How to Finally Let Go and Delegate Like a Pro | Frameworks Over SOPs (#119)

For years I thought delegating meant handing someone my step-by-step process and making sure they followed it to the letter. Turns out that's not delegating at all. It's just remote-controlling people, and it kept me stuck as the bottleneck in my own business.

In this episode I break down the shift that changed everything for me: managing outcomes instead of inputs. I stopped obsessing over how the work gets done and started caring about whether it got done, to the standard, every time. That's when I could actually let go.

I get into frameworks versus SOPs and why a framework someone owns will always beat a perfect process they resent. I use a simple example to make it land. Losing weight comes down to calories in versus calories out. That's the framework. Give someone that principle and a few boundaries, then let them run it their own way, and you get a far better result than forcing them into a rigid plan that fights their strengths.

Then I bring it home to the cleaning business. I talk through how I give my cleaners, supervisors, schedulers and managers the outcome and the standard, set the edges of the sandbox, and let them figure out the rest. It's the only way I've found to build a business that runs without me, where my people get real autonomy and I get real freedom.

If you're still lost in the weeds perfecting every process, this one's for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey folks, just got back from Bali recently, and what an incredible experience that was. It's my first time in Bali, first time in Indonesia, and yeah, beautiful place. I definitely get the hype. And you know, every time I tell someone or I told someone that I was from Perth and I'd never been to Bali, they're like, what are you doing, mate? That's like your next door neighbor, pretty much. I mean, Bali is just turning into an extension of Perth. It's just a suburb of Perth at this point. So I definitely understand the hype now. Beautiful place, beautiful people, beautiful culture, everything. So, but the retreat as well, the um I went for the success school retreat. It was a three-day like business and marketing retreat. Lots of very, very high-level interesting people there. A lot of my um my now friends who I met at the last Thailand retreat made a lot of friends there, and we've maintained contact, stayed in touch. And uh it was really cool to catch up with a lot of them. Some very, very big names there. And uh one of the people I've become friends with, he's like a he was a first-round investor in a now billion-dollar company. So he's done very well for uh well for himself. He's sold an activeware company that he started from scratch with his uh now fiance. So yeah, just a very, very interesting guy. And um very, very fortunate and I feel very blessed to be able to have these people in my circle. And every time I talk to them, it's like I walk away with ideas and I feel very um invigorated and I just want to go out and and achieve stuff. So it's very cool. But the um yeah, the retreat itself was good. We learned about a lot of cool stuff to do with content and and yeah, content marketing and funnels and that sort of stuff. So it is a it's a mastermind that's focused on service businesses, but mainly coaches. So I do a bit of business coaching. I it's uh it's something I want to get more into because I I really do enjoy it. So I've been going there and just trying to uh trying to sharpen my skill and and really hone the craft of coaching and mentoring and just soaking up as as much knowledge as I can. But it was very fun. We uh it was in Jim Baran, Jim Baran, however you say that, and I did a couple of day trips. I went to Uluwatu, saw the uh the temple with all the monkeys, which was fascinating. Uh I I witnessed two monkeys steal people's phones. So boy, that would um that would be certainly stressful if you're solo traveling and a monkey takes your phone. Um that would be yeah, that'd be terrifying, actually. Um, but they're they're very very funny little little animals. They were like stealing water bottles and drinking out of them, very human-like. Um but yeah, just unreal place. Definitely gonna go back there and I'll check out some of the more touristy spots as well, because uh we we kind of stayed away from the really big hot spots, which I actually kind of liked. I do like the more laid-back vibe of some of these smaller, you know, sort of out-of-the-way areas, but very, very cool, fun trip. And so on day three of the retreat, we did our mastermind session, which is actually my favorite part of these retreats. Um, back in Thailand, we we did the same thing. So day three, uh, there's like everyone's at tables, so it's around 10 people per table. And on the mastermind session, everyone gets a chance to um pretty much just lay out a problem or a challenge they're facing in their business, and then the rest of the table will ask clarifying questions and dig a little bit deeper into that problem and just and just get more uh clarity and understanding of what that person's issue is, and then you just spend 15 minutes as a table, pretty much workshopping the the person's problem or idea or whatever it is, and so we just go in a circle and we do that, and that's the really uh impactful stuff for me. Um that's that's what I get the most out of. And so, but one of the