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.

I was taught that I shouldn’t want things.

But as humans, we seem to always want more. We reach one goal, we get a few moments of satisfaction, and we almost immediate start thinking, “What else?”

Culturally, we are told that wanting more is bad.

That wanting more is greedy and selfish.

That wanting more is wrong when others are suffering.

That wanting more is somehow taking from those who have less.

That at some point, once we have “enough,” we will stop wanting.

I have never found any of these things to be true.

Wanting More Is Your Very Nature

How often in your career or your life have you ACTUALLY been content. For more than a few moments, anyway?

It has been a rarity for me. Every time I thought I was getting close, like I thought I had a goal that would finally be enough, it was both elusive and illusory.

Why couldn’t I ever be content? I already have so much more than so many. Why is it that I have to be so selfish and greedy?

But what if selfish and greedy is the lie? What if your own innate desire and capacity to create is the truth?

What if, instead of fighting it, we accepted it as part of the design, as part of what makes humans special in the first place?

I have found at least three benefits to always wanting more.

Wanting More Leads to Creating More

The more I want, the more I create. I am here to serve and in that service I create and create that others can create more as well.

What game is it that I would like to play? What game is it that you would like to play? What would be fun to create just to have the experience of creating it?

Now multiply that out over your lifetime and the lifetimes of all that you touch. What is created simply from that desire to create?

Yes, there are those who create mostly for themselves. Who create mostly from the fear that they are not enough.

But those who see that their very capacity to create makes them virtually unlimited see that the illusion of not-enoughness is created, too.

We are always creating—that is the essence of being a human. Embracing that, in my experience, does not lead to contentment, but to even more creation and capacity to create.

Wanting More Leads To Being More

Whenever you create something new, there is some part of you that must be created as new in the process of that creation.

In other words, when we create, we create ourselves as well.

In one of my early roles at my consulting firm, I had to give talks to fifty or more people at a time. I had to answer questions about technical developments in the space that I was working in (employee benefits and tax law).

I was terrified of public speaking. At first. But I learned to enjoy it, to create a version of myself that loved speaking. Now I love speaking to audiences of any size. The energy that I once interpreted as stage fright is now the excitement of getting to play a big game.

I am guessing the game that you play today is very different than the game you played ten or twenty or thirty years ago.

Because you have created a new you, just as you have created other things in the world.

Wanting More Leads To Giving More

My favorite part of wanting more is how it enables me to give more. My coach told me that he has noticed that as he gives in the world, he is given more back. And that the cycle repeats—giving enables more giving.

He has created the capacity in others to give billions of dollars to meaningful causes. Dollars that would not have been created without his work.

All of that started with his desire, and the desire of the people he works with.

Wanting was the key to all of it.

Wanting Is Your Roadmap

We are trained from a very young age not to trust what we want. To think that it is selfish or greedy or that we will hurt people in the process of going after it.

It is true there are people who are willing to hurt others to get what they want.

But what I have found is that, in most cases, going after what you want actually results in you GIVING rather than taking.

If you charge for a product or service, you have to create more value through that product or service than you charge for it.

If you run a company at some point you hire people. You create jobs, you create certainty and happiness for tens or even thousands of people.

Even as you spend the money you are making, you are giving that money to others for the value they are creating for you. Wanting more leads to being more and giving more, almost every time.

TRUST what you want. Do everything you can to go after it. Be fearless. I have never seen someone truly want something that they did not have everything they needed to create. You CAN do it. The only question is whether you WILL.

The discomfort you feel, that sense of “Can I really do this?” is a sign that you are exactly where you need to be.

The universe is offering. Will you accept the challenge?

Wanting To Go Deeper?

Does this sense of honoring what you want resonate? 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.

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.