#47: Do Better Work by Working Smarter with Emily Morgan, Founder & CEO of Delegate Solutions
Are your business tasks piling up?
Making you desperate to offload to-do’s to someone who can competently and confidently step in to handle them?
In this episode, Emily Morgan, Founder & CEO of Delegate Solutions shares how to do better work by working smarter.
Emily also shares:
What flex work is and how she uses the model in her own business.
Why not handing work off can be detrimental to your business structure.
How creating something extra special within her own company benefited company culture in a massive way.
It’s a new year, and time for you to take some of your work off your plate!
Learn more about Emily’s company here: https://www.delegatesolutions.com or follow them on Instagram @delegatesolutions.
Check out my new free new training on www.yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond.
Listen to the Show:
Laura (00:00):
In this episode, I'm chatting with Emily Morgan, who's founder and CEO of delegate solutions. And she offers a premium executive virtual assistant service, very much virtual hybrid. And when she's helping these high-level entrepreneurs find the perfect match for their ideal assistant, she has incredible insight on how to actually do better work by working smarter. And this is a year that if we have learned anything, it is all about working smarter instead of working harder because we don't have the capacity to work harder as entrepreneurs. We're trying to be homeschoolers and oversee our kids virtual school. And we're trying to make sure that we're starting on time and that we're meetings, zoom meetings back to back to back. And that we are, you know, multitasking. We get new notifications from our kids' school all the time about what it is that's different about today. That was different from last week. That's also different from next week.
(01:04):
And we're realizing that our capacity as business owners, as entrepreneurs is shrinking our patients for all the different things that we need to be responsible for is decreasing. And Emily's going to talk a lot about in this episode, how to actually work smarter so that we don't just burn ourselves out, going into this new year and having a lot ahead of us that could still be a challenge as a continuation of 2020. So up next to Emily Morgan, I know she's going to be so, so insightful in terms of just being able to work smarter so we don't have to work harder up next, Emily Morgan.
(01:49):
So here's the challenge: so many entrepreneurs dream of leading a life of impact by creating a multimillion dollar brand, but only a tiny percentage of businesses actually scale to that point. On this podcast, we speak openly authentically about what it takes to scale your business. Following the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts, and leaders, looking at the behind the scenes of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned. My name is Laura Meyer and I'm your host. I'm a serial entrepreneur, wife and mom to three. I love talking all things business, especially digging into the mindset and strategies of scaling joyfully to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond. Let's go!
(02:27):
Hey everybody and welcome back. I am here with Emily Morgan and not only is she a seven figure business owner herself, but she helps other seven figure business owners and eight figure and nine figure business owners work much more efficiently by actually outsourcing much of their day-to-day tasks with flex work, which we'll talk about in a little bit. She's the founder and CEO of Delegate Solutions and Emily, I'm just so excited for you to be here today. Thank you so, so much.
Emily (02:57):
So excited meet you and be here. Thank you.
(03:00):
Yeah. And so you help founders and CEOs scale their businesses by actually offloading things on their plate that are weighing them down and how can actually delegation help somebody who's in a leadership position, scale their businesses? Like what are some of the common things that you see amongst those types of entrepreneurs that you think our listeners could really benefit from?
Emily (03:28):
Yeah. I think that it's a common anxiety or fear from most entrepreneurs when it comes to handing things off. There's a lot of different reasons for that. We actually built bottleneck diagnostic because what happens is you become the bottleneck in your business for multitude of reasons. But, you know, we hear things like my work is too complicated to handoff. It's easier for me to do it that explain it. I tried to do it before and it didn't work. And those are really just excuses. I think everyone goes into delegation with the best intentions, but it's like scar tissue that develops over time that, you know, it becomes, we say it's a mixture of art and science as well as the discipline to actually do it.
Laura (04:09):
Yes, yes. So let's try this on. I've tried it before I've delegated, before it ended up back on my lap, it was twice as much work. What would you say to somebody who, you know, has that objection with delegation?
