Three Questions That Protect A CEO’s Time with Dhana Kannan

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Donna Cannon is our guest today on the Commission Code for your success.
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And Donna is a fractional COO who focuses on overwhelmed CEOs.
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And oh boy, honey, I tell you what, being one of those, I can tell you it's a lot of us.
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So Donna, thank you for being on the Commission Code with us today.
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Welcome.
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Thank you for having me, Morris.
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It's a real pleasure to be here.
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Well, tell us a little bit about yourself to get us started and what you do.
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Yeah.
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So I will go back to how I actually started my journey.
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So imagine this.
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I'm on my hands and knees scrubbing my shower floor.
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Uh, I did not expect my PhD to bring me to this.
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Let me back up 30 minutes back.
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I get this package from Amazon and I open it to find that is the 30-second shower steamer I have ordered from Amazon.
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So I bring it straight into the shower.
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So for people who don't know, shower steamers are like bath bombs, but for the shower.
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And I was doing my PhD at the time.
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I was looking to relax in 10 minutes.
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I didn't have time for a bath.
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And uh, you know, I just wanted this product to take me to an entirely different world, clear my nasal congestion.
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Well, that's why I bought it.
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The Amazon listing, it listed all of that.
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So I put it in the shower flow, and then I open the uh shower and I breathe in.
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I smell nothing, and then I bend lower and breathe in harder, still nothing.
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And now, after the point, I'm just frustrated, and I am just about to get out of the shower, and I bend down and I see this large purple stain on my shower floor from that lavender shower seamer.
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And so now I'm on my hands and knees grabbing the shower floor, and what was supposed to be a 10-minute shower became a 30-minute shower with all of this audio.
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And as I come and sit back on my home office, and I'm thinking, I just have one thought.
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Like, I can do better than this.
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And to give you uh where I was at that moment, I uh had no experience running a business.
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I uh didn't know anything about the product space because I come from the tech space, and I have a PhD to complete.
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By no reasonable means is this my problem to solve.
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I start working on this the very next day.
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And that's how I started becoming an I became an entrepreneur, and over the next five years, I built and scaled that business to five uh three countries uh the US, Canada, and Taiwan.
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And it was distributed in a lot of uh boutique stores uh here in the US and Canada, exported in bulk to Taiwan.
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And we had a lot of good press today show and Yahoo and all of that.
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And I ran that for five years, and after five years, I had to close it down because the custom acquisition cost was going through the roof.
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And um, for five years it was a good run, and I really enjoyed building the business.
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And when I I actually am in the process of selling a lot of intellectual property around that business.
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Um, but when I walked away, I realized that I didn't walk away empty-handed.
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It was five years of running the business, understanding the sales and operations and hiring and how to build something from nothing.
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So I had all those hard-earned lessons.
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And um today, when I go into a company, I feel like my job description was the same as day one.
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I look at chaotic situations, look at the mess, and clean it up.
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And just that now I do it for businesses uh rather than the shower floor.
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I gotcha.
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All right.
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Well, that sounds that's an interesting story, I'll tell you what.
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That's amazing.
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Well, it so tell us how you work with clients.
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What when you go in and you check it all out and you get you find out what's going on, what uh what do you ask them to do?
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What do they what do they need to change?
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Where do they begin?
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Yeah.
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So um a little bit about how I got into this business.
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So after I wrapped up my previous business, I was just sitting last uh, I think October, staring at a wall, thinking, what do I do next now?
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And uh one of the things um that came to me was all of the things that a lot of business people and CEOs uh really dreaded, the day-to-day operations, managing teams, putting in processes that help this business scale, all of that was where I really thrived.
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My nerdy brain really thrived.
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And um, so uh when CEOs start, when founders start, they have this vision in mind, they want to build something meaningful, and then one day they wake up to being customer care, hiring 12, handling 12 different Slack channels and thinking, how did this become my life?
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And so my job is to go in and take that um uh operational labor away from them so that they can just focus on the vision and the growth of the company.
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And um, what makes it different is I've actually done it.
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I've actually been a founder myself and a business myself because when I looked at the market, I saw a lot of people advising from textbooks, um, very textbook advised.
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So I think that that makes me different.
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And the second is also I have a heavy tech background.
