Who's Really the BOSS?

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Rachel Dillon: Welcome to Who's Really the Boss podcast. I'm Rachel Dillon, and along with my husband, Marcus Dillon, we share the joys and challenges of leading a $3 million accounting firm together. From team structure to growth strategies, we share our leadership successes and failures so you can avoid the mistakes we have made and grow a valuable accounting firm.

Rachel Dillon: Welcome back to another episode [00:00:30] of Who's Really the Boss podcast.

Marcus Dillon: Hey, thanks for having me back.

Rachel Dillon: We need to give.

Rachel Dillon: An update on Kinley and Avery, which, if there's any new listeners, Kinley and Avery are our two daughters. Uh, our only two daughters. And so they are about to leave, and we will officially be empty nesters. So, Marcus, you can give an update on one, and I'll give an update on the other.

Marcus Dillon: Uh, yeah, I'll give an update on Kinley. Kindling our oldest, [00:01:00] so she is working at a camp this summer, Camp Blessing in Brenham, Texas. It's a camp for, uh, special needs, uh, folks, uh, anywhere from young children all the way up to adults. She's been doing that all summer long in the Texas heat. Um, so good for her. I mean, you have to be wired a certain way to even live at camp and serve campers all year. And then definitely the, uh, the needs of the campers and the interactions [00:01:30] that she gets to have. That's a whole other element, um, that she that she has. So, uh, super proud of her for finishing out that, uh, that season and then, uh, going back to Baylor for her junior year. And it's always, you know, interesting, uh, 20 year old, you know, kind of helping grow a young, responsible adult. Uh, but then you get the phone call about the catastrophes that happen in life, you know, the, uh, car window that was broken [00:02:00] with a rock from the mower that was at camp, and not knowing what to do. Uh, I think it's, uh, episode of Modern Family. Um, sometimes, you know, but but we're excited to go to on vacation with her and Avery here shortly and, uh, you know, celebrate the end of summer.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. And then update on Avery. She has one final meet from her year round club swim team. And so we will all be in California watching her swim, [00:02:30] um, here at her last meet, like pre-college meet. And then she will move to college mid August and start training with her swim team at TCU. And so she is very excited and I think we definitely don't know what to expect as empty nesters. Um, it is always quiet in our house, just not loud, like not a loud allowed family with a lot of people coming in and out, and the girls are usually at [00:03:00] practice of some sort. Um, and so I think we're kind of used to that, but currently we have Avery's full dorm, so her and her roommates, all of their stuff that they're going to need because her roommate's coming from California. So we just went ahead and got it all. And then we have Kenley's whole she's moving into a house. Um, so we have her whole room. So we have just a lot of extra things as they just have a few weeks before they both head out in different directions. So, uh, [00:03:30] excited for them. I think it's a fun time in the family, but honestly, I think every day, like ten boxes show up and they're not small like little things from Amazon. They're like big things like this dresser and this nightstand and this headboard. And I feel like every day, like, all of these things keep coming. Just ready for, um, them to Than to stop hitting the credit card so often.

Marcus Dillon: I don't know that the credit card hitting will [00:04:00] stop, and unless we take it away. Uh, you know, it's too easy to go to Amazon and Chick fil A and Starbucks on these cards. Kinley, being at camp has actually probably saved us dollars, uh, this summer. But, uh, hopefully whenever, you know, the girls are at school, our grocery bill will go down. Um, you know, a little bit, because I feel I feel like every two days there's an order from HEB that shows up. And, uh, a lot of that [00:04:30] goes to the teenage kid that's still living at home.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. Swimming. Swimming requires a lot of fuel. And so those groceries go quick. And especially, you know, she eats healthy. So, um, that's fresh produce and things that you were just trying to keep up with. So. Yeah, everything's everything's about to change for us, but I think it's an exciting time. Um. Uh, yeah. All right.

Marcus Dillon: Well, I. But to that point, like, the last thing I'll say on that is I met with my mastermind group [00:05:00] today and, you know, our our kind of rally cry for 2025 was the goal is growth, not comfort. And I think that was, uh, so I didn't have to realize what would be the change in life with becoming an empty nester. You know, like just putting all this additional change on so we didn't have to realize that that chapter was closing. Um, so, you know, between growing businesses and real estate sales and all [00:05:30] that fun stuff, um, but it is it is coming pretty quick.

Rachel Dillon: So what you're saying is you use distraction as like a self-protection mechanism for the girls leaving home.

Marcus Dillon: Uh, I'm sure that that's what a therapist would say if I were to go to therapy. Um, so. Yeah, that that's probably that's probably right.

