The Business Case for Letting Go

“What we let go of determines what we become.” Anon

Most business owners I work with are not struggling to identify what isn’t working in their Companies.  They know which client drains the most energy.  They know which service no longer fits.  They know which habit, role, or responsibility has quietly become a burden.

What founders really struggle with is something else entirely: Letting go.

Last week, I wrote about tolerance, the slow damage caused by allowing the wrong things to persist.  This week is the next step. Awareness without action doesn’t change anything, and insight without endings simply creates frustration.

This is the uncomfortable truth of leadership: nothing truly changes until something ends.

Why Letting Go Feels So Much Harder Than Adding

Business Owners are builders by nature.  That means a core wiring that pushes them to add: more clients, more services, more ideas, more effort. Letting go feels almost unnatural because it triggers things that adding never does:

• Loss aversion: assessing the action as failure, even when it’s progress
• Identity attachment: this is how we have always built the business
• Guilt: especially with long-standing clients or early team members
• Fear of perception: what will this look like from the outside?
• Fear of the unknown: what if I let this go and nothing replaces it?

So, as I covered last week,  instead of deciding, founders drift. They tolerate and postpone. They tell themselves they’ll deal with it in the new year.

And that’s how the wrong things quietly get carried forward again.

How to Let Go Without Chaos

Letting go doesn’t have to be dramatic, confrontational, or destructive. However, it does need to be deliberate.

Step 1: Define It Clearly and Absolutely

Write down exactly what you are letting go of. 

E,g, not a difficult client. This specific client.

Clarity creates the movement required.

Step 2: Decide

Make a conscious decision. Not  a “we’ll see how it goes” decision. Not open-ended and no ongoing tolerance for what you are not prepared to accept. Clean decisions are kinder for you and everyone else involved.

Step 3: Create an Ending

That means: Clear timelines, Simple communication, Respectful tone, No emotional justification.  You are in charge, and you are not asking permission. You’re setting the direction. The instinct is to delay because you will fear the discomfort, but this clarity will reduce that.

Step 4: Protect the Space Created

This is the critical step and easy to overlook.  When something ends, don’t instinctively rush to fill the gap.  Enjoy the space and feel the relief and the energy returning.  This is the space from which you will now make the better decisions from.

Filling it too quickly reverts you back to the same problem, just in a new form.

Step 5: Close the Loop

Reflect back and ask yourself:

• What did this cost you while it existed?
• What did you learn?
• What will you not repeat?

This is how letting go becomes growth and not regret.

From Tolerance to Leadership

Last week was about recognising what you’ve been putting up with. This week is about acting on it.  Tolerance is awareness.  Letting go is leadership.  And leadership always involves endings, not because something failed, but because something no longer fits.

One Simple December Action

Before this year ends, choose one thing to leave behind.

• One client.
• One service.
• One habit.
• One responsibility.
• One unresolved situation.

Decide how it ends and when it ends.  Then commit to letting it stay in 2025.  You don’t need to do everything. You just need to do something, deliberately.

Closing Thought

Growth isn’t always about ambition.  You can’t build next year’s business while carrying last year’s weight.  What you release now determines what you’re free to build next.

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing is nothing.” Theodore Roosevelt