The Lie That Growth Means Sacrifice

For years, I believed the only way to grow my business was to sacrifice. Sacrifice sleep. Sacrifice family dinners. Sacrifice presence with my kids. I thought more clients meant fewer evenings free. I thought more revenue meant more late nights at my desk. Scaling felt like a constant trade-off between being the CEO my business needed and the mom my kids deserved.

And for a while, I lived in that tension. Life in my house has never been simple. I have five kids at different stages of life. My oldest is a senior this year, standing on the edge of adulthood. My youngest is two, still toddling around the house except for the two mornings he goes to a Mother’s Day Out program. I have three boys full-time, and two kids who split their time between households because of joint custody. Add in the role I play supporting my husband — a retired military veteran living with a disability — and it’s safe to say my days have always been full.

So when I sat down to grow my business, I thought the only way forward was to sacrifice. My days blurred together with early mornings, nap-time work sessions, and late nights after everyone else was asleep. I told myself it was just a season. I told myself it would be worth it. But the truth was, the hustle was taking more than it was giving.

One afternoon, I remember my toddler tugging at my arm, asking me to play blocks. I told him “just a minute” while I typed out one more email. An hour later, I looked up to see him asleep on the floor surrounded by his blocks. He had waited for me until he couldn’t anymore. That moment broke something in me. I realized the way I was growing wasn’t sustainable — not for me, not for my family, and not for the business either.

Here’s the truth: scaling doesn’t break your business. Chaos does. When I relied on hustle, every new client felt like a threat to my family time. Every project felt like it might tip the whole thing over. But when I started building systems — automations that handled contracts and invoices, team processes that ran smoothly without me, dashboards that gave clarity — growth stopped feeling like sacrifice. Instead of stealing from my family, growth started supporting us.

Family-first scaling doesn’t mean you ignore the business. It means you design it to honor the life you’re building it for. For me, that looks like working in rhythms that fit our family, automating what doesn’t need my touch, and protecting the spaces that matter most. Because scaling doesn’t have to cost you your family. It can create more space for them.

That’s the lie I want to shatter: growth isn’t about sacrificing presence. It’s about building smarter systems that give it back.