Why Doing Everything Yourself Makes Your Law Firm Worth Less
Delegation is one of the most overlooked business growth strategies. Many small business owners and professional service providers believe success comes from working harder, longer, and handling everything themselves. In reality, the opposite is often true. Businesses grow when owners focus on the activities only they can perform and systematically delegate everything else.
If you feel overwhelmed by administrative work, marketing tasks, scheduling, or endless operational responsibilities, delegation may be the key to reclaiming your time and accelerating growth.
Why Delegation Matters
A business that depends entirely on its owner has limited value and limited scalability. If you cannot step away for a week—or even a month—without operations grinding to a halt, your business owns you rather than the other way around.
Effective delegation allows you to focus on the activities that generate revenue, strengthen client relationships, and drive strategic growth. Instead of spending your day completing routine tasks, you spend your time where it creates the greatest return.
The goal is not to do more work. The goal is to do the right work.
The Hidden Cost of Doing Everything Yourself
Many business owners underestimate the cost of low-value tasks.
Consider this simple exercise:
If your annual income goal is $200,000 and you have approximately 2,000 workable hours each year, your time is worth about $100 per hour.
When you spend three hours performing a task that could be completed by someone else for $15 or $20 per hour, you are effectively paying yourself the lower rate. More importantly, you are losing opportunities to spend that time on client development, business strategy, networking, or revenue-generating activities.
The question becomes:
Should you be doing this task at all?
The Two K Today Formula
A powerful way to evaluate your time is through the "Two K Today" formula.
Start by identifying your annual income goal. Then divide that number by 2,000 working hours.
The result is your target hourly value.
Every task should be measured against that number.
If a task does not require your unique expertise and can be completed by someone else at a lower cost, it is likely a candidate for delegation.
This simple framework helps eliminate emotional decision-making and creates a clear process for prioritizing your time.
How to Identify Tasks to Delegate
Begin by tracking your activities for one week.
Create two categories:
High-Value Activities
Client meetings
Business development
Strategic planning
Networking
Sales conversations
Thought leadership content
Low-Value Activities
Data entry
Scheduling
Administrative work
Social media posting
Basic graphic design
Routine customer service
Look for tasks that consume significant time but contribute little to revenue or long-term growth.
Those are your first delegation opportunities.
Five Steps to Delegate Successfully
Start Small
Delegate one or two routine tasks before expanding responsibility.Hire the Right Support
Virtual assistants, freelancers, contractors, and specialized service providers can often perform tasks more efficiently than you can.Create Clear Expectations
Define outcomes, deadlines, and success criteria upfront.Trust the Process
Delegation is not cloning yourself. Others may complete tasks differently while still achieving excellent results.Review and Improve
Provide feedback, refine processes, and continuously improve your delegation systems.
Delegation Creates Freedom
The most successful business owners understand that growth requires leverage.
Every hour spent on low-value work is an hour not spent building relationships, serving clients, creating opportunities, or growing revenue.
Delegation is not an expense. It is an investment in scalability, efficiency, and long-term business value.
The sooner you begin handing off routine responsibilities, the sooner you can focus on becoming the leader your business needs rather than the employee doing every job.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is delegation in business?
Delegation is assigning tasks to others so you can focus on higher-value activities that drive growth, revenue, and strategic decision-making.
What tasks should business owners delegate first?
Administrative work, scheduling, data entry, routine marketing, and repetitive operational tasks are often the best starting points.
How does delegation help grow a business?
Delegation frees time for sales, strategy, networking, and client service, allowing business owners to scale more efficiently and increase revenue.
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Andrew Colsky (00:12)
Welcome to Be Picked. We are the podcast for small professional service providers helping you build and grow your business. I'm your host, Andrew Colsky and today we are talking with Louis Swart. He is a speaker, business coach, and founder of Ironbridge, which deals with virtual assistants and AI business. he talks about delegation and helping you get more things done using the best.
tools out there available today. So Louis, welcome to the show.
Louis Swart (00:46)
Andrew, thank you so much. What a pleasure to be here. You know. I mean, I know, when we were kids we always wanted to be picked for the team, We wanted so, you know. How good is that? How good is that? Love the name.
Andrew Colsky (00:59)
Yeah, thank you. That's actually one of the first articles and and blogs I put out was why Billy doesn't get picked for the team. And we we talk about, you know, the fact that people have to build up their credibility over time. You know, who knows? When Billy's the new kid to school, how do you know if he's gonna be the best kickball player or the worst kickball player? You don't know. So you kinda aren't
Louis Swart (01:22)
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (01:23)
sure whether to pick him yet.
And then he builds his reputation and then he either becomes the first pick or the last pick.
Louis Swart (01:31)
This is true. This is true.
Andrew Colsky (01:35)
So, all right, well let's let's talk about you and what you do. So maybe we'll start off with if you can give us a summary of exactly the type of work you do today and what got you into that.
