Why Leaders Get Stuck: Overcoming Fear of Change in Business Growth | EP 29

You built something from nothing, your systems, your team, your entire identity wrapped up in the thing you call your business. And then one day, quietly, something stops fitting. Maybe it's a role on your team, a service you've been offering for years, or the way you've been showing up as a leader. You can see it clearly. You could draw a diagram of exactly what needs to shift. And yet... you don't move. You reorganize your desk. You answer emails. You tell yourself you'll get to it. Sound familiar? That frozen feeling isn't weakness and it isn't laziness. It's something far more human and far more fixable than most people realize.

In this episode, we get honest about the emotional side of change that no strategy session ever addresses. We unpack why our brains treat a business pivot the same way they treat a physical threat, why logical clarity and emotional readiness are two completely different things, and why the most self-aware leaders still find themselves stalling, micromanaging, or spinning in busy work instead of taking the one action they already know they need to take. Drawing from our own experiences we walk through what it actually looks like to move through resistance not around it, without beating yourself up along the way.

What to Listen for in This Episode:

Your nervous system isn't broken; it's doing its job. When change feels threatening, your brain responds the same way it would to physical danger. The freezing, overanalyzing, and micromanaging you experience during a pivot aren't character flaws. They're your nervous system trying to protect you. 

Knowing what to do and being ready to do it are not the same thing. You can have the new org chart drafted, the offer revamped, the plan documented and still feel completely frozen. That's because strategy lives in the mind, but resistance lives in the body. What hasn't been processed is the grief; the version of yourself you're leaving behind, the control you're releasing, the identity you've tied to the way things used to be. 

Naming your fear takes away its power. Vague fear is loud. Named fear is workable. We share a practical technique of personifying your inner critic — giving your negative self-talk an actual name, separate from who you really are — so you can catch it in the moment, call it out, and make decisions from a grounded place instead of a reactive one. 

The next time you catch yourself avoiding the very thing you already know needs t

Transcript

You're listening to Entrepreneurial Encounter, the podcast where soft skills meet real talk for creative business owners who are building with purpose. I'm Dana, a Pinterest marketing strategist and agency owner helping wedding pros and creative entrepreneurs get seen without burning out. And I'm Sarah, a business and team strategist who helps small teams and podcasters communicate clearly, lead with empathy and grow sustainably. Together, we're unpacking the messy, side of entrepreneurship.

from boundaries to burnout, leadership to listening, so you can build a business that actually fits your life.
Here's a feeling I think a lot of us know all too well. You're looking at your business. Maybe it's a system, maybe it's a team dynamic, even your own role. And something feels off. It's not broken, just not right anymore. And you can't quite put your finger on it, but you know, you know, and yet you don't change it. You just keep going, hoping it will sort itself out somehow.

What makes that so frustrating is that it's not like you don't see it. We do. You do. You're a perceptive person. You built something. Logically, you're completely clear on what something is supposed to do or how it's supposed to work. Emotionally though, you're frozen.

So the question is, if I know this isn't working, why does fixing it feel so hard? And I have so many things that I could wrap into this. We'd probably be here all day. We'll take it piece by piece. Yes. And that's what exactly what we're getting in today because this isn't really a strategy conversation. It's emotional one. We're talking about why change triggers

fear and leaders, even when we're the ones who saw it coming, the freezing, the controlling, the stalling, and what it actually looks like to move through it, not around it, but through it. If you're an entrepreneur in a season of growth or uncertainty, or even just a quiet shift that you can feel but haven't fully named yet, and if you've been wondering why you feel stuck even when part of you knows exactly what needs to happen, this one's for you.

We're going to walk through why change triggers a fear response and leaders in the first place. The difference between the logically knowing what you need to change and being emotionally ready for it, which spoiler are very different things and how to actually move through that phrase without beating yourself up.

in the process because we've all been there. We've all beat ourself up because we're freezing and we don't feel like we're moving in the direction that we want to go in. And this is already the kind of conversation you want more of. We have a free gift for you. It's called the 20 minute clarity map. Sarah and I have used this ourselves on more than one occasion. It's a quick practical planning tool to set meaningful priorities and the soft skills to make them happen.

You'll learn how to pick three goals that will make the biggest impact, pair each goal with a soft skill to boost follow through, define simple, realistic actions you can actually complete, which is probably the biggest thing to take away from this, as well as stay consistent without burning out. The link is in the show notes, go sign up and we'll see you in your inbox. All right, so let's get into this.

The first thing I want to normalize, and I mean really normalize, is that change threatens identity. And we hear a lot that people don't change, but truth is people change if they want to change. It's that neuroplasticity, especially for founders. Our businesses aren't just strategies on a whiteboard. They're deeply personal, which is why sometimes when we get rejected or like a partnership falls through or collaboration gets turned down,

It hurts because we built these things. We put a lot of our own personality and time, energy, and effort into this. So when something needs to change, what we often hear internally isn't, it's time to evolve. It's something more like, must've done something wrong. I misjudged. I failed. I insert whatever negative talk is rolling through your head in the moment.

