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Are you building a business, or are you creating yourself a job?

So many entrepreneurs are bogged down in the day-to-day, stretched thin, and constantly overwhelmed. In this episode, I’m talking about the fix.

Join me to learn 5 CEO shifts to leverage your time and step into your business owner role. We’re unpacking why staying in client delivery keeps you stuck, fear of delegation and how to actually build a business that can run without you.

Key Takeaways

• If your business would fall apart if you were sick for a week, you don’t have a real business yet
• Overwhelm is a sign you’re too deep in the day-to-day
• Growth requires capacity, not just effort
• You have to get out of delivery earlier than you think
• Your job as CEO is vision, leadership, and creating capacity

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

What if I told you don’t have a choice? How would you look at your time differently? How would you look at your business and how you spend your time and really do an audit of what am I doing in my business? How would you restructure and reorganize your business in the way you operated in your business if it had to run without you?

And this is where entrepreneurs get so stuck, is they are in this box and they cannot pull themselves out and see the bigger picture Your job. It is to always go where the problem is in the business. 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 everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Happy New year. Happy 2026. Here we go. I have a really good feeling about this year. I currently am sick, so I don’t sound like. Amazing. But I feel amazing. I feel so clear, so grounded, and I don’t know. I feel like everybody, there’s a, there’s this like theme of the last few years.

We’re like laying the seeds, a lot of pivoting, a lot of adjusting, a lot of ending. What wasn’t working to lay the ground for this year. I’m feeling that energy this week is embodied marketing live. I am so excited for everyone coming into Austin for the live event. It is my absolute favorite thing that I get to do, and I can’t wait.

So I, I am just, yeah, like killer start to 2026 and I can’t wait. There’s so many exciting things coming that I can’t talk about yet, but. So many good things in the works. It’s funny, before I dive in, I I had someone message me the other day who was like, I found your podcast. And I went to episode 600 and just pressed play.

And I’ve been listening to it like in the car at night all day, and I’ve been listening to so much of your podcast. First of all, I’m always blown away when people say that. I’m like, really? But second of all, she was like. I’m at the part where you did a free live event in Austin, which was the, like the amazing race.

And then she’s and you just started homeschooling your kids and I can’t wait to hear about it. And I just was like, that’s so cool. It’s like a season, right? Like I’m at the part of your life, wear this and it’s because you guys. I talk so much about different things in my life on here.

‘Cause I just don’t know how to not show up that way for you guys. And so I’m like, it’s like a TV show, not really. But it was cool. I was like, that’s so cool, because that was a while ago. That was like two years ago. And now we’re getting close to episode like we’ll be at 800 this year, which is wild.

Alright, let’s get into today’s content. So this was inspired by my mastermind call with my girls last week that I read my mastermind and it’s something that I realized those things where. They have now become so natural to you that you don’t think about how important they are. This is one of those things, so this is about the leverage of your time and making that adjustment in your business and in your mindset from lever tasks and doing things to leveraging your time and really stepping into that CEO.

Role and business owner role, and I’ve helped several entrepreneurs do this and really see this, and it’s like this perspective shift that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. But there’s many of you that are stuck in this place of really not valuing your time and not getting the most leverage out of your time.

And I wanna use this example and then I wanna kinda give you guys an exercise. It’s a great thing at the beginning of the year to think about. So one of the girls in my mastermind has consistently had this experience of. Overwhelm. Like she doesn’t have enough time to get everything done. She has clients.

She also wants to grow her business. She, usually doesn’t get to the parts of growing her business because she’s so bogged down on the client work and we’ve made progress of hiring a va. But she came to the call last week and she was like, my kids were two hours late for school. I’m so overwhelmed I didn’t almost, I almost didn’t come to the call and I’m really overwhelmed.

And I said. I think we need to take an extreme step towards getting you out of the day to day of your business, and I think so often this has to happen way earlier than you think it does as an entrepreneur, because a lot of entrepreneurs have the fear of investing. Money obviously into getting help.

But I also think there’s that fear of obviously what if someone doesn’t do it as good as me? Or what if, I don’t have time to train somebody? Or what if my clients are mad if I don’t, do all the work anymore? And so what I said to her, and this is a question for you guys to sit with, is I, if I were to say that you had two weeks.

And no matter what in two weeks time, you had to get yourself outta the day to day. Like your business in two weeks would have to run without you. Where if your kids, were sick, took two hours this morning, they were late for school, it shifted the whole day that everything would be fine. The clients would still get served.

The business would still run. You have two weeks and you’d have to figure that out, and that instantly gave her the clarity on, okay, this is gonna be the list of all the things. That I need to get support with at this point. She had just hired a VA who had started doing some tasks for her, but I said, if you had to get yourself out of all of the day to day in two weeks time, and that’s going to give you the clear answer of is this VA enough?

