Scaling Yourself: The Art of Strategic Surrender

Hi everyone and welcome back to Type A Unhinged. I'm Nate. And I'm Di. And we're here to talk

to you today about the art of saying no and letting go. I think at one point, Di, every

founder, every leader hits a wall. You're the visionary, you're the lead salesman, probably

the head of product, and somehow also the person that fixes the broken printer. My point

is, is it's like just not sustainable, right? And today, we're talking about the hardest

part of really scaling your business, which is scaling yourself.

Yep. As Type As, we are control enthusiasts, to say kindly. The idea of letting go is basically

a personal nightmare sometimes. But you can't be in every meeting, right? You can't approve

every single ad, and you physically cannot scale if every decision.

Does that sound like an overloo to you?

Follow-up on that one.

I think that's the kind of thing we're talking about.

I think that's exactly right.

I think that's what we're talking about.

Seriously.

We got so many questions.

I think we did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I wanted.

Yeah.

Yeah, we did a dozen questions.

Yeah.

We did a dozen questions.

strategic surrender. This brings us to the core problem, operator to orchestrator shift. An

operator is the person in the trenches pulling each of the levers. If you want to think of it

like an orchestra, you are playing every instrument. But an orchestrator is on the podium

or the conductor, you're conducting the symphony, you're not playing every instrument. And that's

basically the marketer's version of scaling. So we're breaking this down into three different

segments. The first segment is the data-driven art of letting go. Then we'll talk about cloning

your brain. And finally, the growth paradox. So starting off with data-driven art of letting go.

Basically, as a performance marketer, Nate, letting go, the only way you know how is with

dashboards and ruthless prioritization. Am I right? You are so right, Di. You know,

one thing I've learned as I've grown in my professional career is that my philosophy

very much was inspect what you expect. But I think what you realize as you gain more responsibility

or you climb up the ladder in your roles and you're responsible for more, that the reality

is there's just not enough hours in the day to be that way. And I think the only way to solve that

is by building a system of data that really you can trust in. And it lets you inspect the outcomes

versus just the process.

Right. And that can be, in my opinion, one of the hardest parts. However,

if you really identify, I guess, your North Star KPIs and you find a way to make sure you can keep

your eye on the outcome, how those KPIs are doing, you create great dashboards, you put the data in

front of your team in an organized way where they can create their own reports or really dive into

and you suddenly get the system where you can start to let go a little bit. Speaking of which,

that actually reminds me of a time when I put myself and what I like to say in

the chat, which is, you know, when I first started in one of my roles recently, we had, like most

companies do, SharePoint. And on one of my days after training, you know, I didn't have a ton to

work on right away. I was just kind of exploring. I found basically all of these apps that came in

our suite that we were already paying for that weren't necessarily being used. And I'm sure you're

going to recognize which ones I'm going to call out because they are still to this day my favorite.

I have a guess.

You may.

Power BI.

Ah, yes, that is definitely it. I would say Power BI and also Power Automate. If you guys haven't

checked those out, you have to at least look them up. And there are alternatives, right? I think any

software like them are great. Power BI is the first one. It's basically a data visualization

software. We hadn't put any reports in there and I started playing around with it and just realized

it's like Excel on steroids. Especially once you have the data on the back end, you can just

drag and drop fields in and build whatever report you want.

Type A dream.

Right? So I know. And then all of the graphics you can add and the data bars and the conditional

formatting. I mean, literally type A dream. So as you can imagine, people dug these reports. So here

I am helping people make reports with the data we have. Then I discovered Power Automate. I'm

automating things like, I actually, I can't even remember the last time I made a OneNote page

manually if it was for a recurring meeting. And I'm talking like template in there. I'm talking about

pulling product launch dates out of our server, grabbing lists from SharePoint, ready to go for

the meeting with zero effort, right? I should say prepaid effort. Anyway. So anyway, I feel like I'm

doing really great. I'm coming up with these solves for issues. I even built an app with

