GNT #187: This is it

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Fair warning: I've had Kenny Loggins' "This Is It" on repeat all morning, and I regret nothing. Yacht rock is a genuine, un-ironic love of mine.

It's also a great title for today. For the first time in three years of writing to you, I actually have a this-is-it.

Since I started my business, I’ve been coaching 1:1 alongside my growth advisory work, and this year I built a group program from all my frameworks and everything I’ve learned. It's called GPS, the Grow on Purpose System.

It's for consultants, coaches, and experts whose business runs on their expertise and time. Usually that's a solo business. You're great at what you do, and the only way to grow is to grind more. What you want is a profitable and efficient business that doesn't eat up your life.

Some are at capacity, trading time for money. Some are on a roller coaster: get work, do work, get work, do work. Some are ready to grow and want to know how.

Over nine weeks, GPS redesigns the business to grow without growing your hours. The first cohort starts in January, and you're the first people I'm telling!

It's the best work I've ever done, and I'm proud of it in a way I don't usually say out loud. (The whole subdued Minnesotan thing…)

I want to tell you why it exists, because it really isn't about business. It's about two kinds of success: one that builds a cage, and one that builds room to actually live.

Many of you are building the first kind right now.

Let's get to it.

The golden cage

You've heard pieces of my story, so I'll keep it short. I've hit this wall twice. Once in the C-suite, and once in the practice I built to get away from it.

In 2021 I left my nice executive role, went out on my own, and built a consulting practice. I got good at it. Successful, even.

And then I hit it again. The practice I'd built to give me freedom had built itself around me, like a golden cage. It only grew when I worked more. Every new client cost me more hours, not fewer. I was more successful than I'd ever been, and I had less of my life.

It took me a long time to see that I didn’t have a discipline problem. It was a design problem.

I didn't need to work harder, and I didn't need to hire faster. I'd built a business that ran on my hours. You close the sales. You do the work. You fix what breaks. And the better you get, the more of it runs through you, until the thing you built to set you free is the thing you can't step away from.

Every good year makes the cage nicer and the walls higher. Better clients, more money, and somehow less room to move. You keep thinking next year is the one where it finally gets easier. It just gets fuller.

That's success that builds a cage, and you don't have to run a business to end up in one. A bigger job, a busier life, more of what you're good at: same trap, different walls.

The way out

Once I saw it as a design problem, the fix changed. I designed for that inflection point of optimal instead of maximum, and I built the systems that kept the business running when I stepped away. I stayed on the work I'm best at. Everything else, I rebuilt so it didn't need me standing over it.

The growth kept coming. I got my summers back.

That work became a method, and the method became GPS. Nine weeks, a cohort of twelve, and we redesign the business step by step. Your direction, what you sell and how it's priced, your true capacity, how demand comes in, how you execute it. You walk out with a blueprint built for your business.

And it doesn't end at week nine. You stay on with the group, growing the same way. Not by grit, but with actual strategy and intention.

It's the thing I wish someone had handed me the second time around.

GPS is the fast way through it, but the shift underneath belongs to anyone:

Build your work so getting better means you buy yourself more room instead of taking it.

That's the other kind of success, and it starts the moment you treat it as a design problem, not a willpower problem.

Takeaway

Here's the question that got me out, and it's a good one for anyone:

Could next year be better than this one without being busier?

If the honest answer is no, you're not short on effort. You've got a design problem. And design problems have solutions.

That's the whole reason GPS exists. If you want to see it, it's here: catapultnorth.com/gps. I’d love to have you apply.

Either way, hit reply and tell me if these ideas resonated with you today. I read every one.

I'm always rooting for you. See you next week.

-Colleen

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