S8E2: The $3 Million Job Nobody Warned You About (And Why It’s Keeping You Trapped)

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Hitting $3 million in revenue is supposed to feel like you made it.

But for a lot of founders, this is the point where the business quietly starts owning you.

In this episode of the Cash Flow Podcast, Pam talks about a pattern she sees over and over again with founders scaling from high seven figures toward eight figures. The company looks successful. Revenue is up. The team is bigger. From the outside, everything checks out.

But the founder can’t step away.
If they’re not there, things slow down—or fall apart completely.

That’s not failure. It’s what happens when growth outpaces structure.

Pam breaks down how founders accidentally create a “$3 million job” by staying in the middle of every decision, every problem, and every fire. Early on, that level of involvement is necessary. But as the business grows, it becomes the very thing that keeps it fragile, exhausting, and hard to scale.

Using real examples and a few analogies that will probably hit a little too close to home (the gangly ten-year-old, the bicycle vs. the machine), Pam walks through what actually has to change if you want a business that can grow without grinding you down.

🔑 What We Talk About:
1. Why long hours and constant involvement aren’t something to be proud of
2. How founders end up building high-paying jobs instead of scalable businesses
3. The difference between growth and maturity (and why most businesses get stuck here)
4. Why effort fills the gap when systems don’t exist—and why that’s risky
5. The three shifts founders have to make to move from operator to owner:
6. Designing decisions instead of being the decision
7. Building systems instead of acting as the glue
8. Creating durability instead of playing the hero

The question every scaling founder needs to answer honestly:
If I disappeared for two weeks, what would actually break?

Pam also introduces the Founder Removal Exercise, a simple but uncomfortable worksheet designed to help you spot where you’re still the system—and where the business needs better design, not more effort.

If you’re serious about scaling past $3M without