Rachel Dillon: All right. Well, another conversation that you had really, um, kind of [00:06:00] inspired the conversation that we are going to have today. And so recently you were talking with a firm owner about when to delegate. What. And while that's not said very eloquently, um, that really is exactly what you guys ended up talking about is, you know what? What should I be delegating? And then what stage is appropriate for different responsibilities to delegate? And so [00:06:30] I just I think that that would be super helpful to anybody listening because a lot of times you get bogged down with I can't I can't give this away or I need to give this away, but I don't know how or when is appropriate to do it. So I feel like this is a very good topic that a lot of people can kind of take something from.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. Um, obviously when when visiting with that friend and, um, I can I can only go off of, you know, my previous experience or what I thought I should have done, [00:07:00] um, and when I should have done it. Um, so, you know, the end goal of that conversation was just when in doubt, delegate. Like, um, you know, if you're not the best person that's equipped for it, give that to somebody else who either loves doing that or is good at it, or is it just better at it than you are? Um, and so I think those are the first steps, uh, in any of this is realizing that you're not perfect. And, you know, speaking from, from my experience, [00:07:30] um, early on in the early days of diva, like, I was the only option. I didn't have help around me. And, um, even thinking back of, you know, when we were at 500,000in revenue, up to probably a million in revenue, there just weren't many options for delegation. Now, Thankfully, we continue to grow and add great team members, and those great team members are better at certain areas of business and life than I am. And if you're holding back [00:08:00] something from that person continuing to do great work just because it's comfortable for you to do it. I mean, that's such a misstep in in leadership, in growth of a team. So, uh, but yeah, that that conversation was an easy one. Um, anytime you can look back and say, yeah, I delegated this whenever we were about this revenue or this team size, here's here's what worked for us. I wish I would have done it sooner. You know, I wish I would have [00:08:30] taken a chance.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah, I want to I want to frame what we mean by delegation. And this is also just I was reminded of this probably a week or so ago listening to a Maxwell leadership podcast, but sometimes, and we have said it. Um, sometimes we say things need to get delegated down. And I think that that really comes from a place of we have like an org chart that is, you know, top to bottom. [00:09:00] And when we say delegating down, we're literally talking about the two dimensional org chart where, you know, one role is up there, responsibilities are in this box. And we're going to move those responsibilities down to another box. But for some especially if maybe I mean I have been on this receiving end, especially if you're the one um, getting delegated to hearing that, like delegated down doesn't always feel right. Um, but in my mind, [00:09:30] you know, that is not really the picture. Like, the picture that I see would be moving things like on that chart, on that organizational chart to a different person, um, which may very well be down the page. Um, but in my mind, what it really does and what the I think the Maxwell Leadership Podcast was able to help me like just put into words. It's really in my mind. What I see as a visual is not delegating something down, but [00:10:00] actually taking that person and elevating them to a responsibility that's higher, potentially, than what they've been given originally.

Rachel Dillon: So giving them a chance to actually level up with one responsibility or two responsibilities at a time so that it can help them start to advance, like in their career path. So just in case we say delegate, that should be delegated down to [00:10:30] a different level, not down like a person is below or beneath something. Yeah. Um, and then one other thing that they mentioned that was so important was not just taking all of these tasks that you don't want to do or that you don't care about, and that's what you delegate. Um, I believe they actually said like those are ones that you need to evaluate. Does anyone need to be doing them right? [00:11:00] Or is there a different solution, a different way? If it's something that you don't care about? Why would anyone be doing it at all? Um, and if it's if it needs to be something that you care about, then potentially it needs to be done completely different or in some other manner. Right? And so I think that that was all very helpful, just to, just to reframe it of this isn't a way to push off work that you don't like and that you're never going to think about or measure [00:11:30] the success of in the end. That's not what delegation is or really what we're talking about today when we're talking about things to delegate.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah, because I think a great example would be like ten 40s, right? Like nobody necessarily may want to do those. So if you delegate all the ten 40s to one person, you may actually, um, unfortunately, you may actually start to devalue that person because you may say, well, all they do is ten 40s. And [00:12:00] it's not that not that the person is lacks value, but what they are doing, you don't value. So then you associate them to something you don't value, whereas you probably just should have made the call of like, we don't need to be doing that type of work or serving that type of client instead of delegating. So I think there is is definitely an option to delegate outside of the firm. Like, hey, we are not the best for this. Like you need to go completely to another business [00:12:30] and uh, get get this done if you need it done. And then there's stuff to do with inside of these walls. Um, you know, it's it's something that I, I feel comfortable, um, you know, doing in certain seasons of life. And then it's really been cool to see other team members, um, step up to delegate, because it is it is hard, um, to do that because the easy thing to do is keep doing what you've always done and keep doing the same work and not take it, not take a risk on somebody, on another team member that [00:13:00] could do that better than you. You know, an example. We've got Julie, uh, who sits in the Philippines.

