I Collapsed on the Floor Before I Stopped Micromanaging

I remember getting off the phone with my office manager and knowing… KNOWING I couldn’t do it any more. She called just to clarify a note I had made on a task. The note of where the lock code was should have handled it, not a 20 minute phone call. After I hung up the phone I sighed SO BIG. It was deceptively hot in the room. Then I put my back against the wall, sliding down until my butt hit the floor. Then I dropped my head between my knees. Why wasn’t this working? I had a team large enough that it shouldn’t be this hard.

It was early 2021 and I was still managing my Property Management Company day to day. I already lived in a different state and time zone than my team. I had a 1-ish-year-old. I was nursing and managing a house in the prime of COVID lockdowns. Why was I still calling vendors to schedule things? I was barely sleeping, fitting work in where I could. And the world was still closed.

I had hired a team on purpose to support ME. To make it easier, less stressful. To scale, and to provide more quality service for my clients. Why didn’t it feel that way? It didn’t because we were still functioning under the team supporting me as the business. I was The business. The light bulb moment there on the floor was…I needed to support THEM, instead of them supporting me. I needed to lean out. I needed to not be THE business.

Instead of being available for messages all day long from the team, I blocked off time where I wasn’t available to focus on the larger projects I needed to work on. When they came to me with a question that could be answered in the team procedure document, I sent them in that direction. If they finished a project and worded a section completely differently than I would. I didn’t reword it, I just read it for grammatical mistakes.

I decided then and there that I wouldn’t bail them out anymore. I wouldn’t stop what I was doing to answer the questions. I wouldn’t be accessible to anyone outside of the team by phone. And in that moment I wrote a list of all the things I didn’t want to do anymore. Document complaints from tenants. Play phone tag with repair vendors. Write leases. Post vacant properties online. Go to all the networking events. And after evaluating the list, more than half of them I didn’t need to do.

And then I stopped doing some of them. Not all of them, don’t be ridiculous, that would be too much too fast for my nervous system. But the next day I muted Teams while I worked on a larger project. And the next week I taught a team member all the ins and outs of posting properties online and made a checklist. And then that was no longer my responsibility.

And some involved a conversation with my team, and some didn’t. But I had to just… stop. I had to stop answering direct phone calls. I had to stop insisting on formatting all documents. I had to stop insisting my team do it my way… to the T. I had to stop checking behind them. In order to have the ‘time’ I always wanted, I had to let them lead, learn, and mess up.

And did they mess up? Sure. But a lot less often and to a lesser degree than I ever feared. I think the biggest issue is I was really efficient at everything, and it just took them longer because they hadn’t been doing it as long. But their time frame was just as good.

And that was uncomfortable. SO uncomfortable. But being a business owner and running one is the most uncomfortable thing. You are choosing to challenge and grow in every minute of every day. But you know what you are doing is worth it. For you, for your clients.

And slowly but surely that is what happened. I stepped back and they stepped up. I didn’t start having the life I always dreamed of until I stopped doing everything in my business.

If you are here and you are reading this, it’s highly likely it’s because you are a badass. A type A badass who may have started a business FROM SCRATCH, and isn’t afraid of HARD WORK. Someone who dreamed big, stayed up late, took the shot, and so forth. 

We badasses though, we get stuck in momentum. If we control and do all the things, we feel safe. If we ask the right questions, and fill out the right form, it will all happen as it should. I realized… all the me trying to control things was just me trying to be safe. 

But safety is a funny thing. We, as overachieving femme types, have been taught to believe all the way down into our nervous system that if we control, we are safe. Safety comes from within ourselves. Knowing that no matter what happens around us or to us,  we are safe within us. We have the tools we need to handle whatever comes.

And we all know that isn’t sustainable. Or at least you have had to accept that with a flare-up, or a sick kid, or sick parent, or whatever chaotic life event that comes. I had already created systems and policies for them to follow, and after that I had to let go.

So stop. Lean out.

Stop doing the thing! What is the thing that you know deep down that you could just stop and you would be better for it?

The thing a team member could do. Don’t have a team? What is something that software, hardware, or a system could do for you? Or, even better, what a client could do for themselves with some prewritten email prompts?

What small thing could you lean away from?