From 80-Hour Weeks to Business Freedom

The 5 Leadership Levels That Changed Everything

I want to share with you a journey that many of us embark on – the transition from being a solopreneur to an entrepreneur. It’s a pivotal moment, and I’m excited to dive into how embracing leadership roles can transform your business.

As discussed in my recent #ADDAZERO podcast episode, becoming an entrepreneur means your role changes dramatically when you hire your first team member. It’s no longer just about getting the work done; it’s about ensuring that work is done efficiently while fostering the growth and development of your team. This shift is both exhilarating and daunting, but trust me, it’s worth it.

The Night Everything Changed for Giles

It was 2 AM on a Tuesday when Giles sent me the text that changed everything.

“I’m sat in my car outside the office. Can’t face going home and explaining to my wife why I missed another family dinner. This isn’t what I thought success would look like.”

Giles had built what everyone else called a thriving consulting business. £400K revenue, growing client list, team of four talented people. From the outside, he’d made it. From the inside, he was drowning.

Six months later, I got a very different text. A photo of Giles on a beach in Portugal, grinning at the camera, with a message: “Team just landed our biggest client ever. I’m 1,200 miles away and haven’t checked email in three days. How is this real life?”

What happened between those two moments is a story about leadership that goes way deeper than management tips and business strategies. It’s about what happens when you stop trying to be indispensable and start making others unstoppable.

The Call That Started It All

When Giles first called me, he sounded exhausted. Not tired-after-a-long-day exhausted, but soul-deep weary.

“I hired people to give me freedom,” he said. “Instead, I have more stress and bigger problems. My lead developer won’t make a single decision without running it past me first. My project manager asks me how to respond to every client email. My admin assistant… well, she’s great at following instructions, but that’s it. They just follow instructions.”

I asked him a simple question: “When you’re away for a day, what happens?”

Long pause.

“Everything stops. Last month I took one day off for my daughter’s sports day. When I got back, there were 47 unread messages in our team WhatsApp, all asking variations of ‘what should I do about this?’ Nothing had moved forward. Nothing.”

I’d heard this story a hundred times before. Successful solopreneurs who hire teams but can’t figure out why their problems multiply instead of divide.

“Giles,” I said, “you’re not leading. You’re just being a really expensive project coordinator.”

That hit home.

The Position Trap

See, Giles was stuck in what John Maxwell calls Level 1 leadership, leading through position alone. He thought his job title meant people should automatically follow his vision and execute with the same passion he had.

But here’s the thing about position-based leadership: people do what you say because they have to, not because they want to. They become order-takers, not problem-solvers. Every decision flows upward to you because you’ve never permitted them to think for themselves.

Giles was working 80-hour weeks, not because the business needed it, but because he’d accidentally trained his team to be helpless without him.

“I keep thinking if I just explain things better, if I write more detailed processes, if I’m clearer about expectations…” he trailed off.

“How’s that working for you?” I asked.

“It’s not.”

The Conversation That Changed Everything

Three weeks later, Giles called me back, and something in his voice had shifted.

“I did something different today,” he said. “Instead of giving Sarah her weekly task list, I asked her what she thought we should prioritise this week.”

Sarah was his lead developer, brilliant technically, but she’d never offered a strategic opinion in two years of working together.

“What happened?” I asked.

“She had ideas. Really good ones. She’d been watching our client calls and noticed patterns I’d missed. She suggested we package some of our one-off solutions into a recurring service. It was… actually genius.”

This is how you move from Level 1 to Level 2 – from position to permission. You start seeing your team as human beings with brains and insights, not just hands to execute your vision.

Giles started having real conversations with his team. Not about deadlines and deliverables, but about their goals, their frustrations, what they’d change if they could. He discovered his project manager wanted to move into business development. His admin assistant was studying digital marketing at night and had ideas about their lead generation.

“It was like meeting my team for the first time,” he told me. “I’d been so focused on what I needed them to do, I never asked what they wanted to become.”

Within a month, something magical started happening. People stopped waiting for detailed instructions. They started bringing him solutions along with problems. Sarah began taking initiative on client technical issues. The project manager started suggesting process improvements.

“They’re actually thinking now,” Giles said, wonder in his voice. “I forgot that’s what I hired them for.”

