Redefine, Release, Repeat: Three Gentler Ways to Grow Your Business
There’s a point in every creative business where the blueprint you started with just… stops fitting. You’ve grown, built, and learned some things the hard way. And suddenly, those old definitions of “success” feel like trying to squeeze into jeans that haven’t fit since 2019.
If you’ve been feeling a quiet tension—like something’s ready to shift but you’re not sure what—that’s a pretty normal signal. You’re not stuck. You’re just ready for a new way forward.
1) Redefine success in real time
A lot of us inherited someone else’s idea of success: hit X revenue, launch Y program, scale fast and wide. That can be helpful—until it starts running on autopilot.
A gentler, more grounded approach: What does success look like for me right now?
And make it concrete—not conceptual. “Make $X” becomes “Cover my base expenses, fund two months of buffer, and keep Fridays meeting-free so I can pick up my kid from therapy without stress.”
Let that definition change as you do. Milestones aren’t moral victories—they’re wayfinding markers.
Then use your definition as a filter. New offer? Client request? Marketing idea? Run it through this: “Does this move me toward what success looks like right now?”
Try this:
Write two versions of success—one for the next 6–12 months, one for the next 3–5 years. Where do they align? Where do they diverge? Your short-term plan should lean into the overlap. The divergence? That’s your sandbox for experiments.
2) Make space by letting go (even of good ideas)
Capacity is finite. (Yes, even yours.)
Doing meaningful work often means releasing perfectly good ideas so the right ones can breathe.
That might look like:
Pausing an offer you love but can’t fully support right now
Moving “someday” ideas into a doc instead of your calendar
Choosing one idea to go deep on instead of five done fast and shallow
This isn’t a failure of ambition. It’s a design choice.
You’re trading breadth for depth—lowering your cognitive load, easing context switching, and making it easier to repeat the results that matter.
Try this tiny system:
Start a “Good Ideas Graveyard” (doc, folder, notebook—whatever works). Each month: promote one idea from the graveyard to “active,” archive one current thing, and let the rest sit.
You’ll be surprised how many things self-resolve once you stop white-knuckling them.
3) Work in seasons, not forever-plans
When every decision feels permanent, you stall. When you treat it like a season, you move.
Working in seasons helps you:
Make time-bound commitments (like “Q1 = rebuild onboarding” or “Q2 = deep visibility work”)
Reflect with context (“This was a rest season,” “This was a visibility push”)
Pivot without panic when your life or creative direction evolves
If you’ve just hit a long-held milestone—booked out, steady sales, signature offer dialed in—it’s totally normal to feel something new bubbling up.
Sometimes the business was a bridge to a truer creative direction.
Try this seasonal check-in:
What energized me most this season?
What quietly drained me?
Which result came easiest (and might deserve doubling down)?
What’s the smallest structural tweak that would ease a recurring friction point?
A gentler operating system for the next quarter
Try this one-page monthly plan:
Define success (now): 2–3 measurable outcomes + 1 lifestyle guardrail
Choose one lens: client journey, decision-making, or visibility
Ship one change: template a step, remove a duplicate, or timebox a decision
Close one thing: offer, feature, meeting, or recurring task
Review lightly in public: a “what I changed + why” post builds trust, not hype
Boundaries that buy back your time:
Capacity cap: Max number of active clients/projects; waitlist the rest
Default rules: If a decision repeats 3×, write a rule for it
No orphan tasks: Every task must tie to an outcome—or it doesn’t get done
What this looks like in practice
You redefine success from “launch a course” to “protect two deep-work mornings a week”—and suddenly paid strategy days make way more sense than a cohort.
You let go of a beloved membership to free up bandwidth for your book, your gallery show, or your most soul-filling client work—trading constant delivery for concentrated creation.
You shift seasons from “agency-mode” to “artist-mode” or from “custom projects” to “productized services,” because your goals evolved—and your business is allowed to evolve too.
The latest episode of Here’s What I Learned pulls together three smart, honest takes on change—redefining success (Frenchie Ferenczi), protecting capacity (Patricia Sung), and working in seasons (Rachel Lee). It’s calm, candid, and might just spark your next move.
