The OYT Coaching Series – Jordan Erskine – How to Delegate the Right Way
Leaders who can do most tasks in their company seem to struggle in one central area. It is learning to delegate the right way. The main reason is they know how to do the thing. They also know how they want it done. However, great leaders know how to delegate the right way. The art of delegation can help you be the best leader you can be. Our guest is Jordan Erksine, President of Dynamic Blending. Dynamic Blending was #17 on the 2020 Inc 500 list. Jordan begins by sharing his top strategy for optimizing his time, which is scheduling time. He also walks us through the end of the daily routine that has amplified his impact. In part two, Jordan is coached on the struggles of delegation the right way. He is transparent in our conversation, which makes for great learning. You will discover how to delegate the right way better inside this episode.
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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
Jordan Erskine
I mean, for me, it really just comes kind of comes down to that mental psyche about it, right? It’s like, Hey, I’m kind of given this big task over to, you know, Joe over here, let’s say that’s been here six months with the company and he’s highly qualified, you know, he’s, you know, whatever degrees he has things like that. But you know, it’s it’s more of that mental psyche for me to kind of hand over certain things in the business because dynamic blending. You know, it’s my baby. I mean, I grew up from nothing. I mean, it was me and Gavin as ground zero. And in just a few years, we have over 100 employees and things like that.
Intro [0:35]
Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest growing privately held companies. I am the host, my name is Gene Hammett, I hope leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow?
Gene Hammett [0:52]
Your time is so important for you to use wisely as a CEO of a company, you know that you have to get a lot done, you have to move forward. So how do you do that when you are pulled in so many directions? Well, you’re gonna learn from this series, when we look at different ways that executive CEOs are optimizing their time, you will see and hear things that have worked for them. But you also see some of the struggles that they’re making. You will learn from both sides of this. Our guest today is the co founder of Dynamic Blending, Jordan Erskine. And Jordan and I talked about the things that he has done that have worked really well. One of those is scheduling time away, not working so much. He’s a self professed workaholic, he talks about what time away has allowed him to do and what that looks like in his world. But he also talks about the strategy he’s used at the end of the day, that allows him to prepare for the next day. So that’s the one two punch that he’s going to go through. Now. He also goes into what he’s working on what he’s struggling with. And in part two is the coaching section of today’s conversation. And it really is about delegation, we look at what is he’s delegating, what he’s not delegating, and what’s really getting in the way there. He’s really honest with us, very transparent. I love the power and confidence of leaders that are very transparent about who they are, what they’re struggling with, because it shows to me that they’re willing to evolve, because that’s the key to us really being the leaders that our team needs. Now, here’s the interview with Jordan.
Gene Hammett [2:23]
Hi, Jordan, how are you?
Jordan Erskine [2:24]
Good. How are you, Gene?
Gene Hammett [2:25]
Fantastic. Happy to have you back on the podcast for a second round.
Jordan Erskine [2:30]
This is awesome. Thanks for having me back.
Gene Hammett [2:31]
Well, you were here before and you told us a little bit about your company. So I want to start go back to that. But because people may not have listened to both these episodes. Because what Jordan, tell us about Dynamic Blending?
Jordan Erskine [2:41]
Yeah, so Dynamic Blending is a turnkey contract manufacturer that that me and my business partner Gavin, created in 2015. ish. And really, we look to disrupt the contract manufacturing industry for skincare, personal care, oral care products being produced, because there wasn’t really a company out there, that was a true turnkey solution for people that were looking to get into this market. And so they had to kind of piecemeal, you know, brandings, from this company, and all these different things. And so, we started dynamic blending to just help make the barrier to entry into, you know, skincare, oral care, personal care type products a lot easier for people to get into.
Gene Hammett [3:24]
And you still have roughly about 100 employees.
Jordan Erskine [3:26]
Yes, yep. We just surpassed 100 employees. And yeah, we’re still growing like crazy. You know, for your listeners, we were ranked number 17 on the Inc 5000 list for 2020. So that was pretty good. Obviously.
