In this episode, Leon and Samantha cut through the noise and dissect what keeps business owners trapped in operator mode. Think long hours, empty days, and a hamster-wheel effect with zero ROI.
They unpack the mindset, the mechanics, and the proven roadmap to shift into true CEO mode where you’re working on your business, leveraging your team, automating with intention, and protecting your energy so you can scale profitably and sustainably.
If you’re done trading hours for dollars and ready to build a business that bucks the burnout cycle, these strategies will help you to get the momentum you need, and create the life and business you really want.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Signs you’re stuck in operator mode (00:33)
- The three core traits of CEO mode (03:35)
- Shifting your internal compass from worker bee to strategic leader (06:37)
- How to audit your time and stay anchored in high-impact work using the Eisenhower Matrix
- (16:59)
- See how strategic focus, automation, and simplification fuel sustainable growth (24:50)
- 5 CEO audit questions to redesign your business (30:24)
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• Evaluating your marketing, sales, and delivery systems to pinpoint what’s working and what’s not…
• Identifying the primary bottleneck that’s holding you back from growing and scaling…
• Build a 3-step growth and scale plan rooted in positioning, profit, and simplicity
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Working More Isn’t the Answer. Here’s What Actually Moves the Needle
I want to talk about something that needs to be said, especially if you’re the kind of coach or consultant whose calendar is overflowing, but your bank account is whispering, not shouting.
You didn’t start your business to become its most overworked employee. You didn’t leave corporate or a cushy job to build a cage you can’t escape from.
But that’s exactly what happens when you stay stuck in Operator Mode, when your business only works if you’re hustling behind the scenes 24/7.
So how do you know if you’re there?
Why Your Business Feels Like a Trap
If stepping away for a weekend makes everything stop, if your revenue doesn’t reflect your effort, or if you’re always in the DMs, on calls, or in Canva, doing client work, writing posts, fixing tech, replying to emails … and still not seeing real growth … that’s Operator Mode.
And it’s not scalable.
You must shift into CEO mode. It’s not about being lazy or delegating everything. It’s about being strategic.
It’s about leveraging time, systems, and people. It’s about building a business that doesn’t need you glued to every single task.
In CEO mode, your income reflects your impact, not your hours.
But what most people don’t realise is that shifting into CEO mode isn’t just a tactical upgrade. It’s actually an identity shift. And unless you become the leader your future business needs now, you’ll keep rebuilding the same business over and over again, just with fancier software and more expensive problems.
Five Moves That Get You Out of the Weeds and Into Growth
Here’s what it looks like to make that shift:
1. Start Thinking Like the Future You
Ask yourself, “How would the CEO version of me think, act, and decide today?”
That person sets boundaries, protects their calendar, and makes decisions based on data, not drama. They don’t wait until they’ve ‘earned it.’ They step into the role before the results catch up.
2. Audit Your Time with Brutal Honesty
Use the Eisenhower Matrix. The goal is to spend more time in the “not urgent but important” zone (that’s CEO territory). We’re talking strategy, vision, hiring, and systems.
If your day is full of urgent-but-unimportant stuff (like email, client tweaks, or admin), you’re stuck in distraction.
3. Stop Bottlenecking Everything
Ask yourself, “What am I doing that someone else could do better?”
If the answer is “almost everything,” you’re not incompetent. You’re just stuck in task-mode.
Start building systems, not just solving one-off problems. The magic is in processes that run without you.
4. Focus on the Next Right Thing
Growth gets murky when you’re trying to do 12 things at once. So here’s an idea: pick two needle-movers per 6-week sprint. That’s it. Keep your focus sharp.
One of the fastest-growing businesses we’ve seen scaled by doing just this: identifying the next right step and removing everything else.
5. Protect the Founder’s Energy
Your energy is your most valuable asset. If you’re constantly burnt out, everything (team, clients, and offers) suffers.
Build your business around your capacity, not your guilt. Set non-negotiables in your calendar for coaching, health, rest, and creation.
That’s not luxury. That’s leadership.
This Is Where the Real CEO Work Begins
If any of this sounds familiar, know this: you’re not behind.
