Hiring managers does not automatically free you up if those managers were never taught how to actually manage. Lia breaks down the three root causes keeping owners stuck in the weeds and walks through a simple narration method for teaching decision-making without adding more meetings. This episode is essential for any owner or founder who promoted people into management roles and is still fielding every fire.
This episode is part of the Delegation, Bottleneck & Getting Out of the Weeds series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“You hired a team so that you could scale, so that you didn’t have to be in all the details. You didn’t have to be at every single meeting. You didn’t have to service every single client.”
“…the fallacy there is believing that it could never be translated to somebody else. Like, have you tried? Have you really tried? Have you tried with the right people?”
“It actually prevents our team members from fully stepping up because they know that you are there to pick up the slack.”
Episode highlights
Why your success is the thing keeping you stuck
You hired a team so you could scale. But if clients keep asking for you by name, whether you run a med spa, a PR firm, a coaching practice, or an agency, stepping out of client work feels impossible. Lia is direct: this is not just a mindset problem. The calls are real. The requests are real. But staying the only person clients will accept is a ceiling on your growth and a ceiling on how much your team can ever own.
The fallacy of unteachable magic
The first trap is believing your method is too intuitive to pass on. Lia pushes back hard on this. Yes, your experience is unique. But have you actually tried to translate it? Have you tried with the right people, with real explanation, with documented process? The work starts by getting clear on what the secret sauce actually is, naming it, articulating it, and then asking whether you have really tried to impart it on anyone else. If the answer is no, that is the starting point.
Scarcity fear will crush you faster than a bad hire
A common reason owners hold back their best knowledge from team members is fear: fear of being replaced, fear of someone stealing clients, fear of losing leverage. Lia names this plainly as a scarcity problem and traces it directly to the same dynamic she saw in corporate, where managers withheld information to protect their status. Holding onto your genius does not protect your business. It caps it.
Translating your method to your team
Once you commit to sharing the method, the vehicle depends on your industry. Training, apprenticeship, and shadowing all work. The goal is reaching the point where, as Lia puts it, if you had a blindfold on it was the Pepsi challenge and clients could not tell the difference. That standard is achievable. But your clients will not know it unless you tell them.
The messaging shift that gets clients excited about your team
Even when your team member is genuinely excellent, clients will keep defaulting to you because no one has told them otherwise. This is where owner messaging becomes a direct business lever. Lia lays out concrete examples: spotlighting team members in emails and on social media, hosting a small welcome event to introduce new practitioners or consultants to the community, and personally introducing a team member on a client kickoff call with a strong, specific endorsement. The message to clients needs to be consistent: anyone you work with here delivers the same experience. Then it has to actually be true.
Letting team members build the muscle
One of the most overlooked reasons team members do not step up is that they know the owner will step in. When you are always there to answer the client email, handle the hard situation, or save the account, your team never builds the ownership muscle. Lia is clear that this is not a team failure. It is a structural one. If clients are always pulling you back in, part of the fix is creating real space for your team to solve problems, even when that feels risky.
What a realistic timeline looks like
Upleveling a team member to your standard is not overnight, but it is also not a five-year project. Lia’s estimate for most service-based work is six to twelve months, with the caveat that you need clear criteria to assess progress along the way. The same logic she applies to fit decisions applies here: you do not wait five years and conclude it never worked. You define the marks, you track them, and you adjust. The goal is not to replace yourself entirely. It is to operate at a higher level without being the only person clients will accept.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 233: Why you’re still the point person for everything (and how to fix it). Being stuck as the final decision-maker on everything is almost never a delegation problem. Before delegation can work, three things have to be in place: the right people, clarity on where you as the owner should focus, and simple systems that reduce noise. This episode is most useful for business owners and team leads who have already hired and communicated expectations but are still buried in the weeds.
- Ep 231: Why delegating keeps failing (and the shift that actually fixes it). Delegation fails when leaders dispatch tasks instead of handing off outcomes, keeping themselves as the bottleneck at every step. The fix is shifting from fetch-the-answer assignments to giving a team member ownership of a full result, with clear context, defined success, and agreed checkpoints. This episode is especially useful for leaders who know they should delegate more but still find everything coming back to them.