Louis Swart (01:49)
Okay, cool. So, I'll go back a bit. I'll tell you I was I was sitting in a bank. I was sitting in a bank, I just sold a business, I was thirty years old, I had two hundred staff, sold the business for five million, sitting
in the bank and they were counting out the money, you know, and they had one of those machines like grrrr and then they put an elastic band on it, put it in the briefcase. you know, and
I was thinking back to a business that I had when I was twenty-five. I was twenty-five, I grew a plumbing business. I had ten people on the road and I went to go and sell it. And you know, when you're twenty-five, you you're bulletproof and you think you know everything in the world, you know. And I I said to the broker, like, you know, how much can I get for this? What am I gonna get? You know, who can afford it? Basically. And the broker said, Louis, who does the accounts? And I said, Well, well, I do the accounts. And I remember I was still super proud, you know, I do the accounts and who does the quality control? I do
quality control and who does the quoting i do the quoting i and i and i and i and i and i and he said lou your business is worth nothing and i remember that sinking feeling in my stomach just going what what do you mean it's worth nothing it's taken me all this time to build a business and now it's worth nothing because literally the whole business relied on me
And so he said, Louis, I've got to get another Louis who knows plumbing, knows accounting, knows HR, knows all these things, in order to buy this business. And if there's somebody like that, they're probably running their own business. They don't want your business. And that was pretty devastating for me. But fast forward, fast forward five years, and now we went to sell the business. And it was a business I had with my brother, and we went to sell the business, and they came in and they said,
Who does this? And everything was like, you know, when you talk to that person and it's never their it's never their fault, you know? It's always somebody
Andrew Colsky (03:38)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (03:39)
else. There's always they're always pointing the finger somewhere else. And it was all that. And we were able to sell that business for five million within two within two weeks.
Andrew Colsky (03:49)
Well.
Louis Swart (03:50)
So that business went really, really fast because management could just step in
take over from us. There was already people doing all the operational stuff. And that taught me a massive lesson in that, you know, if we don't learn how to delegate, literally our business is worth nothing. We've just got a job. If you can't close your doors and go on holiday for a month, nobody wants to buy that.
You know, you probably work harder than everybody else. and you know, if you probably take the hours that you work and you work how much money you get, you're probably a pretty low paid employee. You know, sometimes you'd be better off to just go and get a job where, you know, they pay you per hour. So that's kind of where my whole thing started.
And then, you know, I came to Australia and I had some epic fails and some good wins and the last business I grew to turning over thirty five million, four hundred and fifty staff, and I was like, man, I've you know, I had all the things that success should be, right? But I felt empty inside.
I felt like I should be happier but I was I I I felt empty and so I went on this quest to try and work out what's wrong with me because I thought I must be broken. And so I I became an NLP master practitioner, you know, the neurolinguistic programming. you know, how we think and how we talk. I became a hypnotherapist, a timeline therapist. I I I did all
Andrew Colsky (05:18)
wow.
Louis Swart (05:19)
these different modalities.
So now I'd come from a business perspective where I understood business completely. And now I was actually going completely into the woo-woo world where I was underst you know, trying to understand all the mindset and what powered us. And
I realized that there's such an overlap on the two. You know, lots of times people are in business and they're not making money, but it's not because they're not working hard.
You know, and and it might be probably more than likely they're not delegating. Okay. But also they've probably got childhood traumas and they've got these limiting beliefs that have carried across with them. And so that's cutting down how much money they can make. So it doesn't matter how professional you are, you know, you'll make money. What happened with me personally?
was I made money and then I would lose all the money and then I would make money and then I'd lose all the money. You know?
Andrew Colsky (06:16)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (06:16)
And I mean we're talking millions. You'd make it, you'd lose it. You make it, you'd lose it. You make it, you'd lose it. and you know, there was limiting beliefs. I had lots of beliefs around money that weren't true. and I had lots of limiting beliefs around me not being worthy, not deserving to h have money. And so when I got money, I would just flush money out because I didn't deserve to have it.
Andrew Colsky (06:38)
Mm.
Right.
Louis Swart (06:40)
And a lot of us are running around with those limiting beliefs in our minds. and we we we're working really, really hard, but the little person, you know, little Andrew says, if we got money we're not gonna be safe. If we got money, people aren't gonna love us.
You know, if we we don't deserve to have money, you know? Money doesn't grow on trees, Andrew. Okay, so if I get money that's like it doesn't grow on trees, I shouldn't have money, you know? Or
You know, you'd you'd you'd be in the car with Dad and somebody'd pull up in a really fancy car next to you and you'd say, Dad, look at that nice car and he'd say, I bet you they owe money to the bank. I bet you they're like, you know, really struggling to make payments to the bank. And you know, they're probably not nice people. They're probably, you know, they're probably up to something nefarious, okay. And so then you'd go, Okay, so if I become wealthy, other people are gonna look at me and go
I probably owe a whole lot of money to the bank. I'm probably a baddie, etcetera, et cetera. and then we fed the same narrat narrative on T V, you know. Look at all the movies. The wealthy guy is very rarely the good guy.
Andrew Colsky (07:56)
Right.
