There's a particular feeling that turns up about six months after you make the hire you'd been putting off. The ops person, the manager, the GM, whatever you called it. You held out as long as you could, you finally did it, and for a few weeks it felt like the weight came off.
And then, somehow, it's all coming back to you again. Not everything. The invoices get sent, the roster gets done, the inbox is mostly under control. But the decisions still land on your desk. The client still asks for you. The thing you were hoping to get out from under is still there, it's just got a slightly different shape. And you start to wonder if it's you. Whether you're the one who can't let go. Were your expectations not clear? Why are requests bypassing the manager, and landing on your desk?
I want to say clearly that it isn't a failing on your part, and I've got a very good example of why.
This business had a CEO for nine years.
Shona Joy closed last week after 26 years. The founder, Shona Thatcher, moved to Byron Bay five years ago and has been commuting to the Sydney office ever since, and she's said plainly that she can't keep running the business at this scale and be a mum. She explored a sale, nothing felt right. Instead, she's keeping the name and the IP. It's a clear-eyed call made from a position of strength, and I'm not here to second-guess it.
But I would be lying if my mind didn’t keep wandering about how a founder of that scale felt the need to close her business, when she had the layers of management in her stead. Why did she feel the need to go down to Sydney’s HQ to feel effective. Now, this is coming from an outsider, my commentary on the matter is here, based on what I have gleaned from various sources. But I’m hoping in this blog to use this as an opportunity to shine a light on a scenario.
Shona Joy had a CEO in the chair for nine years. The running of the business, the operational layer, had been handed over a long time ago. This wasn't a founder who couldn't delegate. And yet it still needed her in Sydney. It wasn’t the admin that bogged her down. The intensity came from four collections a year, 80 garments each, plus bridal, plus bridesmaids. The creative engine became a beast that had to be fed, it was a large part of why the success was there. However, it’s also the part of the business that was her. Nobody could take that off her unless she trained someone for years to be her, but before her move, that probably wasn’t even on her mind.
Then the CEO stepped down in March of this year, nobody was named to replace her, and seven months later it's closing. And as I mentioned in my previous blog. Coming back into the CEO seat after nine years of scale and growth, that seat looks a lot different. Your life has shifted in those nine years. You’ve moved. You’ve had children. You’ve built a team. The systems are more robust. The machine is, well machining.
Handing over the running of it isn't the same as the business not needing you
This is what I see with founders every week, and it's why the hire didn't fix it.
When you hired, you hired for the engine room. The firefighting, the admin, the stuff that was eating your days. And that was right, it needed doing, and it probably is better now. But it's only half of it. Because you can be completely out of the day to day and still be the one load-bearing wall. In the product. In the sales conversations. In the client relationships. In the one thing that only you do, that you've never written down, that you've never trained anyone on, because it never occurred to you it was a separate job. It was just you.
Most founders never decide which parts of the business are theirs on purpose. They just find out. Usually when they try to take a holiday, or get sick, or want a kid, or move to Byron Bay. And by then the shape of the business is set, pivoting gets hard. It’s not something that can’t be done. It can be, but it needs energy and running at that speed already, the energy is expended.
So the hire didn't fail. It did exactly what it was for. It just wasn't pointed at the part that's actually holding you.
Which brings me to the conversation I'd have had with Shona if she were my client and she had come to me to say that she didn’t know what to do, but there had to be a next step. What you’re about to read is completely hypothetical, but the line of questioning and diving, is what we do with our clients day in and day out, preparing the for their next step and for the business to fundamentally not need them to operate. Instead, we get to the point of creating a Founder JD. One that showcases and highlights their outputs, their accountabilities, only what they can do. Brand, vision, hiring (the most senior positions).
So here it goes…
The conversation I'd have had with Shona four years ago
Four years ago is, by her own account, when she started thinking about it. The CEO was in the chair. The business was strong. Nothing was decided. And in our experience, this is the moment when the conversation is so important, yet barely any founder has it because nothing is “wrong” yet.
And to disclaim, I’m not sharing this to say this is what she should have done. It's what I'd have asked, four years out, when there were still more versions on the table. And it's what I'd ask you, because if the hire hasn't fixed it, you're closer to that moment than you think. Her answers aren't mine to write. Yours are the ones that matter, so use this as as scenario, walk through it, and answer it in your own way.
1. What are the three things that stop if you're not here for a month?
Not slow down. Stop.
Most people say the admin, the approvals, the firefighting. Then we go through a month and find out the admin would be fine, and the thing that actually stops is the one they'd never have named, because it never felt like a job. It was just them. It came so easily, it was never written down in an SOP because it was so ingrained in the way they did things, it was just part of the tapestry that they had woven.