things that got that got brought up, and I'm kind of building this uh this podcast episode around it, was my friend who he uh he's the one that sold the activeware company and he's the the investor in this big billion dollar company. His problem was he is a very, very diligent business owner and he's done very, very well for himself, and he like uses AI for um for a lot of his business, and he has like AI assistance, and he showed me his AI dashboard, and it's incredible. But he doesn't know how to build a team, despite all of his success and all that he's done, and as smart as he is, he doesn't know how to build a team. And so his question was about that how do I how do I grow a team? How do I let go of control and stop being such a perfectionist and a control freak and getting really bogged down in the details of everything? And I had obviously a lot of input uh for this question because team building has sort of become a strong suit for me. It's it's definitely become a strength. And it's you know, it's not something that I was always good at. If you've been a longtime listener of this podcast, you'll know that I really didn't like it. I was really, I really did not like the idea even of hiring people and training staff. But I I viewed it as like a necessary evil. Like if I wanted to grow this business, I needed staff. I needed to build teams. So naturally, the more you do something, the better you get at it, the less you suck at it. So that was 100% my experience. I sucked at it in the beginning. Um, but the more you do it, the less you suck and the better you get. And it's great. So now I've actually become quite a good team builder, quite a good leader. Um, and yeah, I get like beautiful messages from my employees. Uh, we have people returning to work for us, which is, I think, a testament to our culture and the fact that people enjoy working with us and want to come back. We actually had two people come back just last week. Uh, one person, she's she's coming back to us for like three months uh in between her. She she goes like and does FIFO and stuff like that. And so, yeah, we we've built a really good culture. And I think it's really important because if you want to sustain long-term growth, you kind of need that. You don't just want to have that revolving door of cleaners that they they come and go. You want to have that sort of environment and that sort of business where people want to come back and for whatever reason they move on, they get they get like a full-time job or you know, life changes or they move away, um, but then they come back because they really did enjoy working with us. And there's not many cleaning businesses out there that have that sort of culture where people just love working with you and and want to come back. So yeah, it's it's definitely become a skill for me, and it's become a skill that I've actually really like it's a craft that I've really honed and I've become good at it, which is, you know, I never thought I'd be in this position where I'd even be saying this, but I actually do love team building now, and I do love the the leadership that I that I do and I love the responsibility of it. But so that was that was a big topic of this mastermind roundtable, and it got me thinking of my progression of of leadership style and my my managerial style, and it really boiled down to this principle, okay. And the principle was, and this was kind of my answer, this is how I started it. Um, is that you need to let go of the inputs and how things are done and focus on the outcomes and the results. Okay, so let's unpack that, right? The moment you stop caring how stuff gets done, and you start caring that it gets done, is the moment your business stops needing you. Right. So most business owners they think they're delegating when they start to grow a team and they like hire VAs and all this stuff, but they're actually just outsourcing the button pushing while they're still keeping all the thinking. So that's not really delegation, that's just like remote controlling. That's like just extending your own arms, like right. Like you hire a VA to like do the stuff you, but you still micromanage every little thing they do, and like you have these step-by-step processes, and it's like all you've done is just extended your own arms in a way. So that's what the core problem is with a lot of people that that start trying to build a team and they get hit with roadblocks and they feel like they're not progressing, and they feel like they're, you know, it's like it's a paradox. It's like that they've hired people to help and they're delegating, but they're somehow doing more work. And it's because the core problem is people um they're always stuck in the weeds of micromanaging the inputs. And when you obsess over the step by step, um, you've made yourself the bottleneck. Every decision is going to come back to you because you've hired a person, but you're treating them like a machine that's running a script. People obviously aren't machines, right? They they have brains, but you're you it's like you're hiring a brain, you're hiring a full person with a brain, and you're only using the hands. So trying to perfect how keeps you stuck in the weeds. It keeps you stuck in that rat race of just constantly trying to micromanage and perfect the process and the step by step. And you feel busy and productive, but you're just polishing a