When the Inside Doesn't Match the Outside

There's a particular kind of tension that shows up in growing businesses.

From the outside, things look solid – a capable team, steady clients, momentum. But on the inside, the business feels heavier than it should. Growth feels constrained not by ambition or demand, but by what the operation can realistically handle.

It's the tension between the business you appear to be and the business you're actually equipped to run.

That tension was top of mind for me last month when I joined a client at their year-end retreat.

By the end of the retreat, I felt more fulfilled and inspired than I had all year.

At first, I couldn't quite explain why.

On paper, 2025 was a fairly nominal growth year for this company. We made progress, but not in the ways we typically point to when we talk about growth – not revenue spikes, not headcount expansion, not a dramatic increase in volume.

And yet, when I compared the feeling in the room to their 2024 retreat – a year where those traditional metrics did show significant growth – the difference was striking.

There was a sense of stability and clarity that hadn't existed before. A confidence that comes not from momentum, but from maturity. From a year spent strengthening foundations, building structure, and bringing order to what had previously felt reactive.

If 2024 felt like we were on our heels, trying to keep up with growth that was happening to us, 2025 felt like the year the way the company operated finally matched the level the company had grown to.

As the fractional COO, it was gratifying to hear the team talk about how systems, processes, and structure had improved their day-to-day work.

But that wasn't the full story.

The impact felt deeper than operational wins alone. And when I took the time to reflect on why that retreat affected me so strongly, I uncovered something about my own relationship with business – and my purpose within it – that clarified why this work matters so much to me.

The Cost of Misalignment

For much of my early life, I carried a version of that same tension, just in a different context.

As a gay man growing up, I moved through a world that offered a narrow and rigid definition of what a “successful life” looked like. Excel in school. Get a stable job. Find a wife. Start a family. 

I knew early on that this wasn't the life I wanted.

I've shared before how important entrepreneurship was in my coming out journey. It gave me independence, confidence, and the freedom to step off the expected path and build a life on my own terms.

But looking back now, I see something deeper at work.

That chapter of my life wasn't just about confidence or autonomy. At its core, it was about resolving the dissonance between how I felt on the inside and how I believed I needed to show up in the world.

That dissonance was exhausting.

I tried to act the way I thought I was supposed to.
I looked for validation in the wrong places to feel worthy and accepted.
I developed protective behaviors that helped me survive, but never feel at ease.

The real shift came when I started doing the inside work.

When I shed those protective strategies, clarified my values, and allowed my external life to reflect my internal reality, something profound changed.

The pretending stopped.
The projection faded.
The way I felt on the inside finally matched how others experienced me on the outside.

Why This Matters in Business

As I sat with that realization, it clicked why my client's retreat had affected me so deeply.

Because the work I do with businesses mirrors that same journey – just at an organizational level.

So many companies look successful from the outside. They have clients, revenue, momentum.

But internally, things feel heavier than they should. Teams are stretched thin. The business requires more effort, oversight, and heroics than its size should demand.

There's a gap between the business an owner envisions and the one they're actually operating. 

It’s not because of a lack of ambition or demand. It's that, intuitively, they know the business can only handle so much.

That was true for this client.

Earlier in our work together, the CEO described feeling like the business couldn't yet be pushed to grow. Their clients expected a level of consistency and polish the internal systems weren't reliably built to deliver at scale.

Growth didn't feel exciting. It felt fragile. Risky.

When I stepped into a fractional COO role, the focus wasn't expansion. It was simpler, and harder: build the operational foundation the business would eventually need.

We spent the year doing the inner work – clarifying ownership, strengthening systems, and reducing friction so the way the business ran matched the standard it aspired to project.

By the time we reached the retreat, something had shifted.

The business felt steadier. Decisions felt clearer. And for the first time, the owner felt confident the company could pursue growth rather than be strained by it.

Because of that work, they're now pursuing meaningful growth goals from a place of readiness.

That's what alignment unlocks.

And it's why this work resonates so deeply with me.

Helping businesses close that gap – and feel confident in their own skin – echoes my own journey of bringing what was inside into alignment with what the world could see.

That's not just operational work.

That's meaningful work.

Doing the Inner Work

If you're a business owner who feels this tension – where things look fine from the outside, but don't quite feel right on the inside – you're not alone.

And it's not a failure.

More often, it's a signal.

A signal that your business has outgrown its current operating model.
That alignment, not more hustle, is the next unlock.
That doing the inner work might be what finally allows the business to move forward with clarity and confidence again.

If that resonates, I'd invite you to pay attention to that feeling rather than pushing past it.

Because when the inside finally matches the outside, growth stops feeling like strain and starts feeling like progress.