Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Michele shares how offboarding responsibilities to others is key to living your best life and creating more value in your business. Purpose X and Purpose Y are both within reach!
Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
And it's essential dynamics again. How glad am I? I'm Reed McColm, your handsome host, and I'm here again in the studio with the thinker and creator of well, the one who came up with the, Essential Dynamics perspective. That's mister Derek Hudson. Derek, are you there?
Derek:I'm here, Reed. Fantastic to see you again.
Reed:Well, it's nice to see you. I'm it's always nice to be seen as well. Derek, I hope we have in the studio someone, we've talked to before because we're not finished talking to her.
Derek:No. Michele Hecken, you're back? You with us? Can you hear us?
Michele:I am back, Derek. Thank you so much. Thanks, Reid. I'm excited to be back.
Derek:It's it's it's great to have you back. We were just kind of getting going when we cut you off last week. So you started with a story about how you started a translation company, by fax machine in twenty hour days. Then you talked about that moment when you realized that you needed a life too, and your daughters needed you. She started bringing people in.
Derek:How big did that organization get?
Michele:Thanks Eric. It grew quite substantially. The first couple of years were crazy because we had, like, 300% growth. And and and while that sounds amazing, we didn't have that much revenue. Right?
Michele:So 400% growth sounds incredible, but it's still a fairly small business. But it was interesting to manage that growth because we really had to scale quickly. And I'm grateful for that experience while it was very turbulent, it taught me a lot of essential skills that I could then use as we were growing 25, 30 percent a year, but at a much higher revenue rate. Right? So when you have three people and you're you're growing 400%, okay, great.
Michele:But, you know, if you already have 20 people and now you're growing 30% of revenue, it's it's a little different ballgame. So, we grew it up to, several million dollars in revenue over the
Derek:five And how many
Reed:did you really?
Derek:How many people, were, I guess some of them were contractors, but like how many people were involved in your organization?
Michele:Yeah. Some people always ask me that, and it was a translation company, right? So Yeah. We had our project managers. So our core team that was full time equivalent was probably, about 15 to 20 people.
Michele:And then we had hundreds and I think even thousands of translators around the world in different time zones that work for us with different specializations and different languages.
Derek:That is, that is super cool. And so you invented remote work? They didn't invent it, but I am
Michele:I am the queen of remote. I am definitely the queen of remote,
Reed:for sure. That's funny because I find you very personal. But if you say remote, that's okay.
Derek:Yeah. Yeah. So, were you always having fun?
Michele:I tried to, for sure. Was I always having fun? No. For sure during the 02/2007, '2 thousand '8, '2 thousand '9, I was not having a lot of fun. As a matter of fact, I almost lost everything during that time because we worked with big law firms and big banks and focused on translating their documents, cross border transactions, very much tied to the financial, world.
Michele:And Lehman Brothers happened and, a lot of our clients suffered. Some of them didn't make it, some of them survived. So within the first six months, I believe, of 02/2008 it was, we lost 75% of our revenue. So, yeah, I know I wasn't having a lot of fun then.
Derek:Hey. We we should have chatted back then. I was, I was the last half of 02/2008 for us at Microline when, the orders went from you can't make enough to please stop from our biggest customers. Yep. Because they took a long time for that to shake out.
Derek:So that was, challenging. How did you get through that?
Michele:You know, I had a great team, and and I remember to this day, my COO just really being by my side and and saying, you know, you started this from scratch once. I was by your side early on. If we have to work out of our basement again to get it going again, we will, and I'll be here.
Derek:Did you you never made it back to the basement though, I bet.
Michele:No. We made it. Luckily, we made it through, but we did have to let go of, you know, three quarters of our team, and and we did have to start not quite from not quite from scratch, but pretty much at the beginning. And, but, you know, there's so many lessons from the edge that make your business so much better. Right?
Michele:Scarcity sharpens the mind. And when you don't have anything, you have to be way more creative and more, you have to apply more ingenuity to survive.
