How To Delegate
Jeff Heggie
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs1/27/2022
How to Delegate
The Inventive Journey
Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.
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need to change to be better it's something we're all going to be able to accept and so the problem you've got to face there is you don't want to staff where they're thinking oh this is the flavor of the month don't worry it'll be gone next month and he'll come up with something new but we we created a environment and a culture where we were willing to take a risk and go do something if it didn't work we were going to change [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive expert i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur has grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller iplock where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast jeff and i'm going to say hey is that right haig peggy peggy i was like it's a hacker hey you're hanging so jeff peggy and uh jeff is just a as a quick introduction so um started out doing a bit of everything and we're going to talk now about how you start out doing a bit of everything and then how you have to ship to kind of a bit more of a delegation model because you're not able to as much as you want to as a startup you're not always able to do everything yourself or at least not be successful in doing so um also talk a little bit about creating a team and how you have uh members of your task or members of your team take over some various tasks maybe talk a little bit about networking and things that you shouldn't be doing if you want to build the network and things maybe you should be doing um and also being open to flexibility and change training uh team members on management or how to manage change and creating an entrepreneurial mindset with employees so it should be a great and exciting discussion and with that i'm excited to welcome you on the podcast jeff hey thanks evan appreciate it yeah um i'm excited to join you again and talk about all this um do you want me to go in and talk a little bit about my we talk or best into the topic at hand if you can just uh reintroduce so for those of you that haven't uh or heard jeff's uh episode on the inventive journey podcast definitely go check out check that out and hear more about his journey but for those of you that haven't caught the episode or saying hey i don't have time i just want to get to the expertise maybe take a minute or two and just introduce yourself a little bit about your your background and why have experience in this area yeah awesome so what i currently do i'm a peak performance coach success coach work with entrepreneurs thai achievers athletes on a lot of areas on their businesses on everything but mostly to help them develop their peak performance to be successful in the areas they're in but taking a step back i look back and um you know i graduated from school with a focus on entrepreneurship that was my major and i went a few different directions i had an excellent job offer at a bank and didn't take it because i was a professional rodeo cowboy wanted to go that route but i ended up eventually going back into the banking industry which was incredible because it gave me a lot of opportunity to in my mind continue my education because what i did day in day out was spent time with entrepreneurs working with them on the financial side of things and learning their businesses which was really cool but it also gave me the opportunity to manage people and so continuing to learn from there then in 2005 i left the banking industry and started my own manufacturing company we were manufacturing manufacturing artificial stone veneer the fake stone that you see on the front of houses and fireplaces and whatnot and it was an incredible experience going from a startup of strictly being a manufacturer expanding that that was in southern alberta that we started that in 2005 and 2006 we opened another factory in utah and you know what's happened in the real estate industry since 2005 we've had a number of up and downs and so we had to pivot as a company a number of times and change directions do different things and so it's been a really incredible experience learning about entrepreneurship about business about leadership all those things throughout that whole process and so yeah it's there's been a lot of different experiences and then you add in the coaching and being able to go through different people's businesses that way i've got a lot of experience in these areas well that's a that's a great introduction and great great a lot of experience and i'm excited to discuss with you on so with that without further ado diving into a bit of the the topic at hand so um one of the things that we talked about which i think is difficult and for a lot of startups and small businesses and i know it was certainly harder for me i've gotten better at it but i don't know that i'm awesome at it which is the idea of delegation so a lot of times when you start a startup or a small business it may be you maybe one or two key other individuals founders co-founders we usually start out small you're having to wear a lot of a lot of hats and you love or at some point if you're being successful you're going to get or go beyond the ability to to cover everything yourself or within the court or current team and you're needing to look to bring people on and but your trade-off is always well yeah but if i bring them on it's going to be more work to train them and i'm going to have to manage them and i have to you know they're not going to do it as well as i am and it's not going to get done and so you always kind of have this hard time of delegation and yet it can stifle a business so how do you kind of ship from as you build a team to first of all building the team but even more so is to delegate so you don't really bring out a team member do twice as much work because you're micromanaging them and still doing all the work