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Master Delegator Podcast
Are you a lazy entrepreneur who wants to work smarter, not harder? If so, you’re in the right place!
Hosted by Kristy Yoder, CEO of SmartVAs and Meet5starVAs, this podcast is all about leveraging delegation, automation, and virtual assistants to scale your business efficiently—without doing everything yourself.
Born and raised in Manila, Philippines, Kristy moved to the U.S. and grew her agency from a one-person operation to 70+ team members. Her business 10x’d within three months of hiring her first virtual assistant, and now she’s on a mission to help other overwhelmed entrepreneurs experience the same success.
Each episode dives into proven strategies for delegation, outsourcing, automation, and productivity, featuring expert insights and real-world success stories.
So, if you’re ready to achieve more by doing less, subscribe to Master Delegator and start building a business that runs without you doing it all!
Master Delegator Podcast
Ep 190 - Gradual Steps to Growing Your Task List with Strategic Partnerships with Greg Toroosian
Can effective delegation really unlock business growth, even for small business owners managing passion projects?
Join us as we explore this with talent acquisition expert Greg Toroosian, who shares over 15 years of experience. Discover how Greg’s strategic move to outsource tasks to SmartVAs helped him avoid bottlenecks and manage multiple responsibilities efficiently.
Greg’s story is both compelling and instructive. From his early recruiting days in London to founding Samson Rose in the U.S., Greg offers a candid look at his career. He shares insights on the differences between recruiting in the UK and the US and talks about the challenges of starting a business during a global pandemic, highlighting the vital support from his wife during these times.
Balancing business goals with personal well-being is a key theme in our conversation. Greg emphasizes the importance of delegating tasks, especially in marketing, to focus on core business activities that drive revenue. He shares strategies for managing business highs and lows and stresses the need for self-care, from skiing adventures to meditation.
Key Takeaways:
- Effective Delegation: Outsourcing tasks can prevent bottlenecks and improve efficiency.
- Industry Insights: Understand the differences in talent acquisition between the UK and the US.
- Balancing Act: Maintaining personal well-being is crucial for business success.
- Strategic Focus: Delegating marketing tasks allows more focus on revenue-driving activities.
Tune in to gain actionable advice on achieving business efficiency through the art of delegation.
Learn more about Greg Toroosian here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregtoroosian/
https://www.samsonrose.com
Are you in need of any assistance? Are you tired and running out of time? It's time to start looking for a virtual assistant! Learn how to get your freedom and life back by visiting smartvirtualassistants.com
Be part of our Facebook community page for entrepreneurs who want to become a master delegator.
Do you want to learn how to hire a virtual assistant? Access our free training.
Anyone that starts their own business, especially like a small business and from your own skills or your own passion, whether you're making a product that you've designed it and then you're going to sell it, or your own service that you know in and out. The hardest thing to do I personally found is delegate Because you don't know well. Firstly, you have to be aware that you are a bottleneck. You know and where to relinquish control. That's not easy for most people, especially when you've put like blood, sweat, tears, hours, money, years of experience into starting something. And then now it's your brand like. Samson Rose is literally my middle name and my daughter's middle name squished together, so it's like they're my names in there. How do you give that to someone else?
