I worked with a tech founder who felt constantly overwhelmed in his business, which had caused growth to stall (a death knell in entrepreneurship).
His biggest problem:
“I’m just so busy all day every day. I don’t have time to actually grow the business because so many things require me to be the final decision-maker.”
It’s an all-too-common trap many entrepreneurs fall into in their businesses (and maybe you’re struggling with it to right now).
There are tons of complicated models and matrices that might help, but I prefer a more straightforward route.
So here’s how I helped them save 15 hours every week with three simple questions…
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Question 1:
“You’re assuming you have to be the final decision-maker. But how accurate is this assumption?”
He realized he was operating off of dozens of false assumptions that had led to him believing every single decision in his company had to go through him.
This is especially common for scrappy founders whose superpower of being the operator and doing everything themselves helped them start an incredible company.
But this superpower quickly turns into their kryptonite when it comes to scaling that company.
The very work ethic that got you here has become the bottleneck keeping you from going any further.
So, we identified and untangled these false assumptions to start the process of removing him as the bottleneck in his company.
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Question 2:
“What specific questions are people asking?”
To take an inventory of all these questions, he created a Slack channel that everyone had to use to submit their questions.
After a week, we looked through them.
He realized most of the questions he was spending his time answering were low-leverage decisions that didn’t actually require him to be the person to make them.
This inventory showed close to 90% were either repetitive questions or ones he could easily train someone else to handle.
With this knowledge in hand, we moved to the final question…
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Question 3:
“Who can you put in place to handle these questions?”
He found a trusted employee who loved operations and promoted them. Their job was to handle most of lower-level decisions and report to him.
This freed up three hours a day, which added up to 15 hours a week (or an entire month over the course of a year).
He decided to split this time between scaling his company, taking high-leverage meetings, and playing guitar.
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Takeaway
Oftentimes, we unintentionally create (or become) bottlenecks in our companies, which takes up all of our time and limits our company’s growth.
Yes, learning to identify these bottlenecks and apply strategies to remove them is key.
But another huge piece, from a psychological perspective, is learning to let go of control.
No amount of productivity advice will help you give yourself permission to let go.
That typically takes working with a professional to help you deal with the mental side of business.
Mindset is key to succeeding in this industry—because it’s all too easy to become your own worst enemy without even realizing it.
Oftentimes, growth requires letting go.
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P.S.
Yes, this founder freed up 15 hours a week.
But more importantly, they freed their mind by learning to strategically let go of control of low-value tasks so they could focus their time, energy, and attention doing work only they could do—the highest-value work for themselves and their company.
That was the true unlock coaching that helped them achieve.
What would you do if you could free up 40% of your time?
I’d love to help.
Apply to work with me for coaching now by checking out my coaching page here, or shoot me a message (email, Twitter, or LinkedIn) with what you want to achieve and your budget to see how we can work together.
