Doing Everything Yourself? Why Consultants Struggle to Scale (And What to Do Instead)

We are live. Welcome to episode 107 of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. What's new in the world of entrepreneurship? Well, how to scale your consulting business without losing your mind. Over the last few weeks, I've been working through my 4-pillar consulting delivery playbook. I've covered in pillar 1, pre-sales, pillar 2, project management, pillar 3, how to retain clients and have the land and expand mindset. And today I'm focusing on the 4th and final pillar, scaling delivery, because Eventually, every successful consultant runs into the same problem. The business is doing well, the business is growing, the clients increase, the referrals start coming in, and suddenly you become the bottleneck. So today I want to show you exactly how to scale, and I'll share examples that you can apply right away. Now, even if you're not ready to scale, you're struggling to get the first few clients, I get it, I've been there. But in today's session, there are some hard-won lessons that you can apply to your business today to build the foundation to enable you to scale effectively while you maintain your sanity. But before we jump in, if you're new to the channel, welcome. My name is Feras, and I've been around entrepreneurship for over 20 years. I was laid off from a startup here in Silicon Valley. I struggled to find another job, so a co-founder and I started a web design company back in 2003 selling to small businesses, depleted all my savings, had to learn everything from scratch. I didn't know how to do sales, marketing, any of this stuff. But we worked hard, a lot of people helped us, and we were able to grow that business to 6 figures, 7 figures, and later to 8 figures, and built a couple other businesses along the way. And today my mission is to help you struggle less and help you overcome the challenges that you are facing, whether in thinking about entrepreneurship the right way, whether about taking the leap at the right time with the right preparedness, or if you've already taken the jump and now you're struggling in marketing, in sales, in hiring, in back office operations, whatever area of the business you have, I have on my YouTube channel @StartupWithFeras, and Feras is spelled like my first name, F-E-R-A-S, I have a number of playlists covering every aspect of starting a consulting business or a services-based business. So I want to hear from you. If you are having any challenges, let me know. You can leave me a comment on LinkedIn or on YouTube or any of the social media channels, on Instagram, on Facebook, on X. I answer all the comments I get. And if it's something very personal, you're not ready to share with the world that you're about to start a business, I get it. I understand you might have a full-time job. And you're still tinkering with this thing called entrepreneurship, you can email me at info@startupwithferas.com. Again, startupwithferas.com. I read those emails. I reply back to them. I want to help you get to your destination faster with less gray hair. The journey of entrepreneurship is not easy, but my role, my mission is to help you get there To make it easier. All right, so let's jump in. Let's step on the mat. All right, so so first a quick recap of those first three pillars before we we talk about scaling. I think it's really important, and I have those live. I'll show you this on the channel in a second. I have these live streams available on on the YouTube channel. You can check those out if you're not sure about pre-sales or project management or. landing and expanding, check those out, but basically presales, a lot of the issues that IC consultants face in delivering a service, those issues start in sales, in the sales process. So in that livestream on presales, I talked about how to scope projects properly, how to manage expectations, how to onboard and how to kick off projects properly. properly, and the common questions I addressed included how detailed a proposal should be, how this thing called scope creep creeps up on you, and then also in terms of things that change within the project. You have a new stakeholder, you have— you're on your own, you have someone who was supposed to help you and now they're not available, or some external factors happen in the industry, or maybe regulations. So I covered all of that in the, in the pre-sales livestream. And let me actually— let me— I just want to share with you, uh, right here. Let me share my screen one second. Yeah, here, this is— so you have a visual. For those of you who are watching, you'll see it on the screen. For those of you who are listening, I'll walk you through it. Basically, in pre-sales, we talked about— I talked about Scoping, about doing a handoff internally from your sales hat, take that hat off and then put on the delivery, the project management hat, and then how to onboard clients correctly. A lot of clients, they make a decision on continuing to work with this vendor based on this onboarding experience. So onboarding is really critical. I shared with you templates and worksheets to help you in this pre-sales phase, including how to do proposals right. So that was one of the live streams. The second one was on project management, and I went through the 6 phases of project management, from initiation to initiation— initiating to planning to execution to monitoring. I added satisfaction, client satisfaction, in there as a phase because it's really important. and then talked about closure, and then land and expand. This is how to retain clients and then how to get more projects and get more referrals out of those clients. So that's what we covered in those previous live streams. And then today we're talking about scaling, systematizing, tech and AI, and delegation. And for those of you who are, again, uh, Let me just show you this so you have it. If you go to my channel at Startup with Feras, you go to the live tab and you'll see these live— last, uh, right here, how to get repeat business and referrals this online, expand. The one prior to that on how to manage a project profitably step by step. Again, every one of those I had, and every one of those I had worksheets, templates, examples, things you can Google Docs, Google Sheets, you can make a copy of slides, slide decks for you to make it really easy for you to customize them, for you to personalize them and use them right away. And then from closing deals to delivering results, this is about pre-sales. So if you feel that you are struggling in any of these areas, pre-sales, project management, or retaining clients, Check out those those live streams. They're they're not short by any means, so take your time. Have a notepad and a pen, or have your computer ready to take notes and to apply what I shared. But for today, let's go back to what we want to cover today. It's about scaling. So let's go back to that. All right. So part 1 of scaling is on systematizing. Now, it's not just a fancy word, but systems are the foundation of scale. And systems and processes are not just for the Deloittes and the McKinseys and the PwCs and the KPMGs. Even as a budding entrepreneur, even as a consultant who's just about to start, you want to think of systems and processes, or sometimes they're called SOPs, right? So think of every aspect of the business, every function of the business, whether it's marketing, whether it's sales, whether it's delivery, what we are talking about today, or back office, or contracts that you have for contractors, for employees, for customers. There are a lot of functions in the business, and each of these functions, there are some repeatable and repeated steps that you do and repeated actions that you make, that you take. So I want you to think of your own business depending on the stage you're in, and evaluate what are the repeatable and repeated tasks that you take. And that's how you build your own custom processes. I'll share with you, and I have, and I have a number of free assets that you can download and make your own, make a copy and make your own. But no 2 entrepreneurs' journeys are the same. But there are a lot of common things that you can take and use, use it, maybe tweak it by 10, 20, 30%, and then it's yours. And you put your logo on and it's yours. And some of it is internal for you and some of it is client-facing. So let me walk you through this master checklist of systems and processes. Again, some of it might not be applicable to you today. Some of it might be applicable when you hire, when you hit 6 figures, but Take a look at this, do a thorough