Episode 7 : Delegate Ruthlessly

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This podcast will give you all the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Millionaire agents and entrepreneurs think and act differently than others. This podcast will give you a simple, proven three step blueprint to grow your business. Over the past 31 years of research in your industry, Mike Stromso has created a unique philosophy called the three people process and promotion. This outside the box thinking and guidance provides agency entrepreneurs just like you the knowledge and tools you can quickly implement to explode your agency business. He has been there, done that, and he's still doing it. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso.

Hey, it's Mike Stromco. And welcome to episode seven of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. Yeah, this is Mike Strompso coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And today we're going to be talking about ruthless delegation. Yes, I said ruthless delegation. I learned years and years ago that the most successful people, the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet have mastered ruthless delegation. And I would encourage you strongly to become a master of delegating anything that's not in your top three areas of your personal talents, gifts, or the top three things that you do really, really well. I'm going to get a little bit deeper into that later on the podcast. But, you know, I got a question for you today. Have you ever thought I used to be the kind of person who thinks he can do it all? But I've learned that such a person doesn't really exist.

I was there myself and what I'm here to share with you today, I changed and I've become a ruthless delegator. The only way to get ahead and the only way to expand your business is to empower others to do some of the work or the majority of the work. Better said, you've got to empower them. You got to give them the authority, give them the right to do whatever needs to get done and let it go. Yes, I understand that it's all about the first P and hiring excellent people, which we talked about in another podcast. But once you've got those excellent people on board, all you got to do is let it go. Empower them to do so. Tell them this is the way we do it. This is the way I expect you get it done and let them do it. Remember, I want you to write this down. By the way, during the podcast, you should always have something to write with and right on. Because you want to not think it, you want to ink it, or what gets written down and crossed out gets done. All right, you ready? Good enough is good enough. Or as I recently learned, the enemy of perfection is progress.

Did I say that right? Anyway, or excuse me, the enemy of progress is perfection. Let me correct that. The enemy of progress is perfection. It's never going to be perfect when you delegate it sometimes, but it doesn't matter if it's 80% of what you can do. You're good. You're good. Let it go. You need to be working on the higher level, top three personal talents and gifts that only you can do. You see, I also recently learned this. You should only. And you might want to write this one down because this is a game changer. Changer. You should only be doing what only you can do. Let me say that again. You should only be doing what only you can do.

And everything else should be ruthlessly delegated all of the time. I'm going to get into the nuts and bolts of exactly how you can do this before we end this podcast and what it means for you. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, all we want for you to be able to grow your business, to create financial wealth, and to have more freedom to live life on your terms. And that's what we want for you. So let's talk about your top three personal talents and gifts and the things that you love to do, by the way. Those are the things that if you get to operate in one or all three of your top three personal talents and gifts every single day for at least 80 to 90% of the time, when you leave, wherever you finish your workday, your going to be on cloud nine. You're going to be feeling it when you walk in the door to wherever you end up, they're going to go. What happened to you today? Because you're going to be on fire. You're going to be loving life and that's what we want for you. And that happens when you get to work in your area of passion. So let me give you something to think about when to help you identify the top three things that you do well. Okay? And then I'm going to share with you my top three personal talents and gifts that that I love, love, love to do. So think about this with me for a minute. If money was not a factor, what would you be doing? If money was not a Factor. If you had all the money that you needed, what would you be doing with your life? What are you passionate about? What do you love? What are you willing to die for?

