Show Notes
Two scenarios: Your team won't stop asking questions. Or you're solo and think this doesn't apply. It does.
The nine-year employee story: A longtime team member messages: "I gave a refund, they got rebuilt. What happened?" Scott's response: "I don't know. Check with the back office team." The reply: "But you've always been the one that knew."
True. But if Scott jumps in, he deprives the team of the ability to learn. It took every amount of restraint not to swoop in. But that restraint is what allows growth.
The capability ceiling: Your business will only rise to the capability of your weakest team member. Every time you answer a question you shouldn't, you pull yourself down and limit the team's growth.
The ego trap: "It's gonna feed my ego—'man, they still need me.' But my team didn't grow. They're still reliant on me. And that means the business is reliant on me forever."
The tactic: Act like you don't know, even if you know. Redirect. "I don't know. What do you think?"
Virtual assistants: We hire them for one task and never explore their full capability. One of Scott's VAs was massively underutilized—until he got to know them.
The football analogy: Your quarterback should be the kicker. Your wide receiver should be the quarterback. You have talented people in the wrong positions. Strong team, no wins.
The solo-preneur trap: "I tried hiring. The people weren't any good. Nobody wants to work." Maybe true. But Disney has 60,000 employees. They didn't magically find 60,000 perfect people. They invested in a process that brings people to standard.
Choose Your Own Adventure: Every decision turns a page. Each choice moves you closer to your goal, keeps you sideways, or pulls you back. The question: Which adventure are you writing?
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:06.392)
Today we're going to talk about two scenarios that come up in business frequently. The first one is when your team won't stop asking you questions. And the second one is to the person that says, I don't have a team. I don't have to answer questions from them. Well, I've got some bad news for you. You do. Welcome to Fix My Business.
I'm your host, Scott Todd, and I've built multiple seven figure companies after leaving my VP job at a Fortune 300 company. And this channel is dedicated to helping you build a business that you love. Now, I want to talk about a scenario that came up with one of my team members recently. And here's the scenario this particular employee who is a fantastic person to work with, she's phenomenal.
And she's been with my team for a very, very long time. In fact, I think the company was about a year old when she joined me. So was that nine years? Okay. So we have worked together for a very long time. And I trust this person. I I I I just they've been fantastic. Okay. So literally since the company was new, in its early stages, this person has been with me. And back in the early days.
Well what happened is there would be a question and they would have to come to me for the answer because I was like the parent of the company. Okay, think about that for a minute. When you start the company, you're like the parent. You know everything. And you give it life. And what happened was whenever there was a question about how to do something or where to find something, it was in my brain.
And that's where it needed to be at the time. And then what happened is if I didn't know the answer, guess what? I had to make it up. I had to put it together. I had to make it happen. And that's what happens when you're building that company, is that it's just like you know, you're you're you're kind of building this thing on the fly and you're trying to grow it while you're at the same time trying to like keep your own sanity.
Scott Todd (02:30.827)
And as the team grew, lots of people still saw me as the person that knew something because I was like the dad. Like I'm like the parent of the company. And that's fine. Guess what? I I mean, it made me feel great. I was I was needed and I was giving these answers and I was doing all of this stuff. But then fast forward, now we have an entire team built out. There's people that do different things.
And I can no longer be that person that gets involved in all of these different aspects. Because if I do, then it puts a limitation on my ability to grow. And that ability to grow is also l gonna limit the company's ability to grow. So what happened was I got a message that said, Hey, from this particular employee, longtime employee, that said, Hey, I rebuild this, I I'm I
Gave a refund for this person and then all of a sudden they got rebuilt. What happened? That was the message.
And I just wrote back, I don't know. Because I didn't know. I really didn't know. I don't know. Well what would cause that? P I don't know what caused it. I have no idea.
Scott Todd (03:48.682)
And I said, but you need to check with the back office team.
And the response that that came back was, Okay, but you've always been the one that knew.
And that's true. I always was the one that knew. Now, could I have gone in there and searched it? Absolutely. I I probably could have figured it out. But with that decision, if I would have made the decision to go do that, then ultimately what would happen is I would deprive someone else on the team from the ability to use their brain to figure out what happened.
And I will tell you, I'll fast forward it because what happened was everybody said, we don't know. Well, if the back office team doesn't know and they can't figure it out, then we don't know. But as the owner, as the person that that wanted to jump in there back in the day, it took every amount of restraint from me not to do it. But in doing so, it allowed me to change.
