But first, I’d like to share Mike’s story with you.
It’s about how he overcame the number one obstacle to growing his company even AFTER he had already made the Inc 5000 list two times when we had our first conversation.
It is one we all face, no matter how fast your company is growing.
And the truth is, if you can overcome it, I firmly believe that you can accomplish more in your business life and your personal life too.
Mike took a chance and scheduled a call with me to discuss next level growth. He was proud to be recognized by Inc Magazine’s 5000 lists of the fastest-growing privately held companies. I asked him about what’s going on now in the business because that’s what I do. I help founders and CEOs of fast-growth companies to really understand what’s keeping them from growing faster. Mike shared with me about the business, his goals, and a few challenges he was facing.
He got to a point when he said, “I know we can handle three to five more clients, but the business just isn’t structured in a way for us to add twenty more new clients this quarter. And if we want to grow and actually hit our numbers, we’ve got to take on a lot more clients.”
Then he said these powerful words with a hint of shame. “I want to continue growing, but I think I’m the problem.”
I hear this quite a bit, and I still love to dig in and discover the real issue. So I probed, “What do you mean, you’re the problem?”
He quickly rattled off a list of challenges. “I have so many things that I’m involved with that I don’t know what to do next. I am pulled in many directions and overwhelmed with the number of meetings each week. I get way too many emails. I don’t even feel like I have time to think. To be honest, I always feel like I am behind.”
Because part of my job is to get really curious, I asked him, “What would I see on your desk right now that lets me know that you’re not able to grow?”
He said, “it looks like there are fourteen reports on the edge of my desk that my team has completed. They’ve done all the work, and I have to review it before it goes to the client. It takes 2-4 hours for each report.”
I added it up with his estimates and asked him, “So that is about half your week reviewing the work from your team. And you do this each and every week?”
Mike responded quickly with, “Yes!” He shared more about his 25 years of industry experience to ensure his team is supported and their work is as accurate as possible. We discussed this approach and it was clear to me Mike was operating as a “transactional leader” because his focus was on his to-do list as he added value to the organization.
I asked him another question about growth and his leadership style, “Who would review the work if it wasn’t you?” Mike was able to name two capable managers that could do it, and as he described their experience and skills, he stop himself.
“As I share with you about my company, I think I am the bottleneck to more growth.” This was a breakthrough and all of this happened before he paid me a penny. My approach to growing my business is to add as much value as I can — which builds trust — so that my clients get clear about what is holding them back. This is essential for me to serve CEOs to next level growth.
In your business, but what came next was a compelling lesson for all CEOs. No matter where your company is now, you have to be willing to fire yourself from the work you are doing now and inspire your team to feel like owners in the company if you want the company to continue to grow.
Here’s what happened next is Mike hired me as his coach. We started with a program I call, the Executive Elevation Lab. This is a unique experience that is a game-changing 2-month coaching program with me (Gene), featuring a full day dedicated to overcoming your toughest business challenges. Discover untapped opportunities and clear the hurdles to sustained growth. The ideal starting point for founders, CEOs, and Executive Teams aiming for high-impact leadership.
Mike was ready for growth and knew he needed support to make the change into the leader his team deserved. Mike and I rolled up our sleeves and created a plan that would change his company’s path. He started letting go of tasks and projects by empowering his team. Mike took one person from his team and inspired him to own the process of reviewing all the reports from the team.
Over the next few months, Mike shifted his leadership model to remove himself from much of the day-to-day work. He started creating the kind of culture where others supported the growth of the business.
Fast forward to today. Mike has nearly tripled the size of his team, his revenue is 4 times what we started. He now has more time to lead his executive team and drive new growth. And he has more white space on his calendar. I’m not saying he doesn’t have new challenges as the company grows, but he is no longer the “bottleneck” to growth.
Mike’s story is a common one in the ranks of fast-growth companies. I have spent years working with founders, just like Mike to help them see a proven path to becoming an exceptional leader who develops the people around them and creates a culture of ownership.
