Yvonne Heimann [00:00:00]
Okay, it is time to dive a little bit deeper why it is so difficult to hand things off, to letting go of control and handing off things. And if you are not watching on YouTube, you are missing out because Hippo is with us today, and we even got two new friends that joined the group yesterday, from my friend Tracy.
You gotta love having friends all over the US that are, that are just amazing. We talked about... That I fired myself. We, talked about why it is so important, and that even me, who's been preaching this forever, I'm human too, right? And especially looking back at 2024, the business exploded. We had some of the biggest contracts.
I was with a different team, different focus of team, and because of one reason or the other, my business exploded end of 2024, '25. There's multiple reasons that fell into this, and we might just talk in another episode about that at some point. And it was the reminder for me, again, the wake-up call of this needs to be managed different.
I am preaching it to my clients. I am in their ears. I'm constantly like, "You need to build a self-sustainable business." The business cannot rely on the owner or rely on the manager or rely on one single person for a process. Life can happen, and it just, it doesn't work. It just does not work, period. I don't need to go down the rabbit hole again.
We talked about this. And I hope you've done your homework.
Yvonne Heimann [00:02:00]
Today, I wanna dive specifically deeper into the experience of handing work off to Luby. Luby is my mini me. That woman is a fucking godsend, and if you've listened to our hiring episode where Luby came onto the podcast, you know I didn't even wanna hire her.
Now, fortunately, I did hire her. And fortunately, Luby is Luby because she also calls me out for my shit.
Yvonne Heimann [00:02:40]
Handing things off to her meant giving up control at a level that is, yeah, oh my God, right? I pride myself on my authenticity, hate the word, but you know what I'm talking about, my integrity, and the business is built on me and my likeliness. And now what, now suddenly I have somebody that is starting to own the processes, that is talking with the team, that is talking with the clients, that's handing things off without me even knowing.
Oh my God, have I had meltdowns in this process. Because I'm not micromanaging. I'm preaching that I don't wanna micromanage, and then suddenly I want to micromanage because I wanna know what's happening and what's going on, right? Because now suddenly Luby is having conversations with the rest of the team and getting things done.
She's having conversations with the client and getting things done. Now, the amazing part of this is, is all of the things that fell through the cracks because I was the, the, the single point of failure, right? I can just do so much. She filled in, and her work ethic and her eye for detail are amazing. So all of the issues we had, all of the, "Oh my God, I still haven't emailed.
Oh my God, I don't wanna do this email." I hate emails. I hate emails, right? Yet giving up control of my email was so difficult. So I finally did give up control of my email, and the things that I let slip are taken care of. And still I'm here wanting to know every nitty, nitty-gritty and that was, that was a practice.
Yvonne Heimann [00:04:42]
That was a practice of letting go, of learning that 80% of what me and my team do is 100% delivery for somebody else, or even 120%. So what I mean by that is we have such high standards that even if we just deliver on 80%, we are delivering at the level somebody else is at 120%. So letting go of this "everything has to be perfect, and it has to be me because the client did hire me".
Actually, it doesn't. Especially with some of my high-touch, high-value VIP clients. They hired me for me, right? They hired me because I've been using, teaching, and implementing ClickUp since 2018. They hired me because I am an NLP master practitioner. They hired me because I can take systems and translate them into human language.
It's not just a, "We roll out a productivity system." No, no, no, no, no. We roll out a system and customize it and optimize it for the humans that need it. They don't need me to be in my fucking email. They don't need me to put together the reports. It doesn't. As a matter of fact, letting go of control in these areas and let my team handle it, give them the resources to either learn what they need to know or trust, and trust that they know. That's why I hired them, right?
I did check them. I did check all the things. So Luby was pretty much my, my refound assurance and training to letting go of control. I don't have to control everything, and if you know my immigration story, you know how much trouble I have of letting go of control. Last time I let go of control in a major aspect, I ended up being an undocumented immigrant in the States.
Yvonne Heimann [00:07:03]
No? Yes, I carry bullshit stories around letting go of control. Looking back at handing a lot of things off to Luby, it didn't happen all at once. First, if you thought it happened all at once, no, it did not. It- no. Would never. It happened piece by piece. Um, it started with handing off my email address, my inbox, and let Luby handle the emails because there's just way too much that's coming in that needs to be handled.
