Do You Want Control Or Growth? | Ep 230
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- What's up guys, welcome back to Build. And today we are talking about something that hits really close to home for a lot of you. If you're a founder, if you're a leader, if you're a CEO, which is when you are the bottleneck in your own business.

The reason I want to talk about this subject is because it has been really top of mind for me as I have stepped back to reflect on 2024 and been looking at how do I need to behave? What do I need to do? What do I need to focus on to grow my company in 2025? And

you know, I have the privilege of having done this before. And so like, I've been in a spot where I've been the bottom, like my own business. And I've had to get out of that because, you know, the only way that I was even able to sell my businesses was that I was not integrally needed and involved. And that was like a process that took seven years and a lot of intentional effort and a lot of discomfort.

And as I'm looking at acquisition.com, you know, I'm not looking to sell acquisition.com. I have no intention of selling acquisition.com. You know, would we sell companies in the portfolio? Sure. But are I going to sell acquisition.com itself? No, that's not something I plan to do. This is a business that I said, like, hey, I want to build a business that I like want to own for the rest of my life.

and I'm having a lot of fun doing it. So for now, that's definitely not something that's top of mind for me. But that being said, I do think there's a lot of value in thinking about how do I build a business that could be sellable because of the way it's structured, because of the fact it doesn't rely on me. And something that I've talked about in recent videos is like, whether you wanna sell your business or not, structuring it in a way that it doesn't rely on you is always a good idea.

It is literally never a bad idea. And I think that sometimes people think, oh, well, I just want to make money for my business or I just want, you know, to do this with my business or I just, you know, I'm never going to sell my business because it's this or that. Great. But at the same time, like what makes for a stronger business is one that doesn't rely solely on any single resource. And that includes you.

And so as I step back and I looked at this year, I was like, wow, you know, I am spending my time in a lot of places. You know, one of my teammates asked me just the other day, he said, like, how many one-on-ones are you doing per week? And I was like, well, 13 on average. And he was like, what the? And I was like, yeah, those are just the ones on my schedule. And, you know, I'm sharing that with you guys because like we all get caught in this trap where we're like, holy crap.

I am doing a lot of things in the business. And so I have had to kind of step out to look at that. And I've seen like, hey, I'm juggling a million things. It's like I'm putting out fires. And in my head, what I don't realize if I don't take a step back is the narrative that plays.

And the narrative that plays in the back of my head, if I don't step back and like really think strategically about how I approach things is no one can do this as well as I can. You know, if I hand this off to somebody else, it's not going to work as well. I'm just going to have to take more time to train them. Like I preach these things constantly, yet I still have them. Now, it might be that the places that I hold on to are higher leverage than the places somebody else holds on to because I've done this a few times, but I still hold on to stuff.

Each level of growing a business, I've just learned like wherever I'm carrying that narrative, no matter what area of the business it is, it's really important that I get myself out of that because it means that I am the bottleneck in the business. That's why I really want to talk about where this all comes from and kind of just a little bit about my journey in learning how to de-bottleneck my business and de-bottleneck myself. So here's what I've learned, especially about myself. Bottleneck issues come from one place and one place only, which is control.

Okay, when you start a business, control is like your best friend, right? Because you're building something out of nothing. You're used to doing all of the things because you can't hire people, you don't have people, or, you know, maybe you're not just at that point yet. And really, when you do bring people on, it's like contractors, part-time people, and like, frankly, it just doesn't make sense. So like, it does make sense that you control everything and do everything, right? But the thing is, is that as the business grows, the same need for control that was an asset actually becomes your biggest liability, right?

It's like if every decision has to go through you, every email has to go through you, every project, every hire, then guess what? You are constantly maxed out. Now, no wonder you can't move anything forward because you're just buried under tactical work, right? And so it's like we create these chokeholds for ourselves on the business, honestly, just like by our own doing. It's not like we are victims of this. Like we're the ones who create it, right? And so we create ourselves these like very demanding jobs, right?

I've been there multiple times. And I think when you, each time you need to get your business to another level, it requires a different level of discipline to get yourself out of this kind of mentality. And for me personally,

I know that control is something that I like, right? Because if I can control something, I can also predict the outcome. And this is like why humans and the human brain likes control in general, just because like, if you can control a situation, then you can predict the outcome. And if you can predict the outcome, then you don't have to worry about it, right? Because we spend all this time ruminating, what if this happens? What if this happens? Like, well, if I control it, I know what the outcome will be. And the truth is, we don't know what the outcome will be, but it definitely creates this illusion that we do, right?

