Most CTOs and tech leaders don’t think they’re the bottleneck. They think they’re being responsible: staying close to the details, protecting quality, moving fast.

But from a buyer’s perspective, that same behavior often is a sign of risk: decisions that don’t scale, teams that depend too heavily on one person, and execution that quietly slows down as the organization grows.

In this episode of The CTO Compass, Mark sits down with David Hori, an operator-turned-acquirer with more than 25 years of experience scaling companies and taking three startups to exit. Today, David doesn’t just advise leaders, he buys businesses. That gives him a rare view on what breaks as companies scale, and why strong leaders so often become the constraint without realizing it.

Together, they unpack:

1. how CTOs and tech leaders unintentionally become bottlenecks
2. the difference between delegation and abdication
3. how to work effectively with visionary CEOs without drowning in continuously changing priorities
4. why AI often amplifies leadership problems instead of fixing them
5. and what buyers look for when evaluating whether a business can scale or exit

Chapters

00:00 When the Leader is the Bottleneck

07:58 Being Open to Change

15:36 Handling Visionaries

19:12 How to Approach Delegation

26:27 AI in Today's Business Landscape

37:14 Is Your Business Going to be Bought?

39:55 Realizing Where You're at!

About David

David buys profitable local businesses, typically with 10-200 employees or $3–$15M in revenue. He is not private equity chasing a quick flip. He focuses on preserving what founders built, including their people, culture, and legacy.

He also advises a small number of established owners, but he thinks like a buyer, not a consultant. That means direct, honest assessments with no busywork and no slide-deck frameworks that fail in practice. Just proven systems that help owners step back or exit entirely.

Whether he is buying a business or advising an owner, David brings an operator’s perspective. Fast decisions, practical solutions, no fluff.

Where to find David

1. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamdavidhori/
2. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toplineops/
3. Topline Operators: https://www.toplineops.com/
4. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@toplineops

When was the last time? You took three weeks off. And that's very telling because sometimes their eyes will widen. They're like three weeks. That's a long time. Maybe never, right? There are people that really enjoy the work and so they won't take three weeks off. But often when you start digging, Okay, how come? You don't like taking time off? What would happen if you did? What would happen if you got.

Welcome to the CTO Compass podcast. I'm your host, Mark Wormgoor, tech strategist and executive coach. In every episode, we meet tech leaders from startup CTOs to enterprise CIOs to explore what it means to lead in tech today. Let's dive into today's episode.

Most leaders don't think that they're actually the bottleneck. They think they're being responsible, hands-on, close to the details, protecting quality, they're moving fast, but from the outside, it looks very different. The same behavior, it often looks like control, fragility and it slows down execution David our guest today he sees this pattern all the time he doesn't just advise leaders and founders he actually goes and buys businesses and that's what we're going to talk about David spent over 25 years scaling companies taking three startups exit and now he acquires and advises profitable businesses where legacy really matters he helps the owners either take a step back from the day to day or when they're selling step out entirely We're going to talk about why smart operators become the bottleneck without often realizing it, how shiny object syndrome, and we suffer from that quite a bit in technology, especially with AI now, destroys a lot of the clarity and direction, the North Star that we're setting, and what CTOs and tech leaders can do to get out of the weeds without losing control of what's happening.

So, David. Thank you very much for joining and welcome.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

From your buyer perspective, when you buy companies, what are the earliest signals that you see that a strong leader has quietly or maybe not so quietly become the bottleneck in their company?

I think. One particular question I like to ask founders and owners that is kind of the least intrusive probably, is asking them simply, , con co be in the You took three weeks off. And that's very telling because sometimes their eyes will widen. They're like three weeks. That's a long time. Maybe never, right? And There are people that really enjoy the work and so they won't take three weeks off. But often when you start digging, OK, how come? You don't like taking time off? What would happen if you did? What would happen if you got abducted by aliens? What would break? Would people know what to do? Those kinds of questions then start to unravel where the bottleneck is. And a lot of times you'll see it come back to that owner operator.

And what happens? Why do you get into those discussions? Is it usually because you're buying the businesses, because you're advising them?

So what's a discussion that leads up to this first discussion that you have about taking a step back?

Great question. The conversations that I'm having with owners is, generally through the lens of I'm looking to acquire the business. That's what all of my outreach and connections is aimed towards. Business owners that are specifically looking to exit. That said... I incidentally do encounter a number of business owners who are just stuck. And sometimes when you're stuck, you don't know what else to do. And so you're like, I guess I'll just sell.

Like I can't break through the $3 million revenue ceiling. I guess I'll just sell. I've tried everything.

So I do... Coach. A select few of those owners, but my focus is on buying businesses. And so when I buy a business, I want to buy a business that isn't dependent on the owner, or we're able to put some things in place pretty quickly to enable them to take a step back or fully exit. From their business.

And I guess most of those business owners never really thought about taking a step back or taking it easier and that they're in the midst of it. What makes it so that they are so in the midst of day-to-day execution and they spend so much time.

There? There's a couple of things that are at play, but some of the common ones that I encounter the most is they actually haven't taken a step back to consider what the business might look like without them. They got into the business kind of maybe they were great in a specific area like, I'm interested in AI. I'll build an AI business or I'm a great engineer. I'll found a SaaS company. And once you're in that, building a company, very few people have the well, means and the kind of ability to recognize that, hey, maybe there are aspects of building a business that I could use help on. And so what happens is they kind of start assembling a team and people start taking on responsibilities. And all of a sudden they find themselves backed into a really tiny corner where they're actually the glue that kind of holds everybody else together and they're not doing what they like. What leverages their strengths, and they're kind of the, you used the bottleneck, that's a great word, for information, decision-making, and all those things by default.

So, and what are the next steps then that you take with them? How do you help them take that little step back and actually...

Yeah, delegate some of the work or make it an independent business that can operate without the owner. Yeah.

If I'm going to work with a business owner, there's a framework I like to walk them through that helps them identify what are they spending their time on. And it's really, I think, an easy exercise. I'll say simple exercise where you're literally just capturing what you're doing every 15 minutes over a period of time.

And then you can go back and analyze that and categorize it based on what's bringing you energy, what is leveraging your expertise and do you like to work on versus that stuff that leaves you drained or maybe you're avoiding or avoided for an entire week and finally got down to it. And then on a different plane, what is generating value for your business and what's not really generating that much value for your business.

So you can plot it out to start understanding what makes the most sense for me to give up first. And where is my zone of genius within the business?

And then we can start looking about at like different, aspects of whether it's outsourcing, like you mentioned, or technology and process or empowering existing team members.

Okay, that sounds like a very simple exercise, one that a lot of people can do. Is there something you can share around that as well? Or something that people.

Don't know about. Yeah, so if you follow me on Instagram, I post all of my best stuff there. And if you reach out to me there, I'm happy to give you the framework that I use that you can go through on your own. And if you want to go through that as a next step and have it unpacked and explain what to do next, I'm happy to connect with you on that. But follow me on Instagram, DM me, and I will send you that simple framework for really discovering the low hanging fruit and the opportunities to get some breathing room in your business.

We're going to share your Instagram handle as well on the show notes so people can find it there. So, and from these first couple of steps, what usually happens? How open are owners, the owners that you work with to changing their behavior, their dynamic that maybe they've been in for five, 10 or even 20 years.

There is, as you can imagine, a spectrum. And I think the key is to focus my energy and channel my energy, towards business owners that are going to embrace change. And most, I mean, We're humans. We don't want to... Shake things up. We've gotten comfortable with the way things are and how we do things. But there are certain people that are more open to change and implementing things and don't need to sit around thinking about it. And those are the business owners that I tend to gravitate towards and make time to connect with and coach and work with. On the acquisition side, because I'm always looking at a business through the lens of could I potentially acquire this business? Is this a potential acquisition target for me and a good fit for me? And that is a lens that I look at regardless of whether or not the owner wants to remain involved in the business post-close, we're still going to have to work very closely together. We have to establish a ton of trust and rapport and be highly collaborative with each other. And so, But inherently, that kind of weeds out people that just are sitting back being like, well, it is what it is. That's how it's going to be. That's how I've always done it.