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I started as a programmer, so I have a lot of technical depth when it comes to like because of now AI and uh data and all of that becoming so important.
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So my job ultimately is to uh let the CEOs do what only they can do, build a company they set out to build.
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But to answer your question, the very first thing I do when I go into the company and ask, tell this to every CEO or every founder that I meet is um, you know, I see a lot of them spending a thousand dollar an hour, um solving the thousand dollar an hour problem the same as a ten dollar an hour problem.
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Um choosing office snacks and a 20% drop in customer retention is not the you don't need the same energy, right?
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But you know, a lot of people when we start businesses, we do everything ourselves before we can hire people.
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And you know, Mark Zuckerberg um famously wore the same t-shirt while he was scaling Facebook because he always said that you know it's one less decision for him to make because every trivial decision takes away energy from major decisions that you have to make.
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So when I go in, the first thing I do is I have this framework for called the CEO time protection filter.
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And what it does is um it's basically only takes 30 seconds, three questions.
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Any task you have, say for example, um uh reviewing marketing plan is the task you have.
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Should you do it?
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So if you have a team, should somebody else do it, or is it not necessary at all?
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So you go into that filter, it's just three questions.
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It's like the first is strategic impact.
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Does this really move the needle for the business?
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Does it get you more sales, more revenue?
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Is it a major needle mover in your business?
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The second uh point it assesses on is reversibility.
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If this decision goes wrong, how is it easy to reverse it back?
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And the third thing is the CEO-only context.
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Is the CEO the only person who can make this decision?
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Is this a very critical decision that only the CEO can make?
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So it's just those three questions, and you can put in any task and these three answer these three questions, and it gives you, puts the task in one of those three buckets, whether you have to do it, whether you have to delegate it, or the task shouldn't exist at all.
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And it's just a time drainer, it's not moving the company anywhere.
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And so it's a free tool, it's not behind any like uh email wall or anything, it's just a free tool on my website.
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And it, you know, if today somebody is struggling with um a decision that you know whether they should do it or delegate it, and delegate it.
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I know there are a lot of solo pronounists on your show as well.
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Delegate doesn't mean necessarily to a full-time person, it could be even to a tool, it could be to a freelancer who works with you just for two hours a month.
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Um, so today delegation is like very varied.
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So it's a free tool, and if you're struggling with any task, whether you should do it, whether you should delegate it, or you're dreading to go into that meeting, um, just use a tool.
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It takes 30 seconds, three questions, and it gives back your clarity right back.
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So, what you're suggesting is that the CEO needs to focus and remember to keep the main thing the main thing, right?
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And it's sometimes so difficult to do that because I've been in that situation as well.
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In my when when I was running my previous company, because that's how we all start.
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I was everything, I was a department of everything.
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And there comes a time when your business scales and then you can't do everything, right?
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And you have to, or that may not be the best use of your time, even if you don't want to build like a massive business and just want to have a lifestyle business.
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Should that thing that, you know, should you manually be sending emails or can you automate it using a task, right?
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Uh do you manually do invoicing or automate it?
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You know, bookkeeping, do you want to do it or has it grown so much that you can pay somebody uh for just a few hours a month to do it?
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So or in today's world, can you can you create a uh an AI system to do it for you?
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Yes, yeah.
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Um, so that that that's what like the tool does uh to give you more clarity on just like three questions.
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Yeah, no, I think it's a great, great move.
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And it's exactly what uh what CEOs need to do because uh it doesn't require me to decide, you know, uh to to or not to send an email response.
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Somebody else can do that.
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Uh it's this is not uh this is not rocket science.
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It is something that that can be many times automated and you know free the CEO up to do what the founder can do and only the founder can do.
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I think it's a great philosophy.
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Sounds wonderful.
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But let's get practical for a minute, Donna.
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How how do you once you do that?
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I mean, what do you do with all that stuff that you don't want to do or that you're not supposed to do?
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How do you organize all that?
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Okay, so um say it says that you have to delegate it, right?
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And uh uh one of the frameworks I uh talk about to every CEO work with, so is the tool, contractor, employee ladder.
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So every um every stage in that it increases the cost, it increases the responsibility, the effort to implement it.
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So, for example, you figure out that, you know, always start with a tool.
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See if a tool can do it.
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See your AI assistant can do it, see if it's any kind of automation can do it.
