Let’s get one thing straight.
Experts aren’t busy. They’re leveraged.
There’s a difference between just being busy and really working.
So many founders and top executives get these two things confused.
CEOs and leaders aren’t wearing all the hats. They’re not checking Slack 50+ times a day. And they certainly don’t put themselves in a position to be the go-to person for every problem that arises in the business.
The best, most effective leaders are doing less, not more. They know the real power in business doesn’t just come from hustle.
It comes from clarity, systems, and delegation.
They’re working in their zone of genius, not only to preserve their work-life balance, but to optimize the business for long-term success.
That’s how I’ve built companies, scaled teams, and helped other founders remove themselves from the trenches without sacrificing growth. It doesn’t happen by grinding harder. It happens by creating a repeatable framework to install, leverage, and stay in their zone of genius.
I call it the 3-Step System, and I use it to delegate everything outside of my top 1% skill set.
This is more than a theory or best practice. It’s the real-life technique that I used to help multiple founders and top leadership build machines that run efficiently without them.
Let’s break it down.
Step 1: Extract — Define Your 1% Zone of Genius
Most founders and CEOs think they have a time problem.
But they have time, and their time management skills are often sufficient, too. In reality, what they actually have is a clarity problem.
They haven’t identified their zone of genius, their top 1% skill—the work only they can do that moves the needle like nothing else. So they default to trying to be useful everywhere instead of being essential in just one key place.
That ends here at step one of the 3-Step System. It begins with “extraction,” where you identify your top 1% skill.
What Is Your 1% Zone of Genius?
Whether you think it or not, we all have a top 1% skill to leverage. It’s just a matter of identifying yours and capitalizing on it.
You can think of your top 1% zone as the intersection of three things:
- High leverage: It creates significant results.
- Unique ability: You’re better at it than most people.
- Deep enjoyment: It energizes you, not drains you.
To break it down even more, this is the thing you’d do even if no one paid you. It might be something that feels like play to you, but it looks like work to everyone else.
If you’re constantly bouncing between sales calls, approving logos, answering team DMs, and rewriting the same email responses 17 times a week, guess what?
You’re outside your 1%, because I bet “following up” and “circling back” aren’t your self-proclaimed zone of genius.
Signs You’re Operating Outside Your Genius:
Beyond being bogged down by busywork and tedious, routine tasks, there are a few other ways to determine whether you’re operating outside your zone of genius. Keep an eye out for these telling signs that something isn’t right:
- You procrastinate or avoid certain tasks altogether.
- You feel drained at the end of the day, but you’re never sure why.
- Your work feels shallow, not strategic. It’s not fulfilling you.
- You’re constantly pulled into low-leverage tasks that suck up your time.
Sound familiar? It’s unfortunate, but you’re not alone. Every founder hits this wall at some point. It almost sneaks up on you.
But it can be fixed, and the shift starts with radical clarity.
You can start ushering in a change by asking yourself these questions:
- What’s the one thing only I can do that directly impacts revenue or vision?
- What feels natural or easy for me that seems hard for others?
- What would I pay someone else to take off my plate right now?
Auditing your work this way helps you filter the zone of genius work from the busywork. This level of clarity isn’t just “nice to have” or a luxury to iron out in your spare time. It’s a necessity for effective, sustainable leadership.
Step 2: Systemize — Build SOPs & Templates Around Everything Else
Once you know what to protect by leaning on your zone of genius, it’s time to systemize everything else.
Here’s the mindset shift:
If it repeats, it gets documented.
Even creative work can be systematized. Templates, checklists, step-by-step breakdowns—all these things can be organized into clear systems to make them faster, more efficient, and easily replicable.
Here’s what I tell founders and CEOs: What’s unspoken becomes a bottleneck, but what’s documented becomes scalable.
This concept alone should be your driver for implementing strong, reliable systems that everyone in the business can access, not just you.
What to Systemize
If you’re completely revamping your business operations, the act of systematizing may feel overwhelming or impossible. It doesn’t have to be, though. Start with your most repetitive or delegation-worthy tasks:
- Client onboarding
- Weekly reporting
- Social media scheduling
- Common email replies
- Internal project updates
- Sales scripts and qualification questions
You’re not just documenting what you do, you’re building scaffolding that allows other people (or AI) to take over.
Think of it like building a franchise.
Every McDonald’s in the world runs off the same SOPs.
You’re doing the same thing, just at a higher level of complexity.
How I Build SOPs Fast
Here’s my go-to workflow for building SOPs quickly that can be expanded and leveraged throughout all corners of the business:
- Record yourself doing the task on Loom, Zoom, or whatever platform your team uses.