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, hey.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Master Delegator Podcast, the podcast that unveils the secrets of effective delegation and productivity for business growth. My name is Christy Yoder, CEO of Smart VAs and Meet 5 Star VAs, and your podcast host. Can I tell you a secret? I am obsessed with teamwork and delegation. I consider myself a lazy entrepreneur, not because I don't like working, but because I always find ways to do things in the most effective and easiest way. I was born and raised in Manila, Philippines, moved to the States and grew my agency from one person to more than 70 plus team members. As of this recording, I was able to grow my business 10 times more after I hired my first virtual assistant within three months. Together with my team, we have helped more than 300 stressed and overwhelmed business owners scale their businesses by delegating to virtual assistants, and that's why my goal in this podcast show is to help you grow your business by giving you fresh perspectives on delegation, outsourcing, hiring virtual assistants and up-to-date proven business strategies, and teaching you how to scale your business while living a freedom-filled lifestyle. Whether you're a business leader, entrepreneur or someone striving for peak efficiency, this podcast is your go-to resource. We bring you insights from industry experts, successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders who have mastered the skill of delegation. If you are ready to elevate your productivity and achieve more by doing less, you're in the right place. Subscribe to Master Delegator on your favorite podcast platform and join our community of proactive delegators. Now let's get started on the path to becoming a true master of delegation.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Master Delegator Podcast. Today, I had a chance to talk to Greg Turushan. Greg has been in the talent acquisition space for over 15 years. His experience is a mix of recruiting agencies in the UK and in the US and internal recruiting leadership. For the last four years, he has been self-employed via his own company, Samson Rose, where he primarily works with startups in the robotics and AI space to help them find leaders across all business units and senior engineering talent. Greg has also been an advisor to several companies over the years and provides advice to clients about their talent acquisition strategies, processes and best practices. He is the host of the Machine Minds show, which is a recently launched podcast, and he also does monthly as a recruiter talks on Fishbowl, where upwards of 1,000 listeners join. Today, we talked about how he was able to outsource an increasing amount of tasks and his ability to do a variety of things simultaneously when outsourcing, instead of constantly being the business bottleneck. Greg is actually a client of SmartVAs, which is my virtual assistant agency, and I'm excited for you to hear how he delegates to my team. So stay tuned.
Speaker 2:Hello, Greg. Welcome to the Master Delegator Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me and I'm excited that you are here with me today. You know we're going to be talking about a lot of good things, including delegation and, of course, about your story, and you know we were, I think, talking for like 15 minutes before we start. You know we were, I think, talking for like 15 minutes before we start recording, so it's nice getting to know you personally. So, before we talk about delegation and all that kind of stuff, why don't you tell us about your story? How did you build Samson Rose? And I know you were originally from London, so that's a story I want our listeners to hear as well. So if you could please share that with us, that would be awesome.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, happy to, and thanks for having me on the show, and I've been talking about this for a while.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I'm originally from London. I live in California, now Southern California. I've been out here for 10 and a half years, coming out to be 11 years this year. I've been in the recruiting world, so Samson Rose is a recruiting business focused on the robotics and AI industries. I started the business over four years ago now four and a half years ago, just before the pandemic, so it's like August 2019. And I've been in the recruiting world for over 15 years and I started in the UK. I started in a recruiting agency and that was my career up until I moved to the US. I moved with a British agency that had an office in LA.
Speaker 1:I've loved LA since I was a kid. I've got family out here. I'm in Orange County now, but I was in LA, so I've got family out here. I'd visit and I just fell in love with it. You know blue skies, palm trees, big roads, big cars, everything and I was like this is where I need to be. But I never knew how I was going to move out there. So, from like 11 years old, I was like I have to be in LA. I just don't know how I'm going to get there. And then, when this opportunity came up, obviously I jumped at it and I'd been in the recruiting world for maybe five years at that point or so. Um, but to me living in LA, I met my wife, we got married, etc.
Speaker 1:And I decided I wanted to go from the agency world into internal recruiting, which is something I'd always wanted to do, which, for people that aren't familiar with it, when you're in a recruiting agency, you're external, so you work with various clients in a particular market and you might have a set geography, or so I was working across the US. But when you go internal, you're part of the HR or people team, you're an internal function and you're just hiring employees for that company. And I always wanted to do that, because on the agency side, you kind of feel a bit like a necessary evil. The clients sometimes it depends on your industry or how you've built things up but you're like they begrudgingly work with you and you just spread yourself across different companies. So I wanted to be part of one team and one uh mission.
Speaker 1:Um, so I worked my way up in the internal world, um, but before I started my own business, I was a director of talent acquisition and so I built and led internal teams and decided that. I say I decided, my wife decided now is the time to start your business because we were about to have our second child. So she's like, if you're ever going to do it, now's the time. And yeah, here I am.
Speaker 2:Wow, your wife's very supportive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean she had a very good point. She was like you know, the kids aren't? They're not in school yet, we don't have all those other expenses, we're not tied to anything like location or anything just yet, and we needed to move to be close to in-laws. So she was like you can't work at the company that you're working at right now. It's not going to be feasible. This is the best time to try it and see if it's going to work for you and like you can put the effort in.