process instead of actually growing a business. So we went deep into that, and I could tell straight away he was the type of guy that's just like a perfectionist, a control freak, and like he has talked about how he's hired VAs and he's like fired them because they don't do everything the exact same way he wants to. And I was like, okay, tell me about that. Well, give me some examples of what they were doing that you know you didn't like, and as a result, you fired them. And he was like, Oh, you know, I was I didn't like the font they used in the emails they were sending out. And I was like, dude, come on. The font they're using in the emails they're sending to the clients, like that doesn't matter. This is this is you getting bogged down in the details of how things are getting done, right? The outcome is the email is sent, right? That's all you need to focus on. Okay, the font, sure, like you you you can nitpick that, but really what you want to build is a framework and then let people occupy that framework however they want. And that's the shift. You need to define the result and then let go of the method. Well, not entirely, but you know, build a framework rather than a step-by-step system. Because, you know, when you when you tell people what done and good looks like, and like the outcome and the standard, um, that's when you can really just get out of the way and let people occupy that space. You give them the what and the why, and then you let them own the how. You give them the freedom and the autonomy to do that. And that's when people actually take a lot of ownership over their own role. And they they feel like they have a lot more responsibility and a lot more skin in the game. And that's when they really, that's when they incentivize themselves to work. That's how I built such a good management team where everyone just gets stuff done and I don't have to constantly worry about what people are doing and how they're doing it. And it's really the only way to actually let go. You you you can't delegate a task and then keep the judgment. You just have to hand over both. There's no other way around it. Um, like if I have to tell you every step, I haven't hired help. I've just hired, like I said, a longer pair of my own arms, which is not what I want. That that creates more work because not only am I, you know, when you do something yourself, like it becomes even harder when you're not only trying to do a lot of that yourself, but you're also trying to teach someone step-by-step how to do that thing as well. It just doubles up the work, and then you're also making less money because you're paying someone else to be doing stuff that you want them to be doing, but you're also still, you know, it's just a mess. And that's what a lot of people do. And it's like, that's the big mistake people make. And I'm I'm just as fallible as the next person. I made that mistake when I started. I was creating like the most rigid step-by-step processes for every little thing in the business. I had like the longest training uh things, and like it was long, it was it was ridiculous. Like, especially when it came to cleaning. I think I've talked about it before. I had like these three-hour long cleaning training modules where it was like step-by-step how to clean a toilet. Step one, this is step 20, this is step 30. And it's like, what was I thinking back then, right? It's like it was just ridiculous. And hindsight is 2020, so I can look back on that and be like, yeah, that was, you know, what was I thinking back then? But, you know, that's how you learn. You have to learn by either doing it and then realizing that the way you're doing it doesn't work and then changing your approach, or you can learn from someone else's mistakes and experience, which is hopefully what you can get out of listening to this podcast and hearing hearing my pitfalls and my shortcomings, and then just being like, hmm, I'm not gonna do it that way because it didn't work so well for him. So um, yeah, that's that's really the shift. It's when you define the result and let go of the how and you focus on the the outcome, right? So um yeah, really the the shift here, and and I got into this with with this guy at the the mastermind as well, and the shift is it's really about frameworks versus SOPs. I know people love to talk about SOPs, um, and like the step-by-step processes and systems, and everyone's like, you know, I'm building my SOP house and my wheelhouse for the business. Like, I'm gonna systemize every single little thing in my business, and there's gonna be a step-by-step system for everything, and I'm gonna step back and I'm gonna go, you know, live on the beach and sit mojitas and and do nothing all day, and the business will run without me because it's all laid out, and it's like, yeah, but then reality hits and you realize that that doesn't work, right? Like an SOP says, do step one, then two, then three. Okay, but a framework is like, here's the principle, here's the boundaries, here's the guardrails, now you figure out the path. It's so much better because SOPs are really rigid and they break the moment reality doesn't match the script. And guess what? Reality never matches the script. Think about if you're making dials and you're doing cold calls, how often are you actually going to stick to a script? As soon, like literally, think about it. Um, when you've got decision trees, so