My capability. So let me explain that. You see, with every decision that we have to make in our business, whether I jump into a scenario or stay out of the scenario, what's happening is I'm changing the dynamics of the capability of myself and the team. Because I can go back and answer these questions for people, but that's either going to bring me down.
Scott Todd (05:29.855)
back into the business or it's going to allow me to rise up. And when I rise up, it pulls the rest of the team up. Because it's raising everybody up. But if I jump back in, then it pulls me down, but it limits the growth of other people. And this is one of the things that makes business especially
Business ownership where you are having to do this, so dang difficult. Is it possible to overcome it? Absolutely. But you have to be aware of these situations. Because with each decision that I'm making, I'm almost forming like a choose your own adventure book.
You see, that's the thing is with each decision I have to ask myself, is this the right job for me to do right now? Is this the right task for me to do right now?
Should I be searching for this? And this is where the concept of capability really comes in. So here's the thing: your business is only going to rise to the capability of your weakest team member. Because if your team can't produce, because that person hasn't grown, the weakest team member hasn't grown in terms of what they can deliver.
They become an anchor on the entire team. So for me to swoop in and answer a question like, why did this happen? I already said I would be depriving the team from the ability to learn. And look, me and giving an answer and all of a sudden, like, here it is, it's gonna feed my ego because I'm gonna be like, man, they still need me.
Scott Todd (07:31.518)
But my team didn't grow. My team didn't bond. They still are reliant on me. And that means that the business then becomes.
Scott Todd (07:44.339)
Reliant on me forever.
So the best thing that you can do in these situations, especially where you have a team, is to act like you don't know, even if you know. You have to redirect. Because, yeah, I have the capability to figure it out, but so do other people. Now, this is again the hard part of starting a business because the business is only going to expand to your leadership capability.
And this might be good in one aspect. Like you might be really, really good in one aspect of the business, but maybe you're weaker in another. And that weakness is gonna be the limiter of your business. And this is where we get into the whole idea of hiring people for their abilities. Look, can can I do marketing? Absolutely, I can do marketing. Do I love the the nitty-gritty of marketing and
you know, all of the analytics that go with it and all of the changes in the content. No way, man. I don't love that. Could I do it? Yeah, I can do it. But again, I'm going to limit my business based on my ability to figure that thing out.
So your business is going to grow to you. And it's also going to grow to the limitations of your entire team. And so what happens is when you go to build this business and you don't have experience in leading teams and getting people to grow to their capability, the whole process of starting a business is a painful process because growth is painful. Your growth and their growth is painful.
Scott Todd (09:37.834)
Painful. I don't know if you remember back when we were growing as as humans. I mean, I or I don't know, it's around the teenage years I remember being told, that's just a growing pain.
The same thing applies to business. Businesses are going to have those growing pains, and oftentimes it's in growing your capabilities. But this is what leads to these traps we've been talking about. Because when the owner gets involved and answers those questions, the owner becomes the trap, and the owner becomes trapped within their own businesses. And that's what we're trying to try to mitigate here, right? We don't want you to become the Google of your business.
By having to answer all of the questions of the team because then they're not developing. And this also gets compounded when we work with virtual assistants who work remotely. If you have virtual assistants in your company, there's another kind of cautionary tale here because what happens is we don't get to know their full capability. We hire them for a task. We hire them for one thing.
And until we really explore how far they can go and what they can do, we don't ever really understand their full capability. There's someone on my team that is just a phenomenal virtual assistant. They the I call them a team member. I don't even think of them as a virtual assistant, but they they are virtual and they are an assistant.
But what happened is that I didn't see them for all of their capability because I never really got to know them. But when I got to know them, I'm like, holy cow, this person is underutilized. And when your entire team is underutilized, guess what? They don't grow to their full potential. It's like having a football team. And the person that you've chosen as the quarterback should actually be the kicker. And your wide receiver.
Scott Todd (11:43.184)
Should actually be the quarterback. You have very talented people that are in the wrong position. You have such a strong team, but you're not winning any games. But then when you move positions around, all of a sudden you're on fire. And now for those of you that are like, this doesn't apply to me because I'm a solo entrepreneur or I'm in business by myself, look, that happens.