- Ep 225: How to stop being the bottleneck on every decision your team makes. When your team brings every decision to you for final sign-off, you are doing two jobs at once and your team is never building real ownership. Lia’s fix is to articulate your own decision-making process, then deliberately offload specific decisions with a simple communication system so you stay informed without staying in the weeds. This episode is especially useful for founders and team leads whose capable people are still waiting on them before moving forward.
- Ep 220: You hired managers. Why are you still in the details?. Hiring managers does not automatically free you up if those managers were never taught how to actually manage. Lia breaks down the three root causes keeping owners stuck in the weeds and walks through a simple narration method for teaching decision-making without adding more meetings. This episode is essential for any owner or founder who promoted people into management roles and is still fielding every fire.
Want to go deeper?
The Unstoppable Team. How to build a team that runs without you in the room.
Full transcript (click to expand)
There is that person who has all the relationships and is the best talker and makes you feel what was seen and knows how to deal with, you know, like getting you excited. And folks in that situation, we have a challenge of people are like, yeah, I’m sure you have a great team, but like you’re the magic behind it. In both of these situations, there is a lot that we can do to get some space here. Welcome to Leading Small Teams, a Real Talk podcast tackling the ins and outs of leading teams in the modern workplace.
I’m Leah Garvin, your host, with a decade of experience driving team operations in companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft, bringing you insider strategies to make you a more confident and effective leader. From delegating to feedback to avoiding micromanaging and more, this podcast gives you the tools to empower your team, scale yourself as a leader, and grow your business. Whether you are managing a team of one or 100, everyone is welcome to hang out with Leading Small Teams.
You hired a team so that you could scale, so that you didn’t have to be in all the details. You didn’t have to be at every single meeting. You didn’t have to service every single client. But what happens when your clients still want you? Maybe you’re the name on the door, or they know that you’re the best at what you’re doing. And it’s really hard to be like, yeah, I am still the best, and yet, please work with my team members.
This is something that happens to so many of us, whether we are running a med spot and we’re the kind of star provider that started the business and they know to come to us for a method, or we’re a coach or consultant, maybe we’re running a PR firm and we are the best out there. And it becomes this bottleneck that makes us feel like, well, I can’t ever step out of the business. I can’t ever take a day off.
I can’t ever find someone that’s going to replace me. And that’s what we’re going to talk about on today’s show. How to break free of feeling like you’re the only person that can run the business, especially when it’s not just in your mind when you’ve decided, oh, I can’t get out of the weeds because of this, but especially when it’s because your clients are asking for you. This is a real challenge, right? You’re not just making this up in your head.
You’re not micromanaging. You’re not too controlling. You’ve tried to step out of the weeds. You’ve tried to get some distance, but people are calling and asking for you by name. So let me take an example of my med spot clients. This is a real big challenge that I see when you were a kick-ass producer. You are the best. You have a method that is drawing people in, maybe from all over the country, all over the world.
And people want to go to you because this is their face. Okay. They want it done by the best. And in this situation, a lot of my provider clients, I actually work with a lot of med spas and a lot of them run to the same challenge that, you know, I can charge a bigger premium. I’m faster than my team members and people are coming to me and asking to come just to me. So yes, you can keep raising your prices, but eventually you might round a bandwidth.
What do you do about this? Okay. Now let me talk about my agency clients. Okay. I work with a lot of agencies, whether it’s production or marketing or PR firms, and there is that person who has all the relationships and is the best talker and makes you feel what was seen and knows how to deal with, you know, like getting you excited. And folks in that situation, if that’s more resonates with you, we have a challenge of people are like, yeah, I’m sure you have a great team, but like you’re the magic behind it.
Okay. In both of these situations, there is a lot that we can do to get some space here. And that’s, again, we’re going to talk about today. So the first thing that we have to do is not just believe that all of the magic is in our head and it’s intuitive and it can’t be taught. Okay. That’s, there is a lot that second nature to us. And there is a lot that is part of, you know, all of our experiences, our upbringing or whatever the training we’ve got, that’s going to be unique to us.
