Welcome to Daily Confidence for Entrepreneurs Show Episode 44.
In this episode, join my friend Meny Hoffman and me talk about Mastering The Art of Delegation.
Listen to the podcast here:
KEY POINTS:
Why Delegation is Important?
What are the challenges business owners experience with delegation?
Who is the best person to delegate?
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:
2:43 – You’d have to start learning new skills, you have to start learning new ways of delegation, you have to learn and bring in other people that might not think like you do and grow a team.
13:01 – The reason for delegation is at one point, you have to realize that the company and your business are bigger than yourself, which means if everything will have to go through you, be done by you, you have a limit to how much you can achieve.
34:34 – If delegation fails, it’s not a reason to quit delegating. Ask yourself the question, why did it fail? Did I make the wrong judgment and give too much away too quickly? Or maybe I gave it to the wrong person.
44:45 – You still delegate but you inspect what you expect. So you have the checks and balances on it.
50:18 – If you have something that you could share with your friend, neighbor, and co-worker, it’s your obligation because it could be one idea that could change a person’s life.
TRANSCRIPTS:
Mostafa Hosseini 0:02
Welcome to Daily Confidence for Entrepreneurs. My name is Mostafa Hosseini, and I’m your host for the show. At Daily Confidence, we share tips, strategies, and actionable advice that you can use on a daily basis and boosts your confidence when it comes to running your business.
As usual, during the show, we’ll be giving away gifts and we will do a draw later. You can enter the draw if you like, subscribe, comment, tag a friend, ask a question as we’re live, or tag a friend who could benefit from the topic. Then your name will be entered into the draw and everyone could win.
I have a wonderful guest today. My guest is Meny Hoffman. Welcome, Meny.
Meny Hoffman 0:45
Thank you so much for having me.
Mostafa Hosseini 0:48
Great to have you. Let me do the proper introduction here and then we’re going to dive into the topic of Mastering the Art of Delegation, which is an important topic for every business owner.
Meny Hoffman is the CEO of Ptex Group, award-winning branding, and marketing agency headquartered in New Brooklyn, New York, and a lifelong entrepreneur passionate about creating winning strategies that help growing businesses flourish. Meny has been successfully helping brands grow and thrive since 2001. He’s been at this for a while and he’s the founder of the Let’s Talk Business LTB platform and movement to provide entrepreneurs with powerful tools needed to learn, grow and lead.
He’s a popular speaker who shares his strategies at regional corporations and conferences. And he’s a proud husband and lucky father of eight. Welcome, Meny.
Meny Hoffman 1:47
It’s my pleasure to be here.
Mostafa Hosseini 1:49
How’s your day going so far?
Meny Hoffman 1:51
Good. You know, in a while, I did not hear that mouthful of bio, maybe I’m going to have to shorten it a little bit.
Mostafa Hosseini 1:59
I like it. It’s not too long. It’s got the main points.
Meny Hoffman 2:03
Yes. I’m very excited about today’s topic.
Mostafa Hosseini 2:07
I absolutely love delegation. It is definitely an art that not very many people actually know how to do well. Every business owner needs this topic. In my experience, over 90% of business owners that I have come across over the years, either don’t do any delegation, or they do it poorly. Meny, what is the story behind what you do these days and what do you specialize in?
Meny Hoffman 2:43
As you mentioned in the bio, I’m the CEO of the Ptex group. It’s a Business Marketing Service Agency, and we help growing businesses flourish. How do we do it? We do it with branding, marketing, web development, and other services, all related to helping growing businesses get to the next level.
At the same time, we do a lot of education. The reason why we do education is that you could have a great business, you could have a great product but if your infrastructure is not set up properly, you could spend so much money on marketing, and not yield the results. In the same way that we offered all these services, we always brought in education for those leaders to know how they could set themselves up for growth.
I always say when I speak on this topic, that the easiest thing in today’s day and age is growing a business. You decide on a few $100, speak to people that started an Amazon e-commerce business or a consultancy business. Sometimes even with $0 they just left their nine to five job. Why? Because they probably had lined up a couple of clients and they started doing stuff that they love doing and ultimately the growing a business.
Speak to them 6 to 9 months later, and they say wait a minute, did I sign up for this? I did not sign up for this. It’s way harder than I thought. It’s managing the growth. It’s not just getting into business and growing a business. It’s managing the growth.
You’d have to start learning new skills, you have to start learning new ways of delegation, you have to learn and bring in other people that might not think like you do and grow a team because now your infrastructure needs somebody for sales or marketing operations and so on and so forth. Till then it was all you, everything your style, your way of communicating, and everything else.
I love this topic. Therefore, I educate people on this topic and I share a lot of resources on this topic. Most of them are not even related to services we offer as paid services.
Mostafa Hosseini 4:44
What is a typical day for you like these days?
Meny Hoffman 4:52
There’s no typical day for an entrepreneur or leader of a company but I do have a system of how I work my week. There are obviously internal conversations that need to happen. There are external conversations that happen. Then there are odds and ends. I try to schedule my day.
We could speak about the full schedule and how it was actually set up in blocks and calendar, and so on and so forth. But mainly, it’s about knowing that certain hours and blocks are dedicated for everything internal or those meetings that have to happen. There are certain days that are open for outside-of-the-office meetings, in-the-office meetings with clients, Zoom meetings, whatever it is.
