The Quiet Bottleneck Holding Women Founders Back from the Next Stage
You built the business by being the one who gets things right. Now that same instinct is the thing holding you back.
If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, you already know the trap. You also know how convincing it sounds when it’s your name on the work.This week on FoundHer Rising, Adyna K. Pressley sat down with Christine Hakkola to talk about the moment she realized her greatest professional strength had quietly become the ceiling on her business. After 34 years in corporate, a layoff she saw coming, and an unplanned pivot to entrepreneurship, the hardest part wasn’t building the offer. It was learning to let go of it.
The Layoff That Felt Like Permission
Adyna had already been planning her exit. Four years inside a Vice President of Operations role had left her burnt out, politically exhausted, and watching the benefits she’d been grandfathered into get stripped away. She had even pulled her retirement estimate the night before the layoff hit.
When the call finally came, she closed her laptop and felt relief. Not panic. Not grief. A weight off her chest.
The first decision she made was the one most founders never quite let themselves say out loud: she didn’t want to work for anyone else again.
The Nashville Lunch That Changed Everything
Adyna’s plan was simple. Take a year off. Travel. Then figure it out.
What actually happened was a girls’ trip in Nashville where her friends went around the table sharing what they did for work. By the time it was Adyna’s turn, she’d already opened with well, I’m unemployed. Then she started talking about the team she’d built, the people she’d mentored into VP roles, the work she actually loved.
Her friends looked at her and asked the question that became the business: Why aren’t you doing this for yourself?
That question landed on a solo Amtrak trip to Niagara Falls a few weeks later. The first thing that came out wasn’t a business plan. It was a book, Rise Into You: Reclaiming Power, Love, Life, and Legacy.
The Surprise Wasn’t the Marketing. It Was the Help.
When Christine asked what was harder than expected about being a founder, Adyna gave a one-word answer.
Help.
She’d spent 34 years being the face of someone else’s company. Now she was the face of her own. The same instinct that made her excellent inside corporate, the my name is on it, so it has to be right instinct, was the exact thing keeping her in the weeds.
This is the bottleneck most heart-centered founders hit somewhere between $150K and the next stage of growth. The work that got you here, doing it personally, doing it well, being indispensable, is the work that will keep you stuck.
Three Things That Have to Shift
1. The belief that delegation is a personality trait. Adyna spent her entire corporate career promoting people, training them up, setting them up to leave. She did it instinctively for her team. When it came to her own business, the same instinct disappeared. The shift wasn’t learning to delegate. It was noticing she already knew how, and choosing to apply it to herself.
2. The standard for who you let in. Hiring help doesn’t mean hiring anyone. Adyna’s lens is specific. Same vision. Same work ethic. Consistent. Reliable. The person you hire has to meet the bar you’ve already been holding yourself to, or the trust never lands.
3. The honesty about what’s actually in the way. Adyna’s growth edge isn’t time. It isn’t money. It’s systems, and the willingness to step back from work she could still do herself. Her self-awareness about it is the thing that will get her through it. The founders who stall here are the ones who can’t name the resistance out loud.
What This Looks Like in Practice
For a service-based founder, the move usually starts smaller than expected. Not a Chief of Staff. Not an immediate full team build-out. A capable, trainable person handling the work that keeps you from the work only you can do.
Administrative tasks. Inbox triage. Calendar. The repeatable parts of client delivery. The pieces you keep telling yourself are quicker to just do.
They aren’t quicker. They’re cheaper to do yourself, and that is a different thing.
The Quote Worth Sitting With
When Adyna talked about going back to her old Brooklyn neighborhood and speaking to a women’s group of seniors who had started their own community at 65 and better, she said something that lands harder the longer you’ve been building:
“Reinvention doesn’t retire.”
The founders who scale aren’t the ones who figure out the perfect funnel. They’re the ones who keep reinventing what they’re willing to hand off, what they’re willing to stop carrying, and what they’re willing to trust someone else to hold.
Where to Go From Here
If you’re sitting at the scaling edge right now, the question isn’t should I hire? It’s what am I refusing to let go of, and what is that refusal costing me?
Listen to the full conversation with Adyna K. Pressley on FoundHer Rising, wherever you get your podcasts.
If this is the season you’re in and you want a thinking partner who works with founders navigating exactly this shift, book your free Growth Clarity Call at HakkolaHorizons.com.
Full Transcript
Christine Hakkola: Welcome to FoundHer Rising, the podcast for women founders in wellness, coaching, and consulting who are ready to build businesses that create freedom, impact, and income. I’m your host, Christine Hakkola, business coach, former psychotherapist, and mentor to women scaling service-based businesses.
