The 3 “bosses” to beat as you level up your leadership 👾
Are you familiar with the concept of bosses in video games?
Bosses are the big bads you fight at the end of every level or act.
They serve to make sure you have the required stats and strategies to move up. But beating a boss is not so simple.
The odds are nearly always stacked against you, and on your first try, they can feel impossible.
But that’s the beauty of a boss.
To keep progressing through the game, you’ve gotta play smarter, not harder.
In our small businesses, I think of bosses as the habits and thought patterns we have to shift to get to the next level.
The systems that allowed you to serve 5 clients won’t scale up to 20.
The habits that make it possible for you and a mostly administrative VA to work well together aren’t up to the task of building the kind of team that lets you step away from the day-to-day operations of your business.
Just like the game bosses, leveling up so you can create the kind of business that gives you actual flexibility and freedom requires you to play smarter, not harder.
Here are the big 3 bosses to beat as you level up your leadership.
1. I am the best person to deliver on the methodology I created.
Even with my big agency background, I am largely self-trained in PR. I came up with a pitch style that worked for me, and when podcasts came out, I adapted it to the new medium and the kind of content they were looking for.
Everything had a purpose. From the construction of the subject line to the opening sentence to the length of the email itself – there was a specific reason and thought behind every line of my pitch.
I know you’re the same. Small business owners tend to be perfectionists. We like feeling in control of the process and the outcome.
If we weren’t wired this way, we’d be working corporate jobs with 4-week vacations and 401k matches.
Your methodology may manifest in the onboarding questions you ask, honed over countless calls and designed to get you to the heart of the matter from day one.
Maybe it’s the way you follow-up with leads, or write ad copy. Or a combination of tools you use.
Whatever it is, I know there’s something about the way you work that feels deeply personal.
That’s why we believe that only we can do that thing we do so well.
If you want to stay solo or absolutely love the work you do, you can stay here.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to carve out time for yourself to write a book, travel more or be an absentee owner, this is the first boss you’ll need to get past.
So what’s the hack to beating this first boss?
Assembling the right party.
You are right about one thing. No single person can duplicate the way you approach your work.
But a small group, all with their own unique strengths and skill sets?
In gaming, we call that your party.
A party is resilient. A party can take on challenges you can’t face alone.
A party is stronger than even the strongest individual team member. Even you, their leader
2. My job is to serve clients.
You know what I wanted to step away to do. Full-time off-grid travel.
I wasn’t going to be the person receiving the onboarding packet or responding to questions right before a client interview. I was out paddleboarding or hiking up to see a glacier.
But after so much time working on my own, my habit was to say, “I’ll handle that,” whenever I felt like something was too difficult to explain or would take too long to teach.
On top of this, I felt uncomfortable asking other people to do things that I didn’t personally enjoy.
Volunteering myself to do one-off, urgent and high-level tasks was a tough habit to break.
Lucky for me, my chosen lifestyle didn’t leave me with any other option. I had to take myself out of the party and learn how to trust my team.
Your own situation may not demand you figure this out as urgently as mine did, but it might.
A lot of people have even bigger reasons for needing to step away than I did. Maybe your kid needs more of your time, or your parent is moving into your home.
Perhaps you’re simply burnt out and you know you can’t go on this way any longer.
So what’s the key to the second boss?
Ask yourself, what would have to change if my handling things wasn’t an option?
A lot, right?
Your team wouldn’t need to know only how to do things, but they’d also need insight into WHY they’re done that way.
As useful as standard operating procedures and tutorials are, these tools don’t teach your team how to solve problems in your absence.
For that, they need a framework for decision-making.
Leveling up requires you to think about your role in the company differently. Your job is no longer serving clients.
It’s enabling the team to do that for you.
3. I should be the person creating new offers, systems and procedures.
When you play enough video games, you quickly figure out that the bosses get easier to defeat the further you get in the game.
With the first boss, you’re often on your own, or with a party member you don’t know very well.
The second boss is still really tough, but you have better tools and more skills.
By the time you’ve reached the final boss, you’ve mastered the game mechanics, and you know the strengths of each party member and how to best leverage them.
Finishing the game is so much easier than making it through the first 15-minutes.
Likewise, by the time you’ve seen how your team is stronger than you ever were alone…
And you’ve given them not only the tools to do their jobs but also the mental frameworks to make good decisions…
Conquering the idea that you have to create every new product, system and process is a small final step.
You already will have started to rely on individual team members to help you through sticky situations or to help you improve upon an existing process.
You will no longer be operating as Chief Delegation Officer for your company, because you can’t possibly hold onto that much control and still be able to step out of the day-to-day.
And, friend, once you beat this final boss and let your team take a more active role in creating the future for your company, this is where your entire business goes into easy mode.
This is when you’re finally free.