That's something that you're passionate about and that you love. Now write these things down and just go brain sprint. When I say brain sprint, there's no right or wrong answer. Don't think about it, just start writing these things down. Then after you have a list of things that you love that you're passionate about, that you love to do, and it could be outside of business, or they could be all business related, I don't think it really matters, just start brain sprinting a list. I think your list should probably get to anywhere between at least 5 and 10 or maybe more than that right now. After you create the list, write them down and then go back and circle the ones that really hit you as yeah, those are the things that I would be loved to be doing every single day. Alright, now write down all the other tasks you're doing in your day to day activities of your business as well. All right. And this may take some time, but you know, if I think back to the job descriptions of all of the team members, our organization, and that's part of another podcast as well because it has to do with the first P. Normally there's anywhere from 10 to 20 topics on that list, but there's always a top three that people love, love, love to be doing that's in their area of their personal talent or gift. And you need to identify what yours are because ultimately at the end of day, like we said, we want to identify that. We want, we want to get you operating in those areas of your top three personal gifts the majority of your day and you're ruthlessly delegating the rest of what you're going to do. Now to start ruthlessly delegating, and by ruthlessly I mean with confidence and without hesitation. That's an important aspect of what we're talking about today. With confidence and without hesitation, you have to have identified the items that you can assign to somebody else. So if you've got 10 to 20 topics that are normal topics that you are involved in or that you give your time to, every single day, you need to eliminate at least probably if there's 20, you need to eliminate 17 to somebody else with confidence, without hesitation. And you must also figure out to whom you will delegate. Now in the unstoppable Profit Producer program, we have documents that help with time management, that help you with delegation. They help you identify what all of these things are, what you're doing from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed at night, and whether it's important or not important on a scale to help you identify these things. And if you ever would like a copy of something like that, feel free to contact us. Infounstoppableprofitproducer.com that's infonstoppableprofitproducer.com just tell them you want the time management sheet to help you identify where your time is going anyway. So you've got to figure out what you're going to delegate and to whom you're going to delegate it to. Now, if you hire right, you don't need to worry about whether your team can handle it. You know they can. And I was talking with our director before we started the podcast today. I said, who said that? I was honored that she said that. You said it in your book. That's awesome. So let me repeat that for you. If you hire right, you don't need to worry about whether your team can handle it. You know they can. Back to the confidence, back to them without hesitation. Alright? Delegate with consistency and without bias to what the situation is. You should have excellent team members who have been trained, who are working within world class processes and systems to get this done. It's really that simple. And if you don't have all that built, we can help you build that. People in our coaching programs have access to everything that they need 24, 7, 365 to help them build all the processes and systems they need. As a reminder, you should only be doing the things that only you can do. And putting a process in place to be able to delegate ruthlessly is critically important. When I figured this out years and years ago, I was thinking, you know, what can I do? How am I going to delegate? How am I going to step by step through the process? And when it really all started was the time that I was finally able to afford to hire what we'll call a personal assistant. So years and years ago I hired a personal assistant and it came to the point where they would say, what do you need me to do today? And I'm thinking, well, how am I going to do this? And I simply got out an 8 and a half by 11 piece of paper and I said, well here, just write down this is what I need to do. And on that blank piece of paper they wrote down what needed to be done. That was the beginning of what we affectionately call today The Next Action Sheet. Because as you know, thinking about it is not going to do it. Talking about it is not going to do it. Only taking action is going to get you where you want to go. All right, so the Next Action Sheet is what it's all about today, our Next Action Sheet. And you have a copy of this available to you. If it's not anywhere around the podcast link, just again, contact us@infounstoppableprofitproducer.com and we'll get it to you because now we've got it in PDF, fillable nowadays. But the original form, I'm looking at a copy of the original form. It's just titled Next Action Sheet. Really simple. And it's on green piece of paper. Why? Because green is the color of money and time is money. Without question. The more time that you have to operate in your top three areas of your personal gifts is the time that you will be able to work on your business, that you'll be able to grow your business and be the creative, be the person who is the catalyst, is the fuel behind growing your business. So this Next Action Sheet, okay, the Next Action Sheet, at the very top to the right, there's the letter P. Right next to the P is an underline and it's blank. What the P means? That's a priority scale, alright? We do everything on a priority scale. It's from a 1 to a 10, a 1 to a 10 with 10 being the most important. Alright? And then right below that it says what you've heard me say a lot. What gets written down gets done. What gets written down gets done, right? And then below that it says to who? The person I'm delegating to from me. And by the way, a little side note, we use initials around here all the time. We don't write out people's names because that's way too much work and takes too long. We just go like Ms. Or AW or SB or something like that and everybody knows who they are. Don't worry, don't overthink it. Just ink it, right? Then we have a date and then we have an re. What's this about? Right? And then it's just an entire sheet and that has lines to tell them what you expect gets done. I'm going to give you another tip in just a second, alright? At the very bottom it says urgent final task. And there's a blank line, it says, I've advised the delegator via email that this project is done. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever asked somebody on your team to do something, say on a Friday morning and then you're doing something on Saturday, maybe spending time with family or friends or at a ball, kids sporting event or something, and you're sitting there thinking, I'm wondering if that got done. Been there, I got two fingers in the air. Yeah, I've been there and I'm still there. Sometimes I want them to tell me that it got done. Just, just shoot me a quick email. Hey, I took care of that task regarding whatever it was. Cool, thanks. And it gives you an opportunity to give them a quick high five back, a quick add a girl or add a boy or kudos or whatever. And you know, you make them feel good. They've eliminated the weight off your mind. Delete the boom. Alright? And another little side note, when you see the form, if you get it in paper form, you'll see where we have it, where it's at on our system. So the people that are delegating within your organization can go get an additional form if they need it. Alright? So one of the other little things, in the early days of my delegation, if you choose to, with the non electronic version.