and it's really not being that beneficial so how do you build that team that you can delegate to you know that that is a tricky thing to juggle because like you say as an entrepreneur you're usually wearing a million different hats and where i struggled the most was what you had mentioned is letting go because well i can get someone else to do it but they're not going to do it as good as me they don't know how i do this they don't know how to do that and i just don't have the time to train them you know all those things in the back of my mind so when i started and started my manufacturing company that's exactly what happened to me i got to a point where i couldn't continue to do everything myself you know i was overseeing the manufacturing most the time i was actually in there doing part of the manufacturing i was taking care of the orders i was taking care of deliveries i was basically everything and there was just a point where that couldn't continue and so i really struggled with making that handoff fortunately i had someone really good hired at that time that i was gonna make that hand off to but i still really struggled with it and probably the biggest part was that whole concept of they're not gonna do it as good as me they're not going to do it right i'm going to have to fix things anyways but really the gratifying part of that was when i got to that point where i had no other choice i had to make that handoff i did it and it didn't take me very long to not only find out they weren't doing it the same as me or i would say as good as me they were doing it much better and a lot of that came down to the fact that it's what they were focused on they weren't just taking part of their focus and putting it towards those certain tasks it was where their focus was going and so instead of putting a percentage of their attention and focus and effort on those certain tasks they were putting all of it there and they did really well at it and that was really kind of an epiphany moment for me i guess because it made me realize that if we wanted to grow if we wanted to be successful i had to put the right people in place that i could trust to do those things that i could hand off those things and not worry about and you know through through the years i've hired great people i've hired terrible people and um fortunately more great people than terrible people yes fortunately there's been um more on the great side and i i have been lucky i've had some really incredible employees and one of the things i'm a strong believer in is you know higher slow fire fast because you've got to look at it as hey this is my business if they're not the right fit dragging it out isn't going to help the business it's going to hurt the business it's going to hurt morale it's going to set a precedent so you've got to really take a look at those things and i guess that's one of my philosophies too because of experience because yeah and i'm a i'm a firm believer now it's much easier said than done i'll give it to that in the sense that most of the time you do most people and i've i've been guilty of in the past is you tend to hire fast and fire slow in other words hey you know things are on fire we need somebody to take this over we can't get all the orders out so let's find a warm body that will fill it no they'll be easy to train and then oh they're not doing as good but we need to give them a bit more time you know they got these things and they're not but it's you know and it's it's one of those things where you keep making excuses because it's not fun to fire people and contrary to what it is on tv or you know how you think it is when you're in that share that that seat you're having to let someone go that you just brought on or that you know that you know have a family or kids and you're saying now they have to go find a new job it's not a fun thing but on the other hand it it pulls or hinders your business so i think that that one you should be taking your time on the front end so that you're hiring the right people and you're not having to let as many go but two if they're not a good fit it's a disservice to both ends they're not going to enjoy it they're not going to prosper you're not going to be happy with them and it's not going to be a good fit but now i before i want to circle back to one of the other things that you hit on which is you know i i'm by far guilty and i'm still guilty to a degree i've gotten better at it uh of letting or delegating out and a lot of times i still probably think that given the time and resources or time and bandwidth i could probably do things better than most of my employees now don't take it wrong i think i have great employees but i always still have that and i think that's the entrepreneur mindset is i can always do it better otherwise you would have never started your business but one of the things that i found is that even if that were true i'm not saying it's always true some of the times i've brought people on and said you know what i have somebody that's on our team that's in marketing and they do an awesome job at design making things looking great you know aesthetically pleasing and that does have that design and i'll look and say yeah i just can't do that as well so i've had those where i've been certainly proven wrong but even for the ones that i've been proven right where hey i could do it more if i had i could do it better than them if i had the time if they could do it or 80 as well as you and it frees you up your time to do the things that they nobody else can do as well as you whether it's sales or marketing or client relationships or building the business or having the vision or direction you have to take that step back and say even if they're not going to do it as well as me they're still going to do it to a level that is good for the business and allows me to add more value to the business yeah absolutely and you know as you were talking about that what i was thinking is exactly what you ended with there is yeah you might be right that