Go big or go home. But what if the real flex is going Small and staying home completely on purpose. I personally used to chase more. More is always better scale, team size, multi, six figure launches, millions of dollars in revenue. But it almost completely broke me. Today I want to help you reframe success and show you why dreaming smaller might actually lead to more money, more impact, and a life you can stand to wake up to. Ever since I started my online business, there has always been this cultural obsession with hustle and productivity and going as big as possible. Because if you could, you should. You want to help as many people as possible, don't you? Like? And so if you could help more people, why wouldn't you pursue that? What if that's not the right answer? What if you always pursuing more is doing more damage than it is helping? You are so capable. I know you could crush so many dreams. You could absolutely do more than a lot of people could ever even dream of. But just because you can doesn't mean you should. As a highly capable person, you are constantly being rewarded for your burnout. People want more from you and the more you give, the more they want to take. But if you keep giving so much of yourself away, there's not going to be any of you left for yourself. Not once, not a single time. Have you ever been lazy, you've been overextended, you've been spread thin, you've been under supportive, under supported. I 1000% get the appeal. I was on the same road. I was building the bigger thing. I had the scale, I had the big team, I had the big overhead, I had the thing that everyone said they wanted. I was like the poster child for it. By all measures of what society tells us is successful. I was successful. So why the hell was I so miserable? You're taught to sell this lifestyle. Like if you become an online entrepreneur, then you should use your lifestyle to sell what it is that you do. And it started to feel incredibly dishonest. Not to say that I was overtly lying to anyone, but I was more lying to myself. I was telling people this was possible, they could do this too. And while they could, I knew deep down that it meant that they would have to sacrifice more. They would have to sacrifice themselves, they would have to sacrifice their time. They potentially would even have to sacrifice their own morals and values, which is completely against how I'm hardwired as a human. I remember having this conversation with a coach about growth and specifically saying, well, if I have X number of clients, like how many people do I need on my staff? And they with like full conviction in Their chest told me how many employees they thought I needed to effectively support that number of people. And I don't think they were necessarily wrong. I don't even think they were trying to be malicious in any way. They were following the guidebook that they were selling down to a T. But I hired far too fast, and it was making me so stressed out to the point that my hair was falling out, like, in clumps. My overhead every single month was more than double. My entire annual salary of my first job, more than double every single month. And I had to figure out how we were going to make it. When I had turned 30, I had worked so hard to prioritize myself and my personal health. I ate better, I lost weight. I trained for a 5K, you know, the like couch potato to 5K app. I was doing it all, and my business was doing okay. But I was so happy. I felt the best I had felt in my body in decades. And then when I felt this call to do more and impact more people and grow bigger and make these big girl decisions and build this company, all of that started to slip. Like, every part that I had worked so hard to not just maintain, but bring back to life, like, slowly started to dull. Like, I didn't feel like myself. I gained all of the weight back, plus some. I was stressed. I was anxious, I was fatigued. I was never getting enough sleep. I was struggling with insomnia. I was chronically worried. And I just thought the more support I had, the better that feeling would get. Instead, I was just drowning in this constant feeling that I wasn't doing enough. I wasn't actually scaling. I was just still the center of this universe and had all, all of these people that were just taking tasks off my plate. But no one else was adding to the bottom line of the business, not really. And I felt like if I was gonna give up the team, that that somehow meant I failed or that if I let them go, that I was being selfish. And so I did what I thought was the kindest way to do this. When people naturally moved on and made other decisions for their employment, we ended on great terms. No one was necessarily unhappy. They were going on to pursue things they were excited about and I was cheering them on. The difference is I just wasn't backfilling their positions. And slowly, after a number of years, the team started to get smaller. I went from 10 to now I'm at the point there's only two full time people in the company. Like, I'm almost still ashamed to admit that out loud, because that feels like I suck. Like I'm not capable, like I don't have what it takes to run a real business. But that's not true. Like, that's not true at all. I knew how to do what I was doing, and I was doing it and I hated it. And I could have kept that at the forefront. I could have buried all of the things that were important to me. I could have left all of that behind, and I could have pursued more with the thought that it would always bring me more money. But that wasn't necessarily true. The more I scaled, I was making about the same. And then it got to a point that on bad months, I just wasn't paying myself at all. And in some cases, making a lot less than I had made before. It wasn't all my fault. Like, a lot was changing in the online business world. The market was shifting. People were making different decisions, Buying behaviors were different. And I personally had decided to walk away from my most lucrative offer I have ever done in this business. Not because it wasn't working, but because I didn't want to keep doing it. I think there's this common misconception that small equals insignificant, but it doesn't mean that at all. It means intentional. There's a reason I have always said that I support small business. For years I thought it was because I supported the entrepreneurial people, the people who wanted to start something, who were pursuing their dreams. But the truth is I want to help people build small, and I didn't realize that at the time. My goal isn't to help people become millionaires or to have them hit a magical sales number. My