Marcus Dillon: She's a team member. And Molly, who who on our team. Molly just has limited capacity. Um, Molly just has stuff going on. Her time is best spent working with clients and doing some complex tax work. And, you know, some of the things that were on Molly's plate. Not that they're below Molly, but she just doesn't have the availability like other team members. So when [00:13:30] you're thinking about like, what could we be doing better? If you have team members that have availability, have capacity and we had that and Julie, then they're an immediate option for a delegation. Uh, responsibility? Right. So some of those things that Molly was able to delegate quickly were, um, you know, changing from we had some QuickBooks desktop files that were still floating around for internal purposes. So, uh, you know, that was, uh, something that had been on the, [00:14:00] the long list, uh, that kept getting punted down the road, uh, on Molly's task list. But she brought Julie into that. Julie set those files up, converted them, made sure everything was good, set up the right, memorized reports made. Made Molly's life so much easier. Right. And then, you know, another thing that she's kind of taken over is something like the monthly accounting that was falling on Molly. Um, so I think it was just one of those where. Yeah, you have to spend more time initially, maybe teaching and [00:14:30] reviewing, but long term it pays off. Uh, especially in this scenario.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. And I think with those responsibilities specifically, if that team member now knows how to convert like a QBD file to a qbo file, then if we have a new prospect that signs on as a client and we need to immediately convert them to QuickBooks online, we now have another team member [00:15:00] on the team who may have more capacity than someone else, who can now step in and help within the onboarding process just to make it that much smoother, that much faster, both for the team and for the client. So again, it is always an opportunity. We say delegate to elevate, but always an opportunity to help another team member to level up their skills. That way they just become more of an asset and more valuable to the entire team and also [00:15:30] clients. Um, because of that.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. Um, I think all of this should, uh, play into your overall strategy, what your long term vision for your business is. Um, hopefully you've done the work on mission vision values. And, uh, I mean, we can kind of share a little bit with what DBA is going through. Obviously, we already touched on it that 2025 was this, hey, we're doubling down. We're growing. We believe in the the services we provide. [00:16:00] We believe that we're called, uh, to serve others in this manner. And so whereas we could get stuck, you know, we were at 2 million to 3 million for a while. Um, and, you know, grew grew year over year to get to 3 million in revenue. And then we were we were there, we had the org chart of a $3 million firm. We thought like a $3 million firm. Um, we had, you know, the team in place. And so in this next chapter after after this recent acquisition, looking at additional [00:16:30] growth, both organic and inorganic growth and positioning ourselves. Okay. We're at 3.53.6 today. How does a $5 million firm look? What is a $610 million firm look. And starting to map out what that org chart looks like. And then once you start doing okay let's say what is a $5 million firm look like. And who's on that team. You have to start building out that org chart which is what we're currently doing. And then [00:17:00] real quick you start to think about, oh I can't hold on to this responsibility much longer. This needs to get delegated to either a current team member we have or I need to go locate that team member that I can delegate this function or these services to.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah, absolutely. So that's a little bit about where we are today. Let's take it way back to maybe some of the first things you [00:17:30] started delegating. And is it easiest just to do? Like we could probably do team size and revenue size, just to give some context of where we were and then what's good to delegate at that size?

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. Um, I mean, coming out of the gate, you know, after buying a firm in 2011, $400,000 book of business, you know, and what I was Sage alive, 28 did everything from start to finish. Met with clients at the beginning, [00:18:00] met with clients at the end, delivered the end product. If we're talking about a return, that was the life I came from. So nothing was beneath me. Whenever we started, uh, DBA in 2011 through acquisition and, you know, quickly you start to realize, okay, like, there's just not enough time in the day because we had a young family, I needed to come home. We were still in office. Um, you know, it was just one of those things where I couldn't sleep at the office all day. So with that, you know, what are you bring [00:18:30] people into that journey with you. Like, so what are the things? And so initially it was like making copies like the easiest potential thing to give away, right? Making copies or scanning documents, printing and putting together documents. You know, if you're if you're leading client meetings, if you're seen as an advisor, I really think, you know, if you're still putting staples into deliverables or like really putting in products together, that would be an easy [00:19:00] one for me to say.

