Show Notes
Joe writes: "I'm seven months in. I thought I'd have this figured out by now. I'm working harder than ever, and the results aren't there. Is this normal?"
Yes. Welcome to the muddy mile.
The hardest part isn't starting—it's sustaining. The newness is gone. The initial excitement is gone. You're in the grind.
The lag: The results from today's effort might take months to appear. But if you stop and restart, you're back at zero.
The Gap and the Gain: Dan Sullivan's concept. Stop measuring forward to the goal. Measure backward to where you started. That's the gain.
The lie: The startup opportunists say you'll crush it from the get-go. They don't tell you about the muddy mile.
The physics: Momentum takes time. A rocket starts slow. A plane builds speed. You're building the foundation.
The prescription: Lower your expectations on the timeline. Raise your expectations on daily effort. Ask: What can I do today that keeps me moving toward the goal?
The lacrosse story: Scott's son was playing lacrosse. The team had the ball, approached the goal, and froze. A dad on the sidelines yelled: "Move your feet." They started running. That's the answer—don't freeze. Move your feet.
The close: You're right where you need to be. This is why only 6% of the population own businesses. Keep moving.
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:01.442)
One of the hardest parts of business is your people, the people that you're working with, the people that work for you. And this is what's driving Christopher's question today. He writes, My team is frustrating. I hire people and I end up jumping in and doing better than them. What am I even paying for? Welcome to Fix My Business. I'm your host, Scott Todd, and I've built multiple seven-figure businesses after leaving.
My VP corporate 500, Fortune 500 job in corporate America. And this channel is dedicated to helping you do the same thing and build a business that you love. And one of the things I agree, one of the things with that that Christopher said here is that his team is frustrating. And I can relate to this because, well, I've been in that situation to where, well, I felt my team was frustrating too. And we've talked about this in this channel on this channel before.
There's some episodes I want you to make sure you're listening to. This is episode 75, by the way. But back on episode 64, which I talked about choosing your own adventure and also the capability ceiling. That's one. And also an important one for this one is the control trap, episode fifty-five. You see, there's a lie that we as business owners tell ourselves, and it's twofold. Number one is that
It's faster if we do it ourselves. And number two is that I can do it better than anybody else. So and that's what drives this frustration here is what am I paying for if I end up having to to jump in and I can just do it?
And it's true, you could probably jump in and do it. But should you jump in and do it? That's really the the challenge here. Because you see, the the truth is that when you do that, your team learns that they can just come to you, that you will just solve the problem. You're you're planting this seed, even though you're doing it in a way you're not saying it, but you're doing it and it's just building this expectation. And then you become the bottleneck.
Scott Todd (02:16.831)
The business can only move as fast as you can move, and you are the slowest constraint at that point. Because the slowest constraint is where everything is coming through. Now, there's a book. I love this book. It's called The Goal. it's by Eli Goldratz. And the book is about the theory of constraints. And the theory of constraints isn't about like
having to solve all of the problems. It's really about finding that one big rock that's standing in your way today and solving or removing that obstacle. It's about finding the weakest link in the chain and fixing it. Okay. And I write about this in my book, Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors, is you want to find it, fix it, and then we want to move on.
Okay, and so what happens is when you're doing their job, you're compounding this because what's happening is that you're stealing their opportunity for growth.
Think about that for a minute. You see, in any role that we assume, we have to kind of grow within this role. Okay. We never show up fully, fully maximized in our growth potential in any role. And when we step in, what happens is we're depriving them from learning, even though it can be almost painstaking, like watching paint dry. Okay, like watching them do something.
Because we're like, just give it to me, I can get it done faster. But we're not letting them grow and expand and make the mistakes and building up the speed to move faster. And in some way, what's happening is when we swoop in, we're also proving to them that they can't be trusted. We're proving to ourselves that they can't be trusted as well. And then we're becoming exhausted. My my friend Mike Mikalowitz, the author of
Scott Todd (04:27.686)
Many different business books, including Profit First and Fix This Next. One of the things that he told me is that a lot of times entrepreneurs feel like they need to swoop in and solve a problem. Okay. The analogy that he provided, which I love this analogy, was that it think about Batman, for example. In Batman, when the police chief loses all kinds
Control of the city of Gotham, what does he do? He goes out and he turns the bat signal on. Okay. Well then Batman, who's the business owner in this case, Batman comes swooping into town to save the day. But what he does is he leaves a path of destruction across the city. Because think about how the movie ends. The movie ends and the camera's panning out, and what do you see? You see nothing.
