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.

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.