speaker-0: This idea that the entrepreneur needs to be the CEO is a is a pro it's a problem. Founder is supposed to be the one with the vision, with the ability to innovate, not that other people can't, but the ability to innovate, iterate, empower. Truly a founder needs to be somebody who empowers others to be able to expound upon their vision.
speaker-1: What you look for first as the things that you should be delegating and and giving up?
speaker-0: The question really isn't what would you do, it's what wouldn't you do.
speaker-1: Today's guest is Ari Mizell. Ari is the creator of Less Doing and the author of The Replaceable Founder. His work is focused on helping founders build companies and businesses as assets instead of just high-paying jobs that take all of their time by getting better at delegation, systems, and decision making. In our conversation, we talked about what it actually takes to effectively delegate by, you know, starting with focusing on the outcome that you want people to deliver and what they're responsible for as opposed to just. Follow this rigid process. And then how an emphasis and focus on delegation changes the way that you build teams, establish processes, and even build the AI agents that can actually take ownership of the work today. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Ari Mizel. Ari, thank you so much for being here.
speaker-0: Hey, thanks for having me on here.
speaker-1: Absolutely. So Ari, a lot of your work is centered around the idea of the replaceable founder. And obviously, in my mind, the idea of the founder, they're the person that gets the business going, right? That they're they're the reason that the abus the business works from the jump because they're essential to absolutely everything. So before we get into this idea of the replaceable founder and how a founder goes into replacing themselves and and making them non-essential to the business. What do you see is the role the responsibility of the founder to the business?
speaker-0: That's a great question, Ian. Nice. Right out of the gate. seriously, I like that. That's a really good one. And I think a lot of people don't actually ask that. And that's part of the problem. Because the founder is often just become the person that wears all the hats and does all the things and fills in all the gaps. That is absolutely not what the founder is supposed to be. The founder is supposed to be the one with the vision, with the ability to innovate, not that other people can't, but the ability to innovate, iterate, empower. Truly, a founder needs to be somebody who empowers others to be able to expound upon their vision. That's probably a really high-level way of saying it. At another level, it's really important for a founder to be the one that creates, and I don't mean creates by necessarily like pushing the buttons, but they need to be the one that creates the ideas around systems and processes. Because otherwise it just becomes this sort of organized and oftentimes disorganized chaos. When people think that the founder is like the one that's hurting the cats and, you know, like keeping every that's not the point. And that's not what it's supposed to be like. And the other one is that I I have found over the years that so much of my work is more and more about protecting an entrepreneur's team from the entrepreneur's mind. And so many entrepreneurs are working out all of their psychological baggage on their companies. And it really do mean that. There's so much crossover with so many different psychoses and mental illnesses that that fit the bill for entrepreneur. So long way of answering that, but the founders really purpose to the business is to have it be a business as opposed to just like their hobby or their job.
speaker-1: Yeah. And what do you think the what's the difference? Obviously you brought in a a a couple of ideas, right? The you know, a hobby or a job would be probably mean that they're involved in in everything. Maybe if they're treating it like a business, the founder is just kind of supposed to get out of the way. Is that directionally correct? Like what's the difference between a founder building a business as a business as opposed to then building it as a job or a hobby?
speaker-0: So I think that you see this all the time on Shark Tank. Shark Tank is a great example of this. Okay. So somebody had an idea for something. And maybe they're an inventor, or maybe they're a connector, or but they they see something and they put it together. It's like this is a great new thing and I'm gonna sell this and they start selling it and they've got a lot of energy and that comes across and people like it. Great. Let's say make a hundred thousand dollars in a year, or maybe three hundred thousand dollars. And maybe that's it, maybe that's where you end up and you're very happy with that and there's no judgment, and that's totally fine. To then become a business, first of all, the people that make the great thing and are innovators, they're not necessarily good at the other stuff. They're not necessarily good leaders. They're most likely not good delegators, because most people are not naturally. They don't know the finances. They don't know the shipping logistics. They don't know that stuff. And of course we can learn those things. But this idea that the entrepreneur needs to be the CEO is is a is a pro it's a problem. Honestly. And furthermore, you may be a great CEO up to a million or three million dollar company. But the the CEO that runs a three million dollar company is not very likely to be the one that effectively runs it at ten or gets it to ten. They can, and I've seen that in very, very rare situations, but I have effectively run companies that were doing up to twenty five million dollars. And I have coached people who are doing companies that are running or doing hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't think that I would be a good CEO of a multi hundred million dollar company. I don't. It just requires different things and different skill sets. So the ego element is so big here where people think that a law should be able to do everything. It's my company, it's my baby. But what they're really doing is just strangling. The thing that they're trying to build and grow. And ultimately, again, it's the difference between owning your own job and running a business. Right. So I have a coaching business, a bunch of different things I'm involved in, but one of them is my coaching business. It's the thing I've been doing forever. I've had a team before. I don't have a team right now. If I don't coach that business, the business doesn't make money. So in a lot of ways, you could say I'm an independent contractor, right? I get paid when I work. It's not quite that simple. Obviously, people have like memberships and things with me. But I am the crux of that business and I'm okay with that for that particular business. If I wanted to grow up beyond me and have it be a coaching, you know, industry where I've got coaches working under me and people building courses and writing things for me, which a lot of that we could do with AI now, but that's a business. And some people want that and some people don't. But the problem becomes when you confuse the two.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And when you confuse the two and you say you want a business, but then you also want to insert yourself into into everything. I think the idea that you brought up of, okay, yeah, you can be the individual with your sheer passion, your energy, your excitement, your enthusiasm about this thing that you're doing, maybe you can take this business to, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars a year, a million dollars a year, three million dollars a year, whatever the number is, eventually you're gonna reach your limit as an individual. And then you're gonna be faced with the decision of Do I want to make the best decision for this business? Like, what is the best move for this business? And probably in the end, the best decision for me. Or do I want to feel like the important person, the head honcho, be the one in charge of running my baby? Like I that was an idea that I never even considered, right? Like I built a marketing agency to, you know, just over a million dollars a year in revenue. And we never even considered the idea of like, okay, what if we brought in another? CEO or operator to come in and run this business and help us take it to the to the next level. It's just like my automatic assumption is like, Okay, I am just the one that needs to improve and get better and develop my skill set to be able to continue to grow this company.
speaker-0: Yeah. And that may be to an extent. Totally maybe. And you may be that guy. But to assume that you are is the problem, right? And we can't all be good like amazing and everything. We can be okay at a lot of things. And if you're okay with that, then your business is gonna be, you know, good enough. Which is fine, right? But again, it's this thing where when then you have people are like, nobody wants nobody's doing what I tell them to do and nothing's getting done, I'm overwhelmed. It's like because you're telling people to do things that you don't know how to do yourself.
speaker-1: Yeah. So in that situation, you I mean, I guess you want to go find somebody who can fit the bill who's gonna be right for that responsibility, that role. But in order to even do that, right, you need to become an effective delegator. And you talked about this idea that most people are not effective delegators, and I can speak from my own first hand experience that, you know, there's a lot more that goes into delegating than just, you know telling somebody that they need to do something, it's like, all right, it's off my plate. I told them that they need to do it. there's a lot more that goes into being a good delegator. So first question, why do you think delegation is one of those things that we aren't just out of the box good at? And then what goes into being like what goes into effective delegation?
