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In this episode, Samantha and Leon unpack why delegation can often fall flat, and the mindset and systems shifts that will free you to lead like a CEO. You’ll discover how to close the trust gap, why SOPs are the secret to scaling, and how to empower your team to think like owners, not order-takers. It’s not about just offloading tasks, it’s about letting go of control, installing structure, and stepping out of operator mode for good.
Get ready for mindset shifts, practical fixes, and fresh perspective on what it really takes to move from doer to leader.
Remember, scaling isn’t about more hustle. It’s about better leadership. If you’re tired of being the bottleneck in your business, this conversation will help you shift from overwhelmed operator to strategic CEO.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- The trust gap and why “no one can do it like me” is keeping you stuck (04:40)
- Why SOPs are the actual path to more time, better results, and scalable systems (05:51)
- How to give your team the clarity they need to meet your standards without micromanagement (09:39)
- Breaking free from the illusion of control so you can finally lead instead of manage (13:09)
- Tools and tricks for creating procedures your team can use and actually enjoy, and why AI makes it 10x easier (17:19)
- The power of giving context, outcomes, and meaning behind the work so your team stops guessing and starts owning (19:56)
- Audit your team: problem solvers vs problem bringers (21:43)
WANT TO EXPLORE WHAT’S POSSIBLE FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
If you would like to brainstorm a plan to explore what’s possible for you, I invite you to book in for a Scale Session.
In this quick 15-minute call we’ll dive into…
• Reviewing your niche, offer, and pricing to map out your immediate growth potential…
• Evaluating your marketing, sales, and delivery systems to pinpoint what’s working and what’s not…
• Identifying the primary bottleneck that’s holding you back from growing and scaling…
• Build a 3-step growth and scale plan rooted in positioning, profit, and simplicity
Click Here to book your no-charge Scale Session
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Instagram @thesamriley
CONNECT WITH LEON FLITTON
Instagram @leonflitton
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TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:00
If you’ve got a team, but you’re still replying to client emails, fixing your tech glitches and staying up late to finish that one last thing, it’s not scale, it’s self sabotage in disguise. I’m Samantha Riley, and welcome to the business growth lab, where visionary entrepreneurs come to experiment, evolve and expand what’s possible.
Welcome to this week’s episode of Business Growth Lab. I’m your co host, Samantha Riley, and joined as I am every Thursday with my partner in business and life, Leon Flitton. Leon, what a week it’s been.
Leon Flitton 0:39
It’s been crazy, apart from the fact that right now I’m having to cuddle the dog so he doesn’t bark at us, chewing the cables. It’s alright. We’ll be fine. We’ve got this.
Samantha Riley 0:52
Well, it’s been quite interesting. It’s very windy here in Sydney today, and he’s just been barking and going crazy all day, so we had to just squeeze this in. It’ll get done. We’ll do it. We can make this work.
Leon Flitton 1:06
It’s okay. We love you, George.
Samantha Riley 1:10
What’s something great that’s happened to you this week that you’d like to celebrate? Because I think on another podcast just earlier, I said it feels like the world’s tilted off balance and everything’s going crazy with data breaches and crazy political unrest across the world. A bit of celebrate something fun.
Leon Flitton 1:31
Well, I’m actually quite happy. Got to hang out with George the dog, so that’s been great as well.
Samantha Riley 1:35
Yes, we’ve had lots of fun with George. Last week he hit, well, his mum and dad don’t listen to this podcast, so it’s okay. We don’t have to keep this secret. But we worked with one of our clients and did a seven-day recall challenge, and we went from him not even flinching when we called him, to now he comes when we call him every single time. And I think that’s super cool.
Leon Flitton 2:00
Which is amazing, because, yeah, doesn’t like come back to you. It can be a little bit, a bit worrying sometimes, especially, run off through the park or somewhere.
Samantha Riley 2:09
Well, I was more worried when he decided he was going to take off across the road.
Leon Flitton 2:13
Yeah, that wasn’t great. I’m so glad that his mum and dad don’t listen to this.
Samantha Riley 2:19
Well, hang on a minute. When he ran across the road, they were still here.
Leon Flitton 2:23
Yeah, they were, yeah, but I may have let him out the door. So whoops.
