The 3 Leaks Stealing From Your Expansion | EP 527

🔗 Mentioned on this Episode: Show Notes 👈

What if the real obstacle to your next level isn’t your strategy... but the invisible leaks in your foundation?

In this solo episode, I unpack the 3 most common ways high-achieving entrepreneurs unconsciously leak energy, clarity, and revenue. These insights are drawn from real conversations with six- and seven-figure clients navigating pivots, leadership challenges, and growth transitions. This isn’t about working harder, It’s about working in alignment with the season you’re actually in.

If you’re scaling a values-driven business and want to lead with more clarity, presence, and ease, this episode is your call to re-center. Your clarity is closer than you think.

Text us! What landed for you from this episode?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
If you've ever found yourself wondering why things
feel heavier even though yourbusiness has grown, we'll be
talking about that today,because it's not always your
strategy that's the problem.
Sometimes it's the subtle,invisible ways your business is
leaking energy, time and clarity.
We're walking through three ofthe most common leaks I see in

(00:22):
growing businesses and howunderstanding them can shift the
way you lead, delegate and grow.
Hi, welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sheila Botello, holisticbusiness coach, creator of the
Season Success Method and yourguide to growing success from
the inside out.
This space is where we explorewhat it looks like to scale your

(00:45):
business, your impact and yourself-leadership in a way that
feels aligned, profitable androoted in who you actually are.
Today, I want to talk about thesilent thieves in your business
, because I know you alreadyknow strategy, you already know

(01:05):
how to grow, but something'spossibly been slowing you down
lately and it may not be whatyou think.
Over the last decade, I'vesupported hundreds of women
founders as they scale and whatI've seen, particularly in this
past year, is a growing gapbetween visibility and vitality,

(01:26):
because we have so much moreaccess to all of these tools
than we ever have had before AI,automations, sops that are
really seamless launch templatesand team structures that would
have taken years to build in thepast.

(01:47):
We are smarter and we're faster, but what I'm hearing and what
I'm seeing in DMs, voxermessages and during coaching
calls is that many founders arefeeling heavier than they did
when they were making less money, if you can imagine.
So why is this?
Because growth without claritybecomes pressure, and speed

(02:13):
without intentionality can turninto chaos.
At least that's what I'vewitnessed.
So what I want to offer youtoday are three core leaks that
I see in the businesses of eventhe most brilliant, seasoned,
multi, six and seven figurepeople that I coach Leaks that
are subtle but compound overtime and siphon off your

(02:36):
momentum.
And the wild thing is, theseleaks have nothing to do with
your strategy.
They are truly about yourfoundation.
So the first leak we're goingto talk about is decision
fatigue.
So this is when you're makingtoo many micro decisions daily,

(02:57):
and it's draining your creativeand strategic bandwidth.
So why does this happen at all?
Perhaps you've scaled fastbecause you had an idea, it took
hold and you ran with it, andthe difference is, though, as
you kept growing, you continuedmaking decisions like a
solopreneur and like a smallbusiness, owner of a smaller

(03:22):
business.
So perhaps you haven'toffloaded that mental load of
the small decisions becauseyou're afraid they'll be made
poorly or mess with your brandintegrity, and the impact of
this is that you end up workingmore just to manage your
business and your genius startsleaking out of the cracks.

(03:44):
One of my clients, a coursecreator, realized that she was
still the one approving everysingle Instagram caption, and
this wasn't because her teamcouldn't write well.
They were actually very giftedin many cases.
As she came to realize, theycould actually do even a better
job than she could, but it wasbecause she didn't trust that

(04:06):
her voice would be carriedproperly, which is such a real
thing to experience.
I mean, I've personally gonethrough this journey myself.
So we mapped out her vision mapand what we discovered was that
her bottleneck was not capacity, it was clarity on that
specific message.
So once she redefined what onlyshe could do, she then trained