There's nothing wrong with it if that's your strategical choice to do that. But what happens is the decision gets made that I'm just gonna go this alone because they had a bad hire process. Like they tried to hire someone, it was miserable because the growth was miserable. The growth to get there was painful. And we're gonna avoid pain and dis un discomfort and uncomfortable situations all the time.
But you end up not growing your business to its full potential because you didn't figure out, I don't know, how to hire somebody. And I'm not trying to lecture, I'm painting a picture of reality here because there's a different way. Because you know, if you dread hiring people and training them and onboarding them and exploring what their full capabilities are, then you're going to limit your growth.
You can't take on more clients. You can't do the things that you want to do to even achieve the financial numbers that you dream of. And I talk to so many business owners that are solo entrepreneurs, and they dread building teams. And one of the things I'll often ask is, hey, why isn't someone working with you? And the one thing I hear on a common basis is, I tried that.
The people weren't any good. Nobody wants to work. The quality wasn't there. This isn't just one person saying it is a repeatable problem. Pattern, maybe. But the reality is if you're hitting your own limitations because that growth is uncomfortable. The hiring process is uncomfortable. The training process is uncomfortable. I I will I will agree with you.
Scott Todd (14:06.779)
There are people who don't want to work, and there are people who that don't have a standard of quality that meets your level yet. But yet there's large organizations. One that's close to me that I think about all the time is this one with, you know, this this whole cast of characters and like the big one's Mickey Mouse. 60,000 employees. You can't tell me that they have s they have found sixty thousand people.
That are all just magically at some standard. No, they've invested in a process that brings people to where they need to be. And I think that's the difference, right? So again, I'm not trying to turn this into a lecture, but what I want you to really understand is I want you to see the sources of the traps that we've spent weeks talking about. Because we can easily fall into these traps and not even see it. And with each decision that you make,
What's happening is that you are ultimately rewriting the path that your company's taking. Because with every decision that you make, it's either moving you closer to the goal that you want, it's keeping you sideways, or it's pulling you back. As the leader, you have to keep hitting the the higher goal. Earlier today, I talked about this.
whole idea of choose your own adventure books. I loved these books as a as a I don't know a younger child. I loved reading them. And the way that they worked, if you're not from, I don't even know if they have them anymore. The way that they worked is that you would read a page and it would say, if you should if you want to do this, go to page, I don't know, 10, if you want to do this, go to page 20. So you made a decision and it took you on a different path.
And you would go through this and you'd find out, like, my gosh, I didn't make the right decision. Guess what? I'd go back, I'd go back to the first decision and say, well, let's make different decisions. And it was like a big puzzle piece. And that's ultimately what business is. I mean, it's what life is too, but it's what really what business is too, because every single action that you take as a leader is choosing that next page that you're turning to.
Scott Todd (16:30.797)
And that's kind of the question here is which adventure are you riding?
With each of those decisions.
And if you have a business question, I want you to head over to scottodd.net forward slash ask. And I'll see you in our next episode.
Today we're going to talk about two scenarios that come up in business frequently. The first one is when your team won't stop asking you questions. And the second one is to the person that says, I don't have a team. I don't have to answer questions from them. Well, I've got some bad news for you. You do. Welcome to Fix My Business.
I'm your host, Scott Todd, and I've built multiple seven figure companies after leaving my VP job at a Fortune 300 company. And this channel is dedicated to helping you build a business that you love. Now, I want to talk about a scenario that came up with one of my team members recently. And here's the scenario this particular employee who is a fantastic person to work with, she's phenomenal.
And she's been with my team for a very, very long time. In fact, I think the company was about a year old when she joined me. So was that nine years? Okay. So we have worked together for a very long time. And I trust this person. I I I I just they've been fantastic. Okay. So literally since the company was new, in its early stages, this person has been with me. And back in the early days.
Well what happened is there would be a question and they would have to come to me for the answer because I was like the parent of the company. Okay, think about that for a minute. When you start the company, you're like the parent. You know everything. And you give it life. And what happened was whenever there was a question about how to do something or where to find something, it was in my brain.
And that's where it needed to be at the time. And then what happened is if I didn't know the answer, guess what? I had to make it up. I had to put it together. I had to make it happen. And that's what happens when you're building that company, is that it's just like you know, you're you're you're kind of building this thing on the fly and you're trying to grow it while you're at the same time trying to like keep your own sanity.
