Have you ever felt like your business depends too much on you? Do you wonder how to step back without everything falling apart? In this episode of Leadership is Feminine, Kris Plachy unpacks the path from being the one in charge to developing leaders who can run the business without you.

She introduces the three key questions that shape an entrepreneur’s journey: How do I do this? How are we going to do this? And finally, how are they going to do this? These questions reveal the natural progression from doing everything yourself to building a team and ultimately empowering others to take full ownership.

Kris explores what it takes to move through these stages and why so many women get stuck in the transition. As she explains, “If you are still thinking like a doer, if you are still thinking like the chief operator of your business and not the CEO or executive leader… then you don’t ever get out of it, right? You stay stuck there.”

She also announces The Sage’s Pathway, a live two-day event, designed for women who are ready to develop their team of managers into true leaders. This event is the next level of growth—helping you step away from the daily operations so you can experience not just more freedom, but the full impact of your years of investment in your business. To join the waitlist and learn more, click here.

If you're ready to shift from being the one who does it all to leading a team that thrives without your constant involvement, this episode is for you.

Key Takeaways From This Episode

1. The Entrepreneur’s Journey: Moving from bootstrapping to developing leaders to lead in your place.

2. Important Relationships that Need to Change for Leadership Growth

3. The Role of Self-Awareness in Leadership

4. Transition to the Next Level of Leadership: Overcoming resistance and fear

5. The Need for Women's Leadership: The significance of women’s accomplishments in business, and the encouragement to keep going.

6. Introduction to The Sage's Pathway

Contact Information and Recommended Resources

Get Access to the One Hour Leader

To download the One Hour Leader digital book and take advantage of the special savings for the Lead Self-Study, go to www.thevisionary.ceo/onehourleader.

Get On the Waitlist for The Sage’s Pathway

Get your name on the Sage's Pathway Waitlist so you'll learn all the details when we open for registration, CLICK HERE

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Transcript

Kris Plachy:
Hello. Hello. Welcome to the podcast. My name is Kris Plachy. This Leadership is Feminine and I have a lot I want to say today. Okay. So over the last several weeks I've been kind of hinting that we're going to be rolling out something new and fun and interesting and I am officially here to tell you what that is.

Kris Plachy:
We have created a program called The Sage's Pathway and there's a reason it's called that. I'm going to go back into that. So- and the primary focus of The Sage's Pathway is to help you as a woman who is leading her own business and her own team of managers, help you develop those managers so that they can lead the business without you. It really is that sort of next step, next level of growth for you in order to really, really experience the, not just the freedom, but the culminated impact of your years of investment in this business so that you have a team of people who aren't just good at the business tactically, but they are capable of leading and running this business without you.And you know, I've worked with a lot of you over the years and there really are these three primary questions that it seems like entrepreneurship kind of moves us through, right? The first one is; how do I do this? How am I going to figure this out? How do I do this? And that question is all about you. And that's when you are bootstrap, just you grinding entrepreneur, maybe with some part time people just doing stuff for you, a VA or what have you, right? You're really still figuring out your business model. You're figuring everything out.

Kris Plachy:
The next level question is how are we going to do this? And that's when you start really building a team and you have to figure out if you've never managed people before, it's such a immersion in a whole other level of thinking. How do I hire people? Fire people? How do I even know who to hire? Do, how do I write a, do I need job descriptions? Do I have, how do I pay people? Right. All of these elements. And those are the elements of that question, right? How are we going to do this? Those questions, or the answers to that question, are in Lead for Women, which is the program that is currently available as a self study. And I strongly recommend, if you have not done it, that you do that immediately. The best way to do that is to go to the visionary.CEO/onehourleader, opt in, pay the 4.99 for the book. And then you're going to get this special bonus offer that we sell lead for. And I would recommend that you do that if you haven't done it yet.

Kris Plachy:
But then the third question is, how are they going to do this? How are they going to do this? And that's when we start really thinking about how am I going to build a legacy into this business through leadership, so it doesn't depend on me. And this is the question that you start asking when you are finally done being a worker, doing work, you are ready to lead. This is The Sage's Pathway, which really then brings you into what I call really that Sage think tank and advisory, which is that next final step of working with me much more personally.Because if we don't have this framework and this process in place and the mindset of a leader in place, if you are still thinking like a doer, if you are still thinking like the chief operator of your business and not the CEO or executive leader of your business, that head that is visioning, ideating, curating where we're going, but isn't doing everything, then you, you don't ever get out of it, right? You stay stuck there. It doesn't matter how much money your business will make and in fact, eventually you will cap it. You will be the bottleneck for growth because the business really can only go as far as you can, especially when you are really attached.

