At the start of this year I hit a ceiling in my business, and I knew exactly how I'd broken through every ceiling before it: on grit, adrenaline and a stubborn amount of willpower. This time I didn't want to.
I've been building this business for about 10 years. I rebuilt my entire product suite a few years ago when my health wasn't doing well, and I'm genuinely proud of my clients, my team and the money I've made. I still want to grow and reach more women, and somewhere in January I realised that the next stage wasn't going to come from pushing harder. It was going to come from building a lot of boring stuff in the back end that I'd been avoiding for years.
The ceiling I refused to push through on grit
So I made a list of what the next 12 months would need: a COO, who has now been on board for 4 months, a move away from the launch model toward evergreen funnels, ads, a sales team, and coaching from the Acquisition team on top of the coaching I was already doing.
When I said all of that out loud in the car on the way to my team retreat, I laughed, because I finally understood why I'd been so tired all year. Every single one of those decisions pulled me out of the things I'm naturally good at and into things I'm still learning.
From ignoring everyone to choosing my hard
About 3 years ago my big lesson was to stop listening to everyone else. Someone told me to build a business independent of my face, so I tried. Then I heard I should stop coaching, so I built courses. After a while I was deeply unhappy, because I missed coaching people live more than anything. Once I stopped taking every opinion as an instruction, I got my own business back.
This year's lesson sits right next to that one, and it has less to do with other people and more to do with being brutally honest with myself: if I want something different, I have to decide which hard I'm choosing.
My dad used to quote Henry Ford at us constantly: “If you do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” I couldn't say no to every new thing and still expect a new result.
What my Monday mornings look like now
For years my Monday mornings were sacred. No calls, no webinars, no meetings, just a workout and an easy start.
Now I host a live webinar every Monday while we build the evergreen version, and I'm training for a fitness race on top of that. By 1PM on a Monday I've done the webinar, a hard workout I didn't want to do and a check on my team KPIs. The webinar currently converts 12% of attendees into our sales pipeline, I'm aiming for 20%, and everyone else leaves with something they can use.
I don't believe in hustle that hospitalises you. What I've noticed is that the people I respect most are honest about the grit. I have wealthy friends who turn down dinner because they're knee-deep in contracts they'd rather not read. My dad rows 10 km 6 days a week and does 5 km on the 7th. Online, everyone wants you to believe a successful business is easy, and very often that's because they're selling you something.
Your business has a set point
This summer I thought about quitting more often than I ever have. Your body has a set point: lose weight and it fights to get back to where it was. Businesses have one too, and so do habits.
What stopped me was a simple thought. If I quit right now, at this exact ceiling, and started a new business or rebuilt this one with a different team, I would grow straight back up to this same ceiling and hit the same problems. The situation isn't the issue. My current capacity and skill set are, and the only way to change those is to go through this.
The proof you don't have yet
Up until 3 weeks before my fitness race, I was convinced the organisers would ask me to leave the course because I was too slow. I have a muscle disease, I hadn't run in 15 years, and my legs have never been my friend. Then I practised the full course and finished it in a trial setup. On race day I crossed the line in under an hour and teared up when I saw my parents. “I didn’t know I could do this”.
When I told my coach Sandra about how I felt, she asked me how many other things I believe I can't do, only because I don't have proof yet. That question hit hard, because I'd been quietly handing my power to my new COO, assuming she'd know better because she came from bigger companies. It made me realize: I do know how to lead my team and they trust me to lead. I'm accepting I’m going to be bad at parts of this next stage of growth as I move through it, and that has to be okay.
You work too hard and care too much to let a set point decide how far you can go. Pick your hard on purpose, do it first, and give yourself the chance to collect the proof.
Listen to my full life update here:
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