Diana Alt [00:00:04]:
Hey, Diane Alt here, and this is Work Should Feel Good, the podcast where your career growth meets your real life. Each week I share stories, strategies, and mindset shifts to help you build a work life that works for you on your terms. Hey there, everybody, and welcome to Work Should Feel Good, the show where your career growth meets your real life. I'm your host, Diana Alt, and today my guest, Adrienne Dorison, and I are going to talk about how to build work and teams and businesses that don't depend on any one person to keep everything running and why that matters, whether you own the business or not. Adrian helps business owners and leadership teams build more resilient, efficient organizations through better systems, delegation, and decision-making. Which decision-making is like the unsung out of that. People do not talk about that enough. It really is.

Diana Alt [00:01:00]:
Yeah. She's the founder and CEO of Level 11 Leaders, which is a brand I love. I just— when you came out with that, I loved it. And prior to launching that company, she created the Clockwork Methodology. Adrienne, welcome to the party.

Adrienne Dorison [00:01:14]:
Thank you for having me at the party.

Diana Alt [00:01:16]:
I love having you at the party. Yeah, we were talking before I hit record about how we have like a weird little parasocial relationship because we've We talked, we spoke at the same event, but we didn't actually get to meet each other because you only were able to be there for one day.

Adrienne Dorison [00:01:32]:
Um, co-parenting, you know.

Diana Alt [00:01:35]:
Oh yeah, my brother got divorced, uh, gosh, how— shoot, a year and a half ago, something like that. It was final.

Adrienne Dorison [00:01:43]:
I had to run out of that event. I was there for like a few hours and then I drove back home to Tampa.

Diana Alt [00:01:49]:
You were like, Adrienne, you have to meet her. And I'm like, She's the Clockwork Lady. And I'm like, okay, I do want to meet this person. No, no such luck that day. I like to— I always like to talk a little bit about like how you got where you're at. And I was doing before this morning, before recording, I was doing a little Adrienne stalking. How do we get from wildlife ecology to business consulting?

Adrienne Dorison [00:02:16]:
I'm so glad you found that.

Diana Alt [00:02:18]:
You know, it's right there on LinkedIn, right? Perfect. Yeah. Talk about that.

Adrienne Dorison [00:02:22]:
I do that intentionally. Yeah. My background.

Diana Alt [00:02:25]:
No, no need. No sense in hiding it. No. Why are we, why pretend that you learn business any other way than like having a business?

Adrienne Dorison [00:02:33]:
Right. Like I did work in corporate, but it's interesting, like how I even got to corporate.

Diana Alt [00:02:41]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:02:41]:
So my background, yeah, my undergrad degree is in wildlife ecology and conservation. After, well, I ended up studying abroad and living in South Africa for a bit and trained and certified to be a safari guide while I was there. So I lived the safari guide life for a little bit, then came back to the States. I did some environmental education for a summer camp. And that also like went throughout the school year. It was like where kids would come out You know, and they would earn, like, the school would get like credit or like curriculum credits for, for the classes that we taught at camp. And it was all wildlife and fish seining and dissection I taught. And wow, um, just like cool wildlife classes that worked at a camp and made zero money.

Adrienne Dorison [00:03:34]:
But I got to live on— I got to live on site, so the expenses in my life were low, you know?

Diana Alt [00:03:40]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:03:41]:
Um, and then I decided to go back to grad school. I went to grad school for forestry and natural resource economics. Also random, okay? But I was trying to become like really well-rounded in the natural resource space and also be, uh, business ready in case, um, my career brought me towards an organization that, you know, I needed to understand like the statistics of things, the economics of of natural resources. And so then the economy sucks. And I think, you know, my whole life I'm gonna work for like a nonprofit and like save polar bears. That's like the dream for me, you know, big predators. I always loved big predators. Like anytime I was working on a project, like that's the, that's the thing.

Adrienne Dorison [00:04:30]:
And then I get hired by a paper company.

Diana Alt [00:04:33]:
Yeah. You basically worked for Dunder Mifflin.

Adrienne Dorison [00:04:36]:
I did. I worked for International Paper. I worked for a paper Company.

Diana Alt [00:04:41]:
And were you in Scranton?

Adrienne Dorison [00:04:44]:
No, but I probably would have preferred to be because every paper company is in like a small little remote town that is close to some sort of river or body of water because you need the water for the mill. Um, and I did a lot of like forestry work where we're buying timber for the mill. And then also started getting tapped for, like, supply chain projects, right, that we were doing, like, across the corporation and got trained in Lean Six Sigma there. And from there started, like, really focusing on how we're improving the supply chain, how we're creating more efficiency in One of the longest supply chains you will ever see, which is everything from like buying, you know, you have to buy the wood.

Diana Alt [00:05:41]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:05:41]:
You're working with landowners, you're working with loggers.

Diana Alt [00:05:45]:
Can I contract for you to grow me some wood? Like, yeah. Did you, is that a thing? I don't know anything about paper, but it would seem like you would be also potentially contracting with landowners to grow you some wood. So just buying it, is that a thing or am I just—

Adrienne Dorison [00:06:02]:
It's a thing. And, and international paper specifically after like, so also like a lot of these paper mills, like people, people work at these paper companies for like 40 years. And part of that is because, or, or more like literally their whole life, right? Like everybody that I was working with was 40 to 50 years my senior, a white male. Um, and we were, me and like the people my age were part of like a new hiring class, like a cohort. They were like, oh, Oh, we gotta hire some people.

Diana Alt [00:06:32]:
Everyone's about to retire.

Adrienne Dorison [00:06:34]:
Everybody's about to retire. But a lot of them, you know, a lot of these paper companies just acquire other paper companies. And that's how, you know, that's kind of how that business works. And International Paper, all of the mills that I was at, and pretty much there was only one mill at the time that was still working directly with landowners to buy wood. They used to do that all the time. Then the model switched to working with, for like working with other foresters who would purchase land from landowners and then we would purchase it from them.

Diana Alt [00:07:03]:
We just put a few more steps in the supply chain. No big deal. Yeah. Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:07:08]:
But they do have contracts and it's in their best interest a lot of times to replant. You're never going to, you know, unless you're doing a clear cut, you're going to be doing different types of cuts where you're not cutting everything. Like, so super like niche expertise that I have on some of these things.

Diana Alt [00:07:26]:
We're going to go down a rabbit hole. I'm very, very indoorsy. But everything you're telling me is fascinating, and I just, I gasped a little. I don't know, it might be on the recording, it might not. I don't know how loud it was, but when you said that you were working in this industry and it was everybody that was 40, 50 years older than you, they're trying to bring people up new, it reminded me of when I was in college. So I went to college for engineering. I have an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a master's degree in engineering management. And when I was going, I did them right in a row.

Diana Alt [00:07:59]:
And when I was interviewing for jobs at the end of my master's, there were 2 routes I was considering. One was like manufacturing quality, et cetera.

Adrienne Dorison [00:08:09]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:08:10]:
Other—

Adrienne Dorison [00:08:10]:
That's where I went.

Diana Alt [00:08:11]:
Consulting, like IT consulting. So yeah, I took like statistical process control and all like TQM and like all this kind of stuff whenever I was in grad school. And one of the place I kept interviewing places, I distinctly remember going to Peoria to Caterpillar because they had the exact same problem. Everybody was either under 30 or like 55+.

Adrienne Dorison [00:08:35]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:08:36]:
And there were like 4 people of color in the cafeteria when— because they were just starting to hire younger people and get a little diversity in it. But like none of the people wanted to go to Peoria. It's wild. I went the tech consulting route.

Adrienne Dorison [00:08:50]:
I mean, the stories I could tell you even about like our cohort of these young hires that they had. And yes, they were looking for diversity. diversity hires as well. You know, even at the time, like, I'm technically a diversity hire in that area because I'm a woman, right? But there was also— they were also hiring, you know, I remember there was a, there was a Black woman that got hired and there was a Black man that got hired. And that shouldn't be crazy, but when you're working in certain parts of the world— or not the world, the country—

Diana Alt [00:09:20]:
Yes.

Adrienne Dorison [00:09:20]:
In these very antiquated industries, in white-dominated, uh, geographies, rural towns.

Diana Alt [00:09:30]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:09:30]:
Like it actually was not safe for some of them in certain situations, in certain towns.

Diana Alt [00:09:37]:
And they would get relocated because they're like, they won't do business with you. Like literally. It's unreal.

Adrienne Dorison [00:09:45]:
And they would, there was a lot of people who didn't want to do business with me, you know, like, because we're essentially the middleman a lot of times of buying that wood. for the mill. That was like one of my first roles when I came in before I started doing like the operational excellence, operational efficiency. I'm literally like a little mini forester, right? Where I just buy wood for the mill. And my contacts have typically had connections to the person above me who used to be doing my job for the past 4 years. And so that's the other thing. They don't want to call me. They're going to call that person anyway.