Today I’m joined by Adyna K. Pressley, founder and CEO of AKP Innovations based in New York. She helps women build leadership, confidence, and purpose-driven businesses through her global empowerment work. Adyna, welcome to the show.
Adyna K. Pressley: Thank you for having me.
Christine Hakkola: I’m so excited to have you. I’ve heard so much about you and I’m really excited to connect and dive into your story. I want to start with something that maybe not so fun, a layoff. You were laid off at some point in your corporate career, and it sounds like that was really a launching point for you. Can you share a little bit about what was going on in your life then and what that was like?
Adyna K. Pressley: To be honest with you, the layoff, I kind of saw coming. We had some, you know how it is in corporate, a shift on the executive team. There was some mismanagement and bad decisions being made during that time. So the writing is on the wall when they start changing some of the benefits that you’re used to. I was there for 34 years, so I was grandfathered into a lot of those benefits. And when I started seeing those start to shift and some even getting eliminated, I already knew that eventually it would happen. During the second wave of layoffs, I was one of them. And to be perfectly honest with you, I was actually happy.
Christine Hakkola: Wow. What were you happy about?
Adyna K. Pressley: In my 34 years in my career, I would say the first 30 years I loved. You’ve heard that saying, if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life. That’s how I felt in that first 30 years. The last four years I got promoted to Vice President of Operations. So now I’m going back to the corporate side of things, dealing with the politics associated with running the business through operations. When I was in my other position, I was VP in our regional offices. So I was client-facing. I was doing education with their employees. I was helping the administrators run their business, run the plan. I loved that because I had a lot of client contact. Now I’m dealing with the big wigs. Totally different ball game. And honestly, I hated it.
Christine Hakkola: You have those experiences and you know what you don’t want to ever do again.
Adyna K. Pressley: Yes. And during that time, we had so much change going on. The leadership just wasn’t there. Not everybody is meant to be leaders. You shouldn’t be promoted to management or executive because you sold billions of dollars in product. You should do that job if you are qualified to do that job. And I noticed when I got there that a lot of these people just weren’t.
Christine Hakkola: It’s so hard, especially when you have the awareness and you know what it takes to be a good leader.
Adyna K. Pressley: Exactly. So at that time I was burnt out, like literally. I know everybody uses that word nowadays, but I really was burnt out. I felt myself, what I always did was I motivated my team. I had a staff from all across the United States. So my job was to make sure that I kept them motivated. I remember when we were going through all this stuff and I’m telling them there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It was going to get better. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I was unraveling. I was keeping it strong and held together for everybody else, but you can’t do that anymore for yourself.
Christine Hakkola: It’s so tough.
Adyna K. Pressley: I remember it got to the point where I had a full out with my direct report. After I hung up the phone with him, I went and I got my benefit estimate. I was like, let me see what it looks like when I’m ready to retire. I already planned to retire this year because I was just so burnt out. But then the layoff happened and I just took it as, thank you. You guys did me a favor.
Christine Hakkola: I can imagine some of that happiness you described earlier must have been just intermixed with so much relief.
Adyna K. Pressley: It was. When I closed my laptop after having that meeting with the HR person and my direct boss, who I actually enjoyed working with, I felt a ton of bricks lifted up off of my chest. Literally. I sat there and I was just like, they have no idea they really did me a favor.
Christine Hakkola: That’s amazing. So here’s the thing I get curious about, Adyna. A lot of folks when they get laid off would start looking for another job. Not you. You knew you didn’t want to go back to corporate. Help me understand the timeline here, but I know there was a friend’s trip to Nashville that was super pivotal for you. What happened that made you pivot from corporate to being self-employed?
Adyna K. Pressley: My initial response to myself once I closed that laptop was, I don’t want to work for anybody else ever again. I was very clear with that. My initial plan was, okay, I love to travel. So I was going to take a year and I’m just going to travel.
I wound up going on a girls trip to Nashville. You know how it is, you have a bunch of friends, you know each other, you all have a job, but you don’t know what each other do. My cousin who was hosting the girls’ trip said, I saw on TikTok that if you have friends and you know they have a job but you don’t know what they do, they had this thing where you do a PowerPoint and you do a presentation to your friends.
I said, I’m so over presentations. You can have your lunch, but on top of that, you wanted PowerPoint. My corporate days are behind me.
We were having lunch, and we said, since we’re sitting here, let’s just go around the table. As we’re going around, I’m looking at some of my friends like, that’s what you do. I’m totally going to steal this idea and do it with my friends. As we went around and I got to myself, I started off, well, I’m unemployed. Then I started to speak about all the work that I did in the financial sector.
