I’m Moving to New York for Six Months. Here’s What That Decision Taught Me About Leadership

I’m Moving to New York for Six Months. Here’s What That Decision Taught Me About Leadership

In 13 days, I leave for New York.

Not for a holiday. Not for a conference. For six months.

And I’ll be honest — when I first started sitting with this idea, my immediate instinct was to find reasons it couldn’t work.

The business needs me. The timing isn’t right. There’s too much happening.

Sound familiar?

There is always something happening.

There is always a reason to wait. There is always a version of “responsible” that keeps you exactly where you are — while calling itself leadership.

I’ve watched that version of responsible cost women more than they realise. Not in dramatic ways. In slow, quiet ways that eventually add up. The holiday that keeps getting pushed. The life decision that stays on the “someday” list. The sense that the business you built for freedom has somehow become the thing standing between you and it.

I’ve lived that version too. For longer than I’d like to admit.

Here’s What I Decided to Question

When I started taking this decision seriously — really seriously, not just rolling it around as a nice idea — I did something that felt uncomfortable.

I looked at what would happen if I didn’t go.

And the answer wasn’t dramatic. The business would keep going. Things would keep working. Nothing would fall apart.

But I would stay the same.

And something about that felt like a much bigger cost than the disruption of actually going.

So I started asking different questions.

Not “can the business survive without me being across everything?” but…

“What does it say about how I’ve been leading if it can’t?”

Because the truth is… if your business genuinely cannot function without you present in every decision, every detail, every moving part… that’s a leadership pattern. And patterns can be changed.

What New York has a way of showing you

I’ve visited the city many times over the years. And there’s always a moment, usually somewhere between the pace and the noise and the energy of it, where something in me gets very quiet and very clear.

A version of me built this business. The one who held everything together. Who stayed close to everything. Who made sure nothing dropped.

And then there’s the version of me making this decision.

She doesn’t need to be in everything. She doesn’t measure her value by how much she carries. She doesn’t default to “I’ll just handle it.”

She leads differently.

And the gap between those two versions of me — standing in that city, with all that space around me — becomes very obvious. Clarifying.

Because that gap means something’s evolving.

Most of the women I speak to feel that gap too. They just don’t always recognise it for what it is.

They feel the friction (the exhaustion, the sense that things are working but something still feels off) and they assume they need to push harder. Do more. Get more on top of things.

When really, they’ve just outgrown the way they’ve been leading.

And no one has shown them what comes next.

The leadership conversation nobody’s having

There’s a version of professional development that focuses entirely on skills — strategy, marketing, systems, sales.

And all of that matters.

But there’s another conversation that rarely gets the same airtime. The one about who you’re becoming as a leader. How you’re growing into the version of yourself that your next level of business actually needs.

Not what you need to do.

Who you need to become.

Because you don’t build a different business by staying the same. You build it by becoming the woman who makes different decisions. Who holds things differently. Who has done enough internal work that the external shifts — in the team, in the culture, in the way the business runs — follow naturally.

That shift isn’t something you can strategy your way into. It comes from doing the work. Consistently. In community. With enough space to actually see yourself clearly.

A Room for High-Level Leadership Conversations

Over the next six months, as I go on my journey — I’m inviting a small group of women to take a similar journey with me.

Not physically in New York (though how fun would THAT be!?)…

…but at a small, virtual Table.

The Leaders’ Table is a monthly series, starting THIS Tuesday, 12 May, for women who are ready to close the gap between the leader they are now and the leader their next level of business needs them to be.

Six 90-minute sessions. Live. Intentionally small.

We’ll work through the real dynamics of leading — buy-in, decision-making, role clarity, delegation, stepping back, leading through change. Not as frameworks to memorise. As live conversations, with real situations, in a room of women navigating the same things you are.

It’s not a course. It’s not a mastermind. It’s a room where the work actually gets done.

I built it because I know what changes when women finally have this conversation — with the right people, in the right space. And I wanted to create that before I left.

Because leadership isn’t something you finish. It keeps asking more of you. Just when you think you’ve got your team aligned, something shifts. Someone needs more. A conversation lands that you didn’t expect.

And the women who navigate that well aren’t the ones who work harder.

They’re the ones who’ve done the work to lead differently.

An invitation

If something in this is resonating — if you’ve felt that gap between the business you’ve built and the way you’re currently leading it — I’d love for you to be in the room.

The Leaders’ Table starts 12 May. Spots are limited by design.

👉 Save your seat here: her-business.lpages.co/leaders-table

And whether you join us or not — I hope this lands as a permission slip.

To take the trip. To make the decision. To stop waiting for the right time to live the life your business was supposed to create.

The right time has a way of not arriving on its own.

Sometimes you have to choose it.

Here’s to doing what you love.

x Suzi