assessment of what you're doing today, and anything that you do on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, when, when a certain milestone occurs, anything that you do and it has— you do it repeatedly, you want to put in as a system, as a process. So here, let me share my screen again and go to here. All right, cool. So here, I'll make it a bit— again, this is maybe an overkill if you're just starting out, uh, but, uh, take a look at it. I call it the Master Checklist of Systems and Processes, and I'll add the link to this template in the description of the YouTube video. Again, click on this and you should be able to make your own copy. You just have to have a Gmail account when, when you, when you do this. I think Google requires that for you to make a copy, but it's free, it's accessible to you. So look at marketing If you have a lead generation strategy, you're going to a networking event every week, and before the networking event, you research the event organizer, you research past attendees, you prepare your pitches, you take your business cards. What I just said, 4 things I just mentioned, that's your preparedness for a networking event. That's a process. So put it in a Google Sheet initially. You don't have to have fancy tools. I'll talk about tools in a second, but that is a process that you do repeatedly because if you don't write it down, you'll forget. You'll just get so busy and next time you're going to an event and then you don't have business cards. Okay, you can use LinkedIn these days, but the point, you want to be able to— you want to be more effective when you are pitching, so you want to understand more about who's attending. That's research. 20 minutes of research ahead of attending an event will pay high dividends when you go there because then you can personalize your conversation starters or pitches, right? So take a look at marketing. If you send emails, okay, have a checklist of everything. I got to research the topic, I got to draft it, I got to run it by AI to make sure that I've got the grammar and the spelling all set up properly. I want to send a test email to myself. All of that, if you're doing any of this stuff repeatedly, it's a process. Have a checklist for it. Sales the same way in terms of your— if you have a sales deck, if you have proposal templates, if you have demos that you run, whatever you do in sales, if you have a CRM, of course, there's things you want to do repeatedly in terms of ensuring the data that you are tracking about a lead is accurate. they came from, the last conversation, the next step. All of that can be done. If you have— if you're updating your website, if you're— if you— if you're not— if you should be onboarding clients, we have an onboarding checklist. I'll make it available as well. I don't have it open here in the tab, but I have an onboarding checklist that you can leverage, a sample email that you send to clients. This way you're not inventing the wheel again every time you have one of those, uh, one of those situations, one of those events. Uh, let's see what else. Legal in terms of contracts, and then hiring when you, when you have a contractor, or hopefully you're growing and you're, you're hiring employees. So how to onboard employees and to do it systematically. Every aspect of the business, everything you do should be, should be documented and should be tracked initially in a Google Sheet. You can have a tab for each of the functions and just list the things there. So, so no excuse, you got to do this. It's really, really important. Um, let me go back from presenting here. Yeah, so, so, uh, clear documentation, reusable templates, that will save you a lot of time. And not only that, it will also ensure that you're improving on what you're doing. So after you go to the— let's say you go to a networking event and you do these 4 things I mentioned earlier, and then after the event there's a post-event action item. Oh, I gotta write down what I learned. I spoke with John and Jane and Jim and James and the— and the— and this person and the other. So So add to your process, take notes right after you finish a conversation with the client, with the potential lead, and then when I come back to the office, come back home, I want to enter that information in my CRM or in my DIY CRM I have. For those of you, if you've watched some of my videos, I talk about a DIY, do-it-yourself CRM spreadsheet that I have that I want you to use right away before you invest in a CRM. So the idea here is that for every function that you have in your business, there are repeatable things you do, jot them down, even if it's just in a Google Sheet. Now, why is it that most consultants keep processes trapped in their heads? I don't know. A lot of us do it because we know we've done it a few times and then it's just there. I mean, when I record, when I have these live streams, I have this massive checklist that I run, especially when I'm recording videos. Live streams are more— they're live, they're more interactive. It's one thing. But when I'm recording a video by myself in my office here, in my studio, I'll forget something. I forget to turn on the light, or I would forget to have a second camera on, or I would forget to have the mic turned on. So it adds a whole lot of weight. Yeah. On me if I have to think of, did I get everything covered before I turn on the camera and start recording? So I put together a checklist and I run through it every time, even though I know it by heart now after all these videos. But I just want to make sure I'm not forgetting anything. It happened before when I forgot to have the mic plugged in, and then I recorded 2 hours of video and then there was no audio. It was painful. I have to do redo the whole thing. So checklists are lifesavers. I remember reading this short book called The Checklist Manifesto. Awesome book. It talks about even in other professions, not just in consulting, in the medical field, how checklists have saved lives in the operation room because people get into— we are creatures of habits and then we forget things. So Make sure that you have a checklist, a list of tasks, subtasks that you— for everything that you do. Also, I'll add, in terms of why some consultants don't keep processes and they don't document processes, I think it's part of just our personalities. Some of us are the left-brain type. So we're wired to think in order and checklist. Others are more holistic and maybe we like mind maps. If mind maps works for you, do a mind map. It doesn't have to be a linear checklist. So I think if you're— I use the Keirsey personality types. If you're the rational or the guardian, you think logically, you think just sort of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you follow systems, you follow structure, maybe taking— setting up these processes is natural to you, but if you're maybe the artisan type or you're the idealist type, you're a big picture or right-brain type, maybe that doesn't come natural to you, so I'm not saying use a specific way, like use a checklist, if looking at a spreadsheet makes you cringe and you like to draw things out and, and do something in Canva or do something in, in whatever system, Stitch with Google these days with AI, that's fine. But the idea is to document repeatable tasks and, and things that you do on an ongoing basis. So that is the first part, system— systematizing, the first part of scaling. You have to have standards and procedures and processes, and that is the foundation to scale. So we've got some questions, and again, for those of you who are watching live or if you're watching or listening later, feel free to add a comment. I will address them here right now or before the end of this session. So the questions, some of the questions I got earlier, what should I document first? Whatever phase that you're in, if you're just starting out, there's nothing to document. You just gotta do— you gotta, you gotta take action before you document. So, so I get that, um, if you're just starting out, there's not a whole lot to document. But as you start to knock on doors, for example, as you start to go, you attend a meetup, um, as you participate in a LinkedIn group and you're— and you're being helpful and you're, you're being helpful and you're answering questions and showing Not showing, but sharing what you know and helping others, right? So as you start to do things, then you want to whatever you're working on next, do it once, do it twice, and then document the steps that you took to complete that task. So if you're you're sending your first proposal, yeah, there's no no process