Why Scaling Feels Heavier Before It Gets Easier — And How to Fix It
For many founders and executives in $3M–$50M professional service firms, growth doesn’t create freedom. It creates weight.
The calendar gets tighter. The inbox gets deeper. Follow-ups slip. Projects stall. Every meaningful decision still routes through you.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not underperforming. You’re operating as the execution hub.
In a recent Scale Smart, Grow Fast episode, Nathan Barkocy shared how nearly losing his life reshaped his philosophy around time, leverage, and leadership — and how that mindset directly impacts business scalability.
This isn’t about motivation. It’s about structure.
The Real Bottleneck in Growing Firms
Nathan’s story begins with a near-fatal accident that forced him to rebuild from scratch. That experience sharpened one belief: time is finite, and how leaders use it determines everything.
Fast forward to running multiple real estate ventures, a restoration company in Dallas-Fort Worth, a personal brand, developments, and a growing family. Success was present. Leverage was not.
The common pattern many founders miss:
You are the follow-up hub
You are the decision filter
You are the escalation point
You are the final approval on everything
When growth increases complexity without changing structure, scaling friction increases.
This is where most delegation efforts break down.
Delegation Fails Without Structure
Many experienced operators have support. What they don’t have is structured leverage.
Nathan initially tried to delegate broadly. The result was misalignment. Too much handed off without clarity on:
What only he should own
What required proactive follow-through
What needed systems, not just assistance
True leverage required defining where his time created the highest return:
Investor conversations
Strategic partnerships
Business development
Vision and brand positioning
Tasks like content editing, posting, coordination, and administrative execution were transferred to structured support. Not casually. Not reactively. Intentionally.
The shift was not about doing less. It was about increasing the quality of leadership time.
Scaling a Service Business Without Becoming the Bottleneck
Nathan’s real estate restoration company in DFW provides a strong example.
Initially operating with a small team, growth was inconsistent. Revenue was present, but scalability was limited. Marketing experiments failed. Ad spend was inefficient. Execution depended heavily on leadership attention.
The turning point came when systems were built around:
Clear workflows
Defined ownership
Follow-up discipline
Operational delegation
Instead of competing with larger firms on ad spend, the company focused on organic growth and controlled operational expansion. Systems created predictability.
This is the difference between being busy and building scale.
The Time Audit Most Leaders Avoid
One of Nathan’s most practical recommendations is simple: track your time.
For one week, log every hour.
Then ask:
Is this where I create the highest leverage?
Am I doing $20/hour work inside a $500/hour seat?
Am I operating as a strategist or a task manager?
Executives often don’t realize how much cognitive load is consumed by low-leverage execution until they measure it.
Legacy in business does not happen without systems.
Without structure:
Execution lives in the founder
Decisions bottleneck
Growth plateaus
Multi-year scalability becomes fragile
With structure:
Teams execute without rescue
Leadership time protects strategy
Growth becomes repeatable
This is how operators move from solopreneur intensity to scalable enterprise.
What This Means for Founders and Operators
If your firm is growing but feels heavier instead of lighter, the issue is not effort. It’s architecture.
Ask yourself:
Are you still the execution hub?
Does every meaningful follow-up pass through you?
Do you have support, or do you have leverage?
Scaling without structured delegation increases stress. Scaling with leverage increases capacity.
The difference is not headcount. It is clarity around what only you should be doing.
Final Takeaway
Nathan Barkocy’s journey reinforces a simple truth: leadership bandwidth is the constraint in most growing firms.
Protecting it requires:
Intentional delegation
Defined systems
Clear ownership
Strategic use of support
Growth should expand opportunity, not compress your time.
If it feels heavier, that’s the signal to rebuild the structure — not work harder.
Watch this before you hire your next support role.
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Full Episode Transcript
Below is the complete transcript of the Scale Smart, Grow Fast episode featuring Nathan Barkocy.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. Today we’ve got a special guest, Nathan Barcosi, and he didn’t build his business by chasing more. He built them by getting clearer on what only he should be doing. After rebuilding his life from a near fatal accident, Nathan went on to scale real estate and entrepreneurial ventures around his true wealth philosophy. In this episode, he’s gonna share what changed when he stopped being the execution hub and created real operational support.
and reclaim the focus needed to scale income, purpose, and legacy without burning out. Nathan, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
Harley, thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be with you today.
Nathan, I’d love for you to share with our audience a little bit more about your background, especially that like near fatal accident that was mentioned in the intro.
Yeah, absolutely. this brings us back 10 years ago where the story really begins. I was a nationally ranked competitive cyclist. I was state champion in New Mexico, youngest to ever win the Tour of the Gila, setting records, going on the way to the Olympics, to the Tour de France, and becoming an internationally renowned competitive cyclist. That was my vision, my goal. And then in January of 2016, I was hit by a car.
at 60 miles an hour.
goodness.
