Do you ever struggle with letting go and letting other people take over parts of your business?
Yea, I’ve been there.
When I first started my business, I was completely in control and I liked it that way. I didn’t want to delegate tasks, I didn’t want to outsource. I wanted my hands in everything that went on in my business.
I think every entrepreneur goes through a similar process at the beginning of their journey. Like when you leave the nine-to-five world, it’s like you have this risk fatigue. You’ve taken such a giant risk in following your dreams and turning your side hustle into a full-time career.
And taking another risk by hiring someone to help you just doesn’t seem doable. Your business is like your baby, and who can nurture it better than you can?
So before I went to Alex Charfen, my business coach, for advice, I was obsessed with control.
I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do less than ask someone for help.
I actually thought that asking for help would hinder me or that I wouldn’t be seen as successful by needing someone else’s help or that this thing, like if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.
Looking back, it was such a horrible mindset! I mean, getting help means you can scale and reach MORE people. That was my whole point. I left being a dental hygienist because I wanted to reach more than one person at a time in the dentist’s chair, and now here I am scared to let someone help me reach more people.
But eventually, I was exhausted.
I was overworking myself, my health suffered, my marriage suffered, and if we’re being really honest, I wasn’t allowing my business to reach its full potential. I myself was holding myself back from helping more people.
When I confided in Alex, he told me, “You’re not that special, Marley.” That sentence changed everything for me. I was slightly offended, but also extremely relieved.
I learned very quickly that there were amazing, talented people out there who were better than me at what I felt was something that only I could do, and that they could come into my business and apply their own superpowers, which allowed me to live in my own zone of genius.
Through lots of coaching and feeling the pain first-hand, I’ve realized that by taking on every task yourself, you’re actually limiting your business and capping your revenue.
Whether you know it or not, you are fully capable of making the money that you have always dreamed of and more, but you can’t achieve that goal without getting the help. And there are a ton of hardworking, talented people out there that are eager to help you make this a reality.
To know more about that one step that turned out to be a giant leap in my business, stay tuned.
Key Takeaways:
- CEO, at the time, meant chief everything officer (1:38)
- I was exhausted. I was overworking myself… (2:45)
- “You’re not that special, Marley.” That sentence changed everything (3:43)
- You can’t achieve that goal without getting the help… (4:23)
- It wasn’t just about managing a team; it was personal development (5:35)
- Going through hard times and struggling to fit the puzzle pieces together (7:24)
- Failure is a necessary part of entrepreneurship, and of life (8:22)
- I went from six figures in debt to making six figures a month (9:11)
- The business starts to bloom as you fail and move forward despite fears (11:39)
- You impact the lives of your audience and you get to change the world (12:13)
Learn More:
Transcript:
00:00 There was a time not too long ago when I was feeling totally overwhelmed and overworked by my own business. When I confided in my business coach, I was both taken off guard and relieved when he told me, “Marley, you’re not that special.”
00:18 You’ve probably been told that content is key to growing your business, right? There are so many experts who spend a ton of time cranking out incredible content consistently and yet they’re broke. See, there’s a huge difference in growing your following and growing your income. How do you create content in a way that actually gets you paid over and over again, like turning every video into an army of salesmen that deliver your perfectly crafted message around the world, around the clock, perpetually forever. I’m Marley Baird and you’re listening to The VIP Code.
00:55 Hi everybody. Welcome back to The VIP Code.
00:57 I’m Marley Baird. Today, we’re talking about how to lead your movement and lead your business in a way that continues to move the needle. It’s one thing to quit your nine-to-five and start your own business, but actually, stepping up to the plate to lead your movement effectively is this whole other beast. If you want to transform your movement and drive impact and profit for your business, be sure to stick around to the end of this episode because I’m going to tell you all about how you can get involved in my Infinite Video Impact Challenge. But for now, let’s jump into the podcast. When I first started my business, I was completely in control and I liked it that way. I didn’t want to delegate tasks, I didn’t want to outsource. I wanted my hands in like everything that went on in my business. CEO at the time meant chief everything officer. Have you ever felt that way?
01:44 I think that every entrepreneur goes through a similar process at the beginning of their journey. Like when you leave the nine-to-five world, it’s like you have this risk fatigue. You’ve taken such a giant risk in following your dreams and turning your side hustle into a full-time career. And by taking another risk, by hiring someone to help you just doesn’t seem doable. Your business is like your baby and who can nurture it better than you can. So before I went to Alex Charfen, my coach, who I absolutely love and adore, please go check out his podcast. It will change your life. Before I went to Alex for advice, I was obsessed with control. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do less than ask someone for help. I actually thought that asking for help would hinder me or that I wouldn’t be seen as successful by needing someone else’s help or that this thing, like if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.