to to write yet. Work on that proposal, review it, watch my. Video, The Ultimate Guide to Writing Winning Proposals, long video, but I covered the whole proposal topic thoroughly. So, so now you have a checklist on what to do. You've done it, you've sent the proposal. So here's what I've done, right? I've grabbed, I've captured the information from the client. I created an executive summary. I evaluated the type of work. I included what's in scope, what's out of scope. So, so you create a template for a proposal. And again, in that proposal video that I mentioned earlier, I, I do have templates for you that you can repurpose right away. So, so I would say whatever activity that you're working on first, once you do it once or twice, document it and then improve on, on that. And the other question here, the other question here is how detailed should the SOPs be? You know, a, a general principle I use here, you know, one of the black belt principles is Complexity dictates formality, so I don't want you to over-engineer things because some of us in consulting, or if we're if we're starting, that's that's what happened to me when I start. We hide behind building systems and processes and and planning, and a a two-year, a three-year business plan, and a one-year go-to-market plan. and a financial assessment. So I don't want you to be hiding behind process. No, that's not my point. I want you to do the work, document it, and then over time, as your tasks become larger, bigger, they're more complex, then you add more complexity to your checklist, to your processes. So don't over-engineer. But do things gradually. And then especially, especially as you start to hire people, contractors or full-timers, you need these systems so that your team can repeat the excellent work that you're delivering as a consultant. So that's really important. I'll talk about delegation before the end of the session. That's the 3rd sub-pillar here. But I really want you to think of building your processes. Keep it simple initially, don't over-engineer it, and then over time gradually add more complexity to it. It looks like we have a comment. Let me address it right now. Let's see, this is from Steven Banks. Hey Steven! He says, hey Feras, thank you for joining again. We're talking about scaling, scaling your processes, scaling your, your business, uh, without losing your sanity. It's hard, it's hard. As we get more successful as consultants, then we might become the bottleneck. So I talked— the first, the first point here is on, on systematizing. So, and then the last, uh, the last question I have here before we go to the second point on tech and, and AI— of course we have to talk about AI— um, when should I start documenting I sort of answered this earlier about what should be documented first. You should document the first day you start taking action. So whether it's a marketing activity or a sales activity, or even if it's something that you're delivering that you haven't done before, always, always, always, the minute you do it, the minute you complete a task, okay, here's what's involved in delivering this this task or this initiative. And while it's fresh on your mind, document it, put it initially in a Google Sheet, that is totally sufficient. And then later, as we use tools, which is my next point, we can leverage and we should leverage tech. So good question there. So the first part in terms of scaling and building the foundation to scale was systematizing The second part is technology and AI. And again, for those of you who are just joining us, let me just go— let me show you right here. Give me one second. Yep. Here you go. That's where we are. So yeah, so again, for those of you who just joined, we in the previous live streams, we talked about presales and the impact of what you do during the sales process on delivery. We talked about project management. We talked about retaining clients, how to land a client and then expand, get more work, more projects out of the client, get referrals, get case studies, all that good stuff. And then today we're talking about scaling. So I covered systematizing. Now I want to go and cover tech and AI. And then the last sub-pillar of scaling is delegation. Let's go back and cover here. So yeah, hi Steven, he said, yeah, I know I'm late, my apologies. No worries, I know we're busy. I hope you're busy closing deals. How do you systematize if the jobs we do are different each time? So the jobs that you do are different, understandable, but there has to be some common things. So if we're talking about, let's say, proposals, So there are a number of steps you take to produce a proposal. So you have to speak with the client, you have to capture certain information so that you can define the scope and you can define what's in scope and then what's not in scope. Then you want to put it together in a proposal document, and I did mention that I have a full video, an hour or so video on writing, developing winning proposals, including some AI assistants that you can leverage. So, and then you do, and then you send the proposal to the client. So just that process, no matter what you are proposing, no matter what the job is, no matter what the service is, those are important steps. Now you can go one layer deeper. You can be more granular. So for example, You want to have a QA step in this before you send this out to the clients, especially in the age of AI. There shouldn't be any email or any document that we send to clients that have typos or grammatical errors. That's not acceptable. I'm not saying I'm perfect, but in your process, once you have the, the proposal completed, run it by whatever your AI tool of choice, AI Quad, ChatGPT, you know, Gemini, it doesn't matter. But you want to say do a full grammar and, and, and, and spelling test on this. And you can give, you can give, you can give some guidelines on the tone— professional, semi-professional, all of that. You can customize that, that, that prompt, and you can actually customize, um, the project. Let's say in, in, in ChatGPT, you can give it, you know, a document that says, this is my tone, this is my style. So that's just one example of a step that will make your proposals better, right? And then maybe another thing is, let's say every once in a while you run into issues with scope, like you thought you sold this, the client thought they bought that, right? So you do a, which we covered actually last week, the project retrospective, or 2 weeks ago, on assessing what went wrong, and then from that issue, the issue that we faced with this one client where the scope wasn't well-defined, well, maybe we forgot to ask about 3 things. So now I make it part of our process to always ask about these 3 things so that we don't make that mistake again. We'll make mistakes, all of us, but issue is to avoid making the same mistakes. So that's, look, examine everything that you do, and you might be selling, I know that when we grew our practice at Enoor, the digital analytics consulting company, we, this is later when we were well into 7 figures, we started to have 2 types of clients, all enterprise, but some that were looking for the sort of the bare minimum of getting their data, their marketing data, and getting their dashboards, and others were requiring more, they needed more attention, they needed more that white glove service, so we started to bifurcate the whole sales process and the delivery process, so we created 2 systems, one for the standard clients and one for the premium clients. We did not call them that way externally, but that was internal. So again, as your business grows, you can have different systems even for the same task, for doing proposals. That's one idea. So the specific, the content of the proposal could be different, but the process to generate a quality proposal, a winning proposal, that process should be Should be the same. Now it could be a bit more granular. If you're selling something for $2,000, it's one proposal. If you're selling something for $30,000, it's probably a whole lot, a whole lot, there's a whole lot more involved, but the structure and the steps required are the same. So hopefully this is helpful. So moving on to the second part after systematizing, and that is tech and AI, technology and AI. Of course AI is technology, but We have to call it app because it's AI. So part of scale, scale is key, is foundational to growth. Part of scale is leveraging tech. Now, you don't have to buy fancy tools. You don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on technology. At one point, you might need to later when you're into, you know, if