11 Things Every Successful Founder Delegates

If you're a founder or CEO and it feels like you're doing everyone else's job, this is for you. And if you've ever said, I'm wearing too many hats, then this is definitely for you. In this video, I'm going to help you identify which of the 11 hats you're currently wearing. I'm going to help you decide which ones to take off. And I'm going to give you the exact system that we use to help founders systematically remove every hat from their head except for the one that actually matters. Now, if you don't know me, my name is Ryan Deiss. My partners and I manage 17 companies across our $200 million holding group. So I've experienced my fair share of burnout caused by failed delegation attempts. And what I'm going to show you now is the same system that we use with our private clients and portfolio company founders to help them reclaim their focus and fire themselves strategically from the jobs that, frankly, they hate and shouldn't be doing. So most founders don't suffer from a lack of discipline. They suffer from a lack of delegation. And we hear it all the time from our clients and our portfolio CEOs. We. When they say things like, I can't get anything done and I'm just wearing too many hats. But this isn't about hiring more people, and it definitely isn't about finding some mythical COO or integrator unicorn who's gonna fix everything for you. It's about recognizing this one simple truth. You're not broken. You're just buried under 11 very, very heavy hats. Frankly, when one person is filling 11 different roles, they don't feel successful and productive and they feel burnout and they feel trapped. So what I want to do right now is I want to run through the 11 hats. And as we're doing it, I want you to write down the name of any one of these hats that you believe that you're currently wearing or that you have worn in the last 60 to 90 days. All right, let's get going. Hat number one is the marketing hat. You are wearing the marketing hat. If you're writing copy, if you're launching campaigns, if you're crafting offers, if you are obsessing over lead flow, if you're. If nobody else is generating demand and it is all up to you, then congratulations, you are wearing the marketing hat. Hat number two is the sales hat. You're wearing the sales hat. If you're doing founder led sales, if you're chasing invoices and closing those Deals yourself. Hat number three is the innovation hat. You're wearing this hat. If you're creating all of the new stuff, all the products, all the services, all the intellectual property. Hat number four is the fulfillment hat. You're wearing this hat. If you're delivering the product, if you're onboarding the clients, if you're solving the big customer issues, basically, if you're the chef in the kitchen, then, yep, you are the one wearing the fulfillment hat. Hat number five, operations. This is your hat. If you're building the systems, if you're running the meetings, or maybe you're just winging it and hoping that the wheels don't fall off. Hat number six, the money hat, this is yours. If you're the cfo, if you're the bookkeeper, if you're the collections manager, maybe even the person checking the account balances. Hat number seven, the people and culture hat. You are the therapist, you're the recruiter, you're the conflict resolution guru. Hat number eight, the gopher hat. Reset that password, unclog that toilet, go for this, go for that. If you are the last line of defense. If you're the one doing all the dirty work, that is the gopher hat. And that gopher hat is very much on your head. Hat number nine, the customer support hat. This is yours. If you're answering the angry emails, if you're managing the support inbox, if you're handling refund requests and making things right when no one else can or will, then you are wearing the customer support hat. Hat number 10 is the partnerships hat. This is where you're chasing collaborations, courting referral partners, managing key vendors, and trying to strike that next big deal that might finally move the needle. If you're the one always having to hop on the airplane because nobody else can, then you're wearing the partnership hat. Okay, last but certainly not least, hat number 11, the CEO hat. This is where you're thinking long term. You're protecting the company vision. You're reviewing scorecards and making those high leveraged moves. This, frankly, is the hat that you actually should be wearing, but probably don't have that much time to wear. But if you do actually get to do those things, then congratulations, you're wearing the CEO hat. All right, so now that we've gone through that fun little exercise, I've got three questions for you, and then I got a plan of action for how we're going to get some of these hats off your head. So question number one, really, really simple. How many hats are you wearing? Right now, I'd love it, just for fun, if you'd like, drop a comment in there. Just. It'd be fun to aggregate how many hats everybody is out there wearing. What I can tell you is that the solution, I hope that you're seeing this is not simply to get better at time management. When entrepreneurs come to me and they say, oh, I just. I just need to get better at time management. I just. I need to better, more effectively manage my time. You know, I wish there were more hours in a day. What you're basically saying is that you want to