In this insightful episode, Joanna Zhang, CEO of The Operations Genius, shares how to master delegation and self-discovery to escape overwhelm. If you struggle with doing everything alone and hitting bottlenecks, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What self-reflection turns challenges into growth opportunities
– How to start delegation by listing tasks and building trust
– Why respecting emotions unlocks better leadership decisions
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to The Start, Scale and Succeed Podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a founder, I’m your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and today I want to talk to those founders out there who find themselves spending Sundays catching up on invoices, staying up late to finish Client Onboarding and answering emails at 5am because that’s the only quiet time you have. Yes, we’re talking to those of you in that startup entrepreneur stage, juggling all the plates and doing it all yourself. And while that might feel like a necessary evil or even a badge of honor, there might be a better way, and here to talk to us about that is the one and only Joanna Zhang, who is an international speaker and the founder of the operations genius. She helps entrepreneurs, agency owners and leaders scale their businesses sustainably through aligned systems, operational clarity and energy based productivity. After years of working inside high growth companies, Joanna saw just how often leaders sacrificed well being and Vision for growth, and now she empowers founders to create freedom driven businesses that thrive without constant firefighting. She’s known for her holistic approach that blends strategy, systems and soul, and Joanna guides leaders to build companies that are both profitable and purposeful, and she’s here with us today. Joanna, welcome to the show. Excited to have you here from the other side of the world, waking up early to be with us today. Thanks for being here.
Joanna Zhang
Thank you so much, Scott. I’m really happy and excited to be here to share all these stories and insights with everyone.
Scott Ritzheimer
Absolutely. Well, let’s just dive in so you make the distinction that I feel really cuts to the heart of where so many stage two founders get stuck, and that is, it’s really clever way of putting it. I love how you say this, but competence is not the same as genius. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. So my question for you is, why is being good at everything? Actually, one of the most dangerous is dangerous places that a founder can be.
Joanna Zhang
Right, that’s very great question. I actually put it back to my own experience. To be honest, I’m not the DIY style entrepreneur like I there’s a lot of things I’m not good at so at the very beginning of my business, I found, like it or marketing, I’m definitely not good at it, and wasting a lot of my time, and in turn around, it just not really good. And someone else can take 10 minutes, 20 minutes, do a much better job than me. So I realized at the time I had to outsource. However, on the other hand, there are founders very self sufficient, you know, like they can do everything they are very good at. They can figure out because of that, I saw actually many people around me in that style. There was initially start wanting to do everything by themselves, and especially if they had a bad experience in work with others, they will reframe and exercise the importance of working by themselves, because they feel like there’s just less hassle. However, most of them, I found later on, they will reach a point that say I had enough. I’m just burning out. I had reached my limit. So I would say the most dangerous thing is that, because someone is really sufficient to do everything, they kind of can somehow escape or ignore the sign of self care, and, you know, the capacity to really push to the hardest. Like for me, I didn’t have that challenge that much because I had to do that. However, so for someone really independent, really wanted to pull things through, that could be the dangerous thing to ignore the science.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, one of the one of the things that I find particularly challenging about it is that you can do it, and then you are doing it, and so there’s just no time to figure out anything else. And no one can do it as fast as you. And it’s certainly no one can do it as fast as you if you have to teach them and train them and talk to them and and and get through all of that so someone listening who just kind of feels overwhelmed with the work that’s in front of them and have some experiences where trying to hand it off to someone else didn’t go well. What would you say to them today?
