Moving From A Solopreneur Mindset To An Operator Mindset | Ep 222
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What's up guys, welcome back to Build. Today I want to talk about going from a solopreneur mindset to an operator mindset. So this was top of mind for me because I had a few different conversations with actually a couple of friends of mine who have businesses that are scaling quickly. As they're scaling, they're like, oh my gosh, I need to hire new people because my business is scaling so quickly. But then they're like, wait, I don't want to hire more people because that means it's more people for me to manage and I fucking hate managing people.

It's funny because I was having this conversation with one of my friends and I said to him, I was like, dude, you don't need to hire more people to manage. You need to hire more people to manage for you. He was like, huh, what do you mean? I was like, you're thinking about this as if you are the one to run everything and that is how you build a business. But that's actually just building yourself into a very unscalable enterprise.

What I see, and this is like a pattern that I've seen in a lot of people when they go from doing everything on their own to needing to hire leaders to help build an enterprise, is they think every default thought is like, how do I do this? How do I figure this out? Oh, there's a problem. How do I solve it? Versus thinking, how do I get my team to solve this? How do I build a team that does this? How do I get my team?

And so what it does is that most of the times when people default to thinking that they have to do everything themselves, what they do is they build from the bottom up. So they hire all the individuals before they hire the people to manage and train and motivate and mentor those individuals. And so then what happens is

is maybe they've leveled up out of the doing, but then essentially what they're doing is they're managing, they're QAing, they're auditing, and they're constantly correcting and giving feedback to like a million different individuals across their company. That was really the conversation I was having with my friend the other day. And he was like, dude, I don't even want to grow my company anymore because I just constantly have to just manage people. And honestly, he was kind of whining. And I was like, dude, you literally need to hire one person to do this on your behalf, and then you will be out of this. He

He was like, well, what is that person? Like, what do you mean? Like, if I give it off to them, like there's no way they could do it right. And what it is, is it's really, it's this mindset that keeps people stuck. And I've seen it more often than not, which is like, one, I will tell you this. Everybody thinks that their business is different and special. This is how the human brain works. We think our business defies the laws of scale and that for some reason we can't scale our business the same way other people have. And what I say is I'm like, you're stuck in a solopreneur mindset.

And it prevents you from building a real scalable, sellable business. Because what that does is you basically, when you're in that mindset where you're like, nobody can do it better than me, I have to do this. And you always default to you doing it versus somebody else is you essentially refuse to delegate. You obsess over control. You sacrifice growth. And in consequence of all that, you lose your freedom. A lot of people don't understand this is that

Basically what happens is, you know, for most of us, right? We have a job. We're like, fuck this job or I hate this job, right? And so we're like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to start a company. Start a company. And you're like, I'm going to be free. I'm not going to have a boss. I'm going to do whatever I want, whenever I want. And then you're like, oh shit. Now I've got customers. Now I've got teammates. Now I've got... And then all of a sudden you're back to this place of not having freedom. And that is what keeps you stuck in this cycle of constantly being chained to something. And what I want to explain is two things.

You having zero personal freedom is not good for the business. It's also probably not what you want. You need to have other people in the business who can operate on your behalf. I wanted to make this podcast because I was really thinking about it and I was like, it's honestly this journey of going from the solopreneur mindset to an operator mindset. And I'll start with kind of my first point, which is,

You can't be the glue, you need systems to be the glue. And again, this starts with the fact that most solopreneurs believe that nobody can do the work as well as they can. And what that tells me is

is that you actually just don't know how to build a system that allows other people to do the work the same way you do. I can't tell you how many people tell me, nobody can sell a house like I do. Nobody can close deals as big as I can. Nobody can build a product like I can. Nobody can deescalate customers like I can. Nobody can build marketing materials like I can. I hear it literally every week. But here's the thing, if you're the only one who can do something,

then that's not gonna scale anyways. You've essentially just started a job for yourself when you have a bunch of helpers, right? And so that's not a business, right? A business is where you build systems that allow others to succeed. Systems scale. Superheroes do not scale.

