“… I keep on fallin’
In and out of love
With you
Sometimes I love ya
Sometimes you make me blue
Sometimes I feel good
At times I feel used
Lovin’ you darlin’
Makes me so confused…”
(Alicia Keys, Fallin’)
No, no, I’m not talking about my husband here, but rather, my business!
As a soloprenuer, entrepreneur, small business owner, founder, or CEO… I think falling in and out of love with your business is more common than we think. It can be a love/hate relationship, marked by confusion, frustration, and moments of real alignment and joy! This can apply to our careers too.
How many times have you felt like throwing in the towel on being an Executive Assistant or entrepreneur? I’ve been there a time or two (or ten!).
Last year, after launching The Force Multiplier Academy, I thought… “Alright, this is it. I’m ready to move on from the Force Multiplier world.” I took my foot off the gas and just let the company coast. From the outside, I was still doing all the activities: writing my weekly newsletter, coaching clients, hosting webinars, joining podcasts, consulting with leaders, showing up in the Academy, but my heart wasn’t really in it.
I was looking for an exit, when what I really needed was the epiphany bridge. The epiphany bridge shifted my perspective and brought me back to the path I was meant to be on.
What is the Epiphany Bridge?
The Epiphany Bridge is a simple framework, developed by Russell Brunson and shared in Expert Secrets, that helps your clients sell themselves on why they need what you offer.
Sounds like it’s just a sales technique. And it is. But for me, it was so much more than that. Because it requires you to first dig into your own epiphany journey.
Russell Brunson explains it like this:
“At some point in time during your entrepreneurial journey, you got excited. You thought about the possibilities. The people you wanted to help. How you could help them. And what it would all look like when you connected the dots by helping people get what they wanted so you could get what you wanted, too. Within that journey was a major “AHA” moment — your own epiphany. It was that first “AHA” moment that created so much excitement for you that you started on a journey where you studied everything you could about a topic. You started diving deep into the subject, learning everything you could about it, and then you logically sold yourself on this new opportunity. When that happened, you experienced both the emotional connection — your “AHA” moment — and the logical connection.”
Russell Brunson
At some point, though, you stop talking like your customers and begin speaking like an “expert.” The Epiphany Bridge gets you out of your own head and back to the basics of helping that earlier version of yourself.
This epiphany moment happened for me long before I started my own business. It happened about fifteen years ago when I started studying everything I could find about the Executive Assistant role, leadership principles, and the EA career path, specifically within the context of entrepreneurs and founder-led organizations.
There was very little information available at the time that wasn’t within the context of government or very large, siloed, global organizations. Those Executive Assistants were not doing the same work as I was. So I started branching outside of my current industry (real estate) and finding counterparts in other industries. Those who worked with single family offices, speakers and coaches, small business owners, and tech start-ups. Those who didn’t necessarily hold the title of Executive Assistant or Chief of Staff, but were performing work somewhere in the messy middle. Those who were the sole (or maybe one of two) business administration and/or executive support professionals in the whole company. These were, and still are, my people.
But, after 15 years, I started losing sight of why I started all of this in the first place! To share ideas and ask questions to expand what’s possible for right-hand partners (Force Multipliers) to entrepreneurial leaders.
After I had that epiphany… everything changed. And I fell back in love with my business, again.
For me, it’s not about the selling technique, as much as I needed to be reminded of who I was doing it all for. For my Force Multipliers!
Justice for Force Multipliers
I’ve seen a few LinkedIn posts floating around recently pushing back on the term “Force Multiplier”—specifically in the context of Chiefs of Staff.
And I’ve been thinking about it more than I expected to. I mean, how could I not!? My company is called The Founder & The Force Multiplier!
I don’t exactly feel defensive about the term. It makes me realize how differently people are using it. And maybe more importantly, what people think it’s supposed to mean. Some of the critiques are fair. The term can be vague. It’s not a formal job title. And in some cases, it’s been used as a bit of a catch-all for roles that are actually very different from one another.
There’s also a broader push happening right now to better define the Chief of Staff role. To make it more concrete. More understood. More respected. Which I fully agree with. Because we’ve been fighting that battle for years with the Executive Assistant role!
When we wrote The Founder & The Force Multiplier, the idea wasn’t to create a new role or rebrand an existing one. It was to describe a dynamic. A relationship. A way of working together that allowed a business to move faster, make better decisions, and actually execute on what mattered.
It was about the person sitting next to the CEO (usually entrepreneurs and small business owners) who could take a vision and turn it into something real. Who could connect dots, create clarity, and move things forward without needing constant direction.
And don’t forget, the subtitle is How Entrepreneurs and Executive Assistants Achieve More Together. It all started with an entrepreneurial leader and their counterpart who could take their vision and ensure it was executed. It was always about leadership and partnership.
Over time, the term took on a life of its own. And I’m not mad about it! I love seeing how many people have Force Multiplier in their LinkedIn headlines. Or how many CEOs contact me after reading our book because they’ve finally understood the type of person they need by their side.
Executive Assistants started using the term. Then some Chiefs of Staff did too. And operators, OBMs, right-hand partners followed. It gave language to something a lot of people were already doing but didn’t quite know how to articulate.
And I think that’s where some of the tension is coming from now. Because once something becomes popular, it can become diluted. If “Force Multiplier” becomes synonymous with a specific role, we lose the point entirely.
To me, it’s not about what’s written in your email signature or LinkedIn profile. It’s about how you think, how you prioritize, how you make decisions, how you communicate and lead, and how you extend the capacity of the person and business you’re supporting.
A Force Multiplier is someone who increases output, clarity, and momentum. That can show up in many different ways and titles depending on the business, the leader, and the stage they’re in.
While we don’t need to turn it into a job title, I do think there’s something there worth keeping.
Because for a lot of people, it was the first time they saw their work described in a way that actually matched the value they were creating.
For me, “Force Multiplier” is still useful. Not as a label, but as a standard. A way to ask: “Am I actually making things better, faster, clearer, more effective for the person or business I’m working with?”
The Future of The Founder & The Force Multiplier
For this and so many other reasons, I don’t believe my work at The Founder and The Force Multiplier is done.
It may have expanded far beyond what I ever could have imagined. I mean, getting to work with administrative teams at 1Password, Google, BlackRock Capital, and more was never on my bingo card!
This reminds me of what Sahil Bloom talks about as the two general phases of your professional life:
Phase 1: The “Yes” Phase. You want to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way. Saying yes exposes you to new things. You learn and grow at an accelerated rate. You figure things out. You try a lot of things until you find your thing.
Sahil Bloom
Phase 2: The “No” Phase. You want to say no to most things. Once you’ve identified your primary energy creators (your things), saying no allows you to focus your energy and attention on those few things that really matter. It allows you to go deep. To mine the gold.
I’ve entered the second phase of my career. And my heart will always be with the entrepreneurial Executive Assistant/Chief of Staff/Force Multiplier and their respective leaders. Where the job description, if it even exists, is not perfect. Where entrepreneurs and their right-hand partners are building the bicycle while riding it. Where resources are limited and it’s all-hands on deck, all the time.
This is the world I understand. This is the world that excites me. I know it will continue to evolve and expand… For example, I’ve already got book coaching on the horizon.
But right now helping Force Multipliers navigate “it all” is where I’ll be.
For more content like this delivered straight to your inbox each week, subscribe to The Founder & The Force Multiplier newsletter! My newsletter is a weekly round-up of actionable ideas and purposeful growth for right-hand partners and entrepreneurial leaders. Each week, I share a carefully curated collection of useful insights, trending business and leadership topics, quotes, questions, career advice, book recommendations, and more. See you on Thursday!
