As a high achiever, I notice a pattern.

I give myself a challenge. I meet the challenge. I find fleeting happiness in that challenge. I move to a different challenge.

I notice this with the people I hang out with, too.

I hang out with a group of high achievers. I learn what I can and quickly rise to the top of the group. I move to find a different group.

But I’ve noticed two things that I struggle with, and I’m wondering if the same might be true for you.

I Create People and Situations So That I Can Win

I was with a group of coaches this week and I have been coaching longer than most of them. I charge higher fees than most of them. In a lot of ways I am “more successful” than they are.

But this week I challenged myself to create every conversation as a gift, as something that I could learn from.

And I found there was so much richness in that room. That if I showed up as “I can learn from you,” rather than “Been there done that,” there was a world of new learning freshly available to me.

I came away from an intensive that I had attended for the first time in 2016 with a new perspective on what was available for me. With a new appreciation for the depth of work that was still available to me.

I could take this on as a lifelong journey rather than a check the box. Rather than, “Is that all there is?”

And I came back changed.

I Avoid Uncomfortable Rooms and Intimidating People

I feel like I’m pretty good at continually challenging myself.

But I’m really not.

Because I only take on challenges that I think I can meet. Things that look possible. Things that I can already see how I can get there.

As my coach said to me recently, “The only worthwhile challenge is the one that you have no idea how to do.”

How do I meet with people I have no idea if or how I can serve?

How do I serve them?

How do I get into more rooms that scare me?

What is it that I want that I have no idea how to get?

What Are You Avoiding Because It Scares You?

Does this resonate?

I confess I don’t know how to make this feeling go away.

For me or for you.

But I do know a lot more becomes available when I share it.

Let me know if that’s true for you, too.

Going Deeper

If you want to explore this in more depth, you are not alone.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning. To the joy of feeling alive and “on purpose.”

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

There’s been a lot written about “10xing” your company, most notably by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy in their book, “10x Is Easier Than 2x.”

For me, that book can be summarized by a single sentence on page 69—

[This founder] exhibits a quality that only the world’s top achievers do: the ability to rapidly accept a new identity.

The rest of the book gives great advice on what to do, but almost nothing on how to create and accept a new identity.

This is the work that I do.

Growing More By Doing Less

The founder challenge is that the very reasons they start a company—they have a better idea and they want to prove themselves—are the things that will get in the way of them growing the company.

As I see companies move from $1 million to 10 million to $100 million to $1 billion, I see the founder struggle with letting go.

Expertise

When the founder starts out, often they are doing everything, not because they want to, but because they have to.

As things grow and succeed, they become more confident in their own abilities, and they hesitate to let go of the very things that they didn’t want to do at first.

I was talking with a serial entrepreneur last week who took pride in being able to figure everything out. On top of having several ideas that are in various stages of company formation, he has built several houses and he laughed at me for hiring a plumber to fix my shower.

“I can do anything,” he said proudly.

“Yes, but you can’t do everything,” I replied.

His ability to figure everything out was the very thing that was keeping any of these ideas, at least so far, from succeeding.

Decisions

As a company grows in size it also grows in complexity.

But owners can often feel like, even after they have hired people with deeper expertise—in sales, in finance, IT, product, legal, HR—that they still need to make the final decisions.

The founder becomes a bottleneck to growth.

It can feel risky and uncomfortable to let others make decisions.

A business owner client of mine told me at one point, “I feel like I am the thing that is getting in the way of becoming a bigger company.”

This is what he was referring to.

Hiring

Many of the founders that I work with are involved in (at first) every hire, and later, every “key” hire.

Most of them rely on instinct, “fit,” and other hard-to-define metrics.

And, if examined dispassionate, most of them are bad it.

They hire the wrong people too quickly, and then then fire the very same people too slowly. They think if only they spent more time with them, they could “save” them. They feel like they let the person down.

Hiring is simply another key area where the founder should delegate to those who have deeper expertise.