your revenue is close to 7 figures, you got to do some major upgrades to your systems. But initially, there's just a ton of tools out there that are either no cost or low cost, from project management to documentation to communication to scheduling to diagramming and producing decks. There's just so many of them, and especially now with AI, there's just too many to count. Stephen, yeah, you're welcome. Anytime. Happy, happy that you're here and happy that you asked the question. So look at the tools that you need. Right? Project management. Do I need Microsoft Project at this point? Maybe not. Maybe do I need Notion? Maybe Notion is great. We use it in one of my businesses, a startup with Feras, but we— it requires some setup and someone who's a bit more hands-on. Potentially you could use Asana or ClickUp or Trello or Basecamp. So I've used all of these throughout my journey. So find something. A lot of them have a free trial or or, or something that you can use. Maybe you don't get all the features, but you can get a limited set of features, but it's no charge. So I'm big on leveraging tech, but I'm not big on spending a lot of money on tech before you need it. When you need to spend money on tech, you, you gotta do that because it will make your life easier, and then you can be more efficient and then more effective. Communication, obviously Slack, Teams, Zoom, all that good stuff. You know, in terms of documentation, in terms of centralizing your knowledge, you can, if you use the Google Suite, you know, we use that, Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Worksheets, the folder structure, not maybe not the better, not the best folder structure, that system that that it offers, but Google, the Google Docs and Google Sheets is just so easy to use and easy to collaborate within, so it's my preference all the time. So anyhow, I don't want to list all the tech that's available, but find something, whatever that is taking you a lot of time, can I optimize this? Can I save 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there and 20 minutes there? At the end of the day, can I save 2 hours by leveraging tech? If the answer is yes, then you should definitely leverage tech. I'll give you an example. Meeting intelligence, taking notes after your call with the client. So today it's prevalent. It's everywhere, whether it's Zoom or Gemini within Google or Microsoft has its own or Otter, I think it's called. Yeah, Fireflies. There's so many of them. They're very, very inexpensive, or if again you get the Google Suite, comes with that, whatever you pay, $12 a month or something like that. So you finish the meeting, you get your action items, you get the summary. Of course, validate that. Of course, review it, but that saves you time and then take it, tweak it, add to it, and then send it to the client, right? So scheduling meetings, a lot of people now use something like Calendly or if you're using HubSpot, HubSpot has a built-in calendar as well. That actually adds to the record of the lead, so if you're at a stage where you are ready to use a CRM, that's a very, very powerful feature where you are basically getting your— that meeting with the customer is tracked in the CRM, and then you can append the minutes to it, you can automate even that whole process of taking the minutes from the call into your CRM. So You know, a lot of tools out there, diagramming. Like if you, if you present using slides, you can use Google Slides. And these days they have this thing at the bottom of the Google Slides, it says beautify this slide. So, you know, check it out. There's something called Stitch with Google. It also comes with the Google Suite. You can use it to build like PDFs, graphics, images. Actually, it's not that bad. You can give it actually your your branded colors, the— I forgot what they're called now, in your design guide, if your branding guide, if you have specific colors that you use, you can give that to Stitch and then it creates it. You can use— there's another one I came across called Gamma. Again, I don't have any affiliation with any of these tools, but all I'm saying is there are a lot of tools that are just there for you, so if you find yourself spending 3 hours building a slide deck, just revisit that whole process. And then if you find yourself using the same flow, the same structure of the Google Slides repeatedly when you're pitching or when you're presenting, or maybe when you're running a demo, then that is— you already have a template there. And then maybe 6 of the 10 slides are the same every time. You just have to tweak, maybe put the client name and the client logo, but the content is the same. So always look for ways to use technology to help you run things faster. So again, do not over— um, don't go overboard on buying the, the latest, um, the, the most expensive. No, look at your— what do I need in the next 3 months or so, and then invest in that technology. And a lot of people— I have this 90/10 rule— a lot of people spend 90% of their budget on and efforts on the tool, on buying, acquiring the tool, and 10% on the time, the training, the support people need to leverage the tool. It should be really the other way around. I mean, you 90/10, 80/20, 70/30, doesn't matter, but most of the energy and the time and the resources should not be spent on the budget on just paying for a tool. This is really important. You can be spending a lot of money on a CRM. If you're using HubSpot or Salesforce or Pipedrive, it could be, you know, depending how many licenses, how many seats you have, what features you use, it could be $10,000 a year. I mean, later if you have multiple. salespeople, it might run into thousands of dollars a month, but that's a good problem to have. But you invest all that money on— as a consultant, as a small business, you spend— you're spending $1,000 a month on a CRM tool. You got to be spending a lot of time in the tool to make sure it's working properly. It's a very common issue. Big companies, they're notorious for doing this. They spend a whole lot of money on the tool, but they don't put time and effort and energy into educating, training, allowing people to master that tool. So, so let— one tool at a time. Don't go out and buy, subscribe to all the tools I mentioned. Examine the things that are taking you long and see what technology you could use to help. And then as your business grows, as you have more people standardizing on, on what tools you're using. You don't want to be using one tool and your other, other team member using another tool, and then when you exchange documents, they don't map properly. So, so stick with one thing, like common. One guy or gal, they like to use PowerPoint slides, and then another person likes to use Google Slides, and then when you exchange those files right before you go to pitch a client, the formatting is, is all messed up. So standardize, even if you're a small team, standardize on one, agree on one tool to use for a specific function. It'll save you time. And the last point here before you go to the third, before we go to delegation in terms of AI. So I talked a lot about AI. I have a video on AI in the age of consulting, the age of AI. studied research. Actually, Eric, my co-founder, and I spent a lot of time researching what the big consulting companies are doing when it comes to AI. So just check out that video. I think Deloitte or McKinsey, they're talking about they're spending $3 billion— Deloitte, I think, $3 billion investing in AI. They will have 20— one of them will have 20,000 agents along with their With their consultants, so they're leaning in on AI, they're not moving away from AI, but for a small business, I think you want to think about AI in 2 different ways. One is AI first and one what I call AI enhanced. So AI first means you're building AI solutions for clients, you're into AI workflow automation, you actually, you're technical and and you're building agents for clients, customer support agents, sales agents, you name it, right? So that's AI first, you are building AI solutions for clients, but for, so you could be that, but for the, and this doesn't apply to those of us who are not technical, although you don't have to be as technical these days to build these things, but still, but for the rest of us, most of us, the real opportunity is is leveraging AI enhanced. So this is— you're not replacing your expertise, you're basically, you're amplifying what you're using. So think of ways to, you know, what I think it's called now, applied AI. So I mentioned some examples with the meeting notes, right? Meeting intelligence. I