Ep123: Fire Yourself - Your Team Can't Grow Until You Get Out of Their Way

Alrighty, team. Matt here from The Leveraged CEO. We are on episode 123. Title of today's episode is going to be Fire Yourself. Your Team Can't Grow Until You Get Out of Their Way. So this is obviously specifically for people that have a team. You know, it could be trainers, it could be admin people, it could be VAs. It doesn't, doesn't really matter who it is, but this is going to be targeted towards people who have a team, but the owner or the founder, or you, the one that's probably listening to this, is still kind of doing some of their jobs, or they're still coming to you for everything, and you're still kind of having that outcome rather than handing over responsibility to your team. Mm-hmm. So as always, I've got a couple of little notes here that's gonna help me kind of stay on track. And I'm gonna give you guys my opinion on what's kind of happening here. So more than likely you're doing relatively well financially. You've got a few team members. Yeah, let's, let's just say maybe it's a, maybe it's a VA, for example. Maybe it's an admin person. They're probably the easiest ones to start with. You're essentially Well, here's what you don't want to do, right? You don't want to have a team that is reliant on you. You want to have a team that can get the outcome that you want without you needing to hold their hand. Okay, so let's firstly talk about the types of team members actually to start with because you can have like, I can't remember who said this, but you can have like Donkeys. Donkeys, I think maybe donkeys, horses, and stallions. So like a donkey is someone that you basically have to check their work all the time to make sure they're actually doing it correctly. Horses are, if you give them a task, they'll do it, but you need to keep giving them the tasks to do. A stallion is someone that you give them the outcome that you want and you just get out of their way and they just do the task. What you want in your business is stallions. You want to immediately fire the donkeys, the ones that need to ask a million questions to get the outcome that you're looking for, and like you have to kind of micromanage them or performance manage them. And then horses, horses are good, horses are pretty good to have because you just give them the task and they just do the task. They don't necessarily ask too many questions. And then stallions, they're hard to find. You probably gotta pay them a little bit more, and they usually already have a job 'cause they're good at their job. You might have to like poach them from someone else or offer them more money to come work for you, for an example. So most of us have either donkeys or horses, to be honest. Prime example, of a stallion. I've got one right now. He's helping with AI stuff in my business and the other clients that we're working with for AI. And I actually, like, I've got, I've actually got a couple of donkeys that I'm going to get rid of, a couple of horses and some stallions. So the stallion, essentially, I haven't even, I've maybe sent him maybe one message this last week, and I haven't heard from him. He's doing stuff. I haven't heard much from him. And I said, hey, do you need anything from me this week to complete your— or get the outcome that we're looking for this week? And he's like, nope, all good. I'll let you know when it's finished. I'm like, alrighty, sounds good. So prime example of what a stallion is. So what essentially needs to happen is you just need to get out of their way and let them do their thing. Okay. So what I mean when I say in this episode, fire yourself. Your team can't grow until you get out of their way. More than likely— not more than likely, but a lot of you guys probably have a team. But this— you're still getting them to come to you for everything to make sure it's done perfectly, where in reality you just need to give them the outcome, give them the tools that they need, and then let them figure it out. Okay, that's how they're gonna learn as well. And that's how you're gonna learn. That's how you're gonna learn as well. To let go because you are just focusing on the outcome. So if they get stuck, they need to figure it out on their own. They can obviously use AI, for example. They can go to other people if they need to, but they only come to you once it's done. Okay? And then again, I suppose you can improve it that way as well if you still wanna have a finger on the pulse. But I would imagine some of you guys probably have donkeys that you are micromanaging right now. Or they require handholding. But don't get me wrong, you always need to train them up and stuff, but they shouldn't need to be handholding. They should be able to figure out what needs to get done. And you guys should have a system in place. And if they're coming to you, it could be a number of things. It could be maybe they don't feel like they're good enough to complete the task and they need to be handheld, or maybe you don't have the right system. For them to do it on their own. Or maybe there's no SOP for, hey, if this happens, do this. Okay, and if there's no SOP, get a stallion