Ep #43: Let Go to Grow Your Business

You are listening to The Design You Podcast with Tobi Fairley, episode number 43.

Welcome to The Design You Podcast, a show where interior designers and creatives learn to say no to busy and say yes to more health, wealth, and joy. Here is your host, Tobi Fairley.

Hello friends. So guess what? Besides the fact that this is episode 43, which means we only have nine to go to hit a whole year’s worth, besides that, guess what else? This year, 2019, is going to go just as fast as the rest of them. Well, unless you do some stuff and I’m going to tell you what that stuff is.

But I feel like January 1st was yesterday and it’s like, three weeks ago already by the time I’m recording this. And I’m almost through January before I know it, so do you have anything to show for January? Did you leap into the new year and really start making things happen? Or are you telling yourself that you’ve got plenty of time to become all that you want to become in 2019?

Well, let me tell you about a lesson I learned, a big one, last year. And here’s the reason I learned it. Last year in 2018, I was very organized. My calendar was orchestrated with only the important stuff on it and I followed it to the letter. Now of course there were some days when I maybe didn’t finish what I started, but I immediately, if I didn’t, if I was supposed to finish it that day, it went right back on the calendar another day as soon as possible and I knocked it out.

So there wasn’t any of this putting it on there but ignoring it, not feeling like doing what was on my calendar, none of those shenanigans happened in 2018. And because of that, the year actually didn’t seem to fly by as quickly as I remember a lot of the years that I had previously. And I actually accomplished all the things that I really wanted to accomplish in 2018 plus a whole bunch more.

I think that’s why time seemed to slow down a bit for me in the best sort of way last year. And I noticed when I got to the end of the year that the reason some years seemed so fast to me, in fact like all of them for the last 15 years before that seemed so fast and that was because when I would get to the end of the year with most of my to-do list and my big goals still not done and – or maybe most is a little extreme but they weren’t crossed off the list.

I wouldn’t finish. I was rushing and trying everything, giving it all I’ve got to get this stuff finished by the end of the year and it wasn’t happening, so it would give me the illusion each one of those years that the year had just flown by and that I didn’t have a chance to do all the stuff I wanted to or I planned to and like it was really something that I didn’t have any control over. I was at the effect of it, of how fast time went and how every single year I would come out on the losing end of getting this stuff done that I said I wanted to.

But last year when I had a plan and I followed the plan, novel idea, I followed through, you know what, I found that at the end of the year, I was standing on the other side of 2018 so proud, so excited for making the most of the year, so excited that there was a line drawn through the things I said I would do, they were really finished, and that I really had had the chance to do all the stuff that I had wanted to do last year.

And I was also standing on the other side of the year looking at my financials, which were in the best position they’ve ever been in and had a big fat cash reserve from all the stuff I did, and then I looked at my relationships and I saw how great they were. And I had so much to show my actions and my choices last year, it was so cool, but it also just felt so good. Like it didn’t fly by, I remember what I did last year. I remember being in moments that I really experienced them, and they were so sweet.

And that was because I was organized and focused only on the things that really mattered to me, and I said no to everything else. And because of that I was able to be more present, whether it was in business or with my family and in my relationships, more present than I remember ever, probably. And because I was able to be present in those moments, slow down and not be working when I was supposed to be with my family or not be constantly worrying instead of enjoying the people that were in front of me and being distracted by work or social media or something else instead of the conversations with the people that were right there. I didn’t do that last year.

I focused on those people and those moments, and because I did, that really made time slow down too. And it really made me enjoy the things that I was experiencing and be able to really kind of carve them into my memory and brand them in a sense on my memory so that I fully experienced them. And because of every one of those things, time didn’t just pass by while I was unconscious about what I was doing, while I was flying by the seat of my pants, while I was overwhelmed because I wasn’t any of those things last year.

And I’ve spent so many years before that being all of those things all at once, but not anymore. So this year I am so motivated to do the same thing, or even to take it a step further. So I’m so motivated to do the same thing in that I’m going to let my calendar help me maximize the year. So when I’m on the other side of 2019 and heading into 2020, I’m exactly where I wanted to be or better or farther, but I’m not standing there looking at the to-do list of things that I didn’t have time to do.