Derek:Well well, one of the things we've talked a number of times on this podcast is how, opposition it's not it's it's not that just we just get through it, but that we're better than we were if we hadn't had it. So what was your business like on the other side of the Great Recession?
Michele:Well, on the other side, we improved our systems, our processes. We became leaner. We became, more courageous. It's one of those things when something like almost really bad happens to you and you come through the other side, it feels like some of the decisions that I struggled with before the crisis were now easy. Some of the decisions that I wasn't willing to give to anybody else to make, I now offloaded.
Michele:I, you know, gave responsibilities even more than what I did before because I knew I could trust my team. I knew everybody had this, and I think that's essentially what really helped our growth as well because I could now even more so go out and and focus on business. I wrote an article called the absent CEO, because I was barely ever there.
Reed:Oh, now how do you feel about CEOs generally? Do you feel like they, they would profit from, I don't know, stepping back from day to day, minutiae?
Michele:Well, I two things. I I believe that, the job of the CEO is to grow the company.
Derek:Okay.
Michele:And it's very hard to grow the company when you're sitting in front of your computer. One. Two, I believe that entrepreneurs, as entrepreneurs, we are so well positioned to design and lead the life of our dreams. And and instead, we're burning out and and waiting for life to happen after while while constantly chasing this elusive work life balance that doesn't exist. So, yes, I feel that CEOs can grow their company, create more value in their company by off boarding themselves and and then living their best life.
Michele:So so really, the team does better, the company does better when they exit, and I know you wanna talk about my my exit as well, Derek. You create more value in your business when it's not just not tied to you, but it can actually run without you. So,
Derek:yeah, let's touch on that, and then I do wanna get to the soft boarding thing because I think it's a fascinating concept. K. We need to we need to talk about that, but, you had created for yourself this business where a long time ago, you fired yourself from the operations. You're focused on growth. You'd leaned it out.
Derek:How did you know when it was time for you to actually sell the business?
Michele:Okay. Well, one, I'd had the business for twenty five years. It served me well. I served the business too, but I really designed it for it to serve me and and the people in it. The landscape was changing.
Michele:So, I mean, to be honest, Derek, I I could have done this forever. Like, I when I sold the company, I really hadn't worked that much for for the past fifteen years. I I did strategy. I I did looking forward, and, you know, I had an amazing COO who ran it. What it was for me is two things.
Michele:One, technology was changing rapidly. So as within the inception of my business, technology at in the fax machine helped me create something that was different. What I was now seeing is that technology was accelerating this process for everybody else, but that it would take a ton of energy and a lot of investment for me to keep up with the development in artificial intelligence, machine translation, and all of those things. Now I didn't I I actually found it very encouraging, and I embraced it, but I knew I didn't have the energy to basically start over.
Derek:Mhmm.
Michele:And I knew that if I sold to a really good, large player in the industry, that they would hopefully take my legacy, take my people, put the money and, you know, the expertise behind it to bridge that gap, that that I just was too tired and and, you know, I didn't have the fire Yep. To restart it.
Derek:So, so you sold it and it and it worked out well?
Michele:I sold it, yes, to a publicly traded company out of The UK in an all cash deal. Publicly traded. Look it up if you like. And I walked away. And, life is glorious.
Michele:It's always been glorious, but now it's fun because I'm writing my book. I'm working with exceptional entrepreneurs and helping them grow their company and create the life of their dreams as well.
Derek:So you found your passion again?
Michele:Yeah.
Derek:Yeah. I wanna hear about that. So first, I'm gonna set it up and and, talk about essential dynamics for one minute read, if that's okay. And if you're You're gonna talk
Reed:about essential dynamics? I'm shocked.
Derek:You know, I I apologize, but, you know, we're gonna do it. So the one concept that I want to focus on is, on the quest, there's this purpose. And, we strive If the purpose was easy, we'd have it. But it's a quest that's hard, there's opposition. And one of the, really interesting things that I've discovered is that to really be, honest, there's more than one purpose.