get better at balancing hats. So moving forward, when you hear yourself say, I need to get better at time management, I wish there were more hours in a day, I want you to imagine just more hats awkwardly stacked on your head, because that is not the goal. The thing that I'll say is that none of the hats that we talked about are inherently bad. Right? Some CEOs also want to innovate. Some CEOs also want to market. Some CEOs also want to sell. Every single one of these hats does have a purpose. So the problem isn't any one hat. The problem is wearing too many hats at the same time. And what I can specifically tell you is that if you're wearing more than two hats, that's a problem. If it's more than five, we got a problem. We gotta fix that. Because again, what we believe here at the scalable company, we believe the more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is. We've got to get some of these hats off your head if we want your business to be valuable. The second question that I have for you. How often do you actually get to wear the CEO hat? I want you to think about it from a percentage standpoint. Is it 80%? Is it 50%? Is it 20%? What I can tell you, if it's less than 50% of the time, you can call yourself a CEO, but you're not truly acting like a CEO. What I'll say is that's a problem, because what it means is that your company is effectively without a captain. Final question. Do you believe that you could solve your company's single biggest problem if you actually had the freedom to focus for 90 days? I bet you could. And this is what we find all the time with the businesses that we work with. It's not an issue that founders don't know what they need to do, and it's not even an issue that they don't know how to do it. It's an issue that they're so distracted by all the little niggly things in business they don't necessarily want to have to screw with that they can't get the important stuff done. All right, so let's talk about the three steps to getting all of these stinking hats off of your head. Step number one is to reassign the hats that already have an owner that already have a head. You're likely still doing job that someone on your team could and likely should own. But you either don't trust them or you're protecting them because you're afraid that maybe they're not ready. Here's the deal. If you're paying them to wear the hat, then they need to have the opportunity to try it on for size. If it doesn't fit, then find someone who can wear it. But that someone can't be you. If you're afraid that they're not yet ready, then go to them and say, look, here's the deal. I just realized I've been wearing your hat. And part of the reason I've been wearing your hat is because I realized that I haven't fully set you up for success. I'm going to acknowledge that right now. But at the same time, if I don't give you the hat, then I'm not giving you the opportunity. So I'm going to give you the hat effective immediately. But let's talk. Let's have conversation to where if things aren't working out, if you're struggling, come talk to me. Let's talk about it. Let's figure it out. Step number two, we've got to ditch the hats that don't matter now. In other words, we got to take off the hats that are out of season. What hats could you remove for now? Because they aren't the most important thing that your business needs you to focus on right now. Some hats are truly mission critical today, and some hats aren't mission critical. They're just distractions dressed up as obligations. So I want you to be ruthless. Kill, pause, or shelve the hats. If the hat isn't necessary for you to wear, take the stupid hat off your head. You can always put it back on later when it's in season. Step three, identify the hat that unblocks your company's right next thing. The reality is there's always one role that your business needs you to play right now. One of them is obviously the CEO, but there may be another one in addition to that. So what I want you to do is I want you to wear that hat and only that hat until whatever bottleneck you specifically need to work on breaks. The hat that you wear today may be very different than the hat that you wear tomorrow, but the goal is never to wear more than one hat at a given time. And the ultimate goal is to only wear that CEO hat because you've got a competent head for all 10 other hats, unless you're just bored and you want to wear it. So I want you to start with this simple audit. You ready for it? Ask yourself, which hats are you still wearing? Which ones have someone else who could step in and wear that hat? And what's the one hat that will actually move the business forward? That's your focus. Remove every other hat for that one. And look at the end of the day, the ultimate hat removal strategy, the ultimate way that we get these hats off our head and we keep them off our head is by installing what we call a business operating system in your company. That's what we do at the scalable company. And so if you want more information about how we do that, about how you can get an operating system in your business, check out the link in the description. That is the key. That's the asset, that's the thing that's going to make sure that once you hand these hats off that they don't come back onto your head, because that's the most frustrating thing ever. So check out that link, learn more about it, and I'll see you in that one.