We’ve been sold this idea that successful practice owners are the ones who love what they do every single day.
You see it everywhere. The Instagram posts about “living your purpose.” The conference speakers who talk about passion like it’s supposed to be a constant state. The business coaches who tell you that if you’re not waking up excited, you’re in the wrong business.
And somewhere along the way, we started believing that’s what success looks like.
So when you have a week where you’re just tired? When you look at your schedule and feel heavy instead of energized? When you catch yourself thinking “I need a break from the thing I built”? You assume something’s wrong.
Maybe you’re burned out. Maybe you made a mistake. Maybe you’re not cut out for this after all.
Here’s what I know from working with aesthetic and wellness practice owners for years: that narrative is doing more damage than almost anything else.
Because if you’re a parent, you already know this truth. You love your kids fiercely. You’d do anything for them. And there are still days when you’re touched out, talked out, and counting down the minutes until bedtime. That doesn’t make you a bad parent. It makes you human.
Your practice works the same way.
The most successful practice owners I know are ones who’ve figured out how to hold two truths at the same time: this is meaningful work that matters, and sometimes it’s exhausting and frustrating and I need space from it.
And, instead of seeing that tension as a problem to fix, they’ve built practices that can handle the full range of what it means to be human.
What Nobody Wants to Admit Out Loud
I work exclusively with aesthetic and wellness practice owners. Mostly women who’ve built something truly incredible. Who have strong teams, organized systems, and kickass revenue. They’ve made it past the startup phase and into the messy middle of actually running a business.
And here’s what almost every single one of them tells me at some point: “I think something’s wrong with me because I don’t feel the way I thought I would.”
They thought once they hit a certain revenue threshold, they’d feel more secure. Once they hired the right team members, they’d feel less overwhelmed. Once they dialed in their systems, they’d finally feel that sense of ease everyone talks about.
Instead? They feel complicated about it. Proud and exhausted. Grateful and resentful. Clear on their vision and completely uncertain at the same time.
And because that doesn’t match the narrative we’ve been fed about what success is supposed to feel like, they assume they’re doing it wrong.
But what if they’re actually doing it exactly right?
What if the ability to hold that complexity without needing to resolve it is an actual skill of leadership?
I’ve worked with hundreds of aesthetic and wellness practice owners at this point, and you know what the most successful ones have in common? It’s not that they love their business more than everyone else.
It’s that they’ve stopped expecting to love it every single day.
They’ve made peace with the fact that commitment and affection aren’t the same thing. They’ve stopped using how they feel on a random Tuesday as evidence of whether they’re on the right path.
It reminds me of what my mom used to say about raising kids: “Some days I love you but I don’t like you very much.” And somehow we all understood that was… normal? Healthy, even?
So why can’t we extend that same grace to our businesses?
The Thing About Delegation That Nobody Mentions
Every time I bring this up in coaching calls, someone says it: “Well, that’s why you delegate. That’s why you build a team.”
And yes. Obviously. I’m not suggesting you do everything yourself until you collapse.
But here’s what I’ve been noticing: Delegating tasks doesn’t delegate the weight.
You can hire the best practice manager in the world, and you’ll still be the one lying awake at 2 AM wondering if you made the right call on that new service offering. You can have a full clinical team, and you’ll still feel personally responsible when a patient outcome isn’t what you hoped. You can systematize everything down to the last detail, and you’ll still be the one making the final decision when something unexpected happens.
Because it has your name on it. Your reputation. Your vision.
I’m not saying that to be dramatic, I’m saying it because I think we need to be more honest about what leadership actually costs. The emotional toll doesn’t scale down just because your team scales up. If anything, it gets more complex.
Which makes me think: maybe the real skill isn’t building systems that remove you from the equation. Maybe it’s building the kind of resilience that lets you stay in the equation without losing yourself in it.
The Pattern I Keep Seeing (And Why It Matters)
I’ve watched enough practitioners build and scale their practices to notice there’s a pattern. Not a rigid formula, but a pretty consistent arc. And I think understanding it might save you from making some decisions you’ll regret.
Phase One: The Honeymoon
Everything feels significant. Every new patient feels like validation. Every small win gets celebrated. You’re running on pure adrenaline and the intoxicating feeling of building something that’s entirely yours.
This is when the Instagram posts write themselves. This is when you tell people “I’ve never felt more aligned” and genuinely mean it.
The tricky part? You don’t realize this is a phase. You think this feeling is your new normal. That this is what you’ve been searching for all along.
Phase Two: The Reckoning
Then something shifts. Sometimes it’s a specific incident, a team member leaving, a slow quarter, a patient complaint that stings more than it should. Sometimes it’s just the slow accumulation of tiny disappointments that nobody warned you about.
And suddenly it’s not exciting anymore. It’s just… work. Hard, grinding, sometimes thankless work.
This is the phase where I see practice owners panic. Because they’re measuring themselves against Phase One, and anything less than that initial high feels like something’s gone terribly wrong.
They think: Maybe I’m burned out. Maybe I need to pivot. Maybe I built the wrong thing.
Here’s what I wish someone had told me when I was in this phase: What if nothing is wrong? What if this is just…the middle?
Not the end. Not a sign you need to quit. Just the part where it stops being new and starts being real.
Phase Three: The Long Game
This is where things get interesting. Not easier (I want to be clear about that) but more sustainable.