I have been there many of times. mean, even when that's completely untrue because we are so in our heads because this is our business. This is what we're building. Even when the change is just growth doing what growth does. And that's the biology. Your brain reads uncertainty as potential danger. It doesn't distinguish between a strategic pivot and a threat to your survival. So your nervous system

does what it's designed to do. It tries to tighten control, which shows up in micromanaging. You overanalyze everything. You delay decisions or you just freeze knowing what to do and not doing it. I've seen it time and time again when the clients I work with other businesses micromanaging because they're not sure of what the next step is. They're overthinking. I overthink things a lot and I don't need to overthink things because it's

So simple, but I think because we're so close to what we're doing, we can't get out of our head. So here's the thing I want you to sit with for a second. And that's resistance doesn't mean you're failing. It means your nervous system is doing its job. It's trying to protect you. And that's really a different thing. And it changes how you relate to yourself when you're stuck. And it's how you get yourself to move forward.

and to go through these changes. So let's talk about something that I think trips a lot of leaders up. You can logically understand that change needs to happen and still not be emotionally ready for it. And leaders get confused here because they think I've done the thinking, I can see the new structure, I mapped it out. I mean, maybe you've created a new organization chart, you revised your offer.

the pivot laid out clearly in a doc somewhere. But internally, you haven't processed what that shift actually means. Like what you're giving up or what version of yourself you're leaving behind. Because sometimes what it means is you're no longer the scrappy founder doing everything, which in theory should give us, you know, a breath of relief. But as you're stepping into something bigger, you're letting people carry things that you used to carry alone and that

is a hard process to go through, especially if you have a mindset like myself, where it's just easier and or faster if I do it myself. And there's a grief process in that, that I'm fully gonna tell you I'm going through right now. So this is real talk right now. Even when the change is genuinely good, like bringing on someone into your team and helping you.


buy back your time and allowing you to do things that move towards the bigger picture, change always comes with some form of loss. And that's the part that nobody likes to talk about. There's loss of familiarity, of certainty, of an identity you've held on for years. And your body feels that before your mind has a chance to rationalize it, before you even consciously acknowledged it, which is why you can have

total logical clarity of this is the right direction for me. Like you couldn't tell me anything from when I first launched my business as a side hustle, being a virtual assistant to what I'm doing now and what I'm building now. Like I know this is the right path for me, but some days I still feel paralyzed on how to properly set up my operations and SOPs to hand things off.

Cause it's not a logic problem. It's an integration problem. It's an emotional problem. I've learned. mean, obviously as you go through things and you change and you you learn things about yourself that you didn't realize before. I used to hate asking for help in my personal life and my professional life because I'm very independent. I like to do things. I like to figure things out.

And when I, when I get stuck on something, I feel almost in confident, like I shouldn't know how to do this. Or I don't want to do homework with the kids because I'm having a hard time. Or I don't want to write this blog post or whatever, like whatever it is going on. I've learned to ask for help because essentially it felt like I was losing control. I was losing myself. Like if I have to ask somebody for help, what's the point of doing what I'm doing?

So that's like when you are growing your business and you decide you want to hire or you will have a partner that you're working on a podcast together and you split up tasks and like, okay, well we can all just decide to, you know, do everything all at once and just do it ourselves. But if you need help, that's the part of growth. I believe that if you ask for help, you'll learn things about yourself that you probably didn't realize. And yes, I used to freeze in those moments. my goodness. I'm going to ask for help.


Now I'm just like, if I need help, I'm going to ask, I'm going to ask for help because now I feel so much better than if I don't because in that moment you're trying to do everything by yourself and you're getting frustrated and you're like, what's the point? And then you ask a question and you get help and then you're relieved. Of course, you don't want to lose control of what you're doing. want to keep what you're doing. But when you ask for help, it's going to help you in the long run.

I think that freeze also looks like knowing exactly what needs to happen and then not doing it. Not too, I mean, yeah. It's a lot of self-sabotage and maybe it's because we know we can't take it on all by ourselves or we're afraid of what that scaling actually means because if you're not comfortable with where you are right now or aren't even comfortable with where you're trying to go, then you're going to freeze, you're going to sit on action.

and come up with some sort of busy works, you don't actually have to think about it and deal with it. That's not necessarily a weakness, but then that opportunity passes by and so you get busy doing something else instead of taking the very intentional actions that would have gotten you closer to what you are trying to get to in the first place. So, well, hopefully it doesn't sound familiar, but if it sounds familiar, it's not weakness. It's your system doing the best it can with what it has.

And here's where I wanna push back on that mindset and that thought process. It's on how adaptability gets talked about. It's always framed as a speed thing, pivot faster, adjust quicker. But long-term, think leadership level adaptability doesn't start with a faster strategy. It starts with emotional regulation and like really honing in on your nervous system.

Can you sit with uncertainty without immediately reaching for control? Can you stay in the discomfort long enough to make an intentional decision instead of just a reactive one? I know for a very long time, I could not do that. And I've gotten better, especially as I sat in the discomfort of pivoting from virtual assistant business management to organic Pinterest marketing and creating ecosystems that connect with each other.


