Episode 343: Can A Business Grow Beyond Its Owner?
In this episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, host Bradley Hamner reflects on his evolving view of whether a business can outgrow its founder. He begins by recounting his earlier belief in John Maxwell’s Law of the Lid—that a leader’s capabilities cap a company’s growth—and explains why he now thinks the rule is not absolute. Hamner argues that while a founder must set the ultimate vision, a business can scale beyond that individual by (1) installing a repeatable operating system of processes, structures, and routines, and (2) building an A‑player team that can execute the vision. He illustrates the point with two case studies: Apple’s growth under Tim Cook after Steve Jobs, and Alex Hormozi’s Acquisition.com, where a high‑performing team and sophisticated systems have amplified the founder’s impact. Hamner notes a practical “threshold” where a company moves from founder‑centric to team‑centric—around the half‑million‑dollar run‑rate mark—and emphasizes that business is fundamentally a team sport. He concludes by promoting a free two‑day intensive (April 23‑24, 10‑12 CT) focused on recruiting, developing, and retaining A‑players, and includes brief sponsor messages for Club Capital and Coach P Consulting.
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Hey everyone, well, in this episode, I'm going to be sharing with you my thoughts that may seem initially a little bit controversial or so, but I'm going to share with you how my, my own thoughts have evolved over time. And the question is this: can a business grow beyond the owner? For a long time, I subscribed to the idea from John Maxwell, the Law of the Lid, that the business cannot grow past the leader's skill sets and capabilities. And here's why I'm going to tell you that I believe now my thought process on that has changed fundamentally. Now, I'm not here to necessarily convince you of that. I'm just sharing with you my perspective of why I do believe there are a few ways that a business— indeed, I'm going to try to give some examples of how a business can grow well beyond the individual owner, founder, and CEO. Okay, so the idea and the premise behind this and the Law of the Lid, which I think is one of 21 irrefutable laws from John Maxwell— and this is not me just being controversial or maybe contrarian to what an incredible leadership thought leader, so to speak, John Maxwell is. I mean, he is absolutely the best of the best whenever it comes to leadership. Hence, one of the reasons why initially, whenever the podcast was called the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, I would even get thinking like, oh man, who am I to speak on leadership? I don't think I'm actually a great leader at all. You got people like John Maxwell and all these other people who are incredible leaders. And so I would have that, my own limiting belief really around that specifically. So can the business grow beyond the leader? Well, I believe that it can, but the previous thought process is is that the thoughts and the mindset and how big the leader was able to think, etc., and how they led and how they were able to set visions for the future, etc. And I believe the one thing that as a founder, CEO of your business, the one thing you can't actually delegate is the vision for the future direction of the company. And so I think that we can hold, or at least for me, I can hold both of these thoughts simultaneously, is that I don't believe that you can delegate the ultimate vision of the company to someone else. But at the same time, I do believe now that the business can grow beyond the owner. I think there are a couple of different ways. Specifically, one of my philosophical beliefs is around if you can design, build, and then install an operating system for the business to run on so that it upgrades the operating system from being dependent on you. To be independent upon an operating system or running on an operating system, then that then also allows the business to be able to grow past that individual owner, whatever he or she is able to do. And the second— and this one is really the point of this podcast— is it's around team. It's around team. Now, you've heard that said before. That is not necessarily something that is profound. But if you think about it in the context of can a business grow beyond the skill sets of that individual founder, CEO, owner, yes, I do believe that. I do believe that the team that you put in place allows it to be able to grow beyond you. Let me give you a couple examples. One, probably most famously, is Apple.
