When you started this crazy journey, you did it all, right? You were the CEO, the head of sales, the head of marketing, the customer service rep, and the person who unjams the printer. You’re the chief everything officer.
And for a while, that’s necessary. You’re in the trenches, getting your hands dirty, learning the ropes from the ground up.
But here’s the problem a lot of us hit: we get stuck there.
We build a business that completely depends on us doing a little bit of everything. It’s exhausting. It’s stressful. And honestly, it puts a hard ceiling on how big our company can grow. You can’t scale a business that’s built entirely on one person’s ability to multitask until they burn out.
So, how do you break free? It starts with a brutally honest look in the mirror and finding what I like to call your “Zone of Genius.”
What the Heck is a “Zone of Genius”?
Think of your skills and time in four different zones:
The Zone of Incompetence: Stuff you’re just bad at. For me, that’s bookkeeping. I look at a spreadsheet and my brain checks out.
The Zone of Competence: Stuff you can do, but so can a lot of other people. It doesn’t make you special. Maybe you can write a decent email newsletter, but it’s not winning any awards.
The Zone of Excellence: Things you’re really good at. You’re skilled, you get results, and people compliment you on it. This is where many successful people get stuck because it feels safe and comfortable.
The Zone of Genius: This is the sweet spot. It’s the work that you’re not only excellent at, but that you’re uniquely built for. It’s the stuff that energizes you, that you could lose yourself in for hours, that comes so naturally you might not even realize it’s a superpower. It’s where your deepest skills and your greatest passions collide.
Your job as the leader is to spend as much time as possible in Zone #4. This is where you create the most insane value for your company. This is where your vision comes to life. This is what you, and only you, can bring to the table.
Charlie Munger Nailed It
This brings me to that quote from the legendary investor Charlie Munger. He once said:
“Nobody wants to go to a doctor who is half proctologist and half dentist.”
Just sit with that for a second. It’s a funny image, but it’s absolutely brilliant. You’d run screaming from that doctor’s office! You want a specialist. You want someone who is the absolute best in the world at the one thing you need.
Your customers are the same. They are buying from you because you solve a specific problem for them. They don’t want a company that’s kind of good at a dozen things. They want a specialist. They want the absolute best at the one thing they need.
And your company needs the same from you as its leader. It doesn’t need a half-CEO, half-social-media-manager. It needs a focused, clear-headed leader operating in their Zone of Genius.
When you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being mediocre at everything. You become the proctologist-dentist. And nobody wants that.
The High Cost of Drifting from Your Genius
So, what happens when you, the CEO, aren’t living in your genius zone? The costs are huge:
You Burn Out: Doing work you hate or that drains you is a one-way ticket to resentment and exhaustion. Your passion for the business fizzles.
Your Business Stagnates: If you’re stuck managing day-to-day tasks, you’re not doing the high-level thinking required for growth. You’re too busy working in the business to work on the business.
You Become the Bottleneck: Every decision, every minor task, has to go through you. Your team gets frustrated because they can’t move forward without you, and you become the choke point for all progress.
You Miss Big Opportunities: While your head is down answering customer service emails, you’re not looking up to see the new market trend, the potential partnership, or the innovative product idea.
You built this business to be free, right? But if you’re not careful, the business you built ends up owning you.
How to Find Your Zone of Genius (A Practical Guide)
Okay, so this all sounds great. But how do you actually find your Zone of Genius? It’s not always obvious. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
What work makes me lose track of time? What are you doing when you look up and three hours have flown by in what feels like ten minutes? That’s a major clue.
What tasks energize me, even when they’re hard? It’s not about things being easy. It’s about the work that challenges you in a way that feels exciting, not draining.
What do people consistently ask me for help with? What is your unique skill that colleagues, friends, and employees naturally come to you for?
If money were no object, what part of this business would I still show up to do? Strip away the financial pressure. What is the core work you genuinely love?
Your Zone of Genius isn’t necessarily the thing you’re best at right now. It’s the thing you have the most potential to be world-class in. It might be your ability to connect with customers. It might be your killer product vision. It might be your talent for inspiring and leading a team.
Getting (and Staying) in Your Lane
Finding your zone is one thing. Staying in it is another. It requires discipline and a mindset shift. You have to start seeing your primary role not as a “doer,” but as a “strategist” and “vision-keeper.”
Here’s your battle plan:
1. Do a Time Audit. For one week, write down exactly how you spend your time, in 30-minute blocks. Be brutally honest. At the end of the week, highlight everything that was in your Zone of Genius. I’ll bet it’s a frighteningly small percentage. This is your starting point.
2. Ruthlessly Delegate or Delete. Look at all the tasks that aren’t in your Zone of Genius. For each one, ask: Does this really need to be done? And if it does, does it really need to be done by me?
Delegate: Can you train a team member? Can you hire a virtual assistant for a few hours a week? Can you outsource it to a freelancer? Your goal is to get every possible task off your plate that doesn’t require your unique genius.
Delete: Can you just stop doing it? Is it a legacy task that no longer adds real value? Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is quit something that isn’t working.
3. Build a Team that Complements You. You’re not supposed to be good at everything. Your job is to be good at the core vision. Then, hire people who are geniuses in the areas you are not. If you’re a visionary big-picture thinker, you need a detail-oriented operations manager. If you’re a creative, you need a numbers-person to handle the finances. Don’t hire clones of yourself. Hire people who fill your gaps and make the whole team stronger.
4. Block “Genius Time” on Your Calendar. This is non-negotiable. Block out large, uninterrupted chunks of time each week (2-3 hours at a minimum) to work only on the projects that fall in your Zone of Genius. Treat this time as the most important meeting on your calendar—because it is. This is when you’ll have your biggest breakthroughs.
The View from the Genius Zone
When you make this shift, everything changes. You start enjoying your business again. You have the mental space to think strategically, which leads to real growth. Your team becomes more empowered and capable because they’re trusted with real responsibility. And your customers get a better, more focused company.
You stop being the stressed-out, stretched-thin owner trying to be a proctologist, dentist, cardiologist, and dermatologist all at once.
You become the specialist. The expert. The leader your business truly needs.
So, take that step back. Figure out what only you can do. And then, have the courage to do just that.
Grab my book! https://amzn.to/45Cm2ky
Hi, I’m Heather.
Let me help you scale your Utah $1M+ biz to $20M+
My credentials:
- Built & sold Queen of Wraps (yep, that’s my face on the side of I-15)
- Learned 1,769,230+ lessons so you skip trial-and-error
- Zero Ivy MBA (just pioneer grit + market-tested tactics)
Let’s talk if you’re:
- Ready to make your ‘good’ business a GREAT business
- Hitting $1M+ and knowing you’re built for more
- Have 10+ employees that need to see your vision
Subscribe to my YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Buy-Scale-SellWhy You’re Burned Out and Your Business is Stuck (The Proctologist-Dentist Problem)