The Benefits of Slow Growth in your Online Business

This transcript has been automatically created and minimally edited/formatted. As such, there may be some errors in the text.
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[Episode preview]
When we are pursuing real lasting sustainable success, we know that an increase in assets and resources are very often a natural by-product of success. But we also know that they are not the definition of success. And actually that defining success based off of how much you can get with how little time and how little work is often actually a contributor to the exact things that those same messages often say that they prevent. And the reason for this is that this definition of speedy success keeps us focused more on external achievements rather than internal satisfaction, fulfillment and joy.
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[Podcast Intro]
Hey, welcome to the Sustainable Success podcast. This is your home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I’m Carly Jo Bell, the Sustainable Success mentor and your guide on this journey with self trust as your North Star and foundations under your feet, you’ll be able to look external for ideas, internal, for answers and build your business your way. Let’s dive in.
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[Episode begins]a little while ago, I published a post called How I grew My Facebook Group from 0 to 1000 in three years. You know, the beginning of that title might sound familiar. I mean, how many pieces of content, blogs, like emails, all the stuff have you seen that are like how I did this in this amount of time? But I think maybe the surprising part of that title is the three years part. How I grew my Facebook group from 0 to 1000 in three years. No, I’m not here to talk about how I grew my Facebook group from 0 to 1000 in three years. Um If you want to read that, feel free to check out the blog post, I’ll drop it in the show notes. But the reason I talk about this is because one of the tenants of the dominant online business culture of Speedy success is that getting the most you can in the least amount of time with the least amount of work is often seen as either a conscious or unconscious signifier of success. And so the reason we see so much like how I did this and this teeny tiny amount of time, how I, you know, went to six figures in six months or whatever it is is because Speedy success, the culture of Speedy success wants to sell us on this idea that the only way to be successful quote unquote is to get the most you can in the least amount of time with the least amount of work in the definition of Speedy success in the, in the outwork of speedy success growing my Facebook group to 1000 people in three years is a failure. Truthfully. It’s like, what are you doing all of those three years? How come it took you so long? Now? You know, if you go read the blog post, you’ll know that my business had a six figure year and a multi six figure year in those three years of running the Facebook group with less than 1000 people. And also what I talked about in that blog post too is that I actually enjoyed those three years. I loved nurturing and connecting with my, what some would call tiny community of people. I loved the work I was doing in those years. I really enjoyed those years and the number of people in the Facebook group had nothing to do with my success in terms of 1000 people or less than 1000 people or whatever did not determine how successful I was able to be when we are pursuing real lasting sustainable success, we know that while an increase in assets or resources like your revenue, income clients, team size, even growing your following, we know that an increase in assets and resources are very often a natural by-product of success. But we also know that they are not the definition of success and actually that defining success in this way, defining success based off of how much you can get with how little time and how little work is often actually a contributor to the exact things that those same messages often say that they prevent burnout breakdown or even decisions to burn everything down. And the reason for this is that this definition of success, this externally focused definition of success defines whether we are successful or a failure based off of what we can achieve rather than our experience of creating any of those external achievements. This definition of speedy success keeps us focused more on external achievements rather than internal satisfaction, fulfillment and joy. My questions here are always, are you doing work that you love doing? Are you doing it in the ways that you actually love doing it? Are you doing it with the people that you love working with? Are you building a business trying to reach this external achievement with the least amount of work and the least amount of time or are you really building that real lasting sustainable success in which you get paid really freaking well to do that work you love doing in the way you love doing it with the people you love working with? And are you waiting to experience that satisfaction, that fulfillment, that joy? Are you waiting to actually do the work that you want in the way that you want with the people that you want? Are you waiting to do those things when you reach your goal? Which is often very indicative of being on the path of speedy success or are you allowing yourself and setting yourself up and equipping yourself to be able to experience all of those things at every step and in compounding increments throughout the entire journey. This is what happens when you prioritize sustainable success, you enjoy the journey and you release yourself incrementally. Of course, because even the release is a journey, but you release yourself from the pressures that come from meeting more faster in order to