Is it the right fit? Are you trying to force something to work that maybe isn’t gonna work? And what would be the actions that you would have to take in order to do that? Thinking that way of a really tight deadline of having to completely get outta the day to day of her business, gave quick clarity on where the gaps were.

And I think what happens is a few things. Number one, I think. A lot of entrepreneurs can’t see this because you start your business and most of us, you’re doing everything. You’re doing the client delivery, you’re doing the marketing, you’re doing the sales, you’re doing all the things, and so you can’t see when it’s time to pull yourself out of that.

And a lot I’ve seen so many entrepreneurs struggle with this idea of who am I? To be able to delegate everything and and then what am I gonna do? And their identity is wrapped up in doing that. They don’t value and understand, like it is literally stopping them from getting to the next level because.

The next level means you need capacity. You need to be the strategist, you need to be the visionary. You need to be focused on growth and leadership in your business. And you cannot do that if you are bogged down in the day to day. If your business would fall apart if you were sick for a week or your kid was sick or something happened that made it so you can’t work, you don’t have a real business yet if that is where you’re at.

And I’m not saying that from a place of judgment at all. I’m saying that from a place of that’s extreme liability and you have a job at that point, which everybody goes through that in the beginning, but I think stays in it way too long because they can’t see it. And again, their identity gets wrapped into it.

And so they’re afraid of making that change and they tell their selves the story of I can’t afford the help yet. I don’t have the money, or someone can’t do it as good as me, or My clients are gonna be upset. It’s gonna take. Too long to train someone. But the reality is all of those things that yes, it’s gonna cost money, yes, you’ll have to reposition it to your clients.

Like those things are true, but there’s such a negative downside to not making that decision and staying in your day to day like think about what it’s costing you. And that’s what I would say to this mastermind member of mine, which is if you think about every day, every week that you are spending.

80, 90% of your time in client delivery, the clients are happy. Sure. But you’re spread thin. Like probably not even able to give them the same level of delivery that a team member dedicated to their account could, but also think about if you took all of those hours. And you applied it to growing your business, getting new clients, working on your marketing, working on an offer she’s working on, like how much more money that would make your business.

And this is where entrepreneurs get so stuck, is they are in this box and they cannot pull themselves out and see the bigger picture. And they’re so focused on the cost of it’s gonna cost me this much a month to hire somebody that they’re not seeing what is it gonna cost me to not hire them?

Like sure, it’s maybe that first month initial investment of training and getting myself into the higher leverage areas of my business. But once I do, that’s gonna start paying off massively. So that’s the first thing I see. The second is I think just the fear of I don’t know how to do this, and it’s overwhelming.

And I remember being there when I hired my first team members like I was horrible at it. I was like, I’m so overloaded. I literally can’t take on another client. This was like eight years ago. Somebody please help me. And then I just dumped it on them. Over time, I’ve figured out how to hire proactively training, right?

We have a whole process, a whole hiring process, but in the beginning I sucked at it. I totally sucked at it, but I knew I am at max capacity. Like my business will not keep growing because I am maxed out if I don’t go hire help. And then I went on this journey of learning like. Oh, the more you delegate, the more you leverage your time, the more you’re gonna grow, the bigger your business is gonna be.

And now I’m like ruthless with it, right? If there is something that somebody else can do, I will not do it because I know that if I can continually put my time into the things that truly only I can do, record this podcast. Brainstorm a new offer, lead a team. Be a part of a, a new project and lead it, whatever.

If I am involved in those growth visionary activities, and also if I give myself capacity, so capacity for something that’s gonna come up or an idea that’s gonna come through that I wasn’t planning on. If you don’t have capacity for that, it will never happen. So it is extremely important that this year you really look at your business and say, am I building a business or am I building myself a job?

And if I gave you that challenge of in two weeks, what would you have to do? Who would you have to hire? What process would you have to put in place? How would you restructure and reorganize your business in the way you. Operated in your business if it had to run without you. And I’m not saying like it’s gonna run without you in two weeks, right?

But give yourself the clarity of what I would have to do to get to that place. And one thing I realized in this conversation, ’cause I was like, I think we need to take extreme measures versus dipping our toe in. Let’s hire a va. We’ll give them a few hours of work. We’ll still be helping them.

And really hands on. It’s no. Let’s go to the extreme and say, what if I had no other option? But to be fully outta my business in two weeks. And sometimes, people do have that happen, right? This is why when you if you’re a mom and you had a business and you have a baby, like it is those nine months when you’re pregnant, you are like so productive and ruthless with getting yourself out of the business.

Because you have to be, ’cause you know I’m gonna have a baby and I need all of this to be okay. And it like forces that on you. If something happens, family member gets sick, you have to go deal with something. Like sometimes that happens and people are forced into structuring their business that way.