Speaker 2:So yeah, if it wasn't for her encouraging.
Speaker 1:I thought it was the worst time to start, but right it's it's covid season during that time, yeah it's just before the pandemic.
Speaker 2:It was just before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we didn't know. So started the business in august and then, within within six months, we moved house. Um, I started a business, we moved house, we had a baby and then it was the pandemic. So all of those things happened in the first six months of having the business, which was crazy wow, okay, I have a question for that.
Speaker 2:But before I ask that question, um, do you, did you notice any difference when it comes to recruiting talent in the UK and in the States?
Speaker 1:Yes, different sides of it. The recruiting industry in the UK is a lot more mature. It's an older industry, like the recruiting agency model kind of started there. The sales model started there. So it's very saturated. There's so many different agencies, but then also the companies. They know that they're going to get hit by agencies all the time and there's sometimes a reluctance to use them. But they know that you have the best talent and we kind of need it. So the candidates also. I don't want to say you're a commodity, but you kind of are. Like there's lots of agencies doing it. So unless you have a really good name or niche and built up your professional standard, you probably like you're in an uphill battle.
Speaker 1:In the us it was different. When I came over 10 years ago it wasn't as saturated. The. When I came over 10 years ago it wasn't as saturated. The internal team. It was a lot more structured where recruiting was funneled through internal HR or internal recruiting teams. Talent was more open to hearing about what you have and then, being a subject matter expert or industry expert if you focus on a specific industry, people were receptive to that. Um, so it was I don't want to say easier, but like you could shine more with the skills that you had and knowledge that you had, instead of being drowned out by the noise of bad recruiters right because that's the problem.
Speaker 1:If a market is saturated, it's not saturated just with great people or just with people that know what they're talking about. You've got people that are like sending terrible emails, not understanding what they're doing, spoiling candidate and client relationships and just muddying the waters for everyone. So us was almost like it was a cleaner slate to work in. That's good to hear I don't know, I can't say it's still like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's go back to the time when you were building Samson Rose, just before the pandemic. So did you quit your job immediately or you were building your business on the side?
Speaker 1:That is a great question and different insight. No, I wasn't, and that was probably the hardest thing or the most eye-opening thing when I started the business, cause I literally I registered the business in July and handed my notice in in July and I started August. I think it was like fourth was a Monday or August 5th, so that was like my first day working for myself. What was the biggest eye opening thing or challenge for me was I wasn't working in a recruiting agency and I hadn't done for at that point, I don't know six years. So I the way of working where you're business developing or you have like client lists or things like that. I had none of that. I'd been part of companies for the previous six years.
Speaker 1:So, starting on day one, I was like wow, I've got to really dust off these cobwebs and figure out how I'm going to work again, because I haven't done this for so long. The tools were all different, the style was different, so in retrospect I probably should have built the business a little bit or gained traction, but it would have been a conflict of interest for my employer. Um, so my tactic initially to get clients on was I'm going to reach out to the people that tried to hire me previously. So I had a few clients or a few companies that had tried to hire me as their head of recruiting or director of talent acquisition. I just went back to them I said hey, I know you wanted to hire me. I don't know if you fill that role, but I'm actually going out independently. If you need a consultant, if you've got work that you need done, if you have any roles that you need to hire, I can work fractionally. I can help you fill spot positions. And my first two clients came like that.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's awesome. And then so you started the business in August of 2020?
Speaker 1:Yes, no 2019.
Speaker 2:2019. Okay, and then you had your first two clients.
Speaker 1:How did you figure out everything? Did you just learn by experience or YouTube? I was confident enough in my abilities and my knowledge that what I was offering them I could stand behind and do. What I didn't know was how to run a business. What I didn't know was now all the tools and systems and financial stuff I needed. So I was reaching out to people that I knew that had done similar.
