B (1:24)

Yeah, yeah, it's tractoring good.

A (1:26)

You got to push any gravel lately?

B (1:28)

No, it's been horse manure.

A (1:29)

I've been pushing lately with the tractor. Dude, that's a lot of horse maneuver that you got to use the tractor to push it. Anyway, Aaron, I love it. Old McTurner had a farm, and I love that you do this. Okay, so let's talk about optics. So coming into quarter two or quarter one or some nebulous date. Whatever date we're in. Whatever quarter we're in. I hear a lot of visionaries say things like, I'd really like to lift my top line revenue. Really like to sell more. Really like to do more. Really like to do bigger, better. You know, they talk to their friends. They go to mastermind events. They get all charged up and they really want to take some ground, but a lot of times they're just hindered, honestly, from what I see internally. It's not that they can't. It's not that their ideas aren't good enough to generate it. It's that they actually have some constriction in their business. And so I'd like to talk about how do you lift top line revenue? And it's probably different than you think, right? It's. It's probably not tied to ads, it's probably not talked tied to leads. It's probably tied to even people that are already in your pipeline that you're just not generating revenue from. And I think that there's a constriction happening. Kind of like a boat, kind of like a boat constrictor. What do you think about that?

B (2:35)

Yeah, I mean, it's the classic use of the saying, what got you here won't get you there.

A (2:40)

And that's a classic phrase. Such a good one.

B (2:42)

Thanks for bringing what it is.

A (2:44)

Yep. So what got you here won't get you there. I actually talk about that a lot when I talk to people. When we're talking about a collab team coming alongside of them and helping them with the lift is usually people reach out to us when they hit that spot where they're growing, growing, growing, but they can't start hitting a plateau. And they realize, man, I don't think that our current technology, I don't know that our current team, I'm not sure that we have the right pieces in place to make the lift to the next level. So like you were saying, what got me here probably isn't going to get me there. So what would you say are some of the things you see that people need to rethink about the boa constrictor within their internal organization that's constricting, that's limiting that growth to the next level. What are some of the things that come to your mind?

B (3:26)

I would say busy work, wrong. People doing the wrong jobs.

A (3:32)

Yes.

B (3:32)

Just because they've been doing it for years. Yeah. Not. Not growing into the growth of your company. So you're, you're still here while the company is growing when you should be growing with it, which means you need to start getting new jobs and putting some things you're working on to other people.

A (3:52)

You know, I. We recently hired Rachel Stivers from Pete Vargas Organization from Platform Consulting for Marketing because I. Marketing doesn't come naturally to me. But you know, and we all realized here at the Collab team pretty quickly that we're all operators, but we're not great at marketing. We would come up with ideas that were just like, random acts of marketing, and we didn't have any real mission. And so we brought Rachel in for the very purpose of challenging us to think differently. Hey, like, okay, so you know us, you've been traveling with us for a while. What do you see, Rachel, that needs to shift and change? So I think that probably bringing in somebody like a third party from the outside, somebody you trust, somebody that's been underneath a lot of hoods, somebody that's seen a lot of different ways the different businesses work that are in your sphere, that are maybe even competitors to you, and ask yourself, what are they doing that I'm not doing? Because I think you're right, Taran. I mean, this is our 12th year in business.

B (4:41)

Crazy.

A (4:42)

You've been with me. 11. Is that true? Is that your story? 2015?

B (4:45)

Yeah, 11 this summer, dude.

A (4:47)

11 this summer, bro. It's like summer 69, but not. It's summer of 2026. But this is what I was thinking is, like, you've been doing business so long, it's easy to get stuck in kind of doing what you've always done instead of asking yourself, are there things that need to shift? And what I personally see a lot of times is visionaries are just choked out. They're doing a bunch of things that they just should not be doing. You know, once they hit that plateauing level, it's usually because they're being constricted and they need to think about what do I need to shed in order to elevate? You know, what do I need to delegate in order to elevate? And there's actually a great tool out there that EOS puts out that we use a lot that they offer for free online. You can find it or we'd love to give it to you as part of the show. You could just go delegate. The collab team. Oh, actually, we don't do that. I keep messing that up, right? It's delegate.opsexpertsacademy.com if you go to delegate.opsexpertsacAdemy.com we'd love to give that to you because Delegate elevates. Great tool. Tara, will you talk to him a little bit about it? I'm going to cough.

B (5:49)

Delegate and. Oh, you didn't even mute. You just did it right in front of everybody.

A (5:54)

Dang it. I couldn't get there fast.

