Team, trust, and letting go – The multi 6 figure shift

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

There is one CEO skill entrepreneurs really struggle with the most, and that is team. I am not just talking about managing the team and and building a high performance team. I’m also talking about the process of actually hiring and getting past the mindset of letting go.

If you’ve hit the point in business where you realise, oh crap, I can’t keep doing everything myself. Today’s episode is for you. Let’s talk team, trust, and letting go.

So look, today we are talking all about team, and I wanted to talk about this topic because it’s something that’s been coming up quite a bit in my mastermind, the Profit Collective. And here’s what I’ve noticed, when you sort of hit that a 100K to 300K mark. Your business is, is working, it’s ticking.

You’ve got clients, you are making money. But behind the scenes, what a lot of the time I find is that my clients feel like they’re drowning. Drowning in admin. The to-do list is overflowing, and basically you are held together by caffeine and sheer determination. So here’s the challenge. Getting to the six figure mark is one thing, but scaling beyond that requires a completely different skillset and a completely different mindset.

When you first start, you are the business. You do the sales, the marketing, the client work, the invoicing. You’re doing it all. And that’s fine, that works .Until you reach a point where it doesn’t. And hitting this next level means that you need to shift your focus from being the doer in the business to being the leader of the business.

This is where you need to step in and bring in team and really start to focus on systems and scalability. And this is where, unfortunately I see a lot of very clever business owners get stuck. Because they, they recognise I need help. And maybe they even take the step of hiring someone, but then it doesn’t work out.

This person isn’t what they expected them to be, or they aren’t the right fit, and they try again. And then that person doesn’t work out either. And then suddenly they’re in this dilemma of how do I navigate through this? Do you know what? It was actually just easier when I did it all myself. It was quicker, it was easier.

I’m just gonna go back to that. And this is something I hear time and time again inside the Profit Collective because this is what stage my mastermind is at, sort of at that, at that scaling stage. And here’s the truth bomb. You’re probably right. No one’s gonna do it as perfectly as you, and that’s okay.

But to move forward, you have two choices. You can either keep doing everything yourself and doing it perfectly. I’m doing that perfectly inverted commas, or you start to delegate imperfectly so that you can actually grow. Because here’s the thing, you can’t scale perfection. You can only scale systems and I’m gonna be honest, a lot of business owners are perfectionists, control freaks, and I say that with love because I know I can be one too.

You built your business to this level by doing everything your way and it’s worked. And so naturally you think that’s the only way to move forward. But here’s what I wanna challenge you with. Is it really around standards or is it around control? Because a lot of time what I see is that it’s perfectionism.

We say it’s maintaining quality, but really it’s, I don’t trust anyone else to do it like me. And here’s the thing, you’re right, no one else will probably do everything the same way that you do. They’ll do it differently. Sometimes worse, but sometimes better.

If you wanna have a business that doesn’t collapse, the moment you take a holiday or get the flu, you’ve gotta learn to let go, and let’s talk practically because sometimes it’s not a trust issue. Maybe you, you are happy to, to delegate. Um, but maybe it’s a clarity issue. I know that I have had this realisation many times myself.

I’ve worked with my, um, beautiful assistant Sally for many years. I think it’s seven years now. And we just work so well together. I can give her the vaguest instructions and she understands exactly what I mean, runs with it and just. Honestly, like, you know, 99 times out of a hundred what she delivers is fantastic.

But when I’ve been bringing in other team members, or when I’ve been working, for example, with AI ChatGPT, when I give vague instructions, they’re really struggling to deliver. And the reason for that, like for example, I might give Sally the feedback or can you please tidy this up. Or I might say, can you please go and create some content for my launch?

See how vague that instruction is? And what I’ve learned when I’m giving it to someone who hasn’t worked with me for a long period of time is they send something back, which actually has kind of hit the milestone of what I said, but in my head I’m going, oh, that’s not what I meant. But the problem wasn’t, isn’t with them, it’s with me.