You know, so those, you know, those people tend to fall out of the funnel, so to speak, early on. Or opt out.

The reason that I find this entire discussion interesting, I mean, our audience isn't business owners, right? It's CTOs and tech leaders. This dynamic, it actually plays, that's what I think, for a lot of leaders in bigger companies as well that maybe aren't business owners, but that lead the departments, that lead the team. You've come from bigger corporations in the past. Where have you seen this dynamic play as well?

- Yeah, so, for the last 10 years of my life, I was in the world of primarily VC-funded tech startups. And so... I've worked with some really brilliant founders and executives And even they struggle being the bottleneck. And Sometimes there are different drivers behind why they become a bottleneck.

Sometimes they care really about delivering a culture or customer experience that is a reflection of them or their identities tied up in the company. Sometimes, you know, it is hard. To trust money and responsibility and autonomy from day one to a team of people that is being assembled around you, even the hiring. Often that's one of the first ones that I would have to show them a path 2. Hiring is going to be done in a manner that makes you proud, that supports your business unit success, et cetera, and develop that trust because there's so many different things that you can hang on to that should be entrusted to your team, to the people that you've assembled around you. It can be implemented into a process.

And especially in startups and scale-ups, I mean, you start with a very small team, maybe even three founders, and that scales up to 10, 20, 50, 70, 100, 200, maybe even more over time. That journey for any leader, any business founder must be quite hard. How do you work with them to let go? What do they need to do to let.

Go? So I'll start with how have I worked with them? And really, again, I am constantly Whatever role I'm in, I'm constantly investing in trust and I have to be reliably able to demonstrate an understanding of their priorities and then deliver on that. And it's that simple. I spend a lot of time asking questions, learning about what they need, what they want, what their fears are, and then creating solutions and proposing ideas that enable them to see like, yeah, that's it. If I can get somebody to say that's it, Then we have a platform to move forward and move them out of being the bottleneck. And again, it can come from in many different aspects of the business, but it's not going to happen by accident. And I think that's a mistake that many executives, many founders make. Believe is like, as we grow, it'll kind of happen organically. And it is by design. It is through excruciating iteration often where you try something, you're like, that didn't have the exact outcome we were looking for.

So let's put, you know, maybe we back it up, walk it back, put some training wheels on it first, you know, try a different approach. But it's all about finding, again, those opportunities having trust.

And then I think the third one that tends to really resonate with executives in the tech arena, bring in data.

Okay. And you're involved in every final interview. Gosh.

So based on that statistic alone, it is impossible for us to be successful. So where can we like deploy you strategically in the area that speaks to you, your anxiety or fear or where you think you had the most value in that hiring process? Okay, cool. Now we can focus your efforts there. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Give me a story, right? Give me a story of somebody, a leader that you work with or a founder that you worked with that really took this too hard and turned this all around.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think So I worked with two co-founders at pro.com. Who I think did this the best from day one. And it wasn't that they didn't still struggle with it, but early on, They're... Go-to-market strategy, so to speak, was we're going to win by geographic expansion. And when they brought me on, they entrusted the how to me from day one, whether, you know, like if we want to go into a new geography and for context, pro.com delivered a residential construction services that was tech enabled.

So... I could go and find a person in a new geography and then, you know, kind of land and expand, build a team around them. But I could go and find somebody that already owned a company. And had a reputation in customers and clients.

And then we could go in and acquire that. So like the how was left entirely up to me. And that enabled some really meaningful progress if the goal, again, was geographic expansion. Now, again, they were somebody that cared deeply about the team they were assembling and wanted to make sure that people were a great fit and that the culture was vibrant as any good founder would want to do. And so there were small iterations and I named a couple actually that were specific to their case. I think one of the main things too is they became really concerned about compensating people fairly and equitably, again, a good thing, but that can be totally Turned into a process. We can develop pay bands. We can have a pre-approved range that removes them from being the bottleneck and moves that somewhere else.