Louis Swart (07:57)
Generally the wealthy guy is the baddie. He's generally the baddie in the movie. You know, and the guy that's got nothing, he's like the hero, okay. He's you know and I mean like I'm all for the underdog, but
Andrew Colsky (08:08)
Right.
Louis Swart (08:10)
we conditioned that it's actually smarter to be the underdog than it is to be the wealthy guy in the movie. and so then we grow up with this and it makes it very hard for us when we go into business, You know, to try and get our
Andrew Colsky (08:24)
Yeah.
Louis Swart (08:24)
head around the fact that we deserve to be wealthy.
Andrew Colsky (08:30)
That's that's you know, y when you're talking about people with a small excuse me, small service provider business, they are the chief cook and bottle washer and doing everything just like you were describing that, you know, you did previously. And they're struggling to keep their head above water because they're got, you know, twenty hours worth of work to do and two hours within which it has to be done. And,
Louis Swart (08:54)
Yes.
Andrew Colsky (08:54)
you know, that they're they're trying to earn the money and do everything else at the same time.
Louis Swart (09:00)
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, one of the big things, Andrew, is that w people don't learn how to delegate, okay, and they don't know the difference between a low value and a high value task. So you know the saying, Andrew, if you want something done right, you need to
Andrew Colsky (09:17)
Yourself.
Louis Swart (09:18)
do it yourself. And it's completely nonsense. It's completely nonsense. You know? if I think about servicing my car, right?
There's no way I would do it. No way. I'd like take it apart. I don't know, if it took the oil out, it might never go I might put the wrong oil in.
Andrew Colsky (09:36)
Ha ha ha.
Louis Swart (09:37)
I've got no idea what to do, okay? You know? if my car makes a little noise, I take it straight to the mechanic and I'm like, listen, this thing's making some sort of ticking or banging, can you sort it out?
But then when it comes to our own business, we go, you know what, I'll just I'll just do it myself. It'll only take me ten minutes. And then we jump in and we we decide that we're gonna move a picture around on Canva. And we go, I'll just quickly, I'll just quickly move this picture around because I know where I want it to be. And then we find ourselves two hours later and we still can't get the freaking picture to move around because every time we move this picture, all the wording over there goes and then we're like, Well how do I get that wording back and how do I r you know?
And now I gotta like go into a Canva like course to try and learn Canva. And the reality
Andrew Colsky (10:25)
So true.
Louis Swart (10:27)
is and the yeah, the reality is that I'm losing so much time by doing something that somebody else could do like that. Somebody else could do it so fast. And
I've got this formula. It's called the 2K Today
formula. Okay. And how it works is if you think about it, we think about it and we go, we lots of us think about time as almost like an unlimited, you know, resource. And we go, okay,
Andrew Colsky (10:54)
Uh-huh.
Louis Swart (10:54)
you know, I've got time and I'll just do this quickly because it's only take me a couple of minutes and I've got time to do it. But if you think about how much you want to earn in a year, let's say you want to earn $200,000 in the year.
We only have two thousand hours a year. That's not a lot, If you think about it, you've got twenty hours. sorry, you've got forty hours a week, you know, eight hour day, you've got forty hours a week, and you've got about fifty weeks a year that you can work. So forty hours by fifty weeks will give you two thousand. So you've only got two thousand hours. So if you want to make two hundred thousand, you've got to divide it by two thousand hours.
And that gives you a figure here of a hundred dollars an hour. Now,
Andrew Colsky (11:41)
Yeah.
Louis Swart (11:42)
if you're in Canva and you're stuffing around in Canva and you and I love Canva, I love Canva. So, you know, if you if you're in Canva or you're doing stuff that's like somebody could do for ten dollars an hour
Instead of making a hundred dollars an hour, you've actually lost ninety dollars because you've done a ten dollar job. Now if you do a ten dollar ten dollar hours relatively consistently, that figure has to go down because you're doing work
Andrew Colsky (12:11)
Right.
Louis Swart (12:12)
that's worth ten dollars.
Andrew Colsky (12:13)
Right.
Louis Swart (12:14)
But if you're doing work if you if your target is a hundred dollars an hour, you're appearing on podcasts, which is going to get you more, you know, more credibility. You're building your brand, you're building lead magnets, you're in front of clients, you build you're writing books, you you know, you actually consulting, you're doing all those things that will bring you more than a hundred dollars. If you're doing all the stuff up here that's more than a hundred dollars, that figure has to go up. So it you know, I mean it's a simple simple maths.
So work out what that figure is. And I'm very much about implementation. So if somebody is listening to this podcast, if you take one thing away from it, work out what that figure is. If you want to earn a hundred thousand in the next year, that's fifty dollars an hour. If you want to earn two hundred thousand, that's a hundred dollars an hour. If you want to earn four hundred thousand, that's two hundred dollars an hour. And what you do is take that figure.
And probably double it. Because if you're working for yourself, you're probably not going to be working eight hour days. You're probably not going to get an eight-hour day. You're
Andrew Colsky (13:19)
Yeah.