(04:34):
her team to carry the rest, withboundaries and creative freedom
, and within weeks, her contentwas scaling without her
micromanaging, and her voice wasstill intact.
And what was even more powerfulfor her is she got her energy
back, so she was able to startthinking bigger again and being
more present for the people thatshe was directly impacting in

(04:54):
her day to day, not to mentionin her personal life.
The second leak is all aboutunspoken tensions.
So what this is and I'm sureyou found yourself here.
If you are human it's avoidinghard conversations with your
team, with your partners or yourcollaborators, and you can only

(05:17):
imagine why this happens.
But truly, in this case, you'rea visionary, you want to
protect people's feelings andyou don't want to be perceived
as difficult or demanding, soit's very easy to stay silent
about any misalignment that yousee going on, and yet it's not
something that you can let slide.
The impact of this, of course,is that you start resenting your

(05:41):
calendar, your inbox, you startresenting your team and you
show up to meetings alreadybracing for what's to come,
because you're holding back onwhat you really need to say.
So this energy leak actuallyturns into miscommunication,
lost productivity and emotionalburnout.
Because, if you're like me, ifthere's a conversation you need

(06:02):
to have and you're putting itoff, it's not like it just goes
into some drawer in your mindand stays silent in there.
Usually, it is the one thingthat is front and center in your
mind.
You're carrying it around withyou all throughout the day,
through every single interaction, and it can actually color
other interactions with peoplebecause you haven't dealt with

(06:24):
it and it truly is draining yourenergy.
And when you get that out ofthe way, when you actually have
that conversation and get somemovement happening, shake things
up, that's when you create morespace in your mind and, frankly
, your energy starts to increase.
So several of my private VIPclients are actually navigating

(06:45):
business pivots or exits.
I mean this is just standard inthe business space, but one
founder was transitioning out ofan offer suite that had made
her multiple six figures but nolonger aligned with her values
in terms of the way she wantedto live her life, her time, her
calendar, right.
She knew that she needed tocommunicate this to her team and

(07:07):
eventually her clients, but shewas dreading it because
everything was like a well-oiledmachine and everybody you know
when you're a business owner andyou have a team, of course
there's impacts to every singledecision you make.
So together we mapped thetiming of this, we practiced the
conversation and then, once shehad that conversation, we

(07:28):
debriefed.
I helped her get grounded againinto the vision of why she was
doing this in the first place,and then we reflected together.
Something about having thatenergy of someone who
understands what your outcome,your ideal outcome is, who
doesn't have a stake in youractual business, is very
grounding, and what followedfrom this experience was a

(07:53):
ripple effect of reallyrespectful transitions and more
space for her next expansionseason, because of the way she
had really thought through howshe wanted her outcome to be,
but also how she wanted to carefor her team in the process.
Her team was actually rootingher on for the changes that she
wanted to make, and it wasn'tlike they were going to be left

(08:17):
without a purpose or a missionfor next steps.
They actually had an evenclearer mission for the next
steps that were coming and theywere on board for it, and it was
because she helped them feellike those stakeholders in her
business.
And this is the invisible ROIof self-care in leadership.
It's so much more than justtaking a day off here and there.

(08:38):
Right, it's really the innerworkings that are constantly at
play.
The third leak is internalmisalignment, and this is when
you're operating in a way that'scompletely out of sync with
your actual capacity or values,and this we see this happening

(09:00):
when, again, you've scaled upand then you say, have
shareholders, for instance, orboard members who are really
focused on growth and they justwant to keep growing and growing
and they're not so much in tunewith understanding or wanting
to understand the cycles ofbusiness and so you are pushed

(09:21):
beyond your capacity, possiblypushing your team beyond
capacity, and that's when crackscan sometimes show up in the
business and what you'redelivering and you start to lose
quality in what you'redelivering.
And this can happen in any typeof business, like even if it is
at the service level, in ain-person environment, or a
product type level.
It can happen when you'reopening too many locations.