Joanna Zhang
Well, I will say it was my personal experience, too. If something happened to me before, I somehow used to drag by it. I used to determine my future by my previous experience. Somehow it’s saying is ego trying to protect us use our previous experience to determine what’s going to happen, what we better to do. So I think that kind of simple effect. It’s actually reflecting our own life. Actually, if anyone is facing this kind of experience, can we actually just stop and reflect everything about our life, not just working with someone else? Have we have that pattern that if we experience something, we somehow come up with a solution? Or can. Conclusion that it will happen again. So it is a sign again for us to reflect certain life patterns. So I will say, if we had a bad experience with someone or if anything in our life, it doesn’t determine our future. Even if we had a bad experience with someone, it doesn’t mean fairly failure. It’s just this pure experience that we need to learn something from it. Maybe there’s something going wrong over there. Probably it’s the other party, which we can’t control, but some of the part probably is ourselves, like myself. I started as working with the VA. I had a lot of challenges, hurdles as well, but because I had to somehow outsource them figure out a way. But for the self sufficient owners, they kind of just like, I don’t have to build that path right? So I think at that particular pivot point, maybe stop and think what has exactly happened during the last experience, if it’s because we met someone who hasn’t really fit into the criteria, or maybe something happened and not trustworthy, whatever it is, probably they’re teaching us. How can we find a better person next time? You know, a lot of time, the attitude is even more important than skill. That’s how I feel. My experience with the VAs as well. Probably from a future in process we need to be aware of something, or if the previous experience was because our communication or the character crush, whatever it is there must be something that’s reflecting our behavior, somewhere we can improve, we can learn, and we can become a better version of ourselves, as well as a leader. So the previous experience is here to teach us something. If we can look at that way, learn something from it, we can certainly move on from it, and not to avoid future possibilities. That’s how I feel.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that, because one of the things that I catch myself saying somewhat regularly with clients is, let’s not learn the wrong lesson from this. And I think that’s exactly what you’re describing. Is we we convince ourselves that that painful experience means delegating doesn’t work, and what we really should think is, Hey, why did that not happen? The way that we tried to delegate didn’t work. But this can be different. So one of the things you mentioned there is getting the right person. I think that’s really important. I think the other side of it is how to actually delegate. Well, what’s our responsibility in that process, and it’s one of those things. We’re not born delegators, at least most of us, right, just like we’re not born walking, but we can learn it. Just the same for someone who has not had any real success in delegating, but knows that they need to do it. What are some steps that they can take to improve on their ability to delegate well?
Joanna Zhang
Okay, I think I’ll probably share from this way, from up to down, like from a bigger picture. I think as a founder, we need to understand one thing, that, as a leader and founder of the business, a lot of us are visionary style. You know, our style are like we have pictures, we want to directions, we want to take things happen. And I found a lot of for example, we’re working with some clients, the founder style, the visionary one, they actually come to passing the instruction with the team. They they are drawing the pictures, but the team members, and they expect the team members, even the team members, or AI, whoever is, they understand exactly. So it’s a kind of the style we didn’t we put too much expectation on the person that that’s something in my mind. Ben, I hope you can telepathy. You know exactly what I want. So there’s one thing. So from an upper arm is a spiritual run, like a higher arm is that the expectation part let go with the expectation, and the next one is actually delegation. So go to the next layer is the style, like the method, how we communicate in terms of that from the language point of view, right? So we are visionary. We wanted to describe, but the VA is the task doer, like the detail oriented. So their language need a very specific precision. Steps and directions lead them through to make things happen. So we kind of need to translate our language from visionary into details. Well, don’t have too much pressure, because it is a process first practice as well. More and more probably during this step, we can use some certain creativity to describe but also physiological steps. So guide the other side through. Actually, there’s one other thing that as our team providing this service is that we have a LinkedIn team in the middle, like a project manager, can translate those language into actionable items. So this step is very necessary. And the third side of the group of detail is that, really, you know, I think it’s one we actually have the outcome coming. It’s different from what we thought. It’s kind of the details how to improve on it. So at the final layer is that we got to have the mindset of not expected things will turn out exactly like we will want and want to come. Outcome comes, instead of just express our in. Motion, we can give some cinema suggestions like that was my personal experience. For example, I asked for a design before, and it’s something like, what is that I practice it to give a few attempts, how about change you feel this and come a bit better? How about you feel this come a bit better? And at the end, it surprised me, because that’s co creation process. It’s always working with someone else. It’s like working together, not just 100% like what we want. So let’s create that kind of openness, communication with on the other person’s side, and with the process language to Yeah, to make it through.
Scott Ritzheimer
So good. Why do you think? Because it sounds so simple when you explain it, right? Why is it that it’s that when you get down into it, it’s so hard, like, why are those emotions so sharp in those moments?
