079 | Your Attachment to the Founder Struggle is expensive

Real talk, your attachment to struggle is costing you. Too many brilliant founders choose the hard way every time… and end up burned out, behind, and watching competitors pass them by.

This episode isn’t about hustling harder — it’s about dropping the “founder martyrdom” complex and building systems that work for you. You’ll learn how to stop confusing effort with impact, replace exhausting manual work with smart systems, and reclaim the time and energy you need to lead for the long game.

In this episode, you’ll learn…

• How to spot and break the “founder martyrdom” habits that burn you out and slow your growth
• The hidden costs of doing everything the hard way — and why efficiency is a strategic advantage
• Three simple steps to replace struggle with smart systems, AI tools, and shortcuts that actually serve you
• How to reclaim your time, energy, and focus so you can lead for the long game

This episode at a glance:

[00:00] – Your attachment to struggle is bankrupting your business.
[01:45] – Why founders default to “I should figure this out myself.”
[03:00] – Efficiency feels like cheating — and why that belief is wrong.
[04:15] – The real costs: time, energy, opportunities, credibility, growth.
[05:30] – Convenience isn’t lazy when it serves your bigger goals.
[07:15] – Three steps to stop making everything harder than it needs to be.
[08:45] – You didn’t build your business to become its prisoner — choose systems that support you.

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

• Free Culture Audit Call
• Join the AI for Founders Community
• 10 Ways AI Will Make You a Better Leader – Free Guide

Want to increase revenue and impact? Listen to “She's That Founder” for insights on business strategy and female leadership to scale your business. Each episode offers advice on effective communication, team building, and management. Learn to master routines and systems to boost productivity and prevent burnout. Our delegation tips and business consulting will advance your executive leadership skills and presence.

Transcript

She's That Founder
079 | Your Attachment to the Founder Struggle is expensive

Real talk. Your attachment to struggle is bankrupting your business. I am watching brilliant founders choose the hard way every single time. Then wonder why they're burned out behind and watching competitors pass them by. You'll spend three hours researching the perfect restaurant, but refuse to spend three minutes asking AI for recommendations.

You'll manually format LinkedIn posts for an hour when AI could handle it in 12 seconds, and you'll spend for hours, days, or even weeks trying to come up with the perfect words to give feedback to your employee when AI could help you do it in minutes.

And somehow you've convinced yourself that this makes you more authentic. Here's what I realized last week, where we choose difficulty reveals our blind spots, and these blind spots are costing you everything. 

 Welcome to She's That Founder Thursday edition. These are the quick rants. Kick in the pants, velvet boot moments. That represent me standing in the future, pulling you towards the even stronger, better, more powerful version of yourself.

Let's get into it. 

So let me tell you what I witnessed during my recent business retreat in San Francisco. I'm planning this week away.

I'm trying to balance productivity with actual rest, strategic work, and self-care. And I notice this pattern in myself that I see. Everywhere in founder world, I've spent an hour researching restaurants that fit my hormone optimization goals, reading reviews, checking menus, mapping locations to match my schedule.
Meanwhile, I could have just asked ai, I'm in San Francisco. I'm avoiding these types of foods. I need to focus on hormone friendly things. I'm trying to do an adrenal reset and I need options near Union Square. Boom, done three minutes with better results than me poking around all over the internet. 

But here's the kicker. I was already using AI for complex business strategy, content creation, project planning, all of it. Yet when it came to something as simple as meal recommendations, my brain defaulted to, I should figure this out myself. And then I watched this play out in my work. I'd ask AI to help me structure a complicated business framework, but I'd spend 45 minutes manually formatting the output it gave me, because doing it by hand felt more authentic, meaningful.

Meanwhile, I have a client who spent six months perfecting her course curriculum. Instead of launching and iterating another founder who rewrites every email, I kid you not 17 times probably, instead of using proven templates that work for marketing emails. And I have one client who desperately, needs to have a difficult conversation with one of her employees, and she's still trying to find the words.

Every single one of them could triple their efficiency tomorrow, but they won't because efficiency feels like cheating. So here's what happened for me when I actually stopped the manual madness. I used AI for meal planning, schedule optimization, even priority mapping when I hit this overwhelm moment on Wednesday.

And the result, I got more done in five days than I typically accomplish in a month, and I felt rested. Energized, not depleted. The work wasn't less meaningful, it was more impactful, and like honest to God, it was just a lot more fun. So why do we do this? Why do smart strategic leaders consistently choose the path of maximum resistance?