mentioned an example of leveraging a tool like gamma.app to— you prompt it and it will give you— it'll give you— it'll make up it'll create your slides. You can use Switch to create, you just prompt it and give it some instructions, it'll give you slides or a carousel or a specific maybe PDF cover page, all of that that you can leverage with AI. So identify the tools, the AI tools that will help you in each of your business functions. I mentioned also the— my custom AI assistant for generating proposals. I did 2 assistants, one using ChatGPT and one using Google Notebook LM. And again, you can make your own copies. I have the links to all of that in my proposal video. So, so find in every area of your business, find the right applied AI to use. Both internally as well as in delivering your service. And I remember actually recently we were looking for someone to help us with the speaking engagements and, and apply to conferences and whatnot. And one of them told us it'll take them weeks and this and that to, to develop our pitch and to submit it. And this other person which we ended up going with, he actually had this system and he said about it, I use AI. So he led with AI and he said, in our discovery session, I'll capture all the information about you, about the topics you want to cover, about the audience you want to address, and then we'll build your pitch together. He had a custom AI that he's built for his business. Basically, you give it like all the sort of scenarios, the questions, the prompts, and then you give it this specific context, and then it answers within that context. So to the extent that you can use AI in your service, do that because it will make you more efficient, it will make you more effective, it is— you're working with it, you're working with AI, it's not going to replace you. I think, as I don't know who said this, but AI will not replace you, AI will replace— no, the competitor who's using AI will replace you. So I'm not saying you use AI to stop thinking, making good judgment, to not tap into your creative juices. No, I want you— and that's how I use AI. I usually brainstorm. I usually— Eric and I, my co-founder, we brainstorm, we think about it, we exhaust our own thinking, and then we run things by AI to just see what else. Did we miss something? Are there other perspectives on things? So, so again, use it effectively. I think if we rely 100% on AI, we end up not using these muscles, the brain, and then we become dumber. I don't know if science confirms that or not. I think it has from what I've read, but that's a different discussion altogether. There's impact on society. There's impact on jobs that are directly impacted by AI. There's a societal impact on new graduates. I get all of that. There's obviously national security impacts with AI. I follow that, I read about it, that's a different discussion we can have over coffee, but from a consulting perspective, I want you to have an edge, I want you to win, I want you to do really well in your business, so leverage AI, use this AI-enhanced approach I mentioned so that you are doing things efficiently, you're more effective, you are getting results, you're solving problems for your clients in a more efficient way and a more effective way. So that is on technology and AI. To summarize, identify what you are— what's taking you time and it's manual work in your processes, and then find tools to help you alleviate these concerns or the pain and the manual work. So step number 1 is systematizing Once you have systems, processes, even in a Google Sheet you've listed things, then think of second step is to identify tech to support you in that process. And then the third point here on scaling, and that is really key, and that's probably the hardest one for entrepreneurs, harder, harder for others, uh, more than harder for some more than others, is delegation. You cannot scale without learning and eventually mastering the art and the science of delegation. There's more art to it than science, I think. I'll cover both. So I know what's going on through some of you and some of you in your minds, hey, Feras, no one can do it as good as I can, as well as I can. It's just so complicated. It's hard to let others know how to do it. You know, I know all the invoicing and all the bills and the cash flow. It's all here. How can I trust a bookkeeper with it? Folks, I've heard all these excuses. They're all lame excuses. All right, after all the— all the— after all these years and after this gray hair, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. If you want to scale, if you're serious about scaling You must start delegating and delegating soon in every area of the business. In every area of the business, you should be able to first systemize, use tech, and then find people who can do this work for you. Now, what is the alternative if you don't delegate? I can tell you, you'll burn out. or you just won't scale, you won't reach the potential that your business has, and that's totally okay. And that's what I, I changed my perspective on this. I used, I used to always think, hey, get into entrepreneurship, grow, it's amazing, it's challenging initially, you'll deplete your savings, it'll be hard, but eventually it'll be very rewarding financially and otherwise, do it. Now my perspective is a bit more nuanced. I say, What do you want to do? If you want to have financial independence, if you want to build an amazing company with an amazing culture, with lifelong friends, colleagues and friends, and these experiences that you'll remember for the rest of your life, then go into this entrepreneurship thing with this growth mindset to grow a company, but if you just want to be a solopreneur, You don't want to manage people, you don't want to deal with growth and bigger customers and bigger responsibilities, that's your choice. But don't expect to go the solopreneurship route and then dream of these outcomes that only materialize with going with the growth route. That's you're setting up yourself for failure emotionally, psychologically. Emotionally and psychologically, you will not be satisfied, and you'll always be unhappy because there's a there's an expectation mismatch. So decide decide if you want to be a solopreneur, then you can make good money as a solopreneur. You can have a very very nice lifestyle, and you have. Amazing clients, but it's a different format and package and processes and systems than if you want to grow and have a team and have, have a goal. I mean, one thing for solopreneurship is you'll have a— you'll cap in terms of— you'll have a cap for revenue. So, so that's one thing to keep in mind. Another thing is when you want to sell the business later, 10 years from now, 20 years from now— and I know people who stayed as solopreneurs for a long time But imagine this company with, let's say, $500,000 in revenue and healthy margins, and it's just one person. When you have a buyer, there's a huge risk there. It's just one person, and everything is centralized within this one person, including client relationships. Many clients buy from this one person. because they love that one person. So a buyer would put a huge question mark, which will translate into some liabilities or certain terms in the mergers and acquisitions agreement about this person. And if they leave or clients leave because of the sale, that you will not get your payout. So, and I've seen this. I've helped people sell their businesses. I've seen this. So Going— I'm sort of going off on this for a little bit, but that's okay, off track. But if you want to be a solopreneur, understand it's okay. You'll cap, you'll have a cap on the potential revenue and profit, and then there's some issues later in the future when you want to sell the business. On the other hand, which most of my content that I produce is for this second part of, or probably the majority of us out there who want to grow and establish businesses and have employees and have bigger accounts and, and, and just keep growing their profit to 6 figures and then 7 figures. And hopefully you can also reach much higher. So, so, so with that in mind, if you want to grow, you have to think— you have to take— if you want to grow, you have to take delegation seriously. Now the science of it is, if you follow the, the advice I said earlier in the session in terms of systematizing, in terms of using tech, that is more than half the battle because when you bring on a contractor or a full-time person or a part-time person, someone who doesn't know you, doesn't know how you think, how you work, how you operate, if you have these clear systems, if