speaker-0: So I mean you nailed it right there. It's just like, hey, I just want to get this thing off a plate and get it done and you deal with it. That's what most people do when they delegate. They delegate annoying sh. That's really like what delegation is for most people. And the problem is well, there's a few problems with that. So the first one is if you delegate something to somebody that you don't want to do, you don't have great necessarily mastery of. They have less context and less information, less experience than you do. And at the same time, you are expecting them to deliver a superior result to the result that you were going to do yourself. You are setting everybody up for failure. And then the loop is what happens is that they get back a result that they're not happy with. And it's like, alpha screen doesn't work. I tried it. It's not for me. And that like gets reinforced. And the same thing happens with AI net, by the way. I'm sure you've had conversations with people who are like, Yeah, I put this thing into Chat GPT and it gave me this crap response. It's like a third grader, so I don't use it. Like, well, yeah, okay. I mean, because you we're an idiot. Like, that's just not the way that these systems work. So the flip is that instead of thinking about pushing stuff under the rug that you don't want to deal with, you should be thinking about delegation as a way of empowering others. Right. So what can I give to a human being that they actually can engage with and really like take ownership over? overcome certain hurdles and actually deliver a result where you're gonna be like, holy cow, this is so great. I couldn't have done this myself. Now, to do that, you have to delegate effectively. You have to tell people shocker, you have to tell people what success looks like. And other shocker, you have to tell people what is the outcome we're trying to achieve. So I can give you a really simple example. One of my favorite virtual assistant stories ever was I was flying to Toronto to go to an event and I was at the airport. At five in the morning. And my VAs at the time I was using a service called Magic, which is get magic.com. And one of the things that Magic has always had, which was great, is they have a marketplace model. So you're never dealing with one person, you're dealing with quite literally hundreds, but they all come at you as like one individual. And because there are so many of them, they have like a 30 second response time, 247. It's incredible. Nothing like nobody's been able touch that human-wise. So they had booked this flight for So I'm sitting there at like five in the morning, I'm like half away drinking a coffee, and I get a text and it says, Hey Ari, your flight's been canceled, but we know you have to be in Toronto by eight thirty. So we've rebooked you on United, blah, blah, blah. Go to gate B six. And I'm look I'm like Is this is a spam? What? And nobody's nobody's saying anything around me. There's no like the gate agent's just standing there. I'm like, okay. So I get up and I start walking towards this gate and I'm not even I'm like get like a hundred feet away. And I hear them make the announcement at the gate that the flight's been canceled and everybody's like losing it. Like, this is you know, like everything. So they had gotten the alert from UA or from the whatever the the airline was. But the point is, is that they knew that it wasn't the task was not book me a flight to Canada, right? The flight was I need to be here at eight thirty at this event, at this coaching event that I was going to. So Yeah. For th and they had already had some rules in place that I teach about, which is like they anything under five hundred dollars, basically they could just make a decision without me. So that so then I got this result that was not only like great, but incredible, right? It's like, my God. So I just casually walk over and I get on a thing and they and then they dealt with like getting a refund from the other one for it. It was all taken care of. Because they knew the outcome. So it's anybody who has Small children has the same kind of thing. Like you you see this all the time where they'll ask for something. And it's funny when you're like half distracted and they come up, it's like, hey, I need some glue. Yeah, okay, here's glue. You come back, you know. I need, you know, a blowtorch. Like, yeah, okay, here's a blow torch. It's like, what are you doing? What are you actually doing? I had to fix this thing. Well, you can't use either of those, and you certainly can't use a blowtorch. So what what are you trying, you know, what are we trying to do? It sounds so basic, but we don't. Do that. So a lot of times again, you're telling people the tasks, or not even the task, you're telling people the steps. Or yeah, the task, but not the goal. Like
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: why is that so hard to share? Yeah. So that's a big one. And then you get somebody who does the task. Yeah. Same thing with AI. Same thing with AI.
speaker-1: Yeah, 100%. You're totally right. Like you need to be able to give you AI the criteria of what success looks like. But I think your point about, you know, the outcome, this is the outcome that we're trying to achieve. If you can delegate those outcomes and it and set the expectation for these are the outcomes that you are responsible for driving within this position. Cause your ex your story about the the airport and and having to change your flight, in my mind, prior to this conversation. If somebody was going to be responsible for that, you know, okay, we need the SOP of like when a flight is canceled, how do you go and book a new flight and then you have this whole step by step thing. But like all of that time would have been wasted if I would have just instead trained them on how do we deliver this outcome, how do we create this outcome of I need to get to Toronto by eight thirty? Because that covers the basis of okay, if the flight is canceled, you just need to, you know, make this decision of finding the next flight that's gonna get you to Toronto by eight thirty. So it's almost like coming at it from a different direction as opposed to all right, I'm gonna come up with the SOP, the standard step by step process for absolutely everything that might come at this person. And then I'm going to train them on following this process as opposed to train them to think more creatively and use these resources that I provide them to delivering these outcomes. It feels like focusing on training for generating outcomes is going to save you so much more time than having to train on like specific like covering your basis on every possible SOP that you would need to create. Is there something there?
speaker-0: Yeah. So back in the day, yeah, before AI was where it is now, I would have had a I I had a lot more focus on SOPs. I was really big on creating processes, process documentation. And when people would say the f like, you know, but this is like a process we're only gonna do once, my response was usually like, Well, it's a muscle to document processes correctly. And a lot of people don't do it the right way. The way that most people would document processes was, Hey, I'm gonna show you how to do this thing. Or I'm gonna write down how to do this thing and then you do the thing, right? So it's like let's onboard a new employee. Okay, so I'm gonna click here, I'm gonna go there, and now you do this and do that. And a lot of those processes had flaws in them, were never tested, were never updated. So the way that I usually flip it or not, the way that I flip it with people is say you show somebody how to do it, and that second person now writes down the process. They write the process based on what they saw. Then you take it ideally to a third person, and when if you're using virtual assistants, it's really easy to do. But you take it to third person who hasn't seen the process and you ask them to run through the steps. And a hundred percent of the time it won't work. It'll never work. But it's really great because what happens is they get to step two and it says, you know, click the big red button and they're like, I don't see the big red button. And then you go back to the first person and they say, Well, yeah, I was logged in as an admin, you're a guest, I gotta fix that in the process. Cool. Get down to step five, open the file for November. Where the hell is the file for November? right. I gotta put a link. Open this folder, get the most recent file, it'll be at the top. Like, okay, great. Get down to the very bottom. When you're done with this, send it over to Roger, an accountant. Roger hasn't worked here in eight months. What you talking about? We're gonna change that. So it's like send it to the account executive for the, you know, that so you go through at a very granular level, and you end up with a process that you've now shown works at a tertiary, not just secondary, but tertiary level. So it's basically bulletproof the process. And then you can start to my framework is optimize, automate, outsource, and you can start to really automate things really easily and outsource them because it's so good. That's the old way of doing it. And it still works, but we don't have to go that quite that far at this point. Because again, AI, because we can show, you know, there's so many great tools now like Guide and Scribe and stuff. You can just show a process and it will fill in the blanks and write it out really well. And then you can even have the AI test the process. And now with agents, you can have agents go through the process and sort of test each step as they go. So a lot of that sort of goes away. And it becomes that much more important to get to the point of delegation. How you delegate well. So And and I I can't stress this enough. Like, you know, the 10 prompts that are going to change your business is like such utter bullsh. The stuff that people have put out there. Copying and pasting a prompt is not going to get you the result that you want. Grabbing a GitHub skill and putting these two magic prompts is not going to make your business familiar business overnight. It's just doesn't work that way. Delegating better will. And always has been the thing that will. And we are in a position now. Where we are all becoming managers because we are now managing the agents that do the work. We're not the ones doing the work. So you need whether you like it or not, you're a manager and you have to get better at it. I have 28 agents running right now and five different organizations basically doing stuff. Two of them have been running for 165 days without me having to tell them to do anything, doing stuff every day. And that's because, again, I'm sharing the outcome. the resources needed, whether that's a credit card or a login or a document or a tax ID, whatever it might be, has the resources. I also have criteria in place, which is only contact me if, right? So if it's not this, this or this, just deal with it. You take care of it within these parameters. If it's under five hundred dollars, you don't have to ask me, do that kind of thing. And one of the nuanced things that we'll see I'll see, I have like 18 foundational rules for all my agents. And one of them is that when you do something, Then the next step is to go ahead and check that you did it. So you said, you know, send a Slack message. Great. Next step is read the Slack channel, see if the message actually matched what you said you sent. Right. So it's those basic checks and balances. But there have been times where something breaks, and I'll say, why did that happen? And it will say, well, you know, the API key broke and this and that. Sorry about that. Like, I'll push that through now. And my response is then. Why didn't you just fix it? And it'll say, I could have fixed it. I should have done that. And then I have to say, from now on, when you encounter an issue that you can fix, fix it. I didn't tell it that before, but now I did. So now it's like, now, and then here's another one along those same lines. I have this particular agent that's looking at legal legislation, like different laws that are coming up for this particular company. And it would say like, okay, here's the twelve laws coming up, approve or reject each one, like how we modify based. And I finally was like, I don't want to go through all these. How confident are you on each one of these? And it was like ninety five percent this is approved, ninety five, ninety four, ninety-three, sixty seven. Okay. So from now on, anytime you are ninety percent confident or more, just deal with it and bring the rest to me. So those kinds of things.
