Too Busy or Not Busy Enough?

Aug 13, 2025

12:52

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Everyone’s busy but are you TOO busy?

In this solo episode, Bill digs into a leadership trap many fall into: staying chronically busy as a way to avoid real obligations. Extreme busyness often masks poor delegation, insecure leadership, and personal habits that chip away at both your business and your health. Through real stories from his executive coaching work, Bill unpacks what good busy actually looks like, and what needs to shift if you want to lead strategically instead of reactively.

Topics explored in this episode:

(03:12) Case Study: When Your Patterns Tank the Business

*A tech CEO worked on 3 hours of sleep for years

*Company collapsed due to his micromanagement and poor health

*Being needed by everyone = a failure of leadership, not a strength

(07:47) If You Don’t Look in the Mirror, You Can’t Grow

*Refusing to be coached is a huge red flag

*Great leaders change themselves before trying to change others

*The most important transformation is personal

(08:51) Let Go of Low-Tier Work

*Stop obsessing over small-dollar decisions

*Identify what only you can do—and give away the rest

*Shift your identity from operator to visionary

(10:57) Sprinting Is Fine, but Strategic Rest Is Key

*It’s okay to have intense moments

*But if every week is chaos, something’s broken

*You don’t scale by sacrificing yourself

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the Scaling Up Business podcast, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

Join Bill in the Growth Navigator Coaching Program: https://ScalingCoach.com/workshop

Bill on LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/BillGall

Bill on YouTube: https://www.YouTube.com/@BillGallagherScalingCoach

Visit https://ScalingUp.com to learn more about Verne Harnish, our team of Scaling Up Coaches, and the Scaling Up Performance Platform, which includes coaching, learning, software, and summit. We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail. We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around people, strategy, execution, and cash so that they can scale up successfully and beat the odds of business growth.

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