Kris Plachy:
And that doesn't mean that there's not a lot of women who get to $6, 8, 10 million businesses with leaders in place. But if you haven't ever actually sort of invested in learning how to develop them and build them and hire, hire them properly, source them properly, and then even let them go properly. Because a lot of the people, my guess is that my clients have-this isn't a guess-that have been on their teams for years are in leadership roles, but they've never really been developed and the business outgrows them. So you'll know if I'm talking to you based on what I've just said, but there's some other truths that we have to acknowledge along the way. It's not just these three questions.

Kris Plachy:
And I was journaling this morning as I was thinking about, kind of in my mind, what I think of as sort of that $3 million business dilemma. It's too big to fail. There's too much riding on it now, but you are still really, really tied to the day to day weeds and operations. You growing out of that requires a tremendous amount of trust. It requires your relationship with control and mistakes to change. It requires your relationship with conflict to change. It requires your relationship with people pleasing to change. It requires your relationship with guilt to change. And it requires your relationship with leadership to change.

Kris Plachy:
What do I mean by that? I have found that, you know, we're in, we're, we're in a, I feel like kind of a-what do we call it? Let's just say sort of a defining era where I think a lot of us, speak for myself, you know, there's been a lot of coasting. Things have been okay, especially for white blonde woman in the U.S. right. I'm very aware of that. You know, even when I was in my early 20s, I, I don't know why, but I started to just notice this, this insidiousness, this insidious problem with a general lack of self awareness. And when someone lacked self awareness and they were in a position of authority, I found it like intolerable. And I know that's why I do what I do.

Kris Plachy:
I, I have been. Now, I didn't know this at the time, but it also is about bias, just innate bias. If you don't practice and gain, learn the tools for personal self awareness and behavior, self awareness and all of the, you know, gaining access to and understanding your mind, gaining access to and understanding why you feel what you feel, gaining access to access to and understand understanding why you do what you do, and then ultimately understanding that all those things culminate together to, to deliver a result when, when people don't do that. And let's be honest, most people don't. Why would we? Right? Like I've had people say to me, 'I don't want to understand that much about myself'. That sounds terrible, right? Like people really do love to be blissfully ignorant. And there's a lot of people, especially here in this country, who've been able to be because it hasn't really affected them. I think we're at a time now where we have to decide not just what, what leadership means to us as people, but also what it means in terms of who we will follow.

Kris Plachy:
So the reason I included that on my list of things that we will sort of need to change our relationship with if we want to evolve into a leader who can develop leaders, who can lead your business without you, is your relationship with leadership has to change. Because I believe you have to have respect for leadership. You have to have respect for what it means, not just to be the leader, but to ask other people to follow you. And that's a philosophy that you have to develop on your own. You have to be able to speak to it if you want other people to follow you and to be follow your model in your company or you're going to be in constant conflict. But a lot of people don't think to talk about leadership with people they hire as managers, which is so ironic, right? They just think about tactics, how to get work done. And there's probably going to be people who listen to this, like, why do you have to make this so complicated? We just have to get the work done. Okay, how do you get work done through other people? You just tell them.

Kris Plachy:
I mean, some people do that. I can assure you those are not the leaders people stay with for a long time. Those are not the leaders that create loyalty not because of who they are and the benefit that people feel by be associated by being associated with them. Sure, there's leaders who can get work done through fear. We are human. Fear is a motivator. And there's people who don't care. 'I don't care if they're afraid of me. I just want them to get it done'. That's not my client. If that's the way people think, they're not my client. I can assure you of that.

Kris Plachy:
So how do we help women who have built these beautiful businesses step into this next level of their leadership role? And we have to look at the relationships we have with all of the things I've already said, right? Guilt, conflict, respective leadership, people pleasing, control. Because those reasons are- the relationship you have with those are usually the reason why you still haven't fully stepped into this next level of leadership. And until we tell that truth, we, we get, we can stay stuck.

Kris Plachy:
And I've had this conversation with a lot of people, so I'll say it to you. Also, here's the other thing that's incredibly true. You don't have to hire managers. You don't have to develop them. You don't have to do any of it. You could decide right now, you know what? I want to keep my business at $2.8 million. It's great. I'm going to keep it at $2.5.

Kris Plachy:
This works. I've got this many people, it's fine. I don't need to invest in. I don't want to do more. I like it. Do it. But if your aspiration is bigger. %8 million, 10 million, 20 million, 50 million, 72 million? I don't know.

Kris Plachy:
You want to get purchased. You want to make $100 million in a buyout. You want to make $50 million in a buyout. Okay, guess what you need. You need replicatable systems. You need the business processes to be an asset. You need them to thrive without your oversight every freaking day. And you need leaders that other people will follow, who other people want to work for.

