"Every single founder, when he moves from being a startup to a scale-up, sooner or later starts to find that he's lost his freedom." Rajesh Nagjee joined David Meltzer's Office Hours live to explain where that freedom goes and how founders get it back.

In this conversation, Rajesh talks about why founders lose freedom as they scale, the delegation mistake that turns leaders into vendors, the bottleneck behind every scaling business, and the inner game behind founder anxiety.

What This Episode Covers

• Why founders lose freedom as they scale

• The delegation mistake that turns leaders into vendors

• Delegating ownership and outcomes

• The bottleneck behind every scaling business

• Short-term pressure versus long-term growth

• The inner game behind founder anxiety

• Matching the velocity of the inner game with the outer game

Key Ideas From The Conversation

Why do successful CEOs feel trapped? As a company moves from startup to scale-up, the costs and targets pile onto the founder, and he loses his freedom in the inner game. Rajesh's work is to give that freedom back so the founder can "focus on being a strategic visionary."

What delegation mistake keeps founders in the weeds? "When you have that combination of delegating projects, tasks, and scope, you have converted your people into vendors. What you really want is partners, and you can only get partners if you learn how to delegate ownership and outcomes."

How does a CEO get freedom back? "My job is to match the desired velocity of the outer game with the velocity in the inner game, and when that matches, things just start to move effortlessly." - Rajesh