Diana Alt [00:10:20]:
And then, then this person's like, why haven't you built a relationship with Joe? Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:10:23]:
Well, Why is Joe still—

Diana Alt [00:10:26]:
Joe doesn't call me and you let him get by with it. That's why.

Adrienne Dorison [00:10:29]:
Yeah, because you keep taking Joe to lunch without letting me know.

Diana Alt [00:10:32]:
Yeah. You don't invite me to lunch with Joe. Yeah, I hear you. I was really glad that I went. I like people too much to do some of the jobs I was considering. Not that quality ever doesn't involve people. Like, I joked that I was the most right-brained person at my engineering school. Um, and my dad used to say that I majored in extracurricular activities.

Diana Alt [00:10:56]:
Um, because like I was a student government nerd and the Greek life nerd and like all that. I did all of those things. But, um, yeah, I'm glad I went the consulting route.

Adrienne Dorison [00:11:06]:
Yeah. So part of the things that I did love was being able, like once I started working on like supply chain efficiency and all of that, I got to basically walk around the mill and ask people questions of like, hey, why do you do that that way? You know, I'd be talking to the crane operator and I'm like, why do you, Why do you do it that specific way? Like, why are you doing that? And why are you pressing that button in between each truck? And a lot of times it was like, oh, it's because the way I've always done it.

Diana Alt [00:11:32]:
I'm like, yeah, okay, fair.

Adrienne Dorison [00:11:33]:
Because you're unionized, you've been doing this for 50 years, you don't really care about like little young me coming in, you know, questioning your process. But I really was listening to try to like really understand. And then, you know, running the data and looking at other ways we could do things to improve and create cost savings for the mill. And so, being trained on all of that, I started to do cost savings projects, really looking at the efficiency of everything, and recognized after a few years of doing that, that I didn't really see myself in a leadership role there anymore. Like, I always had the intention that I was going to become like a VP or a C-suite person at this company. That was— and I absolutely believed in myself that I could do that. But then when I started looking after a few years, like at those people, even like my mentors were those people. And I was like, I don't really love what their lives look like or what their values are and what they're prioritizing.

Adrienne Dorison [00:12:40]:
And I was like, I— like my ex-husband, I met him at the paper mill and it was very common for people to be married and for them to move them to different parts of the country and for them to think that was totally fine and normal. And I'm like, that's actually, they actually, they tried to move him and give him a promotion. And we were both like, no, like that's not a, that's, that kind of goes against our values. So I left and I started, I actually started like doing some consulting on the side, like a side hustle. Right. I didn't just jump out without—

Diana Alt [00:13:14]:
All the best ones start as a side hustle.

Adrienne Dorison [00:13:17]:
Did a side hustle, started doing some consulting. And I was like, maybe I could do this for small businesses. Like I have these interesting tools and frameworks that like these big businesses use, but sometimes I would have an idea or an opportunity for like a million dollar a month cost savings. And it would take forever to get through a cycle of approval. And then a lot of times it wouldn't even get approved because they're like, oh, it's not enough.

Diana Alt [00:13:42]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:13:42]:
It's not enough about cost savings.

Diana Alt [00:13:44]:
It's the impact is totally different. Okay. I have a couple of questions. I love when I asked about the background, because I don't know. Before we kind of go into like more of what you're doing now, safari. I need to know, like, what are a couple of the highlights, unexpected highlights of safari guide life? Because I think a lot of people romanticize that as a, as a vacation and don't think about the people that are actually making that a good experience for them.

Adrienne Dorison [00:14:19]:
Yeah, it's such a, it's such a privileged Westerner thing to do.

Diana Alt [00:14:25]:
What's over there?

Adrienne Dorison [00:14:27]:
Safari is like my happy place. I think it is like such a bucket list trip. Like, I think that if you can figure out how to afford to go on safari and, you know, spend the big bucks and do it. Do it really big. You know, I, I want to take an entrepreneurial group at some point, like on a mastermind where we go safari, and it's, it's life-changing for sure. I'll call you. Yeah. Um, safari, like, it, it will probably be where I end up retiring and then just like being on safari every day, you know, once my kids leave.

Diana Alt [00:15:03]:
I love that.

Adrienne Dorison [00:15:04]:
Leave the nest. It is truly like You know, when you're— I just also feel like we're energetically drawn to places as individuals. Like certain people are energetically drawn to certain places on the planet. And I don't know if there's an explainable reason why. Some people might believe in past lives. Some people might just, I don't know. I don't know why, but I am like—

Diana Alt [00:15:25]:
I think it's enough, like whether there's more to it or not, it's enough to say we like what we like.

Adrienne Dorison [00:15:30]:
We like what we like.

Diana Alt [00:15:32]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:15:32]:
And I am absolutely like energetically drawn to Africa. Specifically South Africa. I've been there many times and no matter what, you could, you could invite me to some of, some of the other places that are on my bucket list, right? Like, oh, I would love to go to Australia. I would love to go to Japan. Like, I would love to go to all those places. But if you invited me to South Africa, I'm going to choose South Africa every single time. Like I'm going back and going again.

Diana Alt [00:15:56]:
You want to go to Australia for our 2-week girls trip or South Africa?

Adrienne Dorison [00:16:00]:
South Africa every time. Every time. So I think partly that, like, I just feel like I'm home when I'm there, like, in my body. But I also just always had this childhood dream of, like, big predators. I don't know, like, I love big—

Diana Alt [00:16:16]:
There's a gal I met, like, almost— oh, it's 15 years ago at least. Um, I was on the advisor— I spent a few years on the advisory board for my sorority chapter. that I went to.

Adrienne Dorison [00:16:28]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:16:29]:
And the gal that was like the consultant that came to help with recruitment had just gotten her degree in zookeeping.

Adrienne Dorison [00:16:35]:
Okay, beautiful.

Diana Alt [00:16:36]:
And she got an actual job at a zoo working with large animals. Like, she was hanging out with the pandas. It's amazing.

Adrienne Dorison [00:16:43]:
Yeah, that was like my childhood dream, right? And then I— so I was in the zoology, like, path.

Diana Alt [00:16:48]:
Bears, not pandas.

Adrienne Dorison [00:16:49]:
But yeah, so, and then I, and then I was talking to, like, actually one of my uh, friend's parents who randomly did fisheries and zoology. And, um, they were like, it sounds like what you're interested in is actually more like wildlife ecology, not being a vet. And I was like, oh, that's a thing? Like, I didn't know that's a job, right? I'm like, oh yeah. So then I switched my major and I'm a wildlife ecologist. But like, I just always knew that I wanted to go to Africa, be on safari, and I was able to, to do that. And Like, I just have such an appreciation. But a lot of the things that we learned, like, you'll, you'll never understand just being on safari, right? Like, the reason I can't take my kids on safari right now is because I would be a safari snob, and I want to see animals, and these kids are too loud. Like, you have to be quiet when we're on safari.

Diana Alt [00:17:39]:
How old are your kids, Adrienne?

Adrienne Dorison [00:17:41]:
I have 2 of my own, so 4 and 6. Okay, okay, too young for safari. And then I have a partner, and he has 3 kids. So we have 5 kids together and it's a lot of children. It's, we take up a whole safari vehicle, you know, where's the fun in that?

Diana Alt [00:17:58]:
You need some friends in your safari.

Adrienne Dorison [00:17:59]:
I need new friends for safari. But like, even, you know, you have to learn how to drive stick shift, but with the opposite hand. Like I thankfully already knew how to drive stick, but you gotta, now you gotta switch because it's all, it's all opposite. So that was challenging. And then you have to learn how to like, At the— because I was also trained on walking safari. So not just, not just driving safari, although you need to be able to do that as well. Right. And you're using all your senses when you're on safari, because animals aren't just going to be like, oh, here I am.

Adrienne Dorison [00:18:33]:
Why don't you take your crew to come see me?

Diana Alt [00:18:36]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:18:36]:
So like, you're really using your scent. You're using your eyes, your ears, like everything to track.

Diana Alt [00:18:42]:
I would've been terrible at it. And here's why. I am not situationally aware enough for it. So I can enjoy experiences, but number one, I just live in my head. Like, I have an overthinker sash for a reason. Carrie Weaver actually gave me that.

Adrienne Dorison [00:18:59]:
But maybe that's why I like it so much, because it's the one place that I don't overthink anything, and I'm like so in the moment that I'm like—

Diana Alt [00:19:05]:
Yeah, I think it is important for people to have a place like that. But what I was gonna say is like, um, I am not aware. I'm aware enough to enjoy it, but I'm not aware enough to keep a group of people safe and like keep all that information because you want to enjoy being there but take care of the random people in your Jeep or whatever the situation is. So I would be very bad at it.

Adrienne Dorison [00:19:31]:
Yeah. I mean, you got to know all the scientific background of everything, all the scientific names, all the, you know, because they're going to ask you questions and you got to know who eats what.

