You Can’t Think Like a CEO When You’re Thinking Like an Assistant

Most business owners think their biggest problem is time.

But what if the real problem isn’t time at all?

In this solo episode of Focus on the Fun Stuff, 
Emma talks about the headspace problem, the invisible mental load every founder carries. 
The endless list of tasks, decisions, and responsibilities that sit in your brain long after the working day is over.

From the “invisible to-do list” that wakes you up in the morning to the myth that delegation is only about saving time, Emma explores why so many entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed even when their business is growing.

Emma shares:
-Why founders struggle to think clearly when their head is full
-The real reason delegation matters more than productivity
-How lack of thinking time stops businesses growing
-Why you can’t think like a CEO when you’re thinking like an admin assistant
-A simple way to start getting your headspace back

If you’ve ever felt like everything in the business lives in your brain, this episode will feel very familiar.

Because sometimes the most valuable thing you can reclaim in your business isn’t time.

It’s the space to think.

🎧 Hit play to hear the mindset shifts, lessons, and decisions that help founders reclaim their headspace and start thinking like a CEO again.

Because sometimes the most valuable thing you can reclaim in your business isn’t time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This week I'm going to talk about the headspace problem. Welcome to Focus on the Fun Stuff. I'm Emma Mills, and I'm talking about something today that actually cropped up only yesterday. This is how relevant these episodes are and um timely. Because I was talking to a prospective client and we were going through all of the usual things I would take somebody through in terms of what are the tasks that you don't like doing, what don't you want to do anymore, what don't you enjoy, like what are the delegatable tasks? And we go through this whole process. And at the very end, she says um a line to me, which AI, if you if you put it into AI, it would say, and it stopped me in my tracks, but it did actually stop me in my tracks. Why does it keep using the same lines in all content now? If you see here's the truth and stop me in my tracks, you know it's been written by AI. Anyway, I digress. So she said to me um a line that at the very end of it, she's like, Do you know what, Emma? It's actually like I want to get these things off my list. I want help with all of these things that we've just been through. I do. But the actual thing for me is I just want my headspace back, like I just want to be able to think about other things and not just her actual line was it's not even about time, it's about not having any time to think, and also not having to think about every single thing in the business. And what she meant by that was is that her head is so full of all of the to-dos, all of the, you know, she has a to-do list, but all of us as business owners have the invisible to-do list as well. All of the things that are just floating around in our head that aren't necessarily written down, or we gave them to somebody else, or we were waiting for somebody to come back to us about it. We all have the written to-do list and the invisible to-do list. My invisible to-do list often visits me first thing in the morning when I wake up and I'm like, oh, what happened? Why didn't they come back to me about that? I wonder if she's done that. I want like that's when my invisible to-do list shouts the loudest. And what so what she actually meant was that she she wants somebody to help her take those things out of her head, but also mainly that she doesn't have to, it's not just her thinking about all the things, it's not just her that's responsible for it as or that's responsible for it all. It's not just her that's carrying all the load. Like that was her out of everything we've just been through, Emma. I just want to have time to think, and it's not just on me to think about everything. And I think that it's not just on me to think about everything, it's such a key thing for most business owners. I mean, we all know how to wear the superhero cape, it's how it's what gets you from here to there. Because when you first start, you are finance, marketing, sales, ops, HR, cleaning lady, you're everything. Obviously, we all do that. So we all know that we're very adept at doing all the things to get us to the next place. But there comes a time as you start to get clients, as you become more successful, as your business grows, as your revenue grows, that then becomes a hindrance. It gets you so far, but then it becomes a hindrance wearing the superhero cape all the time, and it just becomes really heavy. And this episode I've called the headspace problem because headspace, I think having it or not, is the biggest detractor from from where you're going to get to in your business. I work with um a fractional COO called Mike Jones of Better Happy. Quick shout out for Mike, he's brilliant. Um, and he frequently one of his pieces of advice is to go on holiday more, and it's from a perspective of exactly this the headspace problem, because you don't do your best work having everything on you and in your head, and it comes from the time