Find me on https://lovable.dev/@lazarjovanovic and learn Lovable on https://february.lovable.app/

Lazar Jovanovic

Professional Vibe Coder at Lovable | L5: Diamond Certified

Next stop - Lovabletown! ❤️ 

Dream it -> Ship it

Am I still crazy for saying no one will need to code 6 months from now? 
Am I still crazy for saying that PMs and designers do not need to learn how to code to build production grade software? 

Am I crazy? Or am I just trying to shake you from your roots? Make you do something about it? 

Not freak out by any means - but by all means take action and start doing something. 

It's entirely your choice and within your reach, please please please listen to Lenny Rachitsky and Boris Cherny dive deeper into this topic. 

Don't listen to me. Watch me as an example it is possible, and do something! 

https://lnkd.in/eK5jAdwq

Open video: Head of Claude Code: What happens after coding is solved | Boris Cherny on youtube.com

Head of Claude Code: What happens after coding is solved | Boris Cherny

Trying to come up with a good caption for this one.

This lesson is probably going to be very polarizing so I need your opinions on this in the comments. 

My POV:

The real leverage isn't in building more apps. 
It's in building fewer apps that can become many.

I used to think every project had to be unique. 
A new idea, a new market, a new everything. 
That is backwards.

Most beginners build apps. 
Builders build templates.

I don't mean a generic boilerplate. 

I mean a repeatable solution to a repeatable problem. 
Because most people in the same niche need the same things.

Take fitness creators. 
They all need workout delivery, progress tracking, and community features. When you build it, the pitch isn't "I have an idea for an app." 
The pitch is "I already built this. It just needs to look like you."

Or look at podcasters. 
They have audience and trust, but they lack products. 
You build a companion app once with searchable content and AI summaries. You use the same structure and simply swap the identity for the next creator.

The math changes everything:

Build one solid template in two weeks. 
Customize it for a client in two days. 
At $2,000 per branded app, five clients is $10,000 from that same initial week of work.

To find your own template, look for these four things:
1. A niche where people share the same needs.
2. A stable structure where only branding and content change.
3. A market where people are already spending money.
4. A clear way to reach that audience.

Your best work isn't just for one client. 
It is proof that you can deliver something premium, and that proof can be replicated.

Find a repeatable need, build once, and customize many times.

Catch Day 26 and the full lesson at https://lnkd.in/eWZShRpu and tell me if you agree about this being the easiest way to start monetizing your Lovable builds?

I think most people are still using AI at the surface level.

They use it to generate something faster. 
A document. 
Some code. 
A summary.
A deck. 

And that’s fine. 
It already feels magical.

But the real shift for me wasn’t speed. It was structure. I stopped thinking of AI as a tool that produces output and started treating it like a thinking partner.

Now I use it to pressure-test ideas before they become expensive.
1. To argue with me.
2. To ask me the uncomfortable questions.
3. To simulate edge cases I wouldn’t have thought about on my own.

The biggest unlock isn’t “write code for me.”
It’s shortening the feedback loop between idea and clarity.
That’s the part that changes how you work.

Vibe coding is just problem-solving under new constraints.

People hear the term and think shortcuts or laziness. 
In reality, it is the natural next step in the history of software development.

In Day 27 of 28 Days of Lovable, Marija Milosevic Lovable Ambassador and a former software engineer with 10 years of experience writing Java joins us to reframe how we look at AI-powered building.

If you zoom out, the pattern is logical:
- We moved from binary to functions.
- We moved from machine commands to readable languages like Python.
- We moved from manual coding to visual low-code builders.
- Now, we describe functionality in natural language and let the system generate the structure.

Every time we build on top of a new layer, we give up a bit of control in exchange for leverage. 

That has always been the deal. 
But faster execution does not mean less thinking. 
If anything, it means your thinking matters more. 

Thinking, judgment, and taste are what keep you calibrated when the tools move fast.