Samantha Riley 2:28
Oh my goodness, how did I intentional part of the story? On last week’s episode, we talked about making the shift from operator to CEO, and this episode really hit a chord, because quite a few people reached out. And we don’t always hear from listeners every single episode, but we had a lot of people reach out. So we have decided to add to this topic, and we’re going to talk about the real reason you’re still doing everything yourself, even if you have a team, because this is a huge challenge for so many people. They think that when they get a team, everything will get easier. And what generally happens is, and I’ve seen this happen time and time again, entrepreneurs and business owners hiring someone to take work off their plate and not realizing that if they don’t have certain things in place, that it actually adds even more work. Yeah, I think it’s really important to talk about this topic today.
Leon Flitton 3:32
Yeah, and you’re right. We’ve seen it quite a few times, and it is a, quite a bit of a confronting process to make that change into the CEO mindset, but we’ll come back to more of that a bit later in the episode.
Samantha Riley 3:44
Absolutely. So if you can relate to any of these, then this episode is for you. Maybe you’ve got a team, but you’re still the bottleneck. Maybe you are still doing and are buried in the tasks that you swore and promised to your accountability buddy that you’d hand off months ago, or maybe you think that it feels easier to do it yourself than delegate. And I think that all of us, at some point fall into one of these, but we can’t live in any of these.
Leon Flitton 4:22
Yeah, yeah, this is definitely not stepping into your CEO power
Samantha Riley 4:26
Exactly. So I think it’d be a really great place to start talking about the reasons behind this, because not delegating is a symptom. Let’s talk about what is happening at the core.
Leon Flitton 4:40
Yeah. So can I kick it off? Because I just, this is something that I’ve come across a lot, yeah, and I may be guilty myself of this as well. Yeah, let’s call it the trust gap. So when you think about it, you just don’t trust that others will do as good a job as you or fast enough. Or maybe you might not actually think it’s a trusting but you might be going you just think you can do it better than anyone else, so therefore you should do it
Samantha Riley 5:08
well, that is still a trust gap, right? If you think that you can do it better than anyone else, that’s not trusting anyone else.
Leon Flitton 5:15
Yeah, yeah. So that’s probably an obvious sign that you’re sitting in the wrong place, absolutely. So that probably is something that is triggering another form of you sitting in the wrong place, which is delegating. So what you’re probably not doing is you’re not, you don’t have a framework for delegation. So that might look like you’re trying to hand a task off to your team, but they don’t know what actually needs to be achieved, what needs to look like. And I’m thinking that you probably don’t have a SOP for that.
Samantha Riley 5:51
And by SOP, you’re not saying a sock. You’re saying a SOP, standard operating procedure, which is a word, or words that generally have entrepreneurs getting all glassy eyed. But in actual fact, it’s something that gets me excited. You would know, Leon, I’m constantly saying to our team, every single team meeting, every single week, do we have a process for that? Has someone followed the process? Has a process been written for that? Are we following the process? Because I know that for everything that you have a process for, you can hand it on to anyone. And I’m super lucky and grateful that accidentally, my very first job was in McDonald’s, yeah, back in the heyday of McDonald’s, not like it is now, but back when it used to be super busy, it just was a different vibe to what it is now. The team was a lot larger, and we had a procedure or a process for every single thing in the store, even like right from the second a customer walked in the door, we had the seven steps of service, and it was exactly how you greeted that person. And we had procedures for every single thing, from the moment someone stepped foot in the store to the moment they stepped out of the store. And why I say I’m grateful for that is because as a 16 year old, I just assumed this, that that’s how every business ran. I’ve since learned it doesn’t, but I still use this, and have used this in every single one of our businesses. And I have managed to work myself out of multiple businesses and have my staff purely running it without me. I don’t want to say that I was retired, because I certainly wasn’t, but there were businesses where I could show up for three hours a week, and I only showed up because I wanted to. I didn’t even need to. So these procedures and processes are what’s going to give you freedom in your business, which is why everyone goes into business in the first place. I’ve never met anyone that says I’ve left my job so I can go and do a business and work 80 hours, 100 hours a week like I’ve never met that person yet, and I don’t ever expect to either.
Leon Flitton 8:13
Hey, just while we’re talking about socks, not socks, I was gonna say, let’s put a different slant on it. From a customer’s point of view, and my PT is gonna not be very happy with the saying this, but when I’m traveling, sometimes when I don’t know, like, you know, the surrounding food places, when you’re really hungry, you can go to McDonald’s because you know that their processes will be safe, food regulations, all that kind of thing. So you can get something to eat and not get sick, because the last thing you’re traveling is to be getting sick 100% so from a customer point of view, you can see how that made the product better. And that was something for me, anyway, that I knew that McDonald’s had the right quality.