Microsoft Power Apps for our returns team. And then suddenly I realized I was becoming the

bottleneck myself, right? I wasn't spreading the knowledge. I was so passionate about these really

big things that I was helping people solve all these problems, but not necessarily teaching them

how to do it. And so all of a sudden I have this backlog. I'm not getting to my own tasks and I'm

just helping, I'm kind of playing every instrument as you say, right? And so eventually I had to turn

my mindset into, instead of saying like, consider it done when I got a request, hey, why don't you

grab 15 minutes on my calendar and I'll teach you how. And really the hard part was, is like I just

said, these are still my favorite apps today. So if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm

going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. So of course, I want to be in them every day and building cool stuff. But really, I had to, I guess embrace the art of saying no teaching others and let them flourish doing so.

It's hard to let go the things that you really enjoy doing.

I know. I still get it. But really what's cool though is as you see the other people flourish,

like when I see cool things other people make, it's so fun to geek out with them and have them

show you how they did it. And I think that's really cool. And I think that's really cool.

think it just took me getting to the point you know where you have to let go be okay with that

and then that moment happens before you realize like yeah that was the right choice different

sort of reward i suspect later this will play into the growth paradox too but i don't want to

give it away anyway this is a pretty good segue i think into segment two cloning your brain while

i'm building dashboards uh to scale our performance marketing area dies out there building systems to

scale our brand voice and vision i mean what goods uh uh add with good creative if the copy

sounds like a robot wrote it right and not in a good way anyway die tell us how you're building

our brand voice and vision so the first thing that comes to mind when you say that is uh you

need a brand bible right it's kind of your creative playbook uh the first thing that i wanted to do

when i started at our day jobs was to create a

brand

guide i could not believe that they had gone for i want to say 10 years

maybe less maybe more like seven without one i mean it seemed kind of insane to me like

the designers maybe knew what the hex colors were and what font to use but beyond that nobody like

knew anything and it was just kind of a little bit of a mess so setting that brand guide that's

not just colors and fonts right it's what should the photography look like right who

should be using what should be using what should be using what should be using what should be

using who is our customer persona that we're trying to target or personas maybe you have more

than one who uh who are you trying to talk to what does the voice of the brand sound like every

copywriter kind of had their own voice their own flair that they were putting on it and then when

you start to stitch everything together between social posts emails subject lines home page ad

copy um sms text messages it starts to sound like a whole bunch of different people and it's like who

is that brand who is that brand who is that brand who is that brand who is that brand who is that brand

who is that brand who is that brand it's hard to fall in love with a brand and relate to them

if their personality is changing all the time right in multiple personality disorder yes you need

consistency so with the brand guide the voice and tone is part of that as i said and taking that a

step further is not just like making sure that everybody on your copy team is writing the same

but as they start to use ai tools that ai is sounding the same too so some key points there

would be you know you're cloning your brain

into the ai tool you're saying here's what we sound like here's what we shouldn't be saying like

maybe use lots of emojis maybe you never swear maybe you're really edgy in your tone and then

providing a ton a ton ton ton of examples so that it can learn how it should sound and course

correcting it um whenever it gets a little bit off track yep providing feedback you do the same

thing with people right so photo shoots is a good example of that um

cloning your brain or cloning developing the eye is um one thing that i've done a few times with

different folks along the way uh and that's another thing like you mentioned nate hard to

let go i love being on those photo shoots and producing and directing but if i'm there for

six hours twice a week that's a lot of time that i could be spending doing something else

that's more valuable to the business um that i have other expertise in so and how many times

have i asked you like how's your day going how's your day going how's your day going how's your day

going and your response is on the shoot like it's all the time you know spring or early summer day

in minnesota it's it's hard to get those good weather days and if you're outside during them

doing something you like oh even better but i digress so developing that eye uh that alone can

be difficult right whenever you're trying to show somebody this could apply to graphic design web

