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Featuring: Adrienne Dorison, Level 11
In episode 172, I sit down with Adrienne Dorison, founder and CEO of Level 11 Leaders and the operational efficiency expert who built the methodology behind Mike Michalowicz's Clockwork.
Adrienne brought Lean Six Sigma from paper mills to small businesses, and we dig into what that looks like in practice: stripping project management back to its simplest form, why owners hand off tasks but hold on to decisions, and how that habit quietly makes every hire more expensive. She also shares lessons from her years as a certified safari guide that changed how I think about giving teams direction.
The biggest takeaway is her IPO framework. When a question lands back on your desk, ask whether your team is missing information, permission, or a clear outcome, then fix that gap so you never answer the same question again. We also talk honestly about why most women-owned businesses have no employees, why so few ever exit, and how building an asset instead of an identity creates real optionality.
Key Bytes
• Delegating a task without delegating the decision isn't delegation.
• Every decision you reverse puts you back at the center of every decision.
• When a question comes back to you, ask what's missing: information, permission, or outcome.
• Is their decision actually wrong, or just different from the one you'd make?
• Without a clear outcome, even great people will walk in circles.
• Build the habit of using a simple system before you add the bells and whistles.
• A business built as an identity is hard to sell; a business built as an asset gives you options.
• Practice the pause, because jumping in to fix things robs your team of capability.
Chapters
00:00 From paper mills to Clockwork
03:26 Optionality and the four-week vacation test
05:28 Scaling Lean Six Sigma down for small businesses
07:09 Why simple project management beats bells and whistles
11:56 How owner dependency starts with delegating tasks, not decisions
16:00 The IPO framework: information, permission, outcome
21:01 Le Pause and the discipline of restraint
23:07 What safari guiding teaches about clear outcomes
28:18 Why so few women-owned businesses ever exit
33:43 Rapid fire: rituals, books, and advice to her younger self
Adrienne Dorison is a leadership and operational efficiency expert who has spent more than 15 years helping founders build businesses that don't depend on them. She created the methodology behind Mike Michalowicz's bestselling book Clockwork and has personally coached thousands of business owners. Today she's the founder and CEO of Level 11 Leaders, where she helps founders remove owner dependency so they have real options — to scale, sell, step away, or pass the business on.
Adrienne Dorison is a leadership and operational efficiency expert who has spent more than 15 years helping founders build businesses that run without them. She created the methodology behind Mike Michalowicz’s bestselling book Clockwork, which has sold over 300,000 copies, and has personally coached thousands of business owners.
Today she’s the founder and CEO of Level 11 Leaders, where she helps founders remove owner dependency and build real optionality: leaner teams, wider profit margins, and the freedom to scale, sell, step away, or pass the business on.
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Steve Guberman (00:01.944)
Welcome to Agency Bytes. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outsight, where I help agency leaders build agency optionality. That's the freedom to grow, sell, or keep your business because it's your call. My guest this week is Adrienne Dorson, a leadership and operational efficiency expert who has spent more than 15 years helping founders build businesses that don't depend on them. She created the methodology behind Mike McAlowitz's popular and best selling book, Clockwork, and has per personally coached thousands of business owners.
Today she's the founder and CEO of Level 11 Leaders, where she helps founders remove owner dependency so they have r real options to scale, sell, step away, or pass the business on. We are reading from the same playbook, Adrian, and I freaking love it. and so I'm pumped to have you here just to talk about these things that we're so aligned on. But you're you're and I'm so I'm even more excited because kind of your, I don't want to say angle, but like you're like the the the
corner of your passion is all it also surrounding women ownership. And so we're gonna dig into that. 'cause it like, yeah, so we are just super duper aligned. Give kind of the backstory, what you've been up to, how you got here, what you're doing now.
Adrienne Dorison (01:05.796)
Yes.
Adrienne Dorison (01:11.278)
I know.