02:45 But I was exhausted. I was overworking myself, my health suffered, my marriage suffered, and if we’re being really honest, I wasn’t allowing my business to reach its full potential. So when I came to Charfen I was frustrated and discouraged by the ROI I was seeing when I was working so hard at every aspect of my business. Like I kept, I only, I had this ceiling and I couldn’t get beyond that. And then with the ups and the dips and everything in business, it was just, I was stagnant. And then also why would I offload some of this responsibility when I could just do it myself for free, especially if I was feeling stagnant at that. I thought, I am absolutely a snowflake unicorn. No one else can create content like me. No one else can edit videos like me. No one else can. You get it like I thought I am the only person who can do this my way.
03:43 You’re not that special. Marley. That sentence changed everything for me. I was both slightly offended but extremely relieved. Here’s the thing, you are only one person and I learned very quickly that despite believing I was a snowflake unicorn, there are amazing, talented people out there who are better than me at what I felt was only something that I could do and that they could come into my business and own their superpowers allowing me to live in mind and also by taking on every task yourself, you’re actually limiting your business and capping your revenue. Whether you know it or not. You are fully capable of making the money that you have always dreamed of and more, but you can’t achieve that goal without getting help. And there are a ton of hardworking, talented people out there. Videographers, editors, copywriters, the kind of tasks that I thought, these are creative, you have to be intuitive too, is I can’t make this into a process.
04:45 It turns out you can. And Alex Charfen shirt kicked my butt into that. And when you employ people in their zone of genius, they grant your business the ability of making the money and deserves. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. I hope I didn’t butcher that. Do you get what I’m saying? If you wanna go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So when you start your business, like I mentioned, chief, everything officer doing all the work yourself is obviously much more challenging. And it may be the most natural option, especially at first. But I wished that I would’ve known sooner. That the best investments that I would make in my business were first of all in myself and then in other people. Being a leader of a team was the most surprising thing to me that I, I didn’t realize that I was, it was going to be my biggest challenge and my biggest joy.
05:35 It wasn’t just about managing a team to grow the business. It became about personal development so that I could nurture development in my team to my job as a leader is to create more leaders in my team and my clients. There was like this ripple effect in nurturing and leading my team to lead other team members down the line so that they could also be part of leading our clients towards their outcomes so that they could lead their movement and make their greatest contribution to the world. But that said, in my personal development, constantly learning to be a better leader, I deal with and likely entrepreneurs like you deal with imposter syndrome, meaning that sometimes it’s hard to justify becoming someone else’s boss, delegating responsibilities and so on. And sometimes it’s crazy to me to sit back and think, wow, I feed people’s families. I am responsible for paying their mortgages, kind of, you know what I mean?
06:33 I have a team of 16 people right now and I see each of them on our daily huddle every single day and I feel so excited for the company culture that we have in the movement we’re leading in the growth we’re creating in the company, but also in our own individual personal development, but in the ups and downs of business, sometimes it can feel overwhelming and that’s why entrepreneurs, I think, avoid this process of taking on employees, handing parts of their business to other people, trusting them to take care of it, even though it’s exactly what they need to do in order to make the most possible impact and revenue and empower their employees and their zone of genius and being totally transparent. I’ve been burned by employees in the past that didn’t work out and it’s heartbreaking. It’s disappointing and I feel like that’s part of the process and learning how to be a better leader and attract the right members to your team.
07:24 It’s like a rite of passage for us to go through hard times and struggle to fit all the puzzle pieces together and fail and try again and fail some more and try again and likely just like you. I’ve had moments in my career where I thought to myself, I can’t do this. This program won’t help me hiring someone who can’t help me or I don’t have what it takes to implement this training, but I found that more often than not, these feelings were my own self-doubt. Alex Charfen, again, a man that I will quote often, he said, “imposters don’t have imposter syndrome.” Let that sink in for a minute. When I feel like that, I try to take a step back and acknowledge that my concerns are out of my desire to be authentic and do the right thing for my family and my team and my clients, and at the same time, every time I’ve taken a risk from hiring someone new to investing in a program, I’ve always been grateful for it.