you have these processes, these checklists, these documents and these templates, then your thinking and the way you run your business, your thinking and the way you run your business have already been translated and transformed into these documents and templates and worksheets, so if you follow the systematizing point and the leveraging tech point I mentioned earlier, you're more than half, you've won more than half the battle already, so starting with that gives you an The second part of this, which is the harder part, is letting go, letting go of things that you've done for the last 6 months or the last year or 2 years, and you've done effectively. How do I package this? And how do I share it, delegate it to someone else? That's hard. So you can do this gradually. You can do this in a way where you are shadowing the person. You can do it where you have a feedback loop on the progress that this person is doing. So at the end of the day, you're the business owner, you're the founder, you're in charge. The buck stops there, right there. Even if you delegate, you're still responsible. If you delegate a task to a person and this person makes a client unhappy, it's still— it's still goes back to you. So that's where the art of delegation is important, and that's when you start thinking of, am I delegating to someone senior or to someone junior? Typically, junior people require more oversight, more support, more handholding. That's okay. They're growing and you're supporting them there. That's not taking a stab at the younger folks. That's just typically what they need, and it's our job to help them, to show them the way. And then if you're delegating to someone more senior, typically you don't want to give them— you don't want to micromanage them. You don't want to tell them exactly how to do specific things. You want to tell them— you want to focus on the outcomes, the expectations, and just the way you've been doing things and what has been received well by the client so you can maintain it. So the more, I think, the more junior the person, the more of these processes you want to have in terms of being there with them, having them— I remember when we hired a couple of folks that were right out of college, they've had some experience when they were in college, but that was their first real job, and one of them was in delivery, so he was working closer with my business partner, and the other person was in sales, so he was working closer with me. And we had them shadow us for, for a long time, um, just sit in there in every step of the process. And I would take them with me to client meetings, they would sit in on conference calls with clients. So they lived that experience, um, several, several times before they were on their own. And then that was the first phase for them just to shadow. Well, first was to read, understand, ask questions about our processes. They might have some new ideas to make our processes better, so that was great, but then they were shadowing us, me and my business partner, for a number of times, for a number of, a couple of weeks or so, and then we didn't just tell them, hey, you're on your own. It was tempting, No, the next phase was for us to be there where they were leading and we were supporting, and we would plan out the call with the clients, like, okay, so Mr. Intern or Mr. Junior Guy or Mrs. Junior Gal, you cover this part of the call, I'll cover this, and then I'll be there for you and stand by on questions that I can answer, you know, I've done it for a while now and I can sort of answer things without a whole lot of preparation because, you know, I've done it, you know, 1,000 times. So phase 1 was we were doing everything, me and my co-founder, and the new folks were shadowing us. The second phase was they were leading the calls and these activities, and then we were there to support. And then the third phase was where we totally unplugged, my business partner and I, We were focusing on bigger clients, bigger deals, other processes, other ways to grow the business, and then we handed off these tasks completely to other folks. So it is a gradual approach. You don't want to micromanage, but just agree with the plan. Put that delegation plan in writing for you, whatever works for you. Some of us are more detail-oriented, some of us are not, and get the buy-in on that plan with your person that you're delegating to. And then implement. So, so it takes a bit of time, it takes a bit of an investment. Be patient. If you hired someone with a huge potential, this is an investment. You putting all that time into training them and helping them learn, learn the ropes and, and be there, that's a huge investment. It will pay off handsomely for you. So, so that is my approach. Is, is you are responsible, you're accountable, but you can still delegate, you can still be there for them and have feedback loops at the end of the day. Hey, how did your call go? Did you run into some questions you did not have answers for? How did you answer those questions? And if you have that culture of transparency and openness and support where you're not going very hard on the people, I want you to be as I always say, that's one of our values in all of our companies, hard on the issue, soft on people. So understand, ask why 5 times, why did this thing happen? Just to get down to the root cause, but be soft on people, you know, unless someone is making like the same mistake repeatedly and they're, you know, they're distracted and they're not just being— they're not being competent, they're not competent, then deal with that, give them a warning, a verbal discussion, then have it in writing, then give them a PIP, a performance improvement plan, and then if it's not working out, you ask them to leave. I mean, do all these steps before you ask someone to leave. That's just the proper way to do it. We're not a charity at the end of the day. It's a business. I'm all for taking care of the people, taking care of your team, but at the same time, you are running a business. So If you haven't done this before, it's hard to delegate things to people. You can start with small things, smaller tasks, low-impact tasks, and then over time these folks can learn, they can see you in action, and then the way you do things, the way you take care of your clients, the way you deliver, the way you smile, they will actually— I don't want to say imitate you, but they— but, but you are the founder. The way Not what you say, what you say and what you do, that's the DNA of the company, that's the culture of the company, so people will follow your footsteps, they will model, you model the behavior that you want, and then people follow accordingly, and then they'll add, they'll improve it, they'll make it better, so that is what I recommend in terms of delegation, especially for those who haven't done it before. Start with smaller tasks, low impact tasks, have a loop, a feedback loop, provide support, and then gradually delegate bigger tasks and bigger impact tasks, and you'll be then focused on other things to grow the business, to go after bigger clients, to take some time, unplug for half a day if you need to, and go attend your son's soccer game, Whatever it is, delegation will be handy, will help you scale. So that is the third point under scaling. I have a couple of questions and then I want to show you one thing actually in terms of delegation, a tool that will help you, but let me answer the questions. Contractors versus employees, okay. When should I hire? You know, that's— You want to be very careful that you have the funds, the cash flow to support hiring in general, right? And then contractors, you bring on a contractor for 10 hours a week or for 5 hours a week, and it's— they come in with a specific set of expertise, you pay them, that's it. Obviously, you want to have that in writing in a contract, expectations, all that good stuff. But when you have a full-time employee, when you hire someone, that's a bigger commitment. So make sure you have cash flow to support it. And then as importantly, make sure you now, you, you move from being a solopreneur. Now you have, now you have an employee that they need support. Now you have their people issues now, right? So, so you have to really, if you haven't done it before, if you haven't managed people before, learn about Hiring properly. And I have a module on blackbeltstartup.com. There's a module on hiring, and especially if you're hiring a salesperson, the 10 mistakes I made over the years, I put them all in one module. So, so learn about hiring, learn about managing and leading people, managing tasks