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Um only then, if if none of the tools available are uh able to do it, then move to a contractor.
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See if somebody can do it for a few hours a month, a few maybe a few hours a week, depending on the volume of the task.
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Yeah, and then only then, only after these two steps you move to a full-time employee because the cost increases.
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So that's one of the uh frameworks I teach all of this years, because what happens is in a lot of companies that I go in, uh they start this company, they're a solopreneur, now they're like fully bombarded, working like 90 hours a week and uh every day, and they're like, Oh, I need a full-time hire.
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Do you really need a full-time hire?
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So to go by that tool um contractor and employee uh ladder, climb the ladder.
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And um the other thing is when the other thing is when you want to delegate, say, whether it's a full-time employee or um uh whether it's a contractor.
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So some of the lessons that I have learned from my own delegation practices I have shared with them.
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For example, in 2021, TikTok was exploding for product brands.
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Yeah, that was like uh everything was going up, up, up, up.
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So I decided to hire someone for my social media, okay, because that wasn't my strength.
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So I decided to hire somebody.
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I'm on this call, like this, we're on a Zoom call, and um, she goes, Donna, I'm gonna send you a sample video.
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End of uh today.
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And I am so thrilled because she has created millions of views for other clients.
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So I'm so excited to get this video, and 10 days go by, nothing comes, no video, no apologize, taking no responsibility for the task, right?
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And I still hire this girl.
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And uh why?
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Because I was so blinded by this vanity metrics, right?
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Oh, she's done millions of views for other people, she's gonna go do great things, and um, so I bring her on, and the pattern continues almost mediocre content, not uh abiding to any deadlines and no responsibility.
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And this is something which a lot of founders are afraid of.
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They want to delegate, but they worry that they might bring in the wrong hire.
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And um, so this continues, and I keep this uh girl on for months after clearly this was a disaster, and this was my very early days of being an entrepreneur, right?
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I didn't really know how to hire.
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And I keep her on and spent thousands of dollars, waste thousands of dollars um in cash and lost my peace of mind.
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And uh, you know, I I was getting a bit frustrated, but that lesson taught me something important.
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It taught me, and then I changed my way, the way I had.
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So I then go onto social media and I find this girl.
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Um, let's call her Sarah, and let's call the first one Betty, the one that didn't work out, Betty.
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And this I find this uh person on social media called Sarah.
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She's a photographer.
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She hasn't at that time, she there were no videos or anything on her profile, but she knew how to grab people's attention.
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She knew had that aesthetic sense.
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So I bring her on a Zoom call.
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I'm like, Sarah, would you like to do uh videos for me on my social media?
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And she looks at me like I've completely lost her.
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She's like, Donna, I'm a photographer.
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I'm like, yes, Sarah, but you know how to grab the attention of people in social media.
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That's what's important.
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And um, because I was in a very kind of just starting my business, so I didn't have money to bring in someone full-fledged and stuff.
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Um, so so um, so we she's like, I told her neither, I also don't know how to do videos, let's figure this out together.
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And so she comes on the team and she creates brilliant videos for the business.
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And everywhere we went, nobody asked what her experience is, right?
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Right.
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Everybody's like, who does your socials?
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And everyone's like, yeah, trying to put wherever we went for trade fair shows and stuff.
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So that's the thing.
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The other thing is you can also hire for transcerebral skills.
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Someone who has a skill, but it's in a different domain, but their skill can transfer over to what you're looking for.
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And so, but the the most important lesson I learned is whether you hire for trans cerebral skill or hire somebody who has the same skill, is that to hire for both skills and personality.
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That is the most important thing that I have learned in hiring, right?
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Because skill tells you whether they can do the job, personality tells you how difficult it'll be for them for us to work with them while they do the job.
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And if you have a team that has a massive impact on the team as well, because skills, yeah, yeah, they can probably get the job done, but personality if they don't have that culture fit or personality fit.
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And my team is thinking halfway through the weekly meeting, they're questioning their life choices, sure, right?
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Nobody wants to work with somebody like that, so that is by far bringing somebody who is both like knows the job uh or can do the job, the skill is important, and personality is also important, and both are non-negotiables when hiring, right?
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And that's the early entrepreneurial lesson, and that would go back to the uh CO time protection fit to delegate.
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So, this is one of the tips when it comes to delegating.
