How Do You Measure Success?

I spoke with a young entrepreneur this week who, on paper, was incredibly successful. She'd grown her practice to $20k months in less than a year from opening — and yet she felt unsuccessful compared to other high volume practices, was overwhelmed and undersupported, with every moment of her day booked out. She was fully prepared to keep grinding through it, despite acknowledging the toll it was taking on her body, all in pursuit of eventually building something she could step back from when she was ready to start a family.

After our call, I realized I should have been more direct with her. Because in all my years of working with practitioners, I have yet to meet someone who has truly built a business that runs without them. With hiring associates and support staff, typically comes more complexity, not less. Your role just changes in the grand scheme of things.

There is an enormous amount of content in the online business space that has decided what success is supposed to look like for you. While "going full-time," "building a business that runs without you," and "hitting X amount per month" are common goals, they don't have to be your markers of success.

I say this because I lived a version of it myself. When I first started my business I was deep in the "scale to a million in less than five years" camp. Full send. I had big shiny number syndrome, and I was being coached by a very intense, highly gifted mentor who had me obsessed with quantum leaping and operating at a level that, looking back, wasn't in alignment with what I wanted. Over the next two years I burned myself out chasing it.

While I did build a six figure business in less than a year, I also started to realize that a million dollar coaching business wasn't actually the measurement of success for me. What I really wanted was ease in my system. The ability to have fun throughout my days, to relax with a movie in bed, to be creative without crippling pressure to perform, to be present with my husband and kids instead of zoned into my laptop.

So I made a different choice.

And here's what my actual marker of success looks like now:

Being a present mother, wife, sister, and daughter. Nurturing the relationships that matter to me. Having flexibility in my days and simplicity in everything.

When my son wakes up sick, I stay home with him, simple as that. No impossible choice between him and my work. When I want to take a Pilates class at 11am on a Monday, I make it a priority. When his classroom needs volunteers for a holiday party, I'm there. And on a random Thursday morning when I just need to walk my dogs, catch up on laundry, or reorganize my bathroom because it's been driving me crazy, I can do that too.

The way I get to structure my days — my life — is no longer in someone else's hands. And for anyone who has ever felt like it was, you know how valuable that is.

It's not a big flashy metric you could blast on a billboard. But it is everything to me, in this season of life.