The Business Is Working. But Is It Working for You?

There is a strange thing that can happen when you build a business you care deeply about.

You start it because you want more freedom. More autonomy, more creativity, more choice over how you spend your days. Maybe you want more time with your family. Maybe you want to work from anywhere. Maybe you simply want to make a living doing something that feels meaningful to you.

And then, somewhere along the way, the business that was supposed to create more freedom begins requiring your life to organize itself around it.

You check your email when you’re supposed to be off. You squeeze clients into places they don’t really fit because you don’t want to disappoint anyone. You hesitate to take a vacation because stepping away creates too much work before you leave and too much work when you return. You respond faster than you need to, customize things that were never meant to be customized and keep a growing list of exceptions in your head.

Because you built the business yourself, much of this can look remarkably normal.

It can even look like success.

For a long time, we have measured the health of a business primarily by what it produces: revenue, clients, growth, reach and opportunities. Those things matter, but I have become increasingly interested in another measurement:

What does the business require from the person who runs it in order to keep producing those results?

Because those are two very different conversations.

A business can be profitable and still be poorly built. It can be successful on paper and completely incompatible with the life of its owner. It can generate freedom financially while eliminating it practically.

I know this because I built one.

When a successful business stops working

Before becoming a mother, a significant part of my business was built around 1:1 intuitive reading sessions.

I had done them for years. I was good at them. People booked them. They generated income. From most conventional business measurements, there was no obvious reason to stop offering them.

Then I became pregnant, and eventually, I had my daughter. My capacity changed dramatically.

The interesting thing is that my business hadn’t necessarily changed. I had.

At first, I tried to keep going.

I had spent years building this part of my work, and it was successful. Walking away from something that works financially is much harder than walking away from something that’s failing. When something isn’t selling, the decision gets made for you. When people still want what you offer, you have to be willing to make the decision yourself.

So I kept trying to fit the old structure into my new life. For a while, I technically made it work. But the consequences of making it work were becoming almost debilitating.

I started experiencing significant anxiety before sessions. Instead of looking forward to them, I began fearing them. I was trying to be fully present with the person sitting across from me while another part of me was acutely aware of everything happening outside my office.

And then something started happening that was impossible for me to ignore.

My daughter could be completely fine while I worked in my office. I could write, work on my website, answer emails or do other behind-the-scenes work without an issue. But almost every time I sat down for a 1:1 session, she would cry. Not fuss a little. She would wail and become so overstimulated that eventually she needed me, and only me, to settle.

I pushed against this for longer than I probably needed to because I kept thinking there had to be a way to make it work. I could adjust the schedule. I could plan better. I could make sure everything was perfectly set up before I went into my office.

But eventually I had to acknowledge what was happening.

This wasn’t fair to my daughter or her nervous system. It wasn’t fair to the clients who were paying for my full presence. And it certainly wasn’t healthy for me to spend the hours leading up to my work feeling increasingly anxious about what might happen when I closed the office door.

The problem wasn’t that I suddenly lacked discipline. The problem wasn’t that my business had become unsuccessful. The problem was that a business model built for one version of my life no longer fit the life I was actually living.

That realization required a pivot.

And while motherhood made the mismatch impossible for me to ignore, I don’t think you need to become a parent to experience it.

Life changes.

Our bodies change. Our priorities change. Relationships change. Responsibilities change. What we value changes. Sometimes our tolerance for the way we’ve always done things simply changes.

The question is whether we allow our businesses to change with us.

Your life shouldn’t be the infrastructure holding your business together

One of the biggest shifts in how I think about business has been recognizing the difference between being committed to your work and being used as the infrastructure for your work.

In the early stages of a business, those two things can look almost identical. Of course you’re doing most of it. You’re answering the emails, delivering the service, fixing the website, writing the newsletter, handling payments and figuring things out as you go.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem comes when temporary workarounds quietly become permanent operating systems.

You remember which client always needs Tuesdays. You know which invoice hasn’t been paid. You remember the exception you offered someone six months ago. You manually send information that could have been automated and repeatedly answer questions that could have been addressed before someone ever reached your inbox.

Eventually, your memory becomes a system. Your availability becomes a system. Your generosity becomes a system. Your capacity becomes the place where everything the business hasn’t been designed to hold gets deposited.

This can work remarkably well for a surprisingly long time. Until life asks something else of you.

The goal isn’t to care less

I think this conversation is particularly important for heart-led business owners because many of us don’t become overextended because we’re incapable or disorganized. We become overextended because we care.

We want people to have a good experience. We don’t want someone to feel dismissed. We want to be flexible when circumstances change. We want to give a little extra. We want our businesses to feel human rather than transactional.

I understand that deeply, and I don’t believe the solution is to become colder or less generous.

The solution is to build structure strong enough to hold your generosity.

That distinction has changed the way I think about systems entirely.

A booking system isn’t just a scheduler; it’s a boundary encoded in software. An FAQ isn’t impersonal; it’s a way of answering someone thoughtfully without requiring you to personally answer the same question for the fiftieth time. Email newsletters aren’t simply marketing; they’re relational leadership at scale. A cancellation policy isn’t a punishment; it’s an agreement that keeps expectations from having to be renegotiated every time circumstances become complicated.

Systems aren’t productivity tools. They’re decisions you don’t have to keep re-negotiating.

When they’re built well, they don’t remove the humanity from a business. They create enough containment that you can remain human while running one.