Over the last 27 days, the goal hasn't been to master a tool, but to master a loop:
1. Identify a problem.
2. Understand the constraints.
3. Design a system to solve it.
4. Execute as cheaply as possible.
5. Review honestly.
6. Decide deliberately.

When you look at an app like Uber, it feels like magic. 
But when you break it down into driver location, your location, distance, and a recalculation loop, it stops being mysterious. 

It becomes a system. 
And once you see the system, it is buildable.

Good builders don't wait for perfect tools. 
They see limitations early and design around them. 
That is what transfers. 
That skill doesn't expire when the tools change.

Catch Day 27 and the full lesson at https://lnkd.in/eWZShRpu

Community spotlight time! 

I asked -> you shared -> now it's my turn :) 

I cannot be more grateful for all of you that kept sending me Lovable app links for the past week. 

I hate singling anything out - but these are the 3 that popped for me. 

Keep sending stuff that you build and I'll do my best to feature you. 

https://meucv.online/ by Diego Ruzzinenti - simple (love that) application, the reason why I really loved it is because he took advantage of everything that AI development can offer. Check out the animation of how the app works on the page. That is a game changer. You no longer need to record videos of your demos or get people onto the waitlist. Just show them. 

https://lnkd.in/e8disuhJ by Erik Willemse - very cool for getting a bit of perspective in life, in case you ever asked yourself the question I've been asking myself a pretty decent chunk of my time on earth, which is, "Would my life be any different if I was born elsewhere?" 

https://lnkd.in/ezm3xJ88 Michael Tippett - Most people come to me, and when I ask them why they haven't used Lovable, they tell me they don't know what to build. I think this is one of the best apps to solve for the "cold start problem" that I've seen recently. 

Keep shipping, keep sharing, and I'll keep giving you the spotlight. 

Happy Friday!

Tomorrow, to end the lesson portion of 28 Days of Lovable - I have another surprise guest to announce! 

She's a Lovable Ambassador, a wearer of all hats one could put on their head and the best person I could think of explaining what I believe vibe coding is really about - problem/constraint solving! 

Stay tuned for an amazing 15 minute session from Marija Milosevic! I was on the edge of my seat for this one, and am convinced you'll be as well 🙂 

(and you'll hear a few amazing few quotes too)

Everyone talks about how AI makes you faster.
That’s true.
But something else happened that I didn’t expect.

It made me more exposed.

When you can ship in days instead of months, there’s nowhere to hide.

If the idea is weak, it shows immediately.
If your taste is average, it shows immediately.
If you don’t understand the user, it shows immediately.

Before, you could blame timelines.
Or dependencies.
Or engineering bandwidth.
Now the bottleneck is you.

AI removes friction.
And friction used to hide mediocrity.

That part is uncomfortable.
But it’s also the opportunity.
Just depends on where you stand. 

We're all producing faster. The question is what - magic, or garbage.

Most projects don't die because the idea is bad. 
They die because the structure collapses.

On Day 22 of 28 Days of Lovable, we are discussing the uncomfortable truth: sometimes a project isn't worth fixing. 

When fixes start breaking other fixes, you are no longer progressing. 
You are fighting entropy. 
And entropy always wins.

Starting over is not quitting. 
It is optimizing for leverage.

If you find yourself re-explaining the entire system to the AI just to make one change, you are past the point of efficient repair. 

The professional move is to extract what worked, identify what caused the breakdown, and move the good components into a fresh build.

You do not owe a project completion.
You owe yourself systems that can evolve.

Watch the full lesson on structural failure and how to restart intentionally in this video

For a long time, building something felt like training for a marathon.

You would prepare for weeks.
Write specs.
Align stakeholders.
Wait for engineering bandwidth.

By the time something shipped, so much time had passed that it almost felt detached from the original idea.
Now it feels more like going to the gym.
You have an idea in the morning.
By the evening, there’s a working prototype.
And that changes something fundamental.