Kris Plachy:
They can't just want to work for you. They have to want to work for your organization. What does that mean? That's a different proposition than, than working for you, right? What does it mean? So in The Sage's Pathway, I have prepared 12 topics that I'm going to be covering in a two day digital. What are we calling it? Online course. Two full days. Yes, you heard that right. Nine to four, you get a lunch break. Two full days live with me. It's going to be March 20th and 21st.

Kris Plachy:
A couple weeks ago I was talking about wanting to do things live and in person, and I still haven't changed my mind. And that's what my Sage program will continue to be. But I got the, I got your feedback. Those of you who are far enough away that you're never going to be able to get here in person, at least not anytime soon. So I'm going to save you the airfare and I'm going to save you the hotel and the cheap icky gross breakfast, if that's what you tend to do or whatever. And instead we're going to work live together for two days.

Kris Plachy:
And yes, I will be recording all of the lessons and so you will get those afterwards. So The Sage's Pathway is going to be a live event. Two full days, March 20th and 21st. So if that's appealing to you, go to your calendar right now and block it off. You can't register for it yet, but you can get on the wait list by going to the visionary.CEO/SagePathway and then just plop that in, put your name on the list if you're not on it already because you will get all the information.

Kris Plachy:
Now, what's going to happen this week, so that you get a better sense of what's involved. I'm going to post-I've done this before-I'm going to post short episodes all week here on the podcast talking about different topics that are related to being a woman who needs to build a team of leaders, who can lead the business so she doesn't have to. Okay. That is coming every day this week. So if you already subscribe to this podcast, you're going to get notifications every time I drop a new one. If you don't subscribe to this podcast, today would be a good day to do that so that you get those episodes. And I will leave those episodes up for this week and then starting next week, they will all come down. The only people who can keep the episodes from this week will be people who join The Sage's Pathway.

Kris Plachy:
So keep tuning in because as we go through the week, you'll be getting more and more information about how to enroll. But if you join TheVisionary.CEO/SagePathway, if you join the wait list, you will get all the updates as soon as they're available. I'm going to leave you with one more thought. And I wrote an article or a blog post or whatever we call these things, an email the other day about this, and I've done a podcast about this, too. I do not think that there is any skill set right now, there are, well, there's probably a couple. Let me make sure I'm not being too absolutist.

Kris Plachy:
The skill sets that women really should be investing in right now are financial understanding and acumen. If you're an entrepreneur, it's really understanding your market and what's going on with your market right now. But if you are a woman and you have not developed your leadership skills of yourself and others, now is the time to do that. Women have to find their ability to understand themselves first if they're going to navigate in a world that still doesn't understand them. If you are a successful, accomplished female entrepreneur, we need you to have a leadership voice. Whatever direction you want to take that, we need your voice. It can't be hiding behind your guilt and your fear that you're going to hurt someone's feelings.

Kris Plachy:
It can't be avoiding difficult conversations because you're afraid they're going to cry or you will. It can't be buried in your own imposter syndrome. Now is the time more than ever. And if you develop leaders who understand your philosophy of leadership and how you got to where you are, and how you achieved what you achieved, and what your thoughts are about why people work and how to help people be more successful, and why what you all do together is so important, if you are invested in that, if you develop you, it's so much easier to develop other people and it's inspiring to them.

Kris Plachy:
And look, I know you just wanted to open a restaurant. I know you just wanted to sell carpet. I know you just are making, you're just distributing boxes to people. I don't know what your business is. It matters what you have done. If you go back just one generation, there were women who did not have that opportunity. There are still women that don't have the opportunity that you have. And yet we sit behind our fear of having a difficult conversation instead of going after it, getting after it, standing in your power, learning who you are. You are so gorgeously capable. We need you.

Kris Plachy:
Sorry, I'll step off my box. You can tell that this is a passion of mine. We need you. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, I know you know what I'm talking about now. Now, wherever you are, if you, if you haven't built a team yet, go get lead right now. It's so reasonable. Go get it right now and invest in yourself. Go to thevisionary.CEO/onehourleader and get it.

Kris Plachy:
Go in there. But if you have a team of managers that you've already assembled and they're doing okay, but you feel like you could tell, like there's things that are happening, there's some infighting, they're doing some gossiping, they're coming to you all the time. They want you to make all the decisions. Nobody really understands strategy. You still have to set all of the big things and then they come to you for all the tactical things. They're basically just glorified workers in your business. They're not really leading. You haven't removed anyone weight off your shoulders.

Kris Plachy:
Your business is not ready to be sold. If you're ready for that, then it's time for The Sage's Pathway. So go to thevisionary.CEO/SagePathway. Get yourself on the list and then tune in to all the podcasts this week because it's going to be fun. All right, talk to you next time.