So cool. I love that story. Another dynamic that I wanted to ask you about, and it comes from RocketFuel, we've talked a lot about the operators today, the people that are in the weeds, that are doing the work, that are getting the results. We often see the visionary leaders, the people that have all the ideas, the bubbly people, the people that just go and drive and have that vision that need those strong operators. Do you come across those dynamics as well? And how do you think about.

Those? Absolutely. Those dynamics exist and I think my favorite kind of framework for thinking of that is the EOS one where you have the visionary and the integrator. For the majority of my career, I've played more of the integrator role and had the opportunity to work with some really brilliant visionaries. And I think the faster that you can Name that. Dynamic and then face it enables you to really turn up the dial on collaboration. And you can have integrators and operators who have, you know, the ability to be a visionary. And there can be some kind of, you know, like, we both got ideas. We both got, you know, some things that we want to try. And I can see how this where this is going. And so just naming like, again, OK, you are the visionary. I'm here, you know, I'm here to add my perspective. And ultimately, I'm the rubber where the rubber meets the road. And I'm going to execute on your vision. Having that conversation candidly and again, name it and face it, find it faces is what I say all the time. That helps. Just get it out in the air.

So if you're an operator, and that could be a CTO or a tech leader or anyone else for that matter, and you're dealing with this visionary CEO that constantly comes up with new ideas and expects you to execute on everything. Your suggestion would be just open this discussion, have the discussion and discuss what's best or the best way forward together.

Well, that's the starting point. I think that, you know, I've been successful because we're able to lay the ground rules early on. And this is part of, you know, finding the right partners, the right executives, the right co-founders, and being really thoughtful about that partnership or those hires. Because one thing that I think has set apart, you know, relationships with the executives and founders that were successful and not was the ability to clearly define kind of our swim lanes, but hold each other accountable and push back. And so one of the most frequent things conversations you're going to have to engage with between an integrator and a visionary is like, hey, I hear that you have a new idea or there's this shiny thing that you want to go chasing after. And we have these priorities that we're already committed to. Which one of these is coming off the priority list.

You know, I did work within a place where I was constantly asking, what's the number one priority? And we I don't know if you're familiar with like a P0 or P1 or, you know, like priorities, but we had six P0s.

Well, at that point, nothing's a priority. We're not going to get anything done. And you have to be able to say that and confront them with that and then like start that negotiation conversation.

So I love that. We've talked about the operator, right? How they're doing a lot of the in-depth hands-on work that maybe they can delegate or should let go about the dynamic between the visionary and the operator. I think the next step where I want to get into is delegation. What, in your view, and the founders that you work with, is the best way for them to delegate so that they don't just throw it over the fence, but actually properly delegate with responsibility and authority? Autonomy.

I love this question. And I think that, One trap. That I see a lot of successful executives and founders fall into is they manage through abdication And abdication is recognizing like, I should be giving something to somebody. And so I'm going to hire them and On day one, I take this giant burden and say, here you go. It's yours now. Good luck. And I'll see you in our one-on-one. That's abdication. There is... You need to recognize that individual is going to require a significant investment of time training, retraining, resources. And so knowing that from the outset can change the dynamic entirely and save you from burning out a brilliant hire or firing them even worse because they're not delivering on your expectations. But it requires you to be really clear on the outcomes that this individual needs to achieve to be successful. It requires you to then document that and create processes around that. And one of the founders that I admire the most has so much ownership in this area. If somebody's not performing to a level that he expects, he first looks at himself and he's like, well, is there a process? Nope.

Well, that's my fault. I better build a process.

And then if it happens again, it's like, well, was this a training issue? Was there a process? Yes. But did I train them on it? Do they understand? No, that's my fault, too.