So I died on the scene and the ambulance rushed me to the ICU. My parents got the call, right? My parents got the call that I was dead and that the officer had reported it as a fatality. so, I mean, God bless my parents, right? They were driving to the hospital thinking I was dead. So I was in a coma for two weeks and by God’s grace, you know, I opened my eyes for the first time two weeks later.
paralyzed. So I couldn’t move and then I went on a medical flight up to Craig Hospital in Colorado, which is where they do traumatic brain injury rehab and spinal cord injury rehab. And that is where they rolled me into the hospital on a wheelchair. I don’t remember being admitted to the hospital there, but my first memories start coming back during my recovery at that time.
And that’s where I learned how to live again. We learned how to walk again and function again. So that’s where life really started for me. And from that time, I was really passionate about bringing my message to the world about how important our time is. I thought, as a teenage boy especially, I thought that I was going to live forever. And then within an instant, within an instant,
All of that can be stripped away from you so fast. And so that’s why I really started to have a mental shift about the importance of our time, right? Because tomorrow is never promised. So I wanted to write a book. Since that day, I wanted to write a book about the importance of our time and what truly holds value in our life. Well, since that recovery, obviously I went to college and I was able to graduate high school with my class, which is great, you know, and I went through all of this
the different phases and that same passion was still driving me to create my own time, right? To create time freedom and to live today as if it’s our last day. Obviously we need to plan for the future, right? But tomorrow is never promised, right? So we needed to take action today in order to make our dreams come true, which is a very entrepreneurial mindset, right? Which is how we get into the business side of things. You know, I couldn’t trade my time as an employee.
for other people. I’ve done that many times and I was actually working with Josh McCallin up in New Jersey. He’s the owner of Accountable Equity and he fired me from when I was working with him because he told me I needed to go start my own business, right? And so that’s where we get to today, right? Which is where I’m sure you and I will dive into where we are now, how I’ve been able to scale, how I’ve utilized Workergenics to help me do so. And so I’m very honored to be with you today and to be bringing this message to your audience.
Awesome. That’s a great background, Nathan. I really appreciate you sharing that. Now, before we jump into the specifics of the business, maybe kind of stepping back a little bit, a little more meta discussion. Before you really started creating the real leverage in your businesses, what would a typical week look like for you and where were you still the bottleneck without maybe even realizing it?
Yeah, the question is, am I still the bottleneck? There’s a lot of things that I’ve realized through working with you guys at Workergenics, and also during the scaling process of my business, because there’s a difference between a solopreneur and a successful entrepreneur who is in a true capitalist, who is able to create work for others, to create opportunities for others.
and leveraging their expertise, right? In their certain fields, you’re able to scale so much faster and more effectively than having to do it all on your own. So if there was a time where I needed to realize this, was about, yeah, I mean, about a year ago when we started. And it was when I realized that I didn’t have time to do everything in order to have my businesses scale to the capacity that I needed them to. And so that’s when I really started to
put together the formulas of how to build a system. And that system is what’s going to allow you to scale. You know this too, Harley, right? That’s the only way to build your business effectively and efficiently is by creating those systems that are in place that others are able to execute and making it so easy for them to execute this, right? Not a lot of questions, just a lot of action to get it done, you know?
Absolutely, systems and people, excellent leverage there. So let’s talk more about what are your businesses that you’re focusing on now, and how did you create those systems in these businesses? I think a lot of people feel like their business is super unique and making systems to get them out of being the bottleneck is just impossible. So we’d love to hear your story with what you’re doing now and how you created some of those systems.
Yeah, it’s a great question. In reality, just point blank honesty, my systems and my businesses were spreading me thin, right? So I was pursuing multiple real estate investments at the same time. I was pursuing multiple brands. I was writing my book. I was building my personal brand. All of this stuff scaling. I’m also a father of two little boys and a husband of a beautiful bride.
I was running my family, running the businesses, running multiple developments, running investments, all of these different things at the same time. And that’s how I’ve been able to scale more effectively by bringing more people onto the team.
Delegation That Drives Sales: How Founders Free Up Time to Grow Revenue
Sales does not slow down because founders forget how to sell. It slows down because leadership bandwidth gets buried in follow-ups, scheduling, and operational drag.
In Workergenix Executive Edge Live: Delegation That Drives Sales, Harley Green and a panel of experienced operators unpacked what real delegation looks like inside growing companies and why it directly impacts revenue growth.
If you feel like every deal still runs through you, this conversation was built for you.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
The Real Sales Bottleneck Is Not Effort. It Is Clarity.
As JB Herrera explained during the panel:
“Founders don’t lose revenue because they delegate too much. They lose revenue because they delegate without clarity.”
Delegation is not about offloading work. It is about protecting executive judgment.
When everything flows through the founder:
Selling becomes reactive instead of intentional
CRM updates fall behind
Follow-ups get inconsistent
Decision fatigue increases
The ideal client profile begins to drift
Revenue erosion rarely happens dramatically. It happens gradually through small compromises and unclear ownership.
Delegation vs. Abdication
Several panelists reinforced a critical distinction: delegation is not abdication.
