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150: The Fastest Way to 10x Growth? Delegate Now · Harder Than Life

• 0:07
  I'm Kelly Siegel and this is Harder Than Life, a podcast about self-love, self-awareness, business, and health. We tell outrageous stories and boil everything down to simple, practical advice you can start using today. Let's get living. What is up, Harder Than Life Nation? It's your boy, Kelly Siegel, and this is Harder Than Life. You know how we do it real raw and ridiculously honest.
• 0:35
  Today's topic, delegation or the lack thereof. The dirty little secret that leads to burnout, frustration, and a ceiling on your growth you didn't even know you were hitting. I've been there. Hell, sometimes I still struggle with it. But we're going to break it down for you today. Why you're overwhelmed. Why you're stuck. Why you're not scaling. And how delegation isn't just a productivity hack. It's a leadership requirement.
• 1:04
  Let's get living. All right. Let me ask you a real question. Are you feeling overwhelmed? Like your to-do list is strangling you by the hour. That's not because you're lazy. It's because you're doing too much of the wrong stuff. I used to always say, if you want it done right, I'll do it myself. Does that sound familiar? Yep. That mindset is poison. It's rooted in ego, fear, and control.
• 1:34
  I didn't trust others. Truth is, I didn't trust my process. And even worse, I didn't have a process. And this is where EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System, changed the game. When we implemented EOS at National Technology Management, IT and cybersecurity company, I came face to face with the brutal truth. I was the bottleneck. I was the problem.
• 2:02
  And I couldn't scale NTM until I learned to delegate and elevate. So let me ask you this. Are you actually leading or are you just firefighting your way through this day? Here's a pro tip. There's two issues when it comes to this. People or processes. When I'm coaching someone, I ask them one thing. Show me the process. And if it's not written down, I say, there's your problem.
• 2:32
  If it is written down and they have it and they've trained on it, then it's a people problem. Literally, that's it, guys. And if you guys don't understand the delegate and elevate, we're going to get into that right now. It's a very simple and easy thing. There's like four quadrant. And up in the right-hand corner of that quadrant is the things that you love to do that fire you up. And the bottom left-hand lower quadrant are the things that you hate doing and they suck the life out of you.
• 3:01
  So we're gonna talk about that. So in EOS, we use the Delegate and Elevate as a strategic tool. This isn't about dumping crap on people. It's about giving away the things you don't love and aren't great at so you can stay in your sweet spot. Think of it as this.
• 3:20
  giving away all the things that drain you and supercharging your car, this in this case you and your batteries, with all kinds of energy. Think of it as Popeye's spinach. Remember that as a kid?
• 3:34
  And I eat my spinach and then you get all charged up and ready to go. So here's how I do it. Make a list of everything you do in a week. And I mean, down to the 15 minute. It's tedious, but every 15 minutes you say what you did. Sort it into four basic buckets.
• 3:54
  You love it and you're great at it. That's the upper right hand quadrant. You like it and you're good at it. That's your left hand quadrant. You don't like it, but you're good at it. Lower right hand quadrant and don't like it and not good at it. Lower left hand quadrant. Think about it. How many of us are stuck in that bottom lower left quadrant, which is literally email for me. I can't stand email guys. I do get to it. I use AI, but I leverage my assistant.
• 4:23
  Email to me is the biggest time. It's where people go and put all of their issues in my inbox. So eliminate, delegate, and automate. That's the new one, automate. With AI, you can automate a lot of things, but you can't automate everything. So don't jump too far into that.
• 4:42
  If it doesn't require your unique brain or energy, delegate it. Free up your bandwidth for the big picture visionary stuff. This is how you lead your life instead of being owned by your schedule.
• 4:57
  Guys, there's books out there. 10X is easier than 2X. Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel. The Time Machine by Chris Krohn. They all talk about this. They have formulas. You can read about it. I'm giving you the overview. So we're going to go back to the people and processes part of this. Here's the deal. If you don't trust your people, it's not just a people problem. It's a process problem and the.
• 5:23
  You're gonna have to look at this right away. So at NTM, my IT company again, once we documented everything, which was very hard, guys, document everything you do. Easiest thing to do is hit record when you're actually doing the work and screen record it. That's a pro tip. And then you can feed that into some AI forms, which will actually give you the process. It's wild in this world, guys.
• 5:46
  So we documented everything from onboarding to escalations to customer interactions. It became easy to train, delegate, and scale. I resisted these standard operating procedures for years, and I'll be the first to admit it. It cost us. EOS says, right people, right seats. But it's only possible if those seats come with clear expectations, workflows, and here's the kicker.
• 6:10
  accountability. In EOS, they have an accountability chart, not an organizational chart, by the way. We'll get into that later. If it's not written down, it's not real. If it's not measured, it's not managed. That's why every person at my team has KPIs and scorecards. Key progress indicators, by the way, those KPIs stands for. If we're on a deserted island with just our scorecard, I know exactly how the business is doing. We talked about accountability and accountability is important.
• 6:38
  everything delegation without accountability is just hope and hope my friends is not a strategy so we use something called the one three one rule when someone brings you a problem what's the one main issue not multiple what's the main issue
• 6:57
  And what are three possible solutions to that? And then what's the one that you recommend? This forces ownership. It forces them to think and it keeps your plate clear of everyone else's darn monkeys. Keep in mind.