Diana Alt [00:19:40]:
That's what I could do. That part I could do because I can remember stuff, but especially if it's stuff that I like. But I think just that whole— we have tourists, we do not know what their background is, we don't know where they're going to get scared.

Adrienne Dorison [00:19:55]:
Like, all of that. Tourism are problematic, you know.

Diana Alt [00:19:59]:
And the— and it's actual animals that they aren't programmable.

Adrienne Dorison [00:20:04]:
No, that's why you have to have a rifle. You have a rifle in the front with your guide, and then you have a rifle in the, in the back. And these are the type of rifle that could kill an elephant. So they call them like an elephant rifle, right? Because it has to be big, to be honest. Yeah, right. But you'd never want— like, the people, the people that are on safari— now this is different than going to Africa to hunt. I am very anti—

Diana Alt [00:20:30]:
Let's not do that.

Adrienne Dorison [00:20:31]:
We don't— Very anti. The people that are on safari guiding your safari have the most appreciation for the wildlife, the ecology, the birds, the animal, everything, right? So these people do not want to get in a situation where they actually have to kill an animal, but obviously part of their job is to protect the people on the trip.

Diana Alt [00:20:54]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:20:55]:
Um, I thankfully was never in a situation where I had to do that, but my, my trainer, I, I heard like years later, he, he did, he had to kill an elephant and I, it was like, the most traumatic thing.

Diana Alt [00:21:06]:
Yeah, devastating. They're so smart, so it's like killing your cousin. Yeah. I will tell you something very cheesy before we move on. Um, I'm not a huge Disney person, but my favorite thing is in fact Kilimanjaro Safari. I love them all. Sorry, I, I'm like, I can just go.

Adrienne Dorison [00:21:25]:
And my kids love the safari because I— mommy gets to like tell them all the things.

Diana Alt [00:21:29]:
Yeah, don't listen to that guy. Don't listen to that person. Just listen to mommy. So yeah, it's— I don't know why I, I would—

Adrienne Dorison [00:21:38]:
I just love it.

Diana Alt [00:21:38]:
I think it's the— it's my favorite thing.

Adrienne Dorison [00:21:41]:
Okay, you're gonna love your Africa trip when we go.

Diana Alt [00:21:45]:
Okay, let's do it. This is fun. Okay, so when I was prepping for this and went down a rabbit trail on your website— yeah, kudos to your website designer, very good job— um, the thing that stopped me in my tracks That I literally wrote down in my notes for a book I'm writing of, like, this is another way to capture words of some stuff that I believe is telling people what to do isn't leadership, teaching them how to think is.

Adrienne Dorison [00:22:13]:
Mm-hmm.

Diana Alt [00:22:14]:
So talk about that a little bit, because one of the things I have been— I coach a lot of people that are trying to prepare for promotion or that are looking for jobs, and many of them, it's like the way you have to talk about yourself. when you're looking for a VP job is different than what you had to do to get promoted. I love to tell people discernment, decision-making, how you think, more important than anything else that you do. Any other skill other than like, you gotta communicate, but—

Adrienne Dorison [00:22:45]:
But that's part of it.

Diana Alt [00:22:46]:
That should be a baseline, as the Gen Z kids say, that should be bare minimum. Talk to me about Teaching them how to think and what role and how, what ways are you teaching leaders how to think so that they can propagate that through their orgs?

Adrienne Dorison [00:23:05]:
Yeah. So I think it's really easy to just answer a question when someone has it, right? Like when your team comes to you and they ask you a question, the default is to just answer it, which to me is not helpful to anyone. It's not leadership. It doesn't train them on how to do that themselves, nor does it teach them why you answered it in that way to begin with.

Diana Alt [00:23:33]:
Yes.

Adrienne Dorison [00:23:33]:
Right? So not only when we're teaching people how to think do we need to slow down and not just answer people's questions, but really slow down and ask them questions so that we can understand where their understanding even is. Like, where is their level of understanding so that I can teach them how to never have to come ask me this question again? Not because I don't want to be supportive or helpful, but because I want them to be able to be more autonomous, which is something that people find great value in as individual contributors, managers, leaders, like everybody wants to be more autonomous, right?

Diana Alt [00:24:22]:
I mean, Daniel Pink wrote a whole book about it. Come on.

Adrienne Dorison [00:24:26]:
We respect it, right? Like, he's a great, great thought leader.

Diana Alt [00:24:31]:
Yes.

Adrienne Dorison [00:24:32]:
Like, people don't want to have to run to you and ask you every single thing, but when you don't investigate why they're coming to you for every single thing and you just answer the question, then you build yourself into being the bottleneck, right? Like you create that environment and you create almost a learned helplessness with them, right?

Diana Alt [00:24:57]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:24:57]:
Like when, and we're seeing this a lot more right now, even with AI, not, don't even, you don't even need to talk about like human leaders, but people are doing this to themselves with AI. The less you do something, the less you have to think about something, the harder it is to do it, even if you used to be able to do it before, right? Like even if you were perfectly capable, you can have this learned helplessness around it. I know this because of my divorce, right?

Diana Alt [00:25:25]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:25:25]:
Like when you are in relationship with people, there are certain parts of the relationship that he owns and there are certain parts that I own. For example, filling the tires in my car and filling up the gas was something my ex-husband just always did. I never had to think about it. Do I know how to pump gas? Yes. But I had to like retrain myself to even look, right? Like, oh, oh my gosh, like normally it's just full. Like, yeah, like, and then when my tires got low, like I, I have, I have done my tires before, but it had been probably 10 years since I had to do my tires on my own.

Diana Alt [00:26:04]:
I'll tell you what, right now I sympathize with this so hard because I don't like to do them and I'm down the corner from like A Valvoline.

Adrienne Dorison [00:26:13]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:26:13]:
And so if I have the air light go on, I'll just go in there and be like, can you just check my tire? And they're like, sure.

Adrienne Dorison [00:26:21]:
And I remember because I was so frustrated with myself, right? I was like, oh my gosh, you didn't know. Yeah, I feel so helpless, right? I felt helpless. My dad had just passed away. He would be the person— he would be the other person that I would call, another man. Help me. How do I— like, it says PSI. Do I fill it all the way to that PSI?

Diana Alt [00:26:40]:
I don't know. Don't pop your tire. It seems really high.

Adrienne Dorison [00:26:43]:
Right? And so, um, we can create learned helplessness in people even when they're totally capable of doing something or answering something. And so we really have to help them understand, like, why, why we're actually doing something. So even if you get to the point where they do need a little bit more support in answering the question, maybe, maybe they don't have the answer, right? But you need to help them with teaching them why you're answering it the way that you're answering it so that they can think about these things.

Diana Alt [00:27:16]:
I think so much of it comes out of like, we spend a billion years in school and we're getting tested all the time. And there's very few, there's just not time and space in most education environments to be Socratic. So we're not raised that way. Let me tell you my favorite thing that you just said though, that I think is the biggest trust builder in this whole little you know, let's stop just telling people and discovering. It's the part of asking them questions to understand where they're at, because that right there is the thing that people, people don't do that often enough. And when people feel like their leaders are belittling them, right, or think that they're dumb, a lot of times that person is actually trying to equip the person, but they're going so many farther steps back that it's like, you're teaching me that 2+ 2= 4, and I have a PhD in math. Like, what are, what are we doing here? So it's really a trust builder. It's an opportunity.

Adrienne Dorison [00:28:16]:
Or making, or the opposite of like, they might be even, or, or they're way past it.

Diana Alt [00:28:21]:
But the one where people feel like they're belittled or their boss thinks that they're dumb really happens when it's like, I'm telling you, 2+ 2= 4.

Adrienne Dorison [00:28:33]:
Mm-hmm.

Diana Alt [00:28:34]:
So, and the decisions thing too. So I have a client that I've worked with for a while, and he first came to me because he was tapped to be, for a very big promotion in this company, to be the GM of a business unit, um, whenever the existing GM retired. So there was lead time. He knew this was coming, the whole 9 yards. And I, we figured, we figured out a really good way for him to start having the decision-making thoughts. From his current leader downloaded into him. Because I said, more than anything else, you need to learn how your boss makes decisions now while you have the opportunity. Because I know he said he's going to be on consulting retainer for 6 months to help, but that guy is not gonna— he does not want your calls for 6 months.

Diana Alt [00:29:21]:
Figure it out now. So, um, how do you develop judgment? This is, this is another thing because a lot of people, a lot of people talk about the dearth of critical thinking that is happening in people right now. How do you view or work with leaders to help develop judgment in others without turning them into a mini-me? Because I think that's a really, that's a mistake that people make too. It's like, well, I'm, I'm teaching you how I judge things. But they're saying, this is the decision you should make. not walking them through a process. What's your take on that?

