“Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours. Argue for your possibilities, and sure enough, they’re yours just as well.”
Richard Bach
Most people avoid the pain cave.
But if you’re a founder, you live in it—shoulders heavy with responsibility, brain buzzing at 2 AM with a thousand things left undone, team members waiting on decisions you haven’t had time to make. And yet, for all the fire-fighting, the real fire you’re trying to ignite—momentum—feels like a flicker.
I know the feeling.
I lived there for years. Building a company out of sheer willpower. Doing it all. Holding it all. Leading it all. Until I wasn’t leading—I was surviving.
Here’s what I’ve learned in the cave: the biggest threat to your company isn’t effort. It’s misalignment. And the most dangerous misalignment? The one between your vision and your decisions.
The Real Bottleneck Isn’t Your Team. It’s You.
Not in a shame-and-blame way. In a brutally honest way.
Most founders I coach are driven, capable, and willing to grind. But they’re also stuck. Not because they lack talent—but because they haven’t made the decisions their growth requires.
“You have skills and superpowers that are dragging you down because they aren’t where you create the most value anymore.”
That hit me hard when I said it—to my team, and to myself. Because it’s not about working harder. It’s about owning the decisions that free you to build.
You don’t scale a business by default. You scale it by design.
The Dangerous Lie of “When I…”
Here’s the trap I caught myself in recently:
“When I have more cash, I’ll hire that coach.”
“When the season slows down, I’ll invest in my marriage.”
“When we’re more stable, I’ll work on the business instead of in it.”
“When I have time, I’ll get fit.”
Sound familiar?
A mentor I look up to recently reached out and asked if I was interested in coaching with him—but it would require a big financial commitment. I thought, maybe next year when I have extra margin.
But then the truth hit: I might not make it to next year.
Are you in this place today?
I realized… I won’t need help then. I need help now, so I can make it alive to “then”.
The moment you delay the decision you know you need to make, you surrender to fear disguised as strategy.
“Don’t justify. Don’t delay. Don’t negotiate with excellence. Do what needs to be done, especially when it’s inconvenient.”
Growth doesn’t come after things get better. Growth is what makes things better.
The only way out of the corner is to grow out of it.
Founders Don’t Need More Tactics. They Need Visionary Alignment.
I coach founder-led businesses. Not because they’re easy—but because they’re messy. Visionaries who built something from nothing now find themselves surrounded by chaos: scattered marketing, siloed teams, inconsistent execution.
They don’t need more software or consultants.
They need someone to help them think. To see the gap between their vision and their team’s execution. To realign their role around what only they can do.
That’s why I created my coaching model. It’s not about giving founders more tasks—it’s about giving them back their time, clarity, and confidence to lead.
“It’s not about shipping more. It’s about shaping more.”
Indecision Is the Enemy of Impact
Here’s the thing… you can’t delegate your way out of disconnection. You just can’t.
And you can’t outsource the internal work of becoming the kind of leader your future requires.
As Jim Rohn once stated: “You can’t hire someone else to do your push-ups for you.”
“No one’s going to give you permission to prioritize the work that matters most. You have to choose it.”
It’s simply a decision.
Most founders I coach hit a point where they know something has to change. But they wait—until cash flow is better, until someone else steps up, until they feel 100% ready.
Here’s the truth: you’ll never feel ready. But you can choose to get real.
- Get real about where you create value.
- Get real about the fear that keeps you playing small.
- Get real about the version of yourself you’re becoming—and what has to die to get there.
“You either grow through the wall, or you back away from it. But the only way out—is through.”
My Mess Is My Message
My promise to you is that everything I coach, I’ve lived.
I’m not here sharing conference room concepts or lecture hall lessons. Founders like you and I don’t believe that sh*t.
The truth is…
- I’ve been the bottleneck.
- I’ve been addicted to performance and pressure.
- I’ve tried to power through instead of partnering up.
- I’ve buried my head in busywork instead of facing the decisions that would change everything.
But here’s the shift: I stopped running from the mess. I started turning my MESS into momentum.
And now I coach founders to do the same.
“Busy creates burnout. Alignment creates acceleration.”
If You’re Stuck in the Corner, It’s Time to Grow Out of It
This post isn’t about marketing tactics. It’s not about hacks or hustle.
It’s about the heart of transformational leadership.
It’s about the courage to get clear. And it’s about helping founder-led companies stop spinning and start scaling—through visionary alignment, practical clarity, and the conviction to act.
You don’t need a better time. You need a better decision.
If you’re still reading, maybe it’s time.
Time to stop waiting.
Time to stop justifying the delay.
Time to grow out of the corner you’re in—before you get pushed out by it.
