More people on payroll. More expenses going out. And somehow, you're still working the same hours you were before any of them existed. If that's where you are right now, this episode is the one that finally explains why.
The problem isn't that you hired the wrong people or that you need a better project management tool. The problem is that you delegated tasks but kept all the responsibility yourself. You built a business with hired help, not an actual team. And those are two completely different things.
Today Kate breaks down exactly how this happens, why it keeps happening even when business owners know better, and what has to change for you to actually feel the relief that delegation is supposed to create. She gets into the two patterns she sees most often: baking yourself into every decision and process in the business so that nothing can move without you, and assigning people checklists instead of outcomes, which means you're still carrying all the thinking even when someone else is doing all the doing. She also walks through the identity shift that nobody talks about enough, the one where you have to stop being the best person on your team and start building people who are better than you.
From there the episode gets tactical: the three revenue stages and what delegation looks like at each one, the three tiers of decision making every business owner needs to know, how to build a feedback loop that develops people instead of creating dependency, the 30-day disappearance test to show you exactly how baked in you currently are, and why only 22% of small business owners have ever received any formal leadership training, which might be the most important stat in this episode. If your team isn't working, the lid is probably you. This episode is how you raise it.
DM Kate on Instagram or head to the website if you want support building a team that can actually scale without you in the middle of everything.
Timestamps:
02:33 Stop Being the Bottleneck
05:08 Outcomes Not Tasks
09:05 Train Problem Solvers
12:05 Identity and Control
16:42 Standards vs Trust
18:32 Learn to Lead
21:08 Scaling by Revenue Stage
27:11 Delegation Audit Steps
29:58 Decision Making Tiers
32:09 Coach Not Fix
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