Mike Andes maps three stages founders move through as their business grows: Do, where you execute the work yourself; Teach, where you train your team; and Lead, where you become someone people choose to follow. At roughly $5-10 million in revenue, the shift to leadership requires humility about what you don't know and leveraging your team's strengths.
One thing I've recently kind of thought about it as is like there's 3 different levels you move through. It's like you do the work, then you teach the work, and then you lead. And it's like do, teach, lead. So doing is like I go out and I do the work and then I learn how to do the door knocking and do the work itself. And then eventually as you get employees, like I actually have to change my whole role and my identity from to being a teacher of other people how to do that job. And then as time goes on, especially past like 5, 10 million, it becomes are you the leader that these people want to work for because they have options. And it always comes back to humility. Like, just you have to be humble enough to realize that you lack these skills because the person that has those skills, they're aware that you don't have the skills. They know how to judge you. And so realizing that like I have capabilities that they don't have, they have capabilities I don't have, and together it's 1 1 3.
