How helpable are you

Hi it's Jen,

I had a call with a founder the other day that broke my heart.

She’s whip smart. Accomplished. Building something real. And yet she was explaining to me all the ways she was failing.

Her failure? There were facets of running the company she hadn't mastered.

Not work she had ignored. Or avoided. Just... hadn't mastered some parts of the business. And I kept looking at this accomplished person across from me, thinking: mastered by whose standard, exactly?

What's the difference between a star and a superstar?

She let it hang there for a second.
Then answered.

“Helpability.”

She went on to say — and I'm paraphrasing here because I was busy having an obviously life-changing revelation in my seat — "You think Beyoncé feels bad because she can't do everything? No. She finds the people who are the best at it and lets them run."

“In fact,” Bonnie St. John went on to say in that keynote,

“She who gets the most help wins!”

That talk rewired how I lead. How I parent.
How I ask for help without flinching.

But Founders of growing companies risk measuring themselves against every perceived skills gap, and that focus steals confidence and focus. Every function they haven't fully figured out. Every hat they're still wearing that was supposed to be temporary.

And instead of asking who can help, they're asking what's wrong with me that I need help here.

“Helpability” isn't a soft skill.

→ Founders with mentors are 3x more likely to become top performers.
→ Startups with advisors raise 7x more capital and achieve 3.5x better user growth.
→ Early-stage companies leveraging a Chief of Staff or strategic partner have grown 30% since 2019. 

And help doesn't have to be forever. Sometimes you need help for a season. The right support at the right inflection point can fast-track the lessons you need to break through new barriers. It's a strategic decision.

That’s what superstars do.

Also worth saying out loud: the help you need might already be sitting inside your organization. Sometimes the answer isn't a new hire or an outside advisor.

You might have a team member who could deliver EXACTLY the help you (or your company) needs. And you haven’t given them the opportunity. Yet.

That's a helpability gap that also stunts team members’ development.

A win-win opportunity, lost.

For today, consider this:

Who could help with what you're navigating right now?

A friend who's been there?
A founder two steps ahead of you?
A business accelerator or peer group?
A community that actually gets it? On this front, Theanna’s got my 💚 

Someone already on your team who's ready for more?

A (cough cough) Chief of Staff or advisor who's done this before?
Let’s talk if you’re ready to get more done and free up time.

The bottom line, you don't have to figure out every part of this alone.

Superstars aren't superstars because they know everything.
They're superstars because they know when to ask, "Who can help?"

Most of us don't learn this once. We learn it at every new level of hard.

If this “departure edition” hits home, start here:

📖 Who Not How — Dan Sullivan & Dr. Benjamin Hardy, this book is essentially an extended argument for helpability as a growth engine. It's a fast-reading permission slip from a leading voice on exponential growth.

P.S. Help others by sharing this edition with a founder or leader who's been white-knuckling it so they build their helpability, too.

Data sources: TechCrunch, Rev1 Ventures, Omna Search