you could do those things better but is that where your time is most valued because i a lot of the clients i work with have this exact situation is you know i i can do that better i've got it hired out right now so should i take that over okay if you take that over where are you taking time from is that more valuable and that's usually the case if you're working on the most valuable things that you can be that yeah maybe it's not going to be like you said it might not be that 100 of what you could do but if you can be putting your effort and time into the more important things then it yeah it's worth it no and i think that it's a hard lesson to learn because it is one where you have to just let go and because sometimes like ah if i did it i would do it differently and you know there is that and one thing i'll say and then we'll move on kind of another area that i definitely want to chat with but i think that sometimes you you have to take enough a level of training and spend some time and there's always that investment when you bring someone on but if you train them to kind of know what you want know what to expect you know that oftentimes brings them up from that 80 to 100 percent plus is now that they are doing it how you would do it you have 10 spend the time to infuse that knowledge and then you just makes it easier to delegate whereas sometimes you hire fast you don't get you give them five minutes of training and then they expect them to do it exactly how you do it or better it's not a fair setup so i think that you do have to understand with delegation it's not just turn them loose but you also can just micromanage so does that balance one of the other things that we've hit on and uh is that and i think is definitely valuable to all businesses and it's so hard at least for some people and it's so hard for me um is on the idea of networking and you know sometimes it should there you know you approach networking and you think oh first of all i have to go to all those activities and words you know it's not as much with coba but certainly before covert was hey i have to go to the networking events where all these people are getting together all they're really doing is everybody's getting together and pitching their their services or their products everybody else is pitching their services and their products and nobody's really listening to each other because they're so busy but it's the way that you network right and i hated those and i didn't like doing them so with that you know if you take the kind of the topic of networking and how you should or shouldn't be building or how you should or shouldn't be doing it any thoughts on that as far as how you should be ingraining that bolt within yourself and within the company or with the employees in the company at large yeah um you're right i mean there's so many networking events that in my mind are useless and they're not beneficial um but at the same time i actually was asked to speak at one recently and what i spoke on i think really brings us around is because you know when you look at entrepreneurship whether you're looking at partners employees investors customers whatever it is they're all people you need people to operate and run your business because they're that's that's what it's all about you're dealing with people regardless of what your product is right and so it is important to network it is important to get to know people um who was i recently bradley i heard heard him say recently the more hands you shake the more money you'll make and i mentioned that on one of my podcasts and i actually got a few people commenting on that that they didn't agree or they did agree because one of the things you said is it comes down to the quality too you know if your network with someone that i'm just pushing what i do and they're just pushing what they do there's there's no commonality there right and i think where a lot of the powerful network comes in is making connections through other people rather than i mean i've had a lot of success over the last few months actually being a part of a group and going to some networking events that has really created some awesome relationships but i'll share a story from this last year that happened for me i had an opportunity that i met a lady that was working on some same well she wrote a book called the confident athlete and i have a program called the confident athlete program and someone introduced the two of us and she lives out on the east coast i'm in arizona and we started doing a lot of communication um just online talking and we had we hit it off and she shared a lot of valuable information with me and she said to me she says i think i've got a few people i'd like to introduce you to can i do that and i'm thinking you know she's going to throw out a couple names and maybe we connect on social media something like that who knows where it goes over the last year she's probably i actually ended up making a list so i could track it but she has connected me with at least 30 high-powered quality people and those aren't people that i would meet if i was just going to some networking event trying to bump pebbles with people these were high quality people all over the united states in fact out of all of them i've only met one of them face to face because i was at a football game in utah and i saw on social media that he was doing a book signing so i went to it and we happened to meet in salt lake city but otherwise i haven't met any of these people but the networking that she developed out of that has created a lot of partnerships a lot of customers a lot of different things and so i think that's one of the areas is when you can network by helping other people being a connector and finding quality connections like that that's some of the most amazing networking you can do phone i think that that's absolutely right and i i agree that you know you do have to get out you're not going to if all you do is sit in your office you're never going to network and you're never going