But the fallacy there is believing that it could never be translated to somebody else. Like, have you tried? Have you really tried? Have you tried with the right people? Have you tried, you know, explaining what you’re doing? And this is something that I first start with when I work with someone in this capacity, because I’m like, well, explain to me the magic, explain to me the method so that we can start to get a bigger story around what actually that you’re doing so that we could impart that on your team, or we could offload a piece of that, or we could actually articulate what that is and why it’s even more valuable than maybe you’re charging for it.
Maybe you do want to keep doing that, but actually you haven’t fully quantified it. So the first thing is understanding, getting really clear on what is that secret sauce and what is that magic. Now the second piece naturally would be, you know, translating that to your team members. And there’s ways to do that, whether it’s training or apprenticeship or shadowing, and it’s going to depend on your industry. But not feeling like, oh gosh, if I teach a team member this, they’re going to steal my clients.
They’re going to steal my business. They’re going to, this scarcity fear thing, or holding back our, you know, our best stuff from our team members, that is going to crush us. And I’m telling you, yeah, okay. There’s a chance that you have someone that’s like come to train with the best so they can steal and like whatever, like that’s a real crappy situation that I would say is not the most likely situation. Sure, it’s possible. It’s possible.
A lot of things are possible, right? It’s possible that we end up living on Mars one day, but that is not a reason to avoid it. And this is real talk. So I’m telling you that if that is your biggest fear, then that is worth looking at. Like, well, what, what do I need to see to be able to build trust with an employee? What does someone have to have demonstrated? How do I have to have done interviewing and figuring out or what experience has this person have to have so that I’m not deciding there will never be a world when I can impart my magic and my wisdom on someone else?
So this is a you thing and we deal with that a very different way than just having someone shadow us. So I want you to really tease that apart. It’s a hard realization to make of like, oh God, yeah, this is, this is me. I’m worrying about my own value, my own longevity and my own way to demonstrate if I don’t have this information, if I’m not controlling this piece. This is a real big issue that shows up in the corporate world.
I think we’ve all had a manager that didn’t give all the information because they want, they measured their importance and value based on the information that they were holding to themselves. Like this is a, and in the corporate world it’s a lot clearer because you know, no one’s going to like steal information and take someone’s business from them. But this is the same thing. It’s worrying how do I have power and show my status and show my value when I’m not using that based on like controlling information.
We want to get rid of that right away. Okay. Then once we have imparted this wisdom on our team members and let’s say they are crushing it, we’re like, oh yeah, this is, this person is like, if you had a blindfold on, it was, it was the Pepsi challenge. They wouldn’t be able to differentiate between Pepsi and Coke. We are the same. We are right there. Well, your clients still are coming to you because they have no fricking idea that that’s the case.
So now it is about edifying and uplifting and you know, talking about your team in a way of like, hey, I hire people that are as good as, if not better than me. My mission here is to give you, you know, that anybody you walk in the door, you can come any day of the week. You can get any single one of our, you know, reps here or practitioners or coaches or account executives or whatever we’re doing here and you’re going to have the same experience.
This is messaging to your clients. It’s reinforcing again and again, it is continuing to hold your employees to that high standard so that people are actually, that it’s actually like legit the experience they get and that’s even more translating. It’s what’s being said, what’s not being said. It’s what are the ways that you can see a problem before it even approaches you, right? This is where we’re getting really deep under the surface, but then again, it’s messaging it to your clients.
And so there’s going to be a lot of different ways that you do that depending on your industry that you’re in. It might be spotlighting an employee in an email or on social media and saying, oh my gosh, we are so excited. We got the best in the world for X, Y, Z service or for X, Y, Z, you know, feature or, you know, activity or whatever it looks like. We cannot believe we are so lucky and you get to utilize this person too.
What a gift. That’s an example. Some of my clients have, again, in the med spa, spa industries, gyms, they have a little welcome party. They do a community event to welcome the new providers and practitioners, coaches, consultants, whatever it is, and they introduce them. They get them to meet people in the community that starts building up that person’s client base a little bit. It’s a great activity. Love that one. Sometimes you join in to maybe the kickoff call and you say, okay, I’ve brought Leah here with me for the kickoff call.
