Episode #448 – What Happens When You Stop Doing Everything Yourself

This is episode 448 of the Brilliant Balance podcast. What happens when you stop doing everything yourself?

I’m going to start this episode by telling on myself, I guess, because when I started my company 15 years ago—actually, 16 years ago now—I did everything myself. I mean everything, right? I wrote content that was going out in my little blog. I built the first version of the website. I answered every single email. I managed the finances. I scheduled my own calls without an online scheduler, right? I followed up on invoices. I did everything.

And I told myself a very convincing story about why that was a great idea, right? It wasn’t just necessary—it was smart. Like, look how smart I was. And I think my narrative was: I’m saving all of that revenue. I’m increasing profitability by doing everything myself, right? If I keep all this work in-house, then I keep it all.

And also, by the way, I’m the only one who really knows how to do this the way it needs to be done. It’s just easier if I handle it. Sound familiar? I think this is a story we tell ourselves, but here’s the thing about that story:

It’s not entirely wrong. In the very early days of building something—like building a company—you often do have to wear every hat, kind of be in every role. There isn’t always a budget, especially if you’re bootstrapping your company, to hire a team.

And there isn’t always enough volume of work to really justify help, especially full-time help. I think a lot of first-time entrepreneurs get into a paradigm where they think they can only hire full-time employees, right?

And honestly, doing everything yourself in the beginning teaches you a lot. You learn what’s hard. You learn what takes longer than you thought, which is most things. I think you learn what the work actually requires and how the company actually functions because you built it sort of brick by brick, and that’s valuable.

For a while.

But here’s where it goes sideways. The story that made so much sense in the beginning—“I have to do this myself. I’m the best person equipped to do it. I’m being so responsible.”—has a way of following us around long after it stops being true.

And it doesn’t only happen to entrepreneurs. Long after there is a budget, and there is volume, and there is justification for growing the team—long after there may even already be people around us who could absolutely take things off our plate—that story we told ourselves at the beginning becomes a habit.

And the habit morphs into an identity. And that identity kind of traps us at the level we are.

I ran on that story deep into my business, right? I already had a team sort of forming around me, and I knew there was more work than I could possibly handle alone—not to mention the 10,000 ideas that were constantly forming in my mind. I’m deeply visionary, so I have like an idea a minute.

And I was still in that story when something finally shifted my thinking. It was actually a memory that came back to me that finally made the shift.

I started thinking about this man named A.G. Lafley. A.G. Lafley was the CEO of Procter & Gamble for a number of the years I worked there. I spent the first 15 years of my career there, and we worshipped him.

He was the CEO. He was always trotted out on stage. He was this kind of white-haired, dashing figure. And he was running this company that had, I don’t know, 100,000 employees globally—a massive company with global operations, billions and billions of dollars in revenue, and brands touching virtually every household in the world.

If you don’t know, P&G manufactures and distributes Tide, Pampers, Gillette, Crest, Bounty, Charmin—the list goes on and on. There are so many household brands that you might not even realize are all made by this one company.

The breadth of what was going on in that organization on any given day was staggering. If you really stepped back from my vantage point and thought about how that multiplied across all the brands, around the world, and across all the functions, the complexity was astonishing. And I think that’s true in any large global brand.

And here’s what I kept turning over in my mind:

A.G. Lafley had no idea what I was doing on any given day. He had no idea what the vast majority of people were doing on any given day, right? He didn’t know the logistics coordinator in Cincinnati, or the brand assistant in Geneva, or the research team in Singapore. He couldn’t possibly know.

He certainly wasn’t doing the work for them, right?

And yet, all of them were doing work that laddered up to the objectives he was committed to delivering to Wall Street. He was the one sitting on CNBC saying, “I am going to deliver these quarterly earnings,” right?

He had to have everyone moving in the same direction. Everybody had to be getting results that ultimately landed on his desk as wins.

He wasn’t doing the work. He was getting results through the rest of us.

And here I was in this little company answering my own emails, scheduling my own calls, convinced I couldn’t hand off any tiny thing to anyone.