Like it was uncomfortable to say goodbye to clients that I've worked with for years because we no longer, you know, safely served each other. Like I was no longer providing them with the things that they needed. I mean, I was still doing good work, but I just didn't enjoy it. And so it was starting to affect my entire day personally and professionally. Reactive decisions are what happened when you skip that step. You hire too fast because that discomfort of possibly being

short staff feels unbearable. You fire too fast. You change your offer impulsively because staying the course feels like a failure or you avoid the change entirely for way too long because the fear of getting it wrong is louder than anything else. Neither of those is adaptability. Both of them are fear and different disguises. what does actually moving through resistance look like?

Not perfectly, but practically. I would never tell someone they have to do something perfectly because then we'll definitely never take action. Yeah, nothing's perfect. I mean, obviously we can we can imagine it being, you know, I want what was the phrase Pinterest perfect, like a Pinterest perfect house. Man, you know, raising a family is chaotic and it's beautiful, but the house is not going to be clean 24 seven. It's not going to, you know.

It's not going to be perfect. Although it would be nice to have like a really cool decorated house, but I mean, nothing's going to be perfect in your business. It's not going to be perfect. It's going to be messy and we have to take that in. So when you think of this feels scary, but like what, are you exactly afraid of? So when those emotions come up, you can name it. You can write it down if you have to.

Vague fear has a lot of the power, know, named fear is much easier to work with. I'm just afraid of this to fail. Like, why are you afraid for it to fail? Because I don't want to go back to my old life or whatever. Like, you have to kind of like start asking yourself why questions, why this, why, just like how kids ask why questions they want to, they want to know. So maybe do that to yourself. So into that childlike energy of why.

Why are you afraid? Yeah, I mean, I that's a really great way to step into it because then you're able to separate the facts from the identity. Something that we do at our co-working space here in North Carolina. It started as a joke with one of the partners, and now it's like spread into a multiple partners are creating like their alter egos.

It was actually mentioned at the Together Digital Conference I went to in January. Is any of that like imposter syndrome, negative talk, give that a name, typically a person. And so I'm going to call out my friend Beth. Beth is her name, but the negative talk is Liz. And so whenever she's doubting herself, she'll literally out loud sometimes like, shut up, Liz. That's not true.

But then the alter ego, an empowerment leader that she's walking into and joining is Bethany. But it helps you to separate the facts from the identity. is this, so whenever it is that you're looking at, is this a strategic pivot or are you making it mean something about you or your negative alter ego?

Those are two very different problems with very different solutions. And even myself, have, as of Wednesday of this week, at the time of this recording, I have been working on my own alter egos because we talked about rejection and how do we handle it? How do we learn to go for no? And like, that's uncomfortable and trying to grow. And so how do we name that fear?

of rejection and for me, a lot of it is internal. I reject myself before I even give myself an opportunity to take it to someone else to reject me. They could say yes. Yeah. So I'm creating my own alter ego so I can better going into 2026, separate the identity and the facts of I do have this skillset. I own this space. That's just, I haven't named it yet. So that's just my alter ego getting in the way. Way too.

I'd need to think of some names. That's a good homework assignment. With that, know, now you can regulate before you decide, right? So when negative talk comes in and now you're like, you have your name picked out and you say so and so, no, I don't like, I'm not making these decisions right now. This is not how this is going to work. So you're essentially talking to yourself. I mean, I talk to myself a lot, so maybe that's a good way to kind of.

cheese a little bit and you know, knock things down to make things, you know, a little bit better because you don't want to make decisions from a panic or out of even out of fear. You don't want to avoid what's going on. But obviously like naming it is going to help you figure that out and give yourself the conditions to think clearly before you act. I mean, that's not weakness. That's wisdom. That's you learning that self-awareness.

So now it seems like you can almost have fun with it. Have fun with the fear if you're going to name it and then squash it before it comes too much. you imagine the fun or like the confidence boost it's going to be in your mind and regulating your nervous system when you can like stop it in its tracks because you took the time to name it and to identify the fear? That's like telling your childhood bully if you had one to like

F off. Yeah. Yeah. Getting like getting them to face the consequences of all the bullying that they did, you know, like that's kind of what it is. And I hope I'm probably all laughing right now, but it can be like that once we learn these steps. So if you're resisting that change right now, it doesn't mean you're behind. It doesn't mean you're not built for this. It means you're human and that is perfectly OK. Some days you might be able to easily

like in my friend, that's case, like easily tell Liz to shut it down and move on. And other days it's not. It just means you're in the middle of something real and amazing and that's okay. Leadership during uncertainty has never been about being fearless, but it's always been about being aware and awareness is something you can practice consistently. Resistance.

It doesn't mean you're failing. means your system is adjusting and adaptability, real adaptability begins on the inside. If this episode resonated, please share it with another business owner who's in a season of change. They probably need to hear it too, just as much as you did and sign up for the newsletter. If you want more of this, the link is in the show notes. We'll see you next time. can now follow us on LinkedIn at entrepreneur and

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