Even though I was in retirement readiness for a pension company, my real love and my real passion was developing the people that worked for me. Even before I got laid off, I made sure that everybody under me was in a better position before I left. A lot of them got raises, got promoted. The ones that directly worked for me, I got them promoted to vice presidents and management positions.
As I was explaining this, they had a lot of questions because they knew that I had such a large team. How did I manage the different personalities and situations and challenges that you come across? I’m telling them, and they looked at me and said, why aren’t you doing this for yourself? I was like, I never really thought about it.
I really thought about it. I took a solo trip to Niagara Falls a couple of weeks later. I’d never been on Amtrak before, so I got on Amtrak. I took my laptop and my headphones and I was just like, let me see what comes out of this. That was the purpose of the trip. What wound up happening before the actual business was my book.
Christine Hakkola: I want to start with the book. What’s it called, Adyna?
Adyna K. Pressley: It’s called Rise Into You: Reclaiming Power, Love, Life, and Legacy. I felt that was so appropriate for what I was going through. I was reclaiming my life. Love. My legacy. And lastly, my power, which was overall what I felt like I was reclaiming by starting my own business.
Christine Hakkola: Love the name. When you opened your own business, what were some of the initial services?
Adyna K. Pressley: It was really the leadership part. I found that when I was in my corporate position, I was limited in the mentorship. Not everybody has that. Not everybody wants to do it. Sometimes women can be a little competitive. And sometimes you think guys are too. They can be a little competitive, and sometimes they gatekeep. That was never me. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t setting somebody up to leave.
Christine Hakkola: I think as a relationship-focused person, that was just counterintuitive to how you operate.
Adyna K. Pressley: Exactly. So I felt like that was a need I needed to address, to be that mentor to any woman, regardless of what stage they are in their life, to help them advance their career, even their personal lives. One of the things that I suffered from, and now there’s no negotiation, is my rest, is my peace, is taking time for myself to reset.
Everybody laughs at me because I talk about Gilberto, who is my massage therapist that I see every month. I’m surprised we’re not in a relationship, we’ve been together so long. That’s my reset, to take that time, that hour every single month to go for my massage.
Christine Hakkola: Talk to us a little bit about the pivot from the corporate world to a short period thinking you’d just be retired, and now stepping into entrepreneurship. What was easier than you expected? What were some of the early wins and what was unexpected or more challenging than you anticipated?
Adyna K. Pressley: Well, I’ll say the early win was, first of all, I knew that if I wanted to grow the business, I needed to be visible. I knew I had the credibility based on the fact that I’ve worked for 34 years. We’re not new to the industry. But now it’s just trying to get out there, trying to be heard, trying to get my story out, trying to get people to like me and trust me, because that’s what people buy.
Christine Hakkola: Yeah. It’s not hard for a lot of us who are doing work that we love. We’re genuinely good-hearted people. We build that trust. But the key is we’ve got to get in front of them.
Adyna K. Pressley: When I started that journey, because I already knew what the plan was as far as what I was going to offer, not only for individual women but also for organizations, I wrote to Oprah.
Christine Hakkola: That’s so cool.
Adyna K. Pressley: I wrote to Oprah because one night I was laying in bed and I couldn’t sleep, scrolling on my phone. I saw a post that said, have you been fired? Are you a woman and have you been fired? I thought about it. I’m like, I am a woman, and I was fired. So I wrote to her, and to be honest with you, I thought nothing of it. I was just like, little old me, who’s going to want to hear what I have to say? Thousands of people were writing in.
The next day, I get a message from her production team and I’m like, no way. I was sitting in my doctor’s office checking my messages because she stepped out, and I started crying. So when she came in, she goes, Adyna, what’s wrong? I said, oh my God, it’s happy news, but I can’t tell you.
Fast forward, I went through the process of meeting with the initial contact and the producers. They loved my story and they asked me, are you available to meet? I was like, absolutely. And if I wasn’t, I’d make myself available. I had to fly out to Atlanta and I changed my trip.
Christine Hakkola: I would have done the same thing, Adyna.
Adyna K. Pressley: Once I did that episode, my little eight minutes of fame really got people to pay me attention. A lot of people started reaching out to me for my services. That was a huge visibility moment.
Christine Hakkola: Not every successful business owner needs to be featured on Oprah, but I can imagine what a blessing that was and how that expedited your visibility.
