Transcription
Have you ever felt frustrated, overwhelmed, or stuck wasting time in admin instead of growing, leveraging, and scaling your business? Then this podcast is for you. Welcome to Delegate to Elevate, the podcast that's all about handing off what you don't need to do so you can focus on what you do best. So, here's your host, Bonnie Schutz.
Hello everybody and welcome to Delegate to Elevate, Get Stuff Done. This is Bonnie Schutz, your host, and today I am super excited to bring this guest, particularly because I know him well. We've worked together in the past and, you know, he is just an amazing human being. So, welcome today, Mr. Brian Kurlin. He is the founder and CEO of Optitude and brings over 20 years of entrepreneurial and sales leadership experience, spanning startups to Fortune 50 companies. Known for his grit and approachable leadership style, Brian is passionate about keeping others and helping others to succeed. A native of Western Pennsylvania, he's called Denver, Colorado home for the past 16 years. His company, Optitude, empowers emerging B2B companies to achieve consistent, sustainable revenue growth. We all need that revenue growth and build capacity for long-term success through his inside-out approach. Now, we can talk more about that in a bit. We are Optitude specializes in helping first-time founders, CEOs, and entrepreneurs improve performance, streamline go-to-market systems, and create efficiencies with tailored growth strategies. From clearly defining your ideal customer to implementing revenue-generating systems and future-focused roadmaps, Optitude is your partner in achieving 210x annual revenue growth. We will put Brian's contact information below and you can contact him on LinkedIn or connect with him and visit www.optitudeoptitu.co to learn more. I can't believe I got that out. Hi Brian.
Hey Bonnie. Thanks a lot. I know that's a mouthful, but uh, I'm I'm just happy to be here. Thanks for uh, having me as a guest and I'm excited to dig into uh, delegation, how important that is. My favorite word.
Yeah. Yes. That's why I have you here today because I know you're a pro at it. And I think maybe just for for those out in the world, tell me how you came up with the name Optitude and what that means.
Yeah. Um, Optitude was um, a culmination of kind of pulling a couple thoughts together in the earliest days. I guess we've been in business now about seven years. In the earliest days, um, the uh, the work that we were planning on focusing on, which obviously you just read and highlighted for the audience, is that we're big believers in helping the entrepreneur community. um, uh, not only being an entrepreneur myself, but I'm married to a very successful entrepreneur and uh, she has been my inspiration and really the focus was trying to help those first-time founders break through what's often called founder-led sales challenges. So this idea of optimizing your business and generating revenue and so optimize was a word that was kind of out there in the marketplace that we were considering. And then we also know from working with a number of founders that the right mindset and attitude have to come into play when you're trying to grow your business. Realizing that you may be the bottleneck and and help uh, help the business grow. So it was a little bit of the attitude, the appropriate attitude, the optimizing uh, the business and pulling them together. And so that's how we came up with it.
Fantastic. And you came up with that before ChatGPT.
We did. It might have been a lot easier because I think I went through like handful of sessions with my marketing uh, contact at the time that was helping me kind of build the brand. I kept thinking it was a part aptitude, which which it was, like a little play on that word, but the more you know, now I know.
Yeah. I mean, strangely, I think everyone, if you come up with some sort of smashed-up concept of a new word, usually comes from something like that. But that was how we did it. It shows that you're a pro because, you know, it's a great conversation starter, right? Just like I just did and getting to speak with people and learn more about what they do and how you can help them. So, that's great. But what I'd like to do is go back seven years and when you started the company, how far in were you or when did you and what did you outsource or hand off to somebody else to help you with in the the very first time?
Yeah, in the earliest days, just like we just talked about the name, um, I worked with someone that was like, kind of a brand expert, to be honest. So that was someone that I reached out to. I had known this gentleman who was in my network for probably about a year and just um, you know, the way he approached brand is obviously his experience and his company and how he started it. So that was the that was the first thing is, you know, I've I've definitely learned over the years that there are things that I think I'm I do really well and then there's plenty of things I know I don't do really well and I lean on those that are already experts. So in that sense, if we're talking about delegating, I mean, I found someone that had expertise in that particular area and then and then started to work with him on that.