Apple—
do you believe that Apple has been able to grow past Steve Jobs? It has. I mean, I don't know the exact number, but since Tim Cook, who's an Auburn graduate, by the way, a War Eagle, since Tim Cook took over, it has grown exponentially more than it did initially under Steve Jobs. But that's not to diminish what Steve Jobs was able to build so that Tim could eventually take it over and then grow it so much more beyond where it was at that point. I mean, I think like 300% or something like that. I've heard 300% growth is what it's, uh, 300% more growth it's had under Tim Cook than it even had under Steve Jobs as the Apple CEO. Okay. So that's one example. But let's take that, that one example and share with you how a quote that I picked up from Walter Isaacson's book, Steve Jobs, and it's kind of the premise behind this. Walter asked him, and again, I'm paraphrasing, so I'm not going to quote it verbatim, but he basically said, Steve, what is the thing that you're most proud of when it comes to Apple? You would think that he would say the Mac. You would think that he would say the iPhone, certainly, maybe even, you know, the iPad. He didn't say any of those. He said the team. He said the team. The team is everything. The team, in my opinion, plus the systems and the processes that you put in place that the team runs the business on. So I think incredible team that also paired with an operating system allows that business to go so much more further than what one individual person is able to do, the collectivism. I know many of you know and follow incredible entrepreneur Alex Hormozi and what he's been able to do. But if you look at the team behind him, his portfolio team, some of those executives are paid in the millions of dollars individually, because their skill sets for what they are able to do is far beyond what Alex Hormozi can, can do himself, their specific skill set. Now, they also can't be Alex and his skill set and his ability to articulate business ideas and principles on podcasts and on social media, et cetera. Right. I mean, Alex is incredible at his ability to be able to communicate complex topics with business and be able to simplify them. That's what he does well. But he has a team that do those things very, very well that he has admitted that this person, when it comes to the CFO function of the, of Acquisition.com and his business and all of the portfolio businesses, is at a level that he just does not have. And they have, you know, MBAs and they have experience far beyond what he's able to do. And that's awesome. That's amazing because that combination of the team has been able to go so much further than what Alex himself has been able to do, along with incredible systems and processes. Hence why I sometimes say structure, operating system, uh, process and routine. Structure, process, routine, plus incredible team has allowed that business to be able to grow beyond the owner. So again, I used to kind of subscribe to that idea because a lot of the law of the lid, you know, I'm the glass ceiling to the, to the business, how I think, how big I'm able to vision or whatever. And I think maybe the part of that's true initially whenever you're getting initial liftoff, you in the early days of Apple, for sure, whenever they were working in a garage, whenever Jeff Bezos was working in his, in his garage and small office, for sure. I think that that's very true. But when you get to a certain point, what's that point? I mean, I think that when you hit a half a million in run rate, at some point you're, you're not doing it alone. And certainly you can't really get to a million dollar business. I mean, Philosophically, I believe business is a team sport. Is somebody going to make a billion off of one person company? I mean, sure, they're going to do it because of AI, but that's, that's, that's such a rare thing in business. I mean, I believe that ultimately business is a team sport. I don't subscribe. I know there's some Twitter people out there that love solopreneurship, you know, well, come to find out they're not really solopreneurs. A lot of times they have a team. Of people around them. They're contractors. They just don't have any employees, but they got all these contractors around them. But that's neither here nor there. Um, but even if somebody does subscribe to that, I just don't like that. I don't believe in that. Um, uh, in business, I, I, you know, I have a background in sports, um, basketball, etc. And I love the locker rooms. I love the, the, the, the joy. I love the defeat and being with your brothers and sisters in those moments. That's even in golf. That's such a solo um, sport that you're out there on the golf course seemingly by yourself so often, uh, when you're playing. Some of the times I loved it the most is when I was playing for a team. That's why the PGA Tour golfers talk about whenever they're on the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup, and they love, uh, playing for a team. That's why LIV Golf has been able to take this idea and try to find a way to be able to put teams in place. And so if you're going to have a team and you have an operating system, that business can grow in scale beyond what you are able individually to do. And again, initially you have to, you have to be the one that's, that is, you know, you know, having the vision for the direction of the company. But if you get A players on the team and then you set the vision out, they are able to run and go and do way more than what you individually as a person can do. And so I saw this recently and I said, because somebody said the business can't grow beyond you know, the mindset of the owner can't grow beyond the skill sets of the CEO. And I thought, I don't know if I agree with that. And so I'd love to hear what you think. Maybe you disagree with me. Maybe you, you believe that's all hogwash, and, and that would be okay. I'm not generally a person that's controversial in, in nature, and I hope this wasn't. I just wanted to share my thoughts around how my own specific mindset around this idea has really evolved and has shifted over time. So if that sounds like something that, you know, being a part of a community of business owners and you see that as something that, hey, I think I can, you know, I want my business to be able to grow beyond me. Coming up, we just finished our quarterly event where we planned, look back on Q1 and we plan for Q2. Well, at the 2-day intensive coming up in April, April 23rd and 24th, that's on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, 10 to 12 Central Time, I have a completely free event. And the event title, or the, I should say, the theme of it is all about team. It's all about team. In fact, it's going to be based off that quote right there quote from Steve Jobs, which is, the thing I'm most proud of is the team, not the Mac, not the iPad, not the iPhone. The thing he's the most proud about is the team. And so if we can combine team plus an operating system for the business to run on, these businesses, our businesses can run and scale, you know, far beyond what we individually can do. And that, by the way, gives us freedom, the freedom that it is that we got into business to look for— freedom of time and money and purpose and relationships and all things, I believe that's how you do it. So we're going to do an intensive for 2 days. We're going to have some guest speakers, incredible speakers coming to talk about team and specifically how do we attract, how do we develop, and how do we retain A-players. Love to see you there. Go to abovethebusiness.co. Somewhere on the page, you'll be able to find information about the 2-day intensive, one of our events. You— it is completely free to register. Let your friends know about it. Free to register and free, of course, to be able to attend. Both days. Look forward to seeing you then. Till next episode, lead well.
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