Hey,
One of the biggest misconceptions professionals have when they start building something of their own is this:
“If I want to grow, I need to hire.”
An assistant. A VA. A team.
But hiring early creates a different set of problems: cost, complexity, management.
And most people aren’t actually ready for that yet.
What they really need first is leverage.
That’s where AI changes the game.
Most professionals are still thinking about AI the wrong way.
They see it as a tool, something optional, something they’ll explore “later.”
But the people moving fastest right now see it differently.
They see AI as their first layer of leverage.
Not because it replaces human thinking, but because it removes friction.
Think about how much time gets lost every week on work that doesn’t require your highest-level thinking.
Starting from scratch. Reworking the same ideas. Organizing information. Filling in gaps.
None of those things are bad, but they’re not where your real value lives.
Your value lives in judgment, direction, decision-making, and knowing what matters.
AI creates more space for that.
Not by doing the work for you, but by removing the parts of the work that slow you down.
And once that friction disappears, something changes.
You move faster. You think more clearly. You spend more time where your value is actually created.
I’ve seen this shift in my own work.
Not because I wanted to reduce effort, but because I wanted to increase leverage.
The outcome wasn’t just saved time.
It was a better use of attention.
More time spent on conversations, strategy, and thinking, the parts of the business that actually move things forward.
I’ve seen the same pattern with others.
Highly capable professionals spending most of their time in execution, working hard but not creating momentum.
Once leverage is introduced, the same person starts producing more without increasing effort.
Not because they became more disciplined, but because they removed unnecessary friction.
This is the real shift:
From doing everything yourself to multiplying what you do.
From effort to leverage.
From time to output.
Most people think scaling requires more people.
But in the beginning, it requires a different relationship with how work gets done.
If you’ve been thinking seriously about leaving corporate, I recently shared the exact 5-step exit sequence I wish I had followed before leaving Microsoft.
Including the mistake that quietly cost me the most, and the shift that eventually led to charging $20K for a single day of work.
Check it here:
So before you think about hiring a team, ask a different question:
Where am I still doing work that doesn’t require me?
That’s usually where the opportunity is.
TJ
P.S. If you’re trying to figure out how to create more leverage in what you’re already doing, send me a DM. Sometimes it’s not about doing more, it’s about seeing what’s actually slowing you down.