#51: Leading & Loving It
It’s time for you to start enjoying your business.
When you grow and scale quickly, it’s easy to get lost in tasks that you can easily delegate to your team members.
In this episode, I'll walk you through the following three steps that will help you have more fun in your business:
The exercise that will make delegating simple, elevating you in your business.
Writing your own job description.
How to have important conversations with your team about their roles and responsibilities.
Tune into this episode to hear how these steps can increase productivity + profitability.
Check out my new free new training on www.yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond.
Listen to the Show:
Laura (00:03):
So here's the challenge: so many entrepreneurs dream of leading a life of impact by creating a multi-million dollar brand, but only a tiny percentage of businesses actually scale to that point. On this podcast, we speak openly authentically about what it takes to scale your business, following the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts, and leaders, looking at the behind the scenes of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned. My name is Laura Meyer and I'm your host. I'm a serial entrepreneur, wife and mom to three. I love talking all things business, especially digging into the mindset and strategies of scaling joyfully to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond. Let's go!
(00:45):
Hello, hello friends. So today I am going to be talking about the process of actually enjoying this whole leadership component of growing your business. That tends to come up as you are scaling, as you are growing, as you were adding team members, as you're adding revenue streams, as it becomes more and more and more, and making this really critical switch at a certain point, that might be a little bit different than what you think. So when you first started out, you had this tremendous vision, right? You wanted to become an entrepreneur because you had this great idea of what you could put out in the world. And you saw it as a way to increase your wealth and get more freedom and margin in your life, and actually run your day to day activities in a way that feels aligned with who you are and you have this big dream, right, and this tremendous vision.
(01:38):
And then what happens is more, gets added, more programs, more courses, more people, more team members. And before you know it, you actually start growing and resentment towards your business and towards your team, because all you're doing is answering questions all day long and getting the tasks done. Right? And so as the boss, in the beginning, it's exciting because you're watching it grow, but then it can become a real drain. It feels like you're forever working on everything. Even if you have a team in place to help. And sometimes you even think to yourself, like, what are all these people even doing? I have heard that from my clients before, like I have all these people, but what is it that they're doing? Like, I don't even know what it is that they're all working on. They're all busy. Like I know they're busy.
(02:29):
I watch them with their tasks and all of the emails and the tax, but it just feels like everything is still on me. And that's a really natural feeling, particularly as you start getting to that seven figure mark and beyond, even when you have a team to play in place to help, it feels so heavy. And you start really not enjoying the process of leading your company. So I want to share with you some key activities that can do, if this resonates with you, if you feel like this you've said before, you said like, why are we even doing all this? You know, I was more profitable before I had, I had a smaller team. It was easier. It was fun. Like, why are we even, why are we even growing? And I think this is incredibly common at certain points in your entrepreneurial journey.
(03:22):
And you know, when you're leading, everybody's looking at you to- well lead, they're watching how you handle things, how you react to things, they're watching what you say and how you say it because it's really setting the tone for them. And if you're reactive, they're reactive and that's when it can just feel like there's fires everywhere. So when you want to scale your business into the multi-millions, it's important to be more than just a leader. It's important to be more than just a fire extinguisher. You want to be a thoughtful leader and you start with this. You want to know what lights you up. You have to begin with your own self. Many people will go right to writing job descriptions for everybody in the company to get lots of clarity. But what they don't do is actually start with themselves. And if you're a parent, you know, the saying of putting your oxygen mask on first, it's really hard to make sure that your kids are in a great place when you're burnt out and depleted.
(04:21):
And it's the same thing with your team. You want to make sure that you are filling your own cup first. And so you have to start by knowing exactly what it is that you're great at, and that you love to do. Then, and only then, can you surround yourself with a team that tackles the things you don't enjoy doing, or that maybe you're good at, but you actually hate, which are some of the tricky components to get rid of because you're good at it, which is why it stays on your plate. Because remember somebody on your team might Excel at performing a task that you absolutely loathe, and you don't even realize it because you haven't taken the proper steps to discover it. So this is what we call thoughtful leadership. And it's the trademark of any healthy business. So you might be saying to yourself, Laura, this sounds great, but how do I, how do I do that?
