Edition 493 – To Grow, You Have To Let Go

In a career spanning almost four decades, I’ve worked with hundreds of family business and, by extension, hundreds of families.

From professional services, to trades based businesses, through manufacturing into the health space, I’ve had the good fortune, and a great opportunity, to see what works, and what doesn’t in business.

There’s lots of commonality amongst successful businesses, and, sadly, lots of commonality amongst businesses that don’t work. In saying that, not every successful business, or indeed every successful individual, shares exactly the same traits. However, there is one thing they do share, and its become a mantra of mine, in recent times.

To grow, you have to let go!

If you want your business to grow, you have to be prepared to move on from certain elements of it. Client relationships. Employees. Systems. Banks. Professional designations. You name it.

Every successful business owner, and every successful individual that I have encountered in my lifetime, have not been wed to everything they’ve ever accumulated in their business or professional life. They’ve been prepared to say that, in order for me to get to the next phase of my journey, I need to give something up – even if that something is valuable, or, as I’ve experienced myself, can be an integral part of your professional standing.

Back in 2015, I was a registered Self Managed Superannuation Fund auditor. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? It was a hard earned designation, that involved lots of study, lots of knowing the rules and regulations around superannuation and, more than anything, lots of doing and acting right, in every engagement I undertook.

Back then, in my former accounting practice, we had a sizeable regional client base. I loved going out to meet with these practitioners, who progressed from clients, to colleagues, to friends. From Inverell, to Lismore, and from Bega to Toowoomba, we’d talk about their own practices, and what they were seeing in amongst their own clients and their own local communities. I really loved engaging with these people because they were good folk, just like us, and were great company.

When it got down to the tin-tacks of the work, however, well, that’s another story. Frankly, it bored me rigid! Absolutely, mind numbingly so. Indeed, one day, I was so bored, I was distracted by this odd noise emanating from the distant corner of an office we were working inside of, and it got the better of me to the point I needed to investigate. The noise was a large, dot matrix printer, printing client general ledgers on that old, tractor feed, rectangular blue and white lined paper, buzzing away at max volume. But I digress.

When I decided that I wanted to take my professional life to another level, and really dive deep into helping family business owners build the type of business that lets them and their families live their best lives, I realised that I couldn’t take on anything more. I actually had to move something off my plate, to give myself the mental capacity, to perform the role I really wanted to do. So, I gave up my Super Fund Auditor registration. I handed it back. Part of me did so with trepidation, as I knew that if I wanted to (or more likely, needed to) get it back in the future, it was all going to have to start from scratch, again.

The beauty of letting go, is that you don’t give yourself an “out”. Whatever your next step, you have to make it work. And, if it doesn’t work the first time around, then learn from the mistakes you’ve made, buff off the rough edges, then give it another go.

To grow, you have to let go.

Today, in the third quarter of 2025, and a week out from 9 years since I left my former accounting practice, I can honestly say the letting go of so much, over that time, has been incredibly beneficial. Old paradigms. Client relationships that no longer worked for me. Systems and processes. Professional associations. They’ve all been moved on, in my ongoing quest to continually seek professional and personal growth.

And, I regret none of it.

This Week’s Tip

“What are you holding onto, that is holding you back?”