Samantha Riley 8:58
Yeah, or it wasn’t even quality. It’s just that you knew what you were going to get. You knew that they followed a process, and you knew what you were going to get. So your client or your customer absolutely knows what to expect. So that delegation framework or that and that standard operating procedure, and they work hand in hand, you absolutely need to have it, because if you don’t, if you’re constantly saying, Oh, my team can’t get it right. And sometimes they won’t, because we’re all human, but if it’s a constant that you’re saying, your team can’t get it right, then I’m going to guess it’s a you thing, not a team thing.
Leon Flitton 9:39
Yeah, yeah. Following on from having the delegation and the SOPs and, you know, the way you go about that. The other thing is, when you say done right, for example, if that’s living in your head and you haven’t actually explained it, yes, explain, set an expectation of what is supposed to look like or what it’s supposed to be achieved, then chances are they’re not aiming for anything.
Samantha Riley 10:00
Something that I remember saying to you years ago, because you used to say, we need to get this right. It needs to be at such and such standard. And I remember saying to you, after a couple of months, you’ve been saying that on the team call for a couple of months now, do the team actually know what you mean by that?
Leon Flitton 10:17
Yes, we may have to revisit that. Yeah, that was on me.
Samantha Riley 10:24
No, no, no, I wasn’t pointing the finger then. I was purely saying that we can get into really assuming that other people know what your expectation is, or what does done right mean, or what does high standard mean, like, what are the actual outcomes? Like, done right? Means that you need to have five of these in this row, and you have to have ticked this box so people actually can look at what you have delegated and gone, oh, now I understand I’m not doing procedure number like six and seven, and that’s, that’s why it’s not getting done to my standard.
Leon Flitton 11:07
Yeah. Well, it could look like that, done right is, let’s knock it over before finish time. 100%, which could be like a bunch of words on a page in a big blob, or it could be done right, as in, formatted correctly with the right font, the right size, the right layout, the right headline, all those things. So what they think is in their head, and what’s in your head could be completely different, and more than likely, it is.
Samantha Riley 11:29
Yeah, I can give you an example of this. I’m very big on visuals, and I guess as a dance teacher and choreographer, this is something that was really important in that business. Everything had to be in its place, from the placing of the students on stage to their costume to the props to everything. So I’m very visual. And my team, and even the people that are in my time on my design team, even my project managers will pick up. Don’t even show that to Sam, the font size is wrong. It has, it’s not consistently got this spacing. Something has been put in caps in this particular font when it’s not meant to be used, or this is in lower case where in that font it’s meant to be in caps. And my team all know it really well, and they can pick it straight away. But that’s not by chance. It’s because we have it written down. It’s a procedure. This is what my brand is meant to look like. The text always in the is in this hex code with this size and this space between the text and so forth. And it’s interesting, because every now and again, I do need to get other freelancers or teams to do something in a hurry for us, and when it comes back, it really makes me so grateful for my team, because I’m like, yep, yep, they’ve done what I asked, but it just doesn’t have those finishing touches on it, that unspoken standard that I’ve set.
Leon Flitton 13:02
Absolutely does, and I can vouch for that.
Samantha Riley 13:09
There’s something I want to mention here as well, and that’s control equals safety. And this is really important to understand, because when you do everything and when you don’t hand it off. It gives you a false sense of control, and especially in times that are a little harder, or when cash flow feels tight, trying to remain in control of more can feel safer. However, this is also what’s going to hold you back. So the reason I’m saying this is like, like, we need to be really aware of that, that that control equals safety, because, in actual fact, it’s the opposite. We need to let go of things to create the space to grow, to expand, to scale, and we can’t do it when we’re over, controlling everything. So that really goes back to the trust issue that we were chatting about earlier.
Leon Flitton 14:12
Yeah, this can also be really bad for your team, because it almost like hobbles them. It’s like very not autonomous. It doesn’t let them think. And actually, you know, try and move through it. They stop thinking, they just pull back. So instead of moving forward, start pulling back on you, so they become even less effective. So it has a negative effect on it.