And I can say first and foremost, and I'm pretty sure my husband can second this, which is like, I totally used to be a complete fucking control freak and probably a giant pain in the ass. And it wasn't until I had to sell my businesses that I realized like, wow, though this works when you're small and it works when you're, you know,

behind on hiring and when you have a lot of new stuff going on, it's just not the strategy to grow business overall. That's why I wanted to kind of share what I've done to get out of my own way and what you can do to get out of your own way because the problem is, is that if you don't trust other people to do things, then what it really means is that you don't have the skill to delegate properly to allow that trust. What I've realized is that there's really three pieces that you can

pull, or I'd say three levers that you can pull to make it easy to trust other people and make it easy to delegate things. The three Ps. We've got priorities, we've got processes, and we've got people. Okay, so the first one is we want to get clear on our priorities. What we have to do is ruthlessly ask ourselves, what is actually worth my time?

This has been one of the hardest things for me because, guys, I hate when somebody asks for my time and then I'm like, oh, that's not worth my time. It's not worth my time to meet with you on that. It's not worth my time to give you clarity on that. It's not worth my. But the thing is, is that every time it becomes my time, I steal that opportunity from their manager, from their peer, from their leader who probably doesn't have the same skills that I do that could probably benefit a lot from learning how to help that person.

And so what I realized that every time I use myself as the solution, I just create longer term problems, right? So I fix them in the short term, but I create them, they continue to perpetuate in the long term. And so the question I have to ask myself and you have to ask yourself is, your time is the most valuable resource in the business. Do you actually treat it that way? Seriously, if you're the founder, if you're the CEO of your business, then that means that your time is literally one of the most valuable resources in the company.

And like, you probably treat it like the least valuable resource. So that is a question I ask myself a lot. And I think that putting it in the perspective of like, hey, the CEO's time, the founder's time is the most valuable resource. I just happen to be that person. That's helped me a lot because I, you know, whether you have an ego or not, I don't have an ego. And so it's actually very hard for me to conceptualize this. And so I constantly have to ask myself that. And I will say what's helped me is I'm like, hey, it's selfish if I keep thinking

you know, letting my insecurity and my need to be everything for everyone get in the way of growing my business. That is selfish of me because that means that I'm sacrificing my team's potential in the long term for my short term, you know, compulsion, comfort, whatever it might be.

And so what I have recognized, I have to ask myself that question. And then I need to look at, okay, what is my job? My job is to focus on the things that move the needle, right? The business, strategy, vision, relationships, team building. If I spend every moment of my day stuck in tactical, then I'm in the wrong place. Somebody else can do the tactical.

And honestly, somebody else can do a lot of the things. Somebody else can do the managing. Somebody else can do the processes. Somebody else can do pretty much everything. Painting the vision, determining where the company is going to go, you know, recruiting high level executives. Like that's the stuff that I need to focus on. And if you're in your business, that's probably where you need to focus as well. There are other people that can do the other things. The thing is, is that this is one of those things, and I tell people this a lot.

This only gets harder the longer that you put it off because the longer you let anything in your business rely on you, the harder it is to untangle later. And so if you're thinking about an area of your business right now where you're like, fuck, I'm stuck in here and I've been doing this, but I'm recognizing that I need to get out of it. Like, I just want to remind you that the cost goes up every day.

And everyone's like, oh, well, I should wait until I wouldn't wait. The cost goes up every day. It's only going to get harder every day. And so it's one of those things where, you know, doing it sooner is actually the biggest benefit for you. Right. So first thing we want to do is get clear on priorities. What is actually worth your time? What actually moves the needle in your business? I'm not saying what runs the business, but what moves the business forward? It's usually only a few very important things.

The second piece is processes, which is building processes that work without you. The thing is, you do not need to be involved in every process. You need processes that let your team operate without your constant input.

You probably feel annoyed. Oh my God, my team has to ask me all these questions. My team has to ask me for this. My team's constantly asking me for, well, that's because you have no process. So then they ask you, they don't like asking you. Do you think that they want to wait on their boss? They don't want to wait on their boss for an answer. They want to get that shit done too. But the thing is, if you don't put a process in place, then they're like, well, if there's no process, guess what we do? We go to a person. No process, you go to a person.

And so if you don't count processes, I want you to think about this. If you are the process, right? Like you have made yourself the human process for your business, then think about it like this. There's really three steps to get yourself out of being the human process for your business. And it goes like this, okay? Demonstrate, document, duplicate.

The three Ds. Okay, you demonstrate what you are doing to somebody else, right? So say you're still running the sales team, even though you've hired a sales manager. So now you're like, well, crap, I need to delegate that. Okay, so what you want to do is you want to demonstrate yourself running the sales team. Then you want to ask that person, that new sales manager, you want them to document how you run the sales team.

