Source: Chapters 10 and 11 of  The Hands-Off CEO book by Mandi Ellefson. 

You’ve got to where you’re at by working very hard. Now, perhaps a decade or more has gone. Growth has happened, and you’re still working really hard.

Growth is hindered by your own time. And you are driving it.

But it’s exhausting and limiting. What if you could actually generate more profits as a result of working less?

This is scaling.

The key to scaling is getting more done— through other people and efficiencies not tied to your own time.

Next-level productivity as a CEO is no longer about doing more.

It means letting go of the old “Superman” pattern—the cycle where we are constantly needed and become the bottleneck.

Can you relate?

You know you need to let go more, but how do you safely do it? How does the CEO develop the team so the business can run and grow without them?

It’s systems and processes, right? Except maybe you were upgrading systems last year. And the year prior. Sure, progress has happened. But are you still way too involved in service delivery, client management, or other soul-sucking day-to-day minutiae? 

Make more, work less.

Being busy doesn’t mean being productive. The key to how to work less is to shift your focus to get the right work done. To focus on results rather than the hours put in. It seems obvious, but we often get so tied up in the hamster wheel that we get bogged down in urgent, but not important work. 

Uncovering ways for how to work less starts with identifying what truly matters. What can only you do that will drive growth in the business? What should you STOP doing to ensures you’re dedicating your time and energy to tasks with the highest impact?

Delegating just adds more work for you to manage 

You know you need to be delegating, so what is standing in your way of doing that? What is stopping you from focusing your time and energy on the strategic tasks that will make your business profitably scale? Well, it’s often because you know that it’s just a lot more work for you to make sure someone else gets it done, and to quality check that it’s done right. 

To work less, we need leaders who can own it. Not just individual tasks, but the success of whole initiatives and projects. You may still be giving your feedback, but when done properly, your team will often push you out. (They may even laugh at you when you try to be “helpful,” and you insert yourself where it’s not needed. Yeah, I’m talking about my own amazing team).  

When you know where you are going, it’s a lot easier to say no to tasks or projects that don’t align with your goals or priorities. And we can understand the greater cost of our lack of focus as the leader of the organization. Recognize when and how to delegate tasks to your team, colleagues, or external partners. that 

With the right people building the right systems in place, you can free yourself nearly completely from the day-to-day to focus on your job as the CEO. 

What is your job as the CEO?

At each new stage, your role and how you add value shifts. The further you scale your company, the more valuable your time as CEO becomes. And it makes less sense to work IN the business versus ON or above it.

As the CEO, your job is to expand, articulate, and enroll the team in your vision so they can execute it.

You are also the key person responsible for leading sales growth.

Here are 3 key questions to unlock the most impactful growth activities: 

• What is the most important activity I can do today to move my business forward?
• What is the most important action I can take this week to expand my business?
• What might my team need most from me to [outcome you want to achieve]?

The company can only grow as far as the vision and leadership ability of the CEO. That means we grow as a person to keep scaling our companies. That comes from seeing a bigger vision. It comes from accountability to the new higher self they are stepping into. It means seeing other perspectives and up-leveling your network with peers who see you in your true greatness.

Scale to freedom: how to work less and get more done

In just 2 weeks, our clients free +10 hours per week to focus on the strategic work needed to increase growth and scale past the early ‘7-figure slump.’ We help them nail a more profitable model to scale that increases client results, increasing fees, and builds their leadership structure. 

It’s the proven model to profitably scale a service agency from $1-10M. 

Book a complimentary Scalable Growth Session to see what’s holding you back from these kinds of results, and what might be possible in your situation: handsoffceo.com/scale

We only accept clients where we can free up to 10 extra hours per week for the CEO to focus on strategic growth, triple their fees and unlock millions of dollars of profitable growth.