Leadership Advice That Only Works If You're Rich

“Delegate everything outside your zone of genius.”

“Don’t work in the business. Work on the business.”

“Say no more than you say yes.”

That advice sounds elite.

Because it is.

But here’s what nobody says out loud: It only works if you’re already rich.

If you’re pre-scale, pre-exit, pre-runway extension — you don’t have the luxury of philosophizing your way out of execution.

Here’s What That Advice Ignores

• That you can’t delegate if you can’t afford to.

• That saying “no” doesn’t feel strategic when your cash flow is gasping.

• That “working on the business” sounds cute when you are the sales team, the product team, and the janitor.

There’s a massive delta between startup leadership and post-exit advice.

But most content doesn’t differentiate.

So we copy tactics from someone with a 15-person ops team — and wonder why they don’t work when it’s just us and a Fiverr VA.

Here’s the Shift

Don’t reject the advice.

Just time it better.

Because what feels like CEO wisdom at $5M ARR would have bankrupted you at $250K.

Instead:

• Make peace with doing “low-leverage” work (until it stops being the bottleneck).

• Know your unit economics before you outsource your instincts.

• Build simple systems before you try scaling sophisticated ones.

You’re not underperforming.

You’re just not at the endgame yet.

This Week’s Thought Experiment

Imagine you only had $10K left in the bank.

What “best practices” would you immediately ignore?

That’s the real foundation of your strategy.

Everything else is startup cosplay.

—Peter