08:22 Even the experiences that were so difficult in the moment, firing employees, being near bankruptcy, all of that, although painful led me to here and failure isn’t just a necessary part of entrepreneurship. It’s a necessary part of life and self-doubt is just a fancy term for fear. When I first started as an entrepreneur, I had a fear of trusting others with my vision. I thought that no one could possibly help me better than I could help myself. I feared that I wasn’t good enough to execute my plan for my business and experienced success from it, and that was because deep down I didn’t think I deserved success, so I limited myself from receiving it. When I decided to push forward. In spite of those fears, my business was immediately rewarded. I went from six figures in debt to making six figures a month because I decided to shift the narrative.
09:18 I decided that I was worthy of it because I invited people to work towards my vision alongside me. So what if I told you that you are capable of making all the money that you desire and you could even surpass the business goals that you set for yourself? Answer the common question. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? Would you finally start that YouTube channel? Would you launch that course? Write that book, schedule that call, and when you start making changes like this, for example, delegating tasks and giving responsibility to other employees, you’re not just taking that step to improve your business. Don’t forget that you’ll also be helping to feed families and empower people to hone their skills and work in their zone of genius. That’s one of my favorite parts of being a leader. I know what it was like to work in a nine to five and constantly be looking at the clock counting down the hours to my freedom.
10:12 And now I have employees that say to me, I can’t believe I get paid to do this. And meanwhile, I’m like, thank you for doing this and for being part of this movement. There are plenty of entrepreneurs who decided to play it safe and keep their cards close to their chest and they’re assuming all responsibility for every aspect of their business. And I believe that those businesses will only go so far. And I hope that you’ll accept this as truth because to me this is the truth. You are fully capable of achieving your business goals. You are capable of making the money, you alone, the set the limits for your business and you get to decide whether you succeed and what that success looks like. So for you all listening, you’re not that special.
10:55 I’m sorry if you expected a pat on the back there. I needed to hear that from Alex Charfen and now I’m sharing it with you. You’re not that special. You don’t have to do everything in your business. You don’t have to carry the weight of it all yourself. There are people out there who can and are excited to and are eager to take the work off your shoulders and take your business to the next level. If you’re constantly thinking, I can’t do this, I can’t hire someone to help. I can’t run a successful business. I can’t invest in this program. I want to encourage you to rewrite that story, like flip that around and imagine what would happen if you decided everything was going to go better than you even planned. I have to warn you though, you should fully expect to fail along the way.
11:39 Expect to fall on your face. Yay. It’ll happen when an offer or a relationship with a client doesn’t go as planned. It will happen when you have a tech glitch in the middle of a launch or an internet outage. It’ll happen, but you get to fail forward and when you move forward in spite of your fears and you take the chances, even though you might fail, your business starts to bloom. You take action. On the things that you’ve always wanted to do. You finally launched that course with the help of your team and you start creating content for the people who truly need that message. You make an impact on the lives of your audience and you get to change their family, their business, their community, the world. In that case, it almost seems selfish if you don’t live up to your true potential. Imagine all the people that you’d have to send apology letters to by not reaching them when they needed you because you didn’t live up to your true potential.
12:36 “You are not that special.” Ever since I heard that sentence, my entire business has transformed. I work with extraordinary entrepreneurs and agency owners all over the world and it’s in large part due to the fact that I just decided to trust myself, trust my vision and accept that I was capable and you are too, and I’m all about empowering impact-driven, profit-focused entrepreneurs to lead their movement and spread their message. There is nothing I love more than working with entrepreneurs with a vision to change the world. If you want to increase your impact, please check out the challenge I just launched. It’s called the Infinite Video Impact challenge – driving profit with massive impact through video, and it’s packed with over $3,000 worth of strategies to help you overcome the insecurities in your business. Realize what you’re capable of and start going after it. And I’m offering a special bonus for my podcast listeners, so head over to InfiniteImpactChallenge.com to learn more and sign up.
13:37 Thanks so much for listening to The VIP Code podcast. Do you want to connect with me and other impact-driven, profit-focused entrepreneurs who are on a mission to make an impact while creating more freedom in their life? Join us in the private Facebook group, “Entrepreneur on Purpose”. Now, just head over to Facebook and type in “Entrepreneur on Purpose”. When you join, you’ll get access to how to grow your list from YouTube, which will teach you how to generate leads organically and on autopilot from your channel. This is the only place you can get access to this, so be sure to go join the “Entrepreneur on Purpose” group. Now, I look forward to you joining us next time on The VIP Code.