Your Entrepreneurial Journey Doesn't Have to Look Like Everyone Else's (and In Fact, Can Be a Little Selfish)

Because, yes, “I don’t wanna” can be a solid business strategy and decision-making compass

“You’re going to do great at this because you’re like a business chameleon.” 

A business chameleon? I’ve been referred to as many things before, but not something, so reptilian. 

Yet that’s exactly how my best-friend-since-we-were-five-years-old described me when we were catching up the other day. She told me about her husband, an artist who has been bringing in some serious cash lately and has never dabbled in social media or email lists (way to go, brother!). I shared how I am making big shifts away from the online entrepreneurial world as I know it. 

This chameleon comment stuck with me. I have been changing my colors over the years. After all, that’s what we, as entrepreneurs, need to do to keep up with the massive amounts of shiny object ideas flying our way, right? 

• SEO! SEO! SEO! Add keywords all over those pages!

• Get yourself on Facebook! That’s how everyone’s researching businesses these days!

• Put ads on Facebook or the algorithm will never, ever, ever show your business’s face!

• Start an email list!

• Start a blog!

• Start Instagram!

• Start dancing on Tik Tok!

• Create your course

• Offer 1:1 services

• Don’t offer 1:1 services

• Start a membership

• No, not like that

• Put yourself on YouTube

• Write a book

It’s pretty hard to “just be yourself” when you keep piling on everything those gurus tell you to do to grow your business. Yet that’s exactly where I found myself this summer as I was stacking up the 10,000 things on my to-do list. I’d started noticing how I’d designed my professional life was constantly causing me to change colors.

• Yellow: Motherhood

• Red: Course Creator + Coaching work with Roadpreneur School (now closed down)

• Blue: Client work 

• Orange: Creative work with Cruisin’ + Campfires (my product-based company that gathered dust over the years because there’s been zero time to work on it)

• Purple: Land investment (a new venture with my husband)

• Green: Household work

• Red: Health work

How many colors do you move through over the month? The week? The day?

For me, that was a daily rotation. It was too much. Too confusing. I never could go DEEP with my goals in any one area, which meant not one of them ended up thriving the way I knew it could have I given my full focus there. 

So, I stopped and got more intentional. It was time for a few of those colors to fade. 

Yet, evaluating where I was didn’t give me many answers. It won’t give you a whole lot of clarity, either. Baked in all those decisions were 1,000 other tiny decisions sparked by the thought, I could do that! Let’s try it. 

In the entrepreneurial world, that’s what we’re told. Try it! See what happens! Do it messy! Take action! 

The reality is, just because you CAN really doesn’t mean you SHOULD. 

While I’ve often given that advice to others in my coaching work and still inherently believe in taking brave, swift, messy action, I also believe in making big decisions (like starting a business) more methodically. So many other factors weigh into which direction is right for you, and gurus rarely help you work through those choices.

Here’s how I ultimately decided what needed to be scaled back and how I decided to shut down the biggest revenue generator in my business to make space for where I wanted to go. 

In talking through this unique process, I hope you can decide where and how to simplify for yourself.