and leading people, right? There's— you can be firm, but at the same time, you want to be compassionate, you want to be empathetic, you want to You want to support people, especially if they're junior. There's a lot of handholding, which will take time from you. So as I said earlier, it's an investment. So it is the way to grow, and over time, if you're not the operational type, maybe your business founder or your co-founder can be the person in charge of that, all that payroll and accounting and performance reviews, and then, you know, you can be out there selling and marketing, but initially, you have to do all of it. As I always say, you got to do it. You got to do all these things in the business initially so that you have some level of awareness and knowledge about this function of the business, each function of the business, so that you can discern when to hire and whom to hire to help you in those areas of the business. I want to— there's a couple of templates that I think you will find useful. Let me share them with you right here. So, oh yeah, I forgot to mention this. In terms of tech, I have this article. Again, I'll put all these links in the description, in the YouTube video description. The Essential Software for Consultants: How to Elevate Your Workflow with These Tools. It's a list, long list of tools, key features, pros and cons, all that good stuff. The only thing is with pricing, the pricing information is as of the date when we published this article, which was a few months ago. So always check with the latest pricing on the vendor's website, but check out this article. It's called Essential Software for Consultants: Elevate Your Workflow with These Tools. And then this is in terms of delegation. I believe I covered this in a recent livestream, but let me spend a minute on this. And then for those of you who are listening, not watching, I'll walk you through it. So basically I have this spreadsheet called the Founder Focus Optimizer. Okay. I don't know. I couldn't come up with a better name. Founder Focus Optimizer, FFO. All right. So, and this is a family-friendly channel. So, so what I want you to do, I'll start with actually with this tab right here. I want you to do for a couple of weeks, Go to the tab that says weekly tasks and category. So list every task that you do, whether it's in admin and operations, like organizing files, invoicing clients, reconciling bank statements, whatever it is, or whether it's in sales, like follow up with prospects, updating your CRM, marketing, updating your website, writing a blog post. I have this business functions or business categories in one column. Column B here, you know, HR, hiring, legal, product, all that good stuff. And then next to it, I have the tasks. So, so I want you to list for 2 weeks, list the tasks that you're doing and put the time spent next to each task. And then in this column E, I— there are 4 attributes here, 4 descriptors. So, so I want you to select one of them. It's a dropdown basically. So things that you're good at and should be doing, and you make your own judgment. Things that you're good at, should not be doing. So that's the second. The third is things that you're not very good at, you're bad at, but still should be doing. And then that means you have to learn how to do it. And then things that you are bad at and you shouldn't be doing. So, so once you document these tasks for a couple weeks, go back and fill, fill in, uh, fill out the, the column E. And then this spreadsheet here, this worksheet, will give you the total time spent per category, right? So you'll see in our example here— let me make it a bit larger so people can see it— in our example for this consultant, in my data here, 23 hours were spent per week, that is, on things that they're good at and should be doing. So that's great. And then 10 hours, things that they're good at, they love creating video shorts. So for example, but they shouldn't be doing it. They can outsource this. And then things that they're bad at and should be doing, that's 12 hours. And then things that they're bad at and should not be doing, that's 8 hours. So based on this, based on this categorization, you can develop your plan to free up some time and to delegate. So you go to the 3rd tab here. Uh, sorry, one second. I'm in the 4th tab. Yeah, yeah. You go to this 4th tab and then you have this— I'll, I'll walk you through an example. Basically things you're good at and should not be doing. So the action here is that you delegate or outsource these tasks. So if you're great at editing videos, but it eats up hours, hire someone to do it for you, okay? If you love making slides, slide decks, you can again use AI or have an intern do this for you. Now that's the category, the things that you're— things you love, things you're good at, but shouldn't be doing because time, no matter how hard you work, and I'm a big, as you know, I'm a big proponent of people working really hard, But you can put that time in, in better, better use, for better use. Now, things that are not— you're not good at and shouldn't be doing. So these you have to eliminate, you have to automate, you have to delegate immediately. So bookkeeping, you're sending invoices, you're sending— you're going into QuickBooks and doing the right categorization, you're not sure how your general ledger is, it's a huge mess. You will pay handsomely for this in a bad way, not a good way. When it's tax season, your books are a mess, and then your taxes will be a mess, and then you'll be spending a week trying to clean up the data. So find a bookkeeper to take care, take care of this. Not maybe right day one or week one or month one. As soon as you have contractors and clients and you're sending invoices, you need a bookkeeper. Same thing with graphic design. So these things will drain you And, and they're just not worth the learning curve. Now, this is the important thing: things that you're not good at but should be doing. If you struggle with sales, if you struggle with networking, and if you struggle with reaching out to people, my friend, there's no escape. I want you— as you always know, if you follow the channel, you follow me— there's no escape from that one. You have to learn marketing. You have to learn sales initially. Later, once you are profitable, once you've figured out sales and marketing on your own, then you can hire for that. But initially, you have— you can't outsource something that you don't know anything about. You won't be able to pick the right person to outsource to. You won't be able to train this person or educate this person or share with this person what works well and what doesn't work. Well with, with leads. You don't know what resonates with clients. So, so outsourcing sales right away is a big mistake. One of— it'll be very costly. It cost me a lot of money initially, so do not repeat that mistake. So that is on, on delegation. There's one more, one more thing I want to share with you before we wrap, wrap up here. Let me go back. There's another sheet, uh, again, I'll have all these links in the description of the file, and this is called finding, um, a player. So, so, so when you are about to hire— so hiring a contract— hiring a contractor, an intern, a part-timer, that's one thing. When you're about to invest in a full-time person, you really want to be careful and selective, and you want to be thorough before your first hire, or maybe your first few hires. Though that is after your business partner, choosing a business partner, if that's, if that's the path you've taken, you've taken. After choosing a business partner, the first few hires will make or break your business, and I want you to look for A-players. And this, this different livestream, maybe we'll cover it in a few weeks, but for now, check out this resource on how to identify, how to assess the top 1%, the A-players that you want to bring on your team. If— and I have those questions, you can ask them, but basically you want them to have that founder mindset, not the same personality, not the same skills that you have, but the mindset is really important where they are— let me go back here to presenting. Yeah. They have a bias towards action. They think of a lot before they spend a dollar, just like a good founder. As Eric Schmidt said, the ex-CEO of Google, he said, frugal founders are great founders. So you want them to be thinking about before they spend money from your business, they want to think about it carefully, and also they're listening attentively to to the frontline, to clients and leads, and they have that sense of curiosity, and if they fail, they