How to Keep Up When the Business Outgrows You | Ep 270
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What does growth look like in a company? What do the transitions look like? And I kind of want to outline the progression of what it looks like to go from an individual contributor to a manager, to a director, to a C-level executive. Because I think, one, even as the founder, you go through this transition, whether you realize it or not.

What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. And today I want to talk about a topic that has been on my mind for the last 48 hours, and that is when the business or the job promotes you. So a lot of people talk about getting promoted in a company and they talk about what that looks like. But I think that this is actually really looking at it through a very narrow lens, because in actuality, as a founder of the business, as leader of the business, you get promoted all the time by the business.

And then actually people within your business get promoted all the time as well. You just don't officially call it a promotion. And that's because a lot of people think that promotions are just something that we wait for and somebody taps you on the shoulder and they're like, hey, are you ready? Cool, let's promote you. But the reality is that typically the job or the company promotes you. So as the team or the

or the company grows, you get promoted whether you know it or not. And so if you're not paying attention and you're not recognizing that this is happening, you wake up one day and you realize, oh, I no longer know what I'm doing running my business. I have no idea. I have not been here before. I don't feel qualified. Or if you're an employee, you wake up and think, gosh, why do I feel like I'm no longer qualified for the job that I signed up for? And you start wondering in either one of those situations why things aren't working anymore.

And so I feel like this is something very important to break down because a lot of people just assume that, well, if I don't get promoted, then it's going to be easy. As long as I avoid a promotion, then I won't be in a spot where I'm incompetent. And same with business leaders. Like when you own the company, you assume that the business is going to keep growing. But the reality is, is that oftentimes the business or the team or the role grows faster than the person, right? And this is because when a company grows, especially when a company grows quickly, every role changes with it.

And so, you know, what used to be like a one person job often becomes a department. What used to require execution now requires delegation.

And what used to be about doing is now about thinking. And so a good example of this, especially for founders, is a lot of times you're the first person in the marketing, right? And so you're the one writing copy. You're building ads. You're building funnels. You're managing a content calendar. You're the one in charge of the whole growth engine. But if you fast forward 18 months, now you have a team. You're not supposed to write copy anymore. You're not supposed to write ads anymore. You're not supposed to be the one in there doing the thing.

You're actually supposed to be setting the vision. You're supposed to be giving them direction. You're supposed to be developing them, training them, managing metrics, creating dashboards. Now, for business owners, this applies to us in the sense that if we do things the same way we did when we have five people, when our company has 15 or 20 or 30 or 50, then the company will stall.

And the role of the founder or the CEO has to constantly evolve. You can't just set it and forget it. You have to constantly be readjusting the thermostat

based on how the company's growing. And so that means that your job continues to change. I tell people this all the time. If your calendar is not changing quarter over quarter, if where you put your time as the founder of the business doesn't change quarter over quarter, and this goes to leaders as well, then you're not changing and you're not keeping up with the business or you're not pushing the business forward. Because where you spend your time doesn't just catch up with the business growth, but it also will determine if the business will grow.

based on where you spend your time. And for people who are employees, the moment if you still cling to what made you good at the old job,

you often fail at the new one. And this is why a lot of people get stuck. And I think it's funny because we talk about promoting all the time. People talk about, oh, don't promote somebody to their level of incompetence. But I'm like, wait, guys, we promote ourselves as founders all the time. And we accidentally promote our leaders all the time. It's just that we don't make it official. We don't do a title change. It just happens because the business grows.

Now, I will say this is more relevant for smaller businesses. Like I would say if you're anywhere between, you know, just starting and $100 million, this is very common. Once you get into like, you know, your half a billion, a billion dollars, it's less relevant, still happens. But it's just happening quite often in companies that are pre $100 million in revenue. The roles just continue to change drastically.

And so I was thinking about this the other day because, you know, a lot of people in my company right now, our company is growing quickly. And what that means is that they're getting promoted by the company or they're getting promoted by the fact of just how big their team is in size.

And so I try to constantly have these conversations where I'm explaining, hey, let's reset. This is what the world looks like now. And at the end of those conversations, I'm like, listen, do you like this? Because if you don't like it, then we can bring somebody in to mentor. We can bring somebody to help. And sometimes that's not a conversation. That's more of me telling them what's going to happen. Because this is the thing as a business owner is that

If you see that somebody is constantly getting promoted by the job and they're not able to be competent in that quote new job that nobody ever gave them and nobody wanted to give them, right? Then it's your responsibility to say, gosh, I think I need to get somebody else to help. And this actually got brought up because at one of our events last week, a woman raised her hand and then she said, here's what's going on with the company. I don't think that I'm spending my time in the right places.