You get to a point when you realize what used to work no longer works. You feel stretched and need a new perspective.
You can shift your leadership model so that you are positioned to grow faster than you are today. But you have to be willing to let go.
You have worked hard to get where you are now. You have put in the extra hours and made sacrifices to get your company to millions in revenue. You have been hands-on with nearly every part of your company, from marketing, sales, customer service, financials, and every other aspect of your company. Being so close to all of this, you know that being there for your people has made a difference.
Now the team is bigger, and you have more projects going on at the same time. You have even more to keep an eye on and more people to think about. You attend every meeting you can. You get a metric shit ton of emails — most of them are not even that important. You are pulled in many directions. You do what you can to create time to think, but most of the time, you end up doing something else instead of the visionary work the company needs.
If you are like me, you feel like being in the meetings and supporting them in any way you can is your job. However, you secretly wish that they were as committed to the company as you. You wished they would think more like owners. Instead, they bring you the problem of the day, and you can tell them what to do next.
You don’t even realize it, but this is the problem. I have seen it so many times, being an Executive Coach since 2012.
For some founders and CEOs, they approach the work differently. It starts similar to how I described it above. However, one day they realize that their job is NOT to have all the answers. In fact, they don’t need to have the answers to any of the challenges the company is facing.
When a project gets off track, the team is empowered to make changes to the plan and test new approaches. All this happens almost entirely behind the scenes of the company just getting it done. Each person in the company feels safe to make decisions and knows that even if they mess up something, they don’t need to cover it up. They instead are transparent to everyone about what is going on so the team can rally together to keep it moving toward the company vision.
One big difference in this new reality is the company is self-expanding. It all comes down to the right model of leadership and developing people the right way. Most of your people are not treated as employees at all.
They are treated as owners.
They feel like owners, even if they don’t have a financial stake in the company (but it helps).
And they behave as an owner would.
In this new reality of leadership, your job is NOT to hold anyone accountable to get the work done. Your job is to inspire them to feel like owners, even if they don’t have a stake in the company.
This is how many of the founders approach their roles as visionary CEOs. They have time to think about the bigger picture and see around the corners. They spend a balanced amount of time in the future as well as leading the leaders within the company.
“I knew I could grow my company, but not exactly sure how. I would not have created a $10 million + company without Gene. He helped me figure out how to stop wasting time and determine what was holding me back.”
– Ron Dod, Co-founder of Visiture (5-time Inc 5000 company)
If you’re a CEO determined to shatter growth barriers and lead with unstoppable momentum, Gene Hammett is the strategic partner you’ve been searching for. As a best-selling author and keynote speaker, Gene has shaped the leadership strategies of over many business leaders, driving them to achieve extraordinary results. His insights, featured in Inc., Entrepreneur, and Success Magazines, are not just concepts—they are powerful, actionable strategies that transform businesses.
He is the co-author of How to Have Tough Conversations. This book helps leaders reframe the resistance that is all too common of tough conversations so they can be courageous leaders. The book provides extremely practical and actionable tools to improve the skills of tough conversations for those that apply the principles in the book.
Gene is the founder of Growth Think Tank, recognized by Inc.com and Entrepreneur.com as a top podcast for leaders. His expertise in leadership and culture has fueled remarkable transformations in companies like yours. If you’re ready to elevate your leadership and accelerate your company’s growth, scheduling a call with Gene could be the pivotal step toward your next breakthrough.
Don’t just lead—lead with purpose and power. Schedule a call with Gene today.
Founders believe that they need to work harder to lead the company to more growth. So attending every meeting and getting to inbox zero becomes the focus.
WRONG.
The tactical minutia of leadership will keep you busy, but it won’t make you into the leader your team deserves.
In reality, only three things matter…
Secret #1: You work for your employees. They don’t work for you.
The common belief is that you hire employees so you can delegate work to be done. And repeat this to grow.