Emily (04:26):
That there are ways to make sure that doesn't happen again, I think is the biggest advice that I would give. So just because it didn't work one time doesn't mean it's not going to work the next time. And you as the leader, you know, time is the most important thing that you have. And the more time and energy you can devote to growing the bigger you can grow the team and the company, but when you're spending all your time, not letting go of things, you're stalling your own growth. So for us, it's about, like I said, the art of it, which is really about identifying the most impactful things to let go of and then the science of it, which is the process by which you hand something off to someone else to get done.
Laura (05:05):
And so when we think about this handing off of activities, you specialize in something called flex work. What, what is that, In a nutshell?
Emily (05:14):
Flex work is, is a model of a different way to work. So flex work is all about having some flexibility around when and where work gets done. So we are, for example, a flex work company, because our employees all work from home. We've been remote for 13 years. Like that's never going to change for us and our team, while they're available during business hours, they have the flexibility to run errands or, you know, they don't have to ask for permission to leave and go do different things. As long as they're hitting their goals, they're responsive during business hours, you know, we're, we're open to how and when the work's getting done.
Laura (05:51):
And do you find that that has increased for many of the companies that you've worked with since the pandemic hit in early 2020, we're recording this now at the end of 2020, did you find that many more companies embraced that mindset that you already had?
Emily (06:09):
Well, the remote work, yeah. I mean, for 13 years it was like me on a soapbox pounding out why this works so well for people and being a living proof that it's possible, especially with, well, we do, but the pandemic, what it, what it did beyond normalizing remote work is it created this, you know, synergy that companies had to be able to manage staff differently. And they were fine. You know, you're finding people are as productive if not more productive, but I think it's also fair to say, like, this is not a normal glimpse into flex work or remote work. Like this is people we're all just doing the best we can, right. To get the job done and stay productive. So I think it's important that we don't normalize this as, hey, this is like how it should work because we're all struggling
Laura (07:01):
For sure. And when you say you got on the soapbox, in terms of like, this is, this is possible, this is doable. What are some of the things that you found yourself advising your own clients on in that area?
Emily (07:14):
Well, remote work as a retention strategy, right? So what kind of flexibility can you build into it to help keep your employees around longer? What are some of the protocols that you want to put in place to ensure that people can be successful? Because it's really not for everyone, not everybody is great at or prefers to work from home. So understanding what your employees need in particular and how you can support that as a business,
Laura (07:43):
Any kind of tips or tricks for somebody who's just like, oh, I all of a sudden had my employees that were right next to me all day and now they're remote and I feel so disconnected to them. Like, how do you connect with your own team?
Emily (07:59):
I feel, I feel for that group of people, we went into the pandemic pretty much business as usual. I mean, my team is mostly moms. Moms were probably one of the most impacted groups. So it's impacted us that way. We work with small business. It's impacted us that way. But you know, we have, from the beginning, from day one, everything is set up as a remote experience. So one of the things we rolled out was a remote work protocol, which is just the agreement of what remote work looks like, what the expectations are around. hey, you want to look great waist up, but maybe you're wearing pajamas on the bottom, but you know, that's cool. Or if we call you on the phone, you need to pick it up because it's important. If a client's calling you and you're at the grocery store, don't pick up the phone. So like we have a protocol that we built and we have that available to share if anyone needs a copy of it, but it just sets the expectations. So that everyone's on the same page as a starting point.
Laura (08:58):
So good. And then, so let's say that people actually do want to wear pajamas on the bottom half. Is that something that like you encourage or do you, is it sort of like a, don't ask, don't tell type of situation?
Emily (09:10):
You could say waist up, I'll tell you I'm wearing pajama bottoms about right now, actually, because I wear jeans to go vote and there's no way I'm sitting in my desk in jeans all day.
Laura (09:21):
That's so funny. I am wearing jeans, but they have the stretchy top because I had a baby four and a half months ago. So I will be wearing those for a very long time, as much as long as I can. And when you were growing your own company, it's really interesting. You talking about how you serve other high level business owners with the tasks that are weighing them down. What were some of the things that we do down as you were growing your business and scaling it to the seven figure mark and beyond, and how did you ever come? Some of those channels?
