I remember being on a family holiday in Sydney, spending most of my time sitting on the balcony with my phone, wondering why on earth I’d bothered going away. There was always something back at the office that apparently needed my attention, so I ended up running the business from the balcony, the zoo, the beach and pretty much everywhere else we went.

My family had a lovely holiday, or at least I assume they did, because I have very little recollection of it! What I do remember is wishing I was back in the office, which is a pretty sad admission on a family holiday.

On the surface, everything looked great

At the time, I owned POD Consulting, the HR consultancy I’d built from the ground up. Around 2012, the business was growing rapidly and winning awards, so from the outside everything appeared to be going swimmingly.

Behind the scenes, however, I was consulting with clients, leading business development, managing the financials, dealing with HR and ER escalations and leading the team. I was the proverbial duck on the water, looking calm and collected above the surface while paddling like mad underneath. Perhaps it’s a Gen X thing, but I’d grown up believing hard work was the answer to everything, so whenever things became more demanding, I simply worked harder.

I was also convinced that if I stopped managing the escalations, the business would somehow collapse, taking my reputation with clients along with it. People around me talked openly about how difficult things were, while many assumed I was living some stress-free millionaire’s lifestyle, and I certainly wasn’t about to disabuse them of that notion.

The team could see what I couldn’t

Looking back, the team had been telling me what needed to change for some time. They were frustrated that I was always out with clients, didn’t have enough time to help them develop and was becoming a bottleneck.

Most had come from in-house HR roles, and consultancy required a different level of client confidence. They needed the opportunity to develop those skills, yet every time a client asked for me or an escalation came through, I would step in. Clients wanting to work directly with the founder is flattering, but every relationship that depends on you makes the business more reliant on your continued involvement. I thought I was helping everyone, when in reality I was limiting the team’s development and thoroughly exhausting myself.

The balcony moment

Back in Sydney, I was sitting on that balcony completely fed up and questioning whether running my own business was worth it. I remember thinking, using considerably stronger language than I’m prepared to print, that something had to change. I’d started POD intending to build a business, grow it and sell it, yet here I was with a business that seemed incapable of operating without me.

The answer was obvious: I needed an Operations Manager, and as the business grew it became apparent that we also needed a General Manager and a very senior ER specialist to manage the more complex client and team issues. What I’d initially thought was one role turned out to be three, which tells you something about how much I’d been trying to do myself!

Our GM was outstanding, smart, personable, funny, brilliant with clients and the team, and firm but fair. I trusted her completely, which made handing over so much easier, and she and the others actually wanted to own those responsibilities, whereas I’d been carrying them as an increasingly heavy burden.

I handed over managing the team first, and gradually the other operational responsibilities followed. It got better. We kept growing rapidly, the team developed greater confidence and capability, client relationships spread across the business rather than sitting with me, and I finally had the time to work on the business rather than constantly in it. That shift ultimately enabled me to sell POD in 2018.

Why do successful founders find it so difficult to let go?

I see this regularly with the business owners I work with. They’re often incredibly busy, carrying decisions that should have been distributed long ago, and you can see the pressure in their faces and hear it in the increasingly short answers they give to perfectly reasonable questions.

When we talk about what they could hand over, there are usually plenty of reasons why they can’t, such as the team not being ready or another senior person costing too much. Often there’s something else underneath, a worry about losing control, letting people down or discovering the business isn’t quite as robust as they thought. I’ve experienced those concerns myself, and I’ve also learned that holding on to everything often creates the very vulnerability we’re trying to avoid.

Harvard Business School’s Ranjay Gulati and Alicia DeSantola make a similar point, arguing that a company needs to transcend any one individual if it is to grow successfully.

How to step back from my business: it takes more than appointing someone

A common mistake is waiting until you’re completely overwhelmed before delegating. By then leaders are so desperate to get things off their plate that they appoint someone, give them a relatively brief induction, and expect everything to fall into place. When it doesn’t, they step back in, confirming their belief that nobody else can do the job as well as they can, when the real problem is usually the process rather than the person.

Handing over effectively means thinking carefully about the structure of the business, the decisions people should make and the support they’ll need. In my case, I thought an Operations Manager would solve the problem, when the business actually needed a stronger management structure, with the Ops Manager, GM and senior specialist each owning different parts of the operation.

Ron Carucci, writing in Harvard Business Review, makes the point that onboarding deserves attention throughout a new hire’s first year, covering the organisation, the technical knowledge and the relationships people need. There’s also an important distinction between handing over a task and empowering someone to take ownership of an outcome, a theme I explore in Why the Best Leaders Don’t Land the Fish Alone.

What should you actually be spending your time doing?

One of the first questions I ask business owners is what success looks like for them, and I’m often surprised by how little time they’ve spent considering the answer. For some it’s building something substantial and eventually selling it, others want a healthy income without demanding every waking hour, and some simply want to take a holiday without being interrupted every five minutes.

If you’re spending most of your time on operational issues, escalations and decisions that other people could be making, there’s a very good chance you’re not spending enough time on the activities that will create the future you want. There’s also a financial implication, because a business heavily dependent on its founder can be less attractive to potential purchasers. It’s one of the reasons I encourage owners to think of their business as an asset, which I explore further in Your Business Isn’t a Baby. It’s an Asset.

For me, stepping back from the operational running of POD wasn’t about wanting to work less, although being able to enjoy a holiday certainly had its appeal! It was about recognising that my contribution would be far more valuable if I focused on developing the business rather than delivering every part of it. It’s also one of the experiences that shaped my belief in Freedom by Design, the idea of being deliberate about building a business that gives us the life and choices we want, rather than letting it dictate how we live.

I often wonder how many founders are sitting on their own version of that Sydney balcony, running a business that looks successful from the outside but demands far more than they ever intended. If that sounds familiar, perhaps it’s worth asking yourself two questions: What does success actually look like for you, and how much of what you’re doing today genuinely needs to be done by you?

If you’d like to explore how to step back from your business while it keeps growing, let’s have a conversation.