December 25, 2024 • 31 mins
Dave Kerpen is a serial entrepreneur, (7 businesses, 2 exits), New York Times bestselling author of 5 books, and global keynote speaker. He is the co-founder and CEO of Apprentice, a platform connecting entrepreneurs with top college students, and is the author of several bestselling books, including Get Over Yourself, The Art of People, Likeable Social Media, and Likeable Business.
He is a popular contributor to Inc.com and a LinkedIn Influencer, and has been featured in many media outlets, including the New York Times, the TODAY show, CBS Early Show, BBC, Financial Times, and more. Additionally, Kerpen is the executive chairman of The Nursing Beat and an investor in several companies through Kerpen Ventures. He was previously the founder and chairman of Likeable Local, and was the cofounder and CEO of Likeable Media, which was sold to 10Pearls in April 2021.
Most important, Dave is a father to 3 beautiful, healthy children and husband to Carrie.
During the show we discussed:
- Why Entrepreneurs Struggle with Delegating
- 4 Emotional Distractors That Prevent Effective Delegation
- Overcoming Fear to Improve Delegation Skills
- Letting Go of Perfectionism for Better Delegation
- The Importance of Releasing Control to Achieve More
- How to Delegate Effectively While Maintaining Quality Standards
- Hiring Trustworthy People and Empowering Them with Autonomy
- Identifying What Tasks to Delegate
- The 3 Key Responsibilities of a CEO
Resources:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to the Business Credit and Financing Show.
Each week, we talk about the growth strategies
that matter most to entrepreneurs.
Listen in as we discuss the secrets to
getting credit and money to start and grow
your business, and enjoy as we talk with
seasoned business owners, coaches, and industry leaders on
(00:22):
a variety of topics from advertising and marketing
to the nuts and bolts of running a
highly successful business.
And now, to introduce the host of our
show, financial expert and award-winning author, Ty
Crandall.
Hello, and thanks for joining us today.
I'm super excited you could be here because
today we're talking about, look, let's be honest,
one of the biggest problems you have, which
(00:43):
is delegation.
When you're first launching your business, then you
tend to take everything on on your own.
Let's talk about that.
I mean, ultimately what happens is you typically
have little time, and you have a lot
of time, and don't have a lot of
money yet.
So what you're doing is you're basically taking
on all the tasks yourself, and then you
start to generate money that you need to
pull away from those tasks.
It's gonna have other people handle it, but
you're not very good at it.
(01:04):
Delegation is not something naturally that comes for
us entrepreneurs, and we're gonna fix that problem
today.
And to help us solve this problem is
Dave Kirpin.
He's with us, and he's gonna be talking
about exactly what we need to do to
be better at delegation.
So Dave is a serial entrepreneur.
He has had seven businesses and two exits.
He's a New York Times bestselling author of
(01:24):
five different books, and global keynote speaker.
Now, he is the co-founder and CEO
of Apprentice, a platform connecting entrepreneurs with top
college students, and is the author of several
bestselling books as well, including Get Over Yourself,
The Art of People, Likeable Social Media, and
Likeable Business as well.
(01:44):
Now, he is a popular contributor to Inc
.com, and a LinkedIn influencer, and has been
featured in many media outlets, including the New
York Times, The Today Show, CBS Early Show,
BBC, Financial Times, and more.
Now, additionally, Kirpin is the executive chairman of
the Nursing Beat, and an investor in several
companies through Kirpin Ventures.
(02:06):
He was previously the founder and chairman of
Likeable Local, and was a co-founder and
CEO of Likeable Media, which has sold to
10 Pearls in April of 2021.
And most important, Dave is a father of
three beautiful, healthy children, and a husband to
Carrie.
Dave, thanks for coming on the show with
us today.
Oh, thanks so much.
Thanks so much for having me, Ty.
Great to be here.
Yeah, man, you've done a lot of cool
(02:26):
things, so you can only do this if
you're really good at delegating.
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned in my bio,
most important that I'm the father of three
kids, because that is the most important job
for me.
And if it weren't for delegation, I wouldn't
be able to do that.
If it weren't for my ability to prioritize,
I wouldn't be able to do that.
I pick up my son off the school
bus every day at three o'clock.
(02:47):
We'll wrap this podcast just in time for
me to go and pick up my son
at the school bus.
And that's something that I've been able to
do because of my ability to delegate.
But for many, many people, and the reason
I wrote my last book on get over
yourself is that for many, many entrepreneurs, business
leaders, that's a real, real struggle.
So why is that a struggle?
(03:07):
When you were researching the book, what did
you find?
Because we suck at it.
We really suck at it.
I mean, of all the things we suck
at, delegating is probably one of the top
of the list.
So when you researched this, what did you
find?
Like, why are we so bad as entrepreneurs
at delegating?
Yeah, so actually first half of the book
is focused on that very question and set
(03:28):
of questions because it turns out most of
us actually know how to delegate.
Like we kind of broadly know how to
delegate.
It's not really rocket science to give, I
mean, half of the book is about how
to do it right, right?
But it's not really rocket science.
We kind of know in the back of
our heads how to do it, but there's
(03:49):
a lot of stuff that stops us from
doing it.
So I identify four emotional detractors is what
I call them that keep us from delegating
well.
And the first one and the biggest one
by far is fear.
We are afraid that people will mess up,
that people won't do it right, that we
will lose clients, that we won't be able
(04:11):
to build a business.
There are many, many things that we are
afraid of that hold us back.
Fear is the biggest thing that holds human
beings back in general.
And fear of fill in the blank, lots
of things going wrong is the biggest emotional
detractor that keeps us from delegating.
The second biggest right behind fear is trust
or lack of trust, distrust.
(04:32):
We have a hard time as human beings
trusting others.
And especially once something has gone wrong, it
gets harder and harder to trust others.
So we've all made bad hires.
And those of you that have hired people,
we've all had employees that didn't work out.
We've all had a colleague, even before you
were an entrepreneur, maybe colleagues that let us
down or classmates that let us down or
(04:53):
relationships that let us down.
And every time we have a letdown, that
makes it harder and harder to trust the
next time around.
So many of us have trust issues that
keep us from delegating.
We'll talk about, of course, how to address
all these things, but fear, trust, and then
the other two, a little bit smaller, but
many folks have a need to control.
We have sort of an innate need to
(05:13):
control outcomes when we really can't control that
much.
We can only control what we do and
what we say.
And then perfectionism is the fourth.
Some of us think like things need to
be done perfectly, but perfectionism is a really,
really tough one for entrepreneurs.
The most successful entrepreneurs know that they're going
to make lots and lots of mistakes and
(05:34):
they just go for it anyway.
And they just get better and better and
better.
I think about Mark Zuckerberg and failing quickly,
failing fast forward.
Like perfectionists tend to get really, really stuck
in thinking that if things aren't done perfectly,
then they can't be done at all.
And no one else is going to do
things perfectly, but us, so we can't delegate.
So those are the four main emotional distractors
(05:54):
that keep us from delegating well, fear, trust
issues, need to control, and perfectionism.
