How Giving Up Control Will Help Me Hit $10M A Year

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I’m ready.

I’m giving up control.

In this article, I will explain how I am removing myself from the day to day operations of Stodzy Internet Marketing. I will also explain why this will help me hit my goal of $10,000,000 a year in revenue and how it will make life better and easier for everyone in my company.

Let’s get started.

A CEO Only Does Three Things

Last week, I wrote an article about the book, “A CEO Only Does Three Things.“

I’ve been thinking about the book ever since.

The author (Trey Taylor) argues that a CEO’s job should be completely limited to maintaining and improving the …

• culture
• people
• numbers

… of a company.

That’s it.

The book has opened my eyes. I’m going through one of those painful growth periods where the pain of staying the same is worse than the pain of changing.

I’m recognizing all the areas in my business that I have involved myself where I don’t belong. My time is better spent elsewhere and I am reducing the efficiency of my company by inserting myself into many different departments.

Out of all the mistakes I have made, the biggest mistake is inserting myself in the management of the operations.

I hate waste. I’m overly obsessed with efficiency and my anxiety is what drives me to involve myself in keeping my finger on the pulse of the processes and procedures of the company.

This is not useful.

Yes, I see the irony. My obsession with efficiency is the main reason for the inefficiency in the company. The jokes on me. Laugh it up.

A Director Of Operations

The Director Of Operation at Stodzy is the most competent person in the company. Her name is Tricia and she’s amazing. I have the perfect person in this role. So why on earth am I still sticking my nose in places it doesn’t belong?

It’s simple really …

Fear.

Giving up control is hard. I care so much about doing right by our clients that I feel like if I’m not paying attention to every area of my business, then I’m not doing a good job.

But that doesn’t make any sense.

Because the pragmatic and most effective way to build a robust operations system is to assign that responsibility to someone who’s singular focus is to improve the operations..

It’s the most logical concept. Even writing those words and reading them back to myself is a face slap moment. Like …. duh. Of course.

Entrepreneurship is emotional. I don’t care what anyone says.

Now that I have had my come to Jesus moment, let me tell you about the action I am taking to remove myself from the operations.

Operations Is Culture

Before we could truly define what our operations looks like, we first needed to get on the same page with our culture.

How can we know what we need to do without first knowing what our goals are?

So to define our operations, we first need to define our priorities.

1. Phone Calls Over Everything: What Gets Measured Gets Managed

What makes Stodzy special is that we are the only lead gen company in the space that reports specifically on the KPI that our client cares about.

We don’t fluff up our reports with social media shares or Twitter metrics. We focus all of our effort on generating the results that our clients want.

Our clients want inbound phone calls. Nothing else matters.

However, we realized that not everyone in the company has an understanding of what those numbers are. For example, the person who manages our content calendar isn’t face deep in the data in the same way our head of strategy is, so how would she know what the numbers are?

This is a defect. Every person, regardless of their role, should see the connection between the work they do and the results it generates for our clients.

We needed a scoreboard. Without knowing the score, how could we know what play to run?

To get everyone seeing the score, we asked all department heads to track and submit their numbers to a daily spread sheet.

This score board tracks phone calls generated from all our sources. Including …

• Google organic
• Google business listings
• Google ads
• third party directories
• branded traffic
• etc

Soon, Tricia will operationalize this so it’s not so manual. Ideally, we would like to have a morning email sent out that reports on the previous days results for every client. This way, the entire team is speaking the same language and looking in the same direction.

2. Full Autonomy and Decision Making

Tricia needs full control of operations and decision making. Of course I will have my opinion heard, but the gig is up. It’s time for me to let go.

This means sometimes I will not get my way. It means that there will be moments when Tricia does not take my advice or does not implement one of my suggestions.

This will be difficult, but I need to stay focused on the bigger picture.

3. No Silver Bullets, Only Golden BB’s

This is a concept I stole from Alex Hormozi.

I have a terrible habit of wanting to make big changes. I see mistakes or missed opportunities in my business and so I want to TAKE ACTION! But I’m learning that this isn’t the most efficient way to make changes, because big changes require cleaning up a big mess.

If you want to remodel a home, the first step is demolition. So the big “silver bullet” changes come with a lot of externalities and unintended consequences. Anyone who has ever remodeled a home knows that you never know what problems you will discover when you start taking walls down.

Many times, big changes end up costing us time and money.

In order to give up control, I need to first implement a new company culture of small changes. No silver bullets, only lots of golden BBs.

Many small improvements over a long enough timeline result in massive progress. Small improvements compound over time. In addition, they lower the anxiety level of the team.

Small changes = small stress.

That’s what we want.

Doing Less To Do More

When I was 26, Bryan texted me an Instagram meme.

This was back before Instagram had video, so the inspirational quote pics were what was dominating social media. This particular quote said …

Most of everything we see on the internet is forgettable. But for whatever reason, this quote always stuck with me. I’ve reminded myself of that message many times, because it helps me understand that life is full of seasons.

There was a season for the grind. In my twenties, I said yes to everything. I said yes to every …

• coffee meeting
• client that would work with me, even if the pay was terrible
• opportunity
• conversation
• potential improvement

I wore every hat. I solved every problem. I got involved in every problem.

In my thirties, I’ve slowly been able to step away from the grind life and put myself in build mode. But, apparent I haven’t yet found the emotional fortitude to remove myself completely.

Well … here I am.

This is the next phase of my growth. This is the moment where I fully embrace the role of CEO. This is how we put ourselves in the best possible position to build, because I can’t build my masterpiece alone. I need help from others. I need a team.

I need to trust my people while also holding them accountable to fulfil their particular duties and roles. I will need to occasionally have hard conversations, but as the leader, having these hard conversations is what will keep us together as a team and what will reenforce the teams belief in me to put the company first and the teams well being in front of my own.

Wealthy People Don’t Work Harder

Everyone only has 24 hours in a day. People who generate wealth don’t have more hours to grind. Rather, they get more out of their hours.

They don’t take more steps, they take bigger steps.

They get more output (results) out of each unit of input (work, time, capital.)

Wealthy people have leverage.

​To create multiple streams of income, you need to build assets. You don’t get wealthy from working hard, you get wealthy from owning assets. That is my main message to you and a message I hope comes through clearly in my work.

I share my experiences with you so you can use the lessons I’ve learned and apply them to your own business. I hope you can avoid the mistakes I have made. Hindsight is 20/20, but I’m sure if I would have learned this lesson earlier, I would be much closer to hitting my goal of $10,000,000 a year in revenue for Stodzy Internet Marketing.

It takes what it takes, and I’m here now.

Whatever your goal is, in order to get there, you are going to need other people to help you. If you start building a team, you’re better off building the positions properly from the beginning.

Because here’s the thing.

Control is just an illusion. You never had control and you never will. All you have is the perception of control, and that perception is causing you to make mistakes.

So learn to be comfortable with being out of control.

Your future self will thank you.