Transcript
0:00 If you've ever said to yourself, "I can't replace myself. Nobody else can do it like me." And this is something a lot of people say, whether it's a CEO that's trying to create a passive business and they need to get out of the day-to-day, a manager trying to grow their team, or if you honestly just feel incredibly overwhelmed and you haven't been able to figure out how to replace yourself, then listen up because I want to break down how I used to feel when I used to think that I couldn't replace myself and how I've gotten over that and get people to not just run a business on my behalf, but grow it. I thought that I was like a unicorn. Nobody could replace me. Nobody could do it like me. I used to have all the same thoughts and beliefs that a lot of people that are first-time business owners tend to have. I am able to be replaced. It just doesn't look like what a lot of people think it actually looks like. The first thing I want to tackle is that belief that you can't replace yourself. Because what happens a lot of time people believe I can't replace myself. That's a belief that they have or let's call it an assumption cuz a belief is just an untested assumption.
0:50 You don't try to replace yourself because you don't believe you can because it's all driven by this underlying assumption that nobody can do it as well as you. I basically had like two failed attempts at replacing myself in gym launch. I brought in two different people within this time span of about 18 months and tried to get them to replace me in terms of what I do to run the business. It quote didn't work. Success metrics were not going up and the team and the morale and the culture wasn't getting better. If I was going to replace myself, the only way in which it was successful is that the business cannot just stay the same, but it has to be able to grow with this person in that position. I remember I I talked to a mentor of mine. I was like, "Listen, I'm just going to do this for the next year.
1:25 like I I don't think that anybody can do this. And it became like a belief that I was enforcing. I would go in and I would start, you know, doing everything again. Everything would go up. And so what that reinforced is the belief that, you know, nobody can do it like I can. So this was all good and fine. It worked until Alex and I made the decision that we wanted to sell the business. If we're going to sell the business, like I certainly don't want to go with the sale and so I need to be able to replace myself. I remember sitting down writing down all the things I did and writing down all the things somebody would need to do.
1:52 and I realized that the way I was looking at it was wrong. So, why is it that so many people think that they can't be replaced? The first one is that they haven't looked hard enough and they give up after just a few attempts. So, something really common that I hear is people are like, "Listen, I get that you think I need a director of marketing, but I hired a guy, didn't work." And I'm like, "Oh, wow. You hired a guy and it didn't work one time. Like, must be the entire system's broken. Must be that building a business doesn't work." You know, you hear the women who are like, "All guys suck.
2:19 Like, just can't find a man. Like, can't find a good guy." And I'm like, "How many dates have you gone on in the last year?" And they're like, "I've gone on two." I'm like, I literally can't even contain myself. I'm like, "This is so ridiculous." And that's what most people do is they assume because they hire one person because they try one time. They're like, "Oh, well that didn't work. That was painful. I'm not going to do it again. Is this fun?" No, it's not fun. It's not fun being new to business and being new to delegation and being new to hiring people. But the reality is is that sometimes, especially with hard roles, you're going to have to try more than once when you're an unexperienced business owner. The second is that when they do get a person in there, they expect them to be a one forone fit. They expect them to be 100% fit, perfect, and to not need to train them. People bring someone in and then they're like, "Great. Like, you have all the skills, your experience.
3:04 Like, that's why I paid so much money for you. Like, now go do the thing. I shouldn't have to do any of this." And then what happens is that they don't onboard them well. They don't train them well. And then the moment that that person messes up, they're like, "See, I can't outsource this. I can't get anybody to do what I do. Look, they just that up." And I'm like, "Okay, well, how many times have you something up, right? How many times have I something up? I things up millions of times in my business. So, should I assume that the person that comes in to run my business on my behalf will never anything up?" It's like, no, of course not. And it's often that we have more unrealistic expectations of others than we even do of ourselves. A good example of this is one of our CEOs in our portfolio. We hired an operator and that person was going to come in. They were going to be like president of the organization. The CEO was going to move into like kind of a chairman role. She came in doing a fantastic job and this person came to me and they were like, "I don't know if she's got it." And I was like, "Why?"
3:53 And they're like, "Well, she doesn't understand like how to run the ads, how to do the marketing." And I'm like sitting there and I'm like, "What? What are you talking about?" I'm like, "She needs to go in there, shadow the marketing team for 2 months, and also she's not the one that's going to be doing it. So, she needs to have a strong team underneath of her that can do this on her behalf. She needs to know enough to know if they're doing their job, but she shouldn't know like what button to click here and there. And I remember in that moment, he was like, "Oh, really? We can't expect people to be perfect when we are not perfect." The third mistake people make is they try to find one person to replace everything they do. And I realized this, I want to say years ago when we were building Gym Launch. I was trying to relieve Alex of some of the marketing duties and the product duties cuz that was where he was the most involved. Like I would hire somebody to help with marketing. I'd hire someone to help the product and then like it would just be like this string that I was pulling. It's like wait another one and another one and another one. His output was so high. It's very hard to find somebody else that does that. And if you could find that person, what are they doing? They're probably running their own business. What I've realized that a lot of times the reason that someone can't find somebody is because they're saying, "I'm a unicorn.
4:56 I need to go find a unicorn to replace me." Whereas it might be, I'm a unicorn and I need to find four very competent people to replace me. Like to replace me, for example, I need multiple executives to replace me. And so if you're a founder, you're a CEO, you're running your business, like it might be five people that you need to replace you. One of the things that we'll help people do is we help them recruit their leadership teams. And so I had a portfolio CEO and he said, "I want to find somebody who can do everything I can do for marketing." And I was like, "Oh god, that's going to be tough because like you're one of the best in the world." And he was like, "Well, I want to find the unicorn." And I was like, "It's going to be tough."
5:28 Does that person exist? I'm sure they exist. Does that person exist and want to work for you? If you're a smaller business and you're just getting started and growing, you don't have a track record. Do you know how hard it is to find that person and get them to actually work for you? Attracting talent in my first business versus acquisition.com, immensely different experience. Now, finding talent is like incredibly easy for us. But it's because we have a track record. We have a reputation. We have a brand. And so, if you're not at that point in your career, you have to understand that it is probably going to be faster, easier, and more effective to just find four people that are good at their role rather than find one person who is like extraordinary at the thing. The fourth reason that most people are unable to replace themselves is simply lack of patience. They are not patient with the fact that it could take months or years to get somebody up to speed.
6:13 People bring someone in, they expect them to be able to do everything day one. But in reality, like if you're a highlevel executive, if you've been running your business, you want to transfer the skill set and transfer the knowledge you have to that person, it could take up to six months to get them like really going. And as somebody who's had people work for me for six plus years, it gets better and better every year. You have to be patient with them. You have to bear the cost of their mistakes.
6:36 Understand they're not going to be perfect. And you've got to be in it for the long haul. And if you invest in them like you're in it for the long haul, they will stay with you like they're in it for the long haul.