Marcus Dillon: Like that is probably not something you should be doing. Uh, you could probably reallocate your time, bring somebody else up, uh, to kind of give them the the joy of helping you. Um, so that was early on, like pre million dollars in revenue. Those administrative tasks are definitely some of the easiest ones to give away that you you I think you joined us after $1 million in revenue. So like that next? [00:19:30] After a million, um, we started giving away like, some of the, like, phone conversations that were coming in from prospects, referrals, clients. Um, you know, a lot of those phone conversations could be done by somebody else. They didn't have to go to me as the owner or as the person who, you know, they were wanting to speak to. Um, so we started to to do that quickly after you came on board after $1 million in revenue. [00:20:00] And with that, you know, it's one of those where you're going to upset people because they're calling to talk to you. But at the end of the day, like, you're a much better person to talk to on the phone than I am. So like, we're we're actually doing them a service by them, you know, by them talking to you versus talking to me.

Rachel Dillon: I think you've come a long way. I think you've grown a lot. But you are correct. In those days you did not like to talk on the phone and didn't feel as comfortable talking [00:20:30] and advising as you did producing. Like preparing and cranking work out and reviewing, you know, the numbers of the firm. All of that definitely was more of your jam than talking to people on the phone and being surprised with what they might ask for or ask of you. For sure.

Marcus Dillon: I think it's funny because even now, like with you saying that and looking back, um, you have to define work like what is your role? And back then I saw [00:21:00] my role as like preparing tax returns or preparing financials and like, keying stuff into computer software, actually doing the puzzle. What clients were actually probably paying us for was maybe a little bit of preparation was probably already more advisory. And so just the shift from the mindset to where it's like, hey, I'm more of a production team member versus I'm. I'm available to clients [00:21:30] for advisory conversations that that shift happened happened somewhere along the way. And it probably happened from 1 million up because we were a much different firm under a million. It was more of a production mindset. That was 2011 through 2014, I would say. So back then, you know, it was just a different world.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. So, um, we definitely shifted some of the [00:22:00] phone calls and definitely the door. So at that time we were still in office and people were still very much coming into the office to drop things off, pick things up. Um, just have a random unscheduled meeting. Every once in a while, people would show up and like, hey, I have a question. Instead of calling or sending an email. And so definitely transitioned that over and put you in a back office where you could where you could crank things out and put myself and Motta [00:22:30] on. Our team, who is still on our team, became kind of my counterpart. We shared the front office and took care of those responsibilities. And then really to to be able to shift out of that production mindset, there had to be another person helping, right? Like there had to be someone doing. Someone had to, to do the actual preparation and review of work. And so is that what got delegated next or something different?

Marcus Dillon: Yeah, I would I would say [00:23:00] that, you know, as we built up revenue, as we built up budget for great team members, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're, you're trying to like, how do you keep that person busy? How do you go out and get work for that person? So it's definitely a bit of a, hey, I can still continue to do this side of it to help you kind of grow, but ultimately then you, you feed that person enough to where they're self sufficient and then they're actually producing enough work and profit. Um, you know, when it comes back to just why you do this at the end of the day as far as entrepreneurship. So, [00:23:30] um, you know, building up the work, you know, giving away billable work to others, uh, is definitely a very real thing. Uh, I think where we all start and where we all, uh, like to start is the things that we don't enjoy, uh, or aren't good at. I think that's the easiest stuff to give away. Hopefully to give it away to to somebody else that's better at it. If you're giving, you know, bad work to somebody else kind of to that earlier comment, you probably just don't even need to do the work. But [00:24:00] given the stage of the business, maybe that revenue is is good revenue for you to then move on to other services down the road. So, yeah, it was, uh, giving away some of the prep.

Marcus Dillon: You know, we talked about early on, it was the, the administrative tasks of getting things saved or, or prepared and, um, put together, but, you know, the actual in between the work that started getting delegated. Now technology kind of can kind of do some of that with where [00:24:30] we're at. But yeah, now it's just, um, the review still is is something that a lot of people would hang on to. You know, you give away the prep, you keep the review. A lot of people feel comfortable with that. Um, which that's a great evolution. So I would say when we move from 2 million on, um, then it was starting to really give away like even review functions. And after 2 million, you start to, you start to ask yourself, do I need to look at every project that goes out the door? [00:25:00] And the answer is no. And so especially if it's a stable client that comes in year over year, month over month, depending on the situation, you do not need to review or bless that work before your team member can send it out. So during that season of life, that's whenever the team of three, you know, was kind of created and where that structure came into play. So that team of three concept really allowed us to see delegation in action, and it allowed [00:25:30] us to see how somebody at director level, client CFO, could start to delegate to client controllers, tax managers, whatever you want to call that role on, on your org chart, um, to, to equip them to give them enough work to do.

