The Create Your Day Podcast

110. The Problem with being the Problem Solver

• Jenn Cody | Productivity & Systems for Entrepreneurs • Season 1 • Episode 110

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You're really good at solving problems. And that's exactly why your business is still chaos.

Every time you swoop in and fix something, every time you're the hero who saves the day, you're building a dependency instead of a business. In this episode, I'm breaking down why your problem-solving superpower is secretly your kryptonite—and what to do about it.

We're talking about the identity trap that keeps capable entrepreneurs stuck in firefighter mode, why being needed feels so good (even when it's destroying you), and the three specific steps you can take this week to shift from solving problems to preventing them.

This one's going to challenge you. But if you're ready to stop being everyone's emergency contact and start being an actual CEO, let's dig in.


IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:

✅ Why being good at solving problems keeps your business dependent on you
 ✅ The identity trap that makes letting go feel like losing your value
 ✅ The difference between firefighter mode and CEO mode (and which one you're actually in)
 ✅ How to shift from reactive problem-solving to strategic problem prevention
 ✅ Three practical steps to break the addiction to being needed
 ✅ Why your team will never develop judgment if you keep giving them answers
 ✅ How to build systems that scale instead of staying the bottleneck


WHO THIS EPISODE IS FOR

This episode is perfect for you if:

  • You're constantly solving the same problems over and over
  • Your team asks permission for everything
  • You can't take a day off without everything falling apart
  • You know you should delegate but you're faster at doing it yourself
  • You feel guilty when you're not solving problems
  • Your business growth is stuck because you're the bottleneck
  • You're working 50+ hours a week but revenue isn't growing
  • You want to build a business that runs without you


REFLECTION QUESTIONS

After listening, ask yourself:

  1. When was the last time I solved a problem that someone else could have handled?
  2. What am I afraid will happen if I stop being the person who fixes everything?
  3. If I'm honest with myself, am I a firefighter or a CEO?
  4. What's one recurring problem I could build a system for this month?
  5. Am I solving this problem, or am I feeding my need to be needed?


SHARE THIS EPISODE

Know an entrepreneur who's amazing at solving problems but stuck in their business? Send them this episode. Sometimes we all need permission to stop being the hero.

Thanks for listening!

Connect With Me:

📩 Join my email list: https://www.jenncodysolutons.com/subscribe
📱 DM me on Instagram: @solutonsbyjenncody

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SPEAKER_00:

