Learning to Let Go, Without Losing Control

Why real growth starts when you stop holding the reins.

Tony Cline didn’t always know how to step away from the grind.

Like many founders, he once believed everything would fall apart if he stopped steering the ship. But somewhere between building businesses and pounding out mile after mile on rugged trails, he learned the truth: real growth comes from letting go.

A long-distance runner and seasoned entrepreneur, Tony discovered that endurance, in both leadership and life, is less about control and more about trust.

Strategic PM sat down with Tony to learn how those roles converge, how property managers can build teams that run without them, what he’d do differently if he started over, and why he now sees himself as a kind of “entrepreneur extractor” — helping business owners escape the trap of day-to-day operations to build something more powerful.

Success, Sickness, and Self-Reflection

Tony’s been in the property management industry for about 25 years, owning and operating a PM Company for 23 of them. Today, he’s the owner of ONYX, providing entrepreneurs with coaching and consulting.

“I started out buying a real estate brokerage in Denver, Colorado, and discovered they were sort of property managing around 31 properties,” he recalls. “It was messy.”

Drawing from his tech background, Tony built systems to fix what wasn’t working, scaling from 31 doors to nearly 330 properties in his local market.

After merging with a few other companies and expanding nationwide, Tony and his team hit nearly 1,400 doors before selling to a national aggregator.

Impressive numbers. But for Tony, big numbers weren’t new. As an ultra-distance runner who regularly competes in 200–250-mile races, he knows exactly what it takes to set ambitious goals and grind toward them with consistency.

But that kind of physical commitment wouldn’t have been possible if his business still depended on him for every decision.

That realization hit hard in 2006 when Tony fell seriously ill. He found himself out of the office more than in it — and forced to think differently.