The One Thing In The Way of 10x

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 .

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