Speaker 1:So I'd spoken at conferences previously and I was like, hey, I'm starting like people that had either monitored um, hosted the panels or whatever it's like I'm starting out. What tools would you recommend that I need so they would give me those? I'd built up like some good um relationships and equity in that sense, where I was just like asking for advice. And then I had friends that started their own businesses and I I was like, well, what do you use for accounting? Do you have an accountant? What software do you use? What systems do I need to get in place? And I just dove into it. I was on online finding out what websites did I use? They were like you know, like the fibers and the 99 designs to get like website done and all of this things to just look official.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, you've obviously got to get everything registered, so it was kind of just asking everyone that I could that has some sort of business knowledge that has done what I've done beforehand. Um, and figuring out that way, I love, love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because we can YouTube everything. But it's different when you know somebody.
Speaker 1:You know who did it, who did exactly what you're doing right now, and based on my yeah, on that point, I think it's important to do your own research, so YouTube and everything like that but then also ask people that have been in a similar boat, because I could YouTube something that makes sense in. I mean, you're in Ohio, right?
Speaker 1:So, for that state it would make sense and the person doing the video is there, but I'm in California, so there's different things that might make sense. Here or in one industry you should be structured like, oh, you should be an LLC or you could be a sole proprietor or whatever it is, but then here you should be an S-corp, or you know income levels. There's all these different things. So getting different data points and speaking to more than one person, I think is important yeah.
Speaker 2:I love that more than one person I think is important. Yeah, I love that perspective and, personally, you know you've been a client of Smart VA since 2020, and we had a few business experts meeting sessions and, as far as I can remember, I think you were in two or three of those business expert sessions we had, and I don't remember if it was Regine or one of our leaders. I asked them like Greg is like complete attendance when it comes to our business expert session and I said I love it. And to me, you strike me as a person who's very willing to learn, you know and and you're very teachable, and you know you're, and if you're teachable, you're humble as well. You know, because you're willing to listen um to other people, and I think that is a good character to have as an entrepreneur thank you you yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, you reminded me about those. I'd kind of forgotten about all of that. But yeah, I always think that you don't know what you don't know and you can never be aware of everything that's in the marketplace, right, different perspectives, ways of doing things. Even and I think a big part of that was from when I was internal I would get reached out to because as soon as you have like a director title or head of title, everyone wants to sell you. So you know, like you put CEO or founder on your LinkedIn and everyone wants to sell you something right a service, a tool, and I would I'll always look at them.
Speaker 1:I won't always have the conversation, but if it's something intriguing then I will have the call because I'm like, oh, that could help. You know, I've never thought about doing it that way. So when I was heading up departments, I always was looking at what how can we improve our workflow, what could our competition be doing that we're not doing, and how can that give us the edge? So it's just part and parcel of it. If you think you know everything and your way is the best way and there's nothing to improve, eventually you're gonna get stuck right and then it's more work to get unstuck right exactly, wow, and that's not a good place to be if you're a business owner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey, are you sick and tired of being overwhelmed because you are doing everything alone in your business and can't scale because you don't have a team supporting you? Well, you don't have to worry anymore, because smart vas can provide you with a team of experience virtual assistants that can do different tasks to support your growth From admin to bookkeeping, to social media, video and podcast editing to website graphics, seo and customer service. Smartva's team can help you grow your business without any worries or stress from all the tasks weighing down on you. If you are a busy entrepreneur who needs help with your day-to-day tasks so you can focus on growing your business, then you have to visit smartvirtualassistancecom.
Speaker 2:So, um, in 2020, we started working together. Um, I want to know how you learned how to delegate, like, what were the challenges during the time? You're, you know, starting to delegate some of the tasks and now you're a master delegator. You know, because you've been with working with us for almost four years now and you've delegated a lot of tasks already yes, um well, thank you for labeling me a master delegator.
Speaker 1:I still feel like I have work to do. Well, before I say any of that, I want to say that anyone that starts their own business especially like a small business and from your own skills or your own passion whether you're making a product that you've designed it and then you're going to sell it, or your own service that you know in and out the hardest thing to do, I personally found, is delegate because you don't know. Well, firstly, you have to be aware that you are a bottleneck.
