The Systems Person Forgot to Build one for Herself 😳

Who the heck am I this week??

I knew I was reaching my limit when my toddler asked for one more bedtime story, and I started crying instead.

The fifth and whiniest “just one more,” proved I had absolutely nothing left in the tank.

This month has been...a lot.

I’ve earned this frizzy hair and tired eyes, my friends.

My Mimi passed.

We moved.

Kiddo decided this was the perfect time to completely regress on potty training. (I’ve gotten real friendly with that new washer and dryer.)

I’m onboarding a new client.

Turns out our new garage leaks.

I somehow still have things at the old house that need to be cleaned up.

I’m supposed to keep prospecting because businesses don’t magically grow while you’re unpacking boxes.

Oh...and apparently lettuce is trying to kill us this summer? So I’ve been eating cold pizza and leftover Chinese food like I’m back in college.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I stopped working out.

Stopped reading.

Started waking up in the middle of the night.

Then I sat down to write this newsletter and realized I didn’t even care what I wrote this week.

That was the biggest kick in the gut. I love writing; this is my little safe space, and I could barely face it.

How was I going to get myself out of this funk? People hire me to bring order to chaos.

That’s LITERALLY my job.

When a company starts dropping balls, I laugh when they tell me they or their team just need to work harder. Do more.

I don’t encourage them to build some elaborate new operating system.

I send them right back to the basics.

What’s actually on your plate?

Where is it all living?

What can leave your brain?

So...I stepped back and decided to take my own advice.

Whipped out the old checklist.

Actually put things on my calendar instead of trusting my brain to remember.

Brain-dumped into GPT instead of trying to carry every loose end around in my head.

Again, nothing genius here, just back to those key basics.

I think founders, operators, and truthfully, a lot of parents have the same bad habit.

We convince ourselves that everyone feels safer if we keep holding everything.

As if carrying more somehow makes us more responsible.

It really doesn’t. It just makes us heavier.

Last night I asked myself what I would say to my daughter, Sloane, if she were my age, running a company, moving houses, trying to build something meaningful.

Feeling like she was dropping balls everywhere.

I’d tell her,

“Girlfriend...you’re rocking it. I’m really proud of you.”

It’s probably time I started talking to myself that way too.