So you've done a great job of figuring
out these four emotional distractors.
Now, what have you found are some of
the solutions for us to overcome these four
to actually be better at delegating?
So I'll just go in the order of
the same.
The thing with fear is that there's no
(06:16):
antidote to fear except courage.
So there are some in entrepreneurial circles that
say like be fearless.
Like I reject that.
I don't think it's possible to be fearless.
I'm filled with fear every day.
Like I'm afraid I'll say something idiotic on
this podcast right now, but I'm still on
it, right?
So like my antidote to fear, my solution
(06:38):
to fear is feel the fear, feel into
it, get it, address it, recognize it, and
go for it anyway.
That's the definition of courage.
So yes, I'm afraid that if I hire
somebody that they're gonna screw up.
Yes, I'm afraid that if I bring on
a partner, they're gonna screw up.
Yes, I'm afraid that they're gonna make mistakes.
Yes, I'm afraid of it all.
And I still know that if I really
(07:01):
wanna scale and if I really wanna be
available for my kid at three o'clock,
I'm gonna have to have the courage to
trust somebody else, which brings me to the
second one, trust.
The biggest way to, when we have trust
issues, to solve that is to start small.
So people earn trust and trust can be
eroded.
But if we start with a blank slate
(07:22):
with someone, before I bring on a partner
or hire a CMO or a CEO if
I'm executive chairman, I'm going to start with
a small project, a small task.
I'm gonna give somebody a chance to start
to build trust.
So I'm not immediately handing over the keys
to my house, the keys to my car
to some stranger saying, hey, you run my
(07:44):
company, I'll see you later.
I'm going to Belize.
I'm giving small projects and working my way
up and people earn, earn, earn, earn, earn
trust.
And eventually they've earned all my trust.
And yeah, then they can have the keys
so that I can go to Belize and
live my best life and they can run
things based on what I've built.
Need to control.
Man, that's something that all humans struggle with
(08:05):
to one extent or another.
Some of us have bigger control issues than
others.
The serenity prayer has been most valuable to
me.
God granted me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change, the courage to change
the things I can, the wisdom to know
the difference.
So I spend a lot of time checking
in with myself.
What can I control here?
What can I not control here?
And trying to understand and like let go
of the stuff that I can't control.
(08:27):
A lot, a lot of stuff I can't
control.
We just got out of an election.
Many people, either way, there was going to
be half the country that was like massively
disappointed, right?
But we can't control the outcome.
We can only control our response and making
sure that we are calm, cool, collected and
move us forward no matter the outcome.
(08:48):
And then fourth, that perfectionism, blessed with not
needing things to be perfect.
But I wasn't always, you know, I used
to be driven for perfection.
My dad, when I was growing up, if
I got a 99 on a test, he
would say, well, why didn't you get a
hundred?
And I used to think that that was
a good skill, a good trait.
Now I know better.
I know that like, you know, 99 is
(09:09):
good enough.
Hell, 75 is good enough.
Get it done and move forward.
Learn from your mistakes and keep on moving.
But to those of you that are listening
or watching and you're really a perfectionist, I
would just, I would challenge you to look
back on the last 10 times that you
really waited for something until it was perfect.
Was it worth the wait?
(09:30):
It probably wasn't.
Every website I've ever built, it's like this
big project and big production and lots of
time and money goes into it.
And then you launch the website when it's
perfect.
And guess what?
Basically day one or two, I'm like, well,
what about this?
Let's add this.
Let's add that.
It's just, there's literally no such thing as
perfection.
So when we, when we've realized that, we
(09:53):
were much better off.
One more quick example.
Art of People was one of my books,
produced with, published by Crown Random House, huge
publisher.
And at least 10 editors went through it.
I went through five, six drafts.
All those editors worked on it.
Finally, it came out.
I was really proud of the final product.
And I got an email from one of
(10:13):
my readers on day one saying there's a
typo on page one, right?
All right, well, sorry, that sucks.
And we'll fix it for the next printing.
You know, like that's all you can do.
And so instead of, perfect is the enemy
of good.
And the enemy of done right.
So, all right, I'll shut up now, Ty.
But those are my answers for how we
(10:34):
can deal with it.
We have to embrace the fact that we're
all human.
We're all gonna have some fear and some
trust issues, but that's okay.
We still need to act in spite of
those.
We need to act in spite of those.
We cannot let them hold us back.
One of the things that I see that,
and I appreciate you going through the four
of the distractors and actually how to overcome
(10:55):
those.
One of the things that I see is
that doing a task and then I know
it's time to delegate.
And so then I come in and I
delegate and then I have it done perfect.
And by perfect, I mean the way I
want it done, right?
And then the next person comes in, they've
never done the task before.
So obviously they're not gonna do it nearly
as well or to the standard that I
have set in my head.
(11:16):
And then I'm like, I knew it, I
knew it, right?
Like I got to take it back and
then do it myself.
Meaning that we don't give the person enough
time to settle in and do that task
to the level of satisfaction.
We ended up taking it back.
I see entrepreneurs do this all the time.
What advice do you give to overcome that?
Because that seems to be the trend.
Even when we do recognize it needs to
be delegated then we do it and we
(11:37):
pull it back too quickly without letting that
person get in and settle in and do
it to our standard.
And ultimately what would become better than what
we did it if we just would have
given them time.
Yeah, the first step is like having the
humility to realize that it's basically impossible that
we would know best exactly how to do
(11:58):
something, anything.
Like think about it, of the billions of
people in the world, like why in the
world would I, I'm really, really good at
sales but there's still millions and millions of
people that are better at sales than I
am.
I'm really, really good at marketing.
There's still millions and millions of people that
are better at marketing.
And by the way, I'm really bad at
administrative tasks, coding, design.
(12:20):
So I wouldn't even like low percentile on
all those things.
So the first thing is this humility of
like, I probably don't know the best way
to do things.
So, and then the second step is getting
out of the habit, if we can, of
delegating tasks or even delegating projects and instead
(12:43):
delegating outcomes.
So here's what I mean by that.
I don't care how you get there, just
get me close, get me to or close
to the finish line.
And here's my vision of what the finish
line looks like.
I joked in either the book or some
podcasts about this and I'm not advocating cheating,
(13:06):
but a couple of decades ago, there was
a marathon, New York City marathon, where a
woman literally took the subway, like to the
last like half mile away from the end
of the finish line and then jumped in
and completed the last half mile of the
marathon to cross the finish line.
I don't want you to cheat, but I
want you, I wanna empower you, my person,
(13:29):
to figure out how to get to the
finish line.
And I don't really care about steps A,
B, C or D, because like, why should
we care about that?
We should care about the outcome.
So if I'm assigning a task, a project,
et cetera, instead of like, here's how to
do it, here's what I'd like to see
happen at the end.
Can you get close?
(13:49):
Do you have a vision for how you
can get close?
And how can I support you on getting
to that vision?
And it can be a shared vision if
they can really have some buy-in about
what that finish line looks like, even better.
So it makes a ton of sense.
