Growing a business is exciting until you realize the thing slowing it down might actually be you. 

I think this is such an interesting stage of entrepreneurship, especially for women who are used to being capable. You built the thing. You know how you want clients to feel. You know the details. You know what good looks like. And because you can do most of it yourself, for a long time, you do.

Until the business grows.

Suddenly you're answering every question, approving every decision, checking every detail, creating the content, talking to the clients, solving the problems and still trying to think about where the business is going next. You wanted to scale your business, but somehow scaling just created more work for you.

I've had to look at this in my own business too. There is a huge difference between being involved because something genuinely needs you and being involved because you've gotten really comfortable being needed.

That one can sting a little.

As women, many of us are already doing this outside of work. We're the person who knows the schedules, remembers the appointments, notices what needs to happen next and can usually figure it out faster than explaining it to someone else. Then we bring that exact same pattern into our businesses.

But "I can do it faster myself" isn't a scaling strategy.

This is something Ryan and I have learned through growing our businesses in very different industries. The details may look completely different, but the questions are surprisingly similar. Where are you spending your time? What are you holding onto that someone else could own? Where are you actually needed? What does the business need from you in order to get to the next level?

Having the two of us look at these questions together has also changed the way I grow my own business. Ryan naturally sees strategy, operations and the business itself through a different lens than I do. I tend to see the people, the vision, the relationships and what we're building toward. Neither perspective is enough on its own. Putting them together has helped us see blind spots, make decisions faster and get much clearer about what each business actually needs next.

At some point, growing a business requires you to stop proving how much you can carry and start deciding what actually needs to be carried by you.

That might mean hiring before you feel completely ready. Creating systems instead of keeping everything in your head. Letting someone else do something at 90 percent of how you would do it. Giving your team ownership instead of giving them tasks and then continuing to oversee every move.

And maybe the hardest one, letting go of the idea that being essential to everything is the same thing as being valuable.

I don't think scaling means removing yourself from your business. Quite the opposite. I want to be deeply connected to the parts of my business that I am uniquely good at. Coaching women. Creating rooms. Having conversations. Speaking. Building relationships. Dreaming about what's next.

But every hour I spend doing something someone else could own is an hour I'm not spending doing the work only I can do.

This is also a big part of why we created MOMentum Legacy. It's a three-month, all-in coaching experience where you get both of us. You get the accountability, leadership and personal side of growth that I bring, alongside Ryan's strategic business lens. Because sometimes you don't need another course telling you how to grow. You need people beside you who can get into the business with you, see what you can't see from inside it and help you actually make the changes.

So if your business is growing and you're exhausted, before assuming you need to work harder, ask yourself a different question:

Where have I accidentally made myself the bottleneck?

Look at what requires your approval. Look at what only exists in your head. Look at what you're still doing because you've always done it. Look at what you're afraid to hand over. And maybe most importantly, look at whether the version of you who built this business is the same version of you who needs to lead where it's going next.

Scaling a business isn't just about adding more clients, more revenue or more people. It's about building something that can grow without requiring more and more of you to hold it together.

Because the goal was never to build yourself another job that can't function without you.

The goal is to build something bigger than what you could ever carry alone.

The MOMentum Legacy coaching package is designed to support women leading startups or in executive positions.