When building is slow, you can hide inside planning.
You can say, “We’re still refining the strategy.”
You can live in Notion and feel productive.

When building is fast, that shield disappears.
If the idea is weak, you find out quickly.
If users don’t care, you know within days.
If the execution is sloppy, it’s visible immediately.

AI didn’t just make me faster.
It removed the space where I used to overthink instead of finish.

And finishing and shipping something real, however imperfect - is becoming the actual edge.
Not intelligence.
 Not credentials.
Just the discipline to turn thoughts into things.

Don't watch this video at all! 

Day 21 is about building, and this post is for my own consistency purposes - your only purpose for the day should be to create! 

And then visit https://lnkd.in/esnAfSXh to submit what you created as I plan to share it tomorrow. Stop reading! Go ship!

Finally on Android!! 

Shane Spencer let's get to 1M faaaast 😎 Bobby Siegfried can't be the only one!

I was literally thinking this morning - if we're all solving for software, how will the hardware keep up? 

Perhaps this is the answer!?

This result is just mind-numbing. When you can generate 1M toks/min (which corresponds to say 3-4k pages of a book, or a pretty large codebase) - what new AI applications become possible? :)

Ljubisa Bajic a fellow Serbian and former co-founder of Tenstorrent, is building a new AI ASIC at Talaas.

When we spoke last February, he told me this was exactly the direction he was heading in - and now a year later, he’s shipped it.

The ultimate chip specialization: burn the weights of the transformer directly into the chip. Why even deal with software (at least at that level of the abstraction)?

When you're providing the intelligence infrastracture at planetary scale (and given how much the LLM architecture has converged)  this can be a very viable economic model. You tape out a chip that can support 3-6 months of inference - and then you ditch it after that.

Keep in mind that these numbers are for an 8B heavily quantized model (so the quality is somewhat lower) - but then again this is just an "MVP". :) We'll soon be able to do this at a much larger scale.

Check out their blog post here: https://lnkd.in/gEXdXBKs

You can apply to try it out.

Most challenges reward outcomes. This one rewards process.

Today is Day 28 of 28 Days of Lovable, and we are closing the program by opening the 7 Day Buildathon.

Starting now, you have one full week to build and ship a project using Lovable. 

But I am not looking for the prettiest UI or the biggest scope. 
I am looking for clarity of thinking and constraint awareness.

I am judging five specific pillars of execution:

1. Deliberate Starting Point
Show why you chose your entry point. 
Did it come from a real problem, a remix, or a template? 
Day 1 through Day 5 were all about this.

2. Intentional Documentation
You must demonstrate context preservation. 
I want to see your Forward docs (what you planned) and your Backward docs (what you actually built and the decisions you made along the way).

3. Agent-Oriented Execution
Show how you designed for execution, not just prompting. 
This means structured task breakdowns and phased builds with verification steps.

4. Systems Over Memory
Demonstrate how you avoided relying on one-off prompts. 
Show the system you used to keep the project aligned as it grew in complexity.

5. Reflection
This is critical for builder maturity. 
What broke? What limitation did you hit? How did you work around it? 

A month ago, you might have hesitated to start or feared breaking things. 
If you have done the work, you are not that person anymore. 
You have practiced the loop: identify a problem, design a system, execute cheaply, review honestly, and decide deliberately.

That loop is yours now. 
It does not depend on any single tool. 
The thinking transfers.

Submissions close next Friday. Winners will be announced next Saturday.

Catch Day 28 and get the full Buildathon briefing at february.lovable.app

P.S. I am proud of you. And proud of myself for showing up every morning in February. It's now the best month of the year for me ❤️

Award Winning Sr. Partner at ActionCOACH Central Texas | Entrepreneur, Business Owner, & Coach | Host of 'Business Spotlight' Austin

I’m a business operator and investor building systems that allow companies to run without their owners.