So the gap between where I was and where somebody like A.G. Lafley was wasn’t a gap in talent per se. I’m not going to argue that I’m as talented—he’s probably far more talented, right?

But it’s not really a gap in talent. It’s not a gap in intelligence, capability, or work ethic. It’s a gap in one specific skill: the ability to get results through other people.

And once I saw it that way, I couldn’t unsee it. Once I understood that this was a learnable skill—not just something that happened automatically when you got to a certain level—everything changed.

Now, I had done it at some level when I was working in that company, right? And I’m not suggesting that you need to aspire to run a Fortune 500 company to need this skill. Most of us don’t want that life. That’s a rare goal and an even rarer accomplishment.

But the principle scales all the way down.

Whether you’re leading a team of 20 people, a team of three, or a household of four, the skill of knowing how to get results through others is the thing that determines how far your impact can reach.

And honestly, I think it determines how sustainable your life actually is.

So today, what I want to talk about is what opens up for you when you develop that skill.

I don’t necessarily want to talk about the reasons you might be resisting it—that’s a whole other conversation, and honestly, an important one we should have separately. But today, I really want to look at the upside.

What do you gain when you figure out how to let go of some things and get results through other people?

Because I think sometimes we’re so focused on what it’s going to feel like to let go—the hard part of it—that we forget to look at what we get in return.

And there are things we get in return. There are incredible benefits to mastering this skill.

I think when you sit with them, the question stops being, “Can I afford to get results through other people? Can I afford to hire somebody, outsource this, or delegate it?” And it starts to become, “Can I really afford not to?”

Am I limiting my impact by not knowing how to leverage this force multiplier of getting results through other people?

So I’m going to unpack a few of these with you today. I’m really trying to put some catnip out there for you—this might be your motivation for finally letting go of some things you’ve been holding onto well past the point where you really need to.

The first thing is: you get back time.

But you don’t just get back any time. You get back the right time. You get back highly valuable time.

When you stop doing things that someone else could do—because they have the capability, the talent, and the time—you do get hours back.

But what matters is what you do with those hours.

The point isn’t just to fill them with more of the same. The point is to redirect them toward things only you can do—or maybe things you want to do that you just haven’t been getting to.

Let me say this again, because I think it’s worth sitting with:

There are things in your life and work that genuinely require you—your unique perspective, experience, relationships, creativity, vision, and voice. There are certain things in your world that only you can do.

Certain judgment calls. Certain conversations. Nobody else can do those things.

And I want you to be honest with yourself: how much time are you actually spending on those activities right now?

For most of the women I work with in coaching, the honest answer is: not enough.

Honestly, I’m constantly striving to get more of my time aligned with what I am uniquely qualified to do, while building capability in my team—and my expanded team of contractors and agencies—so they can do work at the level I expect.

Because otherwise, those hours get eaten up.

And those hours should be reserved for the highest and best use of who you are.

What is the highest and best use of your time?

If you’re not holding a really high bar on that, those hours get frittered away. They get eaten up by things someone else could handle. They get taken by tasks that maybe feel urgent in the moment because they’re sitting on a to-do list or a Monday board or an Asana plan.

But the work that is really your unique work sits undone.

This happens so regularly to so many people I work with that it’s hard for me to even dimensionalize how much this is a barrier to growth and progression for women.

I worked with this woman—I’ll call her Sarah; that’s not her real name. She’s a senior leader at a growing company. Brilliant. Deeply capable. Genuinely one of the most impressive people I’ve coached.

And when we first started working together, she was spending almost all of her time on work her team absolutely could have handled.

Detailed reports. Presentations. Meetings she was running because she hadn’t equipped anyone else to do it. Emails she was writing that could have been delegated.

And when we got granular and looked at her time—something I’m able to do with some clients through time audits—it was shocking.

She knew she was busy. She came into the conversation saying, “Yeah, my time is gone.” But she hadn’t really seen how much of that busyness was optional. Extraneous. Avoidable.