Gene Hammett [3:40]
That’s incredible. And to still be growing, because it’s it gets harder and harder to climb up the list.
Jordan Erskine [3:45]
Definitely.
Gene Hammett [3:46]
If you could get to 17. Again, it’d be great when?
Jordan Erskine [3:48]
A long shower. Yeah.
Gene Hammett [3:51]
Well, Jordan, this is all about the optimize your time series. So I’ve been talking to a bunch of CEOs people have been listening in to what’s really working, and we talked to you, you’ve got a one two punch on what’s working for you to optimize your time. How would you phrase that one two punch?
Jordan Erskine [4:05]
Oh, I probably phrase it. You know, make sure that you take enough time for yourself away from the menial tasks or, you know, the big extensive projects or things like that, you know, I’m sure a lot of entrepreneurs and business leaders CEOs are kind of like me, where, you know, they’re kind of workaholics and, you know, months and months go by with little to no breaks or anything like that, and it wears on you, and so, a few years ago, I started you know, really trying to focus time on that and, you know, take time for myself and, and that’s been a huge, huge help, not just, you know, from the standpoint of getting tasks done and, and things like that, but also just your mental health. You know, as you’re, as you’re right diving into a lot of these, you know, projects and things like that it takes a toll on you.
Gene Hammett [4:55]
Well, that’s the one part of the one two punch number two is what?
Jordan Erskine [5:01]
Number two is, you know, I like to prepare, at the end of every day for tomorrow, kind of go through meetings go through, you know, projects, what I need to prepare for meetings, you know, things like that, that that would be the second punch.
Gene Hammett [5:15]
Alright, so number one is very self explanatory. But why do you think there’s such a struggle? Is it just the the workaholic kind of approach? And there’s just so much to do, you’re always behind? Or would you say it’s something else?
Jordan Erskine [5:27]
No, I think it is the definitely, it’s definitely the workaholic approach. You know, for you and your listeners, you know, I not only have dynamic blending that we run, that’s, you know, a scaling company that I that I still, you know, go into work every day. But I’ve got 11 Other ventures that we’ve started that are moving forward, and one of them we’re trying to take public this year, so so it’s really just more of that workaholic. And, and, you know, I’m the type of person that doesn’t like to say no to new opportunities, especially if I see like, they could have legs, right. So kind of being an entrepreneur, investor, you know, President, all that type of stuff, when new opportunities come, you know, I’m of the opinion that, hey, let’s figure out if we can make this work. And then I just keep piling onto my plate, one by one. And then, you know, at the end of the day, at the end of the month, whatever it’s, you know, I’ve got all these major major projects from, you know, 10 different companies and, and then you start to panic. You know,
Gene Hammett [6:22]
So when you say planning time away, and I think this is individual for all of us, some people need longer vacation, some people need short weekends, some people need a combination of those throughout the year, what’s been the right mix for you?
Jordan Erskine [6:34]
Yeah, I think, you know, me and me and my family would like to go on little like weekend getaways and stuff here and there. So we like to do that every few months. And I think that really helps but but even just down on the on the micro level, just your day to day stuff. I mean, you know, I usually pencil in one to two hours, depending on the day where I can do whatever I want, you know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be, you know, related to any of my businesses. It could be personal development, it could be watching some master classes, you know, that I’ve been, you know, involved in and things like that, just trying to catch up on but that’s usually what’s worked for me.
Gene Hammett [7:09]
I love that. Most people can’t you know, you’re running one business, and they can’t I look at calendars all the time for my clients, and I look at it, and I see back to back and I go, Oh, I can see why you’re feeling stressed or pressured? And they really resist that one to two hours a day. But how do you do it? Do you actually put it into your schedule? At various times? Or the same time every, every day throughout the week?