Louis Swart (13:20)
probably going to get, you know, you're probably going to get shorter hours. All right. And then what I want you to do is write that figure down on a post-it note. Write it down on a post-it note. Write it down on a whiteboard. Write it down somewhere where it is super visible to you.
Andrew Colsky (13:36)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (13:37)
And then every time you're on a call,
You know, every time you're on your computer, every time you're doing something, look up at that n note and go, Would I pay somebody a hundred dollars an hour to do this? And if you're moving that little thing in Canva and you go, Would I pay somebody a hundred dollars? And you go, There's no way I'd pay somebody a hundred dollars to be in my Canva and move a picture around. Why am I paying myself? Why am I stooping to that level? And so literally that's the difference.
But if we have something visual that we can constantly look up and go, okay, and then work out what we're doing. Okay, you know. that's gonna make a massive difference. Massive difference in your
Andrew Colsky (14:22)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (14:22)
in your world. Just that one thing will change the whole way that you look at the jobs that you're doing.
Andrew Colsky (14:28)
Right, right. So I you know, obviously makes total sense and then I listen to what I I think others, you know, are thinking about it. And I know that I've thought it myself when I think about this, which is okay, so
but where do I find the time to do that? You know, I gotta find someone who's gonna do it and I gotta trust them and I gotta make sure that
Louis Swart (14:52)
Excellent.
Andrew Colsky (14:52)
they know how to do it the way I wanna do it. And then all of those yeah butts come
Louis Swart (14:55)
Excellent.
Andrew Colsky (14:56)
up.
Louis Swart (14:57)
Excellent qu excellent. Excellent question. Okay. So the way that I would recommend anybody delegates, and there's a really streamlined system to it. What's that one job that you do every day or you know, that takes five minutes? It's super easy. You go in and you check through your emails and you go, these are spam. This is this is nonsense. This person's trying to sell me something.
Right. And you but it takes you five or ten minutes every day. Find that task. Find that task. And teach somebody how to do that one task. So now you've saved five minutes. And it's probably gonna take you twenty minutes, okay? But you've now saved five minutes a day. So
Andrew Colsky (15:42)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (15:44)
for the next week you're saving five minutes. So then the next day you've already saved five minutes. Now you teach them another five minute task.
or a ten minute task. So now
Andrew Colsky (15:55)
Right. Right.
Louis Swart (15:57)
the next day you've saved 15 minutes. Now you take the 15 minutes that you've saved and you teach them a 20 minute task. You know very soon you've saved an hour. And now you can say, okay, I'm saving an hour every day. And now I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna show you a little bit more complex task. Because this one's gonna maybe take me two hours to explain to you how to do it.
But so you build it up like that slowly. And what that does is it also builds up it also allows you to have trust because lots of us don't delegate because we lose control. Okay. And we don't trust. So I mean, it's
Andrew Colsky (16:33)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (16:34)
a big thing if I got somebody to go into my emails and then go, Okay, if this is an obvious spam, just you know, don't mark it as spam.
I've got to trust that that person's not getting my you know best customer and marking them as spam. Okay, you know?
Andrew Colsky (16:49)
Right. Right.
Louis Swart (16:51)
so there's trust. There definitely is trust involved in there. and there's also control because you know when I'm doing it, I know exactly what's happening with my emails, and when I've got somebody else doing it, I I I I don't have that. but it's some it's a skill that we definitely need to learn.
really really quickly because it it's it can be the difference between us making it in business or not making it at all in business.
Andrew Colsky (17:24)
Right. Right.
Louis Swart (17:28)
and you know just on that somebody when I was I was a I was a younger man, okay, and I had a mentor and I remember going to my mentor and saying
You know, I can't find anybody to work like I do. I can't find anybody to work in my business like I do, you know. I don't know why they don't why I can't find anybody that, you know, can works as hard as I do or does as much stuff as I do. And he said to me, Louis, who owns the business? And I said, Well I own it. And he said, Louis, whose dream is it? And I said, Well, it's my dream because I want to grow it and sell
it.
Andrew Colsky (18:08)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (18:08)
And he
said, You're never gonna find somebody who's gonna work in your business and have the same passion and drive and be a crazy like you are. Okay. Because a lot of us are crazy. A lot of us are there, you know, at ten o'clock at night, or we're on a Sunday morning and we we we work in a way because we just need to get that file done. You're not gonna find somebody that's gonna be as dedicated as you are, because you've got a much bigger picture. So
Andrew Colsky (18:36)
Right.
Louis Swart (18:38)
Then he said to me something super interesting, and he said, Louis, do you think you could find somebody who could do 60% of what you do? Now, you'd have to be pretty egotistical to think that another human couldn't do one to one of the tasks that you do at sixty percent as good as what you do, or sixty percent as fast. You know, just slightly
Andrew Colsky (19:01)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (19:03)
above half. And I said, Yeah, I think.
I think I could get people to do, you know, my paperwork at sixty percent of what I do. And he goes, Well then you put on one of those people. And now you've your productivity is now a hundred and sixty percent of what it was before. And then when you put on
Andrew Colsky (19:23)
True.
