The 80:20 of Delivery - What to Keep, Cut, and Automate to Scale Smart
What if the way you're delivering your product or service is quietly draining your time, team, and profits?
In this episode of Freedom to Exit, Lani breaks down how to audit your delivery model using the 80/20 rule—identifying what actually drives client results and profit, and what needs to be cut, streamlined, or automated. You’ll learn how to avoid “nice but expensive” features that clients don’t value, why sloppy delivery sabotages referrals, and how to make smarter decisions using client feedback, not guesswork.
She shares:
- Why founders hold onto outdated delivery offers (and how to let go)
- The hidden costs of over-delivering without profit
- Automations that free up time and improve client experience
- Red flags that reveal pricing and scope problems
- How to gather honest feedback that drives upgrades and referrals
If you want to scale without chaos and finally step out of the weeds, this episode is a must.
What You’ll Learn
- How to audit your current delivery model
- Common traps that sabotage profit and scale
- What to automate to reclaim time and reputation
- Why clean delivery = better reviews, referrals, and revenue
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🌐 Website: stealthfreedomtoexit.com
Transcript
>> Lani Dickinson: Welcome back to the Freedom to Exit podcast. I'm Lani Dickinson,
Speaker:your host, and today we're gonna talk about the 8020 of
Speaker:delivery, what to keep, and what to cut. This is
Speaker:episode four of our Scale Smart series.
Speaker:So far, we've covered what scale actually
Speaker:means, how to model growth that supports your
Speaker:life and your future. Exit and the
Speaker:biggest mistakes that kill momentum. Today we're gonna
Speaker:get into delivery, the part most business
Speaker:owners avoid talking about because a lot of it
Speaker:feels too sacred or too operational, and they're not
Speaker:necessarily willing to get rid of things that they get feedback
Speaker:on. So they just don't ask. But here's
Speaker:the truth. Most of what you're delivering is
Speaker:either costing you money or not moving the needle.
Speaker:And if you don't start optimizing here, you'll never scale
Speaker:clean. Here's the thing. The delivery
Speaker:can get very costly because that's the part
Speaker:where oftentimes humans are involved. So human labor is
Speaker:very expensive. And if people are
Speaker:not getting the result they want or getting different results
Speaker:than what they thought they were promised because they're not being asked
Speaker:for feedback or we're giving them things
Speaker:we think they need and they don't necessarily want to pay
Speaker:for, now we're going to have reputation and referral problems.
Speaker:So this is really important to dive into the delivery of
Speaker:your services. So let's figure out, how do
Speaker:we decide what to keep and what to cut and what to
Speaker:automate. So let's think about Steve Jobs. When he returned to
Speaker:Apple, he cut 70%
Speaker:of the product line. That was in 1997, when the
Speaker:company was in chaos. He had to come back. Right. They had
Speaker:dozens of models, no clear strategy, poor
Speaker:profit. And when you think about what Apple is today, it's hard to
Speaker:imagine that they were basically a mess. But they were.
Speaker:When he cut 70% of the product line, that
Speaker:allowed them to innovate on
Speaker:the things that they were already doing really
Speaker:well at so they could focus. And that
Speaker:saved Apple and laid the pipeline and the foundation
Speaker:for imac and iPad and beyond. So
Speaker:cutting is a growth move in many
Speaker:cases, but when we're too close to it, that feels a little
Speaker:bit painful. So why delivery matters more than
Speaker:people think. It's not just about what you
Speaker:do right after this. Delivery is a signal to people that
Speaker:you're efficient, you're predictable, that you know what you're
Speaker:doing, that you're profitable, that you're
Speaker:going to be around to help them solve more
Speaker:problems. Sloppy
Speaker:delivery will get rid of referrals Nobody's going to refer to you
Speaker:if the delivery is sloppy. Great delivery is going to get
Speaker:you great referrals. Sloppy delivery is going to get you
Speaker:messy reviews. You don't want messy reviews.
Speaker:Right. When we know that 95% of people check
Speaker:a Google review before they make a buying decision
Speaker:and they're using that to decide.
Speaker:Wenna, make sure that our reviews are
Speaker:coming in, that we're responding to them, that we've got
Speaker:reviews consistently, not just from three years ago.
Speaker:That all comes from making sure you're delivering
Speaker:what people actually want. So here's how you can
Speaker:audit some of that. Look at your profit and loss statement.
Speaker:If you're not getting them, you gotta start and ask
Speaker:what services or products have the
Speaker:highest margin means makes us the
Speaker:most money. Which clients constantly
Speaker:have scope cree and which clients churn
Speaker:out and why do we think that is? And every time the
Speaker:answer can't be the client was a buttead. We have to
Speaker:say where did we drop the ball? Where
Speaker:were we? Unclear. Go back and listen to the sales call.
