In episode 138 of The Leveraged CEO, Matt Dart opens with a personal update about traveling to Malaysia to play amateur cricket and shares that three new clients have joined his program. He then dives into a core business coaching narrative: a farmer and a roofer complain that their staff are lazy, but Matt argues the root cause is the owners’ lack of proper systems. He explains that without checklists, SOPs, hiring playbooks, and onboarding processes, employees are set up to fail, leading to a cycle of hiring and firing. Using the analogy of donkeys (workers who need clear systems) versus stallions (high performers), Matt outlines a step‑by‑step framework: define the desired outcome, write a detailed job description, ensure SOPs and checklists are ready before hiring, implement a 30‑day onboarding roadmap that transfers ownership, and then conduct regular check‑ins. He stresses the importance of vision, purpose, and mission statements for employee retention beyond salary. Finally, he invites listeners to apply for his program if they need these systems, offering to share documents via social media or provide full training through the program.
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What's going on, team? Episode 138 of The Leveraged CEO. I have got an amazing episode planned for you guys today. So without further ado, it's called Your Staff Aren't Lazy, You're Just a Bad Boss. Controversial, I know. I'm going to tell you a story in a second, but before we get into the story, quick little update on me. Go to Malaysia next week. So at the time of this episode being released, I will be in Malaysia playing cricket for Australia in an amateur 20/20 competition. So I'm super pumped for that. So I'm just kind of getting everything sorted this week. We've actually had 3 new clients join the Leverage CEO program this week, which has been awesome to help people get their time back. But I'm super pumped to grow this business. I literally just made a I made a tracker for me to get to $100K a month for this business and what I need to do, how much I need to spend on ads, when I need to hire people. It's all mapped out. My cost per lead, my cost per acquisition, my cost per call, my show-up rate, everything is planned out. So I love doing this stuff, building systems, building processes. This is my jam. So I've got a couple of notes I wanna go through here, but I literally just jumped off a call, I think it was yesterday, And it was actually a farmer who just joined our program. And basically what happened was he's got 2 staff. One of them is paying $120K a year, the other one's paying $100K a year. And he was basically just not so much complaining, but just saying like, you know, they're a bit lazy, they don't do anything, or they make themselves look busy. They don't actually get the stuff done. They don't follow the— well, they don't work on, you know, the systems and processes, etc. But in reality, it all comes back to the owner. There's no checklist, there's no SOPs, there's no onboarding process. In fact, there's not really any hiring process either. So a lot of the time, it pretty much always comes down to the owner and how you actually set people up for success. So the cycle generally goes, you hire them, they fail, you hire them— oh, sorry, you hire them, they fail, then you fire them. Then jump back on the tools, you hire again, they fail, you fire them, and it just goes through the same result over and over again. The roofer I actually spoke to this week has gone through 4 or 5 different people in the last 6 months. It's not good, not good for business, and it's obviously pretty stressful for the owner as well of the business to constantly have to go through people and constantly have to try and train people up. But the annoying thing is when you don't have the system in the process, You've gone through the same thing from start to finish every single time. So imagine if you just had like a hiring playbook or like onboarding process or a hiring process, or, you know, the SOP is already done, the checklist already done. So people can just, no matter who comes in, they can always get the job done. The farmer was saying like the job's actually super easy. It's very repetitive once they're trained up. So there shouldn't really be too much, you know, issues with finding the right people or training them up properly because a repetitive task. And that's what, you know, I say this all the time, you got like donkeys and stallions. Donkeys are the ones that, um, are good to have in the business, like they'll do the task, but they need to have the system and the process there for them to actually do that task. Otherwise they're just gonna do nothing, which is what's happening in this example for these guys. And so they're both like, just like complaining about the team and the staff, but in reality it was, you know, it was more than likely, uh, the business owner's fault. So I wanted to go through a couple things in terms of the hiring process or what you kind of need to make this process like a success for you. So what you ideally want to do is you want to, you want to firstly have a hiring process. You want to ideally have the outcome that you want this person to do for you mapped out, written out like a job description, what responsibilities they have, what are they going to do, and map out if you actually have the systems and processes already mapped out. ready for when this person starts? And if you don't, I would start there before you actually hire someone, because otherwise you've just got to set them up for fail. And then what you need to do from there is you need to work on an onboarding process, which, you know, if you obviously are working with us, you have this 30-day onboarding process to set up your team for success. So at the end of the 30 days, they should be completely handed over, and they should focus on that outcome moving forward, and then you're no longer part of that role anymore. So then from there, it's just about checking in to make sure they're doing okay, and they're, you know, they're not struggling with anything, or they're not having any challenges with what they're doing. But if you don't have that process, it makes it a very difficult place to be in. It's a very stressful situation because you don't know what the team is doing, you don't know how good they are, and the team is pretty much left in the loop as well. They don't know if they're doing everything correctly. They don't know the kind of the vision or the forecast of what's actually happening. So at the end of the day, it is the owner's fault. Like, if you guys don't have these systems and processes in place, you're just gonna have a really hard time in business, especially as you grow and as you scale, or you're not gonna be able to scale, or you're not gonna be able to grow as well, because, you know, you're not gonna have people stick around. It's just, you know, it's just the reality of business. You know, people can move around. They don't have to stay You know, they don't have to stay in your, in your company. Like, there's— you've got to create a reason for them to stay with you. Like, the money is not enough these days. They've got to be connected to like a vision, a purpose, mission statement, all that type of stuff for them to stay with you long term. Because otherwise you just gotta have a revolving door of people. And, you know, it's not fun for you. It's not fun fun for them. So if this is resonating with you and you feel like you don't have the systems and processes that you need to be able to grow the business, or even not even— not so much even growing the business, even just make more money with the same amount of revenue that you've got, if you want to have less stress in your life, if you want to take more time back, spend more time with your family, click on the link in the description and you can apply to work with us. We don't work with everyone. We do not work with everyone. So you can apply And then we'll review the application and we'll decide if it's gonna be a good fit from there. So moral of the story is, before you hire someone, have the job description, have the outcome ready to rock and roll, and then make sure you've got the right SOP systems and processes in place before you bring someone on. Okay? And then you have the onboarding roadmap. Ideally, you go through like the vision, the purpose, the missions. Mission statement of the company. Then you train them on the, on the, uh, you know, the job that they need to do. And then from there, after 30 days, they're done. And then it's just a matter of checking in, making sure they're okay, and then, uh, it's pretty much done from there. It's a done deal. So if you guys want to copy those processes, just, um, just send me a message on Instagram or Facebook. I'm more than happy to share those documents with you. Uh, but if you want the full, full deal, The full process, full training, etc., click on the link in the description and apply to work with us, and we'll review your application, and then we'll go from there. I'll see you in next week's episode. Bye for now.