Adrienne Dorison [00:30:01]:
Yeah, I, so I think this is even more challenging when you're working with, you know, either directly the business owner or something, you know, someone who they feel an attachment to the decision-making or like the team member feels like, oh, I have to do exactly what Adrian would do. And so I try to I try to really separate that for team members because it's not the right way to think when it comes to distribution of decision-making and removing, you know, the leadership as the bottleneck. Because I'm a person with my own experiences, my own belief systems, my own education, my own backgrounds, my own judgments, like you said, right?

Diana Alt [00:30:55]:
Yes.

Adrienne Dorison [00:30:57]:
And I could teach you some of that, but there's, there's unfortunately not a world where you could download and understand all of that for every single scenario.

Diana Alt [00:31:07]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:31:08]:
So it becomes almost like this, um, this crutch for people when they think that everything needs to have the exact decision Adrian would make or the Like when you're comparing the judgment against someone else's judgment.

Diana Alt [00:31:27]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:31:27]:
Um, and what, what people tend to do is try to create like a system or an SOP for every single nuanced scenario.

Diana Alt [00:31:35]:
Yes.

Adrienne Dorison [00:31:36]:
And I'm like, no, no, no. Right. We can't do that because now again, are we, we're training critical thinking out of people. We're telling them in this, if there's not a step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, oh, Then you should come to me and ask a question. No, you shouldn't, right? Like, you should look at like, oh, what do we typically do here? Or what makes sense to do here? And some of the tools that I think are really helpful when it comes to helping people critically think and helping them make judgments for themselves, having a really clear vision. Like, what is the vision of the organization?

Diana Alt [00:32:13]:
I was just gonna say, stop comparing person A's judgment against person B. And start comparing how the judgment carries you forward to the goal.

Adrienne Dorison [00:32:21]:
Yes. And in order to do that, you have to understand what is the vision, right? Because you almost want to think about the decision-making and the judgment through the lens of— let's just use my business name, for example. What would Level 11 do versus what would Adrienne do? Because it doesn't matter what Adrienne would do. And that's a comparison that a team member will get stuck on. They'll overthink it because they're like, oh, Adrienne, like, but she likes these things and it doesn't matter. Right. And they'll get it wrong inevitably. And it, and really, we're also looking for diversity of thought because that is what creates more innovation.

Adrienne Dorison [00:32:58]:
And so I'd rather you not think about exactly what I would do because it doesn't matter. Right? Like, yeah. But what would Level 11 do knowing that you understand the vision and where we're going as a company? And, and second, like, I always use vision as kind of like the highest-level decision-making tool. And then values being the next one. Like, does the company have values that I can make sure I am staying within when I make judgments and decisions for the organization? Because everything should not have a step-by-step SOP. Again, we will train critical thinking out of it.

Diana Alt [00:33:34]:
One of my favorite examples of that was— I don't know if this is still how Netflix works, but their expense policy was like one line for the longest time, which I can't even remember the one line, but it was basically like, don't waste money, spend it like it's yours. Um, you know, use your judgment and spend it like it's yours.

Adrienne Dorison [00:33:55]:
Here's a beautiful— what we call like— so we have vision, values, and then we teach something called guiding principles, which are a little bit, you know, more like guardrails. They're a little bit less high level than like a value. You might have some guiding principles within values. And Ritz-Carlton is like a beautiful example of this. I talk about this all the time. One of my favorite brands. OK, they have like 27 what I would call guiding principles. And every day they start the day talking about one of their guiding principles across all of their organizations across the entire world.

Adrienne Dorison [00:34:29]:
They have a meeting, quick little meeting where they talk about one of the guiding principles. They talk about examples of how that showed up or didn't show up, how someone did that. But one of the things that they have in place is that you can solve any, anyone on the team, anyone, whether you are a valet or a kitchen manager or a housekeeper or the CEO, you can solve someone's problem on your own without asking for approval for up to $1,500. If it will cost you less than $1,500 to solve a customer's problem, Just go ahead and solve it, right? Just go ahead and do that. Like immediacy is important for that brand because they want people to feel taken care of, right? We are one of their, one of their core values or like brand principles is like we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen, right? So no one is below or beneath anybody else, but solve people's problems because they know their metrics, which is another important piece of being able to make guiding principles for an organization and operationally staying sound and things not going out of control. They know that the lifetime value of their customer is $42,000. And so they know that up to $1,500, just solve the problem. Like, do not—

Diana Alt [00:35:45]:
100%.

Adrienne Dorison [00:35:46]:
Do not give this person a poor experience to where they don't come back, right? Like, to where, you know, how frustrating is it as a customer When you call to talk about your phone plan and the person that you're talking to has to go talk to, oh, let me, let me put you on hold. Let me go talk to my manager.

Diana Alt [00:36:03]:
Yeah. That's a waste of everyone's time. And, you know, yes. Yes. And I was just working with my ghostwriter this morning because I've got like my book. I'm distilling down principles myself, which is an interesting exercise. when you've just lived them and now you're like, oh, this is going to be enshrined on little slices of wood. Um, so I gotta actually figure out how to say it when I'm not there, you know.

Adrienne Dorison [00:36:31]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:36:31]:
But we were talking about, um, perfection and experimentation and basically like, I'm not a fan of perfection because it paralyzes people. And, uh, something I believe strongly is it's not whether you make a mistake. It's how you recover from it.

Adrienne Dorison [00:36:50]:
For sure.

Diana Alt [00:36:51]:
So yeah, we, we, we messed you up and we, we accidentally glutened you, gluten-free person. Yep. But we're gonna give you all the food. Do you need a ride to the urgent care? Do you need this, that, and the other to like get the gluten out of your system so you can enjoy yourself?

Adrienne Dorison [00:37:07]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:37:07]:
Am I giving you a free day in the hotel? Because now a day of your vacation is blown. Like, that kind of thing is really important. And I had a really good example of that happen a few months ago. There's a restaurant near me called Firebirds. Um, I went with a friend of mine and we— it's like Friday, Friday and Saturday night is prime rib night, baby. So we gotta go get the prime rib. Let's go.

Adrienne Dorison [00:37:30]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:37:30]:
They overcooked the— the prime rib somehow got overcooked. So they basically were like, we can't give anybody prime rib tonight unless they ordered it like medium well done. They comped every person that ordered prime rib that night.

Adrienne Dorison [00:37:47]:
Wow.

Diana Alt [00:37:48]:
And the manager went to every table. And it was funny because it's like, I mean, it looked okay. Like, I wanted medium well. But even if you still wanted it because it was how you liked it, comped, comped every single person in the room. That's the kind of immediate decision-making I think is underrated.

Adrienne Dorison [00:38:06]:
For sure.

Diana Alt [00:38:07]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:38:07]:
And you want to make sure your people feel like they can make those decisions because that is how the business continues to move forward without you having to be involved in every single thing.

Diana Alt [00:38:22]:
Yes. Uh, rabbit trail question. I was thinking about this earlier. Um, CEO, like you work with CEOs all the time. What is your take on people that have like one employee And they call themselves a CEO. Is that like bold, bold and aspirational? Is it ridiculous? Like, where do you sit on this? I got pitched by a bunch of people. Like, I've been getting more podcast pitches recently and they're like, oh, I'm a CEO of whatever. And I'm like, you're CEO of nothing and you still work full-time as the controller at like a company.

Adrienne Dorison [00:38:58]:
So I think, you know, maybe it's aspiration. I don't really like— I'm not a huge like title person. I don't really care what you call yourself as long as it feels good for you. But I do think like the small business world has really, um, bastardized that term because I think they've bastardized a lot of C-suite terms, if we're being honest. And—

Diana Alt [00:39:24]:
Oh, let's rip on this. I feel the same.

Adrienne Dorison [00:39:27]:
Because like, you know, for example, a lot of people don't really— they don't really need a C-suite You know, like you don't need a CFO, a COO, a CEO for a sub-$1 million business that has, you know, a few clients and maybe a few, a handful of team members. And like, we're not really at the executive level yet, but like, if that makes you excited to call yourself that, that's also created a lot of service providers. who, like contractors, vendors, who use those terms specifically for small businesses, right? Like fractional COO. And I have, I have done fractional COO.

Diana Alt [00:40:15]:
I have a lot of feelings about fractional right now.

Adrienne Dorison [00:40:18]:
Like, I've done fractional COO work for people, and you do have to use that term for the small business owner to understand what you're going to come in and do.

Diana Alt [00:40:28]:
Yes.

Adrienne Dorison [00:40:28]:
But I've also, over my years, I've like looked at in, in, on like Indeed, for example, right? If I'm going to go back and get a job in a corporation, you might be a fractional COO for someone. You might even be a quote unquote COO for a million dollar business. You're not qualified for a COO role of XYZ Corporation. Like you don't have the same, we're not talking the same language anymore.

