The Ambiguous &: Business Basics & Beyond

In this episode, host Molly Beyer explores an uncomfortable question many entrepreneurs eventually face: what happens when running a business starts taking more from life than we want to give? After nearly a month of travel, family visits, and emotional moments, Molly reflects on reaching the limits of her capacity and questions whether she still wants to be a business owner. She examines the difference between being exhausted by business ownership and genuinely wanting something different, and why feeling overwhelmed doesn't necessarily mean it's time to quit.

Entrepreneurship often comes with expectations to persevere, grow, and push through challenges. But what happens when the business we built no longer fits the life we want? Molly discusses how personal priorities, health, and available energy change over time, and why a profitable opportunity isn't always worth the capacity it demands. Molly shifted her role away from the daily responsibilities of traditional bookkeeping to personal finance education, speaking, writing, coaching, and consulting; she explores how business owners can redefine success, delegate responsibilities, and create a healthier relationship between work and life.

Sometimes exhaustion is temporary, and sometimes it reveals a deeper need for change. Molly shares questions business owners can ask before making major decisions, including what they still love about their work, what drains their energy, and what they would do if money wasn’t part of the equation. She challenges the idea that entrepreneurs must choose between growing their business and walking away entirely. There are possibilities in between, from simplifying services to changing roles and setting boundaries. This episode is a reminder that changing the shape of a business isn't failure. It may be exactly what’s needed to build a business that supports life instead of finding ourselves in a life built around keeping the business running.


Key Moments:
  • [00:00:33] When business success starts consuming too much of life and entrepreneurs begin questioning whether they want to continue.
  • [00:01:27] How travel, family experiences, and exhaustion brought Molly to the limits of her personal capacity.
  • [00:03:04] Why depleted energy can make ordinary business challenges feel overwhelming and lead to thoughts of quitting.
  • [00:04:23] Challenging the expectation that entrepreneurs must always persevere, scale, and grow, even when their priorities change.
  • [00:05:53] Molly's evolving role in her business and her desire to focus more on personal finance education, speaking, writing, coaching, and consulting.
  • [00:07:07] Understanding capacity as a limited resource shared between business, family, health, relationships, and personal interests.
  • [00:08:28] Why profitable opportunities aren't always worth the energy they require and why major decisions shouldn't be made from exhaustion.
  • [00:09:54] Questions to help business owners distinguish temporary exhaustion from a genuine desire to change direction.
  • [00:11:03] Exploring alternatives to quitting, including delegation, fewer hours, simpler services, and redesigning a business around personal priorities.
  • [00:12:43] How building a team and transferring responsibilities allowed Molly to step away from work during her travels.
  • [00:14:20] Finding clarity through rest, support, and a shift in perspective about the role work should play in life.
  • [00:16:21] Why changing a business to better support life is a sign of growth rather than failure.
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Creators and Guests

MB
Host
Molly Beyer

What is The Ambiguous &: Business Basics & Beyond?

Business success is dependent on a solid financial foundation & success looks different to everyone & there is a lack of equity of access to resources and information for small business owners and independent contractors & there is a societal narrative making us believe “balance” is our ultimate goal & … There are so many “&”s that impact being your own boss. Let’s have some frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success.

Molly Beyer: [00:00:08] Welcome to The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond, the podcast where we have frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success. Each episode is a reminder that success isn't one thing, it's a whole lot of ambiguous ands. Like, subscribe, or follow, and let's explore these ambiguous ands.

[00:00:33] Hello and welcome to The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond. I'm your host, Molly Beyer, and I'm here to lead you through frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business. Today I want to talk about an uncomfortable question. What happens when you realize that success has started taking more of your life than you actually want to give it? There are moments in business when you start questioning everything. Maybe you've had a terrible month. Maybe the economy is making you nervous. Maybe you've had a difficult client, or you made a mistake, or you see someone else doing what you're doing, and you're suddenly convinced that they're doing it better. Maybe your family situation has changed. Maybe your health has changed. Maybe you're just tired and suddenly you find yourself thinking, do I even want this anymore? I've been thinking about that question a lot lately, and there's a difference between questioning your business and questioning whether you want to be a business owner at all. And sometimes there's an even deeper question: do I actually want my life to look like this?