Jordan Erskine [7:32]
I schedule the same time every day, I put it in my calendar. So my whole company can see that, you know, 11 to 12, is blocked out some days, that’s 10 to 12. But again, that that just kind of stemmed from, you know, a while ago, I almost had like mini nervous breakdowns because of the stress with just everything bogging me down. And what’s kind of interesting is, you know, you think with all these things going, you know, I have like help from like an executive assistant standpoint, I don’t have an executive assistant right now, you know, and so it’s really just me, and so that weight and stress, and you know, that’s gonna change here soon. But you know, this will kind of go into what we’ll talk about a little bit later, as far as you know, the delegation topic, but the not having executive assistant is obviously a huge deal when you’re trying to build stuff. And so…
Gene Hammett [8:42]
Absolutely, we’ll unpack that in a little bit. So one to two hours a day, and you use it for mostly, you said from learning, or I mean, do you ever just like take a walk? Do you ever just kind of get out of your head and kind of do something else?
Jordan Erskine [8:56]
Yeah, definitely. You know, sometimes I’ll leave the office and go for a drive or something like that, definitely have to clear my head. And, you know, it’s either personal development or, or like you said, you know, taking time to think or ponder or, you know, think of creative things and not necessarily like the menial business tasks that I have to get done every day are things like that,
Gene Hammett [9:15]
You know, I think it’s a good idea, in theory for a lot of people to have this, but I know what happens for most people is they said, Oh, that’s a good time for me to catch up on my email. Yeah, that’s a good time for me to schedule that meeting that I can’t schedule any other time. Have you made rules for yourself, or if you created some kind of mechanism that allows you to use that time for exactly what you want to use it for in advance, instead of letting someone something take over?
Jordan Erskine [9:40]
Not not necessarily a mechanism or just kind of like self discipline and kind of letting your team know like, Hey, I’m off limits from this time and everyone respects that, you know, in very few issues or interruptions or anything like that, you know, it’s been it’s been pretty solid.
Gene Hammett [9:55]
I can certainly appreciate that. Especially if you got 11 companies you’re trying to run and juggle and got all these different things? If you have the ability? Now, I know you talked about the end of the day, I’m kind of curious, before we dive into the actual planning process, what are you doing? What What time? Are you typically ending the day?
Jordan Erskine [10:13]
Oh, geez, I mean, you know, I typically end the office day, around five to six, I got home, I’ve got three little kids, all of them are six years, six years or younger, six years old or younger. So they need attention, you know, and helping the wife and things like that when I get home. And then, you know, usually when the kids go back to bed, that’s when work time starts again, you know, and so usually I’m up till midnight, or one, and that’s when I’m catching up on emails and things like that, you know,
Gene Hammett [10:41]
So does that look like if you have young kids? Are you able to do that from eight to 12? Or nine to 12?
Jordan Erskine [10:46]
Yeah, it’s usually around like nine to 12, nine to one depends on the day, the night.
Gene Hammett [10:52]
Now, I call that the second shift. Do you feel like you, you, you can’t live without that second shift that allows you to catch up and allows you to get ahead?
Jordan Erskine [11:01]
Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, like I said, with as many things going on, and you know, like other CEOs, I’m sure, you know, your brain kind of never turns off, even though you know, you can go read at night or, you know, whatever. But yeah, that’s, that’s what I found to work.
Gene Hammett [11:17]
Jordan. I’ll admit, I, I know that when my head’s going, and if I even read a business, which I love to read, I love to be able to pick up a book at, you know, 8:30 am, and read till 9:30 pm and kind of doze off to sleep, I try to go to sleep with my wife, she gets up really early. And I’m sharing this with you, because I’ve learned that even at 8:30 am, picking up a business book and reading it for 30 minutes or 45 minutes, it gets my head going. Mm hmm. And I can’t do it. Like, every time I do, I’m like, I can’t I can’t, you know, and it’s usually not the reading. It’s usually the work. That’s worse.
Jordan Erskine [11:48]
Right.
Gene Hammett [11:49]
But kudos for you, if you can do that. I is that when you do your end of day planning and that nine to 12?
Jordan Erskine [11:55]
Usually? Yeah.
Gene Hammett [11:56]
I mean, look like just give me a quick overview of what that is?
Jordan Erskine [11:58]
The end of day planning.
Gene Hammett [12:00]
Yep.
