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The Main Street CEO with Theresa Cantley

Why Removing Yourself Completely Is the Wrong Goal

Solo episode

Runtime: approximately 28 minutes

A full text transcript of this episode is provided so the conversation is available to listeners who are deaf or hard of hearing, and to anyone who prefers to read. Timestamps are included throughout. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability: repeated words and false starts have been removed and obvious transcription errors corrected. No meaning has been changed.

Speakers

Theresa Cantley, host

Transcript

Theresa Cantley  (00:01)

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode. We haven’t been here in a couple of weeks, and I hope everyone is doing well, and I hope everyone had a great beginning, start of the new school year. So today I wanted to talk about, there is this thing out there. A lot of people talk about how you basically, what they’re putting out there is how you need to get yourself out of being in the business. Okay. And not having your business own you, and not working in your business all the time, and basically removing yourself. And I wanted to talk about it because the goal should never be to completely remove yourself from your business, whether you are a small business, medium-sized business, whatever. The goal should never be to completely remove yourself, which I know a lot of people have been talking about this. The goal should be, the way that I see it is, and in my experience, is that you need to remove yourself from being in the middle of everything. Being in the middle of all of the decisions, being in the middle of managing absolutely everything in your business, managing every process, managing every, like you are the marketing person and the accounting person, and you own a multi-million dollar business. Like you are making the decisions about everything. The goal should never be to completely remove yourself, which there are a lot of people out there talking about how you just need to put processes in place, you have your team, and then you can only work five hours a week, or you can only work ten, or you should only work ten hours a week, and everybody else can handle it for you. While I believe that yes, you don’t need to be there all the time, you don’t need to be in the middle. I don’t want you to be in the middle of everything, because when you are in the middle of absolutely every decision and you’re doing all the things,

(02:21)

you can’t really focus on what you need to focus on, which is driving the vision. And also, when you are in the middle of everything and your business cannot function without you being there, that actually drives the value of the business down. Because once you step away, then the business, everything starts to crumble. Nobody can make decisions, projects don’t move forward, everything kind of gets log jammed, right? So however, when people, and I’ve seen this happen, when business owners remove themselves completely, and they’re there one time per month, and they’re only there for ten minutes one time per month. So they remove themselves completely without taking certain steps first. Okay, that’s when I have seen things start to crumble. All right. So first and foremost, you can’t just, people are like, well, I have a team in place. Well, I have these processes in place. But as soon as you step away, the team can’t make a decision about something, or certain things in the business start to completely fall apart because they’re not really sure what to do. They’re not really sure how to handle it. And things start to go into a downward spiral, right? So the goal should be to actually be curious about how your business runs, first and foremost. And then start to do, and we’re going to talk about four things. I’m going to give you four things to think about. Start to do these four things so that yes, you can take a vacation. Yes, you can meet with your team one time per week or two times per month. Or even you’re there one time per month. You have a big session and then the rest of the month your team is doing what they do best. They’re empowered to make decisions and the business can continue to run. Like I said, when you are in the middle of everything, and this is something that I work with my clients on, getting themselves out of being in the middle of absolutely everything that happens in the business, that’s when breakdowns start to actually happen.

(04:44)

You actually become the bottleneck in the business, because things can’t happen without you. And like I said, it ends up devaluing the business. Because if the owner isn’t there, then nobody can make decisions. The business can’t run. It actually devalues the business if you’re looking at it on paper. Because there are a lot of breakdowns that happen. There are a lot of costs that you end up incurring that you don’t even realize you’re incurring. And when you’re in the middle of absolutely everything, doing everything, you become the highest paid employee, right? And you’re actually not the highest paid. So I’m going to give you four things to think about so that you can not be an absent owner. And when you’re an absent owner, that’s when, again, things start to go backwards. And I’ve seen it where an owner removes themselves completely from a business, they come back and revenue is down, profit has been eaten into, people are quitting, people are frustrated, and they can’t figure out why. Well, I had a process in place. Well, I have a team in place. I don’t understand. There are reasons for that, right? So I’m going to give you four things to do to kind of set yourself up so that you can start to step back and do the thing that you need to do the most, which is continue to drive the vision. So the first one is, and I mentioned this, lead with presence. So when you’re there, and you don’t have to be there every day, but when you are there, lead with presence. When you’re having conversations with people, making sure, and this is a huge thing with this, if I can back up for a second, is having some rhythms in place with your team. Okay. When you are leading with presence, you have rhythms that keep the flow and the energy going and projects moving forward when you’re not there. So you shouldn’t have to be with a project. I have a client that I had worked with and they said to me that if I’m not driving the actions, if I’m not driving the things that need to happen, nothing happens. Well, that’s a problem. That’s not a team problem.