Then I’ll add days like today, which are always my Wednesdays, where I focus on everything else. I run a podcast, I’m a guest on other people’s podcasts, those things need to happen, or visionary stuff, exploration of different ideas that are not fitting into day to day operation, or even focus on stuff that is related to my business, but maybe an exploration of all stuff, will all be in that Wednesday.
I work my way around it so I have those buckets and I have those days and have those hours. You can squeeze in as much as you can in those weeks.
Mostafa Hosseini 6:12
I love it. Why don’t we talk about the block and how you set up blocks that you have throughout the week. Then we’re going to make an entry into delegation and how do we go about that? Just bear with us. How do you structure your week and your days?
Meny Hoffman 6:29
Sure. Something I love sharing is, in today’s day and age, you could buy everything through Fiber or Amazon. The only thing not available in time, you cannot buy more time. As much as you could put into your time, that’s much input you could put that will yield the output that you’re expecting.
With that said, if you look at successful business owners, leaders, companies, and large corporations, or even think for a moment, the President of the United States, how much they fit into a day’s schedule, how do we make sure that everything fits in? They have certain things they do themselves, certain things that they delegate, certain things where they just get a briefing, and so on.
My days in my weeks are bucketed out in the following stages. There are big-ticket items, which are focused on stuff that needs my attention, then those check-ins and follow-up meetings that need to happen just because people need me for that half an hour to an hour time. Then there are times that I need to delegate because I do a lot of the sales, strategy, and business development with my company. I’ll need to have those blocks available for follow-up meetings or introductory emails, meetings. That’s how I schedule it.
Mondays are usually an internal day, which we start in the morning with a company huddle. Then we move into meetings with team members. Tuesday, we have a big picture, big vision meeting every week. It’s called level 10. We run our company on EOS. It is literally scorecards, where we are holding every single project, every single rock, and everything was just a follow-up on that. The afternoon goes for client meetings. Wednesday, as I mentioned to you, is for all other types of projects that I’m involved with. Thursday, again, is most clients and I leave a block of hours if internal meetings have to happen again before the next week arrives.
Outside of that, I’m an early riser so I start my day early. So before any hectic stuff happens or before any blocks of my time start, usually at 9:30 or 9:00, I already checked my emails and already followed up with some of the emails. Then throughout the day, I have like 15-minute increments where I will jump into my inbox, clean it up and move on.
Mostafa Hosseini 8:59
Just to clarify, what is your Friday like? Did I miss that?
Meny Hoffman 9:04
Friday is the only time that is very open, which means something that still needs to happen this week, but I didn’t get to it. It will sit, we’ll still have somewhere because a big mistake that a lot of people make is they pack their week and it’s so rigid that you don’t leave anything open just in case there is an emergency or there is something that you still need to achieve before the weekend.
I leave Friday open for a zoom call, a face-to-face meeting, or whatever I need to happen. It’s very flexible, so it’s not scheduled and I actually spend some time on Sunday. Most of the time it’s by myself. My company’s not working on Sunday, just to nicely plan out my week.
When I have blocks of hours, I’m going to focus on big picture items. I don’t want that time slot to come up and say I don’t even know what I have. I’m going to go for the urgent stuff so on Sunday, we’ll figure it out this week. I want to review last month’s quarterly reports and I want to make some notes on them or this week, I want to revisit my sales strategy or my sales system, whatever it is.
I will fill in those blocks by asking myself which clients do I want to meet this week? Which internal employees do I want to set some time and meet with? Then those calendar invites go out and those slots are being filled up to I would say, 70% before the week starts.
Something I love sharing is, in today's day and age, you could buy everything through Fiber or Amazon. The only thing not available in time, you cannot buy more time. As much as you could put into your time, that's much input you could put that will yield the output that you're expecting.
Mostafa Hosseini 10:28
Very interesting. Just to recap, Monday is internal, when you do review your stuff and plan for the week, did I get that right?
Meny Hoffman 10:38
Sunday is more or less for planning. Mondays are when I do internal conversations to make sure everybody on my staff has what they need in order to make it the most successful week possible.
Mostafa Hosseini 10:49
Set your sprints and the projects for the next week or two on Mondays.
Meny Hoffman 10:53
It’s not only the projects, it’s also follow-ups of conversations that my people have to have with clients about strategy or different things so those meetings will happen. Block, block, block, block. I also leave some time for big picture reviews like reviewing reports. If I review on Monday, I could give it back to my bookkeeping or my people doing reports to make some edits and changes as the week progresses. Tuesday is half and half.
Mostafa Hosseini 11:22
Big picture you said?
Meny Hoffman 11:25
The second half is clients. Wednesday is trying to keep free for any other opportunities that come my way that need my attention. Thursday is mainly clients, some internal, and Fridays open for anything that didn’t fit in.
Mostafa Hosseini 11:42
Love it. I like the fact that you actually use Sunday to plan out your week. I need to get better at this. Some Sundays when I do it, I sit down at five or six in the evening then I plan out what I need to do for the week. It’s beautiful when you know what you need to do. We actually do the same thing on Monday mornings when we plan out for the whole week and prioritize our tasks. It’s the best thing you could do. I can attest that it really works.
