You’re not ‘bad’ at business

You’re just carrying too much

There’s a moment I see quite often when I’m talking to a business owner. They start explaining what’s going on, and somewhere in the conversation there’s a shift. A slight hesitation. A softening in how they describe things. And then, almost as an aside, they’ll say something like, “I feel like I should be better at this” or “I’m rubbish at xxx”

Not always in those exact words, but the sentiment is there. That something isn’t quite working, and somehow that means they’re the problem. In reality, that’s very rarely true. What’s usually happening is something much simpler. You’re carrying too much.

Not just in terms of workload, although that’s often part of it. But in terms of responsibility. Decisions that sit with you, things that only you can move forward, conversations that need to happen, and loose ends that haven’t quite been tied up. All of it sitting in the background, whether you’re actively working on it or not.

Over time, that builds. Not in a dramatic way, but in a steady, cumulative way that starts to affect how everything feels. Things take longer to think through, decisions feel heavier than they should, and even simple tasks start to feel more complicated. From the outside, it can look like something isn’t working. That the business needs fixing. That you need a better system, a clearer plan, or a different approach. And sometimes that’s true. But often, the real issue isn’t capability. It’s capacity. There’s only so much you can hold at once and when that limit is reached, it doesn’t matter how capable you are, things will start to feel harder.

This is the point where a lot of people start looking for solutions. More structure, more organisation, more ways to manage what’s already there. But if the underlying load hasn’t been recognised, those solutions don’t land in the way they should. They just become more to hold. The shift happens when you stop trying to push through and start to look at what you’re actually carrying. Not just what’s on your to-do list, but everything that’s sitting behind it. The decisions, the mental load, the responsibility. Because once you see that clearly, something changes. You don’t feel like you’re failing. You start to understand why things feel the way they do.

And from there, you can make better decisions. Not reactive ones, not ones driven by pressure, but ones that actually support you. That might mean letting something go. Simplifying something that’s become more complicated than it needs to be. Or just creating enough space to think properly again.

Because you were never ‘bad’ at business. You were just trying to carry more than anyone realistically can.

And when that’s addressed, everything else tends to become much clearer.