Fire Yourself

This week we discuss how to scale ourselves as founders.

This blog is a weekly reflection of WorkHound’s time at Dynamo, a logistics-focused accelerator based in Chattanooga, TN. This is week eight.

Fire Yourself

Each week we have a “deep dive” with the Dynamo team. It’s an opportunity for us to step back, think critically about the business, and map out how to overcome any obstacles we may run into.

One of the questions we were posed stuck with me. One of the managing directors, Ted Alling asked:

“What hat are you wearing, your $800, $80, or $8 hat?”

Ted went on to explain that as founders we have the toughest challenge of breaking out what work we do and how it gets done. We should treat our time like it is worth $800 / hour, as it is only work we can do. For employees, they can add huge value by doing the $80 / hour work. Small tasks like building lead generation lists can be done as an $8 task.

The theme of this is something that I’ve heard in the past:

“Fire Yourself”

In order to scale a company, as founders we have to scale ourselves.

We have to treat our time like it’s worth $800 dollars an hour. We know the business more intimately than anyone else and there are things that only we can do. If tasks can be delegated, even for $80 an hour, we’re still getting a 10x return on our money. And we need all the 10x returns we can get.

It’s tempting to try and do everything in business, but it’s not about what I do or what Andrew does, it’s about what we accomplish as a unit.

Read our previous posts about our time at Dynamo

WorkHound Joins Dynamo // Week 1 Recap // Week 2 // Week 3 // Week 4// Week 5 // Week 6 // Week 7

What is WorkHound?

WorkHound is a software platform built to help carriers keep drivers and improve the truck driver experience. Truck drivers use their smartphones to share feedback and ideas with the carrier, which WorkHound aggregates and turns into actionable insights to help manage and retain drivers. WorkHound is co-founded by Andrew Kirpalani and Max Farrell.

Learn more:

Web: WorkHoundApp.com

Facebook: WorkHound

Twitter: @WorkHoundApp

Linkedin: WorkHound

Email:max@workhoundapp.com