Earlier this week, we talked about how doing the wrong work can drain the life out of you, and how even stuff we’re good at might not be the thing that gives us life. If we keep working in these tedious roles, it drains our energy, and we risk getting burnt out. 

But there’s a challenge there too — some of the tedious stuff is what clients pay me for! The easiest thing to sell is the thing we’ve already done a thousand times — and I’m the best person to deliver that. So…

I’m going to guess that when you started your business, one of your dreams was to walk away from the tedious work that didn’t satisfy you, right? But now you are justifying that  you need to do that work “because that’s just the way it is?”

You are the boss! You can make changes to your role, and to your team, so that you don’t have to do that tedious stuff. 

When I work with clients on this, I hear them say:

But no one does it as well as I do. It’s easier to do it myself. 

You are right; no one does it as well as you do. You didn’t do it as well the first time someone gave you a chance, but they let you struggle through it, and now you are great at it. Give someone else the chance to experience that struggle and that joy. 

No one wants to be doing this stuff!

So, let me make sure I’m hearing this right. You, the CEO, are doing work that is so unengaging that no one else in your office wants to do it? That’s your job? I’m calling bull&%t. There’s someone out there that would *love the chance to do that crappy job. 

But if someone else was doing this, what would I be doing?

If you can’t think of something that would be more important to the growth of your firm that whatever it is that you hate doing, then we need to talk. Usually, this is about only valuing “doing the thing” and not the leadership, people development, planning, and selling as “real work.” Do that thing.

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from folks this last week that these concepts were resonating. You know you aren’t doing that thing that brings you joy. You see where what you are doing is draining your energy. But you don’t see the way out.

If that’s you, hit reply on this email, and I’ll schedule a 10 min triage call with you where we can bust you through that roadblock and get a bunch of that energy stealing, hard work onto someone else’s plate. 

I’m dead serious, give me a call and let’s take care of this.