And what I mean by taking it further is I’m going to even go deeper with this. So where I said before I said no to all the things last year that didn’t matter, well, I’m going deeper, friends. I’m peeling off so much stuff and not even that it didn’t matter because some of it matters. Matters to me or my company, but it didn’t have to be done by me.

And this is huge, this is the biggest shift you can imagine for me. Being a person who has been so attached to so much stuff for so many years and had my identity wrapped into that doing for so many years. So I’m taking a huge leap to get off of my schedule, anything and everything that doesn’t absolutely have to be done by me, particularly in my business.

Now of course there’s some things in my personal life that don’t have to be done by me but I want them to be done by me, like showing up for my family and my daughter and enjoying the next several years while she’s still at home. So that’s the whole reason I’m going to be just really brutal and focused and committed to getting rid of all the things in my work life that can be done by someone else.

So what does all of this have to do with today’s episode? Well, let me tell you. Today I want to talk about this exact experience of letting go to grow. So this episode is dedicated to all of you self-professed control freaks out there who want to hang onto everything all the time.

And you know what I mean, right? You know if I’m talking to you. You’re like, dang it, she could see me all the way through my iPhone, from the podcast app, right here where I’m sitting in my car and she just freaking called me out, right? Yeah, I did. I called you out, all of you, wherever you’re sitting, if you are guilty of holding onto a lot of stuff when it really could be done by someone else.

And one of the reasons a lot of you are holding onto stuff is scarcity mindset because you don’t want to pay other people to do stuff or you believe you can’t afford to pay them. And that in and of itself is basically a whole episode. In fact, I did do a great episode that we’ll link in the show notes about scarcity versus abundance thinking.

So if it’s about money, I get it. But guess what, it’s still not a legit excuse. Because if you give up all the stuff and pay other people to do the stuff that still really matters and needs to be done but not done by you, guess what you can do with your other time that’s free? Make a lot of money to pay for those people to do that stuff, right? Novel idea.

But that’s not the only excuse that we have for not letting go to grow. So here’s the things we say to our self. If you have said any of these things, or all of them as I said many times, you’re going to know I’m talking to you. So here we go.

“I want it done right, so I better just do it myself.” Or what about this? “It will be faster if I just do it. I could be finished by the time I tell someone else to do it, especially telling them the way I want it to be done. It’ll just be faster.” Sound familiar? What about this one? “No one really knows what I want or how I like things done, so I better just do it myself because I know me and if it’s not done to my standards, I’m not going to be happy so that means I really better just do it.”

Or what about this one? “I would rather just do it than to have to come back at the end and clean up the mess that somebody else is clearly going to make. So I’m just going to go ahead and do this because it’s going to be way less work on the back end for me than having to clean up the mess.”

Or what about this one? “I’m so busy with everything on my plate right now I don’t even have time to stop and tell someone else what I need them to do. In fact, I don’t even know if I know what I need them to do. So whatever it is, I’ll just have to do it later myself because really, I don’t even have a choice. I just don’t have a choice. I’ll just have to do it, I don’t have a choice.”

Okay, did I call you out? All of you listeners that are control freaks? Well, I hope so, and don’t hide from this. Don’t fool yourself if you even felt a little stirring inside of, ooh, I think she’s talking to me, guess what, I am. Because I want you to really understand this, and I get it. I have done every one of those things. I have said every one of those things and for years I held on to stuff under the belief, really the false belief, the lie, let’s call it that, that I had to be the one to do everything.

And I’ve worked really, really hard the last couple of years on my mindset, with a lot of the tools that I teach you here on The Design You Podcast to make those statements not be true for me. So I’ve detached myself from that kind of thinking. I’ve created new thoughts to replace those.

And it’s so fascinating. It’s so funny or interesting, whichever word you want to choose to stand kind of outside of ourselves and look in and be the watcher of our own thoughts when we are holding onto this label, this identity of control freak. And we hold onto it like it’s a positive, right? Like it’s a legit excuse. A legit excuse for being overworked, for being overwhelmed, for being under-accomplished, not reaching our potential.