- Transcribe it. I use AI tools like Otter or ChatGPT to simplify this and complete the task in seconds.
- Turn it into a checklist or SOP that others can follow.
It seems incredibly simple, and that’s because it is, or at least it can be. Don’t overthink it.
This isn’t a book report. You’re capturing just enough detail to pass the task off without guesswork or having to field multiple clarifying questions from your team.
I also systemize decisions whenever I can. If I find myself answering the same questions more than twice, I create:
- Decision trees
- FAQ docs
- Swipe files for common responses
Because decision fatigue is the enemy of genius work.
Every decision you make on autopilot is one less distraction from the zone of genius work that actually matters.
Step 3: Delegate — Install People or AI To Own It
This is the part where most founders mess it up.
They hire too fast. Or delegate reactively. Then they get frustrated when things break.
It’s ineffective and does more harm than good to the business over time. Left to fester for too long, and it becomes even harder to fix later down the road.
But here’s a key piece of information all founders and CEOs could benefit from hearing: Delegation isn’t giving up control. It’s giving up bottlenecks.
The goal isn’t to get someone to “help you.” You’re putting them in charge of the task, asking them to own the outcome without needing constant hand-holding. That’s how you eliminate the founder bottleneck that happens when everything gets passed and paused when it gets to you.
Here’s how I think about it:
- If a task requires judgment, empathy, or a more nuanced context, it’s best to assign it to a human.
- If the task doesn’t require judgment, empathy, or context, and is more of a routine operation, an AI tool or virtual assistant can handle it.
The goal is to install systems that function without you having to babysit them.
You want to build a team and tech stack that moves without you constantly checking in. That’s leverage.
How to Delegate Ownership, Not Just Tasks:
When delegating tasks to team members, don’t just say: “Can you do this?”
Say: “I want you to own this outcome. Here’s the goal, the process I’ve built, and the metric we’ll track to know it’s working.”
If you’re delegating without clarity, you’re just outsourcing chaos.
And that’s not leverage. That’s a time bomb, and eventually it will go off.
Why This Framework Works (And Why I Use It Daily)
A lot of founders and CEOs need to hear this blunt truth:
You will never scale if you stay stuck in the daily operations.
The CEOs and founders I work with aren’t struggling because they lack ambition.
They’re struggling because they’re trapped in a job their business gave them that they likely didn’t budget for when they started the company.
And that job?
Unfortunately, it usually includes everything except their top 1%, zone of genius skill.
However, the 3-Step System is a framework that changes that.
- Extract gives you clarity.
- Systemize gives you repeatability.
- Delegate gives you freedom.
Put all three together and you’ve got leverage.
This is the formula for creating actual scale, not just revenue spikes.
I’ve helped countless founders deploy this system in their own business, and all of them have been able to step away from being the bottleneck that holds the rest of the team back from making real progress.
They’ve created systems that give their teams the keys to success without constantly checking in on them or answering repeated questions.
They’ve restructured the business so they can work fewer hours with 10x more output and focus.
Most importantly, they’ve found a way to return to and stay within their zone of genius, leveraging that top 1% skill that’s unique to them.
They’re leveraging systems and frameworks to solve big problems in the business and drive real value.
Essentially, they’re being leaders.
But this only comes when they step out of the day-to-day and see the operation from a top-down view because it’s hard—almost impossible—to look ahead if you’re stuck in the trenches.
Conclusion: Protect Your Genius, Systemize the Rest
Every founder has a zone of genius. It’s likely what inspired you to go into business and start a company in the first place. In fact, it might even be the core concept or idea the business was originally founded on.
That said, most CEOs are too buried in busywork to access that skill. So it gets tucked away, saved for a time when things “calm down” and they have a minute to refocus. But days, months, and years pass, where you’re constantly putting out fires and grinding through the daily workflow, and you never have a chance to recenter and really reconnect to what makes you a leader in the first place.
You need to strive to build something that can scale with or without you, and this is the path.
- Get radically clear on what your 1% is.
- Systemize everything else.
- Delegate with intention to humans, machines, or a mix of both.
Business influencers and podcasters may try to tell you otherwise, but being a good CEO isn’t all about hustle, and being busy is not a badge of honor.
Leverage is.
Successful, long-lasting businesses aren’t built on hustle alone. There’s so much more that goes into it, and strong leadership is at the top of the list.
But you can only be a strong leader if you’re tapping into your zone of genius.
So, build the systems.
Protect your top 1% skill.
Remember that you’re not meant to run in circles.
You’re meant to lead with clarity, scale with systems, and thrive in your zone of genius.
