Welcome back to Little Leadership Lessons, my newsletter highlighting short but powerful insights to help you lead with confidence and create lasting results. These lessons come directly from my research, interviews, and coaching work with six- and seven-figure creator-founders.
Hope you’ve had a great week this week and are enjoying some downtime with family or friends this weekend.
How do you like to restore yourself in between work weeks? Are you a Netflix on the couch kind of person? A get outdoors and wear yourself out kind of person? Chores and food prep? I’d love to hear from you!
And thank you to all of you who replied last week with well wishes. I talk a bit about the family situation in an upcoming podcast with Parker Palmer.
Which reminds me: I know I keep saying this, but we really are so so close on the new website, new art work for the show, and a bunch of new episodes for you. Excited to show you as soon as it’s ready!
Let’s get to it!
A Beautiful Photo to Quiet Your Body and Mind
As a reminder, each edition of this newsletter is the direct learning from a $1,500 coaching session translated to you and your business in 10 minutes or less. Here’s this week’s…
The Situation
A client sent me a message a couple of days before our last session:
“I’ve thought about this post nonstop since you published it. I didn’t even know there was a different option!”
The post she was talking about? A simple distinction:
Growth mode vs. Profit mode.
Neither is absolute. They exist on a sliding scale. But if you aren’t clear about which you’re in, you drift into the muddy middle.
That’s where you’re spending more on hiring, marketing, or tools, but not enough to drive real growth. You feel like your income is lower than it should be, and growth is slower than it should be. You’re frustrated on both fronts.
This is where my client found herself:
“I’ve been in growth mode for so long, I didn’t even know there was another option. I’d love to be making more money, but all the content I see online only talks about growth!”
The Emotional Blocker
We dug into her numbers: revenue over the past year, year-over-year growth, and spending. She was stuck in the middle. Spending more than last year, but without the payoff.
When I asked what it would take to double revenue, she paused and said:
“I’d have to hire more people for marketing and sales. I might need to build new products. I’d have to spend more on ads, too.”
And then the realization hit:
“But that would cost almost everything I have left. I wouldn’t take home what I need for my family. Why can’t I grow AND get paid?”
That’s the emotional block. Wanting both at once, but feeling like you have to choose (because you often do).
The Breakthrough
I wrestle with this too—how much to enjoy the fruits of what I’ve built versus reinvesting for the next level.
Every entrepreneur does. Who doesn’t want faster growth, more income, more freedom, and less work all at once?
But business is a series of trade-offs. And in this case, the options were clear:
- Spend more now to fuel growth. Talk with your family about short-term sacrifice in exchange for longer-term rewards.
- Spend less and take more home. Enjoy more financial comfort today, but accept slower growth and potentially lower long-term value.
- Push harder with what you have. Work more hours, ask the team to sprint, and use the revenue bump to hire and catch up later.
After walking through each, my client realized she was actually content. She was making a good profit, growing faster than the stock market, and keeping her workload manageable.
She wasn’t building a venture-scale company, and that’s fine. She owns the business. She gets to decide what “enough” is.
And now she has language for it. There are different modes for different seasons. Now she has more agency and more buy-in with her own choices.
Coaching Questions to Apply This to Your Business
- Which mode are you in right now: growth or profit? Did you choose it on purpose, or by default?
- What decisions, behaviors, or emotions might be contradicting that choice?
- What would happen if you fully committed to one mode for the next year? What about the other?
The only wrong answer is being frustrated with results that reflect the choices you’re making (whether implicit or explicit).
Much love and respect,