Speaker 1:You know, and where to relinquish control and where to relinquish control. That's not easy for most people, especially when you've put like blood, sweat, tears, hours, money, years of experience into starting something and then now it's your brand, like samson rose is literally my middle name and my daughter's middle name squished together, so it's like they're my names in there. How do you give that to someone else? Um, so it's, it's not easy.
Speaker 1:But then you get to a point where you're like, if I need to do all of these things, if I map out everything that I need to do and I think it was one of the sessions, the working sessions that you guys had, like the four quadrants, and what do you like to do and you're good at and what do you like to do that you're not good at, and all of that stuff and figuring out like what you should be delegating, um, is the first step, and being okay with letting go to a certain at a certain level, um, I think that's step one.
Speaker 1:Step two is also being clear on what you need people to do, because your your VAs or anyone that you delegate to, unless they are your business partner, they're just going to do what you ask or what you require, or give them that direction. Something I'm not as quick with or something that I can improve on is feedback and reviewing tasks, because if you just go quiet for ages which I've done and then you go back and you look at it and you're like, oh, it's been, they've still been doing all the work, which is great, but then I could have given better direction throughout.
Speaker 2:So it's, it's a learning program, a process, always, I find yeah, because when you delegate, it's not like you're gonna delegate a one-time big task today, you know tomorrow, the following week, after a month, after a year, you're still gonna continue delegating, right, and you're not gonna be delegating the same task all the time, you know right. So probably I mean not for each task that you're going to delegate, but for the most of the tasks that you're going to delegate you have to be clear with the instructions that that you're going to give to your va. So you have to have patience as well, right?
Speaker 2:and yeah yeah, do you remember the first task you delegated?
Speaker 1:uh, I don't, actually I don't. I mean, I can tell you what I delegate right now, but wow, I can't remember what I first I don't blame you.
Speaker 2:It's been three years ago, years, yeah which is wild to think about.
Speaker 1:But, um, you know, I've my, my team and I obviously anyone that works with you guys knows, unless you've just got one task, you've got a team. It's like a whole back there, which is what I was having a conversation before this when I was just like seeing your guys praises as well and just talk about, like, the benefits of having a VA company or team there, because you sometimes, again, as a small business, you don't know what you're going to need help with. Sometimes, right, whether I've needed, like, website updates and I don't have someone dedicated always every week working on my website, but you guys have the skill sets internally to to put on there. So I've done that stuff. Social media, data inputs, um, my podcast. There's so much stuff that you guys help with, um, that without it it would be like a bit of an issue yeah, true.
Speaker 2:Um, so what is your favorite thing to delegate, if you have one?
Speaker 1:I think it's probably my podcast my favorite thing to dedicate, to delegate? Yeah, because, again, anyone who now with tools and things like that and time you and, like you said, you can youtube you could probably figure it out yourself, but it's are you really going to spend 15 hours doing that one task, whereas you've got an expert, someone that really knows what they're doing, that does it for other people.
Speaker 1:They've got the setup they learn what you, how you like it, and then you can start leaning on them, you know. So for me it's like that. That is probably um, and then probably my second would be social media engagement and management type of stuff, because again, everyone's got social media and knows how to post and all that stuff. But do you really want to be doing it? All the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly yeah. So since you have delegated you know, most of your it's mainly marketing right Most of your marketing tasks to your VAs or some admin support as well, what do you do now? What is now your day-to-day life look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm primarily focused on I call them money-making activities.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I focus on like client engagement and interactions, and then I work on the searches that I have.
Speaker 1:So I'm looking for candidates for the roles that I work on. So those are money-making activities in my business the the podcast isn't. It's very good for like personal and business branding and like business development, you know, but it's a longer game and the work that I put in that, if I was doing it all myself, could be much better suited or utilized doing the money making activities right, I love that, and that's what it's all about.
Speaker 2:Right, you delegate so that you can focus more on revenue-adding tasks instead of doing admin repeatable tasks that you could have delegated to somebody else. So I love that. So, as an entrepreneur with a five-year-old business, what is that one main challenge that you kept on encountering? It's like what is that one challenge that that you're like ah, this keeps me up at night.
Speaker 1:Why can't you just be, sold um, I think it would probably be the peaks and troughs of business and like having things to work on.
