Perseverance Stopped Meaning “I’ve Got This”

A previous version of me thought perseverance meant saying, “I’ve got this.”

Whatever the problem was.

Revenue slowed? I’ve got this. Customer churn? I’ve got this. A decision no one wanted to make? I’ve got this.

It sounded strong and sometimes it was.

There is a version of founder energy that is necessary in the beginning. You push. You figure it out. You carry the awkward, uncertain, unglamorous parts because someone has to.

And when the company is young, that can feel heroic on the journey.

But inside a growing company, “I’ve got this” can quietly become the sentence that keeps everything dependent on the founder and establishes a ceiling - not a launchpad.

I did not see that clearly at first.

When I was younger, perseverance meant effort. Try everything. Throw ideas at the wall. Stay in motion. Trust instinct. Outwork the uncertainty.

Some of that served me and some of it also became a constraint.

There was a season while growing our fintech company when growth slowed. We had built something real, but the business had become too dependent in a few places.

Nearly 90% of our revenue came from two major licensing agreements. From the outside, we looked successful. Inside, there was tension.

We were not broken. Far from it. But we were no longer moving the way we needed to move. The conversations started to repeat. Product questions. Subscriber needs. Sales opportunities. Strategic choices. The same issues kept coming back, just wearing slightly different clothes.

At first, I responded the way younger David knew how to respond.

I stayed later with the problem. Replayed the same conversations. Most guilty of all --> tried to outthink things that probably needed to be worked through by more than one mind or even with my partners.

Eventually, I realized the company had reached a point where my individual effort could no longer create the next stage of growth.

That was not a work ethic problem. It was a leadership problem. More specifically, it was a decision rhythm problem.

We had to stop treating recurring issues like separate events.

The slowdown, the customer friction, the product questions, the sales gaps, and the internal tension were not separate fires. They were signals.

They were telling us that the company needed a better way to discover what was really happening, discuss it honestly, and decide what would actually change.

Our development team began coming together in a more intentional leadership rhythm. Sales and marketing followed.

We started asking better questions together. I joined a community of entrepreneur peers and found a mentor who was a Guide and coach.

Better questions got asked - not simply:

“How do we sell more?”

But:

“What are customers struggling with that they do not yet know how to articulate?”

“What are we hearing repeatedly but not yet acting on?”

“What decision have we avoided because it creates discomfort?”

“What needs to become owned by the team instead of returning to the founders again?”

That last question matters.

Because in founder-led companies, unresolved decisions have a way of finding their way back to the founder’s desk.

Sometimes politely. Sometimes loudly. Sometimes at 3 a.m.

And if the founder keeps absorbing them, the team learns something.

Not intentionally. But clearly. Hard questions, ambiguity, and conflict comes back to the founder.

Decisions come back to the founder.

And eventually, the founder starts confusing that dependence with perseverance.

I did.

EO Atlanta helped me see it differently.

When I joined EO, I found myself surrounded by entrepreneurs building serious companies and carrying serious weight.

Different industries. Different stages. Different pressures.

But the pattern was familiar. The best leaders were not the ones trying to personally outlast every problem.

They were the ones building teams, forums, rhythms, and relationships that forced better thinking.

They let themselves be challenged, put themselves near people operating at a higher level, and they asked better questions because they were surrounded by people who would not let them hide inside old answers.

It matters who you stand near.

You want higher performance?

Stand close to others doing it.

Over time, I began to see perseverance differently.

Younger me thought it meant staying in the fight.

Today, I think it means noticing when the same fight keeps returning because the company never made a permanent decision.

That is a very different thing.

Because founder perseverance can become dangerous when it turns into private endurance.

From the outside, this looks like commitment. Inside, it can feel like quiet unraveling. Not because it means the business is failing, but because it may mean the business has outgrown the way decisions are being made.

Today, when I look at founder-led companies that actually scale, I notice something different.

Their meetings stop being places where smart people talk around the issue.

They become places where decisions get made, owned, and stay made. Dragons, along the Hero's Journey, stay slayed.

The leadership team knows the three questions that need to be answered again and again:

1. Where are we?
2. Where are we going?
3. What is my role in getting us there?

Simple questions. Not easy ones.

I have lived through stagnant and conflicting seasons when those questions could not be answered clearly.

Perseverance, as I understand it now, is not the willingness to carry unresolved issues longer than everyone else.

It is the willingness to build and commit to the leadership rhythm that keeps those issues from needing to come back through you again.

That rhythm is not dramatic. It is the routine.

The weekly meeting where the real issue is named instead of politely circled. The decision that gets an owner and a date. The tension that gets discussed before it becomes culture. The repeated question that finally becomes a permanent answer. The founder who stops rescuing the team from the very discomfort that would make them stronger.

That is perseverance too.

Maybe the more mature version where decisions are built through repeated choices that matter, compound, and name what is true.

The discipline of assigning ownership. The courage to let other leaders carry real weight.

The humility to admit that “I’ve got this” may no longer be the sentence the company needs from you.

Sometimes the stronger sentence is:

“We’ve got this.”

And then building the rhythm to make that true.

One Reframe

Perseverance is not carrying more.

It is evolving into the leader and structure your next stage of growth requires.

And often, that means building or re-founding a company where fewer decisions need to route back through you.

Two Questions Worth Sitting With

1. Where has your perseverance quietly become founder dependence?
2. What recurring issue keeps returning because your leadership team has not yet made a permanent decision?

Three Small Moves This Week

1. Ask your leadership team:
2. Identify one issue that has appeared in three different forms over the last quarter. Ask what decision is actually being avoided.
3. Choose one decision that still defaults to you and design the first step toward shared ownership.

Because perseverance is not just continuing, in my world it's about becoming.

And sometimes becoming starts when the founder stops saying, “I’ve got this,” long enough for the team to learn how to say, “We do.”