I am inspired by business owners and entrepreneurs every day.
I get to work with people who have built companies from scratch, taken enormous risks, figured things out as they went and created businesses that support employees, families and communities. I see things they’re doing that make me think differently about Innerloop all the time.
And, every once in a while, I see a pain point in someone else’s business that makes me think, I don’t want to create that at Innerloop.
That’s not judgment. I’ve made TONS of mistakes. I’ve held onto things too long, tried to figure out things I had no business figuring out myself, put off decisions because I wasn’t sure what the right answer was and convinced myself it would be faster to “just do it” rather than hand it off.
I’m still guilty of some of those things.
But one pattern I’ve become much more aware of is what happens when too much of a business lives with the owner.
The decisions. The ideas. The passwords. The processes. The relationships. The things we’re going to get to when we have time.
And as the owner of a digital marketing agency, marketing is naturally one of the clearest places I see it.
There Are a Lot of Easy Wins Sitting on the List
Most business owners we work with aren’t looking for more things to do.
They already have plenty.
They’re talking to customers, managing employees, solving problems, reviewing numbers, handling sales and dealing with whatever unexpected issue showed up that morning.
Then somewhere on the list is everything related to marketing: the website, SEO, advertising, email, content and social media.
The website needs attention. Someone should be following up with previous customers. The company hasn’t sent an email in months. There are great photos sitting on someone’s phone that could be used. Nobody is consistently asking happy customers for reviews or replying to the great reviews they have received. There’s a profitable service the company barely mentions online.
Everyone knows these things should probably be happening.
But the owner is busy.
Or they’re not quite sure what to do first.
So nothing happens.
And I don’t think the answer is that business owners need to “make more time for marketing.”
They probably don’t have it.
The better question is: Why does all of this still require their time?
Delegation Is a Strength
My friend Brian Vinci, founder of Apogee Leadership, recently told me a story that has really stuck with me.
Brian works with business owners and leadership teams on many of the things that happen behind the scenes of a growing company: leadership, accountability, processes, priorities and, importantly for this conversation, building a business where everything doesn’t have to run through the owner.
He told me about a client he worked with who finally made the decision to document his work, train employees to do what was on his plate and delegate responsibilities.
It took some time, but finally the business didn’t exist solely in his head.
Then something unimaginable happened.
The owner was involved in a horrible accident and spent nine months in a coma.
Nine months completely removed from the business he had built.
And when he eventually recovered, he had a business to come back to.
As a business owner, my body physically reacted to this story. I instantly felt the panic and relief of this moment for that business owner. Obviously, that’s an extreme example. But it has helped me prioritize delegation.
That owner didn’t care less about his company because he allowed other people to take ownership.
He cared enough about what he had built to make sure it didn’t depend entirely on him.
He delegated.
He documented.
He made sure other people knew what needed to happen.
That’s not giving up control.
That’s protecting what you’ve built.
And no, I’m not suggesting we should all run our businesses preparing for a nine-month coma.
But what about a two-week vacation?
A family emergency?
A huge new client?
A period of rapid growth?
Or just a really busy Tuesday?
If everything requires you, eventually something isn’t going to get done.
Marketing Is Often One of Those Things
We see a much less dramatic version of this every day.
The owner knows the company should be talking more about a certain service.
They know which customer stories would make great content.
They know there’s an upcoming event that should be promoted.
They know the sales team needs better materials.
They know the website doesn’t accurately reflect everything the company does anymore.
They know there are hundreds or thousands of past customers sitting in a database who haven’t heard from the business in a year.
None of these are necessarily difficult problems.
But all of that knowledge is sitting in one person’s head, waiting for that person to have enough time to do something with it.
That’s where things stall.
And that’s also where I think a good marketing partner should be incredibly valuable.
Our job shouldn’t be to give a busy business owner 14 more marketing ideas.
It should be to help figure out which three actually matter and then get them done.
“I Don’t Have Time” Should Be the Beginning of the Conversation
When someone tells me they don’t have time for marketing, my reaction isn’t that they need to find more time.
You shouldn’t have to become an SEO expert to make sure your company can be found online.
You shouldn’t have to keep up with every change Google or Meta makes.
You shouldn’t be spending Sunday afternoon figuring out what to post on social media.
And you shouldn’t have to research every marketing opportunity from scratch while simultaneously trying to run the rest of the business.
That doesn’t mean completely handing over the keys.
Nobody outside your company understands your business exactly the way you do.
We need your perspective. We need to know what you’re trying to grow, what customers are asking for, what makes you different, what’s profitable and where you want the business to go.
But once we understand those things, our job should be to take work off your plate.
Not create another list of things for you to manage.
Uncertainty Can Be Just as Paralyzing as Being Busy
Being busy isn’t always what stops us.
Sometimes we just don’t know what to do.
Business owners are constantly being pitched things.
SEO packages. Advertising platforms. Sponsorships. AI tools. Lead-generation services. New websites. Direct mail. Video. Email automation. Social media. And whatever the marketing world has decided everyone absolutely must be doing this month.
If marketing isn’t your world, figuring out which opportunities are legitimate, which make sense for your business and which are a complete waste of money isn’t easy.
So you research.
You ask around.
You put it on the list.
You wait.
I’ve done this too.
Sometimes waiting is absolutely the right decision. But uncertainty can also become its own form of paralysis. If this is an issue for you, I’ll introduce you to my mindset coach!
Here are the questions that I ask to get my clients unstuck:
What’s the easy win that keeps getting pushed to next month?
What isn’t happening because you’re the only person who knows about it?
What are you still personally managing that someone else could own?
Where is uncertainty preventing a decision that really isn’t as complicated as it has become?
I started thinking about all of this because of things I’ve observed in other businesses.
But I’m writing it down because I don’t want to forget to ask those same questions about my own.
I don’t want Innerloop to become a business where everything important lives in my head. And I don’t want our clients’ marketing to depend on whether they happen to have a few extra hours this week.
There will always be another idea.
Another opportunity.
Another thing we could be doing.
Strong leadership may sometimes mean knowing when the better move is simply to trust the right person, hand something over and let them run with it.
Because sometimes the easiest wins aren’t things we haven’t thought of yet.
They’re the things we already know we should be doing.
And if reading this made you realize the bottleneck goes beyond marketing, that’s Brian’s world, not mine.
Apogee Leadership works with business owners and leadership teams to create more clarity, accountability and structure so the company can grow without everything continuing to run through the owner.
You can learn more about Apogee Leadership, or reach out to me and I’ll happily make an introduction.
I’ll stick to helping business owners get marketing strategy and execution off their list.