I think somewhere along the way we decided that struggle equals virtue. That if it doesn't hurt, it doesn't count. That the harder something is, the more authentic or real it must be.

This is founder martyrdom complex and it is everywhere.

You think manual effort makes you more credible, but your ideal clients don't care how much you suffered to create that proposal. They just care whether or not it solves their problem.

You're thinking that struggle proves your worth, but your bank account doesn't give you bonus points for doing things the hard way. It doesn't know and it doesn't care, and you think that efficiency. Is somehow dishonest, but your team is watching you burn out on tasks that could be automated, wondering why you don't trust them or build better systems.

Here's what this attachment to struggle is actually costing you. 

Time, that our formatting things that could be spent in strategy or on client calls, or the much better working conditions you could have if you finally had that difficult conversation.

Energy, it's costing you energy. The mental bandwidth wasted on logistics or emotional gymnastics that could be fueling creative problem solving.

It's Costing you opportunities while you're perfecting. Your competitor is launching and learning. It's costing you credibility because nothing undermines your CEO positioning, like watching you do everything manually. It undermines your growth. It's costing you your growth. You cannot scale a business built on your personal willingness to suffer.

But here's the real cost modeling unsustainable leadership for everyone around you.

Your team learns that doing it right means doing it the hard way. Your clients absorb that message that success requires sacrifice.

Your industry stays stuck in inefficient patterns because the successful people are afraid to admit that they use shortcuts. Meanwhile, the founders who embrace efficiency, who use AI templates systems and strategic shortcuts are building businesses that work without them.

They're scaling faster, stressing less, and creating more value for more people. And consistency beats credentials in the algorithm every damn time. And guess what enables consistency.  Systems that make showing up easier, not harder.

So here's the reframe that changes everything. Convenience isn't lazy when it serves your bigger goals, when it serves your clients.  Efficiency isn't cheating when it helps you serve more people.

And strategic shortcuts aren't corners cut their energy preserved for what actually matters.  Your ideal clients need your expertise, not your exhaustion. They need your solutions and not your struggle stories.  The most authentic thing you can do is to get your valuable insights out of your head and into the world where they can help people, your clients, your team, your family, and if AI helps you do that faster and better, that is not cheating, that is strategic.

So please stop confusing effort with impact and stop measuring your worth. By the level of your suffering,  start optimizing for outcomes. Use the tools, trust the systems. Choose the easier path When it gets you to the same destination faster, your attachment to struggle isn't making you more authentic.

It's making you invisible while someone else serves your people.  here is my invitation to you this week. First. Audit where you're choosing difficulty, where you just might be self-sabotaging. Look at your task list and ask, what am I doing manually? That could be systematized, templated, or automated, or hand it off to somebody else.

Second, pick one process that is draining your energy and find a more efficient way.  Use ai, create a template, build a system, delegate it. Whatever gets it off your plate, but slow down enough to discover what that process is and do the work.  And third time yourself, see how long the authentic way takes versus the efficient way, and then do the math on what your time is worth. It is staggering to see those numbers.

Finally reframe your relationship with shortcuts. They're not cutting corners. They're cutting through the noise to focus on what matters.

Ff this hits home and you're ready to stop choosing struggle over strategy, I would love to hear from you. Send me a message on LinkedIn at Free Range Thinking or DM me on Instagram at free range thinking. And tell me the one thing you're going to stop doing the hard way this week.  I read every single message, and I'm genuinely curious about what resonates most.  Sometimes we just need someone to see us and say, you don't have to carry it all.

Consider this your permission slip, because listen, I see you. I am you. I get it. I see how hard you're working, how much you care, how committed you are to doing things right. That dedication, that integrity. That's exactly why you deserve systems that support you instead of exhausting you.  You didn't build a business to become its prisoner.

You built it to create something meaningful. To serve people who need what You have to build a life that works.

Your attachment to struggle isn't protecting your values, it's preventing you from living them fully.  I'm standing in the place of what's possible. From here I can see the impact you could have if you could just get outta your own way.

The lives you could change the business, you could build the freedom you could create  your too important to people to burn out on busy work. Your insights are too valuable to stay trapped in inefficient systems, and your vision is too big to be limited by your willingness to suffer.  I'm inviting you to choose efficiency, not because you're lazy, but because you're wise.

Choose systems, not because you don't care, but because you care too much to waste energy on what doesn't move the needle. 

The world needs what you're building, but it needs you sustainable, not sacrificial.  Stop making everything harder than it needs to be because you're not weak, but because you're ready for what's next.

See you next time. Love.