And I like that in military, we refer
to this as like commander's intent.
Meaning if I tell somebody to go take
(14:10):
a building and they get to that building
and they can't take it because the stairwell's
blown out, they don't know what to do
next.
They gotta come back to me to get
it done.
Whereas if I just tell them the point
is to get the vantage, best vantage point
of the east, if the stairwell's blown out,
they go find another location to get the
best vantage point of the east.
So it's easier to give them the goal
where they're going and let them kind of
find their way to get there than it
(14:30):
is to tell them the specifics on how
to get there.
Although for people that are control freaks, it's
kind of hard to do, right?
It's hard to do, because like we have
a set way of doing it.
But what's interesting to your point is I
find that when we do it to your
method, they find better ways to do it
than we ever even thought was possible.
We're like, well, no, not that way.
And we're like, wait a minute.
Well, actually, that's actually a better way to
(14:51):
get to the end result.
Yeah, hence the humility.
And so what I would say to the
control freak, you used it, not me, the
control freaks that are watching and listening to
us is look, try it your way first
to build trust, right?
So you already have your SOPs.
You know exactly how you want these things
done.
You've written out procedures to get there.
That's fine.
Give it that shot.
(15:12):
But then when they nail it, give them
a little freedom to say, you know what?
Next time around, if you think you have
a better way of solving it, like give
that a shot too.
Because again, if we really think about it,
it's pretty asinine to expect that we would
have been, have figured out the perfect optimal
(15:33):
way to do anything better than any other
human being on the planet.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Like, yeah, we have the most experience and
we might have our own vision and we
know what we want to do, but like,
we're just not.
And now a quick break to hear from
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(15:53):
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(16:14):
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Like no individual is that good at every
single thing.
Like it's just not possible.
So we have to have the humility to
realize, yeah, I don't really know how to
get this done.
I might think I know, I might have
built a system in the past that worked
pretty well for me.
And yeah, if I want to settle for
that, sure.
(16:34):
But like, people don't really like being robots.
Like nobody likes being hired for a job
where they have absolutely no freedom, no flexibility,
no sense of empowerment.
Like that's not gonna, it's not a good
formula for long-term success anyway.
Like that person might follow every single rule
and every single procedure, but like, is that
really the way to build a company, to
(16:56):
build an ecosystem, to build something?
Probably not, it's hard to imagine, right?
But when we give people the freedom and
the flexibility, it's like trust, but verify, give
them the freedom and the flexibility to get
there, they're gonna get there eventually.
Or they're not and you'll fire them and
you'll move on.
So like, that's the other thing.
Sometimes people are too attached to, they finally
(17:17):
delegate and then they're like, okay, well, this
person, I can't fire them.
I gotta give them a chance and another
chance, another chance.
The hire slow, fire fast is still the
right adage, but you gotta believe that next
time around, you're gonna get better at hiring
that A player that will get there, right?
Versus, okay, this person didn't work out.
I can never hire them again.
I can never hire again for this role.
(17:38):
I gotta do it myself.
That's the danger zone that a lot, that's
the trap that a lot of entrepreneurs, unfortunately,
fall into.
How do you hire right?
I mean, you built Likeable over 15 years,
I think something to that effect when you
exited.
And so in order to do this, you
have to be hiring people that you have
trust with, that you can give autonomy to.
So what's your advice there?
(17:58):
How do we go through and find the
right people to be able to know we
can trust them and to be able to
give them that time?
Yeah, it's a good question.
And it's not something that I've gotten really
good at, and I'm still pretty bad at
overall.
So I've gone from like 20% of
my hires working out to like 50 to
60% of my hires working out.
(18:18):
So that's a reality.
Like it's still hard, no matter what.
I just believe that, especially in today's world,
people don't really take jobs for their lives
anymore.
They take jobs for a little while, a
year, two years, three years.
So I recognize that I'm not necessarily looking
for a lifetime employee, that's for sure, at
(18:39):
the beginning.
And then in terms of like what I
look for in an interview, it's two things,
it's three things.
Overall intelligence, talent specific to the role at
hand.
So like if I'm hiring a coder, I
need them to be good at coding, right?
And so I probably can't be the judge
of that, but I need to figure out
a way to verify they're good at what
(18:59):
it actually is that they're supposed to do.
And then third and most important, coachability.
The humility, the desire to learn, the self
-awareness, the focus on continuous improvement.
I find that a lot, a lot of
people say they're coachable, but they're not.
A lot, a lot of people are very
(19:20):
stuck in their ways, are very stubborn, are
very self-righteous.
And it's in the humility and the self
-awareness and the desire to constantly grow that
we find the people that are coachable.
But like, yeah, okay, maybe I've done a
good job on a podcast, but I could
get much better on the next podcast I
do.
How could I be a better podcast guest?
Like, again, we just have to be humble
(19:42):
enough to realize or you, the person that's
interviewing has to be humble enough to realize
that you can grow.
And if I don't see that coachability, then
it's a hard path.
How do you know what to delegate?
We went from one man shop to 85
team members.
It's like, I felt like things were taken
(20:04):
from me.
And that was always the words I used
in the beginning.
I'm like, I love sales.
Like sales was just taken from me.
Now marketing was taken from me.
I mean, it felt that way, right?
Cause it was passionate about those things.
And so I think it was hard for
me especially to determine.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs in our
audience face the same thing.
How do you know like what you should
be delegating and what you should be holding
onto?
(20:24):
Well, that's a great question.
And I have to tell you, you were
queued up to talk about other stuff.
And I said, let's talk about delegation.
And that's literally a perfect question to ask
Ty because I do address that in Get
Over Yourself.
I have a model called the SHARE model
that addresses the three things and three things
alone that CEOs, entrepreneurs and leaders should be
(20:47):
doing.
The first, the S in SHARE is set
the strategy and the vision.
That's something that's always worth doing.
Strategy and vision, super big picture thinking.
Strategy and vision does not mean what we
should do next week or tomorrow.
It means what we should do in the
next quarter in the next year, in the
next 10 years.
That's strategy and vision.
Number two, we just talked about it.
Hire the right people in the right seats,
(21:09):
hiring.
Now I'm not saying that you should be
involved in the hiring.
If you're a CEO of a 100 person,
200 person organization that you should involve in
all the hiring but you need to be
involved in all the hiring for the key
positions under you.
And then those people need to be involved
in the hiring for all the key positions
under them.
And so on and so forth.
And number three is in the SHARE models,
A, access to resources.
(21:29):
It is your job to make sure there's
money in the bank to pay everyone, to
make payroll every week.
It is your job to make sure that
your team has all of the dollars and
headcount and tools and software, the resources to
get their job done.
Strategy and vision, hire the right people, access
to resources.
And guess what?
(21:50):
Literally everything else in my mind, in my
view and my model should be delegated, everything.
And that's why the R in SHARE is
remind yourself that if the task or project
at hand isn't one of the three above
things, E, empower somebody or some group to
do that work.
And I'll tell you a funny story.
I got into an argument with my editor
about this.