Yeah, I’d love to do those big things in my life but I’m just a control freak so I’ve got to hang onto all this other stuff and I just don’t have time for that. We say it like it’s the truth. But it’s just a thought. It’s just a belief because it’s a thought we’ve thought over and over and over for years and years and years, which I did it too.

So I decided a while back that I was tired of this kind of thinking. I was tired of not growing into some of my really big dreams just because of my control freak excuses, which when you think about it, this kind of thinking is really pretty self-centered or even arrogant, right? It’s kind of arrogant to think that I’m the only one who has the expertise or talent or skill or knowhow to do the things at the level at which I wanted them done.

Hello, self-centered. Yeah, you’ve been there, right? I’m not trying to say that to beat us up. I’m making light of it because I don’t want you to turn on yourself here. It’s not about that. But it’s about just recognizing, oops yup, I was being a little bit short-sighted in thinking I was the only person on the planet who had the expertise, talent, skill, knowhow to do the things that I need done in my business or my life, right?

So here is the actual truth, friends. The truth is that when we look at our to-do list, there are so many people out there in the world who are actually way better at doing a lot of the stuff or maybe even most of the stuff that we’re hanging onto. And the reason we’re hanging onto it is not because it truly can’t be done by someone else, but because we are afraid to let go of it.

So if that is the case, if we’re really able to delegate it, if we wanted to, then why do we hang onto it? Why do we white-knuckle our task, keeping a death grip on them, sometimes when it’s killing us in the process or holding us back in such a big way, when it would be way easier to go ahead and let other people help us? Why in the world do we do that? It sounds crazy, right?

Well, that’s a really great question. And a lot of times we are doing some sort of crazy stuff under the guise of or the impression that it’s because of the truth, it’s because we don’t have a choice. But we always have a choice. We have a choice to choose thoughts that help us let go of this stuff, and we have a choice to go find the people and figure out how to pay for them so that they can take some of this stuff off our plate.

So I’m going to look at some reasons that we do this because I want you to understand essentially your excuses for not letting go to grow. So here’s one of the first ones. FOMO. FOMO, fear of missing out. We don’t want to miss out on anything. Anything fun or that we think we’re good at, but heck, I’m good at a whole bunch of stuff, friends, and I’m sure you are too.

But that doesn’t mean we should be doing all that stuff. We have to choose which few things, which handful of things really need to be done by us, and we’ve got to let everything else go if we want to fulfill our potential, if we want to be happier, if we want to make more money. That’s what I want to do.

I always want to make more money and I always want to have more free time. Those are my two main objectives in pretty much everything I do. So I may have said this before on a podcast, I’m pretty sure I have. If I haven’t, I need to say it today and if I did, let me say it again because it’s really important stuff. But a gal named Hilary Rushford who I like and follow, she’s a young wiz on Instagram and really she’s a personal stylist is where she got her start.

She has some course content and some other things about really living a more essentialist lifestyle. And one of the things she created, coined, a phrase she coined that I just have hung onto so many times is the idea of the creative candy shop. So she says this is what we do as creatives. Those of us who are good at a whole bunch of different things and so we find ourselves wanting to do all of them, she equated it to a candy shop.

And she’s like, we’re in there creatives and we’re looking at all those things we want to do and we’re just partaking in all of them. So it’s like being in a candy shop and you’re like, I want some of the M&Ms and I want some gummy bears and I’ll take some ice cream out of the ice cream station and I want to have some sugar daddies and I want some extreme sour straws like my daughter eats, and how about some Cabbage Patch Kids, and oh, they also have cake, let’s have cake and a cupcake.

Guess what? When you do that, which you don’t to that level in the candy store but you do in your business a lot of times and your life too, guess what happens? When you partake in that much stuff in a candy store, you’re sick and you’re tired and you’re lethargic. When you do that in your life, guess what? You’re sick and you’re tired and you’re lethargic.