Jordan Erskine [12:00]
Yeah, and really, I just run through, you know, I have probably nine different email accounts, I use a pretty cool software called wave box, and wave box, kind of, it’s one dashboard, but all your links, you know, integrates with hundreds of different, not just mail clients, but also like Monday Asana, you know, Slack, you know, things like that, as well. So you have one dashboard, that you’re clicking through all your messages. And for people that have a lot of email, inboxes, and things like that, I would highly recommend something like that. Because once I switched to that, it’s a lot cleaner, it’s easier to manage. And so I run through wave box, and I just go down the list, and you can see your notifications, you know, from every email account, like, Oh, I got to answer these 10 or, or five, or three, or whatever. And you go through one by one and clear those out. And you know, in some days, it takes an hour other days, it takes two hours. You know, so it really just depends.
Gene Hammett [12:53]
Is that typically when you dedicate the second shift to?
Jordan Erskine [12:56]
Usually Yeah, I mean, what I found is because my brain so foggy at the end of the day that I can’t read and concentrate enough, but going through emails and just kind of answering questions or getting people things they need or things like that, you know, is kind of where the end of the day shines, you know.
Commercial [13:14]
Hold on for a second. Before we move into part two of conversation with Jordan, I want to go back and look at what he really was saying in part one. What I heard him saying was, he was working so hard. And he was forgetting to take time for himself, that he’s done a couple of different things that allowed him to do that. One was to set time in his day for just him from 11 to 12, 10 to 12, whatever time may work for you, he sets that time so that he has some space to actually think to to do some learning to maybe even take a drive take a walk. But he really does keep that an honor that not use it to check email, if you will. The other thing he’s doing is getting away on the weekend with a family, these short trips are allowing him to re energize and really come back refreshed. That’s really helping. And it’s no wonder because he’s working really hard. He’s got what I call the second shift in there. The second shift is something that you’re having to deploy because you can’t get it all done. And the day, I get it. But ideally, you want to make sure you create the space so that you don’t have to do the second shift. Unless this is just your natural works out and absolutely works for you. But if you can minimize that and truly just be present for your family, uncharged unplug, and then come back to work ready to go. That’s what I’ve done. And I’ve learned it has worked really well for me. Now, that’s all in part one. And so part two is going to be very interesting today we look at delegation and really what’s getting in the way of Jordan delegating more inside of his company. He’s got a great team. They’re growing. They’re doing a lot of stuff, but delegation is the key. So we share a few things inside there. Can’t wait for you to hear that conversation and some of the details that help him hopefully see through some stories and through a framework that will help you figure out what to do delegate. All right, here’s the second part, the coaching section with Jordan.
Gene Hammett [15:04]
Jordan, I appreciate you sharing that, that strategy. I am excited to switch gears here for a second. Because not only are we looking at what has worked, we’re working, we’re looking at what are you working on? So if I said, What is the number one strategy that you want to improve? to really give you back your time? What do you think that is?
Jordan Erskine [15:22]
Yeah, I mean, I struggle with delegation. You know, I’m that person that that knows my quality of work. And it’s really hard on certain tasks to delegate those out to team members or other C suite members or business partners, things like that. Because, you know, I’m selfish. I know what quality of work I do, you know, and so I know a lot of people probably are similar, you know, that’s kind of a big issue in business is the delegation side, you know, there’s been countless books, obviously, and coaching things about it. But that’s, that’s really what I struggle with the mouse.
Gene Hammett [15:54]
So if you struggle with it, is it really about the quality? Like, if you give it to someone else, they won’t do it the right way? Or the way you would do it?
Jordan Erskine [16:01]
Yeah, I mean, it’s not Yeah, it’s definitely not just the quality, it’s probably more like the trust and things like that. And, you know, that’s, that’s on me, obviously, as a leader, and a president and co founder of dynamic and other companies and things like that. That’s definitely on me.