Adrienne Dorison (01:16.954)
Yeah, so I actually come from the corporate world. My background is in operational efficiency from large manufacturing organizations. I used to work in big paper mills. So one of the longest and largest supply chains that you'll ever work on. so an operational efficiency dream trying to figure out how do we make this process more efficient. And that was my job: to help figure that out for the paper mills. And then at a certain point, I realized like when I looked up at
the executive team and the leadership, I was like, I don't think my values are fully aligned here anymore. I wanna go out on my own. Let me figure, you know, let me let me see if I even like this. So I started my consulting practice about twelve, thirteen years ago as a side hustle. I was still working my corporate job and then eventually went full time into the consulting because
I always think it's good to do something in practice before you just like romanticize it in theory. So I was like, let me make sure I actually like doing this with small business owners. so I was trying to apply the big business principles of Lean Six Sigma, which is what I was using in my corporate job. And I was like, How do how do I help small business owners who have way less resources apply these efficiency principles to their work? And
And so I started doing consulting. I was doing private consulting for about two years prior to meeting Mike McAllowitz. We were mutually introduced to each other because he was already in the process of writing this book all about efficiency for small business owners. And we had a friend and they were like, you need to meet Adrian because that's exactly what she does. Efficiency and lean six sigma, but for small business owners. And so I had already been developing.
You know, intellectual property that I was using with my clients. And then over the years of co-collaborating with Mike, we built the clockwork book and system. I did that for just over nine years with Mike. And then last year I exited. We both kind of decided, let's, you know, part ways. And I am focused now on
Adrienne Dorison (03:26.677)
Similar concepts, you know, but at a I would just say a a different, like you said, focus area niche with female founders and just even more specifically helping them understand that this is about optionality, right? Like you don't have to do any of these things, but by doing these things, you will make your business more valuable and give you more options for whatever you choose to do. So in the clockwork book, we talk all about this idea of like the four-week vacation.
Steve Guberman (03:55.735)
yeah.
Adrienne Dorison (03:55.828)
And what I found to be true is like most business owners can't take a four-week vacation, right? Completely unplugged, not touching the business at all. But we kind of used that as like the litmus test. Like if you can step away from the business for four weeks, essentially you could get it to a point where you could step away in perpetuity if you wanted to or needed to. Well, most people, when I was working with clients, it wasn't that they had this like, you know.
luxury vacation for four weeks planned and that's what they were planning for. It was usually more life stuff that was happening, whether it was like a medical issue or a baby family planning that was happening or someone who was, you know, we talked about this on when I interviewed you on my podcast, like someone who's like much more entrepreneurial by nature and they have this other idea, but they're currently so stuck in the current business and they really want, they just wanted that freedom, flexibility and
Steve Guberman (04:30.145)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne Dorison (04:51.843)
what we now speak about as optionality, right? So now that's kind of my focus and that's where I am today.
Steve Guberman (04:59.145)
Awesome. I will allow you to use my phrase optionality. It's fine. Go for it. so in in kind of building out the IP and the systems that you eventually rolled into clockwork, you were it it it made sense to you and it worked well that all of the big picture lean six sigma principles that you applied on large corporate, they apply universally, right? Like there's no, well, we've got to change this or scale it down or it doesn't apply to small business. Like the same principles apply, right?
Adrienne Dorison (05:02.873)
Thank you. Thank you.
Adrienne Dorison (05:28.111)
yes, and a lot of them are like fairly complex in terms of execution. Like we need a whole stakeholder team to do this, you know, fishbone analysis of all this data. And it's like, okay, so I was also really scouring through the tools because there's tons of tools inside of the Lean Six Sigma toolkit. And it's like, which ones are actually most helpful and applicable to a small business owner? And how do we just like
Yes, drill it down a bit for the small business owner's use. And effectively those became completely different tools, not just saying, let's use this exact lean six sigma tool. Although sometimes we do that. Like for example, with project management, I always recommend like a Kaizen approach, which is a very lean six sigma Japanese efficiency toolkit for your project management.
And it's very simplistic, right? It's three lanes, it's three different swim lanes inside your project management to do doing done, right? Like so that we know where are things, transparency of who has what on their plate. And most of the time when I go into small businesses and I'm looking at, for example, their project management, it's completely overcomplicated. It's not actually working for what they need it to do, which is.
We just need to be able to tell who's working on what and where it is in terms of progress. But they've got like a million different things built out and all these dependencies. And I'm like, that's great. Those are like fancy things that we can build out later. But most importantly, we need simplicity. And so yes, a lot of those tools do that.
Steve Guberman (06:54.679)
When, yeah. Yeah.