and make a process and get them to document what they did. Okay, so— Yeah, that was nice little rant there. So a couple other things I want to discuss in here. Couple of things that might— you guys might be thinking, getting out of the way isn't lazy. It's the actual job of the business owner at your level. So you shouldn't be required. And if you guys want to scale, you want, you want freedom, you want leverage. There's no way you're gonna have leverage if everyone is coming to you. And of course you can hire middle management, that type of stuff. But in reality, Especially like if we talk about the beginner roles like admin stuff, they should not be coming to you. Like for example, one of my VAs, she always sends me like an update of what she's done for that day. I'm like, yeah, cool. That's just part of your job. I don't need to know that you're doing your job. Like she's actually, this is how she's been brought up, I think from previous roles. Be like, oh yeah, I need to always tell the boss that I've done something so they know I'm actually working. Like, I'll, I'll know that you're working based on the outcomes that have happened in the business. I don't need you to tell me, hey, I've done this specific task and this specific task. So I'm training, um, training her on that. So that's a prime example. If you're having to have admin people, VAs, come to you and just tell you that they've done like basic things. I'm like, okay, cool, well, just completely wasted my time reading that because you should be focusing on other things that are going to propel the business forward. Yes, of course, if they need some urgent attention, then yeah, give them the right support. But like, you want to push them to try and figure it out on their own, meaning, hey, if I wasn't available, how would you solve this problem? Yeah. So the, the real business and leverage and time and freedom that you guys want as business owners is on the other side of you setting the boundary now to get people to be self-sufficient, hire horses and stallions, not donkeys. You gotta get rid of the donkeys 'cause they're just gonna take up a lot of your time and you're gonna get really, really frustrated and it's, it's not gonna be good for you long term. So this is like perfect for people that have teams. You know, business owners that we work with these days, they're doing at least $250K a year. So they more or less have some team members. And not only do we help people with, you know, AI automation workflows, AI agents and that type of stuff, but we also help people with their team to set them up and make SOPs so they don't have to rely on the founder to consistently check in on them and make sure they're doing the right things. Realistically, in an ideal world, you guys should have KPIs for the outcomes that you want to achieve, and the employee or the staff member should be working towards those KPIs every single week on their own. If they need help, they can obviously come to you, but they shouldn't be handholding you. Then you figure out how to, how to achieve that outcome. And present their KPIs the following week and go through any bottlenecks or challenges that they faced that previous week and get the right support to be able to solve that problem. So realistically, you should be only catching up with your team once a week. That is it. Like the whole team once a week on a Monday. Well, I mean, if you want to, you can do like daily huddles if you really want to. Okay, cool. What are your tasks? Are you doing this? Today, what did you do yesterday? Is there any bottlenecks or challenges that you faced? What other support do you need? And that's it. Just get out of the way. You'll be amazed at how much more productive they are when they don't have to keep messaging you about everything. Okay, so get rid of yourself, fire yourself from some positions, and don't get bottled up in doing those tasks or checking all of those tasks. To make sure they're done at 100%. 80% done or 90% done is way better than 100%, if someone else is doing it, that is. No one's ever going to be as good as you. Okay. So be okay with 90, 80, 90% of it done. Of course, you can make some finishing touches, of course, if you really need to, if it's going to move the needle that much. But majority of the time, just let them do the job that you're paying them to do. Okay, hope that was insightful. I've had a lot of team members over the last 6 or 7 years or so that I've done pretty good with managing them and getting the right outcomes that we, that we need. But it all comes down to the hiring process as well and actually finding the right type of people. I might do a separate episode on that, but get yourself out of the way. Remove yourself from these boring tasks, tasks that don't move the needle. Get someone else to do them. Develop a system and an SOP that keeps them self, uh, self-motivated and accountable. You just keep them accountable to those KPIs that you set and let them figure out how to, how to achieve it, that outcome. And then you can focus on the things that actually matter in the business. All right, I'll leave it there. Peace out. I'll see you next week.