Opening Scaling Tension

Most businesses do not hit a growth ceiling because of a lack of demand.

They hit it because too much still depends on one person.

Revenue grows. Headcount grows. Complexity grows. Yet decisions continue routing through the founder. Follow-ups stall without their involvement. The team waits for approvals. Small questions become interruptions. Strategic thinking gets replaced by operational triage.

At first, this feels like leadership.

Eventually, it becomes operational drag.

The challenge is not usually effort. Most founders are already working hard. The challenge is that the business has not changed what it depends on to execute.

And that creates a leadership bandwidth problem.

The Hidden Constraint

One of the most important ideas from this discussion is that founder burnout is rarely a time-management issue.

It is usually an operating system issue.

As companies grow, founders often become the default execution hub. Decisions loop back. Accountability routes upward. Teams adapt to the founder instead of operating independently.

The result is predictable:

• More meetings
• More follow-up
• More context switching
• More decision fatigue
• Less strategic capacity

The business appears larger from the outside, but internally it still functions through the same bottleneck.

This creates a dangerous illusion. Growth continues for a while, so the system appears to be working.

In reality, the company has simply increased the volume flowing through the founder.

Operational leverage remains limited because ownership has not actually transferred.

The organization has learned how to execute around the founder instead of beyond the founder.

The Operating Shift

The shift is not delegation alone.

The shift is redesigning execution systems so ownership can move without constant intervention.

Many leaders assume the solution is hiring more people.

In practice, hiring often amplifies the problem.

More people create more communication pathways. More decisions. More coordination requirements.

Without clear execution systems, additional capacity simply increases the number of questions flowing back to leadership.

This is where scaling discipline becomes critical.

Instead of asking:

“How do I get more done?”

Operators start asking:

“Why does this still require me?”

That question changes everything.

Every recurring interruption becomes a signal.

Every repeated approval becomes a system issue.

Every decision that returns unnecessarily identifies a gap in clarity, capability, trust, or accountability.

The goal is not eliminating involvement.

The goal is eliminating unnecessary involvement.

Execution in Practice

Several practical frameworks emerged throughout the conversation.

1. Identify Functions Before You Delegate Tasks

Many founders delegate activities.

Fewer delegate ownership.

One practical approach discussed was listing every major function inside the company:

• Sales
• Marketing
• Finance
• Operations
• Delivery
• Technology

Then identifying who is truly accountable for each function.

This creates visibility around where leadership bandwidth is being consumed.

Operational leverage increases when functions become independently managed rather than founder-managed.

2. Replace Advice with Decision-Making Frameworks

One of the fastest ways to create dependency is solving every problem yourself.

When team members repeatedly bring issues to leadership and receive immediate answers, leaders unintentionally train dependency.

Execution systems improve when leaders coach thinking instead of supplying solutions.

Good decision-making frameworks reduce re-decisions.

They increase execution speed while reducing founder involvement.

The objective is not simply answering questions faster.

It is ensuring the same question never needs to be answered twice.

3. Reduce Cognitive Load Through Structure

Another important insight involved cognitive overload.

Many founders operate inside constant context switching.

Small decisions consume leadership attention throughout the day.

Over time, decision fatigue compounds.

Structured processes, documented expectations, recurring operating rhythms, and clear ownership reduce the mental burden on leadership.

The benefit is not efficiency alone.

It is preserving executive judgment for higher-value decisions.

4. Trust Is Often the Real Constraint

Several examples highlighted a deeper issue.

Many founders know what should be delegated.

They simply struggle to release control.

This is often framed as perfectionism.

More accurately, it is a trust issue.

Trust in people.

Trust in systems.

Trust that progress does not require personal involvement.

Without addressing this constraint, even strong execution systems eventually collapse back into founder dependency.

Leverage Outcome

Operational leverage is often misunderstood.

Many people define leverage as doing more work.

Operators understand leverage differently.

Leverage expands capacity.

It creates more output without requiring proportional increases in leadership attention.

When execution systems mature:

• Decisions move faster
• Teams operate with greater autonomy
• Accountability improves
• Follow-up burden decreases
• Strategic capacity expands

Most importantly, leadership bandwidth returns.

That bandwidth becomes available for capital allocation, risk management, strategic planning, talent development, client relationships, and long-term value creation.

The goal is not simply avoiding burnout.

The goal is building a company that performs well when leadership is not actively pushing every piece forward.

Connect With the Guests

To learn more about our guests and their work:

Kim Giddens

Website: https://personology.com

Paul Salter

Website: https://paulsaltercoaching.com

Mike Goldman

Website: https://mike-goldman.com

The Immediate Move

Leadership bandwidth is often the scarcest resource inside a growing company.

Most founders attempt to solve scaling challenges with additional effort.

The stronger move is reducing unnecessary decisions, transferring ownership, clarifying accountability, and building execution systems that operate without constant intervention.

Growth becomes sustainable when leaders stop serving as the routing point for every action.

Structure outperforms effort.

Ownership outperforms oversight.

Disciplined decision-making outperforms reactive management.

The businesses that scale most effectively are not the ones working harder.

They are the ones systematically reducing cognitive load while increasing execution capacity.

Watch this before you hire your next support role.

Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.

Full Podcast Transcript

Welcome to Executive Edge Live. I’m Harley Green, founder and CEO of WorkGenics. At Workogenics, we help high performing leaders reclaim their time and stay focused on what actually matters, supported by our ultimate executive assistants. Executive Edge Live is one way we support the broader business community, bringing together operators and advisors to talk through what is actually working inside growing companies. Today’s conversation is how founders scale without burning out.

Most founders build their businesses by staying close to everything, every follow-up, every decision, every moving part. That approach works early on, but as the business grows, it becomes the constraint. The calendar fills up. The inbox never empties, work only moves when the founder pushes it. And the cost is not just time. It’s energy, clarity, and the ability to actually lead. So today we’re going to dig into what it takes to move out of the middle of daily execution, how to keep the business moving.

Without grinding yourself down to actually lead it. So today we’re going to dig in with these panel of experts. And a quick note I want to share before we jump in: this session is also going to be featured on our podcast, Scale Smart Grow Fast. So if something resonates with you today, you’ll be able to revisit it once it’s published. Let’s get into it and meet our panel. Kim, let’s start with you. Go ahead and introduce yourself, let everyone know where you’re coming from and what your business is.

Sure. I’m Kim Giddens. I’m the founder of Personology. I’m a leadership performance advisor and an organizational diagnostician. I work with founders and CEOs and leadership teams when something’s slowing and they can’t quite name why. Decisions are looping, execution is stalling, too much rooting back to one person. My background is leading organizations of 3,000 people.

for brands like anthropology banana republic kohan at high grade high growth stages and transformational pivots. and yeah that’s that’s me from Hoboken, New Jersey.

Welcome Kim. Thanks for joining us today. All right, Paul, how about you?

Yes, hello everybody. My name is Paul Salter. I am a high performance hypnotherapist and mindset coach. And I specifically work with CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, ambitious professionals who know what to do to either achieve next level success or sustain the current success they have, but they’re struggling to do it. So I specifically use hypnosis to help them unlearn.

the destructive patterns of believing, feeling, thinking, and behaving that keep them stuck and hold them back from achieving their potential. And I work with all of my clients virtually, but I’m happily based in Tampa, Florida.

Awesome. Thanks for joining us today, Paul. I’m excited to hear your insights and ideas. All right, Mike.

I am the second New Jersey person on the on the panel. my name is Mike Goldman. I help build great leadership teams, and I do that through my keynote speaking. I coach leadership teams, and I’ve written three books. the second book is called Breakthrough Leadership Team, and wrote the my last book launched in October called The Strength of Talent. Happy to say it made the USA Today.

bestseller list and I work with leadership teams because what I have seen over my thirty-five years coaching and consulting is that as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company.

Thanks for joining us, Mike. All right, everyone, we’re just going to jump right in with an open question to the whole panel and let’s get started. When you hear a founder say, I’m burning out trying to keep this thing moving, what is usually really going on underneath?

I’ll dive in first. What I’ve observed in my 17 years of coaching is there’s typically a point in the growth process, specifically the rapid growth phase, where a founder starts to get disconnected or out of alignment with their fundamentals. And I’m not just talking the business strategy. I mean, all of us here know there’s no shortage of information available in a matter of milliseconds. There’s incredible coaches like Mike, consultants and advisors like him available to fill those knowledge gaps.

But as we continue to go and grow and we taste that next level success, we’re rewarded for that ambition, that hustle, that grind, we start to put the original priorities that gifted us that opportunity in the first place on the back burner. We neglect self-care, we neglect sleep, diet, exercise, we neglect those important relationships in our life that were originally our foundation for success. And more often than not, founders are aware of this.

But they wear that ambition like a badge of honor. They think it’s their separating factor, their superpower. And in fact, it really is until it inevitably becomes their kryptonite. So a lot of my coaching, first and foremost, is reconnecting those individuals to their foundational fundamentals that allow them to have the energy to sustain that rapid ascension of success.

I’ll dive in in addition to agree with everything Paul said is when, you know, when when leaders are kind of burning out trying to get things moving, I feel like, you know, number one, most of the time it’s because they are, or at least feel like they are, the smartest person in the room. And when you are the smartest person on your team, whether that’s true or you just feel that way, we have a tendency to think we’ve got to do it all.

ourselves. And that’s not a scalable model. That’s a model which is going to lead to not only mediocrity, but a whole lot of lack of sleep. The other thing that I see is missing, especially in entrepreneurs that have founded a company, it’s now growing and they feel like they’re just trying to hold on, is there’s no real operating system for the business. Everybody, including them, is just trying to work real hard, get a lot of stuff done, and they’re really smart and that’s all great.

But there needs to be an operating system, some rhythm of planning and execution and holding each other accountable and long-term strategy and short-term execution. And without implementing a real operating system, everything could feel chaotic. And between I’ve got to be the smartest person in the room and everything feels chaotic, that’s a pretty good recipe for getting burnt out.

Yeah, I I absolutely agree with with both of you. And what I have found, especially helping founders who have managed a lot of growth, is that they’ve become the system. So similar to what what Mike shared, but and maybe not intentionally. it happened because they felt like they were the fastest to getting things done, fastest route to getting things done. And now the org has learned how to root around

Mm.

And loop everything back into the founder. And what I’ve also found that this is happening at the highest levels on large companies, it’s something I’ve seen through my career 27 plus years of my leadership journey. And this is a very similar thing that happens when people take on additional responsibility and start growing responsibility. And unless they have that architecture, unless they have systems built.

that work for that company, it will root always root back and create burnout.

Mike, I wanted to touch on something you said about feeling like you’re the smartest person in the room and you know, there’s a whole discussion on like hiring and stuff. Do you have like a quick recommendation of, you know, maybe a a founder’s not gonna be able to like replace themselves as the sm smartest person in every aspect? Are there other approaches they might take to start lifting that burden from their plate?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s a it’s a great question because it’s an easy thing to say. It’s a harder thing to execute on. And one of the things I do when I work with a leadership team, it’s one of the first exercises I do. And it sounds very simple and it’s not, but it’s listing out for your organization what are all the functions? Head of company is a function. Finance, sales, marketing, what are all the functions? And there’s probably 10 to 15 critical functions. And then

Today, who is accountable for that function? And if you’re a very early on founder, your name might go right next to all 15 of those functions. And that’s okay. That’s part of what we do when we get things started, but but you’ve got to quickly start getting proactive about your team and saying, hey, which of these 15 functions? Maybe it’s finance, maybe it’s marketing, maybe it’s technology, which of these functions is one that I’m not great at?

It’s taken a whole lot of my time and taking me away from building the business. What is that function? And if if it’s if that’s finance, then my priority to build a great team, my number one priority’s got to be all right, who can I bring on the team that could be accountable for that finance function? Don’t try to build a great team all at once. You can’t afford it. Your head will explode. But step by step, what are the functions?

Mm.

Who’s accountable? How do we measure success of those functions? And what’s the first one I oughta go get at so I could start pulling back and leading versus having to get my my my my hands dirty with everything?

Thanks, Mike, for clearing that up and giving some good practical advice there. the next question I had was directed for you, Kim. You know, you diagnose where leadership execution breaks down in founder-led companies. What patterns do you see most often when growth is making the founder the bottleneck?

so typically I see three patterns that come up most often. The first one I like to call return loop or liken it to like a game of tennis. And that’s when decisions just keep landing back on the founder side. and you know, the idea with tennis is, you know, a really good game. It should be going back and forth. the second the second one is accountability.

And that’s when everyone in theory knows who’s responsible for what, but in practice, it’s still going routing back to the founder. And then the third one is the compensating team. And this is generally what we what we see after a while of the founder bottleneck. And that team is very good at working around the founder. and they are working around the gap.

Mm.

Okay.

Yeah.

instead of actually naming the gap. And so instead of using their own strengths or using what they know best, they’re starting to hold back and compensating for what the system is actually requiring them to do.

Curious if any of the other panelists have seen similar patterns or anything that they’ve observed when they see the founders becoming the bottleneck.

I mean, I think it comes back to the root of what we’ve already begun discussing as this inability to delegate, which sometimes may show up or feel like it’s perfectionism or it’s indecision. But I think at the core of it all is just a lack of trust in others, because logically one might know that if you’re able to delegate task A, B, and C, you can scale and go significantly faster. But if the person you delegate to is only going to do 80% of the job that you would be able to do, that feels threatening. You might see it as a

threat to your role, your standards, and you can get so lost in that little problem, you forget to see that your big vision requires you to scale and have other individuals working with you to go after the collective goal.

The other thing that that I’ve seen is a total misunderstanding of the job of a CEO. You know, I was with one leadership team, and the CEO said to to his team, Hey, my job is to help all of you. Just tell me what you need. And I said, My God, that’s not your job. Your job is not to do everybody else’s job. That is not scalable. There is a job of a CEO. The CEO is the the chief visionary.

Is is in charge of strategy. I believe the CEO owns culture. The CEO is an ambassador internal in the organization, ambassador external to the organization. CEO’s job is to build a great leadership team. There’s a specific job of a CEO. And I think for a lot of early on founders and and and CEOs, they don’t quite understand what their job is. So they have a tendency to help everybody else and dig into everybody else’s job.

And that’s just not scalable and that drives, you know, just being real tired and burnt out at the end of the day.

I wonder, Kim, if that goes back to kind of what you said, one of the one of the patterns you observed of you’ve got a team, they know the responsibilities, but things keep coming back to the CEO. I wonder if what Paul mentioned too of you know, the trust of getting something done eighty percent, maybe that’s good enough, impacts that I’d love to hear your thoughts more on, you know, that specific pattern and maybe some strategies that you share to help people get out of that.

I d I definitely think that’s part of it. I also think the the flip side, I think the founder can think, well, it’s just faster if I do it this time. It will take me too long to train somebody to do it, when in reality, sometimes you need to slow down a little bit to train somebody to do it. one of the things that that I have somebody do is think about what’s one decision recently.

them you know this week yesterday today that came back that shouldn’t have come back to you and what would have what would have had to be true for that to be that decision to be made without you and within that is your is the gap and that’s the best place to start because it’s always going to come down to clarity capability or trust so somebody wasn’t clear on what they needed to do they aren’t capable

you know, there’s a skill gap perhaps, or they’re simply not trusting that they’ll be able to do it without them.

Harley, I’ll add something too, based on what Mike said. You know, sometimes I’ve had to ask my clients point blank, are you the best person to be the CEO? Because the skill set required to get a company off the ground and running is night and day different versus just like Mike described, the skill set required to paint the picture, build the culture, and set everybody else up for success. And more often than not, it becomes an ego issue, an identity threat when someone has founded and started this great company, this great movement.

And they’re not the best person to keep it moving in that direction because maybe, for example, they love being in the weeds of the tactical hands-on building that they’re neglecting the vision, the culture building, and the leadership. So sometimes it’s an honest conversation that’s required with a mentor, a coach, somebody you trust. And it’s really putting the right person in that seat. And maybe that role changes to president, director of X, Y, and Z. But if you can let go of the ego or that need for validation and attention that typically comes

with that CEO label, you can actually get the movement or the business to scale well beyond the original intention.

That reminds me of an article that I’ve have sent to multiple founders and I’ll have to remember I think it where it came from. But do you want to be a founder or do you want to be the king? And there’s usually, you know, if if really if ego and status, if that’s the most important thing, then then those are, you know, you you can make the choice. It’s your company.

Mm.

Glad you brought that example up of sometimes the best role for the founder is not necessarily CEO. And so this kind of leads into the next question that I had for Mike originally: is you know, your work with CEOs and founders, as they’re building the leadership teams that can actually carry the business. Where do the founders often go wrong when they’re trying to step back?

Well, in addition to stepping back and not knowing what their role is, right, which we’ve said it’s easy to say, I’m gonna step back, but if you don’t understand what you should be doing as a CEO, you’re not gonna step back for long. And then the other mistake I see CEOs make when they step back is in in how they pick their team. You know, there’s a question I ask a lot of my clients er early on when I work with them.

is I say, if you had a chance to do it all over again, would you enthusiastically rehire everyone on your team? And and very often I get kind of, you know, they start to turn green and they don’t feel too well or nervous laughter. And and what I realized it’s not because they’ve got a lot of low performers running around. It’s because they’ve got a lot of folks on their team, including the senior leadership team. They’ve got a lot of folks that are fine. You know, they’re good enough.

So they’re not doing so bad that I would fire them, but would I hire would I rehire them all over again? No, I’d probably want more of a superstar. And, you know, that that leadership team, the first people you surround yourself, the people that are really helping you drive and scale the company, I believe everyone on your leadership team needs to be a high performer. And when I say high performer, I mean a great culture fit and highly productive, you know.

Culture fit and results. Everyone on your senior leadership needs to be high performing or have the ability to get there in the next three to six months, or they don’t belong on your team. There’s just too big an impact they have down and out from the organization. So the mistake I see them make is they believe good enough is good enough. And especially on that leadership team, good enough doesn’t get you very far.

When we see oftentimes too with clients that come to Worker Genics, they’ve got these all-star leadership team members, but they’re bogged down in low level admin work. And so making a decision to bring on like a virtual executive assistant can have a real quick productivity boost for those executive leadership team and keep them really highly focused so they are able to be productive and and hit those goals that are needed. And Paul, this something I wanted to talk to you about next is, you know, why do so many high performing founders know exactly

What to delegate, but still can’t let go. Maybe they have that executive assistant and they really are not letting go of the things that executive assistant should be doing.

Yeah, it comes down to a core belief around trust in other people. And you know, a good example I can share is I have a client of mine, he’s a serial entrepreneur, and his latest endeavor is this, you know, virtual legal software for for lawyers and and whatnot. And what’s interesting is a lot of my work is deep identity level work, going back to childhood to understand when, why, and how some of these perpetuating destructive patterns came to be. And

Whether we’re talking about, you know, lack of trust in others, perfectionism, procrastination, performance anxiety, everything I just mentioned is learned, which it can which means it can be unlearned. So for this particular client, as he hit the seven figure mark, he was starting to realize that beyond him and his wife and his one VA, the only three people in the company, if he wanted to get to that next level, he would have to bring on more talent.

And he had a history of cycling through VAs. He had a history of cycling through bringing people on, not only in this business, but as other businesses previously. And as we began to unpack that, it was very clear he did not trust other people. And my job, of course, is to go much deeper. And what we uncovered in our time together was he was raised in a very perfectionistic household. If he didn’t bring home the straight A report card, there were consequences. His dad ran a very tight ship.

With incredibly high expectations. And there were several moments in his younger years when he was tasked with participating in group projects. And he noticed early on, I mean, we’re talking nine, 10 years old, where he’d be assigned a group project, and all of the other kids just took a haphazard approach. They didn’t care nearly as much as he did. But he knew if he didn’t do well on this on this group project, there were consequences at home.

So as a result of trying to avoid consequence, get his childhood needs met of acceptance and love by dad, he would do all the work himself. He would get the good grade and everything would be fine and safe at home. But this pattern carried on into college and into his adult years with the core belief being it’s not safe to trust people.

So we had to do the work necessary to create that safety, re really revisit and reframe those pivotal moments from his life. So he felt more at ease, more patient and diligent in the hiring process and doing his role to not only set that individual up for success, also to give them the space, time, and resources to have success. And through that work together, the team is now at eight or nine individuals and they’ve hit that next milestone and are now in the process of getting ready to sell the company.

Love that story. And speaking of milestones, I love that you mentioned that. You know, one thing we often hear when speaking to leaders is they’ve got a problem, things are flowing through them, and they are saying, you know what, we’ll we’ll focus on that when we hit the next milestone. What usually happens when they keep pushing off, getting out of the bot being the bottleneck in their business? And this is an open question to the group.

Well, something I see is the is the system hardens and the team just gets better at working around what has become the DNA of the company. And the founder and off the CEO gets more gets more and more isolated. And the longer this this runs, you you’re the the founder isn’t really getting any direct feedback or information.

And it’s just continuing to spiral. And the longer it runs, it just gets more expensive to interrupt because now you’re not just having to fix structure, you’re really having to rebuild trust and helping people understand, you know, what what ownership is real and what isn’t.

What I hear more often than, you know, we’ll we’ll fix it when we hit the next milestone. The the companion kind of mistaken statement, you know, i is, you know, yeah, I know I’ve got to do that, but I have to wait until things calm down. As soon as things calm down, and then my question is, when have everything when is when is anything ever calmed down? And by the way, do you want things to calm down?

That’s a dangerous time if things calm down. So it’s an easy way for a leader to push things off. I’m going to wait until things calm down, but that time never happens. And then to Kim’s point, as you push it off, as your company grows, let’s assume it is growing. As your company grows, things get more complex. Things get even harder. You dig yourself a deeper and deeper hole.

So the best time to solve the problem is typically now and not waiting until some magical day that things calm down.

Most founders aren’t addicted to winning and success like they’ll tell you they are. They’re addicted to stress. They’re addicted to the cocktail of anxiety, fear, worry, this need to prove myself. And that literally transpires as physical, emotional, psychological stress. That is a powerful, potent recipe for burnout. But it also really bleeds into not only the business, but it’s their personal relationships, their marriage, their relationship with their children. And

Just like Kim mentioned, the longer they get stuck in that pattern, you know, neuro neurologically speaking, like the neural pathways responsible for feeling all of those things, they just become easier and easier to run. They become so efficient, effective operating on autopilot that it feels safe to continue to stay stuck in a pattern of whether it be emotional avoidance, anxiety, burnout, overwhelm, or exhaustion. So it really begins understanding how we can learn to not only create safety.

But also detach your self-worth from this success or hitting one milestone after the next. And it really instating a core belief that you are a wonderful person, a leader, X, Y, and Z, regardless of a good month or a bad month.

Love the different perspectives and tie how they tie together on answering that question. Let’s make it really practical now. If someone’s listening and thinking, my business runs through me and I’m just completely wiped out, where should they actually start this week?

Biased, but hire a coach. Like every single high-performing individual should have one or multiple coaches. And you know, it needs to be business strategy, it needs to be life mindset. You need to have a trusted mentor and advisor where you can go to to get honest, real-time feedback about what you’re doing that’s working well, and to shine a bright light on some of the blind spots that are holding you back. So

I’m a big fan of asking for help accelerates results. So if you’re listening right now and you’re feeling what Harley just described and you don’t have a mentor in your corner, that should be your next first step.

I would I would first, of course, being a coach, of course I would agree with that. I’ve got I’ve had a coach consistently probably for the last twenty five years. But but I think a a an additional part of it is the idea of if you believe the whole business is running through you, then that’s kind of a, you know, that’s gonna self-perpetuate. And and if you believe the only way I’m gonna be successful is kind of through my team and through my people.

I think one of the things that that’s helpful to start putting in place right now is start to learn how to be a better coach. Stop giving advice. Stop answering every question. Because what we’re doing when our team comes to us and says, How do I do this? Or I don’t know how to do this, or we’ve got this problem. When you solve the problem, you are training your team to come back to you again and again and again. And you are not helping your team by

Modeling a way of thinking so they could solve the problem next time. So it doesn’t all have to go through you. So become a better coach. And being a better coach means asking better questions. Questions that help model a way of thinking, questions that help come help the individual come up with the right action for them versus just grabbing every problem and trying to solve it yourself. Because then you’re just perpetuating the exact thing.

You say you don’t want to happen.

Yeah. Well Mike, I really appreciate you bringing up that specific example of how people can change. And I think that’s a good segue to the next question I had for everyone, which is just a quick, easy one. Like what is one habit, mindset shift, or operational change that every founder should make if they want to scale without the burnout?

Harley, I lost you for a minute. What is one habit that what?

sorry. What is one habit or mindset shift or operational change that every founder should make if they want to scale without the burnout?

Your calendar is a reflection of what’s important to you. And I understand for everybody listening, their business is incredibly important, but their business success is not sustainable if they show up every day operating with an empty fuel tank. So the quick, easy action step here is open up your calendar. It’s going to quickly show you how important self-care is, family time, opportunities to rest, recharge, play, and experience life.

And you need to put those on your calendar first before you schedule your team meetings, your client calls, your relationship building, whatever it may be, because you can always make time for those. You’ve likely, if you’re listening, found it very easy to push off family and to neglect self-care, but that is what’s going to allow you to sustain the success that you aspire to achieve.

I only heard the tail the tail end because I’ve got kicked off, but I’m back on. But I love that. And what I what I find, what I have found a lot with with busy founders and and the fact that it has become a habit is that’s why coaching and or hiring somebody or hiring even a VA becomes so helpful because you can really almost delegate that process to help you get into the habit.

It’s very hard for human beings to change a habit without some level of accountability or partnership with somebody else. So so and and morning rituals, things like that are are huge, huge, hugely important.