be quote unquote successful. So what I want to really talk about in this conversation today here is really about why I’m so grateful that I have grown at a slow pace. We celebrated five years in business in October of 2023. And when I look back at these five years, you know, I mean, even three or four years ago, I thought, oh, I’ll be a millionaire next year because I had been sold this message of speedy success that, you know, you just in three years of business, you’ll have a million dollar business or, you know, basically it’s like that’s, that’s the goal you have to work toward this million dollar business and it has to happen with the least amount of time and the least amount of work like have your scalable off or you know, like do one to many skip 1 to 1, like charge super high price points so you can get there like all of these things are so indicative of speedy success. And, and at the beginning of my time in business, I was absolutely wrapped up in this culture of speedy success as I think so many of us are. But now as I look back at the last five years and I have not had a million dollar a year, am I working toward that? Still? Absolutely. That’s gonna be a really fun little milestone for me. But when I look back, what I really see is so much gratitude for the fact that I did not grow at that pace, that was defined as success by the culture of speedy success. And truly, I see so clearly that if I had grown at that pace, that I honestly would probably be the person who would have to be burning out. I would have broken down and I probably would have burned a lot of things in my business completely to the ground and had a lot of, let’s say more negative consequences, more negative side effects. Because I think part of, you know, when you’re that big quote unquote, you end up having a much like larger ship to turn and it takes a lot more effort and it ends up, I think in some ways like hurting more people and that kind of thing too. So anyway, I want to talk about why I’m really grateful for my slow growth. But really within this, I’m also going to kind of walk through what I see are some of the benefits of quote unquote slow growth. Now, the little caveat here is that I truly believe and I’ve seen this for myself, I’ve seen this for clients that when you prioritize real lasting sustainable success in your business success actually happens faster. Not only because like you actually start to feel successful, like literally right away almost like you’re like, wow, I see this working. Wow, this is so fun. Wow. I’m enjoying showing up for my business. But also because it’s such a normal phenomenon that when you are actually enjoying what you’re doing and you’re getting fulfillment from it and you’re really confident in what you’re doing and everything is feeling really good in business. That doesn’t mean there’s not hard things, there’s always hard things. But when you are in that space, then the right people are attracted to working with you and then you’re also much more open to your creativity into inspiration. And you get these little like intuitive hits almost or insights into what you want to do next, what’s aligned and you keep moving deeper and deeper into what I would classify as your own alignment. And that ends up having very natural side effects, like increasing your revenue, increasing the number of clients, increasing your referrals, increasing even your reach and your reputation. So all that to say, I really do believe that actually sustainable success is one of the fastest ways to real lasting success. But that’s a little bit of a different conversation here. So let’s talk about the benefits of slow growth and I’m gonna frame them like I said, from why I’m grateful for slow growth. But I invite you to really think about what this means and what this looks like for you. And if this is a benefit that you see as well in your own business, but also this is a benefit that maybe you are not yet experiencing, but that you would like to and that maybe prioritizing sustainable success and exiting the culture of speedy success even more will help you be able to start experiencing in your business. So the first thing that I’m really grateful for in terms of growing at a what many people would classify as a slow pace is that doing so has given me a lot of room to experiment and to play on a smaller scale. I really see like so many of these businesses that you know, they have larger teams, they have hundreds, even thousands of clients, they have all of this kind of like stuff built around them trying to turn that ship. I don’t know why I keep using a ship analogy, but that’s kind of what’s coming to mind trying to turn that ship when you have all of that weight, which is not to say it’s bad weight just as weight when you have all of that weight in the ship, it just takes a lot more effort than when you’re on a sailboat. When you’re on a little sailboat. Maybe even, you know, it could even be a yacht, I guess. I don’t know. However you wanna classify your boat yourself. I guess I’ve seen mine as a little bit of a sailboat, but when you’re in a sailboat, it’s gonna take a lot less effort to turn a sailboat than it is going to turn a cargo ship. Let’s say what I mean by that and what I see that means within my business specifically is that because I have now just one team member, I’ve had, well, one, like employee, one team member. In that case, I of course, work with contractors and that kind of thing too. But with the one team member who she’s been with us for a year or so now with one team member with, you know, I have a dozen or so clients at any one time. Of course, much more people on courses and that kind of thing. But on our little sailboat, if we want to shift gears on something, we shift gears. If I have an idea for something and I want to implement it, I implement it. There’s not as much like kind