Are you the bottleneck in your business?

We all want to scale our businesses, right? 

But here's the thing—growth doesn’t happen by doing everything yourself. 

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have to be in the weeds with every task. 

But in reality, trying to handle everything on your own is a quick way to burn out and hold your business back. 

In this episode of Automate Your Agency, Alane Boyd and Micah Johnson get honest about why you need to trust your team and stop trying to do it all. They’ve been there, and they’ve learned the hard way that growth comes from letting go—not doing more.

Tune in as they talk about:

🔹 The real reasons you’re afraid to delegate

🔹 How letting go can actually help you move faster

🔹 The mindset shift that’ll help you trust others with your business

🔹 And more!

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or like you're stuck in the grind, this episode will give you the nudge you need to start stepping back and empowering your team to help you scale.

Enjoying the podcast? We’d love for you to leave a 5-star review—it helps us reach more people who need this advice. And don’t forget to subscribe for new episodes every week!

Looking to build systems that support delegation? Check out these episodes for more tools and tips:

• How do I pick a project management system?
• How do I use Monday.com like a Pro?
• How do I use Asana like a Pro?
• How do I use ClickUp like a Pro?

Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links. This means that at no additional cost to you, we may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Thank you for supporting the podcast!

For more information, visit our website at biggestgoal.ai.

Want more valuable content and helpful tips?

Explore our Courses/Programs:

• Complete our self-paced Process Mapping course

Enjoy our Free Tools:

• Free Asana, ClickUp, or Monday.com Selector Tool
• Get 25 Free Custom Automation Ideas for your Business

Connect with Us:

• Join our Community
• Follow us on Instagram
• Follow us on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to our Youtube channel

