Episode 116: 10 Things I Learned From Scaling My Business To $1 Million
Raw, Unfiltered Truth Of Scaling To 1 Million Dollars
There are key milestones in every business owners journey. It might be your first client, first sale, first 10k, first 100k, and eventually your first million! Many business owners say the biggest hurdle is the gap between 100k and 1 million. And after that things start to flow more easily.
So I’ll be sharing 10 lessons from my journey to that first million!
1. Order Matters More Than Doing All the Things
Success isn't about doing everything; it's about doing the right things in the right order. Forget the shiny distractions. Focus on what aligns with your business goals. As a fellow entrepreneur, I get it - the temptation is real, but remember, success is a journey, not a checklist.
When I scaled my business, I learned that success comes from strategic moves, not scattered ones. It's about picking one avenue and doubling down rather than spreading yourself thin across all platforms. This can be especially difficult when we see our peers on social media. We might want to test out strategies other successful people in our network are using, but nothing will be more impactful than creating your own unique process, and going at your own pace.
2. Embrace the Pain of Reinvention
Scaling requires shedding your old self. It's painful. Letting go of limiting beliefs, embracing change, and reinventing your unique strategies. It's a beautiful, albeit challenging, process.
I faced the fear of transforming my signature PR course from a one-to-one to a one-to-many model. I had to let go of the belief that personalized help was the only way. The result was a one of a kind program that has reached thousands of founders, creating more impact than I ever imagined. And I now have the bandwidth to offer consistent, value packed, personalized group coaching because all my time isn’t eaten away representing individual clients.
3. Your Business Reflects Your Personal Journey
Traumas, insecurities, unmet needs—your business mirrors your internal landscape. Dive deep, address those issues, and watch your business transform. Growing up with a single parent, experiencing the trauma of moving and divorce, absorbing a traditional immigrant mindset, I realized that my views on money safety were limiting my business. I was afraid to let the money go if it wasn’t guaranteed to come back. But that scarcity mindset wasn’t allowing anything to come in. I was stuck. But acknowledging and working on these patterns allowed me to break free and make decisions beyond scarcity. Some things that helped me on my personal journey was reading, meditation, breathwork and exercise, hypnotherapy, sound bath sessions, psychedelics, and solo travel.
4. Invest in Coaching and Inner Work
Coaching isn't just for your team. It's for you too. Invest in coaching, inner work, and personal growth. It's the secret sauce to aligning your business decisions with your truest self. Investing whether through immersive experiences or accessible content, elevated my thinking. It's not just about dollars and cents but about developing leadership skills, trusting in others, and seeing the bigger picture. This is extremely difficult to learn on your own. How can you learn to lead if you refuse to hire? After adopting a more abundance mindset, I allowed myself to hire more team members, spend 20k for a specialist to come in and assist my business, invest 30k on a high level mastermind, plan multiple team retreats. These are all investments that give back, teach valuable lessons, and form strong relationships.
5. Value Your Time Over Money
As you grow, your time becomes your most precious asset. Delegate, automate, and focus on your zone of genius. It's not about micromanaging; it's about leveraging your time for maximum impact. This requires letting go of control and trusting in others. The shift from valuing money over time is transformative and comes with understanding that certain tasks are best handled by others. Whether delegating email management or automating repetitive processes, valuing your time unlocks new levels of efficiency and success. Everyone needs support and the ones who scale the quickest are the ones who invest heavily in their support.
6. Learn to Repel
Not everyone is your customer and that's okay. Embrace it. Your messaging should attract your tribe and repel the rest. Leaders take a stance, and that's how you build a strong community. In the early stages, the excitement of having everyone on board is natural. The fear of missing out on a sale is natural. However, as you grow, you realize the power of repelling and it’s so liberating to say no to opportunities or clients not aligned with your core values and mission. You start creating and upholding boundaries, which only increases your brand value.
