For founder-owners and entrepreneurs, the business is personal. You’ve poured time, energy, capital, and identity into building it. You’ve earned the right to care deeply. But there’s a hard truth that many founders eventually confront: personal control can become the enemy of leverage.
Once the very early “hair on fire” stage is done and you actually have some staff, leverage is about building a force multiplier: a business that runs, grows, and creates value without your constant involvement in all areas of the business. That’s the core of sustainability. That’s what makes your business investable or —if you choose—sellable for a significant multiple.
And so here’s a simple test to see where you are.
The Founder’s Thought Experiment
Imagine walking away from your business for 30 days. No calls. No Slack messages. No “just checking in.”
Now ask:
- What would keep working?
- What would break?
- What decisions would get made—or not?
- What clients would we lose – which would stay?
- What revenue would continue to come in, and what would stall?
The answers to those questions are your leverage map.
The parts of your business that continue without you? That’s your leverage.
The parts that stall, collapse, or wait on your return? That’s your opportunity.
In my experience working with founder-led companies, one of two things often emerges.
- The risks of stepping back are usually lower than founders imagine. They expect chaos, but more often, half or more of the business would continue humming along—and that’s where the journey to real leverage begins.
- If the risk truly is high—if everything would grind to a halt without them—it’s a sign that they haven’t yet built a sustainable business.
Stop Jumping In. Start Stepping Back.
Once you have processes in place and a team executing tasks, your job isn’t to fix every gap you uncover. It’s to observe what happens when you’re not there— and then to build systems, reinforce accountability, develop your team, and selectively reinvest your energy where it creates the most value.
Letting go doesn’t mean disengaging. Great leaders still pay very close attention. They just know where not to get involved and to let their teams build muscle.
The Hardest—and Smartest—Step You Can Take
If you’ve done the thought exercise—and really sat with the answers—you should begin to see your business more clearly than you have in a long time.
You’ll see – hopefully – where it runs just fine without you—and where it doesn’t. You’ll see where your team currently shows up—and where they have gaps that you may need to support or find support for. If you’ve really done your work, you’ll see where your own involvement may be stifling team members from bringing their best games. And maybe most importantly, you’ll start to see how your constant involvement—your need for control—has quietly become the ceiling on your company’s growth.
The goal isn’t to remove yourself entirely. It’s to see the potential that’s been locked inside your business—and to begin working on the business instead of in it.Companies that successfully do this move from company = founder to company > founder. And their founders reap the rewards they so richly deserve for embarking on the entrepreneurial journey in the first place.