And this is ironic because I did the
(22:11):
book with a small publisher, Ben Bella Publishing,
great publisher.
And the head, the owner of the company,
the CEO of the company took such an
interest in me and the book that he
said, I'm gonna personally edit this the first
draft around.
And I said, that's sort of ironic that
you would personally work on it because you
should be delegating that to editors, but fine.
So you're gonna look at it.
So he reads, he does the first read.
(22:32):
He comes back to me, he says, I
have an issue with the SHARE model.
I said, what if you're really good at
something?
Like if you're really good at marketing, shouldn't
you be doing the marketing?
If you're really good at sales, shouldn't you
be doing the sales?
If you're really good at coding, like Mark
Zuckerberg was still coding in Facebook in the
early days, shouldn't you be doing the coding?
I said, look, I'm not saying you can't
do these things.
(22:52):
You can do whatever you want.
But the downside, if you're quote, really good
at marketing to doing the marketing is you're
stuck with a disempowered marketing team that feels
like they can't do anything because the CEO
wants to get their hands involved in marketing.
If you think you're so great at sales
that you wanna run sales, you're disempowering the
(23:13):
potential sales manager from being able to emerge
as a leader.
So in my mind, if I wanna be
involved in the marketing, if I wanna be
involved in the sales, if I wanna be
involved in the fill in the blank, I'm
still gonna empower somebody.
I'm still gonna hire somebody.
I'm still gonna delegate it.
And I might sit in on a meeting
or two.
And if I have some brilliant idea that
(23:34):
I wanna share, I'm gonna send a text
message or an email after the meeting to
the head of the marketing team or the
sales team, et cetera.
I'm not gonna interrupt.
I'm not gonna, I'll really literally be a
fly on the wall listening in, taking it
all in, but not interrupting, not getting too
involved.
The problem is that we CEO types, we
(23:54):
entrepreneur types, we have so much energy and
so much interest and so much excitement.
And of course we do, it's our company,
I get it.
But the unintended effect of that is to
disempower people, is to scare people, is to
intimidate people, is to get people thinking, oh,
we can't come up with our own ideas
because the CEOs always have his or her
(24:14):
ideas.
So I really, I try to stick with
those three things and try to delegate the
rest and all of it.
I know it's hard, especially hard.
The biggest objection I get from early entrepreneurs,
I know you have some folks listening that
maybe just getting started is, I don't have
people to delegate the work to.
And for them, to them, I would say
two things.
If it's really low level tasks, you do.
(24:36):
Just go on Upwork, it's 10 bucks.
Like figure out a way to delegate the
low level stuff.
If it's high level stuff, my challenge to
you is maybe take on a partner.
See if you can take on a partner
because you won't have to pay them cash.
Yeah, you'll have a smaller piece of a
bigger pie, but the way I've been able
to build companies is taking on partners early
(24:56):
on or raising venture capital, but that's not
easy, you know that.
But taking on partners and then multiple people
can own, you're essentially delegating a lot of
work to your partners in that case.
Yeah, and it's really powerful.
My last company, I exited my VA still
with me today, 15 years later, like, you
know, she ended up coming with me to
(25:17):
this company and my VA that was by
my side to help build this company, she's
actually now runs a lot of things in
our marketing and our podcast manager.
I mean, I've been with me for 10,
11 years now, right?
So it's interesting because those VAs can do
so many more things than you think you
can on Upwork.
You can even get them six bucks an
hour, seven bucks an hour to start.
And it's astonishing on how much of your
(25:38):
time you get back just by starting at
that point, it's just phenomenal advice.
Yeah, no, totally.
And well, part of the reason we started
Apprentice is very similar to that, like really
smart college students can get a lot of
really good high level work done for again,
a lot less.
Now you can't pay them six bucks an
hour like you can with certain outsourced countries,
but you can get really, really smart, really
(26:00):
good English speaking folks to do work that
when these kids graduate, they're gonna be going
to EY and McKinsey and Google and making
$125,000 a year.
But while they're still in school, you can
hire them for significantly less.
And that's really how the Apprentice model emerged.
I love that.
And talk to me a little bit about
before we wrap up, tell me a little
bit more because you're at chooseapprentice.com.
(26:22):
So tell me a little bit more about
this.
Yeah, so my first, I've been blessed with
the mindset to delegate from the start, but
with our first company, Likeable that we started
now 2007.
So, oh my goodness, 17 years ago.
And we started this company to have more
time with our young daughter and it exploded
really quickly.
(26:42):
And all of a sudden we had a
couple of million dollars in revenue and no
time on our hands.
And we thought, okay, well, we'll just hire
people.
But the way many businesses work, as you
know, is cashflow isn't always happening quite yet.
People are paying 60 days later, 90 days
later, some of these brands now in the
brand marketing space, they pay like net 120,
(27:04):
net 150.
And it's like, how do you build a
company like that?
It's wild.
So one of our solutions was to start
hiring college students because we could pay them
a lot less and they were really smart
and driven and could do great work.
At one point early on in our company
tie, we had 60 college students working for
us and only 10 full-time staff.
We realized that this model really scaled well.
It was great.
(27:24):
So I actually ended up taking that same
model to a couple other companies.
And at one point, about five years ago,
this young man, while he was in school,
he was working for me.
He had worked on a million dollar real
estate client for me.
He had co-authored a book with me,
done really good work while he was still
in school.
And he said, Dave, I think there's a
business model.
You've been working all these college students here.
I think there's a business model doing what
(27:45):
you've been doing with college students for other
entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Can we connect them and take a piece
of the money that's going to each college
student?
I said, yeah, you're right.
That's a really good business idea.
And we started the business.
And six weeks later, I was in business
with this kid.
And then a year and a half later,
this kid had a million dollar business at
(28:07):
age 23.
So it worked.
It really, really worked.
So we have recruiters at all the top
colleges in the country now.
So all the Ivy League schools, plus a
lot of great state schools, smaller schools.
We realized that while Ivy League kids are
really smart at certain things, data analytics, for
instance, those that want really like hustlers don't
(28:28):
necessarily care if they have a Harvard kid.
They want somebody that's really hungry and driven
and ambitious, right?
So we pull from colleges throughout the country
and we work in four areas.
So we have four roles that we fill.
Marketing guru, biz dev rockstar, data and analytics,
numbers cruncher, and operations chief of staff.
And we take those four roles and supply
(28:49):
entrepreneurs and business leaders with someone, you might
call it a virtual assistant, but we think
that that doesn't really describe it with these
really talented young college students that work part
-time and they're gonna be making 125 grand,
150 grand in a couple of years.
But while they're still in school, we give
access to small business owners that wouldn't otherwise
have access to these really, really smart talents.
(29:11):
So it's been a really fun business.
My daughter now is a senior at Boston
University.
And so she's really taken over.
And me, I like to delegate.
So she's really running the business for me
now.
And it's been a real joy.
So Dave, great talk today.
Where can everybody go to, first of all,
get your book?
And the second thing is, is where can
they go to learn more about the Apprentice
program?
