Hi, I'm Dani Tan, and if you are here, you are in the right place. Welcome to the Pivot and Promotion podcast where we say forget the rules because they weren't written for us. I'm Dani Tan. I'm your host as well as career and leadership coach and a proud advocate for redefining what success and leadership looks like. And here's what I know. You can lead at any level, you can pivot at any age, and you can make moves that feel right for you. Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder, starting something completely new, or just figuring out your next step. I've got you covered with strategies, stories, and straight up inspiration. So let's make some moves. Today we're going to talk about how to lead through growth without getting lost in the day to day.

So maybe you are a leader, an entrepreneur, a business owner, founder, insert name. But you are leading a business that is definitely growing and you're kind of like, I'm getting lost in the sauce of the day to day, of the things to do. And so let's kind of like break down what you can do to lead without just getting stuck in the weeds of things. And so this first prompt is maybe growth changes the job, but you're still working like it hasn't. So, for example, your business is growing, your job is changing and evolving, but the work that you're doing, like how you are working, is exactly the same since day one. And that's just not going to help. That's not going to serve you right. What you did in day one is definitely not going to necessarily serve how you've evolved and grown in your business, in your role in general.

And so at the early stages, especially like you're a founder, your role required wearing every single hat, right? So you're wearing the heart, the hat for marketing, you're wearing it for when it comes to inventory, when it comes to operation, when it comes systems, when it comes to hiring, all that stuff. But now your team has grown, but your calendar, for some reason hasn't changed. For some reason, you are still involved in every single thing, functioning like you are in the early stages or day one of the business. And so you're still in the weeds, even though your business or team needs more from you at a strategic level. So you're just in the weeds constantly, the day to day, all the things and your, your business and your team.

It's like, hey, we need some more strategy, we need more vision. And so staying so close to those little details is just not sustainable. Right. It's keeping you from making clear, confident decisions because you're just in this constant day to day of the weeds. And so thinking of a founder that I was working with and she had scaled her team, her team had grown, we had talked about hiring, she talked about what role she needed, but she was still reviewing every single detail, fixing everything personally. And once we kind of had this, like, sit down and clarify, like what are your priorities compared to your team's priorities, like who is doing what within it? Because yes, even though you can be a startup, even though you can be at early stages in a business where everyone's wearing all the different hats, there can also be some scoped out priorities of who is working on what.

And that just had to be done. Right. There was of course like a job description for each person in an outline, but at the end of the day, the priorities were just not necessarily aligned to each person. And she was still jumping into everything. So we had to do that as a step one. And the next piece was being able to set like a weekly decision making, like time for the blocks. So instead of her getting pulled into the day to day to make these decisions, it's like, okay, what are the decisions that are truly important and time sensitive versus the ones that can wait during these blocks of decision making? Because it was also just not helping the stress levels and also not helping the ability to make clear decisions.

And so by doing this, by really realigning the team, the roles, the priorities, as well as like creating a cadence for decision making and what needs calls on what they were able to really drop the stress and became more consistent when it came to focusing on strategy versus that balance of like being stuck in the weeds. And so the question that I have for you, the prompt that I have for you, where are you still showing up like it's day one even though your business has potentially moved on and grown. So if you were to think to yourself, whether it is your calendar, whether it is your team, whether it is the work that you're working on, how are you still kind of showing up like it's day one of business and where potentially, if you're to list it down, do you need to like reevaluate and create a strategy and a plan to really align yourself for growth and set you up for success in order to make that happen and your team for success in order to make that happen?

Because what we did on day one is not going to serve us in day like you know, 300. So there's that. The next piece is you're not delegating because it feels faster to do it yourself. And so I have this come up with definitely founders, leaders, business owners, where they're just saying, like, you know, yes, I have the team, but there's just some things that I have the knowledge for that I have the information for, and it's just faster if I do it versus explaining it to so and so to do it now. Yes, of course, logically that makes sense where if you are the one that knows how to do and you have the knowledge, it's faster for you to do it, for sure. But is that scalable? Is that scalable? Is that going to allow you for growth?

Because if you're going to start serving more customers, having a larger audience, whatever it may be, is it scalable for you to be the keeper of all the keys, you will have to have a little bit of a slowdown to speed back up. And what I mean in the sense of that is sometimes it feels like we are slowing down the process by teaching somebody else something, but by doing that, we are then allowing that in the long run to be scalable, because all the information is not dependent on me, and I am not going to be the stop and the blocker for everyone. And so you have hired the help. But I mean, hot take, you're not actually fully trusting them. So if you are not delegating because you think it's faster for you to do it, that means you have hired help and you don't trust them.

