Remote Staffing: Anne Lackey on Building Teams That Scale

What if scaling your business isn't about doing more, but getting the right people doing the right work?

In this episode of ScaleX Insider, Brendan McGurgan is joined by Anne Lackey, Co-Founder and CEO of HireSmart Virtual Employees, to explore how remote staffing can help business owners create capacity, delegate effectively and build a business that doesn't depend on them for everything.

Anne's entrepreneurial journey began more than 20 years ago after watching a close friend become seriously ill and seeing the financial impact on his family.

It changed how Anne and her husband, Mark, thought about work, money and freedom — and eventually led them to build multiple businesses together.

But creating a business didn't automatically create freedom.

Like many founders, Anne struggled to let go. A cancer diagnosis in 2022 accelerated a transition already underway and reinforced an important lesson: freedom requires trust.

Anne and Brendan explore why founders often remain trapped in low-value work and why being busy doesn't necessarily mean being productive.

Through HireSmart, Anne regularly sees highly paid employees spending time on tasks that could be handled by remote support. She even has a list of 47 things CEOs and senior leaders should never be doing.

But successful delegation isn't simply about hiring someone.

It starts with clarity.

Leaders need to know why a role exists, what problem that person is solving and what great performance actually looks like.

Anne also shares her perspective on AI, why businesses need clear policies around its use and why she believes human support will continue to play an important role as technology evolves.