You’re not broken either. You’re just one strategic shift away from building the business you actually meant to build. The one that grows even when you’re offline, that gives you time back without revenue taking a hit.
Remember, you don’t need to work harder. You need to lead better. And that starts right now.
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Instagram @thesamriley
CONNECT WITH LEON FLITTON
Instagram @leonflitton
SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW BUSINESS GROWTH LAB
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TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:00
If your calendar is full but your bank account isn’t, you’re not a CEO, you’re an overworked operator.
I’m Samantha Riley, and welcome to the Business Growth Lab, where visionary entrepreneurs come to experiment, evolve and expand what’s possible.
Welcome to today’s episode of Business Growth Lab. I’m your co host for today, Samantha Riley, and joined by my partner in business and life, Leon Flitton. Leon. Great to have you back here again.
Leon Flitton 0:29
Great to be back and looking forward to this one.
Samantha Riley 0:33
Let’s talk about what operator mode is. I think this would be a really great place to start, because if you don’t know what you’re looking out for, it’s really difficult to change it. So I think the first thing of being in operator mode is always working, but still not making the money you want. You know, it’s drowning in calls, in the DMS, in delivery, creating workshops, admin your branding, creating your social media, blah, blah, blah, all the things, wearing, all the hats. However, your income doesn’t reflect the effort, and it feels like you’re just hustling on hamster wheel. You’re very, very busy, but you’re not profitable. And if that’s happening, you’re in operator mode.
Leon Flitton 1:19
Yeah, and I think this is where you see the people that they just haven’t made any shift at all, so they’re still doing exactly the same thing they’ve all been doing so but yeah, they just work, work, work, work, work.
Samantha Riley 1:31
Absolutely. I think the second biggest part of being in Operator mode is not being able to step away from your business without everything falling apart. And this is a place where most people know they need to delegate, or they know they need to take a break or a holiday, but a feeling like they can’t, or maybe they’ve tried and they’re too afraid to do it again because everything breaks or it just stalls. You know, you don’t end up having leads coming in or your delivery stops, and it’s really exhausting being the glue, and it feels like you’re really caught in a trap.
Leon Flitton 2:12
Yeah, you know, I used to see this in corporate. It’s a little bit different, what we talked about today, but the story is good, is when someone will go on holidays, and then you will see everything just fall over. And you can see, in this case, how that will make them hesitant to want to step away from it.
Samantha Riley 2:28
Totally. And then that, I think the third thing is this thought of, what if I build all of this and it still never gives me the life I want. And I see this a lot, and I describe this as almost like driving with one foot on the brake and one foot on the accelerator, which is never going to end well, but it’s like, oh, I want to go for this thing, but then there’s this fear of, what if I build this and I still feel trapped, or what if I put all of my time in and I still can’t make the money I want, or I build all of this and all that freedom that I wanted like never eventuates, and they fear growing it, and that’s that we’re going forward, we’re growing. Put your foot on the brake. I am absolutely petrified that if I keep going like this, I’m going to burn out and I’m still going to have nothing to show for it.
Leon Flitton 3:23
Yeah, there might be a bit of self sabotaging going on there.
Samantha Riley 3:27
Absolutely. Okay, so that’s Operator mode. Why don’t you take us through CEO mode, Leon?
Leon Flitton 3:35
Yeah, so the opposite of Operator mode. So CEO mode. This is a I suppose. The first point here is that, you know, you’ll earn more while doing less, and that could almost feel like a trap in itself. You know, trying to make that shift, because you feel like I should be working, working, working, helping anyone. And it’s not from being lazy, but need to be leveraging your time, because the CEOs, well, they’re the brains of the outfits, really, and that’s what you need to be. So a good CEO craves efficiency. They want it to be scalable their business. And I think making a big shift as well from having in Operator mode, results are tied to ours, but in CEO mode, they’re tied to the outcome, which I think is really important.
Samantha Riley 4:19
And I think it’s really important that you said that doing less isn’t laziness. And we’re going to talk about one of our clients and one of the big internal shifts he needed to make around that and around this almost shame of like, Oh, I feel like I’m like, hardly doing anything. So we’re going to talk about that a little bit more.
