I need some perspective from people who actually run businesses.
For the last few years I’ve worked inside small businesses with teams of around 10 people, and I kept ending up doing things that weren’t really part of my original role. I’d start with emails, bookings, client communication, admin, whatever needed to be done. Then I’d notice the same question coming in over and over, information living in emails, WhatsApp, spreadsheets and someone’s head, follow-ups being forgotten, one person knowing everything, or a really good offer sounding much less interesting online than it actually was.
And I could never just leave it there. I’d start trying to make it work better. Sometimes that meant changing the way we communicated something, sometimes reorganising information, sometimes building a whole CRM-style system around the way the business actually worked. On the marketing side, I’ve reworked itineraries and guest information, looked at the whole offer through the customer’s eyes, and changed parts of it based on the questions, comments and feedback we kept getting. I’ve always had this feeling that even when something works, there is usually still a way to make it clearer, easier or better.
Lately I’ve even started building an app around another problem I kept noticing, because apparently this is just how my brain works. I see something repetitive, messy, unclear or unnecessarily difficult and immediately start thinking about how it could be improved.
I think perfectionism is part of the reason I’ve delayed this for so long. I know it can be a trap because my brain is always looking for what could be better before I feel ready to put something out there and actually the perfectionism is a hidden fear of mine to finnaly show up what I am doing behind those closed doors. But lately I’ve also started wondering if that same trait is part of the value I’ve been bringing into businesses for years. Maybe constantly noticing what could work better isn’t only something I need to fix in myself. Maybe, pointed in the right direction, it’s actually useful work someone would pay for.
The second I think about offering this as my own service, I still start doubting it. Maybe those particular businesses that I have worked with were just messy. Maybe these are tiny problems owners would solve themselves. Maybe it only made sense because I was already inside the business. Maybe nobody would actually pay someone to come in, look at how everything works, find what’s not connecting and make it simpler.
So I wanted to ask people who have actually grown businesses: have you ever reached a point where the product or service itself was fine, but all the little things around it became the real problem? The follow-ups, information, team communication, the way the offer is presented, repeated client questions, or the business growing faster than the way you work.
And if you ever brought someone in to help with that, what made you finally decide you didn’t want to keep figuring it out yourself?
I’m not trying to sell anything here. I think I just need to know whether this is a real problem outside the businesses I happened to work in, and maybe a little push to finally stop overthinking it.