Except for smoke and ruins. Why? Because Batman, Batman saved this city. But he made a he made a mess. So when your team needs you and you put on that bat signal and you jump into action, what happens is you come into town, you feel like you've saved the day, and you've walked away and you've left a mess. Now, whether you can see that mess or not, there's a mess there. You just
May not be able to see it. And you walk away, you're like, man, I'm the only one that can do this. I'm the only one that can save the day. But that's the wrong thinking for a business owner. And look, I talk to a lot of business owners. I talk to them in every different industry, from real estate investing to car detailing to house cleaning, to I mean, you name it, to software as a service, you name it. And there's so many of these solo on solopreneurs.
That sit there and they don't want to build a team because of this exact experience. They're like, I can just do it myself. Okay. So then they become limited in their growth potential. And what they've done is they've carved themselves out a job. They've got a good paying job. Okay. They don't have any of the hassles of people. But that's also the greatest weakness because it's not something that they can necessarily sell either. I mean, there's some nuance to that, but they're not building an asset, they're building a job.
Scott Todd (06:53.283)
And when it comes time for them to retire, they're going to retire. And so is their job. You see, the real problem here is that we haven't defined what done looks like. Christopher, like that's the challenge for you is what does done look like? Well, whatever it is that you're swooping in to do, that's when you have to pause and not just swoop in and do it. You have to pause and say, hey, this is what I want it to look like. This is the polishing that needs to go on here.
This is what done looks like. And then they have a model. But see what's happening here is that we're not doing that. And in episode fifty-six, we talked about the variability trap. And one of the things that I said there is that we have to define the output, not the task. So
Here's what I want you to do, Christopher, is I want you to take this mindset now and shift your mindset. And for one week or one month, one month would be better. One week might be stressing you out. For that period of time, I don't want you to redo any of the work. I want you to document what's wrong. And at the end of the week.
Train on those gaps. Okay. I I I want you to train people based on what you see, what you see in terms of gaps in terms of the output that they're delivering on. How can they do better? You have to raise the bar because at the end of the day, your business is going to be limited by ultimately two things. The first is your capability as a leader.
And the second is the capability of your team, because that's the weaknesses. That's the that's that's the theory of constraints. So as you think about this, think about: hey, am I the constraint or is my team the constraint? And if the team is the constraint, you do not step back in. And if you're the constraint, you have to figure out how to unconstrain yourself. Because those are the things that will build.
Scott Todd (09:21.484)
Frustration, and those are the things that will keep you stuck in the muddy mile. So Christopher, I appreciate your question. It's a great question. And if you have a business question, head over to Scott Todd dot net forward slash ask. And I will see you in our next episode.
One of the hardest parts of business is your people, the people that you're working with, the people that work for you. And this is what's driving Christopher's question today. He writes, My team is frustrating. I hire people and I end up jumping in and doing better than them. What am I even paying for? Welcome to Fix My Business. I'm your host, Scott Todd, and I've built multiple seven-figure businesses after leaving.
My VP corporate 500, Fortune 500 job in corporate America. And this channel is dedicated to helping you do the same thing and build a business that you love. And one of the things I agree, one of the things with that that Christopher said here is that his team is frustrating. And I can relate to this because, well, I've been in that situation to where, well, I felt my team was frustrating too. And we've talked about this in this channel on this channel before.
There's some episodes I want you to make sure you're listening to. This is episode 75, by the way. But back on episode 64, which I talked about choosing your own adventure and also the capability ceiling. That's one. And also an important one for this one is the control trap, episode fifty-five. You see, there's a lie that we as business owners tell ourselves, and it's twofold. Number one is that
It's faster if we do it ourselves. And number two is that I can do it better than anybody else. So and that's what drives this frustration here is what am I paying for if I end up having to to jump in and I can just do it?
And it's true, you could probably jump in and do it. But should you jump in and do it? That's really the the challenge here. Because you see, the the truth is that when you do that, your team learns that they can just come to you, that you will just solve the problem. You're you're planting this seed, even though you're doing it in a way you're not saying it, but you're doing it and it's just building this expectation. And then you become the bottleneck.