This is only a partial truth.
This will work for a while, but as you add more and more people, you have to change how you see the people inside your organization.
I have asked hundreds of founders the impossible question… “As a leader of a fast-growth company, what is more important: customers or employees?”
The companies that are growing fast know that their employees are the most essential part of the business. These leaders know these employees must be taken care of.
I started tracking the exact number of founders that said it is EMPLOYEES that matter most. 94.1% said it has to be employees. This is exactly how Richard Branson has created so many companies and seems like he just lives on a private island and plays all day (OK, that part is dead on.)
Bigger companies that are not growing as fast and short-term focused will say it is customers. I get it, but the real confusion here is that leadership’s job is more than getting the results. They must develop employees to perform at their best and work together to find solutions to all of the company’s challenges. This is future-focused leadership.
When you take care of the employees and give them a place to transform, they will take care of the customers like it is their company.
Secret #2: Making the shift from managing the work to leading the people.
When you set a big goal for the company, it is common to focus on making that goal a reality. Then all the people get assigned their work. 99 percent of your time is spent keeping up with the progress of the work. You attend the meetings. You talk about deadlines. You look at the metrics. You put most of your energy into implementing the strategy. You feel as though you must have all the answers.
However, the reality is that you have to let go of “managing the work” and start “leading the people,” so they can become leaders, not just doers.
A visionary leader has to keep their finger on the pulse of the work that is going on, but developing the emerging leaders becomes even more essential. This is where empowering and coaching them begin to be more important than attacking your inbox. If you are honest with yourself, keeping up with your email is always easier than having more 1-on-1 conversations with your team members. Leadership is not about doing the easy work.
Your best employees don’t become your leaders by holding them accountable. These people become leaders by you inspiring them to feel like owners. This comes from the founders and CEOs that I have interviewed about creating a culture of ownership, even when people don’t have a financial stake in the company.
When you lead a person to feel like an owner, they will put their heart and soul into the work. They want to do the job, not just because you are paying them to do it.
Secret #3: You can do it alone, but you can do it faster with help.
Being smart and successful gives you the confidence that you can do it alone no matter what you are facing next. You have likely created the impossible already without the support of a coach.
As right as you are that you can do it on your own, you can also go faster with the right coach that can guide you through that next phase.
The coaching relationship is also very different from those that are already on your teams, like your executive team or a board. These people want you to be successful, but too often, they just don’t have experience in getting people to transform their level of thinking when they must solve a difficult problem. They can give you advice but lack the context to what is going on behind the scenes. They also typically only give you steps to handle it — this might not be the best move for you.
The right coach will have instincts that allow them to know the best way to engage a client — it varies depending on their mindset. Sometimes they need a cheerleader to support them. Sometimes they need someone to help them think through different perspectives. Many times they need someone to be direct and hold nothing back.
The key here is having someone that guides you when you face a challenge. They know how to engage you best to make a commitment that is so deeply aligned with who you are becoming that you make profound changes in the way you lead your people.
You may think you don’t have time for coaching too. I have wrestled with those thoughts also. The reality is that coaching is not something that takes up time; it is a way to focus your time on the most critical aspects of your business, your leadership development, and personal growth.
“The first year of working with Gene we almost doubled in revenue. I’d say it was a great return on investment.”
– Mike Woeber, CEO of Corporate Tax Advisors (Ranked 5-times on the Inc 5000 list)
Since 2012, I have coached and studied hundreds of founders and CEOs from the Inc 5000 to determine the two most powerful pillars to their success.
It takes the mindset of an exceptional leader.
And proven strategies to unlock predictable growth.
One without the other will slow your progress at best, and, for some, it will sabotage you completely.
I started my professional career in corporate strategy. I also did mergers and acquisitions, which gave me insight into what works at different company growth stages. For two decades of my professional life, I thought the right strategy alone was all you needed. Heck, I shared with you that I built a company that went from zero to more than $5 million in three years. It was the strategy that laid the foundation for this kind of growth.
