In this CEO Sage podcast episode, Kris Plachy delivers a passionate monologue urging successful women—especially those running multimillion‑dollar businesses—to normalize hiring experts instead of attempting to solve every personal, household, or business problem on their own. She illustrates how women often take on tasks they lack expertise in, from home design and DIY projects to family, marriage, and team management issues, leading to overwhelm, unfinished projects, and sub‑par outcomes. Plachy argues that delegating to qualified professionals not only relieves personal stress but also improves business performance and supports an ecosystem that often includes other women entrepreneurs. She provides concrete examples (home décor, hiring assistants, coaching for pickleball, trip planning) and a clear, actionable step: make a comprehensive list of all delayed decisions and immediately outsource or hire experts to address them. The episode blends motivational rhetoric with practical advice, emphasizing that seeking expertise is a sign of strength, not a flaw, and that doing so benefits both the individual and the broader economy.
Chapters
Well, hello. Welcome to CEO Sage. I'm Kris Plachy, and I have something I want to talk to you about, a little bit of a rant. And this is coming off of some conversations I've had with people and even some of my own experience of late. But I want to talk to you about a goal that I have that I would love for— maybe we could all agree to this goal. Collectively as successful women. And that goal would be to normalize hiring experts. It is amazing to me how many of us have challenges that we're facing in our business, in our personal lives, in our homes, in our communities. I mean, really insert here, right? Things that, things that you take on as yours to solve when you have zero expertise, but you think you should be able to solve it. You think you should be able to figure it out. I am doing this myself all the time with designing in my house. I keep thinking I should be able to figure out what I want to do in my house to design it. You know what? I can't. I am not good at it. I am not an expert. I am good enough To make a house have my stuff in it, but I am not good enough to create a designed home. Right? Other things like little stuff around the house, like this is stuff that sometimes my husband and I go like he's not very good at it. I'm not very good. Can we just hire a person? But we insist that no, we could figure it out. We could do it. We're gonna do fine. It's fine. I'll just take care of it, and then it doesn't get done. It doesn't get done. Is this relating? Then there's stuff that's happening in the business that we do the same thing. We, we, everything in the business is not up to you to solve. There are experts that you can pay money to who can help you solve these problems, who can help you design a new process, a new strategy, get new ideas. You can hire people to do things that you've been doing. We have got to stop Normalizing women doing everything. Because I work with you and I see what happens to you. I see what happens to myself. We take it all on. We get completely overwhelmed by all of it because we are not experts. And then we fail at some of these things or we don't get them done. We keep kicking the can. Why? Because we're not experts. I watch people talk about issues that are going on in their family, in their marriage, with their children, with their parents. With their in-laws, and they just think they need to figure it out and solve it on their own. No, there's experts that you could go to who will help you and pull you out of discomfort, pull you out of confusion, pull you out of your spin. Why are you refusing? Why are you resisting? And why don't you even explore? There's someone who can help me with this because we are just, we are, we are self-teaching ourselves to solve every problem in your life, every challenge in your life, everything that you want done in your life. You begin with how you could do it, how you could fix it, how you could figure it out. Stop it. Stop it. Hire people. There are experts. If you're listening to this and you're running a multimillion-dollar business and you don't have an assistant, you need to start there. Every woman who is running a multimillion-dollar business who doesn't have an assistant is setting herself up to take on more than she ever should. You deserve it. You deserve the support. And you are not broken if you can't solve something. If you don't know how to handle this situation with your parents, if you don't know what to do with this challenge with your husband, if you don't know how to deal with this thing going on in your house, if you're not sure what to do with this employee, that's what people, right? Like these are all solvable problems. People bring me stuff that they're like plagued with, overwhelmed by, haha, right? We have 2-minute conversation and they're already better. Why? Because I have expertise that you don't have, and that's good. You don't need to have it, but you need to know when to tap into it. You need sometimes someone to remind you of what your wisdom is telling you—that you actually do know the direction you want to go in this relationship. You do know what you want the truth to be in this decision. You do know, but sometimes you. Divert. You see it as a problem to fix instead of just a knowing to reveal, an idea to trust in yourself. But we have got to normalize women allowing for expertise in their lives and seeking it out. And not using themselves as the default for the answer. So what I want you to do is I want you to make a list, and I want you to make a list of all of your decisions that you have delayed, things you have been telling yourself you either need to figure out, learn, solve, get done, et cetera. I want you to write it all down, right? If I were gonna tell you that right now, I would have a huge list. The first list would start with my office. What do I wanna do with the wallpaper? I wanna have some ideas for wallpaper, and I wanna make my office Totally different. I want to do something in my bedroom. I have stuff, I have ideas, but I don't know where I want to begin. That's just one example. I have so many in my house, right? And I keep telling myself I'll figure it out. No, I'm not going to figure it out. I'm not going to go stroll through HomeGoods and figure it out. It's not going to happen. I need help. I need an expert. When I'm exhausted, when I don't feel good, when my body hurts, I'm not going to figure it out. You know what I need to do? Go see an expert. If I want to get better at pickleball, I can keep playing all day. I'm not going to get better. You know what I should do? Hire an expert. Go get a coach. If I'm exhausted with my team and the things that they're doing and I can't figure out what direction to take in my company, you know what I need? I need an expert. And if you don't get the right one on the first go, get another one. Don't give up on this practice. We know this is true because guess how I know that you know this is true? Because you are an expert in something, and other people come to you. That's why you have a business. You have built-in expertise, right? If you design kitchens and baths, you must drive you nuts when people are like strolling around Home Depot trying to figure out their faucets and their sinks. Like no, no, I actually do this for a living. You know, I could make this much easier for you. Stop. Asking yourself to know how to do everything. It's literally wearing you down into the ground and you're not solving it. You have built, you have enough confidence to believe in yourself that you can figure things out. I love that for you. I love that for me. And also not everything is for you to figure out. Get Help, get support, hire an expert. Do it right now. Make that list. Just don't, you know, do it over the course of a couple days. Like just have this list of all the little things that you think about. Like, oh, I wish I could figure out this. Oh, I don't know how to handle this. Oh, I don't know, right? Oh, I wanna have this event for my daughter's graduation, but I don't even know where to start. Oh, I have this and I have a trip that I wanna go on, but I don't even, that's the other one. I always think I'm gonna figure out the trip. No, I'm not. I'm not gonna fig— no, I'm not gonna figure out the trip. I need to hire an expert. Here's what I want: the trip. Here's what I want. Can you design that for me? Guess what? There's people who do that for a living, and you don't even have to pay them. They get paid by the people that the places that you go, the services that you buy. Okay, y'all. Are we? Are you on board with me on this one? Can we make this agreement? Because I would really like it if we could all stop trying to be. Be-all end-all? Because I think it would take pressure off all the rest of us. And when you hire an expert, you feed the work, you feed into an economy and an ecosystem that supports, in many cases, other women. So hire an expert. Go.
