The Hardest Thing I Had to Learn as a Founder Was How to Let Go

One of the hardest things I had to learn as a founder was that growing a business eventually requires you to stop being needed for everything. In the beginning, being involved in every decision can feel like commitment. At a certain point, it becomes the very thing that limits how far the company can grow.

After all, starting a company (or even running a successful one) doesn’t equal freedom; scaling your way out of the daily grind does.

Learn to delegate the “how”

There’s an old cliché that a business owner proudly “wears all the hats” in the organization. This idea is absurd and unsustainable.

Your job as a business owner is not to know how to do everything, and you definitely shouldn’t try to do everything yourself. But once your organization gets to a certain level, you need to delegate if you want to grow. This includes the tasks that seem most familiar or comfortable, or those you think only you can do up to your high standards.

Your responsibility as a founder/CEO is as follows:

• Who: hiring and firing
• What: creating and sharing your big-picture vision
• Where: establishing the future direction of the business
• Why: giving your team purpose as they support your big-picture vision

What vital piece is missing from the above? The how. Your job is to communicate and rally your employees around your vision, and let others be the doers and the experts in executing that. To do this well, you need to surround yourself with amazing “how” people.

Figure out how to make your daily presence unnecessary

Replicate your talent with a team so you can effectively “fire” yourself from everyday tasks. Hire great people, then trust in their abilities. Trust them to figure out the how.

When a team member comes to you with a question, ask, “What would you do in this situation?” You’re teaching them to think through challenges, make decisions and take ownership of the outcome rather than relying on you to solve every problem. That’s how you empower people instead of micromanaging them.

I often think that entrepreneurship is like parenting. It might be your instinct to jump in to be the hero when your children are struggling, yet you need to enable them to fall, learn, get up, and apply lessons on their own.

Apply the same attitude to your team. Let them own their responsibilities, and practice stepping away from the business, making it clear that you trust them to handle things without you. When you return, make sure to acknowledge all of the things they achieved in your absence.

Work on your business, not in it

Start by committing to taking every weekend off, plus one day during the week. You’ll be amazed to discover how much more you get out of those four workdays than you did before. Being refreshed and focused at work is the achievable result of taking more time for play and giving your brain a break from the day-to-day stress of entrepreneurship.

Next, work your way toward a three-day workweek. That doesn't mean losing touch with what's happening in your company. You need to understand the north star metrics for each department so you know how the business is performing and can quickly recognize when something is off track.

Before you know it, you’ll be able to take a month off without worrying that things will fall apart in your absence. Ultimately, you’ll be able to run your company as the founder “at large,” only weighing in on top-level decisions and overall company direction.

Stepping away doesn't mean you're no longer working. It means you're spending more of your time on the things that only you, as the founder, can do. You're thinking creatively, developing new ideas, focusing on innovation, and making the big decisions that move the company forward. You're giving yourself the time to lead your business and turn the vision you started with into reality.

This week, choose one decision, task, or responsibility that automatically comes back to you and hand it to someone capable on your team. Give them the outcome you need, then let them own the how. Letting go starts there.

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