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you guys sharing those insights, those specific action items. Before we wrap up, if someone wants to reach out or continue the conversation with you, what’s the best way for them to connect with you? Feel free to share your website, LinkedIn, whatever is you prefer.

We’ll start with you, Kim.

I’ll happily.

How did that come through? Kim, are you able to share how people can best connect with you?

yes. best con best way to connect with me is either through LinkedIn or my website, personology.com, and it’s personology with IE.

Awesome, thank you, Kim. Paul, we’ll go to you next.

Yeah, if you’ve enjoyed this conversation, what I’ve shared, you’ll likely enjoy the podcast I’m the host of, which is called the Unstuck High Performer Podcast. And then on Instagram, TikTok, TikTok, and YouTube at the Paul Salter, S-A-L-T-E-P-E.

Thank you, Paul. All right, and Mike.

For me, my website is mike-goldman.com. My newest book is The Strength of Talent, How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Profit. and also as Paul said, if you enjoy this conversation, I have a podcast called The Better Leadership Team Show that I’m super proud of.

Awesome. Appreciate you all. This was a strong conversation. And if there’s one takeaway, it’s scaling without burnout is not about working harder or finding more time. It’s about changing what the business depends on you for.

Who owns what, and how work the how work moves. What happens when you step away? And if you want help putting this into practice, we created the Executive Efficiency Blueprint to help you turn conversations like this into clear execution and better use of your time. Those of you listening can access it here at workergenics.com/slash EEB Live. Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you next time on Executive Edge Live and on the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast.

The post Your Business Is Growing, But Everything Still Runs Through You first appeared on Workergenix.

Opening Scaling Tension

Most founder-led firms hit a familiar plateau. Revenue climbs, the team expands, and yet the operator’s calendar gets heavier rather than lighter. Every meaningful decision still routes through them. Client relationships, deal judgment, hiring calls, and execution follow-through all sit in one head. The business looks healthy from the outside. Inside, the constraint is obvious: nothing moves without the operator moving it.

This is the structural cost of scaling without delegation discipline. And in the lower middle market, it is the single biggest reason that businesses generating real cash flow still struggle to attract clean offers when the owner decides to exit.

The Hidden Constraint

Cameron Bishop has spent 40 years inside this problem. He scaled a $7M business into a $400M operation throwing off $100M in EBITDA, closed 70+ M&A deals, and now sells lower middle market companies as an investment banker at Raincatcher. The pattern he sees across founder-led firms is consistent enough to name: extreme owner dependency.

The mechanism is straightforward. A founder builds a business around a specific skill, talent, or relationship advantage. That advantage carries the company through its early growth. But the founder never trains a successor, never transfers ownership of execution, and never builds a layer of judgment beneath them. The company keeps producing revenue, but every critical function is tethered to one person.

When that founder goes to market, buyers price the risk. A company with extreme owner dependency is either unsellable, sells at a significant valuation discount, or sells with deal terms that lock the operator in for years post-close. Buyers are willing to take on risk, but they are deeply risk-averse about acquiring a business that disappears the moment the founder walks out the door.

The hidden cost is not just exit optionality. It is the cumulative drag of being the bottleneck for a decade before the exit conversation ever begins.

The Operating Shift

The operating principle Bishop returns to throughout the conversation is deliberate: be the dumbest person in the room.

This is not false humility. It is a deliberate architecture choice. The operator who insists on being the most knowledgeable person in every function is, by definition, capping the company’s intelligence at their own ceiling. The operator who hires specialists in HR, finance, technology, and operations and then actively seeks their disagreement is building a company that can outperform any single decision-maker.

Bishop describes asking every senior hire one question at the end of the interview: if you disagree with me, are you willing to disagree openly? The startled reaction was the point. He was screening for the structural input the business needed, not the comfort he wanted.

This is operational leverage in its truest form. It is not about working longer hours or compressing more output from the same hours. It is about expanding the cognitive and executional surface area of the company so the operator stops being the rate limiter.

Execution in Practice

Three frameworks from the conversation translate directly into how this principle gets executed.

Start, Stop, Keep. During diligence on acquisitions, Bishop ran 15-minute one-on-ones with key employees, no managers in the room, asking three questions. What should the company keep doing? What should it start doing? What should it stop doing? The framework surfaced operational intelligence that no executive summary could produce. He applied the same approach to a $60M turnaround where he met individually with all 220 employees. His initial assumptions about what was broken were almost entirely wrong. Without the structured listening process, his first wave of decisions would have damaged the business.

The lesson for operators is structural. Most leaders make decisions on incomplete information because they trust their pattern recognition more than they trust the people closest to the work. A simple, repeatable framework forces better inputs into the decision-making process and reduces the cost of premature action.

Diligence as a parallel function, not a serial one. When Bishop built out his acquisition model, he stopped treating diligence as a single owner’s responsibility. The lead manager, VP of HR, CFO, head of production, and CIO each owned their domain and reported back in the same room. Cross-functional conflicts surfaced before they became post-close disasters. The model only worked because each specialist had the authority to flag issues without escalating through the operator.

Integration is where deals die. Buyers spend 90 to 95 percent of their attention on the front-end transaction: pricing, contracts, negotiation. Almost none of it goes to the integration plan. That asymmetry is where culture fractures, key personnel leave, and value evaporates. The same logic applies to internal scaling. Operators spend disproportionate energy on hiring decisions and almost none on the integration of new senior hires into the actual decision-making architecture of the business.

Leverage Outcome

The compounding effect of these practices is not a busier operator with a bigger team. It is a quieter operator with a more capable team. When specialists own their domains, when decisions get made closer to the work, and when structured frameworks replace ad-hoc judgment, the business gains something rare: predictable execution that does not require founder rescue.

This is what real capital efficiency looks like in a services or operator-led business. Every hour the founder spends on low-leverage execution is an hour not spent on capital allocation, client relationships, or strategic positioning. Every decision the founder makes that a competent specialist could have made better is a small but real tax on the company’s intelligence.

The exit case makes the math concrete. A business with distributed execution authority, documented systems, and a second layer of judgment trades at a premium. A business that runs on the founder’s nervous system trades at a discount, if it trades at all. The work to close that gap is the same work that makes the business better to operate in the meantime.

Connect With the Guest

To learn more about Cameron Bishop and his work:

Website: http://www.raincatcher.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-bishop-19b6804

The Immediate Move

Leadership bandwidth is the real constraint, not effort. The operators who scale cleanly are the ones who treat their own attention as the scarcest asset in the business and build structure around protecting it. That means transferring ownership of execution, not just tasks. It means installing frameworks that reduce re-decisions, surface better information, and put authority closer to the work. It means hiring specialists who will disagree and then actually listening when they do.

The structural shift is not about getting more done. It is about removing yourself from the path of work that no longer requires your judgment so the work that does require it gets your full attention.

Watch this before you hire your next support role.

Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.

Full Podcast Transcript

Most leaders think scaling is about doing more, but at some point the real bottleneck isn’t strategy, it’s execution. Welcome to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast, where we talk about what it actually takes to build something that runs without you. At Workergenics, we pair leaders with full-time ultimate executive assistants who bring the consistent execution that keeps everything moving. Today’s guest knows this better than most. Cameron Bishop has spent 40 years building, buying, and scaling companies from 7 million copywriting shop to a 400 million operation and 70 plus M &A deals in between. Cameron, great to have you on the podcast. How are you doing today? All right, that did fantastic. Thanks so much for having me on. It’s our pleasure. So you started as a copywriter at a $7 million company and eventually worked your way up to a CEO and took it to 400 million. What was the moment when you realized you were thinking like an operator and not just someone doing their job? Well, it’s interesting. have kind of a theory. There are those who manage and those who do. And obviously as a copywriter, I started out as a doer. And the transition from doer to manager is often difficult one because there aren’t any real courses, at least that I’m aware of, on how to learn how to delegate. because you can always defer back to your comfort zone, which is writing the copy yourself or whatever the individual skill set was. So it’s difficult in order to kind of get out of the doer mindset. Well, we all still have to be doers to an extent, but if your primary role is to manage, you have to learn how to manage, how to delegate and… I’ve always been a big believer in trying to identify what motivates an individual and work with them in that capacity rather than a cookie cutter mold in order to grow and scale a business. What were some of the mindset shifts or resources that you found helpful in shifting that mindset to being able to delegate more and keeping yourself from just doing it yourself? Well, you know, I think we all learn a lot of these things the hard way. And sometimes it’s better to be lucky than be good. So I would say that I have had a lot of luck in terms of where I went to work and how that company evolved and the types of corporate owners we had that. encouraged us and incentivized us to scale the business primarily through acquisition, although there certainly was a substantial amount of organic growth and new business startup. but nobody can do these things alone. Today I’m an investment banker. I specialize in selling lower middle market, privately owned or family owned companies. And one of the primary things I see that is a real negative factor for buyers in these companies is that many of these business owners became successful because they had a certain skill or expertise or talent or knowledge. But they continued to exploit that without training anyone to work with them or to replace them. So they just really don’t delegate. And in the world I grew up in scaling business, I was in that first company for 23 years and definitely moved up through the food chain to finally become the CEO. But you don’t do these things without having a team of experts. our mindset was always to be a highly collaborative environment, which is something I’m still an ardent believer in today. No one has all the answers and for the best interest of the company, it’s always the key focus should always be on getting it right, not who had the last best idea. How do you help operators and these business owners that you work with today understand that collaboration and the importance of getting things delegated so they can scale and be valuable and understand that while they may be the one who does it best now, it is possible to get to a point where someone else might be able to do it for them as good, if not better. Unfortunately, Harley, oftentimes it’s a difficult wake up call for these owners who have the term we use is extreme owner dependency. And that could come in many ways, but oftentimes they don’t realize that their company either won’t be sellable at all. or will sell for a substantial discount on valuation, or the buyer is going to require them to stay on after they sell their company for an extended period of time because buyers of companies, interestingly, are open to taking on risk, but at the same time, they’re very risk averse. and heavy owner dependency is at least a yellow flag, oftentimes a red flag for these business buyers. And until you tell a business owner his options aren’t good, if he’s wanting to exit the company in a fairly short period of time or the business is going to sell for less, or there may also be fairly unattractive deal terms and deal structure for that owner. That’s when they suddenly wake up and realize that, I should have been delegating all this time. Now when you look back at your personal growth and professional growth through your career, what is one time or thing that almost broke everything and that you had to learn to get past? That’s an easy one for me. I’m also a big believer in we almost always learn the most from our mistakes as opposed to our successes. So the company that acquired the business I was working in, which was a small technical magazine publishing company. the previous owner sold us, were acquired by a Fortune 100 company on the New York Stock Exchange. And they said, hey, we kind of like this business, we want you to go buy companies. And ultimately, as luck would have it, I was assigned to do the first deal, because I ran the technology division of technical titles. And the acquiring business was in the technology sector. Nobody told us how to do it. It’s kind of uncomfortable to take in a six month old baby and drop it in the pool and say swim. So we just went out and did it. Then we thought we were being extremely efficient, dotting all the I’s, crossing all the T’s, auditing all the financials and all the kind of typical factual things. But at the end of the day, the significant mistake we made, and particularly me since I was leading that deal, was we didn’t get to understand the people well enough and understand their culture. It’s a common fallacy that when one company’s acquiring another, they say, well, I’m buying you, therefore I’m right and you’re wrong. It’s my way or the highway. And frankly, we were a little bit of that. And at the end of the day, thankfully, it was a small deal. But because we didn’t read key management or key personnel correctly, we lost those people. And they were key stakeholders and knowledge holders in the business. And that small deal ultimately died. and that is a very difficult way to learn. But it’s going to be sink or swim if you’ve got a parent company who’s financing these deals. If you start having multiple deals that die because you don’t diligence them properly, it’s probably not going to be good for your career path. You’re really motivated to learn and not make those mistakes any further. That’s when we really began to develop this collaborative model, utilizing all the special skills managers we had on our team. So it’s more about this model and kind of how it came out of this experience where you had to learn the hard way of looking for those key people and taking into account personalities and the actual roles and interests of the people that are already in this business. Sure. Well, we essentially assembled the team. Again, it was sort of an iterative learning experiences we were along, but a diligent team would include the lead manager. some cases it was me, in some cases it was one or the other of my counterparts. It would include our vice president of HR, our chief financial officer, our head of production, our head of our CIO for technology at a minimum. And then there might be other specialized managers who would all be responsible for diligencing the company we were. assessing to acquire in their specialized area. Then we would get together all at the same time in the same room and each of these specialized area managers would have to report on their findings. And it became fascinating because a lot of times we would see this quite often if the head of production would say, well, we’re going to need this kind of a piece of equipment. not realizing that the chief information officer would then have to interface that piece of equipment with the rest of the technology system. And that’s where a lot of things can fall apart if everybody doesn’t know what everybody else is doing. And it became tremendously efficient over time. And with the help of our VP of HR, we began to more thoroughly assess key talent in the companies we were acquiring and to really get to understand their corporate culture and the things that they were doing well. I was fortunate enough to work for 15 years for a brilliant man who was the chairman of our Fortune 100 company. And he would always remind us when we were doing a deal, remember, there’s a reason and you’re buying this company. Figure out first what they’re doing right and protect that. And if you don’t have a big ego, you can realize that oftentimes the acquired business is doing something better than your existing organization. So you can adapt to best practices. And in our case, it was fantastic because it injected so many efficiencies and allowed us to grow so much more. more, our company on 400 million in revenue, the end in my CEO period there, was throwing off $100 million in EBITDA profit, which was at the top of the food chain for companies like that in terms of its profit margin. But a lot of that is because we adopted and adapted ideas from the companies we were acquiring. I love that. Now, as you’ve built this career and have so many &A deals behind you, what’s one of the things that many owners that you’ve worked with just don’t see coming until they’re already in the middle of it? One of the key things that I’ve lectured on this a number of times, especially for CFO type organizations, one of the key mistakes that business owners make when they are acquiring another business, besides what I mentioned earlier, that they think they’re doing everything right and the acquired company is doing everything wrong. So they’re going to force total change on the company that’s being acquired. But if they really get to know that company and focus on critical factors that are going to come into play post acquisition during the integration period, which by the way is where the vast majority of deals die is in integration because buyers spend 90, 95 % of their time focused on the front end transaction process, whether it’s pricing, negotiations, contracts, etc. and very little time on how things are going to be integrated and to also be respectful of the corporate culture of the acquired organization because that can fracture and cause a deal to fall apart if you again have a very unhappy new workforce. Yeah, absolutely. That’s a really important thing. I’m sure many people in the audience who have been employees at one point in their life and have been in organizations, been acquired can certainly relate to that challenge of merging culture as well. When you are doing these executions, where do you see the execution usually break down and how do you address that? Much of it is, evolves around communication and generally either no communication or poor communication or not frequent enough communication. You almost can’t communicate too much and it also involves with a lot of managers they want to do all the talking and none of the listening. And one of the techniques that we developed that was tremendously successful for us, again, around understanding people, is during our diligence process, we did what we call start, stop, keep. So we would set up appointments with key employees, generally around 15 minutes per meeting, with no other employees or managers there. and we would just simply ask them, all right, what would you like to see the company continue to do? What would you like to see the company start doing? And by the time you got to the third room, which is actually a negative response, what would you like to see the company stop doing? You actually already knew those answers. And it’s amazing how many tremendously productive and insightful ideas come from employees, many of whom have been there for long periods of time, but aren’t high level people. They could be a bookkeeper or a controller or a salesperson. Didn’t really matter what’s the title. A lot of them had very good ideas if we were willing to listen. And oftentimes it was the first time anybody ever asked them anything and then listened to what they had they had to say and then they were really gratified when we would actually take their ideas and implement them in the company. Yeah, you know they felt like they were really heard so it’s far better to listen than to talk but if you’re in a lead role If you do not communicate effectively, rumor mills fill a vacuum very rapidly. And once they’re out there, they’re almost impossible to extinguish. Yeah, I love that framework of start, stop, keep. That might be a lesson that operators can apply even to their business today and have that as something they can ask their employees even outside of a context of &A to improve their business as well. Absolutely. I’ll share a little case study in this regard, which is a really solid proof of concept. Before I moved into investment banking, I was recruited on a management contract to do a very, very complex turnaround, both organizationally and from a technology standpoint. of a $60 million 501c3 charitable business. And when I first took on the assignment, I made some immediate assumptions about what was going to have to change, where I saw inefficiencies or areas that could be exploited for growth, just based on my historical experience level. But thankfully, I went through the start stop keep process. And believe it or not, there were 220 employees in the company, and I met with every one of those employees. individually and I pretty quickly learned that my initial assumptions were not only wrong but if I had executed on the changes I thought I was going to make when I first stepped into the organization it probably would have blown the company up. because what I thought was a waste, the employee population as part of their corporate culture looked at those as essential parts of their business. So I made a complete pivot. We made a lot of changes based on the input I got. But the other interesting thing was the area of the company that I thought was most dysfunctional. That actually wasn’t the area of the company that was most dysfunctional. It was in a telemarketing sales organization. and we had to go through some radical changes at that part of the business, which I would not have figured out for quite some time after I took the job running that company. several of the employees I met with, ironically, one guy from the IT department was the first one that kind of caused the light bulbs to go on for me in that regard. So you never know where that valuable information could come from. That’s a really important insight and great story you shared there. Now, if you are coming into an organization and there may appear to be a lot of things that need to be changed, such as strategy, the brand, systems, and maybe even people, where do you even start and what strategies do you employ to help someone navigate all those changes? Well, again, in a situation where I was placed to do a turnaround, especially once the light bulb came on for me relative to the inaccuracy of some of my early observations and assumptions, I wanted to make sure I took time to really get to know the business better and particularly the key managers. And over time, I was able to make far more accurate assessments and take the actions necessary. I had a very wise board of directors that I reported to who knew that we have a very concerning situation in this business. And they gave me carte blanche to make the changes that we needed to make. And those changes quite often were very difficult. I actually had to change out. think it was eight of the nine top managers in the company in order to begin to create a far more collaborative, communicative, open corporate culture. And there was a lot of spending waste and inefficient analysis of financial information. And we ultimately carved $6 million in costs out of a $50, $60 million company. And those were difficult things to do, but. It’s not, there’s that, what’s that old expression, ready, shoot, aim. You can’t do that. We had to really kind of dig deep in the weeds and understand the business before we could make any of those fairly radical decisions that really had to be made for that company to survive. And when you are doing this analysis and really getting to know the managers and leaders in the business, when it becomes obvious that some of them may be bottlenecks for the business, how do you bring that up without it turning into a defensive conversation? Well, in some cases, even as diplomatic or subtle as you could be in an ingrained organization like we had, like I inherited in this case, the individuals you’re talking with are by nature going to be defensive. because their first interpretation is gonna be that you’re looking for very significant change from the way they’ve been doing things. Some of the senior managers have been there for like 25 years. So, know, change is a scary thing for people and it can be threatening for people. And if you’re going to tell them we’re not gonna do it your way anymore, we’re gonna do it this way. And here’s why. A lot of times you’re just not going to get a good response from that. They may accept it, but they’re not going to be happy about it because it’s not the way they’re used to doing things. And you’ve worked across so many different organizations, had these difficult conversations with leaders and managers of all the different kinds of company sizes. Has there been a pattern you’ve noticed in leaders who actually scale well versus the ones who stay stuck or maintain that defensive position? Yeah, yes, there absolutely is. So if they have no experience in any kind of really aggressive scaling, whether it’s organic, whether it’s a new product development or whether it is through acquisitions, they’ve never been taught how to do these things. And if it’s on the acquisition, it’s almost always what I described earlier, they’re going to go at it. hey I’m right you’re wrong it’s my way or the highway and we have a corporate culture you’re gonna have to figure out how to adapt to our culture and those very often either don’t work out well at all or it doesn’t allow the acquired business to truly perform at peak efficiency and to deliver what you hoped for when you decide to make that acquisition. In my case, with my senior management teams, I always believe in being the dumbest person in the room. I always wanted all of my specialized professionals, whether it was HR, marketing, IT, finance, to be experts in their field. And the key would be always to seek their input. And when I would hire these individuals, one of the last questions I would ask them is, okay, if you don’t agree with me, are you going to be willing to disagree with me openly? And usually you get kind of a startled look and I would say, well, if you just want to agree with me all the time, then you’re not going to be of value to me because I don’t get it right all the time. The goal is to get it right. You’re an expert in your area. I want to see and hear your perspective on this. So I may not always change my decision, but at least I’ll know where you’re coming from. But most of the time I would either adjust the decision to be made. Sometimes I do a full 180 on it based on new information I learned. But if you allow those individuals to do their job, and know that their knowledge is valued, it’s amazing the level of responsibility they will take on and own as part of any process, again, whether it’s assessing concepts for a new product startup or some kind of an &A function. And when you are working with these leaders that you have around you, making sure that you’re not the smartest person in the room, what are some good delegation strategies that you help them with to make sure that they’re able to stay in their top 20 % and delegating the rest to the right people? Yeah, well, I’m a big believer in the concept of servant leadership. So the key with all of these individuals is basically, sometimes you have to give a directive. There’s no way around that. But other than that, if we are trying to achieve a specific goal, then it’s more about asking them what resources they need in order to execute to achieve that goal. And if they see you working in that kind of a management manner, you are far more likely to have those managers function in the same way with their own teams that are reporting to them. And we would often have conversations about who are your successors. And we would oftentimes bring them in on senior management meetings to deliver some kind of presentation or report on results just to give them exposure to that environment. And then it was a great opportunity to recognize them as individuals for the contribution they’re making to the company. Well, as we wrap up here, what’s one piece of advice you would give leaders today that they can start implementing this week to help make their business more of a salable asset? I’ll give you two quick ones. One is spend more time listening than talking. So your employees or team members or managers will feel heard. And two, learn about what motivates those individuals. You know, in the old school military style, it was my way or the highway, you’re going to do this. But in this day and age, with multiple generations of employees in the workforce and very unique individuals, if you do have a diverse workforce, which I’m a big believer in. you need to understand what motivates them. In the media world, I would always say if I motivated by salespeople, like I motivate my artists, I’d have no sales. And if I motivated my artists like I motivate my salespeople, I wouldn’t have a single artist in the company. understanding what works for each individual, you have to be a little bit of a chameleon and adapt to a certain extent to their needs in order to maximize performance and make those employees feel appreciated. Yeah, very valuable insights, Cameron. Thank you so much. If people want to connect with you and start exploring your work, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you? You bet. Yes, so our investment banking firm is called Raincatcher. We’re at raincatcher.com. My company email address is cameron.bishop at raincatcher.com or I’m also easily accessible on LinkedIn. Thank you so much, Cameron. This was a great conversation. 40 years of building, scaling, and getting deals across the finish line. There’s a lot in here that people can take and actually use from this conversation today. I think the through line has definitely been the importance of communication, communication, communication with the people. And I really appreciate you sharing those strategies and experiences that you’ve had so that everyone else can learn from them today. And I want to encourage everyone, if you feel like you’re the bottleneck still, having a full-time ultimate executive assistant can help you handle the execution so you have You bet. more time to communicate with your team members and your leaders and make a real difference in how everyone in the organization shows up. And that’s exactly what we’ve built at Workergenics to help people get those right executive assistants in there so leaders are no longer the bottleneck. Appreciate everyone for tuning into the episode today. Thank you again Cameron for coming on Scale Smart Grow Fast and for everyone listening we’ll see you on the next one. Thank you, Harley.

The post 40 Years of M&A Taught Him One Thing About Founders first appeared on Workergenix.

Opening Scaling Tension

Most operators frame the hardest part of growth as a hiring problem. It rarely is. The harder problem sits one layer beneath the org chart: the senior people you’ve already identified for bigger roles are trapped underneath the work that made them valuable in the smaller ones. The succession plan is written. The names are in the right boxes. But the person who is supposed to step up still owns the migration project, the compliance files, the multi-state research, the inbox that doesn’t stop. Capacity looks like a staffing question. It is actually a sequencing question. And until that sequence gets resolved, every promotion stalls before it starts.

The Hidden Constraint

In a recent conversation on the podcast, Jessica Malone, COO of the Jimmy Simpson Foundation, described exactly this dynamic inside a small nonprofit administering a lifelong traumatic brain injury care facility. Roughly thirteen people in administration. Most of the rest of the team clinical. Every plate already full. A CFO planning to retire. A financial administrator named Nicole in line to step up. And a pile of tedious but consequential work, including a botched records migration that risked regulatory exposure, sitting on the desks of the very people who needed to move up the value chain.

This is the hidden constraint behind almost every scaling moment in a founder-led or operator-led business. The work that needs to disappear from a senior person’s desk is not the glamorous work. It is the medium-skill, high-tedium, high-consequence work. It cannot be deleted. It cannot be ignored. It usually cannot be automated. And it absorbs the exact cognitive bandwidth the organization needs back in order to grow. Leadership bandwidth is not lost to strategy. It is lost to maintenance.

The Operating Shift

The shift Jessica’s team made was structural, not motivational. They did not ask Nicole to work harder or push through. They added a dedicated, full-time executive assistant and, critically, routed her under Nicole rather than under the founder or the COO. That single decision is worth examining, because it reflects a discipline most teams skip.

When organizations bring on executive support, the default instinct is to attach that support to the most senior person in the room. It feels logical. It is usually wrong. The right placement is wherever the next bottleneck will form. Jessica’s team anticipated that Nicole would be absorbing CFO responsibilities and that her qualifications spanned both IT and financial systems. Placing the EA under Nicole did three things at once: it cleared the work blocking the succession plan, it built a working relationship before the promotion happened, and it positioned ownership of tedious-but-critical workflows in a stable place that would not need to be rebuilt later.