to make those connections and i think that one thing at least that i've learned and right or wrong and definitely love to hear your feedback but it is i think you have to be comfortable with the way you're networking in other words if you're getting out there and you do not like those big in-person events where you have hundreds of people there and you're trying to hold the you know hold the plate along with the drink and talk with someone and this is not what you enjoy then find the ways that you enjoy and that can be doing presentations it can be doing webinars or getting online or joining facebook groups i don't know that it matters as much now there are some that are more effective but i think that first step of finding that network or how you enjoy and what you enjoy doing is of the is the best first step you can take of getting out there and doing something active to build your network maybe as you get involved on linkedin and you put out great content you have good conversations and you reach out to them whatever it is i think that that taking that first steps of shaking the hands even if it's not in the you know conventional sense is the best error is the first step you should always take yeah i agree with that because you know i was recently at one in scottsdale and it was an event that um a friend of mine had organized and put on and i'd gone there to support him and to do some networking and when it was almost over i was outside uh talking with him and someone had come out and was complaining about that it was kind of a useless event and i mean this place was crowded it was packed and so we just talked to him about you know why why didn't you enjoy it what was wrong with it and he said you know no one came and talked to me no one and we said you know were you approaching people what were you doing he says well no i just sat at my table but no one came and sat down and talked to me and so yeah there's there's a comfort level going to an event like that you know how do you approach people how do you start those conversations so you're right and for a lot of people maybe that is a lot easier making those connections and starting those conversations on linkedin or something like that because that face-to-face is more difficult but i think too you know kind of going back to what you're mentioning before i think the more quality of a network you can have is when you're not just looking to take when you can start those conversations and looking for ways and opportunities to help someone what can i give you how can i serve you overall i think the power of your networking is going to be a lot stronger no i think that's absolutely right and i think you hit on one of the things that i love is the mantra and have part of why i love doing podcasts one i just get to hear a lot of cool stories i get to learn a lot of things but two is it's a way that i am comfortable talking with someone one-on-one learning more about them and it also provides value it gives them more exposure it expands their network i'm here assisting them in building their business and so it's much more of that hey i'm providing value and i'm not just saying hey come give me your business but rather hey how can i help you and how can i make the connections and learn more about you so i think that finding that whatever that way is that is the better that works for you that you feel comfortable with and then figuring out that way that it's beneficial and built to expand the networks and give to others so i think that that is definitely some great areas of advice and expertise shifting gears just a bit again because i think there's a lot of fun things we can talk on so i always like to hit on a few things but one of the other things we talked about a little bit before the podcast was training a team to manage change in other words especially as a startup or small but it should be the same for big businesses big businesses just tend to get more bureaucratic and move a lot slower but change is always inevitable with a business in other words you should be adapting you should be bringing out new products or new services or learning or expanding or growing or doing different things and pivoting because that's all part of running a business and if you're not somebody else is doing it and then you're going to get left in the dust on the other hand as a team member as a team oftentimes people get used to doing it a certain way and they get comfortable they don't want to change and i've even seen that within theirs i i love automation i love systems i love operations and you know figuring out how to make things optimized on the back end and i'm sure there are team members that they're just saying hi here's devon with another system and here's something else we're going to have to learn and do something else and i'm saying yeah but this will be so much better and it'll be beneficial it'll save you time and it'll be better work product and yet still because they're comfortable the way they're doing it before you still have to get them ready for change and so how do you kind of train team members to manage change and be willing to accept and adapt and kind of have that entrepreneurial mindset yeah i think there's a fine line you've got to walk there but i've had two very different experiences with that when i was bank manager my staff my entire staff were much older than me and said in fact one of my staff had been at that specific bank longer than i had been alive and so they were used to things being a certain way and any changes were very difficult for them to um really accept and so i wanted them to get comfortable with change so i strategically set about making changes bit by bit in small pieces on a regular basis to get them used to that so when things did happen when also we had to bring in a big change it wasn't such a new thing and it worked it was still hard um you know some of them i think will resist change forever but then when i started my manufacturing company it was something we wanted to be able