freedom to do it. But when you're a bit further back, like the lady I was speaking to the other day, and she actually doesn't have anyone else to help her carry the load and to think about the other things, that is her biggest it is her biggest block by far to getting to the next level, and it might just be for other people, and some people might just want to know that other people are suffering from it too. So I'm just gonna go through why the headspace problem, like why it exists, and how we get rid of it, and why it's so important to get rid of it. So I think there is almost a myth that there is that delegation and productivity and time management, and god, I should know because I have spoken about productivity now for flipping 18 years in March this month, it's our 18th birthday. So I have put in some fair air time on talking about productivity, time management, delegation, all the things to leverage you as a business owner. Um, but the myth that I'm referring to is that delegation is just about saving you time from a perspective of okay, well, I've got an hour back, so I should get more customers with it, or I can use it to spend time with the people I love, or I should use it to um put some systems and processes in my business because then it's going to operate without me. All of those things are completely um, they're all equally as important as each other, and and for sure, extremely amazing outputs of delegation. But there is one that I think gets missed a lot, and it's it's just simply that by delegating this one thing and getting my hour back, it gives me time to think. And from a revenue generating perspective, having an hour to think is, I would say, equally as important as getting an hour back to speak to a new client, or because your job as a business owner is to think, it's to think about the next move, the next three moves, the next product, the next service, how you're going to use AI, the topic everyone's obsessed with right now. And just as a small, I know I'm sorry, I do love to digress, but just as a small digress, I sit in so many rooms now where people are talking about AI, and you can tell that everyone around the table is some of you go, like, well, you know, should we talk about how you're using AI? And every single person around the table is waiting for the other person to go first, and I reckon out of every 10 people, one of them is using it a bit more than everybody else, and everybody else is using Claude or Chat G Chat GPT or an or an AI note-taker, or yeah, like it's very, very basic. So, just as a small digression, AI is high on everybody's list, everybody knows we should be doing stuff about it. But I just want to put it out there that God didn't create us another day to work on AI, like we've still got the five days, so I know it's hanging heavy on everybody's heads at the moment, it mine included. Um so now, more than ever in 2026 is thinking time more important, I feel like, than it ever has been before. Um, and so there is this invisible to-do list that AI's in there as well. Like I'm sure in everybody's heads, it's got to, you know, um, I've got to send that email out, I've got to create that new marketing email I was gonna do. I've also got to think about how I'm gonna use AI this month. Like it's it's hanging around in everybody's head. I just wanted to acknowledge that because I think a lot of people are getting stressed out about it, and yeah, we should we all need to use it and we all will, but it's not an additional stress you need to immediately put on yourself. So, yeah, so I was talking about this myth that is that a delegation is just about getting you your hours back, and it is, but it's not only just about generating more revenue with them by doing things, it can also just be by taking the hour, sitting down to think, because it's your job as a business owner to lead. And the thing is that most of us actually go around with our heads completely full, with our heads completely full, not able to even think about what we're making for dinner, never mind the next move of the business. And I think that what it actually costs you when your brain is full all of the time is creativity, is strategy, and is big decisions. And ultimately, you can't think like a CEO when you're thinking like an admin assistant, like the two things are not congruent together. You know, all of the all of the my mentors in life, the people that I don't know but I hugely admire and I follow online and I consume all of their content. The the one thing they all have in common is that they they they are a CEO and they think like a CEO, and none of them are thinking like assistants, like admin assistants, like thinking it's just quicker to do it myself because they know that the most important thing is to protect their time and to protect their thinking space. Like I can't go an episode without mentioning, but Nigel Botrell, who's had a very profound effect on my life, I saw him Tuesday um most recently, and this topic came up again. You like you can't you can't profess to want to move your your business forwards in the best way if you don't have time carved out to do the deep focused thinking that every business owner needs to do. Because you can either not do that, or you can you can either not do that and just get stuck in a loop, continue to be stuck