Steve Guberman (07:09.185)
How much of that so how much of that is the to to blame on the softwares that are we're gonna throw this new feature out, bell and whistle wazoo, like versus agencies, they're not going out and building their own PN PM systems. So they're relying on what's on the marketplace and can't really stick to the simplicity of three lanes, right? So
Adrienne Dorison (07:27.481)
Yes.
Adrienne Dorison (07:32.75)
Yeah, it is it is challenging. And like one of the things that I love about certain tool kits, like a Trello, for example. Like a Trello can be really lean and simple. but the problem is without the training on like how to set it up initially, someone looks at a blank board and they go, I have no idea what to do with this. Right. So that's why when we teach, like we actually teach, like in our program, we just teach the I'm very tool agnostic. Like I don't care if you use
ClickUp or Monday or you know, Trello or Asana. Most of these tools will do the same thing, but when I teach it, it's like it's a very simplistic layout using Trello or using the Kaizen approach. And then I tell them, until you and your team are consistently using this in this way, in the most simplistic format.
Because you need to build the behavior and the habit of actually using it before you go, see, this tool doesn't work for me. It doesn't do all these things, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no, it's it's because you're not in the habit of actually using it. until you consistently use it, we're not allowed to add like all the fancy bells and whistles, right? But there are some bells and whistles that, like, for example, subtasks with dependencies that can be helpful, right? Because now I'm not having to.
Steve Guberman (08:43.639)
Yep. Yep.
Adrienne Dorison (08:53.273)
Go and tell someone, hey, I finished this task, right? So not all of them are cumbersome or you know, inefficient, but for the most part, you don't need most of the stuff. And I find that because most of them are blank slates, the average user does not know how to set them up efficiently. And so then you end up creating like 47 different projects for every single thing you have going on.
And it's a huge inefficiency to actually get what you need out of it, which is usually what's my team's capacity? And you're like, I have no idea because it's it's spread out amongst all forty seven different boards I have here.
Steve Guberman (09:31.757)
Capacity planning, what is that? Resource planning, I don't know what that even means. Yeah. No, that's a whole other ball of wax. All right. So g
Adrienne Dorison (09:35.128)
Yeah. Which I'm sure as an agency owner is like one of the number one things because when I work with agencies or anyone doing like billable hours type of stuff, they need to know like, do I have do I have anyone on the team who has the capacity to actually deliver this? Or if I have some if I have clients on a wait list, when can I realistically tell them we're going to be able to serve them, you know? And most people don't have any clue how to actually they're just guessing.
Steve Guberman (09:45.378)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (10:01.205)
Yeah, it's pretty painful. And most of the tools stink at capacity planning. There are a couple of decent ones, but most of them kinda stink. And the ones that are really good are just painfully expensive. So you get what you pay for. But there's some some DIY solutions out there for tracking. I want to dig deeper into owner owner dependency because I do think that that is one of the keys, if not like the biggest key to optionality. And I and I think it's the definition.
Adrienne Dorison (10:05.528)
Yes.
Adrienne Dorison (10:15.789)
Yes. Yes.
Adrienne Dorison (10:26.894)
Yes.
Steve Guberman (10:29.429)
between building a job and building a business. I'm very clear that the business that I'm building is more of a job because I am the buck stops with me. I'm I'm the coach, I'm the advisor. I don't have a team of people other than a marketing assistant and a VA and so so I'm I'm very intentional on that. But people that are like, I'm building this business and one day this and one day that and lofty dreams, they're they are the bottleneck. They are the biggest
Adrienne Dorison (10:32.195)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (10:59.201)
discount factor in any valuations most likely. I can remember vividly when I had my agency, we would take like a week family vacation down the shore, which in New Jersey means we're going to the beach. and and so I, you know, I would work most of that week. And then as my team developed, as our systems developed, I stopped working for that week. And things didn't I remember vividly when it was like, I came back and things were still operating. They were like, well
Adrienne Dorison (11:11.406)
Yeah.
Adrienne Dorison (11:15.897)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (11:28.213)
Steve comes back from vacation with new ideas. This is painful. We don't like this. But things kept going. And then one year I remember they closed a deal while I was on vacation. And so it grew, right? And so those are like, I think the three, I don't know, stages or whatever. Right. So kind of talk about like what you see are the biggest factors or imp impedements from a founder or leadership standpoint. Like why why is there so much owner dependency? And what steps can we take to try and break some of that?
