→ Done-with-you marketing strategy, messaging that converts, and a business plan built around your life. Embodied Marketing Live is coming up: https://get.embodiedmarketing.com/live

I opened Slack after three hours of back-to-back calls this week and had a realization I’ll never forget.

My team was launching funnels, creating projects, and moving dozens of clients forward, all without me.

It made me realize most entrepreneurs are missing out on the huge upsides of building a team. They’re letting fear run the show and staying stuck in the day-to-day, while massive freedom and impact are on the other side of building a team.

In this episode, I share how to grow into the leader your business requires, and finally build the team that turns your vision into reality.

Key Takeaways

• Most entrepreneurs are missing out on the upside of building a team
• Scaling your capacity is what grows your business, not the other way around
• How I re-made a $17,000 expense in the very same day

_______________________________________

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

Tthe thing about me is I believe that I can have it all, and sometimes that overextends me. There is your vision and your dream, and guess what? You get to pursue that. You are the creator of your reality 100% here’s the thing shit’s gonna happen. You’re gonna hire someone. They’re gonna be the wrong fit. They’re gonna mess up. You could probably do it faster.

Like, all of that is true. So if you have made this decision to not grow a team or if you have held back on getting support out of fear, that’s what I want you to challenge just be real with yourself. Are you playing small saying that’s not your vision, or is that really actually what you want?

Embodied CEOs don’t chase trends. They pave the way they lead from within. Move by purpose, unshaken by noise. When you are the source, you do not need permission.

Hello, you guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you’re having a great week. I am batch recording this week. I feel like I am I am trying to live life and have the incredible experiences of travel and taking my kids places and, like what I built my business for, while, packing in so much in the weeks that I’m here.

So I’m traveling a lot for the summer, and so I’m like, got this condensed week where I get to record so many podcasts. the thing about me is I believe that I can have it all, and sometimes that overextends me. In a time where I’m trying to not rush around and not hurry and not overpack myself, but I’ve…

This week. It’s just this week because I’m like, got one week and then gone for two almost. Home for three days, gone again. Anyways, that’s my week and, but I have so many podcast ideas because I did a solo trip a bit ago and just, I am at the highest level of creativity when I travel on my own.

Today I wanted to talk about two different things that are more just me riffing on my own business and experience and some things for you to think about, and lessons. So I, the first thing that I wanted to talk about is team and building a team. Because I feel like I come across a lot of entrepreneurs who say that they don’t want to build a team or have a lot of fear around building a team or keep their team really small, and feel there is a h- a large headache around building a team.

And I think that if you want to build a business, you can build it however you want. If your vision is for it to stay a certain size and to be super lean and to not really have a team and, or maybe like a few contractors, there’s no right or wrong, right? Let me preface with that. There is no right or wrong.

There is your vision and your dream, and guess what? You get to pursue that. You are the creator of your reality 100%, okay? However, I feel like a lot of the conversation around team, especially in businesses our size of six figures to seven figures to even eight figures, not corporate, right?

A lot of the conversation is usually negative. How it is a headache, how it’s challenging, how it’s hard to hire, how it’s hard to train, how nobody does a good job, the pressure of payroll, all these things. And I’m not saying it’s a breeze building a team at all. It is the most challenging part of my business.

However, I wouldn’t do it if there wasn’t massive upside. And, this week, I had a moment yesterday where I was on three hours straight of calls. I’m packing in this week teaching workshops and calls because I’m home for a week, and so I had to pack it all in. And so it’s one of those weeks where it’s like you work, but you don’t get any work done because you’re spending it all, fulfilling calls and meetings and just recording content.

That’s my week this week. It feels I haven’t even written a to-do list since Monday because my to-do list is my calendar and just the obligations on my calendar. So anyways I had this moment yesterday where I got off three hours of calls, and I opened up my Slack. And we have a Slack channel for every client.

That’s the way that we work ’cause it brings the team together in one of the design team, the copy team, the onboarding manager, all in one, and I’m in those channels. I don’t have to go in them, but I’m in them, and it lets me have a bird’s-eye view. Especially w- as we update process and I train new team members, it just lets me catch things, so I like being in them.

And we have quite a lot of clients. We have our done-for-you side, and then we’ve got close to 100 in our kinda hybrid done-for-you, but program. So we have a lot of clients, right? We have a lot going on. And we move really fast, and we execute. Our whole team is implementation, right?

So there’s always something happening. And I had this moment. I opened my Slack, and all these channels had messages in it. And I didn’t feel urgency. I started looking through them, and I was like, “This is so cool,” because as I was on these calls, the amount of work that got done and execution that got done.

