The Leader, The Manager, and The Salesperson
Most people I consult with don’t struggle in business because they lack discipline, intelligence, or effort. They struggle because they’re playing the wrong role—and no one ever told them.
If you’re a young professional, aspiring business owner, or early-stage executive trying to decide when a side hustle becomes a real business, how to manage a team, or how to work on your business instead of constantly in it, keep reading.
Prior to starting my career as a private pay practitioner, I had been accustomed to professional standards that had rewarded adherence, following a code of conduct, and obeyed ethical guidelines – these long-standing business procedures were guided by “process”. On my first day working in a private enterprise, I learned that the company had been operating without many of these processes – there was no formal onboarding paperwork outlining the conditions of treatment, and no protocols in place.
Throughout the next 10 years, I honed and shaped the business to not only develop procedures and processes, but to also adhere to those same standards. More importantly, I learned that there are three kinds of entrepreneurs, and depending on which one you are will determine what kind of challenges you’ll run into.
In this week’s edition of OPB, I’m breaking down the three kinds of business owners that I see as a high-performance consultant, and how I work with them to keep their strengths a strength, and offload their weaknesses.
The Leader, The Manager, and The Sales Person
You’re one of these more than you’re another.
Let’s start with “The Leader”. Leaders are visionaries. They are the ones who are largely driven by passion and fueled by their mission. They’re the sort of people who move fast, play loose, and project so much self-belief that they seemingly can’t be stopped. They stand at the head of the line, direct traffic, dominate whiteboard sessions, and can’t physically contain their excitement while talking sometimes.
You know you’re a leader (in this context) if you’ve built your business from scratch. You feel driven to bring a product or service to life. You also can’t seem to find time to build processes that move your business forward smoothly.
The Manager
As I recently heard it described, managers do things the right way, while leaders do the right things. They are operators. In the context of my job above, I was a manager – someone who saw processes as an asset, who saw rules and procedures as a necessity for uniform performance and liked things like codifying language, defining values, and creating structure.
Managers usually look to keep everyone in line while leaders stand at the front of the line itself. It’s been my experience that after eight employees, managers become a necessity, since it’s at this size business that leaders no longer have the bandwidth to provide direct support the way they may have prior.
While managers can hold to procedures and processes, they have a tendency to think inherently rigidly as a result. Too many managers create unnecessary bureaucracy, and incentivize rules, structure and process that if left unchecked can turn a fast moving business that moves like a speed boat, into a slow moving business that moves more like a cruise ship.
The Sales Person
Certain business owners just simply have the gift of gab and feel most comfortable building connections. They prefer calls instead of text, will connect you to others without being asked, and ask questions that force “yes” or “no” answers. They’re passionate about closing deals, get energized by meeting new people, have little to no problem being rejected and tend to be pretty gregarious.
The problem with these kinds of “closers” is that they tend to lack an organizational process, the kinds that managers would bring, and if they’re not also the visionary, they will be inefficient with how they deploy their time and energy. They usually have tons of inefficiencies in their process, lack continuity in their message as they individualize each pitch and miss obvious opportunities to follow up with key leads in favor of prioritizing volume.
Leader Problem + My Top Recommendations
Problem:
- The longer they stay in the business the worse the business performs
My Recommendations:
- Hire a manager and spend the time training them on everything that you take for granted. Don’t mistake intuition for intention. Just because it comes naturally to you, doesn’t mean it comes naturally to everyone – have the patience to teach first – thereby creating leverage on your time.
- Document what you see as critical steps for your business to succeed. Keep the list to just what is critical. This list is what you emphasize when training your management team.
- Define your vision and mission and use examples so that people understand what “good” looks like. Again, don’t just assume that words like “integrity” or “excellence” are understood.
- Avoid shiny object syndrome – visionaries tend to chase the next big thing – they need managers to keep them in line OR they need to be really clear on what success in their business looks like.
- Think about what your business would do if you died – this can help you understand where the gaps are. Another way to figure out what would happen would be to take 4 weeks off each year and see how the business does without you in it. You’ll learn a lot about what happens when you’re not there.
Manager Problem + My Top Recommendations
Problem:
- Overthinking, overengineering, move too slow as a result
My Recommendations:
- Think in first principles; if you needed to create a “process” or structure from scratch, what would be the most essential functions that the process would need to cover. Trim before adding. Try and aim for elegance, not exhaustive lists.
- Push back on more bureaucracy. Managers are incentivized to build structures and red tape, but they have to have the mission of the business top of mind when doing so. Far too often managers will build structures just for the sake of saying that they built something that they can bring to the higher-ups for approval. Avoid that tendency by building less structures, but more elegant structures. Think 1 page instruction manuals with pictures and not Ikea furniture manuals.
Sales Person Problem + My Top Recommendations
Problem:
- Lost in connection, forgotten targets, messy
My Recommendations:
- Often strong sales people lose sight of the “why” behind what they’re doing and become consumed by vanity metrics like – well – closed sales. If you’re strong at selling your business but have no back-end process to understand your close rate, who to follow up with, and what you’re following up about, then your problem is a systems problem.
- CRMs can help, but even then, strong sales can lead to gamifying sales without remembering what you’re building. As Naval Ravikant says, “you're doing sales because you failed at marketing; you're doing marketing because you failed at product.” Don’t forget about the product (or service).
- Define your business’s “why” – map out the vision and mission – establish what the culture of the business will be. This ends up being your anchor and can tie you back to why you’re selling in the first place
Within the last two weeks I’ve personally supported 4x business owners and young professionals in outlining what they need to move forward in the new year.
- In one case, I worked with a healthcare business owner in thinking through how to become a better sales/visionary leader since he has all the tools of a manager but lacks clarity on building out a year-long vision.
- In another case, I worked with a long-standing manager in finance to help them map out how they can leave their job and start their own business by 2027.
- In yet another case, I worked with a healthcare CEO whose business benefited from our ability to build managerial processes in play in 2025. We’re developing a more streamlined management system for them in 2026.
- In a final case, I sat down with another service based business owner to help them nail down their sales pitch, knowing that the vision and management was all in place at this point.
As you think about 2026, the most important question may not be what you build—but who you need to be in your business.
If you want help working that through, reach out.
Thanks for reading as always and if this resonates with you, forward this edition to a friend!
Time to win the week 🏆
See you next week :)
– J
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