Speaker 1:So you know you get very focused on finding new clients or work. You know I'm in the services business, so it's like finding a client to serve, because you're a small business you can't just take on an infinite amount of clients. You need to cap it at a certain point to make sure that you actually provide that service and a good service. But once that's done, you've got the trough of oh, now we don't have clients, or now we don't have things to work on, let's ramp up again. So I think that the ebbs and flows with that is probably something I'd love to iron out and always have a consistent or at least visibility to what each quarter is going to look like right?
Speaker 2:yeah, if only we can anticipate everything. Right if? Only yeah, if only yeah, that's the right word that's a hard one to solve, yeah yeah, exactly, especially in the economy right now.
Speaker 2:You know businesses are very conservative with how they spend their money, so they're very conscious about, you know, spending any money towards other people. Hey, are you looking for a community to learn how you can be effective in delegation so you can focus on the things that matter the most in your business and grow to six to seven figures? If this is you, then today is your lucky day. Join our Facebook group today to get your questions answered on delegation, outsourcing, business growth, hiring members and many more. We offer so much value in the group, so join our growing community by going to facebookcom slash groups.
Speaker 2:Slash masterdelegator See you there being a master delegator? You know I am now labeling you as that. It's not just about delegating right, and you won't be able to delegate if you are not taking care of yourself. So how do you take care of yourself as an entrepreneur? I know, before recording this, we're talking about skiing. You know what are some of the ways that you take care of yourself as an entrepreneur. I know, before recording this, we're talking about skiing. You know, um, what are some of the ways that you take care of yourself as an entrepreneur?
Speaker 1:uh, that's something else I could probably be a lot better at or more consistent at, but in my weekly wants or to do's, exercise is a big one, so I try to exercise every day or do something active. Um, or six days a week. Try to.
Speaker 2:Uh, I'll say what kind of exercise do you do?
Speaker 1:um, I like to swim, I like to box and, um, go to the gym for like, just weight training or body weight stuff as well. Um, and then trying to get my steps in, which is which is such a big challenge. If you don't go, if I'm not active, if I don't go to the gym or like jump on my peloton, getting my steps in is difficult because you sat at your desk the whole time yeah um, that's probably the biggest challenge getting steps in.
Speaker 1:Um, I also try to do like a short meditation before I jump into work every day as well, just to like, because I've got young kids, so I like I get the kids up, get breakfast ready, I like responding to emails, stuff like that so before I jump, into work.
Speaker 1:I try to have like a little reset and get some mental clarity before um. All of that is a lot easier if I got to bed early and then I wake up early so I can get my workout in. I have a little bit me time, some thinking time, the kids meditation, then work, but, um, I could be probably, like most people, a lot more consistent, um, outside of that, I love to travel. We love to travel as a family, um, so taking regular vacations or a break is also important right?
Speaker 2:yeah, because what's the point of having a business, right, if you can't enjoy it, you know. So we, now that the philippines is open to travelers since 2022, since December 2022, we've been going to the Philippines at least twice a year, and actually we're going to go there next month, on March 18th, and we're going to be there until April 30th. But we're going to step over not really step over. We're going to go to Japan for a week. You know, because the Philippines is close to Japan. So instead of booking a ticket from the States to Japan, which is expensive, you know why not go from the Philippines to Japan? So the ticket is not as expensive? So we're going to go there for like a month and two weeks, and normally when I go on vacation, I don't really work as much, like I just let my team do the thing and they don't also bother me, like they know, when I'm on vacation, like, oh, let's not bother Chrissy, let's just solve this, you know, to the best of our ability.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys, regine and Lexi yeah, they're great, yeah, they're so great at doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but before I go on vacation, I work really, really hard. I work my butt off, but not to the point where I work more than 12 hours a day. Probably the max is 10 hours, especially this time, february. I'm only a month away before my vacation. So this month is going to be a busy month for me, because I need to make sure that everything is in place, that my team will not be doing anything that I have forgotten to do before I leave. Plus, I don't want my vacation to get interrupted.
