The Hardest Diagnosis Is Your Own
- Deevo Tindall
- 12 minutes ago
- 2 min read
I recently hired an outside team to help me with lead generation and positioning, which is mildly ironic considering I spend most of my days helping other people figure out what is getting in the way of their growth. Thank you, Michaelle.
It reminded me of something I see constantly with established founders and CEOs… The longer you have been inside a business, the easier it becomes to confuse familiarity with clarity.
You know why things are the way they are. You remember the decisions, the pivots, the client who caused the policy, the opportunity that created the offer, and all the little compromises that accumulated along the way.
Then one day the business still works, but it has become harder to steer.
Decisions take longer. Priorities compete with each other. The team is busy, but the same problems keep resurfacing. Growth requires more effort than it used to, and every new opportunity seems to add complexity instead of momentum.
That is the point where doing more can become expensive.
Because when you are not clear about what is actually creating the drag, it is very easy to spend six months solving the wrong problem extremely well.
That is the work I am increasingly brought in to do.
I get outside the day-to-day noise with the founder or leadership team, look at what is actually happening across the business, find the thing creating the most friction, and help determine what deserves attention now and what can stop stealing oxygen.
The result is not another pile of ideas.
It is a much clearer understanding of what is really going on, what decision matters most, and what the business needs to do next so people can move with some confidence again.
That is exactly why I brought outside eyes into my own business. When you have spent years inside something, it gets harder to separate what is actually happening from the story you have been telling yourself about why it works the way it does.
If your business is established, people are working hard, opportunities are still there, and yet you keep finding yourself thinking, “Why the hell is this harder to move than it should be?”
That is probably a conversation worth having. Reply and tell me what has been harder than it should be lately. I'll tell you what I'd be curious about first.
About Deevo
I am the founder of The Brand Storyteller. My work sits somewhere inside business architecture, identity, psychology, story, human behavior, and the strange ways our internal patterns eventually make themselves visible in the things we build.
I spend most of my time helping founders and leaders find the thread underneath whatever is creating drag, determine what actually needs to change, and build the structure, language, and decisions that create movement.
Most weeks, I am helping someone else see what they have become too close to see clearly. Occasionally life has the good sense to make me the case study.
If you are carrying a business, decision, relationship, or next chapter that feels harder to see from the inside, bring me the knot, we'll find the thread.
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