Many entrepreneurs think it’s a badge of honor if they do everything at their companies. But that attitude could actually be holding back their business.

“I’m chief cook and bottle washer,” they’ll say with a laugh, when asked for their title. “I turn on the lights in the morning, know every job in the company, take out the trash and even clean the bathroom if it’s needed.”

That needs to stop, our Upsize Growth Challenge experts say, because a company’s CEO must be focused on the most important, high-level activities if it’s going to thrive.

Cheryl Alexander, CEO of Cheryl Alexander & Associates and a winner of this year’s Upsize Growth Challenge, provides a case in point, although her situation is more sophisticated than the sketch above.

Alexander is the visionary who started her leadership development consulting firm 40 years ago, and today is in the midst of a re-branding campaign aimed at serving the biggest challenges facing her corporate clients.

She has enviable expertise, an impressive client list, her daughter as her trusted second-in-command—yet she spends her time on just about everything other than cultivating and development new clients. “You wear every hat in the company,” says Dean Willer, an attorney at Winthrop & Weinstine and an Upsize Growth Challenge expert, who says that’s typical in small firms. “I would decide that business development is one of your most critical elements.”

It doesn’t matter whether Alexander herself takes the task or she assigns it to another person. “Either way is fine, but don’t put business development on the back burner,” Willer advises.

How about your company? Should you take off some of those hats and wear only the most important one?