Delegation requires:
Clear decision boundaries
Defined ownership
Operational discipline
Governance and values alignment
Abdication happens when tasks are handed off without structure.
Eric Sambaluk shared a powerful example of protecting integrity under pressure. When faced with a short-term financial incentive that compromised company values, he chose long-term trust over immediate optics. That discipline ultimately strengthened credibility and growth.
Sales velocity depends on trust. Internally and externally.
Why Operational Discipline Protects Revenue
WendyY Bailey emphasized that founders often struggle because they try to be both the pilot and the air traffic controller.
Founders must:
Set direction
Define the ideal client profile
Clarify what decisions remain human
Build systems that support follow-through
As Jennifer White highlighted, many delegation failures are not delegation problems. They are clarity problems. Without clearly defined success criteria and psychological safety, sales teams drift or protect themselves rather than protect the company’s direction.
Sales is not just activity. It is alignment.
The Role of AI, Governance, and Human Judgment
AI can be powerful in preparation, pattern recognition, and follow-up. But as JB Herrera made clear:
“Delegation doesn’t work when tools are allowed to replace judgment.”
When AI and automation operate without governance:
Ideal client profiles shift
Messaging drifts
Values erode
Revenue becomes unstable
Human judgment must remain central. Tools should support clarity, not replace it.
High-Impact Sales-Adjacent Work Founders Should Delegate
The panel reinforced that protecting selling time requires structured delegation around:
Calendar control
Inbox management and follow-up discipline
CRM hygiene and pipeline updates
Client communication coordination
Reporting and KPI visibility
When these workflows are owned consistently, founders reclaim time to focus on revenue-generating conversations.
Delegation that drives sales is about rhythm, not relief.
Connect with the Panelists
Continue the conversation with the experts featured on this Executive Edge Live session:
Delegation that drives sales is not about productivity hacks. It is about designing structure around executive judgment.
If founders want to sell more without adding hours, they must stop being the bottleneck and start being the architect.
Growth requires clarity. Sales requires discipline. Delegation is the bridge between them.
Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.
Full Transcript
Harley Green: Hey everybody, welcome to Executive Edge Live. I’m Harley Green, Founder and CEO of Workergenix. At Workergenix, we help high-performing founders and operators reclaim time and focus by pairing them with Ultimate Executive Assistants who reduce operational drag and increase leadership bandwidth. These live sessions are one way we support the broader business community with honest, peer-level conversations about what actually works when companies are growing and time is tight.
Today’s conversation is focused on delegation that drives sales. Founders know that sales drives growth. But too often revenue opportunities stall because leadership time is buried in follow-ups, scheduling, and day-to-day execution. When everything runs through you, selling becomes reactive instead of intentional. So today, you’ll hear real-world perspectives, practical trade-offs, and honest insight from operators who’ve helped founders remove themselves as the bottleneck without breaking momentum.
And a quick note before we begin, today’s session will also be featured on our podcast, Scale Smart, Grow Fast. So if something resonates with you, you’ll be able to revisit the conversation later, wherever you get your podcasts.
So today, let’s dive in and start by meeting our panelists. Eric, we’ll go ahead and start with you. Feel free to introduce yourself and let everyone know where you’re coming from and what your business is.
Eric Sambaluk: Thanks very much, Harley. So my name is Eric Sambaluk. I’m the owner and founder of Sambaluk Consulting. It’s a business strategy firm and we help companies with everything from initiatives to projects to market entry. I’m also the Chief Growth and Strategy Officer from Nomad Cyber Concepts, which is an AI governance firm.
Harley Green: Awesome, thank you Eric for joining us. Jennifer.
Jennifer White: Good afternoon, everyone. Jennifer White with The MJW Group. We specialize in enhancing operational efficiency and leadership capabilities, delivering time and cost savings for organizations.
Harley Green: Awesome, thanks for joining us today. And JB.
JB Herrera: Hi everybody, my name is JB Herrera and I am the Founder and CEO of Synergy AI and Insight Driven Business. We specialize in designing AI ecosystems that are values-based. They’re scalable, human-first, helping organizations move beyond shiny tools to disciplined execution. We’re here in Northern California and proud to work with a whole series of small to medium-sized businesses.
Harley Green: Thank you, JB. And last but certainly not least, Wendy.
WendyY Bailey: Hi everyone. I’m Wendy Y. Bailey. I’m a fractional COO for coaches, speakers, and trainers, millionaire coaches, speakers, and trainers. And I partner with them to look at their operational infrastructure and get rid of the bottlenecks that they create. As a former coach, I’m also a leadership coach. So I coach the founder to be sure the founder understands what it takes to grow, scale, and drive revenue in a way that represents that growth for them. I’m outside of Atlanta, Georgia. And the big thing I can say is companies need operational discipline.
Harley Green: Absolutely awesome. Well, thank you for joining us, all of you guys for being here today. We’ll jump right in with the first question. This is just an open question to the panel, so feel free to jump in if you want to address it first.