it's like, you know, greeting, hello, how are you? The person responds, good, how are you? You say this. As soon as they respond differently in in the first sentence, then the whole script is useless, and you have to go down a completely different decision tree in like all these different scripts. Like, pretty much from step one, the script is useless. So I'm I'm a big believer in frameworks over SOPs. That was one of the biggest changes I had to make in my not only my business, but in just my way of thinking and my whole my whole paradigm and worldview was like, I I love frameworks now. And it's it's good because it's also really simple. Like it's really simple to just create frameworks and create principles that people can follow. And then they can they can they can occupy that with whatever processes they want. Um, particularly when I when I employed my manager in my first location for the cleaning business, I tried to do the same thing. I was micromanaging, I was trying to get her to do everything exactly like how I do it, but we're not the same person. We operate differently, we have different strengths and weaknesses and behavior types and and leadership types. And so it was only when I started to shift away from processes and move towards frameworks that we started to both have success. She started to do well and excel in that role. And I was able to just take a back seat and let her do that and give her that freedom and that autonomy. And it's because she started to operate to the best of her ability because I wasn't trying to make her operate the exact way I do. I just gave her the guardrails, right? It's like when you go bowling at the alley. Um, you just put up the guardrails on either side, and you know, you can throw it however hard, however soft, or in whichever direction you want. But as long as those guardrails are there, that ball is gonna stay in the lane and you're gonna knock over some pins, all right? You might even get a strike. Um, so frameworks are your savior. And Russell Brunson, he's a famous internet marketer who I followed for like over a decade, since I was literally like 14. He says that. He says frameworks are your savior. Every time you get off track, you get off script, you just go back to the framework, and that is gonna get you back on track. And like SOPs are just very rigid, they just they just break the moment that um you know the reality hits, and it's it's just never gonna be like that. Whereas frameworks flex, they they let a person use their strengths and their own abilities and their style and their personal operating system to hit the same target. Like the outcome and the result is still the exact same as what you would have done, but the process may be completely uh completely different, and that's good, that's what you want. Um, I'll I'll give you an example with like weight loss, right? Weight loss is you know, the framework is really just calories in versus calories out. That's pretty much, you know, that's that's that's it. That's really all it is. And I went through a big, like I wouldn't say big, like I went through my own little weight loss journey. I I lost 20 kilos in the in the span of a year. Um and I've I've tried like getting fit before and like following trends and doing what other people do, and I just hated it. I was like, man, if this is what being fit is really like, then I don't want to do it. But then I just started to like, you know, figure out things I did like and figure out like a diet that worked for me. Like I didn't want to stick to this diet because I'm someone that likes to snack a lot. So I like to snack throughout the day. And so I had to shift from like, you know, just eating three really optimized meals to like eating smaller meals and then still having the freedom to snack throughout the day. So I like, you know, I went on AI, I I used ChatGPT for this, and I just laid out my wants, needs, desires, and like things, my behavior types and and things I usually do in a day. Like, yes, I do snack. So if I'm if I'm gonna build a diet plan, I need to incorporate this into it. And like my workout style, like I do not like doing uh deadlifts or like any of that stuff, squats, I don't do that stuff. So I built a workout plan that works for me and then AI compiled it all, and I was able to stick to it because I actually enjoyed it. And that's like it's that um that cliche of like the the diet that's gonna work for you isn't like the best fad diet, it's the one that you're gonna stick to, and you're gonna stick to the one that you actually like and enjoy. So, with weight loss, for example, like if you give someone a very rigid meal plan and workout split and you've fought their preferences and their schedule and their tastes, they're gonna quit that within like three weeks. But if you hand them the framework, you know, you just eat less than you burn, you prioritize protein, uh move more, um, and you let them build a version they can actually stick to, which is pretty much what I did. You know, one person, if you've got three people, like one person could uh just run more, one person lifts more, one person just walks and they cut out like sugary drinks and they switch them out for like a sugar-free drink, right? And they just have lighter meals. Like all three are gonna win because they're working with their their selves, they're working with their own um personal operating