Leon Flitton 4:38
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, CEO mode. You want your income to reflect the impact, not the input. Love it. So number two is leading a team you’ll trust, not managing chaos. This is like your chief firefighter. Is that like CFF?
Samantha Riley 4:59
But. Yeah. See lots of people in chief firefighter mode,
Leon Flitton 5:04
yeah, yeah. And this is also something that not everyone does naturally as well, and has maybe a bit of a learn thing. But yeah, you want to be able to delegate with confidence and knowing things will get done to a standard without you having to market management. Yeah, totally Yeah, instead of constantly putting out fires and market manager, yeah, I think
Samantha Riley 5:24
it’s really important to build a business that runs even when you’re not in the room.
Leon Flitton 5:31
100% Yeah. And number three, you’ll have the business that actually gives you the life that you dreamed of, that you pictured, yeah, the very reason that you started the business in the first place. So I don’t think anyone started a business to go, Yep, I want to, want to work 100 hours a week. No, funny about that, yeah, you know, but I think the majority of business owners started because they wanted to have, you know, more freedom. They wanted to have more effect on their lives, other people’s lives, their family’s lives, and that kind of thing. So, you know, but a lot of them end up creating a case they can’t escape from, so to speak. So the CEO shift is something that’s really important. It needs to happen if you want to be running a business and being successful. And yeah, it’s something that’s going to give you, you know, if you more time, more choice, and it sticks to the well, if you can make it stick to the original vision of what you’re trying to set out to achieve in the first place. And like they said, you you don’t live a nine to five to work 24/7 so totally, I hope not.
Samantha Riley 6:37
Exactly, exactly. So let’s define these two rules. We’ve talked about, like, what could be showing up. But let’s define the roles from the mindset. So I think the operator mindset is very reactive. You were just talking about that, that Chief firefighter very reactive instead of proactive. So something happens and it’s like, oh, now I need to do something else, or, oops, this thing’s gone wrong. I need to create something. They’re very task focused. They are doing it all we talked about that, wearing all the hats. And they are the worker bee. It’s like they’ve put themselves in a job. That’s the operator mindset. It’s being in Job mode where the CEO mindset is the visionary. It’s, I know what I want to create. This is what it looks like. Explains it to the team. They’re delegation focus. So they’re they’re bringing the team on the vision. They’re very strategic, focused. They know exactly what needs to be done and the steps along the way, and they have KPIs, or key performance indicators and data that they’re collecting along the way that tells them that they’re going in the right direction.
Leon Flitton 7:55
Yeah, I’m just going to say, I think I’ve heard you talk about this before with Richard Branson, where, you know, he would not worry about how, but worry about who I think is. Is that right? If I said that right? I want to, I want to mince that one. Definitely.
Samantha Riley 8:08
Richard Branson is one of those people, because when he has an idea for a company, he thinks, Well, who do I need to put in charge of that? Who’s the best person to bring that vision to life? And there’s another great book by Dan Sullivan called who not how? CEOs, they know that they can’t do it all. So they’re always thinking, Who do I need to bring in to help me grow this, to run it, to hire to all of all of the things. And they’re really staying in that visionary mode. Yeah,
Leon Flitton 8:40
yeah. So I apologize to Richard and Dan for absolutely mincing those two together.
Samantha Riley 8:48
You did mince them together. We got the gist there, and we got both of them out. Let’s talk about why most experts stay stuck in Operator mode. Because I’m sure there’s already people saying and nodding along, going, this is me, but today is about helping you come up with the strategies to move away from this. And I think that the very first thing is that most people stay stuck in Operator mode because they’ve got a fear of letting go. They’ve got a fear of letting go of whatever it is, whatever it is, and they’re saying that things like no one can do it like me and I have definitely been caught here before and multiple times it’s very easy to slip into this. I haven’t done it for many years, though, because I am in a position where I would love everyone else to do it. My favorite place is being in visionary mode. So I definitely don’t have a no one can do it like me syndrome, yeah, yeah. And if you’re really smart and you hire well, you won’t have this problem, because you’ll be hiring people that can do these things better than you can.