Scott Todd (02:30.827)
And as the team grew, lots of people still saw me as the person that knew something because I was like the dad. Like I'm like the parent of the company. And that's fine. Guess what? I I mean, it made me feel great. I was I was needed and I was giving these answers and I was doing all of this stuff. But then fast forward, now we have an entire team built out. There's people that do different things.
And I can no longer be that person that gets involved in all of these different aspects. Because if I do, then it puts a limitation on my ability to grow. And that ability to grow is also l gonna limit the company's ability to grow. So what happened was I got a message that said, Hey, from this particular employee, longtime employee, that said, Hey, I rebuild this, I I'm I
Gave a refund for this person and then all of a sudden they got rebuilt. What happened? That was the message.
And I just wrote back, I don't know. Because I didn't know. I really didn't know. I don't know. Well what would cause that? P I don't know what caused it. I have no idea.
Scott Todd (03:48.682)
And I said, but you need to check with the back office team.
And the response that that came back was, Okay, but you've always been the one that knew.
And that's true. I always was the one that knew. Now, could I have gone in there and searched it? Absolutely. I I probably could have figured it out. But with that decision, if I would have made the decision to go do that, then ultimately what would happen is I would deprive someone else on the team from the ability to use their brain to figure out what happened.
And I will tell you, I'll fast forward it because what happened was everybody said, we don't know. Well, if the back office team doesn't know and they can't figure it out, then we don't know. But as the owner, as the person that that wanted to jump in there back in the day, it took every amount of restraint from me not to do it. But in doing so, it allowed me to change.
My capability. So let me explain that. You see, with every decision that we have to make in our business, whether I jump into a scenario or stay out of the scenario, what's happening is I'm changing the dynamics of the capability of myself and the team. Because I can go back and answer these questions for people, but that's either going to bring me down.
Scott Todd (05:29.855)
back into the business or it's going to allow me to rise up. And when I rise up, it pulls the rest of the team up. Because it's raising everybody up. But if I jump back in, then it pulls me down, but it limits the growth of other people. And this is one of the things that makes business especially
Business ownership where you are having to do this, so dang difficult. Is it possible to overcome it? Absolutely. But you have to be aware of these situations. Because with each decision that I'm making, I'm almost forming like a choose your own adventure book.
You see, that's the thing is with each decision I have to ask myself, is this the right job for me to do right now? Is this the right task for me to do right now?
Should I be searching for this? And this is where the concept of capability really comes in. So here's the thing: your business is only going to rise to the capability of your weakest team member. Because if your team can't produce, because that person hasn't grown, the weakest team member hasn't grown in terms of what they can deliver.
They become an anchor on the entire team. So for me to swoop in and answer a question like, why did this happen? I already said I would be depriving the team from the ability to learn. And look, me and giving an answer and all of a sudden, like, here it is, it's gonna feed my ego because I'm gonna be like, man, they still need me.
Scott Todd (07:31.518)
But my team didn't grow. My team didn't bond. They still are reliant on me. And that means that the business then becomes.
Scott Todd (07:44.339)
Reliant on me forever.
So the best thing that you can do in these situations, especially where you have a team, is to act like you don't know, even if you know. You have to redirect. Because, yeah, I have the capability to figure it out, but so do other people. Now, this is again the hard part of starting a business because the business is only going to expand to your leadership capability.
And this might be good in one aspect. Like you might be really, really good in one aspect of the business, but maybe you're weaker in another. And that weakness is gonna be the limiter of your business. And this is where we get into the whole idea of hiring people for their abilities. Look, can can I do marketing? Absolutely, I can do marketing. Do I love the the nitty-gritty of marketing and
you know, all of the analytics that go with it and all of the changes in the content. No way, man. I don't love that. Could I do it? Yeah, I can do it. But again, I'm going to limit my business based on my ability to figure that thing out.
So your business is going to grow to you. And it's also going to grow to the limitations of your entire team. And so what happens is when you go to build this business and you don't have experience in leading teams and getting people to grow to their capability, the whole process of starting a business is a painful process because growth is painful. Your growth and their growth is painful.
Scott Todd (09:37.834)
Painful. I don't know if you remember back when we were growing as as humans. I mean, I or I don't know, it's around the teenage years I remember being told, that's just a growing pain.
