This week, I flew to Atlanta for a company offsite.
Away from the day-to-day of business, we identified which problems need to be solved next, what needs more ownership, and what we want the company to look like by the end of the year.
Across many discussions and working sessions, one pattern became clear: I’m still doing too much inside the business.
There’s a phase of entrepreneurship I understand very well: It’s the 0-to-1 stage. You see something that doesn’t exist yet and then brute-force it into reality. You move fast, don’t ask for permission, and do everything yourself.
These skills map perfectly to a Culture Index assessment (basically a personality test for how you work) I took a few years ago. I scored highly independent, fast-moving, assertive, and comfortable operating without much structure. I like solving problems, making decisions, and building things. I am much more naturally drawn to movement than maintenance. These results both explain why I did well in the 0 to 1 phase and why I'm struggling with parts of the business today.
The flip side of my personality profile is that I tend be impatient. I can take over instead of coach, become overly prescriptive, struggle with repeatable processes, and default to doing something myself because it feels faster.
Those tendencies were useful when Mixed was mostly an extension of me. But they’re getting in the way now that Mixed has a team whose jobs are not simply to execute tasks I hand them, but to own parts of the business, make good decisions, and build systems that are better than whatever lived in my head before.
The next chapter requires layering in skills that are much less instinctive to me: management, communication, coaching, creating accountability, and giving people enough context to exercise their own judgment.
At the same time, I can’t stop doing entirely. But I’m trying to get much clearer about what I should still do and where my involvement is actually getting in the way.
The company is asking me to operate differently than I did when it was small. Not ditch my instincts entirely, but layer in new skills. And tbh, I’m not sure which phase I’ll like better, but I’m up for the challenge.
I love that you can be very good at one stage of a business and still be a beginner at the next.
You build the company, and then every so often, the company hands you a new job description.
P.S - omg you all LOVED our Quincy Jumpsuit in Acacia. I don't know if I've every seen a piece fly so fast