Meny Hoffman 12:15
If you have so many different projects and so many different things happening in your week like myself, I have a notepad in front of me so when I’ll have this spark of inspiration I can say, “Let me investigate this. Let me check out this resource.” These are those small to-do’s that compile.
Most people will stop what they do and start doing that task. I’ll just write it down. Sunday is when I collect everything that came in last week and prioritizes it to basically what is really due for this week, or what is the stuff that I could just put away and store away when I have time.
Mostafa Hosseini 12:52
Absolutely. Now may be a good time to segue into your delegation, give us your definition of delegation and why it’s important to do.
Meny Hoffman 13:01
Sure. The reason for delegation is at one point, you have to realize that the company and your business are bigger than yourself, which means if everything will have to go through you, be done by you, you have a limit to how much you can achieve. It’s perfectly fine. Let’s think about this entrepreneur, doing graphic design, or somebody, even an attorney. If the lifestyle they want to have is, I don’t want to have employees, I want to do everything myself, and once I hit my capacity, I’m good. I want to go to the beach and do whatever I want, that’s perfectly fine. Nothing is wrong with that.
However, if you’re looking to grow something bigger than yourself, which is not dependent on you, but you really want to create a business that has meaning outside of what you have created it, it carries your vision, it carries your face, you are the chief strategy officer, whatever it is, but ultimately, when you are doing something else, the company’s making your money. There are companies that serve clients, being serviced employees, being servicing those clients.
At one point you have to learn the art of delegation because it’s not possible to do everything. I always say when you are the leader of the company, you have to do one of two things. Either you do stuff that nobody else will do. If you don’t do it, nobody else will do it. Or you want to do stuff that you do best. Nobody else could do as good as you. All the rest of the staff at one point, you start to delegate.
If you are the CEO of a company, speak about vision, speak about strategy, speak about the culture as nobody else in your company will do it because you are the visionary of the company if you are in that role. Automatically 50% of your time is already occupied by just doing the stuff that you originally were able to do as a CEO.
I always tell people when you put the CEO title on the business card, it’s not just because the graphic designer asked you what title you have, or finally being the CEO comes with responsibility. When you look at a company, what is the role of a CEO? Or if you look at EOS, What is the role of the visionary? It comes with a very specific role and if you’re not leaving the time to do that, who else is doing it? Nobody.
The second thing is, sometimes you do stuff very well so sometimes you could find somebody in a leadership role, but they’re the best salesperson, fine, be it, but then you are doing sales, but something has to go, something has to be delegated. Now, everybody knows that everybody would want to delegate the natural question that most people asked me.
Why don’t people delegate more? I’ll tell you the answer. I’ve asked this question to so many business owners, or entrepreneurs, or even leaders of companies. And you know what they answer me? They tried and they failed?
Mostafa Hosseini 16:06
They tried delegating, and it didn’t work?
Meny Hoffman 16:08
It didn’t work. Messed up my client, the project didn’t come out as I planned. That’s where you have to learn the art of delegation because if you don’t learn the art of delegation, you will be setting yourself up to fail. Rightfully, now you’re afraid of delegating another piece. That’s why he started saying, “don’t do it, send me the email you’re going to be sending the client. I want to see it and approve it beforehand.”
What you are doing now is that you’re not giving the autonomy and you’re not delegating. You actually have somebody helping you with your workflow but you’re still the bottleneck, still managing it and overseeing it, and not getting the advantage of delegation.
Mostafa Hosseini 16:52
Got it. A nice segue to my next question is.
What are some of the biggest challenges that business owners and entrepreneurs experience when it comes to delegating?
Meny Hoffman 17:02
Sure, mainly it is not knowing exactly what to delegate. All of a sudden, they’re giving the wrong thing to delegate. This is the last thing you should give on your list, not the first thing on your list.
Second of all, they arrive at delegation when they’re full to capacity, and all of a sudden they’re too late. When they’re too late, they don’t have the bandwidth to properly delegate. They’re just handing it off to someone without the proper information, without the proper educational training. All of a sudden, they’re yielding the results we mentioned before.
Third, is understanding that when you delegate, it really depends on what you are delegating to understand who is the best person suited for that delegation. You could have a team of 10 people but if you don’t know who your people are and you don’t know the strengths and weaknesses of every person, you might delegate something to the wrong person then you’re not yielding the right results.
All of a sudden, you get fed up, I cannot delegate, I have to control everything. Sadly, I could tell you, we work with clients that have CMOs. They are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on CMO but do not allow them a single ad or a single piece of content to go out without them overseeing it and making corrections.
Sometimes I ask, if they’re going to do it, why are you paying somebody a few $100,000 to do this job? They’re miserable at their job because they have zero autonomy and the reason for that is they never learned the art of delegation, and this person could be great but you never learned that and you never had these checks and balances to get to that level.
Mostafa Hosseini 18:45
The top question right now is
When should I start delegating?
How do I figure out who is the best person to delegate it to?
When is a good time to start delegating?
