Keeping Up with Growth, Sassy Volleyballers & The Onion
You wanted growth, and you got it. The leads are flowing. The offers are selling. The opportunities keep showing up.
But now your calendar is a blur. Your inbox has opinions. And your brain? Kind of feels like it’s buffering.
This week, we’re talking about what happens when your business outpaces your capacity — and how to move through it without burning everything down.
🚧 Step 1: Admit you’re the bottleneck
This part isn’t shameful — it’s inevitable. Every founder hits a moment where the thing that once worked perfectly now strains under pressure. You’ve grown. The work has grown. But the systems… haven’t caught up yet.
🪫 Step 2: Delegate the energy leaks
Start small. Look for what drains you and slows things down for others.
→ Is your team waiting on you for approvals?
→ Are clients asking questions you’ve already answered in past emails?
→ Are you rewriting the same onboarding doc every time?
If you keep thinking “It’s faster if I just do it myself,” that’s your delegation backlog talking.
🪞 Step 3: Upgrade your internal story
A lot of us get stuck here — not in execution, but in identity.
→ Who am I if I’m not in the weeds?
→ Do I even know how to lead at this level?
→ What if I disappoint someone by letting go?
You’re not bad at your job. You’re just in a new one now. Growth isn’t just about scaling your systems. It’s about scaling your self-concept.
⚙️ Step 4: Build it once so you can stop thinking about it
Right now, too much of your business lives in your head. That’s why everything still routes through you. Start turning repeat work into repeatable systems:
→ Record yourself doing key tasks (client onboarding, reporting, proposals)
→ Turn those recordings into simple checklists or standard operating procedures (bullet points are enough)
→ Create a single source of truth (Google Drive, Notion — whatever you’ll actually use)
If you’ve explained it twice, it should probably exist somewhere outside your brain. You’re not just doing the work anymore. You’re building the machine that does the work.
🤝 Step 5: Hire for the level of the problem, not just the task
A lot of founders stall here because they think hiring = “get a VA.” Sometimes yes. Often… no. Ask yourself: Where am I actually stuck?
→ Drowning in admin? → Start with a VA
→ Need execution but not strategy? → Junior contractor
→ Need ownership + thinking? → Senior contractor/operator
→ Financial or operational chaos? → Fractional CFO or COO
Hiring the wrong level is why delegation “doesn’t work.” You don’t just need help, you need the right kind of help for this stage of growth.
Scaling to meet the moment is one of the toughest transitions in business — going too fast or too slow can each be stressful in different ways.
But to grow, you have to transition — to evolve from being the talent to being the system builder and quality assurer. And that’s uncomfortable as hell — especially when your identity (and frankly, your standards) are tied to being the one who does things well.
But if you don’t cross the bridge, the outcome is predictable: you cap your revenue or you burn out. Or both.
Need a little support and good company while you make the shift? Our next Work With Day is tomorrow (April 23rd)!
🪢 Laura & Lauren
Things We Loved This Week
LaurA’s Things
🍞 It’s too pretty to eat. (Hasn’t stopped me before though.)
🖼️ I’m redoing my bathroom and will definitely be adding something like this fun DIY.
🐐 Where do I get tickets?
🏐 Again, where do I get tickets?
Lauren’s Things
🧅 I am delighted that The Online now owns InfoWars, and I loved this discussion with their CEO about how it all came about.
⛓️ I binged this entire miniseries in a day despite — I’m pretty sure — refusing to read the book in high school. (Thank you Katy for the rec!)
🥛 I love my therapist, but in my next life I want group sessions with Kristen Bell and Adam Grant.