Leon Flitton 9:59
In, yeah, yeah. And this is a really big turning point when you’re trying to make those that shift from operator to CEO. And you’re right that that getting stuck in like no one can do it like me, into a certain point, not everyone’s going to be as passionate about your business as you are so But the other point is that you’re the one that needs to be in CEO mode, not Operator mode, because, well, that’s why you have a team for that. Well, I hope you do anyway,
Samantha Riley 10:25
totally. I think one of the other reasons that experts stay stuck in Operator mode is confusing control with leadership. Now, I know from your background, Leon, you would have a million case studies of this one. But what’s one case study or story you can share to help people understand the difference between control and leadership?
Leon Flitton 10:51
Yeah, so back in my corporate days, I had a group manager the I’m going to call him Nathan, and Nathan was to me what a leader should be. He never micromanaged. He would coach. He would work through like the strategies with you, and not actually control as such, but he would guide you the right direction. Now we had a change of group manager, and the next one, I’ll call him Gary. He was a micromanager, and he actually stifled people creatively thinking or how to work through problems, that kind of stuff. He actually put everyone off and made everyone anxious and all those kind of things. So the two different styles of leadership, but one where it was like coaching and moving forwards. Back in my corporate days, I was in a position where that we had a group manager. Then the first one was, I think amazing. He was to me what a leader should be. So he made sure that we could be creative, had autonomy, and we wanted to grow the business, because he also coached us and let us actually be able to do what we need to do. And we all wanted to make sure that the group had better sales and perform better and that kind of thing. And by comparison to the second manager that we had, he was a very much a micro manager, but he subdued everything. So instead of worrying about getting more sales and growing the group and making your team better and the staff better, stuff like that. Everyone went into cover your butt kind of mode, so everyone anxious and worried about just ticking a box and showing up on report so they didn’t get in trouble. So it actually, actually stifled the sales of the group at the time. So you can see the two differences. So one was clearly still stuck in Operator mode.
Samantha Riley 12:44
Yeah. Also, I think that second one was addicted to being needed. And I see this a lot people, and I’ve actually heard it, funnily enough, where people have moved into that CEO mode and have actually admitted, oh, I actually feel like I’m not needed as much because the team’s just got it, and it requires a really different mindset shift to go they’ve got it. It’s okay I’m not that important, or I’m not as important as what I thought I needed to be, kind of thing absolutely, yep. So let’s talk about the cost of staying in Operator mode, because by staying in that place as a business owner, there are some real costs. And I think the first one of these is reaching that revenue plateau, not being able to increase your income because you’re just stuck in this constant doing everything, putting out fires, and you’re unable to create this strategy to bring the vision of growing and scaling into play.
Leon Flitton 13:53
Yeah, it’s like you’re stuck in deliverability kind of mode, you know? Yeah, totally, in the
Samantha Riley 13:58
weeds, totally. And that also creates this constant decision fatigue when you’re doing everything all the time. This decision fatigue is real. This is one of the reasons and Leon, you obviously know this. I actually wear the same thing every day. I know this sounds super weird, but I heard it years ago that Mark Zuckerberg has like, five different gray T shirts, and he just wears exactly the same shirt every day. And I was like, Oh, okay. And I was thinking, Yeah, I always think, what am I going to wear today? So what I did was started wearing the same thing every day, and when you get out of bed, that’s a decision that doesn’t need to be made. You just get out of bed, you put on your clothes, and you go and do something well, it makes sense to me. I love it, except when you have to go out, it’s like, oh, now what I’m going to
Leon Flitton 14:48
wear. It probably got easier through COVID, though, because you only have to have the top half of you like dress the same way. Exactly
Samantha Riley 14:54
one of the other costs of staying in the same place is this inability. Ability to step away from your business. We talked about that earlier, but also an inability to scale, because to scale your business, you need to have time to work on your business. And if you’re in Operator mode, you’re constantly in your business. And I’m sure every single person listening is has heard, oh, you need to work on your business, not in your business, but doing it is a completely different thing. So you need to be able to step away. You need to be able to scale.
Leon Flitton 15:30
I was just going to say as well. I think that one thing that the stepping away does is creates the deep thinking time, CEO time. I think you call it, yep. And I think without it, you’re kind of stopping yourself from being creative, and you’re not creating the vision and the strategies that you need to move forward to actually scale and grow your business. And I don’t think you can do that when you’re tired.
