Megan Carmack is building businesses that do not depend on founders
Megan Carmack, Founder & Fractional Chief of Staff, is rebuilding beReplaceable, which helps founders build systems, clarify ownership and create accountability their teams can run with. The conversation traces how a virtual assistant business led to a different model, why burnout changed Carmack’s direction, and why handing off tasks is not the same as handing off decisions.
Document how work gets done and plan what to hand off before the business becomes dependent on the owner. Sustainable delegation means transferring ownership and decision-making, not just tasks.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
I started VA Elevation in 2020 after I was laid off during the pandemic. I needed income, and I knew how to keep a business running behind the scenes, so I built a virtual assistant business for entrepreneurs and small-business owners. What I’ve learned since is that most support for founders helps them hand off tasks. beReplaceable is built around something different: helping founders hand off ownership and decision-making, so the work doesn’t keep coming back to them.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
My first clients came from referrals and my network. Today I’m rebuilding beReplaceable from the ground up ahead of an early 2027 launch, so my focus right now is building an audience and relationships through Instagram, community, events, and speaking.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
The mistake that taught me the most was building a business that depended entirely on me. By the end of 2024, burnout had cost me my entire client base. The decision that changed everything was going back to corporate in January 2025 as a Chief of Staff and Controller. It gave me the space to stop rebuilding the same business and ask what I actually wanted entrepreneurship to look like.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
When I started in 2020, most founders wanted an extra set of hands to take tasks off their plate. Over the last couple of years, that’s shifted. Tools and AI now handle a lot of the routine work, so founders don’t need more help with tasks. They need a business that can make decisions and run without them. I saw that in my own business too: handing off tasks didn’t stop everything from coming back to me. So instead of rebuilding a service business, I’m building beReplaceable around the systems, ownership, and accountability founders need to grow beyond themselves.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
Do this first: build your business so it can run without you, even when it’s just you. Write down how things get done and decide early what you’ll eventually hand off. Ignore the pressure to say yes to every client and do everything yourself. That’s exactly what burned me out.
Thank you to Megan Carmack and the team at beReplaceable for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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