make a mistake, they can recover quickly from that. So those are the things you want to look for. Again, it's a trade-off. You're not going to have a perfect fit, a perfect hire for you, but from a delegation— this is related to delegation because you have to delegate to someone. And if you're looking to hire, the first few hires are critical to the business. I always say choosing your business co-founder is the most consequential decision you make in business, and right after that, whether you have a co-founder or not, especially if you don't have a co-founder, hiring the first few employees and choosing the right people to be with you on this journey is definitely a super consequential decision. So be careful with that. So that's what we covered today, how to scale effectively. So systematizing, leveraging tech and AI, and then mastering the science and the art of delegation. So let me know if you have— we have a few more minutes here before I wrap it up. If you have any questions, any comments, let me know. If you're listening to this or watching this later, leave me a comment. I'm here. My mission is to help you succeed. Help you get to your destination, to achieve your goals of financial independence, of growing a business, of creating an amazing culture, of having these lifelong friendships with the people who built that business with you. I'm here to support you get there faster with less, less, less gray hair, and to get there, um, not, not, not— it's not an easy journey, as I always say, but I will make it easier for you. That's the That's the mission here. So with that, see you next time. Go out and make the biggest sale. Just go out and knock on doors. And if you're struggling with delivery, watch these live streams that I've covered for the last 3, 4 weeks. It's all about helping you make those clients happy, helping you establish your reputation as a consultant who delivers, and then referrals will come through, case studies will be there. More clients, bigger clients will come your way. So go out and deliver successfully, and then go out and, and make the next big sale. And let me know how you're doing. I'd love to hear from you about your wins as well, not only challenges. I'm here to help you overcome challenges, but if you are having wins, small or big, I want to hear as well. And we will share with the community and help encourage the rest of us, um, make it and make it big. Oh, I have a question here. So Stephen, yes, if you are a solo consultant, do you choose a co-founder or independent contractor first? Stephen, I mean, those are 2 different questions. Choosing a contractor is a very contained decision. You get a— you go on Upwork, you find someone to help you deliver something for a client or do something for you, like build a website or whatever. That's a very contained task, right? Or even if the independent contractor is there for you to help you support your delivery or maybe in sales, That's one thing, you know, with the contractor, you give them a notice that, hey, I don't have a need for your services. They're used to that setup. When you hire someone as a full-time employee, that's a different setting. If you bring a co-founder, that's a different setting altogether. So with a co-founder, now you're talking about who's doing what. Now you're talking about who owns how much. Is it 50/50? Is it 80/20? Now we're talking about— Yeah. Contributing to the business, not just time and effort, but also financially. So, so it's a much bigger decision to bring on a co-founder. So I would say it's more about you can use independent contractors, you can hire people to help you deliver the services. I think that's— again, that's just part of if you're planning on growing beyond solopreneurship, that's something you can take. But if you And I believe I have, I do have a series of livestreams on selecting a co-founder, so I'll include the links to those, I don't wanna, I'll give you a quick answer, but I think that's a very important topic, and choosing a co-founder is almost like choosing a life partner, see, we spend most of our waking hours at work, I mean, that's just the reality, so if you can't have a nice dinner, enjoy a nice conversation with this person, make sure you don't choose them as a co-founder. So do they have complementary skills? You're a big picture type of guy and they're very detail-oriented. You're good at sales, they're good at delivery, you know, personality, you know, different personalities is a positive thing. You want to argue about things, you want to have that positive you know, good friction, not, I shouldn't say maybe friction, but you want to have that banter every once in a while, so that you can come to a better decision. So look for competent, to summarize, when you're looking for a co-founder, looking for, look for a competent, sorry, when you're looking for a co-founder, look for complementary skills, look for shared values, honesty, reliability, work ethic, these are important, And also agree on the important things, how decisions are made, how the equity is split, all of that. So the legal aspect of it and documenting that, you know, you need a lawyer. And really, are you the type of person that needs to bounce off ideas with others, that needs some support? We all need a shoulder sometimes to cry on, you know? There's that aspect of it when you have a co-founder, but at the same time, you're letting go of some equity, decision-making now is not just you, your business partner has to be part of it, you know, there's potential for conflict, so there's all these pros and cons, I would say, look into it, if you think you can grow, a lot of companies, I mean, you've seen success both ways, Michael Dell, Dell, you look at Google co-founders, right? You look at Airbnb co-founders, DoorDash, and especially in tech, and their preference for a lot of investors to have multiple co-founders, but there are successes where it's just one founder, so, but I'm, in all of my businesses, all of my ventures, I've always had co-founders, and it's been a very rewarding experience for me throughout. So these are, these are my 2 cents on this. I'll add a, a link to a live stream I did on, on finding the right co-founders. Uh, and then, Steven, okay, the last question here I have. So what should be the first step to scale up? What should be the first step to scale up as it relates to human resource? I think, go, uh, Steven, go through that Founder Focus Optimizer, that spreadsheet, again, I'll include the link in just right after this call, and just go through that exercise, like where are you spending your time today? Some things it has to be you, a lot of things will have to be you, but if there are things that you can package, again, systemize, find the right tech for it, and then you can package and have someone else do it for you, I think that's a very good start. And you can start with part-time, you know, with independent contractors, a few hours a week. They take care of this task, right? So now once you've packaged these tasks and you delegate them to someone else, it's going to cost you a penny and it's going to cost you a little bit of money. That's okay. But, and make sure again, you support them, you monitor their performance, you're there for them. Once they're very good at it, It might take you a few weeks, then let's say it was a set of tasks that took you 10 hours a week, right? So now you've packaged and outsourced or delegated those 10 hours to someone else, so let's say you still need to spend an hour or 2 maybe to monitor and support this person, but now you've freed up 8 hours, so those 8 hours can be more billable hours, so you can do more work at your rate, As a consultant, or you could be doing more marketing activities, or you've been working really, really hard. You can take half an afternoon off and go spend time with the family, go golfing, whatever you do. For me, I'll just go and do more Aikido. I'll go on the mat. So yeah, that's— I would say look at the things you're doing today and use that Founder Focus Optimizer, identify the areas that you can package and delegate, And then from there, you get used to it, you get the delegation, and now you have more bandwidth to do more things, and then you can maybe turn this person into 20 hours a week instead of 10 hours a week, eventually full-time, and now, you know, you have more bandwidth to grow the business. Alright, I hope this is helpful. Let me know if not, and happy to get more questions after the livestream. Just leave me a comment or email me at info@startupwithferus.com. and I will get back to you. See you next time.