speaker-1: Right. And that's just like with building the agents, it's just like when you would be creating traditional standards and standards SOPs for for people. It's just gonna be those little gaps that you might have missed and things that you learn and you continue to iterate and improve them over time with the person, just like with the agent. And I think that kind of segues into this next idea. Which is you brought up earlier the idea of ownership, right? So when you delegate something to someone, you want them to own this process. Like you are now the owner of this process, which in my mind means that you are responsible for improving this process over time. Like this is yours. Obviously, we're gonna work together. Like we're gonna have check-ins, like one-on-one meetings where we're gonna review, you're gonna bring up anything that you're struggling with, and I'm gonna help you try to improve this, but you own this. You are the one responsible for improving this over time. So something that we built into our processes with people and I haven't quite done this a hundred percent correctly with agents just yet, but the idea that when you complete going through this process, well a part of the process is identifying opportunities for how we can improve that process and make it better. So a part of the SOP is is identifying any opportunities. Okay, so you just completed this. Were there any ideas that you have for how you can improve it and take note of that? Is that one critical piece that goes into this idea of ownership and what else do you think kind of goes into this idea of creating ownership in the people that you're delegating things to.
speaker-0: So part of that is transparency and accountability. Right. So and again, I I I I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I mean I I don't I'm using AI agents for almost everything now. I'm not defaulting to people for most things. So with like AI agents, I'm basically have a rule that they have to show their work for better lack of a better term. So whether that means that they're writing everything they're doing in a Slack channel, or in actually one of the cases, I have it. managing my Trello board format to manage its own tasks. So if I give it something to do, it's gonna c create its do item on Trello and then it will move it to doing when it's working on it and move it to done. So what that means is that I can interact with it however I want, but then at any given time I can go into Trello. I can be like, all right, here's the three things that my AI agent is working on, because it's not just working in a black box. So there's no thing where it's like, I forgot to do the thing that you told me to do. It's like, no, it's right there. You know, you you it's right there. So there's a lot of ways to do that with AI, there's ways to do it with people. And creating that accountability is the first thing that shows ownership because if somebody can't and I don't mean this like in a bad way, but if there's no way for them to hide, right, at some point most people will step up, right? Because they don't want to just be seen as doing a bad job all the time. But most companies, and I always say most, but it really is, don't is a lot of companies don't use project management tools at all. Right. So how do you so unless you're gonna be a micromanager and just go, you know, cubicle to cubicle and be Hey, what are you working on? What are you working on? It's very easy to just sort of stay under the radar. And I'm not saying that people have bad intentions, but a lot of times most people don't want to really rock the boat, especially when they're not entrepreneurs, you know, even if they work in an entrepreneurial company. So that's one is there has to be some accountability. And if something if someone is going to own something, then they're going to own it, which means that they own the good and the bad. Right. So why isn't this thing performing this well? And why didn't you address it before? that's the standard? Yeah, that's the standard. You own it now. The other thing is that I am a really big believer in Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continual improvement for the good. So we should be iterating and improving every day in some way, not giant leaps necessarily, but something that is measurable. So whatever that means to that person, we want to see it. And then lastly, I have always been of the mindset the biggest team I've ever had on my own company was seven. I've run teams of much larger and other companies, but seven was the most I had in my company. And one of the things I always said was, I am going to overload you. I'm going to give you more work than 14 people probably could do. But at the same time, I'm also going to give you any resources you could possibly want if you asked for it. So if you tell me you need to hire someone, you need to get a VA to handle your personal stuff, you need to sign up for this piece of software, you can do it. Figure it out. You know, the the restriction is the driver of innovation.
speaker-1: Right. And this idea comes back to getting really clear on the outcomes that this person is responsible for. Because if you get really clear and you reinforce and say, Hey, you're responsible for generating these outcomes, the process and the SOP that they go through becomes malleable. Right. Like this current process is the best way that we know how to go about generating that outcome for this specific task. But if you're more married to the outcome and you're and you're not going to become a bureaucracy where you're just married to this process, right? This idea of Like I originally ran into this when I read Bezos' letters to shareholders, or this idea of it's always day one, right? We're never going to use the excuse of this is how we've always done it to keep doing something a certain way or for the reason for why we did it that way. So you again, going back to the idea earlier that just really underlined this for me, and I hadn't articulated it as clearly as you had, is this idea that you're responsible for generating these outcomes. Here's the best way that we know how to about going about completing these tasks, but you will make improvements. to these SOPs that better serve generating that outcome. Right. Like that's kind of their filter. That's how they evaluate what improvements they need to make is how can we more effectively produce that outcome for this given task.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, that that restriction, I'm really th so it's it's funny because on the one hand, like I'm saying, I'm giving them more work but telling them they can have whatever resources they want. It's true. But overloading them with work is the restriction, right? It's like my entire productivity journey began when I was dealing with a health crisis. Without going into the whole story of that, the short version is that I went from working eighteen hours a day to working an hour a day. And that was my limit, essentially, like just mentally and physically. And so when you're in that situation where it's like, well, I have eight hours of work to do, but I only have an hour. What am I gonna do? Right. And so that idea has been like the ethos of everything that's ever come since for me, which is what would you do if you only work an hour a day? And it's a really interesting thought experiment because at that point the question really isn't what would you do? It's what wouldn't you do? And then if those things don't have to get done, then who or what is gonna do them? And you have to put systems and processes in place. So it's why MacGyver has always been like the greatest sort of inspiring image for me, you know? It's like what one person can do with a million dollars and what another person can do with a paper clip is always so fascinating to me.
speaker-1: Yeah. So for the people that are listening to this conversation now and obviously they understand the importance and the need of delegation. And we talked about the role, the responsibilities of the founder. But if they have been maybe they're self aware enough like myself to kind of realize like, okay, I've probably been holding on to way too much and I need to I need to start delegating. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. I need to start delegating. Like, what do you think people that are starting on this journey? It's like, okay, we have enough money coming in now. Like I don't need to worry and stress about hiring people and delegating and spending money to like buy my time back. Where do you look first? Like what do you look for first is the things that you should be delegating and and giving up? Obviously you're gonna start somewhere, but you're gonna keep going for a while. Where should people start?
speaker-0: So I have a framework that I call the ultimate KPI. It's very simple. And you basically take if you you take a little bit and you write down what are the twenty things that you're doing on a regular basis. And it could be as micro and macro as you want. So macro would be like podcasting. Micro would be being on podcast versus having people on my podcast. So then you look at that list of 20 and then you take 16 things off that list. That in a year's time you will no longer touch. So A D twenty basically. And then the next thing is the replacement plan. And we look at my framework of OAO. So optimize, automate, outsource. So are we going optimize this, meaning like it's just gonna sort of become a non thing because we optimize it out of existence? Are we gonna automate it because we can put an AI agent in place or something? Or are we gonna outsource it because we're gonna hire somebody or promote somebody in the company to to take that thing on? But this is the things I'm not gonna be doing anymore. And you do that for yourself and for everybody in the company. And then every month or every quarter you revisit that together and look objectively at your march towards replaceability. Cause ultimately we want to replace everybody up, not out. So That would be a really good place to start. You start looking at those things and you get to the four things, right? That's like, no, I don't know. It's not that I can't, and this is very important. You don't want to put things on that list of 16. Sorry, you don't want to keep things on off of that list that's like, I could never do this. No. You want to get to those four things that really you are so good at and get you so jazzed up and you can focus on your zone of genius and everything else can get done. And it's not that the other stuff is subordinate to that, but there are probably better people or systems to do them than you.
speaker-1: There's a difference between something that jazzes you up, that lights you up, and and you're really good at it, right? There's certain things like this podcast, for example. Like I love doing it, but there's definitely way better podcast hosts out there than me. Like so which do you think like you prioritize? Something that you're enthusiastic about, you're jazzed about, or the things that you're good at, but maybe you don't love doing? Is there a a a decision that you make there and like you provide preferential to to one or the other?
speaker-0: Can you think of an example?
