My biggest mistake… ever

This was the stupidest thing I ever did

Entrepreneur,   In 2011, I made the single biggest mistake I've ever made...   ...I FIRED myself from my own business and brought in a "corporate CEO" to replace me.   Don't get me wrong, I'm all for hiring a President, COO, or even a CEO to run your business so you can step away from the "day-to-day"…   …but that's not what I did.   I quit.   I quit because I thought my business had outgrown me… I quit because I thought I needed "adult supervision"… I quit because I let my imposter syndrome win. I quit… …and it cost me $2.5M in direct losses and a year of my life trying to save my business from bankruptcy. Ouch. Looking back, here's what I should have done, instead…   STEP 1: I should have upgraded my company's operating system so it wasn't still running on the same "RyanOS" that launched it. (FYI: Running on a "YouOS" is the #1 cause of business owner burnout.)   STEP 2: I should have hired stronger functional leaders before hiring a CEO, or just waited to see if my current leadership team could perform with better systems in place. (I now realize I set my team up to fail because I didn't have any systems to support them.)   STEP 3: I should have hired my replacement only after it was clear the company was running on systems rather than my ability to swoop in and "save the day." (I now know that you build your operating system first, and then you hire an operator to operate your operating system.)   Had I followed these steps, I never would have quit.   Had I followed these steps, I'd be $2.5M richer (and I'd have a lot fewer gray hairs).   The lesson?   DON'T quit when you're frustrated... DON'T quit when you're burned out, and... DON'T quit just because you think, "I no longer have what it takes."   And above all else…   …never, never, NEVER quit on a bad day.   If you're sick of running on a "YouOS" and you want to see how we build and install custom operating systems (like the one I described in Step 1), here's a video I made where I break down our process, step-by-step:   https://scalable.co/sos-free-training/   To never quitting on a bad day, -Ryan  The Scalable Company, 4330 Gaines Ranch Loop, Suite 120, Austin, TX 78748, +1 (737) 208-1716 Unsubscribe Manage preferences