In this final instalment of the How I Think About… series, I’m reflecting on what it really takes to create a business that stands the test of time – not just in terms of revenue or visibility, but in terms of energy, alignment, and staying power.
I share:
- Why building a business that lasts isn’t the same as building one that’s constantly scaling
- The sneaky role pricing plays in business longevity (including both over- and undercharging)
- What most people get wrong about evolution vs. pivoting
- Why boredom and understimulation are quiet killers of sustainability
- How to spot the difference between coasting strategically and getting stuck
If you’ve ever felt the pressure to constantly be doing more, this episode will help you consider what’s truly required to make your business sustainable for the long haul.
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Episode 229: How I Think About… Building a Business That Lasts
When you first start a business, the things that you are focused on are so fundamental in those early days, like, I need to sign clients, I need to make money, and we don’t often focus on. Building a business that is going to last us for a long time because we are almost in survival mode. When you are an established entrepreneur and you don’t have to worry so much about finding clients, making sales, that stuff is all happening because you know you have a great marketing system and you’re very consistent, but what do you think about then.
In this, in the final episode of the How I Think About Series, I’m gonna be sharing with you how I think about approaching business in a way that I’m able to build a business for myself and to help my clients build a business that lasts a really long time. Stay tuned to find out.
Welcome back and welcome to this final installment of the How I Think About series. Thank you for joining me over the last six episodes. Codes, while I’ve just shared my unfiltered thoughts in how I think about so many different aspects of business and shared with you how that has changed over time or how that impacts the way I would coach my clients.
If you are just joining in for the first time or just catching up now, please do go back and check out the other episodes because I think. Altogether, they’ll give you a really good holistic view of how I think about things, which of course could be completely different to how you think about things.
But as I said at the start, the reason that hearing other people’s opinions and thoughts, and part of the reason that, you know, coaching and advisory and mentorship is so popular. Because it helps us to do one of two things. It either helps us to see a new possibility or a new perspective that we hadn’t considered before, which is incredibly powerful.
Or it can really solidify our own confidence in what we already think and believe and what we do, because we can hear someone talk about something and go. Yeah, I didn’t think about it that way at all. I think about it completely differently and that works really well for me. So the whole purpose of this series is not to say, Hey, I think about it like this, and you should too.
It is really to just give different opinions and as I say, perspectives and hopefully to challenge your thinking or to give you something that you know you can borrow or steal to enhance your thinking or to really. Give that credibility to what you already believe. If you listen to something I say and go, yeah, no, that doesn’t land for me, so.
All that said, we’re on the final installments, and I’m talking today about how I think about building a business that lasts. And as I said in the intro, many people when they start a business can be really scrappy. We’re really in survival mode. The, there’s an urgency there for. Either, you know, getting our ideas market validated, making our first sale, making enough money to support ourselves, whether that is transitioning out of another job or, you know, hiring team members.
And so. I’m not really talking about that stage of business. If you are at that stage of business, then please listen along because this is gonna be relevant to you in the future. But the way I’m thinking about this now, and probably because it’s where I am in business and it’s where most of my clients are.
Is that, that that set, like we have systems in place, we have marketing, we have audiences, we are consistent, we have ways of connecting with potential clients. We have different things in place, maybe like funnels or like, I have this podcast or a lot of my clients have newsletters where we’re very consistent and we know that people consume in that way and.
Turn into clients, which is great. So I’m not really talking about building a business in a way that, like how do you sign your next client? I’m really talking about building a business that lasts from a more personal point of view with our energy and also from an energetic point of view. And I’m recording this on December 9th, so just, just a little while before it, it releases and.
It’s my business anniversary in January and that will be seven years. So I have been in business officially for seven years. I messed around for a couple of years before that thinking about it, but didn’t really do anything of any great significance. But seven years kind of fully all in working with clients, et cetera.
And when I look back on that, the amount of other businesses that I have seen. Come and go is insane as is the amount of businesses I have seen completely change and pivot into, into something else. And there’s a lot of energy around that, and that’s what I wanna talk about today. So the first thing I wanna say is that when we talk about building a business that lasts.
