Phil Risher hit $1M revenue and realized he was the bottleneck in every critical function. He couldn't scale until he stopped doing email triage and client firefighting and delegated to focus only on his unique ability: the company's vision and messaging.
One thing running a company teaches you is that if everything relies on you, then the company's not built yet. When I crossed about $1 million in revenue, what we realized was that I was the bottleneck on everything. I was running all the systems, I was involved in the sales calls, I was firefighting client relationships, and it wasn't scalable. So what we had to do is remove me from those bottlenecks and then allow me to build a team around me and allow me to lead. The hard part about this is that most people do it the wrong way. They say, okay, well, I just need more leads coming in before I replace myself as a salesperson. They say, "Okay, well, I could never release that part of my job because that part needs me." Here's what helped me out. There's this thing called unique ability, and your unique ability is probably like 1 to 3 things inside of your business. For me, it's articulating my vision and message out into the marketplace so that people resonate with what we're doing here at Flash. So what do I need to do? I need to focus a lot more of my time on going and spreading the word about what we're doing and how it's different at Flash. What's not important to me is going into my email box and digging and unsubscribing from things. What's not important to me is going and trying to firefight why this automation thing is not working. Yes, it's important, but it's not my unique ability, so I need to replace myself for that. Once I replace myself, the business is built, the business can run without me, and now I can go and scale it.
The companies that win the next five years won't be the ones gaming the system.