Adrienne Dorison (11:31.971)
Yeah.
Adrienne Dorison (11:41.049)
Yeah.
Adrienne Dorison (11:56.334)
Yeah, so the reason why is typically because we started the business as a solopreneur or maybe one, you know, two helpers in some smaller capacity. and so we have this curse of knowledge where we know and had to do everything at some point, and then at a certain point you realize you're maxed out on capacity.
And you go, like I guess I'm gonna hire someone, right? I'm gonna hire someone and then it's gonna make my life so much easier. And we all know how that works, Al, right? You hire someone and then you delegate some well, you think you're delegating to them, but you hand over some tasks to that person, but you still own all the decision making because decision making is really the key.
Steve Guberman (12:28.929)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne Dorison (12:50.689)
Like decision-making distribution inside of an organization is one of the biggest keys to removing owner dependency. And it's also one of the most challenging things for owners to release. partly because they have this need for control that they are most likely unaware of. Most people think like, no, Adrian, like, I don't want to micromanage these people, like, I don't want the control. And I'm like, but
If someone made a different decision than what you would have made, you're gonna have a panic attack. And that's and then you're gonna go in and you're gonna reverse the decision that they just made, which further embeds you as the center of every decision, right? So it's like when we first start delegating, we don't know any better because we were never trained how to delegate. We were typically just good at the craft or whatever it is that we, you know, created the business around.
We didn't really probably have any managerial or leadership or delegation skill sets. And so when we quote unquote thought we delegated something, we assigned a task and then we never distributed the decision ownership. So we still own all the decisions, right? And you just you kind of just accept that for a while. You just think that that's how things are. And so you end up, you know, with people on the team.
Steve Guberman (13:58.392)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne Dorison (14:08.441)
Who then bring you 47 decisions a day that you need to be answering, and you just continue to do that for a while until it becomes so painful that you either say, like, my gosh, it was just easier when I did it all myself, and you fire everybody, which is quite common. It's quite common because most business owners actually have no employees. And so I know that people are getting into this like cyclical, like, maybe I'll just hire someone and then
Steve Guberman (14:23.053)
Which happens, yeah.
Adrienne Dorison (14:36.943)
Actually, it was just easier. And if you keep people in what we call the deciding, right? Where you're still in ownership of those decisions, like they can go do a task, but they still have to come back to you and go, Do you know, how do you want this done? Or do you want me to do it this way or that way? Or do you want it done in red or black? Or can you review this before it goes out? Or can I get an approval on this? Like if you are still the one feeling all of that.
You actually will spend less time on the things that are highest value for you to be doing throughout the day. So it will become more expensive for you to have someone on the team. So logically, it actually is more cost effective for you to just do it all yourself, right? If if we're being honest, if you remain in that stage.
You're doing it all yourself. And if something happens to you, then the work doesn't move at all, right? We have to get people to the phase where things are fully delegated to where they now own the decision making, right? And I always tell my clients, I'm like, if if a decision is continuing to come back to you and you feel like you've either delegated it or you would like to delegate it, you're like, why does this keep coming back to me?
Why am I answering this question again? I want you to think through. We have a framework called like our IPO framework for delegating anything off of your plate. Okay. And when the question comes to you, or you can reverse this and have your team members have shared language around this and they can think through this too. If I'm going to Steve, what am I missing? What through what which one of these three things am I missing?
So that maybe I can fill that gap myself, or I can be more clear with Steve on what I actually need from him in order to move this thing forward without his involvement, right? So the three things are they're either missing missing information, right? Which is the documentation, which sometimes lives in your head, right? It's a knowledge that you carry that we have to get out of your head. This this knowledge transfer is typically the biggest piece of removing owner dependency.
Adrienne Dorison (16:50.379)
Is getting the institutional knowledge or the expertise out of the head and into some sort of framework, process, document, decision tree, whatever it might be. There is a thing that you are running through when you answer a question. Sometimes people just think, it's I was just like bored knowing this. I'm like, no, you weren't, right? If you slow down a little bit, you will start to understand that you are running through a series of decisions or a reason why you make this decision versus that.
