I get it. You’re in your restaurant, and you see a problem. Maybe someone’s making pizzas slower than you’d like. Maybe the phone’s ringing off the hook, and the new guy is butchering a simple cleaning task. You step in. You take over. You fix it. Feels good, right? YOU ARE NEEDED. You’re the hero. You saved the day.

Except, no. you didn’t. You just trained your team to rely on you instead of stepping up. Worse, you robbed yourself of time to do something that actually grows the restaurant. You could have been working on marketing, improving relations, or, hell, even spending an hour thinking strategically instead of just reacting all day. But you didn’t. You chose the instant gratification of “doing it yourself” over the long-term win of building a system. And that’s the problem.

Martyrdom in this business is a disease. I’ve seen so many restaurant owners – good, hardworking people – convince themselves that their job is to be everywhere, all the time, because if they’re not, everything will collapse. They tell themselves they’re leading by example, that they’re proving their dedication. What they’re actually doing is making it impossible to grow.

Let’s be clear: knowing how to do every job in your restaurant is valuable. That’s leadership. But choosing to do every job because you think it proves something? That’s ego. You have to ask yourself: Am I doing this because it’s the best use of my time, or because I don’t trust anyone else? Or worse – because I feel guilty if I don’t?

I’ve been there. Early in my career, I thought working insane hours meant I was doing the right thing. I felt proud that my team needed me for every little issue. It took time (and exhaustion) for me to realize that being needed isn’t the goal. Being successful is. And you don’t get there by being the hardest worker in the building – you get there by being the smartest.

Look at the owners who scale past one store. They’re not in the kitchen making every single pizza. They’re not answering every phone call. They’ve built systems. They’ve trained their people. They’ve let go.

That’s the hardest part: letting go. Trusting. Training. Delegating. Knowing that, yeah, sometimes people will screw up. But if you don’t give them the room to step up, they never will. And then what? You stay trapped. Stuck in a one-store mindset, watching other people pass you by because they were willing to get out of their own way.

So the next time you catch yourself stepping in to “save the day,” stop. Ask yourself, is this my job? Or am I just feeding my own need to be the hero? If you want to grow, you’ve got to let go. Martyrs don’t build empires. Smart operators do.

And if you still think being the hardest worker in the room is the key to success, cool. Just don’t be surprised when someone who works smarter laps you. And then at that point, you can either have a heart-to-heart with yourself or sound like the disgruntled band who sees another band play a stadium and say, “Man, they sold out.” Yes, they did, the whole house.

Mike Bausch is the owner of Andolini’s Pizzeria in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Instagram: @mikeybausch