Diana Alt [00:40:57]:
Right? And this is something I get into all the time. With people that are going for promotion and applying for jobs and all that stuff. It's like a VP in a company doing $50 million is not the same thing as a VP at Google.

Adrienne Dorison [00:41:13]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:41:13]:
I mean, I have a friend who— or former client and friend now— who has like a program manager or program director title.

Adrienne Dorison [00:41:22]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:41:22]:
At Amazon, she has a 9-figure budget. Yeah. Yeah. Like, no.

Adrienne Dorison [00:41:28]:
And that's also like, it's also just, it's, and it's not to degrade anyone's role at either. It's just to say we're not comparing apples to apples. And that's unfair even when you're in the hiring process, because I had, um, a colleague, they, they were a prospective client at the time and they were probably, you know, high 7, low 8 figure business. Right. So let's just call it $10 million to make it easy. And they had actually had a few failed COOs, fractional COOs, and they were like, can you come in and help us like figure out who to hire? Yeah. Well, they ended up not hiring me to do this because they hired someone from one of these big orgs. Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:42:15]:
I don't think it was Google, but it's one of these big ones. Okay.

Diana Alt [00:42:17]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:42:18]:
Well, this person comes in and they are going to have a completely different expect— set of expectations around what their role is. Because of the level of resources that they used to have in that type of role.

Diana Alt [00:42:32]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:42:32]:
So you might even be paying them what they used to make and that's cool. But when this guy came in, he was like, oh, I don't do these things. Right. Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna like implement these things. Like, I'm just here to tell people things or to make decisions. And that's also not to fault him. It's just that there was a complete miscommunication.

Diana Alt [00:42:53]:
That was a really bad hiring process. and a really bad, like, personal vetting process that you're describing.

Adrienne Dorison [00:42:59]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:42:59]:
And it's really important. Like, one of the things that I, I ask people a lot or tell people to ask in interview cycles or networking, like, however these opportunities are coming to them, is what questions about what the decision-making capacity for a role is. So, and there's not like the answer is only right or wrong for you. I also tell everybody to ask all of these questions as neutrally as possible. Because you want the truth out of people. You don't want what they think you want to hear. So this particularly comes up a lot. I, I was in product management and tech for a really long time.

Diana Alt [00:43:40]:
And so I especially want people that are in product roles, which are so multi-cross-functional, so ill-defined across the industry. To understand where they're making decisions, because there's a whole lot of people out there that are like, I want to drive product strategy. And they drove product strategy as a senior PM at Company A, and then find out they're like writing user stories and jockeying Jira at Company B because they did not ask enough questions. And that the CEO is actually still basically the chief product officer. This happens a lot when people go into startups.

Adrienne Dorison [00:44:18]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:44:19]:
Like earlier stage businesses. And it's like, Yeah, I know you had like a $180 million revenue line, but this is a $3 million MRR, like ARR company.

Adrienne Dorison [00:44:30]:
But yeah, the work is a little different.

Diana Alt [00:44:35]:
The product manager is either the technical founder or the CEO. Like, you just need to accept that. So yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:44:40]:
And so that, that is how I feel about those terms is that like, you know, yeah, whatever, whatever helps you sleep at night. Like if, if that feels good to you, 'cause I also think sometimes we need some of those terms so that we can get out of the stuff that we shouldn't be doing, right? Like, oh, I'm a, you know, CEO versus an owner. Like a lot of times, like I want people to take on the mindset more of like, no, you own this company. I don't need you like doing everything in this company.

Diana Alt [00:45:12]:
Please don't. You're annoying everyone. Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:45:15]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:45:15]:
So let's talk a little bit about the whole Um, I think you call it out of office now. Is that what it is? Like, let's be able to not be the bottleneck, the person that always has to be in your business. Um, when you worked with Mike in the Clockwork thing, everybody would talk about clockworking your business. I'm, I'm, I'm using, trying to use your lingo and out of office the business.

Adrienne Dorison [00:45:42]:
Talk to me any lingo because I'm still a Clockwork advocate.

Diana Alt [00:45:46]:
Oh, okay. I want to be, I want to be It's still my intellectual property.

Adrienne Dorison [00:45:52]:
It's still things that, yes, I believe in. And yes, um, you know, we made clockworking a whole verb when we were working on that. That was cool.

Diana Alt [00:46:02]:
But really, can you just give a quick summary of— because this is at the heart, you know, when I look at your social content, this is at the heart of what you're trying to get at people, which is really, it's a risk. It's both a freedom thing, but also a business risk management thing. So can you speak a little bit to what you're trying to help businesses do with regard to Clockwork/Out of Office?

Adrienne Dorison [00:46:25]:
Yes. So, so my whole shtick, right? Like my whole purpose on this planet in terms of my life's work is to remove owner dependency, right? Like helping these business owners. And companies to remove the owner dependency so that it's not falling on any one singular person, but specifically the owner who tends to get wrapped into everything as you build this business.

Diana Alt [00:46:55]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:46:56]:
And I think that there's 3 primary, maybe even 4 primary reasons for that, but I'll focus on 3 primary reasons to do that. Number one, like you're saying, to mitigate the risk. Because I think of this kind of like your insurance policy, right? Like, I don't want anything to happen to you. But anecdotally, from my 12+ years of working with small business owners, the majority of them don't come to me because they're like planning this luxury vacation and they want to remove owner dependency.

Diana Alt [00:47:34]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:47:34]:
It's typically because someone's got a health scare or someone already has a diagnosis. I've had many people come to me, my doctor just diagnosed me with cancer. They told me I have to remove myself from this business. I can't keep working like this.

Diana Alt [00:47:48]:
Okay.

Adrienne Dorison [00:47:49]:
Now we have work to do.

Diana Alt [00:47:50]:
Right? Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:47:51]:
Sometimes it's not necessarily a diagnosis, but like a baby, right? Like a maternity or a paternity leave.

Diana Alt [00:48:00]:
Right?

Adrienne Dorison [00:48:00]:
I've known many entrepreneurs who we can talk about how terrible the, the maternity leave is for, for working citizens in the US, but 12 weeks is usually 12 weeks more than every entrepreneur I've ever, you know, I've ever encountered gave themselves. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:48:24]:
The other thing is like, even if there was paid leave, if you have a business of any size, You still have to take care of it because all the paid maternity leave or paternity leave is going to do for you is keep a paycheck coming in. But if you're running a $3 million business, right, what's going to— I mean, come on, you have clients, you have legal obligations, the whole nine.

Adrienne Dorison [00:48:48]:
So, you know, most entrepreneurs, like, they might come to me because they're like, oh, I'm actually about to have a baby and I would like to actually plan to take some time off so that— and make sure that the business can keep running and paying people and paying me and me not like stressing while I'm gone. Um, sometimes it's a parent or a child that's sick and— or just needs, you know, more attention during that time.

Diana Alt [00:49:15]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:49:16]:
Sometimes it's just like the lifestyle stuff of like, I want to be able to pick my kids up from school and not have to stress that I need to be working, you know, during those hours or whatever it is.

Diana Alt [00:49:27]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:49:27]:
But the risk mitigation is kind of like the insurance plan. Like, I hope that nothing happens to you, but if something does, at least this is one less thing you have to worry about.

Diana Alt [00:49:40]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:49:40]:
Like, and one less thing to stress about is like—

Diana Alt [00:49:43]:
This is also how people manage to have multiple businesses. So when you go look on something and you're like, how is this person like It's because they're not showing up in that way. And they're the CEO of this and they're the founder of that. Like, how are they doing it? It's because they set direction and then they get the hell out of the way.

Adrienne Dorison [00:50:01]:
Right. It's like you, you can't run— if you can't run 10 businesses right now, you have to understand that the person that is running 10 businesses runs them entirely different than the person that is running one.

Diana Alt [00:50:15]:
Yes.

Adrienne Dorison [00:50:16]:
So it's like if you want to be the person who owns or runs 10, 20 businesses, and I've had clients that when we removed that owner dependency, I had a client who went from running one 7-figure business. Now she runs 4 7-figure businesses. She couldn't run it the same way that she was running the first one. We had to do that work first. We have to remove the owner dependency now.

Diana Alt [00:50:37]:
Wow.

Adrienne Dorison [00:50:38]:
Freeze up, not freeze up so that she can spend all this time on all these companies. She's a different leader now, right? She understands what she needs to be involved in and what she doesn't need to be involved in. Like we were talking about earlier, what decisions she needs to make and what decisions she needs to stay out of, right? And let her team—

Diana Alt [00:50:53]:
What do you find are the top 2 or 3 decisions that are the, I'm clinging to this with my cold, dead hands, with the business owners that you're working with?