systems and not against a script. And so they all achieve the same result despite very different methodologies and ways of getting there. So the lesson there is a framework that someone owns beats a perfect process they resent. Right. And like now, translating that into the cleaning business, if we have a look at management or admins, you can have you know, you can have an SOP for like scheduling, which is this is the worst thing. I see people doing this and they have SOPs and like written step-by-step processes for how they schedule their clients. And it's just it's stupid because it's like the one single most dynamic thing in a business. It is never going to be static. And they have like, you know, build the roster in this exact order, assign these people to these jobs, follow this template every week, blah, blah, blah. Whereas if you just switch to a framework, it's it's not only easier for you to lay out and easier for you to convey and train people to do, um, you know, the the outcome is just we want every job covered. We don't want anyone over their, you know, this threshold of hours or this workload. We want minimal travel time between sites, and we want clients getting their preferred cleaner where possible. Then you just hand the scheduler those targets and those constraints like budget, uh, availability, award rules, etc., and you let them build the roster however they think best. They're gonna spot efficiencies that you never would have with your SOP system. Like that this is the other beautiful thing as well. Like, you're when you're delegating, you're you're delegating someone else's or the thinking to someone else. And a lot of the time, they're actually gonna come up with ways that are better than the way you would have done it. And I mean, I did this with one of my VAs, um Josh. He was doing our scheduling for a while, and we we just gave him some frameworks to operate within, and he actually created ways that made the scheduling better. Like we had uh we had like a lot of two people cleans, like cleans that two people were on, but you wouldn't know which ones they are with just at a first glance at the schedule. You'd have to like go into the job history and see that that uh client has had two cleaners every single time. So he just added like this system where he would put two asterisks in the job title every time. And it's like, uh, you know, like I would have never thought of that. It's such a simple thing, but I would have never even thought of that. And like we have two locations, Perth and Bunbury. He just added a a little um uh parentheses with a P in the middle of them to signify which staff are in Perth. And so it like organized all of our Perth employees at the very top of the schedule because it goes by alphabet uh order, and then all the Bunbury people were below that. And it's like the same thing, like he's just created this thing because you know he's thinking outside the box and he's he's got a very um intuitive way of thinking, and I would never have come up with that, as simple as it is. Like, I am not the smartest person in the world, and I I'm very okay with that, and I'm very aware of that. So if you're if you're gonna give someone a very rigid SOP to follow, a very written, uh, sorry, rigid set of written steps, like these things aren't gonna come up. The people don't have the freedom and the autonomy to think and use their own ingenuity, which is terrible. That's how that's how you halter growth altogether. So frameworks are always gonna be the savior. And you know, even with uh what what are some other examples? Like uh client feedback and complaints, like an SOP version, like you can give someone a script and you can say, you know, offer exactly this, escalate to me every time. Um and so it always ends up you know coming back to you. Whereas the framework can be the outcome needs to be um the client just has to feel heard. Um the issue needs to get fixed fast, like we need a fast response time, and they remain a client. Like that is the dream outcome. So however you want to operate that, that's up to you. And so the boundaries, you know, we can say, you know, here's the dollar value uh value that you can uh resolve without asking or escalating. Um here's when you must escalate, and then inside this sandbox, you know, you let them handle it their way. So you're delegating judgment and and not a phone script, which is like, oh, I hate phone scripts. I I see a lot of people, like agencies and businesses that have phone scripts and they have scripts for pretty much everything, and it's so bad. We try when we had our um when we first launched our virtual reception, I tried to script all the phone calls and it was a disaster. Like you can tell people are reading off a script, they get flustered when as as soon as They go off script, which is like immediately, as I said, like you can't have um decision trees for every single possible outcome of a conversation, like there's just infinite possibilities. So it just anyway, it was bad. So we switched to a framework. It was less work for me to train people and plan all this out, and it ended up with better outcomes because we we've we focused on the outcome and the result rather than how it gets done. So same thing with like quoting and sales. You can use an SOP, which is like, you know, you use this exact pricing on every job. Um, you know, no deviation from this. This