Samantha Riley 15:54
You can’t, yeah, like, we’ve proven it over and over again, and I think that’s why we take so many little staycations? Because when you’re away from your business, you think about things differently than when you’re in your business all the time, when you’re in your business all the time, you’re making decisions that are task driven, I think, more so than this deep thinking time of what if we implemented this strategy and we went over here and having that creativity as well. And when you don’t allow yourself that deep thinking time, you don’t have the creativity, you don’t have the fun, and you burn out. You hit burn out really fast. Yes, yeah, living groundhog day every day.
Leon Flitton 16:39
Yeah. And I was gonna say this, you need more creative thinking time and just having the magic shower, or whatever it is, yeah. Exactly needs a Yeah. I think it requires a bit more than that. It’s getting around in hot water, one of those.
Samantha Riley 16:52
Yeah, totally.
Leon Flitton 16:59
So what we want to have a look at now is what shifting into that CEO mode actually looks like, and what needs to happen to do that. So one of the things that I talk about sometimes is the Eisenhower matrix.
Samantha Riley 17:10
Yeah, I think it’s some people call it the Time Matrix, or the productivity matrix, or something like that. There’s a simpler name for it, but it is essentially the Eisenhower matrix. Yeah, yes.
Leon Flitton 17:20
So, and looking at that, so if we look at the quadrants, so, but the first quadrant I want to talk about is the urgent and important quote, which is more the crisis mode. And this is where you don’t want to be working in, because this is, like they said before, this is going to be stifling, stopping you from having creativity, that kind of thing. So that looks like, if you got, you know, there’s lots of tasks with, you know, deadlines that you’re running up against all the time. You’re probably going to find that because you’re doing that, it creates problems with the client, issues where you’re not delivering, or the business isn’t delivering the way it should be. Essentially, it’s just emergencies. It’s like full firefighter mode. So, and that’s the first quadrant we’re talking about today. Yeah, so that’s urgent and important, which you don’t want to be in. The next quadrant is urgent and not important. And this is, is like the distraction mode, yeah, kind of zone, and this is probably a bit more when you see other people running your calendar for you based off what they want. Yeah,
Samantha Riley 18:20
totally. This is the mode, or the zone where someone else says this is important, and just because it’s important for someone else doesn’t mean it’s important for me, and that’s why I think it’s the distraction zone.
Leon Flitton 18:33
Yeah, yeah. So most emails and calls, they’re things that are looking urgent, but they’re not adding real value. That’s where you can see that kicking in, but this is where delegation can help you out. In this zone here,
Samantha Riley 18:48
totally, but yeah, this is where someone else needs to be looking. Yeah, these tasks that are urgent but actually not at all important,
Leon Flitton 18:57
yeah, yeah, we dealt with but not by you. Yeah, totally. But the next quadrant. This is a cracker. This one. It’s the not urgent and not important zone, which is a time wasting zone. This is like scrolling central doom. Scrolling kind of like, yeah, so when you scroll onto Mars or you’re busy being busy working, but you’re not necessarily actually achieving anything either, things like might, you might see things like over researching things. Oh,
Samantha Riley 19:22
hang on, human design, one, three profiles talking to you right now. You don’t need to research something for 20 years to get it out there. There’s a difference between research and over research.
Leon Flitton 19:38
Yeah, I think I may sometimes fall into that category as well. Yeah, whoops. Sorry. And something that you can also see as well here is, you could call it tinkering with that impact. It’s probably one way of putting it, but essentially it’s redoing things or like so the same things with the researching. Like redoing things, rebuilding things over and over again, without actually having any particular impact.
Samantha Riley 20:04
So yeah. And this can also look like doing projects or tasks that are actually not going to move the needle,
Leon Flitton 20:12
yeah? So this looks like doing a project that might get you a point, oh, 1% improvement in sales, as opposed to a project that might get you a 20% improvement sales. So that’s, yeah, that’s the thinking with that impact. So yeah, wasting zone, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there’s the not urgent, but important. Now, this is the quadrant that the CEO zone is in, and this is where you need to be working. So this looks like the taking time to do strategic planning, and I gotta say, like sometimes going from Operator mode to CEO mode, it’s hard to get through your head that the sitting there thinking through the strategy, even though you’re not actually physically doing anything, that’s your job. Yeah,
Samantha Riley 20:56
yeah. You. I’m so glad you brought this up, because sometimes you can think, Oh, I feel like I’m not working.