[00:01:27] Now, I've been away from home for almost a month. I've been traveling, staying in different places, driving, packing, unpacking, loading, unloading, visiting family, visiting long time family friends, having some really deep conversations and just really doing a lot, a lot of really good things, a lot of things that I am incredibly grateful for. And then I got to watch my niece get married and I absolutely bawled like all day. She was my little girl before I got my own little girl. And suddenly here she is, this grown woman starting her own family looking like a princess. There are some moments in life that just hit you. And that one did. And now we're slowly making our way home. We have a couple of quiet days, a few evening visits, and not quite as much going on. And today I felt like I could stop. I slept well last night, which is unusual for me when I'm not in my own bed. I got up, I ate breakfast, and then I went back to sleep for a couple of hours, which I also never do. When I finally got up again, I had this whole list of things that I was supposed to do, things for my business, things for my home, things that I really need to get done. And some of them are time sensitive. Instead, I mostly sat. I decompressed, I snuggled with my kid, and I realized, I think I finally ran out of capacity. Not in a catastrophic way, though. Just in a very human way. My brain and my body were basically just saying we're done.

Molly Beyer: [00:03:04] And I think that's important because this is often where I start questioning everything. When I'm tired enough, when I reach that place where I feel like I simply cannot give anything else, everything can start to feel enormous. The thing that is mildly annoying on a Tuesday becomes completely overwhelming on Friday. A problem that I could normally solve suddenly feels impossible. And then it all becomes: why am I doing this? Why do I have a business? Why am I responsible for all of this? Maybe I should just stop. And I know that some of that is probably related to my own health and how my brain works. I have ADHD, I deal with depression, I have chronic health issues, and all of that can affect my capacity in ways that aren't always predictable. So I know that sometimes my perception of what is possible changes dramatically depending on how much energy I have available. And I have learned that this is part of my cycle. But here's the interesting thing. I've watched other business owners go through these cycles too, and some of them make huge changes when they're in that place. Some completely change their business model, some sell their businesses, some shut them down, some walk away from entrepreneurship altogether, and some don't make any formal change at all. They just keep pushing through and eventually they start to hate what they do.

[00:04:23] And I think we're afraid to talk about that because there's this whole mythology around entrepreneurship that says you're supposed to be committed, you're supposed to persevere, you're supposed to keep going when it gets hard. You're supposed to believe in yourself. You're supposed to have a vision. You're supposed to scale, you're supposed to grow. And if you start thinking, I don't want this anymore, it can feel like you failed. But what if you haven't? What if sometimes the business really isn't the problem? What if you changed? What if your life changed? What if the things that mattered to you when you started the business aren't the things that matter the most anymore? What if you built exactly the business you needed five years ago, and now you need something different. I was recently having a conversation with somebody who I respect immensely as a leader in her profession, who made a really difficult decision about her own business. She had built something that was meaningful to her and to many others. She was incredibly good at it. She cares about the people she works with. But eventually she had to admit that it wasn't aligned with where she wanted her life to go anymore. And that's a really hard thing to say. It's so easy to assume that if you don't want to keep doing something you've built, then something went wrong. But sometimes nothing went wrong. Sometimes the season ended. Maybe the business served a purpose. Maybe you learned things. Maybe you helped people. Maybe you grew. Maybe it gave you something you desperately needed at one point in your life.