So the question is, when you hear delegation that drives sales, what’s the biggest misconception you see founders make about that delegation as it relates to sales and revenue?
JB Herrera: I would agree with you, Wendy Y. I mean, really, from my perspective, the biggest misconception is that delegation is really about offloading work and becoming more efficient.
I think really delegation that drives sales is about protecting the judgment that you have in your company. Founders don’t lose revenue because they delegate too much. They lose revenue because they delegate without clarity about what decisions they must stay human about and the direction that they’re going, which activity should never require their attention in the first place.
And if they do that, then they can hire the right people and implement processes, and then delegation works.
Eric Sambaluk: I think those are both good points. I think another thing that’s important to keep in mind is people think about delegation and when they do think about delegation, they think of efficiency.
They really should be thinking about effectiveness.
When a CEO or someone else in the C-suite or a VP delegates some work, it’s not because they’re inefficient at it. It’s because they’re most effective at making high-level decisions. Somebody else to whom the task is delegated will be most effective at managing those decisions, right?
So making sure that the ball is in the right person’s strike zone is, I think, what delegation should be about.
Like JB was saying, like Wendy Y. was saying, it’s not just about, cool, I don’t have to do this task anymore. I didn’t like this. Or I don’t have to do this task anymore. This is going to take a long time.
It’s about every hour is spoken for, especially true of founders and entrepreneurs. So you want to make certain that you’re being as effective as possible with every minute, every hour that you have.
Jennifer White: And I agree with Eric’s points as well.
Sometimes founders or C-suite may think of delegation as trying to get rid of something or delegating that task rather. I think a misconception is thinking that sales is a task. It’s a driver of growing revenue as Wendy Y. stated and Eric has stated already.
And I think a big misconception is thinking delegation happens after the company is successful, when in reality it should be driven all along the growth journey.
And having that buy-in of everyone involved in that process is what really grows a company.
JB Herrera: You know, Wendy, that’s really awesome. It’s a great point. It makes me think of a metaphor like being an air traffic control system, right?
Sales doesn’t fail because you have too many planes in the air. It fails when one person is trying to fly direct, refuel, clear the landing zone, unload the packages, everything.
The founder, the CEO, the leader is really air traffic control, not the pilot of every plane, not getting into the detail of everything.
Clearly when you’re starting a business, the CEO, the leader at that point, you’re the only person that really can sell what is your passion. This is what you’re about. This is what you stand for. And that’s fine. Many CEOs continue to have that role over the long haul. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But we can’t do it on our own.
And sometimes we have this thing in our heads that says, I’m the only person that can do that. No, no, no.
You have to be the air traffic controller here and set that direction. Know where everything is at and give people and empower them with the right tools, the right processes, the right steps, the right things that they need to have to be the best that they can be.
Eric Sambaluk: That kind of points back to what Wendy Y. was saying earlier about hiring the right people, right? It’s easy to say, well, you’re overwhelmed. You’re not managing these tasks that you should be. You should go ahead and delegate it. But before you delegate it, you want to make certain that the person you’re delegating it to has the skill set and, to her point, also the context to be effective in making those decisions or doing that work. And it’s not an easy thing to do, but it is really critical.
Harley Green: Yeah, exactly. There’s a difference between delegation and abdication, right? I’m sorry, Wendy Y.
And there’s just some great insights starting off strong here. I love it.
Wendy Y., I want to go to you for this next question first. From an operational leadership perspective, where do you most often see delegation break down for founders who are trying to protect their selling time?
WendyY Bailey: Awesome, thank you.
Harley Green: JB, I want to go to you next. You work at the intersection of systems, judgment, and technology. How should founders think about delegation when tools and AI are introduced without losing clarity or that human decision-making in the sales process?
JB Herrera: Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s the core of really what I’ve stood for going back to my first jobs coming out of Apple back in the 80s. Yes, I’m an old guy.
Founders need to stop asking what can AI do or what can these tools do and start asking what judgment must remain human.
Tools and AI are phenomenal at preparation, at pattern recognition, at follow-through. But sales still lives in human judgment — reading context, sensing hesitation, knowing when not to delegate, when to delegate, what kinds of things need to be done that are supporting that particular prospect at that moment in time.
Delegation doesn’t work to tools like AI.
And I know AI very, very well. While everybody’s doing this now, my first foray into AI was in 1993. So when you start thinking specifically about what the tool is designed for, it infers based on the kinds of input we give it, but it doesn’t have the judgment that comes from experience.
And that experience comes from being around people and having your own values, your own decision-making capabilities. Those are things that an AI can be given rules about, but that’s not judgment.
Technically the danger isn’t in utilizing automation. It’s that term again, abdication. When founders let their tools make their decisions, they haven’t consciously designed anything, then clarity erodes.
And when clarity erodes, your sales go down. You start to drift if you really think about it.
So you have an ICP, an ideal client profile. And let’s just say hypothetically there are five particular points for that ideal client profile. And then you have a salesperson who comes in and they say, you know what? We got this opportunity. It’s really awesome. But they only have four points, not five.