That makes complete sense. I did a little poll recently on LinkedIn to kind of gauge or garner what most people hand off first and that actually, I think marketing or like the website came second and what came first was the books.
Oh, wow. You mean the Oh, you mean like accounting?
Yeah. Finance.
Yeah. That wasn't too far behind, to be honest with you. That might have been like one, two or, you know, split them two to one, but yes.
Exactly. Oh my gosh. So now that you've been in business what, seven, eight years?
Almost identical to me, which is great.
What was the impact that that as you added um additional people to the team that you brought on and I believe marketing and like admin and things like that? What's been the impact on you personally and your business and how you've been able to to experience growth because of it?
Oh, wow. It's um, it's so fascinating because it's a great question, but uh, clearly your podcast is geared towards this topic, right? You know, I I I think the probably the most prominent thing that has come uh, from the experience of delegating or finding other people to take on tasks or or areas of the business that uh, that I that I know either one I'm not an expert or two um, I'm I'm ready to kind of move on and and prioritize something else. Is something that uh, we talk a lot about in the work we do with clients. It's the number one resource that all of us have that uh, is at a finite level and that's time. Yes. We all have the same time. Like there is no way to reproduce more time on the calendar. And if, Gez, if someone in your audience knows they they got the they got the trillion dollar idea. Yeah. Right. Hand it over.
That's right. So everyone knows that to be successful um in a company building kind of environment as an entrepreneur, it is trying to realize how do you how do you look, prioritize and figure out where to use your time the best to achieve the most to accomplish the goals, etc. At least that's how we think about it. And so it wasn't too long into starting the business where I I started to realize like, geez, a lot of my time is in areas that I got to figure out how to remove myself because I'm not optimizing myself. I'm not optimizing my skills. I'm not optimizing what it is that I can help the business do to grow as grow at the pace and and goals we want to. So number one is just understanding where I was spending my time. And, you know, there's a great exercise that anyone can do. It doesn't have to be formal. It can be very informal. It was taught to me from previous mentors and it's where are you spending your time? It's a it's a question that can be asked rhetorically, but most often people don't really sure where they're spending their time. And geez, as uh, someone that probably is an expert like you in understanding the value of delegation, um, it's really to to look back over let's say it's over as short as a 30-day period, maybe as much as 90 days. And if you really want to get into the granular side, you go for a whole year and think about where you where the if you're a calendar person, I think almost everyone today operates. Yeah. Where do you spend your time? So take the buckets of do I spend my time on admin? Do I spend my time on admin relative to, you know, everything related to emails and follow-up and contracts, for example? And then where do I spend my time on sales and marketing? Where do I spend my time on leadership? Where do I spend my time on strategic planning? So, you know, break it down in a few buckets and look back and I'm sure there's probably a way to do it with AI plugins. Yeah. And automate what what those totals are. And I think everyone would be surprised where they actually spend their time. Yeah. And uh, that's the first way to really evaluate um, what what you're doing in your business. Uh, at least for us, at least for sure.
So um, have you heard of is it was it what's it called? Like the Eisenhower method or something like that where you put it into the four quadrants or something? Um, is that kind of something like have you ever used that?
I don't know if I've ever used that. If maybe if you want to explain it more, I just Yeah, I'll be I'll be curious what what it is.
Yeah, I kind of looked it up yesterday and and forget my menopausal brain, but I'm trying to remember. It's kind of like where you segment those tasks like you're saying and you say, you know, it's like either like important and and crucial or critical to the so like it's a must-do and so you take the tasks on your list, you put them into these four quadrants and one of them is like, you know, it's kind of nice to have, but it's not urgent. And then like you get get to where in like the fourth corner box is something like it's something that it's something you really could eliminate. Um, is it essential? No, eliminate it. So it's either do it, delegate it or eliminate it.
Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. I have heard I didn't know it was called the Eisenhower. Eisenhower method or something like that to that effect. Sure. It just it sounds like what you're referring to is um, re-stacking your prioritization into uh, do it, delete it, delegate it or exactly. We can make up whatever we want to call it. But in that in that in that realm, I think it's helped me a lot to think about. I mentioned in an earlier episode this book that my coach when I really broadly thought of the word delegate and I opened my mind. So, I delegated my mind to my coach and she brought up a book called Essentialism. Oh, sure. And it was just that word, essentialism, that just like, wow, it was very impactful. I hadn't thought of that word in my day-to-day work. And that was something that hit me. So, that like I I just that word comes into my head as we're talking about, is this essential? And I know for you, you know, since you're your zone of genius, which not in love with that term, using it over and over again, but it's what comes first, um, is sales. When in a in if you're a solopreneur or small business, and you know, when is it time, is it a dollar amount? Is it a time amount or like when is it time to really consider bringing on maybe a sales admin or a fractional sales leader into your business?
Yeah. Um, there's all sorts of different ways that we can answer that and that's what you started to allude to. It really depends. Okay. Depends on the size of the business. It depends on um, the average client value of the of the work that you're doing with your particular clients. For example, um, our focus is trying to help professional services companies, expertise in for example, marketing or consulting or interior design or architecture, engineering, right? That that's a group of people that we tend to focus our our efforts in in working with. So that's kind of our scope of of knowledge. So if I would say in working with those types of companies, it's probably best to think about it is once the founder has gotten to a place where their capacity is limited around business development, sales, or there's a term called a rainmaker, right? The individual. Yeah. When when that end of it, when when you're the person bringing in all the revenue or all the the the uh, the projects and you really can't see yourself getting uh, slowly removing yourself from that role, you've reached a limit, right? You've reached a capacity limit and that's going to stunt or what what sometimes is referred to as bottleneck your business for future growth. Right? So y depending on where that that starts to happen in an organization, we tend to see it in organizations that I just just described to you between one, maybe a little less than one million in topline revenue is maybe as high as five million and then there's this uh, there's this idea of how do I bring in other people to build out that that function. Yeah. Um, so it kind of happens in that general frame and depends on the business. And the other is um, you know, the founders that we work with, it's not too much into the working with them. We realize that that's a major burnout scenario for them where they're they're they're kind of they're running up the hill, racing up the hill, doing everything, bringing in the new business, trying to delegate the new business to get delivered downstream. Yeah. And there isn't a system or process uh, SOPs, I know I think you're pretty familiar with. Yep. Yep. That's not been formulated yet. And what I mean by that is that most founders that have broken out to start their own uh, firm is they either one had an expertise in that particular area. They either love that type of work uh, and also have the expertise or they came from a firm where they said, "Hey, I'm going to bring some clients over and I'm going to start my own firm." And they never really took the time because they haven't had the time, as we here we are referencing time again, to go through and map out what is the process they are using to acquire customers to be to be the rainmaker. What are the steps? What are the processes and start to really document that? That's one of the first things we try to recommend to clients we've worked with is start taking what's in your head and and get it into a document, whether it's a Notion document, Google Doc, etc. Yeah. um, then then we can start to manage, organize, and make adjustments to figure out, is there someone else we can delegate? So, long answer to your question, but it's okay. Thinking about bringing in somebody to help in that capacity doesn't make sense until the first couple things I just mentioned are organized and ironed out because if I have seen this in many many occasions, if those things are not organized and managed and set up and someone tries to hire somebody to do that role, that's an expensive, mostly ineffective result.