• 7:13
  This also gets them to buy into it and you don't become the solution person for everything, which is something I've done for years. I love to help people. So I'm constantly paying it forward, giving them answers. But here's the tough thing. They won't learn. They got to grow through it. I do this all the time for my daughter, truthfully, guys. I keep forgetting to let her struggle. Growth is through the struggle. So.
• 7:40
  If the job doesn't get done after the one, three, one, it's either you didn't explain it well, or it's not the right person. Both are fixable. You either communicate better or change the team. It's really, really harsh. One of our core values is family. And this is harsh, but oftentimes you're setting them free to go do the things that they're good at, that they feel empowered to do.
• 8:09
  We have to learn how to let go from control to trust and letting go to grow. I'm going to hit you with this. If your business can't run without you, it's not a business. It's a job. And it's a job that owns you. You want peace, freedom, growth? You need to let go of control. I let go of sales at NTM. I let go of sales at NTM.
• 8:32
  And that was so hard, I love to sell. That was my identity, growing the company. But guess what? Our new VP of sales is better than me. Now I can be the visionary, the coach, the creator, and that's where I shine and it fires me up. If you don't evolve, you become the ceiling. The very thing you said you wanted to build, you're the one keeping it small. So here's some actionable steps.
• 9:01
  This is building your delegation muscle. So grab a pen, you're gonna wanna write this down. Again, step one, we talked about that time audit. Track your day in 15 minute blocks for a week. It's annoying, but it'll blow your mind on how much time you're wasting. You'll see where your time is leaking like a busted faucet and you'll also see how much time you're spending in each quadrant. It is wild.
• 9:29
  Step two, build one process at a time. You cannot build them all. It's the 80-20 rule. You don't have to do step by step by step. Start with the biggest bottleneck, document it, train someone on it, get feedback, improve upon it, then move to the next.
• 9:48
  Step number three, hire for gaps. Don't hire clones, hire compliments. What are you terrible at? Go get that in a human form. For me, the details, every little detail. I want to know just the things that I need to know real, real, real quick. Just the 10,000 feet overview and I make decisions quickly. So number four.
• 10:12
  Define clear outcomes. Don't delegate tasks, delegate results. Make it clear what done looks like. I remember saying, paint exactly what done looks like for me. We'll walk away and one person will think one thing's done, another person will think another one. Here's the outcome we want to achieve. Step number five is use KPIs for everyone. In NTM, every person has a number and everybody's accountable to that number.
• 10:42
  So what you measure gets better. No measurement, no improvement. Make metrics visible. Review them often and course correct in real time. You walk into my office, there are boards up everywhere with real-time KPIs. We know exactly where we are. As a matter of fact, I was in a meeting last Friday. It happened to be a holiday weekend and I get on a Teams message from my COO,
• 11:08
  that our ticket count was zero, our time to resolve was under three hours, and it was Good Friday and he said, I'm letting everybody go. I'm letting everybody go home and enjoy their family. And looking at that screenshot of our KPIs, I was like, wow, really, really impressive. It was a no-brainer to let everybody go early and get their holiday weekend started.
• 11:32
  We have to scale through systems and surrender. A lot of S's there. Scaling through systems and surrender. You want to scale? You want to create something bigger than you? You must document your way out of the day-to-day and surrender the need to control everything. I'm going to say that again. You must document your way out of the day-to-day and surrender to the need to control everything.
• 12:00
  but Kelly, my business doesn't run without me. We talked about that. That's a job. You're the owner.
• 12:08
  Control is an illusion. Trust is freedom. And that freedom is what allows you to lead, innovate, and inspire. At NTM, we say we're the easiest and best IT company to do business with. That's not fluff, that's process, that's delegation, that's automation, and that's freedom. And we're selling the proof, not the promise because we measure it every single time. Talk about easy sales.
• 12:38
  All right, let's have some reflection and some real talk and wrap this thing up. Listen, I know this isn't easy. It takes practice. It takes courage. It takes letting go of your ego, admitting that someone else might do it better. And in fact, will do it better. When you finally let go, the rewards are endless. Peace, growth, joy, and time to live your mission. So, Heart of the Life Nation, here's your challenges.
• 13:08
  Pick one thing to delegate this week. Pick one process to document. Pick one teammate to elevate. Then tag me, DM me, share it with a hashtag.
• 13:22
  Hashtag harder than life. All right, thanks for playing. Hopefully you got something on that. I promise you, I just gave you guys hundreds of thousands of dollars of advanced business knowledge that I've paid for over many, many, many years. Please take one thing and implement it today. It will save you time, money, and headaches, and it will scale.
• 13:45
  I'm Kelly Siegel reminding you the only way to growth is to let go. Stop doing everything. Start leading something. And until next time, be harder than life.
• 13:56
  Please rate and share this podcast. I'm active on all social platforms and love to hear from my Segal supporters. Each and every episode is sponsored by my company, National Technology Management, the easiest and best IT company to do business with, delivering peace of mind with technology every day, even simplifying cybersecurity. Visit TrustNTM.com for more info. Until next week, be harder than life.