When the Numbers Started Moving

By month three, something had shifted beyond just team dynamics. The business metrics were improving, and Giles couldn’t quite figure out why.

Project completion times dropped by 30%. Client satisfaction scores hit 9.2/10. Most surprisingly, new client referrals increased by 40% – clients were specifically mentioning how proactive and thoughtful his team was.

This is Level 3 leadership – when your influence creates results that benefit everyone. Your team follows you not just because they like you, but because they can see that following your lead makes their work better, their clients happier, and their results stronger.

“I’m barely working any harder,” Giles told me during one of our calls, “but everything is working better. It’s like the whole machine just got oil.”

But the real transformation was still coming.

The Investment That Scared Him

Four months in, Giles called with a dilemma.

“Sarah wants to get certified in project management. It’s a three-month course, costs £2,500, and she’d need time off for workshops. Part of me thinks ‘great, she’s growing.’ But another part thinks, ‘what if she gets qualified and leaves? What if I’m training my replacement?’”

This is where most leaders plateau. They’re happy to have engaged team members, but they’re terrified to invest in their growth because it feels risky.

“Giles,” I said, “what’s riskier – having a highly skilled, highly engaged team member who might leave, or having a bored, underdeveloped team member who definitely will?”

He invested in Sarah’s certification. Then he gave his admin assistant a £1,000 budget to experiment with digital marketing campaigns. Then he hired a coach for his entire team.

This is Level 4 leadership – people development. You stop thinking about your team as they are and start investing in who they could become.

The results blew his mind.

Sarah didn’t just get certified – she revolutionised how they managed client projects. Her new systems reduced delivery times by another 20% and virtually eliminated scope creep. The admin assistant’s marketing experiments generated £80K in new revenue in her first quarter. The team coach helped everyone communicate more effectively, reducing internal conflicts by 90%.

“I spent £8,000 on their development,” Giles calculated six months later. “It generated over £200K in additional revenue and saved me about 30 hours a week of my time. Best ROI I’ve ever seen.”

But more than that, something fundamental had shifted in how his team operated.

The Text from Portugal

Which brings us back to that beach in Portugal.

By month eight, Giles’s team was running strategy sessions without him. They’d identified and developed two new service lines he’d never considered. They were proactively solving client challenges before they became problems.

This is Level 5 – pinnacle leadership. Your team doesn’t just execute your vision; they expand it. They don’t just solve problems; they prevent them. They don’t just deliver what’s expected; they exceed what seemed possible.

“I used to think being indispensable meant I was valuable,” Giles reflected during our last formal session. “Turns out, being dispensable is true freedom.”

His business grew 150% that year while he worked fewer hours than ever. Not because he found some magic productivity hack, but because he’d built a team that could think, decide, and act without him.

“The weird thing,” he told me, “is that now I actually want to be involved. Before, I was involved because I had to be. Now I choose when and how to engage. It’s completely different.”

The Question That Matters

I’m sharing Giles’s story because I see too many talented entrepreneurs trapped where he was, working harder and harder in businesses that should be giving them more freedom, not less.

The question isn’t whether you’re a good leader or a bad leader. The question is: what level are you operating at, and what would it take to climb to the next one?

Are you still trying to control everything through position and authority? Are you building the relationships that create genuine followership? Are you consistently delivering results that benefit your whole team? Are you investing in your people’s growth even when it feels risky? Or have you created an environment where your team can achieve things you never imagined?

Here’s what I know: every level feels impossible until you reach it. Giles couldn’t imagine his team taking initiative when he was at Level 1. He couldn’t imagine them driving results when he was at Level 2. He couldn’t imagine them growing beyond their current roles when he was at Level 3.

But leadership isn’t about imagining what’s possible. It’s about taking the next step and discovering what becomes possible.

Where This Goes Next

If Giles’s story resonates with you – if you’re working harder than you want to be, if your team feels more like a burden than a blessing, if you’re tired of being the bottleneck to everything that matters – then let’s talk.

At My TrueNORTH, we specialise in helping conscientious business leaders scale sustainably. Not just adding zeros to your revenue, but multiplying your impact while dividing your stress.

Because here’s the truth: you didn’t build a business to become its prisoner. You built it to create something bigger than yourself.

The view from Level 4 and 5 is worth every step of the climb.

What level are you operating at right now? Drop me a message and let me know what resonated with you today – I read every single one.