Meny Hoffman 19:02
If time allows, I’m going to get a little bit of a big picture because I think if you get some of those concepts in for the listeners, and the viewers, then some of the stuff will make more sense as I dive into the delegation part. I am a strong believer that when you start a company, you have to create an organizational chart. Most people think that org charts are for companies, Fortune 500 companies that have 1000s of employees, and we need to know who works for whom or to whom to direct reports, but I do it a little differently.
By me, I call it basically, a responsibility chart, which means, I’m opening this company so let me put down on paper every type of responsibility my company will have which could be starting today or could be seen in the next few months.
For simplicity purposes, we’re going to have somebody in operations, in billing, in accounting, in marketing, or somebody coming up with product development, whatever you’re selling, and so on. Now you put them all in boxes.
Chances are as you start your company, you are going to put your name on every single box. That’s perfectly fine. We all started that way. However, you could start preparing yourself, as soon as you’re ready to hire the first person.
Which box am I giving away for that person? What am I giving away for this next person? This is not the art of delegation that we are talking about. Are we going to go into details? This is the first level where people make a mistake, where all of a sudden, I’m so overwhelmed. I’m hiring an assistant. The system comes in. I want them to be at my side and do everything together with me. It doesn’t work.
You know you can hire an assistant to schedule appointments, you can hire an assistant to do some admin tasks but when you want to start really expanding, you’re hiring somebody that takes away responsibilities from you. They are going to be taking one box, two boxes, whatever they have, they’re going to start taking away.
When you start seeing that, automatically, your light bulb goes up and says, as soon as I have help, which stuff do I want to start delegating? You can ask yourself a question then you’re going to have the answer.
Now, you’re asking when is the right time to delegate? As soon as you know that I’m full to capacity. I’m going to bring in help but I also know what stuff I’m going to be delegating? Then we have to get into the mode that’s on the high level, on the low level, one of the things that I am going to give away is a guide over here, which is strictly information on delegation.
The first thing I tell people is, if you are really in it already, let’s say you’re running a company all over the place, and you even have people but don’t even know where to start, I say, take seven days, take 14 days and write down everything you do. As soon as you write down everything you do, go through the same exercise after a week or after two weeks and say, which is the stuff that I actually am not even good at? Or which is the stuff that so many other people could be better at and could free up my time so I could focus on the big picture? That’s gonna give you those chunks of stuff.
Then you bucket those stuff together and say, You know what, Sally would be perfect for that. She actually has some free time. Now, let me go ahead and delegate it so the first thing is coming up with what are those items, and then figuring out who is the best at it. Then we can speak about the art of delegation. How do I make sure that the work is going to be done to my satisfaction?
When you delegate, you have to understand who is the best person suited for that delegation. You could have a team of 10 people but if you don't know who your people are and you don't know the strengths and weaknesses of every person, you might delegate something to the wrong person then you're not yielding the right results.
Mostafa Hosseini 22:52
Got it. Now for those of you who are watching and listening. And my guest, Meny Hoffman, is talking about Mastering the Art of Delegation, which is an absolutely essential topic for every entrepreneur. In a few minutes, we’re going to be sharing his gift, which is his guide and workbook on how to master the art of delegation.
Also, if you have any questions about delegation, and how to do it, post it in a chatbox on whichever platform you’re on, and we’re going to try to answer your questions. If you know any friends that could benefit from this topic, tag them in a post and have them watch this interview because Meny is touching on the really important and good stuff.
Meny, a question for you. Would you delegate your strength first, or your weakness?
Meny Hoffman 23:42
Absolutely your weakness and the reason for that is because when you are weak it pulls you down, which means it doesn’t allow you to work with your full capacity and ultimately your full passion. Why struggle, especially if you’re paying people on your team, or you have other people that are working with you? Why struggle and not work to your full capacity just because you’ve been bogged down by stuff that you’re actually weak doing? Those need to be the first thing that you want to give away.
Then when we speak about strengths, you might be great at it but it’s not the best use of your time. You will still delegate that because remember what we spoke about before? You have very serious obligations as running your company and now other people’s food on the table is dependent on what you’re bringing to the table.
Your client’s satisfaction is what you bring to them as solutions to problems so if you are busy reconciling a credit card statement and going through every transaction at the same time, you could have helped the client, not just for yourself, not for your company, not for your client.
Mostafa Hosseini 24:57
Absolutely. Would you delegate your strength at some point?
Meny Hoffman 25:04
It’s when you still don’t have enough time on your day to focus on the bigger stuff that’s relying only on you and if you don’t do it, nobody else will.
Mostafa Hosseini 25:14
Got it.
What are some of some myths that entrepreneurs have around delegation?
What are some of the wrong approaches they have about it?
Meny Hoffman 25:24
The first wrong approach is that I’m afraid that I’m gonna delegate it, and they’ll make a mistake. Guess what? We also make mistakes and the good part is, if they’re making a mistake, while you’re delegating, at least you’re achieving something else at the same time. If we do it and we make the mistake, nobody else is doing something at the same time that we are. That’s the first myth.
The second myth is that nobody is as good as I am. I feel that this is a myth that entrepreneurs have in general. The answer is, you are maybe best at it from your point of view because you started this company, you started this vision, and you’re building this vision but you might not be good at every trade. This comes to a totally different topic but is interconnected.