And when she started, brick by brick, moving work to the right people, she got time back.

Then she used that time to do the work she wasn’t getting to: thinking work, strategy work, relationship-building work.

Guess what? That was actually her job.

She had risen to a level where that’s what the company needed from her. That’s what she was qualified to do.

But she wasn’t getting to it.

Within six to 12 months, the team was stronger. The results were trending up. She was getting out of the office on time. She was getting feedback about the ideas she was bringing to the table.

So getting results through others isn’t just about doing less and going to the spa. It’s about doing the right things—the things you’re drawn to do or qualified to do.

And I think that translates both at work and at home.

So the first thing is: you get time back to do the most important things.

The second thing that happens is: you dramatically multiply your impact.

When one person is doing things, you’re limited by your time. One person, one hour—it goes to one thing.

There’s a hard ceiling on what any individual can produce or deliver alone. I don’t care how good you are, how fast you are, or what your capacity is like. There’s still a ceiling.

But once you know how to get results through others, that ceiling disappears. There’s no limit to the upside.

Go back to A.G. Lafley. His personal impact wasn’t limited to what he could personally execute. His impact was the sum of what everyone in that organization was doing.

It extended through all the people who understood the mission, had the tools and training to do their jobs well, and were moving in the right direction.

Now, I want to bring this closer to home.

Think about the most effective leader you’ve ever worked for.

I’m willing to bet that person didn’t do much themselves. There probably wasn’t a lot of executing work in their daily life.

I bet they were clear on what only they could do. I bet they communicated well enough that others knew how to execute without being micromanaged. And I bet they trusted the people around them to deliver.

Because of that, their reach extended far beyond what they could do by themselves.

Now contrast that with the least effective leader—the one constantly in the weeds, approving everything, bottlenecking every decision.

We call these people micromanagers.

They’re often very well-intentioned, but they can’t let work move through other people.

And I bet that person was working incredibly hard—maybe harder than anyone around them—but somehow less got done.

Why?

Because everything had to flow through one person, and one person can only do so much.

Every organization has a bottleneck. When the bottleneck is the leader, we have a real problem.

The difference between those two leaders isn’t intellect or capability. It’s their ability to get results through others.

And this applies to your personal life too.

Think about the things you can outsource that drain you—the tasks that eat up your time but don’t feel meaningful.

I’m careful about examples because they’re different for everyone. Something I love—like cooking—might be something another listener would happily never do again.

So when you outsource the things that drain you, you free up capacity for the things you love.

Whether it’s capability-driven (“Am I uniquely qualified to do this?”) or desire-driven (“Do I actually enjoy this?”), both are good indicators of what could potentially be handed off.

And your impact multiplies.

The third thing you get from learning how to get results through others—and I really love this one—is that other people win.

A lot of the time, we frame delegation and outsourcing as something we do for ourselves. It can feel selfish or indulgent somehow.

But there’s a generosity in this that we don’t talk about enough.

When you delegate meaningful work to someone on your team, you give them something valuable: the chance to grow.

I genuinely believe that.

When I think about my early career at Procter & Gamble, whenever a leader gave me the chance to do something new—something they had done a thousand times—I got to stretch into something bigger. I felt honored. Grateful. Excited.

Were they better at it than I was? Probably.

But how else was I ever going to learn? How was I going to build confidence and capability if I wasn’t given the chance to try?

We often think, “I’m inconveniencing them,” or “I’m piling work on them.”

But especially when it’s a stretching opportunity—something with visibility or prestige—it’s actually an act of generosity.

I see it all the time where leaders hold onto projects because they think they’re the only ones who can do them justice, or because they’re trying to protect their teams from more work.

But when they keep the work, they also keep the team from building capability and skill.

They may be protecting quality in the short term, but they’re stunting growth in the long term—both theirs and the team’s.

So think about the things you’ve been holding onto.

They may be the very things that would develop the people around you.

And especially when you outsource work—when you pay someone to do something you don’t want to do or don’t have time to do—you’re actually providing their livelihood.