So although it may all be good by itself, every one of those candies and sweets and cakes and goodies and ice cream by themselves might be fantastic, but when we put them all together, it’s a recipe for disaster. And most successful people know, the really successful ones you know, the top of the top performers, they know that they have to constrain their choices of what they are going to do, what they’re going to participate in, what’s going to be on their list.

And the difference in constraining versus partaking in everything is the difference in being mediocre at a whole bunch of stuff or being really, really excellent at one or two things. So this fear of missing out, this fear of saying no to the creative candy shop holds us in this place of controlling everything and not letting go to grow.

Now, another fear that comes up, so this may be your other excuse, and trust me, you might identify with all of these because I at some point or another definitely did. But the next one is fear of becoming irrelevant or being replaced.

So there’s this unfounded fear that if we give up all that stuff that we’re good at, even if we’re pretty much not being good at it right now because we’re kind of stinking it all up in every area because we’re taking on too much but in theory we’re good at it, in a perfect world we’re good at it, and if we give that up, all of that, what the heck are we going to do?

If we make all those other people important and relevant because we give them all the jobs, then are we going to get replaced? Are we going to be irrelevant? And I’m here to tell you we’re not because we’re already good at taking on too much. So it’s not like giving up a lot of the stuff we shouldn’t be doing that we’re going to give up everything and sit there and twiddle our thumbs.

No, we’re going to make room to focus on the one or two things that really help us grow to the next level. So that’s one of the excuses that we use, one of the lies we use, that fear of becoming irrelevant.

Here’s another fear. Can I even handle the new stuff? The new job, the new task, the new goals? Because there’s a fear that we have that at least even if it’s holding us back, we know how to do the stuff we’re currently doing. That dream stuff, that’s scary. That’s way out of our comfort zone, so I’ll just stay over here in comfort land and familiarity and keep doing what I’ve been doing even though it won’t let me grow because this stuff is not scary and that stuff over there, I don’t know anything about that stuff. I don’t even know what I’m going to encounter so I might not be able to handle that.

And I see this in my team and my employees. When I ask them to let go of something that they’ve really done well with and that I’ve really given them a lot of praise with, freaks them out for a minute because they’re like wait, if she doesn’t need me to handle that anymore, then maybe I’m going to really stink it up at the next stuff she asks me to do. And guess what? They will for a little while because we’re all bad at stuff at first. But I have so much confidence in them because they did so good on the last thing that I know they can release that now to someone that comes along behind them and they can go to the next level.

And for me to go to the next level and release stuff, I’ve got to have those people, those key people step into the things that I’ve been doing, right? That’s how it works. So it’s hard to uplevel, sure. It’s way easier to stay in our comfort zone. And even if it’s kind of painful to stay in our comfort zone because we’re not making the money we want or the success we want, we fool ourselves that – and even sometimes it’s an unconscious fooling of ourselves. We’re not necessarily aware, but we fool ourselves into this thing that you may have heard before, that the pain we know is better than the pain of the unknown.

The pain we know right now, even though it’s painful, just doesn’t seem like it’s going to be as painful as the stuff that’s out there in unknown land, scary land, right? So of course, it’s more familiar, the pain we have right now because a lot of us have been living in that pain for years, not moving ahead, not growing.

So familiar, yes, but it’s not easier. It’s not easier to stay where you are, especially if where you’re staying is in a place that isn’t as much money as you need or isn’t as much time as you need. Those things are painful, they’re harder really to stay stuck there than it is to grow.

So yeah, fear, our old friend fear says nope, stay right where you are because upleveling is going to be hard and you might really stink at the stuff out there that you try. Okay, well yeah, duh, we’re all going to stink at something at first, right? Could we all ride a bike or roller skate the first time we got on it? Of course not. I still can’t probably roller skate, let’s be clear.

But if we practice it and if we leap and if we let go of other stuff so we can grow, can we get good at stuff? Yes, absolutely. Okay, so what about some of those other things I said earlier in those questions? Like thinking that it’s better to just get it done instead of cleaning up other people’s mistakes and it’ll just be faster if I do it.