B (5:56)

Delegate and elevate is A great exercise, and it works for anybody on the team. Done it with visionaries, done it with CEOs, done it with customer support roles, done it with salespeople. You can do it with anybody. And all it's really saying is you're going to think about the things you do throughout your day, week, and month, which is why a great place we start this with is the Gap Analyzer app, because then it's already listed out what you do, but you don't have to. You're just going to need to come up with that list. And we're really categorizing it into two different areas, things you like and things you're good at. And so it's going to ask you to put it in a box. There's things you love and you're good at, there's things you like and you're good at, there's things you don't like and you're good at, and then there's things you don't like and you're not good at. So the goal is you want to be in the top two boxes of doing the things that you really like and you're good at. Just try not to be in the bottom two boxes. There's always a couple of things you might have to do that you don't like, but you're good at, that you're just kind of stuck with. But the majority of your job should not be in the don't like or not good at section.

A (7:08)

Yeah, I think that basically simplest form, because it's a little bit hard sometimes to describe four quadrants on a, on a talking show like this. But I do think that shaking it down to core kernel of truth, you want to get the best bang for your buck out of your time, right? Out of anybody you pay. You want to get the best bang for your buck out of the people that you pay. Right. The last thing you want them to be doing is slogging, doing something that they're not good at, they don't like. Right. You want all of us, you included, to be living in what do I love and I'm great at? Right? Or if not love and great at, then definitely like and good at. Like, how do I keep us in that upper quadrant? Now, there are going to be some of those areas where you're just like, I. I can't deny I'm good at this. I don't really love doing it, but I'm probably the best one on the field right now to be able to do it. That's Fine. But it should be a much more minimal piece of your time. And then that quadrant where you're like, I dislike this and I'm not good at it. We need to get that off your plate as fast as possible. So I think that taking everybody through some sort of inventorying tool, you know, the gap analyzer is great. You know, it's our tool. You can find a gap analyzer.com is a great place to inventory people. And then like you said, once you have an inventory of your people and things they're doing with their time, you know, the gap analyzer for what they're doing in the daily, the weekly, and the monthly. As you inventory time and how much time that's taken them, ask your people, hey, now take this inventory here and place it somewhere in the delegate elevate quadrants. And then anything that's living down there in that don't like not feeling good at. Great, let's sop that out. Let's create an SOP so we can hand that thing down. Because the only way to delegate down is if you've soped it out. You can't just like schlep something off onto somebody. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know how you want them to. You can sop it out and, and hand it down. They can execute to it, and then they can ask you questions. And then you've just created for yourself free real estate for you to be able to take ground and do the things that are going to help you lift your revenue. If you're the CEO, you're probably the one at the top. You know, you're the sharp end of the spear. You're the one out there knocking down the work. You're the one selling things to people. And we really need to get you clear in the content you're creating and the way that you're selling.

B (9:10)

Yep. Uh, well said. I think there's one situation where it's okay to schlep work onto somebody else without an sop.

A (9:19)

If you are doing horse manure. Cause if it's horse manure, I don't think that nobody wants that.

B (9:24)

Yeah. If you're doing something you're not good at.

A (9:28)

Yep.

B (9:28)

And you now have an expert who's good at it. I don't think you should be writing an SOP on how you string together something that takes you 10 hours to do when you now have somebody who's native at it and can do it in 30 minutes.

A (9:40)

So.

B (9:41)

So just send a little quick note on where everything is. But yeah, other than that, everything does need to be soped out.

A (9:47)

I mean, I think what I think often ends up down in that not good at or don't like oftentimes that I found is, is if you're the CEO, if you're the one that's been running the organization, you probably have done all the jobs at one point or another back when you're a solopreneur, you know, and maybe you didn't do them great, but you probably did them all at some level. There's some things where it's just like, sure, you could keep doing that, but it doesn't require your brilliance anymore. So like you said, Tara, I'm like, jot it down, send it off, then let somebody else go and figure out how to make it better. Because they're probably going to better than you in the long run, especially if you've lost the passion to do it well.

B (10:22)

Yeah. Yeah. Another cool thing about the delegate and elevate is as you hold them together with groups of people, you can find something similar and realize big missing piece. Like with the collaboration leadership team, we did it together. And that's the whole reason we brought Rachel in for marketing, is because we realized all of us did not like and we're not good at the marketing. And seeing it together in a group like that made us realize we need to bring somebody in to fill this.