Most business owners don’t struggle because they’re doing the wrong things.
They struggle because the business depends on them for everything.

I know that life firsthand.

I spent a decade helping organizations grow, from small credit unions to Bank of America, where I rose to VP. I led nonprofit teams as an Executive Director and Program Director for a local chamber. I learned how organizations scale, how teams perform, and how systems create leverage.

Then I left banking to join my family business.

Within the first year, the reality became clear: the business worked, but only if I stayed in the middle of it.
Decisions bottlenecked. Time off came with anxiety. Growth increased pressure instead of freedom.

Over the next three years, I deployed operating systems that grew the business 5X in revenue and 8X in profit, while reducing my personal involvement to under 10 hours per week.

That experience shaped everything I’m building now.

What I’m Building:

1. ActionCOACH Central Texas - Building owner-independent businesses through systems, accountability, and disciplined execution.
2. Benefic Marketing - CRM and automation infrastructure that enforces consistency and removes owner dependency.
3. Benefic Capital - Acquiring and transforming businesses using operational excellence as the competitive advantage.

I’m not teaching theory. I’m sharing what I’m building, with my own family, my own money, and my own businesses.

What I Believe

Ownership should create agency, not obligation.

Agency over your time.
Agency over your attention.
Agency to step away without everything breaking.

A business should expand your life, not consume it.

The next decade belongs to companies that can execute the same process the same way every time, regardless of who’s on the job.
AI and systems don’t replace people. They replace inconsistency.

Great companies don’t run on heroics.
They run on clarity.

The Long Game

I’m not building a coaching practice. I’m building a platform.

One designed to make ownership repeatable, reduce burnout, and create companies that can scale, transition, or be acquired cleanly.

Real wealth isn’t how big the business gets.
It’s how much agency it gives you in your life.

— Tanner

Tanner O'Brien

I let nearly the entire team go in a single day.

Not a layoff. Not a pivot. A reckoning.

And here's the part that took me a long time to say out loud: it wasn't their fault.

We had hired fast, onboarded poorly, and documented almost nothing. We expected people to perform in a system we hadn't actually built yet. When things fell apart — and they did — it was easy to point at the people. It was harder to look at what we'd put them in.

I remember the quiet after that day. The office felt different. Smaller. I sat with it for a long time.

Then I made a decision. We weren't going to rebuild by finding better people. We were going to rebuild by building better systems first, and then putting people into them.

That shift changed everything.

When we hired again, we had documented processes. We had onboarding that actually worked. We had clarity about what "good" looked like in every role. People didn't have to guess.

The team we built after that day has been the most consistent, capable group I've worked with.

It took losing almost everyone to understand that the problem was never the people. The problem was the environment we'd built — or failed to build — for them.

If your team keeps disappointing you, stop looking at the team.

CEO, ActionCOACH Central Texas | Operator & Investor | Turning owner-dependent businesses into scalable assets

No alternative text description for this image

February 5th.

I was a finalist for the Emerging Leader Award at the Round Rock Chamber of Commerce.

I didn't win.

That part was disappointing.

But here's what I keep coming back to.

My prepared remarks — the ones I wrote in case I won — weren't about me.

They were about the people who came before me in this community.
About the leaders who would come after.
About what it means to hold something like that for a moment and pass it forward.

I wrote: "It's not an award. It's a responsibility."

This thought crystallized something for me.

Recognition is a moment.

What you do with the platform — how you treat the people around you, what you build, what you leave behind — that's the actual work.

I didn't win the award.

But I walked out still believing that.

Recognition is temporary.
The work of continuity — building something worth handing off — that's what actually lasts.

If you lead anything — a team, a business, a community — that's the frame.

Not what you earned.
What you're responsible for passing forward.

What's something you built, or almost said, or quietly did — that mattered more than the credit you got for it?

Nobody talks about this part.