(29:31):
Sure, so get over yourself.
And all my books, Art of People, it
does very, very well with young people.
And Likeable Social Media still continues to sell
really well.
All my books are available on Amazon, Barnes
& Noble, bookstores everywhere.
And then folks that are interested in Apprentice,
you can go to chooseapprentice.com.
And I'm also, one of my personal core
values, Ty, is responsiveness.
So anyone that's watching or listening can reach
out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram.
(29:53):
I try to respond to each and every
person, even if it's just to say thank
you.
But I also try to keep all the...
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to the Business Credit and Financing Show.
Each week, we talk about the growth strategies
that matter most to entrepreneurs.
Listen in as we discuss the secrets to
getting credit and money to start and grow
your business, and enjoy as we talk with
seasoned business owners, coaches, and industry leaders on
(00:22):
a variety of topics from advertising and marketing
to the nuts and bolts of running a
highly successful business.
And now, to introduce the host of our
show, financial expert and award-winning author, Ty
Crandall.
Hello, and thanks for joining us today.
I'm super excited you could be here because
today we're talking about, look, let's be honest,
one of the biggest problems you have, which
(00:43):
is delegation.
When you're first launching your business, then you
tend to take everything on on your own.
Let's talk about that.
I mean, ultimately what happens is you typically
have little time, and you have a lot
of time, and don't have a lot of
money yet.
So what you're doing is you're basically taking
on all the tasks yourself, and then you
start to generate money that you need to
pull away from those tasks.
It's gonna have other people handle it, but
you're not very good at it.
(01:04):
Delegation is not something naturally that comes for
us entrepreneurs, and we're gonna fix that problem
today.
And to help us solve this problem is
Dave Kirpin.
He's with us, and he's gonna be talking
about exactly what we need to do to
be better at delegation.
So Dave is a serial entrepreneur.
He has had seven businesses and two exits.
He's a New York Times bestselling author of
(01:24):
five different books, and global keynote speaker.
Now, he is the co-founder and CEO
of Apprentice, a platform connecting entrepreneurs with top
college students, and is the author of several
bestselling books as well, including Get Over Yourself,
The Art of People, Likeable Social Media, and
Likeable Business as well.
(01:44):
Now, he is a popular contributor to Inc
.com, and a LinkedIn influencer, and has been
featured in many media outlets, including the New
York Times, The Today Show, CBS Early Show,
BBC, Financial Times, and more.
Now, additionally, Kirpin is the executive chairman of
the Nursing Beat, and an investor in several
companies through Kirpin Ventures.
(02:06):
He was previously the founder and chairman of
Likeable Local, and was a co-founder and
CEO of Likeable Media, which has sold to
10 Pearls in April of 2021.
And most important, Dave is a father of
three beautiful, healthy children, and a husband to
Carrie.
Dave, thanks for coming on the show with
us today.
Oh, thanks so much.
Thanks so much for having me, Ty.
Great to be here.
Yeah, man, you've done a lot of cool
(02:26):
things, so you can only do this if
you're really good at delegating.
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned in my bio,
most important that I'm the father of three
kids, because that is the most important job
for me.
And if it weren't for delegation, I wouldn't
be able to do that.
If it weren't for my ability to prioritize,
I wouldn't be able to do that.
I pick up my son off the school
bus every day at three o'clock.
(02:47):
We'll wrap this podcast just in time for
me to go and pick up my son
at the school bus.
And that's something that I've been able to
do because of my ability to delegate.
But for many, many people, and the reason
I wrote my last book on get over
yourself is that for many, many entrepreneurs, business
leaders, that's a real, real struggle.
So why is that a struggle?
(03:07):
When you were researching the book, what did
you find?
Because we suck at it.
We really suck at it.
I mean, of all the things we suck
at, delegating is probably one of the top
of the list.
So when you researched this, what did you
find?
Like, why are we so bad as entrepreneurs
at delegating?
Yeah, so actually first half of the book
is focused on that very question and set
(03:28):
of questions because it turns out most of
us actually know how to delegate.
Like we kind of broadly know how to
delegate.
It's not really rocket science to give, I
mean, half of the book is about how
to do it right, right?
But it's not really rocket science.
We kind of know in the back of
our heads how to do it, but there's
(03:49):
a lot of stuff that stops us from
doing it.
So I identify four emotional detractors is what
I call them that keep us from delegating
well.
And the first one and the biggest one
by far is fear.
We are afraid that people will mess up,
that people won't do it right, that we
will lose clients, that we won't be able
(04:11):
to build a business.
There are many, many things that we are
afraid of that hold us back.
Fear is the biggest thing that holds human
beings back in general.
And fear of fill in the blank, lots
of things going wrong is the biggest emotional
detractor that keeps us from delegating.
The second biggest right behind fear is trust
or lack of trust, distrust.
(04:32):
We have a hard time as human beings
trusting others.
And especially once something has gone wrong, it
gets harder and harder to trust others.
So we've all made bad hires.
And those of you that have hired people,
we've all had employees that didn't work out.
We've all had a colleague, even before you
were an entrepreneur, maybe colleagues that let us
down or classmates that let us down or
(04:53):
relationships that let us down.
And every time we have a letdown, that
makes it harder and harder to trust the
next time around.
So many of us have trust issues that
keep us from delegating.
We'll talk about, of course, how to address
all these things, but fear, trust, and then
the other two, a little bit smaller, but
many folks have a need to control.
We have sort of an innate need to
(05:13):
control outcomes when we really can't control that
much.
We can only control what we do and
what we say.
And then perfectionism is the fourth.
Some of us think like things need to
be done perfectly, but perfectionism is a really,
really tough one for entrepreneurs.
The most successful entrepreneurs know that they're going
to make lots and lots of mistakes and
(05:34):
they just go for it anyway.
And they just get better and better and
better.
I think about Mark Zuckerberg and failing quickly,
failing fast forward.
Like perfectionists tend to get really, really stuck
in thinking that if things aren't done perfectly,
then they can't be done at all.
And no one else is going to do
things perfectly, but us, so we can't delegate.
So those are the four main emotional distractors
(05:54):
that keep us from delegating well, fear, trust
issues, need to control, and perfectionism.
So you've done a great job of figuring
out these four emotional distractors.
Now, what have you found are some of
the solutions for us to overcome these four
to actually be better at delegating?
So I'll just go in the order of
the same.
The thing with fear is that there's no
(06:16):
antidote to fear except courage.
So there are some in entrepreneurial circles that
say like be fearless.
Like I reject that.
I don't think it's possible to be fearless.
I'm filled with fear every day.
Like I'm afraid I'll say something idiotic on
this podcast right now, but I'm still on
it, right?
So like my antidote to fear, my solution
(06:38):
to fear is feel the fear, feel into
it, get it, address it, recognize it, and
go for it anyway.
That's the definition of courage.
So yes, I'm afraid that if I hire
somebody that they're gonna screw up.
Yes, I'm afraid that if I bring on
a partner, they're gonna screw up.
Yes, I'm afraid that they're gonna make mistakes.