So I'll take I'll address that. If it happens a third time, it's probably, you know, the person is incapable of delivering that outcome or just the wrong seat in the bus or whatever that analogy is that you want to use. But I think those are some steps to delegate successful delegation and some pitfalls.

So.

And I think that's quite senior leadership if you delegate and if that goes wrong. So look at yourself and the way that you delegated the process, trained people, got them up to speed instead of just looking at the individual. How do you get leaders to that? Senior level of maturity? I.

Want to speak to your audience specifically because one thing that I think executives often overlook is the cost of turnover. The cost of having hired somebody train, you know, train them, which means you handed them maybe an outdated manual or something or told them to go figure it out and pull some scraps from the repository or something. But, then like ultimately getting frustrated and firing them or they get frustrated and they leave. You can calculate pretty... Directly the cost that it would that it has on your business to have that person churn, to be without that individual with you or your team being extra, having that extra burden placed on them than waiting to ramp up somebody else. And it's, Pretty alarming. And so starting with the data and saying like, how much do you think it would cost just to get rid of this person that we haven't even, you know, I haven't seen any evidence that you're training them, putting the process in place to make them successful or that they understand what good looks like. That usually is the thin edge of the wedge that I use to have that conversation.

You know, when faced with like, do you want to start over with a new person? Because hiring people isn't 100% foolproof. You can still make a bad hire. Do you want to start over or should we go through these initial steps just to validate that, yes, we should go in a different direction first? That becomes a more palatable conversation to have with a tech exec.

- Yeah, I love that because, I mean, people think easy about hiring. Hiring is often a six-month process.

I mean, before you have the job description, have completed all these views, hired somebody, and then got them up to speed, which is another two to three months. So that entire process, at least six months, that is just lost entirely and you're not going to get back. I love if people are leaders themselves and they want to send a check themselves, what should they do?

That. Incredibly expensive.

So...

Ask themselves and how should they look in the mirror to see whether they've properly delegated or maybe abdicated.

Yeah. I think it can be, again, I'll use the word simple, but it's not easy. It can be as simple as, you know, recognizing when something goes off the rails and looking at like Taking a step back, why did that happen?

You know, why did that customer call just flop? Well, was there a process?

You know, you can just walk yourself through those questions. Is there a process where they train on that process or did they just where they did they have a process to follow and training and they just didn't follow it? And that starts to having that conversation over and over again because things go wrong. All day. I don't know about in your world, but in my world, I'm constantly fighting fires. Things aren't going as expected. And so when you get in that rhythm of diagnosing why it's not happening for your team and even yourself, you know, like I. Have developed maybe an internal process. Have I taken a second to document? Do I always follow it?

Right? Like maybe not.

Well, this is the perfect time to start making sure that now I have a template instead of trying to remember all the things that I'm putting into this email or whatever that looks like. Starts to develop that awareness.

Okay. Just looking at proper delegation, is there a process, asking the questions, have I trained them properly, is there a process, and from there maybe seeing if it's a person. But look at yourself in a mirror first. Is it?

Yeah, and again... I'm a huge proponent of, there are people who have done exactly what you're looking to do. You know, exactly that at a bigger scale. And so finding those people that have been there, done that, mentors, coaches, things like that, an outside perspective, even if they haven't walked that exact path, those perspectives can become a brilliant mirror for you to reflect back and see like, For them to gently ask questions that help you realize it or just point it out to you directly and say, hey, it sounds like you actually are missing a hire. You should hire somebody and start delegating to them because you're like, I've delegated, but it's still falling apart.

Well, maybe your team's just overtaxed or something. So getting that outside perspective can be another thing. Crucial step.

Yeah. Love that I've had coaches myself for probably the last 10 or 15 years, and it's been incredible to always have somebody to bounce ideas off of to brainstorm with a mirror that I can talk to. Incredible. I love that.

I don't have many regrets. But I massively regret waiting so long to make an investment like that and a coach and mentors and spend money on my own development to get that perspective.

