Delegation Isn't Losing Control — It's How My First Apprentice Became My COO
Delegation feels like losing control. It's actually the opposite. Here's the right-person-right-seat lesson that changed how I lead.
For years, I white-knuckled everything. If it mattered, I did it myself. I told myself that was leadership. It was actually the bottleneck — and I was it.
The lesson that changed me didn't come from a book. It came from inventory.
Inventory needed an owner. So I handed it off — first to Alyssa, who's been with me since the very beginning. She's exceptional, but inventory wasn't her fit, and we both knew it. So we tried someone else. Also not the right fit. It would have been easy to conclude "I just have to do this myself." Plenty of owners stop right there.
Then Blake took it over. And it clicked. Our budgets got healthier almost immediately — not because inventory suddenly got easier, but because it finally landed with the right person in the right seat.
Here's the part I'm most proud of: Blake started as our very first apprentice. Today she's our COO. She runs payroll, inventory, and the daily management of our Florence location, and she coaches our entire team. The person I once trained is now the person who keeps the whole operation running.
That's what delegation actually is. It's not offloading what you don't want to do. It's not losing control. It's getting the right person into the right seat — and then developing them until they can carry more than you could have alone.
Two things I'd tell any owner who's still holding on too tight. First: if a handoff fails, that doesn't mean the task can't be delegated. It usually means it hasn't found the right person yet. Keep going. Second: the people you develop are your greatest return. I didn't hire a COO. I grew one.
You were designed with specific strengths. So was everyone on your team. Your job as an owner isn't to be great at everything — it's to put great people where they belong and then get out of their way.
This is exactly what I teach in my leadership work — and it's the thinking behind ApprenticePro, which turns "developing people" from a hope into a system. Want to see how?
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