Yes, I'm afraid of it all.
And I still know that if I really
(07:01):
wanna scale and if I really wanna be
available for my kid at three o'clock,
I'm gonna have to have the courage to
trust somebody else, which brings me to the
second one, trust.
The biggest way to, when we have trust
issues, to solve that is to start small.
So people earn trust and trust can be
eroded.
But if we start with a blank slate
(07:22):
with someone, before I bring on a partner
or hire a CMO or a CEO if
I'm executive chairman, I'm going to start with
a small project, a small task.
I'm gonna give somebody a chance to start
to build trust.
So I'm not immediately handing over the keys
to my house, the keys to my car
to some stranger saying, hey, you run my
(07:44):
company, I'll see you later.
I'm going to Belize.
I'm giving small projects and working my way
up and people earn, earn, earn, earn, earn
trust.
And eventually they've earned all my trust.
And yeah, then they can have the keys
so that I can go to Belize and
live my best life and they can run
things based on what I've built.
Need to control.
Man, that's something that all humans struggle with
(08:05):
to one extent or another.
Some of us have bigger control issues than
others.
The serenity prayer has been most valuable to
me.
God granted me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change, the courage to change
the things I can, the wisdom to know
the difference.
So I spend a lot of time checking
in with myself.
What can I control here?
What can I not control here?
And trying to understand and like let go
of the stuff that I can't control.
(08:27):
A lot, a lot of stuff I can't
control.
We just got out of an election.
Many people, either way, there was going to
be half the country that was like massively
disappointed, right?
But we can't control the outcome.
We can only control our response and making
sure that we are calm, cool, collected and
move us forward no matter the outcome.
(08:48):
And then fourth, that perfectionism, blessed with not
needing things to be perfect.
But I wasn't always, you know, I used
to be driven for perfection.
My dad, when I was growing up, if
I got a 99 on a test, he
would say, well, why didn't you get a
hundred?
And I used to think that that was
a good skill, a good trait.
Now I know better.
I know that like, you know, 99 is
(09:09):
good enough.
Hell, 75 is good enough.
Get it done and move forward.
Learn from your mistakes and keep on moving.
But to those of you that are listening
or watching and you're really a perfectionist, I
would just, I would challenge you to look
back on the last 10 times that you
really waited for something until it was perfect.
Was it worth the wait?
(09:30):
It probably wasn't.
Every website I've ever built, it's like this
big project and big production and lots of
time and money goes into it.
And then you launch the website when it's
perfect.
And guess what?
Basically day one or two, I'm like, well,
what about this?
Let's add this.
Let's add that.
It's just, there's literally no such thing as
perfection.
So when we, when we've realized that, we
(09:53):
were much better off.
One more quick example.
Art of People was one of my books,
produced with, published by Crown Random House, huge
publisher.
And at least 10 editors went through it.
I went through five, six drafts.
All those editors worked on it.
Finally, it came out.
I was really proud of the final product.
And I got an email from one of
(10:13):
my readers on day one saying there's a
typo on page one, right?
All right, well, sorry, that sucks.
And we'll fix it for the next printing.
You know, like that's all you can do.
And so instead of, perfect is the enemy
of good.
And the enemy of done right.
So, all right, I'll shut up now, Ty.
But those are my answers for how we
(10:34):
can deal with it.
We have to embrace the fact that we're
all human.
We're all gonna have some fear and some
trust issues, but that's okay.
We still need to act in spite of
those.
We need to act in spite of those.
We cannot let them hold us back.
One of the things that I see that,
and I appreciate you going through the four
of the distractors and actually how to overcome
(10:55):
those.
One of the things that I see is
that doing a task and then I know
it's time to delegate.
And so then I come in and I
delegate and then I have it done perfect.
And by perfect, I mean the way I
want it done, right?
And then the next person comes in, they've
never done the task before.
So obviously they're not gonna do it nearly
as well or to the standard that I
have set in my head.
(11:16):
And then I'm like, I knew it, I
knew it, right?
Like I got to take it back and
then do it myself.
Meaning that we don't give the person enough
time to settle in and do that task
to the level of satisfaction.
We ended up taking it back.
I see entrepreneurs do this all the time.
What advice do you give to overcome that?
Because that seems to be the trend.
Even when we do recognize it needs to
be delegated then we do it and we
(11:37):
pull it back too quickly without letting that
person get in and settle in and do
it to our standard.
And ultimately what would become better than what
we did it if we just would have
given them time.
Yeah, the first step is like having the
humility to realize that it's basically impossible that
we would know best exactly how to do
(11:58):
something, anything.
Like think about it, of the billions of
people in the world, like why in the
world would I, I'm really, really good at
sales but there's still millions and millions of
people that are better at sales than I
am.
I'm really, really good at marketing.
There's still millions and millions of people that
are better at marketing.
And by the way, I'm really bad at
administrative tasks, coding, design.
(12:20):
So I wouldn't even like low percentile on
all those things.
So the first thing is this humility of
like, I probably don't know the best way
to do things.
So, and then the second step is getting
out of the habit, if we can, of
delegating tasks or even delegating projects and instead
(12:43):
delegating outcomes.
So here's what I mean by that.
I don't care how you get there, just
get me close, get me to or close
to the finish line.
And here's my vision of what the finish
line looks like.
I joked in either the book or some
podcasts about this and I'm not advocating cheating,
(13:06):
but a couple of decades ago, there was
a marathon, New York City marathon, where a
woman literally took the subway, like to the
last like half mile away from the end
of the finish line and then jumped in
and completed the last half mile of the
marathon to cross the finish line.
I don't want you to cheat, but I
want you, I wanna empower you, my person,
(13:29):
to figure out how to get to the
finish line.
And I don't really care about steps A,
B, C or D, because like, why should
we care about that?
We should care about the outcome.
So if I'm assigning a task, a project,
et cetera, instead of like, here's how to
do it, here's what I'd like to see
happen at the end.
Can you get close?
(13:49):
Do you have a vision for how you
can get close?
And how can I support you on getting
to that vision?
And it can be a shared vision if
they can really have some buy-in about
what that finish line looks like, even better.
So it makes a ton of sense.
And I like that in military, we refer
to this as like commander's intent.
Meaning if I tell somebody to go take
(14:10):
a building and they get to that building
and they can't take it because the stairwell's
blown out, they don't know what to do
next.
They gotta come back to me to get
it done.
Whereas if I just tell them the point
is to get the vantage, best vantage point
of the east, if the stairwell's blown out,
they go find another location to get the
best vantage point of the east.
So it's easier to give them the goal
where they're going and let them kind of
find their way to get there than it
(14:30):
is to tell them the specifics on how
to get there.
Although for people that are control freaks, it's
kind of hard to do, right?
It's hard to do, because like we have
a set way of doing it.
But what's interesting to your point is I
find that when we do it to your
method, they find better ways to do it
than we ever even thought was possible.
We're like, well, no, not that way.
And we're like, wait a minute.
Well, actually, that's actually a better way to
(14:51):
get to the end result.
Yeah, hence the humility.