Molly Beyer: [00:05:53] And maybe now you're pulled somewhere else. And that doesn't erase what came before. I've had some of these conversations with myself, too. I've been thinking a lot about what I actually want my role to be in my business. I've spent years building my business. I love my clients. I love helping people understand their numbers. I love finding patterns. I love those moments when someone goes from being terrified of their financials to finally understanding what their business is telling them. I love helping people figure things out. But that doesn't necessarily mean I want to spend the rest of my life doing every part of traditional bookkeeping. And I've been working towards something different. I want to build more around personal finance for business owners. I want to talk about money and mindset and cashflow, and the way our personal financial lives and our businesses actually intersect. I want to speak. I want to write. I want to do higher level coaching and consulting. I want to help people think differently. And I've also been working toward getting myself out of the many of the day to day aspects of the business. And it's not because I don't care about them, but because I don't want to spend all of my capacity there. And I think that's an important distinction. I don't necessarily want to quit. I might just want to change the shape of what I'm doing.

[00:07:07] And there's another uncomfortable truth. Sometimes I think I would actually be happiest if I didn't have to work at all. And I don't mean that in an I hate my job way. I mean, if someone told me I never had to worry about money again, I would love to spend more time with my kid. I'd write, I'd volunteer, I'd garden, I'd read, I'd travel. I'd have long conversations. I'd help people because I wanted to, not because there was an invoice attached to it. And that sounds pretty wonderful. And yet, when I imagine never doing this work again, I get really sad. So apparently I managed to create a complicated problem for myself because I don't necessarily want to work, but I don't want to stop the work that matters to me. And maybe those aren't contradictory things. Maybe I don't want to eliminate work from my life. Maybe I just want to stop letting it consume my life. And that brings me back to something that's been coming up over and over in my own life lately. And that's capacity. And we've talked about capacity in this podcast many times. We've talked about it in relation to health, in relation to growth. We've talked about spoon theory and making sure that we're not giving too much. I have a finite number of spoons to spend. Well, maybe we can think about them more as capacity points. So I only get so many points. My family gets some. My business gets some. My health gets some. My friendships get some.

Molly Beyer: [00:08:28] Writing gets some. Volunteering gets some. Sometimes I need to reserve some capacity for absolutely nothing. For just being. And not everything gets unlimited access to me. And that's a really different way of thinking about business, because something can be important and still not be something I have capacity for. Something can be profitable and still not be worth the energy it takes. Something can be a good opportunity and still be the wrong opportunity for me right now. And sometimes the answer isn't, I can't do this. It's I can't give this unlimited access to me anymore. And I think this is where we need to be really careful. Because if you're listening to this and you're exhausted and you're sitting here thinking, I hate my business, I hate my clients. I want to burn the whole thing down. Maybe don't make a life changing business decision today. I say that partly because I've been there. Hell, I think I'm there today. But I know that when I'm completely depleted, everything can feel all consuming. Sometimes I don't actually want to quit and sometimes I just want to sleep. Sometimes I want the problem to stop existing. Sometimes I need somebody to carry something for a little while. Sometimes I need to step away long enough to figure out whether I actually hate something, or whether I just don't have capacity to deal with it today. And that's a big distinction and an important one. But I don't want to swing too far in either direction either, because sometimes exhaustion is covering up a truth.

Molly Beyer: [00:09:54] Sometimes you rest when the question is still there. I don't want this anymore. And if you keep ignoring that because everybody tells you to push through, you can end up staying in a business that slowly becomes something you resent. And I've seen that happen too. So maybe the answer isn't should I quit? Maybe there are some better questions that we need to be asking ourselves. What am I actually tired of? Is it the work itself? Is it the administration? Is it managing people? Is it selling? Is it being responsible for everything? Is it the pressure? Is it the hours? Is it the business model? Or is it simply that I have too much on my plate? And then we need to switch. What do I still love? Not what am I good at, not what makes money, not what other people think I should do. But do I actually love? And what makes me think this? This is why I do this. And then what would I miss if I walked away? And that's a really important question, because sometimes we spend so much time thinking about what we want to escape, that we forget to think about what we'd be giving up. And finally, what would I do if money weren't part of the equation?

