Operator

I was pacing around the back grass area at work, holding my phone 14 inches from my face on speaker mode, chatting with a close friend about how things are going.

Me: “It’s great, man, but it’s really tough to focus on building two things at once.”

Right now, I’m struggling to balance scaling Plunge Party while growing my next project. Both fire me up. Both matter. But trying to build two things at once? It’s hard. Like really hard.

His advice?

“Get yourself an operator — someone young, hungry, and eager to prove themselves by working with someone like you.”

My first reaction: Who the hell would want to work with me at this stage? I’m not running some hot, sexy startup where ambitious kids line up to work unpaid just to say they did. Let’s be real — I’m not Cursor, Cluely, or Bolt.

Then he said something that stuck:

“Look at the guys you admire — Justin Mares, Sam Parr, Shaan Puri, Andrew Wilkinson. They’ve got dozens of projects. Are they running them all? Absolutely not. They start something, get it off the ground, and then hand it off to someone else. Then they split the cash flow.”

Justin started - the wearable challenge and kettle and fire.

Sam started - Sam’s list

Shaan started - a kids clothing company with his wife. Just recently hired a CEO.

Andrew - helped a kid start a pressure washing business

That’s when it clicked.

This is how you go from being a good business person to a really good one. The formula is deceptively simple:

• Have an idea.

• See if people will pay for it.

• Bring in a partner.

• Grow it together.

• Let them run it (or hire someone who can).

• Share the upside.

I hate the word delegation. It sounds like something a business school professor says while gesturing at a PowerPoint or 18 year old on TikTok says for how to be an entrepreneur (which he heard from Alex Hormozi).

Let’s call it what it is: finding an operator.

Someone who can run the business so you can go from individual contributor to leader and conductor.

Of course, easier said than done.

If I’m committed to bootstrapping — and I am — then I’ve got to be the one in the trenches early on. There’s no investor money to hire a team. No shortcuts. That means doing the work myself.

The upside? I learn everything. How it all works. What matters. What breaks. But it also means I can easily get stuck in the weeds, head down, when I need to be looking up — at the big picture. That’s the trade-off I’ve chosen. For now.

I’m also realizing how hard it is to hand off the sandcastle you built and trust someone else not to wreck it. It takes time to find someone who gets it. And then more time to let go.

Maybe this isn’t the perfect way to build. But it’s the way I’m doing it. And I don’t really have a choice but to figure it out. One way or another.

Because the only other option? Sit still and complain.

And nobody wants to hear that.

You’re Awesome,

Jared

Things Worth Clicking

A few gems I found on the internet this week - no digging required

• A 6 hour course on how to build a brand. Compeltely free

• ChatGPT is now better than most doctors

• Sam Parr asked for a new history book and twitter answered. Happy digging.

I Dig So You Don’t Have To

1 Set:

2 IDs:

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