Marcus Dillon: So they're profitable, they're contributing to the firm and then controllers they can delegate to client service managers. And you're really just identifying what level, what type of work is best suited for, what level [00:26:00] on the org chart. And, um, you know, I was having a conversation yesterday with our friend Andrew, who has an HR background, and we were talking org charts because that's what nerds do, right? And, you know, org charts. And he was like, you know, the best thing to do is develop your org chart without names and I agree. Like don't put names on an org chart, put roles on an org chart because then you can start to develop. Okay, a CSM should be doing this work or [00:26:30] a controller should be doing this work, not Molly should be doing this work or Amada or Hannah should be doing this work. So I think we all know the strong suits of our individual team members. But whenever we think about org charts and scale and growth from $0 in revenue to $5 million in revenue, you need to think about it a little bit more strategically, beyond the individual names and the people on the bus.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah, it really, really helps with capacity [00:27:00] because you start to develop consistency across the organization as far as roles and responsibilities and what people, um, what the roles should be doing, not based on a person. I think when we think about the people and what they're currently doing, especially in small firms, small firms, what would we say? Probably under ten people would still be considered a small firm, like up to ten people. Um, you [00:27:30] have people that are wearing a lot of hats. Their, their title may be one thing, but they do, you know, they do tax and also they do this onboarding or this special project or this accounting for this random client over here. Um, there's always these extra duties that they get assigned when you sign a teacher's contract. Um, there is a whole section that says and other assigned duties, [00:28:00] and you just sign that, like, meaning they can ask you to do anything and everything at any time. Um, for no extra pay. Like. And you just sign saying that? Yes, you'll do that. So I think it has really helped to streamline our operations. Has made client service tons better, like just significantly better because we know exactly the roles and what they're supposed to be doing. [00:28:30] But the people sitting in those roles know exactly what they're supposed to be doing and what's expected of them. Um, so that they can meet and exceed those expectations and not just wonder and guess how to prioritize different things in their day?

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. And then the other thing that happens with that is, um, that that team member that's in that same role as somebody else, they know what success looks like based on the role. Right? And not hey, [00:29:00] success is what Molly does, right? Because no one's ever going to be that same person again or do that same type of of work. So it would be very unfortunate if we graded someone's success based on another person. So that's where you need to develop the role. You need to develop the guidelines, what that role does as far as the responsibilities and what responsibilities that role does either need. Like if it doesn't fit within that, that's what gets delegated [00:29:30] up, down, sideways, whatever. Um, because that's that's kind of growing up that, that we had to do and that a lot of firms are doing right now is, uh, developing that org chart, developing those roles and those scorecards and all that fun stuff.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. So really, um, kind of with the development of the team of three and the roles, then monthly accounting projects were able to be actually assigned and given [00:30:00] in someone's main responsibility. Not if I have time. When I have time, whoever has time, go make sure that this gets done. I think that that happens often in firms. Right. Like that. The accounting projects, the monthly accounting projects feel like will whenever we have extra time, those will get done. And often what that translates into is that you're catching up 2 or 3 months at a time, because no one actually ever found the time to do it [00:30:30] every single month, because it really wasn't anyone's direct in in anyone's direct care or directly assigned to a person. It was just floating out there of this is something that should get done.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. And, you know, high achievers, they may not directly tell you this, but like, they they want to be given work that, you know, fulfills them, that they can do and that they feel good about and they essentially can go crush their day. So, um, [00:31:00] the other thing that happened in between 2 and 3 million and I don't know the revenue mark, but we had already developed a team of three. We developed CSM client controller. I was the only client CFO for a while, right? Like, everybody, like, reported up to me in this pod like structure. But we identified, like Leslie whenever she came onto the team, you know, she came onto the team in a CSM role, quickly elevated the client controller and learned that role. And I, for [00:31:30] lack of a better term, delegated like a whole client block to Leslie. Right? She rose up and was a great client CFO candidate. And then I essentially took a whole, you know, block of clients and said, she can serve these people better than I can by continuing to serve everybody that I currently am like. And these clients are going to be better off for it. Like they're going to be served better. They're going to have better, you know, be paid attention [00:32:00] more. They're going to just overall, it's going to be a better scenario, higher customer service. And then that also allowed Leslie to really learn Additional, um, you know, skills, uh, to where she even is today. So I would say it's not always about delegating, you know, a role completely. You could partially delegate, like, like we did with that client list.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah, absolutely. What what would you say? I have an [00:32:30] answer for this. Uh, but what would you say is most helpful when delegating responsibilities, especially ones that do require a certain amount of skill or experience? Um, let's say not just not just, uh, answer the phones this way or file these things, you know, file these documents in this manner. What would you say is probably best at being able to do that?

