Show Notes
Steven asks: "I've been running my company for six years. We do about half a million a year. I have a team, but I'm still actively involved in everything. I've tried delegating, but it ends up with me redoing the work. Is this just my personality?"
In this episode, Scott diagnoses Steven's real problem (the control trap isn't personality—it's an unwritten standard), explains why "what winning looks like" must be defined, and shares the Walt Disney Jungle Cruise story: how Walt noticed inconsistent ride times but went upstream to set the standard instead of fixing it himself. You'll learn why your company is capped at your capacity and what to do when delegated work comes back wrong.
The bottom line: Paint a picture of what success looks like. Get out of the way. Let them redo it—not you.
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:00)
Welcome to Fix My Business. I'm your host Scott Todd and I have built multiple seven figure businesses and I'm here on this show to help you do the same thing. And I do that by answering your questions, audience submitted questions so that you can learn how other people are stuck and you can avoid that way too. So we're not here to judge, we're here
to help and today's question comes from Steven and Steven writes, I've been running my company for six years. We do about half a million dollars a year. I have a team, but I'm still actively involved in every major decision, every marketing campaign. I've tried delegating, but it mostly ends up with me redoing or heavily editing the work. At what point does
I'm the bottleneck become something you can actually solve such as is it just my personality trait that I have to manage around.
⁓ Steven, what I would say is that you're in a control trap. Now, you might argue, hey, I'm not a control freak. I'm not a micromanager. I'm just worried about the way that the company looks or what we're putting out there. And the harsh reality is that the business is going to be capped by you.
And I don't mean that in a mean way. I'm just saying that the company is not going to be able to grow beyond half a million dollars because everything still has to come back to you. And the problem is a little bit deeper here because even though I call it the control trap, it's not a personality thing. It's not just your personality. It's not just your standard. The problem is that
your standard lives within your head. You have this unwritten standard that is just not out into the world because your employees don't understand it. And I get that from what you said about how you're still involved and you're still editing and you're still making every decision. And what I believe is that
you haven't defined what winning looks like. In every role, in every task, in every process, you have not defined what success looks like to your standard. Look, I'm going to, I'll just tell you, one of the things that my team does for me is they take your questions like this and they turn around and they put it on a piece of paper. They make sure that it's printed out for me, something, a question that I can answer for you.
Okay, and we have a standard, it's on a little logo that says, fix my business, the name of the show. You know, it's there, it prints out. When I go to do a podcast like this, it's ready for me to go. I don't have to go look for it. I don't have to go hunt for it. I don't have to go build it. It's there because I've defined what success looks like. Hey, before I go into the studio, these are the things that I need. Before I go into the studio,
I want that back wall to be like this. We want this lighting. We want this configuration. That's all stuff that the team takes care of for me because we've established what success looks like. And until you establish what success looks like, you're going to continue to struggle here. Not just you, but your company and your team are going to continue to struggle. One of my favorite stories about Walt Disney is
After he opened Disneyland, he would routinely go to the parks. He would routinely go to Disneyland and he would ride the rides. He would try to be incognito. He would try to blend in with the guests. He's not there to be Walt Disney. He's there to experience what it's like to be a guest. And on one day, one Saturday, he's going on the Jungle Cruise ride and he noticed
that the timings were very inconsistent. Some skippers would do the ride in about seven minutes. Some skippers would take nine minutes. And because of that inconsistency, some jokes or some of the script was cut. Some of it was like, know, periods of time where it wasn't, it was just like dead space, if you will. There were sometimes because the skippers went too fast that they were backing up. There was no consistency. Now,
If we manage like you, what we would do is Walt would have gone to the skipper and said, hey, you got to change this. But that's not what Walt did. I think that the lesson we can learn from Walt Disney here is pretty broad because what he did was he went and found a manager. So here's the owner of the place, the leader, the CEO. He goes and finds a manager and says, hey, how long is the jungle cruise supposed to take?
and they had a discussion about it and a standard was set. And it wasn't necessarily Walt that was telling the skipper what he was doing wrong. He went upstream and they determined what success looked like, okay? Then that got communicated downstream to the employees. And until you define what's here in your mind of what success looks like and paint that picture for your team,
and teach them how to meet that standard, you will continue to do this work. And as a result, your company will continue to be capped at around half a million dollars a year. And then you are trapped. Okay, that's why I call it a control trap. That's why I also call this phase of the business like the muddy mile, because it's a grind. You're not getting traction. And you got to avoid these traps. There's five of them.
