In this practical episode, Sid Jashnani, Founder of Rekruuto, shares how to master delegation and scale using global talent to escape solo overload. If you struggle with doing everything yourself and fearing first hires, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What global VAs provide for cost-effective team growth
– How to use the Delta Delegation Ladder for structured task handoff
– Why starting with low-risk tasks builds trust in delegation
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 that founder out there who’s listening. Yep, just the one. No kidding, those founders of you who are listening, who are trapped, and you know who you are. You started your business for freedom, the freedom to build something meaningful, to have autonomy and control, to take control of your time, to take control of your money, to take control and do the work that matters to you. But instead, you’ve built yourself another job, and it’s probably even a little worse than your last one, because now you’re salesperson, fulfillment person, customer service person and bookkeeper. And to make things worse, if we haven’t rubbed it in enough, I have to share a little jab that my coach shared with me, and he told me that if you don’t have an assistant, you are one. Yes, that’s where we are. We’re stuck in this mode of having to do it all yourself and feeling like you can’t find a way out. Maybe you’ve tried delegation, maybe you’ve tried vas, maybe you’ve even tried offshore vas, but for some reason, it’s just isn’t for you. Well, I want to challenge that assumption a little bit today, and I’ve got someone here with us who is an absolute expert in it and proof in and of himself. Today we have with us the one and only Sid Jashnani, who is the founder of recruito. He’s also a certified EOS implementer and a whole co entrepreneur who builds and acquires IT infrastructure companies. He scaled his own business from $4 million to $35 million transforming from a firefighting operator, you know what that’s like, don’t you into a strategic leader today, he helps entrepreneurs and leadership teams to gain clarity, discipline and traction through coaching, specializing in delegation systems such as the Delta delegation ladder and pairing strong systems with offshore talent to scale efficiency and affordability. His mission is to help good companies become great while enabling leaders to reclaim their time clarity and freedom, and he’s here with us today. Sid, this didn’t come out of the blue. Every founder faces it, but you did as well. Have you always been great at delegating or tell us a story? When? When did you notice the delegation was something you had to pay attention to?
Sid Jashnani
Scott, first of all, thank you for having me and your show, and been a very avid listener and really enjoy this delegation never came naturally to me. It was one of those hardest things that I had to deal with, and I’ve always found it very difficult to delegate. And what I realized over the period of years, it is both an art and a skill in science to really delegate well. And for me, I think my tipping point was when I was the chief bottle washer, the janitor as well as the cook and the attendant and doing everything in my business, and I was just micromanaging my team. Not like not letting them take decisions, not making the best use of the staff that I had, and essentially for everything in my company, I was the bottleneck, doing all sorts of approvals, making sure everything’s ticking. And if I had to take a couple of hours off to be with my kids, everything would be at a standstill, and I would get these messages on Skype at that time to Hey, Sid, what do we do now? What do we do now? And that was a breaking point for me, and I knew I had to do something. And that’s when I kind of delved into, okay, what is the one thing that I can delegate today that’s going to make life easier for me. So I just did one step at a time, taking out one irritant, as I call it, at a time, gave it to someone else who was good at that, taught them, trained them, shadowed them, and made tons of mistakes. What in doing that? And over a period of time, I feel that I’m 80% there, not perfect, but I’m 80% there, where I do a pretty good job of delegating stuff and empowering others to do it better than me.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic, and you’re putting that likely. I think I’ve seen you’ve called yourself a delegation junkie. Now, if I remember correctly, what does it look like today? Because a lot of folks will hear someone like yourself on an episode like this, and well, they’ve always been good at that. They’ve always done that really well. And from your story, you haven’t why is it that transformation was so great for you?
Sid Jashnani
Yeah, I think if I continue to all the stuff that I was doing in my business at that time, I would have never been able to, you know, I would could, I could not scale my business. And I realized that. So I made a list of things that I was doing on a daily basis, and I started tagging that list and saying that, okay, how much, how much of my money? Is this worth is it like a $10 an hour sort of work I’m doing, or is it $100 an hour, or is it $1,000 and where does my natural abilities lie? So for me, it was being out with customers, thinking about strategy, going out and meeting suppliers, and, you know, building strategic relationships. So that’s where I should have been spending my time, but then here I was, you know, building my website, setting up the accounts, following up on payments and rescheduling interviews. So I was doing a lot of admin, and a lot of the critical stuff just got, you know, did not get the priority needed. And suddenly realized, or at least I realized back then, that my pipeline is quite weak. And I was like, Oh, I was just busy building websites. I was just busy building assets and marketing assets for my business. And I was not out there speaking with customers. And I said, I need to be out there speaking with my customers helping them do well, that’s how I make my money, and that’s when I realized that I had to start delegating some of the things that are just taking up my time. So every business owner out there is probably doing something which they can delegate today. So I call it the low hanging fruit. Just make a list of the stuff that you doing over the past week, or just track it for the next two weeks. I promise you there’ll be about two to five things that you can easily delegate to someone out there. And that’s, that’s low hanging fruit. That’s the easiest win you can get.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so Sid, that brings me to kind of a sub question that I had as you were sharing your own experience early on, and particularly for that person who has folks around them but doesn’t trust them. What I see founders do a lot at this stage is they kind of externalize that lack of trust as if it is their people’s problem. And really, you touched on something, and that is that it might very well be an us problem. So for folks who are new to this process of delegation, or who have failed in this process of delegation, or who don’t think that their people can handle delegation, what would you say to them?