Gene Hammett [16:17]
You have 100 employees, you’ve got an executive team. So obviously, you’ve delegated some stuff. Yes, definitely worked out pretty well. Yeah, company’s grown. Yeah, company’s going to grow. Okay, just get a baseline here. Because in this coaching session, I’m not here to tell you what to do. I’m not here to to do anything other than help you maybe see it in a different way, and get more clear about how you move forward. You’ve read about this, you’ve done some studies, what is it that you wish was really different in your delegation?
Jordan Erskine [16:45]
Oh, man, that’s a good question. I mean, for me, it really just comes kind of comes down to that mental mental psyche about it, right? It’s like, Hey, I’m kind of given this big task over to, you know, Joe, over here, let’s say that’s been here six months with the company, and he’s highly qualified, you know, he’s, you know, whatever degrees he has things like that. But you know, it’s, it’s more of that mental psyche, for me to kind of hand over certain things in the business, because dynamic blending, you know, it’s my baby. I mean, I grew up from nothing. I mean, it was me and Gavin as ground zero. And in just a few years, we have over 100 employees and things like that.
Gene Hammett [17:19]
So I do remember you saying something in the previous section about nervous breakdown, push it pushing the limits too hard, addicted to the word, when you when I hear those things repeatedly, I typically see the same thing that you’re talking about, you’re holding on to things that you know, you could let go right, I have to ask, because if you’re holding on to things that you could let go?
Jordan Erskine [17:40]
Yeah.
Gene Hammett [17:41]
Are there things out there that aren’t getting done? The only you can do?
Jordan Erskine [17:45]
Oh, not not as much as you think maybe maybe a few things here or there. But in the overall grand scheme of, you know, dynamic blending, if you will, no, there’s not it again,
Gene Hammett [17:56]
You have 11 ventures, which, to be honest with you, I’m a very much focused person, like I’m running one business. And I, you know, I guess we have two in the family, but 11 is a lot. And if you’re not missing things, if you know, you’re about to take a company public, you said, or at least on that path. There’s a lot of work that goes into that, but that isn’t really accountable. And to typical nine to five kind of work.
Jordan Erskine [18:24]
Yeah, definitely. And I think some of the some of the delegation issues I have or are not necessarily about the task, and some of it is more related to the people that would do the test, maybe I don’t trust to get it done. And it’s not that it does kind of go back to the quality of work I would expect from them for this particular task. And so I just keep it myself. And then obviously, we have a hiring problem or something like that. Right. So that opens up a whole nother can.
Gene Hammett [18:51]
There’s a few things that I’ve seen with people that struggle with this. And this is very common, you’re not alone, Jordan, and there’s a lot of people listening in going okay, what’s the solution to this? Like, what do I do?
Jordan Erskine [19:01]
Yeah.
Gene Hammett [19:02]
The first thing is, it’s not about what you do. It’s, it’s really about who you are, and your identity in that company. You had said, it’s my baby. So you are a co founder with Gavin. You see that as a mother with a child? And no one would would would think any different from a child. You know, a mother taking care of a child, the early stages of the business. But guess what, that child grows up that mother typically, you know, not always but that typically sends that that child to, to preschool or to kindergarten or to public school or private school and say they send them off into the world, hoping that someone else will care for that child, just like they did, so that they can work on maybe the next child or they can work on. So there’s a lot of similarities between the children their parent kind of relationship and what you’re building there in the business. That makes sense, right?
Jordan Erskine [19:56]
Definitely makes sense.
Gene Hammett [19:57]
But if mothers can let go of their child, why can’t You let go of more tasks that, you know, that would really allow the business to grow even faster.
Jordan Erskine [20:05]
I don’t know, I think I think some of it stems from, you know, we’re still kind of in that early stage, you know, dynamic blending was just started in 2015. I mean, we really only started manufacturing products in 2017. So in the back of my mind, I’m still kind of fearful on like, making sure the market perceives us as positive and all these things like this. So so like, when I’m talking about, let’s say, like marketing tasks, or marketing messages or things like that, like, I want to make sure from my standpoint, you know, that we have the right message, because, you know, what we do is it’s a complex industry, right? Like, not a lot of people know about manufacturing, let alone like contract manufacturing, and, and finding bottles for customers and designing a brand forum and creating a formula and r&d, and all these things have to pull together. And, you know, my personal issues are more related to kind of that underlying fear, like we’re still in my mind in an infancy stage in a way that, you know, we haven’t really made it huge to where we have like a 400,000 square foot manufacturing facility and 1000s of employees, you know, we’re still small, we’re still trying to make a name for ourselves in a way and you know, even getting on the Inc 5000. So hi, definitely help. But you know, there’s always that fear of like, you know, negative feedback negative, you know, reviews like negative everything for your manufacturing company.