I don't really know how to delegate. And so we've stagnated for the last three years in terms of revenue. And as she's talking to me, she's saying like, I think it might be because, you know, I don't have a strong enough team or this, that and all stuff. And I was like, well, it's actually you, like you've stagnated. You have decided that you are not good at X, Y, and Z, which are the skills required to get the business to the next level. Therefore, the business stalls. And so I said, like, there's no shame in saying that you need help

And that for you to get your business to the next level, you need somebody else to come in and help you with it. Maybe it's a mentor. Maybe it's a partner. Maybe whatever it is, right? I think that for founders and business owners, this is really important because you can't just assume that you're the person that's going to get it to every level of the business.

Like, for example, I'm at a point where I'm like, I told my team, listen, I'm bringing in big guns right now. I'm bringing in somebody who's going to help me, who's going to partner with me to take this business to the next level. And I will have more to come on that in the coming weeks. But

It's something I'm really excited about because I've not done it before, but I recognized a year ago that if I want to get acquisition.com to the level I want to, I need to bring in a different type of caliber of person to help me get it there. And that requires doing things differently. It's scary. It's unknown. I've never done it before. It's a whole new process for me. But guess what? What scares me more is being somebody who stalls my whole fucking company, right?

And so you really just have to decide, am I more scared of stalling my company and never growing? Or am I more scared of trying to learn this new thing, of trying to do things a new way, and trying to grow and possibly failing? I'll take trying and failing over stalling any day. So that's just kind of how my brain works. But a lot of people don't work that way, guys. And it is very difficult to change. Like I will say that it is tough because a lot of us want to just stay where we're at. We want to do things we've always done. Maybe we'll change for a few months, but then we end up

Kind of going back to what our set point was, right? Now, that's really why most people fail.

Most people screw it up because they think that they can remain the same person with the same habits and the same tendencies and routines and somehow crush it in a completely different role in the company. It's kind of funny because people will be like, oh, I'm just, I am just this way. And that's what makes me so good at my role. But then the moment the world changes, they're like, oh, I can, I can change that. Don't worry. I just have to change a few things. Like what? You have to really change a lot about who you are in order to do that.

Because as the company grows, the job of the founder, the job of the CEO, and most leadership roles, especially as the business scales quickly, change drastically. Drastically. It's not just like 15 degrees or 20 degrees. It's like 50 degrees. And so I actually would ask you right now to ask yourself, to what degree have I changed this year? To what degree has my team changed this year? 10%.

20%, 50%. Like I would bet that if you're stuck in business, it's because you're not changing. And I say this as somebody who gets a lot of flack for the fact that I say that I'm a chameleon. People are like, oh, you're just changing your personality to win. I'm like, um, I actually look at this as having a great reason to evolve as a human because I want to bring my team to success because I want to see something succeed. And this helps me become, in my opinion, a more flexible, resilient person. And I love the challenge of thinking that way.

But I do recognize it is fucking hard. It's not any easier for me than it is for anybody else, right? But the issue is, is that a lot of people don't realize how drastically they may need to change. I had a leader one time in my business, this was about a year and a half ago, and this person was so incredibly talented at the function that they led, but he just could not

could not lead people that were leaders. And what I saw is that as his team expanded, and as he had to have leaders underneath of him, they just all wanted to leave, or they felt very suppressed, and they were very, like, just down. Like, it was a very bad morale. And so I pulled into the side, and I said, listen, the way that you manage a bunch of individual contributors is so different than how you manage leaders. And here's what the difference is.

And, you know, it's funny. He looked at me and he was like, Layla, I know. And I know where I'm going wrong. And I know where I'm fucking up. And I just can't get myself to change. And unfortunately, you know, that person, it wasn't just that they didn't know how, but they were...

you know, a little bit on the side of like egotistical, arrogant, you know, yelling at the team, you know, that person had to go. But I was like, wow, they know how bad it is. They know that they lack the skill and they have this belief that they cannot change. And I will say more times than not, I'm able to, because of my skill and the fact that I've had to change this for myself in the last decade, time and time over again, how I manage people, how I talk to people, how I communicate, I'm able to help coach people through that. But that person was

In my opinion, they were out of my scope, meaning it might have taken me a year to get them where they needed to be. I didn't have time to wait. My team didn't have time. It would ruin morale, ruin the culture. So you just can't wait, right? But I think what a lot of people don't realize is that often the reason this is so difficult is because

When you're in a position as a business owner or as a leader in a business where the team is smaller, it's like you're still in the weeds. You're still in Slack giving feedback on font size or a deck or this or that. And you're still micromanaging decisions. And if you keep doing that as the business grows and as your team grows, you become the bottleneck. But this is a very large behavioral shift for people because they feel like that's how they add value. Me working hard long hours equals value to business.