Hi there, welcome to the Create Your Day podcast. I'm your host, Jen Cody, and thank you so much for being here. I have to say something right off the bat, and that is I listened to last week's episode, and I was like, Am I trying to make people fall asleep? And was I drugged? Was I falling asleep? I listen, I have been told that, you know, people said my voice can be soothing. Love it, happy to hear it. And I don't want to be putting people to sleep. If I'm doing a meditation, it's one thing, but my last episode really did sound super like meditative. So um this week we're gonna try something a little bit different. So we are jumping in right away. Thank you so much for being here. Like I said, this is a create your day podcast. My name is Jen Cody. I am your host, and thank you for being here. I know that you have a lot of places that you can choose to spend your time. So it is not lost on me that I am lucky and blessed that you are choosing to spend some time with me. If you love this podcast, I will say right now, please rate it. Leave a review for it. It is the only way the podcast grows. It is the best way for us to reach new people. That being said, let's jump into what we're speaking about this week, which is the problem of being a problem solver. And I know most of the people who are listening to this right now love to solve problems. It's why you are a business owner or an entrepreneur, it's why you are a leader. Um, we're good at solving problems. And guess what? We think that that's why we're successful. And what really is the problem is that it's actually why we're in chaos most of the time. So every time you swoop in to fix something, every time you are the hero who saves the day, every time you hear someone say to you, I don't know what we would do without you. So good to hear, right? Okay, but you're guessing you're actually making the problem worse because you're not building a business, you're building a dependency. Remember, we spoke about making yourself the commodity. If you're the one every person is dependent on, that is an issue, right? It's a really big deal. And the whole reason that this podcast exists, that my company exists, and the processes that I've developed exist is to help people stop spinning their wheels so they can actually build businesses that work without them, that have systems in place. So I created this process called the clear process. And essentially, it came out of being annoyed with myself and being tired of watching myself be run into the ground. And then also being really tired of watching the brilliant people that I get to work with drive themselves into the ground as well. Their businesses hold them hostage, their calendar holds them hostage. And let's fix it, right? We're problem solvers. But this one is about not being the problem solver, not being the problem solver. So I know it's personal because you want to be. And I've also been the person that cannot let go. I have been the one who thought that my value came from being indispensable. Does that sound familiar? Because it's really not a good thing. Um, I've watched so many of you do this and I want to dig into this. I want to start by thinking about um, let's just go through a scenario and let me know if it sounds familiar to you. So if you're listening to this the day it comes out, it's a Tuesday. That's when the podcast is released. So let's say it's Tuesday afternoon and you're finally sitting down, you're going to work on a strategic project, you're going to spend some time doing something that you think is really going to move your business forward. You're excited about the time, it's blocked out on your calendar, you're ready to go. And then all of a sudden your phone buzzes and it's maybe a text from a client, it's um a message from a vendor, it's something. Something has gone wrong somewhere, and it's not huge, but it needs attention. It needs your attention. So, what do you do? You could let the person figure it out, you could ask some questions, you can coach them through it, you can maybe even build a system so that this doesn't happen again. But do you do those things? Chances are you don't. What you do is you say to yourself, I know how to do this. It's only going to take me five minutes. So let me just jump in and clean up this mess. And honestly, to be really honest, you kind of like being the person who knows how to fix it. I know, I I know, I've been there myself. So you jump in, you solve it, you get that boom hit of dopamine that's like, I'm so good at what I do. And then you go back to your desk. Except now hours have gone by because it never takes five minutes, and that strategic work you were going to do, that focus time did not happen once again. This happens very often. So let's be honest, like I said, it feels really good to be the person who can solve the problem. And that dopamine hit, it feels like value, it feels like proof. People like me. I'm smart, I'm capable, I am essential. We want to feel that way. When someone says, I don't know what I'd do without you, come on. That's like a little surge of pride. When you're the one everyone comes to, it does feel like six like success. But here's the thing: it's not success, it's ego. And I don't mean that in a judgy way at all. I am not being judgmental. I mean it as a way to diagnose the problem. Just funny that that's what we're talking about. Diagnose the problem that we are trying to solve here today about being problem solvers and it's identity, right? Because what's your identity? You are the problem solver, you are the fixer, you are the person that steps in when things fall apart. And every time you do it, you get the hit of dopamine that says, you're valuable, we love you, we need you, you matter. Which means that every time you don't solve the problem, what is that telling you? Every single time you let someone else figure it out, every time you build a system, instead of being a hero, it kind of feels like you're losing your value. And that is the feeling that we become addicted to. And this is why really smart people, really capable people, um, really capable smart