Am I still useful?

The question no one says out loud when things start working

Hi there,

It’s Suze. I’ve received a few lovely emails in the past couple of weeks that you are enjoying this Substack- so thank you! Honestly, I have no content strategy here - I’m just writing week-by-week as a new thought passes my head. So, if there are topics you’d actually like me to write on….please let me know!

For this week - we’re looking a little inward.

I was on what was meant to be a quick catch-up call with a couple of founder friends the other week, and as these things tend to go, it stretched into something much longer. We ended up talking for close to two hours, and at some point the conversation moved away from the usual topics and into something that felt a lot more honest.

Not the early chaos, not the hard moments when things are breaking, but the quieter shift that happens when the team is strong, the business is moving, and you’re no longer needed in the same way you once were.

And the question that sits underneath that, whether you say it out loud or not, is a simple one, but not an easy one to answer.

Who the hell am I in this now?

When the business starts to outgrow you

That shift doesn’t happen all at once. It happens slowly, almost without you noticing.

In the early days, everything is very clear. You’re in it all. Every decision runs through you, every problem is yours to solve, and you can feel a direct line between what you do and what happens next. It’s exhausting, but it’s also grounding in a strange way because your role is so obvious.

And then, if things go well, that starts to change.

The team gets stronger. People take things over fully. Decisions happen without you being in every detail. The business keeps moving, even when you’re not right in the middle of it.

Which is the goal. That’s what you’ve been trying to build.

But I remember noticing, in a way that surprised me, that it didn’t feel exactly like relief. It felt strange. And if I’m being completely honest, worse than strange at times.

It’s Bigger Than a Change of Role

There were moments where it tipped into something closer to an existential crisis. Not just about my role in the company, but about my value more broadly. Like… if I’m not the one doing everything anymore, who am I? What am I actually contributing? Where do I fit?

I tried to solve it at one point, thinking it was something external that needed fixing. But it didn’t really change anything.

It wasn’t an external problem.

It was internal.

And I think that’s the part that’s hard to accept.

You Don’t Realize How Much Your Identity is Tied to Doing

For so long, I knew exactly where I fit. I was in everything. Fixing, building, stepping in wherever something needed to move faster or be clearer. I could end the day and point to what I had done and know that it had moved because of me.

I don’t think I realized how much I relied on that feeling until it wasn’t there in the same way.

Having more space sounds good in theory, but in practice it’s unsettling.

When things are quieter, a thought starts to drift in:

What am I actually doing right now?
Am I still adding anything?
Was I more useful before?

You don’t say them out loud. And they don’t really make sense. The business is working. In many ways, it’s working better than it did before. But that’s almost what makes it harder.

The Loss Is Subtle, But Real

At times, this evolution feels like a kind of loss. Not of the business, but of how it used to feel to be in it. The constant pace, the urgency, the problem solving. The sense that you were in the thick of something being built in real time.

That goes away, or at least it changes. And what replaces it is quieter. Less defined. Harder to measure.

There’s no longer a clear end to the day, the point at which you feel like you’ve pushed something forward with your own hands. If you’ve spent years operating in that mode, there can be moments where the new version just feels a bit flat. Even when everything is going well.

Sometimes You Fall Back to Old Patterns for the Wrong Reason

I remember catching myself one night, pretty late, rewriting something that didn’t actually need me. It was already good enough. It was going to ship either way.

Halfway through, I had this moment of realization. I wasn’t doing it because it mattered. I was doing it because it felt like the old version of my role, of me. Because it gave me something I could point to and say: this is mine.

It wasn’t a great feeling to sit with, but it was honest.

Your Value Shifts Before You Can Identify It

I think what’s actually happening in this phase is that your value is changing before your identity has caught up to it. You’re no longer the person who needs to be in everything, and if you are, something is probably broken.

But the new version of your role is harder to define in a tangible sense. Your value is in how you think about things. The patterns you see. The way you connect dots across the business. The clarity you can bring when things feel messy or unclear.

It matters a lot. It’s probably the highest leverage thing you can do.

But it doesn’t give you that same immediate feedback loop.

So there are moments where it feels like… am I doing enough?

If You Don’t Change, You Become the Constraint

The uncomfortable truth is that if you don’t make that shift, you do start to get in the way.

Not in an obvious way. Not because you’re doing anything wrong. Just in small ways. Staying too close to things that don’t need you anymore. Stepping in when someone else could have figured it out. Making it a little harder for your team to fully own what they’re capable of owning.

It comes from a good place. It always does. But over time, it limits how far the business can go.

Saying It Out Loud Helps — More Than You’d Expect

I think one of the most helpful things I did, even though it felt slightly awkward, was just saying it out loud. To my team, but also to myself.

That I needed to change how I was showing up. That I couldn’t be in everything in the same way anymore. That their ownership needed to expand, and that I needed to actually let that happen.

And being honest that I would probably slip back into old habits, because it’s hard not to. (And for my team who read this…I know you’re laughing at me and saying “Suze, you still do”…)

You’re Not Losing Your Place, You’re Changing It

Because that earlier version of you, the one who built this thing, is still there. And in many ways, it’s the reason any of this exists at all.

But it’s not the version that takes your business forward. Your new role is harder to define. It’s less visible. It doesn’t feel as immediately rewarding. And there are moments where it feels disorienting, or even a little sad, to not be needed in the same way you once were.

But I’ve come to see that as part of the process. Not something gone wrong, but something actually working.

It’s a strange feeling, to build something that no longer depends on you in the way it once did. But that’s also the point.

Until next week,

Suze