But the reality is, is that as you grow a team, your output and how your success is measured changes. And it's no longer you and your output that is how you measure success of that person, but the output of your team. And so your goal is to work through people, not around people.

And oftentimes what happens, you see people, because it's easier in the short term to go around people, they just continue to do that over and over and over again. And I think a huge piece of it is whether you're a founder or a leader, a lot of people just really like the title, but don't like the job. Like they like the accolades, but they don't like what they're doing every day. And they want that recognition without evolving into it. And I think that that is something where I would just put a pause here and say, if you're a founder,

And you're the CEO of the company. You're running it like I am.

You need to take a really hard look in the mirror and ask yourself if you actually like being CEO. Because being CEO of a 10 versus 50 versus 100 versus 200 person company is completely different. I will tell you that I like it now. And I actually do like being CEO as the company gets bigger more than when it's small. I actually think I'm more suited to be a CEO of a company that has 100 or 200 or whatever people than I am a smaller company. Why? I don't know. I just prefer it.

However, you need to ask yourself, do I constantly find myself asking, yeah, gosh, why the team gets so big? Why can't it just be small again? Because if you're fighting and creating that resistance, maybe it's not for you. Maybe it's time that you look at bringing a CEO. Because here's the thing. One, you're the founder of the company. You don't need to also run it. I just like doing it, right? And I'm like, I don't know what else I would do. Like, I love this. I wake up every day. I'm excited. I love teaching. I love building a team. I love building the strategy and the vision. Like, I love that shit.

But if you don't love it, then you're going to burn out. And the worst thing that you could do for your business is to keep doing something you fucking hate because you feel like you should. There are no shoulds. There's just what works for you. There is no right or wrong. Now, to the other degree, if you're a leader in a business, you really need to understand that most people go for titles, not the actual job. And here's the thing. A title will not entitle you to success. You growing will.

The title should be so obvious that they feel like they have to put you in that title. And I see so many people, it's like no matter what I say to them, I say, listen, this might not be for you. Listen, maybe this isn't aligned with the natural skill sets. Listen, I don't know if you're going to like doing this, to be honest with you. And there's so much resistance. There's so much resistance because there's such a desire for status as humans. And I get that.

But I have seen so many people drive themselves into the ground and honestly end up tanking their departments because they were going for a title rather than actually enjoying the work they do. And something that I see in a lot more mature business owners and leaders and companies is that they understand what they're good at, what they like, and where those two intersect and how that is the most valuable thing they can do for the business. And they recognize that they need to build teams that support the rest. And they're not upset about it. They

it. They don't let their ego get in the way. They don't tell themselves that they're a piece of shit. They just accept it. And then they do great work on a team and often end up more successful than the people who try to be something or someone they're not. And so I'm here to say, if you're not the same person, you know, when you manage three people, if you're not the person that can manage 30, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But I do think it's worth reflecting and asking yourself, do I have the skills? And if I don't, how quickly would it take me to get them?

And does my business or my team have time to wait? Because the best leaders, you know what they do? Whatever is best for the team. And if that means they need to bring in somebody else beside them, above them, below them, then they'll do it. And for me, I always use like at the end of the day, it's what's best for this team, for my partners, for my clients.

because I need to make decisions that are best for all of them. I can't come from a self-centered perspective or point of view with anything I'm doing. That being said, I think that oftentimes people hear this and they're like, okay, well, what does growth look like in a company? Like, what do the transitions look like? And I kind of want to outline the progression of what it looks like to go from an individual contributor to a manager, to a director, to a C-level executive. Because I think, one, even as the founder, you go through this transition, whether you realize it or not.

That's 1000%. Every founder goes through this, especially if you're active in the company. If you're just like chairman on the board, maybe not. But if you're active in the company, you absolutely do. And most leaders go through this. So, okay, we start at individual contributor, right? This is when you are doing things. You are executing. Your value is your output. So you getting things done faster, better, cheaper. That's the output of your job. If you do things faster, better, cheaper than other people on the team, you're a great individual contributor.

It's essentially how you measure the value. And a lot of people start here, or at least they start their career here, right? Now, the second level is you go to a manager. Okay, this is when you now are responsible for the output of other people doing things faster, better, cheaper.