[00:11:03] And I think the really interesting question after that is, could some of those things become part of my work? Because maybe the answer isn't quitting. Maybe it's just redesigning. We tend to think our choices are to keep doing what we're doing or quit or grow. But there are so many possibilities in between. Maybe your business gets smaller. Maybe it gets simpler. Maybe you delegate more. Maybe you specialize. Maybe you change your role. Maybe you work fewer hours. Maybe you take longer breaks. Maybe you stop offering something that drains you. Maybe you start offering something that gives you energy. Maybe you decide that your business doesn't need to become bigger. Maybe it just needs to become more yours. And maybe the goal isn't to build a business that consumes everything you have. Maybe the goal is to build a business that leaves enough of you left over. And I think that's where I am right now. I don't have a perfectly packaged answer. I'm still figuring it out. I'm still asking myself what I want this business to be. I'm still asking myself how much capacity I actually want to give to work. I'm still figuring out what I want to build next, and I'm also giving myself permission to be tired without immediately turning that tiredness into a five year strategic plan. Because today I was tired. I was a little melancholy, I was emotional, I was incredibly grateful, I was proud of my niece, I was happy I was ready to get home and I didn't get much work done. And that's okay, because maybe today wasn't a business problem to solve. Maybe today was simply a reminder that I'm a person before I'm a business owner.

Molly Beyer: [00:12:43] And I think it's the culmination of everything that I've learned on this trip. Because I don't take vacations, I take trips. They're usually for somebody else or for some specific purpose. And I keep track of all of the things, and I make the reservations and I pack the car and I drive and I unpack the car and I get everything settled and I make sure everyone has what they need, and then I think I need to go to my computer and I get it all set up. And I go and I sit there and sometimes I stare at my email or I stare at my to do list. And this isn't just indicative of this trip. This is so many times when I've hit that capacity overload, and I just don't have anything more to give. And then I start questioning whether I can give, whether I should be here. But this trip actually became a vacation many times. I didn't get a lot done. I did maybe the bare minimum and maybe a little bit less. But I have a team, and part of what I've redesigned in some of these moments where I feel like I have to stop or I have to change, I've asked myself these questions and I figured it out. And then I talk with my team and I talk with my support people, and I really get clear on what I want to do and who I want to help and the hows and whys.

Molly Beyer: [00:14:20] And then we pivot. And so the business that's growing for me today is one that's growing to get me out of the things that are no longer bringing me the joy that they did. But we're pretty much only depleting my capacity. But that is a process. And being in the middle of that process, being in the middle of offloading tasks and of training people to do the things that have only ever lived in my head while also being in this position of being away and having calm moments, seeing old friends, reliving an old life. It's brought a lot of clarity, but it also is very difficult. So as I record in this hotel room, that probably is giving a whole lot of extra background noise and wanting to be down at the pool with my family. I know that I am where I'm supposed to be. Perhaps underneath all of the questions for me isn't do I still want to be a business owner? But really, what place do I want work to have in my life now? And like I said, that answer changes and we're allowed to let it change. Especially before we get so exhausted that we start making permanent decisions from a temporary place of depletion. Because many times in the past, what, six and a half years now, I've thought I should just close up. I should just be done. But I didn't because I allowed to listen when that question keeps coming back for the answer, that really is sometimes something just needs to change.

Molly Beyer: [00:16:21] And that's not failure. That's growth. That's being human. That's running a business that is supposed to work with your life instead of a life around keeping the business alive. So I don't know what my business is going to look like next year or in five years. I think the ultimate business will look very similar. What will change is my role in it. What will change is where I give my capacity. And for today, I'm going to give my capacity to rest and to my family. I'm going to go watch my kids swim. I'm going to have supper with my family. And tomorrow I'm going to get back in the car and I'm going to keep driving home. And I'm going to use this reset as the opportunity that it was. A reset. So that when I get back to work next week, I'm clearer on what I want, on what I don't, and how I can get there. So thanks so much for hanging out with me today. We'd love to hear your feedback on today's episode, as well as any requests for future content. Drop a comment or suggestion and join us next time for more frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business. Please like, subscribe, or follow so you never miss an episode. And until next time, I'm Molly Beyer and this has been The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond. Have a wonderful day.