Well, okay, it’s four of five. It’s okay. We’re going to go for it.
And so you close the deal. So now your ideal client profile is here, and now you’ve started to have somebody that’s not your ideal client profile.
And the next person comes in and they only have three out of the five. So now you’re over here.
And pretty soon your ideal client profile is here and your sales are over here on this side. And that creates all kinds of problems because your systems are designed for that ideal client profile. They’re not designed for all of these other people that are over here.
Great people, good businesses, valuable and all. But you’ve started to drift away from the things that you stand for.
That’s why human judgment has to be continuously part of the process. AI and tools don’t do that.
And I’m a technology guy. I’m going to be the guy that says we need to build systems and build tools. And I do do that. But it’s always with humans first.
It’s human brilliance augmented with AI.
Eric Sambaluk: Yeah, I think JB makes a great point. I think AI is really an exciting and kind of frightening new realm for a lot of companies, especially really every size of company.
More and more companies are starting to realize the need for governance in their use of AI. They have their policies, but they don’t necessarily have their guardrails up. And that’s in many cases because they don’t know where those guardrails should be.
So I think working with the right partners to help find where those should be for your business — because it is a tailored solution. It’s not a one-size-fits-all baseball cap.
I think that’s a really critical thing as you start to use AI as a force multiplier. It’s a really good point, JB.
JB Herrera: Yeah, thanks Eric. We should probably talk from a governance perspective because we need to really advise leaders, especially when we come talk about sales and how the implementation of that works.
The danger of allowing it to run unfettered is really big for any company.
It doesn’t take very long for that little drift to happen.
Eric Sambaluk: For sure.
JB Herrera: And that’s on the sales side. And now if you have marketing people who are drifting in a different direction, and if you have your support team that’s drifting in a slightly different direction, all of a sudden the focus that’s absolutely required for success has failed you.
Eric Sambaluk: Yeah, it can change the company’s whole DNA.
JB Herrera: Absolutely. The one thing that I always remember is when Steve Jobs came back to Apple. And the first thing he did, he said, okay, we’re going to get rid of all these products, all these different lines. We’re going to focus on three products and three products only.
And that’s what they did.
I was fortunate. I was there to see that happen.
And really what every entrepreneur should be considering right now is making sure that they identify what they stand for and make sure they have their values and goals — not just something that sits up on the wall, but something that’s a living document that everybody believes in.
They’re pulling in the same direction.
And when they pull in that same direction, now you can implement tools on top of that. Now you can define processes that everybody believes in because they’re part of it all. And then you can use AI.
And then it’s powerful.
Jennifer White: And I just want to bring up one more point that Eric and JB hit on and Wendy Y. just did as well is the governance piece.
You know, I get emails all day long about, hey, we can help you implement some KPIs, dashboards in your company and increase operational efficiency and productivity. And I’m like, how did that intent signal get to you about my company and what we do? Something’s off there.
So we have to be careful with utilizing AI and really honing in on our process, our ICP, like JB said, but our process. Because we know Deming always said, if you can’t describe what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.
And right now it feels like there’s just spray and pray all over the place when it comes to sales and lead generation.
Harley Green: Yeah, excellent points. And it sounds like there’s a lot of overlap too from the first question of how you appropriately delegate to people as well as with the AI and technology tools. That’s interesting to see that intersection there.
Going over to you, Eric, with your background in strategy and execution, where do founders most underestimate the operational discipline required to delegate sales-adjacent work effectively?
Eric Sambaluk: It’s a great question.
I think one of the biggest areas is for companies that provide a sales service. If you’re, let’s say you’re a plumbing service, you can tell what hours of the day you are focused on your actual bread and butter, the service you provide versus how much time you spend marketing yourself.
If you’re a small company, it’s the founder doing that. It gets a lot more complicated when you are a seller and a lot of companies out there have a service that is basically building referrals or helping to augment other companies’ presence in social media or broadening their sales funnels.
For those professionals, I find it’s very hard for a lot of them to differentiate and distinguish the time they should be focused on doing the work versus the time they should be focused on building their own brand.
Now, when you can delegate — when you have somebody who is the right person in the right seat and you have the full context they need in order to manage that properly — then you can properly delineate those things and work on them in the most efficient way you can.
But it’s very hard, especially when a company is starting out, when a founder is just starting out, to know where do I turn this switch off and turn this switch on.
They’re the same muscles that you’re using, but you’re using them in different ways and you have to be using them at the right times in the right ways.
JB Herrera: That’s absolutely true, especially when you’re trying to handle multiple roles at the same time.
Marketing is so different operationally. If you have a trades business, the actual physical work requires a lot of discipline, energy, effort, knowledge, experience, and skill.
Marketing requires knowledge, experience, and skill as well, but in a different way.
Being able to understand what your strengths are and where your gaps are — where you’re not as strong — is one of the opportunities for founders and leaders to help them build the team around them.