in the weeds, or you can protect time and actually come up with the ideas and this and the the moves forward that are going to make a change to your business. And a personal story actually of how this became so relevant in my mind, being that how freeing up your thinking time and getting someone else to share the load, which is what what our prospect that I was talking about at the very beginning really, really wants is someone to share the load of the thinking. So back in early 2021, we were still heavily in the middle of COVID, and my PA was starting to flourish with new inquiries, with leads, we were spending money on paid advertising, and which we had never done before. It was started to like return massive dividends. I had leads coming out of my ears. I had a team of about 12 at this point, and whilst I had team members that did lots of different things that they took from me, the one thing I still had was I was in charge of marketing, but I was also in charge of sales. So every single lead that came in, the follow-up was on me. Um and if you're anything like me, when you have got things to do that you haven't done, just like the lady that I spoke to at the very beginning of this episode, it weighs heavily on my mind. So I would be waking up early in the morning as the lead started to increase. I would be waking up early in the morning, immediately thinking about the email that I'd promised to send two weeks ago and had completely forgotten to do, and then thought, oh my god, they're gonna think I'm an idiot, and then thought, oh my god, it's too late to send it now. Which I need to do another episode on follow-up because that is a whole mind fuck, for want of a better word, for most business owners. It's never too late to follow up. People don't even realise you've not followed up. Um, but follow-up is key to any business. So I knew that I had a problem because there was definitely becoming holes in my bucket. I didn't have anyone else that I could share this with. Um, and to cut a long story short, Helena, who's been in at my PA for about eight or nine years now, she'd made some sales kind of almost by mistake in our call handling business. And she was she is brilliant at customer service, and I brought her over to start it to help me with follow-up. And one by one, after about this is like the April time in 2021, by about three months later, we'd pivoted her role and she was now full-time in charge of follow-up of all leads. And I will say it's one real sweet spot of my PA. If ever you inquire, we are following up until you buy or until you die, as they say. Like we're not letting that drop. And what happened is that my energy immediately became so different because this piece that was weighing heavy on me, I knew I wasn't doing well, I knew I didn't have the capacity to do well, had now passed to Helena. Helena's now like clockwork following up with everybody, and I now have this thinking time back because Helena's sharing the load. It's on her now to do the follow-up. And it means it what actually happened was about six months after this, I then realized that the problem I had, lots of other business owners have, that they get leads, they don't follow up quickly enough, they then get into a whole stress spiral of wow, I didn't follow up. I can't contact them now, they're gonna think I'm an idiot. So we created a new product line called My Follow Up. It then got to about 10k a month quite quickly. It's still with us now. It's you know, it's I created a new revenue stream out of getting one of these things out of my to-do list in my head onto somebody else, it then freed up the space to fact to have the idea, to launch the idea, to grow it into a new revenue stream, to do to solve a problem for business owners. Do you know what I mean? Like having that, having somebody to share that. So whether it's follow-up, whether it's being in your inbox and not replying to people since six months ago, whether it's not answering the phone and then having to, you know, then just thinking, God, people don't even think I answer the phone. Like there's so many things that weigh heavy, whether it's sending the invoice out, and then you've waited, like it's a month gone by and you've still not sent the invoice, and now you think, wow, this looks weird that I'm sending an invoice a month late. And all of these stories that we tell ourselves, if I loop it right back to the very beginning of the episode, the the lady that I was talking to, let's call her Lucy, um, Lucy said to me, like, what what I actually really, really just want, I've realized, is somebody to share this thinking with me because it's a lot to do it on my own. And that for me is ultimately what every business owner wants. They want an extension of them, a second brain, somebody to share the load. Because on the other side of that is all of the creative time, the thinking time where you can properly have your new ideas, ha spend your time on the on the things that move you forward. You can properly be the CEO, be the the the founder of the business, not the not the assistant inside it. And I feel like in all these episodes now, I like to drop in a little science nugget. Um maybe there should be a little jingle for the science part of the episode, but there was um there was, I assume he's dead, um, a scientist called