The same thing applies to business. Businesses are going to have those growing pains, and oftentimes it's in growing your capabilities. But this is what leads to these traps we've been talking about. Because when the owner gets involved and answers those questions, the owner becomes the trap, and the owner becomes trapped within their own businesses. And that's what we're trying to try to mitigate here, right? We don't want you to become the Google of your business.
By having to answer all of the questions of the team because then they're not developing. And this also gets compounded when we work with virtual assistants who work remotely. If you have virtual assistants in your company, there's another kind of cautionary tale here because what happens is we don't get to know their full capability. We hire them for a task. We hire them for one thing.
And until we really explore how far they can go and what they can do, we don't ever really understand their full capability. There's someone on my team that is just a phenomenal virtual assistant. They the I call them a team member. I don't even think of them as a virtual assistant, but they they are virtual and they are an assistant.
But what happened is that I didn't see them for all of their capability because I never really got to know them. But when I got to know them, I'm like, holy cow, this person is underutilized. And when your entire team is underutilized, guess what? They don't grow to their full potential. It's like having a football team. And the person that you've chosen as the quarterback should actually be the kicker. And your wide receiver.
Scott Todd (11:43.184)
Should actually be the quarterback. You have very talented people that are in the wrong position. You have such a strong team, but you're not winning any games. But then when you move positions around, all of a sudden you're on fire. And now for those of you that are like, this doesn't apply to me because I'm a solo entrepreneur or I'm in business by myself, look, that happens.
There's nothing wrong with it if that's your strategical choice to do that. But what happens is the decision gets made that I'm just gonna go this alone because they had a bad hire process. Like they tried to hire someone, it was miserable because the growth was miserable. The growth to get there was painful. And we're gonna avoid pain and dis un discomfort and uncomfortable situations all the time.
But you end up not growing your business to its full potential because you didn't figure out, I don't know, how to hire somebody. And I'm not trying to lecture, I'm painting a picture of reality here because there's a different way. Because you know, if you dread hiring people and training them and onboarding them and exploring what their full capabilities are, then you're going to limit your growth.
You can't take on more clients. You can't do the things that you want to do to even achieve the financial numbers that you dream of. And I talk to so many business owners that are solo entrepreneurs, and they dread building teams. And one of the things I'll often ask is, hey, why isn't someone working with you? And the one thing I hear on a common basis is, I tried that.
The people weren't any good. Nobody wants to work. The quality wasn't there. This isn't just one person saying it is a repeatable problem. Pattern, maybe. But the reality is if you're hitting your own limitations because that growth is uncomfortable. The hiring process is uncomfortable. The training process is uncomfortable. I I will I will agree with you.
Scott Todd (14:06.779)
There are people who don't want to work, and there are people who that don't have a standard of quality that meets your level yet. But yet there's large organizations. One that's close to me that I think about all the time is this one with, you know, this this whole cast of characters and like the big one's Mickey Mouse. 60,000 employees. You can't tell me that they have s they have found sixty thousand people.
That are all just magically at some standard. No, they've invested in a process that brings people to where they need to be. And I think that's the difference, right? So again, I'm not trying to turn this into a lecture, but what I want you to really understand is I want you to see the sources of the traps that we've spent weeks talking about. Because we can easily fall into these traps and not even see it. And with each decision that you make,
What's happening is that you are ultimately rewriting the path that your company's taking. Because with every decision that you make, it's either moving you closer to the goal that you want, it's keeping you sideways, or it's pulling you back. As the leader, you have to keep hitting the the higher goal. Earlier today, I talked about this.
whole idea of choose your own adventure books. I loved these books as a as a I don't know a younger child. I loved reading them. And the way that they worked, if you're not from, I don't even know if they have them anymore. The way that they worked is that you would read a page and it would say, if you should if you want to do this, go to page, I don't know, 10, if you want to do this, go to page 20. So you made a decision and it took you on a different path.
And you would go through this and you'd find out, like, my gosh, I didn't make the right decision. Guess what? I'd go back, I'd go back to the first decision and say, well, let's make different decisions. And it was like a big puzzle piece. And that's ultimately what business is. I mean, it's what life is too, but it's what really what business is too, because every single action that you take as a leader is choosing that next page that you're turning to.
Scott Todd (16:30.797)
And that's kind of the question here is which adventure are you riding?
With each of those decisions.
And if you have a business question, I want you to head over to scottodd.net forward slash ask. And I'll see you in our next episode.