Well yeah, sometimes it’s hard to delegate and sometimes we have to clean up mistakes, especially when you delegate to the wrong person. But you don’t know that it’s the wrong person until you try it. So having the expectation that you’re going to delegate something once and it’s going to go perfectly and it’s not going to come back on you is really silly and short-sighted.

I want you to see that it takes a little bit of time to train other people to do the things that you can’t do, but that’s time well spent. And so, sure, sometimes the work comes back to you when you hand it to the wrong person, it comes back undone. I call that boomerang work. I gave it to you and I can see it, we’re over in Australia with our kangaroos around and throwing our boomerangs and it comes right back at me, right?

And it’s frustrating when that happens because guess what, with the space that I cleared out to give that thing away, I filled it back up. So when the boomerang of work comes back, do I have time to do it? No. But that’s why I don’t do it. That’s why I don’t just take it on myself and say okay fine, that didn’t work, I tried to delegate it, now it’s back in my lap, now I’ll just do that and all the new stuff I added into that spot.

That doesn’t make any sense and that’s definitely not the way to grow. So just because it came back to me once doesn’t mean I can’t delegate it again to another person, and do it again and again and again until I find the right person. Because if it’s an important enough task to be done regularly, then it really makes sense and behooves me and pays me in the long run to keep trying to find the person until I find them so they can take that off my plate indefinitely.

Now, if it doesn’t need to be done, it’s not that important, just eliminate the task. Let’s not keep paying money and increasing our pain and our suffering trying to find people to do stuff that’s not making a difference in your life or your business. So that’s the first step is to eliminate stuff. But if we’ve determined this really needs to get done, it is not better for you to just do it. It is better for you to find someone to do it.

So it’s tricky stuff a little bit at first, and you have to be very aware that this boomerang thing is happening because if not, you’ll send it out, doesn’t work, you take it back on, and before you know it, guess what, you’re doing all the stuff. The old stuff and the new stuff just because it’s kind of in your comfort zone to keep doing things you’ve done before, and you can’t grow at all there.

That’s where overwhelm sets in, that’s where burnout sets in. That is the opposite of being productive, I promise you. So that’s not what we want to do. But you’ve got to be aware to notice what is happening and you got to believe that it is actually possible to find someone else to take this stuff off of your plate long term that will eventually, if not immediately, do it even better than you did it.

And along those lines, we think it’ll be faster if we just do it. And yeah, sure, doing it once would be faster than all of that boomerang nonsense I just talked about. But in the long run, it’s not faster. I’ve learned that I need to stay in my zone of genius as a visionary, that’s when my company grows the most, and I need to show up in the few places that can’t be done by anybody but me like here on the podcast or on a live call in my Design You coaching program, coaching my people.

But there’s really so few things in the grand scheme of things that actually have to be done by me, so staying in my zone of genius in those one or two key areas and then I teach people to fish, right? You’ve heard that, right? Teaching people to fish, so you don’t just feed them. You teach them to fish.

Because if you just feed them, if you just are like okay, here’s your fish for the day, guess what? You have to keep feeding them and keep feeding them and keep feeding them and keep feeding them. If you teach them to fish, they become self-sufficient and you never have to feed them again and you free up the time to reach your own goals.

So is it faster in the short run to just do it yourself? Of course. But is it faster in the long run? Absolutely not. If you’re still doing years later something that you could have taught someone to do years before, then you have done the opposite of letting go to grow, and that’s why you’re stuck where you are.

Many of us have resistance around change, and every one of these things I’ve been talking about in this podcast require change, right? We have insecurity, we have fear, including this idea of fear of success.

Now, for years I thought that was the dumbest thing I ever heard. Who would be afraid of success? Afraid of failure I get. Yeah, nobody wants to fail. But what about afraid of success? I just couldn’t get my head around it. But maybe that’s because I hadn’t let go to grow yet. And when I did and when I started stepping into the next version of me and the next version of me and the next version of me, it got pretty dang scary.