So we have to kind of talk about that. Um, also, you think it's just like, it's just easier that I do it, then you are truly bottlenecking the growth of your business and your team. So, like, that's just wasted money there for, for hiring people. And then delegation is not just about tasks. It's about making space so you can lead. And so delegation isn't just about, like, let me give someone some tasks. I have fewer tasks for me. It's about, by doing that, you're creating space for your strategy, for your business, for growth, for your vision, for the things that you should be focusing on. You should not be doing everything. And you should be able to create space to train others as well. So, you know, I had a client who was always getting pulled into fire drills.

Everything was a fire drill and everything she was intertwined with because she was worried. Like, she's like, I built this business. This business is my baby. You know, it's. It's a. It's an extension of her. It's a reflection of her, all this stuff. But she had a really good team. Like she had a great team. They were, they were really smart, they were completely capable. But she also had to make sure that she was creating a process that allowed them to, to make decisions on their, on their own, that allowed them to lead on their own, allowed them to be able to go ahead and focus on those things. Because she had a focus honestly on her investor meetings, on her board of directors. Like she didn't have time to worrying about like the color of the font that's going to be on the email.

Like she needed to be focusing truly on what it is that she's doing in order to grow the business. When it came to like reporting how the business is doing, when it came to talking about future partnerships and deals, it was not supposed to be that she's spending her time on these things. So the biggest thing we had to talk about was for her to feel like there was a checks and balances, that things were not going to go off the rails, was creating a communication cadence. So we built a process for a communication cadence for versus her getting pulled into every little thing or versus her jumping into every little thing. What could become a cadence of communication for her to talk to her department leads for them to ripple the information up to her, roll it up to her.

So that way she had time to give feedback, but without getting too in the weeds, give feedback. So that way there was enough timeliness for everyone else to do things. And also so she was not bottlenecking anyone. The other piece too was to create guidelines. So versus it being that all of the, you know, ideas were in her brain, what were the guidelines for what she wanted when it came to marketing or the guidelines that she wanted when it came to the product line that they could essentially like have as a guiding light and then also giving them some autonomy and creativity to give them some leeway to come up and solve some problems on their own as well. Right. By doing that, she won, built some trust and belief in her team.

It gave them more confidence to also come up and problem solve and come up with recommendations. Two, you don't hire people so everyone can just think the same way as you. You hire them because they're experts at what they do to challenge and evolve. She got some really good ideas from that team. By doing that, versus her constantly being the one that was feeding everything up. They were able to either honestly create safety and challenging her on giving feedback and also by bringing new ideas. And so by doing that, not Only was she able to get better relationships with her investors, which is really important, and work with her board of directors more to have that overall vision and strategy, what was happening for her brand and her business.

She also was able to get some more partnerships because she was focusing her time on the things that actually move the needle and allowing her team of experts to be experts at what they do and drive that forward as well. So my problem for you is what are you still holding onto that someone else could do right now? Because we love to hold on to things that either give us that dopamine hit that we're getting something off, down off our to do list or that lets us know that we are moving something forward. Like, we love to hold on to those things that are like, they feel so good to get them cross off our to do list. But what are you holding on to that is not important for you to overall in a big way move your vision forward that you can have somebody else do on your team?

All right, the last piece, when it comes to how to lead through growth without being lost and getting stuck in the day to day is going to be all about leading through growth requires a new version of you. Now, I bet you maybe weren't seeing me saying that, right? We're talking about delegation, we're talking about trust, talking about, you know, communication, decision making, all that good stuff. And not, you know, how new systems and new processes have to like evolve in order for us to evolve with them. But how about this? You are going to have to, it's going to require a new identity, a new version of you because you can't use the same tactics and tools that you used to use for yourself, right?

You're going to have to be able to kind of push yourself a little bit forward. And so that means for you in general, in this like version of you, this identity of you, you have to shift your focus so, you know, being so focused on like output, output, output, cross the thing off the list. Like you have to go from output to vision, like visionaries. So strategist, you can't be the doer anymore. Like doer, check off the list. You have to be the decision maker, you know, the communicator. And so you don't need to do more. You have to do the right things. And so how are you going to be able to create clarity in chaos? That's the biggest thing. And so by doing that, you have to start to identify for yourself of, I can't be the doer of everything.

