When Clarity Isn’t Enough: Why Visionaries Feel Stuck in Well-Oiled Businesses
You’ve done the work.
EOS is humming.
Your team is solid.
Metrics look good.
And still… you’re bored. Or disconnected. Or low-key fantasizing about selling it all and raising goats in the mountains.
Welcome to the post-clarity funk.
In a recent Owner’s Room episode of the Culture Focused Practice podcast, I sat with this exact feeling—when everything in your business technically works, but internally, you feel like a car stuck in neutral. The engine’s on, the system’s sound, but something isn’t clicking.
This isn’t burnout in the traditional sense. It’s not a crisis or a collapse. It’s the quiet restlessness that sneaks in after you’ve built something functional and no longer feel needed in the same way. It’s grief. It’s boredom. It’s the byproduct of getting exactly what you worked for and realizing… now what?
I riffed on several questions during the episode—like what clarity really feels like (spoiler: sometimes it’s the urge to sprint down a hallway), and what happens when momentum stalls even though nothing is technically wrong.
Here’s the truth: clarity isn’t certainty. And systems don’t fix your spirit.
When you’re a builder, a founder, a visionary—sometimes that craving to “blow it all up” isn’t about destruction. It’s about expression. It’s about needing a new creative outlet, a new challenge, a fresh edge to push up against.
So if you’re here, in this space—wondering if something is wrong with you because you’re not lit up by what used to set you on fire—pause before you panic. You don’t have to torch your practice. You don’t have to start over. But you might need to start something alongside it. A new project. A new role. A new rhythm that lights your brain up again.
And if you want to talk about it with other people who get it—not just the operations, but the emotional undercurrent of leadership—Inside the Living Practice was made for you.
Because the hardest part isn’t building the machine. It’s staying connected to yourself once it’s running.
About the Author
Dr. Tara Vossenkemper is a gently-candid consultant who’s been in the trenches of group practice ownership since 2017. With a hearty blend of depth, irreverence, and a solid dash of humor (or so she hopes), Tara helps practice owners navigate the can-be-messy process of hiring, culture-building, vision generating, people-y issues, and all the other things that keep you up at night. When she’s not consulting, she’s probably wrangling her animals or homeschooling her kids—because why not add more chaos to the mix?
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