Yeah. So I couldn't agree more. I want to move on a bit to AI because it's the biggest shiny object syndrome in tech leadership, the world that we live in, but probably out there for small business, medium businesses, almost any business owner up to the Fortune 500 CEOs.

So what are you seeing? I'd love to hear your story.

I mean, you work with smaller businesses as well. How do you see AI actually...

Yeah, being dealt with in the smaller businesses, the local businesses that you work with.

Most? Smaller businesses are vilifying AI. And or burying their head in the sand, you know, to ignore what's happening around them. And this is not new.

You see it with every revolution, right? These come in cycles, whether it's, you know, the Internet or whatever revolution. Technological revolution where you want to review, it's the same S-curve that you can follow and see. That said, I feel like there's not a lot of people in the middle.

So you got the people that bury their head in the sand or vilify AI. And then you got people that are like, okay, drop everything. And now we're going to be an AI company or I'm going to start, I'm going to sell the business and start an AI company. And we're off to the gold rush. And I think that could be a mistake for most people. I think the people that are going to find the most success are the ones that have Deeply understood. The process. Or the how of delivery and then can apply AI to certain aspects of that and gain leverage there.

You know, when you look at, There was a famous, I think, case of GM tried to fully automate with robots the production of their vehicles and it led to horrific outcomes. But on the other side, You see, Toyota... That was able to, utilize automation in a very powerful way, but they would not allow a robot to do something that a human hadn't fully mastered. And understood that problem deeply before allowing a robot to take over. And I think that same rough rubric could be applied to business.

So instead of just hiring sales agents, AI sales agents, maybe first try and sell yourself. Get that process down, get it fully under control, and then you go with the AI sales agents and apply that same logic anywhere else. Cool.

Yeah. And, you know, I would say that AI probably acts more as a an amplifier. Right.

So if you struggle with sales and you think that just buying an AI chatbot to do sales for you is going to be the silver bullet. You know, one of my favorite tech leaders, who I actually got to meet, Ben Horowitz, talked about how everybody's looking for this silver bullet. There are only lead bullets. And so if you're avoiding sales or whatever, you're just going to have to figure out the sales, what works, what doesn't work, why am I being rejected, all of that, and then put that learning into the AI.

I love that statement. There's only lead bullets in that, I'm going to reuse that. I never heard him say that, but I love that statement. It makes so much sense.

So if AI is just a lead bullet, let's call it that, where does it make sense to actually go and then use it in that whole ownership of the business? Do you actually use it when founders take a step back or do you first delegate and then see lower down where AI can be used? How do you use it?

I am a proponent of more systematic AI adoption. If you rely on me, Mark, and I can say this because you're far more technical than if you rely on me to come up with a strategy for where we deploy AI, we are in deep trouble. But when I look at a business that I'm consulting on or an acquisition, I'm setting that expectation from the outset that everybody's going to be using AI. And in fact, like I've started this with my direct report right now. I want to know every week, what did you use AI for this week? And it is my expectation that you are using it because if you don't, you're going to get left behind.

And then providing that iterative feedback, like, hey, I noticed this seemed kind of different, you know, like maybe we can refine this a little bit, but I'm not coming up with the ideas. And the executive, the founder should not be coming up with the ideas. Yes, there could be a broader strategy, but I'm entrusting those subject matter experts that are closest to the problem to utilize it in the most decisive manner possible. One thing though, that I think, Should be. Nearly automatic for most companies that I'm looking at is the AI voice agents. Because when you're a small business and you're relying on, you know, largely the Google relevancy. If you need, you know, like you got a leak in your house and you want a plumber, You Google a plumber and then you start calling down the line. And if you missed that phone call, At least gone. And AI can 100% resolve that. In a really you know, I think again, simple, simplistic manner where you, They answer, they get your information right away in case the call disconnects and you start asking some basic questions and then immediately without solving the problem, say, actually, I'm going to want to escalate this to our tech.