When you build a business with family, you're carrying two relationships at once.

And they're connected in a way that keeps you up at night.

If the business struggles, the relationship suffers.
If the relationship gets hard, the business suffers.

There's no clean separation.
No "leave it at the office."

I joined my dad's ActionCOACH practice in 2020.

He built something real. I came in to help scale it.

But some days, the hardest conversation isn't with a client.

It's at the dinner table.

When you're also co-owners, every business disagreement carries extra weight.
Every hard quarter lands differently when the person across from you is your father.
Every win feels different too — in a way most people will never understand.

You can't fire family.
You can't fully separate the personal from the professional.
And you wouldn't trade it — but you also can't pretend it's simple.

The thing I've had to learn:

The business structure has to be strong enough to protect the relationship.

Clear roles. Clear decisions. Clear financials.

Not because you don't trust each other.
Because you love each other too much to let a blurry org chart damage what you've built outside the business.

The systems aren't just for efficiency.

They're for protecting what actually matters.

If you're building with family — is the business structure strong enough to carry the relationship when things get hard?

My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.

My grandmother passed two weeks later.

I was still running a company.

That was the hardest month of my life personally.

It was also the smoothest month we'd ever had operationally.

Let that sit for a second.

The marketing kept running.
Lead gen kept producing.
Client work kept moving.

Not because I was managing it.
Because I wasn't.

The parts of the business I had systemized — the ones with capable people and documented processes — they didn't need me.

The parts that lived only in my head?

Those collapsed.

And that contradiction changed how I think about ownership.

Every time I had inserted myself into a process that had a capable person running it, I slowed things down.

Not because I'm bad at my job.
Because I was in the way.

The business didn't need me as much as I thought it did.

Most business owners think they're the engine.

They're usually the brake.

If your business can't survive a hard season without you, you don't have a business.

You have a job with extra steps and all the risk.

What would break in your business if you disappeared for 30 days?

That's your real to-do list.

Pretty cool when things like this happen…

Cracked the top 200 on Apple Podcasts with The Ownership Advantage Podcast. 

Celebrate the process 🙂

Hosting a small workshop at the office this Wednesday and we have a few spots left.

It's called Succession Without the Stress — and it's exactly what it sounds like.

We're bringing together a handful of entrepreneurs to work through one of the most overlooked risks in a growing business: what happens when a key person walks out the door?

Not a lecture. Hands-on, with a workbook, and real strategies we're using right now with clients.

📅 Wednesday, March 4th
🕦 11:30 AM
📍 In person — our office

We'll cover leadership transition planning, talent readiness, handover processes, and how to protect what you've built without building it around any one person.

If this is something you've been putting off, this is the nudge.

Grab your spot: https://lnkd.in/egWGAYKg

My wife ran a 3:18 marathon and qualified for Boston this in December.
While she was doing that, I was on stage in Florida sharing what we've been building.
Two people. Two goals. Same lesson: you don't get the result without doing the work first.
I wrote about that — plus the AI planning session that asked me 55 questions and the team moment that reminded me why people are the only real leverage.

What a marathon, a team breakthrough, and 55 questions from an AI taught me about building a business that works without you. Community Isn't Optional

Open article: The Business Won't Grow Until You Do by Tanner O'Brien • 6 min read

Making informed decisions, even imperfect ones, is crucial for progress.

The speed at which you can make decisions and observe their outcomes—positive or negative—creates a powerful feedback loop. This rapid cycle of action, learning, and adaptation is how expertise is built.

While perfect decisions are unattainable, the clarity and peace of mind that come from actively making choices, rather than being paralyzed by indecision, is a significant benefit. Business inherently involves risk; understanding your numbers empowers you to navigate that risk more effectively. #DecisionMaking #BusinessStrategy #Leadership #DataDriven #ContinuousImprovement

I didn't start a podcast to become a podcast host.

I started it because I kept having the same conversation over and over.