And so what I would say to the
control freak, you used it, not me, the
control freaks that are watching and listening to
us is look, try it your way first
to build trust, right?
So you already have your SOPs.
You know exactly how you want these things
done.
You've written out procedures to get there.
That's fine.
Give it that shot.
(15:12):
But then when they nail it, give them
a little freedom to say, you know what?
Next time around, if you think you have
a better way of solving it, like give
that a shot too.
Because again, if we really think about it,
it's pretty asinine to expect that we would
have been, have figured out the perfect optimal
(15:33):
way to do anything better than any other
human being on the planet.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Like, yeah, we have the most experience and
we might have our own vision and we
know what we want to do, but like,
we're just not.
And now a quick break to hear from
our sponsor.
Hey, it's Ty Crandall with Credit Suite.
Many of our subscribers want to build business
(15:53):
credit that's linked to their EIN without a
personal guarantee or credit check.
Now, if you're looking to get no doc,
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the business reporting agencies without a personal guarantee
or credit check, give us a call at
877-600-2487.
That's 877-600-2487.
Or schedule your free consultation online to talk
(16:14):
more at creditsuite.com forward slash consult.
Like no individual is that good at every
single thing.
Like it's just not possible.
So we have to have the humility to
realize, yeah, I don't really know how to
get this done.
I might think I know, I might have
built a system in the past that worked
pretty well for me.
And yeah, if I want to settle for
that, sure.
(16:34):
But like, people don't really like being robots.
Like nobody likes being hired for a job
where they have absolutely no freedom, no flexibility,
no sense of empowerment.
Like that's not gonna, it's not a good
formula for long-term success anyway.
Like that person might follow every single rule
and every single procedure, but like, is that
really the way to build a company, to
(16:56):
build an ecosystem, to build something?
Probably not, it's hard to imagine, right?
But when we give people the freedom and
the flexibility, it's like trust, but verify, give
them the freedom and the flexibility to get
there, they're gonna get there eventually.
Or they're not and you'll fire them and
you'll move on.
So like, that's the other thing.
Sometimes people are too attached to, they finally
(17:17):
delegate and then they're like, okay, well, this
person, I can't fire them.
I gotta give them a chance and another
chance, another chance.
The hire slow, fire fast is still the
right adage, but you gotta believe that next
time around, you're gonna get better at hiring
that A player that will get there, right?
Versus, okay, this person didn't work out.
I can never hire them again.
I can never hire again for this role.
(17:38):
I gotta do it myself.
That's the danger zone that a lot, that's
the trap that a lot of entrepreneurs, unfortunately,
fall into.
How do you hire right?
I mean, you built Likeable over 15 years,
I think something to that effect when you
exited.
And so in order to do this, you
have to be hiring people that you have
trust with, that you can give autonomy to.
So what's your advice there?
(17:58):
How do we go through and find the
right people to be able to know we
can trust them and to be able to
give them that time?
Yeah, it's a good question.
And it's not something that I've gotten really
good at, and I'm still pretty bad at
overall.
So I've gone from like 20% of
my hires working out to like 50 to
60% of my hires working out.
(18:18):
So that's a reality.
Like it's still hard, no matter what.
I just believe that, especially in today's world,
people don't really take jobs for their lives
anymore.
They take jobs for a little while, a
year, two years, three years.
So I recognize that I'm not necessarily looking
for a lifetime employee, that's for sure, at
(18:39):
the beginning.
And then in terms of like what I
look for in an interview, it's two things,
it's three things.
Overall intelligence, talent specific to the role at
hand.
So like if I'm hiring a coder, I
need them to be good at coding, right?
And so I probably can't be the judge
of that, but I need to figure out
a way to verify they're good at what
(18:59):
it actually is that they're supposed to do.
And then third and most important, coachability.
The humility, the desire to learn, the self
-awareness, the focus on continuous improvement.
I find that a lot, a lot of
people say they're coachable, but they're not.
A lot, a lot of people are very
(19:20):
stuck in their ways, are very stubborn, are
very self-righteous.
And it's in the humility and the self
-awareness and the desire to constantly grow that
we find the people that are coachable.
But like, yeah, okay, maybe I've done a
good job on a podcast, but I could
get much better on the next podcast I
do.
How could I be a better podcast guest?
Like, again, we just have to be humble
(19:42):
enough to realize or you, the person that's
interviewing has to be humble enough to realize
that you can grow.
And if I don't see that coachability, then
it's a hard path.
How do you know what to delegate?
We went from one man shop to 85
team members.
It's like, I felt like things were taken
(20:04):
from me.
And that was always the words I used
in the beginning.
I'm like, I love sales.
Like sales was just taken from me.
Now marketing was taken from me.
I mean, it felt that way, right?
Cause it was passionate about those things.
And so I think it was hard for
me especially to determine.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs in our
audience face the same thing.
How do you know like what you should
be delegating and what you should be holding
onto?
(20:24):
Well, that's a great question.
And I have to tell you, you were
queued up to talk about other stuff.
And I said, let's talk about delegation.
And that's literally a perfect question to ask
Ty because I do address that in Get
Over Yourself.
I have a model called the SHARE model
that addresses the three things and three things
alone that CEOs, entrepreneurs and leaders should be
(20:47):
doing.
The first, the S in SHARE is set
the strategy and the vision.
That's something that's always worth doing.
Strategy and vision, super big picture thinking.
Strategy and vision does not mean what we
should do next week or tomorrow.
It means what we should do in the
next quarter in the next year, in the
next 10 years.
That's strategy and vision.
Number two, we just talked about it.
Hire the right people in the right seats,
(21:09):
hiring.
Now I'm not saying that you should be
involved in the hiring.
If you're a CEO of a 100 person,
200 person organization that you should involve in
all the hiring but you need to be
involved in all the hiring for the key
positions under you.
And then those people need to be involved
in the hiring for all the key positions
under them.
And so on and so forth.
And number three is in the SHARE models,
A, access to resources.
(21:29):
It is your job to make sure there's
money in the bank to pay everyone, to
make payroll every week.
It is your job to make sure that
your team has all of the dollars and
headcount and tools and software, the resources to
get their job done.
Strategy and vision, hire the right people, access
to resources.
And guess what?
(21:50):
Literally everything else in my mind, in my
view and my model should be delegated, everything.
And that's why the R in SHARE is
remind yourself that if the task or project
at hand isn't one of the three above
things, E, empower somebody or some group to
do that work.
And I'll tell you a funny story.
I got into an argument with my editor
about this.
And this is ironic because I did the
(22:11):
book with a small publisher, Ben Bella Publishing,
great publisher.
And the head, the owner of the company,
the CEO of the company took such an
interest in me and the book that he
said, I'm gonna personally edit this the first
draft around.
And I said, that's sort of ironic that
you would personally work on it because you
should be delegating that to editors, but fine.
So you're gonna look at it.
So he reads, he does the first read.
(22:32):
He comes back to me, he says, I
have an issue with the SHARE model.
I said, what if you're really good at
something?