Marcus Dillon: Well, you've got some tasks, some of the ones [00:33:00] that you had mentioned, um, like a checklist. Does those really well. Right. Like just follow the checklist. Even a pilot who is responsible for so many lives, right? Every day, every flight, they follow a checklist. Pre preflight. And if they follow everything on that checklist they should be good to go. Right. So um, but whenever you're training somebody in, let's say this world of advisory that we're in where, you know, client relationships listening, being able to offer advice, um, [00:33:30] the, the best scenario is that, hey, just come to these come to these meetings with me, watch me, uh, for a season. Uh, we've done the shadowing right where it's like a month of shadow. Like I'll do it. You you hang back, you watch me, you ask questions, and then that next time around, the next month, if you will, you're doing the work. You're leading the meeting. I'm there to support you. I'm there to shadow kind of help you. And then that third final step is, hey, you're ready [00:34:00] to fly. You're on your own. I don't need to be there any longer. And sure, if you're talking like a monthly close out process, that's that's changing hands. Um, three months is that, you know, first month, second month, third month. They're on their own. But if it's, you know, client advisory, maybe those are quarterly meetings. Maybe that's over three quarters. So I think everything could kind of be done, um, in that, in that same kind of vein. But maybe the timeline is just a little bit different based on what you are transitioning [00:34:30] to the next person. Yeah, I like your answer is going to be always the right answer. So hopefully that aligned with what the right answer was.

Rachel Dillon: I think it is the right answer, especially when we're talking about soft skills. So when we're talking about anything that is um, definitely soft skills as far as leadership, advisory, communication, I think those are all things that if you can model and have someone shadow and practice those [00:35:00] things kind of in a controlled environment where you're there and available for support. That's always going to go best, I think, for additional responsibilities, for example, monthly closeouts or a tax review, having some sort of a process. And you mentioned even pilots follow a checklist, even some kind of a modified checklist. It doesn't have to be every detail, right. It's not going to have every single form and every single [00:35:30] click that you have to do. Um, but if you at least have some guidance of what is the process, how do you how do you get started? What are the most important things to look at or look for or remember? And then how do you finish it? How do you know? It's like complete and ready for the next step? I think that that's super helpful when delegating.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. So so the other thing that, um, like we'll get to what's, what's changing what's evolving here in a bit. But [00:36:00] another big thing that I don't know if you would say it was delegated, but I was no longer needed. Uh, was the interview process and what that even looked like throughout the different phases of DBA? So I remember like in the early days, right? Like, hey, you're meeting with me, and then I'm maybe getting some input from others. And ultimately the decision to hire someone was was my call. And then along the way, um, I think you helped lead that, or it [00:36:30] was you and me, and we would meet with folks, but not really have any other team members weigh in throughout that process. And then it evolved to like bringing leadership team or team in. And I was still one of the chairs. And eventually I just screwed up enough that y'all just kicked me out of some of those initial conversations with with interview. Um, you know, resumes and some of those initial team member prospects to where now someone may be hired and I, I'm meeting them when they [00:37:00] show up for their first day of work versus like earlier in that process.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. I don't know if we kicked you out or you stopped showing up. Um, I think your calendar availability definitely, uh, accelerated that process of you getting out of there.

Marcus Dillon: No, you kicked me out because you said that, um, I wanted to hire everybody or I, you know, everybody like the questions that were asked. Like you're trying to sell them on coming to work for [00:37:30] DBA versus, um, you know, them really being interested in a job.