(05:13):
And this is a question that I field from so many incredible women who are ready to scale their seven figure business into the multi-millions. And if you're one of them, or if you're a man, I happen to have mostly women clients. But if you are a man this applies to you too. And before I'm going to give you the solution, I'd like to share a story about Margo. Margo came to me right on the heels of reaching seven figures. She had a small and mighty team in place that helped to get her there. But Margo felt exhausted by her business. She kept hiring and hiring and hiring to fill these gaps of these people that liked doing this one thing and didn't like doing the other thing. And then the things that they didn't like doing, because it wasn't in their zone of genius. And it ended right back on Margo's plate and Margot is starting to become exhausted.
(05:59):
She was starting to resent her business. Her husband was like, listen, I'll pay you anything. If I can just get my wife back. And I was trying to sort through like, how do I best help Margo with this? Because even though I'm a revenue generating consultant, and I really focus on sales and marketing, a lot of times what happens is just scaling problems come up as we tackle the revenue generation that I want to make sure that we're addressing or else, we'll generate all this revenue. And then the entrepreneur will dislike their business, which I don't want. So we were trying to figure out how to help her because she was headed to burn out fast. And if you've ever been burnt out before you know that there is a line that once you go past, it's very difficult to come back from burnout.
(06:46):
There was a time in which I was so burnt out, I couldn't even see any other possibility than shutting down my company, which is what I did. And that was just one instance out of many companies that I've run. But now I know how risky burnout is and how you want to catch it before it gets to that place of no return. For Margot, this is very unlike what she imagined, what life would be like once she reached that seven figure milestone. If you're growing your business to the seven figure, Mark, and you might not have even reached the six figure mark, you may be thinking to yourself, Oh, and I just get to a million, or I get to a multi-million life is going to be so much easier. Like the clouds will open and the sunshine will come down and it will always be a great day once I get to seven figures and it's rarely like that.
(07:37):
And this is a little bit more of the reality. Once you reach that huge milestone, a lot of times your bootstrap team starts needing to become a little bit more sophisticated. And if you don't up-level both them and your way of thoughtful leadership, it can just end up being very overwhelming and a fast track to burnout. So this is going to be a really critical exercise that I can't emphasize enough that you do immediately if you're feeling this way at all, within EOS, which is the entrepreneurs system invented by Gino Wickman. And the book is called Traction. Probably many of you listening are familiar. There's an exercise called elevate/delegate, and you can Google it. You can get the worksheet. And this exercise is what I started Margot with and there's four simple quadrants. And there are a go in the order of upper, the upper left-hand side of the quadrant is writing down everything that you like, that you love to do.
(08:41):
And that you're phenomenal at you just list out everything in your day that you do all little tasky things. And if you're feeling a creative block around this one thing that you can do is just write down all the things that you do in like a week, just keep track, keep a calendar next to your desk and just keep track of everything that you do, and then sort it into these quadrants. So the first is like, I love this. It lights me up. I enjoy it. If somebody else did it, I would be so sad because when I see it on my plate, I really look forward to doing that. And then the upper right hand side is things that you love doing, but you're not good at. And sometimes this is a little bit less common to have a box filled with many items.
(09:31):
What's more common to be filled is the box on the lower left-hand quadrant, which is stuff that you hate. But that you're good at. These are the things that are the hardest to let go, because in your head, you're thinking, Oh man, I've got to now train somebody on this. I've got to get them up and running. This is going to be so hard. We have lots of stories about that box, and it's really important that you list them out and you get to a point where it's just got to go because you might be good at it, but you hate it. And the risk of burnout is greater than the risk of handing off those activities. And you do get to that tipping point where you're like, all right, I'm ready to let it go. And then the tasks that you hate and that you're not good at, but they're on your plate for some reason.