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, like, so for me, again, like hosting this podcast, I love doing it, but I'm definitely have a long way to grow in getting better at hosting this podcast. Like I'm sure I could go and find somebody to be like, hey, I want you to be the host for my show. We're interviewing these guests, we're using it to like build relationships, create content, things like that. So it's an important thing for us to be doing. And then second, like something that I'm good at, but I don't necessarily love doing, would be like developing and building the tools that we do for our clients or maybe hosting the onboarding meetings, which I guess maybe are pretty easy examples. Like when I say those out loud, it's like, yeah, those are things that I could probably delegate. But yeah, so I don't know if it does come to a situation where I guess it is there like w what are the things that you really can't never delegate as the founder kind of goes back to what's the role of responsibility?
speaker-0: And no, it's not can't. It's not can't. So first of all, those are two really good examples. I won't touch on that. So first one is so something that you are really good at, but you don't love doing one of them is creating client tools. One of the ultimate signs of mastery, right, is the ability to teach something. So if you're truly good at that, you're really, really good at that, then you should put effort into teaching it to people either in your team or maybe even in the public if it's that good. But to people on your team and create content around it and create course around it so that people on your team can do that and do it for you. And through in doing that, you will make it better, first of all. So one of the best ways to delegate is to teach. Second thing on the other example that you gave about podcasting. So you're not the best podcast host in the world. Okay. You're getting better at it. Great. Why are you ultimately doing this podcast?
speaker-1: Primary number one reason is to build relationships with the guests to turn into opportunities, right? To so we invite people that are in our target niche of clientele for our business. We have this podcast to build a relationship with more people, create those opportunities, and then create content that resonates with a similar kind of a thing. But yeah, those are like the business primary business objectives. And then secondarily for me personally, like I love meeting people, talking to people, want to get better at the skill of facilitating interesting conversation. Yeah, so it just kind of both worked out for me.
speaker-0: So based on what you just said, why would you ever have somebody else do this? So for I your first question on this podcast was fantastic. Like I'm gonna remember that for a long time. You like doing this, you're getting better at it. You already seem like you're pretty good at it because you're asking some really good questions. And also you want to build relationships. Do you want me to build a relationship with someone else in your company or with you?
speaker-1: Right, yeah, with me.
speaker-0: So you're you're nailing it. Like this is something you should be doing. You know, ultimately, like my highest and best thing I think is creating content. You know, I think that I connect the dots in ways and information that a lot of people don't, and then I can put that into videos. And am I the best podcast? I I I've had five hundred podcast episodes of my own. I haven't done my own podcast in a while. Am I the best video person? Absolutely not. Do my videos while I'm walking my dog down the street. And if people resonate with the content, great. I wouldn't have somebody else do that. And and what this is really an important point, because I've gotten this pushback my entire career where people would say, like, with all this automation, all this outsourcing, like you're killing the human element. It's like, really? Because we're talking right now. And we're talking right now because I don't have to be over here filling out paperwork and scheduling things and dealing with all the other stuff that I'm automating and outsourcing. So I'm enhancing the human element, which is what you're doing right now. Right, 'cause you're sitting here talking to me. A lot of people for businesses, they want to h they want to do a podcast, they hire a host. Are you that that's a very normal thing to do? But that's either because those people don't want to talk to clients or talk to new people, which is fine. Some of them just want to do the work, but they heard podcasting was a great way to market. You want to build relationships. Me too.
speaker-1: Nice. I love it. Cool. Well, thank you for that. Definitely gonna keep doing this. I I really do love doing it and it's created a lot of amazing, exciting opportunities. So thank you so much for the time. I have a couple final questions for you. One thing that you talked about this idea of you you have a unique gift at creating content, right? And you talked about this idea of, you know, you just record your videos when you're out walking your dog, you put them out there and if people resonate with it, great. If they don't, totally fine. Like you're not trying to make the absolute best possible video. And something that I've gotten more clarity on recently, and I think, you know, you might be able to help me with this, is this idea, like when you're just saying that, like I almost like cringe. It's like I just couldn't do that. Like I feel like I couldn't do that just because I have like I've noticed that I have this kind of perfectionism kind of characteristic that gets in the way of me even starting with the creation of content or with the recording the intros and outros for this podcast. Or just like makes it so that I have to record the same video 50 times in a row. So Is there anything that you could tell me or kind of talk me through as far as like this idea of perfectionism getting in the way of, you know, things like content creation are really just getting started? Like how did you get over that? Is it anything that you ever had to go through?
speaker-0: There is n nothing about my content that is perfect ever. Ever. And to me, I mean it's it's a cliche, but perfection's the enemy of done. Right. So The idea of seeking perfection in and of itself is not a bad thing, but it is incongruent. So I ultimately like it comes down to a question of like, do you want it to be good or do you want it to be yours? Right. And that's that's an important distinction. And it can be both, but a lot of times it can't. Right. So is the point of it, it's like this is to be the most Ari thing ever, right? And nobody else can do that. Nobody's touched that. And I'm gonna tinker it, make it so RE-like. And while that's happening, The market is passing you by and you know, AI has doubled in size and all this like stuff. And then nobody got your message anyway. Whereas to me, what's more important is that I believe that I have content that is valuable for people to do better in their lives and their businesses. And I don't mean that in like in a grandizing, egocentric way. I just I've seen that, you know, I come up with things and I want to share them right away. And people usually benefit from them. So I am doing the world, and that again, that sounds very like egocentric, but I'm doing the world a disservice in a way if I'm not getting it out there to people who want it. Right. So, and you see this in all sorts of different aspects of life. Like if you have the ability to provide an opportunity, and you can interpret this however you like, if you have the ability to provide an opportunity to people who want to take advantage of that opportunity, why would you not do that?
speaker-1: Yeah. Just gotta get over myself. G kinda get out of my own way. This kind of goes back to the idea that we opened with of, you know people including myself, founders including myself, just get so married to the idea that this is mine. I have to be the one that's, you know, responsible for the success of this. Like the person on the front line. It's the same thing with the content of just like getting out of my own way. This idea that what I put out there needs to be perfect, that people are thinking that much about me, but That makes sense. Thank you for that. Ari, thank you so much for the time. I have one final question for you, but before we get to that, how can people find you?
speaker-0: So everything is at lessdoing.com. If people are interested in the AI side of things, they go to lessdoing.ai. I've got this free five day boot camp thing there about building AI virtual chiefs of staff. But everything's at lessdoing.com.
speaker-1: Sweet. We'll have the links to both of those in the description. I'll definitely be checking out that five day boot camp. Love learning from everybody in the in the domain of AI. So thank you for that. And yeah, my final question for you are is a recurring question that I ask every guest. But if you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world, the kind of one message to the world, everyone in the world could see for ten seconds, what would it say and why?
speaker-0: Yes, it has to get done. No, it doesn't have to be done by you.
speaker-1: Very on brand. I love it. Ari, thank you so much for the time.
speaker-0: Nice one.
speaker-1: Thank you for listening. My main takeaway from this conversation is that effective delegation is one of the core, if not the most important skills of being a founder. What Ari helped me clarify is that good delegation starts with being clear on the outcome that you want to achieve, then giving someone that context, the resources that they need, and then giving them, like equipping them or encouraging them with the ownership that they need in order to get there and accomplish that outcome. I think in the past I've spent a lot of time thinking about delegation too much as just handing off tasks. The better way to think about it is making sure that you they can move forward without even me needing to come back to me, right? Giving them true ownership of the outcome, right? Not ownership over the sequence of steps, but ownership over the outcome that they're responsible for creating in the business. If you want to get connected with Ari, you can find his links in the description of this episode. You can all also learn more about his work at Less Doing and his AI resources at lessdoing.ai. If you run a coaching program, course, or mastermind, and you want to put more of your clients, or if you want to help more of your clients actually follow through on what you teach, I put a free resource in the description that will help you build more execution support in your program without taking more of your time. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.