This is the operating principle worth extracting: leverage is placed where the next constraint will be, not where the current title is. That is a different kind of decision than most teams make. It requires reading the org chart twelve to eighteen months forward and putting support in front of the bottleneck, not behind it.

Execution in Practice

A few execution patterns from the conversation are worth naming directly, because they are repeatable.

Map the work before the person arrives. Jessica’s team sat down before their EA started and inventoried what work could move, what required physical presence, and what each team member could hand off. This is the unglamorous step most operators skip. Without it, a new hire becomes a search problem rather than an execution problem. The team that walks in knowing exactly what is going to land on the new desk in week one captures leverage immediately. The team that hires first and figures it out later spends ninety days reconstructing what they should have decided in advance.

Treat tedious work as a strategic asset, not a burden. The records migration project Jessica described would have taken years at ten minutes a day. Done by a dedicated owner, it took weeks. Multi-state workers’ compensation research that would have consumed three months of Nicole’s calendar was completed in days. The point is not speed. The point is that an entire category of work that was structurally impossible inside the existing team became routine once it had a single owner with adequate time. Capacity is not always about adding skill. Sometimes it is about adding undivided attention.

Eliminate the re-decision loop. One of the quieter signals in Jessica’s story is the moment she stopped asking “who has time to do this?” and started knowing the answer was Kaylin. That is a cognitive load reduction worth taking seriously. Every time a leader has to re-decide who owns a recurring category of work, a small tax is paid. Stable ownership of workflows removes that tax permanently. Decision-making frameworks that look sophisticated on paper often matter less than this simple discipline: assign the work once, and stop revisiting the assignment.

Underwrite the financial case honestly. Jessica was direct about the budget logic. For a small nonprofit, payroll is the largest line item, and payroll is more than salary. PTO, benefits, insurance, overtime exposure. When her team compared a part-time in-house hire against a dedicated virtual EA, the math worked in favor of the structural choice that also preserved budget for clinical staff who deliver the core mission. This is capital allocation discipline applied to a staffing decision. Most operators conduct this analysis casually. The teams that conduct it rigorously make better calls.

Leverage Outcome

The outcome Jessica’s team produced was not a faster CFO transition, although that happened. It was a permanent expansion of what the senior team could hold. Leverage, properly placed, does not make leaders work longer. It makes the organization capable of carrying more without routing every decision back through the founder. That is the version of scaling discipline that holds up over years rather than quarters.

Connect With the Guest

To learn more about Jessica Malone and her work: Website: https://www.safehavenjsf.org/

The Immediate Move

The real constraint inside a growing operation is rarely talent and rarely capital. It is the leadership bandwidth quietly consumed by work that should already have an owner. Before the next hire, the next promotion, or the next strategic push, inventory the tedious-but-critical workflows still living on senior desks and decide, deliberately, where they belong twelve months from now. Place support in front of the next bottleneck, not behind the current title. Assign the work once. Stop revisiting the assignment. Structure absorbs effort. Effort does not absorb structure.

Watch this before you hire your next support role.

Full Podcast Transcript

Today we’re joined by Jessie Malone, COO of the Jimmy Simpson Foundation, where she oversees operations, fundraising, and program strategy for Safe Haven’s brain injury care work. Like a lot of operators, Jessie reached out a point where follow-ups and scheduling and documentation and email inbox were just eating through hours for her and her team. And in this conversation, she’s gonna walk through what she stopped doing, what her team stopped doing, and what their ultimate executive assistant took over and now owns.

It’s going to be a really exciting episode. It’s great talking to Workergenics clients and hearing their testimony and learning more about their businesses and the important missions they’re doing. Jesse, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

I’m good. Thank you for having me.

Jessica, walk us through how you came into this role, what journey led you to what you’re doing today.

Well, Jimmy Simpson, I was kind of there from day one. He was my grandfather. I’m the firstborn grandchild. I tell everyone I’m the favorite. but so when we started, when we first opened in 98, I was there sort of helping do some really light clerical work. And then I left for a little while because this was in 1998. I was 18.

And then I came back in 2011 and I came back to work part-time and just doing inventory and helping them keep up with supplies and things like that. And it kind of snowballed because I was finding that once I was done with that, I didn’t have anything to do. So I started asking for more things to do. So after a while, Vicki Hodge, our CEO,

we start talking and she said that the board had asked her to come up with a succession plan and that she thought that I would be a good fit for that. And I was a little hesitant at first because I didn’t know how, my children were still pretty young at the time. I didn’t know how much time I could invest. But I talked to my husband and we talked about this for about a year off and on. And then I finally just decided to

take the plunge. And I went back to school for two years and then went from working part-time to full-time. It was sort of pulled under her to learn how to do what she does. then eventually that led to her saying, I can’t do all of the day-to-day operations and work on expanding. And so she split it and that’s how I came into the role of COO.

Awesome. I love that story. those of our in our audience that maybe aren’t familiar with the foundation and the work you guys do, could you let us know more about the specific mission and ways you help the community?

Yes, the Jimmy Simpson Foundation, we’re a nonprofit organization. oversee the funding and day-to-day operations of a lifelong care traumatic brain injury facility called Safe Haven. We also oversee the functions and operations of a local traumatic brain injury support group called Carol’s Light.

The Carol’s Light is based on a social model we do. We focus on getting people out in the community, doing activities. We’ll go to a ball game, go to a movie. We have a lot of fun with that.

Awesome. I appreciate you sharing that. You guys have been working with a virtual executive assistant with Workergenics for some time now. Maybe you can tell us what were some of the factors that initially had you guys start thinking that maybe getting some virtual executive support for your team might be the way to go.

Well, we’re a really small organization. There are maybe 13 of us in administration altogether. The bulk of the staff here are clinicals. as we were growing, we were figuring out we have these tasks that I didn’t have time to do. And I was delegating some of my stuff already. And then everybody’s plate was just kind of overfilling.

It was about that time that we were introduced through Wade Rowan with Sandler. And you had come to speak to us about the virtual assistant. And we decided to, you know, we’ll give it, let’s try it out. Let’s see what happens. And so we really haven’t looked back. Kaylyn is our virtual assistant and she’s fantastic.

Awesome. And how did you guys think about the structure? Because I know there were like a lot of different ways you could have structured it, whether it was like direct reporting to just you or supporting your team or direct reporting to another one of your team members. What were some of the factors or decision process that you guys considered to come up with what you ultimately decided for her role?

Essentially with what we were going to have her focusing on, the tasks that we were having her working on, it was going to be a better fit for her to report to our financial administrator. our systems financial administrator, because she’s kind of got her hands in IT stuff and in financial stuff. And we knew with the qualifications that Kaylin had, we would probably be pulling her into several of those things.

That’s how we decided to kind of structure that. And so that’s who she hates us to.

Were there any challenges getting started with having a virtual team member? Because before that, of everyone was working in office in person there.

Yeah, you know, I’ll be honest, was a little, it took us, it took a little bit of getting used to because, and it was, I think it’s probably more on our end because, you know, this is someone that you, you, we don’t see and you don’t talk to, um, every day other than, know, the, check-ins, um, which can be really brief so that we know that she’s, she’s clocking in and she’s, know, she’s working on something. She, unless she has a question and, um,

to be honest, I would be like, hey, who’s working on this? And Nicole, who she answers to would be like, would be Kaylin. And I was like, yeah. So that did take a little bit of getting used to, or we would come across something and we’re like, who’s got time to do this? And so Nicole would go, Kaylin. It’s been great.

Thank

So it took a little bit of a mindset shift of like thinking that, you do have this other resource. You’ve got this other team member that’s not in the office, but they can handle certain tasks.

It really, it really did. It did. And I think when we had other people go kind of remotely because to work remote, even, you know, I think it’s just changing your mindset for that sort of thing, because you will forget about someone you don’t see every day. You know, you’re just like, okay, I was supposed to send them that email or, you know, I forgot to send them, I forgot to send them this announcement on what’s going on with like within our administration.

Yeah, the mindset is definitely, but it’s, but it didn’t take too long.

Now, did you guys end up using any different tools or did you have tools already in place for helping with the delegation and assigning of the tasks to Kalin or other team members in your organization?

Well, we sort of just sat down and before she started and we were like, you know, what, what, what are her cases? You know, what are her, where, where are her limits at? Cause obviously she’s not here. I can’t have her really, you know, it’s not like I can’t have her come in and scan things or come in and work on their particular tasks because you have to be present for those. So we’re like, you know, what, what do we have? And we already had a few things.

So we just started kind of, you know, looking around and we’re asking everybody, what, you know, what do you have that she could work on? And we kind of just sort of structured that so that when she did start, went smoothly and we could just kind of add to as

think we lost your video. All right, John, just.

You there, Jesse?

All right, got your back. Did your browser freeze?

It just completely dropped and I was like, my gosh, no, of all the times.

Yeah, it’s all right. The nice thing about this recording service is it saves everything in separate tracks and stuff, so it should be totally fine. We’ll just keep on going.

All right. I’m really sorry about that. Sometimes a downside to working out where we do is we could lose our internet at any point. you just have to sort of reset it.

Yeah, no problem.

Yeah.

Understood, not a problem. All right, so think the question we were talking through was if you had any sort of technology tools or what your process was for managing the different tasks that were delegated to Kalin and the other team members and how you structured that.

Well, a lot of it is like, she has become a great example is that she, we have a system, which is our filing system, our electronic filing system. And that is where obviously, it’s where our charting is going to go for our patients, which, you know, there are state regulations with that. And we switched over and updated our system because we had one that was pretty outdated.

And the problem was when the migration came along to get it all the files from there to the new system, nothing went where it was supposed to. And it was like, it’s going to take us years to get this because, you know, I would have maybe 10 minutes a day to work on it. And, you know, and the others that knew the system weren’t in any better of a position. They had a little bit more time, but not a lot. So.

That was a big thing that, Kaylin was actually very vital in getting like all of our medical records straightened out and everything filed away properly so that it’s easily accessible. Because the state here could come in at any moment and go, I want to see, you know, I want to see your patient files. And we have to be able to just go, here you are. So yeah, she was key in that. And we actually have her working on some of our HR stuff now.

Nice. Were there any challenges with having the remote access to the files and your internal systems for enabling her to do the work that she needed to do?

No, the system is cloud-based, so she had no problems accessing it. We just needed to give her the permissions for it. So, and to my knowledge anyway, there weren’t any issues in accessing that system. So, and I think we’ve got her working on some other things. just kind of keep adding some things, because, you know, straightening out files is a tedious, you know, thing to do.

And we’re like, you know, she’s qualified for more than this. What else can we have her doing? And, you know, that’s why we put her under Nicole to begin with is because, you know, she had knowledge of the financial systems and backgrounds again, and that sort of thing. And it was like, okay, well, let’s have her help Nicole with some of this stuff on that end too.

Yeah. What would you say, or maybe speaking for Nicole, have you noticed any difference in her work schedule or the areas that she’s able to focus on since bringing in the executive support for her and bringing her out of some of those really tedious tasks that you’ve been describing?

Ooh, absolutely. Because maybe a year and a half after Kaylin came on board, our CFO announced she was retiring. Nicole is also part of the succession plan to step up and take over as CFO. So her responsibilities kind of jumped, you know? so, yeah, Kaylin was able to take on a lot.

that free Nicole up to be able to step into that role pretty seamlessly. So I think the timing with that was pretty lucky because she had been with us long enough that her and Nicole were familiar with each other. it worked out really well when that happened.

Yeah, so that’s the one thing too. I guess it’s been almost two years that Kaylyn’s been supporting you guys and

I think she’s been with us for three maybe three

Wow, yeah. So having that kind long-term relationship where she’s understanding Nicole’s workflow and Nicole understands her workflow and that communication, I’m sure that’s really helped with being able to kind of smooth handing off new responsibilities as they come along. Do you have any, maybe has Nicole shared examples of situations where like a new challenge has come up and she’s been able to just kind of trust Kaylin to take care of it?

Yeah, she’s learning to do, she’s definitely learning to do that. She’s giving her, my gosh, just flew out of my head what she had her working on not long ago. she needed to do like some research or some research needed to be done with work comp insurance and some of their laws. And so she just kind of was able to hand that to Kaylin and say, hey, and

I think Kayla got her the laws for all 50 states. and Nicole said there’s, that would have taken me, you know, three months to get done with everything else that she has to do. And Kayla got it done pretty quickly.

Awesome. You kind of mentioned earlier that you have a small team in the office and now some are working remotely. And being a nonprofit, I’m sure there’s budget constraints. What was the budget considerations or maybe some of the benefits of bringing on the virtual executive support to help with the budgetary constraints and maintaining your local staff maybe when there’s some tough financial times or you have to plan out in the future and make budgets for your fundraising?

talk through some of that.

Something that really we took into consideration as far as the budget goes, because, you know, yeah, with being a small nonprofit, then, you know, if you have any sort of loss in revenue that you’re looking at revising your entire budget for the year, you’re just kind of almost starting over. But something that we definitely took into account because obviously payroll is going to be the biggest chunk of your budget.

in that payroll it goes, you know, all of your benefits and any overtime. And so when we were looking at bringing on someone to help us in the capacity that Kaylin does, that is, that’s a big thing that we looked at and it was like, okay, well let’s look at what it would cost to hire somebody part-time and then actually be here or to hire some, a virtual assistant.

And honestly, the virtual assistant that was, came out that it was going to work better for us budget wise. because you do have all of your, know, you’ve got all of the things to consider PTO, depending on what the hours they work. And like I said, there’s, know, there’s insurances and there’s other benefits and that, all goes into that payroll is more than just the salary. And so that’s something that, that helps us a lot.

Yeah, it makes sense and it gives more room to make sure you’ve got the budget for the critical people you’ve got in the office already and making sure they’re taken care of.

Exactly. gives us, it leaves that open for us to have more clinical people who can do, who they do the direct care. And, you know, our mission is to improve quality of life. That’s our mission, the statements. And so it definitely frees us up so that we can focus on that.

I’d love to kind of talk about some of the next stages and looking forward for Safe Haven. What are some of the big projects and initiatives that you guys are working on today?

Right now, of course, we have the two major fundraisers that we do every year, but we have also started adding smaller fundraisers, which are kind of, they have helped out quite a bit. Or rather, maybe it’ll be a virtual fundraiser, like, know, donuts, or it’ll be a spirit night or a give back night at a restaurant where that restaurant will donate the percentage.

And that helps us out with a lot. The give back, not especially, what they do, anybody that’s raised for that goes straight to Carol’s Light, our support group. So, and I think last year we were able to do three, three, and it covered almost the entire budget for 2025 for our support group activities. So we were like, this works. This is great. People respond to it.

So we’ve been focused on that. And then of course, we’re working on expanding our admin team somewhat. cause it’s not, tell people all the time, you know, you’re not going to get less busy ever. This is not going to happen. So, you know, if, you’re a company that’s, that’s growing or you’re trying to grow, I think, I think that’s.

something that’s said for all of us. So you don’t get less busy. So that’s a focus is to sort of expand that a little bit. So, and we have in my way of, we had a lateral movement with one of my organs. She was particularly good at doing the activities and going on outings. And then we found out she was also very good.

share.

at just talking to people and telling them all about Safe Haven and Carol’s Live. So we actually created a position for her and that is her job is, you know, she kind of oversees our volunteers because we noticed we’re getting more and more of those. And a lot of that is because she’s going out there and talking to them. So those are some changes that have happened over the last year and they’ve been all great changes and we’re really excited to see it grow.

Awesome. Well, that’s exciting to hear about all those developments that are going on. And as we wrap up here, if you were talking to another director of a nonprofit or a small business operator and they’re considering, you know, feeling that stress that you guys had originally and bringing on a virtual executive assistant, what advice would you have for them for getting started in that critical first, like 30, 60, 90 day period?

Communication, make sure that you’re communicating with your virtual assistant. It’s gonna make that transition adapting to having someone who isn’t there easier on both ends. it’s gonna make sure that they feel okay if they have questions because they’re not here to see exactly what it is that you’re doing. So just keep that in mind and you’ll be okay.

Well, Jesse, I really appreciate you coming and sharing your story, sharing about the important mission that you’re doing with Safe Haven, the Jimmy Simpson Foundation. If people would like to learn more about the important work you’re doing and connect with you, what’s the best way for them to reach out and follow up?

Thank you. Thank you so much.

The post The Quiet Hire That Made Our Succession Plan Actually Work first appeared on Workergenix.

Opening Scaling Tension

At a certain stage, growth stops feeling like expansion and starts feeling like weight.

Revenue may still be coming in. The team is bigger. Systems exist on paper. But execution slows down. Follow-ups slip. Decisions cycle back to the founder. And despite more people and more activity, the business doesn’t move faster.

This is where most operators misdiagnose the problem. They assume they need better strategy, stronger talent, or more aggressive targets.

In reality, the constraint is almost always operational. Execution is breaking down at the behavior level.

The Hidden Constraint

The conversation surfaces a consistent failure point across scaling businesses. Leaders manage outcomes instead of managing execution.

Revenue, closed deals, and performance metrics are lagging indicators. They tell you what already happened. They don’t tell you why it happened or how to replicate it.

When leadership teams anchor on outcomes, they lose visibility into the system that produces those outcomes. That’s where inconsistency creeps in. A salesperson can hit quota one quarter and miss the next with no clear explanation. A team can look productive while quietly underperforming at the activity level.

This creates a dangerous cycle. Leaders react to numbers instead of controlling the system behind the numbers. That increases decision fatigue and reduces confidence in forecasting, hiring, and capital allocation.

The constraint is not effort. It is a lack of clarity around the behaviors that actually drive results.

The Operating Shift

The shift is straightforward but requires discipline.

Move from managing outcomes to managing behaviors.

This is not about ignoring metrics. It is about reclassifying them. Outcomes become validation, not direction. The real operating layer becomes the repeatable actions that consistently produce those outcomes.

In a sales context, this means tracking and reinforcing leading indicators. Prospecting activity, quality of conversations, adherence to process, and consistency of follow-up. These are the levers that drive predictable revenue.

This same principle extends across the business. Execution systems should define what gets done, how it gets done, and how often it gets done. Leadership’s role is to enforce that system, not chase results after the fact.

This is where operational leverage begins. Not through more output, but through tighter control of the inputs.

Execution in Practice

There are a few execution-level insights that stand out from the conversation.

First, hiring without structured onboarding creates immediate risk. Most operators invest heavily in recruitment and then treat onboarding as a formality. The result is unstable performance and higher turnover. Without a defined onboarding system, new hires default to old habits, which often do not align with your execution model.

Second, training cannot be treated as a one-time event. High-performing teams are not built through short bursts of learning. They require ongoing development tied directly to execution systems. Training introduces skills. Coaching reinforces application. Without both, performance degrades over time.

Third, behavior tracking must be granular enough to diagnose breakdowns. One example discussed is a salesperson who performed well in bursts but consistently declined after periods of success. The issue was not capability. It was a breakdown in a specific stage of the sales process that went unnoticed until it impacted results. Once identified, the adjustment was simple and produced a meaningful revenue increase.

This highlights a broader point. Execution systems need to make failure visible early. If you only see breakdowns at the outcome level, you are already behind.

Fourth, leadership time allocation is often misaligned. Effective sales leaders spend the majority of their time managing people and reinforcing execution, not creating strategy or reacting to reports. A structured division of time between management, coaching, and training reduces variability and increases team consistency.

These are not conceptual improvements. They are operational adjustments that directly impact decision-making speed, capital efficiency, and risk management.

Leverage Outcome

When execution is systemized at the behavior level, the business changes shape.

Decisions become easier because the system provides clarity. Performance becomes more predictable because inputs are controlled. Leaders spend less time reacting and more time directing.

This is what real operational leverage looks like. It is not about increasing output through more hours or more pressure. It is about increasing capacity by reducing variability and removing friction.

Leadership bandwidth expands because fewer issues require intervention. Teams operate with clearer expectations. Execution becomes consistent enough to trust.

At that point, growth stops feeling heavy. Not because the business is simpler, but because it is structured.

Connect With the Guest

To learn more about Tim Barry and their work:
Website: go.sandler.com/tjbarry
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sandlerfortworth

The Immediate Move

The constraint is not your strategy. It is how consistently your business executes.

Start by identifying where outcomes are being managed instead of behaviors. Look at your core functions. Sales, operations, client delivery. Define the specific actions that drive results, then build systems that make those actions visible, measurable, and repeatable.

Reduce re-decisions. Eliminate ambiguity. Transfer ownership of execution through clear processes, not verbal expectations.

Leadership bandwidth is the limiting factor. Protect it by building systems that run without constant oversight. Structure replaces effort. Discipline replaces guesswork.

Watch this before you hire your next support role.

Full Podcast Transcript

Most operators don’t have a growth problem. They have a follow through problem. Deals stall, conversations drift, and momentum quietly dies in the gaps. On scale smart, grow fast. That’s exactly what we’re going to dig into. And when you’re buried in that, it’s not just strategy, it’s execution. That’s why at Workergenix, we bring in full-time ultimate executive assistants to lock in consistent follow-throughs so things actually move. Today’s guest has spent over four decades in the game building and scaling seven businesses.

Now he helps owners win through sales, leadership and coaching. And he hates losing more than he loves winning. Let’s get into it. Tim, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Very good. Thank you so much, Harley, for having me your wonderful podcast. Excited to share with you today.

Awesome, glad you’re here. Love for you to share a little bit about your background. What brought you to doing what you do today?

I have a weird story in that I started my first company when I was 14 years old. Out of greed and necessity, a little bit of both and have been self-employed for the 43 years since. I’ve just figured out how to grow and scale companies. Now I spent the last 11 as a Sandler franchisee. So I do sales training, leadership training, executive coaching, and I’m helping

you know, kinds of business owners across the country figure out how to scale and grow.

Awesome, sounds like you’ve got a lot of experience and knowledge to share with our audience today. I’m really excited to get into it. Now you say you’ve been in business for over 40 years, you’ve bought several companies. When you look at operators today, where do you see things actually breaking between having a plan and getting real momentum?

You I think it’s a great question. know, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in America and it’s evidenced by, you know, even unusual things, things you wouldn’t be like, oh, you know, that’s a, you know, that’s a real thing, right? Like, you know, being a content creator, you’ve got to, you have to be constantly, you’re an entrepreneur, right? And, and so I think the, the, the

wheels come off of the rails are when you’re trying to scale beyond just, you know, you. If you’re the content creator, great, fine. But you’ve got to figure out like a scalable product or service to be able to hawk and to sell. Because otherwise, it’s literally just you by yourself. You’re a single solopreneur. But I do find that the…

Lots of hopes and dreams. Entrepreneurship always starts out with a dream. And then oftentimes will the realities of the business world will consume that dream really quickly. I think that that’s got everything to do with how you build your team around you.

Yeah, awesome. Now, Tim, when we were getting started today, you shared how you’ve got like kind of a four point plan you work through with people. Could you share kind of what those key points are and maybe start diving into that first one?

Sure, I think the first thing that a successful entrepreneur is going to do is they’re going to focus on building a successful sales team. And that’s an important piece, of course. Again, if you’re going to scale beyond just the founder of that organization, you’ve got to be able to empower and teach other people how to sell your product and your wares in order to achieve that. So the number one thing that I

work with my clients on is you’ve got to create a amazingly effective hiring and onboarding process. so lots of people might resort to using recruiters, which is fine, but you really should have your own recruiting process in the first place. So when you’re hiring, you know, know,

You’ve got the profile. You understand the characters and the traits of the person that you’re looking for. You’ve got a well-defined job description that really lays out what is expected in the execution of that role. So sales, pretty simple. You want somebody that’s goal-oriented. You want them to have a great internal engine, a motivation engine, if you will.

You want them to be a astute learner, someone who asks great questions, has high self-awareness and high emotional EQ. You want all those things inherently in that character because when you’re looking for those, first of all, to find somebody with all of those traits is pretty difficult.

This is why we call it hiring and onboarding, right? The hiring part is only part of the equation. The onboarding is how you retain them. And what we know is that when you hire someone off the streets, for example, their resume stays out on the various job boards for up to a year afterwards. So they’re still getting calls. And if you go through all of the expense and the agony of

recruiting a high performer, you hire them, but you don’t have a rock-solid onboarding process, they’re still getting calls from other organizations. And so the onboarding piece is just as important as the actual recruitment and hiring process itself. Does that make sense?

It does. Thanks for breaking that down. You know, one question on that finding and onboarding, I think a lot of people struggle with is like compensation models for salespeople. Do you have kind of general guidelines on that, whether it’s like a split of commission and base salary, or does it really depend on the industry?

I think it depends on what your goals are. Now, what I’ve found is that the employers that use a commission only compensation program, those are the hardest jobs to fill because there is a learning curve for everything, right? So for example, we just talked about hiring and onboarding. The onboarding process could take 90 days or more to fully execute.

And if you’re a commission only, yeah, that could be a problem if you don’t have the financial wherewithal to hang on for 90 days. But I also find that the commission only roles pay the best, right? If you can survive the onboarding process and come out of the blocks strong,

you’ll also by far make the most money. A lot of employers don’t have a model like that. They will do a hybrid where there’s a base salary of some sort just to kind of keep people alive. And of course, the trick is if you make the base salary too high, do you end up with lazy people that don’t maximize their efforts?

because they’re comfortable in whatever that, you know, whatever that base salary is, is kind of carrying them. So there, there’s always that, that danger. I particularly spent my whole life. I’m a hundred percent, you know, commission. I only eat what I kill and drag back, back home. So I’ve always been a fan of, know, it’s a high risk, but it’s also a super high reward. That’s the model that I liked the best. It’s not for most though.

Now when you’re stepping into a new business as a coach, what are some of the first things that you notice that aren’t really moving even though everything may look good on the surface?

