The Art of Letting Go: Why the Best Business Owners Know What Not to Do
A big part of starting and growing a business is knowing when to hold on and when to let go. As a business owner, you may find that some of your most mission-critical activities can only be done by you, because do not trust anyone to do it properly or you can’t afford to pay someone who can do it properly. Either way, most entrepreneurs start a business and take on every single aspect of managing and running that business. In the beginning, it seems easy. A tiny blank canvas can turn into anything, but as you grow and build your business, the picture you are painting fills that canvas. If you succeed, the canvas starts to grow and new places to paint appear. If you really succeed, the canvas grows faster than you can paint alone.
Finding other people to join your endeavor is a critical skill every business owner needs to master. When managing real estate, the process of finding other people starts small with vendors like plumbers and electricians. If your boiler is leaking, it’s easy to let go and let the professional take care of it, probably because you have no idea how to do it yourself. There are times when letting go is obvious and times when it is a lot harder. Once you take on an ongoing activity or responsibility in operating your business, you learn it and master it. As someone who knows how these things should be done, it becomes much more difficult to hand that responsibility to another person. Using our boiler example, you can only be critical of the plumber’s work if you understand the problem and know the appropriate solution. Otherwise, you trust the professional and their judgment.
As an experienced investor, the Troy project would probably present challenges that we have not faced in our other projects, but given our experience, we were probably going to end up with a bunch of challenges we have dealt with in the past. We have confidence, not hubris. After all, this is the largest construction project we have undertaken. That said, some of our past projects were more technically complex from an engineering standpoint. Besides scale, another challenge is the new market we are entering: Troy. We have no historical relationships with local vendors to build on, no relationship with the local building department, and little knowledge about the ins and outs of Troy building code. But otherwise, from scheduling to budgeting and administrative paperwork, we can do it all in-house. So, we didn’t need a full-service general contractor, a GC; we only needed help with on-site project oversight and a repository of existing vendor relationships that we could leverage. We had to let go and find someone who can do it better.
About a year ago, when we started this project, our architect introduced us to a local contractor specializing in high-end residential projects. During our first meeting, I shared my approach and philosophy with Rob and walked him through our strategy. As someone who takes enormous care to ensure that I only do business with good people and ensure my relationships are a win-win, it is nice to see the vendors you are screening working toward the same goal. Working with a vendor that shares this mentality feels like working with a teammate to collectively solve a problem. Working with vendors who solely focus on money feels like an adversarial contact sport, not a healthy day-to-day work environment.
When working on a project with professional vendors, most of the on-site supervision is about verifying that the contractor completed all the tasks, is working safely, and is progressing in a timely manner. Given the number of trades, the main challenge is coordinating information and resources. In a project renovating a 200-year-old building, the problems are a combination of too much information and not enough information at the same time. There are too many details, specialists, licenses, and products. At the same time, there is not enough information about the condition of the structure or all of the possible remediations that will be needed to bring the residential units to completion.
As we navigate the complexities of the Troy project, I’m reminded that the most successful entrepreneurs aren’t those who can do everything themselves; they’re the ones who know when to bring in the right people and how to build relationships that create mutual success. Rob and his team have become exactly what we needed: partners who share our values and bring local expertise that would take us years to develop on our own.
The canvas of your business is always growing, and at some point, you’ll face the same choice we did: continue painting alone and limit your growth, or find trusted partners who can help you create something bigger than you could achieve solo. The key isn’t just finding vendors, it’s finding the right people who approach business as a collaborative problem-solving exercise, not a zero-sum game.
What challenges are you holding onto that you should be letting go of? Take 10 minutes this week to identify one area of your life or business where bringing in the right partner could accelerate your growth. Sometimes the bravest business decision isn’t doing more, it’s trusting the right people to help you do better.
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