Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Hey there and welcome back to the Total profit podcast. I'm T2, and with me, as always, is the guy who loves a good KPI more than, I think probably a cup of coffee.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Guilty as charged. I'll take a well structured dashboard over the latte of the day anytime.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. I don't know if I agree with that, but okay, today's episode.
If you are the smartest one in the room, you hired wrong. And yeah, we are coming in hot today.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Yes, this is for the business, the business owners that are stuck being the decision maker, the firefighter, the closer, and the therapist.
If it all falls apart without you, it's not a business. It's more of a hostage situation.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: There's a lot of danger. The smartest person in the room, right? Why don't you walk us through a few of those?
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So you create a bottleneck and if everything has to go through you, how efficient is that?
So then that results, your team can't grow because you're solving everything for them and you burn out fast. I mean, really fast.
Then your business plateaus because you've maxed out your capacity.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: You're not building a business in that situation, are you? I mean, you're just, you're building a dependency on your son, your team, and, you know, maybe even a dictatorship. But nobody wins in that model, especially you.
So you really need people who can think for themselves, right?
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. Just think of a player who wants to contribute, not just execute.
You need people who challenge your ideas and just not nod and do the bare minimum innovation and scale from collaboration, not control.
Totally different results.
Then you, you should be building a team of people who are better than you at their area. I mean, it's, it's. You're handing off these responsibilities and giving yourself more time to run your business.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: The people that you delegate things to should be experts in that area. And you are more of a general manager or a ringleader. So the goal, I guess, you know, to kind of flip it on its head would, would be to, I guess, be the dumbest person in the room.
If you're still the smartest one, you might be the bottleneck and you might be the cause of your own burnout.
So how do we attract and empower smarter people for our teams, Tony?
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Well, that's a great question. So think of when you're hiring. Hire for ownership, not just task following.
You know, when you're doing the interview, ask better questions, look for curiosity, innovation, and their decision making.
And also create a clear lens, give real responsibilities, not just make them chores.
And then recognize and reward thinking, not just doing.
And then lastly, invest in your team's growth with coaching, training and feedback loops.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: If you want people to lead, you have to let go of the wheel a little bit. You can't just delegate the task, you have to delegate the thinking and that is a really important distinction. Right.
So shout out to Performance Margin, our sponsor and our system of choice for building clarity and alignment across your teams. It is the backbone of a well run business that's no joke and it gives your people the tools that they need in order to lead.
So as far as action steps go, here's your move this week. Ask yourself, where am I, the bottleneck? This is going to take a little bit of humility, but look yourself in the mirror, do a gut check and say, where am I the bottleneck?
And then identify one decision where one decision that you're making that someone else on your team could do. They could be making it with a little bit of clarity and a little bit of training and start transferring some of that power today.
So one more time, if you're the smartest person in the room, you've probably hired wrong.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yes. So start hiring better and get out of their way.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: So as we close this session, if.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: You remember, don't get too excited.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: It's all under control and it's going to be fine.