Emily (09:49):
I think the biggest impact we've had in the business and has been in the last year where we created what we call success managers and packs, and we follow EOS. And we built out our accountability chart so that we had small groups of team members that were reporting into a manager that manager's ultimately responsible for the account success and the team's success. And not just like, took so much off my plate. I mean, it's, it's a delegation, but it's a different kind of delegation. Cause it's like an elevation of your team, but that really drove for me a needle mover to be able to step out more.
Laura (10:27):
So you were able to see that immediate impact on your schedule in terms of, it almost sounds like you created infrastructure, that sounds like pods within your company and different people are responsible for different things.
Emily (10:38):
Yeah. We call them packs. I have found in the last, at least six months since we've rolled them out, like I'm very much extracted from the day-to-day kind of crap that's coming up in terms of this person's this and that person's this and how are we going to solve this? Like, that's not part of my world anymore. Like I'm hearing about it. But that to me was like the biggest delegation, because leading up to us, rolling that out, technically all 40 employees of the company reported to me and that's my gosh, scalable or ideal or anything like that. So it was a game changer to do that.
Laura (11:14):
So it was one of those things where you're just growing your company and every time you hired somebody, you're like, you'll just report to me and then before you knew it, you had 40 people?
Emily (11:20):
Yeah. We just never really found the way to the model to set the team up in that way. And so that was our hard work. The beginning of the year, one of our goals for 2020 is accountability chart 2.0 right. People, right. Seats. So like that to me is the biggest delegation I've made. But early day delegation, bookkeeping, scheduling, invoicing, anything to do with my website. Like those are easy, easier things from the beginning,
Laura (11:50):
Especially if it's something that you weren't particularly good, you know, not to say that you good or not good at it, but I find that people who perceive the outsource solution is better at something than they are, have an easier time of letting go of it sooner. And then as you, are clearly very good manager. You have, I think long-term as much as I've heard from other people, you've got a lot of people that have been with you for a very long time and probably like letting go of that was that difficult too?
Emily (12:14):
It's not like in my unique ability, I think to manage people. So probably, probably not as painful as you think. And I think for me, it was about what are the systems that I'm still going to get the same level of information that I need to feel comfortable working with the team and the team that we elevated into these roles where, you know, employees that got promoted basically. So I think where it really made the impact is the level of investment that they brought and ownership over their job. Just really, I think moved the needle and had, COVID not happened. I think we would have grown quite significantly because of it.
Laura (12:57):
That's so interesting. And how did COVID impact things for you? Did you lose clients, get clients somewhere in between?
Emily (13:04):
So, you know, March, sobbing, hysterical, you know, my, my CFO's like you have to lay people off and you know, I'm crying cause I've never been through that. And the night before we were going to do it, one of my friends from EO is like, Hey, how quickly can you add 50 employees? Right? Because you want to pull out some program. It was crazy. And so we didn't lay off. And then we started building back. We were down about 25% at that point started building back up. And now we've had a banner months, pretty much since August. So we've had, we've sold more than we've ever sold ever the last few months as things have started to normalize.
Laura (13:44):
Oh my gosh, that's so fascinating. And what an amazing story to get that call. Were you like on your knees when you got that call?
Emily (13:53):
I was sobbing and like my friend, it turned out to be nothing. It turned out like we barely did anything together, but it gave me hope in the moment, which was like the thing that I needed to survive this. And PPP was like the next day that got approved. So then it all just kind of, you know, we were doing what we can, but we support small businesses, all small business owners freaked out. We had people who now have kids home full-time that had to leave because they can't do both. So it was a lot of that for us, a lot of changes, like just about to roll out that success team when that all happened. So we had to pause that for like another month before we felt comfortable to get that going too. So it was just a lot, 2020 has been a lot
Laura (14:42):
Think. And it's so interesting that you say that too, that you've had those banner months because initially I think everybody freaked out. And I think the people, my observation, I'd be curious on yours as well, is that the business owners that got on the other side of the freak out the soonest are actually doing the best right now, because in as much as that there are categories shrinking, there are also categories that are completely blowing up as a result of all the shifts. Have you, have you found that within your own business?