Speaker:Go back and listen to their last zoom call. Right. We have to
Speaker:figure out why are people really
Speaker:leaving. And you have to get down to what does it
Speaker:actually cost you to deliver everything that
Speaker:goes into a service or a product? You have to understand
Speaker:what is that cost of goods. Are there being team members
Speaker:overused for low value tasks? Those
Speaker:are things we should be automating, delegating,
Speaker:giving to a robot. Right. If we are using
Speaker:high value employees for low revenue
Speaker:tasks, we have a serious problem
Speaker:and we need to clean up delivery and therefore
Speaker:the financials. If you look at these four things, you're going
Speaker:to start figuring out what should we cut, what should we
Speaker:streamline, what could be automated, what could be
Speaker:charged differently. We have to look at our pricing
Speaker:and we need to be at the top of the market, not at the bottom.
Speaker:That's a raise to the bottom. If you don't have clean financials
Speaker:yet, you got toa get there. But here's some ways
Speaker:to spot red flags if you don't have the financials. If
Speaker:you're constantly working overtime for one
Speaker:type of client, that's a sign that you're not charging
Speaker:enough. It's not streamlined enough. There's something to improve
Speaker:there. If your team absolutely hates
Speaker:one type of client or one type of project,
Speaker:that probably means it's out of balance in some way. You
Speaker:need to really dive into that. It's not always just that the
Speaker:team is cranky and doesn't wa want to work. There are other reasons that
Speaker:people get unmotivated. It might be that there's too many
Speaker:repetitive tasks so they don't feel like it's worthwhile work that they
Speaker:can be connected to. If you can't explain how your
Speaker:pricing was set, you're probably losing money
Speaker:delivering. If you're reinventing the wheel with
Speaker:every new project, there's something to create. You have a lot
Speaker:of opportunity there to streamline. This is where I
Speaker:help clients in my Activate to ascend problem. We help you clean all
Speaker:of this, get focused, help you with your financials,
Speaker:make sure they're working for you, not against you. But here
Speaker:are some simple delivery automations that most
Speaker:businesses miss. And you don't have to overhaul
Speaker:everything. Just doing one thing at a time, getting
Speaker:it in place and then moving to the next opportunity. I have
Speaker:a list of 100 plus things you can automate before
Speaker:you try to scale that you can download. But just
Speaker:starting with one, we'start to free up time and create
Speaker:more profit. So you can use onboarding forms
Speaker:within welcome email and text that's going toa save you a phone
Speaker:call. And it's automated. You can use task
Speaker:assignments with deadlines and reminders so that you're not
Speaker:having to have the conversation about hey,
Speaker:where is this? You can look in the program might seem
Speaker:impersonalable, but if we're go goingna decide between you
Speaker:getting home and you making another 5 or 10%
Speaker:in profit, then these kind of systems start to make
Speaker:sense. If we get review requests tied to
Speaker:job completion and get that in the SOPs, or better
Speaker:yet, get that in the automation and have AI
Speaker:do that. If AI schedules, AI knows
Speaker:when it's done, it moves to the next step, it sends
Speaker:out the review request and follows up until it comes back.
Speaker:And then when it comes back, AI responds to it. Guess what you're
Speaker:building? Reviews, reputation referrals and therefore
Speaker:revenue. When you finish up a project, if you can send
Speaker:up automated wrap up email and ask for a
Speaker:referral. If you don't have that in automation tied to
Speaker:your reviews, you can do that and have that automated
Speaker:in your project wrap up email. You can have weekly
Speaker:check in touch points for clients where they get a small survey
Speaker:and they answer one or two questions and if
Speaker:it's great, it keeps moving. If it's not, then that attracts
Speaker:your attention, right? These can be automated pretty
Speaker:much in any modern CRM I happen to use go
Speaker:high level but you can automate many
Speaker:many things in just about any modern CRM.
Speaker:The Minute you do one thing that time, and that profit
Speaker:comes back to you, and then pretty soon you're like, okay, I think I can do
Speaker:another one. Pretty soon you're through my whole list of 100,
Speaker:and your business is drastically different. And you're home for
Speaker:dinner every night. Why do founders keep unnecessary
Speaker:delivery? You think, well, the number one answer I hear
Speaker:is people need this or people love
Speaker:this. Maybe they do. But if you're having a
Speaker:problem getting people to buy or not paying
Speaker:enough for what it actually costs so you don't have enough
Speaker:profit, there's probably something that needs to come out of your delivery. You got toa
Speaker:figure out what results will they actually pay
Speaker:for and then give them what it requires
Speaker:to get that. And when you find out that they're
Speaker:faltering and still not getting results, you've got to figure
Speaker:out like Henry Ford did, what is the next solution I need
Speaker:to create? There are no gas stations, okay? I got to help people build
Speaker:gas stations. There are no roads, okay? I have to
Speaker:advocate to get roads built. People want the result.
