Episode 214: There Are Two Types Of Entreprenuers

The Entrepreneur Mindset Shift That Helps Your Business Grow

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You finally have money in the business account. You have clients, experience, a reputation, and maybe even a team. You’ve built something successful and proven that people will pay you for what you do.

And yet, you may still be making decisions like you’re three months away from going broke.

You hesitate to hire help even though you desperately need it. You hold onto clients nobody else is allowed to touch. You guard relationships and opportunities. You keep doing things yourself because technically you can. You say yes to things you don’t really want because somewhere in the back of your mind you wonder if another opportunity will come along.

The interesting thing is that none of those instincts necessarily started out as bad ones. In fact, they may have been exactly what helped you build the business in the first place. But there comes a point when every entrepreneur has to ask an important question: Am I making decisions for the business I have today, or am I still operating from a season I’ve already outgrown?

Because sometimes you don’t have a growth problem. Sometimes you have a grip problem.

The Habits That Helped You Survive Can Eventually Keep You Small

There is a season of entrepreneurship when being scrappy is practically a job requirement. You conserve cash. You learn to do things yourself. You say yes to opportunities because you need them. You personally handle every client. You protect every relationship and figure things out as you go because hiring someone else simply isn’t an option yet.

There is nothing wrong with that season. We’ve both lived it. In many ways, that resourcefulness is what teaches you how your business actually works. You learn what clients need, where the money comes from, how to solve problems and what you’re capable of when there isn’t anyone else coming to do it for you.

But eventually, the business changes. Revenue grows. Your reputation grows. Your client list grows. Opportunities grow. Your experience grows. And if you’re not careful, your business can evolve while your decision-making stays firmly planted in those early years.

Suddenly, you’re running a successful business with the same clenched-fist mentality you developed when every invoice determined whether you could pay yourself that month. The behavior may still feel responsible because it served you so well before, but the strategy that helped you survive one season can become the thing that limits you in the next.

Closed-Fisted Entrepreneurship Isn’t Just About Money

When we talk about being closed-fisted in business, it’s easy to assume we’re talking about money. And yes, money is certainly one place this shows up. But after more than two decades in entrepreneurship, we’ve seen this mindset show up in almost every part of a business.

It can look like holding tightly to clients because you’re convinced nobody can serve them as well as you can. It can look like protecting an idea because you’re afraid someone else will copy it. It can look like guarding a contact because you don’t want two people in your network developing a relationship that doesn’t include you. It can look like refusing to hand off responsibility because somebody else might do the work differently. It can even look like continuing to say yes to every opportunity because somewhere deep down, you’re still afraid this one might be the last.

The behavior looks different depending on the business owner, but underneath it is often some version of the same fear: What if there isn’t enough?

What if there isn’t enough money? Enough business? Enough opportunity? Enough recognition? Enough work? Enough room for me if somebody else succeeds too?

That kind of scarcity can quietly become very expensive.

The Closed-Fist Tax

We started thinking about that cost as the closed-fist tax.

There is a cost to holding everything too tightly, even when that cost doesn’t immediately show up on a profit-and-loss statement. Sometimes you pay it in money. Sometimes you pay it in time. Sometimes you pay it in missed opportunities, exhaustion, relationships, creativity or the ability to think strategically about what comes next.

Maybe you didn’t hire the person who could have freed you to develop the next revenue stream. Maybe you didn’t make an introduction that could have led to an incredible collaboration. Maybe you didn’t allow someone on your team to take ownership of a client because you were afraid the client wouldn’t need you anymore. Maybe you passed on an opportunity you desperately wanted because your current workload left absolutely no capacity to take it.

In each case, you successfully protected what you already had. But in doing so, you may have left no room for what could have come next.

That’s the closed-fist tax.

You Can’t Receive Much With Your Hand Clenched Shut

This is the image we kept coming back to during our conversation on The Business Reboot Podcast. Imagine holding something tightly in your fist. You can certainly keep whatever is already inside from getting out, but there’s also no room for anything new to get in.

Business can work much the same way.

We say we want bigger opportunities, more revenue, better clients, stronger partnerships, more freedom and a talented team. Meanwhile, our calendars are full, our brains are full, our hands are full, and nobody inside the business can move without us. We haven’t built any capacity for the very things we keep saying we want.

That raises a different question than the one entrepreneurs are usually taught to ask. Instead of always asking, “How do I get more?” perhaps we should occasionally ask, “Have I actually created room for more?”

Open-handed entrepreneurship creates that capacity. It allows resources, people, ideas, opportunities and relationships to move through a business rather than requiring the owner to hold onto every single one.

Open-Handed Doesn’t Mean Irresponsible

Before someone hears this and decides we’re suggesting they empty the business bank account and hand Brenda from accounting every password they own, we are absolutely not. 😂

Open-handed entrepreneurship isn’t recklessness. It’s discernment.

There are things in your business you should protect fiercely: your reputation, your financial health, your values, your client experience, your intellectual property and your boundaries. Mature leadership isn’t about becoming careless with any of those things.

It is, however, about being willing to ask yourself whether the thing you’re holding onto still needs your grip. There is an enormous difference between protecting something because it is valuable and protecting something because you are afraid.

Sometimes what we call “being careful” is wisdom. Sometimes it’s simply fear wearing a sensible outfit.

Learning to recognize the difference is part of growing as a business owner.