What Wendy Y. was talking about — put the right person on the bus and help them operationally build the business of their dreams.
As a founder, as a CEO, as a leader, we have a direction that we want to go. I tried to do it on my own many, many years ago. It doesn’t work.
You need to have the right people around you and understand honestly what your skills are so that you can say, you know what, this is the time that I need to be out here learning more about my craft and I need to bring someone else on board who can help with that sales.
Or conversely, if that CEO is really great at sales, that’s great, but let’s bring the other people on so they can operate consistent with the direction that the company wants to go and use good human judgment making decisions to take the whole organization one step at a time toward that goal.
Harley Green: Awesome. All right, let’s move over to a question for you, Jennifer.
You’ve seen how change initiatives fail when people aren’t considered. What human or behavioral factors most commonly derail delegation efforts tied to sales execution?
Jennifer White: Very good question.
From the operational leadership development work that my firm does, we see a few things when it comes to sales-focused delegation.
First, I call the producer-manager trap.
This is where leaders tend to believe real work is activity-based. Every task should be assigned to someone versus creating a uniform identity and defining what you want your company to stand for and the services you provide.
These leaders rise through execution. They don’t always understand from a leadership capability standpoint how it feels to delegate without abandoning their core identity because all they know is do the work, do the work, do the work.
But what is the meaning behind that work?
So you have to be careful about the leadership versus management track of that type of behavior when you’re commanding a team.
Another issue we see is clarity masquerading as a delegation problem.
JB hinted at this quite a bit. Not being clear on what you need to delegate or when to delegate — not just the how, but the what and the when and the who.
One clarity gap we see often is not defining clear success criteria.
For a sales team, what does good look like?
Is it number of leads generated per week? Quality leads? Conversion rates? Getting into the category of business you want?
If you want to get into consumer products, what activities are you doing to make sure you are present in the consumer products industry?
A third factor is psychological safety.
Your team has to trust you in order to perform well. The more a team trusts their leader, the more engaged they are.
You have to play on empathy and emotional intelligence as a leader in order to drive a team.
Unless you’re cognizant of those areas, change initiatives and delegation tied to sales will struggle.
Eric Sambaluk: Yeah, it’s really interesting. Jennifer, what you said really just rang true for me on a lot of different levels.
When you think about bringing people together into an organization and all pulling in the same direction, the level of trust has to be very high.
And unfortunately, in the heat of battle — as we’re going to get to in public companies — it’s the end of the quarter, right? Because you have quarterly earnings that you have to announce.
And in small companies that are private, it’s not necessarily the quarter end, but it might be every month end.
So that ends up being a true test of the direction of your company, of your decision-making, and of the decision-making of all the members of your team.
They may decide that, you know what, I gotta close this. I gotta make this happen. I’m tasked with doing that.
And maybe our goals — the goals that have been set out and how we’re being compensated — incentivize the person to close more deals.
But that measurement may be inconsistent with the direction of the company.
We want to close deals, but we want to close the right deals.
So now you have a governance issue, right Eric? And then you have a human problem because someone says, “You told me you wanted me to close this deal, and now you’re telling me I can’t close the deal.”
It’s not that you can’t close the deal. It’s that you have to close the right deal.
If we didn’t talk about that before, now all of a sudden trust breaks down.
And now you have challenges all over the place simply because you didn’t understand that human component — the human factor of how we need to work together.
Jennifer White: And I think that’s why change management is so important, but yet it’s always swept under the rug and people don’t really realize its true existence.
Someone has to be the white knight. They have to lead the charge.
The messaging has to always be clear and consistent, leveled with the integrity and values of the brand and the company.
Until someone steps up to challenge the status quo or challenge the bad habits that may come into an environment, you’ll always have those little seeps that get into a company and start making it negative.
And that’s not what we want.
There is truth to someone being honest.
In JB’s case, he was able to do that. And sometimes it allows people to see themselves in the mirror and realize what’s really happening.
Taking the time to acknowledge that with their team and turn it around — those are the types of clients we absolutely love to work with.
The ones that are transparent, cohesive, and not afraid to challenge the status quo.
JB Herrera: You know what, it’s really interesting you use the word integrity.
That’s a broad term.
What my experience is, many people would not define it the same way and don’t have a story that explains it even in a similar fashion.
So for us as leaders of our organization, it’s incumbent on us to identify not only how we define our core values, but explain them in such a way that everybody feels it and can incorporate it into their role.
In sales, it’s even more important.
Because in sales, generally it’s a money-focused reward system.
And a money-focused reward system doesn’t necessarily translate into a values-based reward system.
So looking at it from that perspective, if we can identify what these principles are, it will go a long way toward making sure you have the right people on your sales team.
People who will acknowledge that maybe I shouldn’t do this particular deal, and I’m going to choose not to do that.
And report that up through the sales team and be rewarded for that — because that’s a great decision for the company.
But we don’t necessarily measure that.
So one of the things we try to build into our AI platform for small businesses is measurement of those types of decisions that are not traditionally measured.