Sometimes you hire someone and say, “Oh I hired this perfect person.” Why is that person such a good hire? Well, this person thinks like me, does like me, everything is almost as if I’ve written this email. Do you want to embrace diversity? How about if you actually want to bring in somebody on your team? That’s a little different because maybe you are a very quick person, and this person will actually ask questions, and they’re going to be your safety net, before you move on to the next day, before you move on and do this process.
This is also a myth that if the person is not going to do it like me, chances are they’re going to fail. Guess what? They might be bringing something to the table.
In the long run, even if it’s a little harder than in the beginning, it’s going to be better for the company and I’ve seen this time and time again. I’m a business owner and not just a coach or consultant so I’m offering services on that angle.
We actually have over 30 internal employees in my company, most of them sitting in the office right now, doing work. I remember the days that I controlled everything. I remember the days that I hired my first person who annoyed me because he asked too many questions and I could have done it myself in half the time but when I started seeing the results of it while it freed up my time focusing on other stuff, or gave me checks and balances to make sure that I’m producing proper results, then I started reaping the rewards.
I said, “I have to go out and teach everybody the art of delegation.”
Mostafa Hosseini 27:58
One thing that stops people and you touched on it beautifully, is the time that it takes me to maybe train them. Maybe they asked too many questions but the question I’ve always asked myself, or the people I work with is what’s the alternative?
Either I’ll be stuck here forever doing the tiny little things and like going through transactions, or I can spend some time training other people, so they could do it. At some point, I would be free. I could take a day off, or focus on the big picture.
Meny Hoffman 28:27
If time allows, I want to go into some of the actual practical pointers on how to actually do it. Obviously, the guide itself, it’s broken down into five steps. I’m not going to repeat every step over here now but I’m going to give you just the layout, the direction of where people fail, and how you could do it better.
The first thing is delegation. Let’s say you do something for a long period of time, you arrive at a destination where you know why you’re doing it, you know how you want to do it, you know how the end result needs to look like, and you’re in backward, you’re actually doing all those steps in order to achieve the results that you want to achieve.
Now you’ve hired this new person, he is three weeks with the company and all of a sudden you want to give it to him to do. Most of the people that fail are because they’re giving over the full project before proof of concept that this person will deliver you the results the same way that you expect the results to be. They’re over delegating just because they’re so frustrated and said “You know what? Take it away from me, take it, and run with it.” Without setting up proper guidelines of how the outcome needs to look like, what are the check-ins that we’re going to have, and so on?
I’ll give you a typical example. Let’s say you want to buy a new CRM system for your company. Chances are, as the entrepreneur five years ago, you did it yourself. You went into forums and groups or checked out what it is. You got a bunch of names, you started getting some demos, and so on. You made a decision, nobody held you accountable. Then you made the decision, it’s your money. Five years later, you have a team of five people. Again, you’re looking for the next next-level CRM, and you want to delegate it.
The first level and this is just giving you examples of a level, you will not go to a person that never did it for you or never went to the level and say, “Go ahead, make research, buy whatever you want, here’s my credit card, and just let me know where to log in.” Never, you know what the first step would be? You would tell that person, we’re in the mood for a CRM. Here are the different things that I’m looking into in a CRM. It should do automation, it should do a CRM pipeline, it should have my sales pipeline, we should be able to send out emails, we should have this and that.
Go online, do some research, give me some names and let’s have a conversation. Now, if a person can’t do that, then there’s no second level of delegation. You gave him very clear instructions on what you’re looking to get. If they bring back inventory management systems instead of CRM, they’re totally off.
If I gave you very specific guidelines, once let’s say this person would pass, the next thing you would say is you made great progress with this. I want you to actually go out, have demos with those systems. Make me a comparison sheet, but bring it back to me. I’m still making the decision but make that comparison sheet.
If they come back with great results, what you are seeing now is this person who is making progress. The next step, you would say, negotiate on my behalf. The third one would be: what do you recommend? What do you think we should do? You did the research, you spoke to all these companies, you know the pros and cons. What is your suggestion? Then I would make my suggestion. I’d say, “You know what? We’re aligned.” I would pick the same one that Sally is picking.
Now I’m seeing that they’re arriving at a destination the same way I would arrive. The next step is, “You know what? Just go ahead and negotiate a deal. Whatever you feel comfortable with, and maybe CC me on the emails, I want to see the back and forth.” Then as soon as this person is at that stage, I say, “You know, next time you do this, you don’t even have to cc me, you’re good to go.”
I’m giving the scenario, this happens every time. Let’s say client relationship. The first thing is coming up with a strategy for a client, the person will say you’re hired for strategy, go ahead. Here’s the client’s information, speak to the client, and close the sale, give him all the solutions. Then the client calls me. Who gave it to me? Just somebody Junior. Your company never gave me ideas? I’ve done these ideas five years ago. But what if you do the same? You know, the same idea that I just mentioned? Come up with some ideas, share them with me.
What would be the idea that you’re going to push to the client? How would you sell that idea and coach the person to the destination? Then you say, “You know what, pitch it to the client, but I want to be on the call. Then you know, pitch it to the client, don’t even CC me then bring me the results.”