Derek:And, so in the context of that those dynamic forces, we talk about purpose acts and purpose why. We don't define what they are, but, you know, encourage people to say, what are you trying to accomplish and what else are you trying to accomplish? And how do those two things relate to each other and what are you doing about it? So I think Michelle, with her off boarding concept, has really nailed one aspect of purpose X, purpose Y for many entrepreneurs. So I think we should just let her run with what's off boarding, and how does it serve those conflicting purposes that entrepreneurs face.
Derek:Okay.
Michele:I love how you frame that. And I, by the way, I really love the analogy of the quest that you bring up x and purpose y because it really is at the essence of of what keeps us torn. It's like the quintessential dilemma where, you know, you're being pulled here and you're being pulled here, and and they're both right. And both things are right. They're equally important and valuable to you.
Michele:Right? And and that's what really creates that tension. So offboarding, what is offboarding? And why is it different from everything else that we've heard about working on our business? So we've all drank the Kool Aid, and it's delicious Kool Aid, and this Kool Aid actually has a lot of vitamins and nutrients for entrepreneurs.
Michele:It's very important, to drink it maybe out of that, you know, holy grail on the quest that, that you may or may not have. But while we drink this delicious Kool Aid, we need to work on our business. Nobody really tells us how to do that. So now we're like, okay. I know I need to do this.
Michele:I know I need to get out of the way, but how? Okay. Let me get some of the stuff off of my desk. So then we start delegating. Right?
Michele:So I give somebody this piece of paper. Oh, now I don't have this piece of paper on my desk anymore. Awesome. Let me give you this piece of paper. Oh, my desk is getting emptier.
Michele:What we don't realize is the more we do that, there will come a time when all of a sudden we go like, oh my goodness. When was that to? Who did I give that to? Oh, this person has I haven't heard from them. I think they're late.
Michele:So now we're carrying all of this heavy load in our head because we have to now manage everybody. And so while everybody tells you to delegate more, I'm actually saying we should stop delegating completely because it increases our mental load, and it leads to micromanaging everybody that you've delegated to, and and it burns us out. What if instead we actually offboarded a responsibility? And here's the other thing about delegating that is dangerous. We always delegate the stuff that we least want to do.
Michele:Right? Yeah. Okay. So with offboarding, it's more important to be purposeful and mindful of which responsibilities we are giving to somebody else. Because with delegating, we still own the responsibility.
Michele:And if the person we gave a task to messes it up, we're responsible. That's a ton of stress. But if we can offer the entire responsibility with the right framework, with the right training and coaching, doesn't happen overnight, now we've freed our mental load. So if I don't have to think about if my translators, ten of them, are gonna be on time with their translation or how much time somebody has to spend proofreading, I can now have an engaged conversation with my client who may bring me tens of thousands of dollars of new work.
Reed:That's that's that's a very, wise principle. I am not sure why it hasn't been more widely embraced in the business world. Delegation and business seem to be, well, one of the one of the bugaboos of business. It's Right. Seems to be something you have to do.
Michele:That's right. That's right.
Derek:Well, I think Michelle Michelle's, key here, the key word I picked up on this pit was micromanaging. So if the kind of delegation that I would like in my own mind to think that I do is actually offboarding, but it's not easy to distinguish that between handing tasks out Right. And then expecting people to do them the way you want them to do them, which is the definition of micromanaging.
Michele:Yep.
Derek:And I don't like to be micromanaged. Nobody does. And I would rather be let down by somebody because I didn't set them up for success, than to hover over them and get the product that I wanted, and not have them develop the capacity to do it on their own.
Michele:You know, the next step. I love I love what you said there. Can I just jump in because it's so important? We can off board the responsibility to a member of our team. Right?