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If necessary, work with them as a contractor, work with them for a few hours before you if you think that then as your business grows, then you know that how they work and if that they gel with you, gel with the team.
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So um, I would say that that is one of the most important lessons I've learned.
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Yeah, I mean, I can certainly understand that.
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I mean, relationships are the key to business, and yes, whether you're building a relationship with a customer or with a team member or the within the team, relationships are key.
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And if if folks can't relate to you and and build a relationship, then it ain't gonna work.
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Yes, it ain't gonna work, you're right.
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You know, there's so much talk now about AI and stuff, but ultimately, right, without relations, it's still people behind all of that, right?
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And because I also come from a very technical background, I was a programmer and stuff, and I understand all that, but I've also been in leadership for so long now, and I'm like, it's all about the people because if you think about it, most of your customers, at least okay, I can't maybe there are AI agents which will become customers in the future, or it's still or it's already happening.
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But if you see the majority of your customers are going to be people, the be your employees are people, even numbers tell the story of people, right?
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So there is a massive human element in it.
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Although we talk about all the AI and everything happening right now, there is still a massive human element to it.
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And that's what I talk about.
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People often ask me about the rule role of AI impact, right?
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And AI is great in some things, it can like do copy editing, maybe, it can write your proposal, write the initial legal document, and all of those things.
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But what AI cannot do, I feel, is um, it cannot build trust, right?
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It cannot uh navigate a conflict between two people, it cannot exercise judgment when um there are when the answer is very uncertain.
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And I think those are all very leadership decisions.
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Oh, and it there's no doubt about that, as far as I'm concerned.
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The the great thing about AI I'm learning is that it can automate some tasks that take the task off the CEO's desk or the founder's desk.
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Yes, and if if we can use it to automate things, I'm I'm working on building an AI virtual assistant right now to reply to specific emails, to uh do all of that, and even for my podcast, I'm I'm looking at how the AI can you know make sure I schedule it, make sure I'm prepared for that for that meeting, and then once it's done and the recording is done, it can take the recording.
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And if I teach it properly, it can take can produce that recording for me.
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Yes, and I don't spend my time and Editor putting in the the the hook and the music and uh AI is I think gonna be able to do that for me.
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So I'm impressed.
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Yeah, and for me to prepare for podcasts as well, right?
00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:26.000
So whenever I go on podcast, I see what the host has uh uh the previous some of my previous their previous podcasts, I always either listen to it.
00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:29.200
If I'm in the car, I'm like on 2x listening to it.
00:22:29.359 --> 00:22:32.720
Otherwise, what I do if I'm short of time, they're usually on YouTube.
00:22:33.119 --> 00:22:49.279
So I take those transcripts from YouTube, and for at least three or four of the hostess' podcasts, I summarize it on um Cloud or whatever the AI is, and to give me the summary, and I know what their previous guests have spoken about.
00:22:49.359 --> 00:22:57.119
So I just want to provide value for the customer uh for their audiences and not say the same thing if we are in the same area.
00:22:57.359 --> 00:23:14.400
So I see what they and I see the kind of guests they bring in and what an AI, and then when I have like a structure for my podcast, I have my frameworks and stuff, but I also use AI to help me say, how can I do this for a commission-based business?
00:23:14.640 --> 00:23:19.359
How can I streamline this for a tech-based audience?
00:23:19.680 --> 00:23:27.440
So AI has really because what would take me days earlier or weeks, now I can do it and seconds.
00:23:27.599 --> 00:23:34.240
And what used to take like a team, now AI can do it, like photo editing.
00:23:34.559 --> 00:23:50.079
I used to go on Fiverr and Upwork and all these places, and then often the first hire might not be a good fit, and then unless I already know somebody in the past that I've worked with, it takes a few tries once uh to find somebody.
00:23:50.400 --> 00:23:54.160
And now I can do it in seconds in AI.
00:23:54.480 --> 00:24:05.519
Yeah, I mean it's it I'm learning, and it's it's amazing what uh what my AI assistant has learned about me and uh what it can do going forward.
00:24:05.599 --> 00:24:06.880
So I'm I'm impressed.
00:24:07.200 --> 00:24:09.200
Donna tells me tell me this.
