In this insightful episode, Joanna Zhang, CEO of The Operations Genius, shares how to master delegation and self-discovery to escape overwhelm. If you struggle with doing everything alone and hitting bottlenecks, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- How to start delegation by listing tasks and building trust

- Why respecting emotions unlocks better leadership decisions

- What self-reflection turns challenges into growth opportunities

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 2 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Joanna Zhang is an international speaker and the founder of The Operations Genius. She helps entrepreneurs, agency owners, and leaders scale their businesses sustainably through aligned systems, operational clarity, and energy-based productivity. After years of working inside high-growth companies, Joanna saw how often leaders sacrificed well-being and vision for growth. Now, she empowers founders to create freedom-driven businesses that thrive without constant firefighting. Known for her holistic approach that blends strategy, systems, and soul, Joanna guides leaders to build companies that are both profitable and purposeful.

Want to learn more about Joanna Zhang's work at The Operations Genius? Check out her website at https://operationsgenius.net/

Connect with Joanna at her LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhang-joanna

Download her Unstuck Guide at https://operationsgenius.net/solopreneur-guide/

Mentioned in this episode:

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If you’re a Founder, business owner, or CEO who feels overworked by the business you lead and underwhelmed by the results, you’re doing it wrong. Succeeding as a founder all comes down to doing the right one or two things right now. Take the quiz today at foundersquiz.com, and in just ten questions, you can figure out what stage you are in, so you can focus on what is going to work and say goodbye to everything else.

Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

to the start, scale and succeed. Podcast, the only podcast that

grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a

founder, I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and today I want to

talk to those founders out there who find themselves spending

Sundays catching up on invoices, staying up late to finish Client

Onboarding and answering emails at 5am because that's the only

quiet time you have. Yes, we're talking to those of you in that

startup entrepreneur stage, juggling all the plates and

doing it all yourself. And while that might feel like a necessary

evil or even a badge of honor, there might be a better way, and

here to talk to us about that is the one and only Joanna Zhang,

who is an international speaker and the founder of the

operations genius. She helps entrepreneurs, agency owners and

leaders scale their businesses sustainably through aligned

systems, operational clarity and energy based productivity. After

years of working inside high growth companies, Joanna saw

just how often leaders sacrificed well being and Vision

for growth, and now she empowers founders to create freedom

driven businesses that thrive without constant firefighting.

She's known for her holistic approach that blends strategy,

systems and soul, and Joanna guides leaders to build

companies that are both profitable and purposeful, and

she's here with us today. Joanna, welcome to the show.

Excited to have you here from the other side of the world,

waking up early to be with us today. Thanks for being here.

Thank you so much, Scott. I'm really happy and

excited to be here to share all these stories and insights with

everyone.

Absolutely. Well, let's just dive in so you

make the distinction that I feel really cuts to the heart of

where so many stage two founders get stuck, and that is, it's

really clever way of putting it. I love how you say this, but

competence is not the same as genius. Just because you can do

something doesn't mean that you should. So my question for you

is, why is being good at everything? Actually, one of the

most dangerous is dangerous places that a founder can be.

Right, that's very great question. I actually put

it back to my own experience. To be honest, I'm not the DIY style

entrepreneur like I there's a lot of things I'm not good at so

at the very beginning of my business, I found, like it or

marketing, I'm definitely not good at it, and wasting a lot of

my time, and in turn around, it just not really good. And

someone else can take 10 minutes, 20 minutes, do a much

better job than me. So I realized at the time I had to

outsource. However, on the other hand, there are founders very

self sufficient, you know, like they can do everything they are

very good at. They can figure out because of that, I saw

actually many people around me in that style. There was

initially start wanting to do everything by themselves, and

especially if they had a bad experience in work with others,

they will reframe and exercise the importance of working by

themselves, because they feel like there's just less hassle.

However, most of them, I found later on, they will reach a

point that say I had enough. I'm just burning out. I had reached

my limit. So I would say the most dangerous thing is that,

because someone is really sufficient to do everything,

they kind of can somehow escape or ignore the sign of self care,

and, you know, the capacity to really push to the hardest. Like

for me, I didn't have that challenge that much because I

had to do that. However, so for someone really independent,

really wanted to pull things through, that could be the

dangerous thing to ignore the science.

Yeah, one of the one of the things that I

find particularly challenging about it is that you can do it,

and then you are doing it, and so there's just no time to

figure out anything else. And no one can do it as fast as you.