Sid Jashnani
Yeah, that’s a tough question, and the answer is probably not very pretty, but this is what I did. And yeah, I think to delegate. I also had trust issues with some of the people that were working with me, because I just didn’t trust that they’re going to do the kind of quality job that I expect. But I think what worked for me was just setting up expectations clearly and just giving them the time and being patient with them to explain to them what the outcome I’m looking at. So I showed them what great looks like. This is what would, you know, float my boat, and this is what’s just going to make my day, if you do it this way. And then I would just hand hold them, and I said, Hey, for you to do this, these are the steps that I use, right? And we started recording those using, you know, like a tool, like loom. So we do it on a video call, we record those steps, and obviously, now they have that video available to refer back to, to kind of follow that system. A lot of people got it and understood it, and they started doing it, and some of them improvised. Those processes made it better than what I actually expected, right? And I was blown away. And I was like, wow, this is brilliant, because I’ve empowered them to do a job which is better than me, and I love that. But in certain cases, I was asking people to do stuff that they were not good at. So essentially, I had a VA who was more of a bookkeeper and accountant, and I was asking them to do graphic design work. And then obviously, no matter what sort of video I show them, they just don’t have the skill, the aptitude to do that work. And you know, it’s just setting myself up for disappointment, and that’s what happened. So if I’m delegating something to someone, have to make sure that they get it and they understand it and they have the skills to deliver what’s expected. The rest of it is the teaching and the guide rails and the framework that we can teach them. But if you have people who just don’t know and just don’t get it, then yeah, you’re not going to get the outcomes that you want.
Scott Ritzheimer
I want to jump to that framework here in a second, but I want to go one more step on the founder’s role in this. Because when you when you said, you know, even if you had to step away for a couple hours to be with the kids, things would come to a halt, and they’d say, what do we want to do? And one of the things that I don’t think founders recognize is how much they’re actually robbing their people of the ability to do those things. The very reason you can’t trust them is because you’ve taught them to not be trustworthy. You’ve taught them to just come and ask you for questions. Do you see the same thing?
Sid Jashnani
Absolutely. It’s like, you know, leaving their monkeys on your back. You know, the great book a One Minute Manager, right? So they just come. And leave their problems with you. And then, you know, just because you’re the entrepreneur hero, it’s your business. You want to put out all fires. You take their monkeys, and you say, All right, you know, let I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure it out. And that just becomes a habit. And for them, that’s the easy way out. They’re like, Oh yeah, Sid will do it. Let me just walk into his office and just tell them, or tell him my problem, man, he is going to deal with it, you know, and you’re right. So we don’t give them the opportunity to step up and give it a shot, because, you know, that’s the mindset that we treat them with, and that’s what they live up to.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Now this isn’t just your story. This is something you’ve helped a lot of folks with, especially more recently, and you’ve developed something called the escape formula. Tell us a little bit about what the escape formula is and why it matters to someone who’s struggling with some of this today.