Transcript

0:00:00 - (Alane): Welcome to Automate Your Agency. Every week, we bring you expert insights, practical tips, and success stories that will help you streamline your business operations and boost your growth. Let's get started on your journey to more efficient and scalable operations.
0:00:18 - (Micah): So, Alane, in this episode, I want to talk about a limiting belief that we hear quite a bit. And it's essentially somebody who's leading an agency or a B2B company, or really any company, and saying things like, nobody can do it as good as I can, or I might as well just do it myself, because, you know, otherwise it's just not going to be done right. And while that may be true, that belief is absolutely restricting the growth of these companies.
0:00:51 - (Alane): Oh, my gosh. I mean, we were there.
0:00:53 - (Micah): Yes.
0:00:53 - (Alane): It's not just talking about other companies. That was completely us for way too long. You with programming, me with managing accounts. Like, man, letting go is scary. And it does feel like nobody can do it better than you.
0:01:09 - (Micah): Yeah, yeah. And sometimes that's true, but in many cases, that's only true because I know for myself, I almost made that come true because of how I hired and who I hired. So it was. It was almost like I wasn't letting it happen so that I could tell myself, well, might as well just do it myself, because that'll just work better.
0:01:34 - (Alane): Yeah, yeah. This idea of doing better than myself, I mean, I've had the same problem. And you know what I think helped change both of our perspectives is when we hired somebody and they did it better than us. And this was absolutely. I mean, you're. You know, I. With hiring, you know, that came to mind. And you did feel like that because of the people you were hiring. And then I came along and I'm like, you suck at hiring the right people.
0:02:00 - (Alane): We're going to change how we hire people here. And, you know, then we started adapting some of the things that I wanted to do and then seeing it, and you're like, okay, well, I can let go of that part. And this actually is something that can run without me. But it does take that idea of seeing, oh, actually somebody else is better than me at something. I can let go of that. But also for, you know, there's other circumstances where things aren't done as good.
0:02:25 - (Alane): But how can we train and empower people? Because people are going to come in with different knowledge sets. The knowledge that I have and acquired over time is going to be very different than any other person because life experience and jobs that we've had, schools that we went to, are different for Every single one of us.
0:02:42 - (Micah): Yeah, absolutely.
0:02:44 - (Alane): And natural skill sets, too. Play into it. You know, there's things that some of us are naturally better at, and let's utilize those skill sets and improve on that and then let's hire for the gaps that we have. And I mean, there's people on our team even now, Micah. Because one of my favorite things is when I'm on a call and they're. And they're like, all right, so are you going to be our account manager? I'm like, oh, my gosh.
0:03:06 - (Alane): Like, no, you don't. You don't want me building these automations. Like, that's not my skill set. I have a team to do those because they're a lot smarter than me at it and, and can really map out what a future state looks like, you know, and that's because we have these incredible team members that do better than us.
0:03:24 - (Micah): Yeah. So that's definitely the flip side of it, right. Is if you have that limiting belief and you believe you're the only one that can do it, you're going to be the only one that does it. And when you're the only one that does it, you can only scale and grow as fast as you personally can. And the flip side where we're going with all of this is when you hire the correct people, then all of a sudden it does open the doors. You were one of the first people that I ever worked with, Alane, where you, like, you said, you came in and you're like, dude, come on, this is terrible. Let's do it differently.
0:03:56 - (Micah): And then all of a sudden I was like, oh, shit, I'm going to let Alane do this because she is doing it better than me. And I could take that off my plate and I could trust you. And then as we hired better and better people, then all of a sudden we had developers that were developing better than I was, way better than I was, and we could take that off my plate. And then we had our bookkeepers and our accountants so that you and I didn't have to do invoicing and bookkeeping all the time. They did it better and we could take that off our plate. And pretty soon all these things are running where we just have to manage at a higher level.
0:04:32 - (Micah): And the same thing here, even on automation and AI, like, I'm skilled in it, but does that mean I should be doing it for every single client, for every single project? Hell no. We wouldn't be able to help as many businesses as we are able to now when we hire the Right. People get people that are better than me at doing it. Now, with all that said, that doesn't mean they're going to be better at everything.
0:04:58 - (Micah): And there still needs to be true leadership to fill in the gaps.
0:05:03 - (Alane): I mean, there's a big piece to this because if you believe you're always going to be the best person for it, or that you're projecting that nobody else can do it as good as you, then you're always going to be in that position. And you basically gave yourself a job instead of owning a business and running a business because it's reliant on you and not even in the perspective that you want to one day sell it. It's literally on you to run it because you have. You're so integrated in client fulfillment or how things run is that you can't ever step back and do the things that you really enjoy doing or growing an organization. And I'm not saying that it needs to the size of Apple or Amazon, but having a small team that can execute so that you don't have to run everything and feel like you need to be the one doing it because you're the best one possible.
0:05:52 - (Micah): It's interesting, as we talk about this, I think back on some of the conversations that I've had with companies over the years, and one of the things that I hear is, well, if we hire a couple people, then we have to generate more revenue to pay those people. And then you're just managing all these people and they kind of portray it as this, like, way more complicated, far more work. Right. But what you just brought up is absolutely true.