And it's certainly no one can do it as fast as you if you have to

teach them and train them and talk to them and and and get

through all of that so someone listening who just kind of feels

overwhelmed with the work that's in front of them and have some

experiences where trying to hand it off to someone else didn't go

well. What would you say to them today?

Well, I will say it was my personal experience,

too. If something happened to me before, I somehow used to drag

by it. I used to determine my future by my previous

experience. Somehow it's saying is ego trying to protect us use

our previous experience to determine what's going to

happen, what we better to do. So I think that kind of simple

effect. It's actually reflecting our own life. Actually, if

anyone is facing this kind of experience, can we actually just

stop and reflect everything about our life, not just working

with someone else? Have we have that pattern that if we

experience something, we somehow come up with a solution? Or can.

Conclusion that it will happen again. So it is a sign again for

us to reflect certain life patterns. So I will say, if we

had a bad experience with someone or if anything in our

life, it doesn't determine our future. Even if we had a bad

experience with someone, it doesn't mean fairly failure.

It's just this pure experience that we need to learn something

from it. Maybe there's something going wrong over there. Probably

it's the other party, which we can't control, but some of the

part probably is ourselves, like myself. I started as working

with the VA. I had a lot of challenges, hurdles as well, but

because I had to somehow outsource them figure out a way.

But for the self sufficient owners, they kind of just like,

I don't have to build that path right? So I think at that

particular pivot point, maybe stop and think what has exactly

happened during the last experience, if it's because we

met someone who hasn't really fit into the criteria, or maybe

something happened and not trustworthy, whatever it is,

probably they're teaching us. How can we find a better person

next time? You know, a lot of time, the attitude is even more

important than skill. That's how I feel. My experience with the

VAs as well. Probably from a future in process we need to be

aware of something, or if the previous experience was because

our communication or the character crush, whatever it is

there must be something that's reflecting our behavior,

somewhere we can improve, we can learn, and we can become a

better version of ourselves, as well as a leader. So the

previous experience is here to teach us something. If we can

look at that way, learn something from it, we can

certainly move on from it, and not to avoid future

possibilities. That's how I feel.

I love that, because one of the things that I

catch myself saying somewhat regularly with clients is, let's

not learn the wrong lesson from this. And I think that's exactly

what you're describing. Is we we convince ourselves that that

painful experience means delegating doesn't work, and

what we really should think is, Hey, why did that not happen?

The way that we tried to delegate didn't work. But this

can be different. So one of the things you mentioned there is

getting the right person. I think that's really important. I

think the other side of it is how to actually delegate. Well,

what's our responsibility in that process, and it's one of

those things. We're not born delegators, at least most of us,

right, just like we're not born walking, but we can learn it.

Just the same for someone who has not had any real success in

delegating, but knows that they need to do it. What are some

steps that they can take to improve on their ability to

delegate well?

Okay, I think I'll probably share from this way,

from up to down, like from a bigger picture. I think as a

founder, we need to understand one thing, that, as a leader and

founder of the business, a lot of us are visionary style. You

know, our style are like we have pictures, we want to directions,

we want to take things happen. And I found a lot of for

example, we're working with some clients, the founder style, the

visionary one, they actually come to passing the instruction

with the team. They they are drawing the pictures, but the

team members, and they expect the team members, even the team

members, or AI, whoever is, they understand exactly. So it's a

kind of the style we didn't we put too much expectation on the

person that that's something in my mind. Ben, I hope you can

telepathy. You know exactly what I want. So there's one thing. So

from an upper arm is a spiritual run, like a higher arm is that

the expectation part let go with the expectation, and the next

one is actually delegation. So go to the next layer is the

style, like the method, how we communicate in terms of that

from the language point of view, right? So we are visionary. We

wanted to describe, but the VA is the task doer, like the

detail oriented. So their language need a very specific

precision. Steps and directions lead them through to make things

happen. So we kind of need to translate our language from

visionary into details. Well, don't have too much pressure,

because it is a process first practice as well. More and more

probably during this step, we can use some certain creativity

to describe but also physiological steps. So guide

the other side through. Actually, there's one other

thing that as our team providing this service is that we have a

LinkedIn team in the middle, like a project manager, can

translate those language into actionable items. So this step

is very necessary. And the third side of the group of detail is

that, really, you know, I think it's one we actually have the

outcome coming. It's different from what we thought. It's kind

of the details how to improve on it. So at the final layer is

that we got to have the mindset of not expected things will turn

out exactly like we will want and want to come. Outcome comes,

instead of just express our in. Motion, we can give some cinema

suggestions like that was my personal experience. For

example, I asked for a design before, and it's something like,

what is that I practice it to give a few attempts, how about

change you feel this and come a bit better? How about you feel

this come a bit better? And at the end, it surprised me,

because that's co creation process. It's always working

with someone else. It's like working together, not just 100%

like what we want. So let's create that kind of openness,

communication with on the other person's side, and with the

process language to Yeah, to make it through.