Steve Guberman (17:00.631)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne Dorison (17:19.855)
And so we ultimately have to get that out of your head or give them access to it if it's like, it's a client database that they don't have access to or it's some, you know, Google Doc that there's 47 versions of that they don't know which one they should be referring to, right? Or where to even find it or they don't have access to it. So number one is information. If they don't have information to good to make a good decision, we need to get that to them. Number two is permission.
Right. So sometimes people have the information, but they don't feel that they have the permission to move something forward. They don't have the permission to make the decision. And sometimes we think as the business owner that they should just know they have I I gave them permission for that, or I just want them to do it. I'm like, no, you need to give explicit permission for them to do things because the psychology of an employee is very different than the the psychology and the psychological
you know, nature of an entrepreneur, right? Or of a business owner. We are much more risk tolerant as entrepreneurs and business owners, and we're willing to do things that, you know, might scare the crap out of other people. And most of your employees are very risk averse. And so making a decision that could cost them their job potentially is not something that they're interested in, right? Like they're going to avoid
Steve Guberman (18:20.577)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne Dorison (18:47.693)
That risk at all costs. And this is this is high risk for them. You have to understand that like they want safety, security with because they want to go home and they want to feed their family and they want the consistency and stability of the work that you're providing for them. And making a decision that could cost them that if they feel that they didn't have permission to do it is just not something they're gonna do. Right. So if you have never explicitly given them permission, then you need to go ahead and do that.
We call this like we have different tools that we teach for how to do this because sometimes you're like, I want them to make all of these decisions except for these two. And I'm like, okay, like at least be explicit with that. They'll have a much more autonomy. But what are the two and why are we not handing those over? Is it because we're missing information that you haven't yet figured out how to get out of your head? Okay, but we're not gonna continue to live there. Eventually we want those off your plate as well.
Sometimes you also think you've given or you may even have given explicit permission and then you took it back. And you took it back unintentionally, maybe. you didn't realize you were doing this at the time, but they made a decision and then you changed it, right? So you went back in and you were like, you picked red, but I really wanted black. And they're like,
Steve Guberman (19:48.055)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne Dorison (20:03.661)
And people are, but I gave her permission, but she she made the wrong choice. And I'm like, okay, but why did she make the wrong choice? Is it actually so there's two things here? Is it actually wrong or is it just different? Right? Because those are two different, two different outcomes, right? If it is inherently wrong, it goes against our company values, or the company as an entity would not make this decision, then it's still our responsibility because they were missing information.
Right. They may if if they made a bad or wrong decision, it was because they didn't have the information to make the correct one. If they made a decision that is just different, then that's something that you, as the business owner, need to start getting comfortable with. This is where the control factor starts to creep in, and we have to do what I call le pause and restrain ourselves, right? You need to practice a lot more restraint.
Steve Guberman (20:56.875)
Hmm. Yep.
Adrienne Dorison (21:01.465)
So there's this book, it's about French parenting. It's called Bringing Up Bebe. And it's an expat who like learns all of this stuff about French parenting and and speaks to like all the things that we could learn that we do differently as Americans that French parents do. And one of the things they do during sleep training, but also during like growth and development is called Le Pause. Like, just don't jump right in. And this goes not just for decision making, but so many areas of the business, like.
We as business owners have no restraint. We just like jump in and fix things, jump in and solve things. And we really rob our team members of creating capability, right? Like they might not have the capability yet, but we never allow the capability to emerge if we just immediately jump in, right? And my youngest daughter has taught me this over and over again because my oldest daughter, like, she would let me tie her shoes until she's 24. Like she'd be fine with that. She would let me feed her with a spoon. Like,
Steve Guberman (21:57.36)
Ha ha.
Adrienne Dorison (21:59.746)
She she is very dependent. Whereas my younger one, she's like, Nope, mommy, I do it myself. I do it myself. I do it myself. And I'm like, okay, you're right, right? You need to do that yourself. And you're gonna fail a million times until you figure it out. And you that in that regard, like parenting is a lot like leadership, right? You have to let your teams fail, but you have
Steve Guberman (22:11.447)
That's how they learn. Yeah.