A business owner, doing everything right by most measures. Revenue. Team. Clients. And completely trapped inside their own company.

That was me too, not long ago.

I spent years being the ceiling of every business I touched. The bottleneck. The person everything ran through. I thought that's what ownership looked like.
It's not. That's just a more expensive job.

So I started building differently. Documenting what actually works. Installing systems. Removing myself from the day-to-day. Watching the business grow without me having to be the hero of every story.

That journey became The Ownership Advantage.

Part of it is me sharing what I'm learning in real time. The numbers. The decisions. The things that broke and what we did about it.

The other part is bringing in founders who are doing the same thing. Operators who are in the middle of the shift from doing the work to building the system that does the work.

We don't talk tactics for their own sake. We talk structure. Leverage. Optionality. The decisions that compound over time.

If you're building something serious and want to share your story, we invite a limited number of founders each season into long-form conversation.

Link to listen and apply is in the comments.

Most business owners won’t say this out loud.

The business is successful.

Revenue is up.
The team has grown.
Clients are steady.

And yet… it feels heavier than it should.

You expected growth to make things lighter.

Instead, growth made things more complex.

More people.
More payroll.
More decisions.
More responsibility.

You’re the CEO on paper.

But in reality?

You’re still the backstop.

When something breaks, it lands on you.
When money gets tight, you feel it first.
When a decision is risky, you’re the one who makes it.

From the outside, it looks like leadership.

From the inside, it feels like carrying the business.

This isn’t burnout.

Burnout means you can’t handle it.

What’s actually happening is structural.

Your business outgrew the way it’s being run.

The operating model that got you here isn’t strong enough to get you out.

So you make a quiet trade:

Stability over sanity.
Control over relief.

You stay involved because it feels safer.

But the real shift isn’t becoming a “better CEO.”

It’s making the business safe without you.

If this feels familiar, you’re not failing.

You’re just in a stage no one talks about.

And it’s fixable.

If you’ve been feeling this quietly and want to talk it through, shoot me a DM.

No pressure. I’m here for you.

Fun Fact Friday.

This photo is almost 20 years old.

Summer camp. One of those days where everyone's headed to dinner after a long day and someone starts telling a story.

The guy in the middle? That's one of the counselors. And if you could zoom in on everyone's faces, you'd see we're all completely locked in.

He's telling a story about something that happened earlier that day. I was part of it. I lived it.

But somehow, the way he's telling it makes it better than it actually was.

Here's the wild part.

Twenty years later, I can still hear that story in my head.

Not just the plot. The way he told it. The pauses. The buildup. The punchline that made everyone lose it.

That's the power of storytelling.

It's not about what happened.

It's about how you make people feel when you tell them what happened.

I think about this all the time now.

In business. In coaching. In life.

Facts inform. Stories transform.

You can tell someone their business needs systems. Or you can tell them about the business owner who was two weeks from closing, couldn't take a vacation in five years, and finally built something that worked without them.

Same message. Completely different impact.

The best leaders I know aren't the ones with the most answers.

They're the ones who can take a complicated idea and turn it into a story that sticks.

Because people forget facts.

They don't forget how you made them feel.

What's a story someone told you years ago that you can still replay in your head?

Drop it in the comments. I want to hear it.

My coach said something to me that I genuinely didn't want to hear.

"You're no longer allowed to get results directly. All of your results now have to come through people."

I was sitting across from him, venting, if I'm honest. Too many projects. Not enough hours. Things I could see needed to get done, and I was the only one who could do them right.

I'd spent years getting good at this stuff. Sales. Systems. Delivery. I was genuinely good at it.

And he was telling me to stop.

Not to stop working. To stop being the one doing the work.

There's a difference. And it's a painful one.

Here's what I've learned about that kind of feedback: the reason it stings is because it's attacking an identity, not just a behavior.

I didn't just do the work. I was the work.