Sometimes I get ANGRY emails from people who didn’t like what I taught, or didn’t like my tone. This used to upset me but now I’m able to detach from that negative emotion and realize their negative feelings aren’t targeted at me, but are just a reflection of their current state. I don’t let it get me down! But also that’s not to be confused with constructive criticism. It’s so important that I take feedback and listen to my community so I can serve them to the best of my ability.
7. Embrace Unmeasurable Gains
Not all wins are monetary. Oftentimes it's about the energy you put into your community. Hosting a free event might not show up on your balance sheet, but spiritually, it pays dividends. The gains from giving back, whether through events or additional support, might not have a direct monetary ROI, but they contribute to building a strong community. It's a reminder that success isn't solely about dollars but about creating meaningful connections. This is what business should be about and why I will always support fellow small business owners. Because their clients aren’t just numbers. They are important connections and meaningful parts of their life. Unfortunately big corporations more often than not tend to ignore that.
8. Ditch the Playbooks and Write Your Own
Yes those big business coaches' templates and playbooks helped in the beginning, but as you grow, you need to write your own. The success lies in innovation and resilience. Challenge the norms and create your own playbook. The transition from following established systems to crafting my own strategies was a game-changer. It was all about understanding that what worked initially might not sustain growth. So you can’t hold onto initial success because the industry is so dynamic. I’ve even shut down my teams’ creativity with the excuse of “well I don’t see anyone else doing that”, and that just isn’t an acceptable excuse. You know what’s best for your unique audience, so looking to other businesses for the “right” answers just won’t work. It’s something you create for yourself once you reach a higher level and are trying to scale to 1 million.
9. Leadership Equals Growth
Your success is directly linked to your ability to lead. Trust, delegate, empower your team, and watch your business soar. True leaders bring out the best in their team, not micromanage or instill fear. Understanding that leadership is a crucial element of growth was a turning point for me. Creating an environment where every team member operates in their zone of genius allowed me to step back and trust that they were right for the role, because they truly wanted to be there. Not just in order to get a paycheck. Leadership is not just about directing; it's about empowering others to shine and be accountable.
10. CEO Thinking Time Is Non-Negotiable
The more you grow, the more you need time to think. Solo trips, walks, or a few hours of uninterrupted thinking is essential. Your best ideas often come when you step back from the chaos and just listen. In the rush of daily tasks, carving out time for CEO thinking is non-negotiable. You can reflect on your business's direction, strategize future moves, and tap into your creative reservoir. This thinking time is where your most innovative ideas will emerge. Now not all of those ideas will be viable, but take note and run them by your team. Sometimes our creative ideas don’t account for the difficult implementation, so keep the team in the loop of what your thinking and if it’s currently possible. Maybe it needs to be tabled for the future!
In conclusion, I’m sure you know this from your own business journey no matter what stage you’re in, but the journey to 1 million isn't a straight path. It's a roller coaster with highs, lows, and loops you never saw coming. Embrace it, learn from it, and keep going. With each lesson learned, you're not just scaling a business; you're evolving as an entrepreneur and as a person. So, here's to navigating the roller coaster together and celebrating the victories, big and small!
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, small business heroes, welcome back to another episode of small business PR, where we make PR and marketing super accessible for founders, especially bootstrapping founders, founders of color, and people who have traditionally not been seen in the media. Our mission here is to make PR and visibility and getting more recognition accessible and easy.
And we interview journalists about what they're looking for. And once in a while, I also give you a. sneak peek behind what it's like for me to build a business as a first time entrepreneur. So this is going to be one of those episodes and here are the 10 things that I've learned scaling my business to 1 million that things that people might not even tell you.
So here are kind of my lessons learned and some of them are more painful than others, but here we go. So number one thing that people don't tell you when you're scaling a business to 1 million is that success comes not from doing all the right things, but from doing the things in the right order. I'm going to say that again, success comes from not doing all of the things.
Right? It comes from doing the things in the right order and definitely not all at once, which is a sure recipe for disaster. So you know all the [00:01:00] strategies and the tools that people say works, right? You as an entrepreneur probably started your business because you have this natural curiosity and thirst and that probably could lead you down.
