I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
3 keys to managing a company without burning out
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Hey Reader, If you run a company, you know how exhausting it can be. So much responsibility and there’s a never-ending list of things to do. It’s really easy to lose yourself, over commit, and find yourself on the path to burnout. Back when I had a team of just five people, I might have been able to double my personal effort and watch the overall output of the business go up 40–50%. But with a team of 80 now, increasing my individual effort doesn’t have the same effect. Even if I put in a Herculean effort, the overall output of the business might increase 2%. Essentially, a drop in the bucket. And it may actually reduce output by confusing or burning out the team. Instead of working harder, I have to work smarter—a cliche, but stay with me. That means spending time on the right things. But knowing what those right things are takes dedicated thinking time. Which brings me to the first key: Key #1: Set aside time and space to thinkSomething I've made a concerted effort to do is take a step back to spend more time thinking strategically. I use this time to evaluate how the business operates, where the bottlenecks are, and what our next strategy needs to be. This includes things like spending time thinking about what company we want to acquire next. It’s not enough to think about these things passively during gaps in your schedule. If you don’t set aside time for deep thinking, it isn’t going to happen. Or it’s at least not going to happen on the level it needs to. After you’ve set aside time and space to think through these ideas, it helps to have someone help you process everything. This is where a facilitator comes in. You might think having a facilitator would be more beneficial in a group session. But I’m not talking about facilitating people. I mean having someone help facilitate your ideas. Because when you have a lot of ideas, and you can't quite pin down how they all fit together, it’s useful to have someone help you work through that. Not necessarily give you advice but ask great questions.
Key #2: Invest in executive coachingAfter setting aside time to think, I like to bring those ideas to a facilitator—which is why I’m such a big believer in executive coaching. My executive coach is someone who knows me, has the necessary context, and is able to create space where I can share what I’m thinking so they can ask thought-provoking questions. I touched on executive coaching in one of last year’s issues of the newsletter:
From: The investment everyone forgets to make Another area I invest in is executive coaching for all of the leadership team at ConvertKit. That includes me. One of the many benefits of a coach is they can help me take a decision I intuitively know is the right thing and bring it to the point where I can defend it with confidence. If possible, hire a coach who has experience with the emotional side of things as well (basically, someone who bridges the gap between coaching and counseling). There are almost always little things that drive how and why we make decisions that are rooted in childhood, and if you don’t take the time to understand them, you can suffer the consequences for years. Hiring an executive coach also creates a forcing function: because I know I’m going to meet with them every other week, it ensures I regularly think about, and identify, the biggest problems I'm trying to solve. Key #3: Develop the right leadership teamLastly, it’s important to recognize you can’t do this alone. Trying to do everything yourself is not only a sign you’re heading toward burnout, but also a sign you haven’t hired the right team. Or maybe you have, but you’re not leaning on them or empowering them like you should be. We hire slowly and put a lot of thought into who we bring onto the team, because we’re going to invest a lot in helping them grow and develop as a human and professional. One of the ways we do this is by investing in executive coaching for everyone on the leadership team. Knowing we have A-players in place makes it easier to delegate things I might otherwise be tempted to do myself. Something I’m constantly evaluating is whether I’m involved at the right altitude. If you’re not careful, you can end up doing a really good job at the wrong thing. Often, what’s more important than doing a good job at something is recognizing when it’s not something you should be doing at all. A good question to ask is, “Should I be the one doing this?” Instead of dictating, I’ve learned to delegate the solving of many problems by asking those on my team, “What do you think we should do?” PODCASTWe’re Finally Talking About It... Behind the Scenes of Our Rebrand“We don’t normally cry on Billion Dollar Creator.” As you may have heard, ConvertKit is becoming Kit, and in the latest episode of the podcast, I'm joined by our Creative Director, Charli Prangley, to talk about how this goes beyond a simple name change. We take you behind the scenes of our rebrand where you’ll hear:
ARTICLEHowever large you’ve gotten, you can probably double it.Jason Cohen wrote an article on startup potential nearly a decade ago. In it, he talks about how “the actions that got you your first 10 customers are probably not sufficient for generating 100”. If you’ve gotten 10 customers you can probably get another 10 in a similar way. Will you ever get 2000? I hope so, but most companies that do get 10 never get 2000.
Putting it another way, doubling the size of the company always sounds plausible, because you’ve done it once, so you can probably do it again, even faster this time. But 10x or 100x is not obvious at all.
An example Jason cited was GoDaddy. In 2014, their revenue was just under $1B and he made a prediction about their growth. This year, he went back added an editor’s note. Click to see if his prediction was right: Have a great week! —Nathan |
Nathan Barry
I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
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