Most owners started their business for freedom. Instead, they’ve become the most expensive employee they ever hired. They are the human duct tape holding everything together. And too many are proud of it. That pride is killing their growth.
I’ve coached a lot of business owners and the typical pattern I see is that:
Owners spend 80% of their time fixing things and 20% growing the business.
Fast-growth companies flip it. Those owners spend most of their time figuring out how to grow.
The difference isn’t competence. It’s systems thinking.
Here’s the math:
Emergency response time: Immediate (owners are always “on”)
System improvement time: Zero (they’re too busy responding)
Growth rate: Glacial (fixing problems feels more urgent than preventing them)
The pattern that changes everything? Owners who build teams and systems so problems don’t reach them see issues disappear or get solved faster by their teams.
Three Signs You’re Human Duct Tape
1. Your vacation requires a 47-point handoff doc.
If it takes a manual to keep the lights on while you’re gone, you don’t own a business—you run a very expensive personal services company.
Fix: Start with the process that breaks most when you’re away. Document it so clearly anyone can run it. Then test it.
Make a Loom video of how you do something, then have ChatGPT turn the steps you outlined into a checklist. Then have someone else use it to see if it works.
2. You get emergency texts about decisions your team could make.
Most “urgent” escalations aren’t complex. They’re just proof your team has learned you’re faster than the system.
Fix: Now that you have documented processes ask the person, “Have you tried the checklist or talked with x?” Keep doing that for a few weeks and the questions will stop.
3. You know how to fix things that happen “once in a while”… every month.
Those “rare” billing or delivery problems? They’re recurring. You’ve just normalized firefighting.
Fix: Track your firefighting time for a few weeks. Where do the problems come from? Is it finance, operations, marketing? Identify the source of the chaos and then fix it with better systems and/or better people.
From Duct Tape to Architect
The uncomfortable truth: Leadership isn’t about solving every problem yourself. It’s about building systems and teams so problems get solved without you.
Try this: For the next 48 hours, every time you fix something, ask yourself: “How do I keep this from reaching me again?” Don’t implement yet. Just write the answers down. That’s the start of your systems playbook.
The businesses that thrive over the next decade won’t be run by the most indispensable owners. They’ll be run by the ones who made themselves dispensable.
Alan
P.S. If you’re ready to stop being duct tape and start being the architect of a scalable business, that’s exactly what we’re building at OwnerRx, the world’s first AI powered business advisor. We’re launching our beta in October: join the waitlist here.