Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

Why You Should STOP Doing Menial Work NOW | Doug Smith, America's Best Restaurants (Podcast 454)

4 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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This transcript excerpt is from a YouTube podcast episode in which Doug Smith recounts a personal anecdote about learning to stop doing menial tasks and delegate work. He describes initial resistance to delegation, an assistant (Katie) pushing him to give up routine tasks, and his realization that delegating allowed him to focus on his primary responsibilities without losing effectiveness.

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Sometimes it takes me multiple attempts to learn something. And it goes back to the first time, when I was still in radio and I became sales manager at a radio station. First time ever having an assistant. And I was still doing all the menial stuff, filling out orders, doing all these little things. The assistant, her name's Katie, she came to my desk. When they put her hands on my desk, she's like, will you stop doing my job? Give it to me. You do your job. And I sat there and I'm going, you know what? I like it. She's right. And I delegate it, and all of a sudden, I could do my job. Well, when I got into this job, I reverted back to my sales days. No one does it better than me. If I want it done right, I'm just going to do it because someone will screw it up. And then I got to go back and I got to do it again and everything else. And that's really been one of the things over the past five, six months, is having conversations and learning that delegation doesn't mean that you're weak or that you suck at something or you can't do something.