I was the one who caught things. The one who closed deals. The one who made sure things got done right.

That identity got me to where I was. And it was the ceiling that would keep me from going further.

The skills that build the business become the trap that limits it.

The operator identity serves you right up until the moment it starts serving itself.

You get so good at doing that you never learn to lead.
You get so essential that you become the bottleneck.
You get so capable that you've made yourself indispensable.

And indispensable isn't a compliment.

Indispensable is just another word for trapped.

I didn't fully believe that until I posted a job ad five days after that conversation.

Not for a salesperson. Not for a coach.

For a VA -- someone to take over the project work I'd been doing myself.

Small act. But it was the first domino.

Because here's the thing about identity shifts: they don't happen in the moment of insight.

They happen in the first decision you make after the insight.

The insight is free. The decision costs you something.

What identity are you holding onto that's become the ceiling in your business?

Discover how even minor adjustments can lead to substantial cost reductions and increased profitability.

This video explores practical strategies that can significantly enhance your bottom line and personal earnings. Focusing on efficiency and smart resource management can unlock surprising financial gains.

What small changes can you implement today to boost your income? #CostReduction #Profitability #FinancialStrategy #BusinessGrowth

At some point, every scaling business hits the same wall.

Things are breaking. The team seems stuck. Nothing moves as fast as it used to. And every conversation about what's wrong eventually circles back to people.

Wrong hire. Wrong attitude. Not enough ownership. Not enough initiative.

I've had all of those conversations. And almost every time, when we actually traced the problem back to its source, it wasn't a people problem.

It was a clarity problem.

The team didn't know what the actual goal was. Or they knew the goal but not what "done" looked like. Or they knew both but had no authority to act without approval. Or they had authority but no process to follow when things got complicated.

People can't perform in a fog. And as the owner, you're often the last one to see that the fog exists — because you've been operating in it so long you think it's just the weather.

Clarity is the job. Not just vision-casting and motivational meetings. Specific, documented, repeatable clarity.

When a team isn't performing, before you change the team, ask: have I actually given them what they need to succeed?

Usually the honest answer is not entirely.

That's where you start.

The skills that built your business are the same skills that will cap it.

Think about that for a second.

Every time you jump in and fix the problem, you get faster results. You feel useful. You feel like a leader. But you're actually training your team that you're the solution — and you're training yourself to need to be needed.

That was me.

I was the best operator in the room. I could outwork anyone, outthink any problem, outmaneuver any obstacle. That made me valuable. And it made me a ceiling.

The shift happened when I hired my first VA. Not because I wanted to — I hired him because I had to. I was out of hours. But something clicked when he handled a task better than I would have.

I didn't need to be the one doing it. I needed to be the one building the system that got it done.

Operator to architect. It's not a title change. It's an identity change.

The question isn't "how do I do this better?"

It's "who should own this, and what do they need from me to succeed?"

If you're still the best operator in your business, you don't have a business. You have a job with employees.

Which one do you have?

If you've ever been faced with burnout in your business...you've got to watch this one.

Most burned out business owners are solving the wrong problem. They think they need a vacation. They think they need to work less. They think they need to hire someone. Maybe they do — but none of that matters until you find where the burnout is actually coming from.

Watch the full episode here to learn the process to diagnose for yourself: https://lnkd.in/ghZuZumw

p.s. - when watching the video, make sure to subscribe!

I used to think delegation meant handing someone a task and walking away.

It doesn't.

That's abdication.

And it's why so many business owners end up redoing work themselves, frustrated that their team "just doesn't get it."

Here's what I learned the hard way:

Delegation without clarity is just setting someone up to fail.

When I first started stepping back from daily operations, I'd hand someone a project, give them a quick overview, and expect them to figure it out.

Then I'd come back a week later and nothing looked like what I had in my head.

So I'd redo it. Or step back in and micromanage. Which defeated the entire point.

The breakthrough came when I realized delegation isn't about less involvement upfront.