For Shona, I think we'd have got there fast. She's said the collections were the intense part. Not the running of the business. The designing of the thing. It would have been her love for it, that’s why it’s so hard to let it go because you’re often wanting to outsource the parts of the business that you didn’t sign up for. That's where I'd have put the circle.
2. Of those three, which did you choose, and which just happened?
There's usually one the founder is holding because they love it and it's why they started. And there's usually one or two they're holding because nobody else was there when it needed doing, and it's been theirs ever since without anyone deciding.
These need different answers. The one you chose, we protect. The ones that defaulted to you, we start lifting, and most founders are relieved to find out they're allowed to.
I don't know what Shona would have said here, and I'm not going to guess. But it's the question I'd most want to hear her answer to. Because even if she did love designing, and that took her capacity and focus away from what she deems important now, you can still do what you love, but not do it in its totality. There is always at least 20% of it that you can give to someone else, or teach someone, make a prodigy.
We used to ask, “Are you a founder or operator?” as if there were one or the other, but for most people we work with they are both to a certain extent, they want to be the founder and develop the business, but they still operate within in the business, and putting those boundaries in place to be able to do both well is where things tend to drift. Being in a product based business, your brand and vision is so tied to the product you create and that essence initially comes from you. Where we want to get you to is holding the vision, and having the right people on the bus to trust them to translate that.
3. Who's holding the other half?
Every founder-led business I've been in has a second person who's quietly carrying the part the founder isn't. Sometimes it's a CEO, sometimes it's an ops lead, sometimes it's a partner or a PA who's been there nine years and knows where everything is.
The question isn't whether that person's good. It's what happens the month after they leave. Because that's the test of whether the business is built, or whether it's two people holding it up between them.
You might not be there yet, they might not be your second in command, but someone you have given a system to own end to end. They have evolved it, brought you concepts to make the business better, and even helped with the decisions. What happens if that person goes on a six week holiday or decides to take a different route in their career? What do you have in place? Do you have to then pull your sleeves up and get back in, but now that role you had seeded, looks wholly different? It’s foreign?
4. Is the business built around you, or built by you?
These look identical from the outside. Same revenue, same team, same founder on the website. The difference only shows when you try to step out, even briefly.
Built around you means the clients came for you, the product is you, and the team's job is to make more of you possible. Plenty of brilliant businesses are built this way. Most creative ones are. It’s also why some agencies have a premium on the founder versus an account manager. There's nothing wrong with it, but it has a particular ending, and you want to know that in advance.
Built by you means you shaped it but the thing that makes it work is how it's set up. If you stepped out for six months it'd be different, but it wouldn't stop, and your essence would still hold strong.
Most founders have never been asked which one they want. They've only been asked how to grow it.
5. When you picture this in ten years, are you in the picture?
Note that I didn’t say, should you be? Do you want to be?
This is the question that changes what we do next. If the answer's yes, then we're building a business that works with you in it, and we plan the ending now, on purpose, while there's time to build towards it. A close, a handover, a sale with you attached for a few years. All fine. All better decided than discovered.
If the answer's no, or not sure, then we go back to question two. We take the thing that's only you and we write it down, and we let someone else learn to do it for a while so they can eventually do it well. It costs something now, in control and in pride. It buys options later. One thing to note is the way you did something in the beginning, and in the now is because its how you felt you could get to A to B. Bring in a whole team, you have a whole dynamic to then contend with and the way the team work is represented through the systems they need to use. The more effective they are is on the basis that (one they have a great attitude and are capable) but two that the systems that they are meant to own, are designed around them, not the founder.
3+3 = 6…..2+4= 6 and 5+1 = you guessed it, 6. It may look different, the outcome is the same and as long as the values are aligned, let it be.
Shona said there was always going to be a day. I think she's right. There always is. The whole point of having this conversation four years early is that you get to decide what that day looks like, rather than find out.
6. So what does the next hire actually need to be?
This is where it comes back to you and the hire that didn't fix it.
If the thing that stops when you're gone is the product, or the sales, or the relationships, the next hire isn't another ops person. It's someone who can start taking a piece of the thing you thought was only you. Different role, different brief, usually a different kind of person to the one you were about to go looking for.
And if you've decided the business is built around you and you're keeping it that way, that's completely legitimate. But then the next hire is whoever makes that sustainable, and you stop expecting the ops hire to give you something it was never going to give you, and you plan the rest of the business around the fact that you're in it.
Either answer is fine. The thing that costs you is not knowing which one you've got.
That's the first session of many I have with every client. Before we dive in and work on your systems and team, we need to work with you to hone you as a founder to drive the business in the way it needs to be driven. Most founders leave it knowing something about their business they'd been feeling for a year and hadn't said out loud. Usually it's the thing they'd been blaming themselves for.
If you'd like a business partner for the next 12 months, to guide, challenge and build alongside you, contact us today!