entrepreneurs and business owners, we stay stuck in this fixer mode, this firefighting mode, because um, even though we know better, we just love that feeling. It's easy to be addicted to. And it certainly isn't because you don't know about delegation. I'm not, you know, a pioneer in this industry when it comes to we should delegate. You've read the books, you've heard the advice, you've listened to the podcasts, and you know we are supposed to work on our business, not in our business. But knowing it and doing it are definitely two different things. When we let go of problem solving, it means that we're letting go of being needed in that specific way. It means that our team might solve things differently than we would, which requires us to let go of some of that control, right? Because there will be a learning curve when we have to sit back and let things happen and watch them not happen the way we would do them. And the worst part of all of that for some of us is that it means we have to find a new way to prove our value. But do we do we really have to prove our value? Can't we just build our businesses and let our value speak for itself? So I said, remember, this is an identity problem. So if you are the person who is solving all the problems, you're the fixer. If you're not the person solving all the problems, who are you? How do you break that addiction? How do you understand what's really going on? Because we have to see it if we're going to change it. This is not about time management. This is not about delegation. This is about identity. And you cannot fix identity with a productivity hack. That's just not how that works. So I want you to picture two different people. Person one, always busy, always moving, always handling the next urgent thing. That person is fast, they're efficient, they're really good at putting out fires. Everyone knows they can count on this person when something goes wrong. This person is invaluable. Guess what? They're also exhausted. Person two seems to work less, but somehow is getting more done. They're spending their time thinking, they're planning, they're building systems. So when a problem comes up, they don't have to rush to fix it. They're asking questions. Why did this happen? What would prevent it from happening again? And maybe who else could handle this? Person one is a firefighter, a fixer. Person two is a CEO. They are in control and they are on top of their shit. Nope. Sorry for my French. If you're being honest with yourself, you already know which one you are, and that's why you're listening to this. This shift that we're going to do, though, it's not, I want you to work differently. It's not about working less. It's not about abandoning things that are important to you. It's about learning to work differently and seeing your job as building the business, not running the business. You see that there's a difference there, right? Because we spend a lot of our time thinking that our job is to run the business. But if I'm running my business all the time, I can't build it. And then I'm stuck. There's nowhere for me to go. I'm never going to scale. And that's what I want for you is to scale, is to get control, is to build your business. And you cannot do that when you are stuck always in running the business mode. So, what I want to do is start to break that identity cycle by talking about what does actually make you valuable. Because it's not solving the same problem over and over. That's expensive labor. You can hire someone to do that. Your value is actually in what do you see that other people miss? What are the systems that you can build that prevent those problems from happening to begin with? And then what are the decisions that you make strategically about where your business goes or is going? What kind of clarity can you create for your team so that they can act without you? They can go about their day and not have to lean on you for every single thing. And how can you think three moves ahead so that you're always in proactive mode instead of constantly reacting to what's in front of you and being in reactive mode? These are CEO skills and we need to develop them if we're spending all of our time being like the emergency call number. We can't be 911 for everything. So you might be really amazing at client delivery, like world's class. And every time there's a client fire, are you jumping in to handle it? And your team, I bet they love you for that. Your clients love you for it, but your business is not growing, right? Your revenue is stuck. Maybe you're working 60 hours a week and you can't figure out why nothing changed. Why has nothing changed? So I want you to ask yourself, what would happen if you didn't solve that problem? And I know some of you right now are looking at me like, I can't do that. I might as well just set the whole business on fire. I have to solve the problem. But do you if you don't jump in, will a team member step up and solve it? Even if they don't do it the way you would do it, even if they don't do it perfectly, do they do it? Do they take the initiative to do it? So that the next time something similar comes up, they don't have to ask you. So that one moment where you decide not to solve the problem, that actually creates space for a few things. A, it creates space for someone else to grow. It creates space for someone else to level up their own skills. And that is what scales. It also creates space for you to focus on what you need to focus on. And when those two things are happening, when you're focusing in your lane and you're allowing the people that are supporting you and supporting your business to have some autonomy and to solve problems, that is how businesses scale. So we need to make the decision to stop being addicted to solving problems so we can start preventing the problems from happening. And that is actually where the shift happens. This is where your thinking is going to change. You start thinking more like a systems builder instead of that firefighter, right? So when every problem that lands on your desk used to be seen as a sign for you to jump and do something about