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My 14 years’ experience of growing a business from £0-£100m as well as the life that goes with it.

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Simon Says

Winformation This Week...

This time last year was the toughest of my life. My Dad was in the last few weeks of his life after battling an illness for 3 years, my partner and I were in the final throes of organising our wedding, I had a 100+ person business to run as well as 2 kids under 5 to look after.  

To be with my dad and to spend time with my family I didn't do a full week’s work for over 3 months. I took more time off in 3 months than I had in 15 years. When dad finally passed away, and once the funeral was done, I returned to work.  

But what happened in my prolonged absence? Did it burn down? Had our top people moved on? Did we lose clients? No. In fact, the place was in very good shape. Would this have been the case a decade before? Definitely not.  

If you can’t take extended periods away from your business, you don’t have a business, you have a job. A job where often you are the last to be paid, if at all!  

Businesses that stay stuck, stay small and end up in a Groundhog Day type loop year after year. All have one thing in common. The founder, however well-meaning, somewhere along the line, has made themselves the biggest problem. I know this, because this used to be me. Below, in today’s One Idea to Win in Business – we look at how to spot when you are the bottleneck and what to do to solve it. 

Last week we invited the world-renowned mental resilience expert Emma J Bell into the business for a half-day talk to the entire team. Emma spent more than 3 years travelling 35,000 miles across the world to interview 50 of the world’s most resilient people. And not just people that do the odd Ironman, or grow a business, but people that have suffered huge losses and come out of the other side. To become successful in anything resilience is THE key skill (and I say skill purposely) that you need to possess.  

Emma has distilled her findings from the interviews into a book called 9 Secrets to Thriving: Uncovering Your Inner Resilience. It’s available on Audible, I urge you to listen to it. But below, in today’s One Idea to Win in Life, I give you my top 3 takeaways from her mind-blowing session with us.  

P.S. Yes, before you ask, our brand colours are now blue.  

One Idea to Win in Business

Something to Regain Freedom

The Founder Firewall: When You Are the Problem + How to Fix It

This time last year taught me something most founders never want to test. Whether their business can survive without them. And it did. 10 years before, however? Things may have been very different. You see I used to be a very big bottleneck in my own company. Often, I was the problem. I created a “Founder Firewall”. This problem plays out in 2 very big ways. The business stays stuck, and as the founder, you feel trapped.  

So how do you spot if this has happened, or is about to? And how do you solve it, if it has? 

After the chaos of the start-up phase, most businesses and founders that feel stuck are not short on talent, effort or ambition. They are short on space. Everything runs through the founder, so everything waits. 

Here are the three most common ways founders quietly become the problem.  

First, you become the approval layer. 

Nothing moves without your sign off. People wait for answers instead of making decisions. This is natural at first, after all you see the resources as “your money” and so should decide where it is spent and how things are done.  

Second, you solve instead of systemise. 

If you keep fixing the same problems personally, you are teaching the business to rely on you. Each fix feels productive. Far quicker for a 5 minute solve, than the 2 hours to train someone else to do the same thing.  

Third, you hold too much knowledge. 

When key information lives only in your head, progress pauses the moment you step away. Knowledge hoarding is rarely intentional, but it is one of the fastest ways to cap scale. 

So how do you spot this before it becomes a problem? 

Ask yourself a simple set of questions. 

Does work slow when you are not there? 
Do people bring decisions to you that they should be able to make? 
Do you avoid taking time off? 
Do you spend the evening and weekends working or checking people’s work? 
Are you answering the same questions repeatedly?
If the answer is yes, you have created a Founder Firewall.  

Everything gets filtered by the wall, decisions start to stack up and growth slows. The solution is not working harder. It is redesigning how the business runs without you. 

Here’s how: 

• Keep a 2-week log of every decision you make.  

• The logins you hold and are asked for  

• The calls only you can make  

• The work you check

• The emails you proofread  

• The meetings that only you can chair

• Document the lot

What patterns do you spot? What tasks could naturally sit with others in the team? What are simple admin tasks that could be passed off to AI, or a VA? Create a 30-minute mini training session for each task you need to give away. Sit with someone and show them how. Let them shadow you doing it. Consider setting a small budget figure that others can sign off without your input.  

The idea is to constantly (at a pace of at least one a week) bring yourself joyfully out of a recurring task you do. A decision you have to make.  

The biggest push back I hear on this strategy is: 

“But they won't do it as well as me, they will make mistakes” 

Yes, this is probably true. But 90% well done by someone else, is better than something done 100% perfectly by you.  

Move yourself out of day-to-day decisions and into direction and review. The goal is not to be needed. The goal is to be free. Eventually your presence should be a huge bonus, not a necessity.  

Believe in others, empower them to learn and make mistakes and see it all change.   

Hit Reply And Tell Me: 

“What decisions do people bring to you that they should not need to?” 

One Idea to Win in Life

Something to Build Resilience

I Met Emma J Bell – Here's What She Taught Me About Resilience

We had Emma J Bell come into the business last week and deliver an amazing talk on mental resilience. Her book is well worth a read, but here are my biggest 3 key takeaways from a mind blowing talk.  

Resilience is a muscle you can train. Resilience is determined by the motor cortex part of the brain. You are naturally born with a certain amount of resilience based on the development of the motor cortex, but it’s a muscle you can train, a skill you can develop. You CAN become more mentally resilient over time. Humans aren't naturally resilient beings. We are built to seek comfort and safety to keep us alive. Emma spoke about mental press ups we can all take to build our mental resilience.  

Take Control of the Narrative. Emma interviewed Kia Scherr who lost her husband and daughter in a terrorist attack on a trip she was also supposed to travel on but didn’t. Kia’s huge secret to resilience is to control the story you are telling yourself. 2 people can experience the same huge terrible event in totally different ways.  

For one, it can end them, for the other they can eventually find the resilience to thrive once again. Emma showed us that people who thrive under pressure are able to reframe difficulty without denying it.  

They do not sugarcoat reality, but they also do not catastrophise it. They retain authority over the meaning. 

The 3 Second Pause. We are in total control of how we react to events that take place. Never allow someone’s behaviour to dictate your response. Easier said than done. Breathe 3 seconds in and out before responding can be the “mental press up” required, rather than act instinctively. The calmer we remain, the longer we can keep going.

Win or Wonder?

Ask Me a Question…

No matter where you are on this mad journey. Starting out, scaling up, or somewhere in the messy middle feel free to ask me anything.

Business, life or mindset, I read and reply to every question. The best ones will get featured in future editions of Winformation, with your permission of course!

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Until next week! 

Let’s win, together!