(07:04)

That’s a rhythm problem. You don’t have a rhythm in place. And when I say rhythm, and when you’re present, it’s making sure that you’re dedicating time to meet with your team and it’s focus time. So the rhythms are, one time per month you have that longer meeting where you’re talking about what’s working with the strategy, where are we, what do we need to course correct, what are our next steps. So that during the week you might have a short check-in with people. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you don’t need to. Maybe it’s one time per week as a short check-in. Maybe you don’t have one. Maybe it’s one time every other week. But then you have that next rhythm where it’s kind of like, okay, we’re kind of stuck on this. Like, what do you think? Or how are things going? Or maybe there isn’t a check-in. Maybe it’s just a message, maybe it’s a text message or an email that gets sent. But you have those rhythms in place where you’re consistently, you’re letting, and it’s not about you being in the middle of it and having to make the decisions. It’s you letting your team know, your leadership team, your managers. It’s letting them know that you trust them to make decisions. You trust the work that they’re doing, and the work that they’re doing matters. Okay. And that you are also keeping a pulse on the business and that you want to know what’s happening so that you can, again, adjust the vision and continue to drive things forward, right? So we want to make sure that we are leading with presence. And when you’re creating those rhythms with your team, letting them know that you’re listening. You listen, you’re hearing what they say. You’re not focused on fifty thousand other things. The thing that I hate the most is when I see leaders in meetings and they’re having a conversation and they’re in the middle of a meeting and they pick up their phone and they check their phone. I hate it. Like if somebody texts them. Or I’ve been in meetings with people where I’m in a meeting with a leader and another person comes in and interrupts the meeting to ask a silly question. And the leader

(09:28)

answers the question, meanwhile the meeting completely gets derailed, right? Not a good thing. So if you have rhythms, those rhythms keep the flow moving. The rhythms also create that boundary to say, okay, this is our focus time to make sure that we’re planning, to make sure that we’re driving projects forward, to make sure that we are working towards that aim and that goal and that objective that we have that we want to meet this month, this quarter, this year, whatever. So that also helps you stay curious. Okay, I know this part of what we set in our plan isn’t working. How can we make it work better? That helps you to stay curious. You don’t have to make every decision about what’s happening. All you have to do is be there to be a guide, right? Number two, you want to empower through knowledge and close the gap. This is the mentorship piece. This is the part where many leaders think, well, I put this person in a leadership role and they should just know how to lead. Or, this person has worked for me for years, they should just know how to be a manager. I’m just going to step away because I made them a manager, I promoted them. I’m just going to step away. I don’t need to be involved at all and I’m just going to let them run. And then things fall apart and they can’t figure out why. Right? So what we want to do, what I mean by empower through knowledge and close the gap, the gap is: what do you know as the business owner, as the founder, as the leader? What have you learned along the way? The failures that have happened, the mistakes that you’ve made, but also the triumphs that you’ve accomplished. What have you learned? And how have you done things that you know work? And how can you transfer that knowledge to your leadership team, to your managers, even to people on your team? How can you transfer it to your leaders so that they can transfer it to the rest of the team? So it’s closing that gap and really working on being a mentor, having a growth mindset and a mentor mindset. So a growth mindset, you are welcoming in change. And I heard this the other day, which was kind of funny. I had never heard this before, but change is as good as a holiday. Isn’t that wild? And you think about it.

(11:57)

And this is where that growth mindset and that mentor mindset work together. Those two mindsets work together to create change. And change, if we’re open to it, change is like when you’re doing something different, or you’re trying something different, or you’re taking a different route on something. It’s as it says, it’s like a holiday. Because you don’t know. It’s like that excitement. If you embrace it that way and say, you know what, I’m going to go into this with some kind of curiosity and excitement and say, look, the way we’ve been doing it hasn’t been working. So we’re going to try something new. And we’re going to approach it with excitement and we’re going to approach it with wonder. And I also heard something else this morning that I thought was interesting. Every day we have the ability, we can take nothing and create something from it. So every time we open our eyes, every time we look around, we have the ability to create something from nothing. Meaning that we have the ability to take an idea and create something from it. We have the ability to, again, move in a different direction and be like, hey, we don’t know what’s going to happen, growth mindset, but we’re going to do it anyway. And I’m going to guide you from what I already know, from what I’ve been through, mentor. So it’s not just about teaching people skills, but it’s about teaching people from your own experience so that they can co-create that change with you, right? So that they can tap into a bigger part of themselves. So yesterday I was teaching process design to my team. And I was teaching it to someone who is moving into a leadership role. And what I was saying to the other leaders is that what we do is we co-create a process, a new process, with someone that we’re teaching. Why do we do this? Because number one, we want them to gain new skills. We want them to learn

