You don’t have to be everywhere, all at once, to be in control. Sometimes real leadership looks like stepping off track and getting off the “pit lane”.
South Africa (01 June 2025) – Here’s a little Sunday story. A flashback that’s been sitting with me and one I hope lands with you as we roll into a new month.
Long before Good Things Guy existed, and even before my (then) agency Chaos Theory, I had what I’d call my first real job. Proper hours. A team. A boss. A salary that felt like a jackpot (until payday hit and reality kicked in). I worked for a company called Fantastic Racing and it really was really… fantastic.
We ran high-octane corporate days with real Formula 3 cars, the type of experience where your accountant got to live out his Lewis Hamilton dreams in a fireproof suit. We’d book out tracks, do safety briefings, throw in some theory, a few warm-up laps, and then… let loose.
Real racing. Proper champagne afterwards. It was flipping lekker.
But make no mistake, it was a production. A big one. Tracks cost money. Cars needed care. Clients wanted adrenaline but we also had to keep them alive (the cars and the clients). Every day was a dance between excitement and disaster… oil spills, mechanical failures and those thunderclouds that only ever rolled in after we’d committed to the day.
And at the centre of it all was the pit lane.
The heartbeat. The chaos. The place where things got loud, messy and stressful. It’s where a thousand things could go wrong… and often did. That’s where my boss (and now very close friend) Julie Brown taught me one of the most important lessons I still carry with me.
Sometimes we need to get off the pit lane.
It sounds counterintuitive right? You’ve worked your guts out setting everything up. You’ve checked every checklist. You’ve prepped the team, the gear and the guests. And now, with the action unfolding, your instinct is to stay glued to the edge of it all, just in case. Because this is the critical bit. The most important bit. The moment where the pressure peaks and the outcome feels like it rests on your shoulders.
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But here’s the thing.
When you’ve done the work… like really done the work… the best thing you can sometimes do is step back. Trust your team. Let go of the wheel (or in this case the clipboard). Because staying in the pit lane when you don’t need to be there only creates more noise. More stress. And, ironically, more risk.
Julie knew this. She’d built the systems, trained the teams and prepped for every possible thing that could go wrong. And she knew that if she was still standing in the pit lane once the day was underway, it usually meant something hadn’t gone right.
I’ve held onto that idea.
Because I believe it’s not just about racing… it’s about life. It’s about leadership. It’s about control and knowing when to release it.
Sometimes, we get so caught up in everything we’re managing… family, career, goals, pressure, anxiety, gym, drinking water, that bladdy Duolingo notification… that the final thing on our list feels like the most important. The one thing we absolutely must control. But often, that final thing is just the loudest, not the most essential.
And sometimes the most powerful, growth-filled, peace-giving thing we can do… is to get off the pit lane.
Or just let it go.
Trust your team. Trust your work. Trust yourself.
Let the systems run. Let the engines roar. Let the people you’ve invested in… do their thing. Because stepping back isn’t giving up control. It’s recognising that you’ve already built something strong enough to carry on without you holding the clipboard.
So maybe, as the new month kicks off, this is the reminder you need.
Get off the pit lane.
(Okay. Love you. Bye.)
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