goal is to help people build businesses that fund the life they have and allow them to build towards the life they want. That they can save enough and invest enough, that it fuels their financial future. That's what I really want. I want people to do more living than they do working. Do I think, like, systems are important and project management is important and like, having the right support is important, and yeah, sure I do. All of those things are important, but they're not the most important. You and your life is the most important. There's never actually tomorrow. It's always today, 100% of the time. It is always today. And we could keep living in some imaginary future that doesn't yet exist, or we could learn how to live right now in the circumstances that we have and build more opportunity to enhance those circumstances, not just for the sake of more, but for the sake of the life we want. My Goal here isn't to lower the ceiling. My goal is to help you build more of the right foundation. A rock solid foundation that's not going anywhere, that's stable, that's reliable, that's sustainable. That's something that you can keep doing. Something that allows you to do less over time. Something that is less reliant on you in the day to day. Numbers are sexy. Followers feel good. That's why you get a notification every time you get a new one, it's a dopamine hit. You are psychologically programmed to want more. But if you really back out, would you rather have 50 of the most dreamy clients or would you rather have 5,000 followers who don't buy from you? Now I know some of you are going to argue, well, I'd rather have the followers that do buy from me. Okay, but does the number even matter at all? You need to have the freedom to define your own enough. Not enough is enough, but enough is supportive of the life you have and the life you want and the life you're dreaming of. Enough allows you to live right now, in today, in the present. Enough allows you to step away when it matters. Enough allows you to keep your values centered and at the forefront. Going small can be the strategy. It's not necessarily a compromise. Small power moves are powerful. You can make any decision you want and those decisions are not permanent. They are just data points. You get to put in some level of effort that you define, you measure and listen and you watch what works and then you tweak and edit and we're fine and do it again. No one's asking you to make a big leap. No one is asking you to build a $10 million company. No one is asking you to be the next Apple or OpenAI. Now if that's what you want to do, fantastic. I am not denying you that opportunity. But I am not your girl. If your goal is to just keep growing forever, I don't think you're going to like it here. I want to help people that are far more motivated to live than they are to work. I think the thing that a lot of people do not want to admit that small can often outpace big in a lot of ways. Probably first and foremost is margin. A lot of small business owners up until multiple six figures could operate at a 70, 80, 90, 95% margin. You do not need a lot to do well in the online space. But when you go past that, there is a tipping point where every dollar you earn becomes more expensive to earn. Now, I'm not necessarily saying taking you out of the equation isn't part of what will make this successful. You absolutely need to not be the thing that you're selling. You are not the product. You are just a person who works at the company that you're building. But your products need to offer your value in a package that is not you. You are not the delivery. You are the genius. You are the strategist. You are the person behind it all. And when you keep growing bigger and bigger and bigger, that's not something you can sustain. Eventually you have to train other people to think like you, to act like you, to sell like you, to coach like you. There are plenty of people I'm sure if you were to look around in the online space that you would love to work with. But some of those people, when they scale beyond a certain point, if you say yes to working with that company, you're never going to see that founder. Not one time.
Unknown Speaker (21:04)
I remember the first time I bought from a company like that. I was so greatly disappointed. I bought because of who was at the helm. I bought to learn from them. And I'm not saying that the coach wasn't valuable or wasn't adequately trained or didn't have the knowledge or expertise they did. But I didn't like how it came to me. I felt duped. I felt lied to. There is a way to do both. There is a way to not give so much of your time away while also not completely removing yourself from the delivery altogether. Like I think there is a delicate balance that both works and feels good for your life, but also still makes you feel like you're in control of the narrative, of the story, of the experience. Because at some point you're betting on other people to put your image out there. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It can work. Lots of successful companies grow in that way. But you are in an information business. You are selling your expertise, your skill set. And yes, you can translate that and teach that all day long. But would you rather be the one who teaches or the one who's managing the team who teaches? I would absolutely argue that no one is quite as good as you. And that's a hard pill to swallow. Because like, you see these testimonials and you're like, it's possible. You can absolutely translate all of that knowledge. And you can. You can deliver that without you functionally being the one delivering that. But completely handing it over changes the tone, changes the way people absorb information, changes the impact. People will still get good results, but are they going to get 70 or 80% the results when you could offer them 100. I'm not saying that's not okay. That is just a choice. I just like the fact that being small means you. You get to have more direct access to the people that you are changing lives. You get to be more flexible with how you spend your time, your energy, your capacity, your money. You get to be nimble. You get to be quick. You get to be responsive. The bigger you get, the slower everything goes. I promise. I recently had a coach look at my website and they said, you know, I don't think you're for the person who wants it all. I think you're for the everyman. And I could have been offended in that moment, but I think they're right. Like I am for the person who isn't trying to be flashy. I'm not saying you won't get noticed. I'm not saying you won't be important. I'm