Some different options for pursuing shiny objects. I myself included, how many times have we been told this is the next thing that's going to work to grow your social media or to get customers to the door, right? So many different distractions and all of them probably do work, but here's the thing. It's not about doing all of them and being on all the social media platforms at once.
It's about picking one and doubling down. It's about niching down and it's about selecting the right avenues to pursue to meet your business objectives. So it's about the order of doing things and it's about doing the right things in the right order. I have a lot of people in my PR program that say, Hey, Gloria, I want to start my own podcast.
I want to have a platform. This is going to help me grow my audience. And I say, well, that's really awesome. But have you guest podcasted on other people's podcasts? Have you been interviewed? And a lot of times they say no. So here is my point. Why start a podcast, which takes an enormous amount of time, energy, resources, planning.
If you can just [00:02:00] guess podcasts on other people's podcasts, if you can just be interviewed on other people's platforms, leverage their audience and use that to get visibility and brand awareness. This is something that I teach in my PR starter pack, of course, but here's what I mean by doing the right things in the right order.
See, I would rather get comfortable knowing how to interview. Build my network by guest podcasting, right? Which you're expanding your network using that finished podcast piece, turning it into 10 plus pieces of social media content. Before I pour all my time and energy on starting my own podcast, which probably will take a lot longer to gain traction.
So again, success comes from not doing all the right things, but doing the right things in the right order. Number two is a thing that I've learned from scaling my business to a million dollars, which is at every level of business of growth of revenue, you will have to literally kill your old self to reinvent the wheel.
Now, this is excruciating. It's painful because you're letting go of beliefs, narratives, ways of doing things, systems, content, ideas, things that you're like, this is it. I know exactly what I'm doing. And then in order for you to get to the [00:03:00] next level of business, all of a sudden you have to scrape all of that.
And you have to start over. Now, obviously you take your resilience with you. You take your mindset with you. And I really think growth is kind of like a Christmas tree where you grow out, but then you have to like niche down again, and then you kind of grow out and you kind of niche down. So at every level of the tree, you're kind of shaving away layers and that's kind of how you grow.
It's definitely not linear. What I mean to say is it is painful. You will have to let go of all the different limiting beliefs. So for example, I'll give you an example. When I wanted to turn my signature PR course from a one to one to a one to many model, which would give me the time freedom and the financial freedom that I've always wanted, I thought there was no way that people were going to want to join a program where they are not getting personalized PR help from me.
At this point, I only knew that PR was something that you do on a one on one consulting rich container, right? I had to basically face that fear. I had to get over that limiting belief. I had to imagine something else entirely to create my signature program now, which is a one to many where people do get direct coaching and learn from the group and they get [00:04:00] enormous amount of wins.
So I'm able to scale my revenue and my impact because every day we have tens of founders and they're posting, they got featured in a lore and they got. That is much more impact than just me working with one client for one, two or three months. Do you know what I mean? But I have to get rid of that old narrative of people are not going to buy if it's not me directly holding their hand or people are not going to want to be able to do this if it's not me executing for them.
Because the old school way of doing PR was you hired someone and then they go and pitch for you. And then guess what? They own the relationships, right? So on so many levels, it's about recreating your mindset, getting rid of that old mindset. And it means killing your old self because it means. Getting rid of all of those leads that you thought were true and pushing past that to create a new reality.
And that's what has been able to help me create so many new possibilities and growth in my business that I never imagined before, but it's painful. It's excruciating, but it's also beautiful because it shows you the depth and capacity of your ability to create and innovate. And it really tells you that we are all creators here.
We as entrepreneurs, we as business owners, we're all creating [00:05:00] something from something that has never existed. So we follow our imagination. We put in the work and we create it, but it does. That's take work and it can be very painful to kill off those old beliefs. So that's the number two thing that I've learned.