I went in these channels, and I was like, “We launched this client’s ads. We finished this client’s funnel. We got their strategy approved.” Sh- a huge list of things that had been done in the three hours that I was able to be on my mastermind call. I taught a workshop for our clients. I did a bonus strategy call and those were the calls I was on, right?

I was delivering. And in one of those calls, someone said to me, she said, “Thank you so much for all the work that you are doing to support entrepreneurs and, like, all that you do to make an impact.” And it was really an, a, a nice compliment, but I was like, wow, I really do get to pour a lot of my time into doing what only I can do, creating the content that I create, creating the impact, the movement, the support.

Like when I do a training, right? Like creating a workshop space that creates clarity for other entrepreneurs so that they can build the business and life of their dreams. And that would not be possible without my team. And I’m not just saying that to acknowledge my team. I want to acknowledge my team, but I just had this moment yesterday where I was like, I think that out of fear and the way that people reference having a team, so many entrepreneurs are actually missing out on the upside of it.

There is such an upside. I come into my office, I get to collaborate with these extremely talented team members of mine who are in the trenches delivering for our clients so that I have a business where I can have my highest impact. It’s not just so that I can have a business that runs without me, that, that is an added benefit. I can go on a trip next week with my kids, and I’ll check in, and I’m around, but I don’t have to work. I don’t have to show up. My entire business can run without me. That is a benefit, right? That is a goal. But more than that, I don’t know, it just reframed to like I’m able to have such a bigger impact because of the system and the team that I have.

And so I say this because I just feel there’s so much negative around building a team And around the pressure of having to be responsible to pay somebody else’s salary and keep up the money and do all that. And I’m not diminishing the fact that it is challenging. Majority of my struggles in my business come from people management because everybody’s got their stuff, right?

And it is challenging, but the upside of it way outweighs the challenge. And I just wanted to bring that here to have that conversation because if you have shut off that vision or you have kept that vision small because of fear, I just wanna be that voice that challenges you. And there’s no right or wrong.

Maybe that is still the right decision for you. You don’t have to have a massive team. There’s a lot of people that I talk to who are, like, very clear, “I do not want a big team. That is not my dream.” And that’s fine. But if you’ve decided that wasn’t your dream or your vision, or you aren’t building a team, or you aren’t investing in support out of fear, I wanna be the voice that says, “It’s not easy.

You’re gonna learn a lot.” And it’s… it is true that there is the pressure, right? When something happens with a client, when something happens, at the end of the day, it does fall back on me. It falls back on me to make sure that we are okay, but that is what I signed up for, and I’m grateful for it And that’s gonna bring me to the next thing I talk about.

But I just wanna be that voice that says the upside of having an incredible team supporting you far outweighs the pressure and the challenges that you face because of that, in my opinion. And it is 100% possible to build a machine where you have a team fully running the day-to-day of your business, and allowing you to be in a space where you can have your greatest impact.

And that’s what I realized yesterday is I was like, “Wow, I got to spend three hours doing what only I could do,” right? My mastermind call where I’m coaching the women in the mastermind, my workshop that I held for our clients around their messaging, and I was doing coaching on that call the one-on-one strategy call that I helped someone tremendously with clarity on their business.

Those are the things that I should be doing. Now, I wouldn’t be able to do those things if I didn’t have a team running the entire day-to-day of our business, writing our clients’ copy, launching their ads, coordinating everything, organizing the strategy. And so the amount of production that we have in a day as a team is incredible.

And that’s where I just like… I went in Slack yesterday, and I was like, “This is amazing.” It is amazing how much gets done in a day with a cohesive, talented, hardworking team. And that is possible to have in your business And yes, there will be challenges, but those challenges grow you. My team challenges me to be a better leader all the time.

I would not be where I am today without having to face or getting to face the challenges that come with a team, right? Learning how to be a better leader, learning how to communicate to different communication styles. Like for me, I’ve had to learn a ton around that because I am somebody who I don’t communicate a lot with emotions.

I’m black and white, right? Logical. And I’ve had to learn how to communicate with different team members and to be a better leader, to get people excited to be, working at Embodied Marketing and working together and to feel appreciated and all these things. And the more that I work on that and the more that I, m- set an intention to pour into that, the more I feel fulfilled.

Because also not only, do I get to have an impact for people who consume my content and clients, but I get to have an impact on my team, and they have an impact on me. And it’s a very rewarding experience. So I wanted to be that voice because I feel like I hear very often people who are scared of hiring a team because they’ve heard horror stories.

