You’re the one people can count on.

You follow through.

You get things done.

You don’t drop the ball.

And for a long time, that’s exactly what helped you build your business.

But at some point, something shifts.

Your business is working.

Clients are coming in.

From the outside, everything looks solid.

And yet behind the scenes?

It feels heavier than it should.

You can’t fully step away.

Everything still runs through you.

And even when things are going well, it never quite feels like enough space.

Because here’s the part most solopreneurs don’t realize:

Being “reliable” is often the reason your business still depends on you.

Listen to the Episode

In this episode, Carin and Marcia break down how being the “reliable one” quietly turns into over-responsibility, pressure, and a business that can’t move without you.

If your business looks successful on the outside but feels heavy behind the scenes, this conversation will hit home.

What We Talk About In This Episode

• Why being the “go-to” person creates hidden pressure in your business

• How reliability turns into over-responsibility without you realizing it

• The difference between a business that runs through you vs. one that runs with you

• Why doing more isn’t the solution (and what actually creates capacity)

• The shift from being the one who does everything to the one who leads it.

Key Takeaways

• Being reliable can quietly turn you into the bottleneck

• If everything lives in your head, your business still depends on you

• Over-carrying feels productive, but it limits your growth

• You don’t need to do less… your business needs to depend on you less

• Real growth comes from shifting out of execution and into leadership

Continue the Conversation

If this episode made you pause for a second and think, “okay… this might be me…” You’re not the only one.

This is exactly the kind of conversation we’re having inside the community every day.

👉 Join us here: https://thesolopreneurceo.com

It’s a space for solopreneurs who are building real businesses and don’t want to carry everything alone.

Episode Transcript

Solopreneur CEO Show Episode 15: Below is the full transcript of this episode for those who prefer to read or want to revisit specific parts of the conversation.

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Carin:
Hello and welcome back to the Solopreneur CEO. We are kind of back to a normal episode where Marcia and I are chatting through a topic.

We've had three episodes that have focused on our summit, which was fun, and we had a really good time with that. And hopefully you enjoyed the little snippets in the last episode.

Today we thought we would talk about one of the themes that keeps coming up. And we noticed it a lot as we were working through the summit, and our talks had so many similarities, and this through line was glaring at us.

We're going to talk about the hidden cost of being reliable in your business. Reliable. Mm-hmm. That's what we're going to talk about. It's going to be a good one.

So, you have a full client load, your inbox is overflowing, you maybe can't take a day off. Your business looks amazing from the outside, but inside you could be crumbling a little bit.

We don't want to dance around that. We want to talk about that and what we think is the reason for it. How when you build a business a lot of times you have just built yourself a job.

Again, we are not going to dance around the topic. We really want to hit it head on. So, Marcia, what are your thoughts?

Marcia:
Yeah, I love this idea of an episode because when we first talked about it, it was like, oh yeah, this plays into everything.

This plays into your presentation about making the decision to be a CEO and then also my Activate Audacity program where we talk about how you can become the default.

My talk is more for like everything in your life. It takes some real balls to start your own business, right? People see that, and I think they're in awe of it. And they're like, Oh my God, she can do anything. She's a superwoman.

Then you have people in your personal life asking for stuff. People in your professional life asking for stuff. Maybe you have some proteges or people that you're helping out like you're a mentor to, and.

Everybody is constantly tapping you on the shoulder, asking you to help them because you are reliable.

But as Carin said, it does start to crumble inside and your nervous system is just in over-reactive mode. Maybe you end up getting an autoimmune disease or you're gaining weight and you don't know why, or you're not sleeping well at night. It's all the added pressure. It's going to take a physical toll on you.

What got you here won't get you there. We say that all the time and it's so true. And being reliable, it's a decision.

You have to determine, what do you want to be reliable for.

We were just talking about a client who knows exactly what their problem is. They've had the problem for a few years, but now there's work to get everything situated, but then the person's not responding with what's needed.

That's when you wanna be reliable.

You know what the problem is, we know how to fix it, but we actually need you to hand the stuff over.

It's like the pendulum swinging from one side of being constantly available for everything to the other side.

Carin:
Yeah, it's really interesting when you're working with clients who are at the $20k plus a month.

Their business is doing well. They have a full client load, are doing their thing, but they don't really have systems in place.

Or they have some things, but not other things. They know they need to have a CRM, like if you don't have a CRM system, let's say maybe you still are using a spreadsheet to track your leads. No judgment.

So they are like, okay, I know this is my problem. I know I need to fix it. They find a service provider, they do all the things to get started, and then they are still busy though, with actually running the business.

They are slow to respond to the service provider and get them what they need. And then they start to feel the mental load of that, right? There's the guilt, the shame, oh my God, and then, oh, I've paid for this. I need to do this.

It just creates so much of a bottleneck in their mind, heart, and soul.