of almost red tape of, well, if I do this, then it’s going to impact hundreds of people or even just dozens of people. And I’m going to have to know, like, make this adjustment and do this kind of thing and, and do all of these prest steps before I can actually do the thing that I want to do. So what this has done is it’s allowed me that space to try things to see what I like to see what I don’t like to see what I need to shift, to see what feels good to see what’s working for clients, to see what’s not working for clients and to make those adjustments from there, it has allowed me to be playful. It’s allowed me to say, oh, you know, it sounds really fun. Let me try that. I can’t tell you how many offers I’ve created in the last year that literally just came because I was like, oh, that sounds fun. Let’s do it. And because I’m not carrying the weight of a much larger team, the weight of hundreds of clients that I’m having to, you know, like, really show up for and be very present for and all of that. I have that capacity to be able to make those shifts and to be able to just kind of follow my whimsy a little bit. Well, of course, still really holding the responsibilities that I do have for my team, for the clients that I do have. Now, it’s not to say that, you know, there’s not going to be a day in the future where I have grown my team significantly. I would love to grow my team. That is a goal and it’s not to say that, you know, when I have way more clients than I have right now that that’s going to be some big burden. Absolutely not like those are both goals that I’m working toward and being able to experiment and play right now on a much smaller scale than the vision that I do have ultimately for whole co for this business that has made sure that I have the space to really experiment to really play. And then from that figure out what I actually want and need to be doing. I think so often, we have this kind of perception that like, we should just know, you know, I, I put a post up recently actually that I was talking about how I used to think that just one day I would like have everything done in my business life would be easy and nothing would, you know, I would just be able to like rest and drink margaritas on the beach. I don’t even really love margaritas. That’s a different conversation, but I just had this vision that one day everything’s going to be done. And I recently realized that’s not how it works. Like I just genuinely love experimenting. I genuinely love playing. I genuinely love like trying things refining things, seeing how I can make things even better. I just love that process. And so again, because I’ve had the sailboat rather than the cargo ship I’ve been able to do that. And I do see that in this process, I am starting to build maybe my own cargo ship because of the experimentation I’ve been able to do, I’m building what I truly want and what I’m ready to actually have solid, which then allows me to bring in more team to bring in more clients and no longer have to be worried about XYZ thing because that’s solid, that’s done. I do feel good about that but still have the space for myself to experiment to play, to try other things as well. With that said, another reason that I’m really grateful for my slow growth is because it has allowed me to hone my craft and refine my thought leadership in the last. Well, let’s see at this point. As of recording, I have been running expand for three years. Expand is our signature program. It’s our comprehensive business training program and over the last three years, it has evolved so much. And this goes back to the experimentation of the play. I have allowed myself as I have delivered expand over the last three plus years at this point to try things, to see how I like things, to see what might need to shift, to see what feels good, to see what doesn’t feel good. I have allowed myself to continue refining it to get it to the place that it is able to produce or let’s rather say, facilitate reliable results with clients. Now did I know when I first started to expand about three years ago, did I know exactly what I needed to do in order to facilitate a reliable result? Not really like I had a good idea, but not to the extent that I do today because I have now brought so many clients through the program. I, I actually should count how many clients have I brought through? I need to, I need to look at that. But I’ve brought so many clients to the through the program and in different ways and with different levels of involvement, like when I first had expanded, actually, it was a purely one on one offer. So I’ve done it so many times now and walk so many clients through it that I’m able to understand. Oh, these are the steps that they need to take. Oh, I need to make sure that in this training video, I address this particular kind of question or this particular objection or whatever that is because I know that this is a sticking point for clients. I am allowed now or I have been allowed through the slower growth to hone my craft to actually make sure that I can stand confidently behind what I’m selling because I know that it works. And because I have supported so many people through it and because I have been consistently iterating it, we literally just, I just redid the whole messaging module and expand. And it’s amazing now I’m so excited. It was amazing before it worked before people liked it before. But we decided to iterate it. We decided to shift it a little bit and actually expanded it even because I wanted to make sure that clients had all of the pieces that I have learned in the last three plus years of doing this and similar work. I wanted to make sure they had all of those pieces that they needed to be able to come to the messaging the foundational messaging that was going to be really supportive of them across their entire business and not just right