Yeah, that's a mic drop moment for me because that happens a lot in my business. A lot of people think they're ready to hire a virtual assistant, but they don't have systems and processes and really a plan in place. In fact, I'm meeting with someone this afternoon, a client of mine, to have a work session with her because the delegation that she's doing, it it's just not good. She's not good at it. And and it's so it it is a muscle and this podcast aims to help people build that muscle. Um, I you know, I attribute it a lot to you know, it's like working out. You know, you're on this spectrum, you're either you can lift 10 lbs or you can lift, you know, 300 lbs. It is a process of learning how to delegate and how to get build that muscle. Um, but it's also being strategic about who you're delegating to and when. So thank you for that that insight on like when it's the appropriate timing. Um, yeah, but it is so important to really assess what you're doing, what you want to do, where you want to go, and then, you know, then go to your network and your resources and and see who you can talk to about how did they get there, how can they help you or introduce you to your to people in your in their network to help you get there. So, I mean, that's just that's what has propelled me is my network and my clients. Yeah.
So, I know that I attended and I was a part of another thing that you offer within Optitude called the Optitude Growth Academy. Can you tell people a little bit more about what that might help them with?
Yeah, I'll be happy to. I have to go back though. I can't pass up this opportunity, especially because your podcast called Delegate to Elevate. So, I want to make sure we touch on something is a pretty unique framework that I've learned uh from other mentors and it's related to to delegate. So, you know, thinking as you uh help your audience get more informed and as you said, build that muscle and delegate. I think there's a nice framework to think before delegating, there's this idea of documenting. So, you and I are referring to that right now is what is it that I'm trying to delegate and is there a documented system or process or SOP that I can build? Even if it's sketched out, yeah, you know, very novice, very beginner-like, at least there's something. And then after there's this documentation, then there's a opportunity to be like, let's say um, you you and I are working together and you come to me and saying, hey, I want to delegate uh, the sales process to you, Brian. Great. So here's the documents I want you to kind of educate yourself on. Then I would ask you to, in this case, demonstrate for me how this works. So, document, demonstrate, and what you're doing in the demonstrate, which I think is a big miss that we see with, you got to be able to teach and train somebody how to do what it is that's documented. Yeah. And give them real-time feedback. Like go through the documentation and give them guidance as they're going through it as as quickly as you can, whether it's at the end of a day, it's at the end of a three two-hour period. And then after you get to a point of, you know, going through demonstration, you want to be able to duplicate, which is having the person repeat and see the result of the actual process over and over again.
Yes. I have to write this down. Yeah. Document, demonstrate, duplicate, and duplicate. I love the 3Ds.
Yeah, the 3Ds. So, it really ties in. I just didn't want to pass that opportunity because it was taught to me by somebody else as a mentor. And I just think it uh, it resonates framework to think about because there's so many there's so many fumbles um, that happen between here's what I want you to do, here's how I want you to do it, and then I if you need to like anyone, you need to guide them through of doing it differently and getting it right. Once they get it right, then it's duplicate, do it over and over again, and then everyone seems to get that muscle built. Yep. That you're talking about. So hopefully that was, I know it was a little aside because we we.
No, that is okay. Like thank you for the diversion and that was a great. You gave me some nice little fodder for for a social media post. Hey hey hey.