0:06:16 - (Micah): You can give yourself a job by starting a business and doing everything yourself. That's just a job. You can try to scale a team and they can ask you 100% of the questions. You're still in a job, but now you're paying more people. And the magic is to hire the people that are better than you. You're still acting as leadership, but there becomes this kind of cultural shift almost within the business where it's like, okay, all of a sudden, as a, you know, co founder, I can start focusing on strategy more because the team has taken over all the stuff that I was doing before, and they're doing it better than I was now. They still have questions. I still have to answer questions and help out and, you know, be there for support.
0:07:02 - (Micah): But it's a supporting role, not necessarily the. My way is the highway leading role. We have to do it this way. And there's a big, big difference. There and it's big. I would even say emotionally and mentally. Right. Throughout the day if I can answer a few questions and then watch stuff accelerate and go and the team's got it. That's a great feeling. Right. And you know, you can take a break and step away.
0:07:28 - (Micah): It's not, you're not always behind the eight ball thinking about the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and what you missed and what's letting there and all this stuff. And yet we still got to grow more revenue. And don't forget all of this. It actually feels like a machine that's working.
0:07:44 - (Alane): Yeah. And having training is a big piece of this because like even if we just look at hire, the hiring process, you know, taking my skillset of hiring well, we got to a point where I couldn't do all the interviews, I couldn't do all the application tracking of everything. And so, so, you know, how do we hire somebody that can take those concepts that I was putting in place naturally and scale that?
0:08:09 - (Alane): And training like a lot of people, you can get them 90% of the way there, even if they're not better than you or going to be you, you can get them majority of the way there so that the system can work without you. And having that as a process that they can follow and having training along with it. And so we took the hiring process and implemented across the organization with each manager and being able to scale that so that we continue to have the same company culture that we really wanted to thrive in. And it came down to just training them.
0:08:40 - (Micah): And we've narrowed it down to a pretty simple couple step process. Right. The first thing is you've got to document your procedures. You've got to document what you want somebody to do. And then we usually do like a shadow period where say you're leading Alane and they're running back up or kind of watching what's going on. And then you shift that so that you're almost shadowing them and they're leading and you're running support again and that's that nice transition into support.
0:09:12 - (Micah): And then the final step is setting them free and letting them do it without you. But because of that nice easy transition, they always have the documentation, they always know you have their back. And they've been shadowing and leading enough of the scenarios where all of a sudden they're like, okay, I got this, I'm feeling pretty good about this. And it does take time. Right. That's not a two day process, that's a Multi month process, but it's a surefire way to make it happen.
0:09:40 - (Alane): Yeah. And then that keeps people working for you longer because they're enjoying it, they're taking the load off of you. So you're not having to do everything. I mean, as business owners or managers of teams, your biggest thing is you do want to get done at the end of the day. And if you are trying to do everything and if you can't find anybody to do those things, then you can't leave work and you're on holidays, checking your email, checking your chat, doing all the things or the weight of all the things that you didn't get done are carried on you.
0:10:09 - (Alane): I saw somebody this week and they just said, man, you look so much lighter. And I'm like, yeah, because I got a. I got a team that's cranking again.
0:10:16 - (Micah): All right, so if you're listening to this and you feel like you always have to do everything, start thinking about your hiring process. Who's hiring? Who are you hiring? You know, what are the traits that can be there? And start thinking about your training process for the people that you are hiring if you hire the right people and you give them the support. I think, you know, all of these episodes that we do, Alane, are completely unscripted.
0:10:41 - (Micah): And so even as I hear myself talk about all this, the thing that's really standing out to me and some of the things that I'm saying here is that support role that leaders play. Right. If you have to tell everybody, this is how you do it, this is how you do it, this is how you do it, then that's the culture that you're going to have and you're going to be on the hook for everything. If you play the supporting leader role, then all of a sudden you can start asking them questions like, well, what would you do in this situation?
0:11:12 - (Micah): What do you think is the right path? And you're there to guide instead of tell. I think that's the big standout for me, that hiring, playing a supporting leader role and then, you know, doing that transition that we talked about where there's shadowing, flipping the shadow so that they're leading and you're running back up and then letting them go on their own with all the support that they need. We've done that multiple times and it's just been a game changer for us every time.
0:11:39 - (Alane): Yeah. And we'll put a couple of links in because as you're saying that I cannot imagine doing any of that without having a project management system in place and a single source of truth with a knowledge base. Because if not, then you're using chat and email and creating more chaos for yourself. And not only do you have a job to do, but you're also doing somebody else's job by answering all those questions. So we'll link to those episodes in here. All right, thanks everybody for listening and see you soon. Thanks for listening to this episode of Automate youe Agency.
0:12:10 - (Alane): We hope you're inspired to take your business to the next level. We have free content and tools for automating your business at our website, workdayninja.com.
0:12:18 - (Micah): And join us next week as we dive into more ways to automate and scale your business.
0:12:22 - (Alane): Bye for now.