Team Leverage
You're the only one delivering. Revenue = your sessions × your rate. Team leverage is multiplying your output through the productivity of your team. You keep strategy, quality bar, and key relationships; they run delivery, first drafts, and ops. Your expertise scales through them—same quality (when you've set the bar), more capacity.
Same expertise, more hands. A coach who runs 20 sessions alone caps at ~$16k/month at $200/session. When she adds an associate who runs 12 sessions using a clear flow and a quality gate, she's in 8—the complex or strategic ones. Revenue can grow without 20 more hours from her. A consultant who writes every report delegates the first draft to someone following an SOP; she does the review and client conversation. Team leverage is extending yourself: you design and hold the bar; they execute the repeatable parts.
You keep what only you can do. They run what you've documented. Capacity multiplies.
How to build it
-
Document first. Before you hire, get documentation and SOPs in place. If you don't, you'll spend more time explaining than doing—and quality will slip. The associate needs a script; you do the exception handling.
-
Delegate the right things. Start with low-value, high-repeat tasks: calendar, proposal drafts, intake, follow-ups. Keep strategy, key relationships, and the close until you've written down how you do them. The goal is to free the hours that multiply, not to empty your calendar tomorrow.
-
Hold the bar. One quality gate: work is reviewed before it reaches the client. You (or a designated lead) own that gate. Team leverage only works when quality is consistent—and that requires a clear standard and a checkpoint.
What breaks
Hiring without systems. Founder bottleneck describes Marcus who hired an ops person with no runbook—six months later he was spending 10 hours a week in syncs. Build repeatable processes first, then add people.
Delegating the wrong things. Handing off the close before you've documented how you sell means the associate is guessing. Delegate the work that repeats; keep "only you can do" until you've captured how you do it.