I love it. I love it. Document, demonstrate, and duplicate. I absolutely love those little kitschy things like that. But yeah, Optitude Growth Academy. Quick little spiel about that because it did have a huge impact on me when as a CEO myself, I started to invest in myself and investing monetarily, time, effort, energy into things like this really helped me grow my my delegation muscles. So yeah, thanks for yeah, thanks for participating in it. We love having you. It's obviously uh, great to see the continued growth of the work you do. But yeah, the the the the birth of the idea has come from the work we started out in with Optitude seven years ago and that's really around what you've started I think to mention early on in in the introduction is something called the inside-out principle and our belief is that for organizations to grow, specifically B2B professional service organizations, the founder uh, while while intentioned, well-intentioned on trying to grow the performance of the business, also has to grow their capacity and they have to actually grow simultaneously where one will bottleneck and you will stall out performance and never see quote unquote the result of the next stage of growth. So it ties really well into delegation, right? To all of what your topic is. So that's kind of the foundation and under performance, everyone realizes certain things have to be in place. You have to have strategies, systems, and practices, as well as, you know, all that documented to be able to help increase the predictability of your performance of your business. In this case, the work we do relative to revenue and and business development. Y and then on the capacity side, it's really about focusing on what we believe are setting the right goals for your business. So that's direction, making sure there's a disciplined approach to that. And we talk about prioritization a lot, which is knowing what your top three goals are each week. And then lastly is having the discipline to stick with it. So there's this learning approach of what is your business teaching you and what is it that you can learn to to make adjustments appropriately. So the inside-out principle is the foundation and then through our work of helping first-time founders, we believe that the best way to do that is give them the knowledge uh, in a way where they can start to consume it and in the time and ability that they have available to them. So we made it into a 12-week online course. uh, you were a part of a live program which we offer uh, you know, one to two times a year, but there is an on-demand program. It's all uh uh self-taught as far as self-learning, excuse me, where somebody signs up and goes through the training modules, the videos, the templates and tools to help them really build um, really the inside-out results in their business. So helps improve performance and capacity.
So that's great. That's great. And I love that you have the options in there for busy busy entrepreneurs who who can't decide if they're going to be able to be live in in real life and and be able to give up that amount of time, you know, to the group or to do it on their own. So that's great. Um, that I'm I'm happy for you and and I've also seen the evolution of your business, too. is that we're right there with you and it's it's great to see that grow and change and and develop and and you know, exceed all my expectations as I watch. So I know that you also delegate a few other things in your business like like marketing and, you know, course creation. Um, and I'll just say it. Yeah, I I have introduced you to a few people and I I'm happy you brought them on like and and I like to mention that because it truly is it's trusted relationships that can help expand your business, too. Have those been effective and and helped you exceed as well?
Oh, no question. Yeah. And thank you again for introductions to people in your your trusted network. And I I would echo your thoughts that it's a lot easier to think about whom you already know and trust that you could um ask if there's a need in a particular area of a business, our business, or anyone's business, who whom in that network could have that expertise. And so yeah, we did talk about that um years ago. And so, yeah, I was lucky enough to have a number of different people kind of join the team in that in that capacity as it relates to um the building of programs and courses that, you know, as I started off earlier in the discussion, that's not my expertise. I wouldn't have known now. Yeah, there's I even had to learn the actual title. Well, part of a title that's used or sometimes often used for people that have that expertise is, you know, someone that's an instructional design expert, which is the the uh um, the two letters I and D. So, an I and D expert, instructional design.
That's good. The more you know. I think of that little, the more you know. Also, okay, I just learned a new title. That's great.
Yeah, because I mean, the whole goal as a reference back to uh, the Optitude Growth Academy, the online program is really about how do you take um, important topics, knowledge, skills, and information and put it into a format that an adult uh, adult learning principles really play into the fact of being able to deliver information in a way that's consumable, can make behavior changes, build skills, and then, you know, implement those skills in businesses. So I didn't have any knowledge of it. I was lucky enough to meet an individual that had that expertise and has helped us grow.
That marries so beautifully with the art of delegation. Let me tell you, yeah, that marries great and that's why I asked you to be here today. Um, if we had any takeaways or words of wisdom that we could impart upon the audience today, maybe a couple, what would be your top two when they're thinking about delegating or growing their delegation muscles?