And here’s the thing shit’s gonna happen. You’re gonna hire someone. They’re gonna be the wrong fit. They’re gonna mess up. You could probably do it faster. Like, all of that is true. Again, the upside of it far outweighs all of that. So if you have made this decision to not grow a team or if you have held back on getting support out of fear, that’s what I want you to challenge.

Because as an entrepreneur and as a CEO, those are the places that you do need to challenge. Where are you letting fear run the show? Because that’s not actually in alignment with your dream. We tell ourselves these things as an entrepreneur like, “Oh, I don’t want that because it’s gonna be like this,” or, “I can’t have that,” or, “I can’t grow to that,” or, “I’ll never be able to not do this in my business.”

Absolute statements are very dangerous because you believe those as facts, and they’re not facts. And so my favorite thing to do when people say absolute statements to me is like, “Really, though?” “Look, can I challenge it?” ‘Cause is there a world, is there a timeline, is there a path where that is not actually the reality?

So I wanna be that voice, and I want you to think about, really think about and sit with: Where do I want my business to be in the next year, in the next two years, in the next five years? Am I playing small with that vision? And again, I’m not saying that everyone has to have this massive vision for an 8-figure company.

There is nothing wrong with that not being your vision. Nothing wrong with it. Just be real with yourself. Are you playing small saying that’s not your vision, or is that really actually what you want? And everything’s a trade-off, right? When I say that I want to grow an 8-figure company, I am growing to an 8-figure company.

I know that the trade-off to that is the challenges that comes with growing the team and the infrastructure to get us there. But I am willing to take those sacrifices, to face those challenges, and to sit in that because to me, the upside and the benefit of the impact, not just the revenue of an 8-figure company.

That’s just like the scorecard. The impact of an 8-figure company means we have massive impact in terms of media and content and people I’m able to reach and support, clients, businesses that we get to run marketing for. I am choosing the challenges that come with running a large team, large business infrastructure to be able to have that outcome.

I could absolutely say I’m too scared of having a 6-figure a month payroll. I already have that. It’ll be probably double that at 8 figures. I could say I’m too scared for that. What if this? What if something goes wrong, one month and that’s how much I, cash I have? It is a different game But I, I really try to not let fear run the show and to push up against anywhere I’m uncomfortable, anywhere I’m scared, which then brings my next point.

So I want to be that. I want to be that voice. I want to challenge you. I want you to think about anywhere in your business that you are operating from an absolute or out of fear or out of discomfort, out of the new, but also be that voice of you absolutely can grow a business that 100% runs without you because you have an incredible team supporting you and allowing you to be in the space where you can have your greatest impact and the freedom of a business that runs without you.

Because you need that, not just because… You don’t need that, but you can have that. You can choose to have that, not just because you want that life, but also because if you do want to grow your business to certain levels, I don- I don’t think you can get past certain levels being in the day-to-day. You just can’t.

Your brain and your capacity, you eventually hit burnout, and your creativity and your vision and everything, it’s just clouded with the tasks that you have to get done. And in that case, a lot of times what I see is entrepreneurs created a job for themselves. Again, you can do whatever you want.

It’s your business. It’s your life. It doesn’t have to be that way if you don’t want it to be that way, but you’re gonna have to make the decision to say, “I’m gonna build a team. I’m gonna mess up. I’m gonna do my best. I’m gonna figure this out. I’m gonna take the risk. I’m gonna bet on someone. I’m gonna invest this money because my time and my future and my vision is more valuable to me than the fear and the uncertainty of that So this kind of brings me to the next point, right?

Because how do you operate from a place of trust? How do you operate from a place of knowing that you will always be okay when something does happen? Because it will happen, right? And how do you operate from that place of being willing to take the risks, being willing to go up against the fear and take the action anyways?

And I think that I’m really fortunate in the sense that I was raised with this mindset of “You’ll always figure it out.” And I do trust myself in business, I will say. In this way, I think I’ve actually… I struggle sometimes in my personal life where I’m like, “What the heck? I can go take all the risks in business and I know I’ll always be okay,” but then sometimes in my personal life I don’t always do that.

Anyways, side note. But I was raised like, “You want it, you make it happen. And you’ll always be okay. You’ll always figure it out. You have the skills and the ability to figure it out,” and I’m really grateful for that. It’s a skill that you can learn, though, and you build that confidence within yourself as you do it.

But I will say that over the last probably fi- three to five years, I have had to really practice and deepen my ability to trust and not allow any resistance or something not going how I want it to put me in a place of force and white-knuckling it. And I’m actually still working on this. I think I always will be working on this.