One of the cardinal sins that a lot of business owners make is they manage by numbers, not by behaviors. And what I mean by that is when you look in the world of sales, the lagging indicator is the actual revenue that a salesperson can drag in, right? The leading indicator is the execution of the prospecting behaviors that result in the

lagging indicator, the actual sale. And too many times business owners are focused on the, you know, the actual revenue number as opposed to the, the leading indicator. Cause I can tell you, for example, I’m an old Chicago White Sox fan. grew up in Chicago. And if you know anything about major league baseball, the White Sox are one of the most horrific teams that there are. But they had a guy, this was in the

you know, mid 2000s and his name was Adam Dunn and Adam Dunn was a fumper. That dude would hit 40 home runs every year. But the problem was, is he’d also hit one, you know, 175 and he’d strike out 230 times a year. So he would, he’d get it right 40 times a year. He crunched the ball and everybody’s excited, but he was also a killer because, you know, he, he wasn’t on base enough in the world of sales.

You know, you want as many at bats as possible and you’re going to do your fair share of striking out. But you know, being in the batter’s box in the first place is the behavior of learning how to hit a 95 mile an hour fastball that’s thrown your head. Right. the home run is nice. It’s sexy, but you know, the more time you spend in the batter’s box, the more hits you’ll ultimately get. And so I hope I made that clear. the, the Cardinals sin is that.

most people will manage by the lagging indicator, not the leading one.

Awesome. I want to jump back into your main points again. We covered the first one. What’s the second point?

The second point is to build a high performing sales team as you want to make sure that you train them appropriately. Right. I think a lot of times the an employer will go through the recruiting and the hiring and even the onboarding process and they’ll build those things out. And then they are there will be some level during the onboarding of training. Here’s our company. Here’s our service or a product.

Here’s who we’re looking for. And then they kind of pat you on the head at 90 days and say, all right, go get them killer. And what we know is that that’s a dangerous place that you go through the effort to have a good recruiting, hiring, and onboarding process. You’ve got to provide development, professional development for even high performers.

And I think that that’s, know, the hyper for there’s salespeople. break into three different categories. You’ve got a high performer, you’ve got a variable performer, and then the low performer, the low performer is someone who, you know, who constantly regularly misses their targets and their goals. The variable performer in the middle is going to, you know, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll get a hit one day and then they’ll strike out three times the next. but your top performers.

are the ones that most business owners neglect the most in regards to professional development. And that’s a mistake, right? They’re like, well, that’s the one that’s bringing in 80 % of my revenues. I don’t want to mess with that one. I don’t want them upset and you know, whatever, whatever. So they, they let them be on their own and it’s a dangerous spot because again, we live in a competitive world. And if the salesperson gets bored or feels neglected,

If there’s not any challenge for them in what they do, they will. They’ll get bored and they will look elsewhere. So training them, providing them with some professional development program is extremely important to retention.

Yeah. Well, that is perfect for a question I had for you as well, which is how do you see the sales skill development, that training that we just talked about tying into a leader’s ability to actually free up their time and maybe their team’s time and also their trust in their sales team.

You know, for the leaders, you know, I’ve got a leader, I’ve got a sales leaders, you know, program that I put them through as well. But the, help me understand the question better. Cause I just got confused in my head.

Yeah, so just talking about the sales skill development and how that relates to a leader’s ability to free up their own time.

Yep, for a sales leader is what they’ll often do. The most efficient ones will not waste their time doing the training. They will subcontract that out to someone like me, for example, right? They’ll have me do it because that’s the one thing I focus on. As a sales leader, you’ve got a bunch of different things to worry about. And what we know is that when you’re in a leadership position, especially in sales, know, about 55 % of your time,

as a leader sales leader, a sales manager, a VP needs to be spent with, you know, managing your people. And that could be ride alongs and, and, know, doing reports and stuff like that. But the remainder of the other 45 % of that time, you should spend 30 % of that coaching, one on one coaching, and that’s different from training, of course.

Training I define as teaching someone a new skill. Coaching is helping someone take an existing skill that they have and apply it better and more effectively, you know, in a given scenario. So, if 55 % of the time they’re supposed to be like managing their people, you know, 30 % of it, now you’re at 85, 35%, 30 % of that time should be spent coaching.

And then you take training and mentoring and you can take the remaining 15 % and split it that way. But that’s the most effective division of labor I would teach to sales leaders, if you would.

Now as an entrepreneur and business leader is getting into this time where they are starting to delegate sales and they’re bringing on someone like you, what are some of the mindset shifts that you coach that helps them let go of the sales role without feeling like the standards are going to drop?

Yeah. Well, you know, you’re going to laugh when I even say this, but, for the first nine weeks of training, so training for it in my world happens on a repetitive basis. And it happens over a period of time. Like I won’t do sales boot camps, if you will, because my personal philosophy is, know, we’ve all gone to, you know, motivational talks and boot camps that lasted a day or two. And we know that about 90 % of the information that you

that you learn in those boot camps within 96 hours is you’ve forgot it and you can never access it again. you know, for me, training happens over a period of time and we do it in 90 minutes classes each week, you know, 44 weeks during the course of a calendar year. And so you…

You know, delve that piece out, right? And the first nine weeks, the managers will actually be in the training with their, uh, their sales people. And the reason that that is, is because we want the sales managers to know, uh, you know, what framework am I teaching and downloading into their team? uh, because there’s a second piece to this, you know, I can deliver the training, but I’m also not there 24 seven afterwards.

And so if the managers and leaders are in the first nine weeks of training, for example, they’ll understand fully the framework. And then I can coach the leaders and say, okay, here’s how to hold your people accountable to what I’m teaching them. So you don’t have to be in there for 44 weeks in a year. All you need is like the first nine and then you’ve got the framework. And then I’ll coach the leader through the framework.

Awesome. Well, let’s jump back into your key points. We’ve covered the first two. What’s the third that you like to share with people?

Well, we did a little bit of jumping because we hit hiring and onboarding your top performers as massive training to execute the winning behaviors. The third one was the managing the behavior is not the numbers. And I can’t stress this one enough because it’s easy to fall in love with the, you know, the end goal. There’s an old saying that a stopped clock is right at least twice a day.

And it’s true. You can have a salesperson that might be hitting their sales targets by closing two sales in a year, right? They could do exactly that. And you would think on the surface, well, that one is, you know, knocking it out of the park. They’re hitting their goal every time, you know, even though they’re only closing two sales a year. The real question as a manager, you have to be looking at like,

What behaviors are being executed? Because if you’re getting, you know, say you only have three sales calls in the whole year and you’re closed in two of them, that’s amazing. You have a 66 % closing rate, right? But you’re only doing three sales calls a year, which is, you know, like what’s the opportunity cost of only having those three? Well, what if they had 10 times that? What if they had 50 sales calls a year instead of, you know, and you were at two thirds at that point, you’re, you know, beyond a rock star at that point.

And so again, you’ve got to be able to be in, you know, there, the, there was a movie and a book called Moneyball that was written about the Oakland A’s and Billy Bean was the general manager of the Oakland A’s in the nineties. And it was curious because he started to bring in baseball statistics into play, right? like he relied less on the traditional old school, you know,

baseball scouting, and he started to look at like the metrics and, and that’s how we know that the top performing managers that have high performing sales teams, they managed by the execution of behaviors and measure those because they know if you execute the winning behaviors, you’re naturally going to get the result. It’s going to make sense.

Now, if a manager is reviewing numbers and seeing that there might be a gap in where someone is performing versus where they’d like to be, can you maybe share a story where some simple feedback or a rhythm of coaching has made a big difference in how that team performed?

Yeah, absolutely. So it happens all the time. And this is what good managers who are plugged into their team and invested in their team, you know, they do automatically. I had a client who had four salespeople. One was, you know, your top performer. One was a lower performer. But one of the two middle ones, they showed flashes of being able to go on hot streaks for long periods of time. But then they would, they’d run into a wall at some point.

And as it turns out, when, you know, when you’re following a, a sales process, when you’re at, when your sales team is executing a sales process, you can actually debrief your sales calls. if you’re documenting the debriefs, for example, like in a CRM or something like that, it’s incredibly helpful because you can start like seeing where it breaks down. So with Sandler, for example, there’s, it’s a seven step sales process and in each step.

You know, there are benchmarks which you can measure. And, and so what we noticed was that that variable performer that had the ability to shine and be a top performer for pretty long stretches, what happened would, they would get comfortable, right? Because they were making tons of money while they were on the hot streak and they would stop doing, they would bail out of the, the pain conversation prematurely.

Right? They would get comfortable. They’re like, you know, I already hit my quota for the year, you know, whatever, whatever. And so they would cut the pain step, short. And that was the actual problem. So once the manager and I were able to determine that, the manager was able to coach that salesperson into where they weren’t exactly like an A plus player, but they were an A minus player.

because you, you, you can see the dip in the numbers, you know, and, every time there was a dip in the numbers after going on a nice winning streak and all of sudden you, you know, you hit the wall. They were able to debrief that and say, okay, well here, and they would, the manager would coach that salesperson up and that had a massive impact. It was, you know, like a million dollars of additional revenue just by being able to recognize what was going on. and then, and then.

come up with a game plan to attack that problem. was a million dollar fix for that organization.

And I bet that was hugely helpful too for the salesperson because maybe they were making that change just subconsciously because they felt comfortable. It wasn’t even intentional.

And that’s just it. know, it was such an unconscious thing that, again, once the sales manager was able to help the salesperson throw that awareness radar up, as soon as they felt the dip, they’re like, I’m doing it again. And then they can course correct on the fly. And then the dip was, you know, minimal at best. Like I said, it went from, you know, like a B player.

to like an A minus and that was enough to bring in an additional million bucks of revenue per year to the company and the salesperson was just happy as can be because you know, he made way more money too.

sure. Now you’ve seen a lot of different team structures. I’m curious in your experience, where have you seen top performing sales teams and leadership teams leverage like executive assistants or virtual assistants to extend their capacity and get their time back?

Yeah, you know, I’ve got some clients that leverage the virtual systems, for example, to help with doing the CRM notes and stuff like that to update the CRM. I think that’s probably the most important one that I’ve seen. You know, having someone to do expense reports and…

the mundane kind of reporting tasks that a lot of salespeople have to do. Most salespeople have to do. You can never go wrong by having an EA or a virtual assistant. And it’s just good best practices because you get to focus. Think about this, if you’re a salesperson and your job is to be in front of a dozen face-to-face meetings with your ideal client profile.

You’re not getting paid to do paperwork, right? And that’s the number one complaint is, know, Oh, I got to mess around with this stupid, you know, CRM. If you have a virtual assistant in there or an assistant and EA, uh, they can do all that stuff. can voice record your notes, you know, send them to the EA. The EA can, you know, do what they need to do in order to get the, get in there. And so, yeah, those are, those are ways that you can really, really maximize the, the executive, uh, assistance or the VA.

Great points and perfect examples there. Now let’s circle back and hit your fourth point that you like to share with people.

Yeah, think, you know, again, think of the first three hiring and onboarding is, is massive and having that locked down and tight is huge. The second one training your, your, team to execute the winning behaviors. That’s number two, three, managing your behaviors, not the numbers. When you’ve got those three, it’s literally just as simple as lather, rinse, repeat. If you’ve got those three, you will build a.

high performing sales team. know, it starts again with great recruiting, hiring and onboarding. But then it can’t end there. You’ve got to develop them, train them to execute, and then you manage them by, you know, hold them accountable to the execution of the winning behaviors. And if you do those three things, it’s literally just lather, rinse, repeat. You could build 10 teams doing exactly that formula.

over and over and over and over again. So it takes discipline. It takes consistency and it is a process, right? You’ve got to build that into your culture. But from a sales team point of view, if you build that into the, you know, the sales culture, you just, you can’t lose. As an entrepreneur, you’re going to succeed every time.

Now, shifting a little bit to like habits and leadership habits, as things continue to evolve in business today, what’s one leadership habit that you think separates the businesses that grow cleanly from the ones that might burn out?

think when you have a coaching culture, when the leaders adopt a coaching culture, I think that is the difference between the haves and the have-nots in the business world. Coaching, again, I define as helping someone take an existing skill and apply it better, more efficiently, and more effectively. Coaching is not training, and you’ve got to develop

because what happens in coaching is one-on-one training is a kind of a group event and there’s multiple people in there but coaching is one-on-one and it does involve a level of professional intimacy right you’ve got to be able to you know put on your coaching hat and you have to have immense trust because what happens it’s almost like Vegas what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas

What happens in coaching also stays in coaching and you can’t breach the coaching slash managing divide. You can’t do that. Like you can’t go, you said this in coaching and yell at them for something in a, you know, in a sales meeting that that is not allowed. So, you know, I train sales leaders, uh, you know, on how to set a coaching upfront contract.

Which is you know a whole different hat and you’ve got it. It takes it takes time. It takes trust It takes skill and coordination, but you’ve got to be able to suspend your positional authority as the boss Because now your coaching hat is on and the second thing is that you’ve got to give them permission to speak freely and then you’ve got to give them protection so we call it the three P’s you got to give them protection against reprisal for what they say in

The coaching session and you cannot break if you break that trust, it’s going to be impossible to get it back. So the answer to your question is, the best from the leadership point of view, the difference between the haves and the have nots, 100 % of the way is developing a coaching culture where your team, your players actually actively go, Hey, I’m struggling with this one piece in the sales.

I and then they set up a coaching, you know, coaching session and it’s it. You know that that’s the difference.

As we wrap up today, what is one piece of advice you would share with business leaders today that they can execute immediately to start seeing differences in their business?

You know, I think you’ve got to get away from the features and benefit trap. Every time I talk to business owners, I’m like, me something that is amazing about your company, and they will feature and benefit me to death. And the reality is that, think about it from a prospect’s point of view. If you’re a prospect, you don’t care about any of that stuff.

So your job is the you business owner is to create a culture where you You help your salespeople ask the right questions and figure out what’s the compelling? pain that your prospect would respond to first like and maybe There’s a fit maybe not but that’s that’s my actionable item stop pitching and start asking questions and gathering information

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with our audience today. To everyone listening, this conversation really came down to sales, leadership, and coaching. It all comes back to showing up and actually executing these things. And that’s where most things break, not the ideas, not the strategy, it’s the follow through. The stuff that’s supposed to happen after the call, after the plan, after you’ve made that decision. And that’s why we built Workergenix. We have full-time, ultimate executive assistants who stay behind the scenes to make sure things keep moving consistently.

and without you having to chase it all down. If that’s the gap you’re feeling right now, head over to Workergenix.com. Appreciate you all being here and we’ll see you on the next one.

The post Why Experienced Founders Still Struggle to Scale first appeared on Workergenix.

At a certain stage, growth stops feeling like progress and starts feeling like pressure. Revenue is up. The team is larger. Opportunities are expanding. But execution still routes through the same place. The founder. The operator. The decision-maker.

Inbox volume increases. Follow-ups stack. Deals move slower than they should. And despite adding people, the system still depends on one node to keep everything moving.

This is where most operator-led businesses stall. Not from lack of opportunity. From constrained leadership bandwidth.

The Hidden Constraint

The constraint is not time. It is not talent. It is not even capital.

The constraint is being the execution hub.

When every decision, clarification, or follow-up loops back to the founder, the system cannot scale. It becomes reactive by design. Even strong teams underperform because they operate without true ownership. The leader remains the point of coordination, correction, and completion.

This creates three predictable issues:

• Decision fatigue from constant low-leverage inputs
• Execution drag from delayed handoffs and approvals
• Cognitive overload from tracking everything mentally

At that point, adding more people or tools does not solve the problem. It amplifies it. More inputs. More coordination. More noise.

The Operating Shift

The shift is not “delegation” in the traditional sense. It is ownership transfer through structured execution systems.

Delegation fails for experienced operators when it is treated as task assignment rather than system design. Simply handing off work without defining how it gets done, how it is tracked, and how quality is measured creates more friction than relief.

The principle is straightforward:

Leverage is created when execution continues without the leader’s direct involvement.

That requires three components:

1. Clearly defined workflows
2. Decision-making frameworks that remove ambiguity
3. Consistent follow-through that does not depend on reminders

Without those, the leader remains the fallback for everything.

Execution in Practice

There are several practical shifts embedded in this conversation that map directly to scaling discipline and operational leverage.

1. Breaking Work Into Discrete, Trainable Units

Most operators underestimate how much of their workload is undefined. Tasks live in their head. Decisions are made contextually. Processes are implied, not documented.

The correction is to break work into discrete, repeatable actions.

Instead of “manage deals,” it becomes:

• Update deal sheets
• Track follow-ups in CRM
• Coordinate communication with partners
• Maintain timeline checkpoints

This reduces cognitive load and enables clean handoffs. It also creates a foundation for execution systems that can scale.

2. Eliminating Re-Decisions Through Structure

One of the largest hidden drains on leadership bandwidth is re-deciding the same things repeatedly.

When processes are unclear, teams escalate decisions unnecessarily. When expectations are not documented, leaders re-explain standards. When workflows are inconsistent, execution varies.

Structured systems eliminate this.

Checklists. SOPs. Defined communication loops.

Not as bureaucracy. As a way to remove variability and preserve decision-making capacity for higher-value work.

This is where decision-making frameworks become critical. They allow teams to operate within boundaries instead of waiting for instructions.

3. Separating Value Creation From Task Execution

Early in a career, value is tied to output. Time at the desk equals productivity.

At scale, that model breaks.

The highest-leverage activities are no longer task-based. They are strategic:

• Capital allocation
• Relationship development
• Opportunity identification
• High-level decision-making

When leaders stay embedded in execution, they trade these high-value activities for low-leverage tasks.

This is not a time issue. It is a value misalignment.

Operational leverage comes from shifting focus to activities that expand capacity, not consume it.

4. Maintaining Execution Through Consistent Oversight, Not Constant Involvement

A common failure point in delegation is the assumption that once something is handed off, it is “done.”

Execution systems require ongoing visibility.

Not micromanagement. Structured check-ins. Measurable outputs. Clear expectations.

The principle is simple:

What gets measured gets maintained.

Reducing involvement does not mean removing oversight. It means replacing reactive intervention with proactive structure.

This is particularly relevant for distributed teams and remote support. Without clear communication systems, performance drifts. Not from lack of capability, but from lack of alignment.

Leverage Outcome

When these shifts are implemented, the result is not just time savings. It is expanded capacity.

Leaders regain control over:

• Decision pace
• Execution consistency
• Strategic focus

Follow-ups happen without prompting. Projects move without constant supervision. Communication becomes structured instead of reactive.

This creates a different operating environment.

Instead of managing tasks, the leader manages outcomes.

Instead of reacting to inputs, they direct priorities.

Instead of being the bottleneck, they become the multiplier.

This is the difference between growth that feels heavy and growth that compounds.

Connect With the Guest

To learn more about Jens Nielsen and their work:
Website:https://jensnielsen.us/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenswnielsen/

The Immediate Move

Leadership bandwidth is the limiting factor in scaling. Not effort. Not hours.

Without structure, more work simply increases pressure. With structure, execution continues without constant intervention.

The immediate move is to identify where ownership has not been fully transferred.

Where are decisions still routing back to you?
Where are follow-ups dependent on your memory?
Where is execution inconsistent without your involvement?

Replace effort with systems. Replace oversight with clarity. Replace involvement with ownership.

This is how you reduce cognitive load, increase decision speed, and scale without becoming the constraint.

Watch this before you hire your next support role.

Full Podcast Transcript

All right, have you ever hit that point where the money’s working, the career looks solid, but your time still isn’t yours? That’s the tension we’re digging into today on the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast, because real leverage isn’t just financial, it’s control. And inside Workergenics, we see it constantly. Leaders stuck as the execution bottleneck until an ultimate executive assistant steps in and brings real consistency to how things actually get done. Today’s guest, Jens, made that shift himself.

from decades in IT to building a multi-state real estate portfolio, and now helping other operators level up how they think and perform. Let’s get into it. Yans, welcome to the podcast. Give our audience today a little background about yourself and what brought you to what you’re doing today.

Yeah, thanks, Harley. appreciate it. I, well, first of all, I came to the United States 30 years ago as a young man looking for adventure and started out on the East coast in Maryland, did the typical, you know, got my education, went to college and undergrad and graduate degree in computer science, and then worked, you know, a long career in different companies from

startups to large corporations, to local governments, to Native American tribes, slowly moved west. 20 years ago, we moved to New Mexico. So I’ve lived in New Mexico and Colorado for the last 20 years. Still in IT, stayed in telecommunication IT my whole career. It was great. But in my mid-forties, I realized that something needed to change. I didn’t want to spend the next 20 years working for somebody else.

And then that led to an interest in investing in real estate. So we started investing in apartments like 10 years ago, smaller deals in New Mexico. And then that scaled up to a multi-state portfolio of properties from four units to 200 plus units and so on and warehousing and everything else.

I still do that, but then about five years ago, six years ago when I quit my W2 job, I also started coaching and mentoring because that was really a passion of mine to help the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Awesome, well, I appreciate you sharing that background. I’m sure there were a lot of lessons learned along the way. Hopefully we can dig into some of those. one question I had to start out with is that you probably hit a point where things were maybe looking successful on paper, but the time still didn’t feel like it was yours. Was there a specific moment in your journey where you realized doing everything yourself wasn’t sustainable anymore?

Yeah. You know, I know you traveled too, right? And one of reasons why I wanted to kind of start the real estate investing was to try to decouple my time from my income and so on. Right. So started traveling, but then I’m still sitting on, you know, calls with, with partners and clients. I was like, man, what am I doing? I’m in Spain here to try to ride my bike, but I’m still on calls trying to run the business and so on. that’s

That didn’t really sit that well for me, with me because you hey, yeah, I don’t mind working, but also when I’m off, I need to have the freedom to not work so hard.

What kind of actions did you take to start freeing yourself up and making it so you could really enjoy your time in the moment when you were doing things like bicycling in Spain?

Yeah. Yeah. First, the first was like, so when we were structuring these, when we were structuring real estate deals initially, were like, you know, we can manage them and manage, but I’m not saying property manage, but we can like asset manage them, you know, remotely. That’s just pretty straightforward, blah, blah, blah. It turned out to be very, very hard actually. It was not really, it’s not easy to actually manage these properties remotely and so on. So the first thing was to start hiring actually.

asset managers, know, people that were hired to do that, that work. So we weren’t, you know, trying to make decisions thousands of miles away about, know, should we, you know, very specific details stuff around that. So that was one, one aspect to start getting out of it. Right. And then the other thing was, you know, I used to see from the W2 world, I used to see my, my value as sitting at the desk doing work, right. That’s how you get paid.

So I had a really hard time separating the fact that, if I’m not at my desk, nothing gets done, right? That was the mindset I had. And that really had to shift because first of all, right, if you buy real estate, well, you shouldn’t have to be in there every single day doing the work because then you’re doing something wrong. And then really starting building the right systems and processes so that the people on the ground, the property managers, the asset managers could…

do most of it without having our direct day-to-day involvement with it. So I think that was really the starting point where I started to shift out of this, hey, time for money to mindset.

Yeah, I appreciate that mindset discussion. think a lot of people across the spectrum of industries and businesses, when they go from like solopreneur or employee to like solopreneur and then start having team members, they can have some guilt or maybe subconscious guilt about, you know, having people work while they’re enjoying life. What kind of mindset shifts like or practices or thoughts helps you kind of get over that and realize that it’s okay, you’re, you know, you’re helping these people and life can go on.

Yeah, it has to do with, you know, the value you adding, right? Is your value just your time and there’s no leverage? That’s low value, low skills, low pay kind of work, right? My value is leveling up and bigger strategic, you know, finding investors for our next deal, know, managing or, you know, raising money and finding the next deal and big relationships and so on. And, you know,

I couldn’t do that 20 30 years ago, cause I was just starting out of my career. Now I can. And separating the fact that, the people that are early on in their career, they may have to do that hard work that I did 20, 30 years ago to kind of level up. So I think it’s just realizing where is your biggest value. And for me, it’s absolutely going out there and working on relationships and so on. Right. And it may seem, I mean, it may seem,

Easy, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but it may seem like I’m not working in the same sense, right? But you know, creating relationships and maintaining them, that’s a lot of, that takes effort and time and being in the right rooms as well.

sure. Now as you’re working with other operators today and you see the growth that’s happening in their organizations, what areas in their businesses and operations do you see costing them a lot of focus and time, maybe even trust within their teams?

I think most, most businesses or small businesses, they go from, you know, the solo entrepreneur, somebody has an idea, they start a business and then they start hiring. They never learn how to replace themselves. Right. They just become, as you started out with the bottleneck because they never learn how to actually delegate and leveling up their team and training and so on. Right. So the, I work with anybody, it’s always like, okay, what are you doing? What is the low value?

low pay things that you’re doing that absolutely 100 % should be, you know, hired out for immediately. And you just step out of the way, right? You create a process, a system. I I have have a client who owns a small bakery here. She was in there baking cookies and cakes every day. was like, okay, this is, this is not going to work. Right. So she, she knows you made, it’s like, okay. Because she was so, she was so afraid that the product was not going to be at the qualities she wanted. So after we, you know, okay.

Write out the recipe, train your people on it, and then just do quality control and see if they do a good job. And if they don’t, you correct. So Ziu was able to get out of that, right? And then, you know, it’s just like, I don’t even show up in the shop anymore because I’m like the hood ornament here, right? So that’s kind of the level you want to get to. just get, get out of your own way, right? I think that’s the biggest challenge, but also where you leverage really, you can start leveraging yourself and your team much more.

If someone is kind of in that messy middle and they are trying to just like get out of the way, what are some like mental blocks that you often see people have in getting out of the way and how do you help them overcome those?