Adyna K. Pressley: Yes. Aside from that, just getting myself out there, putting myself out there to get people to find value in what I’m doing. I focus on the small to medium-sized businesses because they really don’t have the team or the structure. Starting out with leadership development. That’s one of the things I learned during that girls trip, because a couple of the women had their own businesses, and what they felt challenged with was trying to get good people. I told them, a lot of times it’s not about getting good people. It has to do with the training. Do they know what the business is about? Do they know what the culture is? Do they know what the need is of the clients that you’re serving?
When they thought about it, they were like, oh my God, you’re right. That’s what the real problem is.
Christine Hakkola: And I think that’s what I also like to tell other business owners. You have to know what the problem is that you’re solving. It has to be clear. Otherwise you’re just spinning your wheels.
Adyna K. Pressley: Exactly. And I’m not going to lie, in the beginning I struggled with that because I didn’t know what direction I wanted to go in. But then I realized I’ve always been a chameleon. I always knew how to shift. Whatever the need is, and I have a solution to it, that’s what I’m going to go for.
Christine Hakkola: Before we keep going, I want to say something. If you’re listening to this and thinking, I’m in that season right now, I’d love to talk to you. FoundHer Rising isn’t about polished success stories. It’s about real growth. Hiring decisions. The revenue plateaus. The identity shifts that happen when your business starts stretching you. If you’re building something meaningful in wellness, coaching, or consulting, and you’re willing to have an honest conversation about what scaling actually looks like, apply to be a guest. The link’s in the show notes. I’d love to meet you. Okay, back to the episode.
I think you’re touching on something that I hear from a lot of women service providers. There’s so much that could be said. It’s a full-time job just serving your clients, figuring out how to position your offers, what growth and training you need, how to meet folks where they’re at and give them the best transformation. All the things we want to do as service providers and why we often become entrepreneurs in the first place. But then there’s this whole other piece of running our own business. What were some of the things you experienced early on that you just didn’t anticipate?
Adyna K. Pressley: For me, help.
Christine Hakkola: Say more, Adyna.
Adyna K. Pressley: Even when I was in corporate, I always had a hard time with letting go and letting somebody else do certain things. When I was working in corporate, I was the face of the company. And now working for creating AKP, I’m the face of my company. One of the things that I struggled with, and I always struggled with, was letting go. Letting somebody else take on certain responsibilities. Because my name is on it. I want to make sure it’s done right.
Christine Hakkola: There’s a huge sense of ownership there.
Adyna K. Pressley: Exactly. I always had this sense of, if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself.
Christine Hakkola: Many people are taught that. It’s not like we just have these false beliefs for no reason. We often grow up in a society where as strong, independent women, we are taught that asking for help can be seen as weak. That we should be able to do it all ourselves, carry it all ourselves. It’s really hard when we get to a point in our business where we realize those beliefs aren’t serving us anymore.
Adyna K. Pressley: That’s what I had to learn. I had to learn how to let go because that was holding me back. I had other work to do. I really shouldn’t be dealing with administrative tasks or responding to people. You can get somebody that’s capable and trainable to do that.
Christine Hakkola: What would you say was the biggest mindset shift or belief that you had to break down to be willing to trust people, hire people, rely on others?
Adyna K. Pressley: I had to believe in myself that if you want to get to that level of independence, you’re going to have to take the time. You have to do the work to get that person to help you. Make the time to train somebody up to be a mini-you. When I think about it, I was like, I did that my whole career. But when it comes to yourself, it’s very personal.
Christine Hakkola: It feels overwhelming at the beginning.
Adyna K. Pressley: It does. But once I felt comfortable, it has to do with the connection with the person. Make sure that you’re aligned. They have the same vision that you have, the same work ethic, they’re consistent and reliable, because I pride myself on being that. I need someone just like that in order to work with.
Christine Hakkola: As you shifted your mindset around that and took the risk to start hiring people, what has that freed you up to do?
Adyna K. Pressley: Right now I’m focusing on speaking. I’ve been loving the speaking space.
Christine Hakkola: That does not surprise me at all, Adyna.
Adyna K. Pressley: I know, I talk a lot. I just came back from Paris. I did a speaking engagement at a women’s conference. I’m actually preparing to go to Oxford University in London in a couple of weeks to speak on a panel for leadership. And then the most exciting one, I’m supposed to be going to Belize to speak at a prison. I’m going to speak to both men and women, to speak to the power of reinvention and starting over and putting yourself first, self-worth.
Christine Hakkola: That is fantastic. You told me right at the beginning that your goals are to reach people, to get your message out there, to travel, and you’re literally doing all of those things. When you look into the future, one to three to five years, what is it that you really want to build?