That isn’t the same as scaling a business to grow. And I think many people, including myself, can get this mixed up and they think that a business that lasts a long time has to be a big business. It has to be growing all the time. It has to be increasing its revenue, it has to be increasing its audience and its client number and increasing.
Its team and you know, its reach and, and all of these things. And of course that that can be true. and also I’ve seen many businesses do that and then go out of business for various reasons. So when I think about building a business that lasts, I’m thinking about this from a more personal point of view.
My business has gone through many iterations in the last seven years and will continue to. So, but I’m thinking about me. As an entrepreneur, as the owner of the business and my ability to be in this and to make this last and to make it sustainable. So it’s not about building this huge empire at any cost because we think that is what is gonna be.
You know, give us longevity. It is really about what does lasting mean to you? And one of the things I can share in, you know, the last few years in my business is I. Where I was recovering from long COVID, I approached business very, very differently for probably the last two years in that I reduced how much marketing I was doing.
I reduced the frequency of the podcast and, and my newsletter, and I didn’t actively sell as much because. My energy wasn’t there for that. But my business has still been here and it has still been profitable and it has still sustained me and it’s still paid my salary and done all of those things.
Mainly because I have a really good client base and many of my clients choose to stay for a long time and, you know, resign. So, you know, that is, that is something to consider for longevity. You know, it’s much easier to. Have clients that stay for a long time and have to find new clients every few months.
So that is something that has worked really well for me. It was about making a decision with how I felt and with that energy of, I’m gonna pull back a little bit. I’m not stopping, I’m not. Not gonna market. I’m not, not gonna do the podcast. All of those things. And of course, you know, if people inquired about working with me, of course I still got on calls with them and sent them proposals and, and discussed whether it’s a good fit.
But I wasn’t as active in doing those things. But what, I was still very active in this, supporting my clients to a really high level because I know that when I do that, my clients are much more likely to stay and that has given me a sustainable business. So that’s just an example of. You know, when we talk about building, we can often think about growing and more and, and bigger.
And actually I took a little bit of a, a little bit of a step back, I guess. So it wasn’t a pause and it wasn’t, it wasn’t a stop or it wasn’t burning anything down, but it was what worked for me in that season and. I’ve been doing that for a couple of years now. That is about to change, which is another story that you’ll hear about on the next episode of the podcast if you tune in, but.
It’s been really important to me and the groundwork that I did in the first five years where I was much more aggressive in my marketing. I was releasing this podcast every week. I was doing newsletters every week. I was really aggressive. And I say aggressive, it’s, you know, as in a positive way. I was really aggressive in like building my network and making connections and doing all of these things and growing my audience has served me really well in a period that I have coasted a little bit more.
rather than, you know, being a little more passive should we say, than. Than active and all of that is great ’cause that’s exactly what I needed. So my business has done what I needed it to do. It has supported me and it has lasted over that period to be able to support my energy, my health and, and different things.
So that is just an aside. So the first thing that I think about when I think about building a business that lasts will probably surprise you. And the first thing I think about is pricing. Pricing is key for longevity in business for a number of reasons. The most overlooked reason of which is value exchange.
Now, this is rather woo, so we are touching on the energetics here. But think about it this way, if you are an entrepreneur. And you undercharge for your service. So you charge an amount of money for your service that does not match the value that you give and does not match the time and the energy and the effort that you have to put into delivering that service.
And you do that with a number of clients. That business is not. Sustainable because it will not be bringing in enough money for the amount of time, effort, energy that you are giving into it. And what happens is. You’ll get burnt out or you will start to resent your clients because you recognize that they’re not paying you enough money for what you are delivering.
Now that can be a boundaries piece around over delivery. and it could, I guess, be a piece about clients being demanding, but quite often it just comes back to bad pricing. It just comes back to the fact that the money that you are receiving does not cover energetically the cost of what you are spending to deliver that service.