Adrienne Dorison [00:51:04]:
Um, like people really struggle to get completely out of client work. Like they want to have a hand in that, but that's actually in my mind, one of the easiest things to get out of. Um, we can like framework— once you know how to create intellectual property, then it's much easier to get out of the client delivery side. But people think that people want to work with them, and I'm like, no, they don't. Like, you gotta—

Diana Alt [00:51:31]:
They suffer, their little egos suffer when they—

Adrienne Dorison [00:51:34]:
Exactly. It's the— you gotta get over your ego because this— like, no one actually wants to work with you. No one cares. No one cares about working with you. They care about the results that you're saying you're going to get them. And can we get repeatable results for people without you being involved? If not currently, then great. We know what we need to work on. We need to process out what you're actually doing in those meetings, sessions, patient rooms, whatever type of work it is that you're doing.

Adrienne Dorison [00:52:01]:
The other thing that people hold really closely is financial decisions, which I, you know, I can understand that people don't want other people being able to run payroll. Um, they don't want other people even seeing what the cash flow statements are like. They have a really hard time, whether that's again an ego thing or just like holding something really close to the chest of like, they can't know these things, um, and make good decisions on them. I'm like, yeah, they probably could make better decisions than you because they're not so emotionally attached to it.

Diana Alt [00:52:34]:
You know. I worked for too many public companies. So, you know, I'm like, don't we all have to tell that stuff? We don't. Yeah, we don't.

Adrienne Dorison [00:52:45]:
But a lot of people do not have open books, you know, like they— and they don't even have like one— they don't even have a right hand who's like looking at these things. They're trying to do all of it. So it's like, yeah, uh, how come?

Diana Alt [00:53:01]:
What else? Anything else?

Adrienne Dorison [00:53:03]:
Oh, I mean, pretty much everything. I feel like someone could justify that they are the person that needs to make that decision. It's, it runs the gamut from like a social media aesthetic. It could be like, it could literally be a social media post. Oh, I, no one else can make that decision but me.

Diana Alt [00:53:23]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [00:53:23]:
Because no one knows the brand aesthetic or the voice. Like a lot of people hold onto copywriting. For their business.

Diana Alt [00:53:30]:
I am guilty of that. And I set a goal at the beginning of the year to release a minimum of 50% of my content creation. And I think I'm there, um, because so much of it is the podcast. And I'm like, yeah, if we can't train our good friends Chatty and Claude on the mass quantities of stuff that I have, and then also accept that a social media post is not an evergreen thing. Like, the shelf life of it is this long. It helped me, it helped me release that. Yeah. Um, and I needed to because like, um, last year I had surgery and I was out of work for 3 months.

Diana Alt [00:54:15]:
I had notice of it, so I was able to do some things, but—

Adrienne Dorison [00:54:18]:
You had a little—

Diana Alt [00:54:19]:
You know, I'm a solo person. I got a bookkeeper and I have a team in the Philippines that does website, Kajabi, like that kind of stuff. All the little notices you got for being on the show came from my pal Lance in the Philippines.

Adrienne Dorison [00:54:34]:
Lance was great.

Diana Alt [00:54:35]:
He's amazing. Um, he's amazing. He does a wonderful job. I don't have to worry about it. And actually, that is the podcast in my business is the first thing That I did the most delegation of because I wanted a podcast and I knew I don't care about— I don't even want to learn how to edit. I'd like— I always said I'm not doing a podcast until I don't have to do anything except for pick the guests. Yeah. And get on.

Diana Alt [00:55:03]:
And then I was like, oh, I could do that.

Adrienne Dorison [00:55:05]:
Do that.

Diana Alt [00:55:05]:
It's time. Yeah. So I'm about 75% of the way there and releasing more of it all the time.

Adrienne Dorison [00:55:14]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:55:15]:
It's been really important. But for me, like, I'm a coach. I am a one-on-one coach. I don't have employee coaches. And it was an interesting challenge to think about this because so many people tried to tell me, well, your problem is your business model. And the most important thing for you to do is to create something that has MRR. And like, you know, everybody was addicted to the $49 or the $9 or the $99 membership. That's just not what my business is.

Adrienne Dorison [00:55:43]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:55:44]:
So there are a million ways to build a business though.

Adrienne Dorison [00:55:46]:
And I don't think that any one right way is right for everybody.

Diana Alt [00:55:49]:
There are a million ways to build a business. Yes. Also, one of the very first initiatives I ever did right after I got out of college and took my first consulting job was business continuity. So I fortunately had some grounding in business continuity, which is not the same as clockworking your business, guys. They're two different things. You want both of them. If you have, uh, if you have a business of any size, you want both of them. But I ended up looking at it as I had a few months of notice that I was doing this.

Diana Alt [00:56:20]:
So I looked at it as an extended business continuity exercise, which helped. And, uh, but I was like, oh yeah, this is, this is hard. It hit home. And then it also hit home, um, We met at Terry Weaver's event. The thing— we didn't meet.

Adrienne Dorison [00:56:38]:
We were both there. We didn't meet.

Diana Alt [00:56:40]:
We didn't actually meet, um, at Terry Weaver's Thing event in Orlando a couple of years ago, which fortunately I'll be back this time. Yes, but I was there. I was one of the people that when he went out in an ambulance at 10 AM and we had an event starting at 1 AM that picked it up and, and did it. Terry is wonderful at a lot of things, but like systems and business continuity and all of that was not— that was not on his bingo card for top talent, right? So we did a lot to change that. And I, I was the on-site speaker coordinator in that with no information, which was fun.

Adrienne Dorison [00:57:17]:
You're like, who here is speaking?

Diana Alt [00:57:20]:
We kind of— we knew that. We had a graphic in Canva. We knew what it was. Like, we knew kind of when, but It was just, it was wild. So, um, and also like Terry plays things close to the vest. Like he wants surprises during the events and all this kind of stuff. So he had reasons and he always introduces the guests, the speakers himself. So I had to kind of replicate that.

Diana Alt [00:57:44]:
Fortunately, I'd been to the event a bunch of times. Let's just say we had speaker coordination for the June event and you'll start seeing stuff on that this time. But it's really, really interesting as a solo person because that is not the same as when you have 20 employees and you can delegate all the decisions down. So what are the top couple of things? I know you don't regularly work with single solopreneurs, if I understand correctly, but what are the top things you would suggest that a solo business owner or a solo with You know, a couple of VAs pay attention to first in their business to reduce risk?

Adrienne Dorison [00:58:26]:
So I think thinking about like how much of your time is attached to your revenue, like we do this even with larger companies, but I think I think the, the more you can figure out, like, is there a model where, yes, I'm still— and I think it also depends, like, does the solopreneur want to remain a solopreneur? Because to me, that's a different approach than— and I— there's no right or wrong, right? It's just like, do they want to remain a solopreneur, or do they want to eventually have even just a couple additional support people that can help them?

Diana Alt [00:59:13]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [00:59:14]:
Yeah, because that makes the answer different, you know?

Diana Alt [00:59:17]:
Yeah. But I think that that's a starting point because if you want people to work with you, like when I went out, just spoiler, spoiler alert for people, I had some notice, but I also had people that were in 6+ month programs that they had bought. So I stopped selling that stuff because most of them were job search programs and I'm really intensive on positioning and resumes and all that kind of stuff at the beginning. And then it's a little bit more in kind of like, and we're just doing this search thing.

Adrienne Dorison [00:59:46]:
Yeah. For the rest of the time.

Diana Alt [00:59:48]:
So I stopped taking new job search program clients a couple months out so that I wouldn't have somebody in the middle. And then I found people that I could refer to. Every single one of my clients, I referred to a competitor as a potential resource for them and set up you know, whatever the billing rate was for, you know, if you— if my client calls you and needs a coaching call, like, this is what I'm gonna pay you. And most of the people, because of the circumstances, were like, I don't need your money, I'm gonna take care of your clients. But I set that individually. I had 3 or 4 people that I did that with.

Adrienne Dorison [01:00:25]:
That's great.

Diana Alt [01:00:26]:
Yes. Yeah. And I, I would do it, you know, there's one, there's one that was a total champ and helped me figure out how to do this because another one of her friends got breast cancer and had to do the same exact thing in her business. So, but I prefer solo. Like, I don't— I like— I want to go in and impact leaders, but I don't necessarily want to build a giant org. And so that whole, do you want to be a solo person? Do you not want to be a solo person? Is a really important question.

Adrienne Dorison [01:00:55]:
I think it's— yeah, because I don't think there's a right or wrong. I think it's also just about intentionally understanding the risk, right? Like, if you— like, a lot of people don't ever think about this, and then they think that nothing will ever happen to them, and then they don't realize that, like, yes, they have this great income, but now it goes down to zero without their labor. It's like, oh boy, like that— I thought that would last forever. And it's like, okay, just, just please, please know the risk, right? And be intentional with the choices that you make around that, whether that means building up you know, using some of, some of the income that you make and putting it towards other types of investments, right? Or making sure that you have a larger emergency fund for, for times like that, right?

Diana Alt [01:01:43]:
Having a reserve fund for the business itself, etc.