Measure what matters.
And if that’s what matters in your organization, you better put the implementation in place that enables you to do that.
Harley Green: Well, thank you everyone so much. We’re coming up on time here.
I want to have one final opportunity for those that have been listening and want to continue the conversation with you.
What’s the best way for people to connect with you, whether it’s LinkedIn, website?
We’ll start with you, Wendy.
WendyY Bailey: You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Wendy Y. Bailey. I’m also at wendyybailey.com.
Harley Green: Thank you, Wendy.
Eric, what’s the best way for people to connect with you?
Eric Sambaluk: Yes, I am on LinkedIn. My last name is a little hard to spell, but it’s S-A-M-B-A-L-U-K.
I also have my website at sambaluk-consulting.com.
Love to have a conversation with anybody who wants to nerd out over strategy or initiatives or AI governance.
Excited to talk with you.
Harley Green: Thank you, Eric.
Jennifer, how can people connect with you?
Jennifer White: You can find me on LinkedIn at jenniferwhite, MBA.
Also our website, themjwgrp.com.
And similar to Eric, I geek out on all things numbers, Excel spreadsheets, KPIs, supply chain, manufacturing.
Glad to see everyone here.
Harley Green: Awesome. Thank you, Jennifer.
And JB, what’s the best way for our audience to connect with you?
JB Herrera: You can connect with me on LinkedIn, JB Herrera.
I also have a Substack that I write every week specifically on values-driven AI ecosystems and how you can implement them safely, how you can use AI effectively, and more importantly, with the right team — as we’ve talked about today.
So synergyai.io is my website.
But LinkedIn is primarily where you can reach me.
Harley Green: Thank you, JB.
And thank you to all of our panelists for your clarity, honesty, and real-world insight that you shared today.
And thank you to everyone who joined us live.
Delegation isn’t about doing less.
It’s about building the structure and leadership capacity that removes you as the bottleneck and keeps execution moving without constant rescue.
That’s why we’ve created the Executive Efficiency Blueprint to help you turn today’s ideas into clear ownership, consistent follow-through, and better use of your leadership time.
You can get the Executive Efficiency Blueprint at workergenix.com/EEBlive.
We’ll drop the link in the show notes.
And again, thank you all for joining us.
We’ll see you all on the next Executive Edge Live and on our podcast, Scale Smart, Grow Fast.
Why Entrepreneurs Feel Empty at the Top — and How Purpose, Adventure, and Alignment Change Everything
Many entrepreneurs believe the next milestone—more revenue, more scale, more recognition—will finally bring fulfillment. Yet for many founders, growth only amplifies burnout, isolation, and a quiet sense of emptiness.
In a recent episode of Scale Smart, Grow Fast, host Harley Green sat down with Mike Brcic, founder of Wayfinders, to unpack why this happens and what leaders can do differently.
This conversation is a powerful reminder that how you scale matters just as much as how far you scale.
The Early Seeds of Entrepreneurship and Transformation
Mike’s journey began long before Wayfinders. At 20 years old, he took a six‑month backpacking trip through Southeast Asia, Nepal, and India—long before social media, travel blogs, or digital convenience.
With limited money and no clear plan, Mike and his girlfriend took a risk that would shape his future: buying handmade shirts in Kathmandu and selling them in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark. What started as survival turned into Mike’s first taste of entrepreneurship—and a powerful lesson in creativity, courage, and trust.
That experience planted two lifelong themes:
Getting off the beaten path creates the deepest growth
Discomfort often leads to transformation
Why Entrepreneurs Burn Out as They Scale
Later, as founder of a fast‑growing travel company, Mike experienced what many high‑performing entrepreneurs face:
Aggressive scaling driven by external validation
Increasing stress and responsibility at the top
Less time for health, family, and meaningful relationships
Despite hitting ambitious goals, Mike found himself asking a hard question: “What happens after I win?”
As Mike explains, many founders unconsciously chase scale to feel worthy, seen, or validated. The result is a cycle where every milestone only creates the need for the next one.
Scaling With Alignment, Not Ego
Mike isn’t anti‑growth. He’s anti‑growth for the wrong reasons.
True, sustainable scale happens when:
The business is deeply aligned with who you are
Growth serves customers, not ego
Systems support freedom instead of creating more pressure
One of the most counterintuitive lessons Mike shares is this: businesses often run better when the founder steps back.
When leaders let go of control:
Teams gain confidence
Decision‑making improves
Founders reclaim time, energy, and clarity
Why Nature, Discomfort, and Adventure Matter
This philosophy is at the heart of Wayfinders.
Mike creates immersive experiences for entrepreneurs in some of the most remote places on earth—from Mongolia to Bhutan—where comfort is limited and certainty disappears.
These environments force leaders to:
Surrender control
Slow down
Listen to themselves
Away from constant notifications and expectations, many founders reconnect with what Mike calls “the soul”—the deeper part of themselves that knows what truly matters.
