Mini Stories #4: Outsource Decision Making

Biggest life hack as an agency owner is this:

I’ll cut to the chase, straight to the point, without any wait, straight up.

Let’s lock in.

Don’t waste any time.

There’s lack of it anyway.

Wtf am I even writing.

Aight, basically, over the last 3 months. My agency has grown a LOT.

I mean the uppercase LOT.

And I hardly worked in the process.

The main reason behind it:

I outsourced most of the decision making to my lead team members.

Let me explain how.

I trained my creative lead, Aryan, since Jan 2024.

Sakshi, my ops manager, since around mid 2024.

We went through a lot of ups and downs. I lost 10s of lakhs of rupees.

Keep this hidden from my mom.

And in this timeframe, they constantly got on calls with me.

Every single day I randomly text these 2 people, to get on calls.

Where I tell them about:

1. My current thoughts

2. Updates around the agency

3. Pipeline of new clients

4. What am I planning to improve

5. Where I feel improvement can be made

6. And ask them, do you need anything from me? People? Money? Software? etc.

Over time, by having these constant conversations, they picked up my way of decision making.

Now, if I need anything done from my team of 40+ people. I tell these 2.

I know they can make decisions aligned with my thinking.

Most of the scenarios, I ask them, what do you think?

Whatever they tell me, I go along with it.

Because at this point, they are the ones running the company. I am growing it.

And they have earned my trust enough, to take decisions.

I randomly get texts from my ops manager, like these:

“Hey Saksham, I’m firing this person”

“Hey Saksham, I need x editors”

“Hey Saksham, I onboarded x editors”

There’s so much motion happening without me knowing, I don’t step in. Or bother them.

I know they know everything and I don’t.

And, this way, my peace is protected. Most agency owners are constantly worried about running the company, I’m not.

Just because of my peace of mind, I can do my thing to grow the business. Maintain client relationships.

Now I know what the gurus meant when they said, they hardly work in the agency.

Not like I’m 100% there. But I’d much rather work a couple days a month in the agency, and spend the rest of my time closing deals and building client relationships.

If you’re a beginner. Or on your way. Find people who you can trust.

One thing is for sure, you WILL fuck up.

You will lose money. Peace. Clients. And have self doubt.

You’ll be scared to make hard decisions. You will want to give up.

You will wonder if it’s worth it.

And in almost all those scenarios, learn from my experience, those problems will be insignificant the moment you start delivering great work and develop confidence in your team’s work.

That will be the start of a new world for you.

So embrace failures, time is limited, go through people to find who’s the best one, do REAL GOOD work, don’t half ass your input, trust people, become a judge of character, learn human psychology, pattern recognition, prevent problems before they occur, take decisions fast, show people how you work and think, let them learn from you, there’s nothing wrong in spreading your wisdom within the people who deserve it, slowly let go of control, let go, let them take decisions and mess up, you face their failures, let them know about it but don’t let their confidence down, give them more chances, value intent and initiative, value communication, value values and character. Over time you’ll find your ride and die people. Your people. Who bring peace instead of making your life difficult, and life will never be the same.

Talk soon. More to come. Much love.

~Saksham.