For years, I've prided myself on my accessibility. When someone emailed my podcasts or my businesses, I would personally read and respond to every message. It would sometimes take weeks or months for me to respond, but I refused to let someone else do it for me. I wanted to keep my hands in every aspect of my business—even in the design and coding of projects.
I was the superhero of my business.
Even though I knew that business style can't scale, I held on tightly. I considered it a badge of honor for me to directly serve my audience and customers, and to be skilled enough to design and code well.
But the truth is that badge and my pride were getting in the way, weighing me down, and thus actually preventing me from serving as many people. Even those I could serve were often not getting my best.
As is the brilliant title of a friend's podcast, I need to mature “from founder to CEO.”
Growth is what all podcasts and businesses want, but it's also the hardest thing to handle. Growth requires more financial investment, better planning and communication, andmore trust in others.
With properly guided growth comes higher returns, a stronger team, and greater outreach.
Thus, with both anxiousness and delight, I must officially let go of many things I've been holding on to:
- Answering emails
- Customer service
- Product administration
- Graphic design
- Web programming
- Video production
- Accounting
- And even some of my writing
This will be a hard transition for me. Many of these things will take longer for me to train than to do myself. That's only a short-term problem with long-term gain.
Most importantly, this will allow me to better serve more people because I won't be so burdened with the details.
So if you email my podcast or my business, you may get a response from someone on my team and I may never read the message myself. I hate that I can't promise a personalized response from myself, but that's now an impossible promise to keep while providing for my family.
I'm no longer only the entrepreneur, I'm the teamleader—the CEO.
By focusing on the right things for me, I can serve you better and reach more people at the same time.
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