00:24:09.519 --> 00:24:19.519
If if you could tell our our founders and CEOs out there, what's the one thing they should do in the morning to change their situation and make it better?
00:24:19.680 --> 00:24:23.440
What's what do you what would you suggest they get up in the morning and do differently?
00:24:23.759 --> 00:24:32.240
Yeah, so I would encourage everybody to take a time audit of if they're struggling, right?
00:24:32.319 --> 00:24:37.359
Like they have 60 hours, 70 hours, no time for family, no time for anything else that they want to do.
00:24:37.599 --> 00:24:40.720
And time audit, where where is your time going?
00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:43.680
Where is that are you doing proposal writing?
00:24:43.839 --> 00:24:45.519
Are you doing invoicing so much?
00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:46.960
Are you doing everything manually?
00:24:47.119 --> 00:24:48.400
Are you doing so?
00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:51.119
Where exactly is your time going?
00:24:51.599 --> 00:24:56.880
And is there anything repetitive you do every single day, which is taking up hours?
00:24:56.960 --> 00:24:58.960
That's a good candidate for automation.
00:24:59.119 --> 00:25:01.039
And automation, as I said, could be anything.
00:25:01.200 --> 00:25:07.119
It could be uh a tool, it could be AI, it could be a person for a few hours a week.
00:25:07.279 --> 00:25:13.599
Uh, but you have to first figure out where your time is going and why are you drowning in your operations?
00:25:14.079 --> 00:25:23.519
Uh, and if you can delegate that aspect of it, and again put it in the filter, or if you don't want to use the filter, you can ask, is this the decision only I can make?
00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:33.359
Is replying to emails like non-important trivial emails, is that the best use of your time?
00:25:33.759 --> 00:25:36.720
Can you have an AI assistant like you were talking about?
00:25:36.880 --> 00:25:39.440
Can you have a virtual assistant for a few hours?
00:25:39.680 --> 00:25:42.559
So I think the first step is auditing the time.
00:25:42.799 --> 00:25:50.960
Once you find out where your time is going, figuring out if that is a task only you can do or delegate, or it should not exist at all.
00:25:51.039 --> 00:25:56.160
Because there's some tasks which absolutely don't move the needle but makes us feel productive.
00:25:56.400 --> 00:25:56.720
Yeah.
00:25:56.880 --> 00:25:57.599
Uh yeah.
00:25:57.759 --> 00:25:59.759
So you have to figure that out for yourself.
00:25:59.839 --> 00:26:03.359
Once you realize, okay, these are the parts I can delegate.
00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:06.000
Then you figure out, okay, do I need a tool?
00:26:06.160 --> 00:26:07.599
Do I need a contractor?
00:26:07.759 --> 00:26:12.240
Or do I need somebody full-time because my business is exponentially growing?
00:26:12.400 --> 00:26:14.000
And then go from there.
00:26:14.640 --> 00:26:18.799
That sounds great and such a great idea and such a great piece of advice.
00:26:19.119 --> 00:26:25.599
Donna, how do our folks get in touch with you if they'd like to learn more from you and engage in your your work?
00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:28.400
I um uh I have a website.
00:26:28.480 --> 00:26:38.240
Um, it's called With Orion, which is like um it you can link it in the show notes, w-i-t-h a u r-i-o-n dot com.
00:26:38.720 --> 00:26:42.799
Uh, but I also post very regularly on LinkedIn.
00:26:43.039 --> 00:26:44.960
I post a few times a week.
00:26:45.200 --> 00:26:50.640
I talk a lot about operations business leadership, so they can follow me there at Donna Cannon.
00:26:50.799 --> 00:26:55.200
It's D-H-A-N-A, Space K A N N A N.
00:26:55.920 --> 00:26:57.200
Excellent, excellent.
00:26:57.440 --> 00:27:00.319
Donna, thank you so much for being on the Commission code today.
00:27:00.400 --> 00:27:02.160
I've really enjoyed our conversation.
00:27:03.039 --> 00:27:05.839
Likewise, thank you so much for having me.
00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:06.960
Absolutely.
00:27:07.119 --> 00:27:08.079
Have a great week.
00:27:08.319 --> 00:27:08.880
You too.
00:27:09.200 --> 00:27:12.000
And we'll uh we'll stop recording at this point.
00:27:12.240 --> 00:27:12.559
Okay.