Well, the biggest mental block people have is that nobody can do it as well as I can. Right. Nobody is so as good as I am. I totally had that too, when I was moved into management in the IT because like, you know, they can’t do it as well. So that’s the biggest mental block. And I always tell people that, okay, think back, you know, when you started in this career and this business, you probably weren’t very good at it, but somebody was helped you to grow, helped you to.

rise up or you took the training or whatever that is. So put yourself in that earlier version of yourself and have that same patience that somebody had with you with your employee now. And say, okay, it’s okay if they make some mistakes. It’s okay if things are a little bit slower. This is just the nature of human evolution. We got to learn it. We got to grow. We got to go through it.

And, know, be a mentor, be a, be a coach, be a supporter of your team versus that critic versus that, you can’t do it well enough. Let me just do it myself type, type attitude, right? That’s really what I think is so important.

I love that you brought that up because I see this a lot with virtual staffing agency. People come in and oftentimes they have this expectation that an executive assistant is somehow going to just like replace them. And it’s not like that with any employee. In fact, most entrepreneurs cannot just replace themselves. What you kind of alluded to here is you find like specific roles and, you know, break out the pieces that you’re doing and then you hire for those. What are some like methods or,

I guess systems that you kind of coach people on to help identify where they can break out responsibilities and start hiring and start getting out of the way in those areas rather than just like replacing themselves all at once.

Yeah. No, and I’ve had that same challenge there, hiring your VAs and it’s like, well, they should figure it out. It’s all, it’s easy, right? Well, obviously it isn’t. So what I tend to do, you know, it starts with, if I’m working with an owner that needs to start hiring and growing their team, it’s always, let’s just start with the beginning. What are the tasks you’re doing all week? Right? Let’s say you are the baker owner. How much time are you?

Spending on baking cookies and cakes and staffing the front and everything else running to the store. Let’s just break it down and figure out what are all the different tasks that you’re doing. And what are the, and then start with what are the easiest ones. So what are the ones that are easy to train that you hate doing, right? Let’s get those off your plate first. Now, of course that’s a physical thing. It’s a little hard to do remotely, but let’s say, you know, you’re more of a knowledge worker or have a business that that’s not a physical location, right? Just get those.

Simple things that are discrete, repeatable, you don’t like doing, right? So that could be, you know, your social media stuff. could be, you know, customer outreach or prospect outreach, all these different things, but be very specific about what it is and make it discrete and also easy to train. So you can say, okay, here’s how you do it, right? And then you check on it. And I really struggle with that too.

in my W-2 career, because I was like, well, you know, I have smart employees, why can’t they figure it out? Well, because they were much younger in their career and they hadn’t had that growth themselves. So I just had to have patience, train them and so on. Right. I think this morning I’m meeting with my assistant for, for an hour. She’s fairly new. So we’re to really, you know, work on training her up in some of those key things. And in the past, I didn’t have that and I just got irritated and would fire them again. Right. So that’s a learning lesson for me.

Now, one thing that we implement with our clients is providing them with a 30, 60, 90 onboarding plan. So based on the consult call and then discussions that we have with the client about the responsibilities we’re handing off, we’ll help them with making that plan. So they have a clear path to success of like, here’s what you’re handing off in the first 30, then the next 30, and the next 30. And we found that tremendously changes the mindset and the success rate because both sides of the equation, you know, the employee and the

the leader know what’s expected and it’s not this just mass, like here’s everything at once, figure it out, like you mentioned. So I really appreciate you pointing that out. The next question I wanted to ask you was more of like the results. So when you’re working with people and they start handing things off, they’ve delegated, they’ve gotten themselves out of the bottleneck, you know, in addition to just like having the time that they used to be doing free, what are some of the other results you see, whether it’s like, you know, mindset shifts or, you know, what are they doing with that time and how is it impacting their

their happiness and also their business success.

Yeah, I think it’s important as you start handing over what’s the, why are you doing that? Right. You know, because there are people that are solo entrepreneurs that are totally happy doing that. So if you start handing stuff over, is it because you want more time? So you can, you know, do other, other activities or it’s because you want to grow your business. Right. Be very clear on that. The reason why, why, and for most people it’s because they want to grow their business. Right. They want to have.

a business that can function without them and they can truly grow. Um, you know, so I always think about that and say, okay, so if you don’t have to do all these tasks, you don’t want to do, what are you going to focus on? Is it, know, creating new relationships, raising money, new product lines, whatever, or I said, Hey, I just want to work, you know, a few hours a week and the rest of the time, I just want to do my hobbies and so on. That’s totally fine, but be clear on what it is. So you don’t.

Because if people start getting bored, they will just start feeling that David mean, you know, meaningless stuff and they’re just haven’t really won anything. Now they have an assistant to do stuff and they just trying to keep themselves busy by doing things that doesn’t make any sense. Right. So when I’m coaching people, I’m always, okay, you know, what is that? What is the idea life that you’re trying to create here? And let’s make sure that the stuff you can pull the stuff away from you that doesn’t serve you. And you can focus on what’s really going to push you forward.

Absolutely. And when you’re working with people or you’re kind of observing other businesses, what are a few signals that you look for to know that things are working and the leader is actually getting their time back? Sorry, I’m going to… My alarm just went off. Start that question over again. So, when you’re looking with working with people and you’re observing their businesses, what are some signals that you look for to know things are working and the leader is actually getting their time and clarity back?

When I see growth, right? If the goal is growth and I start seeing there is new growth, you know, they’re adding new product lines, they are, or they’re expanding their revenue and so on, right? That’s a pretty obvious thing to measure. But also I would also listen for more subtle clues. Like, you know, I, I was able to, yeah, here’s an example, right? So I work with some real estate agents and stuff and when they can start like not working every single weekend,

they can go on trips with their spouses or they can do other things. I start seeing those shifts, right? Because all the things that they said, I want to try, I want to, know, just go on trips. So I want to go to the gym. want to whatever. When I start seeing that that’s happening, I know that, that it’s working. there’s two, there’s they get their personal, they get their personal time back and they can do someone things. And at the same time, if they can start growing their business, which tends to happen, right? We think that.

We just work harder, things will grow, but we just tend not burning us, burning ourselves out. If we step back, we create space, we get some time to get away and so on. Then the energy is there to take things to the next level.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, kind of as we go to the next level and teams are growing, business is going well, they have that growth. What breaks down around ownership or communication that still catches leaders off guard and how do you help them fix it quickly?

Especially when you have, you know, if you have, executive assistants or VAs that are remote, they still, you know, they can’t read your mind, right? They can’t, they can’t see what’s going on. And if you fail, if you start, if you if you stop communicating well with them, you may run into performance starts dropping or you forget to pay attention to it. Right. And, and you’ll start seeing that where, you know, the the quality drops or.

you know, tasks doesn’t get completed. that’s because typically because the owner becomes complacent, like, I thought I had this solved, but you know, it’s an ongoing kind of involvement with, with your team and so on. Right. So if you just, if you think it’s set it and forget it, then you’re probably going to run into problems down the road. Right. You know, you gotta, you gotta stay on top of it. And it’s the old saying, you know, what, what, what gets measured, get done or whatever, something to that effect. Right. So stay on top of it.

And you know, maybe you don’t have to check in every day, but you can reduce your, your check-in frequency, but it has to still be, has to happen regularly anyway.

Yeah. Now, both of our backgrounds in technology, I have background in computer engineering, your background is computer science and IT. So I think, you know, technology is a big discussion right now across the board in businesses. You know, I’m curious what your take is or philosophy when it comes to, you know, deciding and helping coach business owners on what needs to be automated and leveraging technology versus, you know, what’s delegated and still have a human in the loop.

Yeah, it’s, fun. mean, I’m, I’m just having so much fun playing with Claude and Claude cowork and all these different things. Right. And there is it’s like, wow, it can do that. So there’s definitely a, there’s definitely some opportunity it is. And now the question is, do you have the, do you have the skills to actually truly implement the technology in your business? and can leverage that, right?

Or is it like, well, that’s, I can do it, but it’s going to take a lot of time. And then I have to manage the technology versus managing the people. Right. So it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit of an energy. It’s very full, put your energy on your focus, right? Because a human, you know, it’s easy to say, okay, this need to tweak a little bit or go do something else. You just tell the person, if you’ve designed all these fancy workflows, if they suddenly don’t support you anymore, you got to redesign them all. Right. So I’m.

I’m doing personally, I’m doing a mix. and to be honest, I mean, there’s certain things that I was like, wow, I don’t need my VA to do these things anymore. Cause now Claude can do it for me and so on. Right. So it’s, it’s, but then hopefully I can level her up to do other things that are at a higher level or maybe have her be the person that manages the technology and so on. Right. So I think you definitely as

As a small business owner, mean, there is some technology there you can use. only problem is, do you have the energy and the time to implement it yourself or do you need to go out there and hire agencies to do it? And suddenly the cost probably becomes pretty high and so on. So that’s a balance you have to really think about there.

Yeah. And we’ve observed in our businesses, like we really heavily leverage chat GPT early on, and we’re now being very disappointed by it. And we’re actually shifting focus to using Claude more for a lot of things. And a worry I personally have is, well, what’s the next thing? Are we going to invest all this time and effort getting switched over to Claude and its ecosystem? And then it kind of goes the way of chat GPT and something new comes. And that’s just, guess, the nature of the beast with technology, right?

Yeah, no it is. I mean, just, just out of, mean, you know, I was like the other day, I wanted to go back and look at all my clients and see, okay, who haven’t I spoken to or email for a while. And I said, go through my, go through my, my CRM for former clients, you know, figure out what the last we talked about draft an email for me and so on. Right.

That would have taken me hours to go through that and it would just process through and say, you know, Joe, you talked about blah, blah, blah. And it’s been a year. It’s like, okay, let’s email Joe and stuff like that. mean, things like that, which would be really time consuming for a human to do. It’s like, wow, this is amazing. Right. So there’s so many really cool things to do it, but you know, you know, I’m doing the same thing. I’m going from chat, GPT to cloud, because I feel like it has some functionalities that I like better, but you know, it could be replaced in two months. Who knows? Right.

Exactly. Well, Jens, it’s been an awesome conversation. If someone listening wants a quick win today, what’s one action they can take this afternoon that actually creates momentum for them in their business?

I would make a phone call or a text to somebody that can help grow your business to the next level.

Powerful. Get that leverage. And Jens, if someone wants to connect with you and go deeper on the topics we’ve discussed today, where should they start?

Just at my personal website, so it’s my first name J E N S and last name Nielsen N I E L S E N dot U S Jens Nielsen dot U S. There’s a, phone number on my email is on there. My link to book a call is on there. So that’s the best place to start.

Awesome. And to our audience, I think what really stands out from this conversation is the shift that Yen’s made going from chasing stability to actually designing a life with more control, more intention and real impact. And you can hear how that plays out, not just in investing, but in how leaders think and operate day to day. And because at the end of the day, most people don’t struggle with knowing what to do. It’s the follow through, it’s the execution. And that’s where things quietly break down. And that’s exactly where having the right support matters.

At Workergenics, our full-time ultimate executive assistants step in behind the scenes to keep things moving so you’re not the one holding everything together. If that’s something you’re feeling right now, you can check out workergenics.com and appreciate everyone listening today. We’ll see you all on the next one.

The post Scaling Revenue Doesn’t Scale Your Time (Here’s Why) first appeared on Workergenix.

At a certain stage, growth stops feeling like progress.

Revenue increases. Headcount expands. The business looks stronger from the outside. But internally, decision cycles slow down, follow-ups lag, and execution starts to stack up behind the owner.

Everything still routes through one person.

This is where most founder-led businesses begin to feel heavier instead of more efficient. Not because the business lacks opportunity, but because the operating model has not evolved with the scale.

The Hidden Constraint

The constraint is not capital. It is not market demand. And in most cases, it is not even talent.

The constraint is control.

More specifically, the owner remains the central decision engine. Authority is partially delegated, but accountability is not fully transferred. Systems exist, but they are not trusted. Processes are understood, but not externalized.

From the outside, it looks like a growing company. From the inside, it is still a centralized operation.

This creates three compounding risks:

• Execution bottlenecks that slow decision-making
• Operational drag from repeated approvals and rework
• Valuation compression due to owner dependency

As discussed in the panel, many owners believe they have delegated. In reality, the team is still waiting for signals, approvals, or direction before moving forward. That gap between perceived delegation and actual authority transfer is where leverage breaks.

The Operating Shift

The core operating principle is simple:

A business becomes transferable when decisions move without the owner.

This is not about stepping away entirely. It is about designing execution systems where ownership is clear, decisions are distributed, and outcomes do not depend on the founder’s presence.

Exit readiness is not a transaction milestone. It is an operating condition.

Leaders who understand this early begin to build differently. They focus less on output and more on how decisions move through the organization.

This is where operational leverage actually begins.

Execution in Practice

1. Authority Without Decision Rights Is Not Delegation

One of the most consistent patterns discussed was the illusion of delegation.

Owners assign responsibilities, but retain final decision control. Teams execute tasks, but hesitate to move independently. Meetings become performative, where participants look for cues from the owner before committing.

This creates a hidden approval loop.

The correction is not more communication. It is clearer decision ownership.

• Who owns the outcome
• Who makes the decision
• What thresholds trigger escalation

Without this clarity, execution systems fail under scale.

2. Systems Replace Memory, Not Judgment

A second constraint is the absence of structured execution systems.

Many businesses rely on institutional knowledge that lives in the owner’s head. Processes exist, but they are undocumented or inconsistently followed. This increases cognitive load and introduces variability into execution.

As highlighted in the discussion, businesses that lack SOPs and repeatable systems are not transferable. Not because they are unprofitable, but because they are unpredictable.

Execution systems serve three purposes:

• Reduce decision fatigue
• Standardize outcomes
• Enable ownership transfer

The goal is not rigidity. It is consistency under pressure.

3. Value Is Defined by the Buyer, Not the Owner

Another key insight is the gap between perceived value and market value.

Owners often evaluate their business based on effort, history, or personal significance. Buyers evaluate based on predictability, scalability, and risk.

This creates a mismatch.

A business that generates income for the owner does not automatically translate into a transferable asset. Value is determined by:

• Stability of revenue
• Independence from the owner
• Clarity of systems and reporting

This is where capital allocation and risk management intersect. A buyer is not purchasing effort. They are acquiring a system that can continue without disruption.

If that system does not exist, value is discounted.

4. Exit Is Not Just a Transaction, It’s a Transition

A less discussed but critical point is what happens after the exit.

Many owners optimize for deal terms without considering post-exit reality. Earnouts, advisory roles, or employment agreements often look attractive financially but introduce constraints operationally and personally.

This becomes a misalignment between financial optimization and personal outcome.

Leaders who approach exit with clarity on what comes next tend to make better decisions earlier. They build businesses that give them options, not obligations.

This is a form of risk management that extends beyond the balance sheet.

Leverage Outcome

Operational leverage is not created by working longer hours or increasing output.

It is created by removing the owner as the bottleneck.

When execution systems are in place, decision-making is distributed, and ownership is clearly defined, the business gains capacity without increasing complexity.

This results in:

• Faster decision cycles
• Reduced operational friction
• Improved capital efficiency
• Higher transferability

Most importantly, it protects leadership bandwidth.

The owner is no longer required to be the center of execution. They can shift focus toward capital allocation, strategic direction, and long-term positioning.

That is where real leverage lives.

Connect With the Panelists

To learn more about the panelists and their work:

Jerome Myers
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeromemyers/

Samir Mokashi
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samir-mokashi-cepa%C2%AE-m-arch-ar-a3825712/

Asa Patterson
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/retirementbankbuilder/

The Immediate Move

If the business still depends on you to move forward, you do not have a scaling problem. You have an execution design problem.

The priority is not adding more people or working harder. It is restructuring how decisions are made and how ownership is transferred.

Clarify decision rights. Build systems that reduce re-decisions. Remove yourself from the approval chain where it is no longer required.

Leadership bandwidth is the limiting resource.

Protect it by building structure, not by increasing effort.

Watch this before you hire your next support role.

Full Podcast Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. This is the Workergenics Executive Edge Live. I’m Harley Green, founder and CEO of Workergenics. And at Workergenics, we help high performing leaders reclaim their time and stay focused on what actually matters, supported by our ultimate executive assistance. Executive Edge Live is one way that we support the broader business community.

bringing together operators and advisors and experts to talk through what is actually working inside growing companies. Today’s conversation is from owner led to exit ready. A lot of businesses grow, but they’re still heavily dependent on the owner.

decisions bottleneck, follow up stall, the business moves, but only when the owner is pushing it. That becomes a real problem, not just for scaling, but for transition, succession, or exit. So today is really about what it takes to build a company that can run without you, grow beyond you, and eventually transfer without friction. And a quick note before we jump in, this session is going to be featured on our podcast, Scale Smart, Grow Fast. So if something resonates with you, you’ll be able to revisit it there. Let’s get into it and meet our

panelists today. We’re going to go around and give everyone a chance to introduce themselves and let’s start with you.

Hey everybody, Jerome Myers. I’m founder of Exit to Excellence. We are a full service exit planning company or exit strategy company that leads with personal planning. So our focus is on helping the founder optimize for post exit fulfillment versus optimizing for their transaction.

Thank you. Sameer.

Thanks. So my main company is the Business Millionaire Club. I recently published a book called The Millionaire Exit. And the whole point of writing the book was I found a lot of the business entrepreneurs I was mentoring did not have a good idea how to grow a business and did not know how to exit the business. So my book origin started as growing the business. And then by the time it finished, was focusing on exiting the business. I helping multiple businesses right now in different stages.

Some are taking to the acquisition right now, some are already early on, and it’s a very, very exciting part of my life right now.

Very nice, thank you. And Asa, that, make sure you’re pronouncing, I’m pronouncing your name correctly. Asa, very good.

Long A, Asa, thank you. Yes, I’m the founder CEO of the retirement bank method, and we focus on helping baby boomer business owners turn their business into a retirement bank. My background is in the financial industry, private wealth management. And we just see that a lot of baby boomer business owners. That’s why I’m so excited about the show. Harley just don’t have the systems and tools in place to exit. And there are other ways to exit a business besides selling.

So we help people through the retirement bank method build a retirement bank.

Thank you all for introducing yourselves. Let’s just go ahead and open this up to the group here. The first question I have for everyone is a lot of owners say, I’ll figure out exit later. What usually happens when they take that approach?

Yes.

I can take that question. think most commonly somebody who says I’ll figure out exit later, they don’t even know what exit means to them and how to exit. And they immediately assume that, I’ve built a business, I’m making money, so it’s valuable. People will offer money for it right away and I’ll have a lineup of that. So that’s the first thing that just like starting a business, exiting the business takes time, effort and planning.

That’s also man sitting based on my experience. A lot of times that answer comes from not really understanding the question. What I’ve learned is to slow down and just ask a lot more questions to help them understand what exit the business could mean, what that could look like. And sometimes we have to come back later and then engage with them and ask that question where they can answer it after some thought. They’ve I found that they’ve had a lot of thought processes about it, but really aren’t clear on what it means.

So it’s just amazing how what we found slowing down helps them speed up a little bit.

From my perspective, people who think about exit later set themselves up for a business that’s going to be less valuable. And if they do successfully exit, they are going to be disappointed with what happens on the backside of that transfer from business owner to exative owner.

Most people think the transaction, we call it a transaction illusion, they think that the transaction solves a bunch of problems. And while it may deliver some financial relief, it creates all types of other problems that money can’t solve.

Thank you guys. Great intro here. A lot of good things to think about. Now, moving a little bit to a trade-off question for everybody. What is one decision you see owners delay that you know would move them closer to being exit-ready?

One of the things I see consistently is I work with a lot of small to mid-sized businesses and they consistently are very owner centric businesses. They think they have delegated, but they don’t really delegate authority of making decisions. Everybody’s still waiting for the owner to make the final decision. They’re looking for visual cues in the meeting to see the owner is nodding, things like that. And that reduces the value of the company to the potential buyer.

So getting the owners ready to really hand over authority and trusting the people they have around them and coaching the people around them to really grow to take on leadership is the one blind spot I see over and over again.

Hey, Harley, could you repeat the question for me?

Yeah, absolutely. So we’re asking about delaying. what is the decision that you see owners delay that you know would move them closer to being exit ready?

For me, it’s letting the team, letting the staff know that they’re ready to exit. So many business owners in my experience attempt to sell their business or exit of their business and they don’t want anyone to know. It’s like, shh, don’t tell anyone. Well, you have to let everyone in the business know, your entire staff has to know for multiple reasons. But the main thing is, do they want to stay? Right? And are they open to working with a new owner or

do they possibly wanna buy it? So not having that question, delaying, being open and honest with that question really hurts them and hurts the entire process from being able to move forward very smoothly.

My perspective is knowing what they want to do next. I find that owners who have no idea of what they’re exiting to spend more time holding on or clinging to the business that they’re exiting from.

And if there’s something they’re excited about working on and they’re interested in, they’re more interested in that than the business they already have, they tend to not sabotage the exit. And they’re openly looking for ways to make themselves irrelevant in the business that they’re currently in.

I like to talk to Jerome, postpartum is very serious when it comes to women who had children, but it’s just as serious when it comes to business owners. This is their identity, this is their life, and that is a big challenge as well. The identity crisis that they go through as a result of the idea of moving away. I’ve talked to lot of owners that…

One owner told me that there’s a funeral company in this city is very popular. He named the company and he says, they know when they get the call on me, either to pick me up at home or pick me up here in the business. Right. So that is their identity. Right. So that’s the biggest challenge we face as well. Just not knowing that there is a life outside of what you’ve been doing for so long. They’ve convinced themselves in my opinion that they don’t want to have a life outside the business.

not worth it.

Hmm.

I’d love to take it a step deeper on this topic here and maybe from your guys’ experience, what are some practical tips that you share with people you work with to help them prepare for that? Like give them ideas of what life could be like without the business, get some inspiration. If they are in that situation where they just don’t know what they would do afterwards, then they might be self-sabotaging.

Right, right. For me, it is a longer process. Let’s say a home, a business owner calls a broker. They may have been thinking about selling their business for three, four or five years and the broker is just getting involved. So I like to have a lot of touch points and a lot of dreaming conversations to help them.

you

step outside of themselves. One of my main things I’ll say, Hey, Harley, if you had a magic wand and this magic wand can control your next two to three years, what would you, what would you do? And, that helps open them up a little bit, but I do a lot of hypothetical dreaming and forward pacing with them to help them begin to see what possibilities are.

you

I work with a lot of professional businesses. So many of them come with an idea that this is what they want to do, but it is not a fully baked idea. And their presumption, oftentimes is, okay, I will sell the business today and from tomorrow, my next career will start. And when you started the business, you were in the career building a credibility until you got to that point.

Right. So, so how are you going to do that? the, so, so connecting the dots and thinking about how to strategize, how to evolve, you need to establish your, your community before you exit. You need to let people know that this is what you’re going to do before you exit in order to, and even after exit, there is such a draining emotional drain after the exit. People don’t account for that. There’s a lot of emotional things that happen right after the exit. There’s a, there’s a gap that you feel you can’t just fill it with something else.

that you said, I’m just going to volunteer and do it. Yes, eventually, yes. But right after exit, there is a lot of emotional ups and downs, challenges, even going through the exit, just like any project. When you come to the end of the project, you have regrets like, but they charged me so much. this is so much taxes. I didn’t think we had to pay all of this planning when you do it at the last minute and you’re hurrying around trying to get to an end and then send me a beginning has to happen. It is.

very hard. And that’s the part that we help prepare. And a lot of times when I went through, I exited my business as well and did very well, but realized that the broker is there just for the transaction. Who’s there for the owner? And that’s where I come in is that’s where was my passion is I want to help other owners understand the process, get the rewards of all the hard work they’re putting in and get it because nobody tells you how to do it well.

It was says, you’re you’re an entrepreneur. You must be a millionaire. Very few actually end up becoming millionaire or managing money enough to stay millionaires. Right. So so those kind of things about how to be successful and how to be well off is is is two different things. And making that connection, helping the emotional, financial and just the intellectual need to be satisfied is a complex process. And I share a Jerome and Issa about

hits different aspects of them. This is what I come in to do, but I often rely on people like Jerome and Esa to help them post it. I stay in the more in the transaction phase, preparing them, I finding the right partners for them to identify and work with them and get a team around them as they move on. You can remain a loner, right? So you need a team as you go past it. And who is that team? What is the right team for you? Those kinds of things is what I work with quite a bit.

Since I’m the last one to go, Harley, I’m going to adjust the question just a little bit. And I’m going to answer the question of what will we encourage them, like the frame for them to look through as they’re figuring out what post-exit life looks like. I think a whole lot of people can understand this concept of it’s hard to read a label if you’re inside the jar.

And that’s exactly where the founder is. They’re inside the jar and they’re trying to figure out like, what else can these skills, relationships, abilities that I have be used for? How can I be used for or helpful? And for the people who are like, pick me up at my desk. They’ve decided that that’s all that they’re useful for. And so from our perspective, it’s probably self-serving because we’ve built a process around it. We encourage people to go through a guided.

phase of understanding themselves again. It includes assessments, includes interviews, and they end up with what we call the freedom compass, where it orients them for what life looks like post-sex, and not just how are you going to spend the day, because most people don’t know how they’re going to do that, but how do you actually show up in the world? How do you introduce yourself? Are you going to introduce yourself as the person that

exited ex company, well, you’re just like hanging on to the wreckage of the ship that crashed against the island when you exited. So like, who are you actually and what relationships are most important? And how do you actually spend that 406080 hours a week that you were working like, those are questions that show up as experience. And

You can’t fully understand the gravity of it until you exit. But if you do some planning prior to, you’re not trying to make those decisions and figure those things out in what we call the descent window.

