I am an owner sitting in four different seats and our business is struggling with low profit margins. Should I focus on finding someone to replace me in my operational seats first, or should I hold onto these seats to cut costs until our margins recover?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When margins are tight, owners often try to save money by keeping themselves in multiple seats. If you are sitting in four seats such as Visionary, Integrator, Operations, and Sales, you are actually throttling your business's ability to recover. You cannot scale a business when the owner is stuck doing low-value transactional work while the strategic vision is completely neglected.

To solve this, look at your Accountability Chart as a future blueprint, not your current reality. You must decide which of those four seats is the biggest bottleneck for your profit margins. Usually, it is Sales or Operations. If you cannot afford a full-time external hire right now, you must look at your existing team and identify who has the potential to step up.

Use the GWC framework to evaluate your current staff. Is there a high-performing employee who gets, wants, and has the capacity to take over one of your operational seats? Even if you have to transition them slowly, freeing up your time allows you to focus on high-value activities like driving revenue or optimizing systems. Saving a salary by holding onto four seats is a false economy that will eventually lead to burnout and operational failure.