So how can I Go from the doer of everything to really being able to become a decision maker and become more decisive. So you're going to have to work on your decision making skills. You're gonna have to work on your ability to create strategies and to test and experiment those things. You can't just stick to what you had before where you're just like executing things and firing them off. And so being able to create this new version of yourself, this new identity of yourself and to expand it, right, we're not throwing out the old version of you, we're just evolving it. And so that will be very important because it affects how you lead, it affects your team, it affects how you build your business.

And just knowing that there has to be some expansion, some expansion there and there creates a lot of self awareness. I was talking to a founder yesterday who's built her business in the course of eight years and the biggest thing that she came to find was just like being able to have the self awareness to understand the things that one, she was good at, two, the things that just did not light her up that she needed to like essentially hire experts for. And then three, like sometimes that's not fun, but just being self aware of what the business actually needs versus like the things that we want to do and execute but what is actually needed for that. And I just was saying, you know, it's, it's kind of crazy the level of like awareness you need to have of yourself in order to make sure you're getting your, you're, you're keeping yourself out of your own way and out of the business's way.

And by doing that it's being able to grow and evolve. And so you know, my, this one client that I'm thinking about, she was just reacting to everything. So it was like very like reactive of the things that were happening versus like driving, directing and leading. And so we really had to recenter her on like what are the priorities? Because you know, something would happen like a delivery would be delayed, would be delayed or a campaign would be late. And so we were like constantly like it was like scramble, scramble, scramble. How do I problem solve? Or a team member was like underperforming like how do we fix this? But it was like, okay, how can we start to create like real clear goals of what it is you want to be focusing on month to month, quarter to quarter, on all these different like pillars of, you know, of the business so we can create more proactive plans.

Obviously things are going to happen last minute, but create more proactive plans around it so you have a better way to expend and spend your energy as well as be able to have the resources needed to support that. Because once you start to prioritize what's important to you, then you start to look at what tools, systems or people are needed in order to achieve that. So you become more proactive versus reactive. And if you're somebody who's like staying in the past identity of yourself, that is just in the doer aspect or the get things done aspect. You don't have time to plan proactively and then strategize what is needed in order for that to happen. And so that's the part that I always say it's like you got to have a little bit of self awareness of getting out of your own way.

Because it's so easy to say there's not enough time, it needs to get done now, it's easier if I do it. But lady, I mean, once that, what is that going to get you? What is that going to get? You're going to get stuck doing the same thing. If you are doing the same thing you have always done, you will be the same person you always have been. So you have to change it up. All right, I feel like I was giving some tough love on this one, but I just wanted to bring it home because we want to evolve, we want to change, we want to grow, whether it's our business, whether it's ourselves, but, but we are so easy to get caught up on the day to day of what we do. And then we wonder why days, years, months, et cetera, et cetera go by and we haven't changed or evolved.

And I'm going to repeat it. The biggest thing that it comes down to is you can't keep acting like you've been always acting. In order to be someone new, you have to evolve and change it. So what does that require from you? And so that way isn't scalable for what it is that you want to do. You know, are you delegating? Are you asking for help? If you've hired them, do you trust them? Have you communicated for them? Are you creating systems in place for that to happen? Are you creating an overall vision of what you want, goals and priorities and then breaking down what steps need to happen there? That is where the Mrs. Happen. For my entrepreneurs, my leaders, my founders, when they are building something that is growing really rapidly and things start to kind of like crumble, there's like these different breaking points in the business and they're like Wait, what do I do?

It's not working anymore? No, it's just time to evolve with the business, and that's the biggest thing. So the last thing I would say to you, if you would change, like, if you could change one thing that you feel like you are just not executing on, that you would like to execute on, what would it be? Because I'm kind of curious, like sometimes we're saying to ourselves, like, oh, I really need to get this thing done. I really get this thing done. Get this thing done. And it's like going constantly to the bottom of our to do list. So what is that thing? And it better be a big thing that's going to move the needle. And if it is, you know what's stopping you and what would be your plan to kind of implement it?

All right, perfect. com and there's information there on private coaching, group coaching, as well as strategy sessions. So if you're like, hmm, what is it to work together? I always recommend book a strategy session. We can see what it's like to work together in general. And even before that, you can just book a call just to get to know me and say hello first to see what is best for you. But I always say the difference between somebody who evolves and grows and changes their life as someone who takes action, and you take action by doing something different, doing something new that you haven't done before. So what will you do this week? All right, have a good one and I will talk to you soon.