And then the third step is you ask them to duplicate your demonstration. So you show them how to run a sales team. You have them document while they watch you how you run the sales team. And then you watch them run the sales team based on the documentation that they took of you running the sales team.

This is by far the best way you can teach people. Now, the thing is, a lot of times they're like, no, I'm not going to have them document. It will work so much better if you have them document, not you. I promise you. If they write it down themselves, if they document themselves, this is the best possible thing that you could have done. Because if you're the one writing it down, they don't take full ownership over that process. And the best way to learn something is to teach it.

And so if they have to document you doing it and then teach it back to you by demonstrating it to you, that is like the best way that you could do this. The first place to build a system, right? When I look at how I'm going to build a system is first I do it, then I get somebody else to do it, then I get them to get anybody else to do it, and then we figure out how we're going to automate it.

That's really it. But the first step for you, if you haven't built a system before, and if you have areas where you are bogged down in things, the first step is simple. Just get yourself out of there. Get yourself out of doing the thing and get somebody else to. Because listen, you're not going to go straight from you doing it to getting it automated. You need to get it from you doing it to getting somebody else to do it.

That's the first step in building out a process. I think a lot of people are like, "I need to get AI and automation." It's like, just freaking get somebody else to do it first. And I promise you, if you do it and then you get somebody else to do it, and then they get somebody else to do it, you will be 10 steps closer to having a process than you are if you try to go straight from you doing it to then having some kind of AI tool do it. I promise this is an easy path. So that's the second piece. Now, the third piece is people.

Okay, and the biggest piece around people, because we have priorities, then we've got process, then we've got people, right? Everything I just talked about under process involves delegating stuff to a person. Now, why is it that people don't do this, right? Why is it that grown adults don't delegate things? It's not because they don't want to not do things. It's because trust. This is the hardest part for most leaders, myself included.

You have to hire well, you have to train well, but then you have to step back and you have to actually let people do their jobs. And you have to give them the room to make mistakes just like you did when you first started. Otherwise, how else will they learn? You cannot expect people on your team to make less mistakes than you do. Shit, you're the one who owns the company. You probably make the least mistakes.

Right. They don't own the company. They don't have as much knowledge as you. They don't have as much invested as you. You think they're going to make less mistakes than you. And yet we fire people because of the mistakes that they make. It sounds crazy when you say it out loud. Right. But it's so true. We do this all the time. And so that's why the last piece of this is trust your people. I want you to understand this.

If you keep stepping in to fix things, you teach them to depend on you. You teach them they can't do it. You teach them that they're not capable. And that is the exact opposite of what you want. You need to give away control. You can have control or you can have growth, but you cannot have both at the same time. And so either we are letting go of control or we are holding on tight and keeping ourselves stuck.

If you put these three together, I promise you, you will be able to get yourself out of these areas in your business that you are stuck. Now, here's what happens when you let go. I want you to imagine this. Instead of being buried in your inbox, buried in one-on-ones, buried in meetings, stuck approving every single tiny decision, you get to focus on the big picture.

You get to build relationships. You get to build partnerships. You get to identify opportunities. You get to think about the future. You get to decide what are the three most important things that I could do to build my company. You actually get to steer the ship. Because here's the thing, when you step back and you let go of all these other things, you let go of all the things that you don't need to do, your team will step up.

If you step back, they step up. And if they step up, they gain confidence. And then when they get confidence, they move faster. And then eventually they move so fast that your business scales without you. And here's the best part. When you stop being the bottleneck, you become a better leader.

If you are stuck in the tactical and you are working in the business and not on the business, that is how you build resentment. If you stay there for forever, if you constantly feel like you can't get out, if you constantly feel buried, if you constantly feel like I can't get ahead and you start to build this resentment for the people on your team who are asking for help and asking you questions to ask it, it's you who didn't set the boundaries. It's you who didn't do this. It's you who built this business. You get to choose what you do.

And so the best thing that you can do to become the leader that your team needs is let go. Let go, get the priorities down, get processes in place, and trust the right people. And I promise you, if you do that, your business will grow. So here's what I would say you do after listening to this podcast. I want you to write down all the priorities on your plate right now. Then I want you to write down

for the priorities that are not the most highest and best use of your time, the name of somebody on your team who can take it on. Then you're going to use process to delegate those things to them. And then once you have that process, you can eventually build a system and then you're out of that thing. And so right now, whether it's the beginning of your week, the middle of your week, whatever day it might be, write down all the priorities, put somebody else's name next to them. Do this every week.

Remember, you are not supposed to do everything. You are supposed to build the business. If you're not building and growing the business, who is? Seriously, who's the CEO? Who's the founder? Who's growing the business if it's not you? I don't know. It's not me. I'm over here making a podcast about my own business. And so write those things down, delegate them to the right people, and get out of your way.