Rachel Dillon: That's exactly right. Like, we were having less time to ask and learn about the person because you were so, um, interested and passionate about selling them. On why they wanted to work at DBA and probably sometimes promising some things that we don't do as employers here. So, yeah, you may have gotten, um, pushed, pushed out just a little bit, uh, during that [00:38:00] process, But definitely I think when we think about if we have the team members that are going to be working directly with, um, this new prospective hire, plus we have some leadership team available to meet them, to interview them, to really assess and evaluate if they're a good fit for the team. And you have clients that are wanting to meet for advisory. Where is your time better spent at that [00:38:30] moment? And it was definitely client facing because there were other team members who could step in and who would be working more directly with that person anyway. And so it definitely made sense of where is your time best spent, where are you most valuable for that? Um, for that time period. So sometimes it's by the day, sometimes it's when you're looking at the whole role, how is all of your time best spent. And I think [00:39:00] that's to say as as a leader and as an owner, you're probably always going to do things that are outside of your designated list of responsibilities, right? Like you're always going to step in where things are needed or go back just to become familiar again with what's going on, what the current process is, all of that. So you don't ever really leave it. You don't ever get to just ignore or step completely away and not have any idea what's going on. [00:39:30] I don't think that that's the purpose at all, but definitely maximizing how you spend your time each day so that the team, the clients and the business as a whole is better off with the way that you chose to spend your time.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. Um, it's there's not enough time in the day, right, to get it all done. And I think that's where it ultimately comes down to, like, where's your time best spent and who else could be in charge of these delegation [00:40:00] projects? So, um, but yeah, I think you're spot on. On how I got kicked out of the the hiring process and where we're at today. So definitely wanted to share, you know, as we move from 3 million and then are quickly approaching five and then even looking beyond five uh, and revenue like what we should be looking at and um, you know, from what's being delegated today as an owner or as a leader [00:40:30] or definitely like management of service lines. And so with that, you know, it's, hey, this has been, um, led by me to a certain extent, and now we've got other team members that have, you know, risen through the ranks or are coming in from, um, additional hiring, uh, that can run this service line, these relationships that much better. And so I think that's part of it where you start to remove yourself out of the org chart and [00:41:00] the the seats you hold. Um, so I would just, I would kind of encourage people as they grow to like, really evaluate, uh, what seat they sit in. And I know most of our friends who lead firms are, you know, they consider themselves the visionary. And if if you consider yourself the visionary, how many visionaries sit in production? And, um, you know, for for a season, it's definitely the case. But I would I would kind of challenge like, if you're a visionary [00:41:30] running a 5 or $10 million firm, like, what seat of production are you really supposed to be sitting in?

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. And I want I want to jump back because I'm not sure exactly what point it was delegated. Uh, but I know what was so helpful was to hand off responsibilities and hand off clients Vance.

Rachel Dillon: Who had a.

Rachel Dillon: Process in place that was working. So a process that [00:42:00] was repeatable. And this is really talking more on the monthly accounting clients. So talking on bookkeeping and financial statement clients where deliverables going out every month. So having rules set up, having um journal entries that need to be made, set up where someone could like follow an example, follow a sample of what was done last month or previous months, would have something to go back and look at to help with the months going forward. [00:42:30] When did we delegate onboarding? That, I feel like was one of the last things to go, because that was our opportunity to get it in good working order, like optimize and make things efficient better than when it came in to the firm. Um, as a new client, make it as good as it can be so that the monthly Processes ran efficiently and well, you know, like for the benefit of the client. So when did we give away on onboarding [00:43:00] or.

Marcus Dillon: Start.

Rachel Dillon: Sharing out those responsibilities?

Marcus Dillon: Not not soon enough. So I would say I remember being tasked with onboarding and a lot of owners, a lot of leaders are because, you know, it's this triage of getting a client in and you thinking, hey, I can get them up on the wheel of service that much sooner, and I'm the best qualified. Well, what what happened, uh, in our world is like, I just didn't have time to onboard clients. So then people were just sitting in queue of waiting to be served. We had available [00:43:30] team members ready to serve these clients, but we had to get them in so we could talk another hour on the evolution of onboarding. But I think it went from me probably when we were around, you know, right, under 2 million or around $2 million of revenue. And we were really tasked Asked with growing CAS. Um, we were in that season of transition where we wanted to exit the annual only relationships [00:44:00] that weren't that didn't value us, um, as an advisor. And we were really pushing on organic growth. We were pushing team to be structured appropriately for Castro. And when you're trying to grow and trying to add 24 CAS clients a year, two clients a month, and you're in the way of doing that, we handed those responsibilities over to one sole person to be the Ta, being the onboarding specialist.

Marcus Dillon: Right. [00:44:30] And then, um, so that that's an option. Uh, I would say if you're going to go that route in your firm, make sure that onboarding specialist has no other responsibilities that are as important as onboarding. If they've got other client service responsibilities that are important, either more important or as important as onboarding. Onboarding is going to still get kicked to the curb because it's a project. It's you know, it's one of those things where it's work. And, [00:45:00] uh, so what we saw was we we were there for a season, uh, a year or two, I would say. And then during that season, team of three came on. There were also that onboarding person, you know, they're trying to get it in and out of onboarding as fast as possible. And with that, maybe it's not fully set up. So if you've got that one sole person that's in charge of it, make sure that you also have some review, some checks and balances, because then you're handing it off to a completely different service [00:45:30] team. If it's not fully onboarded, if everything isn't set up, then that service team they're doing, they're going back and doing part of the job of the onboarding person that wasn't done fully.