George Miller, uh, I think it was like 1950 something, and he literally his his studies proved that the human brain can only have four to seven things at any one time in the short-term piece of your memory. Well, if you're anything like me, I definitely think, I wish George had done that study on me. I definitely think I have more than seven things going on in my brain, and that's why you start to feel heavy, that's why you start to feel tired. It's just the same as the iPhone, you know. Joe is obsessed with um shutting all the apps down in my phone because it makes it run so much slower. You know, I'm trying to take a picture and the camera's still not opening. Joe will go, it's because you've got all the apps open. Well, it's exactly the same as your brain. You when you have those, apparently we only have max seven, like seven things in our short-term brain. I'm sure all of us have got loads more than that going on. That's how it makes, that's why and how it makes our brains drained. We're tired, our energy dissipates. Like, this is the reason why. So if you have got a lot of things swimming around in your brain, you're not on your own, we're all the same. There's a reason why it makes you feel tired, there's a reason why it makes you feel less less easy to make decisions, less easy to make the next step forward because you are like literally your brain is like the iPhone running slow because you've got all this stuff open. And so, just like Lucy at the very beginning of the episode, having someone to share that is by far the biggest key differentiator for moving forwards. And so I'm sure you're like, Yeah, Emma, well, I totally get it, but what I like and that's me, you're talking about me. What is the fix? And for me, I and I said this to Lucy on the call at the time, that's not her real name, by the way, but we'll just stick with Lucy. Um, like, step number one for me when I get into these modes, and I still do, and I have a full-time EA, I have a lot of people around me, but I still, you know, we all still get to a level where we're like, there's too many things now. I need someone else to help carry this, help share this thinking, take some of these things. Number one, I think a lot of us will have a to-do list, but I think we'll also have a lot of other things floating around. My number one is to get everything down, every single thing, whether it's writing it, typing it somewhere, just you'll know that not everything is out of your head. Get everything out of your head first. That is always step number one. And I said this on the call the other day. I think number two, I I love quick wins, I love the marginal gains, I love the 1% improvements. And I think step number two is picking one thing off that list and going, is there somebody now in my business, in my team, someone around me that can just take that? And if not, the next best question is who? Who? If you've ever, if you haven't read it, please do. It is definitely in my top five books ever, Who, not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. It is the book that every business owner should read. Who is gonna do this? Not how am I going to do this is the best question and so perfect for this episode. So I want you to take one thing, go, who in my team is gonna take this from me. And if not, we're not gonna say how am I gonna do it, we're gonna go, well, who else? Just like Lucy had the call with us about getting support and assistance in her life. It's like I can either carry on trudging almost through decision making, through the tasks, feeling tired, or maybe I can trial having someone to be that second brain, that extension, and free up my thinking space because that is the most that is the most profitable and highly valued part of your business, your brain. You started it all from the beginning. The more your business has of your brain and your ideas, the better it will be. And that's why just this headspace bit is so important. It's not just about the mechanics of getting tasks done because that's what a business owner does, and step by step they offload it because my hourly rate is 150 quid. It's not just about that, it's also about am I operating at a high level? Am I making decisions quickly? And I think that's a really good barometer as well. You will know if you are tending to procrastinate, you will know if you are acting on things or making decisions quickly, and if you're not, it's a really sure sign that you need to get some help. Um and you know that this is what we do, and one of the things you can chat to us about, as with follow-up, if you've got a hole in your bucket and you need your leads following up, but this episode isn't about that, it's about you, and it's about knowing that yeah, it's if your thoughts are really heavy, that's normal. And the most important thing you can do is get some some support on that, however that might look. I hope today's episode has been really helpful. Um, it's hard being a business owner, but there's always things that we can do to make it easier to focus on the fun stuff. And getting some support with all the things you're thinking about is definitely high up there on important things to do. And I will see you next week where I will be in an interview with another starting business owner who has managed to focus on the fun stuff. See you there.