I'm not going to go through all five right now, but yeah, there's a control trap and that's where you firmly are. So your action is to paint a picture of what success looks like, get out of the way, let your team execute. If they did not do it correctly, guess what? Go back to your documentation, go back to the training and say, this still isn't right. Let me show you how I would make it right.
and you guys need to go do it again. Let the team redo the work. You don't do that. I appreciate the question. If you have a question, you can head over to scotttodd.net forward slash ask. Happy to answer your question because I want you to grow into that seven, eight figure business. And I'll see you in our next episode.
Welcome to Fix My Business. I'm your host Scott Todd and I have built multiple seven figure businesses and I'm here on this show to help you do the same thing. And I do that by answering your questions, audience submitted questions so that you can learn how other people are stuck and you can avoid that way too. So we're not here to judge, we're here
to help and today's question comes from Steven and Steven writes, I've been running my company for six years. We do about half a million dollars a year. I have a team, but I'm still actively involved in every major decision, every marketing campaign. I've tried delegating, but it mostly ends up with me redoing or heavily editing the work. At what point does
I'm the bottleneck become something you can actually solve such as is it just my personality trait that I have to manage around.
⁓ Steven, what I would say is that you're in a control trap. Now, you might argue, hey, I'm not a control freak. I'm not a micromanager. I'm just worried about the way that the company looks or what we're putting out there. And the harsh reality is that the business is going to be capped by you.
And I don't mean that in a mean way. I'm just saying that the company is not going to be able to grow beyond half a million dollars because everything still has to come back to you. And the problem is a little bit deeper here because even though I call it the control trap, it's not a personality thing. It's not just your personality. It's not just your standard. The problem is that
your standard lives within your head. You have this unwritten standard that is just not out into the world because your employees don't understand it. And I get that from what you said about how you're still involved and you're still editing and you're still making every decision. And what I believe is that
you haven't defined what winning looks like. In every role, in every task, in every process, you have not defined what success looks like to your standard. Look, I'm going to, I'll just tell you, one of the things that my team does for me is they take your questions like this and they turn around and they put it on a piece of paper. They make sure that it's printed out for me, something, a question that I can answer for you.
Okay, and we have a standard, it's on a little logo that says, fix my business, the name of the show. You know, it's there, it prints out. When I go to do a podcast like this, it's ready for me to go. I don't have to go look for it. I don't have to go hunt for it. I don't have to go build it. It's there because I've defined what success looks like. Hey, before I go into the studio, these are the things that I need. Before I go into the studio,
I want that back wall to be like this. We want this lighting. We want this configuration. That's all stuff that the team takes care of for me because we've established what success looks like. And until you establish what success looks like, you're going to continue to struggle here. Not just you, but your company and your team are going to continue to struggle. One of my favorite stories about Walt Disney is
After he opened Disneyland, he would routinely go to the parks. He would routinely go to Disneyland and he would ride the rides. He would try to be incognito. He would try to blend in with the guests. He's not there to be Walt Disney. He's there to experience what it's like to be a guest. And on one day, one Saturday, he's going on the Jungle Cruise ride and he noticed
that the timings were very inconsistent. Some skippers would do the ride in about seven minutes. Some skippers would take nine minutes. And because of that inconsistency, some jokes or some of the script was cut. Some of it was like, know, periods of time where it wasn't, it was just like dead space, if you will. There were sometimes because the skippers went too fast that they were backing up. There was no consistency. Now,
If we manage like you, what we would do is Walt would have gone to the skipper and said, hey, you got to change this. But that's not what Walt did. I think that the lesson we can learn from Walt Disney here is pretty broad because what he did was he went and found a manager. So here's the owner of the place, the leader, the CEO. He goes and finds a manager and says, hey, how long is the jungle cruise supposed to take?
and they had a discussion about it and a standard was set. And it wasn't necessarily Walt that was telling the skipper what he was doing wrong. He went upstream and they determined what success looked like, okay? Then that got communicated downstream to the employees. And until you define what's here in your mind of what success looks like and paint that picture for your team,
and teach them how to meet that standard, you will continue to do this work. And as a result, your company will continue to be capped at around half a million dollars a year. And then you are trapped. Okay, that's why I call it a control trap. That's why I also call this phase of the business like the muddy mile, because it's a grind. You're not getting traction. And you got to avoid these traps. There's five of them.
I'm not going to go through all five right now, but yeah, there's a control trap and that's where you firmly are. So your action is to paint a picture of what success looks like, get out of the way, let your team execute. If they did not do it correctly, guess what? Go back to your documentation, go back to the training and say, this still isn't right. Let me show you how I would make it right.
and you guys need to go do it again. Let the team redo the work. You don't do that. I appreciate the question. If you have a question, you can head over to scotttodd.net forward slash ask. Happy to answer your question because I want you to grow into that seven, eight figure business. And I'll see you in our next episode.