Imagine this:
November 2019, you open a business. No clients. Barely any money. Nothing but a shot to prove you could do what your parents had already done — not once, but twice.

January 2020 hits. You bet on yourself.
You sign a lease for an office space.
You hire three telemarketers.
You buy five brand-new computers.
You pick out the paint colors, the décor, the perfect little coffee station that made it feel real — that made it feel yours.

And then, three months later — the world shuts down.
The office you built? Locked.
The team you hired? Gone.

My business went from feeling full of momentum to being replaced by a Costco fold-out table with two monitors and a keyboard in my dining room. Buying insurance wasn’t top of mind for most people during the Pandemic — and if I'm being honest, I wasn’t even convinced the ones who were looking should buy it from me.

The rest of 2020 was a free fall.
I cried almost every day.
I ate to numb it.
I baked bread, mixed cocktails, pretending I was just coping when really, I was sinking.

The mental weight turned physical.
Before I knew it, a year had passed and I had gained fifty pounds. Again.

What started out feeling like a curse quietly became my new normal.
I got used to not dressing up. My clothes didn’t fit anyway.
I got used to not putting my best foot forward. How could I, feeling so uncomfortable in my own skin?
I got used to staying home. Staying unseen.

At first, it felt temporary.
Then it became comfortable.
Then it became who I was.

But the world started moving again.
In-person events were back and bigger than ever.
Everyone was excited to be out, to be seen, to rebuild.

Everyone except me.

I delayed it as long as I could.
I made excuses: "I’m not comfortable going out yet." "I’m just being cautious."
But the truth was, I was hiding.
I was ashamed of still being on the rollercoaster of weight loss and weight gain.

And honestly, what was I even going out to promote?
After almost two years "in business," I was sitting at $48K in revenue.
Forty-eight thousand dollars.
Not even enough to confidently call it a business.

What was there to network for?
What was there to celebrate?

The dark pivot I thought was temporary had become my comfort zone.
The Costco fold-out table in my dining room.
The sweatpants.
The invisibility.

It was safer to stay small than to risk being seen for who I had become.

Then one day, on a mentoring call, everything snapped into focus.

We were talking about content creation, about how so many people make excuses not to get on camera because they’re uncomfortable with how they look.

And my mentor, brutally honest as ever, said something that would offend most people but became my wake-up call:

 "If you’re ugly, you’re ugly. That’s not going to change. Do it anyway."

It hit me like a punch to the gut.

I wasn’t hiding because the market was hard.
I wasn’t hiding because people didn’t want to buy insurance.
I wasn’t hiding because I didn’t have the right strategy.

I was hiding because I couldn’t face the thing that was literally weighing me down.
Me.

There comes a moment in business when you have to ask yourself a brutally honest question:
Am I stuck because of strategy... or because of something deeper?

I watched my peers step right back into the spotlight, rebuilding momentum, making moves.
And yet I stayed home.

Not because there were no opportunities, but because I didn’t want to be seen.
I wasn’t proud of the weight I was carrying mentally or physically.

The shame.
The insecurity.
The feeling of being out of alignment with the person I knew I could be.

It sounds harsh, but sometimes you have to be harsh with yourself to wake up.
My weight wasn’t just a personal lifelong struggle anymore.
It was blocking my business growth.

Until that call.
Until the lightbulb moment where I realized:
Was I really going to let my weight be the thing that stopped me from growing my business?

I had a choice: stay stuck or take control.
For the first time, I chose control.

This time was different. Never before had my weight stood between me and the life I wanted.
I wasn’t just fixing my body. I was fixing the physical representation of the mess I felt like my business had become.

And once I decided to control the part I could control, everything changed.

Here’s the reality no one talks about enough:

Most of the time, the thing keeping you stuck isn’t outside of you.
It’s not the market.
It’s not the competition.
It’s not your pricing.
It’s not even your offer.

It’s YOU. 

It’s the fear.
The self-doubt.
The avoidance.

Until you’re willing to name it, face it, and change it, no amount of rebranding, no new strategy, no better funnel is going to fix it.

If business growth was purely tactical, everyone would be millionaires.
If the answer was always just better ads, sharper funnels, stronger marketing, it would be easy.

But the hard truth is this:
Your business can only grow to the extent that you personally are willing to grow.

For me, the hidden obstacle was my weight.
For you, it might be something else.

Maybe it’s fear of judgment, worrying about what people will say when you finally take your shot.

Maybe it’s fear of failure, clinging to perfectionism because it feels safer than risking embarrassment.

Maybe it’s burnout,  running yourself into the ground because you’ve convinced yourself that rest is weakness.

Maybe it’s money shame, believing you don’t deserve success until you fix some imaginary flaw.

Whatever it is, it’s costing you.
Not just emotionally but financially.

The hardest part about growing a business isn’t learning new strategies.
It’s confronting the parts of yourself that are too scared to grow alongside it.

Looking back, yes, the weight loss mattered. But the weight was just the visible part of the invisible battle. It was the mental block that made me say, "I’m not ready," every time an opportunity came my way.

Once I decided to control the physical, I stopped making excuses in every other part of my life too.

Launching a podcast didn’t seem so scary.
Speaking on stages didn’t feel so impossible.
Showing up, taking risks, putting myself in the rooms where opportunities lived — it all became possible.

Because now, I was in control.

So if you’re stuck right now, if the deals aren’t coming, the growth isn’t happening, the success feels like it’s always just out of reach, I hate to break it to you but:

It’s not your offer.
It’s not the market.
It’s not the economy.

It’s you.

Your business can’t outgrow the limits you refuse to confront. And no new coach, no new funnel, no perfect timing is going to save you from doing the work on yourself.

You don’t need a better plan.
You don’t need more time.
You need a better YOU.

And the only way to become that version?

Identify the real obstacle — and fix it.

No more waiting. It’s time to move.