I finally hired a housekeeper.😊

I've resisted for years. I told myself it was a waste of money since I could do it just as well. Not a single woman I grew up with back in Sweden has household help. I didn't have help when I was running a city and a law firm at the same time. I saw no reason to start now, when I am doing fewer hours and someone else is running my two European companies.

But I finally agreed. Mostly so I could spend more time doing things I actually want to do.

After they came the first time, I was surprised. They did a really good job - even by my standards, which are not low.

I checked anyway. Of course I did.🕵‍♀️

I walked the house - ran my finger along the door frames, checked behind the kitchen appliances. I looked at the fingerprints on the fridge. I went into every room and did the audit I'd do if it was my company.

I gave them about 80%. Which, if I am honest, is higher than I expected. But I didn't tell my husband that.🫢

Then I did something I am still laughing about. I asked my husband to please tell them what they missed.

I, executive coach to senior women, who's been under scrutiny from media, received death threats, fired people in three languages, asked my husband to deliver the feedback to the housekeepers. Because I didn't want them to think I was the difficult one.

Girl code, I told him.😁

My straight-shooter husband delivered the feedback. They came back the next week, fixed the missing things, and have done a beautiful job ever since.

But here is the part I want to tell you about.

There are two areas my husband thinks they should be doing. The beds. And the couch.

There are two areas I keep redoing myself. The beds. And the couch.

We have a Cloud couch. Google it. It has to be fluffed a very particular way after anyone sits on it, and nobody but me can do it correctly. That's what I've decided. They can wipe the kitchen, scrub the bathrooms, vacuum the whole house - but they can't fluff my couch.

The beds I took back even faster. The American way of making a bed is wrong. I'm sorry. It just is. I make mine the Swedish way, duvets folded inwards, done a specific way nobody else in this country knows how to do.

I see this exact pattern in my Recalibrated women every week. She hires the team, delegates the work - and then tells me about the one thing she still does herself. The proposals to the top clients. The investor decks. The first onboarding call with every new hire.

She tells me it has to be her because no one else can do it the way she does it.

That's sometimes true.

It's also sometimes the last place she's holding on, dressed up in a sentence that sounds like a standard.

The beds and the couch aren't really about the beds and the couch. They're the version of the work I won't let go of - where my standard still has to live in my own hands.

I am not coming for your beds. Or your investor decks. But I want you to notice - what are your two things? And why those two specifically?

/Ulrika