Right person, wrong role

A story of how I was the wrong person, and why you or someone on your team might be, too

First off, thanks for being here. This is the first post on It’s Not Easy, and I wanted to make sure it was extra spicy. Let me take you back…

2013. I was completely drowning. I was at the helm of Metalab’s consulting team and had been doing so for about 5 years. We had grown tremendously during that time, going from $5k to $100k in monthly revenue. The team went from 3 to 40, spread across multiple business entities. We had two floors in a very nice building in a very nice city. It was like a volcano that grew right under our feet.

As for me, in the very, very early days, I was a project manager. In fact, I was the project manager. As our clientele evolved and their needs changed, I added account manager to my role. And all the while, I was also doing sales alongside Andrew, a role neither of us were particularly interested in letting go of at the time (that’s a story for another day).

My job encompassed everything, and to be frank, it was starting to require me to run Metalab like a real business. A bit of a tall order for someone with no prior business experience aside from running a very small copywriting agency for a year.

Right when I was down to my last few gasps of air, I had an unforgettable lunch with someone who very patiently heard all of my gripes, and then said, “Well, you know, you might just not be the right person to run it any more.”

Wow. Gut punch, right? When I voiced my offence, they added the following.

“That’s not a failure on your part. You’re on a rocket ship. You got it here, and that’s amazing. You should be proud. But maybe you’re not the person to get it to the next level.”

I stood up and stormed out of the restaurant, hurling a plate against the wall as I left.

Ok, not actually. But I kind of wanted to. What I heard in that moment was, “Sorry, you’ve had a nice Cinderella run, but you’re just not good at this anymore,” which was my worst fear confirmed. But as I thought more about it over the coming weeks, I realized how completely right they were.

When your company is small (let’s say 5-20 people), chaos can reign—to some degree. You are often working with very tolerant small-to-mid market clients. You typically have a management team who is inexperienced, but eager. Systems and processes are starting to become important, but they aren’t essential yet. Your goal is to keep landing work and keeping people busy and just generally figuring out how to do the thing, and face problems head-on as they fall in front of your face.

But something very distinct changes past a certain plateau (it is not necessarily when you pass the 20 person threshold; in fact, it’s usually earlier, but you fight past it). You realize that your company is something that must be sustainable. You have an office lease and a big payroll. This can’t fail! I can’t let all these people down!

With that in mind, your lens moves from 10 feet down the road to 10 miles. Your next 10 clients, not just your next client. Growing the business from 20 to 50. 50 to 100. You hear other successful people doing things you have heard of before but never tried, like KPIs and quarterly rocks.

Whatever your role is, things must shift out of a purely reactive mentality.

This shift requires a tactician, not just somebody incredibly well equipped to roll with the startup punches (which is indeed its own precious skillset). This tactician is someone who hears your company’s goals, nods with familiarity, and is able to formulate a plan that is rooted in at least some grit and experience. This is the new you.

The hard part — as experienced by me during that tough conversation — is that even when you know in your soul that it’s the truth, it’s deeply unpleasant to hear. It’s very hard to not to feel threatened because of all the things this truth implies — failure, loss of job, loss of status.

But I knew it was true, and I made the decision to relinquish my seat to someone else, who indeed grew Metalab well beyond what I could have (and many more have since that person, each leader doing something the previous one could not).

It was only after ceding control that I realized the opportunity it presented: to focus on the things that I wanted to do, and relieve myself of all the stress I’d been previously feeling. For me, that meant more of a focus on sales and relationships—always the things that had brought me unequivocal joy and accomplishment. And someone else can do the work I was not equipped for: the scaling, the planning, the sweating of the books.

And hey, it’s worth noting that this doesn’t just apply to non-creatives like me. How many of you have elevated an incredibly talented designer or engineer or product manager to a management position, only to realize that their true value was as a contributor, not a manager? Someone who wants to do work, not sit in meetings all day?

I was the right person for awhile, and then very suddenly, I wasn’t. Asking “Are you the right person?” is a hard question to ask of yourself that leads right into a dark night of the soul. It’s equally hard to ask that of someone on your team who shepherded your company to this amazing, unexpected place.

But often, it’s the only way. And I think everyone involved will usually find that the decision is easy.

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