Remember why you started this business? I'm not talking about the sexy founder story you tell on podcasts, but the real one where you were sitting around with a glass of wine, a half-baked idea, and a feeling in your gut that said "I think I can actually do this."
Whatever it was, it was awesome! The early days were chaos but you found flow. You were locked in. Every problem was a puzzle worth solving, and every small win felt huge.
So when did it stop being fun?
Somewhere along the way your ego probably took charge and convinced you that grinding constantly is the only way to prove that you're serious. That needing help means you're not enough, and that if you just push a little harder, you'll finally feel like you've made it.
And now you're playing every position at once, wondering why your team is standing on the sidelines watching. And you’re telling yourself the pain is just what leadership looks like.
It's not. The pain is optional.
Engineer the Game
Here's a question: can you actually design the game so that playing it is fun again? Not just the wins at the end, but the actual day to day experience of running your business. Can you engineer that to feel like something you want to do instead of something you are trying to survive?
I think you can. But most founders never even ask the question because they're too deep in it. They've been heads down for so long that the grind just became the default. If you've been following this series, you know we've spent months talking about the cost of holding everything yourself. This month I want to talk about the easy button.
The Easy Button
You've been playing this game on hard mode and didn't even realize you had a choice. For a founder, the easy button is finding the person who completes the picture. Your #2, the yin to your yang. The one who fills the gaps you don't even see anymore because you've been covering them yourself for so long.
Think of it like finding the right partner. Not someone who always agrees with you. That doesn't make you better. You need the person who's strong where you're not, who challenges your blind spots and keeps everything steady when you're chasing the next big idea. In business, that's your operational counterpart - a COO, Head of Ops, whatever the title.
There's a reason VCs have always looked for this combination before writing a cheque. The visionary alone is a bet. The visionary with their operational other half is a company. They don't need to come from your industry. They need to have solved problems like yours before, even if it was in a completely different game. Someone whose values match yours, who coaches rather than manages, and who has the judgment to know when to pull you in and when to handle it without you. They own the rhythm. You own the direction. And the same principle applies to your whole roster. Every gap you're covering is a position someone else should be playing.
Start Playing Your Position
Once you've got the right people on the field, you've got to redesign the game so that everyone, including you, is playing a position that allows for flow.
There's a reason 70% of kids quit organized sports by age 13. It stops being fun. Too much focus on outcomes, not enough on the experience of actually playing. The adults build the whole system around winning and forget that the reason anyone started playing was because they loved the game. Sound familiar?
The best teams in sport and in business do the opposite. They make sure everyone knows the game plan. They create visibility around the score so the whole team can see whether they're winning. They give everyone a real stake in the outcome. And they focus on the process, not just the results. They build cultures where people feel like they belong and where shared values are real enough that people make good decisions without being told what to do.
Find the work that puts you back in flow. You've been buried in work that stripped your energy for so long that you've forgotten what it feels like to be challenged in the right way. Go find it again, then do the same for your team. Put people in roles where they come alive because the work gives them energy vs. taking it away.
And celebrate the wins. Most founders are terrible at this. You close a big deal and immediately start worrying about the next one. Championship teams don't just grind through the season. They enjoy playing each and every game.
Nobody looks at a championship coach and asks why she's not on the field. They look at the roster and say she built that.
The game is still there. You've just been too busy playing every position to enjoy it.
This is what we help founders do at Switch. Build the roster, redesign the game, and start enjoying it again.
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