So you're still close to the work, but now you're coordinating, giving feedback about how they get better, faster, cheaper, training them on getting better, faster, cheaper, and tracking if they are indeed better, faster, better, faster, and cheaper. Now, this is where a lot of people first get very uncomfortable.

because their identity is tied to doing things, and because humans like recognition. And what happens is that between individual contributor and manager, you give up the recognition and you start to give it to other people. Your team gets recognized, no longer do you.

And this is where the first, I would say, like, class of people opt out because they say, oh, I just don't enjoy it anymore. Oh, I just don't like it. Well, of course, because you haven't stuck it out long enough to see how gratifying it is when you get a team to win rather than just you. But you've got to stick around for that because here's the thing.

In the beginning, nobody's winning because you probably aren't that good at it. So if you're not a good manager, then your team isn't winning. So you aren't winning and your team's not winning, right? And so a lot of people just don't stick around long enough to acquire the skills to get past that level. Now, if you do stick around long enough, what you will see is it's incredibly gratifying to get a team to win. In fact, I would say it's much more gratifying than winning yourself. And if you do that, then you get to the next level, which is different. This is when you're managing managers.

You will spend most of your time on putting in systems strategy to make sure that your managers know how to make people do things better, faster, cheaper. And then you hold them accountable to ensuring their teams hit the quality standards of better, faster, cheaper.

So what you're doing is you are setting strategy, you are training your team, you're holding them accountable, you're looking at dashboards, you're reading the numbers, you're identifying gaps, and then you're creating leverage. You don't solve problems yourself. You actually build a system that points them out for you and helps you identify which ones to solve. And you then delegate a lot of the solutioning to your managers. This is because if you do not invest in your managers,

as a leader, they will leave because they want to feel useful. And so you have to allow them to solve problems. You have to allow them to run the team. You have to allow them to take credit for their teams. And you are like the, you know, in the backgrounds, one designing the plays off the court, but you're not on there and you're not even on the sidelines coaching them. You are there to essentially set them up for success and build a system that will do that.

And you spend more of your time hiring, looking ahead, building systems, determining if we're making the right decisions.

Because what happens at this point with a team and with a company is that it's much harder to backtrack if you make the wrong decision than it is when you were small. And so you have to keep moving forward. Otherwise, things just get completely fucked up and it's way harder and takes way longer to get things back on track. And so directing the department and directing managers becomes an actual job. Now, why is it that most people fall off here?

Most people don't go from manager to director or they go from there, but then they end up losing it because they cannot lead leaders. Okay. They don't know how to talk to people, manage people, hold people accountable, who are competent and also know how to do that themselves. And so it's not that they have less sales or marketing or customer success ability. It's that they have less leadership ability and they communicate with their managers and leaders the same way they communicate with individual contributors or they

Even worse is they get incredibly nervous about it. And then they let them rule everything. They don't hold the line. They don't actually direct them. And they just let them run the whole show. I would say that's more common with people who are inexperienced at this level is because they don't know how to direct. They just allow the managers to direct them rather than they directing the managers.

And then what you see happens is that the whole department becomes like a democracy. Everything's run by people who don't actually have perspective of the whole business. And it usually becomes a shit show you got to clean up later. Just speaking from personal experience. Right? And so that's where most people fall off. They just cannot hone in the ability to maintain relationships

camaraderie with somebody, but also be their boss. It's like a very fine line. And I get it because I've been there and it is difficult because I would say that everyone that reports to me, I feel like we're friends. I also feel like I'm their boss. It's not exclusive. It's that I feel both of those things.

And I've somehow created that dynamic where I feel like I'm able to do both. What happens when you're less experienced is that either you go all authority, micromanage, complete asshole, or you go, I'm going to just let them do it. They probably know better. Just complete passive, just freaking ninny out on the thing, right? I don't know what I'm saying anymore. Okay, so that's where a lot of people fall off. Now, the last level is when we get to executive or C-level. This is all about cross-functional leadership.

This means that you don't just understand your department, you understand the entire business. You know how the whole business works. You understand the vision. You're doing future planning. And you will never sacrifice what's best for the business because it makes you look good or the department look good. So you are a leader in the company. You just happen to be over a couple of departments. And so what you're doing is you're driving alignment across departments. You're usually allocating capital and resources.

You are creating culture, you are inspiring a team, and you are ensuring that you are able to scale. This is usually where you work on the business, not in it on a daily basis. Now I will say this, you've got to know when to zoom in and zoom out.

