No one cares about your company (as much as you do)
Nobody will ever believe in your brand as much as you will. At first, that might feel like a downside to brand building. But accepting the fact no one will care about your company as much as you do (like, really) opens up the true power of three of the things stakeholders can bring to your business: increased capacity and competency, intimate accountability, and powerful perspective taking possibilities.
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Tough love for a tough lesson.
While founders might at times bemoan this fundamental fact while building, leading and staffing their businesses, there’s something to be said for embracing the truth: no one will care like you do. It can feel like a true struggle to find folks committed and excited to join you as a founder in the process of brand building - to hire anyone who will devote their talent and time to growing your business with the same quintessential mix of bravery and urgency. And absolutely, there can be internal employees, external contractors or agencies that don’t seem to measure up on a performance basis. Not the right fit, or in the right role, or maybe they’re the right fit in the right role, at the wrong time. In more than ten years of my industry experience, having worked with over 125 brand founders in multiple categories, and in a handful of countries, I’ve noticed a compelling pattern. People can only perform to the extent that leaders provide them with the conditions for success. With the right communication, culture, systems of support, and ultimately vision. One of the hardest lessons to learn early (and keep learning, often) is that these conditions of success are almost wholly dependent on leadership. I know. Ouch. It takes a real team superstar to rise above chaotic communications, disorganized or toxic culture, or the absence of a robust operating system. It’s humbling to remember that if there are consistent issues in getting folks to work well in your business, and stick with it working on your brand, it may be due to a lack of leadership. Double ouch. Stick with me. Clarity is kindness.
This is where our grace comes in - because in this corner of the internet we LOVE founders. We love you, reading this. Yes, you. Now, let’s embrace more truth. Managing people is hard, creating systems and curating company culture, is a challenge. This is what our friends at Raw Signal Group rightly point out as they train folks to become better bosses: none of us are born knowing this stuff. Not a one. And it doesn’t always come naturally. Plus, it can feel impossible to prioritize it all while you seek to scale your company. Or right size through a downturn. Or make it through a pandemic. Leading people is so important. Hiring and managing folks is unavoidably difficult. We don’t know how to do it without learning and growing ourselves, and as a result, we can feel a real temptation to point the finger at others for underperformance. Finding fault with them for not caring enough, or striving hard enough. Sometimes that’s it - they aren’t hitting the mark - and sometimes, we are it, not hitting ours. It’s tough love to consider clearly if we’re the reason why people can’t rise. Rise to the role. Rise to the moment. Rise to the KPIs and standards we set.
So, instead of wishing others would care as deeply as we do as owners, or be as committed as we have to be as founders, we can savour the sweetness of their involvement in our companies for what it actually is. It’s a gift we’re given. You create something that draws people to exchange their talent and time to make their mark in the world. What a beautiful honour, what a real responsibility, to join them on their journey. This is an invitation for us to reflect with careful self-awareness on the fact no one will ever care as much as we do. And that’s okay. These are three powerful reasons why that’s actually a good thing for you as a leader and your company, on the whole.
Capacities & competencies
I’ve never met a single founder who possesses, independently within themselves every characteristic, bit of knowledge or skill necessary to grow their brand, forever, alone. We know this. We feel this. We live this! While loads of things can (and should) be learned along the way, it’s the mark of a brave brand builder to see where your strengths and gaps exist. And acknowledge how the right people in the right seats (EOS reference) will add fuel to the engine of your enterprise. In EOS, we talk about ‘delegate to elevate’ — the idea that there's things as a leader you might like or dislike, and be good at or not so good at. Visually it looks like this.