And I thought you know, can I really go to this next level and what’s it going to feel like over there? And friends, it’s a real thing to fear success because we fear a lot of stuff like we’re going to outgrow our friends, we’re going to outgrow our family, some of them maybe, we’re going to outgrow our clients. And then we start to think it’s going to be lonely, it’s going to be alone, we’re going to feel abandoned, we’re going to feel isolated, or the people that we moved up from are going to feel abandoned or isolated.

And yeah, you can’t bring all your clients that paid your original hourly rate or fee along with you if you’ve moved up 20 steps but that’s not a bad thing. We want to grow. Doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with them anymore. Just means they’re not an ideal client anymore and that’s totally fine. But fearing that we’re going to be completely isolated and alone is not the truth. That is a thought we have that scares the heck out of us but it’s not founded.

We also have a fear of pushing ourselves, and this is part of the fear of success, that fear of putting ourselves out there and stepping into our dreams in a big way because doing that, a lot of times, means it’s way more public.

And guess what? When you put yourself out in the public more, there’s way more chance for people to judge us or not like us, or so it seems. So it feels like a great big risk, right? It’s going to be so scary if I go on a podcast like Tobi and I start talking about what I think. What if everybody comes back and says that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard and you’re a complete idiot and I hate you?

Well guess what, some might. But here’s what I want you to realize. People judge you when you’re holding yourself small, and people don’t like you when you’re holding yourself small because half the people aren’t going to like you and they’re all going to judge you all the time no matter what.

And so holding yourself small and being judged and not liked to me is a really big lose-lose situation. If they’re going to judge you and half of them aren’t going to like you anyway, then why not at least go for your dang dreams and really uplevel your own life? Because we think holding ourselves small is controlling that risk, it’s keeping people from seeing us, it’s keeping people from judging us, it’s keeping people from not liking us.

But guess what? Control is an illusion in every way. We have no control over anything, except our own thoughts and our own actions, and because our thoughts create our actions, essentially our thoughts create our feelings and then our actions, those are the only things we have control over, period. Can’t control our spouse, our kids, our clients, our employees, none of them. None of them.

So we have this illusion of control and we have this belief that if I just hide back here behind my business that’s kind of mediocre even though it’s painful and I’m not making any money, it’s way less scary and I’ll be way less vulnerable and I won’t be judged as much and I will be liked a whole lot more if I just hang out here in safe zone. And none of that is true.

And we definitely can’t grow if we’re not willing to accept the fact that yeah, people may judge us, people may not like us, but the funny part is again, that’s happening already right where you are.

So what else? Well, then there’s the who am I to do this piece of fear of success. Who am I to teach somebody about their mindset? Who am I to teach somebody about interior design? Who am I to teach anybody about whatever the heck the thing is that you want to do? Who am I to do it for them? Not just teach them, who am I to design your house or act like I’m an expert on something?

Well guess what? When you think who am I, that’s just an obstacle thought popping into your head, trying to keep you in your comfort zone again. And the way I want you to think about this who am I is that every time we think that, who am I, we’re falling back into that self-centered place, that sort of a little bit arrogant place.

Like who am I to teach them, when the real question you should be asking is who can I help? Stop worrying about me and start worrying about who can I help? Who can I make a difference for if I do this? Or who will I not be helping that really needs me to help them if I let this imposter syndrome speak hold me back and keep me small? Well, there’s a whole bunch of people that you won’t be helping.

Think of all the people that listen to my podcast. So far, we’ve had 40,000 downloads of this podcast, so that’s not 40,000 people because a lot of you listen regularly, but it’s a lot of dang people. Probably 1000. Probably 1000 people at least that I would not be helping if I was holding myself small and not teaching this podcast, right?

So the world needs your gifts, friends, your talents, your skills, your ideas. And if you let fear keep you from growing, if you are not willing to let go of some of the things and step into the biggest and best version of you, look at all the people you’re not helping.

I really think it’s my duty, my obligation, my purpose to bring my gifts and my talents to the world, and I hope you think that too. So here’s what I think about – I heard Marie Forleo say this and I love this. She said, “When you’re thinking who am I, it’s like you’ve got a flashlight in your hand and you’re shining it right on you. The spotlight’s on you and you’re thinking who am I? And do we like to be in the spotlight, no, not really, not most of us.