Commercial [21:23]
Let me take a second here to remind you that if you want to keep getting episodes like this, you want to evolve as a leader, then you want to make sure you go to genehammett.com/subscribe. genehammett.com is my home base, the podcast is Growth Think Tank. And if you want to be a visionary leader, if you want to keep learning from all of these amazing founder CEOs that go to genehammett.com/subscribe, so you don’t miss an episode.
Gene Hammett [21:49]
Here’s the thing with fear, when you understand that you’re afraid to let go of something, you can get down to the place where you have choice. A lot of people think that when you are delegating, you don’t have a choice, like I just have to do it. And in for some businesses that are you know, five employees, you may not have a choice, it is you right, and but you do have a choice, you have hired over 100 people, you have hired them probably based on their skill, their attitude, their ability to get things done, they aren’t working, I don’t think they’re probably just collecting a check over there. And you’re doing all the work, right?
Jordan Erskine [22:21]
Yeah.
Gene Hammett [22:21]
So here’s what I do know about those type of employees that really want to shine for you. They want more work, they want to be supported and grow. And in many of the areas that you probably are holding on to, you could very easily find someone in the organization. And I’m going to walk you through a tool I use with clients all the time and just a second, that will help you do it. But it there are people that you can give it to and here’s the thing, it will take longer to give them to get them to do it to learn it to understand the context around and all the stuff that you have with you. But here’s what I got to ask you in the form of question here is, if you took the time to do that, and you build that person up, it would build the trust, right?
Jordan Erskine [23:04]
Definitely.
Gene Hammett [23:05]
And you could eventually give them even more
Jordan Erskine [23:07]
Definitely.
Gene Hammett [23:07]
And they would be more valuable to the organization, they’re probably going to want more money because they’re more valuable.
Jordan Erskine [23:13]
Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah.
Gene Hammett [23:14]
It’s where they’re gonna even enjoy the work. They’re longer. So if you’re pushing people and taking them to their own edge, just like you’ve pushed yourself, you’re actually become a better leader, and not just a doer inside your organization, right?
Jordan Erskine [23:30]
Yep.
Gene Hammett [23:30]
Is that important to you?
Jordan Erskine [23:32]
Yes, that’s definitely important to me.
Gene Hammett [23:34]
Is being being a better leader, is important to you. So that’s really kind of the heart of delegation is getting getting people to play at a higher level than they currently are, by taking things off your plate, so that you can guide them to the next level, and you can focus your energy on something that’s even more value than what that was definitely. Logically, that makes sense. But you still struggle with it. Right?
Jordan Erskine [24:00]
Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s one thing that I’ve identified that I want to work on personally for 2021. You know, because because like I said, as these other ventures that I’m a part of, they’re about to blow up. And I can’t just obviously, you know, I’ve got to hire or delegate, obviously, a lot more to dynamic blending team so that I can step over and Hey, take this company public, or, you know, do this investment stuff, or whatever. So definitely make sense.
Gene Hammett [24:26]
You’re a little bit bigger than most companies want to have this conversation. And this may not be the way you feel. But I had a client not too long ago who came to me because he felt like he was the bottleneck of the company. They made the list. They were 4.2 million when I when they signed on with me, and they doubled this past year, all because he realized if he was the bottleneck that that was limiting their growth and he had to remove himself from certain functions very, very few things, but just those few things freed up his time and allow the company to grow double its size. Yeah. Do you feel like the bottleneck of the company, sometimes when you’re always kind of get your hands on the little pieces that you’re talking about.