Samantha Riley 14:32
Yeah, but let’s talk about some shifts. I think the operator or the Operator mode is your job is to check things off, but we need to shift into CEO mode, and it’s to to build and to support and help people, help our team grow so that they can check things off. Yeah, being in the Operator mode means that you’re too busy to doctor. Document to create the procedures, to create the processes. But as the CEO, or to shift into that CEO mode, you need to understand you’re too busy not to. Now, what’s really interesting is here, is that it’s, that your job as the CEO to realise that things aren’t documented, but it doesn’t mean that you have to actually document them? Yeah, that’s and I think that this is actually what catches people out. Oh, I’m too busy to create a procedure for that. Well, if your team’s doing it, get them to create the procedure, get them to stress test the procedure, get another member of your team to go through the procedure and figure out if it works, and be in that CEO mode and just say, right, have we got the procedure? Has it been stress tested? Let’s do it together. Let’s see that it works.
Leon Flitton 15:52
Surely that will get more buy in as well. If your team’s part of the whole process, they’re going to be way more invested in it.
Samantha Riley 15:59
Yeah, I think what’s interesting with our team just recently is that, because they are creating a lot of procedures for us right now, what they actually realised is how manual a lot of it is. And I was just chatting to one of our team members this morning, and she’s like, oh, yeah, that wasn’t working for me. It wasn’t streamlined enough. That’s so good, because they’re in charge of the procedures, all of a sudden it’s like, oh, this is too hard. Let’s stream like this. So it’s actually created this knock on effect that they have gone ahead and changed the procedure because they realised it was too …
Leon Flitton 16:40
Well, I think was too clunky for them. It just wasn’t smooth and flowing. Yeah, actually, we used to, when we first started with the getting the SOPs, you know, the process is going and recording them, I think I used to say something the lines of fast, friendly and efficient. So fast because, you know, I like things done fast, because that’s always good. You can do more stuff then, and friendly, as in, easy to use like can you actually make it work. And efficient. Because I don’t like wasting time with things you don’t need to. So hence automations and, you know, or removing steps, you don’t even need things like that.
Samantha Riley 17:19
Let’s talk about fun, because most people don’t put fun together with a procedure when you talk about fun. I think that having all of your procedures as big, huge documents that are all text heavy don’t feel very fun. Can you talk about some of the ways that we could record procedures so they were more fun?
Leon Flitton 17:41
Yeah. Well, you know, screen recording is great, because when you can actually see something happening, and some of them actually have voiceover as well. So that makes sense, because otherwise you don’t quite know to look for on the screen, but it’s kind of fun for the team to record them as well, because they’re recording, we’re not recording they’re recording them and, you know, and that’s that’s much better than just like, typing a whole bunch of text out.
Samantha Riley 18:05
Yeah, totally Yeah. Screenshots, Looms. All of these are great. Let’s talk about AI, because this has changed the game for recording procedures. Our team uses scribe, if I’ve got that correct, yep. And it means that when what they do is they put Scribe on in the background and just do a task, and what scribe does is records what you’re doing and puts it into a procedure, and I believe, with screenshots and all sorts of things.
Leon Flitton 18:39
Yep, yep. Does the whole lot for you. It’s like gamifying it.
Samantha Riley 18:44
Yeah. How many times can we do this? Oh, let’s do another one. Yeah. So it creates procedures, it creates checklists, it gives screenshots, it puts in URLs. And the reason you need all this is not just so that it’s recorded, but imagine one of your team has an accident and they can’t come back to work tomorrow, or you have a team member off on vacation for a week, or you have a team member leave and you need to train the next team member. You don’t want to be doing that yourself, so that’s why they need to be able to just jump in and follow along on your procedures.
Leon Flitton 19:26
Yeah. And the good thing about this is it actually makes it like so that you could train someone that didn’t even know anything about any of your systems or where to find things. You know, because the way it works, you go to this place and you get that, then you go this, and do this, and then make sure you tick this, or whatever the process is, step by step. So it’s quite a robust way of doing it, and I think it’s really good.
Samantha Riley 19:56
Yeah. The second thing that I want to talk about is just going back to this done well piece. I think this is really important, because you need to give people context. Without context, it’s really difficult to learn something or to implement something, so don’t just assign your tasks. Share the outcome that you’re working towards. Share what the success criteria are. Share the outcome of what the task looks like when it’s done well, share the success criteria, something like, if it’s done well, you’ll likely achieve this outcome. If it’s done really well, you’ll see x, y, z, and share why it matters when you don’t do it well, this is what happens when you do do it well. This is what happens. And that means that, you know, whatever it is, we sign more clients, you get a pay rise. Depends what language we’re talking, you know, give context to what it is.