Steve Guberman (22:18.637)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne Dorison (22:21.613)
You have to give them the opportunity to try and try and try and figure it out, right? It's okay for people to be challenged. Sometimes we just want to like swoop in and save them because something is hard for them. And so I always encourage you, like, make sure it's low stakes, things that are further away from the money, right? When you're first starting to delegate, but they need information, they need permission explicitly, and then they need an outcome. They need to understand where are we actually going, right?
If they don't have an outcome, they will just walk in circles or they will just come and ask you for the answer. So I actually have like a really random previous career. I used to live in South Africa and I was trained and certified to be a safari guide. Okay. And yeah, random first life. Okay. My background from like undergrad and grad school, eventually how I landed at a paper mill, my background is in wildlife ecology and conservation.
Steve Guberman (23:07.987)
What?
Adrienne Dorison (23:19.597)
master's degree in forestry and natural resource economics. So during that time I moved to South Africa. I'm certifying to be a safari guide. One of the things that we have to do when we're certifying is called orienteering. Okay. We have to figure out how to navigate in a landscape where there's not a McDonald's on the corner and I need to figure out I'm leading this group of, you know, tourists. I need to make sure I'm safe, but I also need to make sure I know how to get back to camp or get where we're going.
Steve Guberman (23:23.063)
Very cool.
Adrienne Dorison (23:49.696)
So we were taught, and this is very true because our guide would let us go on for hours in the wrong directions, but you always have a dominant leg. Okay. So if you are right leg dominant, you will actually walk in left circles over and over and over again at like a really wide range because your your right leg will go slightly more than the left, right? So if you're
not focused on a specific milestone that you're moving towards on the horizon or wherever your point of reference is, you will just walk in circles and you will not know it for a long time, right? Because it looks, especially when you're out in the savannah, it looks like you're going towards that tree. Well, you, you, you messed up. You're just walking in. You think you're going straight.
Steve Guberman (24:30.785)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne Dorison (24:39.033)
This is true for your team. If they do not have a lighthouse, a milestone, a direction of where you want them to be going, they will walk in circles. And it's not their fault, right? Like they can't really make clear decisions without you if they have no idea the direction that you want them to go. So I always communicate to our clients that like vision, a very clear vision for your company and values are like.
The highest level decision-making tools that you can provide for people. Because if you have A players, if you're hiring like competent, you know, qualified people for your team, they can get pretty far even with just an outcome. Right? They can, they can, if they know the outcome, they can make a lot of decisions, even if they have imperfect information, right? So
Steve Guberman (25:27.391)
If if they are if they have the initiative and you say this is what success looks like and they have initiative, they can figure out the steps to get to that success point. Yeah.
Adrienne Dorison (25:34.966)
Yes, right. So it's like with incomplete inf you know, we always want to give them as much as possible in terms of the information, permission, and outcome. But if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna slack on any of them, it's never gonna be outcome, right? Because outcome is the goalpost, right? And if they don't have that, then they're gonna be in ill-equipped to answer questions or make decisions or move us forward, right?
And most of the time as leaders, we have not defined the outcome. We haven't defined it for their role. We haven't defined it for a project area. And so it's impossible for things to move off of our plate and remove owner dependency when we haven't done the legwork up front to go, what is the outcome I actually want from this person or from this project? Like how will they know when they've been successful? And right now you're probably basing
success of their performance on feelings, which is also a big no-no for me. Like I think it's so unfair to the people on your team that like I just don't really like how they're doing X, Y, and Z. And when my clients come tell me that, I'm like, absolutely not. What is the metric that we're measuring them against? And do they know it? Do they understand it? Have we communicated it with them?
And all by doing all of these things, right, it removes owner dependency so that each team member can be more autonomous and actually move us towards the goals that are going to move the business forward. And so all of that together creates like the systems that we need, the metrics that we need, the documentation that we need, the dis the decision-making distribution that we need. And so it's like if I were to give someone one tool or one framework, it's the IPO. I'm like, how do we get things off your plate? It's like,
Steve Guberman (27:18.315)
Happy O
Adrienne Dorison (27:21.303)
Running it through this filter every time a question comes back to you, which is something people can do right now after this episode, right? It's like, when a question comes to you, whether it's in Slack or it's like, hey, you got a minute, right? Like I have a question about XYZ. I want you to filter through and ask yourself, do are they lacking information? Are they lacking permission? Are they lacking the outcome? And how now can I get that to them so that I never have to answer this question again? If you do that.