I wasn’t articulating properly what I wanted, and I haven’t had the proper systems and process in place to support people to do the job well. Like for example, if, for me, I said to a new team member, Hey, go and create my, my social media content for my launch. There would be a system, a structure in place, and they would just pick it up and be like, okay, cool.

I can run with that. I understand exactly what you mean. So if you are feeling frustrated by a new team member or with your team, before you fire everyone and go back to being a one person show, ask yourself some questions. Am I being a control freak or a perfectionist about this? Have I actually trained them properly?

Have I clearly articulated and documented what success looks like? Or am I expecting people to read my mind? Because the clearer your instructions, the better your outcomes. Whether that’s your assistant, a social media manager, or your team member, or even with ai.

So that’s the practical side. Let’s go and talk a little bit about mindset because this is where the real magic happens. If you are used to being the, the be-all everything person let it go is gonna feel really unnatural. You might feel guilty like, what, what are my clients aren’t getting serviced the way they used to.

What if this person messes up? What if people do know that I’ve got team. And they think that I’m lazy or they’re not happy to pay for the service anymore because someone else is doing some of the crunch work, and this is where the next level sits. Inside the collective, we talk a lot about these mindset transformations because what I see is when the members start letting go releasing control, the shift is wild.

They say things like, oh my gosh, Claire, I have so much more freedom. Someone else is taking care of the, the bookkeeping or my inbox or whatever it might be. I’m hearing I have more space in my calendar. And the other thing that I love to hear is I finally have the capacity, the bandwidth to focus on strategy instead of the day-to-day chaos, I can actually think about being the CEO and creating real growth in the business ’cause I have the spaciousness to do so. This is when people start to shift from basically being employees of their own business to being the CEO of their empire. You can’t build a million dollar business on startup habits, and this is exactly why I created, created my Mastermind, the Profit Collective. Because this journey, from doing it all to actually being a leader. It’s not just about strategy, it’s also about the emotional stuff. ’cause it’s really confronting inside the collective, we’re having deep conversations about boundaries, about team dynamics, leadership, delegation, all of this messy middle stuff that people aren’t talking about on Instagram.

And the cool thing about the collective that I really love is that you’re not doing it alone. It’s not just about having a coach, it’s about being part of a community, being around other business owners who get it. So when my collective members ask a question, whether it’s in the Facebook community or one of our calls, it’s not just me who’s chipping in with my advice, it’s the other collective members, people who are moving through it alongside you.

Other business owners who really get it, and the ripple effect of these conversations is huge. It’s about freedom, capacity, space to dream again. If you’re ready to stop being the bottleneck in your business and start being the CEO, this is exactly what we do inside the Profit collective. Now this is strictly only for business owners who are making six, preferably multi six figures of revenue a year in business.

So it’s not for everyone. This is a, a high level community of people, you know, scaling towards the million dollar a year mark. But you know, if you are at that stage, I will pop a link in the show notes for today’s episode if you want to check it out, and if you aren’t quite at that stage yet. Keep an eye on my socials, make sure that you’re on my email list because I will share other ways that we can work together and I can help you to get to that next stage and hopefully you can come join us in the collective when you are ready. So to wrap up, the next level looks like doing things differently. And here’s my final thought for you. What’s one thing that you are holding onto that’s really holding you back from your next level? And can I challenge you to delegate that this week?

Because the business that you really want doesn’t just give you money, but it also gives you freedom, time and space can’t exist if you are holding onto every single part of it with white knuckled control. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of the podcast. I really do appreciate you taking the time to listen to the podcast.

I am so glad that you are in my world, and maybe we’ve worked together, maybe we haven’t yet, but I just wanna take a moment and say, I really do appreciate you being here. If you know a six figure business owner who you think would benefit from this episode of the podcast, maybe it’s your audience. Make sure you do share it with them, and I look forward to chatting to you again next week. Adios.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio.