What would you do if your business was generating $60,000 a month—but you knew in your gut that it was no longer the right business to build? Most leaders are taught to recognize opportunity, pursue growth, and keep pushing when things get difficult. But what happens when the harder—and potentially more courageous—decision is to let go of something that is already working? That is the leadership decision Aasha LaCount faced. Aasha is the Founder & CEO of Beyond EQ, where she works with leaders and organizations on emotional intelligence, leadership performance, decision-making, and the human factors that can affect business performance. Her current work focuses heavily on helping leaders identify internal issues that can affect teams, performance, retention, and growth. But getting to this point was anything but straightforward. After losing her job in 2021, Aasha started her own business and built a functioning direct-to-consumer business around technology and online courses. Then came a series of wake-up calls. She began realizing that the business she had built might no longer be aligned with where she was going. The problem? She was afraid to leave it. She ultimately made the difficult decision to let the business go and move more fully into working with corporate leaders. And here's the part that makes this story especially relevant to leaders: The business was generating approximately $60,000 a month when she made the decision. In this episode of Create the Future with Rick Williams, Aasha and Rick explore what it really takes to make a difficult leadership decision when the numbers, the outside opinions, and your own fear may all be pulling you in different directions. 𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞, 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬: • How leaders recognize when a successful business or strategy is no longer aligned? • Why leaders sometimes need to let go of what is working to make room for what comes next? • The courage required to make a major business pivot • How fear can keep leaders holding on too long? • Why trusting yourself matters when making high-stakes decisions? • How to use advisors without surrendering your own judgment? • How difficult decisions can reveal which advisors and relationships you can truly trust? • The role of emotional intelligence in leadership and decision-making • How leaders can recognize the difference between intuition, fear, and old patterns? • Why Aasha believes leaders need an “inner compass”? • Why purpose, impact, relationships, and legacy can matter just as much as financial results? • How leaders can continue moving forward even when they are afraid? One of the most powerful lessons from Aasha's story is that a decision isn't necessarily wrong simply because it doesn't produce the outcome you originally expected. Sometimes the decision gives you alignment. Sometimes it gives you a lesson. Either way, leaders can learn from it and move forward. Aasha's story is a powerful reminder that leadership isn't only about knowing when to push forward. It's also about knowing when to stop, step back, listen, and choose a different path. ------------------------------- 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐀𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐀 𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓 Aasha LaCount is the Founder & CEO of Beyond EQ and an expert in emotional intelligence and leadership development. In the conversation, Aasha explains that she has spent more than a decade coaching and teaching emotional intelligence and leadership development, along with more than two decades as a hospitality and business consultant. Her work has evolved from her own experiences as a CEO and leader—including recognizing the disconnect between what she was teaching leaders and what she was experiencing personally. That realization became part of the foundation for her work with Beyond EQ. Today, Beyond EQ positions emotional intelligence as a business-performance issue, working with leaders and teams to identify internal challenges that can affect decision-making, leadership, retention, and performance. Aasha's story is ultimately about more than emotional intelligence. It is about resilience, self-awareness, courage, difficult decisions, and having the confidence to change direction when the path you are on is no longer the path you are meant to build. 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐌𝐒 & 𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐔𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐓 Rick Williams is a leadership speaker, author, and corporate leader and the host of the Create the Future Podcast with Rick Williams podcast. Create the Future is a forum for leaders to share real stories about difficult decisions they've made for their companies, organizations, and sometimes themselves. Each episode explores the decisions leaders face, how they approached them, what they learned, what worked, what didn't, and what other leaders can take away from the experience. Because the future isn't something we simply wait for. We create the future by the decisions we make today. Take the time to get important decisions right.
