Snapshot · The Mel Robbins Podcast
Seth Godin grew one of the first internet companies to nearly 100 employees, with 50 reporting directly to him — and admits he was hiding from strategic work in the daily bustle.
Where this was said
At 50:51 · chapter starts 48:00
The conversation turns to the specific, insidious trap that captures ambitious business owners: hiring yourself for every job because you're faster, cheaper, and 'better' than anyone else. Seth reframes this firmly: every time you do that, you're hiding. You're hiding from the actual strategic work — finding the partnership, building the asset, creating the system that will eventually make you unnecessary. He illustrates with an unusually candid personal confession: at his first internet company, he spent years walking in and enjoying the thrill of answering questions, solving problems, and being the connective tissue for nearly 100 people — 50 of whom reported directly to him. It felt productive. It was hiding. Only in the final three months before the company sold did he finally remove himself from whole sections of the operation, and that's when he understood what building an asset actually means. [1] — Seth Godin "When business owners keep doing every job themselves — because they're cheapest and fastest — they're not being efficient; they're hiding. …" 48:00
When business owners keep doing every job themselves — because they're cheapest and fastest — they're not being efficient; they're hiding. Hiding from the hard strategic work of building something bigger than themselves. Every task you do yourself is a question you're refusing to answer.
Every time you hire yourself to do a job in your business, you're avoiding your real job: building the assets and systems that let you eventually do none of those jobs.
Sam built Algrow from zero to $14,000 in monthly revenue within just six months of shipping his first MVP.
Algrow reached over 10,000 users in roughly six months, driven almost entirely by organic Discord community growth.
Sam acquired his first 400 users entirely through Discord communities, without paid advertising or traditional outreach.
Algrow added exactly 480 new paying customers in its most recent month, demonstrating strong ongoing growth.
Sam's Stripe dashboard showed over £10,000 in revenue in the last four weeks, equivalent to roughly $13,000–$14,000 USD.
Sam gave all early users free access so they could show the tool to friends, turning them into live demos and advocates who helped the product spread virally.
By silently screen-sharing his tool in Discord voice chats rather than posting links, Sam attracted curiosity without violating no-self-promo server rules.
Before building Algrow, Sam and two friends made over $10,000 in revenue through affiliate marketing for RizzApp by posting faceless texting story content.
Bhanu grew SiteGPT to $13,000 monthly recurring revenue entirely through organic channels, spending nothing on paid marketing.
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