Use Your Seat to Create More Seats

I recently attended an event where guest speaker Stephanie Miles shared a line that stuck with me: “I would use my seat to create more seats.” 

Her message centered on three core concepts: take the risk, protect your team, and leave it better. For business owners, these ideas can help create opportunities for others while building a stronger, more sustainable business. 

Here’s what stood out to me—and how we can put it to work. Let’s dive in! 

Take the Risk 

If you’re 80% ready, go! Maybe don’t apply that logic to rockets, but you get the idea. 

As an owner, you’ve already taken a risk. Whether you bought a business, inherited one, or started from scratch, you accepted responsibility for making it work. 

Now it’s five, ten, or fifteen years later, and it’s time to revisit that moment—with a twist. Take a risk on someone else. 

Trust someone else to lead part of what you’ve built. Document the process, set clear expectations, remain available, and manage the risk. Most of all, give them a meaningful assignment before they feel completely ready, with enough support to grow into it. 

As Stephanie put it, “The purpose of managing risk isn’t to make us afraid to move. It’s to help us move forward wisely.” 

As an owner, protecting your team can take a lot of forms. Sometimes it means protecting people from outside pressures. Sometimes it means helping them recognize an unsustainable pace. 

An owner recently told me about one of their hardest-working employees: dependable, reliable, and resilient. The kind of person you know you can count on. 

The owner cut that employee’s hours—not because the business needed less from them, but because the owner believed their pace wasn’t sustainable.

That decision needs care. Fewer hours can affect someone’s income, so the conversation matters as much as the schedule change. But the intention was worth paying attention to: if the owner wanted that employee to thrive long term, something needed to change. 

Hard work should be valued. Exhaustion shouldn’t become the expectation. 

When owners pair that message with honest conversation and practical support, they can make it easier for employees to raise a hand when life and work get out of balance. 

For many of you, this is what you do every. Single. Day. 

You designed your business to create a better outcome for someone or something. Let’s take it a step further, though. 

When was the last time you created a new seat for someone else? 

Your business has likely put you in relationships with customers, vendors, and other business owners. Some of those connections may feel ordinary to you. To someone else, they could open a door that’s been closed for years. 

You’ve built relational equity through years of showing up, doing good work, and earning trust. When was the last time you used some of it for someone else’s benefit? 

People need a foot in the door, a new job, a connection, or a mentor. As an owner, you may know exactly the person who could help. 

Make the introduction. Recommend someone whose work you believe in. Invite an emerging leader into a conversation they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. 

Leave it better by opening the door for someone else. 

That’s what Stephanie’s message brought home for me. These three ideas challenge us to consider how our success can create opportunities for others. 

There’s a thread of generosity running through all three: giving someone your trust, caring enough to protect them, and using your relationships to open a door. 

Generosity has a way of returning something to the hand that gives. It may be a stronger relationship, deeper trust, or simply knowing someone else is better off because you showed up. 

Take the risk. Protect your team. Leave it better. 

The next time you find yourself in a seat as an owner, ask yourself: “Who else can I bring in?” 

To connect with Stephanie about commercial insurance and protecting the business you’re building, visit Stephanie Miles on LinkedIn. Her perspective is what prompted this article, and I’m grateful she shared her message.