speaker-1: What you look for first as the things that you should be delegating and and giving up?
speaker-0: The question really isn't what would you do, it's what wouldn't you do.
speaker-1: Today's guest is Ari Mizell. Ari is the creator of Less Doing and the author of The Replaceable Founder. His work is focused on helping founders build companies and businesses as assets instead of just high-paying jobs that take all of their time by getting better at delegation, systems, and decision making. In our conversation, we talked about what it actually takes to effectively delegate by, you know, starting with focusing on the outcome that you want people to deliver and what they're responsible for as opposed to just. Follow this rigid process. And then how an emphasis and focus on delegation changes the way that you build teams, establish processes, and even build the AI agents that can actually take ownership of the work today. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Ari Mizel. Ari, thank you so much for being here.
speaker-0: Hey, thanks for having me on here.
speaker-1: Absolutely. So Ari, a lot of your work is centered around the idea of the replaceable founder. And obviously, in my mind, the idea of the founder, they're the person that gets the business going, right? That they're they're the reason that the abus the business works from the jump because they're essential to absolutely everything. So before we get into this idea of the replaceable founder and how a founder goes into replacing themselves and and making them non-essential to the business. What do you see is the role the responsibility of the founder to the business?
speaker-0: That's a great question, Ian. Nice. Right out of the gate. seriously, I like that. That's a really good one. And I think a lot of people don't actually ask that. And that's part of the problem. Because the founder is often just become the person that wears all the hats and does all the things and fills in all the gaps. That is absolutely not what the founder is supposed to be. The founder is supposed to be the one with the vision, with the ability to innovate, not that other people can't, but the ability to innovate, iterate, empower. Truly, a founder needs to be somebody who empowers others to be able to expound upon their vision. That's probably a really high-level way of saying it. At another level, it's really important for a founder to be the one that creates, and I don't mean creates by necessarily like pushing the buttons, but they need to be the one that creates the ideas around systems and processes. Because otherwise it just becomes this sort of organized and oftentimes disorganized chaos. When people think that the founder is like the one that's hurting the cats and, you know, like keeping every that's not the point. And that's not what it's supposed to be like. And the other one is that I I have found over the years that so much of my work is more and more about protecting an entrepreneur's team from the entrepreneur's mind. And so many entrepreneurs are working out all of their psychological baggage on their companies. And it really do mean that. There's so much crossover with so many different psychoses and mental illnesses that that fit the bill for entrepreneur. So long way of answering that, but the founders really purpose to the business is to have it be a business as opposed to just like their hobby or their job.
speaker-1: Yeah. And what do you think the what's the difference? Obviously you brought in a a a couple of ideas, right? The you know, a hobby or a job would be probably mean that they're involved in in everything. Maybe if they're treating it like a business, the founder is just kind of supposed to get out of the way. Is that directionally correct? Like what's the difference between a founder building a business as a business as opposed to then building it as a job or a hobby?
speaker-0: So I think that you see this all the time on Shark Tank. Shark Tank is a great example of this. Okay. So somebody had an idea for something. And maybe they're an inventor, or maybe they're a connector, or but they they see something and they put it together. It's like this is a great new thing and I'm gonna sell this and they start selling it and they've got a lot of energy and that comes across and people like it. Great. Let's say make a hundred thousand dollars in a year, or maybe three hundred thousand dollars. And maybe that's it, maybe that's where you end up and you're very happy with that and there's no judgment, and that's totally fine. To then become a business, first of all, the people that make the great thing and are innovators, they're not necessarily good at the other stuff. They're not necessarily good leaders. They're most likely not good delegators, because most people are not naturally. They don't know the finances. They don't know the shipping logistics. They don't know that stuff. And of course we can learn those things. But this idea that the entrepreneur needs to be the CEO is is a is a pro it's a problem. Honestly. And furthermore, you may be a great CEO up to a million or three million dollar company. But the the CEO that runs a three million dollar company is not very likely to be the one that effectively runs it at ten or gets it to ten. They can, and I've seen that in very, very rare situations, but I have effectively run companies that were doing up to twenty five million dollars. And I have coached people who are doing companies that are running or doing hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't think that I would be a good CEO of a multi hundred million dollar company. I don't. It just requires different things and different skill sets. So the ego element is so big here where people think that a law should be able to do everything. It's my company, it's my baby. But what they're really doing is just strangling. The thing that they're trying to build and grow. And ultimately, again, it's the difference between owning your own job and running a business. Right. So I have a coaching business, a bunch of different things I'm involved in, but one of them is my coaching business. It's the thing I've been doing forever. I've had a team before. I don't have a team right now. If I don't coach that business, the business doesn't make money. So in a lot of ways, you could say I'm an independent contractor, right? I get paid when I work. It's not quite that simple. Obviously, people have like memberships and things with me. But I am the crux of that business and I'm okay with that for that particular business. If I wanted to grow up beyond me and have it be a coaching, you know, industry where I've got coaches working under me and people building courses and writing things for me, which a lot of that we could do with AI now, but that's a business. And some people want that and some people don't. But the problem becomes when you confuse the two.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And when you confuse the two and you say you want a business, but then you also want to insert yourself into into everything. I think the idea that you brought up of, okay, yeah, you can be the individual with your sheer passion, your energy, your excitement, your enthusiasm about this thing that you're doing, maybe you can take this business to, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars a year, a million dollars a year, three million dollars a year, whatever the number is, eventually you're gonna reach your limit as an individual. And then you're gonna be faced with the decision of Do I want to make the best decision for this business? Like, what is the best move for this business? And probably in the end, the best decision for me. Or do I want to feel like the important person, the head honcho, be the one in charge of running my baby? Like I that was an idea that I never even considered, right? Like I built a marketing agency to, you know, just over a million dollars a year in revenue. And we never even considered the idea of like, okay, what if we brought in another? CEO or operator to come in and run this business and help us take it to the to the next level. It's just like my automatic assumption is like, Okay, I am just the one that needs to improve and get better and develop my skill set to be able to continue to grow this company.
speaker-0: Yeah. And that may be to an extent. Totally maybe. And you may be that guy. But to assume that you are is the problem, right? And we can't all be good like amazing and everything. We can be okay at a lot of things. And if you're okay with that, then your business is gonna be, you know, good enough. Which is fine, right? But again, it's this thing where when then you have people are like, nobody wants nobody's doing what I tell them to do and nothing's getting done, I'm overwhelmed. It's like because you're telling people to do things that you don't know how to do yourself.
speaker-1: Yeah. So in that situation, you I mean, I guess you want to go find somebody who can fit the bill who's gonna be right for that responsibility, that role. But in order to even do that, right, you need to become an effective delegator. And you talked about this idea that most people are not effective delegators, and I can speak from my own first hand experience that, you know, there's a lot more that goes into delegating than just, you know telling somebody that they need to do something, it's like, all right, it's off my plate. I told them that they need to do it. there's a lot more that goes into being a good delegator. So first question, why do you think delegation is one of those things that we aren't just out of the box good at? And then what goes into being like what goes into effective delegation?