Jordan Erskine [25:06]
In some ways, maybe not, you know, like, probably probably the bigger bottleneck for me, if I would have to say I’m a bottleneck on anything would be more on like the marketing side, you know, I’m very passionate about our message, and our vision and communication to customers and the customer experience that it just all has to be perfect. And, you know, there’s certain people that maybe don’t catch on to that right away. And so that may be kind of plays into my Oh, well, maybe I shouldn’t delegate this, because they don’t really understand. And it’s gonna take me, you know, months to get this into their head that this is the direction and this is why we say these things and things like that, right. So that’s kind of…
Gene Hammett [25:41]
I get it, and I got another client just like that, who is a genius at marketing, and he’s got a good team around him. But here’s the thing, I just did a leadership 360 feedback. And here’s what what came out of that conversation, I won’t mention the name of the company, they’re doing really well, they’re still growing. But his his marketing team came back and said, You know, sometimes I can’t get him to approve our next step. And so we have to wait a day or two, or sometimes a week, you know, can’t get permission to move forward. And so he’s running the that should that slice of the business. And this is about a $40 million business, it’s growing fast, too. And he knows that now he’s like, you know what, maybe I could let go of more of this. And so we’ve been working on that as well, when you are integral to usually I see it in sales, not so much in marketing, you are integral to any part of the business, one of the best things that I think you can do as a leader, especially when you have so many ventures is to realize that if you really did get hit by a bus, who would take over those those things, right? For you who would step up, and the earlier you train that the more every time someone does, this is like, you know, I wasn’t sure who would do it. But soon as I did identify, as soon as I did identify someone got Tongue Tied there, that it was a allowed us to really go faster than what we were doing. Any questions on that so far?
Jordan Erskine [26:59]
No, I think, to your point, you know, that’s kind of where a good succession plan comes into place for most organizations, you know, in my previous companies I worked for, they didn’t really have good succession planning, and they had, you know, 1700 to 2000 employees, and not really any succession plan. And so that, that is another thing that, you know, the C suite at dynamic has kind of identified for 2021 is heavy succession planning, and, you know, all areas across the business for that exact reason, so that I…
Gene Hammett [27:28]
And I get that you’re working on it, here’s the, here’s the thing I would share with you, and I call this the time audit matrix, I don’t have a piece of paper in front of you. But if you did, you could draw two lines, like you’re gonna make three columns, we’re not gonna have time to go through this today. But I’m gonna give you the headlines of this and kind of walk you through it. But in the three columns, the first column would be what are the things that you’re doing all the things and that I mean, all the meetings, all the stuff that you do the reviews, the projects, you look at your task list, you look at the things you’re responding and emails, and you write those things down. And it takes a long time for someone like 11 ventures and whatnot. And it’s, you know, you’re probably gonna get tired of writing, but here’s the thing he will, the longer that list is, the more it shows you how important this deal definitely. And in the middle column, if you go back and look at it, and you have something like marketing review campaigns or something like that, who would you ask to do that? If you were hit by a bus or you were put on bed rest, you put a name next to it in the third column, you just go ahead and put down what is the skill set or mindset that that person has that makes you choose that person, I’m not even asking you to go do it. But I’m asking you to do the exercise of identifying the task, identify the person, identify the skill set or mindset. And then for you to step back and look at that and go, what would be the easiest thing for me to let go of you, you might find five or 10 things in there. You might find three, every time I’ve had them do it. What do you think you’d find if you if you were able to let go of those three things or so?
Jordan Erskine [28:55]
Oh, man, like specific tasks? You mean?
Gene Hammett [28:58]
I’m not saying with? What What do you think you’d feel if you weren’t able to let go of three things that you were holding on to that you allow someone else to take over?
Jordan Erskine [29:06]
I mean, it would probably be a little tricky. At first, obviously, we’ll get what we just talked about, but no, definitely I think I would I feel nine day different. I think you know, and just you know, delegating other tasks throughout the business over the years, like finance and accounting type stuff. I mean, that’s definitely helped you way.