Marcus Dillon: So for us, all those pain points actually led us to where we're at today, where the team of three is onboarding their own clients. And with that team of three, there comes some delegation and responsibility of different areas of onboarding. Right. So I think you've got tax admin Deidra who helps proforma tax [00:46:00] returns. You've got client service manager who's going to be serving that client for the life of the relationship. Um, they're, you know, either scrubbing the cube file or setting up a cube file. Definitely making sure bank feeds and all that are connected. Uh, client controller is is diving in, looking at strategy, filing any compliance things that need to be done. Client cfo's already leading, you know, advisory and throughout that process. So that was the evolution of onboarding from owner to onboarding specialist, a sole person all [00:46:30] the way to the team of three doing it. And I think we learned a lot during those transitions. Part of it came down to delegation and having the right people, um, doing the right things throughout that process.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah, we shared we shared kind of revenue marks and In size where we delegated things. However, if we had a better structure and I will say right now, the better structure is team F3 structure. If we had had team F3 structure from [00:47:00] the beginning or very close to the beginning and just started in that manner, we could have delegated so, so many things and made growing so much less painful, right? Like, like less hours for every single person on the team just because things would be more defined. Um, and so I would say structure and processes are the two things. So whatever the delegation timeline, [00:47:30] if you're looking if like someone's looking for the specific time of when do I delegate this? Can I delegate this yet? I would say if you don't have a structure to support it, get a structure to support it. And if you don't have the process Says. Nowadays, I feel like that's so easy to capture and not thinking like we do have available in collected by DBA, standard operating procedures, playbooks, templates, those types of things. But [00:48:00] just capturing what you do either through scribe as one of our very favorite things to use here at Dillon Business Advisors, and then also Vimeo or Loom, just to be able to screen, record and have that saved so that someone can go back to it later. So I think that those two things, if we had had that structure, if we had had a way to easily capture the processes [00:48:30] of what we're doing, then being able to elevate team members, um, to new responsibilities, we could have done it so much faster and so much easier. They would have been so much more successful and not had the learning curve and growing pains that you have when you're just trying to kind of go off memory or do one step and then go ask the go, ask the person who did it before you, and then do the next step and go back and ask the person, okay, what do I do next? Um, it would have been a [00:49:00] lot easier for sure.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. Um, all all of this. I wouldn't say trial and error. It's, you know, just growth. Um, because you don't realize how far you've come until you've lived through some of some of those pains. Right. And, and are able to see. Okay, it's much better now than it used to be. If it was, if it was worse than it used to be, you can easily just go back. Right? Like you can bring that back to the one person doing it in the case of onboarding or whatever. Um, [00:49:30] so I think we've pretty much done a good job about talking through the different revenue marks where things have been handed off and revenue marks, they're just a vanity metric. But really, it's easy to associate the life of the business, the team size, the team makeup to those revenue, revenue marks. And that's that's why it was easier to kind of talk through those there today. It also just goes back to the goals of the company. Um, if [00:50:00] you've got a high growth goal and you're looking to onboard, you know, 2 to 3 clients per month, your your delegation needs to be very strong and you need to have multiple people that could do something like onboarding, um, because you don't want to bog down the wheel or life happens and people don't show up, um, for, you know, the, the next day of work for whatever reason. So I think you just need to have some overlap in place, [00:50:30] given the goals of the business.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah, absolutely.

Rachel Dillon: Well, hopefully.

Rachel Dillon: This is helpful. I think it's a good reminder to us to constantly Evaluate. Are we using our time in the most valuable way? Are we adding value to others? By the way, we're choosing to use our time and the responsibilities that we're choosing to hold on to. So just as much of a reminder for us and allowing others to come alongside and grow in their skill set [00:51:00] and their knowledge.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah, no. That's great. I appreciate the conversation. And delegation is something that we can always continue to, uh, improve and learn from others on. So it was a great topic for today.

Rachel Dillon: Thanks for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed the conversation and want to learn more, be sure to visit. You can schedule a meeting directly with me, Rachel by clicking on the Contact Us page. Be [00:51:30] sure to subscribe, like, and share so you don't miss any future episodes. We look forward to connecting with you soon!