to implement that yeah if we need to change to be better it's something we're all going to be able to accept and so the problem you've got to face there is you don't want to staff where they're thinking oh this is the flavor of the month don't worry it'll be gone next month and he'll come off with something new but we we created a environment and a culture where we were willing to take a risk and go do something if it didn't work we were going to change things an example was that was at one point we said okay maybe some of our manufacturing we can be more successful if we get um manufactured white labeled by someone else and we start we did some manufacturing in vietnam and brought it in and you know we went all in it was going to be a great thing we had done our research we felt really good about it it turned it out turned out to be a disaster and so we did it and we're like okay no it didn't work so we're going to make the shift and change we did that in a number of different areas we were always trying to advance what we were doing and become better but we were willing to step out of the box and if it didn't work go a different direction and so rather than just kind of having the flavor of the month we were getting everyone involved saying okay what do you guys think of this do you think it's gonna work should we do it is it worth the risk try it if it didn't work get together again and go a different direction but they were definitely and i think part of change too a key thing you need to make sure you're including is communication and i think as long as you're keeping open communication and keeping everyone involved on why you're doing it how you're doing all those things it makes the whole change process a lot easier and one of the things you said was kind of creating that entrepreneurial mindset and if you can in my mind if you can create a team of employees that has that entrepreneurial mindset that they're taking their job as a business whatever it is but they're gonna grow that part of their business then you're gonna have success and i think that's when if you get employees like that they can accept change because they know they're trying to whatever they're focused on they're trying to be the best at it and that does require change at times now i'll give it all one follow-up to that it is it is harder than it sounds to find their employees i think your entrepreneur will have an entrepreneurial mindset you can get employees that are very talented but are not entrepreneurial minds and i think it is two different skill sets now if you can find them they're worth their weight in gold because then they are willing to accept their you know that change and they're not only accepting the change they're proposing new ideas and they're coming up with different ways of they're providing those proposals and then you're not always the one that has to figure out the new systems or come up with the ideas because they're that you know they're they're wanting to or they see the vision and they're wanting to do it of their own coalition but i think you have to one is i like the idea of kind of incrementally easing people into it or getting them used to change or getting them used to understanding that they're doing that i think the other one is to explain why there is that change in other words if all it feels like is your knee jerking around and you're always doing something different just for the fun of it they're going to say oh i don't want to have to do this i don't understand but if you say no here's the reason why we're doing this here's the system's in place here's why we think it's better here's what the outcome's going to be here's why it's beneficial to you and through the company and then find those people that are entrepreneurial mindset find all that mixture of easing them into it explaining them why and then finding those that are already in it or liked or might are geared towards that change then i think you have a recipe for success absolutely well look we can talk for a lot longer in all these episodes but i do want to leave just a bit of time because uh one thing that we are and you're actually the first person we've had we're introducing with as part of the podcast series one of my things or one thing that i'm excited about which is you get to pitch your crazy idea so as a setup for the listener just because it's the first time we've done it it's a crazy idea it's something that you know if you're anything like me you have a whole bunch of ideas that always are exciting and fun and you wish you could go and do and yet one either you don't have the expertise the time the money the uh bandwidth to ever pursue them but you always kind of just wanted to go do it if you had the time and money the bandwidth you always would and so it's always that kind of that crazy idea that sits out there you'll probably never pursue but it's always fun to talk about so where what we're doing is adding that as a bonus section to the podcast and so we'll wrap up the normal episode but if you want to hear jeff's crazy idea definitely stay tuned because it's a great one so with that before we jump to the crazy idea as we're wrapping up the expert episode that people want to reach out to they want to um they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to be an investor they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you contact you find out more for sure thank you um jeffhaggie.com is my website so that's j-e-f-f-h-e-g-g-i-e dot com that's my website my email is jeff at jeffhaggie.com um but yeah all of my programs my trainings everything are on there um probably my two premier ones right now are the confident athlete program which is jeffagy.com confident athlete and my high achievers mindset secrets program which is mindset.jeffhaggy.com and of course i've got three podcasts love you to check those out and yeah love to reach out and i guess the other part where i'm probably most active is instagram it's jeff hagee coaching all right well definitely plenty