now but in the future as well. So this slow growth has given me that time to be really intentional with the whole journey that my clients are on to make sure that I am showing up to support them to create those conditions within which they can succeed. Another part of this, you know, the slow growth and how it has helped me hone my craft is that I do probably a lot more one on one work. Then I think a lot of people do at this level and with the goals that I have, you know, even in expand, we have, it is a group program. It is a, you know, in many ways, a group program. And yet with that, our expanders have over 15 individual one on one touch points with me. Now, that doesn’t mean 15, 1 on one coaching calls with me but they get at least 15 and it’s actually, I think we counted. It’s actually over 20. So maybe I should change that. But they get at least 15 opportunities for one on one support from me. And that doesn’t even, you know, include them, asking for support in like the whole coface group or something like that. But that level of one on one support. The reason I show up for that one on one support is one because it really is awesome for our clients and they love it and it’s really supportive for them. But two because showing up in those individualized ways actually is part of what has helped me hone my craft in the last five years. And as part of what has helped me get to the point where I’m like, oh yes, I do know how I can like systematize this. I do know how I can turn something into a very like static or evergreen asset. Like I do now understand what I need to say, how I need to say it, what I need to do, how I need to lead people through a journey. I do now understand that because in large part, I have done so much one on one and or highly individualized support throughout these years. The other kind of piece of this is not only has this slow growth allowed me to hold my craft, but it’s allowed me to refine my thought leadership. I think so often in the culture of speedy success, like there’s so many messages that are like you need to be an expert, like become a thought leader, figure out, you know, I don’t know, you need to position yourself as an authority. Like there’s all of this pressure to position yourself as something that I think in many ways, it’s just not normal to be able to be an expert, to be an authority, to be a thought leader at the very beginning or even toward the middle of a journey. Right? I truly think that this conversation that is so common in the online business world. Please tell me, I’m not alone in this. Like, have you seen this as well? Come talk in the big garden entrepreneurs, Facebook group about this with me, please. Like I’m really curious what your thoughts are on this. But my perception, my what I see so much in the online business world is you have to be an authority, you have to be an expert, you have to be a thought leader. And yet when I look back at the last five years for myself, anyway, I truly just started being able to like confidently call myself. And I would, I would even go beyond that. I would say I just started to actually know my area of expertise. I just started to know that I am a thought leader and, and becoming even more of one in sharing what I share here on the podcast, like I just started to really be able to like step into and stand confidently in this role of thought leadership, this role of expert. And I, I think I can from this place speak authoritatively on things. But if I try to and I and I did try to because I was bought into, there’s a vision of speedy success for the first few years of my business. But when I tried to be authority, tried to be an expert, tried to be a thought leader before I was really ready to be one man that was exhausting. And it was also, I think frankly, a big source of imposter syndrome because I was trying to be something that by all accounts, I actually truly was not like, yes, I had expertise in an area, maybe not an enough to qualify me as an expert, but I was very good at what I was doing. When I started, I was good at social media. When I was a social media manager, I was good at brand strategy. When I was doing that branding work, I was good at those things. But I wasn’t in a place where I had enough experience enough longevity, enough actual clients moving through processes, enough results to be able to actually call myself an expert on something to be able to speak in a way that, you know, positioned me as a thought leader. I didn’t have it then and that’s ok. It’s really OK. And I don’t think that in order to be, actually, I, I’m going to speak authoritatively on this. I know that you don’t have to quote unquote, be an expert or be a thought leader in order to have a successful business and facilitate transformation for clients. And I actually truly believe that so much of the rhetoric around needing to be an expert, needing to speak authoritatively, needing to be a thought leader is actually part of. We’ve ended up in a little bit of a mess in the online business world because there’s just a lot of people who have been taught, it’s not even their fault I would say, but they’ve been taught that they have to present themselves as already having it all together already knowing everything already. Like being the premier expert and yada yada yada, they’ve been taught that they have to position themselves in that way to be successful. But I’m here to tell you you don’t. And there are ways to recognize and to honor and to speak from what you do. Actually have some level of expertise and experience in without trying to at the same time position yourself. As someone who is the expert here. As someone who is the thought leader here, you’re allowed to organically expand your expertise, expand your experience and become through that organic process. A true thought leader, a true expert who actually is equipped