And so everyone out here, when you're going from that solopreneur to that operator mindset, you're trying to be the superhero of your business, but you need systems to be the superhero, not you. What I really want you to do is in this switch or in this mindset shift that you have to make, it's really going from defaulting to you doing everything to defaulting to who do I need to do this?

I'll give you a really easy example. So I was on a team meeting the other day with my team and they were talking about this new marketing project that we wanted to take on and we want to start doing. And as we're talking about it, they're talking about like how they're going to do it, time to do it, resources to do it. How do we spend this stuff? Blah, blah, blah. And as I'm listening, I'm like, oh my gosh, is nobody realizing that they're already maxed out and that they already have no bandwidth? It's literally like everyone's talking about how they're going to figure out a way to do this. And in my mind, I'm like, the first question I go to is who's going to do this?

who do we need on the team to do this and make it easy? Because here's the thing, they could go and do this thing at the cost of their current job, at the cost of their current responsibilities, at the cost of the current thing they're doing. And it's funny because as I watched this, I was like, wow, it's funny how like I went through this when I was starting my business. Other entrepreneurs go through this as they're scaling their business. And then my leaders go through this as they're learning to lead a division or a function in the business.

And so I kind of took a step back and I said, hey, maybe we should instead of ask the question, how do we do this? Ask the question, who do we need to do this? And that is the shift that you want to make here to go from this mindset. It's not how do I do this? It's who do I need to do this? Because here's the thing. This is why most people stay stuck is because if you do everything day one and you do everything to start,

then if you do everything day one, and if you essentially tackle everything in the business, you know it's going to work. And it's going to work faster and with less resources, right? So you're like, yeah, obviously I should tackle all this stuff because I know I can make it work. But

But at some point, what happens is you essentially play whack-a-mole because you build an entire business off of things that are built off of your skills and expertise, not the team's skills and expertise. And so what happens is say you do that in the sales department and the marketing department and the CS department and the IT department. Each time you leave that function, right, where you've like worked your magic, it starts to go down. It starts to not perform. The KPIs aren't being hit.

And so what you basically have to do is you have to continue playing whack-a-mole until the end of time. Because what you've done is you've built a business that relies on you, not on systems.

And so you have to bounce around from department to department to department because the department doesn't have systems that allow it to succeed, it has you. If you want to change this, you just need to change the question you ask. Stop asking how, start asking who. Now the second thing to consider when you're trying to go from like a solopreneur mindset to an operator mindset is you have to take this mindset of what is the cost of control? What's the cost of holding on to every decision,

to every task and every outcome. Is this a symptom of being excellent or is it a symptom of being a bad teacher? Is this a symptom of being excellent or is it a symptom of my insecurity? Is this a symptom of being excellent or is it a symptom of bad systems? There's a cost to control. Control feels productive in the short term, but in reality, you're choosing your ego over the success of your business every time.

The longer that you delay delegating things, the longer that you delay sustainable growth. So the second switch that has to be made is deciding, really, I want you to write this down. Where is the cost of control worth it? And where is it not? Zoom out for a second and look at all the questions you're answering every day. Look at all the tasks you're taking on.

Do you really need to be doing every single one? And here's how you know. Ask yourself, what happens if I don't do it? What happens? Like maybe somebody doesn't love the decision. Maybe one customer gives you a nine out of 10 instead of a 10 out of 10.

maybe you spend $500 more than you're used to. What's the cost? And this is what I want you to think about is like, this is how I go through my weeks. I look at my weeks, I look at all the things I've done, and then I ask myself, what's the cost of me doing this? What's the cost of me needing to exert control in this specific function, department, task, et cetera? Because what I know is that there's a cost to control, and I wanna make sure that it's worth the cost, that the result is worth the cost. So for me, I know

that I want to have control in areas where the cost is very, very high if I don't control them. Legal, anything that involves legal, I'm always going to have a lot of control over there because a lot of stuff that's legal has very big ramifications. Big financial decisions, again, big ramifications. Strategic decisions as to what we do as a company, very big ramifications. Hiring decisions, meaning projecting the org chart and what we're going to need to hire for. I hold on to those decisions.