And at some point, we even gonna go the route of having AI handle a lot of the, a lot of the cleanup in my email inbox, just the bullshit, right? But it started with that, and her cleaning out my inbox, her replying so anybody new with cold pitches that were actually worth something didn't have to wait, like, three or four days to get a reply or for us to, to get information or anything like that.
And it was a step-by-step system where Luby got to understand more and more what I care about, what I don't give a shit about, how to manage, how to handle, how to organize, how to flag things to me because, yeah, we didn't have a clear SOP on it. Guilty. And I was able to more and more trust her because now what we call my convincer saw over and over and over again, this works, this works, it's saving me time, and it build up this proof of this is really not this bad.
I don't have to do all of this myself. Luby knows what she's doing. Hand it off. And I was able to calm my nervous system and be like, "You know what? This actually does work. I don't have to do it." And- What I want, I think what I want you to take most from this is we all are just humans, right? As I preach it all the time, you build processes and systems for the human, which means you are going to run into patterns, how people do things, how they over and over and over and over do something.
With humans, we also call them habits. You potentially have to change habits, which I had, handing things off and trusting that things are working right. So systems need to be adjusted to those habits, to those patterns, how humans work, or potentially you need to reprogram patterns and habits. And even somebody that preaches it, even somebody that is really good at rolling out systems in other companies don't always have their own systems perfectly down.
Yvonne Heimann [00:10:23]
We have a lot of systems going well. We have a lot of processes that are heavily automated and are really fun to run, and then we have areas that need an overhaul, that need to be polished, and with a lot of those, we are working on it. And I'm working on a blog post, little side quest here, working on a blog post right now about what's happening in the coaching industry, right?
And I think I mentioned that in the past solo episode. Don't... Do as I say, not as I do doesn't work anymore, and I can't expect my clients to follow my recommendations if I don't even follow my own recommendations, and I'm happy to report, yes, I'm just human, I am not following them 100% all the time, and also, I am developing the habit to following my own advice more and more.
I'm sharing this with you so you can walk away with the knowing, "Okay, I can develop the habit. You can develop the habit." I lived in a time of do as I say, not as I do. I've seen the issue with it, and I have changed. So can you
As a service provider, as somebody that is helping other people, the industry is changing. The industry is changing to such a thing that people don't trust the seven figures in seven days, the 15K in five email bullshit. It is marketing bullshit, it is sucked dry. It's not what people want to see. People want to see that you are doing what you say you're gonna do.
They are tired of empty promises, they are tired of blown-up numbers, and just the, the lack and fear marketing. So do as you said you're gonna do. And the interesting side effect of this is, too, when you say you're gonna do something and you do it, you are proving yourself that you care enough about yourself to do what you said you're gonna do.
There is nothing worse than saying, "I'm gonna go to the gym tomorrow morning," and you don't. Now you lied to yourself. Don't do that. It is a nice adjustment, and we suddenly see the time we are spending and how often we say we're gonna do something and we don't. When you become really honest with yourself, and you're going to start feeling different about yourself, too, and you're gonna start showing up differently, now suddenly you have this self-confidence in yourself because you said you're gonna do it and you did it. Got a little bit off the rails here with the topic.
Yvonne Heimann [00:13:30]
And also, this is what happens in this whole process of removing yourself from your company. There is, especially for us women, so much connected to our business, to what we do. Love to hear from you. Again, email heythere@askyvi.com. Email us. I wanna hear, maybe, maybe it's just my perception, but I believe that most women build a business around something they are passionate about.
Did a podcast episode on that one too, by the way. And with that, there is so much connected, so much emotion, so much personality connected to our business, and that's where we hit that ceiling. Because of the connection we have to our business, there is a whole level of personal work we need to do to let go and hand off work because we are so closely connected to our business, and that's where the work is going.
And if you don't do that work, that's the ceiling you're gonna reach. I'm happy to report our ceiling is nice and high right now, and I am determined, I am determined to raise that ceiling even higher. Welcome to my I Fired Myself Out of My Business journal. If you haven't subscribed yet, you know the spiel.
I don't need to tell you the spiel. I'm gonna keep driving towards Kansas. I don't even know if I'm in Kansas yet. And go walk out to some music before I might just record another episode for you guys. I'll see you in the next video.