Steve Kamb on Why He Had to Fire Himself Twice

What happens when the business you built pulls you away from the work you do best? Steve Kamb, founder of Nerd Fitness and author of How to Try Again, joins Karl Staib to explore that question. After growing his company to roughly 40–50 employees, Steve realized that leading a larger team was taking him further from his strengths: researching, writing, and connecting with people through ideas. Steve shares why he had to step away from leadership roles twice before finding his way back to writing. Instead of making one dramatic leap, he used small experiments to reduce his meeting load, shift responsibilities, and learn what fit. The conversation explores how to reconsider your goals, build systems around your strengths, and keep trying without turning every setback into a judgment about yourself. Recognizing when you’re in the wrong role Steve shares how growing Nerd Fitness put him in a CEO role that pulled him away from his strengths in writing and content creation. For business leaders, his experience raises a useful question: Is the role you’ve built helping you contribute your best work, or making that work harder to do? Using small experiments to change direction He gradually reduced his meeting involvement and shifted responsibilities as he explored returning to writing. His approach shows how small experiments can help you learn what fits before committing to a major career or business change. Creating space to reconsider your goals He introduces his PACT framework: Pause, Accept, Change, Try. It gives listeners a structure for stepping back, acknowledging their current situation, and deciding whether the goals they’re pursuing still deserve their time and energy. Letting go of expectations you can’t control He discusses “declaring expectation bankruptcy,” accepting that effort does not guarantee a particular outcome. For listeners carrying the pressure to make everything succeed, this idea offers a way to focus on their actions while responding to setbacks with more self-compassion. Building a system that develops ideas He explains how he captures ideas in Roam, tests them through his newsletter, and uses audience feedback to develop book chapters. His process shows how a repeatable system can support creativity and help you discover which ideas connect before investing more time in them. Steve Kamb is the founder of Nerd Fitness and author of How to Try Again. He writes about making meaningful changes, navigating setbacks, and starting again with more self-compassion. Explore his book, essays, and newsletter at SteveKamb.com, or connect with him on LinkedIn. If this conversation made you rethink how you work, join my Systematic Leader newsletter for practical ideas to help you make better decisions, simplify workflows, and build systems that support your strengths. I share ways to reduce daily friction, give your team more clarity, and create a better customer experience so your business depends less on you remembering every detail. Visit SystematicLeader.co to sign up and get my free guides.