A third thing that I've learned scaling my business 2 million is that all of your traumas, your insecurities, your unmet needs, your unprocessed emotions, Ooh, it gets real deep, but all of that will play out in your business in front of you and your team. If you have one, let me explain what that means.
For me, I had a lot of traumas around money safety, right? Growing up with a single parent and having moved and been a product of divorce, I was always told that the more money I made, the more stable and safe and worthy I was as a human. This is very toxic from my mom's generation as she was growing up in communist China, where she literally was sewing shoes in a factory.
And so her generational traumas affected me because this was my point of view where she kind of instilled in me. And so if you were to run a business with that scarcity mindset, you are basically seeing everything as a transaction. You are seeing. hiring, not as an investment. You're always looking [00:06:00] at how you can save money and that really trickles down into everything that you do.
And so that really limited me because it prevented me from getting the tools, the coaching, the resources and saying yes to opportunities because I was so focused on keeping myself safe and small. And for you, it might manifest in that way. It might manifest. It might be that you were not seen or heard as a kid and you feel like somehow it's wrong to promote yourself on social media, or you feel weird about promoting your business even though you know that it changes lives, right?
This stuff runs so deep and we are lucky to be entrepreneurs where we get to literally have a playground to work out all of those things, but it can be really painful and terrifying to see those. old patterns if unaddressed, if unworked on play itself in business. I think about all the times where I could have said yes to opportunities, but because I was worried about keeping myself safe, I was worried about saving money.
I didn't feel as abundant or expansive because I didn't do the work yet. Those opportunities slipped away. Now I am on a mission to rewrite those narratives, working from my body to [00:07:00] my mind to like somatic therapy and hypnotherapy and incorporating all those things. But. It definitely is a journey. It didn't start off that way.
And it's something that I actively have to work on every single day because it's about the decisions that we make in our business, right? No one is telling us here is the next right decision or here is the next one. You have to feel it for yourself. And that's what we get to do as entrepreneurs with that freedom.
But it just means that the constant narrative that we have ingrained in us, right? That will be the default one that we operate in unless we take action, unless we work on ourselves, unless we are aware of that old patterns of programming, it ripples through your relationships with other people, how you give and receive your time, right?
How you network, how you think that you can advocate for yourself for some opportunities that are maybe out of reach. And also how you deal with defeats and failure, all of those things. And that's why I say it business is really our playground to look at all of our unmet needs and unhealed traumas so that we can take action.
The third one is just a by product of the last one I said, which is that [00:08:00] you also, because we're doing this work and we see those. old conditioning patterns playing out. If you don't invest a ton in coaching, I don't mean you have to invest tens of thousands of dollars. Oftentimes it does help because it gives you a higher level of thinking and unlocks a higher level of network.
But even from reading the books or consuming coaching content that's more accessible, if you don't spend a lot of your time doing that inner work, nothing's going to feel right. Again, you're still going to be Maybe it's that micromanaging tendency, right? Where you're unable to delegate and trust. I know I was guilty of it too, but that's what I mean is like, nothing will feel aligned.
It will feel like you are working your ass off and you have these people who are working for you. But why is it that you're doing all the work? It's because you haven't done the inner work to really elevate like a leader, to trust, to invest in people, to have that patience, to understand that not every dollar that you spend is going to come back to you.
That's really what I mean by it's really, really important to invest in coaching community resources and experiences where you get to work through all of those things [00:09:00] and you get to maybe be in a peer group of people who can tell you like, Hey, it's okay. Like this frightening, like fear that you have, or these late night cries, it's uncomfortable, but you're not alone.
I've been there and sometimes that really makes a world of difference. Is just surrounding yourself with people who have been there, maybe not exactly in the same business or industry, but in that process of learning and unlearning, they have also had to do the uncomfortable work. And so being in those masterminds, being in that coaching has really helped.