Steve Guberman (27:48.322)
That's super powerful and like Yeah. Yeah, super powerful and and what a freeing framework to easily implement to get start getting things off your plate. And when you have the right people that you trust and you and you use that framework, there's no reason why everything should be on your plate. I want to go a little long on this episode because there's something really important I want to dig into. And when we first met, you threw a stat at me and you said ninety-one percent of women owned businesses, have no employees.
Adrienne Dorison (27:49.333)
Over and over and over again, you will remove voter dependency.
Steve Guberman (28:18.347)
And less than one percent of business exits are women-owned. And with such a massive consolidation in our industry happening and and continuing to accelerate, there are a ton of female-owned agencies who are unsupported, who don't have the s the support systems, groups, whatever. And and there's a million, right? There's I'm looking at my other screen, there's entrepreneista, there's join the OGC, there's Agency Darlings, there's Growth Tribe, there's
Adrienne Dorison (28:18.351)
Mm.
Adrienne Dorison (28:21.935)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (28:47.447)
FemaleAgencyOwners.com. There's a zillion like that. amazing women in e-commerce, women in tech, women who code, like all of these things. I'm sure you've got a zillion more. But I want to know like, what's this gap all about? And I have found such more than two thirds of my clients have been female or minority owned agencies. I don't promote for that. That's not like a micro niche that I target, but god damn, there's a support that is needed, and I don't know.
Adrienne Dorison (29:07.161)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (29:14.645)
What's the gap? Is it funding? Is it a confidence problem? Is it nobody taught us how to build past our like what in a in a a minute, like what is your thought on why is there such a gap?
Adrienne Dorison (29:28.015)
I think it's a I think it's a lack of education starting at the beginning of building a business, right? I think that most women are not thinking about an exit. Most women, and so we're so we're not even aware that that might be an option for us as women. I think there's well, we know factually there is a funding gap in terms of capital. but I know a lot of men who don't.
Steve Guberman (29:44.557)
Mm.
Steve Guberman (29:50.423)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Adrienne Dorison (29:54.51)
get any capital and still exit, right? And so it's not the only path capital is not the only path, but I do think that there's absolutely a lack of capital in terms of being able to hire people and scale it the way that you want, so that you can exit effectively. I think more than anything, when it comes to the exit, we are
As women, we build a business as an identity. Like it becomes who we are, how we identify, how we find value in ourselves. And so then when the the even the thought of exiting happens, like we don't build businesses as assets the way that we should. We think of them even more like you know, revenue builder, like like a job, like you're saying. Like it's something that has high revenue sometimes for us.
But it's not an asset until we remove that owner dependency or figure out like, yeah, w how do we want to scale this right with funding or venture capitalism? We don't have access to those rooms. People are not educating women on these conversations. I think only more recently I'm like, I'm being brought into rooms where investors are like, hey, you know.
Deal flow, right? Like women have not had access to deal flow. Women don't even know what deal flow is until you get to a certain point. And so it's like access to these rooms. But I just think that there's an identity piece of us being so attached to things. And I think part of that is also the problem with the hiring. Like why we don't have more team members is because we can't trust people. We feel like we should just do it all ourselves. Like we do that with labor in the home and we do that with labor in our businesses.
Steve Guberman (31:38.295)
Mm.
Adrienne Dorison (31:39.46)
And then we're just duplicating the responsibility we have on ourselves, and we're not creating the right support system. Like, not to, you know, blame this on women because that's what everybody does, right? But like we do have a martyrdom problem in some ways, right? Like, I don't I don't have any help.
Steve Guberman (32:00.461)
Yeah.
Adrienne Dorison (32:03.311)
But I'm not gonna ask someone for help. I'm just going to overload myself and continue to do it all until I reach a point of burnout or breakdown. And then like I've met so many women who just shut it all down instead of instead of having the optionality to sell it or whatever, they just overload themselves.
Steve Guberman (32:21.333)
I've had just this year, three founders, female founders, come to me with that same framework. I'm burnt out. I don't, you know, this is something I've done for X amount of years. It's who I am. I don't know that I can or I don't know how to sell it. I'm just gonna shut it down. And I've helped two of them exit, and the third one is on an exit path. So yeah, that is a common like just the knowledge is not there. And so there are plenty of MA conferences. There are there's
Adrienne Dorison (32:39.087)
Amazing. Yeah.