it, now that's information, it's data. It's telling you something about your business that's not working. But if you just solve it and move on, you're going to miss like the lesson that's in the middle of all this. So here's some things I want you to start asking yourself. Why did this problem reach your desk in the first place or come through your email or the text message, whatever it is? Why did it actually happen to begin with? And what would have to be in place for this to be handled without me? Is it a specific team member? Is it a specific team member that exists already, just knowing different information? Like what has to be in place for the team to handle it or for the problem to be handled without you being in it? And if this happens again, what is a system that could prevent it from happening? Because I'm going to be honest with you, a lot of people, a lot of business owners, I should say, entrepreneurs, we're solving the same five problems over and over and over again. We don't realize it because we're too busy with solving problems to see that there actually is a pattern there. There is something that we're doing over and over and over again. So if we step back, and that's where clarity is, right? We need to step back, allow ourselves to see the bigger picture. When we have that clarity, we can actually build a system. Is it a checklist? Is it some sort of, you know, decision-making tree, um, uh an SOP or a documented process that you have? You solve it once by doing that. And then that is the permanent way that thing gets done or gets solved every single time. This is what people in control do. This is how they eliminate entire categories of problems. It's really true. So there's the shift, but how do we make the shift happen? How do we go from being this addict, right? I'm addicted to solving problems. How do I now become someone who prevents them? So I'm gonna give you a couple of things that you can start doing. The first thing I want you to do is name your pattern. What does that look like? You need to be able to see what you're doing, right? Because how can you name it? How can you change it? How can you shift it if you never even see it? So for the next week, every time you solve a problem, and let's be honest, you're gonna be solving a lot of them because it's your nature to jump in, jump, you know, like I'm the one that's gonna do it. So you're not gonna be able to break that habit overnight. So for the next week, every time you do that, can you write down the problem? Just a quick note, like what was the problem? Why did it need you? And at the end of the week, you look at that list, and I bet you're going to be able to see some patterns. Is it always around client communication? Is it the same operational breakdown that keeps happening over and over? Is it the decision paralysis that is preventing people from moving forward, whether it's you or your team members, whatever it is, now you can see it. And once you see it, you can build for it. So I have a process, right? It's called the clear process. And the L in the word clear stands for locate. That's what we're talking about right now. This is the locate phase. We're mapping out where the chaos actually lives because everybody thinks that the whole thing is just chaos, right? So that we see what's happening as this giant bowl of chaos, but we need to track it. We have to locate in that chaos and find out is it three or four recurring issues that you just keep solving manually? So now we're going to name them and then we can fix them. So, next thing we're going to do is something that may not come that naturally to you. The next time somebody brings you a problem, this is what I want you to do. Do not jump to solve it. I want you to ask them some questions. Okay. I just had a conversation with a client about this yesterday. They were talking about um someone in their business always coming to them and asking them for something really simple. Okay. So there it's a company that uses insurance companies. And there's a person on their team that always comes to them and says, I can't find this insurance information. And my client was expressing her frustration over, I just, why can't they find it? Why can't they take the initiative to try to find it? So I said, well, when they come to you and say, I can't find X, Y, and Z, what is your response? Are you doing it because you know how easy it is and you can find it in two minutes? Or have you tried asking them, what have you tried to do to find it? What do you think we should do to find it? If I wasn't here right now, how would you handle this? And yes, this is going to take a little bit longer than you just solving the problem. And yes, it might feel a little bit uncomfortable. And you are going to want to jump in, right? It's like when you, for those of you who have children, it's like when they're learning to ride a bike or they're learning to tie their shoes, and it's something that just takes 20 minutes when it could take two minutes, and we're watching them and we're like itching to just jump in and tie the shoe for them or push them on the swing, you know, whatever it is. Help them ride the bike, like whatever we want it to be easier. And easier usually means we're controlling it. So you are going to want to jump in. And I'm telling you right now, don't do it because every time you answer the question, you are training them that they don't need to think. All they have to do is ask you. And you're reinforcing your own addiction to being needed. But when you ask them questions instead of answering for them, there will be some magic happening. They will start figuring things out, they're going to develop better judgment. Slowly, slowly but surely, fewer problems are going to land on your desk. I'm going to be really honest with you. This is hard. It's going to go against every instinct you have as someone who is good at what you do. But this is the work that's necessary. This is how you move from being that expensive employee in your business to being the CEO of your business. So, what I want you to do is pick one problem. Remember, you wrote