And this is where you’ve got more resources than you’ve ever had, but you’ve got limited capacity because you’re fatigued from the journey of exiting. And we find people make really poor decisions in that window. And so we believe in planning before you actually summit so that when you’re coming down, you have an idea of what to expect. And then if you don’t like it, you can adjust off of that. But trying to figure it out with no plan, I think, is a recipe for disaster.

sure these are some great points here and Asa I wanted to ask you we talked about you know what people are preparing for in advance but what are some signals or what are the clearest signs that you see when you’re working with someone that they still just have a job with overhead versus a business as a like saleable asset?

Right. Going into the business, we have an assessment when we go in and they answer that when we’re coming in. But the main thing is who’s in charge of the process, who’s in charge of the customer, who’s in charge of billing. And those main things, those three points right there really help us understand exactly where they are. We’ve had a gentleman who opens his business and closes his business, and he’s been doing that for 40 years. And what we’ve found is that

So many entrepreneurs and business owners of multiple millions of annual revenue have drank the Kool-Aid. When I say that, mean, they have bought into the idea that you leave, become an entrepreneur, you’re a individualist, and you do this on your own. Jerome said it. It’s a team sport.

Right. And you have to surround yourself with people that are going to do the processes and do the things that you want. But the main thing we see is that they don’t have any SOPs, no systems in place, no oversight, no checks and balances. I’m a retired Marine captain. And over the years, I’ve learned to go into the business with less of a military stature. But the checks still are there. You you have to understand.

the entire process and most business owners do understand the processes, but it’s all in their head. The Marine Corps has SOPs for SOPs and SOP to understand the standard operating procedure. And it’s like that because if we have to go into a combat situation, those SOPs are there so that they become second nature.

so that it becomes a muscle memory when you go into the situation in a combat situation. So I take that same kind of idea into the business environment and really help the business owners start seeing the trees instead of being in the forest.

But we really focus on helping them understand the system and the need for the system and began walking that in place. I’m so grateful for AI and how it’s advanced. It’s really helped my process working with business owners, develop those SOPs and put them in place in a much simpler fashion where they’re not as frustrated because the process prior to AI was a long, arduous process. Yeah.

I work with businesses that are not kind of standard businesses that most brokers go after. I find those unique businesses. And those businesses are the ones that often have a challenging situation. And one is understanding the business, but two is understanding value to somebody else and helping the business owner understand what is it that you have that is valuable to somebody else.

Right.

See, that’s the challenge that they often do. This is they see their value from their eyes, but not from somebody else’s value. So oftentimes, there’s a business I’m working with, but I’m looking at it, there is no value to sell a business to somebody else. But if somebody is interested in the regular income, and they have a systematic approach, they can make a regular income for not a very big involvement or effort.

helping that client. For most clients, I’m saying, okay, you find the next team you can hand over to. In this client, I’m not helping them find the next owner, next person to buy it or run it. I’m asking them to make it a definitive systematic approach that you do X, you do Y, you do Z, and then you get this revenue per month. And then the book of clients that you have potentially becomes the value based on demonstrated consistent income.

Yeah, you’re not going to make a lot of money. And these are people who are not wanting to take a lot of risk, but they still put an effort and they can get value back out of it. So understanding from each business’s perspective, what the value to bring. Some businesses are valuable because they were valuable 20 years ago, but the time has changed. So what do you bring? And sometimes you have to sit down and give them the hard truth that your business is not valuable 10 years from today. So what you have today.

If you wait for 10 years, would be less. So you might want to change your business or sell your business or something else. So that’s the hard discussions that I come with clients just because of my background, understanding what it took to build a business, understanding what it took to build a sustainable business and what it took to build a business that is valuable to somebody else. So all these different aspects are important part of getting the owner ready to understand what is it that they have. It’s like…

When you do investments, if you just put in the bank, you get this. If you put in the mutual funds, you get this. If you invest in stock, you get this. But there is different risks, right? There’s different amount of effort you put into this. And what do you get as a guarantee at the end of two years, three years is different depending on what is it that you have and what is it somebody else wants. So that whole perspective of framing the value becomes important.

great points.

Yeah, I find most people that help with transactions see it as a marketing problem and understanding the market conditions. I watch some founders who believe that there’s going to be a line wrapped around the door for people that are interested in their business. And the fact of the matter is only two out of eight that get listed get sold successfully.

And so this expectation that there’s going to be a lot of people that are interested in a business if it’s not properly set up for exit is a notion that is inaccurate at best. And then the other thing that shows up that is a big challenge for me is people think that they get the exit on their timeline. It’s like, I’m an exit in five years or 10 or three. But the reality is like,

75 % of businesses, business exits are from death, disease, divorce, or burnout. And so if one of those four things happen, it probably wasn’t by their choice and it was probably unplanned.

And so as a general rule, having an exit ready business is just a good business strategy and not something that you should plan multiple years or say you shouldn’t worry about because it’s multiple years away because it could be unfortunately tomorrow.

Yeah.

That’s a really good point. And Asa, I appreciate how you brought up the SOPs. That’s something at Workergenics we’re just like really huge on making sure all of our EAs that get placed with clients are trained on making really crystal clear and repeatable SOPs so that they can come in and help take that burden off their clients. Because that’s one thing that most founders just really do not want to do is document what they’ve been doing. And so I always recommend people just, hey, the next time you’re doing that thing that you don’t want to do anymore, record yourself doing it.

Right.

say you can do it with so many AI tools now and then let that EA come in, watch the video and leverage AI tools to make a beautiful SOP and then they can handle it for you. So appreciate you bringing that point up. The next question I want to jump to is getting into that topic of value and money. Obviously that’s a big part of the discussion when people are selling their business. Where do you see owners leaving the most money on the table when it’s time to exit?

Hmm.

Very interesting question.

a couple areas, improper tax planning, know, taxes takes a big hit and the thought process that they weren’t going to be taxed as heavily as they were, right? So there’s so many ways of exiting the business and structuring it precisely for maximizing the code to the benefit of the seller. And I think a lot of owners,

miss that due to the time crunch of wanting to sell it and just the exhaustion of what it takes to get brought up to speed on understanding that process. know, so many business owners are just in their business, but it’s so much more to being successful at what they do. So that’s one of the main challenges that I see is just helping them understand, hey, please understand these things so that they can understand how to minimize their taxes. The other thing is,

What caused them to leave so much money on the table, in my opinion, is not having the advisors around them to help them understand what we’re doing for them. That’s just really painful in my experience is, you know, we know how to help them get from where they are to where they say they want to be, but they have to understand it and be willing, a willing participant in it. And so I’ve been, if anyone can bring up something on helping us understand how to help this seller.

have some advisors around them so that they can understand the process more, that would be great because that would help tremendously minimize the amount of money that they’re leaving on the table.

I think I would go do the same thing. I was just going through my mind. There’s so many different places that you leave money on the table. And I think the biggest mistake is not having the right advisor. And even when we were, I was a consultant and I would hire good consultants, not just the cheapest consultant. And I said a good consultant, it’s worth their money, their weight in gold, right? So a good consultant can make a big difference. And I’ll give you examples. I was thinking that

.

you have to find the buyer who has money and who thinks the business is valuable to get the right value. So and any buyer coming in is going to not offer you full price. And if you don’t know how to negotiate, you’re not going to get there. Even before you get to the point, if you don’t know how to present the value that you have in your business to the buyer, the buyer is not going to see it as clearly. So they’re going to make their decision. So there’s so many things a consultant does that is not

something an owner understands or appreciates and leaves millions on the table. So there’s even saving money in the transactions as Asa pointed out in taxes, setting it up for your children, for their taxes down the road, right? So all kinds of things are part of them leaving money on the table and somebody who knows of how all connect all the dots together and may not be an expert in all areas, but knows how to connect all the dots and has the right experts around them to connect the dots.

It is way more complex than owner thinks it is. They just think you go to the bank and you cash the check. It is not like that at all.

My thoughts on money on the table. When yeah, I’ll just go with what I initially thought. We don’t focus on money that’s left on the table because we’re not optimizing for that. We’re optimizing for post-access fulfillment. And so I watch founders over and over say, I’m a do an earn out because it’s going to give me 20 % more money.

And they agree to do something for two to five years. And six months into that agreement, they realized that they hate the company that they’re working for. They don’t like what the company is doing with the company that they sold to them. And being an employee and getting time off approved and expense reports done is not something that they ever thought that they would be doing after 30 years of running their own company.

So our conversation is very much about what do you want life to be like after you exit and making the decisions on the front end that don’t encumber that. That to me is so much more important than an extra 20 % on an earn out, because you obligate yourself to do things that you don’t want to do.

If done well, right, if you have an eight figure exit and you truly become work optional, I think the money becomes very irrelevant at that point. if you get extra two million on 10, I’m not sure that it changes what you do in your life.

some great observations and points. love the perspective, you know, all different angles here of the, not just the capital that we’re dealing with, it’s the individuals and what their values are and what they want to do with their time. Now, kind of a forward looking question here is a company is growing, let’s say, going from like a $5 million to a $20 million and beyond company. What are some changes that they need to look at to become non-negotiable as they’re planning to step away, if anything?

I would say systems, biggest changes systems, getting the right people to manage, to define the systems, getting the right people, right leaders who can know how to manage a distance. A of businesses grow and their key leaders are based on loyalty, not competence. so, so getting, and at that stage, when you’re going to a 20 million business, it has to run like a corporation and entrepreneurs struggle with that aspect.

Most entrepreneurs think that as you get bigger, you have to get more efficient. And that is actually not true. As you get bigger, you become inefficient, but you have more credibility, you have more money, you more resources, and that results in more profit and more other things. But you’re not actually running a lean operation. Your overhead starts growing up. And so that’s the aspect that most people don’t understand. Either because the overheads are fuzzy, you don’t realize they’re overheads, and you just

put it in a different bucket. But as you get bigger, you need more tools, you need more resources, you have more regulations, all of that adds up. So getting a grasp on that and getting a good CEO who can run the ship without that owner mindset. The owner mindset is a strength in the beginning and can become a liability for a lot of owners in the middle market. And so making that transition to a

a manager who’s an operational manager running the systems well, even though they are not kind of fine tuned like the owner does, but creates stability, creates repeatability. Those are the things that are unique to a business that add value and help them continue to grow without the owner trying to do everything. And so those are kind of the challenge, creating the systems that are reliable systems that work with the culture of the business, the nature of the market and getting it done right.

Okay.

I agree with Samir. It seems as if it’s going from five to 20 million. They already have all those things in place and just continue to maintain the structure that they’re working with. But it’s just important to, again, create those systems, have those tools in place and, you know, have a idea in your mind of you’re developing a franchise within your own business.

So as you asked that question and Samir was answering, I was just thinking just keep doing what you’re doing and making sure you don’t you change with what the market is doing because if you’re scaling that rapidly, you already have a lot of the systems and tools and mindsets in place and people have properly had it in their correct divisions.

It’s funny that I’m answering this question this way based on my last answer. The financial reporting becomes so important on the backside. many people have a lot of personal expenses flowing through the business and it’s really interesting when people start looking around how

Yes.

much they start to question other things when they see things in the P &L that they don’t believe should be there. And so this is probably included in systems, but the financial reporting and making sure that those reports are really clean is so important from a credibility standpoint and value transferability.

Thank

Well, these have been some great insights and very practical tips that you guys have all shared today. As we’re wrapping up here, if someone wants to reach out to you or continue the conversation, what’s the best way for them to connect you with you? Feel free to share your website or LinkedIn or wherever you prefer they connect. Asa, we’ll start with you.

Okay, so our website is yourretirementbankmethod.com as well as I’m on LinkedIn, it’s just Asa E. Patterson. They can find me there. Correction, it’s yourretirementbank. So that’s our focus since we want people to think about retirement.

and how their retirement, how can they continue to get deposits and withdrawals? So you’re a retirement bank and also Asa E. Patterson on LinkedIn.

Very nice, thank you, and Samir.

So our website is Business Millionaire Club or the Millionaire Exit book also connects you to this. And I would advise people to buy the book, The Millionaire Exit as a very good prelude to really understanding what is it that they’re wanting to do. Go to Business Millionaire Club or they can reach me directly at samir.mokashi at outlook.com.

Thank you, Samir and Jerome.

Yeah, for us, we’d love to have people take our exit readiness assessment because I think it’s good for you wherever you are in business, just so you can see what opportunities you have available. If they go to exit to excellence dot com for slash ERA, you can get opportunity to take that for free and get a report. They don’t ever have to talk to a person if they don’t want to, but they’ll have very clear understanding of where they stand as it relates to exit readiness.

Awesome, and huge thank you to all of our panelists. We really appreciate you showing up today. This was a strong conversation. And if there’s one thing to take away, becoming exit ready isn’t something you just wait for at the end. It shows up in how you run the business today. Who owns what, how decisions move, and what happens when you step away. And if you want help putting this into practice, we created the Executive Efficiency Blueprint to help you turn conversations like this into cleaner execution and better use of your time. You can get it at our website, workergenics.com.

Thanks again for joining us today. We’ll see you all next time on the next Executive Edge Live and on the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. Thank you all for listening.

Thanks, take care.

The post Transferability Decides Your Exit Price first appeared on Workergenix.

Your Lead Problem Isn’t What You Think It Is

Most operators don’t lose deals because of weak demand. They lose them because execution breaks between signal and follow-through. The pipeline looks full. The calendar is busy. But outcomes lag behind activity.

At a certain level, growth doesn’t fail from lack of opportunity. It fails from operational drag, fragmented decision-making, and systems that don’t hold under pressure. The cost isn’t just missed revenue. It’s leadership bandwidth getting consumed by things that should already be solved.

Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The Hidden Constraint

The default assumption in most organizations is that more input solves the problem. More traffic. More leads. More campaigns.

But as discussed in the conversation with Anthony Blatner, the issue isn’t volume. It’s alignment between inputs and qualified outcomes.

When cheaper channels generate higher activity but lower-quality leads, teams end up spending time filtering instead of converting. Sales cycles extend. Decision speed slows. Leadership gets pulled into diagnosing problems that originate from poor upstream filtering.

This creates a hidden tax on execution.

You see it in teams that are “busy” but not advancing. In dashboards that look healthy at the top of the funnel but collapse deeper in the pipeline. In repeated conversations about improving conversion without addressing the quality of what’s entering the system.

The constraint is not effort. It’s the absence of a decision-making framework that prioritizes qualified outcomes over surface-level efficiency.

The Operating Shift

The shift is from optimizing for activity to optimizing for qualified progression.

This is where operational leverage actually begins.

Instead of asking “How do we get more leads?” the better question becomes:

What is the cost per qualified opportunity, and how consistently can we produce it?

This reframing changes how capital is allocated. It also changes how teams operate.

Rather than chasing low-cost clicks, operators start aligning marketing, sales, and data systems around a single standard: does this input produce forward movement in the pipeline?

This is a discipline shift. It requires tighter feedback loops, better instrumentation, and clearer ownership across stages.

It also requires accepting that higher upfront costs can produce lower total cost when execution is aligned.

That’s not a marketing decision. That’s capital allocation.

Execution in Practice

There are a few execution patterns from the conversation that highlight how this shift actually works inside an operating business.

1. Full-Funnel Visibility Over Front-End Metrics

One of the most common breakdowns is over-indexing on early-stage performance. Campaigns that generate low-cost leads get scaled quickly, even if those leads never convert.

The correction is straightforward but often ignored: track progression beyond the initial conversion.

This means tying marketing inputs directly to CRM stages. Not just leads, but qualified leads, opportunities, and closed outcomes.

When this visibility is in place, scaling decisions become clearer. Campaigns are no longer judged by volume, but by their contribution to pipeline movement.

This reduces noise and prevents teams from chasing false positives.

2. Lead Qualification as a System, Not a Judgment Call

Another key execution layer is the introduction of structured lead grading.

Instead of relying on intuition, teams implement a simple qualification step immediately after lead capture. A binary or tiered system that answers: is this the right type of opportunity or not?

This does two things.

First, it creates a feedback loop that improves targeting and messaging.

Second, it protects leadership bandwidth by preventing misaligned opportunities from moving deeper into the pipeline.

Without this, teams end up spending time evaluating deals that should have been filtered out earlier.

3. Content and Distribution as a System, Not an Event

The conversation also highlights a critical distinction in how content is used.

Most teams treat content as isolated output. A post, a campaign, a one-time push.

The more effective model is to treat it as part of a structured funnel.

Cold content introduces ideas and establishes relevance. Retargeting reinforces positioning. Offer-driven content converts.

Each layer builds on the previous one.

This reduces randomness and creates consistency in how prospects move through the system. It also reduces the need for constant reinvention, which is one of the biggest drains on execution capacity.

4. Delegation as Risk Control, Not Just Time Savings

A less obvious but critical insight is how delegation is used.

In many cases, leaders avoid delegating certain activities because they view them as low leverage or difficult to standardize.

But in environments like LinkedIn, where consistency and manual interaction matter, delegation becomes a form of risk management.

Automating incorrectly can lead to platform penalties or reputational damage.

Delegating to trained support, such as virtual executive assistants, allows execution to continue without exposing the organization to unnecessary risk.

This is not about offloading work. It’s about maintaining system integrity while protecting leadership focus.

Leverage Outcome

When these elements are in place, the outcome is not just better marketing performance. It’s operational clarity.

Teams know which inputs drive results.

Decisions are based on progression, not activity.

Execution becomes more predictable.

Most importantly, leadership bandwidth is preserved.

Instead of reacting to breakdowns, leaders operate from a position of control. They can focus on higher-order decisions like strategy, capital allocation, and team development.

This is what operational leverage actually looks like in practice.

Not doing more. Doing fewer things with higher precision and better alignment.

Connect With the Guest

To learn more about Anthony Blatner and their work:
Website: https://speedworksocial.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyblatner/

The Immediate Move

If the pipeline feels inconsistent or heavier than it should, the issue is not volume. It’s structure.

Audit where opportunities break between initial interest and qualified progression.

Implement a clear qualification step. Align metrics across the full funnel. Remove any activity that does not directly contribute to forward movement.

Leadership bandwidth is not lost in strategy. It’s lost in re-decisions, misaligned inputs, and systems that don’t hold.

Fix the structure, and capacity expands without adding hours.

Full Transcript

Most leaders don’t have a pipeline problem. They have a follow-up and focus problem. Today, we’re joined by Anthony Blattner, founder of SpeedWorks Social and host of LinkedIn Ads Radio. He’s helped SaaS companies turn LinkedIn into predictable pipeline engine without adding more chaos to their day. Anthony, welcome to Scale Smart, Grow Fast. I’d for you to share a little bit more about your background and what led you to SpeedWorks Social.

Yeah. Hey Harley, thanks for having me. So a little bit about my background. I come into the marketing world from, from the tech world. I started my career early on doing software development and started my first business doing mobile app development. So I originally I worked for IBM for a few years, and then I started my own business building mobile apps for other people. This was like the very early days of the iPhone and it was.

It was a great, great space to be in at the time. And then, you know, after a while of building a lot of mobile apps, people started asking for help of, can you help us get some more downloads, get some more users and get people to sign up for it. So that was kind of the natural transition into getting into the marketing world. And, know, back in the day, it was try a little bit of everything, Google ads, Facebook ads, you know, all across the board, SEO and LinkedIn. And then.

because we were working with largely like tech companies and startups and stuff like that. We often found that LinkedIn was the best performing channel for all those types of companies. So this marketing agency we’ve had for about 10 years now, which seems like a long time and maybe.

Maybe like seven of those 10 years we’ve just decided just to focus on LinkedIn because seven years ago there was not many people doing LinkedIn. It was working very well for these types of tech companies. Obviously nowadays there’s a lot more people on LinkedIn which is great for both sides. But that’s how we got our start into getting into LinkedIn marketing and have just focused on LinkedIn ever since.

was actually at lunch today with someone who used to work in the SaaS space and were kind of lamenting about going to SaaS masterminds and these guys would be like great tech minds, but really struggled to get these products that they have and these great technology and engineering ideas out to the masses because they were not marketing people and didn’t have a clue what they were doing. So love that you’re here, maybe can shed some light for people like that today. I’m curious if you could take us back to that moment where you realized that LinkedIn

could be more than just another channel and what kind of distinguishes it from the other platforms out there that benefits people for getting their product out there.

For sure. So I do, I always remember this one project that I worked on like very early on. It was for a data analytics company that was basically selling dashboarding software to mid-market and bigger companies. Like it would, it had a lot of data security, data privacy and stuff like that type of tools built in. So it was meant for like bigger companies.

in, those, when we first started, we started by running everything for them. So we did Google ads, we did meta ads, and we did LinkedIn ads and you know, Google ads, you would get a lot of people searching for data analytics or research and stuff like that. But found that often like those types of people were maybe students looking for research that might use at school or maybe some research that they were doing, on meta. You know, a of people were downloading some different

Offers are signing up for things just because they thought it was an interesting free offer or like it was a flashy PDF or something. But when you go to look at those leads, pretty much none of them fit like the

criteria that the company was looking for. then comparing that to LinkedIn, where pretty much every lead that came through was like a good fit. So when you look at those metrics side by side, it was very clear that LinkedIn was the winner there. And we ended up pushing most of the budget to LinkedIn. So I always remember that project because it was just like super clear of the cost per qualified lead comparing these different channels. And, you know,

That was the one that always sticks out of my mind. And ever since then it’s been like, okay, LinkedIn is the place for B2B. If you’re, if you’re selling B2B to a niche professional, that’s where LinkedIn really stands out. You know, if you’re going to go sell to every business owner, know, maybe you have credit card processing software, maybe Meta is a better channel for that. So whenever you have a big broad audience, Meta might be a better channel for that. But yeah, I always think about that project.

And then that’s not to say that these other channels don’t have any place in B2B. Like there’s definitely some use for Google ads and meta ads in B2B marketing, but used the right way so that you’re targeting the right people and not just kind of driving a lot of cold traffic that isn’t going to be a good fit for

I how you broke that down. Now, some people may have heard or when they’re doing online research about getting into advertising that LinkedIn ads or LinkedIn marketing tends to be on the pricier side for the cost per click or impression or those different metrics. What would you say to someone who is seeing this and being like, well, it’s cheaper to go on Meta or these other platforms?

Yeah, really at the end of the day, have to look at your cost per qualified lead that you’re getting. And when, you know, when you look at Meta versus LinkedIn, Meta is almost always going to look cheaper. But if you’re getting, you know, 50 cent clicks, but none of them are the right people, then it doesn’t matter. So at end of the day, you have to look at cost per qualified lead that’s coming through and then kind of understand your metrics in that way.

You if you run Google display ads or meta ads, those are always going to look cheaper than LinkedIn. So you just got to make sure that you’re, you’re measuring the traffic and the results that you’re getting from that traffic. and then comparing them that way. So those are, those are some thoughts on that. but also I’ll say the, you know, the newer thing in LinkedIn these days is what’s called thought leader ads. it sounds fancy, but really just boosting posts from people. and the advantages.

person will always get higher engagement rates than a company. So we see much better performance from running these thoughtlier ads and with them, the engagement rates are so much higher that we can achieve much lower costs in a manner that’s competitive with the cost you’re going to see on Meta. So we can now get pretty competitive with Meta’s metrics and we know our traffic is all the right people that we’re going to.

And so actually it might be more cost effective because you’re getting the right people and not wasting money on leads that are taking maybe your sales team’s time and they’re just not the right people. That makes a lot of sense. I’d love to hear if you could maybe take us back and talk through one of your biggest mistakes that you made when you were first starting to scale these LinkedIn campaigns and what did it teach you about trusting your data and your team?

That’s a good question. What’s one of the biggest mistakes? I think working in the ads platform, you know, it can be too easy sometimes to see, this campaign is driving a really good cost per lead and a lot of leads. Let’s go crank that one up. But you need to then go look at what is, how are those leads moving after?

that initial conversion point because sometimes it can be very easy to drive a lot of leads for something, but maybe those people don’t have the right type of intent or the thing that they’re downloading maybe is a little bit misaligned with your main core offer. So very often in B2B marketing, the lead magnet strategy can be an effective one to use for a lot of industries. It can be when you need to generate new demand or if someone’s not

actively searching for you. Like if it’s a new category or a new product, then it’s hard to go straight to like get a demo or contact us because people need to learn something first. So that’s when switching to like a lead magnet strategy can be a more effective version of that, where you’re to offer some kind of downloadable guide checklist, webinar, stuff like that can all be effective. So sometimes

when you’re split testing different content items, you might find one is getting a lot more downloads, but you need to then look at what’s the conversion to call and to call into opportunity after that for those leads coming through and not just look at that pure front end cost per lead because that’s a mistake that yes, I have made in the past is you’ve you’ll over, you know, over index on, we’re getting a lot of leads here. Let’s crank that campaign up. But you really need to look at the full.

funnel as to like how those leads are moving afterwards. So if you’re using any kind of CRM, that makes this a lot easier. Something that we do for all clients is a lead grading step where as the lead comes in, we have them or their salesperson grade the lead for just a very quick initial, know, is this the right person or no, to give us, you know, to let us know like are the right people coming in through this offer and through this audience. If not, then we need to make some adjustments. So we do have that lead grading step.

And then from there, if you’re using any kind of CRM system like HubSpot or Salesforce, all of those have like the qualified lead step and the opportunity step so that you’ll know, okay, yes, this lead did progress to further stages. And those are the things you need to be then watch.

Awesome. Well, it sounds like you really learned some valuable lessons there. Watching the numbers and the metrics and tracking them is so important. I’m curious what your journey has been. Obviously, when you start out, doing everything yourself, leveraging both technology to help with scaling these LinkedIn pipelines as well as delegating, if you can speak to that in your experience.