You've got to be able to get in there and fix something if it needs to. But on a daily basis, you don't do that. You actually give your team the opportunity to do that because they learn more. You've already been there, done that. You won't learn anything else from doing it again. We know that you can get in there and do it. They don't know if they can, right? And so the reason this is so important as you move into this role that you change the way you operate is because every decision that you make moves a million dollars and dozens of people. And so there's really no room anymore for half-assed decisions

for super fast, complete redo, pivot, whatever, emotional reactivity or inconsistency. Because then you have 20 or 25 people under you. And then you have the whole team that's also affected by your decisions. And this is where a lot of people just completely fucking melt. Okay, whether you are the founder or a leader in the company, because they cannot, they cannot let go of the busyness

They can't accept the fact that in order to get to the next level, they have to do less, not more. Because doing less means you have more time to think about your decisions. It means you have more time to invest in people. It means you have more time to think ahead. But many people, they go their whole lives without doing that. They don't do it in their personal life. They certainly don't do it in their work life. And then they wonder why they're not at a C-level. Now, the second piece of this is that if you're at the C-level in a company,

or if you're the CEO, is that you are essentially, the company is saying, this is what we want in the company. You're put on a totem pole and people say, this is what leadership looks like. And so you're held to a very high standard of how you conduct yourself personally and professionally. How do you uphold the culture? How do you speak to the team? And so it's like, you're heard through a megaphone, you're seen through a microscope. Everything you do becomes more important. The

the way you speak, the way you show up, et cetera. And I really had to understand that as my company grew and I got, quote, promoted through it for my first company. This was maybe seven years ago. Suddenly I realized how everything I said in a meeting mattered.

How every Slack message I sent meant a lot to somebody. And how one thing that I said half-heartedly could break somebody's entire day. How the fact that I mentioned something on a meeting could send somebody into a loop where they think that I don't approve of what they're doing. I mean, it's crazy. I can whisper something to certain people on my team and they will just like, they'll go change their whole department if I don't tell them not to.

And a lot of people don't understand the magnitude of how their words affect the team or how their actions affect the team when they get to this level. And that's usually why they drop off is the pressure is high. Not because you have to do more, but because you have to be more. You have to be a person worthy of following. You have to be a person who exemplifies the culture. And you have to be somebody who people want to learn from.

And that, my friend, is becoming an inspiration. It's very difficult to be at this level in a great company, not in a mediocre company, plenty of mediocre companies.

but in a great company without being an inspiration to other people. So let's talk about what we can do to keep up as our job promotes us or as our business promotes us, because I think that's actually what many of you would want to hear right now. You understand kind of what's going on. I hope that resonates with a lot of you because I think it's incredibly common. It happens in every business. But let's talk about what we can do as the job or company keeps promoting you. One, you want to keep asking, what is my job now? Not what your title says, not what you like doing, but what is the highest value?

that you can do for the company based on its size and stage of business right now. I ask myself this all the time. What is my greatest contribution? What is my job right now? And it's good for me because my job changes a lot. And I have to ask myself, what do I need to do differently to do that job better? Because it's usually not what I did yesterday. Now, the second piece goes with what I said in the beginning. Audit your calendar again.

against your level. Are you solving $1 problems? Are you solving like million dollar problems? Right? Are you doing individual contributor work even though you have a manager title? Are you managing people like

like a director would? Or are you still managing people like a manager would? Or are you avoiding doing any of this because you don't actually like the job that you're stepping into? Audit your calendar. I want you to get angry about your calendar if there's something on it that shouldn't be there. You have to hold the standard. And I do this myself. I will look at my calendar and if I see a call that's a waste of my time, I've trained myself to get angry. So I take action, I get it off. Because my default is like, oh, I want to help. Oh, I want to do it. No,

No, don't waste my time. I can't waste my time if I am at the C level or at the D level, whatever it might be for you.

You have to train yourself to operate in a different way and you have to treat your time differently. And so maybe get a little mad for a second because sometimes I think that people don't allow the emotion to move them into a better emotion. Which brings me to the last one, which is you have to be willing to let go. Growth means subtraction, not addition. If you step into this new role, you have to figure out what you have to let go, what tasks,

what control, what decisions, or even what identity you have to let go to that was tied to what your role was four, five, six months ago. Because the job that you want might not be the job the company needs anymore. And so that might scare you. It also might excite you. But what I do know is that there's no way you can step into the new one until you've subtracted the old one out of your schedule, agenda, whatever you want to call it.

So here's what I want to leave with you. Okay. The best people in business do not wait to be promoted. They notice when the job has already changed and then they rise to meet it. Then they change how they operate. I say they get a new operating system. And so the question is not, oh, why haven't I been promoted yet? The question is, has the company promoted me and I haven't caught up?

yet. So if you're in business and in the business of building anything great, whether it's your company or your career, you have to constantly become the person that your current role demands.