to speak truly authoritatively about the specific topics that you work in or with. So when I look at, you know, how this podcast even can be what it is. We, we’ve rebranded, I think, I think we’ve planned for this episode, I’m recording now to be our like seventh episode after the rebrand or something like that. But when I look at how this podcast came to be what it is where I feel so confident in speaking about sustainable success and speaking about, you know, these topics that I think we need to talk about and that I, I do see as in many ways my thought leadership and my legacy to the world. I don’t see that I forced myself to get here. I see that I was able to organically arrive here where I now am in a place where I’m like, yes, this is what I want to talk about and I feel good about this and I know that I need to talk about this and I know that this is important and I get to actually have conversations about these, these things that matter to me, not because I’m trying to necessarily say, well, now I have to get clients from this. I position myself as the authorities that I can get clients. But rather this is kind of my gift to the world is how I see it. Like this is my service to the world is having these conversations about sustainable success and inviting people to step beyond the culture of speedy success. That so many of us don’t even realize we have a choice to step beyond if I had tried to speak on these topics in this way. A couple of years ago when I was still, I was talking about sustainable success back then. Sustainable success has been kind of like a core message for me for most of my years in business at this point. But if I had trying to speak quote unquote authoritatively about it, even just a few years ago, I can tell you right now that even though I would have been trying to be a thought leader, I would not have been actually being a thought leader because I didn’t have that capacity. So again, one of the benefits that I see of quote unquote slow growth, which is not actually very slow, let’s be real. It’s been beautiful, it’s been fulfilling, it’s been joyful and it has actually been profitable and sustainable and all of those things as well. But when I think about one of the benefits of slow growth, it’s that stepping out of that speedy success is need to be an expert before you actually are. One actually allows you to be on the path to developing and establishing your expertise and to embodying your expertise. And with that, you know, another reason why I just am so grateful for my slow growth and really what I see as such a benefit of being on this journey of sustainable success. Is that doing so has allowed me to cultivate my own capacity for leadership. I was just having a conversation actually in the, in the big hard entrepreneurs, Facebook group a little while ago about Israel Gaza Palestine Hamas about what I see is a genocide happening. What I see is, of course, also a huge uptick in anti-semitism which is totally not OK, genocide and anti-semitism, not OK. But there’s two really big things happening. And I, I was having a conversation within the Facebook group about how you know, this is actually this this war, this geopolitical event has made me start to realize whoa because of my upbringing, because of my um my lived experience, I actually had some very unconscious biases that I actually wasn’t even aware of which for me, it was Israel can do no wrong. I was, I was raised in traditional Christianity. And so the belief was Israel can do no wrong. And so from that upbringing, I had developed a bias toward frankly a country that I know nothing about. I don’t actually know much about Israel. And I also don’t know anything about Palestine. And yet I had developed an unconscious bias in one direction and completely therefore kind of dehumanized an entire population on a very unconscious level. So this event in the world showed me, oh my gosh. Wow. OK. Carly even more to work on even more to learn even more to unlearn and with that, you know, we, it kind of started a little bit of a conversation in the Facebook group about how as business owners, we are often so afraid to get it wrong. We’re often so afraid to like, speak up because what if I say the wrong thing and truth be told even in me, just saying what I just said here, I’m like, man, you know, like might lose some listeners about after talking about that or might uh piss some people off or, or I might have said the wrong thing or you know, a question that I’m even very conscious of is, is me talking about my own biases that I am obviously working to unlearn and relearn new expansive much more humanizing ways of thinking. But is me even talking about that centering myself in a conversation where I do not need to be centered so often though we don’t talk about these big things because I have this fear of getting it wrong. And yet the slow growth journey that I’ve been on this sustainable success journey that I have now been on for literal years at this point. One of the big things that that has done for me has allowed me to cultivate capacity for leadership and part of being a leader is being able to get it wrong and make it right. Part of cultivating the capacity for leadership is being able to recognize that you are a very imperfect human who is going to get it wrong and who also has the capacity to make it right, to do what they need to do to make it right. And so this of course, applies to speaking up about events in the world that are frankly heinous, this applies to speaking up about events that maybe are quote unquote controversial. This applies to speaking about all those things. But you know what else this, this capacity for leadership, this ability to get it wrong and to make it right applies to literally everything it applies to maybe accidentally getting it wrong in a conversation that you had with a client or in