You stop expecting every day to feel meaningful and start showing up like a professional who’s committed to their craft. Not because you’re constantly inspired, but because you made a decision and you’re honoring it.
You learn to hold complexity without letting it flatten you. You can be proud of what you’ve built and acknowledge it’s harder than you imagined. You can want to grow and need rest. You can love your business and occasionally need space from it.
All of it. At the same time. Without the internal narrative that something’s broken.
I don’t know if this is mastery exactly. But it’s something like peace. And I think most of us don’t get here because we bail somewhere in Phase Two, convinced that the struggle means we’re doing it wrong.
What I Think Your Business Actually Needs (And It Might Surprise You)
I’ve been thinking a lot about what actually makes a practice sustainable. Not just profitable (though obviously that matters) but the kind of sustainable where you’re still doing this in five years and not fantasizing about walking away.
And I keep coming back to this: your business doesn’t need you to be passionate every day.
It needs you to be consistent.
It doesn’t need you to love every moment.
It needs you to show up anyway.
It doesn’t need you to feel inspired.
It needs you to make decisions.
Which sounds almost anticlimactic, right? But stay with me. Here’s what I’ve noticed in practices that last:
They set standards even when they’re tired of holding them.
Your patients don’t know you’re having a hard week. Your team still needs clear direction. The operations don’t pause because you’re feeling off. It’s not that you have to be “on” all the time. It’s that the business has to function regardless of your current emotional state.
They protect boundaries even when it feels easier to just push through.
Because here’s the thing about resentment: it doesn’t build character. It builds contempt. And contempt will eat away at your practice faster than any external challenge. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is give yourself permission to be done for the day.
They acknowledge the hard without camping out in it.
Tuesday was brutal? Okay. Feel it. Say it out loud. Call a friend who gets it. Then wake up Wednesday and try again. Not because you’ve magically processed everything, but because that’s how this works.
They stop waiting to “feel ready” before taking action.
Some of the best calls I’ve made for my own practice happened on days when I actively didn’t want to deal with anything. I did it anyway. Not because I’m particularly disciplined. Because I’d already made the decision that this mattered, and feelings didn’t get a vote.
I’m not suggesting this is easy. I’m suggesting it’s possible. And maybe that’s enough.
The Question I Can’t Stop Thinking About
Here’s what I keep asking practice owners when they’re beating themselves up for not hitting a revenue goal or struggling with a system that still isn’t working perfectly:
“If one of your kids didn’t make the soccer team or bombed a test, would you tell them they’re fundamentally flawed and should just give up?”
Of course not.
You’d remind them that setbacks are part of growth. You’d help them figure out what to adjust. You’d make sure they knew that one disappointing outcome doesn’t define their potential.
But somehow, when we miss a quarterly goal or launch something that falls flat, we make it mean something about our worth as leaders. We decide it’s evidence we’re not cut out for this. That we should have figured it out by now.
So what makes us think our businesses are different? Why do we interpret a hard season as a sign we’re on the wrong path instead of a sign we’re building something that’s real and therefore complicated?
I don’t have a perfect answer to this. But I wonder if we’ve confused “difficult” with “wrong” somewhere along the way. And that confusion is keeping us stuck in cycles of self-doubt instead of moving forward with the practices we actually love, just not every single day.
Here’s What I Want You to Know
You’re allowed to be tired.
You’re allowed to look at your schedule and feel overwhelmed by it.
You’re allowed to occasionally think, Why did I sign up for this?
You’re allowed to love what you’ve built and still need a break from it.
None of that makes you ungrateful. None of that means you’re in the wrong business. It just means you’re human, and you’re doing something hard.
What I’m learning (slowly, imperfectly) is that you can be all of those things and still be the founder your business needs. You don’t have to wait until you’re “feeling it” to make good decisions. You don’t have to be inspired to be effective.
Your business needs someone who can hold complexity. Who can sit in the tension between “this is really hard” and “this is still worth it” without needing to resolve that tension immediately.
And I think that’s you. Even if it doesn’t feel like it today.
So maybe instead of waiting for the day when it all feels easy again, we build practices that work even when we’re not totally in love with them that week.
We set up systems that run when we’re running on fumes. We create teams that can hold things steady when we need to step back. We give ourselves permission to have complicated feelings about something we’ve poured everything into.
Not because we’re failing. Not because we’re burned out.
Because we’re building something that matters enough to be difficult sometimes.
And I think that might be the most honest definition of success I’ve found yet.
Where This Leaves Us
Your business is kind of like parenting. And if you have kids, you know what that means.
It means showing up even when you’re tired. Making decisions when you’re not sure. Holding the long view when the short term feels overwhelming.
It means commitment isn’t about how you feel on any given Tuesday. It’s about what you keep doing anyway.
The practice owners I admire most aren’t the ones who make it look effortless. They’re the ones who are honest about how hard it is and who show up anyway.
So yeah, some days you might need a break from the thing you built.
That’s not a crisis. That’s just Thursday.
And the fact that you keep showing up anyway? That’s not despite your humanity. That’s because of it.
That’s what builds something that lasts.
If you’re stuck in this pattern and want help building a practice that works even when you’re not totally in love with it that week, let’s talk. Book a discovery call with us and we’ll figure out what actually needs to shift, and what just needs some grace.