was like, hey, I, I have questions around this. I'm unclear on this step in this process for this step. Can someone help me, uh, to do this? I don't know how to log into this. Okay, well, we could do it and we did. A lot of cases it was actually someone else on my team that was doing this, taking it, but then we recorded a video, right? Because we're like, hey, let's not just go from one person's brain to another person's brain. Let's actually make sure that we slow down enough, check them, back this thing down into neutral for a second, slow down enough, create a video, create an asset so that if anybody else in the future has this question, they know how to do it. It was one where you had to log in to access something to send terms and conditions to be signed. And they were like, okay, now wait a minute. Where was the website? Was the login? Ah, we missed that step. Right. Okay. Let's, let's add that in. Is it perfect now? Not at all. But has it made massive steps forward? Absolutely. Every time we onboard someone new, it gets better. So if we were doing this and somebody pings me a year from now and says, hey, how many steps is your onboarding process or onboarding system? I would say, I don't know. We'll look at it. It's maybe 15 in a year from now. Maybe it's 22. But every time it's just gotten better, um, over time. So the 3 Ds are do it, document it, and then delegate it. Do it, document it, then delegate. Just document what you're doing and then we can begin to delegate. So I hope that is helpful to you. Shared that with some other people. Thought I'd put it out here on this, uh, episode. Appreciate all of you. Until next episode, lead well.
Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create, measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm.
Ambition is the first step towards success. It's time to level up your agency. And Coach P Consulting will help you do just that by using the same strategies he used to sell over 700 life insurance policies in 2021 alone. Now, this is not your regular one-and-done type coaching. You'll get personalized coaching 2 days a week, every week of the month, and you'll get a live look behind the scenes of his team training and an office that's performing at the highest level. There's a reason Coach P Consulting is the fastest growing coaching company for insurance agency owners in the country. Coach P will train your team alongside his own and show you the exact steps they are taking to achieve Chairman's Circle, Exotic Travel, and Multi-Line Presidents Club and be one of the few agents to be selected to have a third office. So whether your goal is to be at the top of your local market or amongst the best in the country, this training will give you the strategies and the tactics to get there. For just $250 a month, you'll get high-level coaching each week from someone who is already getting it done at that level, and his strategies work, and it's time to put them to work for you. Sign up at CoachB Consulting.com.
