During your career as an agency founder, you're likely to have the same job title the whole time.
Founder. Owner. Director. CEO. MD. Whatever. You get the title on day one, and keep it for years.
But that disguises the fact you're really giving yourself a series of promotions at key points of growth.
You start as a practitioner, a team member. Then you become the leader of the team. Then you become the leader of the leadership team. Then you eventually become the mentor to the leader of the leadership team.
All while building the team and leadership structure behind you that does your old jobs.
But because the promotion isn't a clear step up, many founders can miss that it's happening.
That becomes a major source of frustration for your team, and a major source of stress for founders.
Because, by growing your agency, you've been promoted by default on reaching key stages.
But if you don't embrace that promotion and move your focus up too, two things go wrong:
A gap opens up between the responsibilities of your new role, and what you are actually doing
You keep on doing the work that's supposed to be being done by the leaders and managers who are developing in your agency to take over your old roles — stepping on their toes, blocking their development, and suggesting you don't trust them. This will also overload you.
So a key part of growing as a leader as you grow your agency, is to learn to leave behind what you did before.
At some point you need to hang up the tools of the trade of being a practitioner to become a leader of the team.
And at a later point you need to hang up the tools of managing a team of craftspeople to fully lead what has become a bigger business.
Yes, this 'leaving behind' is hard. But if you want to fall back in love with leading your agency again, it's vital to honestly appraise what you should be letting go of to free up your time and attention for your current role.
What level have you been promoted to by default now? What have you been holding onto? What do you need to let go of?