speaker-0: So I mean you nailed it right there. It's just like, hey, I just want to get this thing off a plate and get it done and you deal with it. That's what most people do when they delegate. They delegate annoying sh. That's really like what delegation is for most people. And the problem is well, there's a few problems with that. So the first one is if you delegate something to somebody that you don't want to do, you don't have great necessarily mastery of. They have less context and less information, less experience than you do. And at the same time, you are expecting them to deliver a superior result to the result that you were going to do yourself. You are setting everybody up for failure. And then the loop is what happens is that they get back a result that they're not happy with. And it's like, alpha screen doesn't work. I tried it. It's not for me. And that like gets reinforced. And the same thing happens with AI net, by the way. I'm sure you've had conversations with people who are like, Yeah, I put this thing into Chat GPT and it gave me this crap response. It's like a third grader, so I don't use it. Like, well, yeah, okay. I mean, because you we're an idiot. Like, that's just not the way that these systems work. So the flip is that instead of thinking about pushing stuff under the rug that you don't want to deal with, you should be thinking about delegation as a way of empowering others. Right. So what can I give to a human being that they actually can engage with and really like take ownership over? overcome certain hurdles and actually deliver a result where you're gonna be like, holy cow, this is so great. I couldn't have done this myself. Now, to do that, you have to delegate effectively. You have to tell people shocker, you have to tell people what success looks like. And other shocker, you have to tell people what is the outcome we're trying to achieve. So I can give you a really simple example. One of my favorite virtual assistant stories ever was I was flying to Toronto to go to an event and I was at the airport. At five in the morning. And my VAs at the time I was using a service called Magic, which is get magic.com. And one of the things that Magic has always had, which was great, is they have a marketplace model. So you're never dealing with one person, you're dealing with quite literally hundreds, but they all come at you as like one individual. And because there are so many of them, they have like a 30 second response time, 247. It's incredible. Nothing like nobody's been able touch that human-wise. So they had booked this flight for So I'm sitting there at like five in the morning, I'm like half away drinking a coffee, and I get a text and it says, Hey Ari, your flight's been canceled, but we know you have to be in Toronto by eight thirty. So we've rebooked you on United, blah, blah, blah. Go to gate B six. And I'm look I'm like Is this is a spam? What? And nobody's nobody's saying anything around me. There's no like the gate agent's just standing there. I'm like, okay. So I get up and I start walking towards this gate and I'm not even I'm like get like a hundred feet away. And I hear them make the announcement at the gate that the flight's been canceled and everybody's like losing it. Like, this is you know, like everything. So they had gotten the alert from UA or from the whatever the the airline was. But the point is, is that they knew that it wasn't the task was not book me a flight to Canada, right? The flight was I need to be here at eight thirty at this event, at this coaching event that I was going to. So Yeah. For th and they had already had some rules in place that I teach about, which is like they anything under five hundred dollars, basically they could just make a decision without me. So that so then I got this result that was not only like great, but incredible, right? It's like, my God. So I just casually walk over and I get on a thing and they and then they dealt with like getting a refund from the other one for it. It was all taken care of. Because they knew the outcome. So it's anybody who has Small children has the same kind of thing. Like you you see this all the time where they'll ask for something. And it's funny when you're like half distracted and they come up, it's like, hey, I need some glue. Yeah, okay, here's glue. You come back, you know. I need, you know, a blowtorch. Like, yeah, okay, here's a blow torch. It's like, what are you doing? What are you actually doing? I had to fix this thing. Well, you can't use either of those, and you certainly can't use a blowtorch. So what what are you trying, you know, what are we trying to do? It sounds so basic, but we don't. Do that. So a lot of times again, you're telling people the tasks, or not even the task, you're telling people the steps. Or yeah, the task, but not the goal. Like
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: why is that so hard to share? Yeah. So that's a big one. And then you get somebody who does the task. Yeah. Same thing with AI. Same thing with AI.
speaker-1: Yeah, 100%. You're totally right. Like you need to be able to give you AI the criteria of what success looks like. But I think your point about, you know, the outcome, this is the outcome that we're trying to achieve. If you can delegate those outcomes and it and set the expectation for these are the outcomes that you are responsible for driving within this position. Cause your ex your story about the the airport and and having to change your flight, in my mind, prior to this conversation. If somebody was going to be responsible for that, you know, okay, we need the SOP of like when a flight is canceled, how do you go and book a new flight and then you have this whole step by step thing. But like all of that time would have been wasted if I would have just instead trained them on how do we deliver this outcome, how do we create this outcome of I need to get to Toronto by eight thirty? Because that covers the basis of okay, if the flight is canceled, you just need to, you know, make this decision of finding the next flight that's gonna get you to Toronto by eight thirty. So it's almost like coming at it from a different direction as opposed to all right, I'm gonna come up with the SOP, the standard step by step process for absolutely everything that might come at this person. And then I'm going to train them on following this process as opposed to train them to think more creatively and use these resources that I provide them to delivering these outcomes. It feels like focusing on training for generating outcomes is going to save you so much more time than having to train on like specific like covering your basis on every possible SOP that you would need to create. Is there something there?
speaker-0: Yeah. So back in the day, yeah, before AI was where it is now, I would have had a I I had a lot more focus on SOPs. I was really big on creating processes, process documentation. And when people would say the f like, you know, but this is like a process we're only gonna do once, my response was usually like, Well, it's a muscle to document processes correctly. And a lot of people don't do it the right way. The way that most people would document processes was, Hey, I'm gonna show you how to do this thing. Or I'm gonna write down how to do this thing and then you do the thing, right? So it's like let's onboard a new employee. Okay, so I'm gonna click here, I'm gonna go there, and now you do this and do that. And a lot of those processes had flaws in them, were never tested, were never updated. So the way that I usually flip it or not, the way that I flip it with people is say you show somebody how to do it, and that second person now writes down the process. They write the process based on what they saw. Then you take it ideally to a third person, and when if you're using virtual assistants, it's really easy to do. But you take it to third person who hasn't seen the process and you ask them to run through the steps. And a hundred percent of the time it won't work. It'll never work. But it's really great because what happens is they get to step two and it says, you know, click the big red button and they're like, I don't see the big red button. And then you go back to the first person and they say, Well, yeah, I was logged in as an admin, you're a guest, I gotta fix that in the process. Cool. Get down to step five, open the file for November. Where the hell is the file for November? right. I gotta put a link. Open this folder, get the most recent file, it'll be at the top. Like, okay, great. Get down to the very bottom. When you're done with this, send it over to Roger, an accountant. Roger hasn't worked here in eight months. What you talking about? We're gonna change that. So it's like send it to the account executive for the, you know, that so you go through at a very granular level, and you end up with a process that you've now shown works at a tertiary, not just secondary, but tertiary level. So it's basically bulletproof the process. And then you can start to my framework is optimize, automate, outsource, and you can start to really automate things really easily and outsource them because it's so good. That's the old way of doing it. And it still works, but we don't have to go that quite that far at this point. Because again, AI, because we can show, you know, there's so many great tools now like Guide and Scribe and stuff. You can just show a process and it will fill in the blanks and write it out really well. And then you can even have the AI test the process. And now with agents, you can have agents go through the process and sort of test each step as they go. So a lot of that sort of goes away. And it becomes that much more important to get to the point of delegation. How you delegate well. So And and I I can't stress this enough. Like, you know, the 10 prompts that are going to change your business is like such utter bullsh. The stuff that people have put out there. Copying and pasting a prompt is not going to get you the result that you want. Grabbing a GitHub skill and putting these two magic prompts is not going to make your business familiar business overnight. It's just doesn't work that way. Delegating better will. And always has been the thing that will. And we are in a position now. Where we are all becoming managers because we are now managing the agents that do the work. We're not the ones doing the work. So you need whether you like it or not, you're a manager and you have to get better at it. I have 28 agents running right now and five different organizations basically doing stuff. Two of them have been running for 165 days without me having to tell them to do anything, doing stuff every day. And that's because, again, I'm sharing the outcome. the resources needed, whether that's a credit card or a login or a document or a tax ID, whatever it might be, has the resources. I also have criteria in place, which is only contact me if, right? So if it's not this, this or this, just deal with it. You take care of it within these parameters. If it's under five hundred dollars, you don't have to ask me, do that kind of thing. And one of the nuanced things that we'll see I'll see, I have like 18 foundational rules for all my agents. And one of them is that when you do something, Then the next step is to go ahead and check that you did it. So you said, you know, send a Slack message. Great. Next step is read the Slack channel, see if the message actually matched what you said you sent. Right. So it's those basic checks and balances. But there have been times where something breaks, and I'll say, why did that happen? And it will say, well, you know, the API key broke and this and that. Sorry about that. Like, I'll push that through now. And my response is then. Why didn't you just fix it? And it'll say, I could have fixed it. I should have done that. And then I have to say, from now on, when you encounter an issue that you can fix, fix it. I didn't tell it that before, but now I did. So now it's like, now, and then here's another one along those same lines. I have this particular agent that's looking at legal legislation, like different laws that are coming up for this particular company. And it would say like, okay, here's the twelve laws coming up, approve or reject each one, like how we modify based. And I finally was like, I don't want to go through all these. How confident are you on each one of these? And it was like ninety five percent this is approved, ninety five, ninety four, ninety-three, sixty seven. Okay. So from now on, anytime you are ninety percent confident or more, just deal with it and bring the rest to me. So those kinds of things.