Louis Swart (19:24)
the next one of those people, your productivity is now two hundred and twenty percent.
And that made such an impact on me because it was like, wow. So I put on one at sixty, I put on another one as two hundred and twenty. I put on another one, it's like th you know, it's just this massive compounding effect. And obviously we lose a little bit along the way. Some of many so many of
Andrew Colsky (19:47)
Right, right.
Louis Swart (19:48)
us are out there we're trying to get somebody to do a hundred
percent, which is just not gonna happen.
But if we think sixty percent, you know, and they might do eighty, and we be like, wow, this is incredible. and with a lot of the stuff, you know, with AI, I've got I've got staff in the Philippines, I've got staff in Nepal, Egypt, South Africa, and my God's amazing. I've got a young guy, he's twenty, and I just go, Hey, I I'm looking at building this agent to do this.
And then the next day he goes, here's the agent, here's the website. Click on the website, and the agent does what you want it. And I'm like, What the hell? Like, you know there's no way I could do it. There's no way I could even possibly do it. So that's where you want to be, you know. I mean w and
Andrew Colsky (20:46)
Right. Well it's yeah.
Louis Swart (20:53)
and I think as AI is coming along, we want to get to that point where
Lots of us I I go on Facebook okay and on my Facebook I always get I always get a bit depressed. I get a bit depressed because I'm on Facebook and it goes you don't need any you don't need anybody. You just you just take this podcast, you put it into Opus Clip and it comes out with clips and then like bang your world's perfect and you know the whole universe is amazing and everything. And then I go, Okay, right, then I go now I'm gonna download Opus Clip, okay? So download Opus Clip.
And then I go, man, I've got to pay a subscription for this now. So then I guess so I pay the subscription. Now I'm paying the subscription. Now between my work, I'm trying to work out how the hell I use OpaSlip. You know, I'm trying to learn how to do it properly. And it takes so much of my time. And then when I do it, it doesn't, you know, it comes out okay. It comes out okay, but it's nothing great. Okay. but then if I give it to my team who does Opuslip all day.
They decide done, mate. Here it is. Here's the files. We've trimmed it. We've taken out the extras. you know, we we've done whatever. And it it constantly amazes me, you know, how fast some people are with some technology. You know, you you might be amazing at sales and yet you might be terrible at accounts, or you might be terrible
Andrew Colsky (22:22)
Uh-huh.
Louis Swart (22:23)
at creative, you know, actually
coming up with images and stuff. and and I found that. I found that personally I'm I'm with accounts I'm shocking. I'm shocking. And I know I shouldn't say that. I should say I'm amazing and I'm working towards being amazing. But I don't like it. I don't like it, you know. And so I've got an accounts person and they literally do my accounts for me. You know? And if if I had to do
Andrew Colsky (22:51)
Right. Well that's
Louis Swart (22:54)
them it would be a nightmare for me.
Andrew Colsky (22:58)
Yeah, and I I think, you know, you're hitting a really important part here in general, which is on one hand, people are thinking, well, if I'm gonna find someone to do this piece and that piece and the other piece, well then I gotta pay all these people. But you're
Louis Swart (23:12)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (23:13)
also pointing out that well, think about the value that that brings. If you have more free time of your own to earn the
Louis Swart (23:20)
Ha ha
Andrew Colsky (23:21)
hundred dollars an hour while you're paying somebody else fifty dollars an hour or
$25 an hour, depending on the task, whatever it may be, you still are going to make more by doing it. And I think that scares a lot of people up front because they they maybe they've never done it before and they they don't know what the outcome's gonna be. And maybe this person isn't gonna be so good. And yeah, there's lots of maybes. And yes, it's important to interview people and hire correctly and all that. But you know, when you find someone
Who is really good at what they do, and all of that weight comes off your shoulders because now you're just, okay, you take care of this, and I know that it's going to be done. What a difference. And nowadays, you know, and here's a a huge debate, obviously, AI, you know, you were describing the issue of my email. I mean, I I I got to the point where email, I it's become useless to me because there's so much junk that comes.
comes in and you can unsubscribe and delete and block every 10 minutes of your day and it doesn't make any difference the way it works out there. So anyone who knows me knows if they send me an email, chances of me seeing it are one out of 10. But the very first tool that I built for myself with AI was exactly that. Go into my email box every morning automatically, 4 a.m. Look at the last 24 hours worth of emails based on these rules, mark what I need to look at.
Mark what is obviously spam and mark what, you know, should be deleted versus deleted and blocked. So every day I open up my computer and I get a list. Here's what we recommend being deleted. Here's what we recommend being deleted and blocked. Here's what you should read. Should I go forward? And I can pick through. And most of the time it's right. Sometimes it's not, which is why I have the summary. Because initially I did it as fully automatic and I realized, whoa, wait a minute, it might be deleting that important client.
But the point is, I don't have to sit there now and go through each email and open it. And I don't have the time to do that. But now
Louis Swart (25:27)
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (25:29)
in the morning I open up
my agent and there it is. Tells me exactly what I say, do number one, don't do number two, see you tomorrow. And it's a very simple task.
