Adapted from my conversation on The Principal Podcast, November 2026.
Hand off the work you shouldn't be doing, and protect the work only you can do.
For most small business owners, the first list is administration: scheduling, email, invoicing, bookkeeping. The second list is shorter. Stay close to what your customers experience. Set the standard for the leaders who lead your people. Repeat the vision until it sticks.
I started at BELAY as the first employee, a part-time executive assistant to the founders. I've led the company as CEO since 2021. Both lists have held up at every stage in between.
Before BELAY, I built a career in retail leadership. Retail never closes. I worked nights, weekends, and holidays, and that was my life.
Then my first daughter, Riley, was born, and everything changed. I didn't want to work holidays and miss them with her. I didn't want to be gone every weekend or home late every night.
So in 2010, I stepped back. I took a part-time job as an executive assistant to BELAY's founders, a few hours a week, so I could be a present parent.
I never treated it as a small job. I loved doing great work. I loved leading people and watching them grow. And I wanted the company I worked for to thrive. Over 16 years, that mindset took me from assistant to manager, director, VP, chief operating officer, and then CEO when the founders exited.
I share that because most of the leaders we serve are standing where I stood in retail. They're capable and committed, and their hours are going to the wrong things.
Most of the businesses we work with bring in between $1 million and $20 million in revenue. Their teams range from two or three people up to about 20.
They need help, and they know it. But they aren't ready for a full-time hire, and often they don't have the budget for one.
That in-between stage is where the bottleneck forms. The owner keeps handling scheduling, email, invoicing, and bookkeeping because no one else is set up to own it. Slowly, the business gets buried in running itself instead of growing.
Start with the administrative and back-office work. Ten to 20 hours a week of experienced support can give an owner their focus back, along with some margin in their life.
Once the administrative weight is off your plate, the work that's left gets harder to see. These are the three jobs I hold onto as BELAY grows.
As a company grows, layers form between the CEO and the people serving clients. At BELAY, I have officers, vice presidents, directors, and managers between me and the teams working with clients every day. It's easy to drift too far from what clients actually experience.
So I ask for two kinds of stories. Where are clients winning? And where are we missing the mark? When a client leaves, I want to know why. Sometimes I talk with clients myself. I can't make big changes if I don't know what's going on.
Retention is the clearest signal we have. It tells us whether we're delivering the value we promised. When churn goes up, we dig in. Did we misunderstand something? Did we fall short? Do we need to update a process, or change how we vet the people who work at BELAY? Retention is also our largest revenue driver, which makes it our most important metric.
Takeaway: If you only hear the wins, you're too far away.
Leading a team is fairly controllable. Leading a leader who leads a team puts you one step removed.
People leave their bosses. They won't leave because of a CEO they see once a month at an all-team meeting. They'll leave if their direct manager isn't giving them what they need.
So I spend a lot of time with our managers on how they lead, what expectations look like, and how we protect our culture.
Takeaway: Your culture is only as strong as your weakest manager's week.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking, I've said this so many times already. Then I remember we've hired 20 new people since the last time I said it.
I'm still the owner of our vision and mission. Our core values live in how I represent them every day. So I keep saying it, over and over.
Takeaway: If it feels repetitive to you, it's probably just landing for someone else.
1. List the administrative tasks you handled this week. Circle the ones someone else could own.
2. Ask your team for one recent client win and one recent miss. Read the miss first.
3. Ask each of your managers what their people need from them right now.
4. Restate your vision at your next team meeting, even if you think everyone has heard it.
Administrative and back-office work: scheduling, email, invoicing, and bookkeeping. That work keeps a business running, but it pulls the owner away from growing it.
Watch retention. It tells you whether clients are getting the value you promised. When churn rises, find out why before you change anything else.
Ask for the stories where clients are winning and the stories where you're missing the mark, and talk with clients directly when you can.
Listen to the full conversation on The Principal Podcast.