“When is it enough?” My husband Poul asked me this interesting question probably a year ago. I was getting ready for bed, and my usual little bit of pre-work day stress or anxiety was already kicking in the night before work. I knew I had a lot going on, and I was talking to him and asking, “How do we keep growing? How do we keep making everything better?”
And I was ranting and rambling. And suddenly, Poul looks at me and asks, “When will it be enough?”
And I said, “Specifically, what are you referring to? When is what going to be enough? When is the revenue gonna be enough? When is the profit going to be enough? When is the team going to be big enough? When is the impact going to be big enough? When is my YouTube gonna be big enough?”
And he replied, “I’m actually not going to elaborate on it. When is it going to be enough?”
It was a fascinating question because, at the time, I kind of thought, “How dare he ask that! What is he trying to imply?”
However, this past year, I have really and truly figured out several different definitions for that. And I want to share a little bit about it because I want to share some of the weird parts of that journey. People often think, “Oh, it must be really exciting to speak on stages and podcasts, write a book, travel, and win awards.”
And yes, it is. It’s amazing and really cool. And I’ve dreamed of it my whole life! Sometimes it’s a little wild that it’s now a part of my normal life. However, those highlight moments are a lot like eggnog. I love them; they’re amazing and feel so good in my tummy. But the truth is, I really only get to experience those a couple of times a year. The in-between of the highlights, the stages, the awesome virals, the campaigns that take off, the launches, etc. It can be really mundane. I just want to be super transparent about that because I’ve learned one fascinating thing that many people, me included, didn’t realize before stepping onto stages and into bigger opportunities.
You think, “Oh, that’s when I will have made it. That’s when everything will feel fantastic. That’s when it will finally feel like enough, right?” But I didn’t realize that there’s this crazy crash that happens when you step off a stage and you’ve already said goodbye to everyone and start to leave whatever conference it was that you were speaking at. And there’s this moment where the adrenaline wears off, and you begin to think, “Okay, now what?”
I remember accepting awards for our business’s revenue and literally standing on stage and thinking, “Now what?”
I remember getting the book deal, and a huge part of me was like, “Now what?”
It’s really interesting because the in-betweens sometimes leave us feeling like, “Maybe I hallucinated the highlight moments. Maybe it was a one-and-done thing. Maybe it was luck. What if I can’t replicate it again?”
So I want you to think about the highlights and the wins and the cool things that have happened, and I want just to normalize that those highlight moments are not what life is usually made up of. They are like the frosting on top of a cake, and baking the cake is the day-to-day. There’s not much that’s romantic about the process. You have to get all the ingredients together. You must be precise with your measurements and wait for it to finish baking. It’s not usually until that final moment when the cake is frosted that you get to see the beauty of it.
So it’s a really interesting thing because I sat there thinking for so long that those big moments were going to be what makes life the coolest thing ever. However, it turns out that is a very, very, very, very, very small percentage of what life and business actually look like day-to-day.
So while in the moment I didn’t particularly appreciate Poul’s question, now I love it because it made me think really deeply about “what is enough?”
For example, this morning, I hosted a training that wasn’t my most popular training. There were probably 30 people hanging out with me. We hung out for half an hour as I trained on something. It was really cool. But if all I were to do was try to break my old records and surpass my own personal highs, that might have felt lost, simple or basic or boring or mundane.
And, you know, we’ve been having this talk a lot lately because often, the first reason someone builds a business is usually one of two big things. It’s either because they need money. Which let’s be honest, money is pretty fundamental when it comes to shelter, food, security, being able to take care of your mental health, taking care of your family, and making sure you’re set up for success. So I’m not going to villainize that because money is a legit reason for starting things. On the flip side, a lot of people start their business or grow their business because of impact. And recently, we’ve been talking about how neither the money nor the impact is enough.
Now, it sounds crazy because I love impact. I love connecting with people! But, on the day-to-day, there isn’t a ton of “Thanks,” meaning you don’t hear “Thanks” a lot. And so when you do, you get to savor it, and it’s really, really great. However, most of the time, impacting others is a pretty thankless position. Some days can feel like you’re trudging through the mud, and nothing’s moving. And it’s so frustrating. You’re starting to think, “I don’t even care about the money anymore. And I’m starting to wonder if I even care about the impact that this makes.”
So we’ve been having this conversation about what is beyond money and impact. What is a good “why” that can really keep you going? I used to hear Gary Vaynerchuk talk about how he loved the game. “You have to love the game!” and I would kind of roll my eyes because I would think, “whatever Gary like, what do you know?” Meanwhile, I’m sitting there with, like, a little small business that I’m working on, and he’s got this 100 million dollar business! I firmly believed it was all about impact.
