The Delegation Deception
Last Updated: July 22, 2020
PSA: Both Of These Options Suck
Especially if you want to build an empire based on quality, depth and lasting results.
It’d be one thing if these quotes represented a few isolated incidents. But they’re not.
When you think about it, though, it’s only natural that this would be the result. After all, consider what our industry is built upon. Who our teachers have been, and what they’ve taught us …
According to the “Internet Marketing Gurus,” there are ultimately only two options:
1. “Corporate Hustle” Culture
Either you embrace the hustle and work endless hours managing a big team of contractors, VAs, OBMs, project managers, etc that allow you to take on more and more clients … but at the cost of your profit margins and (frankly) your sanity and love for the business.
2. “Passive Income” Culture
Or you replace your high-touch, personalized approach with increasingly formulaic courses, “productized services”, and programs with complicated ascension models that herd most of your clients into cookie-cutter programs while reserving your highest value and results for only the elite few.
Thing is, you’re not going to get a better option from the same old Internet Marketing “gurus” whose entire worldview is based on an approach that says:
And so all they ever tell you to do is hire a couple more contractors, write SOPs for them to follow, set everything up on Asana, and voila! instant success.
But the truth is, the more time you spend creating processes, the less time you have to spend creating anything else. The more order-takers you hire, the more time you need to spend giving them orders.
And no matter how much you delegate …
There’s always a list of things that only you can do:
- Showing up in the videos for the new marketing campaign
- Taking calls with clients, coaching them and answering their questions
- Finding, hiring, and training contractors for every new project
- Coming up with new trainings, new curriculum, or new ways to improve the client experience
- Defining new systems and processes for team members to follow
- Even just figuring out what went wrong, why something didn’t work, or what to do differently the next time … it all comes back to you.
At the end of the day, you’re still left with too much to do, and not enough of YOU to do it…
It’s just that now, you’ve got more people relying on you, more people waiting on you, and more people expecting things from you.
The stakes are higher, the decisions are bigger, the responsibilities are greater, and there’s no one but you to make it all happen.
So what you NEED …
… is a way to break out of the Corporate Hustle AND Passive Income Cultures, and into a new paradigm.
One that lets you focus on what you’re best at, rather than spending all your time keeping things on the rails.
One that lets you help dozens—if not hundreds—more clients get the exact same level of results as you do right now …
But which doesn’t require you to hustle harder, build a massive team, or strip all the magic and personal touch out of your work.
For that, you’re going to need a different approach.
A word of warning before we begin, though:
If you want to scale without simply creating cookie-cutter products, automating the sh$t out of everything, or hiring a massive team, you will need to do things very differently.
It won’t be easy.
It may not be fast.
And you will have to unlearn a lot of what you think you know about what it means to “scale an online business.”
Truth be told, many people can’t be bothered.
Many online business owners would rather keep making a few hundred thousands per year, building a lifestyle business that’s all about them.
If that’s you, what you’re about to read won’t help.
But if you want more than that …
If you’ve already got a successful business that gets real results for clients …
And you WANT to create a sustainable, scalable empire that creates millions of dollars worth of impact in the world WHILE allowing you the complete freedom to do the work you were meant to do …
Then let’s get started.
Haaaaaang on a second.
Who are “we”, exactly? And why should you listen to us?
Hi, we’re Breanne and Jill.
We’re the Co-Founders of the Visionary CEO Academy.
It all started in 2011 when Breanne was working as a curriculum developer at the local college. And she hated being an order-taker.
The only catch was, she also had zero desire to join the Corporate Hustle rat race.
Being constantly on call, working 60 hours per week, telling people what to do and then chasing them around to make sure it’s done properly? No thanks.
Of course, being the ambitious type, she promptly got herself promoted and started studying and testing everything she could get her hands on to figure out a better way to make it all work.
Meanwhile …
Jill was leading a team of twelve, and despite it being a traditional, corporate-style management gig … she wasn’t having to play the Corporate Hustle game at all.
She wasn’t chasing her team around, she wasn’t working all hours, and when it came to getting things done …
… her team took ownership of everything. She would set out a big-picture vision, and they’d set the goals and outcomes. They’d make the decisions about how to do it. And then they’d take full responsibility for making it happen.
As we compared notes—Breanne with her theoretical knowledge and Jill with her hands-on experience—a framework started to emerge.
A simple method that would turn traditional “Corporate Hustle” practices on their head, and make the idea of having a self-managing “dream team” from a dream … into a reality.
When we started our journey into the online business world a few years later, we wanted to know if that framework could work for entrepreneurs who wanted to build the team that would take their business to the million-dollar mark (and beyond).
So we found a few clients who were willing to let us try …
And it worked better than any of us ever could have ever imagined.