TRP 183: Three Secrets to Profitable Delegation for Rainmakers with Dan Warburton

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[00:00:13] Hosted by High Stinks Headhunter, Author and Professional Speaker, Scott Love.

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[00:01:41] As always, and I'm really proud of kind of dig right into it. So when you talk about profitable delegation, can you give me some working definitions? What does that mean? What's the profitable delegation,

[00:03:00] unprofitable delegation?

[00:03:01] What's the difference?

[00:03:02] Kind of tell us a little bit about what that means.

[00:03:04] Well, my client that usually approaches me So they then all of a sudden become a partner, expect to continue doing this billing work and also having a team to manage. But at no point throughout any of the academic training and through their time of that law firm where they taught leadership and management. So in the end, they end up really exhausted, trying to fit in their billing work and then they end up with this team that just annoy them.

[00:04:20] His team just keep asking stuff and wanting things and how do I do this and how do that.

[00:04:24] And they just want to be rid of the to people. What should they keep top of mind first as they're looking at delegating this? So the very first thing is to set up regular one-on-one calls with their key team members. That's like, you could say secret number one, is if you're leaving yourself contactable at all hours, then you will be contacted at all hours

[00:05:40] with all sorts of questions and everything

[00:05:43] by everyone in your team and it will wear you out.

[00:05:45] But if you have regular one-on-one calls

[00:05:47] and then you request each team member Right. Then all of a sudden, they're leveraging their whole firm, their whole years expertise and everything to be so much more profitable than if they were stuck behind a desk trying to do that one hour of fierning themselves. So when they do this first secret, setting up regular one-on-one calls with key team members, setting up boundaries, unless it's a critical crisis, don't contact me

[00:07:03] except between this hour and this hour. I mean deliver that work directly to the client, but up until that point, review the work. But as soon as the work is of a good enough standard to deliver straight to the client, they can not only do that to that one

[00:08:21] client, but they can start then reviewing the work of the other law firm, the other members in it clear. So I had an orphan partner was leading a team of 12 and he was burnt out exhausting doing a hundred hours a week and he was just absolutely exhausted and his partner was also really exhausted and they didn't know what to do and he came to me saying I don't have any joy anymore. I haven't been on holiday for years. I don't see my wife and kids.

[00:09:42] And so the first thing we did was we set up those one-on-one calls and then made a request that them up to 100 hours each. And he then after two months of working with me, he dropped from 100 hours a week to less than 50. Wow, that's great. But after six months, he made an extra $707,000 clear profit. That's great. Workless. Make more money. How about that? Yeah. And that was only with a team of 12. Yeah. After a year, his firm went from being valued 3.5 million to 8.5 million dollars.

[00:12:07] power in requesting verbally that you can never achieve through emailing, which is why if you have the one-on-one calls, you know if you spotted a mistake that individual's made or if they've let

[00:12:13] you down or done something wrong, you haven't got to say, hey, let's set up a call when you free.

[00:12:18] You know that same time, Tuesday, 4pm, you've got that one-on-one call without individual. So,

[00:12:23] you just take a note, right? Bring that's where most of your repeat business comes from is from repeat clients, existing clients. And then once you see they now have to talk to them and they're generating extra work and delivering a high standard of work, you can then drop down to half an hour a week. And it can even get to a point where some of the key team members, you can then appoint

[00:13:45] one of these people that you've trained and connected. It creates that. And then the second thing is the acknowledgments.

[00:15:02] So that's your bonus secret. Let What is important to you? What do you want to succeed at? Is it more money? Do you want to become partner? Do you want to take Friday's afternoon to go and play golf? Are you in some kind of club or hobby or sailing? What is it? And then once the employee feels like you really care

[00:16:20] about them fulfilling what matters to them,

[00:16:22] then the loyalty really steps in.

[00:16:24] And then you end up do you go on all the dates that you say that you're going to do? And do you do all the workouts that you say you're going to do? No, no one does. No, even me, who's like really into yoga, and I do yoga probably five to six mornings a week, I'm no way near as to when I was in the Himalayas with yogis practicing yoga,

[00:17:45] for those hours that length, that need this written, this is what we agreed to. How can I say, I want to hold you accountable? What do you think me as a rainmaker can tell my associate that will convey that I need to hold them accountable? So the first thing is always put it in the context of the employee succeeding at what matters to them. And that the way that they're going to succeed at what matters to them is by co-partering

[00:19:03] with you to succeed at what matters to the firm as a whole.

[00:19:07] That's the context.

[00:19:08] Yeah, good. that we want and things that we don't want. And if we help people get clear in what they don't want and what they do want, and then we help them move away from what they do want and get what they want, then they're gonna be more loyal to us and willing to take responsibility that goes with it because then their success is on the line. That's right. That's great. Yeah. So how does somebody get better at that?

[00:20:20] How does somebody get better at articulating this

[00:20:24] in the way that you recommend?

[00:20:26] Well, the first thing is be genuinely interested hundred member firms and this works with them. It just takes longer for it to rain down and to really become culture, that's all. So I'm curious, I want to get to this in a second about how you work with them over the long term. I want to kind of talk about that in a second. But if we could give some structure in terms of three action steps to kind of recommend that you'd recommend to get people

[00:21:40] started with this three action steps, what do you think those three action steps would

[00:21:44] be there?

[00:21:45] They're pretty much the secret. So number one, schedule regular partner of a 25-person firm. She was exhausted, burnt out. Some of her employees would come in on Monday, still drunk from the weekends. They really didn't care about her. They didn't care about the success of the firm. She felt like she was able to do everything herself. And when we got into it, what we'd realized was that

[00:23:01] she was so busy and so exhausted trying to do everything

[00:23:04] that she would never stop to have a conversation

[00:23:06] with any of employees and find out what matters to them. In fact, more than that, it was over 40,000. But by the sixth month, you start to hit 60, 70,000 revenue per month. And now she's on 150,000 per month in revenue. But it's always the same kind of process that I find that works with one firm, works with another. And it's these three different secrets that I've shared with you today. Thank you for sharing that.

[00:24:20] And kind of share with us what your offerings are.

[00:24:23] What is it that you have, that you do,

[00:24:24] that you'd like our listeners to know

[00:24:26] where they can benefit from that information like to be connected to new people. Yeah. So just just search down more about and you'll find me there on LinkedIn. That's great. We'll put that on there also. And I've already checked out. I know you've got some great information on there. And Dan, thank you so much for sharing this. I like the fact that it's simple that people can take these action steps and get started. And I also appreciate you offering that free delegation assessment. We'll put that link on the show notes as well.

[00:25:41] Dan, thanks so much for being on the show today.

[00:25:43] Fantastic.

[00:25:44] Cheers.