But there comes the point where even impact isn’t enough to keep you going. There’s a point where suddenly you realize you actually do have to love the game. That doesn’t mean you’ll love every single step in the game. You’re not gonna always love posting content, you’re not always going to love creating, you’re not always going to love every product you put out there, and all the promotion that goes along with products, but generally speaking, you have to love the game to stay in it. Otherwise, impact and money both become full, and you start searching for more.
Now, here’s what’s super interesting. There are times when I’ve thought that loving the game was about growing my following or engagement, even though logically, I knew that that wasn’t true. There’s this really interesting cycle. I’ve seen a lot of people do it, and I’ve gone through it multiple times on probably every single platform.
So there are seasons where you grow a ton. You get tons of followers, you get tons of eyeballs, you get tons of engagement, and it’s fantastic. But then there’s this other season, and sometimes it’s the majority of the year, but there are other seasons where things flatline, or nothing seems to really hit, or you just feel uninspired, but you’re still showing up, and nothing’s really getting good engagement. What’s so interesting about that particular journey is that many people like to call you out when you’re in this season. They say, “How can you call yourself an expert if you have low engagement?”
So I see this journey from a lot of other people as well, where they soar, become super popular, everything’s taking off, and then they go into a season of almost hibernation where nothing is doing as well as it used to do. But the problem with that season is that other people will say, “How can you teach people about X, Y, and Z when your engagement is garbage? Or you haven’t gone viral in X amount of time.”
But the truth is that that’s okay. It’s normal. It’s a part of the cycle. Even athletes are not on all year round. That doesn’t mean that they don’t practice. That doesn’t mean that they don’t go through training. The thing is, there’s only a tiny amount of time that they’re actually on the court and have to show up at 120% performance. And we sometimes forget that as business owners, marketers, and freelancers, we are not always on the court! The court is when that one video is taking off. The court is when you’re on a stage. The court is when you are connecting with a client and getting fantastic results, and it’s incredible! But that is not all day, and that is not every day. Okay?
This is super important to keep in mind. Sometimes people will ask, “Why are you posting so much content when nothing’s taking off?” and I’m like, “Bro! this is practice!” “This is shooting 100 free throws so that by the time the one comes where I’m standing there with under three seconds left on the clock. I don’t choke! I know exactly what to do because I am practiced at creating content.”
Now, it can definitely be hard to go from that huge high to those lows. And I’ve been in the game long enough to see that it kind of goes like this repeatedly. So I can feel amazing, and everything’s taking off, and it feels like every piece of content I create is going viral. But can you imagine if that never slowed down? That would be a train I would want to get off, but it would be too fast to get off of the train.
The truth is, those seasons of downtime where you’re still practicing are just as valuable as the seasons where everything’s taking off and going viral. I like to think that those seasons keep me humble. Usually, when I’m on those peak moments where everything’s going fantastic, I start to think, “Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. I’m good. I’m so good!” And then usually, anytime we start to think that, within about a week or two, everything stops performing, and it’s like, “Oh, yeah, thank you so much to the algorithms for humbling me!”
But the interesting thing is that other people will sometimes villainize you for not being everything in every season on every platform and every part of your business. Or they comment all the time and love to point it out. But the truth is, you guys, this is a marathon. Life is a marathon. Business is a marathon. It is the biggest, wildest, funnest, coolest thing you get to do! And it’s okay to have down seasons and off seasons and to reconfigure your “Why” and check in with yourself. Ask yourself, “What do I love about the game? Where am I weak? Where am I strong? Where do I need to practice?”
I like to think about it this way. So when you ask a doctor how long he’s been working, you don’t ask, “How long have you been a doctor?” You say, “How long have you been practicing?”
They literally call their offices a practice! And that’s something that sticks out to me, the idea of what if I didn’t take myself so seriously, or what if many of us didn’t take ourselves so seriously? What if we went into the mindset of, I’m just going to practice? I’m just going to practice recording a YouTube video every day. I’m just going to practice posting Tik Tok content every day. I’m just going to practice giving speeches because I’m preparing for my moment.
What a beautiful concept! I think sometimes we hit burnout because our “Why” has run out or because we believe we always have to be on top of the world. For some reason, we think it’s all going to be highlights. In reality, it rarely is. So I wanted to share this today because I know some of you may be feeling the same way, or you’ve experienced this in the past and wondered why.
So a great question to ask is when is it going to be enough? Now the answer to the questions can be different for each and every one of us. But I have found two answers to that question that exist simultaneously. One is, “When is it going to be enough? “I already am.” And simultaneously, “When is it going to be enough?” “Never. I love the game, and I practice every day.”
Check out this Youtube video on this topic!