design too right what's your brand look like um and one thing that i do for that is make sure that

i am showing people and then i'm watching them do it and then i'm coaching them on it so uh the i'm

doing it myself they're watching there's the do i i'm showing them i'm going step by step here's

what i'm looking for when we take a shot i point things out on the screen here's why i would what

i would give direction on um maybe you need to change the lighting maybe you need to move some

things into the screen with graphic design it could be something

or on the typography right and then uh you coach so the coaching piece is them actually doing all

of those things and telling you what they're doing and why they're doing it and why they're making

those decisions the communication is very important whenever you're trying to clone your

brain right you can't just show and then be like okay good luck um same thing i'm sure as you're

teaching people power automate you can't just be like here's a video have fun like there's going

to be bumps that they hit along the way right and it's important that they're able to communicate

what they're seeing

and why they're doing what they're doing and you can course correct if need be so do show coach

and i just want to say i love that do show coach it's worked time and time again and the goal

really though with with all of that is empowering your team right you're empowering them on the

creative side it's just to make sure that they're they're working within a framework but still have

that ability to be creative and i would say the same holds true for data i mean when you play with

data you're looking for trends and you're looking for things that are going to help you and you're

looking for things that are going to help you and you're looking for things that are going to help you

and part of that is being creative right you're not just doing xyz and output you're done so um

setting that framework is key so people can still be creative you're not stifling that

and that helps make it scalable and making sure that you're consistent and on brand

so with that let's talk about the growth paradox we're talking about people growing and learning

a little bit throughout the first couple of segments here

and to grow your business you have to grow your people but when you really truly grow your people

they might end up outgrowing their role they might even leave for a better opportunity

and you have to learn to be okay with that and it's tough

it's so tough it just feels inefficient to be honest like i don't know how else to put it other

than you invest all this time into somebody you feel like things are finally going to work out

smoothly things are great and then they leave and then it comes and they leave yeah but i think

also like the alternative is a stagnant team and or a like a bottlenecked business and those aren't

great right so i think it's hard but it's important to remember a great leader makes more

leaders and after you've done that you do see the positives in it too it is it does get easier to

look past the the feeling of inefficiency really

i think it ties back to even my example of where i was kind of interrupt myself right you get to this

point suddenly where you're able to like geek out with how other people are succeeding or flourishing

with that you see people leave or i guess another example is like how many of our marketing team

members come in join our amazon team learn a ton fresh out of college about our crazy big amazon

business and then after a couple of years they go flourish they open their own amazon shop or they

go to a larger company

and then after a little while you grab like coffee with them or something and you hear about all the

fun things they're doing and and it's just my point is is it gets easier to see the other side

of that as well but it is an art like it is an art to learn i still cry sometimes when those

good people leave because you've developed you know absolutely a friendship usually with them

you know you're you're helping them and they're helping you at the same time just as much

and there's one gal that comes to mind particularly that was one of the hardest for me and i hope we

get to have her on sometime but she had been hired i feel like as a temp during one of our busy seasons

to help out with like merchandising the website and i barely interacted with her and within like

a couple of years she was managing our crm team and also trying to take on lifestyle like she was

a freaking rock star whatever you gave to her she just figured it out and like

somehow managed to add it to her plate um and when she left i told her that she would be dumb for

not taking the opportunity like i was to that point like so happy for her but so sad for me

and for us um and still getting to like chat with her and see like what she's done since then is

is so rewarding and so fun to like just follow their journeys too i just

and eventually you get to the point where like they're helping and

inspire you too like they keep helping you it's just in different ways hey we're working on this

tool have you ever tried them before what were the goods and the bad like they become a peer and

yeah yes yes for sure i suppose we should probably uh maybe end on you know what is the one

like actionable takeaway that if if somebody is fast forwarding through this whole episode

and they're like what's the one thing i need to know what would what would you say nate

um

i think coming definitely from the performance marketing perspective or pov i would say one