(14:21)

so that they can think bigger, they can do bigger things, they can step into a bigger version of themselves. Number one. Number two, it starts to integrate, meaning that whatever they’re learning, it actually sticks and it integrates. And what it does, and this is that transfer of knowledge, what it does is it starts to spark some new ideas and some creativity of how to do things. Again, change. It creates new ideas of how we can do things that you may not have thought about before. So you’re teaching someone a process of how you do things, and they’re co-creating it with you by taking notes, writing it down, whatever, and potentially asking questions about things that you may not have thought of, potentially having an idea of how you can do something a little bit different that you’ve never done before. So when we close that gap, and the gap is between where we are and who we’re meant to become, where we are and where we’re meant to go, what we’re meant to create, what we’re meant to do. That is how we can get that next level leadership. And also that is how you can get people to take ownership, to have responsibility, and to also start to learn things so that you can start to step away a little bit more, right? Not completely remove yourself from the business, but just start to step away so that you can keep the ultimate aim moving forward. So that is number two. Actually, I said four things, but I’m giving you three things, because number two was a big one. So that actually had two things in there. Number three, focus on the aim. So once we’re leading with presence and we’re creating that rhythm with our team so that we are kind of keeping our pulse on what’s happening so we can help to guide the ship, right? We’re not actually doing all of the things within the ship. That’s where we have our team, that’s where we have our crew, right? So what we’re doing is we’re just guiding it. And we’re staying curious, like, hmm, this wasn’t working. Maybe we could do it this way. Or maybe I need to talk to one of my resources and figure out, okay, what am I missing here? Where are the gaps? Right.

(16:43)

So we’re leading with presence. We’re also listening. We’re listening to hear. Because when you can have that open conversation with your team and they see that, yeah, you care, you’re there, they’re going to open up a little bit more. They’re going to know that that’s a space where they can share ideas, they can share concerns, they can share frustrations, and you hear them. Number two, empower through knowledge and close the gap, right? Growth mindset, mentor mindset, right? And looking at change like it’s a holiday, like you got a gift, and you’re going to be opening this gift and you have no idea what it is, but you’re excited for it, right? And then the third one is focusing on the aim. So the aim is, and here’s the thing: your vision and your aim, that thing that you’re moving towards, it is going to shift and change. The dream that you had, and I experienced this myself recently, is that the dream that I had in the beginning was in this container. And I started feeling some friction. And what I realized is that the dream that I have now is much bigger than what it was. So that dream that I have, that aim, that vision, has grown. And I was trying to squeeze it into this smaller container that it really didn’t fit into anymore. It was like, as my friend said, it’s like a belly shirt. It’s like your favorite shirt. You love this shirt. It’s so comfortable. You love to wear it all the time. It’s your favorite one, but you’ve outgrown it. You’ve put on some pounds. You’ve gotten taller. You’ve grown. It’s like ten years later, and now it’s like a belly shirt. You’ve got to get rid of the shirt, right? You can’t wear the belly shirt anymore. You’ve got to get rid of the belly shirt. So it’s the same thing. Your aim, your vision. A lot of times people want to keep cramming it into the original container that they started their business in, or the container of what the business looked like five years ago. And the truth is that as the business grows, the vision has to grow, and you have to keep nurturing it. You have to keep growing it. You have to keep focusing it. And along with that, you have to keep innovating. So if you are in the middle of everything, you can’t do that.

(19:03)

And that’s why your container stays here. And it’s like, I have these big goals and you say all these things, but you’re not focusing the aim and doing the things that you need to do to consistently move it forward, working towards those things that you want to work towards. All right. We fall out of integrity, because we say we want this, but we’re stuck in the middle of everything. We’re in the weeds and we’re not functioning in integrity with what we want, right? And then we fall short of what we want. So focusing, once you can do the first two steps, right? Once we’re leading with presence and curiosity, we’re developing that next level leadership. With the leadership, we’re creating those processes, we’re co-creating with people so that it integrates and that infrastructure is really getting built. And everybody is interconnected and functioning in a rhythm. You can focus on that aim. And that aim will shift and change as you grow, as things grow, as you just say to yourself, you know what, I think we need to move in a different direction, right? So we always want to be focused on innovating. And innovating doesn’t mean you’re constantly creating new products or you’re opening up a new business. Like some people think it means that. No. Sometimes innovating just means shifting our thinking about it. Sometimes innovating means simplifying. It means looking at our business and saying, where are we still overcomplicating things? Where are we trying to focus on too much? And we need to simplify, prune it back so that we can grow. So sometimes innovating isn’t doing more, it’s doing less. Right. And if we are in the middle of everything, we can’t do that. But if we also pull ourselves out of the business completely, we can’t do that either. Because, and I’ve seen this happen, when a business owner removes themselves completely and they haven’t been in touch with the business, they come back in and all of a sudden they throw fifteen ideas at the team. Meanwhile, the team has been working towards what they know to do, what they know the aim is, and they keep working towards that and things are building, building, building, and they feel really great about it.