of ways to reach out connect and definitely encourage people to do so well we are doing the bonus the crazy idea question bonus or bonus section but for all the listeners are wrapping up and saying hey i've got to get back to work and i've or i've just finished up my run and now i've got to get or get to on with the rest of our day um definitely appreciate you coming on the the podcast jeff it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and now as listeners if you can make sure to click subscribe make sure to leave us a review and share the podcast i know that's a lot of things but it will really help us out because we want to make sure that we are helping as many startups and small businesses to gain or gain the expertise and the the knowledge that they can be successful and on that note if you ever need help with your patents your trademarks or anything else definitely feel free to reach out to us at millerip law and we're always here to help just go to strategymeeting.com so now with that now as we wrapped up their expertise episode i always i'm excited because this is kind of a new thing that i'm i'm really excited because this is kind of a fun a time where you can pitch out that one idea that you've always had that's a crazy idea that's always out there that you wanted to pursue but maybe you haven't had the bandwidth so with that i'll turn it over to you um what is your crazy idea give us that you know couple sentences description and then we'll chat about it sure you bet you know what devin i'm i'm like you uh those ideas are kind of non-stop going through my head but when you asked me this i'd actually as i mentioned earlier i used to rodeo professionally and i had just come from a rodeo watching my brother participate in and so the idea that i had is as a rodeo cowboy whether you're in a timed event or a rough stock event when you get your draw and you know what animal you have in that rodeo um probably one of the things that the fans don't know is the cowboys know all these animals and when they get their get their draw that animal is going to do the same thing it did at the last rodeo at the rodeo before the rodeo before so what we do as cowboys is say for example i'm in the steer wrestling we get to a rodeo and we know whose stock is there and we'll say okay i i drew steer number 23. what did it do last time oh i've never seen this deer go i don't know what he's going to do so i'm asking the other cowboys they'll say oh you know last time it it stopped or it ran hard or it ran left or something like that well my idea is that cowboys need to jump into the current times and get an app for this we need an app that um on a subscription basis that you can enter okay this is so and stock at this rodeo these are the animals and this is what it did and and this is one thing you know cowboys share all this information they don't try to hold it secret and so it would be a shared app that people go in and say you know i had steer number 23. it ran hard it went to the left and then it stopped hard well the next person that draws that steer he looks at it he knows what it's going to do and that helps him in that rodeo and then he can put his comments in and continue on that way so there's my crazy idea hey i liked it crazy i think it makes sense now i'll tell you where i where i think you can even go one step further which because first of all this is i don't know that it's only for bulls or for animals and i thought it would be cool right you can expand this to a lot of areas in other words let's say you're a football player and you have a quarterback that always has these tendencies when you play against them whether it's professional high school or college or anything else and now you can say every time that you see this quarterback do this you know that they're likely to do x right so maybe it's a pass plan every time that they step there take a step back you know they're going to pass or every time they take a step forward you know they're going to run or anything else and it's kind of one of those that you're monitoring the tendencies of whether it's the opponent or you know rodeo i don't know that the bulls are the k or the the horses or the opponent but the same idea of being able to track what they are and i think that there's a lot of ability to one to get the notes from those that have done or done it before so you can better prepare and then two it also kind of gives you the analytics of what you should be doing in general if there is an example every pool every bull stops short and you find that out then you should better practice and prepare for every bull stopping short or whatever that might be so i think it's a cool idea now you just have to go out and figure out how to implement it so if you guys as listeners think this is a fun idea and you think it's a great idea and the best idea in the world and you think that jeff should certainly go forward and do it or you think it's a dumbest idea and it's terrible now you should never invest in your money what we're going to be doing is we're going to actually be as part of the podcast we're going to be putting this up on linkedin as a poll that you can actually go and vote on this is a great idea and definitely worth pursuing and i pay for it terrible idea somewhere in between so if you want to check that out you want to support jeff's great idea or you want to tear it down hopefully be nice and tearing it down don't tear down only tell him that the idea isn't worth pursuing but definitely go on to linkedin and we'll we'll provide that so keep our if you go to my linkedin profile just go to meetdevon.com and we'll provide some of this information as well to go to meetdevin.com you can see the great idea terrible idea go vote on jeff's idea and uh definitely will be uh fun to see what the results come in at with that as we wrap up um thank you again jeff for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thanks devin i appreciate it you
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