The idea of getting yet another amazing referral should have made Amy excited. After all, she’d spent a long time getting her business to this point.
She’d doubled her revenue almost every year. She was making way more money than she ever had at her last day job. Plus her clients adored her, and for good reason: they were getting great results …
… but she was working 60+ hours a week, just to keep up with everything that was going on.
For years, Amy had tried to lighten the load by doing all the things the Internet Marketing gurus talked about.
Here she was, working late … again.
Amy sighed. She closed out her inbox (ignoring the dozens of unread messages waiting for her) and turned her attention back to the latest files that her most recent subcontract hire had sent.
Scrolling through the ad copy, she found her stomach sinking further and further. “Never mind being able to take on more clients,” she thought to herself. “There’s hours of rework needed just to make sure I don’t lose the ones I’ve already got.”
“Guess I won’t be going to bed before midnight tonight after all …”
I wish I could tell you that I was surprised when Amy told me that this is what was going on in her business.
(It’s Jill writing now, by the way.)
The truth is, pretty much every client that I’ve ever coached has had a similar horror story to tell.
It’s not even that they’ve been doing the wrong things. Often, they’ve got a great team, and they have built some solid systems and processes along the way.
It’s just that despite having done all of that, they’re still left with too much work … work that only they can do. And it’s not like they are making enough money to hire the kind of high-level support they think they really need … though at this point, they’re usually not really sure that would help, either.
(Some other time, maybe I’ll tell you about the client who came to us having hired a high-level Integrator / Project Manager / Ops Manager four different times, only to end up right back where she started … just with a bit more gray hair and a lot less money in her bank account).
And so people like Amy … people like you … spend hours trying to tell team members what to do, never mind all the time and effort you put into systematizing and automating things beforehand.
The question is:
I’ll tell you how Amy’s story turned out in a little bit, but for right now I want to dig into this a bit deeper.
Because when you peel back the layers, all of these scaling issues come down to one simple thing:
Even after systematizing, automating and delegating, if your delivery model still requires you to be personally involved with every client …
Whether that’s to create the systems, build the automations, or delegate the work to your team …
Then you’ll never be able to take on more clients than you can personally handle.
Now, I think we all get that if you want to be able to keep the personal touch in your work with clients, there’s only so much that you can systematize and automate.
But the problem with delegation is a bit more subtle …
See, as Breanne likes to remind anyone and everyone who will listen … the word “delegate” is a verb:
del·e·gate | \ ˈde-li-ˌgāt \
And that means that “delegating” is an action. By definition, that means delegation needs someone to do it.
You figure out what needs to be done, how to do it, when to do it … and then assign someone else to do it.
And then you figure out the next thing that needs to be done, how to do it, when to do it … and you assign that out too.
Wash, rinse, and repeat. The cycle just keeps going.
Every time something needs to get done, you have to go through that same process.
Even hiring someone else to “run your team” doesn’t really help, because you still need to tell them what work to delegate!
And so what happens when a system breaks, or an automation fails, or the team member doesn’t do the right thing?
Well, if you care about your clients’ experience and results (and I know that you do), you end up jumping back into the weeds to fix it.
Every emergency, every unexpected situation, every edge case and exception … all those fires always come back to you to put them “out”.
That’s why you can’t take a real vacation, why you end up always being “on-call” in your business, and why … after the air has cleared … you’re always the one left to pick up the pieces.
It’s always up to you to fix your systems, shore up your automations, and create even more clear instructions about what your team should do the next time something similar arises.
You will still end up needing to dictate the details of what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. And that, more than anything else, is what will keep you stuck down in the day-to-day.
🚫 Systematizing doesn’t solve this problem.
🚫 Automating can’t solve this problem.
🚫 And delegation sure as hell doesn’t solve this problem.
In fact, all three of these so-called “solutions” that the Internet Marketing gurus love to preach don’t do anything to help with the decisions side of your business.
And that, my friend?
That is why you are the bottleneck in your business.
Because as Gino Wickman—the guy who popularized the idea of the “Integrator” in the books Rocket Fuel and Traction —says:
“It’s simple math. One person can only make so many decisions and solve so many problems.
You cannot build an enduring, successful organization that lives beyond you if your organization is designed to crumble the minute you step aside.”
via Traction
It’s so important, it bears repeating:
Well, as Amy discovered, you need a completely different way of structuring your business. One that is:
💰 Not only super simple and profitable to run (without skimping on the client results!) …
🚀 But which also aligns your delivery model, team and operations to be completely scalable …
🙌 And which is based on a culture that ensures that the right decisions get made, even when you’re not involved.
More on that on the next page.
Time to finish our story…
Hey—Breanne here again.
(Jill: what, you couldn’t let me have even ONE page all to myself?)
(Breanne: this is important!)
(Jill: *sigh* fine …)
Okay, so you remember the friend I was telling you about on the last page?
The one who messaged me last July, full freak-out in progress?
Turns out, it was the good kinda freak out.
She’d just had her entire team update their job descriptions, and on a whim, decided to do it for her job, too.
Her old job description probably sounds pretty similar to yours right now:
In other words, she was pretty much the Chief Everything Doer for her business. It’s a big reason why she was ready to blow the whole thing up, turn her whole team over, and shrink the whole thing back.
But check out where she’s at right now:
We call this 👆 “being the Visionary CEO” of your business.
We’re going to talk a LOT more about how that all works in detail, starting on the next page.
But for now, I just want you to let this sink in.
Rather than being stuck in the day-to-day, chasing your team around, micromanaging, working all hours, putting out fires, missing vacations, hustling to meet deadlines …
My friend is living proof that it’s entirely possible to have a business that will keep growing, making money, and having a bigger impact …
… whether or not you do anything related to marketing, selling, client delivery, running her team, building systems, or any of the rest of it.
Getting to $1M wasn’t enough to make it happen.
Neither was systematizing, automating, or delegating.
No, to get there, she needed to create a completely different job for herself.
She needed to #BeTheVisionaryCEO.
More on that soon.
(Jill: done now?)
(Me: yep.)
(Jill: good.)