something that you said or did whatever and being able to say, hey, I got that wrong. I apologize for that. I’m sorry. And here’s how I’m gonna move forward or here’s how I would like to make it right. I had a one on one client for a few years and in working with her, there were actually several times where I said something wrong, did something wrong. There was one point where I used something that she had said to me in a private coaching conversation in a piece of content in a way that almost made light of what she said. Now did I mean to make light of what she said. Heck no, absolutely not. And yet I did, she brought it up to me on one of our calls on our next call and because I had been cultivating my own capacity for leadership for getting it wrong and knowing that getting something wrong doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person. Right. It just is. Yeah, I got something wrong because I had done that when she brought up to me how that piece of content made her feel when she read it. I was able to readily take ownership of, oh, my gosh. Yeah, I’m so sorry. I messed that one up and we were able to move forward with even deeper trust after that because she knew that she was safe to bring something up. If in some way, I had made her unsafe or hurt her or said something that just didn’t feel good to her that actually made our relationship stronger because she was able to bring something up that I had done wrong and I was able to own. Yes, I did that wrong. I apologize sincerely and I’m going to now make it right this journey of sustainable success rather than trying to get more kind of at all costs, right? Get more in the least amount of time, using the least amount of work, at least out of resources, gives you the space to organically become the leader that you want to become. Now, I say organic, but I, I don’t mean that it just kind of happens without you thinking about it. It’s a process of intentionality becoming the leader that you want to become increasing your capacity to get it wrong, make it right. Which that’s just one piece of leadership, of course. But increasing your capacity for leadership is something that has to be done with a lot of intentionality. You know, I think a lot of the coaching that I have received has helped me with that. I took a, what was it like a 10 month? I think a 10 month program on learning how to bring somatic work into my work, how to be a like a somatic practitioner. I have done a lot of therapy. I’ve done a lot of my own work outside of my business. Even I’ve done a lot of work, very intentional work to cultivate this on this leadership to cultivate my capacity for leadership, but cultivating capacity for leadership is not something that happens overnight. It’s not something that happens in one year. And even if you have been comfortable being a leader in some other area of life, doing so in business is completely different and especially I think doing so in online business is wildly different than in many ways. A lot of in person leadership is because there’s kind of this amorphous blob of visibility around you in the online space. Like you don’t actually know who’s talking to you, looking at you, talking about you listening to you, you have some idea based off of who is following, who’s reaching out, you know, who’s buying things, but really, it’s a little bit the visibility that comes with being an online business owner is quite uncontrollable to an extent, right? Like when people go viral, this is often their experience, they go viral and they’re like, whoa, I don’t really know how to do this and it freaks them out because we’re just not used to having hundreds thousands, even millions of people staring at us. So cultivating our capacity for leadership is something that has to happen organically. But it also has to happen intentionally and taking that kind of proactive step to begin cultivating that capacity as early as now means that in the future, when you do have a situation where you now are a leader, whether you wanted to be one or not, you actually will have the capacity to show up for that and to be able to do things like own your mistakes and rectify them. And I guess one more little piece here is that another part for me of cultivating this capacity for leadership, but also creating my own safety within that, which I think goes with that capacity. Word has been growing more comfortable with knowing that some people are not going to like me no matter what I do, right? As a leader, literally part of leadership is recognizing that you’re going to piss some people off. Part of leadership is recognizing that you are always going to be wrong to some people and part of leadership, therefore, is being able to be very grounded in who you are as a human, your inherent value as a human and being able to trust your own sense of self and sense of worth more than you are trusting what someone outside of you is saying about you. Now, of course, there’s a fine line there because again, we got to also have the capacity to get it wrong, but still, even in getting it wrong, we have to know who we are as a human and that takes time. And that is part of this journey of growing quote unquote slowly is that I’ve actually had the space and time to intentionally cultivate that and not rush that process. With that said, I think kind of two more pieces here that I want to bring to this conversation. One is that slower growth in terms of, you know, maybe not reaching a million in three years like I thought I was supposed to or even, you know, my first year in business, I made 14,000, my second, I think I made like 5050 something. I think it was like 54. I never remember that number for some reason, that’s a different story, but I didn’t make 100 K in six months. Like I thought I was supposed to in those first couple of years. But doing so, like not growing at this like