She Went From 80-Hour Weeks to 50, Without Losing a Dollar

A friend of mine took over a business four years ago. Over the first few years, she learned something that stopped me when she said it.

"I've learned I'm not that important."

I pushed back. She runs the place. The buck stops with her.

That's exactly the belief she had to unlearn.

As the leader, she assumed every decision was hers to own, which meant every decision had to be defensible. Made the "right" way. The "proper" way. The way that would hold up if someone questioned it later.

So that's how she led. Not from what her team needed, from how it would look.

Eighty-hour weeks, every decision filtered the same way.

Then she started asking instead of deciding. Her team didn't all want the same thing.

One person needed to hear, out loud and often, that she was doing a good job. Another needed to know a mistake wouldn't cost him his job. A third needed flexibility in her schedule more than anything else.

None of that showed up in the "right" way to lead. It only showed up once she stopped performing leadership and started paying attention to the actual humans in front of her.

She adjusted her approach person by person. Not lowering standards. Just meeting each one where they actually were.

Four years later: 50-hour weeks. Same revenue.

Here's the uncomfortable part. If you're leading anyone right now, there's a decent chance you're optimizing for the same thing she was: how it looks, how it holds up, whether it's defensible. Not because you're vain. Because when you believe the buck stops with you, "correct" starts to feel safer than "actually useful to this specific person."

So ask yourself the question she had to face:

Are you leading in a way that would hold up under judgment, or in a way that actually works for the people in front of you?

Those aren't always the same answer. Most of us default to the first one without noticing we're doing it.

The ACE Assessment is built to close exactly this gap: not just how you lead, but where the pressure to look right might be quietly running the show. 138 questions, 20 minutes, then a full hour with me to walk through what it shows.

Take the ACE Assessment → https://ace.bethoughtly.com/

In your corner,

Allison