Then, in 2010 I was introduced to the power of coaching through an experience that changed me forever — I needed new ways to look at challenges and powerful coaching approaches that would allow for new results.
I began working with Inc 5000 founders to help them add more growth to their company. After years of working with successful people who wanted to transform themselves, I developed frameworks that unlock the evolution of a founder to CEO.
The key to my results with clients, as I have shared with you in Mike’s story (above), is the combination of working and studying the exceptional leaders who are already growing fast. I had to look at their strategies for success and the mindset that makes it all work.
In other words, the growth you seek for your company requires you to think like an exceptional leader and execute the right strategies at the right sequence.
I am going to assume you can.
If you are experiencing frustration, anxiety, or any other emotion that you don’t like — it is only because the “system” you created is no longer working. As you started as a leader, you likely made mistakes and learned how to move forward. After some success, you often find a comfortable place with your leadership model.
And being comfortable is the problem.
Being comfortable breeds complacency.
Here is the reality of your approach to leadership right now. You are living in a “system” that you made that is giving you the results you have — and the fact that it is no longer working gives you negative feedback in terms of emotional stress.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the options for growing your business.
Like, what strategies do we need now?
What is the best way to find the right people?
How do I develop the people I have?
If you’re struggling to choose which project to work on, that’s normal.
I used to have that problem too.
Let me introduce you to the Executive Elevation Lab. This is how working with me in this unique, 1-on-1 coaching experience works:
Part 1 – Kick off with Gene. We schedule our first coaching call together to review the challenges and goals you have as a leader. This is looking at everything we need that affects how the company is growing and leading your people. We dive into the real roadblocks that need to be addressed.
Part 2 – Assess Team Alignment. Using our proprietary assessment tool called the “Team Alignment Scorecard,” we determine exactly where you stand on the ten fundamentals that impact growth across the company. These are the exact same aspects that other fast-growth companies focus on that allow for their predictable growth. We can send it to every employee or just a select group.
Part 3 – Define Your Leadership Gaps. An internal look at your leadership capabilities and skills using a series of 1-on-1 interviews with key employees and/or your executive team. This will give us direct insight into your leadership gaps. I will analyze and help you see the truth of your current leadership capacity.
Part 4 – Set the Agenda. Another coaching call with Gene to define a custom agenda for “Full Day of Coaching with Gene” based on your goals, the team feedback, and all of the previous research.
Part 5 – Join Me for Executive Elevation Lab. The Executive Elevation Lab includes an intensive coaching experience designed for founders, CEOs, and executive teams who are serious about driving sustained growth and high-impact leadership.
Key Benefits:
The Executive Elevation Lab is the ideal starting point for those ready to make a lasting impact on their organization and lead their teams to new heights.
After more than a decade of working with successful founders, I will guide you to go deeper into every aspect of yourself. In both options, the first part is about the internal shifts you need to remove the old beliefs and cultivate new ideas. The second part is defining the strategies that make it all work. This experience exposes and allows you to be intentional about the most important parts of YOU. You leave with extreme clarity about the changes you must create and the strategies to implement.
* I aim to give you everything I can in our time together. In your experience with me (Gene), you will learn how to inspire your team to support you in these new strategies. If you, like many of my clients, want to keep working with me after the Elevation Lab, we can discuss the options when you are ready.
Do you know that creating more company growth requires you to be a more effective, visionary leader?
Do you want to evolve as a leader using a proven path?
Do you want to build a better team that takes ownership of their work, projects, and client experience?
This coaching experience is NOT for you if you want…
… to be comfortable and require little work on yourself.
… to wait for things to change instead of creating the future you want.
… to blame your team, the economy, or anything else that keeps you from owning your growth.
Schedule a “Leadership Acceleration Call” with Gene
You will be given a chance to share about your business and you as a leader. Be as specific as you can be. And let’s see how I can help you.