Emily (15:12):
I just find that human's ability to innovate is spectacular and what we've seen. Like we innovated in that now we offer full time virtual assistance. Whereas before we were like in the one to three hours a day, so now we're selling full time, which is helped us scale faster too. So I think I love watching the innovation that's coming out of it. And even my friends, like I have a friend who had a pet sitting business and a camp business, like they're finding innovations to, to move forward, which I think is the heart of being an entrepreneur in the first place.
Laura (15:50):
Yes. Oh my gosh. I love that. So when it comes to your own personal journey this year with all the ups and downs that 2020 has brought, and it sounds like you've navigated them so well. Was there any, and you laugh because as entrepreneurs, we all, I think sometimes forget how well we're doing. Part of what I do for my clients is I often remind them that they're doing a really, really good job at adulting in general. And in addition to being a CEO, were there any things that you did personally to navigate this? Like in terms of self-care or those types of activities?
Emily (16:28):
Yeah, a couple comes to mind. So I hired a personal trainer who comes to my house and works out my partner and I in the backyard. And we got, he brought like a group of people. So now we have like a class going every Monday and Wednesday morning for a workout. So that was, my son has ADHD. He's 13 and this really shone a light on what was going on for him at school. And the fact that he is not equipped to remote into school five days a week. So it was able to hire him an e-learning aid that basically works with him. This is through my friends, nanny business. She runs a Philly nanny network. So, she works with him every day. They, they met like right now and they go through what's in his Google classroom and figure out what's due, just like she's like managing him. So I've got her, I've got like, got him into school four days a week. So a lot of this stuff has to do with my son and his own struggle in terms of like, I've been spending my own energy through COVID, it's been largely about my health. We've done a lot of projects around the house. We put a pool in that type of stuff.
Laura (17:39):
Wow. It's really interesting. It's fascinating to see that inner game and outer game and hear you describe it for yourself. And then what you see happening in your clients and what do you see coming up for Delegate Solutions next? Like what are you looking forward to in the coming year?
Emily (17:56):
Branching out, I'm working on some ideas now that I've had this like freedom of thought, now that I have time to think about some of these larger things, working on a few different strategies beyond our service offering, but you know, we're on a path of, we're trying to hit a certain number of hours that we're supporting people over the next 10 years and it's like 1.4 million hours. So like we're chasing that number year over year, trying to get there. And this is kind of in addition to that, some other sort of things that I'm working on.
Laura (18:28):
So exciting. All right, cool. So we're going to do just a couple of fun questions before we wrap up and it's been great just to hear your perspective on 2020 and how you serve your clients. So what's your favorite book?
Emily (18:41):
So I'm going to not go business, but there's a book called Chasing Slow. I don't know if you've heard of it, but by Aaron Lochner. Gifted it to a bunch of clients a few years ago, but I loved that book because it was all about, you know, the journey of accumulation and like how your time is being spent and what we're actually chasing and why we're chasing it. So it was a really, really inspired read for me.
Laura (19:11):
Awesome. I haven't, I think I've heard of it, but I haven't read it so we'll have to pick that up. Yeah. And then what's your favorite vacation spot?
Emily (19:21):
So we always go to Maine. My goals would be to buy some property or a house in Maine. So for me, it's like I've been going there my whole life and it's rejuvenating once I'm there. So something on the water in Maine.
Laura (19:35):
Cool. And then finally, um, if people want to get in touch with you, if they want to connect with you talk delegate solutions or anything other, in addition to that, that you've mentioned, um, um, could they get in touch with you?
Emily (19:47):
Just on our website delegatesolutions.com or you can email me emily@delegatesolutions.com.
Laura (19:54):
Thank you so much for being here. It was wonderful to connect with you and I really appreciate you sharing your journey.
Emily (20:01):
Thanks, Laura.
Laura (20:05):
Hey there, before you head out, I want to let you know about a free new training I have right on a brand new website called yournextmillion.me. It's your next million.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses to the multi-million dollar and beyond, and I have to tell you, it's not what you think. So check it out at yournextmillion.me. And if you loved this show, will you subscribe to it and share it with a friend or just say something nice about it to someone, you know? I'd really appreciate it so much. Thanks so much for being here and I'll see you next time.
The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.