It shouldn’t be this hard, should it?
Why do we keep having the same problems?
These type of questions haunted me for years…around 2010 especially. I’d finish another long day, twelve hours of meetings, firefighting, and chasing work that should’ve been done weeks ago, and sit there wondering, why do the same problems keep coming back?
I remember breaking down in front of a client once… it was horrible. We’d failed their project by introducing new technology we simply weren’t ready for, magento 2. In the end, we gave them all their money back and connected them with a better team for the job. It was one of the lowest points of my career.
It must be me, I used to think. Maybe I wasn’t a strong enough leader. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this. I’d built something from nothing, but somehow it felt like it was owning me instead of the other way around.
Blueleaf, my agency, looked successful from the outside. We were winning awards, working with incredible clients, and growing fast. But inside, it was chaos. I was exhausted, disillusioned, and living in constant survival mode.
And if I’m being really honest, I’d fallen out of love with my business. I hated it. I despised it. The thing I’d poured my soul into had become something I couldn’t stand to face each morning. If someone had offered to take it off my hands, I’d have given it away. I remember lying awake at night wondering, am I even enough for this anymore?
The truth was hard to face: I was getting in the way of the business.
I’d built a company that revolved around me. Every problem, every decision, every piece of progress still ran through me. I thought I was helping, but really, I was holding it back.
Then came 2013, the year everything broke. My mum passed away. I went through a divorce. The business was on the brink of collapse. I spent months sleeping under my desk, refusing to quit, doing whatever it took to stop the insolvency practitioners from coming in to close us down.
That’s when someone gave me the book Traction by Gino Wickman. I was still living in the office, so I had time to read it. And it made sense. It was simple, stuff I already knew deep down, but I hadn’t been putting any real rigour in place.
I ran through it with my lead developer, who thankfully got it straight away. Together, we made a plan to introduce the book and the EOS system to some of the leaders. We started following it.
We couldn’t afford an Implementer, so we had to self-implement. Not easy to do, it’s tough to read the label on the jar when you’re stuck inside the jar yourself. In hindsight, we should’ve got that extra support to help us implement it faster and more purely, but we made do.
I stepped into the Visionary seat, properly supported by my much smarter, younger, and driven Integrator. Letting go was terrifying. My ego screamed that no one could do it as well as I could. But deep down, I knew it was the only way, and, in reality, he did a better job than me.
I was prone to confusing my team, reading books, going to events, and coming in the next day full of “the next big idea” that was going to take us to the moon. My energy was high, but my focus wasn’t, and the team never quite knew which version of me was walking into the office.
With our new plan, we rebuilt Blueleaf using the discipline and tools of EOS. It wasn’t fast or easy, but it was real progress. Slowly, we began to trade out of the chaos.
We even took a massive Funding Circle loan, personally guaranteed by both of us. It was one of those “oh shit moments.” We had to make it work. And because we had structure, rhythm, and accountability, we did.
That was the turning point.
For the first time in years, the business ran smoothly. We weren’t putting out fires anymore; we were building something sustainable. And somewhere along the way, I started to fall back in love with it.
Here’s the thing I learned: most recurring problems in a business aren’t really problems at all, they’re symptoms. They’re signals that your structure, your clarity, or your leadership rhythm isn’t strong enough. When you fix those things, the noise dies down.
If you’re reading this and you’re tired, tired of solving the same issues, tired of being the one who has to hold it all together, please hear me when I say this: you’re not broken, and your business isn’t beyond saving. You just need to stop carrying it alone.
You can’t outwork a broken system, but you can rebuild one that works for you.
Once you have that structure, a clear vision, the right people in the right seats, a regular rhythm to solve issues instead of spinning them, everything changes.
You stop surviving. You start leading.
You stop hating what you built. You start remembering why you built it.
From one founder to another, I promise you this, it’s possible to fall back in love with your business. It starts when you step back, find clarity, and let others step forward.