And so investment decisions, I hold on to those decisions. Other decisions, in what order we add value to this company, in what way we want to communicate with this company, how we're going to conduct this new workshop, what we're going to do with our new VC investment, all the details of these things, I give control to other leaders in my company.

Because I know that I could, and let's be real, if I do it, it's probably gonna be better because who knows every single thing about the business? Me. I know more than any single person about my business, right? And so it's gonna be better if I do it. But the question is, at what cost?

What else should I be paying attention to that I'm not because I'm too dialed in at making sure that, you know, this person's dressed to code today. There's a cost to control. Holding on to every decision, task, or outcome is not a symptom of excellence. It's a symptom of not having systems, not having leaders, and not delegating properly. And if you want to grow, you need to delegate.

The third thing is now that we've talked about delegating, right? There's a cost to control. We want to delegate things. Why is it that people don't delegate? And it's really broken down into two.

Honestly, just fear. One, fear of things being done poorly, right? But what if they do it and it's wrong? But what if they do it and it breaks something? But what if they do it and that person's upset? But what if they do it and I don't like it? But what if they do it and I realize they're not that good? Sound familiar? It's also due to fear of not being needed. If I'm not doing everything, what do I do?

"If I don't do this, what is my job? "If I don't do this, what am I supposed to do? "How do I grow the company?" A lot of people hold on to a lot of small stuff because why? Because they don't know what to do next.

Ask yourself, if you didn't have all this stuff on your plate, what would you do? What would you do to grow the company? And if you're like, I don't know, then maybe you're still doing these things because you simply don't know what to do next. In which case you can check out my scaling roadmap at acquisition.com because I literally break down how to go from zero to a hundred million in that roadmap, which I did not even mean to plug that, but that's a really good plug because you should check it out. The next one, fear of trusting others.

you feel like nobody cares as much as you do and they're not going to pay attention like you do. I would like to reframe all of this, right, and that one specifically too. If you think that nobody can do it as well as you, it is your fault for not training them properly. We don't delegate because we lack the skill of knowing how to train and teach people. And we say, "Gosh, doing it myself is easier because I have the skill of doing it,

Delegating it sounds harder because I don't have the skill of teaching it. If that is you and you're like, that resonates, this is the simplest framework and it will get you a lot of bang for your buck. Demonstrate, document, duplicate. You want to demonstrate what it looks like when it's done right. Let them watch you do the thing. Now, the second D, document. You're not documenting doing the thing, but you want your team or who you're training to document while you demonstrate.

So you're going to demonstrate doing the task and they're going to document you doing the task. And then the last piece is duplicate. You're going to ask them now that they've watched you, now that they've documented the process, to then follow that process that they documented to then demonstrate it to you.

Let's look at a real example. If you're trying to teach somebody sales, what you wanna do is you want to do a sales call in front of them. While you're doing the sales call, you tell them, "Hey, I want you to write down the whole process for what I do before, during and after the call, as well as write the script." They write the script as well as the process and then you say, "Okay, great. Now what I want you to do is I want you to take that script and that process and I want you to take the next sales call and I'm gonna watch you." Then here's the cool thing. If they follow the script to a T,

and it doesn't work, look at the script and say, did you document it incorrectly? They followed it to T and it was the right script and then they had documented it correctly and it doesn't work. The script ain't that good. So either it's the process or it's the documentation of the process. Either one leads you back to figuring out how do I build a better system so that other people can succeed, not just me. And that is what I follow to delegate things literally time and time again. Like anytime I'm trying to delegate something, I'm like, all right, let me do it first, show you what's up. And then we're going to go from there.