Speaker:And if you're not getting them, the result, someone else is. But they're also
Speaker:going to talk bad about you online. So you've got to solve that
Speaker:so legacy founders can get rid of
Speaker:legacy services without guilt, without
Speaker:feeling like they're making a bad decision,
Speaker:without sticking to habits or living in fear by simply
Speaker:asking clients, why did you choose
Speaker:us? What was the moment in your mind you knew we were
Speaker:the ones that will tell you what? What about your
Speaker:marketing, your trust factor, your authority, your
Speaker:lead magnet? It will tell you what's working in
Speaker:the attraction phase. The attraction and the beginning of
Speaker:conversion. What part of our services mattered most
Speaker:to you? And you have to stop and be comfortable with
Speaker:silence when you ask these questions. People need a few seconds to think
Speaker:and come up with the answer. So this can't be,
Speaker:you know, just throwing questions at them.
Speaker:What's something you didn't care about at all? In
Speaker:every coaching or program relationship
Speaker:I can think of, there was always something that
Speaker:got thrown away or sat in the corner or collected dust
Speaker:or whatever. If it's one person or 10
Speaker:people who don't really need the product or the service that
Speaker:you're including in your product or service, that's
Speaker:fine. If you find out the majority of people
Speaker:are not using something, then don't produce
Speaker:it, right? That's gonna save you money. And then ask em
Speaker:what's something you'd gladly pay more for. And
Speaker:when you find that out, then you Start offering more of
Speaker:that. Right? So you don't have to
Speaker:guess what people are willing to
Speaker:do without and what they want more of. You just have to ask
Speaker:them. You can also do this in a survey but it's
Speaker:great if every month you call a certain number of
Speaker:your people and actually talk to the human. They'll also be
Speaker:shocked that the owner took time to do that. So customer
Speaker:led delivery optimization is
Speaker:really important. Most businesses
Speaker:design their offer kind of in a vacuum and
Speaker:then they're having costs they don't need to spend and maybe not
Speaker:getting the results as quickly as they could
Speaker:and maybe they don't have as satisfied of a customer but
Speaker:satisfies customers get you more satisfied customers.
Speaker:So you can send a three question quick feedback
Speaker:survey after every job or project. You cannot send them 10
Speaker:or 12 questions. They'll get survey fatigue and they just won't answer.
Speaker:It's ideal if you're going to send something to like a Google
Speaker:survey that they have the ability to answer
Speaker:an anonymously. I was in a program where every month they
Speaker:would survey and every month people would be chattering in
Speaker:the background about what they were mad about but they would not
Speaker:respond in the surveys because they didn't feel
Speaker:like they were going to be treated the same
Speaker:or something afterwards. And lo and behold there was
Speaker:a live event, a bunch of people went, the survey went
Speaker:out, somebody took the time to answer, the name was on
Speaker:there. The VA accidentally sent the whole
Speaker:survey result to everybody in the event and the
Speaker:person who had her name on there and had given some
Speaker:fairly direct curate feedback but it was a
Speaker:painful. Suddenly that person was a bad person who just
Speaker:couldn't be pleased and that wasn't the
Speaker:case. So you got to allow people to
Speaker:be anonymous if you're going to get real feedback. One of my
Speaker:favorites is to just add the Net promoter score question
Speaker:how likely are you to recommend us
Speaker:to other people? That's it, open ended question
Speaker:and they rank you from 0 to 10. It is known
Speaker:that people who rate you a 9 or a 10 are
Speaker:actively promoting you to other people. So you
Speaker:wanna find out from them what's working well
Speaker:and younna ask them for referrals and you wanna use them
Speaker:for case studies. Anybody who answers a 7 or
Speaker:a 8 they're neutral, they're not promoting you. They don't hate
Speaker:you, but they don't love you. The people who answer less
Speaker:than that are actively detracting from your business.
Speaker:654-321. Those are people who are telling
Speaker:10 people. You suck. So you wanna find out why
Speaker:are people truly upset? And if you think it's oh,
Speaker:it's just them, well then your marketing needs to change. If
Speaker:you're always attracting people who are just unhappy, I
Speaker:don't believe that's the case. Usually it's we're not willing to
Speaker:hear and adjust the product because
Speaker:we are clinging to what we think we need to
Speaker:do. You can also have like a secret shopper
Speaker:type of a service. Participate and
Speaker:interact with your clients and see what stands
Speaker:out for them. And you can track the features that get mentioned in
Speaker:the reviews. The features in the people that get mentioned in the
Speaker:reviews are the things people love or hate. But build
Speaker:the next version of your delivery around the
Speaker:responses you get by talking to, looking
Speaker:at people's results and then surveying
Speaker:people. So the next thing you can do is take the
Speaker:changes assessment and see what delivery element is
Speaker:dragging you down. You can book a call to see if you're a great
Speaker:fit for Activate to Ascend. We will help you optimize your
Speaker:delivery and margin without chaos. And you can
Speaker:download the 100 Automations 100 Plus Automations
Speaker:list and start lighting your delivery team's load almost
Speaker:immediately. As always, I'm grateful that you're here.
Speaker:I'm grateful that you keep coming back. I'd love for you to share this
Speaker:episode with somebody who needs to hear it. And if you haven't
Speaker:subscribed yet, you gotta hit the subscribe button. So
Speaker:thank you so much for joining us today and I look forward to seeing you in
Speaker:the next episode in our Scales SMR series.