Adrienne Dorison [01:01:47]:
Exactly. Because, and knowing that, you know, having things in place like you did where, okay, if I do get pulled out, like it It's my— if I'm not working, my clients aren't getting served. If that's the— if you have like a service-based model like that. So how am I going to serve them in this interim? Is it partnering with, you know, some of my colleagues and referring people out during that time? Um, because financially I'm okay, but I still have an obligation to the people that I made a commitment to and they still need to be served. And I unfortunately—

Diana Alt [01:02:21]:
I was honestly really— I had Virtually, you, you're one of the first people that's gotten it like, oh, you referred to a colleague. We were all independent business owners, so technically we're all competitors to each other. But I have had people like, you referred your clients to competitors? I'm like, or I could breach my contract. I mean, right?

Adrienne Dorison [01:02:44]:
Right.

Diana Alt [01:02:45]:
Hello? I could just be in breach and not provide service. That would go down well. My clients were so wonderful about it. Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [01:02:54]:
Your client is going to be so much more appreciative of that and be much more likely to come back to you in the future if that's what they need. But like, you care, it sounds like, right? And knowing you parasocially for some time now, like I'm the same way.

Diana Alt [01:03:13]:
We're friends on Facebook, she and I.

Adrienne Dorison [01:03:16]:
Like, I care about the result that my client is getting and whether that's through me or someone else, it's still my obligation to help them get that result. And they'll be much more appreciative of me if I send them somewhere to get it versus if I say, I just can't work with you until 3 months from now. And it's like, well, that's not going to work for this person, right? Like, they're looking for the results now. And I just don't believe in competition like that. Like, I have enough colleagues and friends that we would do this for each other and it wouldn't feel competitive because it's like, I got your back, you got mine. I'm not trying to steal clients from you. I'm just trying to help you out and make sure this client gets served because again, my focus is on the impact to that client.

Diana Alt [01:03:58]:
You know, I have a belief that clients can't be stolen. No, like, I mean, you can steal a client list from somebody's system, but I mean, especially for what you and I do where So personal. I don't think clients can be stolen. I don't think your boyfriend can be stolen. I don't think your spouse can be stolen. Like, I just don't. You can't steal people.

Adrienne Dorison [01:04:18]:
I agree.

Diana Alt [01:04:18]:
Um, and, and having that mindset though, when I feel weird, like if there's somebody that's in my same business and I feel weird about them, it's if I start to feel competitive with them every single time without exception, there's a values mismatch that tells me I shouldn't collaborate with them. You're like, go with God, have a good time. I'm out. We're— we aren't going to be doing collaboration. Uh, before I get to my favorite last question and close this whole thing, um, I want to know from you a tip for like a lot of my people do work in corporate. And so there's so much that you talk about delegation of outcomes and like all this thing, but many people listening to this might be In the situation where they aren't the owner, they aren't the single ringable neck. What are— is a tip or two that you have for those people that want to make their job a little bit better, maybe reduce risk a little bit, even if they can't eliminate it all within their scope?

Adrienne Dorison [01:05:24]:
Yeah, I think the same rules apply, like whether you're a manager at an organization or you're a business owner and trying to just just, you know, not be the bottleneck. I think it's your responsibility to make sure that the things that are on your plate are supposed to be on your plate because those are the highest value things that you're capable of doing. It's the highest value to the organization, which means that a lot of us need to delegate a lot of things off of our plates that don't belong there. And so one of the frameworks that I teach for delegation, making sure that things don't bounce back to you, is called the IPO framework for delegating anything, right? So the things that you need to think about when you delegate so that you're also distributing decision-making, right? Because you can, you can delegate, you can transfer, we call it, you're like, you might transfer a task to someone else, but if you still own the decision for it, like you didn't delegate anything, you didn't actually delegate it.

Diana Alt [01:06:29]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [01:06:30]:
And, and, and decision-making is the most neurologically taxing thing that we can do. And so a lot of managers end up in roles, or business owners, we end up in roles where we're just making 10,000 decisions a day for everybody else. We're exhausted, right? We finish the day and we're like, oh my gosh, I didn't get any of my own work done.

Diana Alt [01:06:49]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [01:06:50]:
And every time I try to delegate something, quote unquote delegate, it ends up coming back to me. Like they keep coming back to me with the questions about how this works or they didn't do it right. So I have to redo it. So when you're delegating things, I want you to think—

Diana Alt [01:07:05]:
Stop doing that, by the way. When they wouldn't do it right, don't redo it.

Adrienne Dorison [01:07:09]:
Don't redo it.

Diana Alt [01:07:10]:
Partner with them so they understand how to do it right the next time.

Adrienne Dorison [01:07:14]:
And give them feedback, right? Like, they don't know why you're redoing it. A lot of times we just do this in haste, like in the middle of the night. We're like, oh my God, I'm just gonna redo it myself. It's just faster, easier. No, it's not, right? Because now that's like very short Short-sighted thinking. Yes, it's going to keep coming back to you. Whereas the long— those of you who are in, you know, thinking long game, you need to be thinking, but how do I make sure this doesn't come back to me again the next time and the next time and the next time? And I don't need to keep getting frustrated that they didn't learn what I never taught them.

Diana Alt [01:07:49]:
I know people I've worked with, clients that got put on a PIP, performance improvement plan. because their boss had to redo stuff and the boss never told them that it was wrong. It's like, what? What? Like, the person that belongs on a PIP in that scenario is the boss that didn't give feedback to their team member. So what is the—

Adrienne Dorison [01:08:08]:
Quite common, right? Like, we have really poor communication with team members. We don't set expectations well, and then we fault people when they don't meet the expectations that we only had living in our head. And I'm like, How are you going to put something like that when your partner does it?

Diana Alt [01:08:24]:
Don't do it to your employee.

Adrienne Dorison [01:08:26]:
Exactly.

Diana Alt [01:08:27]:
That's seriously— what is the I, the P, and the O?

Adrienne Dorison [01:08:31]:
OK, the I, the P, the O. Make sure that when you're trans— and you can also do this in the reverse. When something comes back to you, you can kind of question, oh, which one of these was missing? Like, why is it coming back to me? So the I is information. Like, did they have the information that they needed to actually move this forward, execute this, make a good decision around it? A lot of times the information lives in your head. So this is the—

Diana Alt [01:08:55]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [01:08:55]:
Hey, let's explain why they, you know, need to do it this way, or let's make sure they have all the data to make a proper decision. You know, sometimes it's living in your head, sometimes it's living in a Google file that they don't have access to, and you're just expecting them to move it forward. So making sure that they really understand and have the information that they need to do this as effectively as possible. The P is permission. So sometimes that is just as simple as explicitly giving someone permission to make a decision, to move something forward. They need to know what permissions they have or do not have around a specific area or an entire role. Sometimes we maintain access to certain permissions because we don't have the information yet to delegate it properly. Right.

Adrienne Dorison [01:09:53]:
We're like, oh, you can make every decision except for these 2. But that to me, that's not the end. Like that's not the end game.

Diana Alt [01:10:00]:
Right.

Adrienne Dorison [01:10:01]:
End game is you can make all these decisions. But the reason I can't let you make these 2 decisions yet is because I haven't figured out how to get those things out of my head. I haven't figured out how to document them properly.

Diana Alt [01:10:13]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [01:10:13]:
So I don't want you to fail at something that I haven't set you up well for. Right. But give them clear permissions on what they can actually make decisions around so that they're not constantly coming back to you and going, hey, how would you like this done? Or do you want it done this way or that way? Or should we do this? It's like, no, no, no. Like you have permission to make these decisions within this area. You don't need to come and ask me all these things. So do that explicitly. A lot of people think that they've done that. But they haven't done it explicitly.

Adrienne Dorison [01:10:42]:
They haven't actually told the person.

Diana Alt [01:10:44]:
Something that I have been talking to more people about that are kind of knocking on the door of bigger decisions, bigger scope, is, you know, a big thing that people complain about all the time is I don't have support from my manager. Like, that's something that you hear. But when you ask, what does support look like? They go, I don't know. And I'm guilty. Like, I had kind of a, I had, I had some, like, Eye-opening, right? Yeah, I don't feel it. But sometimes all the support you need is for— if let's say you're the senior manager and you report up through a VP and you've got to do stuff with another team, sometimes the only support you need is for the VP of your team to go tell the VP of the other team and/or the peer on the other team that this decision sits with Adrian.

Adrienne Dorison [01:11:33]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [01:11:33]:
And that's it. So don't be complaining. Don't run to me saying, why, why is this girl stepping on toes? Just let them know. An email, a text can be all the support that you need. So what's the O?

Adrienne Dorison [01:11:47]:
The O is the outcome.

Diana Alt [01:11:49]:
Yay. I was hoping it was outcome.

Adrienne Dorison [01:11:50]:
Yeah. What, where are we actually going?