Gene Hammett [29:22]
Delegated before, it might not have been easy, but it worked out eventually is the thing eventually. But I think that it’s gonna be smooth. It’s not going to be perfect. It worked because you stayed with it. And now you’ve moved into other stuff to wrap this up, Jordan, I mentioned that the story about the client who went from like 4.2 to double 7.8, I think is what he actually went to this past year. And as we were working together, what we really realized was he was reviewing the work of his team, not in marketing, but it’s in an accounting fashion. He’s not an accountant, but he works in that area. And he was reviewing all this stuff before it went to the client and he was spending half his time doing it and I asked him a very basic question of if it weren’t you who would it be? He didn’t have the answer. But he said these two names would probably be, it’d be one of these two, what actually happened was it became both of those, both of those two people were asked to rise up to the next level, they both had the capabilities. They both had some resistance to do it. I will say that, but after eight months, he said, it’s running extremely well, in screamingly smoothly. I can’t believe I didn’t do this before. I don’t want to go back because I know I can work on the other parts of the business that need me. And that’s the story I leave you with. Does that? Does that kind of give you a perspective? That’s not in your world?
Jordan Erskine [30:39]
Yeah, definitely. Appreciate that.
Gene Hammett [30:42]
All right. We’re gonna wrap up today. Any questions you have on this delegation thing?
Jordan Erskine [30:46]
Oh, thanks. So this has been great, informative. I’ve enjoyed the discussion.
Gene Hammett [30:50]
You got a little smile on your face? Is it been helpful?
Jordan Erskine [30:52]
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Gene Hammett [30:53]
I leave you with this operating from a place of fear usually doesn’t produce the best result holding on to what you have. Because you’re afraid that someone else can’t do it the way the way you do it us perfect. Quite a bit. I’m not sure perfect is the right word. I think maybe they you think that way, especially in what you’re doing. But marketing is not a science of perfect, it’s a science of, let’s try some stuff and see if it works, right. And then let’s be able to be able to tune into it and make it work, eventually, until we get it as right as we can. And then then it keeps evolving. So there’s never really a perfect, especially in marketing and in many other areas of life. But I just want to remind you that you said that you’re operating from a place of fear. And if you operate it from a place of courage, which, despite the fear, you’re able to move forward, you would be a different leader. Does that make sense?
Jordan Erskine [31:42]
Does that make sense.
Gene Hammett [31:43]
Do you think that would help you in the organization grow to that next level?
Jordan Erskine [31:46]
Yes.
Gene Hammett [31:47]
With you being a courageous leader, not not playing the fear, fearful leader and going in there so that you know, I gotta hold on to this because this is this is this is gotta be right. But to be able to rise people up and develop the emerging leaders around you. That’s really what delegation is. There’s so many things I didn’t get into with you and unpack but I want to make sure we created some good content for you and hopefully a shift. Do you feel like you’ve you’ve gotten something that you can go with?
Jordan Erskine [32:12]
Yeah, definitely. I think I think I got a lot of good ideas. And I’m going to try this exercise as well. Yeah. All right.
Gene Hammett [32:20]
Perfect.
Jordan Erskine [32:20]
To see how it turns out show my team.
Gene Hammett [32:22]
Jordan, thank you for being here on the show.
Jordan Erskine [32:23]
Thanks, Gene. Appreciate it.
Gene Hammett [32:25]
So I’m going to wrap up here just for a second. What Jordan experienced today was something that you probably have experienced to holding on to anything out of fear is probably not what you really want to be seen as a leader, you really want to be a courageous leader, you want to be able to identify people that can step up that want to step up, and you want to lead them to the place where you can move as a leader and develop the company in a way that you can focus on the highest value stuff and those around you are supporting you and they feel great about it. That’s the kind of leadership that I deal with my clients. It’s all about creating ownership across the culture. And if you have any questions about that, make sure you go to the free resources we genehammett.com you can actually schedule time with me if you want to talk about what your next step is, is a leader becoming a visionary, influential, competent leader, instead of genehammett.com. When you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of Growth Think Tank as always encouraged. Well see you next time.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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