Get Over Yourself: How to Lead and Delegate Effectively for More Time, More Freedom, and More Success

by Dave Kerpen

Discover time-tested strategies to growing a successful business and leading a team—without sacrificing your personal life. The key is delegation.

Drawing on his own experience launching and scaling multiple companies, New York Times bestselling author Dave Kerpen shares the secrets of how you can shift your mindset (and your workload) to focus on the things that are most important for your business, your employees, and you.

With the rise of remote work, the gig economy, AI, and social media, the boundaries between work and home are dissolving, leaving workplace leaders with less time for themselves than ever before. Featuring real-life examples and prompts for goal setting, Get Over Yourself is a blueprint to help readers become master delegators by learning how to:

• Embrace delegation as a strategy for long-term growth and success
• Avoid common challenges faced by small business owners and corporate leaders
• Navigate the changing work landscape, including remote work, hybrid work, ChatGPT, and the gig economy
• Choose the right people for your team and encourage a workplace of trust and autonomy
• Create a healthy, sustainable work-life balance in today’s dynamic work environment
• Build a business that serves your life, not a life that serves your business

Get Over Yourself is an evergreen guide for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and leaders growing their businesses in a new world. By shifting your mindset in small, impactful ways, you can reclaim your time with peace of mind and turn your attention to what matters most.

240 pages, Hardcover

Published March 19, 2024

Reviews

[RxReads]

"Get Over Yourself" by Dave Kerpen is like a refreshing breeze in the cluttered world of self-help books. As a small business owner juggling work, family, and life's curveballs, I found Kerpen's approach both relatable and practical. His emphasis on delegation as a key to success isn't groundbreaking, but it's his down-to-earth delivery and real-life anecdotes that make the difference.

What sets this book apart is Kerpen's ability to blend humor with wisdom. I found myself nodding along with his stories and chuckling at his witty insights. Plus, knowing that he's walked the talk with successful business ventures adds credibility to his advice. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just dipping your toes into leadership waters, "Get Over Yourself" offers actionable strategies to reclaim your time and focus on what truly matters. It's a five-star read that's already earned a permanent spot on my bookshelf, ready for whenever I need a dose of inspiration and practical guidance.

Thank You Netgalley for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

[Tony Stanfel]

Kerpen's central idea isn't a new one (delegate or drown) but he earns his keep in the how, not the what. The book is built on the SHARE method and a pile of real stories from his own run building and scaling companies, and that's where it's strongest: watching him actually screw up delegation, over-explain, under-explain, hire wrong, then course-correct, makes the framework stick in a way a bullet-point list wouldn't.

Where it's thinner is depth. If you've read much in the leadership/management space, you'll recognize the shape of most of this, trust your team, define outcomes not tasks, hire for fit, set boundaries and a few other reviewers are right that stripped of the anecdotes, this could've been a long essay. I didn't mind the padding as much as they did; the stories are the actual teaching mechanism here, not filler around it.

The most useful thread for me was the reframe from "delegation as risk management" to "delegation as the thing that makes your business and your life sustainable at the same time." That's a genuinely different mental model than most delegation advice, which treats it purely as a productivity hack. Worth reading if you manage people and/or lead teams and still feel like the bottleneck in your own organization. Less worth it if you've already internalized that lesson and are looking for something more rigorous.

[Mukesh Gupta]

I got an advanced copy of the book via Netgalley.

Here are some of the things that I liked about the book:
- Lots of examples. Every reader would find themselves in some of them and therefore making the recommendations more personal.
- It simple and easy to read.
- Simple frameworks that are easy to remember.

Here are some things that I missed in the book:
- If we remove all the stories, the crux of the book could have been written as an essay. So, I missed more meat in the overall content or interesting insights in the book.

Overall, the book touches on an important topic for all leaders - entrepreneurs or not and provides some interesting ideas to put into practice.

[Keisha Blair]

This book should be required reading for all leaders! The book delivers on time-tested strategies to growing a successful business and leading a team - without sacrificing your personal life. In a world with ChatGPT, AI, social media and excessive burnout in the ranks of leadership - this book is a very important resource. I also interviewed Dave on the Holistic Wealth podcast where he shared tips on fundraising for leaders as well as the enneagram quiz as a tool to highlight strengths and honing them in a team setting. Five stars! Great work Dave Kerpen!

[Helfren]

"Get Over Yourself" by Dave Kerpen is a practical guide for leaders mastering delegation amid remote work, AI, and gig economies. Drawing from his entrepreneurial experience, Kerpen offers relatable stories, simple frameworks, and tools like the SHARE method to build trusting teams and reclaim personal time. While light on deep insights, its actionable advice on work-life balance earns it 4.5 stars for busy educators and entrepreneurs