About three months ago, I woke up one day and realized that my business was becoming something I promised it wouldn’t become – another web agency.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my service clients, and value them very much. They’re a vital component in my business, and I genuinely enjoy serving them. I just want my client work to be just a part of my business’ big picture.

In hindsight, the issue is clear – I overhired. I tried to grow too fast, too soon, and the result was the operating costs of my business put me in a forced “grow or die” scenario. I had to remain so focused on growing that I lost sight of why I left my job in the first place. I just wanted to spend more time building Siren, but it was being constantly overshadowed by the flailing operations in the service side of my business.

I’d closed about $300k in business in my first year of this business, and I was still broke as hell, and going into debt. Something was clearly wrong.

This all happened so fast, and yet so slowly. I made one bad bet at a time, and before I knew it, I had hired myself a team that required that I grow my business 2-3 times its current size, and still have room in the profits to actually have someone work on Siren.

Even worse, the system that I put in place felt backwards. I was shielding myself from the clients, putting people in-between me and them, which created more friction to get my expertise, and slowed the business to a crawl. The team I had simply didn’t have the tools to advise and answer customer questions quickly or effectively.

I was never completely sure what was going on, because things often didn’t make it to me, and my team would just say that they were “handling it”, even after I would ask to be more involved. They were trying to help by protecting me from adding more to my workload, but instead it just shielded me from preventable emergencies.

And yet, the team was insistent that we could do this, that we could stick together, and together through great effort and communication we could overcome these things and create a better team. The team I assembled wanted to double down and figure this out. I admired the gumption, and tried to stick it out for a while.

I bought into it, telling myself that maybe they’re right – maybe we can overcome this, and we can actually make the drastic shifts needed to do it. If they’ve got it in ’em to try, then by gumb so do I.

It wasn’t until I got serious about managing my tasks again that I was able to free up my brain from the day-to-day enough to take a step back, and see with some clarity what needed to happen.

This process took four days of me just getting it all out of my head, Getting Things Done style. I knew I had a vague sense of “shit’s not going right”, but I couldn’t quite connect the dots with my brain so full of everything else.

But eventually, after getting all of that out of my head, the dawning realization came over me. The business structure I had built only had one possible shape – a web agency.

I sure as hell didn’t jump into the trough of despair to run a web agency. I’ve worked in, on, around, and for agencies since 2009 – I know it’s not what I want.

I care about these people deeply, but it became clear that I had to choose between protecting the team I’d swept along for this ride, or protecting the business I actually wanted to create.

But really, there was only one choice here, because the simple truth is that the business was not going to survive if I didn’t make a change.

So, I found my resolve and made really difficult phone calls. One of these people was a teammate I’ve worked with off and on for a decade. That call lasted from 9am to 4pm. It genuinely felt like a breakup.

After recovering from the emotional toll, I woke up one day rested, and excited about the future of the business. Suddenly, I felt like I wasn’t burdened by the need to debate or discuss how we need to do things. I didn’t feel like I had to move “slow enough” to allow the team to catch up to what I wanted.

I kept bouncing between Jack Skellington and Santa Claus in The Nightmare Before Christmas. On one hand, I was Jack, excitedly pitching this big, weird vision to a town that nodded along but try as they might, they never were quite able to get it. There’s a special kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to export a vision no one else can fully see.

I also had to be Santa, swooping in at the last minute, righting the wrongs and putting everything back in its proper place. Systems that had been stuck in debate and limbo for weeks were shored up, set up, and running in hours.

• The backlog of work was caught up in two weeks
• Clients are well-informed, and communicating well
• My clients are happy, their needs are being met
• My budget is clear, and I know how much runway I have
• I’m more profitable than I’ve been in months
• I’m working fewer hours,

I know that this can’t be forever, because the truth is I am definitely going to burn out at this pace. I’m still working a lot of hours, and I’m barely treading water. Yet, I also can’t really afford to slow down lest my debts catch me. The reality is, I can’t be the only person working in my business, but for the moment, brief as this may be, I’m relishing in the catharsis of shit getting done quickly, and correctly.

But looking at the budget, and the workload, this is juuuust for a moment. 😅

In the meantime, I’m scaling much slower. I’ve been paying close attention to the processes I’m setting up, and working as if I’m a part of a team now. I’m developing the processes and communication channels with my clients so that as I grow, there aren’t dramatic shifts in how the business works in the process.

I’m working to set up systems where I’m delegating instead of abdicating, and slowly, I am gently bringing in as few contractors as I need to help me out where I need it.

It’s been a really difficult month, but after feeling like I was screaming at the top of my lungs “this isn’t what it should be!” to an empty void, I finally found the clarity and the courage to hit the reset button. I’m a little battered and bruised from the experience, but I’m healing. The business is healing, my clients are happy, money’s flowing, and most-importantly, I feel like the business is on the right trajectory again.

And honestly, I haven’t felt this happy in a while.