You are the reason they get to do work they’re skilled at and maybe even enjoy.

And they get paid for it.

So your “selfish” investment in yourself is actually creating someone else’s income.

That’s not weakness. It’s generosity—or at minimum, economic reality.

I look at things in my own life that I don’t want to do or can’t get to. When I pay someone else to do them, that money becomes part of their household economy.

That’s important to remember.

And finally, the fourth thing—and maybe the one I want you to think about most after today’s episode—is who you become.

When you’re no longer doing everything yourself, something shifts.

When you stop white-knuckling every outcome, hovering over every task, and keeping every moving piece in your head, you get to discover who you are underneath all that doing.

And for a lot of us, that’s a person we haven’t spent much time with lately.

Because overdoing creates behaviors we’re not always proud of.

When I have too much to do—when I’m overwhelmed—I become critical. Short-tempered. Snappish at home and at work.

I’m not proud of that, but now I recognize it as a signal that I’m trying to do too much.

The person who has learned how to build an organization—at home or work—where everybody contributes is less reactive. More thoughtful.

They can think beyond the next immediate crisis.

They have energy left over to pour into people.

There’s space for creativity and ideas.

I see it in the women I coach. They laugh more easily. They’re more curious. More creative. It’s like a flower blooming.

That person is actually more powerful—and she knows it.

Not because she’s doing less for the sake of doing less, but because by allowing other people to do more, and orchestrating those results, she becomes more powerful.

There is a version of you that will know this once you’ve done the hard work of figuring out:

What can only you do?

What parts of your job, business, or household are genuinely yours?

And once you center your time there and let go of the rest—whether that work gets delegated, outsourced, systemized, or simply doesn’t get done at all—you become more powerful.

That’s leadership in a nutshell.

The barriers to doing this are real. There are definitely emotional barriers, and we’ll have to sit with those if you really want to move into this space.

So check in with yourself and ask:

What’s the source of my resistance?

What am I still holding onto that someone else could do?

And what might I do with the time, energy, and headspace I’d get back?

If you can learn to do this well, what does it open up for you?

What are you not getting to today that you’d actually be excited about doing?

Because the answer to that question is where your real work lives.

That’s the contribution only you can make.

I know there’s something on your list where you’re saying, “If I could just stop doing this, I’d finally have time for that thing I really want to do.”

And I want you to have that experience.

The impact you can have is too valuable to leave untapped.

Now, I want to tell you about what’s happening in June, where I’d be happy to help you.

I’m teaching a masterclass on getting results through others.

I designed it specifically because I know how valuable this skill is, and I also see how underdeveloped it is among many of the women I work with.

We’re going to start with the mindset piece, because honestly, that’s where most of us get stuck.

Why do we hold on?

Why are we uncomfortable asking for help?

Why is it hard to watch someone else do things we used to do?

We’ll get clear about those beliefs, and then we’ll get practical.

We’ll talk about how to delegate well—because delegation isn’t just handing something off and hoping for the best.

It’s about communicating clearly enough that the work comes back the way you want it.

How do you set expectations without micromanaging?

How do you build trust over time?

We’ll also talk about outsourcing, which is different from delegating.

Outsourcing is when you pay someone to do something you used to do yourself.

So we’ll look at how to decide what to outsource, how to find the right people, and then ladder all of this up into leadership at a larger scale.

Whether you’re leading teams at work, in your organization, or in your community, how do you create an environment where people can do their best work without you being in the middle of everything?

This really is the kind of skill that pays dividends in every area of life.

The masterclass is happening in June, and you can get access by joining the Coaching Circle. The link is below.

We’re going to do deep, practical, transformational work together. I’ll teach, and then we’ll coach together. June is going to be a particularly powerful month with this topic on deck.

So check it out if you want help learning this skill and figuring out how to apply it in your life. I’ve got you, and I’m excited to do this with you in June.

Until next week, that’s all for today, my friends.

Till next time, let’s be brilliant.