is how you um uh this is how you greet the people, this is how you uh handle each objection, this is how you, you know, you can have this step-by-step process, or you can just say, you know, here's the framework. The outcome is uh we we want a client, right? And here's the margin floor, here's the value range per service, here's our positioning as a brand. Um, so just hit the margin and uphold the brand values and convey that to the customer. How you structure or pitch that quote is entirely up to you. So a good estimator reading the room and reading the client and getting a feel for that person and their wants and needs and steering the conversation to fit that in their own way, that's gonna beat a rigid price sheet or, you know, calls, sorry, quote script every single time. Same thing with hiring, like we are big on frameworks for hiring. You can, you know, um, you can have these three-hour-long uh SOP modules and videos like I had, which is ridiculous, or you can just have a framework version, which is like we just want someone who joins our team to independently be able to hit the standard on a solo job within a week and uphold the brand values and and expectations to a T. And so how a trainer gets there is entirely up to them within the confines of uh the framework, right? So we have the we have our core values, which is like the the cornerstone of how we want to train people. So everything kind of flows downwards from the values, and there's like a whole thing about it. We've got we've got modules on this stuff, and we we train the trainers to not really necessarily train on skill, but just train on attitude. Um sorry, not train on attitude, but um nurture attitude and mindset more than just the cleaning. Like the cleaning will come, like the cleaning's the easy part. We want to make sure people are really indoctrinated into our culture and fit into that well. So that's the key focus there. And then we give the trainers the autonomy to to kind of train how they want to, and they all train differently as well, which is the thing. Like people are very different. We are not we are not all the same. We're wired differently, we communicate differently, we lead differently, we train differently. So they're all gonna have very different training approaches, but as long as they're all following the same North Star, the this the same framework, then we end up with the same result. We end up with you know not having to micromanage every trainer and every trainee, and things flow a lot smoother, right? But in saying that, the outcomes need to be uh measurable and they need to be visible. Um or you know, the trust trusting them with how to do it just becomes hope and pray, like spray and pray. Um you need to define what good looks like clearly enough that anyone can tell it was hit. It needs to be clearly defined and it needs to be measurable. The outcome needs to be visible visible and measurable, right? So you set the boundaries of the sandbox. You say, here's the framework, here's where you have full freedom, and here are the few hard lines you can't cross. Here are the few non-negotiables or principles or whatever it is that cannot be altered with or tampered with, or you know, we cannot compromise on these things. And then you inspect the result, not the process. You check the outcome and the standard, not whether they did it your exact way. And you let people fail small, right? So a framework means you're giving them the room to make non-catastrophic mistakes and learn. And that's how they build judgment on their own, which is what you're trying to delegate. So a big thing I did when I first kind of relinquished control and I stepped out of the business for the first time when I employed my first manager. I I gave her a set of frameworks and principles. And so I pretty much said to her, like, you are gonna fail in some ways. You're gonna mess up in some ways, but they're gonna be small, they're not gonna be big. And so I don't want that to let uh to let them dishearten you or or demotivate you or stress you out or anything. Like, expect to fail in some ways, but we need that. We need to see where the cracks are forming, we need to see what areas you're not super strong in, and also on the other side, what areas you are strong in, so we can empower you in those areas and we and we can really build you up in those areas. Um, but so I just stepped away for a month. I went away, came back. Obviously, some things, some cracks had had showed, some cracks had formed. There were some things that she was dropping the ball on and she wasn't super strong with. So then we worked on that, but I wouldn't have had the chance to see what areas she was lacking in or what areas she had weaknesses in if I didn't do that, if I just gave her the step-by-step system. And also she would have hated that. She would have, you know, people will just hate following systems. Like, you know, how how annoying is it when you're given a step-by-step uh process to do anything? Like a lot of the time you can just tell someone what you want, and then as long as you know the outcome, you can kind of re reverse engineer how you want to do it, right? Like when I cook, I I don't follow recipes step by step. I know the outcome, I know what kind of goes into it, and then I sort of just wing it. And that's how I've started to enjoy cooking because I don't like following step-by-step