Now, when you do this exercise with people, you get confidence and if there’s a hiccup, it’s not a way to pull back. It’s a hiccup. Now I could give them more training till you arrive at the final destination. When you learn this art, I could say from my own experience, it’s a breeze because your people also know when you give them something, how far they should go with it.
They’re not making mistakes or trying to outsmart you and do “Oh, wait a minute, not only did I come up with ideas or extra pitch to the client who asked you.” “Why did you pitch to the client? I didn’t ask you for it.” This is typical in delegation because you weren’t clear? Where does it start and where does it end? When are you bringing it back to me? Or where am I giving it back to you to continue the work?
As you run your company, you want to have key employees in the company that you could eventually delegate for projects that could take you from start to finish.
Mostafa Hosseini 34:13
Absolutely. You’re dripping, step by step. You know, delegating the steps of each process, say “Hey, do this first.” Make sure they are successfully completing each step before you give them the next thing.
Meny Hoffman 34:34
Now, it could be done this way just as I mentioned, it could also be with the different tasks, but they’ve proven themselves at the following level. I gave an example even if you want a task, one project is done step by step, but use that concept. Think when next time somebody is listening to this and in delegating, you could actually split it up. They have been very successful on this stuff.
As for the next task, I could give them even a step further. Next time to their client, they don’t even have to show me ideas. I trust them, but start CC on those emails. I think that’s what I would suggest doing and if delegation fails, it’s not a reason to quit delegating. Ask yourself the question, why did it fail? Did I make the wrong judgment and give too much away too quickly? Or maybe I gave it to the wrong person.
I just want to make one more point, because this is real feedback I got from a lot of people on the top on this topic, which is, do we have to have every person on our team able to do this whole process on the delegation? Meaning to say, do I have to have all my people that could do this full scope? Let’s say at one point, they know so much, could they do everything? The answer is no.
As you run your company, you want to have key employees in the company that you could eventually delegate for projects that could take you from start to finish. You might have people’s capacities only to follow exactly what you told them to do. But they can think for themselves, or they can make their own decisions and speak about content.
You could have great writers that could write well, but they can’t come up with their own content. You could give them direction, and then they could go out and write. There’s nothing wrong with them. If at one point, you want to accelerate content, you’re going to want to have one person on your team that could actually come up with content and build out content, you get what I’m saying?
Mostafa Hosseini 36:31
Absolutely, give them direction and they will follow direction. They will do it. Very interesting. I want to bet on you earlier, you mentioned having a safety net for someone with a different opinion and different view because if they think exactly as I do, then there may be points that they miss. There may be things that we need to think about, but we didn’t.
So I really like that idea of having someone that has a different view because we like to hang out with people that approve of us and to say, “Oh, I’m smart, and whatever you say is the nicest thing that you said.” Then God will hurt us in turn, down the road.
Meny Hoffman 37:18
The point is that we’re not talking about the culture fit, we’re talking about both people, any person that you hired in the company needs to fit in the culture, needs to believe in the vision of the company, and so on.
It’s just a style of person, which is when you go out and interview people, sometimes as entrepreneurs, we basically ignore the people that were a bit more laid back or a person that has asked too many questions during the interview. Maybe they’re going to annoy me once they are hired. I’m just saying that you have to look past that.
If there are quality skills in that person, they will do a good job on the skills or the job description that you put out to do. Don’t ignore that person, just because they’re not thinking like you or they’re not operating the same way you are operating. That sometimes could yield to be a great add-on for the team engine as a whole.
Mostafa Hosseini 38:23
We talked about identifying what we do throughout the week, today, in a month, creating a list and figuring out what we’re going to delegate then delegating to the right person step by step with different tasks to make sure that they prove themselves with their abilities that they can actually do it. Eventually, you would just give them the entire thing to deal with as you train them. Then they learn the whole process.
Meny Hoffman 38:54
Yes. There’s one more thing, which is you have to inspect what you expect and that is another safety net even if you’ve delegated the full project for your best person, you have to have checks and balances. That’s where I have meetings with my team, run me through the project, where are you up to? Where are you? Let’s spot-check it. It‘s not to overturn the ideas or not to take away their responsibility and stuff like that.
You have to have ways where you can inspect so as not to find out way too late that it was taken a little bit out of context or is taken to a level that you didn’t expect. Even if you know the art of delegation, never have anything in your company that you have zero control over, zero-knowledge that you don’t even know what’s happening. You have to be able to inspect what you expect.
Mostafa Hosseini 39:47
I’m very guilty of that. I started delegating at some point and they were doing a good job. Then I assumed that they were doing the right job only to find out, six months later or a year later, that it wasn’t getting done the way it was supposed to.
Would you ever delegate the checks and balances to someone else to check on another?
Meny Hoffman 40:15
This is a very delicate question. I could say through transparency, that we had a time when I delegated too much, and then I had to come back and find the right balance. This is very typical, sometimes, you’re so stressed out and you have so much on your plate so you’ll start delegating. Then you’re delegating may be too much, or too important pieces of the company, and find out you have to come back and fix it or bring it back to the level that you want.
