I own or partially own dozens of businesses. I want to leverage my teams’ expertise and abilities to have the biggest positive impact we can on as many people as we can. People say to me “How do you get it all done?” They are amazed.
But they are thinking about it from the perspective of how THEY do their business. They are involved in their business to a certain level of detail in day-to-day activities. Doing it the way they do it, there is no way they could have two businesses like theirs because they are already working as much as a human can work and they don’t have 2X the time.
So there is the lesson. Build the leadership job so it works for you. Cut chunks of your job off and have other managers and other leaders do them to free you up so you can do the most important things and be home by 6pm.
Nobody said you had to do what you do each day. You just have to make sure certain things are being done in a certain way. That doesn’t mean they need to be done BY YOU.
This is the most important distinction you need to make if you are a leader who wants to grow your organization without going insane.
Attract and identify other leaders, train everyone, communicate, and empower them.
(PS- I am not suggesting that everyone should be like me, that having multiple businesses is a sign of success or even a good idea for everyone.)
PPS – In fact, for me, all my businesses are closely related so you might think of it as one business with multiple dimensions.)
PPPS – (If you do more than one thing, they both must be successful. Why try something else when the old thing will fail to be profitable without you or the new thing will never be?)
I was thinking about this yesterday when you wrote about being a problem solver… It doesn’t always have to be YOU who personally solves the problem – in fact it can’t and shouldn’t be if you want to be effective; but you have to have trained, empowered, capable, and confident Leaders in place who know WWLD (what would MY Leader Do).
That takes time, knowledge, training, patience, and follow-up invested by the Leader to develop when ability is recognized in a prospect – but it’s a force multiplier when it works and you can focus on other concerns with confidence that that AOR is properly managed.
Go, Harry!
Good Morning Larry! I think what you are describing is THE hardest thing for anyone to do when they are trying, wanting or needing to grow their business. It has been (was?) the hardest thing for me. The reality is it takes time to get to the point in our lives when we can be comfortable letting go of the personal control that we have had over our business since it started. It takes time and practice to learn how to have (or let) others to do the tasks that we are used to doing daily. The great news is that practice makes perfect! Once you learn how to pass off some of your duties to someone else then you can use that experience to pass along even more.
🙂 I am grateful for you too my friend!
Great one Larry! I own my own AI tech business and now with chatGPT we’re hiring and growing fast and I’ve been working on executing today’s post lessons for some time now. I’ve printed today’s post and have taped it to my desk. This post hit home big time. As a Think Daily subscriber for many years, you touch on this Leadership view of running one’s business a lot, and I thank you. Based on your posts I’ve had a big piece of paper on my desk with the word LEAD on it for months now, and it’s going to stay there. LEAD and build TEAM is my mantra, thanks to your posts, thank you!
PPPPS: 100%!