And so the whole trick is to take your hand with the other hand and whip that flashlight right around and shine it out from you on everybody else. shine it on all the potential people that you could be impacting with your message or your gift. So here’s what I want you to do. We covered some really deep stuff here today on the podcast and all these descriptions of all the reasons why you’re not willing to let go to grow.

I want you to figure out which ones apply to you. And maybe they all do. This is one of the podcasts that you may have to listen to a couple of times. You may want to get your notepad out and write some of these things down or go look at the show notes on my website and read this material. Because I want you to know and become aware of how you’re holding yourself back.

And then I want you to start practicing changing your thoughts about each and every one of these obstacles that you have and that you’re thinking that are keeping you from growing. Because if you start to change your thoughts, that’s how you start to let go. And you can learn to let go of as much as you want of these obstacle thoughts, of these beliefs so you can step into the next level of who you’re meant to become this year in 2019.

So if you need help managing your thoughts, go back to episode four. It is like the jewel of my podcast so far and I didn’t even come up with all that. Let’s be clear, I had the wonderful privilege and gift of going and paying Brooke Castillo a whole lot of money for her to teach me the model at The Life Coach School.

But it is the – really the foundation of this idea of changing your thoughts. And so I want you to go back to that episode and I want you to learn the model. And if you learned it but you’re not practicing it or you need a refresher and let me tell you, you probably do, we all do. I need a refresher on it too. Go back and listen to that episode, and there’s even a worksheet I think on that episode. Episode four, and print it out and start practicing.

And if you didn’t practice before or you started it and you fell off the wagon, start doing this as part of your morning routine, looking at your thoughts and asking yourself specifically, what am I holding onto that’s not letting me grow this year? Because in 2019, any time we think of these thoughts, these excuses that are holding us back, I want you to recognize as soon as possible that it’s stopping your growth and that it’s a critical mistake if you keep holding onto these thoughts, they’re going to keep you from reaching your dreams.

And like I started at the beginning of this podcast telling you how at the end of 2018 I actually maybe for the first time ever did the stuff I said I wanted to do that year, if you let these things keep you from letting go to grow, you’re not going to be standing there at the end of 2019 feeling the way I feel right now.

So get out of your own way and get out of your company’s way and again, listen, this is not just a one-time deal. I did it last year to a certain level. This year I got to go even deeper, and next year I’ll have to go even deeper and deeper and deeper. But the reason we do that is so we can stop being the bottleneck, so we can stop being the kink in the pipe that’s keeping our mission and our work from getting out into the world in the way that it should.

So join me in learning to delegate as much as possible. See if you can delegate even 80% of what you’re currently doing in your business to make room to go to next level of your goals, and look at your life too. Now, this doesn’t mean to shuck responsibility. Like oh yeah, I’m going to delegate every piece of raising my children.

Probably not going to feel real good about that at age 18 when they don’t really like you that much, right? That’s not one of the ones that you can be replaced with most of the time. Sure, you can have people help you, a nanny or somebody else, that part’s great. But make sure that you’re getting clear on what matters to you and that you’re delegating the stuff that really does not have to be done by you.

And I know it feels foreign. I know the idea that we could have a whole bunch of other people working for us and doing all of this stuff and that we freed up our own time, it feels weird, feels kind of like we’re a diva for a minute, like ooh, I have all these other people working and I get to get all this off my plate.

But this is what top execs do. This is what top earners do. This is what top visionaries in the world are able to do. Think of all the things that Bill Gates learned to delegate at Microsoft to get to the level that he is, or now the new most wealthy American, Jeff Bezos as Amazon. Gosh, there have to be thousands of things that go on every day in companies like that to be their best that the top execs, the main guy doesn’t even know about.

Because it’s not their job to know because they found people who had a zone of genius for each of those areas and they let go of the control so they could grow. And I’m not saying you want to be Amazon, that’d be really difficult, not that you couldn’t be. We all have the potential to be as much as we want to be but I’m just wanting you to see that Amazon didn’t become Amazon because Jeff Bezos held onto everything.