She is the best in the business on, you know, on creative direction for this type of thing. You know, you’re, you’re working in, you know, wanting to grow your, you know, event production agency and she is the best. She has worked with X, Y, Z. That is why I brought her in. You are in good hands, like, and then really amping that person up when you get there. That’s another way we can do that. If you’re anything like me, you’ve had those nights where you wake up at three in the morning wondering, gosh, are people working on the right things or what’s the status of that project?
And obviously you can’t email folks at that time, but the tools you’re using, ClickUp or Asana or Slack, it’s just too detailed. You need a bird’s eye view. Enter the snippets template. At the end of each week, your team member fills out the highlights from the week, any places they’re stuck and the top parties for next week. So you’re never wondering, are folks working on the right things? Are there things that they haven’t brought up that really should be on my radar?
And most importantly, what wins can we celebrate as a team? Grab your copy at LeahGarver.com slash snippets. But you see what I’m doing here is I am not just hiring and saying like, okay, figure it out, knowing that that person is going to need a little bit of that backing because I used to be the person that people went to. So there’s things we do internally to uplevel our team members and there’s things that we do with our clients as well.
And when you start to do the activities, these are just two examples. There is so much that we can do to edify our team with our clients, with our audience on the call. You know, people understand that a great team is behind a great leader or a great business. So to really believe like, no, I’m the only person that can do this and there’s no one else and like nobody wants anybody else, that’s a little bit of an ego thing, kind of a super ego thing, right?
Like we’re really the only person in the universe that can do this thing. Okay, well, it’s going to be an exhausting life for you to run that business. We’ve got to figure out how to let that stuff go, give a little space here. And if you truly have set up something where there’s such a gap between you and your team members and you have not made senior hires or you have not offloaded any of your genius on anybody else and you’re not willing to do that, then you are deciding you want to be, you know, that you have a ceiling on your growth, a ceiling on how much you can deliver.
And like you’ve made that choice and you want to be deeply ingrained in that. That’s a decision you’ve made. No, that’s not a wrong decision, but I think what we want to not do is say, there’s nobody else that can do it and yet I don’t want to be here every day. I don’t want to be stuck. I don’t want to be this. Okay. So like it’s going to be hard at first. It’s going to get rocky.
The first person you impart all this wisdom on, they may not be as good as you. We got to keep trying. It might take a couple of years. We got to keep trying. And there is a chance where that person does it in a little bit of a different way and it’s better than you did it and we’ve got to be okay with that because there’s still ways that we can add value. And so this is a very scary thing for so many of us to start to let go, to start to give a little space, to watch things be a little bit different, to figure out how are we going to uplevel someone so they can charge as much as we can for the service for what we’re doing.
We’ve got to figure that out. It’s not overnight, but it doesn’t, it’s not not worth doing. Okay. And frankly, training someone in their craft like that may take maybe a few years, but I would say on the whole, like these things aren’t forever things. We can probably uplevel someone in most kinds of work within six to 12 months. It depends what the nuances are, but reach out and we’ll figure out, give me an estimate for that and what you should be expecting.
And that’s another thing, understanding based on, okay, they might not have the 30 years of experience that you bring to it and X, Y, Z, but what is a reasonable expectation? Okay. We talked, we talked on the show before about, well, when, how do I know if someone’s not a fitter or if they are, right? We don’t wait five years and go like, now they were just never a fit. We have some criteria that we’re assessing to know, okay, is this person hitting the marks or not?
Same thing with offloading and having this person really be able to take over or this team of people being able to really operate at your level of altitude. We don’t, it’s, this is not about replacing ourselves whole scale, but how do we operate as that CEO? How are we operating at a different level of altitude without doing everything and without being pulled back in and our clients will only work with us if we’re involved. It is a really challenging situation that when we haven’t thought through these things, it becomes very hard to get out of.
It keeps us up at night. It keeps us in the weeds even when we don’t have to be, and it prevents our team members. This is the biggest point I’m going to end with this. It actually prevents our team members from fully stepping up because they know that you are there to pick up the slack. And I’m going to do another episode on this, but one of the biggest reasons our team members are not taking ownership, are not being accountable is because we will be there.
