Why Startups Stall: When Everyone’s Doing Everyone Else’s Job

Startup teams break when roles blur. Workers try to do strategy. Owners get pulled into task work. Managers become firefighters. We’ve been there the past few weeks across Local Service Spotlight (LSS), High-Rise Influence (HRI), and our partner agencies in HVAC and landscaping. This is a snapshot of what we’re fixing—and how you can apply it if you’re building something similar.

The trap: the #1 VA mistake

Dennis has said it for years: the top mistake is producing assets without understanding the business outcome—missing Goals, Content, and Targeting (GCT). That’s how you get “pretty” decks, videos, or articles that don’t move revenue or reputation. His write-up is blunt: if you’re writing under a figurehead’s name, you must know their why, their audience, and how each piece supports the strategy—not just have good grammar or software skills.

Put another way: tools are secondary. ROI is the job. There’s a whole mini-canon behind this—LDT (Learn-Do-Teach) as the standard for credible teaching and repeatable excellence, and the 9 Triangles as the operating system for aligning organization, marketing, and policy. 

And yes, in the earliest days you will do things that don’t scale—answer tickets at 1 a.m., handhold clients, and record scrappy videos—because momentum matters more than polish. But “unscalable” effort must still tie back to strategy.

Our current picture (and why it matters)

Dennis sent a note that captured our reality: workers taking on manager/owner duties, while managers/owners cover task work. Think “Shaq taking threes while Curry tries to dunk.” It’s normal in a startup, but it’s not sustainable. So we’re tightening roles and shipping the things that directly grow revenue, authority, and systems.

What we’re doing right now

• Sell what already sells (HRI Coaching, $2,500): Scalable if we screen well. The content exists; packaging and intake are the levers.
  
• Fund systems via retainers: Facebook ads for HVAC and landscaping—proven offers with clean handoffs. Daniel is quarterbacking here.
  
• Publish at volume with fidelity: We’re prioritizing content that springs from direct implementation—Marketing Mechanic episodes, client wins, and SOP-quality write-ups—so teaching follows results (LDT).
  
• Roll out personal brand sites ($30/mo): The MVP works. Add onboarding we already built, hook in the knowledge-panel lookup, and integrate the dashboard.
  
• Enforce operations: Clear menu of assignable tasks, clear prices, clear standards—so owners stop doing worker jobs, and workers stop asking owners to privately tutor them.
  

Concrete examples from this week

Sam (LSS engineering + product clarity).
Sam reflected on his week and called out the real blocker: time lost to email threads and ambiguity. He moved three items that matter:

1. Knowledge Panel Tool (WordPress plugin) — rebuilding UI with clear explanations and buttons so users know exactly what to do after searching a name; he’s testing variants from multiple AI platforms before picking one.
   
2. Personal Branding Tool — consolidating scattered efforts into two docs (internal vs. user-facing) to expose gaps and define the build.
   
3. LSS Master Doc — a single source to align contributors.
   

This is the right direction: cut ambiguity, centralize specs, then ship the working plugin and onboarding flows.

Dylan (me: video backlog → outcomes).
My last week leaned heavily into production:

• HRI video backlog: Finishing deliverables, including recordings from July and the recent sessions with Jack and Dennis for High Rise Academy. Imperfect lighting? Fine. “Done” outperforms “waiting for ideal.”
  
• Marketing Mechanic: Continued processing and then converting episodes into articles so the ideas rank, can be quoted, and can be reused in sales material and SOPs. (Raw videos are already getting traction with no editing.)
  
• Client performance work: Spent time in ads/analytics for our clients. This matters because PPC attention—even five sharp minutes—can translate into real, compounding dollars.
  
• Indexing our meetings: I’m cataloging weekly agency-owner meeting transcripts in a sheet so we can turn them into articles, and later into book chapters and SOPs.
  

These tasks are the “D” in LDT. Once the work is done and measured, we teach it credibly.

Why this approach holds up outside our walls

• LDT prevents fake expertise. You don’t teach what you haven’t proven. You document, then you publish. That’s how you avoid the #1 mistake.
  
• 9 Triangles reduce chaos. Teams know who is doing what, which KPIs matter, and how a piece of content ties to business outcomes.
  
• “Do things that don’t scale” is a phase, not a home. Early heroic effort is fine—but the goal is repeatable excellence: a menu of tasks, known prices, known standards.
  

The near-term milestone

We’re syncing in Vegas on November 4. That’s close—but enough time to stabilize roles, publish consistently, and demo:

• HRI Coaching intake that screens well.
  
• A working Knowledge Panel Tool inside WordPress with clear UX.
  
• Personal brand sites with simple onboarding and dashboards.
  
• A visible cadence of Marketing Mechanic episodes and companion articles.
  

Playbook you can copy this week

1. Write your menu. List assignable tasks with fixed outcomes and prices. If it’s not on the menu, it doesn’t get assigned.
   
2. Tie every asset to GCT. Before you produce, answer: What goal does this serve? What content data or proof will it include? Who’s the target and why will they care?
   
3. Adopt LDT as the bar. If you haven’t done it successfully, don’t teach it. Document the doing, then teach from the artifact (screenshots, dashboards, before/after).
   
4. Publish imperfectly, measure perfectly. Get the thing out; then track the KPI it was meant to move. Improve from evidence.
   
5. Guard manager/owner time. Owners can’t be everyone’s private tutor. Use SOPs, checklists, and a queue. Escalate only when the SOP fails.
   
6. Reserve focused PPC attention. Minutes of expert effort can unlock durable gains—treat that time like surgical slots.
   

Closing thought

People can critique rough lighting or lack of edits. They often miss the point: the episode shipped. The client call happened. The site went live. Shipping creates feedback and revenue; perfection creates excuses.

We’ll keep publishing our wins and misses as we build. If you’re in a similar spot, start with the menu, enforce roles, and hold the line on LDT. The rest gets easier.