You know, he's the expert. Can I have him call you back? Right. There's so much low hanging fruit in that instance where it's hard for it to go off the rails. That's one of those that's almost automatic for me.

Sounds like... Almost sounds like voicemail but then five steps ahead of the old voicemail that we had, just asking all the questions, having all the information and then offering a next step or not, depending on what that is. Cool. I like.

That. Yeah.

Well, and the next step, too, is then you have the recordings of that you can have AI analyze, right? And so then you're like, how do we make this our customer service better? What do people actually care about? If I got a thousand calls in the last month, I can instantly analyze, like, what are the top three things people want to know about that I'm creating collateral around it or updating my website or whatever that is.

If we now take it back. So we have We talked about the delegation from the owner, how to actually delegate, maybe to use AI or just delegate to regular people. When the owners or leaders now actually free up all that spare time. What's next?

Well, I don't think that you know, in most cases, freeing up somebody's time to the point where they just sit around is the goal. You know, yes, I happen to talk to business owners primarily through the lens of them X-ing their business and getting time to, for hobbies or, you know, stop missing key milestones with family and all of that. But when I'm working with a founder or executive in a business, I would, I'm constantly looking at How do I free up time for them to focus. Again, I call it their zone of genius and on the strategy, working on the business, not in the business. And that's the ultimate goal. It's not just like, okay, well, I haven't checked with my team in three weeks now because we did the work and now I have all my time back.

Well, You need to be investing in yourself and you need to start, you know, establishing what's next for your team, because now you've broken probably through the threshold, you know, that was previously the ceiling. And I was talking to a business owner last week that's never broken the $3 million revenue ceiling. Once you break through that, You're going to hit another ceiling and you don't need minor tweaks or, you know, you can't hire the same way to break through that. You need a new playbook. You need to be thinking through that in advance. And, I think you probably are familiar. I am a huge proponent of the theory of constraints and looking ahead, like what happens, you know, theory of constraints is just, you know, bottlenecks basically.

Like in a business where what happens if suddenly our sales leads double overnight? What breaks next? What becomes the next limiting factor? And getting ahead of that and starting to design systemically a solution for that before it becomes.

A problem. And then so just scaling the business. What happens, how do you prevent people from falling back?

I mean, it's nice to put the systems in place to delegate. It's very easy, I think, for operators to then fall back and just spend a little bit more time just looking over people's shoulders, seeing what they're working on. Maybe for their delegates to come back with questions every now and then, and just falling back into the same patterns. How do you prevent that? That.

Is a great question. And I don't know if there is a foolproof prevention method that I would suggest It does take I would frame it more as like a muscle that needs to be exercised. You can always go back to being a couch potato, but the more you use a muscle, the less likely, you know, you feel good.

You see the results, The benefits of not being a couch potato. So you keep doing the thing. But this is one that is sneaky for me and I think a lot of founder visionaries and executives because you're used to having the ideas and being the source for the strategy, the vision, sometimes a lot of the answers early on. And so when team members come to you with a question, I always coach owners, make sure that when somebody brings you a problem, a monkey into your office, That they don't throw it on your desk or on your back and walk out. And how you avoid that is, you know, really, again, I like simplicity. Asking them, well, what have you tried so far? This is something I do nearly every week. What have you tried so far? Nothing? Okay. How do you propose? What's the starting point for solving this? How do you propose? What ideas do you have? I want three ideas and a recommendation of those three ideas. Okay, here's three potential paths for resolving this. What do you suggest? I'm not the expert. Maybe I am the expert. I want to know how you're thinking and processing things because that might inform.

So that's one thing that I advise a lot of people to do to keep things from creeping back into your office and getting dumped on your desk.

Love that. So then for our CTOs and tech leaders, if they take the assumption that their company might get bought, it's all months from now, What is there that today they should stop doing and where should they start today instead to prepare for that 12-month exit? If it comes.

Yeah. So.

You know, there are three primary things that I look at when I'm looking at businesses, two that are going to be most relevant probably to your question. So one of those is I'm looking at the degree of owner dependency, executive dependency. Again, I love seeing things that are documented processes that are consistently followed, those kinds of things.

