What’s the true cost of waiting to become your ‘Future CEO’ self?
I was talking to a founder about her biggest headache: a recurring bottleneck in her sales pipeline. Every quarter, the same issue would surface. She’d review the deals, spot the friction, step in, and fix it. She’s the hero in the moment, but the cycle keeps repeating.
She told me, “I know the answer is to coach my Sales VP instead of stepping in myself, but I just can’t risk the pipeline. Once we land these two major clients, then I’ll have the space to train her properly and build the system that lets me step away.”
Do you see the subtle but dangerous trap? It’s the belief that we need to wait for an external event—a new hire, a specific margin, a big client—to grant us permission to behave differently.
“Once we hit that revenue target, then I’ll become the decisive, visionary owner who only focuses on the highest-leverage work.”
This is fundamentally backward.
The Champion’s Equation: Identity Creates Achievement
Think of Nick Saban. When did he become a champion? Was it when he won his first NCAA Championship? When he won a championship at two different schools? Or when he won his seventh championship? He’s considered one of the greatest college football coaches in history, but his reputation wasn’t built on a single victory.
Saban became a champion long before any of that — when he committed himself to “The Process” and relentlessly pursued excellence in each moment of every practice. His identity was non-negotiably tied to the daily execution of his process: preparation, absolute focus, and blocking out external praise or criticism.
The national titles were not the cause of his championship identity; they were simply the unavoidable consequence of his fixed, world-class operating system. The external world only changed its perception of him. His system remained intact.
The Hidden Organizational Cost of Leadership Delay
Delaying the adoption of your ‘Future CEO’ identity generates tangible organizational costs:
- Increased Key-Person Risk: Every day you wait to fully trust and empower your team, your business remains overly dependent on your input for tactical decisions. The cost is the exposure you create if you suddenly step away.
- Stalled Systemic Growth: If you’re waiting for the revenue target before you become the system-builder CEO, the very systems needed to hit that target will remain underdeveloped. The cost is stalled momentum and a higher ceiling on your growth.
- Wasted Leadership Energy: You spend time and mental energy doing tasks that your team could handle if you simply chose to lead from a place of radical delegation and trust today. The cost is burnout and neglecting the true high-leverage work: vision and culture.
The goal isn’t what creates the leadership identity. The identity is what ensures the goal.
The Critical Questions to Unlock Your Future Self
I invite you to consider the ‘future self’ who has already delivered on your most ambitious target—the leader who has successfully scaled the business to operate without their constant, daily input.
- What operational sloppiness do they no longer tolerate? What are they willing to immediately ask of others to close those gaps?
- How do they systematically coach and empower the next level of leadership to own their outcomes?
- What is their relationship to money? How do they ensure healthy margins and resilient cash flow in any operating environment?
- How do they use their time to focus exclusively on vision and culture, rather than problem-solving?
If you are waiting for the achievement to deliver that clarity and composure, I invite you to make a more powerful, immediate choice: Step into that identity now.
The clear boundaries, the profound belief in your team, and the focus on building scalable systems—these are not privileges earned after the goal is hit. They are the essential inputs that create the culture, focus, and momentum needed to reach that goal in the first place.
Try this: Before your next decision, meeting, or conversation, pause and ask, “If I already achieved my most ambitious goal, how would I handle this one, specific situation?”
I’m confident that when you choose the identity first, the sustainable results follow with a surprising sense of certainty.
