With GROW! 2018 just one week away, I’ve been spending time preparing for the keynote session, when I’ll lead a free-ranging discussion with Clay Mathile and his son, Mike.

Clay purchased the Iams pet food company for $1.2M in 1982 and 17 years later sold it to Procter & Gamble for $2.3B; he was the only shareholder. It’s an incredible story by any measure, but it’s especially so for me, and for so many other entrepreneurs, because of what Clay has done through his educational organization, Aileron, to teach us how to grow our own businesses using the principles of professional management he used to grow Iams.

This week I’ve been rereading Clay’s book, Run Your Business, Don’t Let It Run You, and I’m struck again by how full it is of great practical advice for the small business owner. Clay really understands where we’re coming from, and he knows how to help us get where we need to go. See if Clay’s words don’t hit home for you:

[T]hat tight-fisted control you’ve been using to run everything, to hold everything together, and to keep it all going one day at a time is limiting your growth potential...Although your solo command-and-control style used to work, maybe even was necessary in the beginning, that same tactic won’t serve you now that you’ve grown your business...You don’t have to be the one-man band, doing it all yourself. In fact, if you want to grow, you will need to enlist some other musicians.

I’m in my fourth decade of running Grunder Landscaping and while I’ve learned a lot about how and what to delegate over the years, I still have to remind myself from time to time to share the mic and let other musicians play.

How about you—are you a one-man band? Are you what’s holding your business back from growth? We’ll go in depth into Clay’s tactics for changing that at GROW! 2018. Hope to see you there!