Louis Swart (25:42)
and those agents you can build in like you know people are have this whole th we have this whole thing at the moment we'll go should I use you know should I use Gemini should I use GPT should I use Claude should I use Copilot and they're kind of like jumping around should I and you know what? Almost any one of them will do it amazingly. Okay. There's obviously
Andrew Colsky (26:04)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (26:05)
some that do it better
I'll give you a I'll you an example. So today I've just written a book and I'm putting this book onto Amazon, okay? And in the book I need it's it's a I need to make it into a PDF.
I need to it's a it's a word document and I need to make it into PDF because Amazon prefers a PDF. Okay. So I go into I go online and I go Google and I go, hey Google, I w you know I wanna do a PDF, a word document to a PDF, and it goes, Well, there's these different things you can use, okay? So I go into one of them and there's one called Cloud Con Cloud Convert or something.
And I go in there and it says, 'Yep, yep, you can do it for free.' And then I put in this and I'll put in that, and then it says to me, 'Hey, you need to pay, you
Andrew Colsky (26:55)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (26:56)
need to subscribe.' And it's like it's two dollars. And I'm like, I need it done, and I'm 'Okay, I'll just pay the two dollars.' But then I read the fine print, and the fine print says, 'If you don't cancel within the two days, it's gonna be forty dollars,' and then and then it's gonna be ongoing forty dollars unless you cancel. And then I went, 'You know what, why am I?
using old school technology. So I took the document, I went back to ChatGPT and I said, Hey ChatGPT, can you just take this document and make it a PDF? And it went, Yep, no problem. I put the document in there. It said here's a PDF. Which you know, I mean we still had that thing where we go away from the you know we almost go we go and use old school stuff.
even though we know that the the AI stuff is phenomenal, you know. another example was I
Andrew Colsky (27:51)
Right, right.
Louis Swart (27:52)
got I got the book, I I wrote the book and I used AI for some you know to assist me with it and the layout and everything. And the formatting came wrong. And I spent I was there watching TV and I was like, I'll just get the formatting and I take out the spaces and then
A friend of mine went, Louis, I've just formatted your whole book. because they said, What are you doing? I said, I'm just watching TV and I'm formatting this book and they said, send it through, I'll have a quick look. They sent it straight back and they said, I formatted the book for you. And I'm like, How did you do that? And they said, I just went into Claude and I said, please format this, take out all the spaces, make the, you know, headers the right thing.
Andrew Colsky (28:40)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (28:40)
And I was like, I am the AI guy, okay.
Why didn't I think of just flick it straight into AI, get AI to do it? Why did I go and s format it and stuff around with it? But it's 'cause we kind of forget that we've got these amazingly powerful tools at our disposal, you know?
Andrew Colsky (29:03)
Right,
right. Well there's they're scary for people who haven't used them, it's scary 'cause they don't have a frame of reference, they don't know what it can do or how to do it. and that's okay. You don't have to know everything. They're like you said, you've got people who who do things for you and build it out for you. Okay, so hire somebody to build out something for you. But the
the amount of time that I personally
You know, I look back at at my own business, you know, building my own business. Well, you you gotta do things to get out there. You gotta be known, you gotta do YouTube videos, you gotta write a book, you gotta do all these things, or or in in in the internet world, you're you're nothing today because AI will never find you. So you gotta do these things. And it took me hours and hours and hours a day, every day. And it got to the point where I I don't have the time to do this, but I can't afford not to do this. So what do I do?
And then I realized, you know what, I'm gonna automate a lot of this because with the tools available today I can do that. And that's how that's how this whole business got started and the credibility generator that I that I have and you know things that I help other professionals do is all right, well let's let's get your you
know let's get you automated here so that you can be doing
Louis Swart (30:24)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (30:25)
the things that you don't have time to do. And so, you know, I know there's a lot of discussion out there about AI and
Is it good? Is it bad? And all these things. And you can debate it all day long and talk about it with everybody you want to. And at the end of the day, AI is here. AI is in everything you do. It's going to be more and more and more and more. So you can sit there and fight it and be upset and hide under your your pillow. Or you can embrace the fact that this is where the world is now and I'm going to use it to my advantage. And we're going to do all these wonderful things with it. So, you know, it's a personal
Louis Swart (30:56)
True.
Andrew Colsky (30:57)
choice.
Louis Swart (30:58)
Well think about this, okay. Go back to the eighteen hundreds and there's there's there's monks, there's monks and they're in the monastery and they're writing the Bible, okay? And they've got their quill, they've got their quill in the ink pot and they, you know, they they're lovingly doing every letter, you know. And they and they probably took a whole, you know, probably a whole day to write a page, right?