So good. Why do you think? Because it sounds

so simple when you explain it, right? Why is it that it's that

when you get down into it, it's so hard, like, why are those

emotions so sharp in those moments?

That's really good question. That's why a lot of

people like to work with AI now, because AI, they don't have

rejections, they don't have emotions everything we say, yes,

yes, yes, go always, you know. Like they don't have a sick

leave, you know, they don't even need to stop you know. But

that's why I really cherish the moment working with the humans,

the human upgrade mirrors of our souls. Let's imagine that we're

here in this world as a if you believe we have a soul, right,

other than his physical body, we have some other energy around in

with us. What create all those emotions? Emotion again, is I

used to escape from emotions because, for example, if I'm

upset, frustrated, drained, whatever I wanted to I want to

get rid of that, you know, I don't want to become positivity,

but I was missing a step of facing those things. I was

escaping, not myself. However, when I four years ago, I had a

soul awakening event, I started realized to really look at every

single thing happened within me and to really face it, even

though that's very painful, because every single emotion

behind that, there is a lesson to learn. For example, I used to

be angry at my son, I don't know what, and then later on, I found

out whatever he's saying is actually some pattern in me. Oh,

I realized because I was angry at myself something I wasn't

happy about myself. That's why she reflects my anger. You know,

so a lot of time when we're working with someone else, we

see someone we're not happy. We judge on them. It's something we

haven't accept ourselves. So since I started to practice all

those emotions, started to accept all the style of myself,

surprisingly, those kind of emotion just faded away. But it

is a procedure, like, it is a journey as well, like what you

say, it's a decision of ourselves, whether, if, let's

say I used to work for someone bad experience, but I decide to

try again when we try it out, whether we can really face the

pain, find the gold, Golden Nugget behind it. So why I

experience this? How I can improve? So if we can do this

way, every single emotion become a navigation.

Yeah, I love that. And one of the things that

I think we we overlook that you're pulling out so

brilliantly, is being an entrepreneur. Being a founder is

such a deeply personal journey. We like to think like, oh, it's

our business thing. Or, if you're in the nonprofit world,

it's, you know, it's our work thing, but it is us. It's in us.

It's through us, and we're such a big part of it. And I love

that, that pause to step back and think, hey, like, what's

going on in me and what's my role and responsibility in this?

It's very good. Joanna, there's this question that I have for

you ask all my guests. I'm interested to see what you'd

have to say. And the question is this, what would you say is the

biggest secret that you wish wasn't a secret at all. What's

that one thing you wish every founder watching or listening

today knew?

Well, probably just based on my previous point,

respect and accept all emotions. I found probably that doesn't

sound related to the business world. However, at the end of

the day, I found that the main thing is our self discovery

journey, no matter what we do, like entrepreneur journey is

extreme one, because we facing a lot of bumps challenges, and we

chose this journey because we wanted to to fulfill our vision,

right? So we took on this hard journey, and let's not escape or

ignore or avoid certain challenges on the way, all those

signs are giving us a beautiful, important moment for us to be a

better version and to learn something and grow out of

certain patterns. So that could be the secret. I used to

probably give some logic or tips, but I found at the end of

the day that was purely because I started to look, really look

within myself. Respect my own feelings, and that could be a

good start.

So good, so good. Joanna, I know there are

some folks listening today that would love to hear more. They'd

like to know how they can connect with you and what

resources you have to share. Where can folks find out more

about the work that you do and what the next step might be for

them?

Right, I think the best way, easiest way, you can

find me on LinkedIn and just type in my name, Joanna Zhang.

If there are multiple of that, just put operations beside it. I

believe I will show up. And also I will ask Scott in the show

notes to share a Unst guide. I've got a free guide for the

solopreneurs, especially if you're feeling stuck. There's a

certain steps you can look into it and started to find out where

to start with the delegation journey, and feel free to

connect with me. I love to connect and collaborate and to

find out some solutions where you're feeling stuck.

Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Joanna, thank

you so much for being on with us again from the other side of the

world. Really, really appreciate you being here. It was a

privilege and honor, and for those of you watching and

listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to

us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I

did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.