Unknown Speaker 21:01
Yeah,
Samantha Riley 21:02
yeah, because we’ve been taught through school and through corporate that working is sitting at a desk and actually punching out a task, but this strategic planning is what we want to be doing in the CEO zone,
Leon Flitton 21:18
yeah, and that’s where you see the it’s not about the out, it’s a it’s about the outcome, and that’s why it’s so important. But, and you know, that includes things like building the right systems, not just solving a one off problem, for example. And there’s a couple things I want to come back to later about that as well, how you can do that better, yeah, building the right relationships with the team and people in networking and those kind of things so and I think even that in itself, being in a CEO zone, there’s things that you need to do as a CEO to actually look after yourself, look after your company, and look after your team. And that’s things like making sure that your health, that your mindset and your vision, you’re looking after
Samantha Riley 21:57
yourself totally because that’s where the magic happens. Yeah, I
Leon Flitton 22:01
mean, a burnout CEO is no help to anyone. You can’t help your team, and you can’t help your business if you’re burnt out, because you’re just not going to be operating from a good space. So you know a couple other things here as well. Is that we talked about who, not how before, but hiring the right people for the right role, so the right people on the bus and not just for task focus like there’s a bigger meaning to who you’re hiring.
Samantha Riley 22:24
Hiring based on roles, not tasks. I think that when people first hire, it’s because they want to get I want someone to post on Facebook, rather than thinking, all right, well, what does this role look like? What are all of the things? Because then in this zone, you’re going to get team members that are really moving the business forward, not just doing what they’re told to do, because there’s a really big difference.
Leon Flitton 22:51
Yeah, I also like to think about it as in hiring someone that can, yes, they can do what needs to be done, but does the role have growth in it? So can that person, if you put them in that role, can they grow and help the business more and more and and actually improve the business in total? Totally, what they can offer you as well,
Samantha Riley 23:09
totally. Can I just finish off with one thing in the CEO zone that I see is probably alongside deep thinking and being the visionary. I think this, this is really, really important in the CEO zone, and I’ve seen it time and time again with our clients, the ones that are really making progress fast and building the business that they really want. They’re really good at setting boundaries. They set boundaries with clients. They set boundaries with time, they set boundaries with team. And I think that this is something that that a lot of people don’t realize the importance of. There is something that you and I do that I actually notice not a lot of people do, and that’s being really in control of our calendar. So in our calendar, we have a coach, and the sessions with our coach are in the calendar first, and our other tasks work around that. We don’t say, oh, we can’t show up to that call this week because we’ve got something else on, because we know the importance of being there and doing the work. So that’s one boundary that we are really strict on we’re really strict on boundaries around our training. We’re really strict on boundaries around our team. We’re really strict on boundaries around how people can contact us in our time. And we make sure that we run our calendar. We don’t let our calendar run us.
Leon Flitton 24:41
Yeah, yeah, I think you, you described that as protecting the founder’s energy, protecting the CEOs energy.