acknowledge the fact that letting go is hard especially for a type a i think you know the

first step is just yep it's hard but then two identify the most important pieces and build a

great system of data and reports to help you make sure you can keep an eye on them but remember

you're determining the route not building the pathway any longer

and so by identifying

these north star metrics that you can help watch it and ensure that your team is going in the right

direction you no longer yep feel like you have to always you can't manage it if you can't measure it

absolutely write that down we should write that down one i think my big takeaway yeah

i think my big takeaway would be um thinking about the cloning and the growth piece

kind of taking that a step further in if you

aren't able to say no and delegate it and let go then you're not going to grow either so if you

can't manage to clone your brain and train somebody else then it's it's delegate and elevate right so

if you're able to do that then you're able to elevate into the next new big project because now

you freed up some of your plate and it's like just open white space opportunity for you to find

something new to help yourself and your company grow

so that would be my big takeaway it helps you a lot too i love that

all right i have um an off-the-cuff question for you if that's okay

i'm nervous now that's a long pause

what no no it's not that crazy what is one task that you know you should be delegating

but just having immediately right now one thing

yeah like what's what's one thing that you i mean probably should have delegated but but still

still do probably customer repeat rate reporting and tracking um definitely

takes up too much time because of some of the systems we have and the way i have to access that

data it takes a while and part of the reason here's my excuse right coming out with my excuses

right away

is that it does take a while and we run super lean and so i feel bad offloading that to somebody

right now for sure how about you nate

probably the best example i have is every week in the marketing area we come up with a

cost of sale report or like a row loss report and we send it out and my team i have done much

better lately my team has done much better lately and i've been able to do a lot of things

that it really is okay to sell being a business when and i don't know why but for me personally

from my experience like i've had to keep my customer base up and running for a long time

because i've been able to get up and running and doing all the work that i'm supposed to be

doing and having a lot of times i've had to give up some of the tasks that i'm supposed to be

able to do or keep planning my business because you know the apps that i've been able to use

are so much more expensive than that and shot only on a day to day basis so yeah it's it's

a little bit of a success for me and also like i said earlier i think one thing that's really

important is that i'm not there to sit and wait and wait until i'm able to go to work or i'm

trying and i'm trying to get into the job and i'm constantly trying to find someone that's

that, it made me think more about some of the things that I'm trying to do right now is figure

out ways to make email design more efficient, whether it be using AI tools or for the design

itself or using AI tools to help us reduce our sends by using like send time AI, things like

that. And if I did that, it would allow the person who would probably take on the repeat rate percent

and everything to have more free time. And then they would be able to combine that data with the

loyalty data and think a lot more strategically. So thank you, because that made me move that piece

of the puzzle up to the top of my list so I can make the rest of it happen.

What I was going to say is, so like, I would say our cost of sale or ROAS report is probably a

great example to the question. However, on kind of on the flip side, one thing that I still

am very involved in that should just be delegated, but I do it because I love it so much is on our

Amazon side of the business, trying to figure out the best way to optimize a listing for search

results and driving sales. Like my team is all in on that. But I definitely could spend less time

helping them in that. But I love nerding out with should we test this AI model or that? Or should we

just use a completely alternative solution altogether? How are we going to do this the

best and fastest way possible? I mean, you die, you know, we do

75% of our yearly sales in two or three months of the year. So when it's go time,

it's freaking go time. And I just like, thrive off of that. But that's more of an example of

I could definitely delegate that 100%. But I just love being I would argue that because you're a

part of it, still, you come up with other ideas of other things to test. And then that gets you

out of those weeds again, and back into developing something new. And so I almost feel like it's a

different episode that we should add to our list of how important it is for us to be able to

keep a project on your desk, even when you're at a higher level. Okay, right now.

I love that. I'm adding it to the list.

Well, I hope that you guys got something out of today. I really want to thank you for joining us.

And as always, stay type A. And a little unhinged. Until next time, guys.

Bye.