So in today’s day and age, as much as I delegate very important pieces, I do feel that in every single part of the company, you should have a way on how to get the information. Let’s say in today’s day and age, we run on EOs, as I mentioned before, we have a level 10 which is one of the items of the level of EOs in general. It’s called a scorecard which is one of the most important metrics across your organization that you track on a weekly basis.
Sometimes, I won’t be involved in the actual data or the actual work that’s being done for that metric. If I look at it weekly, I could see something on the number that’s off. I could say, “Wait a minute, I think we should have a 15-minute conversation about that number. How you arrive at that or what the plan of bringing it up or down whatever the number is or whatever that reflects. You gotta have those checks and balances by being able to get information.
At least if something is totally off, you should be able to pick it up before it’s way too late, or something terrible happened. Do you know where I can see a lot of entrepreneurs suffering from that is, especially smaller companies that have a great culture? Usually when you start off the first employee, the second employee, third, and all of a sudden, middle-tier management comes into play. Sometimes that great culture goes away and people at the lower end, lower tier, so to speak, start feeling uncomfortable, and they lose the momentum.
Sometimes, by the time the visionary gets a hold of that, it’s too late that the environment is a little too toxic, or there’s a bad apple and you don’t know how to figure it out so that we could see a lot because they obviously did this with the middle management. Even if you hire middle management, ask yourself how will I keep track and keep in touch with the rest of the employees. What can we do on a weekly basis? We have a huddle, the whole company comes together.
Regardless, of you have direct reports or not. You have to come up with those ideas where those people don’t feel threatened that “Oh, I lost touch with you. I don’t know what you’re doing.” Therefore, by the time you find out, it’s too hard to roll back the clock.
Mostafa Hosseini 42:59
I remember hearing about Steve Jobs spending a lot of time meeting with his team members at different levels. I’m guessing that now you mentioned that he probably did it to stay in touch with people to know what’s happening. What is the culture like? What are they focusing on? Maybe fun problems and areas of improvement?
Meny Hoffman 43:20
There’s a concept of riding the train. It was in the concept, obviously, not new but Mike Bloomberg, when he was mayor in New York City, used to ride the train. He used to say, if this is one of the largest enterprises that the city has, I want to ride it to see how it feels. We know at that time, the train system was clean, and a lot of those things happened because he was actually riding the train.
To that extent, a lot of times you could hear from a business owner, “Tell me what’s happening? You’re on the ground.” They’re asking like a mid-tier manager or leader. Tell me what’s happening because you’re on the ground, you’re on the floor. My answer to that is, of course, get information from those people but how can you get yourself on the floor, inspect what you expect?
What if you built into your calendar half an hour here, half an hour there, you chit-chat with an employee, even if it’s not a direct report. Just tell me how things are happening. What can we do to make the company better? Stuff like that or undercover boss. Obviously, it’s a stage show.
So many times you are so disconnected that you really lose sight of a lot of stuff you could do. It’s not counter counterproductive to the conversation about delegation. You still delegate but you inspect what you expect. So you have the checks and balances on it.
Mostafa Hosseini 44:47
Love it. Meny, tell us about what you do these days and who you serve?
Meny Hoffman 44:55
We help growing businesses flourish which are basically companies that have a proven concept, know what they want to do, and they’re looking to build out. A lot of our clients would be B to B or B to C, such as E-commerce brands, or other sellers that are selling on Amazon or any other online platform, or B to C, and servicing a ton of customers.
They do a great job by doing that. They’re looking for somebody to actually manage their positioning, their marketing, their branding, and so on. We’ll be there to support it between the different services we have to offer.
Obviously, we have a bunch of different services in this day and age with digital, print, and physical products. There’s a bunch that people could check out at Ptexgroup.com. But that’s my passion and the reason why is because you have great people that have great products, great services, and not enough people know about it. A lot of times it is because they’re not positioned well and they’re not telling the proper story.
There are a ton of people selling on Amazon, but why don’t you share the story, the passion behind your brand, the story behind your brand, and the effort that you’re putting into product development. That’s where we shine. That’s what we do for a lot of our customers.
Not every stumbling block is a reason to quit.
Mostafa Hosseini 46:08
I love it. I understand that you’re sharing a gift with people that are listening or are watching about delegation. Could you tell us about that?
Meny Hoffman 46:19
Sure. That’s a simple guide. I’ve done it because we have conversations like this, where people say, so what is my first step, my second step, what could I do? It’s simple.
We put up a page, Ptexgroup.com/delegation. When you go to that page, there is just a blog article about delegation just to get your appetite going. Then at the bottom, there is obviously a way that you could put in your contact information, and you’ll get a PDF, email, which is just a guide. You can print it out and start doing it immediately. We don’t sell a course on delegation, we don’t sell a product.
Delegation is straight-up information that you could use, of course, you’re going to get the emails from me. Then I’m going to check in if you like it and if you make progress. We can have conversations about other parts of your company that we might be able to help but delegation is because I’m so passionate about it.
I’ve seen the success myself and I know what other companies have seen based on leaders implementing the art of delegation and being able to delegate stuff. Not leaving everything on their desk to do.