Scott Todd (02:16.831)
The business can only move as fast as you can move, and you are the slowest constraint at that point. Because the slowest constraint is where everything is coming through. Now, there's a book. I love this book. It's called The Goal. it's by Eli Goldratz. And the book is about the theory of constraints. And the theory of constraints isn't about like
having to solve all of the problems. It's really about finding that one big rock that's standing in your way today and solving or removing that obstacle. It's about finding the weakest link in the chain and fixing it. Okay. And I write about this in my book, Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors, is you want to find it, fix it, and then we want to move on.
Okay, and so what happens is when you're doing their job, you're compounding this because what's happening is that you're stealing their opportunity for growth.
Think about that for a minute. You see, in any role that we assume, we have to kind of grow within this role. Okay. We never show up fully, fully maximized in our growth potential in any role. And when we step in, what happens is we're depriving them from learning, even though it can be almost painstaking, like watching paint dry. Okay, like watching them do something.
Because we're like, just give it to me, I can get it done faster. But we're not letting them grow and expand and make the mistakes and building up the speed to move faster. And in some way, what's happening is when we swoop in, we're also proving to them that they can't be trusted. We're proving to ourselves that they can't be trusted as well. And then we're becoming exhausted. My my friend Mike Mikalowitz, the author of
Scott Todd (04:27.686)
Many different business books, including Profit First and Fix This Next. One of the things that he told me is that a lot of times entrepreneurs feel like they need to swoop in and solve a problem. Okay. The analogy that he provided, which I love this analogy, was that it think about Batman, for example. In Batman, when the police chief loses all kinds
Control of the city of Gotham, what does he do? He goes out and he turns the bat signal on. Okay. Well then Batman, who's the business owner in this case, Batman comes swooping into town to save the day. But what he does is he leaves a path of destruction across the city. Because think about how the movie ends. The movie ends and the camera's panning out, and what do you see? You see nothing.
Except for smoke and ruins. Why? Because Batman, Batman saved this city. But he made a he made a mess. So when your team needs you and you put on that bat signal and you jump into action, what happens is you come into town, you feel like you've saved the day, and you've walked away and you've left a mess. Now, whether you can see that mess or not, there's a mess there. You just
May not be able to see it. And you walk away, you're like, man, I'm the only one that can do this. I'm the only one that can save the day. But that's the wrong thinking for a business owner. And look, I talk to a lot of business owners. I talk to them in every different industry, from real estate investing to car detailing to house cleaning, to I mean, you name it, to software as a service, you name it. And there's so many of these solo on solopreneurs.
That sit there and they don't want to build a team because of this exact experience. They're like, I can just do it myself. Okay. So then they become limited in their growth potential. And what they've done is they've carved themselves out a job. They've got a good paying job. Okay. They don't have any of the hassles of people. But that's also the greatest weakness because it's not something that they can necessarily sell either. I mean, there's some nuance to that, but they're not building an asset, they're building a job.
Scott Todd (06:53.283)
And when it comes time for them to retire, they're going to retire. And so is their job. You see, the real problem here is that we haven't defined what done looks like. Christopher, like that's the challenge for you is what does done look like? Well, whatever it is that you're swooping in to do, that's when you have to pause and not just swoop in and do it. You have to pause and say, hey, this is what I want it to look like. This is the polishing that needs to go on here.
This is what done looks like. And then they have a model. But see what's happening here is that we're not doing that. And in episode fifty-six, we talked about the variability trap. And one of the things that I said there is that we have to define the output, not the task. So
Here's what I want you to do, Christopher, is I want you to take this mindset now and shift your mindset. And for one week or one month, one month would be better. One week might be stressing you out. For that period of time, I don't want you to redo any of the work. I want you to document what's wrong. And at the end of the week.
Train on those gaps. Okay. I I I want you to train people based on what you see, what you see in terms of gaps in terms of the output that they're delivering on. How can they do better? You have to raise the bar because at the end of the day, your business is going to be limited by ultimately two things. The first is your capability as a leader.
And the second is the capability of your team, because that's the weaknesses. That's the that's that's the theory of constraints. So as you think about this, think about: hey, am I the constraint or is my team the constraint? And if the team is the constraint, you do not step back in. And if you're the constraint, you have to figure out how to unconstrain yourself. Because those are the things that will build.
Scott Todd (09:21.484)
Frustration, and those are the things that will keep you stuck in the muddy mile. So Christopher, I appreciate your question. It's a great question. And if you have a business question, head over to Scott Todd dot net forward slash ask. And I will see you in our next episode.