Diana Alt [01:11:52]:
Right?

Adrienne Dorison [01:11:53]:
Like this is a safari, a safari tip because when you are out on safari, we learned something called orienteering. Because if every person has a dominant side of their body, right? So if you just start walking, you will eventually just walk in circles, okay? Because your right leg or left leg—

Diana Alt [01:12:18]:
Is that why you do that?

Adrienne Dorison [01:12:20]:
Yeah, like you will—

Diana Alt [01:12:21]:
I never knew that.

Adrienne Dorison [01:12:22]:
Slowly but surely you haven't—

Diana Alt [01:12:23]:
I did it, but I didn't know it was because—

Adrienne Dorison [01:12:25]:
You have a dominant leg, a dominant side, and you will tend to— these are like micro little movements that you will take a big step with your right leg than you will with your left. And over time, especially when you're out in the wild, like in the middle of nowhere, literally on the savanna, on the plains, you will just walk in circles. And so you have to learn something called orienteering when you're in the middle of nowhere and there's not a— there's not a McDonald's to help you figure out which turn you're supposed to make.

Diana Alt [01:12:52]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [01:12:52]:
You have to orient yourself to a, a specific milestone, right? Like a specific tree that you can tell which tree that is, or a specific body of water that you're looking at, right? Your team will walk in circles if they do not understand where they're supposed to go, if they do not have a milestone that they're moving towards, an outcome, a vision, right?

Diana Alt [01:13:17]:
Yeah.

Adrienne Dorison [01:13:17]:
So vision could be the biggest form of an outcome. But you want to do this in their role as well, or for specific projects that you have expectations around, right? Like Like, what is the outcome that you are actually expecting them to get? How will they know when they've been successful or not? Right. A lot of times people have no idea. Your team should absolutely be able to rate themselves on how they're performing in their role based on metrics and outcomes that they're accomplishing. Am I actually hitting my marks or not? And a lot of people don't. They have this like discomfort.

Diana Alt [01:13:53]:
Some of the outcomes can be qualitative too. It doesn't have to always be a KPI on a dashboard sitting in a CRM somewhere. Sometimes it's like, did I get copy? Like, did I get the landing page out in time for the promo email?

Adrienne Dorison [01:14:11]:
Right. It can be a yes or no binary. Like, it was completed or it wasn't.

Diana Alt [01:14:15]:
Did we do it or did we not do it?

Adrienne Dorison [01:14:17]:
So did we hit the deadline?

Diana Alt [01:14:19]:
Because I think one of the biggest lessons, this is something I'm trying to do more often. with my VA team. Um, and that is delegate the outcomes to them because I've worked with this agency for 6 years and they've leveled up big time.

Adrienne Dorison [01:14:34]:
It's great.

Diana Alt [01:14:34]:
Um, so where I used to have to delegate a lot of instructions, I don't have to do that. They're, they're the ones coming to me like, we got it, we're good.

Adrienne Dorison [01:14:44]:
It's all good.

Diana Alt [01:14:45]:
Well, I—

Adrienne Dorison [01:14:46]:
you can think through that, like that IPO, and, and anytime a question comes back to you, like as a manager or as a business owner, Like when a team member's coming to you because they can't move something forward, you can think through, oh, like, are they coming to me because they don't have the information, they feel like they don't have the permission, or they don't have a clear outcome? It's gonna be one of those 3 of like why they're not actually moving something forward. And all of those things help build their confidence in themselves, right?

Diana Alt [01:15:11]:
And guys, this is a thing when you're listening to this, even if you're not the leader, if you're the individual contributor on a team, you can bring this to your boss. They'll probably actually appreciate it. So if you say, if you say, okay, thank you for the project, I have a couple of questions. Where can I find the project charter and the this, that, or the other that you think you need? Where does my decision-making start and stop? And what are we trying to do? What are we trying to achieve?

Adrienne Dorison [01:15:39]:
And I encourage you, like my team does this, and I encourage any teams that we're working with, like fill it out as much as you possibly can. Do a lot of that critical thinking for your manager or for your leader. Take, take a first attempt at it and go, here's the information I believe that I need. I'm still missing these 2 pieces from you. If you could close that gap for me, let me know what the easiest way to do that might be. I can, you know, you can send me a voice note or we can, you know, have it do a time.

Diana Alt [01:16:05]:
This also makes you promotable.

Adrienne Dorison [01:16:07]:
Because here's the permissions that I need or here's the decisions that I will need permission on. Do I have your approval to do those? And then here's the outcome that I believe we're working towards. But if that's not what you had in mind, or if we need to realign that, let me know right now. You've done all of the work for them, which makes it so easy for your manager to go yes, yes, no, or otherwise you're waiting, right? 85% of a project's lifetime is spent in waiting, waiting for someone to do something right. And your, your manager is probably busy. So it's like if you could take a lot of that work off of their plate by just just handing them on a silver platter, here's what I think I need to get started on this. They're going to be like, oh my God, thank you so much. Now I don't have to think about this.

Diana Alt [01:16:50]:
I love that so much. I may pull this section out and do like a separate little YouTube video just on IPO. This is very good. I teach some similar things, but sometimes you can't come up with the right 3 letters. And I feel like it's such good 3 letters. Well, before we close, first off, where should people find you?

Adrienne Dorison [01:17:11]:
They should find me anywhere on the interwebs. My name is usually my handle on social media platforms.

Diana Alt [01:17:18]:
So it'll be all in the show notes too. So adriandorson.com. And you're also at level11leaders.com too, right?

Adrienne Dorison [01:17:26]:
@Level11 on some socials and then level11leaders.com.

Diana Alt [01:17:32]:
Level11leaders.com. Thank you for correcting me on that.

Adrienne Dorison [01:17:34]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [01:17:35]:
As we close, Question I ask everybody, what is the worst career advice you've ever received? Oh gosh.

Adrienne Dorison [01:17:45]:
Um, worst career advice.

Diana Alt [01:17:51]:
Career, business. I mean, as a business owner too, it's not just about working for someone else.

Adrienne Dorison [01:17:57]:
Maybe like, I think the worst career advice is like to just do like what you're passionate about. I am passionate about what I do, but I don't think that that's realistic for a lot of people. And I also don't think that's the goal. Like, I think that we need to be whole people. And if you're not super passionate about the thing that you're doing, don't make that wrong. I'm like, yeah, maybe that's like your job and you should find hobbies for things to be interested in outside of your business life.

Diana Alt [01:18:26]:
Similar. This raises like a really interesting point because one of the things that people I think make a mistake in marriages or romantic partnerships is they look for a person that can be everything, that can fill every role for them, not knowing, like, of course, like, it's okay if it's your best girlfriend that you go get your toes done with. You don't need that to be your husband.

Adrienne Dorison [01:18:52]:
Right.

Diana Alt [01:18:52]:
The same thing with work.

Adrienne Dorison [01:18:55]:
Yeah. I think that, like, even being more, like, even specific with this, like, yeah, I'm, I'm actually passionate about my work. I'm very lucky, but I do be— I'm really intentional that I have other priorities, but like making your business like your baby or your work, like, I don't like that terminology at all because I'm like, no, like my business is not a baby. I have to make really tough decisions around my business. And like, I don't treat my business like my child at all. I could be pretty cutthroat with my—

Diana Alt [01:19:25]:
You don't expect your child to generate money for starters.

Adrienne Dorison [01:19:28]:
No, but she tells me that she's going to make a lot of money. She told her teacher that. She told her teacher that this week, and she told her teacher that it's because mommy likes things.

Diana Alt [01:19:36]:
And I was like, girl, no, mommy wants to go on the bougie safari when you're old enough to—

Adrienne Dorison [01:19:43]:
yeah, mommy's actually not that bougie, but she does want to go on safari. So I love it.

Diana Alt [01:19:48]:
Well, thank you so much, Adrienne, for coming on Work Should Feel Good. I really appreciate it. We like— y'all, this is an hour and 20-minute long episode. I'm real sorry, but I'm not sorry also.

Adrienne Dorison [01:19:58]:
So we won't be sorry because work should feel good. This is like— I feel good.

Diana Alt [01:20:03]:
Adrienne and I love talking about work. So, thank you everybody, and we'll see you next time.

Adrienne Dorison [01:20:09]:
We do.

Diana Alt [01:20:09]:
Want some more career goodness between episodes? Head on over to dianaalt.com and smash the big green Let's Connect button to sign up for my newsletter. Let's make work feel good together. And that's it for this episode of Work Should Feel Good. If something made you laugh, Think, cry, or just want to yell yes at your phone, send it to a friend, hit follow, hit subscribe, do all the things. And even better, leave a review if you've got a sec. I'm not going to tell you to give it 5 stars. You get to decide if I earned them. Work should feel good.

Adrienne Dorison [01:20:45]:
Let's make that your reality.