If you're like most scale-up leaders, you’re busy from the moment you start until the moment you stop,

yet the work that actually energizes you keeps getting pushed to “later”.

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Your days are filled with decisions, follow-ups, clarifications, approvals and gap-filling.

It’s the work that keeps things moving, but it pulls you further away from the work that lights you up.

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You feel like a cog in your own machine.

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The Signal

You’re not just tired. You’re drained, disenchanted, disconnected, detached.

The love you had in the early days has turned to tepid tolerance.

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Your business still lights you up once in awhile, but the day to day is far from what you envisioned.

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Observable tells:

• You dread decisions because every choice turns into more decisions.
• You finally have a strong leadership team but you still feel alone at the top.
• You’re constantly “selling” the vision, and it’s starting to feel demoralizing.
• You feel like you can never quite come all the way up for air.
• You’ve invested everything in the company, but it needs you now more than ever.

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The Root Cause

A business stops lighting you up long before it stops performing — not because of a lack of success, but because of the self-sacrifice that comes with the success.

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That self-sacrifice shows up when systems & scaffolding don’t keep pace with scale and you become the glue.

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You step in to keep momentum. You fill gaps to prevent misses.

You make things work when the structure can’t yet carry the load.

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None of this looks like failure.

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The business is growing -- new clients, new hires, new launches -- but you’re miserable.

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You can’t remember the last time you really turned off and

you’re constantly steamrolling the time blocks you put on the calendar

for the deep creative and strategic work that lights you up — you know, the fun stuff.

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The Tool

This is what happens when growth outpaces the systems meant to support it.

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The good news is that the problem is identifiable and fixable.

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The entrapment you’re feeling maps to a common set of execution gaps that show up consistently in scale-stage companies.

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When those gaps are left unaddressed, the founder gets stuck holding it all together,

but when they’re closed, the business starts carrying more of its own weight,

and you, as the founder, can do more of what lights you up.

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That’s exactly what the latest Greene Light Guide is designed to do:

5 Execution Gaps Stalling Your Scale (and how to close them)

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The guide isolates the five most common system breakdowns that keep scale-stage businesses owners trapped, and pairs each one with a practical, field-tested fix that removes friction from the system instead of adding work to your plate.

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Each gap maps directly to the experience you’re having now:

• Being the fallback
• Carrying context
• Re-deciding the same things
• Holding everything together
• Feeling like the business can’t move without you

The goal isn’t optimization for its own sake, it’s to build enough structure that

the business stops requiring your self-sacrifice for its success.

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The Technique

Use the guide as a diagnostic, not a to-do list.

1. Identify where the business is leaning on you the hardest

Most founders see themselves immediately in one or two of the Gaps:

• The Accountability Gap if you’re the backstop for execution
• The Autonomy Gap if decisions stall without you
• The Knowledge Gap if context lives in your head
• The Alignment Gap if everyone is busy but not enough seems to be happening
• The Flow Gap if your flow is constantly interrupted or nonexistent.

You don’t need to fix all five (at least not all at once).

You need to fix the one that’s costing you the most energy right now.

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2. Follow the step-by-step guidance to implement the fix

Each gap in the guide includes a specific fix:

• SOP Builder for accountability
• Decision Matrix for autonomy
• CORE Framework for knowledge management
• Goal Cascade for alignment
• Operating Rhythm for flow

These tools are surgical. They’re designed to replace one recurring drain with a repeatable structure your team can carry forward without you. Immediately.

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3. Run a 30-Day Effectiveness Audit

Once you apply a fix from the guide, give it 30 days to prove itself.

During that window, pay attention to three signals:

• What still routes to you that shouldn’t
• What moved off your plate without breaking
• Where the system is being bypassed or ignored

At the end of 30 days, review what you see and make a call:

• Tighten the implementation where the structure isn’t being used
• Expand the scope if the fix is working and holding
• Or adjust the tool if the gap was correctly identified but poorly addressed

Only after the first fix is holding do you move to the next gap.

This keeps you out of perpetual change mode and ensures each layer of structure actually reduces burden before you add another.

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Why It Works

The exhaustion you’re feeling isn’t random, and it isn’t emotional.

It’s the predictable result of scale without execution infrastructure.

When gaps exist:

• You become the glue
• You absorb ambiguity
• You prevent misses
• You keep things moving

The business performs, but only because you’re compensating for the lack of systems and scaffolding.

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The frameworks in the guide work because

they change what the system requires from you

and give you room to get back to doing the work you love.

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If this issue hit close to home, don’t analyze it to death. Do one simple thing next.

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Read it once, circle the gap that’s costing you the most energy and start there.

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You don’t need to rebuild your company.

You just need to stop being the system that’s holding it all together.

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PS - If there is an entrepreneur in your circle that would benefit from this message, feel free to forward.

If you want to catch up on tools to translate vision into velocity, check out all the issues HERE.

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