The ONLY business wisdom you need to scale up

Here's a tip you're never going to see in a business class or in a business book. Don't be the secret sauce in your business. As you develop your business, your own personality imprints itself. You are the company culture, right? And this is important when you start your business. However, as you grow your business, you must empower other people.

Yeah, nailed it. Again, a classic case of what works in the beginning doesn't work at scale.

This is hard for us who want to start businesses because we tend to be so invested that we want to make sure everything's done exactly right. It's hard for us to trust other people to step into these roles that are so important, right? So, as you get to the point where you can trust other people to take on the small duties and then the big duties, that is where the success comes from. You're working less and still making the money, right?

And this doesn't just apply to you, the founder. This also applies to your people. I've seen lots of businesses that say, "Ooh, our people are the secret sauce," but that's not good either because people leave, especially your best people leave because they got options. Your secret sauce should be your systems, your systems for hiring that get you these great people, your systems for executing that ensures those great people are set up for success, your systems for decision-making that ensure the people you have are able to grow and scale with the company and make decisions as good or better than you would. If your secret sauce is you or any other individual in your company, that's a problem because last I checked, you're not allowed to bottle up human beings, stick them in a jar, and then ship them off to somebody else when you sell your company.