Sometimes the less you know about how the work gets done, the freer you are to build the business itself.
Could knowing too much about your own product or service actually hold you back? Sometimes not being the technical expert helps you sidestep a trap many founders fall into — getting so absorbed in the work that they never build the business around it.
Carrie Kelsch founded a garage door repair company with no experience in garage door repair. Rather than treat that as a weakness, she turned it into an edge, pouring her energy into growth, leadership and building a high-performing team instead of getting stuck in the technical detail. As she put it, she did not know how to fix a garage door — and still doesn't. So she leaned on her team to handle operations while she focused on marketing and growth. It is the classic advice from Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited: work on your business, not in it.
The obvious worry is that if you do not understand the technical side, staff or suppliers might take advantage — claiming a job takes longer or costs more than it really does. The answer is to tie your key people's rewards to the long-term success of the company.
One effective approach is phantom equity, which gives employees a stake in the financial upside without transferring actual ownership. It aligns their decisions with your goals and motivates them to grow the business. Carrie used a version of this, rewarding loyal team members with phantom shares. That gave them a real sense of ownership and accountability, which helped her keep her best people — and freed her to focus on growth.
She later sold a majority stake to a private-equity-backed roll-up in home services, which valued the business at around £55 million, recognising the strong foundation and brand she had built. The deal let her take significant capital off the table while keeping a stake in future growth.
Carrie's journey shows you do not need to master every technical detail to build a business worth millions. By focusing on growth, empowering your team and aligning incentives with performance, you can turn what looks like a disadvantage into a competitive edge. Your business is more than the service it delivers — it is a system, a brand and, ultimately, an asset. Sometimes the less you know about how the work gets done, the better.
The Inspire Framework begins by measuring your business against these drivers — and by uncovering what your business is worth today versus what it could be worth. It starts with a free, no-obligation Ignite meeting.
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