Yeah. So it is a very exciting time for anything tech or online these days with all the AI stuff. So I’ll get to that a second, but first let’s talk about delegation. So on LinkedIn, there’s a lot of stuff that are…

I’ll say kind of nice to have, you’ll see a lot of people talk about, you should be making connection requests. You should be liking posts. You should be commenting on posts that your average CEO is not going to do. They don’t have time to do that. They’re, they’re focused on what their day to day is. They don’t have time to jump on the link to do this stuff. This is a perfect opportunity to delegate that to somebody. and I’d say that this is not, this is not a great thing for AI yet. Maybe AI will get there, but

You know, everyone has seen the AI comments and the AI posts on LinkedIn and it just looks bad when you see that you, you know, you, you know, it’s AI generated and you gives you a worse feeling about the person that you’re seeing post that again, a CEO is not going to want to be putting that out there and having other people think that of them. So this is a great use case to delegate to somebody, whether it could be a marketing leader on your team or a VA is great for this. So those are some good cases for that.

You know, they can go send those connection requests. They can go like those posts, leave those comments, and then that really starts to generate a lot of activity on LinkedIn. And that is, that does set a really good foundation for everything else that you’re going to do afterwards. So I talk a lot about advertising strategies and including those thought leader ad strategies where you’re boosting posts from people. So the more activity that that profile generates, the more…

the better the foundation that builds for everything else that we’re going to do on top of that. So it is a very, it doesn’t all kind of work together and build on each other. So next let’s talk, we can talk a little bit about the AI stuff. So AI is very, very interesting these days. You know, I think the easiest thing that most people can conceptualize is using it to generate posts, right? Write some posts for me. I do, Hey, recommend go, go do that. A lot of people, the biggest hurdle, like we work with lots of companies and lots of executives.

It is, you’d be surprised sometimes how much of a hurdle it is to get somebody to post on LinkedIn, or it’s like, we just need to get you some posts. Like I’ll write you some posts. You just need to get them out there. and I find, you know, giving them the content is the best, is the best way to get them started. The second best way is to show them their competitors who are posting well on LinkedIn and being like, we’re losing ground if you’re not posting, because you can see that these competitors are generating a lot of activity. so those are the two things that really help you get somebody to post, but from there.

you know, eventually you want them to be generating their own posts or their marketing leader or manager to be doing that. So AI is a great tool for that. One workflow I love is taking your call recordings from your past week and connecting the end. with like MCPs these days where you can add connectors to Claude or chat, GPT, you can say, Hey, go look at all my call recordings from this past week. Take a look at the transcripts and

and suggest some LinkedIn post ideas from like some insights and some LinkedIn post ideas from those call transcripts. And that just gives you a very unique set of posts that you could post on LinkedIn. Otherwise you might be getting some pretty generic kind of boring stuff. Cause I do talk to a lot of people and they’re like, yeah, I try to use AI, but it was kind of boring. It didn’t kind of, know, kind of seem like those, those, those noisy posts that you see all over the feed. And they’re like, I don’t want to do that. Well, if you give it.

more accurate starting content relevant to you, then it’s going to generate stuff from you. So take call recordings. I love that workflow. And use that to generate some posts. And then of course, don’t just click posts on that. Give it a little bit of human love, know, make sure it sounds like you do some editing to it. You know, I like to break it up a little bit. AI can be a little overly formal when it’s writing because as AI it wants, it’s going to output perfect grammar most of the time and stuff like that. Even if it doesn’t sound the way that somebody would actually write it. So take a Passover, edit it, put it your voice. You know, if, if you tend to use emojis, go at them in,

and just make it sound like you. can definitely do some training for the AI. You hey, here’s all my posts that I’ve written so far, or here’s a bunch of my other writing and let it learn based off that. But I find take a Passover and edit it yourself a little bit and just make it sound a little more conversational. So AI is very interesting. Writing content is the easiest thing. And then from there, we’re doing some very interesting things with in the ads platform. Now you can connect Claude to the ads platform. There are MCPs out there to do that.

But through all my testing, like MCPs are a great tool, but they can be limited in the fact that they’re like, like pre pre-configured APIs where someone’s like, okay, you know, here’s, here’s 20 API calls you can make from this MCP. But most APIs are pretty extensive that 20 doesn’t, isn’t fully giving you full access to the API. So I’ve built.

my own API interface to the LinkedIn ads API. And like anybody can do this. It’s very easy to do. you just tell Claude to do it. does it for you. build your own API interface so that you can just communicate directly with the LinkedIn ads API. And then you can start to get to some more interesting things.

you know, the couple of connections I would make is your LinkedIn ads connection, and then maybe your CRM connection, HubSpot, whatever it is. And then you start to pull that data out and tell Claude to analyze your LinkedIn ads performance data versus your HubSpot CRM data and make some connections of, Hey, this campaign is driving you the best leads. Go and those leads are turning into sales opportunities and HubSpot go spend more there.

because blending together the LinkedIn ads data versus your serum data is really where the magic happens. And it can be challenging sometimes to see that because LinkedIn’s got the spend and the clicks, HubSpot has meetings and opportunities, and sometimes you have to manually export those and blend them together to get those stats. But if you can just tell Claude to go do it, that really simplifies the whole process a lot.

Those are just some interesting examples. And then from there, there’s just like, you know, once, once you get something into like an MCP and Claude, then like the options are infinite. So there’s some more advanced stuff that you can do, but I’ll kind of leave it at that for the purpose of this episode.

And one of the themes I’m hearing is like, there’s great opportunity, both on delegation and leveraging technology AI specifically. One thing that stands out is you still have to have a human in the loop, the thought leader, right? Whether it’s you, you know, helping a CEO or a CEO coming in and like kind of following your guidance, there’s got to be that human in the loop to make it effective. You know, you cannot just say, Hey Claude, do all my ads.

it needs to have someone to get it set up right. You’ve got to have that plan. And so I think that’s an important point that you’re making there. One question I had too was, along with some of the opportunities that you shared, like the Thought Leader promotion, leveraging AI with the LinkedIn ads and your CRM, are you finding it important to find ways to have people on LinkedIn or whatever social platform they’re on grow their direct

network, their connections, I think it’s the term in LinkedIn, or like friends for Facebook and Meta, and like what strategies, if that is important to you, suggest people leverage.

Yeah. So your connections are definitely one piece of the pie. It doesn’t end there, but it does kind of start there. So building your network is useful because, you know, a lot of what we do is how do we get more impressions to your content? The first step is just building awareness, getting people to know who you are, what you do, and then you can deliver the CTA. So the bigger your network, the more people are going to organically see your content. So definitely network is one step of the process. And you can…

You can send those connection requests. LinkedIn has tightened those limits a lot. So you can send about a hundred to 125 a week. So do use those? And the best thing to do is in sales navigator, if you have sales navigator, you can filter by people who have viewed your profile. So it’s kind of the warmest, almost retargeting stuff you can do. So, Hey, if someone’s viewed my profile, great, let’s go make sure we connect with them. You’ll have the highest connection rate out of that. You know, maybe you filter that down to like your ICP.

You know, the right job title, the right type of company who has viewed your profile and they connect with those people. And then for any leftover ones, go connect with, with your target audience. so that’s kind just one piece of the puzzle. Other things you can do is the more content you post, you can gain followers out of that in the top right corner will be a little follow button for someone who’s not connected or following you. So the, the better content you post, the more likely someone is to click follow on that button. I find that,

those document carousels tend to be some of the best stuff. Well, those in videos are like the top two because for whatever reason, people find those documents very interesting. Like they often want to save those and send them to somebody else on the team and just tends to get a lot more followers. And then same with video too. You kind of like get the, people kind of really get to know you when you post a video of yourself, maybe talking about your topic.

So those are the best two to build your following and then from there once you have a good top-performing post that’s a good candidate to go boost and then from there you can kind of just you know run the continue running the process that way

And then overall, like the best thing if you’re trying to build followers is those comment to receive type of posts. Some people have had bad experiences with those, but at end of the day, if you’re like offering a good piece of content to people and then you actually give it to them when it comes out, that’s all you got to do. And then, you know, people will be happy. Sometimes you’ll see those people haven’t followed up with everybody, haven’t sent it to everybody, and then they’ll get annoyed and frustrated. But those comment to receive posts are like one of the fastest ways to build your network.

Not everyone’s going to do that, but if you do have interesting pieces of content that you can share, that’s the best way to build your follow-up.

And is the handler for those like comment to receive posts something that can be automated? you found that? Or is it best to like just leverage that virtual assistant again to just monitor those and go ahead and deliver the deliverable at that time.

Yeah. Another good time for delegation. Definitely would delegate that to a VA. You want to be very careful. I do not recommend automation on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is trying very hard to ban and remove any account that uses automation. So LinkedIn’s getting smarter and smarter about it. They’ve recently banned other companies who have done automation on LinkedIn. So you just, you see the trend happening. You know, they’re banning the companies and they’re starting to ban people that do automation. So just.

You know, no, no CEO wants to lose their profile. So at the end of the day, you want to make sure you’re doing it the right way. You’re not going to get yourself banned. Um, so yeah, the recent examples are like Apollo got banned maybe a year ago and then Hey Reach just got banned. And it’s because those platforms were automating actions on LinkedIn. They were scraping data from LinkedIn. LinkedIn doesn’t like that. So they got rid of those platforms and then, you know,

I actually just read an article that anytime you visit LinkedIn, LinkedIn scans your browser for extensions you might be using that might be, that are known to do automations on LinkedIn. So be careful with the browser extensions you’re using and just be careful with the automation that you’re using. Um, you know, I’ve, I’ve heard of a lot of people being fine with doing a little bit of automation, but I’ve also heard of a lot of people getting their profiles restricted or banned or something like that.

I as an advertiser do not recommend automation and if you do, just be very, very careful with whatever you’re doing. The flip side of that is, hey, it’s much easier to go delegate this to a VA. LinkedIn is very aware that most CEOs have an assistant out there, any kind of mid to big size company. Pretty much all those CEOs have an assistant of some sort who’s gonna help them with anything that they’re doing on LinkedIn. So, LinkedIn’s very aware of that.

So the delegation route is the better route to go. Do not automate things on LinkedIn. You know, don’t, you can try your luck, but you might get banned.

So leave the automation and technology more for the backend, the links between the API for the LinkedIn ads and just analyzing the data and helping generate content, sounds like, and put the human in the loop for the actual direct interaction.

Yeah, and it’s interesting you talk about the human loop step. Like I think that is a very important step for anything that you’re going to do AI based. And then the other thing that I think a lot about that I’ve heard about is called the skilled operator.

problem or situation or scenario where at end of the day, whatever you’re using AI for, you still need to know what you’re doing to know if the output’s any good. So whether you’re writing content or analyzing performance data or whatever it is, like analyzing your financials, like the output, the recommendations, you still need to know if it’s good or not. So

You know, I don’t, AI hopefully will be making us more efficient, but, you know, it’s not going to eliminate every job and everything because you still need to know somebody, you still need to have somebody who knows what they’re doing. So hopefully it makes teams and companies more efficient and people more efficient. But the other day you still need to know if what, what it’s outputting is good.

Well, that’s a perfect segue into a question I had for you, which is like when something does work, you get that post where you get a lot of engagement, you get a lot of leads coming through it. How do you turn that into a repeatable process instead of just having it as a one-off win?

Yes. So what you do is you start to build a funnel out of your LinkedIn posts. if you’ve done any marketing, the marketing funnel is a common concept where you’ll have your cold layer and then you’ll have your retargeting layer so that once somebody engages with your cold layer, maybe you’re targeting that to your ICP or your target accounts. And then once somebody clicks on one of those, watches the video, then those people get retargeted with all of the rest of your content. So you start to build that journey.

So this is what starts to make it a repeatable process is as they engage then get retargeted you can add you can add website retargeting so anybody who visits your website will get retargeted you can add company page retargeting so anybody who visits your company on LinkedIn can get retargeted so these are all good things to be building in and then You know kind of the three main steps are number one. You’re gonna have your cold layer So what I like to use there like there’s a lot of stuff that can work there, but what I see work best

across the board for everybody is like a good case study. And it needs to be the like, here’s how you can achieve XYZ results. Here’s some steps or here’s a tutorial or here’s information that you can use. Not the we’re so awesome because we got this result case study, but here’s how you can do it to type of case study. That’s what that’s why people are on LinkedIn to read those types of posts and learn something that they can take back to their job and their company. That’s what they want. So if you’re

If you’re posting that, that’s perfect content to start with. So case studies across the board can work well. There’s lots of that can work well, but across the board is case studies. And then from there, retarget them with a whole bunch of different posts, maybe other case studies, maybe podcast clips, other things. A lot of things can go in that second layer. And then your third layer can be your offer posts. So at this point, know, people have engaged with you a few different times. They have a much better picture of who you are and what you do.

And then from there, then you can deliver your offer post. So this type of post could be much more direct into, hey, here’s what we do. Here’s how we help people. Click here for a free consultation or a free demo or free trial, whatever it is. And then that would be then boosted to that third layer. Again, people have engaged with you few times. They have a much better picture of who you are.

And a couple of tips here is one, you can post without the link initially, maybe just app tag your company instead of the link so that you get the maximum organic reach. And then after a couple of days, you can then go edit that post, switch that tag to a link and then boost it so that you’re getting your organic engagement. You then edit it and then you boost it. And now it’s going to run as a boosted post. You’re not worried about it getting like less reach because of the link.

you’re boosting it so you know it’s going to give it’s reach. And then yes, lots of people, you know, maybe shy away from putting links into posts because very often on social and like there’s a lot of like mixed research out there, but very often on social, if you put a link in a post, you get less reach out of that post. So.

Once you boost something, you know the algorithm is going to be serving it because you’re boosting it as an ad. So that’s a way to just make sure your content is getting served to the right people that you want it to and not just leaving it up to the organic algorithm. So once you set this up as a funnel, then that’s how you start to build repeatable results and drive people to whatever your final offer is.

There’s a huge amount of value you just shared there. Appreciate all those tips for everyone listening. And one question I think a lot of people have on their minds right now is like, especially with LinkedIn, it seems to be evolving a lot. It’s changing what it promotes, what people like. We’ve already talked about some of the things that’s changed just in the last few years. What do you think leaders need to be preparing now to do to protect their pipelines ability and their leadership freedom over the next six, 12, 18 months?

Can you repeat that question over time? I’ll do the wave for your editor.

Yes. So basically, you know, it was a long question. So I’ll shorten it up. as LinkedIn evolves, what should many leaders be preparing to do now to protect their pipeline stability and their leadership freedom over the next 12 to 18 months?

Yeah, so it is about building systems, I believe that, you know, some of these things that we’ve talked about of analyze your call transcripts and then create LinkedIn posts from that. Like we’re talking about systems here for the most part. Like that’s how you start to get it out of from just like one-off chats with Claude into like something that saves you time. So people should be.

I think everybody should be learning AI now, like learning how these tools work, learning how the MCPs work and all this stuff, because I think it is getting better and more useful and more integrations are being built. So it’s definitely like, that’s where everything is going. You need to learn it now so that you can take advantage of it. But that said, for like executives to like start, you know, saving themselves time, there’s a few different things, I think.

And I’ll kind of first I’ll walk through like the B2B marketing process. And then from there, I’ll have some stuff out of sight of it. But what you do is as you start to that funnel that I talked about first, it’s about the content that you’re creating. So build that process, get the content created, then also know who you want to be selling to. So the more clear and specific you can be about who your target audience is, the more targeted your ad campaigns can be. And then the more

The more you know your money will be spent on the right people because we don’t want to leave anything up to chance. We don’t want to be spending money on the wrong people. So you want to make sure you’re reaching the exact right people. And one of the best things you can do is build a target account list, whether that’s your Dream 100 or your TAM, your Total Addressable Market. Build that list so that

You know, the exact companies you want to be reaching and not just, you know, leave it, leaving it up to chance of who’s going to be seeing your ads. So that’s some of the groundwork you can do now. and like I said, from there, it’s about building systems. and I I still believe that right now, like, you know, outsourcing, delegating, VAs are a great thing to be doing that, some of this stuff cannot be automated with AI, you know, to the automation thing with LinkedIn is you want to be careful to not be using automation there. That’s where you need.

to human in the loop. Number one, just to be, just to not be doing automation that’s going to get banned. But then number two, to be reviewing the outputs of what’s coming out of these tools and make sure it’s good. And then, you know, doing the right steps to make sure things get posted and stuff like that. So a lot of steps there, but I think it comes down to building systems and then having the right people in place so that the things aren’t all on your plate, but you’re getting it outsourced and delegated from there.

Awesome. Now, what would you say is one common mistake you are continually seeing leaders make on LinkedIn today that’s hurting their results?

Hmm. That’s a good question. What is one common mistake? Every time I go to look at someone’s like an executives posts that they’re doing, not every time, but a lot of times, like it would just happen like yesterday when we were reviewing a couple of executives at a company and the content they’ve already posted. And especially when you generate stuff with AI, it tries to put maybe a little hook or like the first line.

Very often I see that they write a post and the first like couple lines don’t indicate exactly what the rest of the post is about. So this one that I was reviewing yesterday was about, a lot of his content was combining AI with education and the kind of the technology side of education, building educational platforms and courses and modules. But the first couple lines always talked about AI. So I’m sure that, you

What happens is people who see those posts, they see AI in the first couple of lines. They’re like, I want to read more about AI. So they click read more, but then the rest of the post is about education. Then you’re like, wait, what? And then they scroll by. So if you’re boosting that with an ad and then retargeting those people, you’re getting the wrong clicks because your first couple of lines talk about AI, but it doesn’t talk about the educational stuff that has main, you know, that’s what the business does. So your hook there is very important. You want it to be.

kind of pretty clear as to what the rest of the post is going to be about, because you don’t want to be drawing in the wrong clicks, which are then going to get retargeted. And then you’re spending more money on the wrong people or the people with the wrong intent. You know, again, they were interested in AI, but not necessarily education. So you’re bringing in the wrong people. So that’s something I see. I just thought about it. Like I see that all the time whenever we look at posts. So your first couple of lines are very important. Make sure you’re drawing in the right clicks.

That’s really powerful because you might have great content after that and had you attracted the right person could have been very powerful post. But if, like you said, you don’t have that hook right, it’s a total misalignment of the content with the audience there. So great advice there. Anthony, we’re running out of time here. If people want to learn more about you, connect with you and maybe we’d love to hear a bit more about your podcast about LinkedIn ads. What’s the best way for them to connect with you?

Sure. So getting started is I’m on obviously on LinkedIn a lot. So feel free to go connect with me there. I’m the only Anthony Blattner. You can look up, look me up there and kind of come to me there and follow. I talk a lot about LinkedIn ads. And then if you want to listen to our podcast, we have lots of episodes. It starts with a master class for the first like season, deep diving on everything A to Z. And then after that, we have lots of interviews, both with LinkedIn and with other LinkedIn practitioners. So you’ll pick up a lot of different good tips and tricks if you listen to those episodes.

Similarly, we also post that on YouTube with some good videos there, so feel free to check it out wherever you prefer. And then if you want help with your LinkedIn ads, you can find us at speedworksocial.com and we’ll always offer a free audit if you’re currently running ads. If not, we’ll help you put together a marketing plan.

Awesome. And then again, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It’s been a great pleasure having you here.

Thanks, Harley, it was fun to deep dive.

The post Your Lead Problem Isn’t What You Think It Is first appeared on Workergenix.

Opening Scaling Tension

At a certain point, growth stops translating into control.

The pipeline expands, inbound increases, and activity rises across the business. But execution slows down. Follow-ups lag. Decisions stack. The inbox becomes a queue of unresolved commitments. What should feel like progress begins to feel like operational drag.

This is where decision fatigue sets in. Not because the decisions are complex, but because there are too many of them. Too many touchpoints still require founder involvement. Too many tasks depend on direct oversight.

The business is growing. But leadership bandwidth is shrinking.

Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The Hidden Constraint

The constraint is not demand. It is not capital. It is not even talent.

The constraint is structural.

The founder remains the execution hub.

Every lead requires coordination. Every conversation requires follow-up. Every workflow requires supervision. Even with team members in place, the system still routes through one person. That creates a bottleneck that no amount of additional activity can solve.

This is why many operators experience a paradox. They invest in growth. They generate more opportunities. But instead of increasing throughput, they increase friction.

More leads create more administrative load. More communication. More scheduling. More CRM updates. More tracking. More decisions.

Without execution systems, growth compounds operational risk.

And over time, opportunities degrade. Leads fall through the cracks. Response times slow. Conversion suffers. Not because of strategy, but because of follow-through breakdowns.

The Operating Shift

The operating principle is straightforward:

Operational leverage is created by removing the founder from execution coordination, not by increasing inputs.

This is a shift from activity to structure.

Instead of asking how to generate more demand, the focus moves to how demand is processed. How decisions are made. How follow-ups are executed. How work moves without constant intervention.

Scaling discipline requires that execution systems replace memory, urgency, and reactive decision-making.

This is also where capital allocation becomes more precise.

Hiring for revenue generation before stabilizing execution increases exposure. It introduces more variables into a system that is already constrained. The result is inefficiency at best and missed revenue at worst.

The more disciplined move is to build operational infrastructure first. To ensure that every input can be absorbed, processed, and converted without increasing founder dependency.

Execution in Practice

This shift becomes tangible through specific execution systems.

1. Structured Follow-Up as a Decision-Making Framework

Follow-up is not a task. It is a system.

Every lead, client interaction, and communication should move through a predefined sequence. Timing, messaging, and ownership are clear. There is no re-deciding what to do next.

This reduces cognitive load and increases consistency. It also improves risk management. Opportunities are not left to memory or availability.

2. Inbox and Calendar as Controlled Systems

When the inbox operates as an open loop, it becomes a source of constant interruption. Each message demands context switching. Each decision fragments attention.

A structured approach converts the inbox into a filtered system. Only high-leverage decisions reach the founder. Everything else is processed, organized, and executed upstream.

The same applies to scheduling. Calendar control is not about filling time. It is about protecting decision-making capacity.

3. Ownership Transfer in Administrative Execution

Administrative work is not inherently low value. It becomes low leverage when it requires founder involvement.

Tasks such as CRM updates, document coordination, onboarding, and communication tracking are essential to execution quality. But they do not require founder-level judgment.

When ownership is transferred with clear systems, these tasks are completed with consistency and speed. This eliminates re-decisions and reduces execution friction.

4. Decoupling Output from Founder Time

Marketing, communication, and content often depend on founder availability. This creates a direct constraint on output.

By separating high-value input from downstream execution, output increases without increasing time investment. The founder contributes strategically. The system handles distribution, coordination, and follow-through.

This is where operational leverage becomes visible. Capacity expands without extending hours.

Leverage Outcome

When execution systems are in place, the business operates differently.

Decisions become fewer and more focused. Execution becomes more predictable. Communication becomes more structured. Projects move forward without constant oversight.

Leadership bandwidth is preserved.

This has direct implications for capital allocation and risk management. With clearer visibility and faster decision-making, operators can deploy resources more effectively. They can evaluate opportunities without being buried in operational noise.

The business becomes less dependent on individual effort and more dependent on system performance.

This is the difference between scaling activity and scaling capacity.

One increases workload. The other increases control.

The Immediate Move

Identify where you are still the point of coordination.

Not where you are making strategic decisions. Where you are managing execution. Where follow-ups depend on you. Where communication waits on you. Where tasks require your involvement to move forward.

These are not minor inefficiencies. They are structural constraints on scale.

Replace effort with structure.

Transfer ownership of execution with clear systems. Define workflows that eliminate re-decisions. Reduce cognitive load by ensuring that work moves without constant intervention.

Leadership bandwidth is the limiting factor. Protect it with disciplined execution systems, not additional activity.

Watch this before you hire your next support role.

Full Podcast Transcript

Let me start with a situation I see all the time. A business owner reaches the point where they know they need help. A business owner reaches the point where they know they need help. Their schedule is packed, their inbox is overflowing, their to-do list keeps growing. So they decide it’s time to hire. And the first hire they make is usually something like a cold caller or an ISA, an inside sales agent, or someone focused entirely on generating more.

or something foes or someone focused entirely on generating more leads.

The thinking makes sense. If we just bring in more leads, the business will grow. But here’s the problem. When the operations of your business still depend on you to coordinate everything, more leads often just creates more chaos. Now, before we go deeper into that, quick introduction in case this is the first episode you’re catching. Now, before we go deeper into that, quick introduction in case this is the first episode you’re catching. Normally my husband…

I’m Adrienne Green, co-founder of Workergenics, a virtual staffing agency where we help business owners and entrepreneurs in the United States get amazing virtual executive assistance. Normally, my husband, Harley Green, hosts this podcast. But for this short series, I’ve been stepping in as a guest host.

Before starting Workergenics, I built and later sold a real estate team. And learning how to leverage virtual assistants inside that business was one of the biggest reasons it was able to grow the way it did. And if you want to hear more about that, go back to episodes where I get into all the details. Because in this short series, we’ve been talking about how business owners create leverage inside their business using virtual assistants.

Now, like I said, in the first episode, I shared the story of how I first started working with virtual assistants and how that changed the trajectory of my business and my life. In the second episode, we talk about when hiring help actually doesn’t make sense yet because not every business needs additional leverage. And today we’re going to talk about the next step when you are ready to hire, when your business could use that leverage. What role should you hire first?

because this is where a lot of business owners accidentally make things a lot harder for themselves. Now, when entrepreneurs decide it’s time to grow, they often start by hiring someone focused on sales or marketing. In real estate and other industries, this could look like a cold collar, an ISA, a lead manager, maybe somebody who’s running ads or…

focused solely on marketing. And the idea is simple, more leads will equal more growth. But here’s what often happens instead. The new marketing or sales activity does start to produce results. There’s more leads or more inquiries, more emails, more calls, and also more follow-ups. And while this has some good stuff going on, every one of these things creates additional operational work.