It really will weigh down on you when you are trying to be the person for every single thing. It is just not sustainable. It's literally not sustainable.

When everything lives in your head, when you don't really have systems for things, you have a process that you do, but it's overly manual and you have to do all these steps every single time, and you know that you could automate or you could systematize.

But you are not taking the time to invest in actually setting it up, because it seems like it will take too long. It seems like it's faster to just keep doing it the way you're doing it, but in the long run you're costing yourself so much time, and the mental load.

What I said to Marcia before we started recording is sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.

It feels weird 'cause you're like, oh, I don't have time to slow down and do these steps.

You really don't have time not to because it's not going to get better until you make it get better by doing what you need to do to set stuff up differently.

If everything in your business has to run through you, you will never get past a certain point. You can't, you're one person. It's not physically possible.

We can talk in another episode 'cause Marcia knows I have a lot of thoughts about AI and how you can use AI to help you move faster and do things quicker and easier.

I am not talking about having it write all your sales pages and content. I'm not talking about using it as a chat bot. I'm talking about AI powered systems. It's not optional. As a solo operator solopreneur that's trying to move into CEO mode.

You have a business, it's popping, it's doing well, but you will not be able to grow if you don't move out of this, I am the one, I am the only one. And that whole I've gotta be reliable mentality.

It's an employee mindset. If you think about it, right? If you work in a job, it's do or die.

If you're in corporate, if you're not working your butt off you're afraid that you're going to get replaced or get fired.

It is that leftover employee mindset that we have to just root out because you are the boss now, and so you have to be approaching your business and setting up your business and running your business from that boss mentality.

Marcia:
So good.

When you say growth, some people might think like, I need to grow a team, I need to grow revenue.

This is a pattern disruptor that I find very helpful when it comes to personal development.

Whenever somebody says something and you immediately get an image in your mind, you know, of something like a spreadsheet or a pie graph or whatever, stop what you're automatically thinking and recognize that there are other ways of growth.

It's not necessarily growing the exact business that you're in.

Growth is different for every single person.

This business is your therapy. It's your way of evolving you into the person that you're supposed to be, you're a leader.

I think that we all evolve into who it is we're supposed to be.

But we might take our time, we might be like bamboo and we're underground for 30 years and then we just shoot up in the span of a month, or whatever.

Just think about that whenever you're thinking about growth.

But you're calling me out. Carin was talking about FG funnels and I'm going to bite the bullet and do that.

Carin is so good at the systems and I'm so good at the mindset. And of course we both bleed over in those different aspects, too.

But if I want to get serious about this Activating Audacity I have to have like a good backend or I am going to drive myself insane.

With personal stuff going on, like I don't have the capacity to do it all on my own without systems and automation.

Now I know who it is I want to serve and how I want to serve them. And with the personal stuff, I just know that I'm not gonna be able to do both of them even at 50% if I don't get it set up.

So Carin convinced me yesterday, I literally wrote it on my power sheets for this month. I was going to get Funnel Gorgeous set up in my business.

It's a big commitment for me because I hate tech. But, whatever.

It needs to get done and I need to set aside a week where I can black out and get it done. I've done this with everything in business. You know, the stuff I don't wanna do. I'll just have a conversation with myself like, Marcia, grow the fuck up.

Like, just do what you need to do.

And so I'm going to do that. It's going to be hard for me to pull back, but I know Marcia from 2027, when I'm running like the third or fourth group program and everything is firing on all cylinders, and I'm not worried about, did this person get that? Or worried about the lead gen or any of that.

It's all going to be set up and who knows what is going to be happening in my personal life then. Well, no, actually I do know that this time next year, my son's going to be almost graduating from high school. Don't even get me started. I'm about to cry now just thinking about it.

So, I'm going to work on my business now the way that I should have done a while ago, but I didn't know what I was doing back then. Now I know Carin, right? We know, we know what I'm supposed to be doing. So I’m taking that ownership and realized that thinking about your business and being available 24/7, it doesn't serve anyone.

It's not serving me. It is not serving the people that I hope to be working with. Or even in the past, the people I was working with. It just was not a reliable system and so let's do that. Let's remove my reliable self to a reliable system and then maybe have some positive emotional health.

That got a bit out there. I'm not editing it either. I've decided I'm not going to be editing as much, so. We'll see.

Carin:
I love it. Keep it in. But no, I love that. And that is the point 'cause I think a lot of times when people hear like, oh, you need systems and you need to be doing less in your business. We're not saying less gets done in your business. Right? It's two different things.

You doing less does not mean your business is doing less. Because the point is these systems, these processes, these automations will be filling those gaps and they become the thing you can rely on instead of you, your memory. Did I send this? Oh, I still need to get that to that client. Did I send the link? Oh, I gotta grab the, I mean, that is insane.

I don't know how anyone wants to sustain that type of chaotic operating. It's not you. It just does not work. Marcia knows from experience and I know from experience.