Leon Flitton 20:54
Yeah, I was going to say as well that if you relate this back to, you know, being in the CEO space, the leader, one of the things you need to be aware of is actually making sure that you’re taking everyone along for the ride with you. And I mean, what I mean by that is, are you not sharing the big picture and where these things fit in and what the outcomes are, they’re not going to be along on the ride with you. So by, you know, defining what is done well that fits into the bigger picture of what you’re trying to achieve. So I think that’s a really important piece to be in for the, as a CEO, to be moving towards those, you know, these outfits from the big picture. You’re sharing it. You’re part of the team. We’re all doing this together. And this is why this bit’s so important. And like you said before, why it matters.
Samantha Riley 21:43
Totally. Another practical fix that you can implement now is to audit your team. Who solves problems in your team versus who brings problems? Because if you have people who are constantly bringing problems, you either need to upskill them or move them along, or suggest they move along, because it’s very difficult to grow on scale. If you’ve got someone that’s just constantly bringing you problems, you need a team that solves problems. And what I love about our team is that it’s not just one person solving a problem. I love it when they send me a message that says, This person from the design team, this person from the podcast team, this person from the video team, and, you know, this person from the admin team, have all got together on a meeting and sort of had a look at one problem, and how can we fix it? Not just from a little tiny let’s just fix this issue, but we’ve really helped our team to understand that everyone impacts someone else, that a little issue doesn’t stand alone. So I love it. They all come together and solve problems together, and I’m really proud and grateful of our team for doing that.
Leon Flitton 22:57
Yeah, and I think that’s the way it started. I think it’s actually evolved a little bit, because now, oh yes, yeah, they come to us and they go, we need to try this, because we will make this better, yeah, which I think is great.
Samantha Riley 23:11
Yeah. But we’ve created the space for that as well. And I know that there’s a lot of people actually, I can give you an example. This is an example from a corporate perspective. So not a small business, but we often have a bit of a giggle that we read a job ad from one of the top 10 corporates in Australia that constantly has in every single job ad, we want you to be entrepreneurial, and we’re like, No, you don’t. You want a pen pusher that’s going to do what you say. That’s not entrepreneurial.
Leon Flitton 23:50
A box ticking person, that’s what you want.
Samantha Riley 23:54
Exactly. But we do want a team that thinks like that, yeah. So yeah.
Leon Flitton 24:00
And I think that’s, you know, when we hide it to the team members, that’s something that we actually considered to make sure that they fit in with that. And that’s kind of the way they operated. So if you go back to the, you know, who solves problems and who brings problems, and you won’t always know, but you should always do your best when you’re interviewing them to try and work out which one are they.
Samantha Riley 24:18
Well, we do have it in our interview process, and maybe we’ll discuss that in another episode, because I think it’s a bit clever. Like you said, you can’t get it right every time, but we have managed to get it right most of the time. Yes, yeah. And I think the fourth practical thing that you can implement now is to install a feedback loop so team meetings or weekly catch ups or stand ups or whatever you want to call them, will catch gaps early. They’ll build accountability, and they will stop you having to micromanage if you know what’s going on, because as long as you know. What’s going on, you can sort of put it out of your head.
Leon Flitton 25:04
That’s keeping it in the, that’ll be the what, the important, not urgent, quadrant moment as well.
Samantha Riley 25:09
Yes, like that. That’s where we want to be. So big takeaways from today’s episode. You’re not scaling if you’re in survival mode, the more you cling to doing all of the tasks, all of the jobs, the more you’re going to stall your own growth. You’re going to hold yourself back, and it’s going to feel like you’re running a business in a pair of handcuffs. So you do need to let go to grow. You need to teach, empower and lead your team, and you need to go from running your business to leading it. Anything I’ve missed there, Leon?
Leon Flitton 25:46
I just want to reiterate the empowering your team part, because I think that will help you so much.
Samantha Riley 25:53
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s amazing when you think no one can do it as good as I can to flipping it to they do it so much better than me, because I don’t even enjoy doing that. Like, let someone else whose zone of genius is in the stuff that you hate to do, like, Stop holding on to the stuff you hate, and let someone else take it off your plate, and someone who is much better at it than you, and who actually loves it and wants to take ownership of it for themselves.
Leon Flitton 26:24
And most importantly, you need more CEO time. Protect the founder’s energy.
Samantha Riley 26:29
Absolutely. That came up in our group call today, didn’t I, when we talked about, what’s your lessons this week? It came up in multiple different phrases, but the theme was, we need more CEO time to have more creativity. Absolutely.
Thanks for joining us this week. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with someone that you know would get value, and we look forward to seeing you next Tuesday on another episode of Business Growth Lab.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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