Samantha Riley 24:50
I saw this, I was in a book I read, and I can’t remember what book. So if anyone knows what book this is in, please let me know. But I know that when I read. It. I put it straight on a post it note and put it in our office. Protect the founder’s energy, because it is so, so, so important. Yep, yep, absolutely, yeah. So this inner identity shift needs to be an energetic upgrade. You need to be the person that is running the business, that future business. You need to start being that person right now. You need to stop being the engine and start being the architect. You need to make sure that you’re not the person that’s worried about productivity. You need to be the person that is focused on leadership. So let’s talk about a client of ours, and I’m going to call him Mr. X because I’m really, really, I want to keep the privacy of our clients. I don’t particularly, yeah, it’s important to us. That’s something that we it’s really important to us to protect our clients privacy. So we’re calling Mr. X. But when this client of ours started working with us late last year, he was really in the weeds of his business. He was doing all the tasks. And a lot of the tasks that he was doing were really like in the weeds, logical tasks that you only do once, and you have to learn how to do them, and they take a long time. And this person is in a very, very creative area. And if you’re in the weeds doing these tasks all the time. It Like It drains your creativity. And there’s two things that he shared with us last week, number one, and at that time, he was not enjoying his business. Number one. Last month, he just did his biggest revenue month since 2019 and this is huge because we’re seeing it bandied around on social media, oh, like, people aren’t buying. Right now, we’re in a cost of living crisis. No one’s buying. He’s just done his biggest revenue month since 2019, there are people out there buying, and he’s proven it. The second thing he shared is that he used to be working, like, really long days back last year, before he started working with us, and now he’s got so many systems and procedures in place and so many automations in place that there’s some afternoons where he’s sitting there and it’s like, Oh, I’ve done everything now. Well, that’s so good. It’s so cool, right? So let’s talk about how he got there. Number one, he only focused on the next right thing. It’s like we cleared the deck of everything that’s not moving the needle, and he only focuses on two projects per cycle. So we work with our clients in eight week cycles, where we do a six week sprint and then take two weeks to cool down. And in that cool down period, it could be just finishing off a few odds and ends in the cycles. It could be taking two weeks totally off, going away, just living life and taking some time out. Or it could look like getting ready for the next cycle. It’s however you want to choose it, but we choose those projects per cycle based on or focusing only on the next right thing. So that’s the first thing that he did so that he could just clear all the clutter away. So the next thing he did was used our implementation team. We call them the genies, because they grant wishes all day, every day, for our clients. But he used our team of genies to delegate as much off his plate as he could. There’s still things that need to be done, but he delegated as much as he could. And the other thing that he did is with these projects, rather than just doing things as a once off, he used the time to automate or create systems as he went. So he created his systems for long term sustainability, not just a short term win. And I think a lot of people get caught here of just doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over, where this client really went, Okay, how do I want to move the needle? Where do I want to be? What are the two projects that’s going to move the needle. And now, instead of just creating something and doing the task, it’s like, how do I create this system so I never need to do it again? And he’s just proven that our system of going through the Black Diamond growth roadmap works.
Leon Flitton 29:17
Yeah, yeah. I love this. It’s so good to hear this kind of thing. And I want to touch on a couple of things here. One of it is the genies are awesome. And if you can delegate to them and immediately remove something off your plate, that is fantastic. And the other thing is, multitasking. You’re kidding yourself if you think you can multitask. The good thing about doing the two projects is that you have efficiency and like, are you actually probably concentrating on what you’re doing so you actually nail those tasks faster by doing those two things. So you know that that’s really good. And the last thing I just want to mention is, yes, he automated those systems, created a process for them, like, and I said for long term sustainability, that marginal increase in effort to. Get those sorted out, is a massive win moving forward is how much energy did you just save by doing that moving forward? So little bit up front of energy. What’s that? Short term pain? Long term gain? Yeah and yeah. So he’s just onwards and upwards.
Samantha Riley 30:24
Totally. So right now, I’m going to share five simple questions to ask yourself right now so that you can audit where you are on this journey from operator to CEO. So the first question is, how does the leader that I want to be in the future think? How do they act? And how do they decide? And am I showing up like that version of me right now today? Because that’s really important. We don’t get results and then be that leader. We need to really embrace being that leader today. Number two, where are you still bottlenecking growth? Is it in strategy? Is it in systems? Is it you? Are you bottlenecking the growth of your own business? Number three, what are you doing that someone else could be doing and should be doing? Number four, what decisions are you avoiding that the CEO version of you would have already made. And number five is your calendar a reflection of your highest priorities or of your old habits? I think that really reflecting on those five questions, it will help you to figure out what is the next thing that you need to do to shift from operator to CEO, because until you become the CEO, internally, you’re going to keep rebuilding the same business over and over and over again like Groundhog Day, just with different tasks. Yeah, yeah. 100% thanks for listening today. I hope that you got a lot out of this episode. If you did, we would love you to share it with someone in your world that you know that this will help. I’ll look forward to seeing you next week on another episode of Business Growth Lab.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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