The "Generalist" Trap: When Your Superpower Becomes Your Ceiling
There is a specific, painful point in every growing company where the owner doing “everything” stops being a strength and starts being a bottleneck.
In the early days of a business, being a "Generalist" is your greatest asset. You’re the one who knows how to fix the website, how to talk to the difficult client, and exactly how the cash flow should look on a Tuesday morning. You wear every hat because you have to, and honestly, you’re probably better at it than anyone else you could hire at the time.
But there is a specific, painful point in every growing company where that versatility stops being a strength and starts being a bottleneck.
This is the Founder’s Trap. It usually happens when you realize that you are the primary problem-solver for every single department. If the sales team hits a snag, they come to you. If a project stalls, you’re the one who jumps in to finish it. You feel like the indispensable hub of a wheel, but in reality, you’ve become a single point of failure.
The logic we use to justify this is usually: "It’s just faster if I do it myself." And in the short term, you’re right. It is faster. But every time you "just do it yourself," you are essentially voting for your business to stay exactly the size it is right now. You are trading your future growth for a few minutes of immediate convenience.
Scaling a business isn't about working more hours or becoming a "better" boss. It’s about a fundamental shift in your identity. You have to move from being the Technical Expert - the person who knows the how to being the Systems Architect - the person who builds the who and the what.
If you want to grow, your goal is to become the "dumbest" person in the room as quickly as possible. You want to hire people or build processes that are better, faster, and more consistent than you are.
It’s an ego hit, for sure. It’s hard to let go of being the hero who saves the day. But you have to decide: Do you want to be the smartest person in a small room, or the architect of a large, self-sustaining one?
If your business can’t run for a week without your input on a dozen minor decisions, you haven't built a company yet. You’ve just built a very demanding job for yourself. It’s time to stop doing the work and start building the machine that does the work.
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