Someone has to respond to the inquiries, schedule the calls, organize the calendar, update the CRM, send the follow-ups that actually convert those leads into clients, prepare the documents, track communication, coordinate everything. And very often that someone is still the business owner, the solopreneur, and instead of reducing their workload, the new hire actually increases it. And we’re not often seeing that increase in income

because some of those leads are just falling through the cracks. And this leads to one of the biggest realizations many business owners eventually have. The problem usually isn’t a lack of opportunity. The problem is that the business owner becomes the operational bottleneck. Every small decision passes through them. Every coordination task lands in their inbox. Every piece of information needs their attention. And that creates friction and limitation.

Not because the owner isn’t capable, but because there’s simply a limit to how many things one person can do in a day. And that’s why simply adding more leads to the top of that business funnel isn’t always gonna solve the problem. If the operational side of the business isn’t supported, growth can actually make things harder instead of easier. This is why in many businesses, the most powerful first hire is actually an executive assistant.

and this is what I did myself in my business. I had an executive assistant handle my bottom 80%, all the operations, the follow-up, the administration work, so I could focus on the top 20 % that included servicing the clients with only, so that I could focus on the top 20%, which included servicing the clients with only the work that I could do and marketing and lead gen. Now an executive assistant doesn’t just complete tasks.

They take ownership of the operational layer of the business. Things like managing your inbox, drafting emails so that you can just review and send, or maybe even sending emails on your behalf, organizing your calendar and helping schedule calls, coordinating those meetings, and then tracking the follow-ups, doing all that follow-up that often falls through the cracks. Maintaining the CRM so that you’re accurately tracking all those new leads that you’re able to get because you’re doing more lead gen and marketing.

Handling client onboarding so that you can actually get these clients serviced and get them into paying clients. Preparing documents, supporting all those marketing logistics. Something I shared in the first video was I was able to really get a lot more business because I could do marketing like I just recorded the video and my virtual assistant did everything else to get that video posted on YouTube, to get clips on socials, to make it out in the world. I did 10 minutes of work, they did a few hours to get that done so we could put out more videos.

The executive assistants also help keep projects organized. I was able to events, talk about marketing and lead generation. I was able to host investor meetups because my virtual executive assistant was the one coordinating everything and keeping it organized. Now all of this is stuff that’s happening in a growing business, but it doesn’t necessarily require the business owner or the entrepreneur to personally do them. So when executive assistant takes ownership of these responsibilities,

something powerful happens. The business owner gets their time back and that time can be reinvested in that top 20 % work that actually drives growth, strategy, relationships, decision-making, leadership, all of those things that only you can do. Now inside WorkerGenix, we often refer to something called the executive efficiency flywheel. It starts with one simple shift.

reduce the administrative load on the business owner. Once that happens, a few things begin to compound. The leader has more clarity, so decisions happen faster. Communication becomes more organized. Projects move forward more consistently, and the business starts to gain momentum. Many leaders spend 30 or more hours every week on administrative work that could be delegated. That’s almost four full work days

When that time is reclaimed, it creates enormous capacity within your business.

Now, if you want to see exactly what tasks might be taking up your time that you could hand off to an executive assistant, one of the best things that you can do is a simple time audit. And that’s why my team created the Executive Efficiency Blueprint. Inside this guide, you’ll find a simple framework to help you identify which tasks are strategic and which ones could be delegated. You can download that guide below or visit us at workergenics.com slash EEB.

And if you’re curious about what working with a virtual executive assistant might look like inside your own business, you can also schedule a conversation with the Workergenics team. Well, thank you guys for joining me on this short series as I came in and joined the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. Harley will be back hosting the podcast in the next episode. And hopefully these conversations help you think a little differently.

about how leverage works inside a business. Because sometimes the biggest opportunity for growth isn’t working harder, it’s stopping the work that doesn’t actually require you.

The post The Wrong First Hire Makes Growth Harder first appeared on Workergenix.

When Support Becomes Friction Instead of Leverage

At a certain stage, growth stops feeling like expansion and starts feeling like weight. Decisions stack. Follow-ups slip. Execution slows. The instinct is to add help. More capacity should fix the pressure.

But in many businesses, especially those already operating within a controlled workload, the next layer of support introduces coordination overhead before it creates relief. What was supposed to reduce operational drag begins to add it.

This is where most delegation decisions break down.

Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The Hidden Constraint

The constraint is not always time. It is often structure.

Many operators assume they are capacity-constrained when in reality they are clarity-constrained. The business runs. The workload fits. The outcomes are acceptable. But the assumption is that adding support will automatically improve the system.

Without clear execution systems, decision-making frameworks, and defined ownership, support does not remove work. It redistributes it into communication, oversight, and rework.

Hiring too early creates a new layer of responsibility. Tasks must be defined. Processes must be explained. Standards must be enforced. That effort is not trivial. It is operational work.

If the business is not yet under real strain, that added layer becomes friction.

The Operating Shift

Delegation is not a default step in scaling. It is a timing decision.

The shift is recognizing that operational leverage only works when there is pressure to absorb. Without that pressure, leverage does not expand capacity. It fragments it.

There are two valid reasons to introduce support:

First, the business requires more output than current systems can handle.
Second, the operator wants to reclaim time to reallocate toward higher-value decisions or personal capacity.

If neither condition exists, adding support is not leverage. It is complexity.

This reframes delegation from a growth tactic into a structural decision tied directly to leadership bandwidth and execution demand.

Execution in Practice

There are three clear signals that support is premature.

1. The business already fits within your week

If execution is stable, deliverables are completed, and there is no backlog of strategic work being deferred, there is no excess demand to absorb. Operational leverage has nowhere to apply.

Adding support in this scenario introduces coordination without relieving pressure.

2. Your schedule is controlled, not reactive

If your calendar allows for completion of work without constant spillover into evenings or weekends, and decisions are not being rushed or delayed, your current execution system is functioning.

Support is typically introduced to restore control. If control already exists, the benefit diminishes.

3. The business supports the life you want

Not every operator is optimizing for maximum scale. Some are optimizing for stability, income, and lifestyle alignment.

If the current structure delivers that outcome, introducing additional layers of execution may disrupt rather than improve the system.

This is where many operators misallocate resources. They pursue leverage because it is expected, not because it is required.

Key Execution Insights

Delegation is a learned operational skill

The first layer of support requires building new capabilities: task decomposition, process clarity, communication discipline, and trust transfer.

This is not passive. It requires active leadership involvement. Without structured delegation, support creates dependency rather than leverage.

Hiring creates new decision surfaces

Every new role introduces additional decisions. What gets delegated. How it gets done. What standards apply. What requires escalation.

If those decisions are not systematized, the operator becomes the bottleneck again. The difference is now there are more inputs flowing toward them.

Shiny object pressure distorts timing

Operators are constantly exposed to new “must-do” tactics. Hiring support becomes one of them. It is positioned as a universal solution rather than a conditional one.

This creates premature scaling decisions that are not aligned with actual operational needs.

Leverage must be earned through structure

True operational leverage comes from systems that allow work to move without constant intervention. Without defined workflows, SOPs, and ownership clarity, adding people does not create scale. It increases coordination cost.

Leverage Outcome

When introduced at the right time, support expands capacity. It removes low-leverage work from leadership and allows focus to shift toward decision-making, capital allocation, and growth strategy.

When introduced too early, it compresses capacity. It adds oversight requirements, increases communication load, and slows execution speed.

The difference is not the person. It is the timing and the structure surrounding the role.

Leadership bandwidth is the variable being protected or eroded.

The Immediate Move

The goal is not to add help. The goal is to protect and expand leadership bandwidth.

That requires disciplined evaluation of where time is actually going and whether the current system is under real strain. If execution fits, decisions are clear, and outcomes are aligned with your objectives, the constraint is not capacity.

Structure comes before support.

Ownership transfer only works when tasks are defined, processes are stable, and expectations are clear. Without that, delegation becomes supervision.

Reduce cognitive load before expanding the team. Eliminate unnecessary decisions. Clarify workflows. Identify true bottlenecks. Then introduce leverage where it directly increases throughput or frees leadership capacity.

Scaling discipline is not about doing more. It is about deciding what not to add.

Watch this before you hire your next support role.

Full Podcast Transcript

Let me start this episode with something that might sound a little strange coming from someone who runs a company that provides virtual assistants. Sometimes you should not hire a virtual assistant.

Now, if you listened to the last episode, you heard how hiring a virtual assistant completely transformed my business as a real estate agent. It helped me rebuild a business from scratch in a new city and eventually grow it into a real estate team doing about $27 million in annual volume, a team that was a business that I could sell and move on to other endeavors. No, cut that.

It helped me rebuild a business from scratch in a new city and eventually grow it into a real estate team doing about $27 million in annual volume. That team, by the way, was a business that I could eventually and did eventually sell. So yes, I absolutely believe in delegation and leverage.

But after talking with a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners over the years, I’ve realized something important. Not everyone actually needs help yet. And hiring a virtual assistant when you don’t truly need one can actually create more complexity instead of more freedom. So today, we’re going to talk about when you should not hire a virtual assistant. If you are just joining this series on the Scale Smart Growth Path,

Now, if you are just joining this series on the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast, quick context, I’m Adrienne Green, co-founder of Workergenics. Normally my husband Harley hosts this podcast, but for a few episodes I’m stepping in as a guest host. In this short series, we’re talking about how entrepreneurs and business owners free up time and stop spending their days on work that doesn’t actually require them.

In the first episode, I shared the story of how hiring a virtual assistant changed the trajectory of my business. But today, we’re going to talk about the other side of the equation, because knowing when not to hire help is just as important as knowing when you should.

One thing I’ve noticed in the business world is something called shiny object syndrome. You’re probably familiar with it. Every year there’s some new thing that everybody says business owners should be doing. Start a podcast, launch a YouTube channel, build a course, hire a VA, use AI to automate everything, and suddenly it feels like every entrepreneur is supposed to follow the same exact playbook. Hiring a virtual assistant is because one of…

Hiring a virtual assistant has become one of those things. You’ll hear advice like, just hire a VA. Outsource everything. Buy back your time. Get help immediately. And while delegation can absolutely transform a business and a life, it’s not always the right move. Because hiring help isn’t magic. It requires effort. You have to figure out which tasks to delegate. You have to explain how things should be done. You have to communicate clearly. And you have to spend some time getting someone up to speed.

If your business doesn’t actually need that leverage yet, hiring help can end up creating more moving parts instead of simplifying things.

Let me give you a real example. Recently, I had a conversation with a real estate investor who reached out to explore hiring a virtual assistant. We started talking about his business, how many deals he was doing, what his typical week looked like, what his goals were.

And as we talked, something became clear pretty quickly. His business was doing exactly what he wanted it to do. He had the lifestyle he wanted. He wasn’t overwhelmed. He wasn’t buried under work. He wasn’t working nights and weekends. Life was actually going really well. So at the end of the conversation, I told him something he probably didn’t expect to hear. I said, honestly, I don’t think you should hire a virtual assistant right now.

And he kind of paused for a moment and was surprised, because when someone talks to the founder and owner of a virtual assistant company, they usually expect the answer to be, yeah, you need us. But the truth is, if your business is already supporting the life you want, you might not need additional leverage.

And honestly, this is not the first time I’ve had this conversation, because the goal isn’t just to help people hire assistants. The goal is to help people build better businesses and better lives. Often, that does mean hiring help. But sometimes, it means realizing things are actually working the way I want them to, and that’s a great place to be.

Another thing people don’t always talk about is that delegation is a skill that you build over time. The first time that you hire help, you have to learn how to hand off tasks, how to explain your processes, how to communicate expectations, and trust someone else with work you’ve already handled yourself.

That learning curve isn’t huge, but it is real. And while at WorkerGenix, we do offer training and resources to help with that, at the end of the day, as the business owner and entrepreneur, you’ve got to also do the work. So if your business already fits comfortably within your week and you’re not trying to grow it further, there may not be a good reason to introduce that additional layer of work and learning that comes with figuring out how to leverage a virtual Assistant.

Let me walk through three situations when hiring a virtual assistant probably doesn’t make sense yet.

Number one, you’re happy with the size of your business. Not every entrepreneur wants to build a massive company that’s gonna go public or get bought out by private equity. Some people intentionally design their business to support the lifestyle they want. If your business is already producing the income you want and the workload feels manageable, you may not need additional help right now.

Situation two, your schedule already feels balanced. Another important factor is your schedule. If you’re finishing work at a reasonable time on most days and you’re not constantly feeling rushed, you still have time for your families and your hobbies or personal time, then your current system may already be working well. Hiring help is usually about creating more capacity, but if you already have the capacity you want, you may not need to change anything.

Three, your workload fits comfortably into your week. This is kind of related, and it’s often the clearest signal whether a virtual assistant is a yes or a no. Many business owners reach a point where there are always more tasks than there are hours in the day. The inbox keeps filling up, operational tasks pile up, and there are projects they know would help the business grow, but they never seem to get to them. And that’s when leverage becomes powerful. But if your current responsibilities already fit comfortably into your week, you’re able

to get everything done that you want to get done for your business, you may not need support yet.

In my experience, business owners usually hire help for one of two reasons. They want a bigger business, or they want a bigger life. Maybe you want to grow the company. Maybe you want to reclaim evenings or weekends. Maybe you want to stop spending half your day inside your inbox. And that’s when delegation to a virtual assistant can become incredibly powerful.

Now, you’re not sure, let me redo that. If you’re not sure whether you actually need help yet, one of the best things you can do is a simple time audit. And that’s why I created a guide called the Executive Efficiency Blueprint. Inside the guide, there’s a simple exercise that helps you track where your time is going and identify what work you could delegate. You can download that.

you can download that guide below in the show notes. And in the next episode of the series, we’re going to talk about one of the most common hiring mistakes business owners make.

Because when people decide they’re ready to hire, their first hire is often the wrong one. They often hire a cold caller, an ISA, a lead generator, and they assume that more leads are going to solve their business problems. But what often happens is the opposite. They just create more work for themselves because now they’ve got more business to handle. So in the next episode, we’ll talk about why an executive assistant is often the best first hire for an entrepreneur or business owner. So be sure wherever you are listening

to subscribe so that you can join me again next week for another episode of Scale Smart Grow Fast where I’m gonna share all about the right first hire. See you then.

The post The Hidden Cost of Hiring Help Too Soon first appeared on Workergenix.

Growth does not break most businesses. Accumulated decisions do

What starts as momentum turns into operational drag. The inbox fills faster than it clears. Follow-ups stretch longer than they should. Execution slows, not because the business lacks demand, but because everything still requires the founder’s attention.

The result is predictable. More activity. Less progress. Leadership bandwidth becomes the limiting factor.

Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The Hidden Constraint

The issue is not workload. It is structural dependency.

When the business is designed around the founder as the execution hub, every workflow inherits friction. Emails wait for replies. Deals stall between steps. Internal coordination requires constant oversight.

At a certain scale, this stops being inefficient and starts becoming a risk.

The system depends on one decision-maker to keep it moving. That creates exposure across:

• Client experience
• Deal velocity
• Internal execution speed
• Decision-making clarity

This is where most operators misdiagnose the problem. They assume they need better tools, more discipline, or longer hours.

The constraint is none of those.

It is the lack of operational leverage.

The Operating Shift

The shift is not about doing less. It is about deciding what should never require you again.

Operational leverage comes from removing the founder from repeatable execution, not optimizing how they perform it.

This requires a different lens.

Instead of asking, “How do I get this done faster?” the question becomes:

“Should I be involved in this at all?”

This reframes delegation from task relief to ownership transfer.

The standard becomes clear:

If the task does not require founder-level judgment, it should not require founder involvement.

This is where scaling discipline is applied. Not by increasing output, but by reducing dependency.

Execution in Practice

Leverage is built through structure, not intention. The difference shows up in how workflows are designed and executed.

1. Workflow Ownership Eliminates Re-Decision

Most founders delegate tasks but retain decision-making.

They assign pieces of work but stay responsible for outcomes. This creates a loop where execution continues to come back for approval, clarification, or correction.

Ownership transfer breaks that loop.

Instead of delegating “respond to emails,” the system owns inbox management and follow-up discipline.

Instead of “schedule meetings,” the system controls calendar flow.

Instead of “update CRM,” the system maintains pipeline visibility.

This removes repeated decision points and stabilizes execution.

2. Cognitive Load Reduction Drives Speed

Decision fatigue is rarely caused by large decisions. It is caused by volume.

Dozens of small, low-leverage decisions consume the same cognitive bandwidth required for high-stakes thinking.

Execution systems reduce that load.

• Defined follow-up processes
• Standardized communication patterns
• Clear ownership of coordination tasks

The result is fewer decisions, faster execution, and improved consistency.

This is not efficiency for its own sake. It is capacity creation.

3. Separating Revenue-Critical Activities

The founder’s role becomes narrower and more focused.

Only activities that directly impact growth remain:

• Strategic direction
• Client acquisition conversations
• Relationship building
• Capital allocation decisions

Everything else is structured to run without them.

This is where leverage compounds.

For example, content creation becomes a system. The founder records once. Distribution, editing, and repurposing happen without additional involvement.

Client acquisition follows the same pattern. The founder handles the initial conversation. Follow-ups, coordination, and next steps move forward without requiring re-entry.

This separation protects leadership bandwidth while increasing output.

4. Execution Systems Increase Deal Velocity

When workflows no longer depend on the founder, speed improves across the business.

Follow-ups happen on time. Communication becomes consistent. Opportunities progress without delay.

This is not about working faster. It is about removing bottlenecks.

Execution becomes predictable instead of reactive.

For operators managing deals, capital, or client relationships, this directly impacts outcomes.

Speed is not just convenience. It is a competitive advantage.

Leverage Outcome

When operational leverage is implemented correctly, the business expands without increasing founder effort.

Three shifts occur:

First, leadership bandwidth is restored. Decisions are made with clarity instead of urgency.

Second, execution stabilizes. Workflows run consistently without requiring intervention.

Third, growth no longer increases complexity at the founder level. The system absorbs it.

This is where capital efficiency improves. More output is generated from the same input, without increasing risk exposure tied to the founder’s capacity.

Leverage is not about time savings. It is about control.

The Immediate Move

Leadership bandwidth is the constraint.

If your business still depends on you to move, the system is incomplete. More effort will not solve it. More discipline will not solve it.

Structure will.

Ownership must move at the workflow level. Decision-making must be reduced, not optimized. Execution systems must remove you from repeatable actions so you can focus on what actually requires your judgment.

The goal is not to stay involved and move faster. The goal is to build a system that moves without you.

Full Podcast Transcript

Let me share a scenario and see if this feels familiar. You sit down at your computer in the morning with a plan. You’re going to work on something important today. Maybe it’s strategy. Maybe it’s marketing. Maybe it’s finally tackling that project that would actually move the business forward.

But then the day starts, and suddenly you’re replying to emails, scheduling meetings, following up with clients, fixing something in your CRM, tracking down a document, answering a quick question from someone that somehow takes not so

Answering a quick question from someone that somehow eats up half an hour, approving something, sending something, updating something, and before you know it, it’s five or six p.m. You were busy all day, but somehow you didn’t actually move the business forward. And if that experience sounds familiar, you are not alone, and that realization is what completely changed how I run my businesses.

Now before we dive into the story, quick note for our regular listeners. Normally on this podcast, Scale Smart Grow Fast, you hear my husband hosting the show. But for the next few episodes, we’re doing something a little different. I’m stepping into Guest Host, a short series where we talk about…

I’m stepping in to guest host a short series where we talk about something that’s really central to what we do at Workergenix. How entrepreneurs free up time, delegate effectively, and stop spending their day on tasks that don’t actually require the founder or leader of the business. And if we haven’t met before, I’m a co-founder of Workergenix.

I’m also still a real estate investor and a licensed agent today. And that’s actually where this whole story and wild adventure started. The reason we started Workergenix is because of something I discovered in my own business that was so transformational, we wanted other entrepreneurs to be able to access it too. And that’s where it all began.

Now when you first start a business, there’s a phase that almost everyone goes through. The solopreneur phase. When you’re basically every department in the company, you’re the CEO, the marketing department, the operations team, the bookkeeper, the customer support, IT, and sometimes you’re also the janitor, right? You’re wearing all of the hats.

In real estate, we call this being a solo agent, but honestly, the same thing happens in almost every business. Consultants experience it, coaches experience it, small business owners experience it, startup founders experience it. And when I became a real estate agent in 2018, that’s exactly where I was. And to be fair, the business was working.

I was doing about five million in annual sales, which was roughly 12 transactions a year, and I was making about $100,000 in income. Things were solid, but there was a hidden problem. Everything depended on me. Every email, every contract, every client communication, every marketing task, every operational detail.

If something needed to get done, I was the one doing it. And when you’re in that stage, it can actually feel pretty normal because you tell yourself, well, this is what running a business feels like.

Now, somewhere during this time, I will say my husband had read The Four Hour Workweek, which, if you’re married to an entrepreneur, is always a slightly dangerous moment because suddenly your spouse comes to you with business ideas they just read in a book, and he kept telling me you should hire a virtual assistant. And I had the very mature and thoughtful response of, absolutely not. I was like, how does that even work? Something remote? Helping you redo this.

I was like, how would that even work? Someone remote helping run my business, and I was so busy running it the day to day that I couldn’t even fathom taking the time to figure out how to make it happen. I was also convinced that it would take longer to explain the task and hand it off than to just do it myself, which is something a lot of entrepreneurs say. And it feels so true in the moment, but it’s also one of the most dangerous traps we fall into.

Then something happened that changed my perspective and honestly changed my entire life trajectory. I joined a real estate team at Keller Williams.

I joined a real estate team at Keller Williams and that team used virtual assistants inside the business. And this was the first time I saw the model actually working and it was eye-opening.

Because the assistants were handling a lot of the back end work that normally eats up an entrepreneur’s time. Things like marketing logistics, administrative tasks, operational coordination, which meant the agents on the team could spend more of their time doing things that actually grow a business. They could meet clients, build relationships, and generate deals. And this is the first time I really saw what leverage looks like in a business.

Then my family made a big move. We relocated from Northern Virginia to Chattanooga, Tennessee, which meant I had to rebuild my real estate business from scratch.

I had to leave that team I had just joined. I was back to the solopreneur world, and I was now in a place where I knew no one. Now in real estate, we talk about something called your sphere of influence. That basically means your network, the people you know who trust you and who eventually do business with you or refer business to you.

And this concept exists in many industries I know. If you’re a consultant, your first clients usually come from your network. If you run a service business, referrals often come from people who already know you. And if you’re an entrepreneur launching something new, your early customers are often people who already trust you. But when I moved to Chattanooga, I had none of that. No network, no referral base, no past clients in the area. And to make things even more interesting, I had three children under the age of five at the time.

At this point, I worked with a dear friend who’s also a business coach to figure out what my strategy should be. And we made two key decisions. First, I decided to focus on working with real estate investors, which was a niche that I understood well and could have a competitive advantage in. Second, I finally listened and I hired a virtual assistant.

If I was going to rebuild this business from scratch, there was no way I could do every task myself.

Now the assistant I ended up hiring handled about 80 percent of my computer and phone-based tasks. They did things like email management, contract preparation, bookkeeping, CRM updates, client coordination, marketing logistics, video editing, and event planning. All the operational work that has to happen in a business but doesn’t necessarily require the founder or CEO to personally do it.

And the results were dramatic. I hired that assistant in January of 2021. By August of that year, in a brand new market where I knew almost nobody, I had completed 54 transactions and about 10 million in volume. Compare that to my prior business in the market where I had a sphere but no assistant, and I was doing 12 transactions for 5 million in volume.

Eventually, this business grew into a real estate team that did about 27 million in volume annually before I sold that team. And one of the biggest reasons that this was possible was leverage.

By having that virtual assistant do all of those operational tasks, I was freed up to do my top 20 percent, which is what actually brought in new business.

So, for example, I could record the video that was going out on YouTube, and all I had to do was record the video.

My assistant would take it, edit it, do the thumbnail, write the caption, post it on social media, cut it up into reels to put on all the other things, and all of that happened and brought me a new business when I only had to take a few minutes to record that initial video.

That same kind of leverage happened with my other top 20 percent activities.

So let’s say I went and did some lead generation and brought in new potential clients. I would do the initial discovery call with those clients, see what they were looking for, what they needed.

And then I would have a system where I could hand off to my executive assistant all the follow-up work that had to happen so that I could move on to that next discovery call, which was the piece only I could do.

So that my executive assistant could be doing the email introductions to lenders or to property managers or to contractors. If this was a buyer, they could get that search set up in the MLS for that client. They could do all that follow-up that takes up so much of our time after we have these really amazing meetings so that way we can go do more of these amazing meetings and have more business.

So that’s what really started this whole Workergenix.

And that, my friends, was the experience that eventually led to us starting Workergenix, so we could help other entrepreneurs and business owners get that same kind of leverage and help with a virtual executive assistant and really have their businesses succeed and grow while giving them a bigger business and a bigger life.

If you’re feeling like your business keeps you busy but is not necessarily moving forward, I created a guide called the Executive Efficiency Blueprint. It walks you through a simple framework to identify what you could delegate and how business leaders can reclaim 30 or more hours per week with a virtual executive assistant.

You can download it below in the show notes.

And in the next episode of this series, join me again next week. I’m going to talk about something that might surprise you because even though we run a company that provides virtual assistance, sometimes I actually tell people you shouldn’t hire one.

And knowing when not to hire help can save you a lot of time and money.

So be sure that you’ve subscribed and join me again next week for another episode of Scale Smart Grow Fast.

The post Doing Everything Yourself? Here’s What’s Really Happening first appeared on Workergenix.