Michelle

I'm in my 8th year as a CEO, and I've been a part of growing multiple startups from founding to 9 figures of revenue. When asked for leadership advice from younger leaders, I always mention one principle. To scale, you have to excel in three roles: Player Player/Coach Coach Stage 1: Player In the earliest days of any company, the founders are doing all the work. There is no extra money to hire others. You have to be ready to grind. It is a season of late nights, shoestring budgets, many tactical to-dos, feeling overwhelmed, and constant learning. During this stage, you build high competency in execution and develop expertise in several core business areas. You will wear a lot of different hats during this period. For example, in the early days of Simple Modern, I led sales, Amazon advertising, purchase orders, hiring, licensing, and business development. This period is exhausting because there is so much to do, and the pressure is 100% on your shoulders. It can feel like your work is all-consuming. To use a football analogy: You are like a running back during the "player" stage. If you aren't carrying the ball into the endzone, your team isn't winning. As the company succeeds, you begin to have the resources to hire & the inability to get everything done. You are ready to graduate to stage 2. Stage 2: Player/Coach You don't have the resources to hire someone for every aspect of execution in the company, but you start to fill key positions of need. These new team members you are hiring need direction and coaching. Ironically, adding people to the company only increases your workload in the short term. There is a ramp-up period where you devote significant time to coaching these new teammates, but they have a limited ability to contribute. As a result, you still have heavy execution and tactical obligations, but you are also responsible for coaching others. You will commonly hear people in this phase say things like, "I feel buried" or "I wish I could just get some time to think and prioritize." This stage is dangerous for an emerging leader. The organization is growing and has relied on your ability to execute up until now. New team members can't execute at your level yet. Coaching them requires significant time, but there is so much to do. The temptation is to not prioritize developing others and double down on your own execution. We have all heard a leader say something like, "Never mind. I'll do it myself." Resist this temptation to slide back to an exclusively "player" role. It kills your ability to scale. You must become comfortable with the reality that execution will be less effective with new team members. You have to be willing to take a step back temporarily to take ten steps forward. In coaching, I recommend using this 5 step process: 1. I do. You watch. We talk. 2. I do. You help. We talk. 3. You do. I help. We talk. 4. You do. I watch. We talk. 5. You do. Someone else watches. Success at the player/coach stage requires a commitment to building a team. During this phase, you are like a quarterback. You are responsible for calling plays, coaching the other players on what to do, AND throwing touchdowns. As you develop others, you go to stage 3. Stage 3: Coach At this stage, the company no longer relies on your ability to execute. The teammates you have been coaching can now perform at a high level and teach these skills to new hires. Your new role is crafting strategy, recruiting, and leading the leaders. At first, it feels incredible as tactical responsibilities come off your plate. You've been looking forward to this stage for a long time. As your calendar frees up, you discover another leadership hurdle you must overcome. You feel unproductive. For years, success was getting stuff done. It was crossing lines off a to-do list. Now, your job is leading and developing others. It is harder to point to the tangible things you are accomplishing. Making the transition requires you to manage the most challenging person: Yourself. You will have to work through your own insecurity. Many leaders struggle to overcome their personal issues. They revert to the player-coach stage and become micro-managers. Transitioning from an excellent executor to an average coach is painful. No one is a great coach right off the bat. It is a skill developed through experience. If you put in the work, you can become a great coach over time. Success during the coach stage starts with understanding the enormous leverage you now possess. By coaching and leading others well, you can accomplish 50x, 100x, or 1000x more than you could ever do alone. You can now multiply the time you invest in the company. Now, you have created the freedom of movement to work "on" the business instead of "in" the business. You can give your team the strategic guidance, encouragement, development, and leadership they need to succeed.