The results are often profound:
Letting go of misaligned businesses
Healing strained relationships
Rebuilding businesses around purpose, not pressure
One Simple Practice Every Founder Can Try This Week
Mike’s advice is deceptively simple:
Turn everything off. Go into nature. Sit quietly.
No phone. No journal. No agenda.
Even a few hours of uninterrupted stillness can surface insights that years of hustle suppress. For many entrepreneurs, this becomes the first step toward building a business—and a life—that feels aligned instead of exhausting.
Final Takeaway
Scaling smart isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters—on purpose.
When growth is rooted in alignment, leaders don’t just build bigger businesses. They build better lives.
Book a discovery call to see how the right executive support helps you scale with clarity, alignment, and control—without burnout or chaos. Click here to subscribe.
Full Podcast Transcript
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. Today we’re joined by Mike Brcic, founder of Wayfinders, a community-driven movement helping entrepreneurs find deeper connection and meaning through transformative adventures in some of the world’s most remote places. His work sits at the intersection of business growth and human connection. Today we’re unpacking how adventure, vulnerability, and community can reshape the way leaders scale, lead, and live. Get ready for a conversation that goes beyond strategy into what truly fuels transformation.
Yeah, thrilled to be here. Looking forward to it.
You’ve built an incredible career around the idea that adventure can change not just lives, but leadership itself. Can you take us back to the moment when you realized travel and connection could become a path to transformation for entrepreneurs?
I think it was a gradual reveal. The biggest part of that reveal happened when I was 20, in between first and second year university. I took a year off—six months saving money and six months traveling through Southeast Asia, Nepal, and India. We started in Indonesia and moved through Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, and India.
This was 1991–92, before the internet or travel blogs. Back then, the Lonely Planet Guide was the only real resource. What I discovered was that it didn’t take much effort to get off the beaten path—and that’s where the most meaningful experiences were.
That’s when I caught the travel bug. Another transformative moment came when we realized we were about to run out of money. We had $3,500 Canadian for six months after flights. Southeast Asia was cheap, but heading to Amsterdam with only $500 left didn’t seem realistic.
In Kathmandu, I noticed beautiful embroidered shirts selling for two or three dollars. I thought someone in Amsterdam might pay more. I convinced my girlfriend to spend $300 of our last $500 filling two duffel bags with shirts. We took them to Amsterdam, sold $1,500 worth in one day at Vondelpark, rented an apartment, and lived comfortably for the rest of the trip.
That experience—travel combined with my first taste of entrepreneurship—planted the seeds for what has now become a 27-year career in travel and transformation.
That’s an incredible story, and it really shows the mindset behind taking that leap.
We almost had nothing to lose. We were going to run out of money either way, so it felt like a worthwhile risk.
Many leaders chase growth but feel isolated at the top. What emotional or relational patterns do you see with high-performing entrepreneurs?
I’ve lived this myself. With my previous company, Sacred Rides, we aggressively scaled after raising investment capital. We expanded fast, grew the team, and set ambitious goals.
One day I realized I could see myself achieving everything—and feeling empty afterward. Around the same time, I was reading Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday and attended a session where the question was asked, “Where are you seeking validation and why?”
I realized I was chasing growth to feel worthy. More revenue, more recognition—it never filled the hole. It only increased stress, damaged relationships, and hurt my health.
I sold that company and started Wayfinders with a different approach—focusing on alignment, value, and patient growth. Scale can be beautiful, but only if it’s done for the right reasons.
How can leaders balance systems and scale while staying authentic and aligned?
Most founders struggle to let go. They believe no one can do it as well as they can. But what I discovered coaching entrepreneurs is that the real issue isn’t systems—it’s internal systems.
I’d ask clients to take one day off a month. Then a half day. Eventually, I’d ask them to spend time alone in nature—no phone, no journal, just sitting quietly.
When leaders step away, two things happen: they reconnect with what matters, and their teams step up. Businesses often run better when the founder gets out of the way.
Tell us about the environments you create through Wayfinders.
Wayfinders is built on three elements: adventure, community, and transformation.
The adventures are intentionally uncomfortable. I don’t tell participants exactly what will happen. Entrepreneurs are used to control—this teaches surrender and trust.
We create safe spaces for vulnerability where leaders can share challenges they usually carry alone. Through facilitation, reflection, and time in wild environments, people reconnect with their inner voice.
The transformations are profound. People leave misaligned businesses, heal relationships, and reconnect with what truly matters.
For someone feeling stuck right now, what’s one actionable step they can take this week?
Go into nature. Turn everything off. Sit quietly. No phone. No agenda.
You’re starting a conversation with your soul. When you listen, insights come—through intuition, dreams, or unexpected connections. Trusting that voice leads to a business and life that feels aligned and joyful.
Where can listeners connect with you?
The best place is way-finders.com. Joining the mailing list is the best way to stay informed about future experiences.
If you got value from today’s episode, subscribe, rate, and share it with another business leader who might need this message. Until next time—keep scaling smart.
