Crossing the $10 million mark wasn’t the summit. It was the pressure point.
Suddenly, the systems that got us here started to crack. The team that helped build BELAY’s success began to struggle under the weight of new complexity.
And me? I realized that if I continued leading as if it were still year three, I would burn out trying to hold it all together.
I started here as BELAY’s very first executive assistant, and I’ve grown with the company every step of the way.
So when I say I’ve seen scale from the ground up, I mean it.
If your business is pushing past eight figures and you feel like the gears are grinding harder than they should, this video is for you.
Because here’s the truth: The model isn’t broken. It’s usually leadership capacity — yours, your team’s, or both — that’s not scaling fast enough to keep up.
In this video, I walk you through the four leadership shifts that saved me from spiraling and helped our business continue to climb.
This one hurt the most.
The team that got us to $5M needed different leadership at $15M.
I was still too embedded in the day-to-day. I wasn’t just busy. I had become the ceiling. I realized I was no longer just slowing growth. I was the drag.
The turning point came when I brought in a coach to help assess what was really going on inside the organization. After weeks of digging in, he looked at me and said, “You’ve got leadership issues. Some of your team have hit their lid.”
Then he added, “But Tricia… so have you.”
That stung.
But he was right. I was holding too much, including financial oversight, and I no longer had the skills to lead well. So I made one of the biggest decisions of my career: I handed it over to someone better.
Our CFO, Lisa, brought sharper insights and deeper expertise. And giving up that control? It didn’t feel like failure. It felt like freedom.
Early in my career, I believed doing more proved my worth.
I jumped into every gap, fixed every problem, and took on every project. I thought I was being indispensable, but in reality, I was just overworked and in the way.
Leadership isn’t about doing everything. It’s about building others who can. That means delegating outcomes, not just tasks, and trusting your team to carry real weight.
I had to learn that when I keep the work, I also keep the bottleneck. And the longer I hoard it, the more I’m slowing the machine.
At this stage, clarity isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s your primary job.
It’s not just what you say. It’s how you show up. Your presence, your tone, your energy — it all communicates.
I used to think we needed more meetings to stay aligned.
So we stacked check-ins, standups, syncs … until no one had time to actually work.
One day, I asked my team to record 5-minute Slack videos instead of a 90-minute meeting. It worked so well, we cut the meeting altogether.
That’s what clarity looks like: fewer meetings, sharper messages, more action.
Your job is to tell your team what ‘done’ looks like, who owns it, and when it’s due.
Then say it again. And again. Until it’s muscle memory.
Your time is the most expensive resource in the business. Treat it like it is.
I did the math: If you're a CEO making $200/hour and you spend 3 hours a day on admin work, that’s $14K a month. You could hire an EA to do it better for $3,500.
Why would you ever touch your email again?
Start auditing your week.
Ask yourself: What actually requires my judgment, voice, or decision-making?
Everything else? Delegate it. Build margin into your week, so you can focus on vision, strategy, and leadership — the work no one else can do.
If your business is growing but your energy is draining, this is your wake-up call. You don’t have to do it all. You just have to lead differently.
🎥 Watch the full video for a deeper breakdown of each shift — plus, download my free guide Delegate to Elevate. It’ll help you start small, offload smart, and protect your time before burnout decides for you.
The best leaders I know? They don’t do everything. They do what only they can do — and they do it exceptionally well.