Speaker 2:So I think one of my realizations recently is that, yes, I go on vacation for a month and not work, but at the same time, when I work, I work. When I go on vacation, I go on vacation for a month and not work, but at the same time, when I work, I work. When I go on vacation, I go on vacation like I'm not gonna waste my three thousand dollar ticket, you know, just to work at a beach, you know if that, if that, makes sense. So I think it's just true, it's. I think it's just a matter of like knowing yourself, and because what is freedom to me may look differently to you, right? So you, some people. They go on a month vacation, but they still work. But that doesn't mean they don't have freedom and flexibility. It's just we're built um differently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you can structure it.
Speaker 1:That, I think, is probably one of the biggest gifts of having your own business is building it, how you especially in this day and age, right and the pandemic kind of emphasized and accelerated remote working or flexible working and things like that. Now, if you are building a business from scratch whether it's a, you know, online services business, a coaching business, e-commerce, whatever you know online services business, a coaching business, e-commerce, whatever you can build it in the way where you don't have to be physically there. Or, like you said, some people I know some people that just, they're constantly working but they travel the world. Right, they, they're always away, they're never there. They're like this week they're in Aruba, next week they're in South America, somewhere else, then they're going to Europe, but they're always plugged in and they prefer that.
Speaker 1:They're like this is my office this is my office for the week, um. And then there's the other people that work really hard when they're working, like yourself, and then when they vacation, they vacation hard as well. I mean, you'll go, you'll just do emails here and there right, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean you're never going to fully turn off right, but exactly you just gotta answer it and be like, okay, that's not a fire that I need to be involved with, um. So I think that's the blessing. Now I'm going into it with that mindset of and I think, for the people around you as well setting that expectation, whether it's your spouse or your kids or friends or family, like when I'm working, this is my working, or when I'm not working, this is what it's like.
Speaker 2:And or even your staff, like you said, you know I'm contactable all the time, unless I'm not, and then don't contact me exactly, yeah, well, and yeah, I mean, the reason I asked about, you know, all that kind of stuff is because, you know, as entrepreneurs, we need to.
Speaker 2:You know, like we didn't want to have a boss. But if we're in the business and we're not able to do the things we want to do, then what's the point? You know, might as well, at least if you're employed by somebody, you have like 12 days of vacation or maybe more than that, right, yeah, and you, and if you're sick, you can, you can just, you can just call your boss and say, hey, I'm not feeling well today. But if you have a business, right, sometimes you gotta work, you gotta really push, yeah, and so that's why it's important that you find balance between work and play, you know, because it's really really important. Um, so I'm glad that you take the time to travel with your family. So, um, in terms of delegation, what is one thing that you are still struggling with?
Speaker 1:um, apart from my quicker feedback to tasks, um, I would say delegating more. You know, I think to delegate effectively you need to carve out the time to make, either document it or have a process for what you want to delegate, because I think sometimes but I'll speak for me at least it's more of like a daunting task to think through what I need to do or how to do it than me just and instead saying you know what, I'll just do it myself, whereas if I carved out like an hour and put it all like pen to paper or wrote a document, or even, like you know, use a loom video or whatever, to record what I'm doing, then at least I can hand that off to someone.
Speaker 1:So I think that is probably. I wish I could, or should, delegate even more so and spend, maybe carve out, some dedicated training time or one-on-one time with the people that I delegate to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that and that's also one of my challenges as well.
Speaker 2:And I think one sign that I'm not delegating enough is if I'm working too much hours or if I'm overwhelmed already. So when I'm overwhelmed to the point where I'm kind of like paralyzed, you know, I'm like I didn't know where to start and just kind of panicking, you know, like with everything that you need to do, so once I'm at that point I tell myself oh, christy, you didn't delegate enough, you need to delegate this stuff. You point, I tell myself oh, christy, you didn't delegate enough, you need to delegate this stuff. You know, because I consider myself as a creative person and I still I don't want to lose that, you know. So there are some tasks, creative tasks that I still want to do myself. You know, I love designing websites and graphics and I'm very picky when it comes to design, and so sometimes I try to do it myself because I enjoy it and I'm picky. But then when I realize that I'm working too much and I could have delegated that specific task to somebody, you know, I immediately take actions.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't justify doing the task or continuing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a good point. I found myself there this week at that point of overwhelm. I think that is a really good realization, or like a moment that you should have a reflection like why am I overwhelmed with all of the things that I? Because, again, you said like working in the business if I'm constantly working in the business, I can't work on the business. And then if my now my to-do list looks like a long list of on and in the business tasks, where have I gone wrong here? Or why has this all just come up? Or why have I let it all pile up like that? And I sometimes just get like paralyzed by my to-dos right I don't know where to start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah that's true.
