It’s time to expose myself with this one when it comes to leadership in business. Do you know how everyone says “You build the team that builds the business” when talking about your role as a founder in a growing company?
I’m guilty, I’ve said this before too. But I never truly understood what that meant until now.
Lately, I’ve been reading a ton of books (as always) but focusing on leadership and my role as a CEO. For awhile now, I’ve been feeling like I’m spending a lot of time working in the business rather than on it. And even when I’ve been working on the business it hasn’t really felt like my efforts have been fruitful. Or worse… they were too micro to even make an impact.
I’ve always spent so much time on marketing, sales, and product development, but never enough time on the team. I tinker in ClickUp (hellooooo top 10% user badge lmao) but it usually doesn’t actually get implemented into the business.
WTF is a KPI?
The idea of KPIs and OKRs evaded me, they always seemed like a “nice to have” not a “have to have”. It wasn’t until recently that (in the midst of one of my many menty b’s) it occurred to me that I myself do not have the skills to scale this company to 9 figures.
The elusive acronyms are what allow you to measure not only the growth of your business but also the efficacy of your team members. Meeting or not meeting those KPIs tells you where to focus and train. Not where you need to dive in and fix it.
I know that we can be a 100 million dollar company but for some reason, I thought that meant that I myself had to be a 100 million dollar founder.
Personally, I do not have the capacity to grow the business to that level. At the end of the day… I don’t know what I don’t know. Prior to this, I have never managed a team. Currently, I’m 23 now and I’ve never even worked in a corporate environment. But what I do know is that for all of my limitations, there is a clear vision. I’m able to see where we need to go and what we need to do to get there.
That’s where the team comes in. Instead of hiring people and then trying to train them to do things the way I would do them, I’m learning that I need to hire people BETTER than me. I don’t need to train them, they need to train me. My job is simply to set clear expectations.
My other fault
When something isn’t going right in the business, I jump in and do it myself.
- Close rate not what I think it should be? Don’t worry, I’ll take the sales calls.
- Are reels not performing high enough? That’s fine, I’ll make the next batch myself.
The shift here is that instead of jumping in, I should be keeping a pulse on the business consistently and developing my team. My job is my team. The operations of the company are no longer my job.
I asked a mentor of mine a year or so ago when I was building out my team, “If I hire all of these people, what am I going to do?” And she answered the question completely correctly. She told me that I would be managing the team, I didn’t get that though. I stayed in the trenches right alongside my team, picking up the slack, and randomly taking on tasks that I thought would be useful.
I get it now…
The team is my job. The vision is my focus.
So for example, rather than jumping in and taking over sales calls when the close rate isn’t high enough, I am now reviewing sales calls daily and providing feedback to the closers so they can improve.
Instead of taking over when a client requests a 1:1 call because I think I can do it better, I review the coach’s calls and give my own feedback.
Rather than being in the weeds making a new template for our clients inside the program, I’m reviewing the modules in their entirety assessing the gaps, lack of clarity, and room for improvement. Once that’s complete, I am handing those areas of improvement to the team, so I can move on to scoping out the next area we can develop or improve.
You can see where I’m going with this. Instead of doing, I’m managing. Rather than jumping in, I’m looking ahead. And instead of taking over, I’m TRAINING.
Final Thoughts
I know if you are in the newer stages of business, this is not going to resonate with you. You’re going to do exactly what I did which is nod, think about it, and then keep doing what you are doing. But, for my founders that are reaching that turning point, typically between $2-5 million annual revenue.
You are at the point where your team members should be the boots on the ground and you are the general.