Mastering Management Systems: Mads Singers & James Dooley

**James Dooley:** So today I'm joined with Mads Singers. Today we're going to talk about management systems and delegation. So let's dive straight in. Straight into it. Delegation. Let's go straight into that. What do you find majority of people when they're coming to hire yourself. What do you find the most common problem is with regards to delegation. **Mads Singers:** Yeah the number one thing is that people delegate tasks. So when you are listening to people online or when you go to most courses they tell you to figure out how to do something, put it in a process, hand it to someone. But the problem is giving people tasks does not help them take ownership. It does not take it off your plate. It adds more stuff to your plate. When you do that, every time you hire people you get more people to look after and you get more work to do. What you really want to do is delegate responsibility. You want to take a specific area. Let us say link building. You want to hire someone or find someone in your existing team and say hey we are busy. I do not have time to focus on link building. I want you to take and own the link building. Our goal is to make sure we build a certain amount of good links. But you want to give it to someone to own, not just hand them a process. Most people struggle because they say they give stuff to people but they do not come back with suggestions and they do not improve because they are not given ownership. When you work with your business partners I see you giving them a ball. You give them something to run with and figure out. That is why you succeed. Most people hire very cheap low cost labour. That can work if you hire great people. But if you hire low cost labour and hand them tasks you will not get people who can grow your business. **James Dooley:** So today I was on a podcast. I was getting asked questions that are perfect for people like yourself. They were asking at what point you decide if you need a middle management structure. Is there a number of staff before you say you now need middle management. **Mads Singers:** Yeah. I work with a couple of numbers. As a business owner you should not have more than five or six people reporting to you. You need time for strategy and vision. If you are a manager I say eight to twelve people. Lower end if people do different things like in a marketing team. Higher end if they all do the same job like customer support. When to introduce middle management. My feeling is as soon as you have two people doing the same job. If you have two link builders do not have both report to you. Make one the team leader. It helps them learn to manage early. Managing one person is easier than managing ten. So pick the one with most potential and make them the leader. Then you have one less person reporting to you and they start developing leadership skills. **James Dooley:** Let us talk about the owners. Sometimes they try to delegate responsibility and middle managers take ownership of the SOPs. But talk to me about perfectionism and procrastination at the top. When the top person is a perfectionist and procrastinates. How does that fall down into the managers and staff. That is a huge problem I see. **Mads Singers:** The person at the top is often the one that needs to let go. Detail oriented people are usually the worst at delegating because they think in tasks. They have a to do list of hundreds of things and hand them out as tasks. They do not give ownership. They are control freaks with it. You have to understand value. Think of a company as a pyramid. You grow a company by increasing the value of the stones in the pyramid. If you sit at the top and do things someone on five or ten or twenty bucks an hour could do you hinder the growth of the business. People say it takes five minutes so they do it. It is not about the five minutes. When you do that stuff you are not doing higher value work. Many agencies have SOPs with a hundred things per site. I ask what the ten things are that move the needle. Take the other ninety and park them. Business is return on investment. If you spend two weeks speed optimising a website but two weeks writing content would get stronger returns you pick content. **James Dooley:** So if my business partner is a procrastinating perfectionist is there anything I can do to develop them out of that. **Mads Singers:** Mindset. Everyone knows they should delegate but they do not understand the value of it. Procrastinators are often kind people. They are afraid to hand work to staff because they do not want to overburden them. But they are in their position now because someone once gave them ownership. No one became a great SEO by being handed a pile of processes. People grow when they are given responsibility. These leaders think their staff are not good enough. The reason they are not good enough is because they are not being delegated to. It is a two way thing but leaders who are perfectionists or too kind are not giving people the option. If you asked a busy staff member if they wanted to help with something they say yes every time. Most people sit and do the same stuff every day. New tasks excite them. **James Dooley:** Another one. You have someone at the top who says they are frugal but they