Michele:And when we think about leadership, right, now that puts the onus on you, the leader, to set that person up for success. So it really grows better leaders in your whole entire organization by embracing that that notion of offboarding responsibility. And and by the way, you're right. Everybody calls it delegating and and and on different degrees. And what does that mean?
Michele:Now I'm a linguist, so I had to make up a new word for it.
Derek:And how do you say off boarding in German?
Michele:Oh, my goodness.
Reed:She's not a translator. Okay.
Derek:That was a test. You passed the test. Good for you. So, we got to cover one more thing here, which is a different kind of onboarding. So the another the next step, I guess.
Derek:So I certainly want to hear that. So just to recap this, you take responsibilities and you move them to other people.
Michele:Yeah.
Derek:And then what do you do with yourself as a CEO entrepreneur?
Michele:Okay. So let me share with you the four steps that I use when I work with clients through this. And and the four steps are really the initial step, but it answers your question. One is instead of just getting rid of what's on your desk or on your your your plate because you don't wanna do it or you're too busy, What I do is I I I have my clients look at and list all of their responsibilities, everything that they do. Then I have them rank how much time approximately they feel they spent on all of it.
Michele:Percent. As a percent. Yeah. And then I say, okay. High, medium, and low.
Michele:How important is this for your business? How much value do each of those responsibilities create in your business? And then lastly, I say now mark all those things that you love doing green and all the things that you loathe doing red. Now those four little things on one excel sheet are some of the most powerful some of the most powerful information you can have. Because now instead of just getting rid of these things off of your desk, you can say, oh, I love doing these things.
Michele:Are they high value for my business or low value for my business? Because sometimes we need to offer things that we don't love because they're not the highest value for the business. Right? If I love inputting data, I'm just saying
Derek:Yep. Not
Michele:the highest value. I love doing it. Doesn't mean I should be doing it. Right? If there's something I really hate doing, but I'm the only one who can do it or so I think, and it has a high value, now you have a strategic hire.
Michele:So you can get a lot of information from those four simple steps rather than just flinging things at people and then carrying their mental load.
Derek:That's amazing. Hey, Reid, I just wanna apply this quickly. You've been the director of a theater.
Reed:Yes.
Derek:Can you do that in this use these those steps in that environment?
Reed:Well, it's certainly interesting. It's it's it's I am applying it in my head as she's speaking, and I'm I'm going, yeah. Of course, they can be applied. I just I think a lot of my mistakes have been in not applying it. I'm I'm looking forward to my next opportunity to to apply Michelle Hacking's philosophy of life on mine.
Derek:Michelle, any other advice for us? Wow. This has been great.
Michele:Thank you. Thank you, Reid, for that. And Derek, I appreciated that. You know, maybe I'll just leave you with this, and your listeners. You do deserve to have it all, and you don't have to choose.
Michele:You deserve to have it all so you can have more of what you want, more often with less effort. You deserve to have it all so that you can live your best life and create more value in your business. And you deserve to have it all because you only have one life. So live it on your terms.
Reed:Yeah. You
Michele:deserve to have it all.
Reed:That's really valuable. Thank you so much for joining us, Michelle Hekin. Where can people find you if they want to reach you on the Internet?
Michele:Absolutely. MichelleHekin.com, Michelle with 1 l, hecken like what the heck with e n, michellehecken Com. Happy to answer any questions of your listeners. Reach out to me at michellehecken dot com. And thank you so much for having me, Derek and Reid.
Reed:Thank you. Derek, where can people find you if they want to know more about Essential Dynamics?
Derek:They can find me at derek hudson dot ca, and now, for the first time in my life, I'm wishing I had heck in my name. In in my family, that was, like, the worst word you could say almost. So so they consequently, we used it a lot. Michelle, thanks so much. This has been fantastic.
Michele:My pleasure.
Derek:Thanks for
Michele:having me.
Reed:Yeah. Yes. Thank you. And, I'm Reid McCollum, your handsome host. And for Brynn Griffiths in the studio, I'm saying to all our listeners, until next time, consider your quest.