Could your business be working… but no longer working for you?
Why this stage of growth isn’t about fixing what’s broken - it’s about noticing what’s no longer a fit
I had a conversation this week with a founder who’s spent nearly a decade building a deeply engaged, 40,000+ member community and the business around it.
From the outside, everything looked solid.
There’s a strong community.
There’s consistent revenue coming in.
There are programmes running, one-to-one clients, and speaking opportunities.
People know her work. People trust her.
And yet, fairly early in the conversation, she said:
“I feel like I’m sitting on a goldmine of opportunities… and I just don’t know how to harvest them.”
Then, a bit later:
“I think I’m just… underutilised.”
That combination - working business, but something not quite clicking - is one I hear more often than you might think.
What this actually feels like (when you’re in it)
It’s not crisis.
You’re not panicking about money.
You’re not scrambling for clients.
You’re not questioning whether the business “works”.
But there’s a low-level friction that doesn’t quite go away.
You’re busy - but not always on the right things.
There’s demand - but it doesn’t get your excited.
You’ve got ideas - but they’re not getting your headspace.
And underneath it all, there’s this quiet sense of:
“There’s more here. I can feel it. I’m just not moving towards it.”
It can feel oddly uncomfortable to admit, because on paper, things are fine.
So most founders don’t say it out loud.
The assumption most people jump to
When things feel like this, the default reaction is usually to look for what’s “not working”.
Maybe it’s time to scale, or pivot, or launch something new.
In other words:
“Something must be broken.”
And sometimes, that is true.
But in this case - and in many like it - it wasn’t.
What’s actually going on underneath
As we unpacked it, something else became much clearer.
This wasn’t a demand problem.
It wasn’t a credibility problem.
It wasn’t even a structure problem, really.
The business worked.
People valued it.
It generated income.
It had momentum.
But she had outgrown the role she was playing inside it.
So I said something that tends to land quite heavily in these moments:
“Sometimes the issue isn’t that the business isn’t working… it’s that you’ve outgrown how you’re showing up in it.”
And I could see that it landed for her.
Because that’s a very different problem to solve.
The moment things started to open up
We stopped trying to “fix” the business.
And instead, I asked her a slightly different question:
“If we put the ‘how’ to one side for a minute… what would you actually want more of in your work right now?”
Not what’s realistic.
Not what fits the current model.
Not what people expect from you.
Just - what would actually light you up.
That’s when things started to get clearer.
She talked about wanting more strategic work.
More use of her experience in different contexts (including corporate).
And less of:
organising and activating the community
being the default person everyone looks to
holding things together operationally
Nothing was “wrong”.
But the shape of her role hadn’t caught up with the stage of the business - or the stage of her.
Why this phase is so easy to misread
This is one of those moments in business that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Because it doesn’t look like a problem from the outside.
In fact, it often looks like success.
But internally, it can feel like you’re slightly miscast in your own company.
You built something that works…
And now you’re still operating it in the same way you did when it needed you most.
Which makes sense.
That’s what got you here.
But it’s also what can quietly keep you stuck.
Where I learned this (the long way round)
I’ve been here myself.
When I was a few years into running my first business, I used to think that if something felt off, it meant I needed to change the business.
Tweak the offer.
Rethink the model.
Add something new.
So I’d keep adjusting things externally, trying to find the “fix”.
But it never quite landed.
Because the real shift wasn’t out there.
It was in stepping back and asking:
“Is this still the right role for me inside this business?”
And in a couple of cases, the answer was no.
Not because the business wasn’t good.
But because I had changed, and my role hadn’t.
Once I started redesigning around that, things got a lot lighter.
A more useful way to look at it
If this feels familiar, I wouldn’t rush to change everything.
I’d start somewhere simpler.
Instead of asking:
“What’s not working here?”
Try asking:
“Where am I underutilised in this business right now?”
Or:
“What am I still holding that I don’t actually want to own anymore?”
Because often, the opportunity isn’t in building something new.
It’s in reshaping how you show up in what already exists.
That might look like:
shifting your role away from delivery into direction
changing how people access you (less reactive, more intentional)
introducing support in the right places - once you’re clear on what needs to come off your plate
creating space for the work that actually stretches and energises you again
Nothing dramatic.
Just more aligned.
The truth that tends to unlock things
When a business is working but still feels off, it’s rarely because you need to do more.
It’s usually because something hasn’t evolved.
And more often than not…
It’s you.
If this resonates, ask yourself:
Are you still playing the role your business needs now… or the one it needed to get here?