A few years ago, I called up someone who was building the exact same thing I was.
His name is Brooks. He ran a productivity blog. Same audience as Asian Efficiency, same topics, similar format. In any reasonable sense of the word, we were competitors.
I called him to offer him a job.
The Problem I Was Trying to Solve
For most of Asian Efficiency’s history, I was doing everything. Running the team, writing content, managing courses, and handling operations. All of it.
Which was fine when the company was small. But as it grew, I started noticing something: the work I loved — teaching, speaking, getting in front of audiences, thinking through big ideas — was getting crowded out by the work of running the business.
The irony of building a company around productivity is that you spend a lot of time doing things you’re not actually best at.
I wanted to be the person out front. Teaching live workshops. Doing partnerships. Building my personal brand. That’s where my energy was. That’s the work that felt like it actually mattered to me.
But the business needed someone running it. And that person couldn’t be me anymore — not if I wanted to focus on what I actually cared about.
Why a Traditional Operator Wasn’t the Answer
My first instinct was to find a COO or general manager. Someone with operations experience, management credentials, the usual profile.
But when I thought about what the job actually required, I realized those credentials weren’t what I needed.
Running Asian Efficiency meant understanding the audience. Caring about productivity as a topic. Being able to jump on a podcast, write a post, talk to customers — not just manage spreadsheets and processes. This wasn’t a pure ops role. It was a hybrid of operator and practitioner.
A traditional manager would need a year just to learn the space.
That’s when I thought about Brooks.
He’d already built it. He understood the audience. He cared about the subject matter. He’d been doing many of the same things I’d been doing — just in a smaller operation.
The Pitch
I reached out and made him a simple offer: run my company instead of your own.
Same work. Same industry. Same audience. But with an existing team, an established brand, and consistent six-figure income — instead of the roller coaster of building a solo business from scratch.
He was at the point in his solo journey where the income inconsistency was wearing on him. Two kids heading to college. A real desire for stability.
I wasn’t offering him a step down. I was offering him a chance to do the exact work he was already doing — at a bigger scale, without the financial uncertainty.
He said yes.
What Each of Us Got
Brooks got stability. A real paycheck. A team to work with. The ability to do the content and podcasting and customer work he loved — without the revenue anxiety of running a solo operation.
I got freedom. I could step back from day-to-day operations. Focus on the workshops, the speaking, the consulting clients, the personal brand work that I found most meaningful. Asian Efficiency kept running without me being the bottleneck for everything.
That’s a clean trade.
The Pattern I Keep Seeing
Since then, I’ve watched a lot of business owners get stuck in the same trap I was in. They’re the hero of their own company. Every decision flows through them. Every piece of work gets reviewed by them. Every client ends up talking to them eventually.
And the business can’t grow past their personal bandwidth.
The question most founders ask is: “How do I do all of this?”
The better question is: “Who already knows how to do this — and why would they want to?”
Sometimes that person is someone on a hiring platform. Sometimes it’s a referral. But sometimes… it’s someone who’s been doing a version of your job themselves, who would love to do it at scale with someone else taking the financial risk.
Your competitor might be looking for exactly what you’re offering.
What This Looks Like in Practice
If you’re a founder or expert service provider who wants to step back from operations:
The person you’re looking for probably already understands your work. They’ve been in your industry. They know your audience. They can step in fast — not because they’re a generalist manager, but because they already care about the same things.
Look at who’s running smaller versions of what you’ve built. Ask yourself: would they thrive doing this inside a larger operation with stable income? Would I thrive having them run this?
It’s not a conventional hire. But it works.
I advise founders and operators on business design, AI systems, and building companies that run without requiring your constant presence. My AI workshops and consulting programs are built around the same principles — clarity first, then systems, then freedom.