recipes and then like checking the recipe every five seconds, making sure I've got the exact right temperature, the exact right amount of time. I just kind of wing it and I use my own intuition. And now, like I may not make the most perfect like lasagna, you know, I may be I'm not sticking to the script and I'm not making it perfectly, but I'm doing it in a way where I'm actually doing it because I'm enjoying it and I'm not quitting halfway through and I'm like, stuff this, I'm just gonna go down the local uh Italian place and order one of these. Like I've actually found a way to enjoy it, um, and I found my own version of autonomy, whatever that looks like for you. It may be different, right? So this is this is where the the frameworks are really powerful. It's giving people that freedom and that autonomy and that ownership, and they can occupy that space however they want, but you still have to set the guardrails, you still have to uh set the expectations, and you have to have that clear, visible, measurable result, that clear outcome. Because without that, this is all just spray and pray. This is all just controlled chaos, or not even controlled chaos, it's chaos, right? So this is one of the things I picked up very early on, and it was a big part of uh what we talked about at this retreat. There's a lot of very successful people there, they've done very well on their own. They've, you know, some of them have hired VAs, but they quickly fire them and try to replace them, and they're they're just stuck in this rat race or this constant cycle, and they've done well with like um, you know, they they've had they've got AI agents that run their businesses without them. Like, it's crazy. I met I met this one lady, she makes $1.2 million a year with one VA, and she works 15 hours a week. And I I thought these people were like unicorns. I was like, you hear about them, but they're not real, right? But then I finally saw a unicorn. And there's people, there were multiple people there making over a million dollars a year, working like two or three days a week with no employees. And they showed me like their AI stacks and the the AI systems they have, and it's like blowing me away. But in saying that, it's still very reliant on them. Now, don't get me wrong, I would love to make one you know $1.2 million a year working 15 hours a week. But the point is if you stop working 15 hours a week, then the business kind of stops as well. Um, so the only way you can really build a business that runs without you and have that full autonomy is with teams. Like there is just no way around it. You need to build teams. AI is only going to get you so far. It's not like, can this be automated or can it not? It's like to what degree can I automate this? It's like a dial that you turn, you know, all the way to the left or all the way to the right, somewhere in that range. Uh, to what degree can I automate this? So it's always going to be, it's always going to come down to team building and and and how you how you can make that fit into whatever you're doing, but it's always going to come back to people. You always need to hire people to be able to grow and to be able to scale if that's what you want to do. And look, I know it's a lot of people are turned off by that idea because you hear so many horror stories about HR and hiring. And look, I've had horror stories, I've I've had things happen, uh, and things are gonna happen. You're gonna get hit with roadblocks, you're gonna there's gonna be things that happen and they're gonna really rattle you. But it's it's uh it's a necessary step on the way to achieving success. Because if it was easy and everyone knew how to do it, then we'd all be doing it and we'd all be rich. And you know, we can't have that. That that just that's just not how the world works. So um if you want to to really grow in this business, you need to just get comfortable, first of all, with the idea that you need to build teams, you need to hire people, you need to grow that way, and it is going to be scary. You may not want to do it, you may not be a people person, you may hate people for all I know. Um, I used to think I hated people, but I really just hated that I wasn't good with people. Okay, and I think that's that's the key here. Most people just that say they don't like people and they don't want to hire people because they don't like it, they just don't like the fact that they're not good with people. But it's like anything, it's just a skill that you have to train, it's something that you have to get good at. And so that's really where um things will start to compound big time, and that's when that's when you get the real growth. That's when you really get a business that you can step away from. That's when you get a business that runs without you. That's what that actually means. It's not that you've documented every step, but it's that you've handed over the thinking. You've given autonomy to your team and you've given freedom back to yourself. You can't have one without giving the other. Right? So, bottom line, stop trying to build a business that does exactly what you say. Build one that gets exactly what you want. And let your people figure out everything in between there. Give them the guardrails, give them the constraints, give them the outcomes, the parameters and the principles, and then let them occupy that space however they they