And that's why it's important to find masterminds. And by the way, there's so many out there, but find masterminds that really align with you where the coach has a lived experience that you feel like can truly resonate with you and that they really got you and that they really can see you. So let's go on to the next one, which is that first, when you first start making maybe six figures or beyond, you are just so excited to have everyone buy, right?
You just want as many people in the door as possible. Everything is a yes, but as you grow, and as you realize that you can make money and that you can really create something out of nothing, which all of us have, when we have built a business. You lean more into [00:10:00] realizing that you are not at McDonald's and you are not serving everyone.
And you start to repel people. You start to have people who are like, Oh, no, this is not for me. I actually want to work with you in this way. And you're going to be in a position in an empowered position to say, well, this is really not how I work with people. I have my program for a reason. And this is how I work with people because this is how it's proven to get results.
And that is such a liberating and powerful place to be where you realize that you are not for everyone. And that maybe some things in your messaging is actually. It's actually repelling people and that's a good thing. You want people to be repelled because it means that you are stepping up in leadership.
People want to follow leaders and leaders take a stance. Leaders are not wishy washy. They're not one size fits all. So we are all out here looking and observing and consuming content and we're also wondering, is this person a part of my tribe, right? And if you are confident enough with your message to actually take a stance, then you will probably repel some people.
But that just means that you are growing in leadership. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing. My friend, another thing that has really changed for me as I scaled my business to [00:11:00] 1 million and beyond is you start to value your time more than money. Right in the beginning, we value our money more than time.
How can I save money? How can I get this website for the cheapest possible? So you're constantly trying to save, save, save. And it's this energy of constriction because you want to save the little money that you've made and because you don't know if it's going to come back, right? That's normal. We've all been there.
And I'm currently working through that as well because of my upbringing as a first generation immigrant. But I will say that as you start to realize that your business works, your business model is viable. It gets people repeated results. You start to realize, Hmm, this is really for real. We are making change in this world.
People like what we have to offer. How can I scale this quickly by hiring the best experts, the best 18 players? How can I set my team up for the best resources and get the best software and take them on team retreats and spoil them so that they feel truly invested so that they know that we care about them.
Cause that's all going to come back to you, right? That. takes a different type of mentality. It takes not you counting dollars and cents. It takes you valuing your time over money. So then you start to say no to opportunities of things [00:12:00] that before I might've been like, sure, let's say yes to this. Maybe it'll get me a few more people.
And now you're like, nope. I know that my time can be more leveraged in this way. It might be doing the 10, 000 an hour things instead of the 10 an hour things that you can delegate and automate. And you probably start to get addicted to delegation and automation that you don't want to do anything anymore that you can delegate to anyone else.
And you only focus on your zone of genius. That's when you realize you've elevated your time and the value that you create within one hour, right? So. I'll give you an example. I was so scared of handing over my email inbox, like my personal email inbox, my work email, all those things. But I realized that I was in a loop of checking Slack and Instagram and email, even on date night with my husband to the point where I was not present anywhere with anyone.
And so as I built my business, I realized like, why am I not delegating more to the people already on my team who are good at what they do? How can I just increase their hours, pay them a little bit more so that I can have a peace of mind where I'm not constantly checking email every 30 minutes and I have a whole.
block of afternoon where I am [00:13:00] strategizing offers, where I'm building strategic relationships, where I'm doing things that only I can do, like record this podcast. And so that's when I started to value my time over money and anything that I can delegate. I want to delegate anything that I can automate. I want to automate anything I can templatize.
Constantly making templates now so that it becomes a repeatable system for anyone on my team that I don't have to keep reinventing the wheel every time. So as you scale, you're going to start to value your time over money. And in the beginning it's the opposite, right? But as you scale, you're going to learn that time is more important than money.
And you start to take action from that place. And that's a very powerful place to be. And that's going to help your success. It certainly has helped mine. So the next thing is that, you know, in the beginning, you're watching your money, your resources, everything so closely, right? You're like, I got to just keep tabs on everything.
