Rachel's business hits $500K and then something always goes wrong
Feb 04, 2026Rachel hit $480K revenue last financial year. She should be excited. She's terrified.
Because this has happened before. Three times.
The pattern: business grows. Momentum builds. She approaches $500K. Then something detonates. A key client leaves. A major project falls apart. She makes a decision so bad it keeps her up at night.
Revenue drops to $350K. She stabilises. Starts climbing again. Approaches $500K. Detonation.
Her business coach thinks the market is cyclical. Her husband thinks she's being dramatic. Rachel thinks she's unlucky.
None of them are right.
Here's what Rachel doesn't know about herself:
Her mother had bipolar disorder. The household followed a rhythm: things are good, then things are catastrophic. Good was never permanent. Good was a warning. The better things got, the worse the coming crash would be.
Rachel absorbed this rhythm like a heartbeat. She doesn't think it. She feels it. As the revenue climbs, a dread builds. Something bad is coming. It always does.
And when the dread becomes unbearable, Rachel — without knowing she's doing it — pulls the pin herself. Picks a fight with the key client. Takes on a project she shouldn't. Makes the bad call.
Because if the crash is coming anyway, at least this way she controls the timing.
That's subconscious programming. Self-sabotage isn't weakness. It's the mind's attempt to manage an outcome it believes is inevitable.
Rachel's accountant can see the pattern in the numbers. He can't see what's causing it. Her therapist might find it — in two years of weekly sessions. And then she still won't know how to build a business past $500K.
This is the gap. The thing between the strategy and the result. Almost nobody knows it's there.
Perry Mardon