Before growth, there has to be containment

Business advice talks constantly about expansion: more clients, more followers, more revenue, more visibility, more offers and more leads.

But I think there is a question that needs to come before all of that:

Can your business actually hold more?

Because getting more customers isn’t always the problem. Sometimes the problem is what happens when they arrive.

What happens if twice as many people inquire this month? What happens if an offer sells far better than expected? What happens if you become sick for a week, your family suddenly needs more from you, or your capacity changes for reasons you couldn’t have anticipated?

If every increase in demand requires an equal increase in your personal output, you haven’t necessarily built leverage. You may have simply built yourself a busier job.

This is why I believe that before growth, there must be containment.

The business needs somewhere for growth to go. That might mean clearer offers and processes, better communication, stronger boundaries, ways for people to receive value without requiring direct access to you, or simply enough margin that an ordinary human life doesn’t threaten the functioning of the company.

Because an ordinary human life is going to happen. That isn’t an interruption to plan around. It’s the environment your business exists within.

Build for your actual capacity, not your theoretical capacity

I think many of us accidentally build businesses around the version of ourselves who wakes up rested, has no interruptions, feels motivated, has a perfectly functioning household and somehow completes everything on the list.

I have met this version of myself occasionally. She’s lovely.

I would not build a company around her availability.

A sustainable business needs to work with your actual capacity, which requires being willing to look at it without judgment.

How many hours do you genuinely want to work? How much direct client contact feels good? How quickly do you actually want to respond to people? What responsibilities exist outside your business? When do you do your best thinking? What consistently energizes you, and what consistently leaves you depleted?

And perhaps the most important question:

What are you no longer willing to sacrifice in order for your business to succeed?

Your answers should influence the architecture of your business. Not someday when you’ve “made it.” Now.

Because if the business model only works when you routinely exceed your capacity, the problem isn’t your capacity. The model needs to change.

Look for where your business depends too heavily on you

If you want to begin building a business that supports your life, I wouldn’t start by downloading another productivity app. I’d start by paying attention.

For one week, notice the places where your business unnecessarily pulls on you. Look for questions you’re answering repeatedly, decisions you keep making from scratch, tasks with far too many steps, information that exists only in your head and situations that become urgent simply because there wasn’t a process for them earlier.

Pay particular attention to the moments when you think, I’ll just do it myself.

These moments are incredibly useful because they’re showing you where the business may need more structure.

Sometimes the answer will be automation or documentation. Sometimes you’ll need to change an offer, adjust a price or establish a clearer boundary. Sometimes you’ll realize you’re providing a level of access that no longer makes sense.

And occasionally, the solution isn’t to improve the system at all. It’s to stop doing the thing.

That was a difficult lesson for me.

I spent a long time trying to figure out how to make 1:1 readings fit my new capacity when the more truthful question was whether they belonged in this version of my business at all. Eventually, the answer was no.

Your business is allowed to change when your life changes

We often build a business during one season of our lives and then expect ourselves to continue operating it exactly the same way after our lives have changed.

The structure that worked when you had enormous amounts of time may not work when you become a parent. An offer that felt exciting five years ago may feel exhausting now. The amount of access you once enjoyed giving clients may no longer feel sustainable. A schedule that suited one season beautifully can become completely inappropriate in another.

That doesn’t automatically mean you’ve lost your drive. Sometimes you’ve simply gained information.

I think that’s what happened to me.

Motherhood didn’t make me care less about my work. If anything, it clarified what kind of work I wanted to create and how I wanted that work to coexist with the rest of my life. I still wanted to build. I just didn’t want to build something that required me to continually choose it over everything else that mattered to me.

I don’t think sustainability means finding one perfect business model and maintaining it forever. I think it means building a business capable of responding to the life that is actually happening.

There will be seasons when you expand and seasons when you simplify. There will be seasons of enormous creativity and seasons where maintaining what already exists is enough. The goal isn’t to flatten those differences. It’s to build enough flexibility into the business that every change in your life doesn’t become a crisis within it.

What is your business actually in service to?

There is nothing wrong with wanting a successful business.

I do.

I want meaningful work and good income. I want my ideas to reach people. I want to create things that continue working after I’ve finished making them. I want to build something substantial.

But I also want to sit down for dinner without rushing, apologizing or still being half at work. I want to be present with my family, take care of my health, have space to think and be able to move through different seasons of my life without feeling as though my business is constantly waiting for me to get back to work.

I don’t think those desires sit in opposition to ambition. I think they demand a more thoughtful version of it.

So instead of only asking, How big can I build this?, I’ve become much more interested in asking:

What kind of life will this business allow me to live if it works?

Because we rarely talk about the if it works part.

Imagine the strategy succeeds. The clients come. The audience grows. The revenue increases. People want more from you.

What does your average Tuesday look like then?

Do you actually want it?

That question is worth asking before the next growth strategy, another offer, another platform or the assumption that more must automatically be the next move.

Your business can be in service to your financial needs and your ambition while also being in service to your family, health, creativity, values and freedom. Those things don’t need to be competing interests.

The point of building a business isn’t to create another thing you have to spend your life serving. Perhaps the work isn’t about becoming better at carrying everything your business creates.

Perhaps it’s about building something that can carry more of itself.

That is the kind of business I am interested in building now.

And increasingly, it’s the only kind I am interested in helping other people build.