And so you want to have an instant ROI from everyone you hire or from every event that you throw. But as you grow and you scale, you realize that not all of the gains. can be measured and quantifiable in a tangible way. Not everything is going to be a monetary gain or maybe adding someone to your network.
Sometimes it's [00:14:00] just a law of energy where you give because you know that you are in an abundant place that you can host a free happy hour where you pay for all the drinks and food, but you make your community feel seen and yeah, you're not getting money back from that event. But spiritually, you're getting that good karma.
Spiritually, you are rising in your ability to lead. You are establishing yourself as someone who gives freely, who cares about their community. And that's going to create ripple effects in terms of testimonials, referrals and all kinds of things that maybe you can't. quite measured, right? It doesn't show up on your Stripe dashboard.
It doesn't show up as more followers necessarily, but you know that it will come back and it just feels so good to help somebody to maybe sit for an hour longer than you usually do in your coaching container because you really want to help that person, even though it's not technically in the program, right?
Those are all the things that you feel super blessed and grateful to be able to do as you scale. And it's a confirmation from the universe that it all comes back to you in one way or the other because you are trusting that it does without having to keep checking your balance [00:15:00] sheet every single day to see like, is this adding to my bottom line because you trust that it is coming back to you energetically or otherwise, that's just a powerful place to be in.
Another thing is that you realize as you scale how brainwashed we've become just from listening to all of the other funnel bros and marketing bros about this is how you do your business. Now, to be clear, I also use those things in the beginning, right? Because those are all the people that we learn from when we first build a business.
We learn from like the same five dudes who have been creating these playbooks. It does help in the beginning. It does help get you launched. It does help maybe make your first six figure, but if you want to make multiple six figures or seven. figures, you're really going to have to decide what is true for you out of that playbook.
And it's time to write your own playbook because at that point you have an audience, you have your point of view, you have heard from your audience why they decided to buy from you and not other people. And from all of this market research and confirmation, you become a new playbook. You are in a position [00:16:00] of knowledge and resource and experience where you can write your own playbook of what's true for you.
So there is power in abandoning those playbooks, other people, it's scary because we're always looking for the next right thing, right? We're always like, please just tell me what to do. But as you scale, you learn that a lot of the times the success comes from not doing what traditionally everyone's doing.
And if anything, this year in online business has taught us that what has worked is not going to work anymore. And then you're going to be able to practice that skill of resilience, of leaning into trust. and innovation. Because what is entrepreneurship if it's not innovation, right? I feel like we start off having these great ideas and somehow we just get pigeonholed into doing things a certain way because we are listening from the same people online.
But now it's your time. If you want to grow, lean into your limitless ability to create, to have higher levels of thinking, to. Unlock new possibilities. And that's where the success is going to be. So I had to do that for myself. I had to cleanse myself of a lot of the things that I thought were true that were no longer true for me.
And in doing so, I've been able to [00:17:00] really take a stand and have people come my way, join me, follow me, and tell me that they loved what I had to say about X, Y, and Z and how they too rejected X, Y, and Z. Right? Again, it's all about taking a stance. And this is just a powerful place to be in. Second to last thing is that your ability to grow, right?
Our ability to grow as business owners is in direct relationship to our ability to trust and delegate to other people. Now, if you look at the most successful entrepreneurs, they are not doing the day to day like managing, like, have you done this? Have you checked this? No, they are. Stepping back and empowering their team and giving them the resources so that their team is doing the execution.
If you look at the most successful fortune 500 CEOs, they are not doing the day to day. They are making sure that they are getting out of the way so that their team can really elevate and do their best work. Now that takes a tremendous amount of leadership skills. patience of coaching, of understanding how to develop talent, of how to give feedback, how to have tough conversations, how to put the right people in the right seats.
Because oftentimes it's not just about, well, this [00:18:00] person is not right for the team. Let's get rid of them. No, it's about maybe this person has. skills that are just not aligned to their current role. How can you give every single person on your team something that lights them up so that they're in their zone of genius so that you can play that game at a higher level when everyone is at their A game, right?