(21:28)

And then this absentee owner comes in and all of a sudden throws fifteen ideas in there and they’re like, this doesn’t go with anything that we’ve been doing. And then they have to scramble to try and figure out how to make it happen, which costs time, energy, and money, lots of it. It’s a huge tax that gets applied to the business when you’re constantly moving the goalposts and constantly shifting deadlines on projects. It messes up the rhythm. It messes up the flow. And also, honestly, it just messes up your numbers. So whether you are absentee or you’re in the middle of everything in the weeds, you can’t focus on driving that aim forward. And you can’t focus on, okay, this was our vision, but I think the vision is bigger. I need to sit with this and reflect and kind of ideate on what is that next step. It’s like the Imagineers, right? How can we, which I am fascinated by the Imagineers and how they started and how they’ve grown over the years and what their thought process is for Disney. Fascinated. I’ve been watching documentaries on it. And it’s the same thing. Be an imagineer in your business. It’s like, okay, we had a robot functioning this way. How can we take it to that next level? How can we go to that next generation that’s really going to surprise and delight the customers and the people that are walking through our doors? You can’t do that if you completely lost touch with your business. And you can’t do it if you’re in the middle of everything. And I know, like I said, there are people out there who are promoting heavily about buying businesses, just putting a process in place and making it mechanical, and then you’re off to your next venture. I don’t buy that. I don’t buy into it, and I don’t buy into it because I live it every single day. So you don’t want to be in the weeds and in the middle of everything and have the business run because of you, because that’s going to drive the value of your business down and it’s going to burn you out, and you’re going to become the log jam with your own results and your own vision. And you also don’t want to be completely removed from the business and have no touch with it whatsoever.

(23:54)

And just rely on, okay, well, my business makes money, so I’m going to go on to the next thing. And then you don’t really know what’s going on with it. Even if you have a full leadership team in place, I mean a full leadership, top to bottom, you still need to have touch-base sessions with them to say, hey, what’s going on? So that they can fill you in, and then you can help guide and make sure that the vision is constantly growing and that aim is constantly growing. So that the results follow, and ultimately you’re taking care of the people who are making it happen. So I hope that this episode helped you. And I hope you take this and think about those three things that we talked about today. Because that, let me tell you, my friends, that is what the goal should be. The goal should never be to remove yourself completely. The goal should be, how can you become that leader that leads with presence, that is a mentor, and that is the leader, the business owner, the founder that is constantly driving that aim?

(25:15)

That’s what we need to focus on. It’s that true definition of an innovative founder, of a visionary founder. And hey, eventually you might decide, you know what, I really want to step back from this business completely. So what I need to do is, it might be that you’re going to sell it. So putting these steps in place, you would potentially find a successor in your business who can take over. It might be an employee, it might be a leader that you’ve already promoted that can actually take over the business and keep it moving forward. But even if you’re stepping back as a business advisor, even if you say, you know what, I really want to remove myself for a while, or completely, or whatever, and just be an advisor, you’re still going to have touch-base sessions with them. Right? So think about this. All right. How can you really lead with presence and put the right people in the right roles so that you can drive the vision? Truly be that visionary founder. So I hope that this helped you. I would love to know in the comments below, what was your biggest takeaway? What is something that you’re going to really focus on in your own business? And if you’re looking to go deeper on this, if you’re really looking to go deeper on this, I am opening up my Main Street CEO Table mastermind. And it’s going to be starting in January. We are opening applications for it now. But if you apply, we have a big bonus that we’re putting together for it. So I will drop a link below to apply for the mastermind. It’s a limited number of seats. It’s only six to eight. I’m intentionally keeping it small. But if this is something that you are interested in, definitely check out the link. Again, I will drop it in the comments below. Get your application in to get started in January. But also to take advantage, and it is a big bonus. It is a big bonus that itself is worth the entire investment in the mastermind. So stay tuned for that.

(27:38)

But until then, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and I hope you have a great rest of your day and rest of your week. And I will see you back here next week.

End of transcript

Applications are open for the Main Street CEO Table mastermind, starting in January. Seats are limited to six to eight. The application link is in the episode description and in the comments.