Sid Jashnani
Yeah, I think so. The Escape formula is just one of those cool things that I created, which is more actually moved into the Delta framework, but the escape formula is essentially getting out of this firefighting mode. And how do you escape this? You know, because it’s, it’s a cyclical process. It’s like running on a hamster wheel, like, how do you exit that? How do you escape that? So you actually work on the stuff that energizes you. Because for me, energy is created by just speaking with customers and just, you know, making more money and just helping other people do their job better and but I’m, if I’m spending my time behind a desk chained, I don’t feel very free. So that’s why I created this framework, which is the escape formula. And one of the things in the escape formula is this delta delegation ladder, which is very simply for you to delegate. There are certain stages, right? And you know, the D in Delta just stands for do as I say, which is if, you know, if I hire someone, and I’m like an assistant, and I’m telling them, Hey, these are the instructions. Just follow instructions and get it done. Now today, we are blessed with AI in the mix. And then, you know, the D part can be done by AI. You know, you can fire up an AI agent to do that, because it’s like a repetitive workflow. And the E gets interesting, where we say, hey, go explore, and go figure out this problem that we’re dealing with, right? And tell us, you know, give us some recommendations. So yes, it requires a bit of research, bit of IQ, and you’re trying to figure out what the problem statement is, what the possible solutions are. And the L gets more interesting, because then that’s why we say that lead with a recommendation, right? The else for leading with the recommendation? And typically want to hire people who are at the L level, where you know, they can do the research, they know what they’re doing, and then they can say, Hey, I found a few solutions. I think this is the best solution based on what I know and what I’ve learned from you, right? Because they’re leading with the recommendation. The T is more interesting. And these are managers for me, like, these are the guys who take action, right? They lead with the recommendation, they know what to do. And they go take that action, and they keep you in the loop. They exactly know, yes, I’m going to keep in the loop. This is what I’m doing, and I’m going to take care of it. So these are the people you start trusting, even if you’re not an office, they’ll take they’ll take care of the solution, yeah. Now the A, which is the last part, which I say, which, which is, you know, that’s autonomous mode. That’s like co founder mode. That’s when you know that you met your, you know, the ying and the yang. And this is the person that will really, you know, be your CEO. And you can elevate and start doing other stuff, you know, like in Eos, we call visionary and integrator mode, you know. And so, and I think you also call this in the four jigsaw puzzles I saw, which is the visionary and, you know, this is the Operator mode. And so this is the operator essentially. So they’re autonomous, because they know how you think, they know what kind of actions you take, and they are just there to execute that. And and we want people, we want them to graduate through this ladder and get to this autonomous mode where they understand everything. They understand the ethos, the processes, the systems, and they’re just executing. And that’s the ladder of progression. And we have to start somewhere. And I tell people, Hey, if you’re going and hiring someone, start with an L. Help them move to a T, and eventually, hope that someone gets to an A where they run a department on a T or a team autonomously for you.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s I love that. I love it. I love it. It’s so good. I love the different steps of that. You know, we think if we we should just be able to jump to a and it’ll, it’ll all work out. And it doesn’t work that way. So super, super helpful, super practical. Recommend folks listening go back and work through those one stage at a time, because they do build on each other as well. Sid, got a couple more questions for you here. The first one is one that I like to ask all my guests, and that is this, what do you what is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everyone watching or listening today knew?
Sid Jashnani
Yeah, I think there are certain things that you can’t delegate. And what I’ve learned is you cannot delegate, oh, well, you cannot delegate culture with your team. What you have to do is show up every day and you have to lead from the front. And I thought that I could delegate that as well, right? I thought, Oh yes, I it’s easy to build culture, and I’ve kind of set the guide rules now you go deal with it. No, I think as a leader, you know, I have to lead from the front. I have to walk the talk, be consistent. And if I don’t show up in my own meetings and expect others to do it, then you know that just kind of creates a discipline, or lack of discipline in the company where we start tolerating, you know, mediocre behavior, and then it just takes, you know, a little chink in the armor for the whole armor to come down. And so one thing that I’ve learned is you cannot delegate culture, and everyone in the organization is responsible for culture, and you have to show up every day as a leader, walk the talk, be consistent and repeat yourselves often. So that’s one learning I’ve had over a period of years.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s so good, so good. Sid, there’s some folks listening who’d love some help in several of these areas. Where can they reach out to you? Where can they find more out about the work that you all do there at Rekruuto?
Sid Jashnani
Yeah, I think rekruuto.net is our website, and sure, we’ll leave it at the link part of your show notes. Search for us online recruiter, and we can help you find great talent who already at at least an L or a T level based on the kind of work you need. And even if we can’t help you find talent, we’ll refer you to some great freelancers, people who are out there, who are great operators across the world, who have done some of this, and they might just be able to help you, you know, figure out the next puzzle piece as you move through your ladder and as you you know, scale your business.
Scott Ritzheimer
Excellent, excellent. Well said. Thanks so much for being on the show. It was a privilege and honor having you here. Thanks for sharing your story, and especially the Delta delegation ladder, super practical, very helpful. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And for those of you watching and listening, you know that your 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 Sid Jashnani
Sid Jashnani is the Founder of Rekruuto, a Certified EOS Implementer®, and a holdco entrepreneur who builds and acquires IT infrastructure companies. He scaled his own business from $4M to $35M using EOS, transforming from a firefighting operator into a strategic leader. Today, he helps entrepreneurs and leadership teams gain clarity, discipline, and traction through EOS coaching, specializing in delegation systems such as the DELTA Delegation Ladder and pairing strong systems with offshore talent to scale efficiently and affordably. His mission is to help good companies become great while enabling leaders to reclaim their time, clarity, and freedom.
Want to learn more about Sid Jashnani’s work at Rekruuto? Check out his website at https://www.rekruuto.net/