And then along comes this guy, Gutenberg, and he's like, Pfft, let me show you guys what I can do. And he goes, Give me that page. And he goes, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. And he goes, here's ten pages. Now, you can't tell me that those priests didn't go, hang on a second. This is
Andrew Colsky (31:44)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (31:45)
This is the devil's work. Hang on a second. This is not as good as when we wrote it by hand. Hang on a second. When we did it, there was much more love went into it. Hang on a second. Nobody's gonna accept this. Hang on a second. This is gonna be super dangerous. All this stuff that we say now. Okay. And I understand that AI is a mega powerful tool.
understand that it's super dangerous, but so's the printing press. You know, you've only got to see what you know, radical people do with literature that they're printed and they can cause all sorts of chaos in the world. And then we moved to the car, you know. When the car came along, people all had horses and now suddenly there were cars, you know, and
These things go so fast, people are gonna get hurt, you know. And you people aren't gonna be able to use these, like the you know, we won't have enough space for them and there's never gonna be enough this and enough that and they're gonna be so dangerous and I'm sure some people got run over in the beginning. I'm sure I don't know, but I'm sure they did, you know. And you know, and they would have some people would have just focused on how how terrible cars were. Whether whereas others would have focused on what the benefits are and how we could use cars.
Andrew Colsky (32:59)
Right. Right.
Louis Swart (33:00)
And AI
is exactly the same. We need to think of it as a tool. And it's not a tool that's going away. It's not something that's suddenly gonna go away. So you either need to learn it
Or you need to learn it. There's no choice.
Andrew Colsky (33:17)
Right. Well it's it's you
know, I I I have to share this because this has always stuck with me. Many, many years ago there's a a comic cartoon. It was called King of Id. Or Wizard of Id, I'm sorry.
Louis Swart (33:31)
My yes.
Andrew Colsky (33:33)
And I've always remembered this one. I I I cut it out and I saved it and I've lost it. I don't know where it is, but this is what it was. It was a single frame picture. And it's the king sitting on his throne.
Looking at his assistant Rodney, who had a bow and arrow.
Louis Swart (33:48)
Yes.
Andrew Colsky (33:50)
And behind the king, on the outside of his other side of the wall, outside the door, is a salesman. And the salesman is trying to get in to see the king because the salesman has a machine gun. And the king says, you know, the the caption is: I don't have time to speak to salesmen right now. I've got a war to fight.
As he looks at all of his soldiers with bows and arrows. And you
Louis Swart (34:17)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (34:18)
know, to me, I've always remembered that because, you know, it it's so ironic about all this. Same thing with AI. You can sit there and and and complain about it all you want, or you can embrace
the fact that this is just the next tool, like the car was a tool, like email was a tool, like a telephone was a tool, like the electric light was a tool, and on and on and on throughout history. So
Louis Swart (34:41)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (34:41)
Every time
a c the new thing comes out, there's that, you know, level of fear and my god, the world is gonna end because now we have electric light. Well guess what? The world adapted and new opportunities came and new jobs came and new things came.
Louis Swart (34:54)
Absolutely.
Andrew Colsky (34:56)
So, you know, same thing.
Louis Swart (34:57)
Absolutely.
I remember when they brought calculators, when they at school they had calculators and the
Andrew Colsky (35:02)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Louis Swart (35:03)
parents were all in up in arms 'cause like, you know, how were the children gonna like it's this is ridiculous, you know, the children need to be able to calculate, you know. They when are they ever gonna have a calculator in their pocket when they're adults? And I mean now we all walk around with a calculator all the time. But at the time they were like, When's that ever gonna be thing? you know, this is ridiculous technology and then the internet came out and I remember
I remember, you know, dad saying, Why do you want to learn that? Who in their right mind is gonna sit in front of a box all day? Okay? Who's gonna sit in front of a box all day? And like literally that's what I've done my whole life for work. I've sat in front of a box. I've sat in front of a box all day. You know, that's what I do for work. And and the internet's the same, you know? Who's gonna do that?
So
Andrew Colsky (35:58)
Right. Try
try and function today without the internet. Try and get your banking done. Try and try try and get any information. Try and do anything. You can't.
Louis Swart (36:06)
Yeah, incredible, Just it's just not available. Just not available. And it's gonna be like that
Andrew Colsky (36:08)
So yeah. Well let's
Louis Swart (36:12)
with AI, you know. One of one of my favourite
Andrew Colsky (36:14)
Right. Well it already is.
Louis Swart (36:17)
hundred percent. One of my favorite sayings, Andrew, is and I don't know who the guy was, but it said he said technology has never moved this fast and will never move this slow again.
Andrew Colsky (36:34)
True. 'Cause I I thought you were gonna say, and then we look back ten years and someone said that exact same quote ten years ago. And then we look back twenty years and somebody said that same quote twenty years ago.
Louis Swart (36:45)
Yeah, yeah. But I mean if you think about that, like you think it's fast now? Wait in five years time, you know.
Andrew Colsky (36:55)
Right, right.
Louis Swart (36:56)
So
Andrew Colsky (36:58)
But you know, th this is where, you know, and then and th I guess this is the whole message of this podcast is, you know, there's a lot of stuff that you now I'm speaking to the listener, that you the listener in building your own business, there's a lot of things you can do to streamline your own practices and to to, you know, if you're a hundred dollar an hour person, then do a hundred dollar an hour work and let someone else do the fifty dollar an hour.