But the more that I lean into this and the more that I really, learn this, teach my system this, is what I’m really doing, the more my business can grow. And so I wanna share a second story that I thought was really cool and may help you. so the other day, I woke up… Sometimes I wake up to a bomb being dro- dropped, something that happened that I wasn’t expecting. It could be someone’s quitting, it could be somebody’s asking for a huge refund and it’s not warranted. Business situations. So I woke up the other day to, a surprise $19,000 charge, basically, that I wasn’t planning on having to s- spend.

I’m not gonna get into the details of it, doesn’t really matter. But woke up to $19,000. Which is fine, right? I do have cash, and I can co- I’m okay, I can cover those things. But it’s not necessarily a nice thing in one week to have $19,000 that you weren’t planning on spending on the same week of payroll and just cash flow, right?

And so I woke up to that text message and I was like, “Okay.” Most of the time I can get these things now and I’m just like, ” Alright, we’ll figure it out.” And so that is what I did. But I was really intentional in that moment, right? Because it’s really easy to go into a state where you’re like I guess it would be fear, right?

Because even if I’m fine, even if I have the cash, which I do, it’s still like you can still start running the what if scenarios. What if this? What if we don’t make all these sales? What if da? What if the payroll expense goes? What if this? It’s very easy. The brain is very good at that. That’s its job.

It’s trying to protect you. It’s trying to think about all the ways that everything could possibly go even more wrong, right? And then make you scared, and therefore, then you don’t take risks. So I noticed that I could go that route of what if this, and also be mad at the expense, be annoyed, be short, go into this like scarcity, fear energy.

Or I was like, or you have the choice to be like, “Okay, I trust that this is happening for a reason, and I trust that everything will be totally fine.” Not just logically choose that, but actually put myself in that state of being, right? When you’re in an energetic state of being, I’m gonna go woo on you for a second.

Hopefully, you can feel this. There is a different feeling in your body when you are in fear or you are in abundance, right? Like different actual frequency. You can feel the difference in your body. So not just logically decide “Oh, it’s fine. Everything’s gonna work out,” right? I could tell myself that and force myself to feel that, but I was like, “No, you know what?

I’m gonna go into a state of abundance, of so much gratitude. I’m so grateful for my team. I’m so grateful for the new clients that we’re bringing on. I’m so grateful that I’m always taken care of and that everything always works out how it’s supposed to.” And like I went deep. I went into meditation and just went into that trust and went into that gratitude.

And then I went about my day. And the same day, we did $18,000 in new sales, which we do new sales every single week, but I just was like… It– that was a high day for us in a single day, $18,000 of new sales on top of our regular billing. And I just thought it was so cool ’cause I was like, woke up to an, to a surprise $19,000 expense.

Did $18,000 in new sales. Alright. Alright, universe. I got the message. And as I was doing that, I realized… So Quick side story. I have a friend here in Austin. I’m gonna bring him on the podcast. He’s a founder of a very large, successful company. and he has a team of seven people. It’s a physical product company, so a lot of his expense is in the development of the product.

So he’s got a small team. Small-ish. Small for the size of his company. And very successful. Very successful company. And I was talking to him the other day, and he told me he never goes on a computer. He said, “If I’m on a computer, there’s something wrong.” And I was like, ” the fact that you have that large of a company, you’re that successful, you don’t go on a computer that’s amazing.”

And I said, “So what do you do? What do you do during the day?” And he said, ” I make myself available to my team.” They work out of this house, basically, in Austin. “I make myself available to the team.” And he’s “I have this room,” he called it something. “I have this room. It has a bed, it has a couch. It’s like this chill room, and I go and I sit in there.

And people come to me and they ask me questions, and I answer the questions.” And the way that he carries himself is a very calm, grounded, energetic frequency. Like, when you’re in his presence, you’re like… You feel good. He feels calm. He feels grounded. He feels regulating. And he’s got this massive company, right?

And so that happened the other day, and I was thinking about him, and I was like, you know what? I think the more I go about this, the more I realize one of the main jobs of the CEO is to maintain their energy and the frequency that they are vibrating at. I know that’s woo, okay? But maintaining that energy, because that is the energy of the company.

And this friend of mine, I’m like, that is what he does. He’s not saying that he’s doing that, but I’m… he is maintaining this grounded, centered, inspired, calm energy so that no matter what happens, which I’m sure with the size company that he has, and e-commerce and fulfillment and all that, that there’s big challenges that come up, right?

he’s not rocked by them, and he stays calm And when you do that as a leader, your team feels like they’re okay, right? Have you ever been in a situation where somebody who’s in charge gets stressed out and is panicking? Then you panic, right? If you were on, like for example, an airplane and the pilot and the flight attendant started panicking, you would panic.

