Welcome to the Forward Obsessed Founder, my newsletter with insights, awesome tools, and real-world advice to grow your business and career.
GO FORWARD THOUGHT OF THE WEEK ➡️
Your company growth is stalling.
You’ve got clients. You’ve got a team. You’ve even got systems.
But every decision flows through you. Every approval. Every fire. Every strategic question.
You’re working 60-hour weeks. Your team’s waiting on you. Growth is paused.
Here’s what nobody’s telling you:
This isn’t a capacity problem.
It’s a delegation architecture problem.
And it’s costing you 7 figures.
The Math You’re Ignoring
You’re not too busy to delegate. It’s too expensive NOT to.
Every hour you spend on $50/hour work costs you a $500/hour opportunity.
That’s $450 per hour you’re burning.
40 hours a week. $18,000 per week. $936,000 per year. (Ok not quite 7 figures 😉)
That’s what being “indispensable” costs.
The Pattern I See With Every Founder
You’re between $2M and $20M ARR.
You’ve got the tools. Claude. ChatGPT. Notion. Zapier. Maybe Perplexity. Definitely Slack.
You’re paying for all of them.
You’re using none of them right.
You ask ChatGPT to write an email. It sounds like a robot. You rewrite it yourself.
You try to delegate to Claude. It doesn’t understand your context. You do it yourself.
You build a Zapier workflow. It breaks. You go back to manual.
The tools aren’t the problem. Your AI operating system is.
My Son’s Connect-the-Dots Moment
I was thinking about this the other day as my son was working through a coloring book. Connect-the-dots page.
Connect-the-dots page.
He got frustrated halfway through.
“I just want to see what the picture is.”
I recognized that frustration immediately. My brain works the same way.
Show me the result. Skip to the good part. The sequential work feels like torture when you just want the whole thing.
But there’s no shortcut. You have to do the work to see the picture.
That’s your AI problem right now.
You want the result. The perfect output. The time savings. The delegation.
But you’re skipping the work of connecting the dots. Of building the system. Of training the AI on your actual context.
So you get generic outputs. Robot-speak. Wrong decisions.
And you go back to doing it yourself.
You’re Protecting the Wrong Work
I see this pattern over and over again:
You’re holding onto the $50/hour tasks that make you feel productive. Email sorting. Meeting prep. Organizing files.
You’re trying to automate the $500/hour work. Client strategy. Creative direction. High-stakes decisions.
You’ve got it backwards.
The mundane stuff? Keep it. That’s where your brain recovers.
The strategic work you think only you can do? That’s what you automate.
But not with generic ChatGPT prompts. With a custom AI operating system trained on YOUR expertise.
What a Real AI Operating System Looks Like
When I was running my agency years ago, I was the bottleneck.
Every client strategy deck went through me. Every pitch. Every creative direction.
Sure, I had an amazing team. But most of our clients were buying “me”. This is the classic agency founder trap.
There was no genAI back then.
Now I help founders like you turn your expertise into leverage so you can sweat the stuff that matters.
You don’t have to keep grinding on the stuff that sucks your life away (like I did).
I’ll help you build an AI system trained on your unique thinking.
Not ChatGPT with better prompts. A custom system that knows:
- How you analyze client problems
- How you write strategy decks
- How you make decisions
- What you say yes to and what you kill
You'll even use the same tools you already have.
The difference? I help you connect the dots. Build your personal AI operating system.
3 Types of Work You Need to Delegate
1. Strategic Repetition
Client briefs. Pitch decks. Strategy frameworks. Meeting prep.
You think these need your “unique perspective.” They don’t. They need your documented process.
Record yourself doing it 10 times. Train an AI on that. Now it thinks and inquires like you.
2. Decision Frameworks
You make 50 decisions a day. Most follow patterns you don’t realize you have.
Document those patterns once. Build them into your AI system. Now your team makes decisions at your speed.
3. Context Management
You’re the only one who knows what client X said last month. What project Y needs. Where initiative Z stands.
Stop being the memory. Build a system that tracks it. Now everyone has your context.
What to Actually Protect
Some work should stay slow:
- The unexpected client conversation that turns into a new opportunity.
- The creative brainstorm that goes nowhere but sparks something later.
- The simple admin tasks that give your brain a break between deep work.
This isn’t productivity failure. This is how your brain works.
But you need to free up space for this by automating everything else.
Here’s What Most People Get Wrong
They think AI delegation means:
- Better ChatGPT prompts
- More AI tools
- Fancier automation
Wrong. AI delegation means:
- Documenting how YOU work
- Training systems on YOUR context
- Building workflows that match YOUR process
- Connecting the tools you already pay for
You don’t need more tools. You need an operating system that makes your existing tools work together.
I’m Taking 3 Clients This Month
I have 3 coaching spots open this month.
We meet weekly. Here’s what we build together:
Month 1: Audit your current tools and workflows. Find the $500/hour work you’re doing manually. Document your decision frameworks and strategic processes. The stuff you think only you can do.
Month 2: Build your personal AI operating system. Custom training. Workflow automation. Context management.
Month 3: Deploy and refine. Train your team. Fix what breaks. Optimize what works.
The result:
- Your strategic work gets automated
- Your team moves at your speed
- You work 20-30 hours less per week
- Revenue grows because you’re not the bottleneck
It’s a big investment, but the return is worth hundreds of thousands or more to you and your business. And if nothing else, your sanity.
This Isn’t For Everyone
If you’re under $2M ARR, you’re not ready. You don’t have enough repeatable strategic work yet.
If you’re not willing to document how you work, this won’t work. The AI needs your process to replicate it.
If you want to stay “indispensable,” keep doing what you’re doing. Just know it’s costing you $936,000 per year.
But if you’re the bottleneck killing your own growth?
If you’re ready to build the system that gets you from $3M to $10M?
If you’re willing to do the connect-the-dots work now so you don’t have to do it forever?
Reply with “coaching” and I’ll send details.
Talk soon,
Pete
Please take a second and hit the FWD button ▶️, to share this email with your favorite growth-obsessed peer. I want to inspire 1 million awesome minds like you.