Let’s put that little bit of pressure on you now. What if I told you don’t have a choice? How would you look at your time differently? How would you look at your business and how you spend your time and really do an audit of what am I doing in my business? Maybe even do a time study.

What am I doing in my business every day? What am I spending time on? And is this all truly things that only I can do? And I can almost guarantee you that the answer is gonna be no, that the answer is going to be somebody else could do a lot of these things. And you’re probably holding back for whatever reason and figure out what that reason is, like where’s the resistance?

When you think about hiring that support for this client of mine, it was of course investment, but it wasn’t even as much that for her, it was like the big change. It was like that change is so much of my business. What are my clients gonna think? What are my clients gonna say? And then as we talked about it, she was like, you know what?

I actually think my clients would love this because they’re basically just gonna get somebody else supporting them in addition to me. And I’m stretched thin. Like I’m not even the best version of me for my clients because I’m stretched thin. So think about, okay, two weeks you’ve gotta replace yourself.

What would you have to do? Who would you have to hire? What would you have to restructure? And then when you think about actually going and implementing that, what resistance comes up? Pull it out, talk through it. Think about it. Because I promise you, if you commit to this in 90 days time of leveraging your time differently, you’ll be.

A different CEO, you will have a different business. And I think, one of the biggest secrets to success and having a business that scales that you’re able to have capacity to grow to big levels is being ruthless. Being ruthless with your time and energy, and not feeling guilty about being ruthless with it, and understanding that your job is to constantly create capacity for yourself.

Capacity for you to be involved in the growth of the business and also available. I also think something important to note for a CEO is like your job is to always go where the problem is in the business, like where the cracks are, because that’s where the opportunity is and that’s where the money.

You really shouldn’t be doing the same exact thing every day, every week. Like sometimes I’ll work, be working on a project, and so there’s repetition, week over week of what I’m doing. But where I put my attention in the business is constantly shifting because it’s usually where either we’re working on something or there’s a problem and I’m leading the charge on fixing it, or we’re growing something, we’re changing something.

So the only real repetition I have is content. And then I bounce around from delivery to marketing to sales. We could have a team member that’s leaving. And so it’s opportunity for us to restructure the way we’re doing things and, re-look at things. But that’s another thing that I think people get wrong, is they try to create this job title for themselves, or this job description as a CEO, where they’re doing the same thing.

And I think that’s really dangerous because the CEO’s job. Is to be the bird’s eye view, to not be in the day to day, but to be able to see everything and kinda walk the factory floor, right? Elon talks about this. If he goes around, walks, the factory floor, has the conversations. Pokes the holes to see where the opportunity slash problems are.

The problems are the opportunity. You have to have capacity to do this. If you are bogged down in client delivery, in, tactical admin tasks and day-to-day delivery, then you can’t expect a different output from your business. There’s people that are in that place in their business and then they want the six to seven figure business.

It’s like you have to become the CEO that is leading the six and seven figure CEO business before you can have it. Which means you have to be radically committed to honoring your time and energy ’cause it is scarce, but also one of the most valuable, like your team exists to protect that for you and uphold the business and the delivery and the standards.

So there’s a challenge for you guys is really like we’re in the first month of a new year. Let’s look at your time. I want you to do an audit last few weeks. Where’d you spend your time? What would’ve happened if you suddenly couldn’t work one day? Would the business have survived? Would it have caused overwhelm?

And this is what I told this mastermind member is I said, as long as all these things in your life. Have the opportunity to set off this state of overwhelm because the minute something happens outside of the norm, you get behind, your business isn’t gonna grow. You’re gonna be a, in a state of overwhelm and reacting constantly to this.

And not able to get ahead and be proactive and actually in the driver’s seat. You’ve gotta make a decision to get so much support that you fire yourself from your job and you now have a completely different role as CEO and you won’t recognize the company. So do an audit. Ask yourself, if I had two weeks to get myself out of the day-to-day, what would I have to do?

And then look at actually doing that and see where the resistance comes up. Challenge that resistance. If you’re like, oh, I don’t have the money. Okay, how much more will it make me? What’s my time worth? And if I get this support and then I put my time somewhere else in growing the business, is it one client, one customer?

Like how much more can I make and then take the actions and make this the year that you really step into that role of A CEO and building a true sustainable. Business. I can’t wait to hear what you guys come up with. I know this was really powerful for our mastermind and there was a few girls in there who even another one was like, two years ago I helped her with this and I remember we were on a hike in Alaska and she was like.

Telling me, why she’s bogged out in our business and she’s burned out and all these things. And I said, you’re still looking at your business as if you’re a bootstrapping solopreneur and you’re a CEO of almost a million dollar business. And you’re looking at it as if you have to bootstrap it all together.

And since that day, like she’s looked at her business differently, it’s all about that perspective of how you see yourself, how you see your business, and it’s a choice. And then we can allow that to dictate our decisions. All right everybody, I’ll talk to you next time.