Mostafa Hosseini 47:24
So gang, if you want to get access to Meny’s Mastering the Art of Delegation and Guide, and the workbook that he’s sharing with you go to Ptexgroup.com. That’s P as in Peter, T as in Tom, E as in elephant, X as in X group.com/delegate and download the workbook. Read the article because he’s sharing an amazing resource with you for free, a complimentary gift that you could use daily. As you heard the man, he’s got a lot to offer and share with you in that regard so I would download that right now.
Meny Hoffman 48:04
One thing before we will let you go. There are so many people that will actually go and download something. It’s not about the download, it’s about the action. In my experience, people took action within the first three days. Those are the people that got momentum and they say, I want to do more. I want to challenge you, not just to download the guide, or whatever we spoke about today that you want to do in this whole conversation. You’re listening to this conversation, so take action in the next three days, figure out one step I can start doing in order to be better at delegation.
Mostafa Hosseini 48:39
Meny what are the top two or three books that have made a massive impact on your life or business?
Meny Hoffman 48:49
Sure. I have top 10 books that probably need to be updated by now. When it comes to books, obviously, it depends where you are in your career, where you are in your journey. What makes sense for you depends, like if you’re entrepreneurs who are just starting off but nobody could escape the E Myth book.
Like the E Myth, the one thing which is more important is to stay focused on the Purple Cow to know how you’re going to differentiate yourself. Those are classic books, good to great. Those are the books that will always come across but there are always other books if you’re starting to become leading to people.
Quick book is The One Minute Manager. It’s a great book that I’ve probably given out hundreds of times to people just to start reading it so you know how to compliment the team. If you’re building a larger team, it’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Then the list goes on from there.
Mostafa Hosseini 49:44
The top 10 books are listed on your website as well?
Meny Hoffman 49:48
The top 10 books I think are listed on Menyhoffman.com. It’s Meny Hoffman. You’ll see on the homepage, my top 10 books because people always ask me. I know that it’s for a redo because I have a couple of books that need to be on that list. But all of the books are still relevant for any entrepreneur.
Mostafa Hosseini 50:07
Amazing. Now, if you had an ad, a Facebook ad, or a Google ad that everyone on earth could see on the internet, what would your message be?
Meny Hoffman 50:18
My message will be, I believe every person should be given the opportunity to succeed in life. If you have something that you could share with your friend, neighbor, co-worker, and so on and so forth, it’s your obligation, because it could be one idea that could change a person’s life.
Mostafa Hosseini 50:35
What advice would you give your 20-year-old self?
Meny Hoffman 50:42
The importance of focus is to know that you can achieve so much more, so much faster if you focus. As young entrepreneurs and probably entrepreneurs in general, we always think that opportunity knocks, we have to open the door. What ends up happening is we start having shiny object syndrome, and we’re on from one thing to the next and that opportunity will come back.
If it’s not that opportunity, something else will come that way but not at the expense of not maximizing the current business or the current opportunity already committed to the importance of focus.
Mostafa Hosseini 51:19
What’s one piece of advice that made a massive difference in your life or business?
Meny Hoffman 51:26
It is knowing that as you’re growing a team, it’s all about you. If the person is not performing, ask him, what could you do to help him perform. If they are not suited for the job, maybe it’s time to help them transition out. A lot of business owners will always complain that this person is not doing a good job, that person is not getting a job, I wish they would do better, and so on. The answer to the question is always you.
As a leader, you are responsible to make sure everybody’s doing their best. When everybody’s doing their best, the company will do their best. Sometimes the best for a person is to move on but help them do that in the right way, in a professional way, or in an emotional way. Sometimes you have to do that with a heart because we only live once, and we have to do everything the right way.
Mostafa Hosseini 52:19
Absolutely. Meny, is there anything that you would like to add that we haven’t talked about?
Meny Hoffman 52:26
No, I think I will just close with the following. Not every stumbling block is a reason to quit. As business owners, as leaders, we grow. Sometimes you say, “Should I quit this?” The answer is when that thought process comes into mind, ask yourself, what is a way I could get around it? How can I overstep that, and actually look back and say, “You know what, I did it again.”
As business owners, you’re always going to have it regardless of you’re Apple computers, or whatever you are, you’re going to have stumbling blocks. That’s the natural way of doing business. You have to be able to overcome them and that makes you a stronger leader and a stronger company.
Mostafa Hosseini 53:05
Again, stumbling blocks are not a good reason to quit. They’re probably a reason to grow and learn.
Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure. I really liked what we talked about. Gang, if you’re listening, or watching later or now, if you have any questions about what we talked about, put it in a comment either on our social media channels or put it in a form of a review, maybe on Apple or Google and we will get back to you.
Also by doing that and drawing to draw for getting a gift. You can also subscribe, and comment on our channels on whichever platform you’re watching, and I look forward to seeing you and chatting with you on the next episode.
Thank you for joining us. My name is Mostafa Hosseini, and you’re listening to Daily Confidence for Daily Entrepreneurs. We’ll see you in our next episode. Bye now.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW:
- Mastering The Art Of Delegation : A Guide and Workbook – Free gift from Meny Hoffman
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What To Do About It by Michael Gerber
- The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
- Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable by Seth Godin
- Good To Great : Why Some Companies Make The Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
- Simple Marketing Formula Boot Camp
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