Like if you're really good at marketing, shouldn't
you be doing the marketing?
If you're really good at sales, shouldn't you
be doing the sales?
If you're really good at coding, like Mark
Zuckerberg was still coding in Facebook in the
early days, shouldn't you be doing the coding?
I said, look, I'm not saying you can't
do these things.
(22:52):
You can do whatever you want.
But the downside, if you're quote, really good
at marketing to doing the marketing is you're
stuck with a disempowered marketing team that feels
like they can't do anything because the CEO
wants to get their hands involved in marketing.
If you think you're so great at sales
that you wanna run sales, you're disempowering the
(23:13):
potential sales manager from being able to emerge
as a leader.
So in my mind, if I wanna be
involved in the marketing, if I wanna be
involved in the sales, if I wanna be
involved in the fill in the blank, I'm
still gonna empower somebody.
I'm still gonna hire somebody.
I'm still gonna delegate it.
And I might sit in on a meeting
or two.
And if I have some brilliant idea that
(23:34):
I wanna share, I'm gonna send a text
message or an email after the meeting to
the head of the marketing team or the
sales team, et cetera.
I'm not gonna interrupt.
I'm not gonna, I'll really literally be a
fly on the wall listening in, taking it
all in, but not interrupting, not getting too
involved.
The problem is that we CEO types, we
(23:54):
entrepreneur types, we have so much energy and
so much interest and so much excitement.
And of course we do, it's our company,
I get it.
But the unintended effect of that is to
disempower people, is to scare people, is to
intimidate people, is to get people thinking, oh,
we can't come up with our own ideas
because the CEOs always have his or her
(24:14):
ideas.
So I really, I try to stick with
those three things and try to delegate the
rest and all of it.
I know it's hard, especially hard.
The biggest objection I get from early entrepreneurs,
I know you have some folks listening that
maybe just getting started is, I don't have
people to delegate the work to.
And for them, to them, I would say
two things.
If it's really low level tasks, you do.
(24:36):
Just go on Upwork, it's 10 bucks.
Like figure out a way to delegate the
low level stuff.
If it's high level stuff, my challenge to
you is maybe take on a partner.
See if you can take on a partner
because you won't have to pay them cash.
Yeah, you'll have a smaller piece of a
bigger pie, but the way I've been able
to build companies is taking on partners early
(24:56):
on or raising venture capital, but that's not
easy, you know that.
But taking on partners and then multiple people
can own, you're essentially delegating a lot of
work to your partners in that case.
Yeah, and it's really powerful.
My last company, I exited my VA still
with me today, 15 years later, like, you
know, she ended up coming with me to
(25:17):
this company and my VA that was by
my side to help build this company, she's
actually now runs a lot of things in
our marketing and our podcast manager.
I mean, I've been with me for 10,
11 years now, right?
So it's interesting because those VAs can do
so many more things than you think you
can on Upwork.
You can even get them six bucks an
hour, seven bucks an hour to start.
And it's astonishing on how much of your
(25:38):
time you get back just by starting at
that point, it's just phenomenal advice.
Yeah, no, totally.
And well, part of the reason we started
Apprentice is very similar to that, like really
smart college students can get a lot of
really good high level work done for again,
a lot less.
Now you can't pay them six bucks an
hour like you can with certain outsourced countries,
but you can get really, really smart, really
(26:00):
good English speaking folks to do work that
when these kids graduate, they're gonna be going
to EY and McKinsey and Google and making
$125,000 a year.
But while they're still in school, you can
hire them for significantly less.
And that's really how the Apprentice model emerged.
I love that.
And talk to me a little bit about
before we wrap up, tell me a little
bit more because you're at chooseapprentice.com.
(26:22):
So tell me a little bit more about
this.
Yeah, so my first, I've been blessed with
the mindset to delegate from the start, but
with our first company, Likeable that we started
now 2007.
So, oh my goodness, 17 years ago.
And we started this company to have more
time with our young daughter and it exploded
really quickly.
(26:42):
And all of a sudden we had a
couple of million dollars in revenue and no
time on our hands.
And we thought, okay, well, we'll just hire
people.
But the way many businesses work, as you
know, is cashflow isn't always happening quite yet.
People are paying 60 days later, 90 days
later, some of these brands now in the
brand marketing space, they pay like net 120,
(27:04):
net 150.
And it's like, how do you build a
company like that?
It's wild.
So one of our solutions was to start
hiring college students because we could pay them
a lot less and they were really smart
and driven and could do great work.
At one point early on in our company
tie, we had 60 college students working for
us and only 10 full-time staff.
We realized that this model really scaled well.
It was great.
(27:24):
So I actually ended up taking that same
model to a couple other companies.
And at one point, about five years ago,
this young man, while he was in school,
he was working for me.
He had worked on a million dollar real
estate client for me.
He had co-authored a book with me,
done really good work while he was still
in school.
And he said, Dave, I think there's a
business model.
You've been working all these college students here.
I think there's a business model doing what
(27:45):
you've been doing with college students for other
entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Can we connect them and take a piece
of the money that's going to each college
student?
I said, yeah, you're right.
That's a really good business idea.
And we started the business.
And six weeks later, I was in business
with this kid.
And then a year and a half later,
this kid had a million dollar business at
(28:07):
age 23.
So it worked.
It really, really worked.
So we have recruiters at all the top
colleges in the country now.
So all the Ivy League schools, plus a
lot of great state schools, smaller schools.
We realized that while Ivy League kids are
really smart at certain things, data analytics, for
instance, those that want really like hustlers don't
(28:28):
necessarily care if they have a Harvard kid.
They want somebody that's really hungry and driven
and ambitious, right?
So we pull from colleges throughout the country
and we work in four areas.
So we have four roles that we fill.
Marketing guru, biz dev rockstar, data and analytics,
numbers cruncher, and operations chief of staff.
And we take those four roles and supply
(28:49):
entrepreneurs and business leaders with someone, you might
call it a virtual assistant, but we think
that that doesn't really describe it with these
really talented young college students that work part
-time and they're gonna be making 125 grand,
150 grand in a couple of years.
But while they're still in school, we give
access to small business owners that wouldn't otherwise
have access to these really, really smart talents.
(29:11):
So it's been a really fun business.
My daughter now is a senior at Boston
University.
And so she's really taken over.
And me, I like to delegate.
So she's really running the business for me
now.
And it's been a real joy.
So Dave, great talk today.
Where can everybody go to, first of all,
get your book?
And the second thing is, is where can
they go to learn more about the Apprentice
program?
(29:31):
Sure, so get over yourself.
And all my books, Art of People, it
does very, very well with young people.
And Likeable Social Media still continues to sell
really well.
All my books are available on Amazon, Barnes
& Noble, bookstores everywhere.
And then folks that are interested in Apprentice,
you can go to chooseapprentice.com.
And I'm also, one of my personal core
values, Ty, is responsiveness.
So anyone that's watching or listening can reach
out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram.
(29:53):
I try to respond to each and every
person, even if it's just to say thank
you.
But I also try to keep all the...
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