(10:20):
And usually they're on your plate because somebody on your team should be doing it, but they're not. For whatever reason they think they should be getting paid more. They think that it's not their job. It wasn't what they were hired to do. And what needs to happen in that situation is revisiting the conversations that maybe you had when you were at a hundred thousand 500,000, because now you're at a million or 2 million or 5 million, and the company changed and now the job requirements have changed. And those are tricky conversations. And that's why a lot of times you hear the saying of the people that got you to this point are often not the same people that will get you to the next iteration of your business. And it's not because of their skill set. It's really because of their mindset. And sometimes those difficult conversations bring out the mindset I am of the belief that most people can learn.
(11:15):
Most things. If they choose not to be confused or overwhelmed by it, if they choose to step into possibility around it, most people can learn most things. And so what happens is that it really comes down to that team member and them choosing to actually accept these new responsibilities as a result of your growing business. Then, this is the next step. So that is step one is the elevate delegate exercise. And step two is writing your job description for yourself. Many, many times we have job descriptions that we write for everyone else in our company. And I remember at point of frustration, when I growing my own multi seven figure business, where I realized that nobody knew what it was that I did. And so they would say, well, there's no one to take this task. So it must be Laura. So I'll just put it on her plate.
(12:06):
I'll put the monkey on her back. If you've ever read that article from Harvard Business Review, I will just put the, put it in her inbox. She'll know what to do with it, cause no one else does. And I realized that by writing my job description and handing it out to my team, it really gave them insight into what I expected to land on my plate and what I expected them to handle. And then it became a much easier conversation around, well, this was part of your role because it's not on my job description. So what is it that we're going to do about it? Because putting it on my plate, isn't an option. And that's where those, what can be seemingly tough performance conversations become very clean and clear. And so I encourage you to take that elevate delegate exercise, write your job description only around the things that you love and that you're great at and make sure that all the other tasks that are in the other three quadrants go on somebody else's job description.
(13:17):
Then you have the conversations, you have the performance conversations. Do you have the job role conversations. Then you start talking about upside and performance plans and things like that. And you scale confidently, knowing that you're actually going to like your own job in your own company, which I think is so incredibly important. So doing this exercise will not only help you become the CEO you envisioned, but it will make you more valuable leader to your team. Your team wants to experience joy from you. They want to experience you as a happy fun leader who, yes will have challenges will have difficulties, but enjoys the process of becoming an inexperienced entrepreneur, enjoys the process of becoming a thoughtful leader. And this is an incredibly important component to making sure that you are always operating from a positive place and that you are creating an environment that people are going to be motivated, not only by what they're getting paid, but how they're being treated.
(14:23):
So ultimately your team needs you to do this exercise so that you're an example that others want to follow. Not that they have to follow. And your team deserves this too, to operate from their own zones of genius, to have clarity around what it is that's expected of them. And so that they can grow in confidence and happiness. You won't believe the difference that these series of steps makes in productivity environment. And yes, ultimately your bottom line, because where your joy is, that is where the fruit is. That is where profitability and revenue always follows. I have never seen a leader go into a launch, grumpy, unhappy, and have the launch, blow it out of the water. It's always, when you're going into it, feeling really aligned and excited about your offer that you, that all of a sudden you realize, Oh my gosh, we doubled our numbers.
(15:21):
And I didn't even realize it because I was having so much fun doing it. And that's so incredibly important to our spirit as entrepreneurs, because it gets back to the why of becoming a business owner, even in the first place. So if this was helpful to you, I would just ask you to let me know, send me a direct message on Instagram, that tends to be where I live with in my inbox. Please just let me know on LinkedIn or leave a review. It would mean so, so much to me, I want to get this message out to as many entrepreneurs as possible, because I know what it's like to just not love the day-to-day of your business and to not enjoy the process of becoming a leader in your own company. And so I really hope that this helps you take that tremendous vision that you had in the beginning stages of entrepreneurship and bring it with you as you scale to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond.
(16:22):
Hey there! Before you head out, I wanted to let you know about a free new training I have right on a brand new website called yournextmillion.me It's yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses, to the multimillion dollar mark and beyond. And I have to tell you, it is not what you think. So check it out yournextmillion.me. And if you loved this show, will you subscribe to it and share it with a friend or just say something nice about it to someone you know? I'd really appreciate it so much. Thanks so much for being here and I'll see you next time.
The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.