are actually tight and do not want to reinvest. Have you come across that. **Mads Singers:** All the time. Frugal often comes from fear. Business is return on investment. Clients will pay more if you give value. You can hire a bad person for five hundred or a great person for three grand. It is not about cost. It is return. Cheap can be fine but if you are not good at hiring and you go cheap you usually get poor people. But there is another layer. Some founders understand ROI but do not understand branding. Short term you take one step back for two steps forward. Branding is long term ROI. Many founders are too focused on short term ROI and not enough on trust and brand. That is often lack of experience. You know the long term return because you have seen it. They have not. You look at lifetime value and you know it is worth it. New founders struggle with that. **James Dooley:** These people are all over the world. India, Pakistan, Philippines, UK, US. They think differently. Some understand ROI but not brand. They cannot see the bigger picture. To take it to the next level you need trust and branding. Sometimes they are just tight. They do not see that brand can win jobs. Long term I know it will work so I think about putting my own money in. But I should not. I might only own 20 or 30 percent. I should not fund the whole brand. **Mads Singers:** You are not supposed to. I take responsibility for everything around me. You have three choices. Teach them. Put your own money in. Or do nothing. For me I educate. Get them training or mentors. Or I decide to invest. Or I let the business grow slower. Depends on the situation. **James Dooley:** As a consultant what are the most common issues you see. And does the person who comes to you usually turn out to be the main problem. **Mads Singers:** Delegation is number one. People come saying they cannot find good people. They ask where the A players are hiding. There is no A player job board. Finding great people is a skill. Giving them a vision they buy into is a skill. Managing them well is a skill. Most founders have no management experience. They start hiring and managing with zero training. Same as SEO. If you started SEO without training it would take years. It is the same with management. Number two. Many founders want to do the job rather than run the business. Many say they want to do SEO not manage. That is a technician running a business. You have to choose. Are you a business owner or an SEO. Two different paths. Being a business owner is a skill. Anyone who can learn SEO can learn business. When they see the power of management they get hooked. Like SEO. At first it looks like a black hole. Then it becomes interesting. They learn how to talk to people. They learn what happens when they are too nice or too strict. **James Dooley:** Random question. If you have an SEO who wants to do SEO work but wants a business, can you set up someone to run their business above them even though they own 100 percent. **Mads Singers:** Yes. I know a few who have done it. But hiring above yourself is harder than hiring below. Hiring a CEO is much harder than hiring an SEO. In SEO community Michael Suski from Surfer is an example. He is the tech guy and brings in others. Most people want to build a business though. You can learn to be a great business owner. It is a skill. **James Dooley:** So let me wrap this up with a question. When do people need to hire a Mads Singers. Many people ask me about this. They get to ten or twelve staff and they are overwhelmed. They have no middle management. They need help. What are the signs they should hire someone like you. **Mads Singers:** People can start learning management in many ways. Books help but only so much. Start slow. For me the first step in a business is to figure out the business model. Many come wanting to hire better but they do not know what they actually sell. Fix the value proposition first. What problem do you solve. Repeatably. Then hire and scale. As soon as you have a clear offer, revenue coming in, and a couple of staff, it is a good time. Two to three hundred K revenue. I have people come at fifty staff with no structure. Management shortcuts the learning curve. Most businesses take three years to get from nothing to sustainable. Because they fall over many times. Management shortcuts that. **James Dooley:** Sounds good. Mads has massively helped me. Building a business to sell even if you do not plan to sell. Profit and loss. Lifetime value. Average order value. Good KPIs. Better accounting. Three years of clean books. Understanding lifetime value. Understanding what you can spend. Not just month one. All those bits helped us. Building every business as if it is a franchise. Systems that work without you. Higher multiple. And the creative freedom to step out. You can go away for months and still do creative sessions. You get ideas from conferences. If you did operations daily you would not have time. I do the same. I plant seeds with four people. They come back with ideas. We refine them. New services get built. Because they take ownership. It works well. If anyone has not hired Mads I strongly recommend him. Especially if you do significant revenue or have staff. He is a legend. **Mads Singers:** Thank you very much James. Cheers.