It's about more clarity upfront so you can have less involvement later.

Now when I delegate something, three things have to be crystal clear before anyone starts:

What does success look like when this is done?
What decisions can you make without me, and which ones need my input?
When do I expect an update, and what does that update need to include?

That's it.

When those three things are answered before the work starts, people don't need you hovering. They know exactly what you're looking for and when you'll check in.

Delegation isn't about giving away tasks.

It's about giving away ownership.

And ownership only works when expectations are impossible to misunderstand.

Think about the last thing you delegated that didn't go how you wanted.

Did the person actually fail, or did you not make success clear enough before they started?

Hiring shouldn't feel like a coin flip.

But for most business owners, it does.

You post the job. You get a handful of resumes. You interview a few people. You pick the one who seems least risky.

Then you cross your fingers and hope it works out.

That's not a hiring process. That's a lottery.

Here's what changed everything for me:

I stopped hiring for people who could do the job.
I started hiring for people who could own the outcome.

There's a massive difference.

Someone who can do the job follows instructions. They wait for direction. They need you to tell them what good looks like.

Someone who can own the outcome sees the gap and fills it. They solve problems before you know they exist. They make you look smart for hiring them.

The problem is most business owners never define what "owning the outcome" actually means for the role.

So they end up hiring task-doers and wondering why nothing runs without them.

Now before I hire anyone, I write down the one outcome this role is responsible for.

Not tasks. Not responsibilities. The outcome.

For a coach: clients see measurable progress and renew.

For an admin: the business runs smoothly without the owner being involved in logistics.
For a salesperson: qualified leads turn into closed clients at a predictable rate.

When you hire for outcomes instead of tasks, the conversation in the interview completely changes.

You stop asking "can you do this?" and start asking "how would you approach this?"

And the people who can own it reveal themselves immediately.

Hiring feels hard because most people are hiring for the wrong thing.

What's the one outcome your next hire needs to own?

Write it down before you post the job.

December was thinking season for me.

Not hustle season. Not sprint season.

Thinking season.

Before I touch revenue targets or hiring plans, I start with one question:

What do we want our life to feel like next year?

Not look like.
Not post about.
Feel like.

From there, everything else ladders up.

The holding company strategy.
The growth targets.
The budgets.
The lead channels.

If the business plan doesn’t serve the life plan, it’s backwards.

Planning isn’t about predicting the road perfectly.
It’s about being clear on the destination so you can reroute when reality hits.

Recorded this episode back in December - always good to reflect back and remember the plan... We’re officially into December. Week seven of this journ

Open article: The Most Important Planning Question Isn’t About Business by Tanner O'Brien • 4 min read

The Most Important Planning Question Isn’t About Business

Six weeks into 2026.

I was already off plan.

Not obviously. That's the thing about drift — it's subtle.

I wasn't wasting time. I was busy.

There was a partnership worth exploring.
A software project that had real potential.

Both felt like opportunities.
Both were exactly that — opportunities.

And neither of them were on the critical path.

My singular focus for 2026 is one thing:
Retire my parents from the business with dignity and financial security.

That's the mission. Everything else is noise.

So I made the call to park the rest.

It felt like closing doors.

It was actually the opposite.

When you stop chasing the thing that's 40 degrees off your heading, you get your capacity back.
Focus compounds the same way interest does.

Distraction doesn't always look like distraction.

Sometimes it looks like a great opportunity.

That's what makes it dangerous.

Your annual plan isn't a wish list.
It's a filter.

Every shiny thing that comes across your desk — you run it through the filter.
Does this move the singular focus forward?

If not, park it.

Not forever.
Just not now.

The opportunities will still be there.

Your focus window won't.

What are you chasing right now that isn't actually on the critical path?

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The Battle

Lazar Jovanovic

Tanner O'Brien

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Lazar Jovanovic's LinkedIn Performance

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