Speaker 2:I mean, even though we consider ourselves master delegators, we're still not perfect, right? No, the podcast is not called perfect delegators, it's master delegator, and we are in the process, even though we mastered it already. You know, things change, you know, and so we are all working in progress, and I think it's just a matter of knowing. When you're overwhelmed, you need to act fast, you need to delegate fast. So, as we wrap up, what is an advice that you want to give to entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed in the business?
Speaker 1:I will uh rephrase that on. What advice should I give myself then? I love that yeah, I mean again, it's, it's, it'sawareness. You know, if I know I could be better, or I know I'm overwhelmed, what would someone else tell me?
Speaker 2:I might need that advice too, right now as I prepare for my vacation, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's sitting down and looking at everything that you're trying to do and everything that you want to do and then everything that you need to do, and looking at those groups of things, because sometimes you're trying to do things that just aren't important, you know, or you want to do things. I'm I, my wife and I, like I'll say, battle about this, but when I'm in those overwhelmed states I'm like, but this stuff's important for the business, like I've got a vision for what I want this to look like or be like, or I can't get in a place where I don't know, or clients don't know who I am, or I don't know that there's business coming in, or I can't not be at that conference. So there's all of these things that you have to do for, like future state, and then there's the right now, like those money making activities that if you just focus on, that's revenue. It is a balance. You need to balance it because you can't just constantly be chasing dollars, because right you know what you're doing.
Speaker 1:No one just wants to do it like, let's be real, it's not just for money. You're doing it for all the other the freedoms, the passion, the, the helping, the, whatever your, your motivation is, um. So I would lay out all of those things and then try to prioritize um what in your first chunk of time, whether that's this week or month or this quarter you need to action. And then the whole point of this podcast is delegation right, what can you really delegate? And then be clear about how you want to delegate it. Because some of the stuff you know, I look at my list and it's right down here and I've got like my first bucket, my second bucket, and some of that is like I could and I could and I should and I will delegate.
Speaker 1:But I need to understand what I'm delegating first, because some of it is new. You know it's a new tool or a new blog thing that I want to do or some sort of marketing task, but I can't delegate something I have no idea about that's been introduced to me brand new. So I have to carve out the time to learn and understand it before I can delegate it. So if you want to do it and you want to do it properly, allocate that time and then just know it's like setting up automation If you put up, put in the front work, it's going to make it so much easier later on.
Speaker 2:Same with delegation. So that's a long answer, but I hope the gist of it came out.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I love it. I love that, yeah, and I love the part where you said you know if it's something new, you can't delegate it immediately. You have to learn how to do it so that you can make you know, um better instructions to your team and you can set them up for for success. So I love that. That's a good uh, that's a good insight. But, um, yeah, thank you so much for your time today, greg. I feel like we can talk all day about personal life, professional life. I can talk skiing all the time and delegating.
Speaker 2:We can talk about delegation while skiing.
Speaker 1:While skiing, yeah, up on the ski lift. Maybe we'll set up another podcast of that.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, exactly when can people find you online?
Speaker 1:um linkedin you can find me. My name is greg terussian. Um, I'm sure my name will be on here somewhere. I'm very responsible on linkedin. Uh, my instagram, which is for the podcast and business, is machine minds show, um. You can find that on my linkedin as, and the company website, samsonrosecom. But yeah, I'm very active on LinkedIn, so feel free to connect and reach out.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. If you like this episode, please share this with your entrepreneur or business owner friends on social media, so they can have freedom and flexibility while running a successful business as well. Please also subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback will inspire me to continue creating content like this and help me improve this podcast show for you. Thank you so much again for listening and I'll see you again on the next episode.