Ideally in those bottom quadrants, the skills and tasks you don’t like or are not good at, someone else (eventually) tackles in your business. And even in areas you enjoy and excel at, delegating becomes necessary for growth. With someone you can trust — even someone who's smarter or savvier than you are in knowledge areas. Leadership isn't about being the best at everything all the time. It's about knowing yourself and empowering people with the authority and the responsibility to to achieve ever greater goals. It might sound like a really simple premise. Of course hiring people should increase capacity and competency, isn’t that a given? That depends how the people are managed, how they're trained and onboarded, what sort of processes are in place, how many systems they can rely on, how much communication they receive or reciprocity there is in your business. We can’t assume that a new hire or agency contract automatically equals more and better outcomes - it's a shared responsibility, a relationship that relies on the core factor of leadership to create shared expectations. It's tempting to believe that we'd solve some of our biggest people problems in our brands, if only we could find some who care as deeply as we do. Who would commit as hard as we have as founders and entrepreneurs.
Intimate accountability
It’s lonely at the top - there are decisions and pressures that no one else on your team will ever fully understand. At the same time, it doesn’t have to be an isolated existence as a brand leader. There are many people who can create accountability, including advisors, mentors, and of course, a board. While these insightful stakeholders in your business ecosystem are irreplaceable for the value they add, they often exist at an arm's length distance offering support from the outside in and sporadically at that. Your team, contractors, and agencies like ours, can take another position as stakeholders by joining you in the daily grind. That unique and special position offers unparalleled access to see your leadership, experience your management tactics and inform your best practices up close, with a cadence that is unmatched. You can take that and turn it into a feedback environment that serves the best interests of your brand and addresses your blindspots.
Leaders face the expectation to have it all figured out, to constantly be put together, to have every answer. It can be exhausting. And while we always want to work to communicate our competence and build trust, there’s something valuable about opening up vulnerability in leadership. Letting people know that sometimes you might not have the answer immediately, or know exactly what is the next right step. You open up the opportunity to be known and to be seen when you invite people into your business. And when there's so much pressure for performance, from LinkedIn to every pitch deck, you need input and encouragement. No one else you work with might ever know exactly what is feels like to be in your shoes, but they can still walk beside you along the way.
Perspective taking
You know those visual tricks, where an image could be two things at once depending on how your brain processes it and if you squint at it just the right way? Your brand is like that too - after giving birth to your business baby, you can sometimes lose your sharp focus, being so tied up personally in what you created. While your point of view is paramount in your business, making space for other people and their perspectives can revolutionize your growth trajectory and transform your own leadership experience. Growing a team gives you eyes and ears in new places and spaces, where you could never go alone. It's about holding space for critical thinking and meaningful conversations. Allowing opposing points of view and diverse understandings of your customers, company, clients, operations and strategies. How do you know if you’re seeing things as they are? Others can help.
One of the challenges of wanting people to match your care for your company, is the reality that you don't share the same risk and reward profile. When someone isn’t an owner, they never will share that. It’s a mistake, even misguided, to desire and in some cases try to require people to match and mirror you as a founder. Many founders are extended into their business at a very high level of risk. They may have remortgaged their homes. Sacrificed time with family and friends. They pushed all the chips into the centre of the table. As a founder you place a unique bet on your business that you should not anticipate anyone else making. It also creates the very real potential for you to lose perspective due to this outsized risk. Take on additional ideas, people, and voices in balanced measure, as an opportunity to maintain a healthy point of view as you bravely build your business, and define together what it means to show commitment at your company as a non-founder.
Invite people to care with you.
Not exactly like you.
It's tempting to believe that we'd solve some of our biggest people problems in our brands, if only we could find people who care as deeply as we do. Who commit as hard as we have as founders and entrepreneurs. There are people who will want to work with you because of how big your dreams are, because of how compelling your mission is, and the special ways that you lead — they don't have to care as much as you do to become an integral and impactful part of what will make your company successful.
It's a mistake to want people to match what is an unmatchable risk and reward profile of a founder. You don't need someone to be the same as you to be a superstar on your staff, an awesome agency partner or a critical contractor at your company.
Embrace the truth that nobody will love your baby more than you do. And that's actually a good thing.
