In 2022, I took the COO (Chief Operating Officer) job at our company.

I had never had a job in operations before. I was and still am, horribly underqualified for the position.

Over the past 5 years, I had been doing everything I could to learn how to be a growth hacker. Then I had to pivot back to knowing nothing.

Why?

Because someone had to. And when you’re running a startup, everything is your responsibility.

We were great at getting clients and running campaigns. But there are limits to where that can take you. We had to become a company that can scale. One that has processes, systems, expectations for employees, templates, software, etc….

If I’m being honest, I think I’ve done a mediocre job. But the effect on the company has been positive. We’ve accomplished many of the things we were lacking as a company.

We are more effective and more efficient. In other words, although the restructuring proved grueling and difficult. We are on a path to way more profit because of it.

It has changed the way I approach every project.

Common wisdom tells you to dig into your strengths. To find the thing that you are great at, and optimize your work so you are doing that as much as possible.

But that’s limiting. Limiting because there’s no exploration.

For example. You can be a mediocre driver and still make it from LA to NY.

But if you had already determined that you were a great horse rider. And because of that you should do all your travel by horse, you would have never figured out that a car works just fine.

More often than we think, you don’t have to be great at something to get the job done.

The cave is dark and scary, but you can walk from one side to another with nothing more than a lantern.