not saying you can't land that book deal or get that incredible client or be on the Fortune 5000 list. All of those things can still be true. But you can stay small on purpose. You can grow your revenue and keep more of it. Not in a selfish way. You're still gonna value what your client experience is like, and you're still going to serve people in a way that is highly impactful. I'm just wondering what it would look like if your business prioritized your peace over your prestige over your virality, over your celebrity status. I know I would much rather have a slow morning with good breakfast on my deck with the birds chirping and the wind blowing than I would be in a meeting with a staff of 20. I want to be on the deck. I want to be watching silly videos and laughing and spending time with my spouse and petting my dogs. To me, that is success. I want you to ask yourself what kind of life you're trying to fund. And does the business model that you are currently pursuing even match that? Is it possible to have both the way you're currently running it? For a lot of people, the answer is no. You're probably closer to the kind of life you want than you realize. But the longer you're in business, the further away you're getting from the business model that's supportive of that. Despite everything you've been told, you're over complicating growth because you feel like you should be doing more. I'm sure you've heard the concept by now that you're shoulding all over yourself. You don't need to do anything to please anyone. You could, you should, you would, doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what you did, the actions you actually took, the impact you actually made, not what you should do. Because society tells you that is the right way. Because that is what has been deemed successful by some group of people that is yet to be revealed to me. Who decided that? Who said that that was the dream? I think we've all been fed this life lie of what the American dream looks like and the way we get there is not the same as what the generation before us went through. Life is more expensive. Life is more complicated. With so much access to knowledge and media, we have a different set of challenges and a different kind of life to navigate. And the dream of the big house and the white picket fence and the two and a half kids and the car. Like for what in la? The cheapest apartment you can find. A studio apartment with no room for a life or a dog or those kids or that white picket fence. It's $2,000 a month. There is a two bedroom apartment a mile from my house. $3,500 a month. That is more than I made per month at my first two jobs. Probably even more than that. To just live in a place, not to put food on the table or live the life that you say you want. Money is still an important part of this equation, but money, when it's the motivator, can often put us on the wrong path altogether. I wish I could say I learned this lesson the first time, or the second or the third. But I didn't. I've had to relearn this lesson more times than I care to count inside this business. But it doesn't matter how many times I have to learn it. What matters is how I respond. What matters is how quickly I become aware of the issue and how quickly I course correct. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. Heck, I don't know with climate change if a tornado or a flash flood or a hurricane is going to wipe out my house. Despite living in the middle of the country now, I'm sure this has probably been argued for years and I was younger and had blinders on, but there are plenty of people arguing that now is the end of times. And I've seen so many people say why am I doing this if none of it is worth it? And this isn't for you to just like quietly quit or step away or let go of all the things that you said you wanted or even to just abandon what you have built. That is not what I'm saying this matters to you. This whole thing matters to you. How you show up matters to you. How you impact people matters to you. How you make your money matters to you. But you keep incessantly moving towards a version of this that is defined by someone else's definition of success, not your definition of enough. Go small and stay home isn't meant to be ironic. It's meant to be a reminder that playing small isn't small. Playing small is smart. And you have the ability to build something that feels like yours, that you can stay in touch with, that you don't have to completely lose yourself to, that you don't have to abandon who you are or what you want or what matters most to you. I have so much more to say on the subject, but for now, I just want this to be an encouragement. You get to show up, you get to impact people. You get to make a real difference. Don't let anyone else jade your vision or jade your future, or make you lose sight of why you started in the first place. You have so much to offer the world and it does not have to all be packaged up inside this business. I used to make the mistake that all of my fulfillment, all of my value, all of my worth, all of my success, all of my money, all of it had to come from just this business. And I have found more fulfillment and more money and more all of those things by realizing it can come from more than one. I can be fulfilled by sitting down with friends and spending four hours at dinner with the worst waiter in the history of restaurant experiences. I would rather have an evening like that than one where I'm like, stressed about writing 17 more emails and getting some sales page up and hoping I make more sales. I don't even want more sales if I can't do the other thing. I'll take the sales if I can keep both. And that's the whole point. Like, how do we make both happen without this constant sacrifice? You don't have to let yourself go. You can actually lean in more. You can better understand who you are and what you want and pursue that. All of that's possible. I want you to DM me the smallest goal you've ever set. And if you've reached it already, I not only want to celebrate with you, but I want to hear why going small was so important to you. I'd love to publish your story in the book I'm writing, but I can't do that unless you don't tell me about it. So head on over to Instagram and shoot me a DM, Abigail says. Or you can find me over on LinkedIn and shoot me a message there. Either way, I want to hear how this resonated with you. What stuck? What feels good? What made you think differently? Where are you going? Small. Why are you staying home? I'm ready to hear all of it. I can't wait to see what's next for you. And I can't wait to see you do less.
