Running Four Businesses While Growing a Human

How I’m juggling ambition, exhaustion, and pregnancy without letting my companies miss a beat — and what it’s teaching me about leadership, systems, and life.

This year, I’m running four businesses, opening new locations, and… growing a human.
Turns out, building companies and building a life aren’t separate—they’re happening at the same time, whether I’m ready or not.

For years, I’ve lived comfortably in the rhythm of building. 5AM mornings. Constant decisions. Moving quickly, solving problems as they appear. Entrepreneurship rewards speed. It rewards availability. It rewards the ability to push through when things are hard or inconvenient.

Pregnancy doesn’t care about any of that.

Your body introduces a completely different pace. Some days your energy is gone by mid-afternoon. Some mornings your priorities shift from emails and meetings to nourishing your body in new ways & rewarding a slower pace. It’s a humbling recalibration for someone used to operating at full capacity.

What pregnancy has forced me to confront is something I think many founders quietly avoid: how dependent our businesses are on us.

For a long time, being needed everywhere felt like proof that things were working. That I was a good leader. That the businesses were growing. But pregnancy has introduced a very real question:

What happens when I step away?

Not theoretically.
Not someday.

Actually.

Because for the first time in my career, stepping away isn’t optional. It’s coming whether the businesses are ready or not (an insane reality for someone like me!).

And that realization has shifted the way I think about building.

Instead of asking how do I keep up with everything, I’ve started asking:

Where are the systems weak?
Where am I the bottleneck?
What decisions only happen because I’m in the room — and why?

Pregnancy is teaching me to build companies that don’t collapse if I step away.

And practically, that has meant making a few intentional shifts.

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1. Curating more efficient systems