Adyna K. Pressley: It’s not like I want to be famous. If it comes, it comes. But I just want to make a difference in people’s lives, that they can say what you said or what you told me or what you taught me helped me get to where I am right now. It changed my life. Someone told me one time that I saved their life, and it literally made me cry. They really did credit me with saving their life.
Christine Hakkola: This piece about it’s not about being famous, I think a lot of women in my network are worried about how people might perceive them as they become more visible. Most of the women I speak with, what’s really important is impact. Doing meaningful work and creating a lasting positive impact on the people we serve. But what comes hand in hand with having a bigger impact is being more visible. There’s the shadow side of that, that when done poorly can be out of alignment and out of integrity. How have you navigated that balance?
Adyna K. Pressley: Being myself and not changing. I’ve always been like that. When I started in corporate, I started as an entry-level position. As I grew, I was the same Adyna that was in the file room. I’m going to be me no matter where or how I show up. Everybody would say, Adyna has all these friends in the company. I can go to the mailroom and I could get them to do something for me just like I can get someone in another department.
I stay grounded and in my own authentic self. What you see is what you get. I never want to be bigger than who I think I am. First of all, I have a problem with people like that. It’s not that serious. If you say that you’re doing this work for impact, if you’re doing this from your heart and your spirit, because I feel like this was something I was called to do, then I need to make sure that I maintain who I’ve always been. That same Brownsville girl from New York. I grew up in the housing projects that just happened to advance herself. I’m going to still be that same person.
I recently went back to my old neighborhood and I did a session with the seniors. That warms my heart so much. They had started their own women’s group at 65 and better. They invited me to come because I was a hometown hero. That also showed me that reinvention doesn’t retire.
Christine Hakkola: Let’s talk about growth. As you imagine continuing to serve, continuing to be visible, having a bigger impact, with that comes the need for more team, more support, systems, finances. What do you imagine are the growing edges for you specifically as a business owner?
Adyna K. Pressley: It would definitely be the systems. A lot of this I do myself. I’m a very detailed person. I have systems that work for me that keep me in alignment with my to-do list and the projects I’m working on. But I know the systems are going to have to grow, and I’m going to have to step away and be okay with creating something that can run itself.
Christine Hakkola: In my experience of why that is, when our business is smaller and we’re responsible for more things, we’re wearing more of the hats. We can do it however we want. We can use our pen and paper list, our sticky notes, hold things in our head. We all have different strategies. But the problem is, as you grow and especially as you bring on those first few support people, they’re not psychic. They can’t read our minds. Systems start to become necessary so we can train people, document how we do things, what makes our culture, so we can more effectively delegate.
Adyna K. Pressley: I would also say the learning. There’s so much out there, especially with technology and AI. I take an AI course on the side so I can stay up to date with the changes and shifts. It’s been very helpful because it has allowed me to use some virtual assistance to manage some of my responsibilities.
Christine Hakkola: A lot of business owners want to implement it themselves. They want to choose the software. They want to get their hands in there. But the problem is the temptation to get sucked in and to maintain control. Finding that balance between having the control and being the decision-maker, but knowing when to step back, so you don’t end up wearing yet another hat.
Adyna K. Pressley: I feel like as long as I can understand it, I’ll be okay with letting it go. I just need to understand it. It’s not in me to not know what’s going on on the other side. Maybe I need to work on that.
Christine Hakkola: I really appreciate your self-awareness. That ability to recognize where our growth edge is and what we truly need to feel comfortable letting go. We all have it, me too. We all have our areas that are hard. My experience is that self-awareness is going to take you far. Even when we do go too far down a rabbit hole, we can notice, step back, and recover.
Adyna K. Pressley: That is one of my strengths. I know my shortfalls. I know my shortcomings. I hold myself accountable. I’m okay with saying I’m working through it. I’m a work in progress. I’m okay with that.
Christine Hakkola: Same here. I’m in the same club. Adyna, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your journey. I imagine there are listeners out there right now who want to learn a little bit more about who you are, where to find you, maybe watch your Oprah episode. Where is the best place to find you online?
Adyna K. Pressley: My website. It tells my story. What you see is what you get. I’m also on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. I also did a docuseries called Next Level CEO hosted by Daymond John of Shark Tank, and that should be coming out shortly. You can click on the link on my website to see my Oprah feature.
Christine Hakkola: So many ways to interact with you and lots of stuff coming. Thank you, listener, for tuning in to FoundHer Rising. If today’s episode resonated with you, follow the show, share it with another founder, and leave a quick review. It helps more women find these conversations. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or learn more at HakkolaHorizons.com. Until next time, keep rising and keep building the business that gives you freedom to live, lead, and create on your terms.
