The moment I realized my grip was slipping

Pre-S: Happy New Year’s Eve! I’m picturing you wearing 2026 bling-y glasses!

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I want to share a story from my own business – not because it’s unique, but because it’s so common, once a business reaches a certain point.

A few years ago, my business was growing. Revenue was up. Demand was solid. On paper, everything looked good.

And yet, I could feel something shifting underneath me.

My days were getting more scattered.
I was holding more and more in my head.
I was switching between modes constantly – coaching, creating, responding, managing – without much space between them.

Nothing was “on fire,” exactly.
But everything felt like 20% (or 40%!) too much.

It was like riding a horse that had broken into a gallop – faster is good, right? Not if you’re barely hanging on.

At the time, I was running two different delivery models at once:

• one-on-one work, which was fairly straightforward to deliver

• and a small group mastermind, which had lots of moving parts

Individually, each made sense.
Together, without a new operating system underneath each one, I was barely keeping up.

I kept trying to manage it with effort.
More hours.
More attention.
More mental tracking.

And for a while, that worked.

Until it didn’t.

I was at the playground with my laptop and kids when one of them wiped out on a swing dismount and came to me, crying hard. And I remember being more irritated than sympathetic. (#not-proud-of-this)

That was the moment I realized I had to fix something. I didn’t know what or how, but I knew I couldn’t stay on the track I was on.

My coach saw what was going on. He helped me pause and redesign how I ran my business. Not the coaching. Not the mastermind. Not the pricing. The operating system.

That period was deeply uncomfortable. It felt like everything had to turn into jelly before it could take a new shape.

But on the other side of it, something remarkable happened.

My days became calmer.
My brain got quieter.
Work flowed.
The business became predictable again.

That shift didn’t come from working less hard.
It came from putting structure under the work so my effort could be efficient.

In the next email, I’ll talk about what I captured from that experience – and why I was so determined to make it teachable for other firm owners who might be approaching a similar inflection point.