The Secret to Moving Up in Your Business Is…
Replacing Yourself First

The Portus Charting Opportunities series brought in a speaker recently who runs a company called Evil Bone Water, an ancient Chinese remedy for all kinds of ailments that started as a small batch operation out of a chiropractor’s home and grew into something remarkable. Dr. Mark Brinson built the product, built the brand, and built the company into what it is today.

What stood out most in the conversation wasn’t the product or the growth story. It was something Mark said about where he is right now as a leader.

He is more COO than CEO at this point. And he knows it. He is actively working to elevate himself into the CEO role while teaching his team to do the same thing within their own positions.

The Framework That Changes Everything

The message Mark shares with his employees is deceptively simple. If you want to grow beyond where you are, you have to create the systems and processes that allow someone else to come in and do what you are currently doing. You cannot move up until you make it possible for someone else to step into the role you are leaving behind.

That reframe is one of the clearest and most practical ways to think about succession planning William has come across. Not just as an exit strategy for a founder ready to sell, but as a framework for every person in every role at every level of a growing company.

Succession Planning Is Not Just About the Exit

Most business owners hear the phrase succession planning and immediately think about what happens when they leave the business for good. The sale, the transition, the handoff. And yes, that is part of it.

But succession planning in its truest form is something that happens continuously at every level of a healthy organization. The analyst who wants to become the chief investment officer. The field technician who wants to move into operations management. The operations manager who wants to step into a VP role. Each one of those transitions requires the same thing. The person moving up has to create a path for someone else to step into what they are leaving behind.

Without that, the organization stalls. The person who wants to grow cannot move because nobody is ready to fill their seat. And the business owner who wants to become a true CEO cannot get there because the COO role they are still playing has no one to hand off to.

Building the Systems That Make It Possible

The practical answer is documentation, process building, and intentional knowledge transfer. What do you do every day that someone else could learn to do? What knowledge lives only in your head that needs to be captured somewhere? What decisions do you make that could be made by someone else with the right framework in place?

Those are not comfortable questions for most business owners. They require admitting that you are not indispensable, which can feel threatening even when you know intellectually that building something that does not depend on you is the whole point.

But the business owners who do this work, who actively build the systems and develop the people that allow them to move up and out of their current role, are the ones who end up with something genuinely valuable. A business that grows because the people inside it are growing. And a founder who finally gets to operate at the level they have been working toward all along.

You can’t promote yourself until you replace yourself.

Start there.

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We do an event Every month called Charting Opportunities, and it’s great. We bring in outside speakers to talk about business topics, right? Business only things that we know are important for our business owners. And we– In June, we had a speaker come in, he actually lives down in Florida. Uh, owns a great company, uh, that makes a product called Evil Bone Water.

It’s an old ancient Chinese recipe and for all kinds of, for all kinds of ailments. And it was great. He started the company. He was actually working as… He’s a chiropractor by trade and started the company in basically his, um, his own house and was making batches, small batch. It grew, it grew, it grew. And so we were [00:01:00] just talking about that growth and that Charting Opportunity series, right?

And the, the growth in the marketing, right? That Mark’s, uh, uh, has done a phenomenal job marketing the company, and then he’s also done a phenomenal job of growing the company. He was talking about that growth and, you know, one of the cool things that came out was is he talked about the growth, he talked about how he’s trying to become the CEO, but he’s not there yet.

And like he’s more a CEO r- or a COO right now than he is a CEO, and how he talks to his employees about the same thing. Like, they want to grow beyond where they are, but in order to grow beyond where they are, they’ve got to watch the company continue to grow and elevate themselves out of the position.

And elevating themselves out of the position means creating systems and processes for people to come in and backfill them and to do the things that they’re currently doing so they can move on. And I thought that was such a, a [00:02:00] great comment, such a great way to explain succession planning, right? Like, that’s essentially each one of us is going through succession planning in our own way, right?

Like, we want to be– we want to move on, whether it’s to sell your company or whether it’s to, to be better. And in order to be better, we have to move from where we are to a step above that or two steps above that. But you, you can’t do that without, without creating new you, without getting to a point where you are replacing old you as well.

So anyways, when you think about succession planning, think about it that way, right? Which is, how do I become the CEO if, if that’s what… If you’ve got a smaller company, like how do you actually get there? And, you know, how do you move past CEO? How do you teach your employees to move to, from, you know, analyst to, uh, chief investment officer in, in our particular case, [00:03:00] or whatever that might end up being.

So shift your focus a little bit on, on, um, on succession planning and just think about growing into that new role and leaving that old role behind.

ORIGINAL MEDIA SOURCE(S):

William Bissett: Don’t Promote Yourself Until You Replace Yourself | Portus Perspectives

Originally Recorded on July 15, 2026

Portus Perspectives: Episode 34

By /Published On: August 19, 2026/