Now it’s a, it’s a little bit of a double bind because we’re as, as the business owner, like sure as hell going to be there because if this person Fs it up, we don’t want to have them, you know, have everything fall through the cracks. So I’ll talk about how to figure that out. But I will say that when we are always there, when we are the one that steps in and deals with the hard situation or saves the day or things, even when, you know, answers the question that the client sends to us, even if it’s, they were dealing with a different one of our team members before, when we’re not really, again, uplifting and empower team members to solve these kinds of problems and to take things, things on, they’re not going to build the muscle to do that.
And they’re going to be like, Oh, you want to handle this one again? So this is also a way to build ownership and accountability. So if we’re feeling like our clients are always pulling us back in and we’re getting stuck in and we’ve tried, but like we can’t break out of this doing everything or being kind of the main, the main person running the show, the main kind of face of everything, then it is a time to take a step back and try these different things.
Again, it’s really understanding what is that magic, translating that to your team. You got the team side done and then you got to get the client side handled. And how are you uplifting and communicating things on both of those angles? Okay. This is a challenge I see every single day. Every week I have worked through with countless business owners, again, especially ones, a lot of times I see this in the med spa space, also in PR and agencies where there’s kind of a face to the account.
If you are struggling with this, do not struggle in silence. Do not suffer alone. There is a strategy for working through this and you’ve got my support. If you need help, reach out at Leah Garvin, hello at leahgarvin.com. If you have a question about this, I love hearing from you. Your questions allow me to know exactly what to focus on the show. So if there’s something that you’re like, yeah, this made sense, but what about this?
Then please let me know and we’ll talk about it on the show. All right. See you next time. Thanks for tuning in. And I hope this podcast makes leading your team feel just a little bit easier. If you liked this episode, check out my most popular tool for staying in the know of what your team’s working on without having to micromanage at leahgarvin.com slash snippets. And if you’re looking for more support for yourself as a leader or for the team you’re managing, don’t hesitate to reach out at leahgarvin.com.
See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
How do I get clients to stop asking for me by name and trust my team instead?
It takes work on two fronts: your team and your clients. First, document and teach your method so team members can actually deliver what you deliver. Then actively uplift your team to clients by spotlighting them in emails, introducing them on kickoff calls, or hosting a community welcome event. Clients keep asking for you because they have no idea your team can match your quality. Once you start consistently messaging that anyone on your team delivers the same experience, client trust shifts over time.
How do I hand off client relationships without losing them?
Don't just hand off and disappear. Join the first call with the new team member and openly amp them up in front of the client. Say why you brought this specific person in, name their credentials, and make the client feel lucky to have them. Spotlight team members on social media or in emails before the handoff happens. The goal is to make the client feel like they are gaining access to someone great, not losing access to you.
I'm afraid if I teach my team my methods they'll steal my clients. What should I do?
That fear is worth examining honestly. Is it really about the risk of someone stealing clients, or is it about your own sense of value and control? Withholding your best knowledge from your team creates a ceiling on what your business can ever become. Yes, a bad hire is possible, but it is not the most likely outcome. Focus on what you need to see from a team member to build trust, and solve that through better hiring and onboarding rather than by keeping your method locked away.
How long does it realistically take to train someone to do what I do at my level?
For most types of work, you can bring a team member up to a strong level within six to twelve months, depending on the complexity and nuance of the skill. It may not happen overnight, and the first person you train might not nail it immediately. The key is having clear benchmarks so you know whether someone is hitting the marks or not, rather than waiting years and realizing it was never a fit. Keep trying and adjust your approach with each person.
Why won't my team members take ownership or step up even when I try to delegate?
If you consistently step in to save the day, answer the client email, or handle the hard situation, your team learns they do not have to build the muscle to do it themselves. They know you will be there. Fully handing things off feels risky because you do not want things to fall through the cracks, but always being the safety net is exactly what prevents your team from developing accountability. Uplifting your team to handle problems independently is the only way they grow into it.