Ever felt like your business is running you instead of the other way around?
You’re juggling Slack pings, chasing invoices, fixing product bugs, and somehow still expected to map the future.
Reality is, if you’re in the weeds every day, you’re not the CEO. You’re the most stressed-out employee on payroll.
The job of a CEO isn’t to fix every leak. It’s to steer the ship to where the treasure lies.
Let’s break down how to step out of the weeds and step into the visionary role your company desperately needs.
Step 1: Admit You’re Addicted to Control
Every founder starts with their hands on everything. Sales, product, marketing, support—it all ran through you. That’s why the business exists today.
But at some point, your greatest strength becomes your biggest liability.
Like a pilot who refuses to let go of the controls, you’re exhausting yourself and holding back the crew.
Coaching advice: Ask yourself—if I disappeared for two weeks, would the business stall? If the answer is yes, you’re still stuck in operator mode. Follow Adam Robinson of Retention.com and RB2B.com as he is taking this exercise to the next level by letting AI agents run the business.
Step 2: Redefine Your Real Job
Your real job isn’t managing support tickets. It’s setting direction. It’s shaping culture. It’s creating clarity so your team knows what mountain they’re climbing.
Think of your company like a chessboard. You can either be a pawn moving one square at a time, or the queen—able to see the whole board and dictate the game.
Framework to use:
- Vision: Where are we going?
- Strategy: What game are we playing to win?
- People: Do we have the right players on the board?
If your calendar isn’t dominated by these three, you’re still in pawn mode.
Step 3: Delegate Like Your Business Depends on It (Because It Does)
Here’s the founder trap: “It’s faster if I just do it myself.”
Sure, today. But tomorrow you’ll have twice as many fires. And next year you’ll burn out before the business even scales.
Pro tip: Delegation isn’t abdication. It’s building trust systems. Document what “great” looks like. Set clear outcomes. Let your team own the process.
A founder who can’t delegate builds a company that can’t grow.
Step 4: Design Space for Visionary Work
Vision doesn’t come from reacting to Slack notifications. It comes from stillness.
Some of the best founders I know schedule “thinking time” like a board meeting. No calls. No email. Just deep work on the future.
This isn’t fluffy. It’s survival. Without vision time, you’ll only ever optimize the present, never create the future.
Action step: Block 2-4 hours a week for nothing but high-level strategy. Guard it like a fortress.
Step 5: Build Feedback Loops That Keep You Grounded
Here’s the risk of being a visionary: drifting into fantasy. If you float too high above the ground, your team will stop following.
That’s why the best CEOs create structured feedback loops. Weekly exec syncs. Customer calls. Metrics dashboards. These keep you tethered to reality while still steering the ship.
Coaching perspective: Vision without grounding is a hallucination. Vision with grounding is a roadmap.
The Founder’s Shift
The hardest identity shift in the founder journey is going from doer to designer. From player to coach. From operator to visionary.
It feels unnatural because you built the company by doing everything. But the truth is, the higher your business climbs, the less valuable your hands become—and the more valuable your mind becomes.
Your team doesn’t need you in the trenches. They need you to see around corners.
Reflection
If you’re a founder reading this, pause and ask yourself:
- Where am I still acting like an employee?
- Where am I avoiding the discomfort of vision work by hiding in the weeds?
- What one task can I delegate this week to reclaim my role as a true CEO?
The future of your company depends less on how many tasks you check off, and more on the clarity and courage you bring to the journey ahead.
Step out of the weeds. Steer the ship. Become the visionary.