super rapid pace, actually allowed me to continue prioritizing my own alignment at every step. You know, the first year when I made 14 K, I was, I was doing social media management, purely social media. And actually, that’s not true. By the end, I had started bringing in some brand strategy work as well. So in that first year though, I was like, wow, I really am good at social media but I really hate doing this for other people. Like this is not fun for me. This is exhausting for me. It’s not fulfilling work. Like, you know, I’m good at it and getting good results for clients, my clients and like, like my work, it’s not even that I even like to my clients. But it was just that the work itself wasn’t actually work that I loved doing. It wasn’t something that was fulfilling and it wasn’t really even using my gifts, my capacity, my strengths. And so because I only had a few clients frankly to be able to be bringing 14,000 in in a full time year because I only had a few clients again. I go back to the sailboat analogy here. I didn’t have a big cargo ship that I had to turn when I wanted to pivot into doing brand strategy, work full time instead of social media with a little bit of brand strategy woven in, I was able to actually like pass off my few clients that I did have to someone else who wanted to be doing social media work and let them do it, let them take those clients rather than me then having kind of these like very deeply entrenched systems and you know, deep relationships, all these things that I had to like continue fulfilling. It was very simple to just kind of hand them off at the end of a contract and let them go while then shifting my attention to building up my brand strategy work. When I wanted to shift uh a bit later from that, from brand strategy work into coaching and consulting. Again, I didn’t have a bunch of clients on these like big contracts. I, I had clients who are coming in for, you know, kind of the brand development work and I did the things with them and it was great. It was fun. I enjoyed it. And again, I realized like this isn’t actually really the work that I want to be doing. This isn’t where I am getting real fulfillment and joy. And again, my clients enjoy the work. I love my clients, but this is just not it. And so again, because I had more of a sailboat than a cargo ship because I was growing more slowly. I was able to make those shifts. And I think part of that too is that there wasn’t a lot of fear of like what if it doesn’t work? Although it did exist. Of course, I was afraid of what if I do this thing this new thing and it doesn’t work, but there wasn’t as much fear because it wasn’t like I was leaving behind something wildly successful, you know, it was, it was moderately successful, like 50 plus in a year, 50 grand. Like, that’s great, especially, you know, for your second year in business. That was, that was great. And it still wasn’t like, wow, if I leave this behind, like, I’m gonna have to, you know, I’m gonna have to leave all of this big success behind. It just made it easier to prioritize alignment. And even as I have continued coaching now, for several years, continued consulting for several years. Even within that, there’s been able to be consistent small alignment checks, right where I’ve been able to continue looking at. Is this truly the work that I love doing in the way that I love doing it with the people that I love working with this slow growth rather than this definition of speedy success has given me that space. Whereas if I was caught in the culture of speedy success, I have to make this huge amount of money in the least amount of time during the least amount of work, then making pivots or risking by changing something doesn’t make a lot of sense because that starts to then see anything that you did before that point as useless as a failure as you know, oh, I got completely off track and now I’m starting over that means nothing. You know, that culture of speedy success defines any of that past stuff that didn’t lead to the fast success as wasted time wasted energy, wasted resources. But what I know because I have continued prioritizing sustainable success is that any pivots that I have done, any shifts that I have made any slightly new directions or even wildly new directions that I have taken in my business have all been done because I am prioritizing my joy. I am prioritizing alignment. I am prioritizing building a business that brings me as much joy as much or more joy as it does revenue. Whereas speedy success would have me purely prioritize the revenue. The final thing that I would love to kind of bring here is that growing at a slower pace than what the culture of speedy success would define as successful. Frankly, has kept me humble. You know, I’m in a phase right now in business where I actually am very intentionally preparing for quite significant growth. That’s something that I think we can, we can talk more about in another conversation maybe. But just as the context for this, I am preparing for a very significant growth at the moment. And as I’m doing that, one thing that I have kept really top of mind for myself are the questions of who do I want to be? What do I want to be known for? How do I want to show up and be seen I don’t know if you’ve been seeing this, maybe I’ve just been seeing this because I’ve been needing to see this. But in the last year or so, I’ve been seeing a lot of conversations about kind of the behind the scenes experience of working with some very successful names in the online business industry. And one comment that I’ve been seeing consistently and that has really stood out to me in talking about quite a few different very successful names in the online business industry. Is that a lot of people who have worked with some of those very successful names before they were very successful, loved working with them. And