I mean, I do this with everything, like hiring people, interviewing, firing people, hard conversations, performance reviews, even showing people how to do this process, I have people watch me. And so the more that you can give people that model and then ask them to document it and then watch them do it,

That is what your key to delegation is. If that all resonates with you, I wanna bring you to the last piece of this, which is we need to transition from technician-first thinking to team-first thinking. Solopreneurs think like technicians.

CEOs think like leaders. Okay, so what does that mean? Again, it is asking the who, not the do. When I was a solopreneur, when it was just like me and Alex and like nobody else on the team, I just thought, how do I do everything? How do I do more? How do I get more work done? How do I work harder? How do I work longer? Now, when I have a team and I realize that my job is to be the CEO, I think to myself,

"How do I find the right people to help me achieve this? "How do I take on this new initiative "without making other things worse in my company? "How do I tackle this new project? "Who do I need to tackle that new project?" What that means is that when I approach things like a leader and not a technician, when I have team-first thinking rather than technician-first thinking,

I do a couple things differently. One, document everything I do. I write everything down. I put everything in a project management system. I email things, I write things. I don't ever just verbally do something. Why? Because I want to turn it into a repeatable process. I want to know that if it needs to get done again, I've already documented the first time. Is it going to be perfect the first time? Probably not, but I know at least that's like a V1 to go off of. The second is that I hire people based on culture and skill, and then I train them ruthlessly to succeed.

What does training look like? Feedback. Demonstrate, document, duplicate, give them feedback to do it better next time. But when I'm looking to take on something new, I'm not thinking, how do I do this myself? I'm thinking, who do I need to do this? And then the last one is that I own outcomes, not tasks. I focus on the results. I don't micromanage how people are going to get there.

I often don't love every single way that people do things around my company. Does that mean it's wrong? No. I think that there are, again, people say this, right? It's like there's more than one way to skin a cat. It's like, by the way, that's a gross saying. I don't know why people say it, but it just came to mind. Is that even what people say? What if it's like skin an apple? How awkward. That might have been a bad joke from high school. But like there's more than one way to, you know, slice an apple, right? Let's use a better one than that. People

People aren't gonna do things exactly how you want them to do things.

But if they get the outcomes you want, that's what you want to pay attention to. And that is what's going to allow you to move out of this solopreneur mindset, to move out of a space of having literally zero time and zero personal freedom, and to go into a space of actually having a business that you can grow, that you can lead, that you enjoy operating. And that is what I think most people really want. Because here's the reality. The only way to grow your business is to step out of the doing and step into the leading.

And it is probably the hardest step for people to take because again, it's just like what you've trained yourself to do. You're really good at being a solopreneur. You're really good at being a technician. You're really good at being in the details. You're not really good at training people. You're not really good at hiring people. You're not really good at influencing and motivating people. But here's the thing. If you don't start now, when are you going to start?

And if you don't start now, are you ever going to get out of this? When I made this shift, it's not like this happened overnight. This took years of changing my mindset around work because for so long, it had just been me. And for so long in my business, when I first started it, I was responsible for everything. It did rely on me.

And so what I want to impress upon you is it is not about it happening overnight. This is an ongoing process. Take one of the points that I made and focus on that one. You're not going to go from a technician to a team-oriented leader overnight. This is a process that could take a decade. If you ever want to get to the point where you truly own a business that you are proud of, that has leaders, that lead leaders, and has

people that are operating on your behalf and building new divisions and doing big shit without you, then you have to start today. With that, I hope this was valuable for you guys. I hope some of you who are out there grinding on your business, trying to get out of the day-to-day,

Hear this, and I hope you hear me. There is never going to be the right time. The reason for that is because you will get more returns in the short term by doing it yourself than you will by giving it to someone else. But long-term, if you never give it to someone else, you just create a really demanding job for yourself, not a business.