A (10:49)

That's good. It's good. I think too. Not only you, but oftentimes we see operators become the choking point. Maybe you've hired somebody in, maybe they were great when they started, but you're like, I really feel like they're losing steam. I really feel like they're losing the good Augusto, you know, that they're losing. They just don't have the spirit they had initially. A lot of times that comes out of they're just overloaded. It's too much, you know, and really asking yourself if we do want to ascend to that next level. You and I had a really interesting conversation last week back and forth over vox about if that visionary wants to grow more, they may have to make an investment in some team. I mean, because it's. It's not realistic for that one person to continue doing all of those things that they're gonna choke. Like, that's just realistic. It's too much. The expectation is too great. So I think if you have a desire to grow your top line, there are gonna be some economies of scale. Now, I don't think if you want to 2x your top line, it has to be a 2x of all the expenses underneath it. I don't think you need double the laborers to be able to necessarily get to 2x. You know, your, your top line revenue. But I will say you are gonna need to add some people. Right. Cause there is some scalability that you can't. You. You probably don't have that much bandwidth within your team for them just to make that kind of a lift. And you probably need to be honest with yourself about that. What are your thoughts on that term?

B (12:04)

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, a lot of conversations to end with bandwidth. You know, it's a lot of times it gets eaten up pretty quickly.

A (12:14)

Yeah, I know. That's. That's something that, you know, we talked about a couple weeks ago too, on even just the Rock party and doing things with rocks, you know, if you missed that show, we talked about creating what are the big moving projects in any given quarter you can find? I think we did@rocks.opsexpertsacademy.com but I think that identifying what are the big rocks for this quarter. And then once we've got all of our rocks selected, any other new ideas need to be punted to next quarter. Because we've already committed the bandwidth of our team to saying these were the things we all agreed on. We had our quarterly rock meeting. We all decided together these were the most important things. Stick to the plan. I think visionaries can have a tendency to want to pivot all the time. Time some new thing comes up, some new idea comes into their brain, it's the best idea they've ever had. So they think and they want to change everything based upon it. But if they would just hold, they would just be consistent. I remember I used to have conversations with Keith Yackey about other people that we saw and just how like we would look at people and we just think they're not that smart. Like these leaders that are making all this money, these leaders that are just knocking down big dollars, we would just be like, how would they do doing it? But really, in all honesty, it was because they had just honed down into the one thing that they did, and they did it really well. And they were just consistently end over end, driving that nail deeper and deeper, you know, and really accomplishing. Sometimes one of the greatest achilles for a visionary is they have too many ideas and so it just becomes a choking point. And their people are like chickens with their heads cut off chasing every new idea. And then there's just a bunch of half Baked all around, all around them because they never got anything to the finish line. So they never got to see the fruition and they never got to see the full lift. They could have gotten out of those ideas if they would have just stuck consistently to it and really seen it through.

B (13:59)

Yeah.

A (14:00)

So in summary, Darren, talking about visionary, talking about lift, talking about team, talking about how do I grow my revenue 2x I want to 2x my revenue this year. Well, 2x is pretty ambitious, depending on what your revenue is. But say you wanted 2 extra revenue, probably taking consideration, do we have the right butts in the right seats? Right? Like are, are there, do we need to think about, are we going to need economies of scale? Like how are people really going to be able to make that lift? The way to do that would be inventory your team, put them through a delegate and elevate because that's how you're going to create more real estate in your people. And then finally, I would say really think through the number ideas that you're trying to roll out and ask yourself, is this realistic? Like, am I part of the problem? All my ideas, ideas, maybe they need to be captured somewhere. That's great. But what are the ideas that are going to get me to my goal this year? And stay consistent to them, drive hard on them and don't keep picking up, putting down, picking up, putting down, picking up, putting down. Because what that's going to lead to is months and really for some people, years of burned out energy and never really seeing the fruit of what could have been great ideas. You just had too many of them.

B (15:11)

Yeah, I love it.

A (15:13)

Love it. All right, so delegate@nope, gate.opsexpertsacademy.com if you want the delegate elevate tool, we'd love to give that to you. Or you can just search Delegate Elevate. EOS has got a place you can download it too. This is just an easy way. And I think I give you a little video too, walking you through how it works so you can check it out there. Aaron, always a pleasure talking with you. I hope visionaries and operators alike you're able to get to your financial goals that you're setting for this year. Man, get out of your own way. Don't let the boa constrictor come after you. Don't let your own business internally constrict what you are able to lift to this year. So thanks, Terrence. Appreciate you Ops Experts, thanks for showing up this week and we'll see you next week here on Ops Experts Club.