(09:43):
It can happen when you'restarting too many product codes,
right, you're not maybeimproving all the existing
things as best you can beforeyou move on and you may be
watering down what it is thatyou're offering, maybe even
confusing people because of justprofit for profit's sake, right

(10:04):
, like, ooh, everybody'sinterested, let's just throw
everything at them.
Profit for profit's sake, right, like?
Ooh, everybody's interested,let's just throw everything at
them.
So why this happens is, you know, somewhere along the growth
journey you adopted strategiesor timelines that weren't yours.
They were things that haveworked for other people you've
seen, perhaps again those peoplewho've been on your board, et
cetera but they're notsustainable for who you are

(10:25):
today.
And that ties into the valuespiece right, things that are out
of sync with your values,because perhaps your values are
to have a specific impact onclients or on the world or on
your community.
And, yeah, you're a business,you want to be profitable, but
you are really looking forlegacy profitability, which
involves not necessarily like askyrocket to hit a major revenue

(10:50):
goal, like really quickly.
It's more of a strategic movetowards long-term sustainable
profitability.
And again, when you have otherpeople who have their hands in
the business, who are looking toprofit quickly and maybe you
don't, that's where the mismatchcan show up.
And so the impact of this isyou keep overriding your nervous

(11:11):
system.
So you might even be hittingyour goals and everyone's happy,
but you don't feel fulfilled.
And so how is that going toimpact everyone on your team and
perhaps the products and thethings that you're bringing to
life?
There's going to be a direct,energetic impact, because you're
always preparing for the nextthing instead of living the

(11:31):
season you're in or allowingyour business to be in the
season that it's in.
So one of my clients waslaunching a second business
while scaling her first, and Imean, sometimes just the thought
of that is, um, it gives mepause because I've seen it
happen a lot and I see thethings that can happen in that,
in that situation, and it ispossible.

(11:52):
It's just there's verystrategic things you need to do
to help that be to help thatwork.
So on paper, everything lookedincredible, of course, right,
doesn't it always?
But her body was giving outloud signals fatigue, lack of
focus, emotional volatility,which again does not help the
cause when you're working with ateam.
So when we zoomed out using theseason's success method, we

(12:16):
realized she was in a harvestseason with her first business
and a planting season with thesecond and she really needed to
honor both and not override them.
And what that involved is uslooking at her calendar and
helping her realign it, realignthe team, support the launch
strategy so she could grow bothbusinesses but with less
pressure and greater impact.

(12:38):
And of course, that was quite aprocess.
But it is possible and you justneed to be intentional and you
cannot cut corners when it comesto this.
So let's bring this together.
The three most common leaksstealing your expansion are
decision fatigue, caused byunstructured delegation, perhaps

(12:58):
, and lack of clarity on yourcore genius.
The second is unspoken tensions, which can be caused by
misaligned communication andfear of disruption.
And then, of course, the thirdis internal misalignment caused
by potentially strategy stackedon top of outdated identity or

(13:18):
unacknowledged season thatyou're in.
These are not surface levelproblems.
They are so subtle and they'refoundational gaps that slowly
eat away at your momentum.
But here is what I want you toremember when you honor your
season the season of life,business, health, everything and

(13:41):
you realign your foundationsand lead from your nervous
system instead of your to-dolist.
Expansion stops feeling like afight.
It starts feeling like moreflow.
This is what I teach in my VIPdays while we're doing it in
practice and, of course, insideof my private client containers.
So if you've been scaling yourbusiness but wondering why it

(14:05):
feels heavier than it should,the next step is not another
strategy call.
It really is a return to theroot, and you can check the show
notes to learn more about howto work with me, to learn about
my vision map and the seasonsuccess method.
And if this episode landed foryou, send me a DM on Instagram

(14:25):
at Sheila A Botello, and let meknow.
I would love to hear, becausethese stories that I'm sharing
with you are not unique, but youare unique and, of course, the
season that you're in may bequite unique compared to those
in your midst.
Your expansion does not have toleak.
It gets to feel like you.

(14:45):
So until next time I will seeyou in another episode.
Have a beautiful rest of yourday, thank you.