So that's an investment you can start making today and moving, towards that. There's always a next step you can take regardless of how well documented things are. And, you know, how empowered your team is.

So that's owner dependency. The other thing that I would share is One of the biggest hurdles to actually closing on a deal. Is when the executive team, the owners, start to coast in the business. You have to keep your foot on the gas if you want to sell and you want that to be as smooth as possible. It's going to be a chaotic process. There's a lot of extra demands on your time and, you know, your business you're divided, you know, running a company and trying to negotiate and collaborate and all that stuff. If you take your foot off the gas though, and your revenue starts slipping and things like that, it, you get into a really sticky situation where suddenly you came to an agreement on price three months ago, but now the revenue doesn't support it and you have to retrade or you don't want that because you've already started dreaming about that number or whatever it is. And so it makes it, impossible to close. I put this for like front and center when I talk to business owners and executives.

Like, more than anything, I want to get to know you and hear the story. And I want to make sure, you know, you got to keep your foot on the gas.

Like, this is going to be a long process. You got to keep your foot on the gas and keep the team engaged and involved and firing on all four cylinders.

So just... Keeping full on until the data to deal closes and probably after that as well, depending on what happens.

And that applies to so many different aspects of business, you know, like hiring. I always am like, wait, you stopped interviewing people before they actually started?

Like, you know, like what a, terrible way to kind of put all your eggs in one basket.

Final question. And this is something that I see so much and with so many leaders. They are stretched Then, They have their teams, they try to delegate, it's just not working. And they just keep spending the 60 hours a week without being able to spend time on strategy, on long-term vision, the North Star, all of that other stuff. What's the single... Piece of advice that you would give them to start.

Tomorrow? I don't think that there is a sacrifice that they could make that enables them to have that breathing room and stop working, you know, those 60 hours. That won't be. Exponentially more valuable to them in their future. Their future self will thank them. And what I mean by that is We talked about mentors, coaches, third parties. You have to, at some point, again, there's not going to be a magic wand that suddenly gets waved over your business and you get more money or time, or the team's gonna suddenly wake up and do twice as much.

So you just gotta meet, find it and face it head on that I'm stuck and I need help and you get help I'm laser focused on resolving that. And some people have better instincts than others. They're like, I need to start. I'm stuck in my inbox all day. I need to start delegating that. I need to hire somebody to do that. Other people are going to need a framework to start identifying again. What we talked about earlier in the call, where it's like, where are you spending your time? Does that support the best outcomes for you? Where can we start buying back your time? Make that investment though. And if it means, you know, like skipping getting paid for a month or, you know, putting it on the credit card, you know, there are people that can absolutely even guarantee the results.

Like we're going to give you 10 hours a week back within two months. That you can go and source and find and pay and get that breathing room back. But there's only... One path when you're working that unsustainable, you know, even you see Elon Musk, you know, he has these physical crashes because you just can't sustain that indefinitely. And so make that investment.

I loved it. Thanks for this. I really appreciate you coming on. Where can people go and find you online?

Yeah. So I'm most active on LinkedIn and on Instagram.

So Instagram is at toplineops.com. That's T-O-P. L-I-N-E-O-P-S, short for our top line operators.

And then I'm on LinkedIn, David Hori, H-O-R-I, and would love to connect with you. And like I said, I put all my best content out there. And if I can help you, I love building businesses. I love helping business owners and executives.

So I am here for that.

Thank you so much, David. It's been incredible.

Mark, thank you. Appreciate you.

As we wrap up another episode of the CTO Compass, thank you for taking the time to invest in you. The speed at which tech and AI develop is increasing, demanding a new era of leaders in tech. Leaders that can juggle team and culture, code and infra, cyber and compliance. All whilst working closely with board members and stakeholders. We're here to help you learn from others, set your own goals and navigate your own journey. And until next time. Keep learning, keep pushing and never stop growing.