So even if you just want to go up a couple of levels, even if you just want to get to financial comfort or maybe financial freedom, next level thinking doesn’t happen when we are bogged down in the trenches of doing the work.

One last little story, one last little genius that I want you to know about is this internet guru named Dean Jackson and those of you in my Design You program have heard me talk about this before. But he has this idea that you can either be the farmer or you can be the cow.

And like it or not, I’m a cow because the cow is the visionary. She produces or he produces all the milk, all the good stuff, the stuff that makes the money. But then you got to have a whole bunch of farmers who are the ones that take the milk and turn it into all of the good stuff that it ultimately turns into and sell the heck out of it.

The farmers are the people in the weeds every day, in the trenches of that day-to-day stuff. The farmers don’t let go of stuff. They hang onto it and do it day after day after day to the best of their ability. And if you’re being the farmer for your life or your business, you may be doing a dang good job but you’re not going to be able to grow. So be the cow.

That’s maybe the only time in your life I want you to think I want to be the cow, especially at this time of year when we’re trying to lose weight. But the cow in this sense of the analogy is that you are the person at the top producing all that amazing milk, and then you get out of the way and let all these other people turn it into the thing that really grows your business.

And remember, there’s one other little quote that says, “You can’t set sail with one foot on the dock.” So I think that wraps up in a nutshell the way that we’re talking about letting go to grow because if you don’t let go of the dock with that foot, guess what, you’re doing the splits in a second.

One foot’s on the boat, one foot’s on the dock, in a couple of minutes you’re going to be crashing into the water, so you got to let go to grow. So if you want to grow big this year, it’s time to find the best people you know or even you don’t know yet that are out there in each of the areas that you need and bring those people in to operate in their zone of genius so you can stay in yours.

That is exactly what my team and I are doing for 2019 and I’m letting go of so much stuff to step up a notch and I’m letting go of so much stuff so my goal of optimal health and wellness can actually happen, so I can have time to make that happen. And everyone in my organization with me is doing this too, like I said, because when I step up a rung on the ladder, somebody’s got to step in the slot behind me.

And to step up, they got to let go of stuff that’s on the step they were on, right? And we’re adding new people underneath some of our current people, and it is so super scary but it is also exhilarating and you can do this. So friends, let’s do this together. Let’s let go to grow. I’m doing it in the biggest and scariest level that I’ve ever done in my life, and if I can do that, I know you can do it too.

And if you want to get some support, couple things. You can of course join my Design You coaching program but if you want to get some support in some community around these goals that we talk about on the podcast for free, then just go join my Design You Podcast community.

We’re really just getting started there, it’s pretty new, it’s a couple of months old but we’re growing with new members in there every day and I can’t wait for this to become a really active and robust support system for so many of us where we’re sharing and we’re holding each other accountable. So if you want to let go to grow, get over there in my community and tell me how you’re going to do that this year.

And tell your other peers in that group how you’re going to do that or where you’re stuck or what you need help with because that’s going to be an awesome community we’re building to hold all of us accountable. So go join that group and if you want to do it, the way you do that is you go to Facebook of course, facebook.com/groups/designyoupodcastcommunity.

And you have to request to join. It’s open, we’re going to let everybody in, but we just keep it as a closed group to keep it kind of a safe community there in case anybody is not a good fit we can have them go away because we only want those of us who are really excited about growth and positivity and being our best self over there.

Because guess what? My philosophy for Design You is to say no to busy and say yes to more health, wealth, and joy. So health, wealth, and joy is what we’re cultivating in the Design You Podcast community so join us. And that’s all I got for you today, which is a lot. This was kind of a long episode for me but a really important one, friends, so get ready to let go to grow and I’ll see you back next week with a whole other exciting topic as you know I bring every single week. Bye for now.

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Design You Podcast. And if you’d like even more support for designing a business and a life that you love, then check out my exclusive monthly coaching program Design You at tobifairley.com.