YouTube talk (Mike Andes) about how ego acts as a hidden 'tax' in small business decisions—preventing owners from raising prices, overextending service areas, and refusing to delegate. Emphasizes the difficulty of letting go (returning to ‘fix’ team problems) and that the solution is improving systems rather than personally solving every issue.
If the leadership could actually realize that their ego is what's keeping them from raising prices, keeping them in services they should have no business doing. It's keeping them driving an hour, hour and a half into service areas they know they shouldn't be going. And it's all built on ego. And I remember even after letting go of sales operations admin at my first location, I was working on the franchising, trying to get it started. And I remember I would be driving, I would see my crews at the gas station, and I would also run into people like my customers in the public. And you'd hear murmuring like, oh, so and so didn't do this, or so and so the office said this. And immediately the inclination is to jump back in. And if you've been in that position where you're trying to let go, it's very difficult. Instead of thinking about the fact that the systems you've built are the things that need worked on, not trying to jump in and solve every problem for your team.