People would come in my office and I'd write out what I want them to do. And sometimes they'd come back and say, hey, I can't read your writing right here. That was an aha moment for me. You know why I said aha, I'm not going to fill these things out anymore. They are. So if somebody walks into my office and they say, well, I can't figure this out, I say, have a seat, I would like to give you one of these forms and it's the delegation form. And I would like you to write down your own handwriting, exactly the following things. And I tell them what to write down and they write it down in their own handwriting. Can they read their own handwriting? Well, if they can't read their own handwriting, that's another conversation which is a lot different, which will probably be the last conversation you have with them in a business function, right? Okay. So they fill it out in their own handwriting and they walk away with it. And I say, if you have any other questions, let me know. Okay? Now, in today's world of virtual assistants, remote employees and all that kind of stuff, we have the offline version, which is the green piece of paper, and we have the online version which is the PDF fillable. And we will be happy to provide you either of those, either in word or PDF fillable if you'll ask us@infoonstoppableprofitproducer.com and so nowadays what I do is I just fill out the PDF fillable and I send it to people and ask them to take care of it. Let me know if you have any questions. Ladies and gentlemen, it's really that simple. If you will make a decision and a choice to let it go.

You can't worry about it. You've got to make a choice to let it go and work in the areas of your top three personal talents and gifts. I told you earlier that I would share with you what mine are because I've identified over time working through this and it's constantly a work in progress for me all of the time. I learned from the great Rudy Rudiger last year that never giving up lasts for the rest of your life. Never giving up lasts for the rest of your life. So you can never give up on this. It's. You constantly got to work at it. Alright, so my top three personal gifts and talents are leadership and training. And I kind of combined the two because they're in the same realm. But I love, love, love to lead people and I probably love training more than I do leadership. There's nothing that turns me on more than to teach and inspire somebody else who wants to be taught, inspired and they get something out of it and it changes their life in some way. For me it's all about that. Secondly, I love to sell. I still love to sell and I wish I could be in sales all day long. I would blow away everybody in our organization because I know how to sell. I love to sell and I know how to close the last thing that I love. And I constantly interrupt the awesome Tapatillo and her team by going into the marketing department and butting into things. But I love marketing. I love, love, love marketing too. So I love leadership and training, I love selling and I love marketing and those are the things that I'm, if I'm doing that 80 to 90% of my day, it's off the frickin charts. And I go home and Cindy says oh, you had an awesome day. I said I had an awesome day today. But you know what, at the end of the day there's going to be days and there's going to be days, right? So structure your time, structure your days and identify days. If there's days, you know this stuff needs to get done, it's not going to be in that realm. Make that happen on one day and my day for that is a Monday. Alright, if I know there's going to be days when I don't want to deal with stuff. I put it all on my calendar for Monday. I time block everything. I get it out of the way so that Tuesday through Friday or whatever I choose to do are those kind of awesome days. Friend, I hope this has helped you. At the end of the day. Remember, by delegating and using the forms and the processes and the systems we just talked about, it takes the hesitation out of the process and it makes you more methodical and systematic. You can use the systematic process to unload things that you just don't need to be doing. Just fill out the form and pass it along to the capable people that can handle it. Good enough is good enough. Don't forget about that. The person assigned to the task is held by more accountable by the form itself. Once they have it, that weight is on their shoulders and it's off of yours to get the task done. What does this mean for you? You will now begin to have more time to start working on your business and in the areas of your top three personal talents and gifts. Reminder. 3 times 5 times 50 equals 750 small choices plus consistency plus time equals the massive results that you're looking for. I don't have any silver bullets. I don't have any magic pills. What I do have for you is the ability to start delegating ruthlessly. Right now, it's on you. I know you can do it. You've got a greatness within you. Go. Let unleash it upon the world. This is Mike Stromsell, live from the Living Agency Laboratory. I will talk with you on the next episode. Make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets. Talk to you soon. Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.