Sometimes Spending Money Is How You Buy Capacity

Money is one of the clearest examples of how our thinking has to change as our businesses mature. Early in business, one of the most important questions is, “How much will this cost me?” That question doesn’t stop mattering just because you’re successful. But another question eventually deserves equal consideration: “What is it costing me not to do this?”

Maybe you can absolutely handle a $25-an-hour task yourself. The question is whether you should. If five hours of your week are being spent on work someone else could handle while the work only you can do keeps getting pushed aside, doing it yourself may actually be the more expensive decision.

This is why we love something Melissa said during the episode: “Hiring is not about getting tasks off of your plate. It’s gonna create capacity for you to do the things that only you can do.”

That capacity might allow you to develop a new offer, nurture an important client relationship, pursue a partnership, lead your team or create more revenue. But it doesn’t always have to produce another dollar to be valuable. Sometimes you’re buying back dinner with your family, a weekend without your laptop, creative energy, mental bandwidth or a vacation where “out of office” actually means you are out of the office.

Time is an asset too. The longer you own a business, the more valuable you realize it is.

Someone Else’s Brilliance Doesn’t Threaten Yours

Delegation is part of open-handed leadership, but not simply because business owners need to get more things off their plates. It requires becoming comfortable with the idea that somebody else may bring something to the business that you cannot.

That can be uncomfortable when you’ve spent years being the person who knows how everything works. You finally give someone responsibility, they do it differently, and your immediate reaction is, “Well, that’s not how I would have done it.”

Exactly.

They aren’t you.

Building a healthy business doesn’t mean manufacturing additional versions of yourself. It means finding talented people and allowing them to contribute their own experience, perspective and ability. Sometimes they will do something differently and your way will still be better. Sometimes they’ll do something differently and you’ll realize their way is better.

Neither outcome diminishes your value as the owner.

Open-handed leadership means you don’t have to be the most talented person at every single thing happening inside your company. In fact, building a business filled with people who are better than you at certain things is usually a very good sign.

Stop Collecting Relationships and Start Connecting People

One of our favorite examples of open-handed entrepreneurship actually has nothing to do with hiring. It has to do with relationships.

There are business owners who collect contacts, and there are business owners who connect people.

The connectors are the ones saying, “You two need to know each other.” They recommend the talented person. They share the opportunity. They say someone’s name in a room that person isn’t in. They introduce two people who could create something incredible together, even when there is no obvious benefit coming back to them.

As Corry said during our conversation, “It is the best thing watching other relationships flourish because of something that you connected people to.”

Your network doesn’t become less valuable because the people inside it know one another. It becomes more valuable. Generosity compounds. Introductions compound. Trust compounds. Reputation compounds.

After 21 years of doing business, we’ve watched opportunities find their way back to us from directions we never could have orchestrated ourselves. Not because every introduction was transactional, but because people remember the person who opens doors.

You don’t need to own every relationship in the room. Sometimes being the person who opens the room is far more powerful.

Maybe You Don’t Need Another Opportunity Yet

Entrepreneurs spend an enormous amount of time trying to create more. More clients. More revenue. More visibility. More opportunities. More connections.

But what if the next stage of your growth doesn’t begin with getting something else?

What if it begins with creating room for it?

You say you want the bigger client, but your calendar is full of work someone else could do. You want to launch the new offer, but your brain is consumed with day-to-day operations. You want the speaking opportunity, but you can’t leave the company for three days without everything stopping. You want the collaboration, but there isn’t enough margin in your life or business to say yes when it appears.

Sometimes we assume an opportunity hasn’t arrived because we need to hustle harder to find it. Maybe we need to look at whether we’ve created a business capable of receiving it.

That’s a very different way to think about growth.

What Are You Protecting—and Why?

This may be the most important question from the entire conversation.

Look at what you’re holding tightly in your business right now. Maybe it’s money, clients, tasks, relationships, ideas, opportunities, credit, time or control. Then ask yourself: Am I protecting this because it’s valuable, or because I’m afraid?

You may discover that some things absolutely deserve your protection. Keep protecting them.

But you may also discover that you’re responding to circumstances that haven’t been true for years. You’re not the brand-new business owner anymore. You’re not trying to prove someone will pay you. You’re not trying to land your first five clients. You’re not building the same company you were three, five or ten years ago.

If the business has changed, eventually the way you lead it has to change too.

Your Business Grew. Your Leadership Has to Grow Too.

There is no single right version of entrepreneurship. You don’t need a giant team, seven figures in revenue or an empire simply because somebody on the internet decided that’s what successful business ownership is supposed to look like. Growth can mean more revenue, but it can also mean more freedom, better clients, fewer hours, greater impact, more creativity or simply a business that doesn’t occupy every available corner of your brain.

You get to decide what success looks like.

But whatever you choose, the way you lead should support the business and life you’re trying to create now, not the one you were trying to create five years ago.

So perhaps the question isn’t simply, “What do I need to do to grow?”

Maybe it’s, “What do I need to stop gripping so tightly so there’s room for what comes next?”

We’re Corry and Melissa—business consultants, coaches, and the women behind The Business Reboot and The Business Reboot Podcast. After 21 years of entrepreneurship, we’ve both had closed-fist seasons. We’ve made fear-based decisions and held onto things too long. We’ve also experienced what happens when you begin investing, trusting, connecting, collaborating and making room.

That’s what we’re unpacking in this episode of The Business Reboot Podcast.

Because you may not have a growth problem.

You may still be operating from a season you’ve already outgrown.