speaker-1: Right. And that's just like with building the agents, it's just like when you would be creating traditional standards and standards SOPs for for people. It's just gonna be those little gaps that you might have missed and things that you learn and you continue to iterate and improve them over time with the person, just like with the agent. And I think that kind of segues into this next idea. Which is you brought up earlier the idea of ownership, right? So when you delegate something to someone, you want them to own this process. Like you are now the owner of this process, which in my mind means that you are responsible for improving this process over time. Like this is yours. Obviously, we're gonna work together. Like we're gonna have check-ins, like one-on-one meetings where we're gonna review, you're gonna bring up anything that you're struggling with, and I'm gonna help you try to improve this, but you own this. You are the one responsible for improving this over time. So something that we built into our processes with people and I haven't quite done this a hundred percent correctly with agents just yet, but the idea that when you complete going through this process, well a part of the process is identifying opportunities for how we can improve that process and make it better. So a part of the SOP is is identifying any opportunities. Okay, so you just completed this. Were there any ideas that you have for how you can improve it and take note of that? Is that one critical piece that goes into this idea of ownership and what else do you think kind of goes into this idea of creating ownership in the people that you're delegating things to.
speaker-0: So part of that is transparency and accountability. Right. So and again, I I I I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I mean I I don't I'm using AI agents for almost everything now. I'm not defaulting to people for most things. So with like AI agents, I'm basically have a rule that they have to show their work for better lack of a better term. So whether that means that they're writing everything they're doing in a Slack channel, or in actually one of the cases, I have it. managing my Trello board format to manage its own tasks. So if I give it something to do, it's gonna c create its do item on Trello and then it will move it to doing when it's working on it and move it to done. So what that means is that I can interact with it however I want, but then at any given time I can go into Trello. I can be like, all right, here's the three things that my AI agent is working on, because it's not just working in a black box. So there's no thing where it's like, I forgot to do the thing that you told me to do. It's like, no, it's right there. You know, you you it's right there. So there's a lot of ways to do that with AI, there's ways to do it with people. And creating that accountability is the first thing that shows ownership because if somebody can't and I don't mean this like in a bad way, but if there's no way for them to hide, right, at some point most people will step up, right? Because they don't want to just be seen as doing a bad job all the time. But most companies, and I always say most, but it really is, don't is a lot of companies don't use project management tools at all. Right. So how do you so unless you're gonna be a micromanager and just go, you know, cubicle to cubicle and be Hey, what are you working on? What are you working on? It's very easy to just sort of stay under the radar. And I'm not saying that people have bad intentions, but a lot of times most people don't want to really rock the boat, especially when they're not entrepreneurs, you know, even if they work in an entrepreneurial company. So that's one is there has to be some accountability. And if something if someone is going to own something, then they're going to own it, which means that they own the good and the bad. Right. So why isn't this thing performing this well? And why didn't you address it before? that's the standard? Yeah, that's the standard. You own it now. The other thing is that I am a really big believer in Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continual improvement for the good. So we should be iterating and improving every day in some way, not giant leaps necessarily, but something that is measurable. So whatever that means to that person, we want to see it. And then lastly, I have always been of the mindset the biggest team I've ever had on my own company was seven. I've run teams of much larger and other companies, but seven was the most I had in my company. And one of the things I always said was, I am going to overload you. I'm going to give you more work than 14 people probably could do. But at the same time, I'm also going to give you any resources you could possibly want if you asked for it. So if you tell me you need to hire someone, you need to get a VA to handle your personal stuff, you need to sign up for this piece of software, you can do it. Figure it out. You know, the the restriction is the driver of innovation.
speaker-1: Right. And this idea comes back to getting really clear on the outcomes that this person is responsible for. Because if you get really clear and you reinforce and say, Hey, you're responsible for generating these outcomes, the process and the SOP that they go through becomes malleable. Right. Like this current process is the best way that we know how to go about generating that outcome for this specific task. But if you're more married to the outcome and you're and you're not going to become a bureaucracy where you're just married to this process, right? This idea of Like I originally ran into this when I read Bezos' letters to shareholders, or this idea of it's always day one, right? We're never going to use the excuse of this is how we've always done it to keep doing something a certain way or for the reason for why we did it that way. So you again, going back to the idea earlier that just really underlined this for me, and I hadn't articulated it as clearly as you had, is this idea that you're responsible for generating these outcomes. Here's the best way that we know how to about going about completing these tasks, but you will make improvements. to these SOPs that better serve generating that outcome. Right. Like that's kind of their filter. That's how they evaluate what improvements they need to make is how can we more effectively produce that outcome for this given task.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, that that restriction, I'm really th so it's it's funny because on the one hand, like I'm saying, I'm giving them more work but telling them they can have whatever resources they want. It's true. But overloading them with work is the restriction, right? It's like my entire productivity journey began when I was dealing with a health crisis. Without going into the whole story of that, the short version is that I went from working eighteen hours a day to working an hour a day. And that was my limit, essentially, like just mentally and physically. And so when you're in that situation where it's like, well, I have eight hours of work to do, but I only have an hour. What am I gonna do? Right. And so that idea has been like the ethos of everything that's ever come since for me, which is what would you do if you only work an hour a day? And it's a really interesting thought experiment because at that point the question really isn't what would you do? It's what wouldn't you do? And then if those things don't have to get done, then who or what is gonna do them? And you have to put systems and processes in place. So it's why MacGyver has always been like the greatest sort of inspiring image for me, you know? It's like what one person can do with a million dollars and what another person can do with a paper clip is always so fascinating to me.
speaker-1: Yeah. So for the people that are listening to this conversation now and obviously they understand the importance and the need of delegation. And we talked about the role, the responsibilities of the founder. But if they have been maybe they're self aware enough like myself to kind of realize like, okay, I've probably been holding on to way too much and I need to I need to start delegating. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. I need to start delegating. Like, what do you think people that are starting on this journey? It's like, okay, we have enough money coming in now. Like I don't need to worry and stress about hiring people and delegating and spending money to like buy my time back. Where do you look first? Like what do you look for first is the things that you should be delegating and and giving up? Obviously you're gonna start somewhere, but you're gonna keep going for a while. Where should people start?
speaker-0: So I have a framework that I call the ultimate KPI. It's very simple. And you basically take if you you take a little bit and you write down what are the twenty things that you're doing on a regular basis. And it could be as micro and macro as you want. So macro would be like podcasting. Micro would be being on podcast versus having people on my podcast. So then you look at that list of 20 and then you take 16 things off that list. That in a year's time you will no longer touch. So A D twenty basically. And then the next thing is the replacement plan. And we look at my framework of OAO. So optimize, automate, outsource. So are we going optimize this, meaning like it's just gonna sort of become a non thing because we optimize it out of existence? Are we gonna automate it because we can put an AI agent in place or something? Or are we gonna outsource it because we're gonna hire somebody or promote somebody in the company to to take that thing on? But this is the things I'm not gonna be doing anymore. And you do that for yourself and for everybody in the company. And then every month or every quarter you revisit that together and look objectively at your march towards replaceability. Cause ultimately we want to replace everybody up, not out. So That would be a really good place to start. You start looking at those things and you get to the four things, right? That's like, no, I don't know. It's not that I can't, and this is very important. You don't want to put things on that list of 16. Sorry, you don't want to keep things on off of that list that's like, I could never do this. No. You want to get to those four things that really you are so good at and get you so jazzed up and you can focus on your zone of genius and everything else can get done. And it's not that the other stuff is subordinate to that, but there are probably better people or systems to do them than you.
speaker-1: There's a difference between something that jazzes you up, that lights you up, and and you're really good at it, right? There's certain things like this podcast, for example. Like I love doing it, but there's definitely way better podcast hosts out there than me. Like so which do you think like you prioritize? Something that you're enthusiastic about, you're jazzed about, or the things that you're good at, but maybe you don't love doing? Is there a a a decision that you make there and like you provide preferential to to one or the other?
speaker-0: Can you think of an example?