Should the founder meet with key people before they are hired? Absolutely. Should the founder make the final decision? In most cases, no.

Culture and Vision

The last things that most founders hold onto are culture and vision.

Culture, in most organizations, is modeled, sometimes unconsciously, by the founder. It will change as the organization grows, but if the founder believes that a collaborative culture is critical, they can continue to reinforce that to resist the “silos” that can emerge as a company grows.

To survive, culture needs to be made explicit.

The same is true for vision.

Vision is more than simply product/market fit.

Vision is WHY the company exists.

Vision is WHY people join the company, and sometimes, why people leave.

Vision and culture are how companies like Apple can continue to grow and succeed. The impact of vision and culture are the legacy of what Steve Jobs built, even more than ten years after his death.

If the founder wants to hold onto the company, their leadership around culture and vision is critical. And if the founder wants to sell, they have to realize that they will need to let go of culture and vision as well.

A Series Of Small Deaths

Every step of the way, the founder has to let go of things that have been, to that point, critical to the founder’s identity.

Their expertise, their decision-making, their need to control.

What do you need to let go of?

It can be very uncomfortable. It can look like it is “other people” who have the problem. But I assure you, it’s you.

If this feels uncomfortable, let’s talk.

Going Deeper

If you want to explore this in more depth, you are not alone.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning. To the joy of feeling alive and “on purpose.”

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

As I was moving up in my career I relied on three strategies to succeed at work. To get good reviews, to get promoted, to get the sale.

The problem with all of these strategies is that they work.

Until they don’t. Until they exhaust you.

You might not even be aware of them. I know I wasn’t. But now I see them everywhere.

What are those strategies?

Outpleasing

Just say yes to everything anyone ever asks of you. What could be wrong with that?

There is nothing wrong with outstanding customer service.

There is nothing wrong with making sure your boss or your client is happy.

Except that sometimes, that means NOT saying things that actually should be said.

Not telling the truth, avoiding conflict, and continuing to do things that make no sense because you don’t have the courage to challenge them.

Ever been afraid to tell the client that what they want will not work? And then lost the client when it didn’t?

Ouch.

Out pleasing may look like it works. But at some point it will fail. Often spectacularly.

Outworking

When I was a law firm lawyer, I made sure that I had more total hours than anyone else in my department. And my billables were always high, too.

You need me on a weekend? You need me to stay late? I’m there. Mr. Dedication.

When you are doing the same thing as a lot of other people, outworking them is a tempting way to differentiate yourself.

The challenge, like the other strategies I am going to discuss, is that it most likely is not sustainable. At my law firm, I fell into a destructive cycle of caffeine during the day and alcohol at night and never feeling fulling awake and engaged.

I created the APPEARANCE of working hard (and I WAS exhausted) but I was not really producing much. It fit the law firm model, but it FELT awful.

Outsmarting

This is the one I run into most with founders and even CEOs of larger companies.

When you start your own business, BY DEFINITION one of the reasons you are doing it is because you think you have a better way.

A better idea, a better process, better code.

And it can be easy to think that if you were hired as the CEO, it must have been because you are really, really smart.

But if you have a head of sales, a head of product, a head of finance, a head of IT, are you really trying to tell me you know more than ALL of them? If you do, you don’t hire very good people.

One of my CEO clients told me he only owns two things—culture and vision.

Everything else has a smarter person than him in charge of it.

He grew the company and sold to a strategic buyer. You can do the same.

What To Do Instead?

If you find yourself doing these, and getting burned by them, there is an answer.

It’s not perfect. But it is perfect for you. And you will find the perfect people to help you.

You have a perfect leadership style, just waiting to be revealed.

If this resonates, let’s talk.

Going Deeper

If you want to explore this in more depth, this journey from knowing all the answers to questioning what to do next, you are not alone.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning. To the joy of feeling alive and “on purpose.”

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.