Joanna Zhang
That’s really good question. That’s why a lot of people like to work with AI now, because AI, they don’t have rejections, they don’t have emotions everything we say, yes, yes, yes, go always, you know. Like they don’t have a sick leave, you know, they don’t even need to stop you know. But that’s why I really cherish the moment working with the humans, the human upgrade mirrors of our souls. Let’s imagine that we’re here in this world as a if you believe we have a soul, right, other than his physical body, we have some other energy around in with us. What create all those emotions? Emotion again, is I used to escape from emotions because, for example, if I’m upset, frustrated, drained, whatever I wanted to I want to get rid of that, you know, I don’t want to become positivity, but I was missing a step of facing those things. I was escaping, not myself. However, when I four years ago, I had a soul awakening event, I started realized to really look at every single thing happened within me and to really face it, even though that’s very painful, because every single emotion behind that, there is a lesson to learn. For example, I used to be angry at my son, I don’t know what, and then later on, I found out whatever he’s saying is actually some pattern in me. Oh, I realized because I was angry at myself something I wasn’t happy about myself. That’s why she reflects my anger. You know, so a lot of time when we’re working with someone else, we see someone we’re not happy. We judge on them. It’s something we haven’t accept ourselves. So since I started to practice all those emotions, started to accept all the style of myself, surprisingly, those kind of emotion just faded away. But it is a procedure, like, it is a journey as well, like what you say, it’s a decision of ourselves, whether, if, let’s say I used to work for someone bad experience, but I decide to try again when we try it out, whether we can really face the pain, find the gold, Golden Nugget behind it. So why I experience this? How I can improve? So if we can do this way, every single emotion become a navigation.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. And one of the things that I think we we overlook that you’re pulling out so brilliantly, is being an entrepreneur. Being a founder is such a deeply personal journey. We like to think like, oh, it’s our business thing. Or, if you’re in the nonprofit world, it’s, you know, it’s our work thing, but it is us. It’s in us. It’s through us, and we’re such a big part of it. And I love that, that pause to step back and think, hey, like, what’s going on in me and what’s my role and responsibility in this? It’s very good. Joanna, there’s this question that I have for you ask all my guests. I’m interested to see what you’d have to say. And the question is this, what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish every founder watching or listening today knew?
Joanna Zhang
Well, probably just based on my previous point, respect and accept all emotions. I found probably that doesn’t sound related to the business world. However, at the end of the day, I found that the main thing is our self discovery journey, no matter what we do, like entrepreneur journey is extreme one, because we facing a lot of bumps challenges, and we chose this journey because we wanted to to fulfill our vision, right? So we took on this hard journey, and let’s not escape or ignore or avoid certain challenges on the way, all those signs are giving us a beautiful, important moment for us to be a better version and to learn something and grow out of certain patterns. So that could be the secret. I used to probably give some logic or tips, but I found at the end of the day that was purely because I started to look, really look within myself. Respect my own feelings, and that could be a good start.
Scott Ritzheimer
So good, so good. Joanna, I know there are some folks listening today that would love to hear more. They’d like to know how they can connect with you and what resources you have to share. Where can folks find out more about the work that you do and what the next step might be for them?
Joanna Zhang
Right, I think the best way, easiest way, you can find me on LinkedIn and just type in my name, Joanna Zhang. If there are multiple of that, just put operations beside it. I believe I will show up. And also I will ask Scott in the show notes to share a Unst guide. I’ve got a free guide for the solopreneurs, especially if you’re feeling stuck. There’s a certain steps you can look into it and started to find out where to start with the delegation journey, and feel free to connect with me. I love to connect and collaborate and to find out some solutions where you’re feeling stuck.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Joanna, thank you so much for being on with us again from the other side of the world. Really, really appreciate you being here. It was a privilege and honor, and for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Joanna Zhang
Joanna Zhang is an international speaker and the founder of The Operations Genius. She helps entrepreneurs, agency owners, and leaders scale their businesses sustainably through aligned systems, operational clarity, and energy-based productivity. After years of working inside high-growth companies, Joanna saw how often leaders sacrificed well-being and vision for growth. Now, she empowers founders to create freedom-driven businesses that thrive without constant firefighting. Known for her holistic approach that blends strategy, systems, and soul, Joanna guides leaders to build companies that are both profitable and purposeful.
Want to learn more about Joanna Zhang’s work at The Operations Genius? Check out her website at https://operationsgenius.net/
Connect with Joanna at her LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhang-joanna
Download her Unstuck Guide at https://operationsgenius.net/solopreneur-guide/