Steve Guberman (32:48.747)
least a handful that I know of coming up the rest of twenty twenty six and into twenty twenty seven. There is Own It, which is an amazing conference and community for female founders. Their next summit I think is in April in Portland, Oregon. It's an amazing community. It's female founders, female speakers. Christy, I forget her last name, Hellyor, I think is her last name, launched it. so there's so much support out there.
Adrienne Dorison (33:10.807)
Mm.
Steve Guberman (33:14.581)
And I you know, and and the ability to be s as successful, if not more successful, than any non female founder or anything else, like the tools are there. And so, you know, please reach out to Adrian myself. Like, if if you're if that resonates with you, we want to help you, jump on a call with us. We'll point you in the right direction. I want to wrap up real quick with a couple of random rapid fires, 'cause why not? I was gonna ask, like, what's the most random job you have, but now I know it's like putting your head into
Adrienne Dorison (33:29.711)
Yeah. Yes.
Absolutely.
Adrienne Dorison (33:37.601)
Okay.
Now it's done.
Steve Guberman (33:43.445)
The lion's you know, in in the mouth of a lion. what is a a a ritual that's part of your day that leads to your success?
Adrienne Dorison (33:45.967)
Safari guide, yeah.
Adrienne Dorison (33:54.48)
moving my body. Like it doesn't have to be. I used to be like hardcore, like it has to be CrossFit. I have to do this, you know, hardcore workout. And now, and I actually started to track this because I would start, if I didn't move my body, I would start to feel the effects of that by like 2 p.m. on my attitude, my negativity, my mindset. And I was like, okay, I actually don't sometimes I don't have time. Like I have, I have a blended family. I have five.
Steve Guberman (34:14.061)
Mm.
Adrienne Dorison (34:21.667)
kids between the two of us. And so like sometimes I don't have time to do like a full ninety minute workout. Like I would like, but I do need to at least move my body and that absolutely affects my mindset, which affects my success for sure.
Steve Guberman (34:33.325)
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. other than clockwork, what is a a business book that has been transformative for you?
Adrienne Dorison (34:43.101)
my gosh, so many. But one of my favorites is called The Five Hour Workday. And it's called it's by Steven Aristol. It's not like a super popular book, but I I loved this book. It talks about the economics of our society and like why we're not actually built for eight, nine plus hour workdays. And the five hour workday is actually a much better.
more efficient process for our brains and how we got to this point, like basically talks about the industrial revolution and all like it's it's a very interesting read and it's a good book to like start testing out different work schedules, which is why we're like my company is a four we have a four-day work week. I was telling you this and that's part of that process is like when you condense the amount of time, you'll actually be more efficient. So
Steve Guberman (35:37.313)
Yeah, I'll have to check that out. I I thought you were gonna refer to was it Tim Ferriss's four for our work week? But I guess that's different. I I've streamed some of it, but in my audible, but yeah, so and then finally think back to I don't know, twenty five years ago, Adrian. What is a piece of advice that you would give your younger self with what you know today?
Adrienne Dorison (35:44.525)
You know, I've actually never read that book.
Adrienne Dorison (36:00.653)
my God. I wish I was like better at financial investing back in my earlier life. Now I like kick myself on like the amount of money that I've made in my current lifetime and what I could have done better with certain investments and things. Like I just wish wish I knew now and I'm still learning now. Like I still feel like I still have so much left to learn. But I'm like, I wish I would have prioritized that or knew back then what I know now.
Steve Guberman (36:28.811)
Yeah, I'm similar. I wish I had bought real estate much, much sooner. so
Adrienne Dorison (36:34.915)
And I was never and still I'm not like a big spender, like I'm not like a big luxury item type person, but I still think I could have done some better things with some of the money I've made over the years, you know?
Steve Guberman (36:48.107)
Yeah. Well that's great advice. Adrian, folks check out level eleven leaders dot com. There's an exit planning tool there at slash exit. Adrian, thank you so much for joining me for all of the passion that you bring to female agency founders and and entrepreneurs, and and their paths forward. So grateful for your time today.
Adrienne Dorison (37:01.475)
Yes, thank you.
Adrienne Dorison (37:08.547)
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.