If they stayed calm even if something was happening, you’re gonna stay calm. So people look to the leader on how they should be responding, how they should be feeling. That is the job of a CEO. And so I realized the other day… I know this, but I just deeper level of realization that I was like, “Oh, one of my core responsibilities is to maintain my energy so that when we are hit with surprise expense, somebody quits, whatever happens, right?

‘Cause these thing happen some weeks more than others, but you can expect them to happen. And the larger the company, the more this is gonna happen. My job is to maintain my energy so I stay in the state of being centered, inspired, grateful. Grateful, I cannot express that enough. You can move through so many challenges if you can find the state of gratitude, and you can always find it.

In the hardest of the hard seasons, I can find gratitude. And not logically just find gratitude, but how do I feel the gratitude? How do I drop into that in my body, in my heart, and feel that state of gratitude? Because that directly impacts the entire company. And, again, it’s woo, but there is something to you vibrate at a certain frequency, you’re gonna attract certain things.

And I truly believe that day that I got myself, “Okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna vibrate at this higher frequency,” and then we made all those sales. And I’m not… And I didn’t even, I didn’t even ask for that. I didn’t even say “Universe, I wanna make a bunch of sales.” I just was, I just kept myself in that state.

So that’s my second point to this, is no matter what, if you grow a team or not as a business owner, I think that if you would’ve told me this years ago, it would’ve helped me. I think if you would’ve told me this 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have known what you were talking about, and I wouldn’t have believed you.

I would’ve been like, “That sounds nice, but how?” And it’s been a journey, right? Of, of me learning this. But I… This is something that I wish somebody told me. I wish somebody told me years ago, which it’s, again, happens exactly how it’s supposed to, but I’m saying it now because maybe it’s the message you need.

In business, it is not just about logically solving everything with your brain. It’s not about white-knuckling and pushing through and making everything happen and just pushing through the hard times There is an element to it that goes beyond the brain, and that is actually the embodied part.

That is how you choose to show up, the energy you choose to show up with as a leader. And I for sure have done this poorly, right? Where I’m a human, I get stressed, and then I get panicked, and then I deflect that onto my team. I put that onto my team. And I’m not saying don’t hide the reality. People don’t like it when you’re not transparent.

If you’re like, “We’re fine, guy- we’re fine, guys,” and you’re not really fine, people know that. But if you can actually stay grounded and actually go, “Okay, here’s the situation, blah, blah, blah,” and you stay centered, your team’s gonna feel that, and they’re gonna feel safer, and they’re gonna feel more grounded.

Your clients are gonna feel that. Your audience is gonna feel that. How do you do that? There’s not a manual, but you have to have the capacity for it. You have to have the intention and the awareness and the capacity. And you can’t do this if you are running in a chaotic,

overpacked, stressful day-to-day, and also if you’re lacking awareness. If your environment is dictating your state of being, that needs to flip. You get to dictate your state of being regardless of the environment. Meaning regardless of the people around you, the situations that happen, the traffic, like, all these things, you choose to let those impact you.

That’s a choice, and when you have the awareness and then you have the power over that, it changes everything. And the more I go on this journey, the more that I realize, the more intentional I am with this, and holding myself accountable knowing that’s one of my number one jobs as a CEO. And also that the more I can do this, the more capacity I can carry, the more my business will grow.

The more it grows, and the more it grows easily. Even this week when I’m saying my schedule’s packed, I haven’t skipped a meditation. I unplug with my kids. I go f- we’ve been going for a walk every night without my phone. I do keep myself centered. My schedule’s packed, but I’m not stressed.

I’m not in chaos. I’m not in that frantic energy. And so therefore, I can handle a higher capacity of things, which is how you scale your business. You have to become the person who can hold that level. So those are the two things that I wanted to help you with that have come to me this week.

Hopefully you get some value out of it. Question and think about, ask yourself some questions around how you’re showing up, how you can get in that state of being where the problem’s already solved. that’s what I did the other day, is I was like, ” Okay, I can face this problem. I’m just gonna get myself in the state of being that it’s already handled.”

It’s already handled. I don’t even need to know the steps of how we’re gonna handle it, ’cause I trust that we will, but my state of being is gonna be that it’s already handled, and then it was. Alright everybody, I will talk to you next time