Great Marketer, Bad Manager? Scale Without Burnout

Most businesses don’t stall because the founder “isn’t good at marketing.” They stall because the founder becomes an accidental manager—and management is a different job.

If you’re a solopreneur who’s starting to hire (a VA, a freelancer, your first marketing coordinator), you’re about to feel this shift in real time. One week you’re writing copy and shipping work. The next week you’re setting expectations, reviewing drafts, untangling miscommunications, and wondering why everything takes longer now.

Ashley Herd—founder of Manager Method and former Head of HR at McKinsey—calls this the “accidental manager” problem: high performers get promoted into leadership without training. For solopreneurs, it’s even more intense because you’re not getting promoted—you’re self-promoting into management while still owning sales, delivery, and strategy.

This post reframes Herd’s core ideas for the Solopreneur Marketing Strategies USA crowd, and connects them to the bigger theme of our series: AI in Human Resources & Workforce Management—specifically how to use AI to support better delegation, clearer performance management, and healthier teams.

Why top performers often struggle as managers (and why it hits solopreneurs first)

Being great at execution doesn’t translate to being great at leadership. Execution is about doing the work well; management is about helping other people do the work well.

In the podcast discussion, the classic example is sales: the best salesperson becomes the sales manager, then gets stuck coaching people they don’t relate to, handling “people issues,” and missing the thrill of personal wins. The same dynamic shows up in small business marketing:

• The founder who can write a killer landing page now has to review landing pages.
• The founder who can run ads now has to teach ads (or set guardrails).
• The founder who thrives on speed now has to slow down enough to communicate.

Here’s the stance I’ll take: Most solopreneurs don’t need to become full-time managers to grow—they need a management system.

That system can be lightweight, but it has to exist.

The “doing-to-managing” cliff

Solopreneurs hit a specific cliff when they hire their first helper:

1. You outsource a task to buy time.
2. You spend time explaining the task.
3. You spend more time fixing the output.
4. You conclude hiring “doesn’t work.”

What actually happened is you tried to scale execution without scaling the clarity required for delegation.

That’s where Herd’s fundamentals—clear expectations, real one-on-ones, and coach-style feedback—matter.

Clear expectations are conversations, not assignments

Clear expectations aren’t “get this done by Friday.” They’re a shared understanding of what good looks like, why it matters, and what support exists.

Herd breaks “clear expectations” into something practical: talk about role impact, outcomes, and the how—not just the goal.

For solopreneurs, this is the difference between:

• “Write an email for the webinar”

…and:

• “Write a webinar reminder email that gets at least 3% click-through to the registration page. Use our friendly tone, 125–175 words, 1 CTA button, and 2 subject line options. The goal is to reduce no-shows. If you’re unsure, check the last two campaigns in our folder and mirror the structure.”

A simple expectation stack you can copy

When you delegate marketing work, define expectations in five layers:

1. Outcome: What must happen (metric or observable result).
2. Audience: Who it’s for and what they care about.
3. Constraints: Brand voice, length, budget, tools, compliance.
4. Process: Draft date, review date, final date, where files live.
5. Quality bar: Examples of “good,” “great,” and “off-brand.”

This matters because “miscommunication” is usually “missing specification.”

Where AI fits in (without turning your team into prompt monkeys)

In the AI in workforce management conversation, expectations are exactly where AI can help—if you use it as a drafting assistant, not a replacement for thinking.

Use AI for:

• Turning your voice notes into a first-pass brief
• Creating a checklist from your best-performing past asset
• Generating acceptance criteria (“this is done when…”) for recurring tasks

Avoid using AI for:

• “Just make a strategy” prompts with no context
• Replacing your judgment on positioning, offers, or brand voice

A good rule: AI can write faster than you can manage confusion. Your job is still clarity.

One-on-ones shouldn’t be status updates (use them to prevent churn)

If your one-on-ones are only status reports, you’re doing the least valuable part live.

Herd makes a point that’s easy to miss: simply holding consistent one-on-ones—and showing up on time—signals respect and builds trust. Many employees rarely get that.

For a small business, one-on-ones do three high-impact things:

1. Surface blockers before they become missed deadlines
2. Improve retention (people leave when they feel unseen)
3. Build judgment in your team so they rely on you less

A better one-on-one agenda for tiny teams

Use a shared doc (or your project tool) so status updates don’t eat the meeting. Then run the call like this:

• 5 minutes: Wins + what felt hard this week
• 10 minutes: One priority blocker (pick the biggest one)
• 10 minutes: Decision-making coaching (“What would you do?”)
• 5 minutes: Growth/energy check (“What’s giving you momentum?”)

That’s 30 minutes that actually changes output.

