I hit rock bottom. Here’s what I learned.

Hi fam,

Rock bottom doesn’t always come with drama.
Sometimes it just feels like quiet exhaustion.
A slow burnout that sneaks up on you —
Until one day, you're sitting there wondering:
How the hell did it come to this?

For me, it happened while everything looked “successful.”
Clients. Revenue. Momentum.
From the outside: growth.
From the inside: chaos.

I had no space to think.
Slack was a war zone.
The team relied on me for everything.
I couldn’t disconnect without the business falling apart.

I wasn’t building a business.
I was building a trap.

Looking back, here’s what I learned from that phase:

1. Growth without structure is a ticking time bomb.
You can scale revenue, sure. But if your backend is broken, you’re just multiplying stress.

2. Founders underestimate the cost of decision fatigue.
When everything depends on you, you stop being creative.
You stop being a leader — and start being a firefighter.

3. There’s no clarity in motion.
Moving fast isn’t the same as moving forward.
I had to slow down to fix what was under the hood.

4. Systems don’t kill creativity — they protect it.
I always thought structure would box me in.
Turns out, it gave me freedom.

It took me hitting the wall to see this.
But it doesn’t have to be that way for everyone.

Most founders wait too long to face what’s really going on.
Not because they’re lazy — but because it’s working just enough
to not feel urgent.

Until it does.

If you’re there now, I get it.
Just know this:
You can rebuild it.
One clear system at a time.
One decision at a time.
One boundary at a time.

Cheers Markus