then when that person got very successful, they actually kind of shifted who they were in some ways and or just started showing up in a way that was maybe more jolting for the people who had known them kind of before they got big, you know, and this bigness seems to have really shifted who a lot of these people, these now big names are. So I’ve been really thinking for myself, like I am preparing for very significant growth. I am preparing to quote unquote, go big, you know, I am preparing for those kinds of things and yet who do I want to be? What do I want other people’s experience of me to be? How do I want to be known? And you know, a big part of this is just this recognition of I want to still be the Carly who deeply prioritizes client care and client success and client experience. I want to still be the Carly whose biggest focus in our work is how do we create the conditions within which our clients can succeed? I want to still be the Carly that people get to know rather than kind of just this like elusive figure at the top that you know, like has all of these walls around me. Now, of course, boundaries are very important and I’m, I love boundaries. I think that boundaries even are part of how we create the conditions within which our clients can succeed. So there’s no self abandonment happening here in the name of client success. But I’m really looking at how do I continue being, who I truly know myself to be and who I truly want to be even amidst quote unquote significant external achievement. I think in the past, you know, if I was to have reached the external achievements that I’m currently preparing for, but if I would have reached them several years ago, if I would probably even reach them in the three year timeline that I thought, you know, I had heard, oh, you, you can build a million dollar business in three years or whatever if I would have reached that milestone three years ago. Well, I don’t know several years ago, if I would have reached it earlier on in my journey, I don’t think I’ve been ready for it. I truly think that I actually probably would have kind of gotten a little bit of a complex of, like, I’m better than I am better than the people I’m working with. I’m better than whatever competitors I am better than XYZ person. I think I truly would have ended up in that mindset that again from conversations I’ve been watching people have, I actually haven’t really been participating in them, I guess. But in conversations I’ve been watching people have about some of these quote unquote big names is that it does seem like there is a little bit of I am better than now. Of course, I don’t know any of these big names personally, so I can’t testify to that truth. But just the lesson I’ve been taking from that for myself is, you know what, I’m really grateful that I have been able to grow at a quote unquote slower pace because it’s given me space to really think about who do I want to be? How do I want to show up? And it’s given me space to also build the capacity to hold an equal playing field rather than to go into the mindset of I am better than now. Of course, I think it’s very, it’s a very normal thing, a normal human thing to start to see yourself as better than other people, other things, you know, I do think that’s very normal and yet part of cultivating the capacity for leadership is being able to recognize when you’ve gone there and then kind of re equalize the playing field. So to kind of wrap up here, I know it’s so easy to get sucked in by the shiny promises that are very inherent in the culture of speedy success, you know, six figures in six months, million dollars in three years, like 20 clients every month, whatever clients on, I don’t know, there’s so many, there’s so many promises. A big one recently has been like with A I, you know, create 100 pieces of content in one hour with A I yada yada, right? So basically so much of how speedy success defines successes again, getting the most you can in the least amount of time with the least amount of work. And because those things sound nice to an extent, right? Like actually it’s a lot of work to create a lot of content. So 100 pieces of content in one hour woof that would be nice in some ways, but it’s so easy to get sucked in by those things. And yet I know for myself that when I took a really good hard look at those messages, I realize that this message of more faster is not actually what I want. I don’t actually want as much as I can in the least amount of time doing the least amount of work. That’s not actually what I want. And actually the reason why part of me felt like I did want that and was so drawn in by those messages of speedy success is because I had been socialized to want more, faster, more, faster, easier. I had been socialized to want that. But that wasn’t actually what I at my core wanted or want to this day. What I really want is real lasting sustainable success. I want to enjoy every single day. Even the hard days I want to feel fulfilled by the work that I am doing and to feel really challenged by it and to feel like it’s using all of my inherent gifts and experiences and expertise. I want to do the work that I most love doing in the way that I most love doing it with the people that I most love working with. That’s what I want. The more faster, easier would be nice sometimes. Absolutely. And yet all of those things that speedy success says that you need the more clients, the more cash, the more of everything, the more followers, all of those things happen as natural by-product of me prioritizing real lasting sustainable success. So I’ll leave you with a couple of questions. What do you really genuinely at your core want? And how can you begin prioritizing that in your business as it sits today?
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[Podcast Outro]
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