And that starts to feel really bad. And as I say, it can be resentful. It can be that you have to work more hours than you want to be able to deliver the service. It can be that you see other people charging more for the service and and feel resentful about that, but quite often. What will happen in that situation is you will just burn out because you are working far more than you should be for receiving that.
Energetic exchange of cash. So as I say, it is a little bit of a a woo one when we talk about finding the balance, but everyone knows that if you work too hard for too little money, you will get burnt out. And everyone knows that if you work too hard for too little money, you will probably feel resentful for it.
So that’s the first example. The second example being if you are an entrepreneur and you have a service and you over. Charge for it. And I’ve seen this many times, many, many times with other people in the coaching space. What happens is you overcharge and people sign up and then people are like, wow, that person charges X for their service.
Oh. That’s so expensive. They must be really good. They must be great. Like, wow, I wish I could charge X. That’s amazing. And then people go, oh, I’m working with a coach, so and so, like it’s X amount a month. And everyone’s like, wow, that’s so much money. And then you don’t deliver to the level that you have charged.
So maybe you’re charging $10,000 a month. I’ve seen coaches charging that and more, $10,000 a month. And then people get on the call and they go. Yeah, this isn’t actually that great. Like I’m paying $10,000 and I was expecting something. I was expecting like, wow. I was expecting to have my socks blown off, and in fact, it’s not really any different to the coach that I worked with that was like a thousand dollars a month.
So then what you start to get are resentful clients, and then you get them saying to people, oh, I paid $10,000 a month to work with so and so, and it was really bad. It just wasn’t worth the money, even though the service you deliver. Might be fine. And if you were charging $2,000 a month, they might be perfectly happy with it and think it was great value, but at 10,000 because you have overcharged for what you’re delivering, they’re like, nah.
And then it spreads and then people tell people, and then people hear it’s not good. And so. Then people don’t sign up. And then you’re in this situation where you have this really expensive service. People aren’t signing up for it because the value exchange is not equal and it’s, it’s just the complete, like 180 of the previous scenario where you are undercharging, you’re now overcharging, but the client isn’t getting the value so the client feels resentful.
So we have that kind of energy. That is the main energetic reason that pricing is so important for a long-term business because when you get the sweet spot of your pricing, where what you deliver and the money that you receive in exchange for that service is equal, and everyone feels great about it, you feel well compensated.
Your clients feel like they’re getting great value in a great service. That is how you are able to keep a business going for many, many, many years. Undercharging and overcharging are the fastest way to burn your business out very, very quickly. And the other thing I will add to this, which is a little more,Prescriptive, should we say is things like profitability. Okay. So, I’m not an accountant so I’m not gonna go too much into that, but regardless of the value exchange, if you are charging for your services and then by the time you have received that money and pay tax on it and paid any subscriptions or team that you have, and then taking that money out, it’s not actually enough for you to live on.
Then your business is not, is not gonna be able to last because it can’t support you. And if you are full-time in business, it needs to be able to support you. So again, this is where the pricing is key and two ways of looking at it. The first is the slightly more woo energetic, you know, is the pricing aligned?
Does it work? With what is being delivered, but also does the pricing work because by the time you’ve taken off tax and paid different fees and done everything, do you have enough money left to to live on? Because if not, that is gonna impact how long your business can go. Right? So that is the first thing I think of is pricing.
The second thing that I thought of with this topic is that. Building a business that lasts doesn’t mean that you do the same thing over and over and over again. As I said, I’ve had many iterations in my business and. So far, it’s mainly been under the umbrella of the ambitious introvert, but I have done kind of more mindset coaching under that.
I’ve done more business coaching. I’ve done some business strategy consulting. I have talked to entrepreneurs. I have talked to employees and executives in, in corporate. I have obviously, you know, media and a podcast. I’ve run group programs. I’ve done one-on-one coaching. There’s, I think, various.
Iterations and things that have that have come from that, but it’s still me. It’s still under the, the scope of what I consider to be my business. And so the reason for that is sometimes I tried things and I didn’t like them, didn’t enjoy it. Sometimes I tried things and I loved them, and then they came to their natural end and it was time to retire them, like different programs.