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, like, so for me, again, like hosting this podcast, I love doing it, but I'm definitely have a long way to grow in getting better at hosting this podcast. Like I'm sure I could go and find somebody to be like, hey, I want you to be the host for my show. We're interviewing these guests, we're using it to like build relationships, create content, things like that. So it's an important thing for us to be doing. And then second, like something that I'm good at, but I don't necessarily love doing, would be like developing and building the tools that we do for our clients or maybe hosting the onboarding meetings, which I guess maybe are pretty easy examples. Like when I say those out loud, it's like, yeah, those are things that I could probably delegate. But yeah, so I don't know if it does come to a situation where I guess it is there like w what are the things that you really can't never delegate as the founder kind of goes back to what's the role of responsibility?
speaker-0: And no, it's not can't. It's not can't. So first of all, those are two really good examples. I won't touch on that. So first one is so something that you are really good at, but you don't love doing one of them is creating client tools. One of the ultimate signs of mastery, right, is the ability to teach something. So if you're truly good at that, you're really, really good at that, then you should put effort into teaching it to people either in your team or maybe even in the public if it's that good. But to people on your team and create content around it and create course around it so that people on your team can do that and do it for you. And through in doing that, you will make it better, first of all. So one of the best ways to delegate is to teach. Second thing on the other example that you gave about podcasting. So you're not the best podcast host in the world. Okay. You're getting better at it. Great. Why are you ultimately doing this podcast?
speaker-1: Primary number one reason is to build relationships with the guests to turn into opportunities, right? To so we invite people that are in our target niche of clientele for our business. We have this podcast to build a relationship with more people, create those opportunities, and then create content that resonates with a similar kind of a thing. But yeah, those are like the business primary business objectives. And then secondarily for me personally, like I love meeting people, talking to people, want to get better at the skill of facilitating interesting conversation. Yeah, so it just kind of both worked out for me.
speaker-0: So based on what you just said, why would you ever have somebody else do this? So for I your first question on this podcast was fantastic. Like I'm gonna remember that for a long time. You like doing this, you're getting better at it. You already seem like you're pretty good at it because you're asking some really good questions. And also you want to build relationships. Do you want me to build a relationship with someone else in your company or with you?
speaker-1: Right, yeah, with me.
speaker-0: So you're you're nailing it. Like this is something you should be doing. You know, ultimately, like my highest and best thing I think is creating content. You know, I think that I connect the dots in ways and information that a lot of people don't, and then I can put that into videos. And am I the best podcast? I I I've had five hundred podcast episodes of my own. I haven't done my own podcast in a while. Am I the best video person? Absolutely not. Do my videos while I'm walking my dog down the street. And if people resonate with the content, great. I wouldn't have somebody else do that. And and what this is really an important point, because I've gotten this pushback my entire career where people would say, like, with all this automation, all this outsourcing, like you're killing the human element. It's like, really? Because we're talking right now. And we're talking right now because I don't have to be over here filling out paperwork and scheduling things and dealing with all the other stuff that I'm automating and outsourcing. So I'm enhancing the human element, which is what you're doing right now. Right, 'cause you're sitting here talking to me. A lot of people for businesses, they want to h they want to do a podcast, they hire a host. Are you that that's a very normal thing to do? But that's either because those people don't want to talk to clients or talk to new people, which is fine. Some of them just want to do the work, but they heard podcasting was a great way to market. You want to build relationships. Me too.
speaker-1: Nice. I love it. Cool. Well, thank you for that. Definitely gonna keep doing this. I I really do love doing it and it's created a lot of amazing, exciting opportunities. So thank you so much for the time. I have a couple final questions for you. One thing that you talked about this idea of you you have a unique gift at creating content, right? And you talked about this idea of, you know, you just record your videos when you're out walking your dog, you put them out there and if people resonate with it, great. If they don't, totally fine. Like you're not trying to make the absolute best possible video. And something that I've gotten more clarity on recently, and I think, you know, you might be able to help me with this, is this idea, like when you're just saying that, like I almost like cringe. It's like I just couldn't do that. Like I feel like I couldn't do that just because I have like I've noticed that I have this kind of perfectionism kind of characteristic that gets in the way of me even starting with the creation of content or with the recording the intros and outros for this podcast. Or just like makes it so that I have to record the same video 50 times in a row. So Is there anything that you could tell me or kind of talk me through as far as like this idea of perfectionism getting in the way of, you know, things like content creation are really just getting started? Like how did you get over that? Is it anything that you ever had to go through?
speaker-0: There is n nothing about my content that is perfect ever. Ever. And to me, I mean it's it's a cliche, but perfection's the enemy of done. Right. So The idea of seeking perfection in and of itself is not a bad thing, but it is incongruent. So I ultimately like it comes down to a question of like, do you want it to be good or do you want it to be yours? Right. And that's that's an important distinction. And it can be both, but a lot of times it can't. Right. So is the point of it, it's like this is to be the most Ari thing ever, right? And nobody else can do that. Nobody's touched that. And I'm gonna tinker it, make it so RE-like. And while that's happening, The market is passing you by and you know, AI has doubled in size and all this like stuff. And then nobody got your message anyway. Whereas to me, what's more important is that I believe that I have content that is valuable for people to do better in their lives and their businesses. And I don't mean that in like in a grandizing, egocentric way. I just I've seen that, you know, I come up with things and I want to share them right away. And people usually benefit from them. So I am doing the world, and that again, that sounds very like egocentric, but I'm doing the world a disservice in a way if I'm not getting it out there to people who want it. Right. So, and you see this in all sorts of different aspects of life. Like if you have the ability to provide an opportunity, and you can interpret this however you like, if you have the ability to provide an opportunity to people who want to take advantage of that opportunity, why would you not do that?
speaker-1: Yeah. Just gotta get over myself. G kinda get out of my own way. This kind of goes back to the idea that we opened with of, you know people including myself, founders including myself, just get so married to the idea that this is mine. I have to be the one that's, you know, responsible for the success of this. Like the person on the front line. It's the same thing with the content of just like getting out of my own way. This idea that what I put out there needs to be perfect, that people are thinking that much about me, but That makes sense. Thank you for that. Ari, thank you so much for the time. I have one final question for you, but before we get to that, how can people find you?
speaker-0: So everything is at lessdoing.com. If people are interested in the AI side of things, they go to lessdoing.ai. I've got this free five day boot camp thing there about building AI virtual chiefs of staff. But everything's at lessdoing.com.
speaker-1: Sweet. We'll have the links to both of those in the description. I'll definitely be checking out that five day boot camp. Love learning from everybody in the in the domain of AI. So thank you for that. And yeah, my final question for you are is a recurring question that I ask every guest. But if you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world, the kind of one message to the world, everyone in the world could see for ten seconds, what would it say and why?
speaker-0: Yes, it has to get done. No, it doesn't have to be done by you.
speaker-1: Very on brand. I love it. Ari, thank you so much for the time.
speaker-0: Nice one.
speaker-1: Thank you for listening. My main takeaway from this conversation is that effective delegation is one of the core, if not the most important skills of being a founder. What Ari helped me clarify is that good delegation starts with being clear on the outcome that you want to achieve, then giving someone that context, the resources that they need, and then giving them, like equipping them or encouraging them with the ownership that they need in order to get there and accomplish that outcome. I think in the past I've spent a lot of time thinking about delegation too much as just handing off tasks. The better way to think about it is making sure that you they can move forward without even me needing to come back to me, right? Giving them true ownership of the outcome, right? Not ownership over the sequence of steps, but ownership over the outcome that they're responsible for creating in the business. If you want to get connected with Ari, you can find his links in the description of this episode. You can all also learn more about his work at Less Doing and his AI resources at lessdoing.ai. If you run a coaching program, course, or mastermind, and you want to put more of your clients, or if you want to help more of your clients actually follow through on what you teach, I put a free resource in the description that will help you build more execution support in your program without taking more of your time. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.