We want to have people who are doing things that they love and they feel like they are set up for success for. And so that's really what I mean by your level of success is directly related to your level to step into leadership. And that takes trust, that takes letting go of control, that takes surrender, that takes communicating in a way that you can effectively.
still be done. 80 percent perfect, right? 80 percent perfect done by someone else is like 100 percent awesome. It's from a book that I read called buy back your time and we're not expecting someone to be carbon copies of us. That is the quickest way to burn out and stressing out your team. I had to learn that because I had people actually leave.
It was about how could I set up for success by having clear SOPs, clear instructions, and then having a feedback loop when things don't go wrong where it's. It's not about me judging them or [00:19:00] turning them off or disempowering them. How can we have uncomfortable conversations of performance where it actually brings our team closer?
That is a sign of true leadership and something that I am actively working towards so that every single person on the team can work at a higher level because it's not about me doing all the things. It's about us as a team. And as you grow your team and your ability to delegate and elevate will be absolutely transformative too.
How you can grow and scale because you cannot do it alone. And a lot of you listening, you probably have already recognized that you really can't do it alone. Right? And it becomes about the team and hiring. And so that's why I'm spending a lot of time now figuring out how can I be the best leader? How can I communicate?
How can I get unstuck with my communication and how can I ask questions in a way that's not accusatory, that actually addresses a problem, but not threatens or makes people be on the defensive so that we can arrive at a solution together. The last one is that the more you grow, the more thinking and CEO like me time you're going to need.
What I mean by this is the more that I've grown, I've always prioritized reading more books and also taking more time to just think about what is true for me and my business, what offers I want to [00:20:00] have, what strategies I want to incorporate so that I'm not just constantly doing, doing, doing right. It's about the reflection work.
It's about the inner work. And I actually spend one to two weeks every year taking a solo trip. And you hear about Bill Gates doing this too. The solo time is. So important because we're getting so much information from our peers, from strategies. We're inundated with information, but our ability to unlock the next level of success is knowing what is aligned for us and taking confident and empowered action instead of being stuck in decision paralysis.
So that's what I mean. That's why the more I grew, the less focus on tools and tips and joining masterminds where it was like all strategy and more about tapping into how I feel regulating my nervous system, rewiring my relationship to email, to productivity, to communication. That's really what I mean by you need alone time.
You need CEO time. Take solo trips, take more walks, but I can't stress enough the CEO thinking time where you're blocking out three to four hours just to think, take a walk. Have you ever noticed that some of your best ideas come from when you're actually in motion? That's what I mean. Our ability to create new possibilities is direct.
in [00:21:00] proportion to our ability to tap into our creativity. And that comes from stepping back from doing all the things and thinking and reflecting and just having some peace and quiet to reconnect with ourselves. So these are the top 10 things I learned from scaling my business to a million dollars a year.
It was painful. I experienced a lot of burnout. As many of you know, I had my own journey of struggles, healing my relationship with my mother through psychedelic plant medicine and understanding that everything is energy. After I had a 13 centimeter fibroid tumor that grew rapidly in my uterus that I literally took out.
And I saw. Wow, that is stuck energy through all these things. I have been really grateful to have some deeply beautiful and painful lessons and I'm nowhere near the end of my journey. I'm still learning every day. I'm nowhere near perfect as a leader, but I'm a lot closer to where I want to be. So hopefully these 10 things have given you some perspective.
Thank you so much for trusting me, for letting me be in your ear, for being on this journey together. It's definitely a roller coaster ride. We got our good days, our bad days, and it's. Definitely not all rainbows and butterflies, but knowing that you are here with me along the way, I see you, I hear you, I've [00:22:00] got you.
We collectively can shine a light on each other. If you love this podcast, feel free to give me a rating and a review. I would love to know what you think. And if you know of another small business hero. Who can benefit from this podcast. Please set it along to them. Thank you so much for being here and I cannot wait for next week's episode.
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