Sometimes I outgrew things. Sometimes the industry shifted and called for, for something different. So there are many, many reasons why things have changed and have evolved for me that don’t. Mean that I’ve done anything wrong or I don’t make it to be a bad thing. You know, there have been times for sure when I’m like, I’m quite happy coasting along here, but, well, the industry’s changed and I need to, you know, keep up and be relevant, so I’m gonna have to make some changes, and being okay with that.
But when we have this idea of like, burning everything down and starting again, that is not key to longevity because we are literally starting again from, from day one. And I, I think this is the difference for me with when people say they are having a pivot and when they say things are evolving, quite often people will say, oh, I’m pivoting in my business.
What they’re actually doing is evolving. So it might be that, I don’t know, they might be like a generic business coach, let’s say. And then after however many years of doing that, they realize that their actual sweet spot is supporting founders who are making $50,000 a month and wanna make a hundred thousand dollars a month, let’s say.
I’m just making this up so I go along. They might realize that they’ve had a few clients do that. Their methods work really well for it. They really enjoy it. The client’s got great results and they’ll say, oh, I’m pivoting to do this, and I don’t see that as much of a pivot. I see that as an evolution of the work that they’ve done and then stepping into what they enjoy and what they have been proven to be excellent at.
I think about a pivot more as someone going, oh, I am a. Social media manager, and now I’m an energy healer for animals. Like that would be a huge pivot, right? Because you are like completely changing your business. And I’m not saying that’s wrong to do. I’m not, you know, many people have a business and then realize that it’s not right for them and they start something else and, and they start something else.
But I’m thinking of a business that, that lasts here, and I’m thinking of a business that is. The same thing. So for me, I’m thinking of coaching. An advisory, an education, an education brand, essentially. if I think about my clients, you know, coaches or brand designers or copywriters, I’m thinking about them in that role in a business.
And so that is where I always encourage them to think about, don’t burn everything down, but what have you learned? What have you got to build upon? What have you got to grow from here? Like where have you evolved? And quite often this evolution is, it’s kind of doubling down on what we really love and what we’ve recognized.
We’re really good at. Which is very different to, I hate what I’m doing because you know, I’m undercharging or overworking or because I’m bored of it, which we’ll talk about in a minute. And then I’m gonna like stop and then start something else completely from scratch. And then we’re always in that phase of like, I’m building and building and building and building.
I gotta get some traction. I’ve gotta get some momentum. With a business that lasts, I’m thinking there is always momentum. It might be a a different velocity, but there is always that momentum going up. And then lastly, when I said about boredom, this is the, this, again, is something that I think isn’t spoken about enough in business.
And one of the things I do speak about quite a lot on here is overstimulation. So if your business is overstimulating you, it’s gonna be really hard for you to be in it for a long time and an overstimulating business. Can be because you are working too much. It can be that you are doing too many tasks that you hate, that don’t work for your energy.
It can be because you are switching tasks. Very, very quickly between one thing and another. It can be that you don’t have good boundaries. To delineate your workday is very common. So you know, you check in LinkedIn at 10 o’clock at night or reading emails at the weekend or answering clients before you’ve had breakfast.
And all of that can be very overstimulating for our system. And something I see often with clients is. They can get resentful because they feel like they’re working more than they did in a job, but not earning the same amount of money, or not earning enough money to justify how much they feel like they’re working.
And quite often they’re not working, they’re just not switched off, and that is overstimulating them. So that is obviously a boundaries piece that is work to do yourself on. Like, these are my office hours. I’m not checking my phone at these times. You know, I’m gonna. Log out of these apps or delete these apps.
I’m, you know, and being, having that like, this is the start of my day. This is the end of my day. To ensure that you can relax and. You know, get over that overstimulation. The under stimulation, I think is a piece that people don’t talk about enough and look as a, as a coach for, I, almost all of my clients are highly sensitive and I’m highly sensitive and it’s something I’ve talked about on here, like get, get an understimulated isn’t usually our concern.