The way I approach things is always different because I do work full time and I love my job. I still have my job. I don't think I'm going to be not having it for a while. Right? Matter of fact, I just had my 19th anniversary, which is insane by the way, like almost two decades. Anyway, side note, but when I started my business, that was my first thing, how does this get done without me having to do it because I don't have time.

I didn't have time, I don't, I don't have any of the extra time that I want to have because I have to go to work every day. It really forced me.

Sometimes that will happen if you have an event or personal things or health problems. There could be something that kind of forces you into this, right?

Where you're like, okay, I gotta do, you know?

But we don't want you to feel forced. We don't want you to have to come at it from like, okay, I have no other choice. Just come at it from, I want my business to run smoothly. I want my clients to get everything they need. I want my income to not be capped by my capacity.

What does that look like? And it's not ever going to be that you are the answer for everything. If it all comes back to you, you have to do something. You have to think about something. You have to be the one that is pushing the button. That's always going to put a limit on how much you can grow.

And like Marcia said, growth is whatever your vision is. We're not here to tell you what it is. You may want to have a Fortune 500 someday more power to you. Or maybe you are like, let me stay in my little business world, my $240K a year is great. That's fine too. We are not going to tell you what your business needs to look like as a solopreneur, but whatever your vision is to achieve it, it's never going to be, okay, I'm the one that does every single thing.

Marcia:
And that goes for your life too.

“Carin, have you taught your son-son how to do the laundry yet? Because you mentioned that a couple episodes ago.”

Carin:
“We are working on it, yeah.”

Marcia:
“Okay, good!”

That's the thing, it's every aspect of your life.

That's why we love having these conversations and talking to solopreneurs because you're not just running a business, you're running your life too, and you're running your kids' lives.

So think about it in those other terms too. About systems that you can create in every aspect of your life.

And I love that Carin's like, we're not going to tell you how you need to grow. Like nobody knows. And that's the truth. The God’s honest truth is that nobody knows where your destination ends or the path that you're on, right? Because you can decide to take some side steps or whatever.

Just being intentional about knowing you just can't do an A+ job if you're trying to handle everything that life is throwing at you.

So the systems, yeah.

I think that's why it's so good, Carin, that we partnered up because you did have to systematize early on. And for me to be where I'm at, yeah, I did start crying a little bit about my kid, but that's part of who I am. Being able to actually process things in the moment and to recognize, okay, these feelings are so deep and they're so raw, but I know that it's not permanent.

A lot of people have a hard time emoting because they think, I'm going to get stuck in an emotion. But emotion, it's in motion. For me, I have a very rollercoaster life with emotions, but like, I don't avoid them.

I'm not afraid I’ll get stuck in the top of the loop.

Me having that ability to do that with my slow growth entrepreneurship, it's amazing.

Now that it's time for me to get that fast pass at Disney World where I'm going on every rollercoaster as much as I want, I have a very clear image of what I want to be doing and how I want to be doing it. And so I have to set up the backend system.

If you're in a similar situation right now, I highly recommend Carin’s services. I think that she's amazing at helping people. She can just take a look and be like, okay, this is where your damage is. She puts it better than, but she'll be like, this is what you could do to make it better to make your systems run better.

Sometimes it is something like FG funnels where everything is included.

Because right now having MailChimp, Squarespace, and PayPal, everything is so bojangled together. I need to have something that works well that I'm just checking on every once in a while.

Carin:
Yes, I love it.

And back at Marcia. Work with her if you are feeling like you are not really making bold moves and you want to be stepping further, going further, with the audacity that she talks about.

I was telling her yesterday that I have a new client that signed on and she was almost trying to fit me in her box.

Like, this is what I need. And I'm like, look, this is how I work. This is what I build in, this is what I do. Then she came back and said, all right, cool. And she paid the invoice.

In the past I would've been like, okay. And then I would've spent like 10 hours trying to figure out what she uses, which would've been a waste of time.

Then I would've been resenting that I signed her on, and then it would turn into a whole spiral. I felt audacious because I was like, no, this is how I work. This is what I do. So if that sounds good to you, cool. If not, I'm okay that this might not be a good fit.

I just felt so good taking that step and seeing my growth right from when I first started my agency in 2020, I totally would've been like, all right, cool. And then I would've hated myself later, you know? So it was amazing.

Marcia:
I love that! She told me, this was my audacious act. And I was like, Oh My God! It made my heart so happy.

I would've been so mad at you, Carin, if you would've gone along with whatever she said. That's the thing, people are hiring you because you're the expert. Don't let them… and it's not even that they're trying to bully you. They're just like, like me. They don't want to change and put all of their eggs in this basket because it feels scary.

So you have to walk them through and be like, I'm going to be there. I'm going to help you. This is a reputable software system that we're putting everything in, or whatever.

That was amazing.