down the problems that you're going through. Write them down, find that pattern. Now just pick one. Pick one client, one client, one problem, and we're going to build a system for it. Not someday, not next week, this month. We're going to do it now. We're going to do it together. Maybe it is going to be a decision-making framework. Amazing. That is something so valuable. You want to have frameworks in place for your team. So this way they stop asking permission for everything, for things that are routine. Maybe it's a checklist. Do you have a business that regularly onboards clients? Well, what's the onboarding checklist so that they don't, your team doesn't have to consistently ask the same questions about what comes next? Is it a system for communication so that you are not the problem, you are not the bottleneck for every single update. People can get information from other places. Whatever the system is, make it yours. But I want you to document it and I want you to make it repeatable. It should be a system that if it belongs to you, if it belongs to your um VA, if it belongs to your COO or whoever is on your team, if they're not there, can somebody just pick this system up and do it? That makes it repeatable. And then we're going to enforce it because this is actually where it's going to fall through the cracks. And it's going to feel natural for it to fall through the cracks because you build the system, but then your instinct is still going to be, I'm going to solve the problem the way I always do, which is just blindly the way that I want to do it. Because at first the system is going to feel clunky because it's easier to do it yourself instead of following this step by step by step. So it will feel a little bit clunky, but if you want a business that can run without you and that can solve problems without you, you have to let the systems work, even when they're not perfect. It's when they're not perfect that we learn how to perfect them, right? And this is the A in the word clear. This is the align phase. You are aligning your resources, your time, your team, your energy. You're aligning all of that with systems that are going to help grow your business, not run your business. You do not need to be the hero. You just need to be present and focused on growing, growing, growing. So I understand it's not going to be easy. I understand that being good at solving problems is why you're here. It's how you built your business. And that's why a lot of people get stuck in this specific problem because you wouldn't be running a successful business. You wouldn't be an entrepreneur if solving problems didn't come easily to you. It's why we do what we do. And it's how we proved to ourselves that we're worthy and that we're valuable. And now that you have this successful business and you need to scale it and grow it, you need to step out of that identity. Because if you want a business that's actually going to not consume your life, it's probably not the right way to say that, but if you want a business that doesn't consume your life, you have to let go of being the person that solves everything. You have to be be really willing to put the systems in place and allow them to be, like I said, clunky and imperfect and still running in the background because they will get better and they will refine and they will get stronger every single time until eventually, how amazing would it be to have a new person that you're hiring and you just hand them the system. Here you go, here's the Google Doc that how outlines all the steps. So when you get to this crossroads, here's everything you need to do. And that just is running without you having to put out the fires. So you have to believe that your value comes from what you build, not how busy you are. That is really how you shift this identity because your value to this point, like I said, is showing in the success of your business and you're tying it to the fact that you're the one doing everything. That's not what it's about. Your value is in that you built that business. So now, you know, the phrase, what got you here isn't going to get you there. That's where we are. What got you here is actually gonna keep you away from here. We need you to shift that identity, get out of problem-solving mode. It will be uncomfortable and it's going to feel weird not to jump in. It's going to feel vulnerable to let other people uh figure things out. And you know what's gonna be the worst thing? It's going to feel like you're losing control. But here's another secret: real control has nothing to do with solving every problem. You're not losing control, you're building it. Real control is creating a business that most of those problems don't reach you because everything is running on such a great system in the in the background. So, okay, you're going to pay attention to what problems you're solving, notice when you're about to swoop in, ask yourself, am I solving this problem or am I feeding my need to be needed? And ask your team, what have you done to find this out already? Right? Like ask them what what can you do to solve this problem without me? What if I wasn't here? So we're gonna shift this identity slowly but surely, because once you see it, you can change it. And until you see it, you can't change it. So I hope all of this was valuable to you. If it was, I would love to have you join my weekly email. Comes out every Monday. All you have to do is go to gencody solutions.com. Sign up for the emails right there. And um, if you're interested in my clear process, you can get that on there too. The program is coming out in 2026. It's really going to be pretty incredible, self-led program, super easy to access and um pretty life-changing when it comes to your business. So if you want to go deeper, let's talk about it. Until next time, I hope that you take this information, go out there, create your day in the best way possible, create the business that you deserve. And um, yeah, until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other. And I will see you here next week. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a good one.