It is usually getting overstimulated, however, under stimulation. Is another key driver to businesses that that don’t last because it’s very easy to be coasting along doing the things because you’ve always done them and because that’s, that’s how it is and that’s what you do. And go. Oh, I’m actually really, really bored.
And that’s not to say we want our businesses to provide a ton of excitement for us. You know, it’s, there’s a balance there somewhere where we want some satisfaction or some fulfillment or some kind of. I dunno what the right word is for this, but we, we do wanna be moved by our business, right? , we want to feel something from it, but we don’t wanna pin all of those feelings on our business and expect it to provide everything for us.
So I always say to clients like, if you want excitement, go bungee jumping. Like, don’t keep messing around with your business just because it feels exciting. So like. Some processes can be boring and that’s okay. Like it, you can keep using the same marketing system. If it’s working you, you can, you know, keep the same frequency of newsletter or whatever.
If it’s working, you can have the same team members for years and years and years and years. If it’s working, it’s not like, oh, like I’m a little bored. I need to change things up with that, like. Those boring processes are the things that bring the exciting results like amazing clients and big cash months.
But if you are understimulated in the actual work that you are doing, that is the biggest key. And if you’re a generator in particular in human design, this is very, very noticeable and it can quite often show up in for coaches, for example. You are working with a certain level of client and then you are growing and you are evolving, and you are learning and you’re getting more competent at whatever it is you’re coaching.
And then actually you would be challenged in a really good way by working with people that were a little further along, that, you know, we’re bringing slightly different concerns or or problems to you that you were helping them achieve bigger outcomes because you are growing, so you want your responsibility as a coach to grow.
But you instead, you keep working with the same people and you start to be like, oh, I’m really bored. Say everyone keeps saying the same things and sessions and like, oh, I’m just like, it’s not as challenging. And part of that, right, if you’re a coach or whatever you are, is because you’re getting the experience and you’re getting better and better at what you do.
So it’s easier, which means you have more capacity to be stretched and challenged a little more So. Like I say, being understimulated. It’s not about changing everything in your business every month because it, it doesn’t feel exciting and you want a dopamine hit. I’m not talking about that. But if you are an intelligent high achiever, which I don’t doubt you are, because you are here listening to this podcast about entrepreneurship.
Then it can be really easy to get Understimulated without realizing it and suddenly just start to feel really me about your business. And quite unmotivated is how a lot of people would describe it. And you don’t know what shifted because you’re like, I’m doing the same thing. And it used to, I used to love this and it felt great, and now it feels like a little bit of a chore and.
I just feel a bit like brain dead from it. That’s where I’d say like, look at like. Are you challenging yourself at the project you’re working on or the clients you are working with? Are they, are they pushing your growth edges? Because if you are not, and you’re, you’re sat there and nothing is changing, there is a chance that you could be getting understimulated.
And it is one of the sneakiest things that creep into business. And of course that brings a whole host of things that brings like, bored, I don’t wanna do my business anymore. Or a lack of motivation to, to work on your business. It’s, it’s kind of endless. So. All that to say, building a business that lasts isn’t about build an empire.
It isn’t about growing and scaling. You know, for whatever cost it is about finding the right balance, and that is the right balance of pricing for the services you deliver, the right balance of profitability, the right balance of evolving and iterating your business without. Tearing it down and starting again, tearing it down and starting again, and the right balance of, you know, not being plugged in and switched on all the time, and completely dysregulated and overstimulated that you burn yourself out, but not just coasting along understimulated, that you actually start to just feel like.
Soul has been sucked out of your business. It’s really important to find those balances and hopefully this episode might have given you some food for thought with that. So thank you once again for tuning in to this entire how I think about series. And be sure to tune in to the next episode because I’m gonna be sharing some rather big.
Very exciting and probably quite surprising news that if you are a listener of the show, you are not going to want to miss. So thank you once again and I will see you on the next episode to share all the news. For now, take care.