Yeah. Oh boy. The first one is um, really trying to evaluate where you're spending your time. So I I discussed it earlier, but I'll just have to reference it and reinforce it. It's probably the one thing that um, can really uh, jumpstart your impact of of your business, that the mission you're trying to accomplish, is knowing where you're spending your time. Um, absolutely. And I I know this can get a little more uh, financial nuance, but kind of a way to think about that is your business is is uh, is set up to to achieve and help your clients solve a certain set of problems, right? And to do that, all businesses that unless they're nonprofit are created to to make a profit. Mhm. And where where I'm getting at is that to create a profit, you got to be able to leverage time and get the correct amount of output of whatever you're trying to solve for that customer in a way where there's still profit available at the end of that work, right? Everyone, okay, we get that, right, Brian? That's simple. It's okay. You know, you know what's not simple, though? is not each task needed to complete that work might not have the same value dollar figure to the time needed to do the work. And so that's what leverage is really about is how how do I get the most out of the time that any of us have in the time in the moments that we are working with clients to solve their problem. Yep. And so delegating is also realizing that sometimes the value of a um, of a task might not have the same value to another task in the business from a dollar figure inside the cost of delivering that work. Yeah. And when you can start realizing where you're spending your time as the founder and CEO is at some point, you you can't be the person that does all the tasks and all the jobs because you'll never get the leverage, right? You'll be that bottleneck that you mentioned earlier. Yeah. So there's a simple exercise to think through is uh, what do you think um, that's a rhetorical question to the audience. What is the value of an hour of your time as relates to your business and put a figure to it. Yeah. And then ask yourself how much time you're spending in in the bucketed tasks we talked about earlier and realize what do those tasks, what dollar figure on average of those tasks and know that if the difference is, we'll call it a couple hundred dollars per task. Yeah. Then you are essentially losing money in the business, throwing money, throwing money down the drain because you are unable to find somebody or get out of your own way, whatever. I've had that. I've been guilty of that. Right. Right. Same. And find someone else that can do that that loves doing that work, is better at you at doing that work, and can do it with more efficiency. That is real quality leverage of your time.
And that's I love that you say find someone that loves doing that work because believe it or not, those of us that hand off our books first because we don't like math or figuring out money, there are people that love doing it. And that's like unbelievable to me. But there are people that are so much better at it than I am. Um, that's something I always had to get past was like, "Oh, I can do it better or nobody can do this like me." But that's an attitude you got to get over fast. Out. So, I say I say you're right on and um, that would be that that's the main thing I think is just how to really think about your time, how to get the most leverage out of your time, where your expertise is, find other people to delegate to, have that expertise, and then and I think you you said it, you kind of started to say it, so I'll just add to it to close it out. Um, most of the time the mindset we have is that we that start a company, founders and CEOs, you know, let's kind of be honest. I don't know the psychological makeup of everybody, but you you have a little bit of confidence that you want something in the world to be out there with you having the stamp of doing it. Yeah. That could be also a little troubling because it's hard to break away from being everything. Yeah. So, if you can kind of get that mindset of, hey, I know I'm not good at everything. I know there's other people that can do it better. How do I get off that train as fast as possible with different tasks and yeah, you're doing it right and you've got that bodybuilder muscle at some point. They're an extension. They're an arm of you. They are still you because at that point you are very clear and you've communicated and and and you've raised them up and spent time with them to be an extension of you and that just helps you grow. So, I'll kind of end with that. I say um, I really loved that and the gold golden nugget from our chat today is the whole document, demonstrate, and duplicate and I will quote you on that one.
Yes. I just want to thank you so much for being here today. It means a whole lot to me and I suggest that people take a look at at your programs and your offerings and I will drop those down in the comments. And so, raise a hand. people listen, like, follow, comment. Um, leave us a review and ask some questions of Brian. I'll be sure to get him to the him and make sure that we can give you some great feedback or let me know if you'd like to have him back and answer and talk about another subject that you're struggling with in your growth at maybe you're plateauing or you're being that bottleneck he mentioned. Thanks again, Brian, for being here today. And delegate to elevate, folks. Yeah. You'll get there. Have a good day.
Thank you so much.
So, that's it for today's episode of Delegate to Elevate. Head on over to Apple Podcast or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcast or iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $15,000 private VIP day with Bonnie herself. Be sure to head on over to delegatetoelevatepodcast.com that's with the number two and pick up a free copy of Bonnie's gift and join us on the next episode.
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