AI in employee engagement (yes, even for solopreneurs)

You don’t need enterprise HR software to get value from AI-enabled engagement practices. You can use lightweight tools to:

• Summarize weekly check-ins and detect recurring blockers
• Track workload signals (too many “urgent” tasks = burnout risk)
• Draft development plans based on role goals

Just be transparent. If you’re using AI to summarize notes, tell your team and confirm what’s stored and where.

Feedback that doesn’t trigger defensiveness: “Pause → Consider → Act”

Most managers don’t avoid feedback because they’re careless. They avoid it because it’s uncomfortable—and because they’re worried about how they will look.

Herd’s framework is memorable and useful:

• Pause: Don’t react in the moment when emotions are high.
• Consider: Shift focus from your discomfort to the employee’s growth.
• Act: Deliver clear feedback with empathy and next steps.

Here’s the punchline: If you delay feedback, you’re not being nice—you’re letting the problem become someone’s identity.

A script that works (and doesn’t sound robotic)

When something’s off:

• “I want to flag something early because I want you to win here.”
• “The specific issue is X. The impact is Y.”
• “Here’s what ‘good’ looks like next time: Z.”
• “What got in the way on your side?”
• “What do you need from me to hit Z consistently?”

When something’s great (and you want more of it):

• “This was strong because __.”
• “It helped the business by __.”
• “Keep doing __. Next time, try __ to make it even cleaner.”

Positive feedback is a performance tool. Treat it like one.

Performance management without the corporate baggage

“Performance management” has a bad reputation because it’s often bureaucratic. In a small business, performance management can be one page:

• Expectations (what success looks like)
• Checkpoints (how we review work)
• Coaching (how we build skill)
• Accountability (what happens if it doesn’t improve)

AI can support this by drafting role scorecards, summarizing performance notes, and suggesting coaching questions—but it can’t replace the conversation.

The coach mindset: how to grow without becoming the bottleneck

A manager who acts like a boss creates dependency. A manager who acts like a coach builds capacity.

One of the simplest coaching moves mentioned in the discussion is this:

When someone asks, “What should I do?” respond with “I don’t know—what would you do?”

It’s deceptively effective because it trains decision-making.

The solopreneur version: coach the work, not the person

If you’re hiring contractors or part-time help, you may not be “managing careers,” but you still need to coach outcomes:

• Clarify what matters (conversion rate, show-up rate, lead quality)
• Give guardrails (brand voice, pricing integrity, customer promises)
• Review decisions (why they chose approach A vs B)

You’re building a small marketing engine. Coaching is how the engine stops relying on your hands.

The easiest trust-builder most founders skip: “Why I chose you”

Herd shares a tactic that’s almost embarrassingly simple: tell people why you hired them.

Not the generic “we’re excited to have you.” The specific version:

• “I hired you because your writing is crisp and you think in customer objections.”
• “I hired you because you’ve shipped campaigns under deadlines without drama.”
• “I hired you because you ask better questions than most candidates.”

This sets identity, confidence, and direction from day one.

And if your team member has been with you for years? It’s still not too late.

When to get outside help instead of promoting internally (or doing it yourself)

The campaign angle matters here: internal growth doesn’t automatically produce leadership.

If you’re a solopreneur scaling marketing, you’ll often face a fork:

• Keep hiring executors and become the default manager
• Bring in external strategic help so your hires don’t drift

I’m opinionated about this: If strategy lives only in your head, delegation will always feel like failure.

That’s where a fractional leader (or an advisor) earns their keep—not by “doing all the marketing,” but by installing a strategy, priorities, scorecards, and operating rhythm that your team can actually follow.

If you want a second set of eyes on how to structure your marketing leadership as you scale, the fastest route is to work with someone who’s done it across many businesses—especially when your first hires are underway and mistakes get expensive.

Next steps: a 7-day management reset for solopreneurs

If you’re hiring or planning to hire this quarter, do this over the next week:

1. Write one role scorecard for your most delegated function (content, ads, ops).
2. Create a shared one-on-one doc with three standing prompts: wins, blockers, decisions.
3. Give one piece of positive feedback in public (in Slack/email) that names what “good” looked like.
4. Deliver one piece of corrective feedback early using “issue → impact → next standard.”
5. Record a 5-minute Loom explaining “why we do it this way” for one recurring process.
6. Use AI to draft briefs faster, but keep your quality bar human.
7. Decide what you won’t manage—and what needs outside strategic support.

You don’t need to become a “natural manager” to scale. You need repeatable clarity, coaching habits, and enough structure that your team can win without mind-reading.

What part of your business would grow fastest if you stopped being the default manager—and started being the coach and strategist instead?