Most people think the hardest part of building a company is the workload.

The hours.
The pressure.
The responsibility.

But if you’ve ever built anything real (a product, a team, a company...) you know that’s not the real challenge.

The hardest part is maintaining momentum when everything breaks at once.

Because there comes a moment in every founder’s journey where problems don’t arrive one at a time… they arrive as a stack.

When the plan collapses all at once...

You think you’re finally catching your breath.

The roadmap is clear.
Your team is aligned.
Customers are excited.

Then the spiral begins.

A key hire you were counting on suddenly backs out, after hours of interviews, alignment sessions, and onboarding prep. You already planned work around them, and suddenly you have to start all over and the entire timeline shifts.

Another person, someone who carried a huge part of the operational load, decides to leave unexpectedly. Not maliciously, just at a moment where you can’t afford to lose continuity.

And sometimes it’s worse.

You make a hire who looks great on paper, you might have worked with them before and you think you know them; but internally they disrupt everything: the team dynamic, the communication flow, the energy. Meetings become tense. People stop sharing openly. Productivity drops. You start noticing the subtle signs (hesitation, misunderstandings, avoidance) and you realise this one decision is draining the team more than helping it.

Meanwhile, on the customer side, the deal you were sure would close this quarter, the one your financial forecasts were dependant on, suddenly gets pushed to “next year.”

Not because of you.

Because someone on their side needs “more time,” “new approvals,” or “a revised budget.”

All polite words hiding the same truth: your plans just shifted by months.

And behind all this, there also might be internal tension, misalignment with a co-founder or a senior partner have been brewing for a while, and the stress of it all is making it worse. Conversations that used to flow now feel transactional. Decisions that used to be simple turn into debates. Instead of clarity, you get friction. Instead of momentum, you get second-guessing.

It’s the type of conflict that drains.
Slowly, quietly, consistently.
Until one day it explodes

And when all of this hits at the same time, it can feel like the entire company is wobbling.

But these moments teach you something essential:

The weight doesn’t get lighter.

You'r just gets stronger.

The work stays heavy, you get stronger

People assume that once you hit a certain milestone, the load becomes manageable.

It never does.

If anything, the weight increases:

More customers, more expectations, more responsibilities, more relationships to navigate, and more people affected by your decisions.

But what changes is you.

You stop expecting the journey to be calm.
You stop being surprised when plans change overnight.
You learn to correct quickly instead of emotionally.
You recover faster because you’ve recovered before.

And this is where the real shift happens, the shift that separates people who build from people who quit.

It’s the moment you internalise one of the most powerful truths:

“Every man has two lives; the second begins when he realizes he only has one.”

Suddenly everything becomes clearer.

You stop postponing the decisions you’ve been avoiding.
You stop tolerating toxic behaviour, even if the person is “useful.”
You stop letting misalignment linger.
You stop delaying the uncomfortable conversations.
You stop assuming you’ll have time later, because later is never guaranteed.

You start operating with urgency - not panic.
With intention - not fear.
With clarity - not ego.

Because this is your one life.

Your one shot at building something meaningful.

Momentum becomes your superpower

When everything breaks, most people slow down.

Builders learn to accelerate through the chaos.

Not recklessly.
Not emotionally.
But decisively.

Momentum, not talent, not funding, not the “perfect plan”, is what keeps a company alive when the ground shakes.

Momentum is what turns messy moments into learning instead of spirals.
Momentum is what rebuilds teams after a misaligned hire.
Momentum is what neutralises delays, setbacks, and shifting timelines.

Momentum compounds.

If everything feels heavy right now, good!

It means you’re in the part of the journey where the work is shaping you.

You're getting stronger.
Your mindset is shifting.
Your second life has already begun.

And you’re becoming the person capable of carrying the future you’re trying to build.

Keep going :)

Not because it’s easy, but because the hardest parts of the journey are always the ones that change you the most.