$20 an hour work. If you're doing $20 an hour work and you should be getting $100 an hour, what are you doing? You're you're losing $80 an hour. So,
Louis Swart (37:35)
Yep.
Andrew Colsky (37:36)
you know, recognizing this and putting it in use for yourself, that's how you're going to build your business. Because guess what? The guy next to you is doing it. And so he's going to be moving that much further ahead of you while you're still sitting there struggling, trying to move that picture on Canva.
Louis Swart (37:55)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Very, very scary for some people.
Andrew Colsky (37:59)
So,
Louis Swart (38:03)
but I mean the opportunities are incredible. Look at you know, if you just take advantage of it and see how it can assist you, you know, in so many ways, and you know, people say, you know, but AI lies, and it does lie, so do humans, you know.
Andrew Colsky (38:21)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (38:22)
I mean, it it does what we do. It's learned from us. It w you know, and so so we you know but I'm very much about having this having a human who can actually manage it for you. So, you know, I mean, Andrew, you're probably like a you're like a smart dude and you've got your a you've built your own agent to do your emails and that's cool. But the average person doesn't
A doesn't maybe want to do it or know how to do it or have the time to do it. And that's where VA's come in, you know. So now
Andrew Colsky (38:53)
Mm-hmm.
Louis Swart (38:55)
you can just get somebody offshore. I've got I've got whole teams that actually know exactly how to do that and they would just come in and say, Okay, what mm what tool are you using? We'd build you an agent, put it into a business and off you'd go. or even for social media, you know, another one that we're really big on is social media. We
The brand, you really we're going into a world now where if you don't have a personal brand, you're gonna be in some serious trouble. Okay. and people say to me, Louie, I'll just create some AI pictures and I'll just chuck it onto the internet.
And I go, yes, but somebody that's got no experience can also create AI images and chuck them on the internet. And if they chuck in on more than what you are, they're gonna they're gonna get better exposure than what you are. You know. You want to be able to create some videos so people can see who you are, see that you're a real person and that they like your personality. You know, I mean it's y you still gotta work with people, they still gotta be, you know, cool people to work with.
So you want to create some videos so that people can see your personality. You also want to w use you really want to know what people's pain points are. You know, what's what's their fears? What are those deep fears, frustrations, dreams and desires that they've got? and how do we how do we talk into those? You know, can so we we can say, do you feel like this? And the more we can explain how they feel, the more they believe that we know the solution.
So if we can say, Hey, you know, do you suffer from this? Do you wake up in the do you wake up in the middle of the night going, Hey, I'm gonna go into a meeting tomorrow and they might find out that I'm that I don't know as much as what I should know, you know? And people go, Wow, that's me and those are the people that are gonna come and sign up with you. And so,
You know, on that note I've got like a I've got a little program where I work with people one on one and I create six months worth of content for you in one hour. In one hour. I create six months a full six months worth of content. So yeah, that's I'm still blown away by the results. I did one today and the person was just blown away and I'm continually blown away how
AI's allowed me to do that for people, you know? Incredible. Incredible.
Andrew Colsky (41:21)
Right, right.
Well let's let's do this because we're we're over time here, but this has been really interesting and helpful. So if somebody wanted to to find you or read more about what you do or all the things you've been talking about, what's the best way that they could do?
Louis Swart (41:42)
I've got a couple of different ways. So my name is just Louis Swart. So Louis like Louis Vuitton and and S W A R T. So they can just go Louiswart.com is one way to find me. and if they go there, there's all my contacts and they can reach out and they can have a virtual coffee with me or whatever, whatever they want to do. The other way to reach out to me is I've got a company called Iron Bridge.
So iron like the steel, I R O N and then B R I J and it's ironbridge.com dot AU because it's Australia. So and if you go there you can see all about the virtual assistance. you know if you reach out to me on Louis Swatching, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Facebook, I'm on all the different platforms. yeah, and I I'd love to I'd love to just have a one on one with anybody and see how I could help them.
Andrew Colsky (42:38)
Right. Well we we really appreciate that. And you know, the the goal here on this podcast, on the Be Picked Podcast, is to give people the ideas and and and help them understand all the opportunities that are out there that are available now, today, and things that they can do to build their businesses and, you know, get get a little bit more of their own time back, but be doing more than what they're doing now by trying to do everything themselves. And when they start to to
To master that, things start to become easier. So with that, I've got to close us out here. And I want to thank you for joining us on B Picked and sharing all that you've shared today. I want to thank our listeners for listening, and we have a new show that drops every week. interesting guests with great messages and great information to help you grow. We'd love to hear from you, our listeners. Send us some feedback. Tell us if you've put anything in place where you have actually made your own job.
Bigger, better, easier in in any way from anything you learn here. Visit us at bpicked.com, be hyphen, p-i-c-k-ed.com, and we will see you on next week's show.
Louis Swart (43:52)
Thank you so much.
Andrew Colsky (43:54)
Thank you.