I've been sitting with a question for a while.

Why does growth feel uncomfortable?

It's supposed to feel like progress. The numbers are better. The team's bigger. Founders are taught to want this, to work for it, to celebrate when it shows up.

The founders I work with, in the middle of growing, are quietly miserable. They don't say it out loud. They blame burnout or a bad hire or the market. They assume the discomfort is a personal failing. They keep going.

The discomfort is the actual work of growing. People treat it as a problem to solve and lose time that way.

I've been noticing where it shows up.

You don't recognise yourself. The decisions you used to make instinctively now feel uncertain. The voice you wrote your first website in sounds slightly off in your mouth. You're standing in the gap between two versions of yourself, and the gap is uncomfortable to stand in.

You have to choose. Up to a point you can be many things to many people. Past that point you can't. Growth forces specificity. Every yes closes a door. Every no costs a version of the future you could have had.

You miss what you used to have. The early days had a vibe. You knew every customer's name. The bigger thing you're building is better and worse than what came before. Nobody warned you growth would also be a loss.

Founders are sitting in one of these right now, trying to push through. The pushing through is what I want to slow down on, because pushing through is usually how the discomfort wins.

Over the next three weeks I'm going deeper on each one. The series is about naming them properly, because the naming is what unsticks the discomfort.

The discomfort is a sign growth is actually happening. Founders read it as a sign something is going wrong.

Sit with:

Which of these are you in right now?

What part of your old self are you still trying to bring with you?

What would happen if you stopped fighting the discomfort and let it tell you something?

— Ian Adams, Founder @ sofa.

Twenty years in global advertising. Now I work with founders on the stuff that actually matters.