however way they want. Let them figure it out, right? You want to delegate the thinking, you want to outsource the thinking. You don't want to outsource the doing, because you know, um you may as well just do it yourself at that point because you're still going to be micromanaging. You want to outsource the thinking. You're hiring a person. These people have brains. As much as people like to say, you know, all the you know, people are dumb. Like I everyone's dumb. I have to like handhold them through the whole process, blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, people aren't dumb, but you you can't give them a dumb process and expect them to follow it to a T. When everyone's different and everyone likes to learn differently and do things differently. Doesn't work like that. Frameworks are your savior. You have to shift focus from the how things are done, shift focus from the inputs and focus on the outcomes. Stop worrying so much about exactly how things are getting done and just focus on the result. Have a clear, measurable result that you can, that you can quantify, that you can measure, and that people can just they can work within a clear set of parameters or principles to work towards. And that's when you start to build a business that is a real business and not and not just something that, you know, is contingent on you all the time. And it's not like you just own a job. That's when you can really build something that you can step away from and you know, have yourself a unicorn. Have those, you know, people always talk about like, I've got a business that runs without me. I work like, you know, four hours a week, blah, blah, blah. And everyone's like, yeah, right. Like, what's it really like? What's the catch? What's it really like behind the scenes? It's like, no, these things really do exist. I've met a lot of people like that. I've met people that don't work at all and their businesses continue to run and grow without them. I'm sort of on the way there. I can take holidays whenever I want. I've been to seven countries this year. I'm going to another one in a few weeks. I'm going to Spain. Um, it's a beautiful thing once you adopt this mindset and this way of thinking. And it's it's kind of reassuring in a way that this this this there's still people at this like billion-dollar level, like literally billion-dollar level, who still don't know how to build teams and they still suck at it. And it's like, because we're all just human. And if you haven't done it before, you are gonna suck. And you're gonna have all these limiting beliefs and these these things in the in the back of your head telling you you shouldn't do it because it's like the wrong idea, or you, you know, you're not you're not good with people, so you shouldn't be trying to build a team. And you know, just try to try to do it all yourself and like you know, build systems and like AI assistance to to do as much of the work for you as you can and just like try to maximize your own output and your own input so you don't have to hire a team. It's like just adopt this way of thinking. That's all I'm saying. Just shift focus from the inputs, focus on the outcomes, focus on frameworks over SOPs, and you will be able to build a really great business that you not only enjoy running, but is also going to really flourish on its own. So, yeah, that was that was a big topic at the Bali Retreat. There were so many other things, cool things that we talked about, and I'll probably talk about them in other podcast episodes as I kind of as they trickle out. But um, yeah, I've just um got so many notes, so many things I want to implement, learnt so many things from my friends there, and it's just a great environment to be in. That's why I like being in these masterminds and these these coaching containers. Like I just bought another program literally a couple days ago about AI, so I've been learning that. Like I just love learning things. I I've made it a non-negotiable for myself where I just set time aside every week to learn. Like I just want to have four to five hours every week of uninterrupted learning time, whether it's watching videos, reading books, whatever. And, you know, four or five hours is pretty reasonable. Like I know people that do hours every day of just learning. I I can't really bring myself to do that, but it's now a non-negotiable for me. And I recommend that you do that as well because a lot of people they just get to a point and they just feel like they don't need to learn anymore. And they just get bogged down in like doing the thing every day and like working and working nonstop. But you need to continue learning and you need to continue growing. And so if you want to grow in this business, you need to get good at uh hiring people and building teams, and it's you know, you may see it as a necessary evil. I I used to look at it that way, but now I actually really enjoy it because I've become good at it, and it's it's something that I never thought I'd be saying. I never thought I'd like it, let alone you know, be good at it. So um that's the word for today. Hope you got something out of this. And just remember frameworks are your savior. So try to move away from the rigidity, if is that a word, rigidity, of SOPs and focus less on the inputs and more on the outcomes. So thanks so much for listening to another episode of Self Made, and we'll talk again soon.