As I previously wrote, I’m a different person now than I was before I took my extended medical/personal leave.
So what work am I actually doing now? And how did I figure out this next evolution of my business?
Today I’m going to tell you how I got here and exactly where here is.
Finding My Way Here
The whole time I was on leave, I knew that, barring some miracle or unexpected twist of fate, I would need to return to work. So I spent a lot of time considering what that might look like.
The thought process went kind of like this …
The business I ran before was completely out of the question. Although I love love loved my team, the size of the business, the clients we were serving, and the responsibility that came with all of it, the complexity was far more than I’d be able to shoulder immediately upon my return.
Maybe I’d get a job. It would be a relief to have someone tell me what to do. Running your own business, no matter the size, comes with a significant mental tax from being in charge of the whole operation.
But realistically, I’m not built for a regular job or a 40-hour workweek. I’d collapse before I got my first paycheck.
That meant self-employment had to be my path, but I didn’t want to simply recreate a smaller version of the business I had before. I needed to figure out what business would support me, my life, my current capacity, and my goals and also feel enjoyable, rewarding, and appropriately challenging.
I always loved the one-on-one business model and the high-touch and flexible nature of that work, so it seemed like the right place to begin. But exactly what kind of one-on-one work would I do?
I wasn’t going to focus on beginner business owners. I love what I was able to do all those years, but that version of me has retired.
I have a lot of expertise to offer seasoned business owners, like leadership and team management, strategic planning, and business and financial management. I loved those aspects of running my business, and I enjoyed the little bit of coaching and advising I did around those topics during my leave. And still, I could feel that wasn’t fully it.
Those topics drew on my experience, but they didn’t account for the whole picture, including what I want to spend my days talking about and want matters to me personally.
I looked at the patterns of what energized me. I remembered what people had said about my work over the years. I considered the kinds of problems I most wanted to help solve. I got clear on the ways I was and wasn’t willing to work anymore.
I started playing with language, hunting for specifics, and getting more curious. I wrote an offer. I waited and rewrote it. Lots of time passed. I had new ideas and fresh angles. I reconsidered the problem, the people, the work, and how it would fit for me and who I am now. On and on for months.
But here’s the important part: For me, clarity didn’t arrive before I began working—not even a little bit. It emerged through repeatedly thinking, writing, waiting, reconsidering, rewriting, and having conversations.
And this: I wasn’t just trying to find the right words for a new niche. I was trying to figure out what the next version of my business needed to be so it could fit the person I’ve become, my current capacity, the life I’m living today, and where I see myself heading in the future.
Eventually, the direction, the words, and the actual shape of the business matched what felt true. The work I’d do, how I’d work, what I’d be responsible for (and not), and how it would fit into my life. It finally clicked.
Quick Answers Aren’t Always Good Answers
Before I get to the specifics of the work I’m doing, I want to set the stage by sharing a quick story.
Thirteen years ago, I was part of a peer-led mastermind with four other women in the online coaching space. We regularly talked on the phone (before the Zoom boom) and met in person every quarter to plan, strategize, and support one another.
I’ll never forget one exchange at one of those meetings.
I can’t remember the exact issue I brought to the table, only that I was trying to figure out how to do something in my business.
One woman offered an idea, and it felt like an immediate NO. Then she offered another. Also a NO. She kept suggesting things, and none of them felt right, so I kept saying no.
She got so frustrated with me! She said I always said no to everything, and I’d never achieve what I wanted unless I said yes more often.
Here’s the problem: I believed her.
I set aside what I knew about myself, as I’d been so strongly conditioned to do, chose the option that seemed smartest, and went for it.
It wasn’t until years later, well after the group dissolved, that I realized I’d known what was right for me all along. Her suggestions weren’t bad; they just weren’t right for me, the specific problem I was facing, or what I needed from my business at that time.
The world we live in wants us to move quickly. We’re pushed to choose a good option, implement it, and get results as soon as possible. It doesn’t want us to slow down and ask deeper questions. It doesn’t want us to take time to dig underneath to find the deeper issues. It doesn’t care if the solution isn’t a match for the human running the business.
So when a business isn’t working like it used to (maybe because we changed, our life has changed, the industry changed, or something else), we tend to grab the most obvious fix or the latest trend and try to resolve the issue as quickly as we can.
A new offer. A different niche. A fresh marketing campaign. A new business model. A mastermind. Fresh social media content. A spreadsheet. An AI chat.
Sometimes those changes or tools are useful. But if we haven’t taken the time to understand what’s no longer working and why, what we need from the business, and what the different paths forward could be, we can end up solving only the most visible symptom—and the underlying problems still remain.
Instead, we have to look beneath what first appears to be wrong, understand what’s actually going on, and figure out why it’s happening. Then we need to look at what we need the business to provide for the owner and their life.
And then we can consider the possible ways forward, including what should stay, what needs to change, what each option would mean in real life, and which direction makes the most sense for the business and the person running it.
This can be difficult to do from inside the business, especially if we’ve been living with the problem for a long time.
It helps to have someone alongside us who can see what we can’t see, ask the questions we don’t know to ask, distinguish the underlying problem from its symptoms, and see the possible options for moving forward.
And that’s the work I’m doing now.
My New Work
I’m working with experienced business owners whose businesses need to change, but figuring out how isn’t simple, obvious, or easy. What they’ve built may still be successful by all external measures, but it no longer works for the person running it.
Because the business matters. The clients, reputation, history, and years of work matter. The team—and the responsibility for them—matters. The income matters, too. So changing some or all of it feels big, scary, and loaded.
We figure out what’s no longer working and why, what you need for yourself and your life today, and which possibilities make the most sense for you and your business.
I don’t have formulas or blueprints, because there isn’t one right answer. My job isn’t to hand you a prepackaged plan or tell you what you should want. It’s to help you see the situation clearly enough that the next steps, even if they aren’t easy ones, become apparent.
Then I stay beside you as you implement changes, make decisions, and respond to what you learn along the way—making sure the business supports you and your life in the ways you need it to.
You can learn more about this work here.
If someone you know might need this kind of work, I’d be grateful if you passed this email or my information along to them.
Going forward you can expect to read more about what it means to truly consider the person behind the business and ensure your work fits your actual life, values, and unique circumstances.
Also what it means when your business no longer fits you—the person who built it—or your life and what to do when that happens.
I look forward to sharing that, and so much more, with you soon.
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