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What you’ll learn in this episode:
250 episodes in, and the biggest lessons aren’t the ones I expected to learn.
After working with hundreds of business owners, spending thousands of hours inside real businesses at every level, and recording 250 episodes of this podcast – the patterns that keep showing up have changed how I think about growth, success, and what it actually means to build a business that works.
The businesses that grow most sustainably don’t always look the way we’ve been taught they should. They’re not the loudest, the biggest, or the busiest. They’re the clearest. The most intentional. The most focused.
In this milestone episode, I’m sharing the five biggest lessons I’ve learned – not theory, not hustle culture noise, but what I genuinely believe creates sustainable success after watching real people, in the arena, doing the thing every day.
In this episode, you will learn to:
- Why complexity is one of the biggest hidden growth killers in established businesses – and what simplicity actually looks like when it scales
- Why revenue alone doesn’t create wealth (and what actually does)
- How focus acts as a profit lever – and what it costs you every time you split it
- Why the emotional state of the founder shapes the entire business, and how calm is becoming a real competitive advantage
- Why the best businesses are designed to support your life – not consume it
Mentioned in this episode:
Nathan Barry Podcast: How To Uncover $100K In Hidden Profit with Jessica Miller
Work/Connect with me:
Jessica Miller (00:01.71) Hello, everyone, and welcome to the It’s Your Offer Podcast, episode 250. Oh my goodness. Can you believe it? 250 episodes. This is absolutely a pinch-me moment. If you had told me almost four years ago that this is where I was going to be, I would have told you you were crazy. But here we are, 250 episodes. And I could not be more proud and more grateful for everyone who’s listening to this and has been on this journey.
Today’s episode feels really special to me. Obviously, it’s because it’s the 250th episode, but not just because it’s the 250th episode of the podcast. It’s because somewhere along the way, this show has become so much more than just conversations about marketing, about business growth, about your offers. Over these last 250 episodes, after working with hundreds of business owners and being inside businesses at so many different levels with so many different people,
I started to notice some patterns. Some patterns in the businesses that grow most sustainably and most efficiently. Patterns in businesses that quietly struggled. Patterns in founders who look successful on paper. And when you see them, they look like they have it all together, but are completely exhausted behind the scenes. And patterns in businesses that actually have created freedom and wealth and joy and impact and a life
that people genuinely enjoy living. And honestly, some of that journey has really surprised me. And some of what I’ve learned has really surprised me. Because the things I used to think that created successful businesses aren’t necessarily the things that I believe now. So today I want to share the five biggest lessons I’ve learned after 250 episodes. Thousands of conversations, years of consulting, years of being on the podcast.
And years of having the honor of watching what actually works in real businesses with real people who are in the arena doing the thing every day, you know, when they want to, when they don’t want to, like all the things of actually being in there with people, right? Actually in the game. So this is not an episode about theory. It’s not gonna be about hustle culture, it’s not gonna be internet marketing noise, but it’s what I genuinely believe creates
Jessica Miller (02:27.85) sustainable success now, after having been on this journey and being really in the mix. And what I’ve realized is this — the businesses that actually work long-term, the ones that create profit and freedom and peace, they often look very different than what we’ve been taught scaling is supposed to look like out on the interwebs when we are bombarded
with messaging all day, every day about what it’s supposed to look like when you grow and you scale. It’s actually been very different from my experience of talking to so many people and working with them. So today I’m gonna share you those top five things. And of course, there’s like so many things, but I wanna boil it down to kind of the five top lessons that I’ve learned and that I think will resonate with you. They might be extremely eye-opening for you, and they are something that you can really take note of
in your own experience and in your business, so that you have them on your radar and they can help you grow in a way that actually does create more profits, more freedom, and more joy in your life and in your business. Okay, so lesson number one. The businesses that grow the fastest are often the simplest businesses. Complexity is one of the biggest killers of growth in established businesses.
I’m gonna say this again. Complexity is one of the biggest hidden growth killers in successful businesses. Most owners assume growth problems actually require adding things. They think if they have a problem with growing, that they need to do something they’re not doing. They need to add something in that they’re missing. But what I have seen, and often is the case, is that more does not equal
more growth. So when I say that, I mean more offers, more teams, more platforms, more launches, more content, more meetings, more — insert here — more customization, right? More does not equal more growth. And it is actually exactly what is slowing the business down, this addition of things. At a certain point, complexity starts taxing your growth.
Jessica Miller (04:48.328) more than lack of opportunity ever will. And there is this FOMO, there is this knee-jerk reaction for many of us. And you kind of hear it out on the interwebs, like, you gotta have this thing, you gotta have this next shiny object. Are you doing this thing? Have you tried this thing? What about this thing over here? And that complexity that comes into a business and into your brain taxes your growth more than the elusive thing that you might be missing. What this transpires
into in businesses are things like operational drag. Things are now so complicated. There’s so much going on you can’t keep it all straight. You are making decisions all day long about all these things. So it creates decision fatigue. Fractured attention because you’re being pulled in so many different directions. I mean you’re onto one thing and then you have squirrel brain and something else comes up or the ping from your Slack message is there while your phone is, you know, buzzing because you have a text message.
There are too many priorities. You’re talking about too many things. Your messages get diluted. Never mind what’s happening in your business with your teams being overwhelmed and inconsistent execution because it’s so complicated that you can’t follow it. Many, many businesses do not have a revenue problem. I cannot tell you — I literally got off the phone today with a gentleman who I actually worked with. He was doing some work on our house and he came over.
And I remember speaking to him at the end of the year. And I actually connected back with him because he was here helping us get rid of some unwanted creatures in our house that we didn’t want. And I happened to be talking to him and he had just had a very young baby and he was super, super busy and there was like so much going on. And he even said to me, like, cash is not the problem. We just have so much going on here and I have no time.
And it’s so like complicated and so chaotic that I’m doing all the things and I’m not only doing them all day, but I’m coming home and I want to be there for my kids. And then I’m doing it again at night till like two o’clock in the morning. And then I’m getting up the next day and I need to like wade through this and go do the work and then come back and do all the other stuff. Cash flow is not an issue for him, right? He doesn’t have a revenue issue.
Jessica Miller (07:14.7) He has a complexity problem. And that complexity problem is actually stealing all of his time. Because every new thing that comes on adds to the business and it creates a cost. And that cost for him is time and sanity and energy, right? And what I found to actually be true is that the simplicity in the business is what scales — you can have the revenue coming in, but when there’s so much complexity, you’re actually leaving so much money on the table.
You’re leaking that, but you’re also leaking the other things that are actually equally, if not more, important. And that is your time and your energy and your moments. And simplicity is really what scales, and complexity and chaos does not. And so when I look at these highest performers — like I said, through the conversation, through the people that I’ve worked with — the highest performing businesses I’ve seen, they are usually remarkably clear. Like they know what is going on.
And I want to share with you a story of a client of mine that I worked with. We’re going to call her Susie. She had a very successful coaching business. And she was helping a lot of women. She was a manifestation coach. And so what she helped people do was lean into their money story, which, oh my goodness, like, who does not have a money story? And she was helping them manifest money and really get clear on their limiting beliefs around their money so that they could grow the business that they wanted.
And she had a lot of things going on in her business. Really at the core of it, she had an upfront membership, she had a group program, and then she had a very, very high-ticket mastermind. But in between all of that, the number of things that were going on — the chat bots and the Facebook groups and the text messaging sequences and the email sequences —
there were so many things going on in that business that when it came time to look at that launch and really uncover what was going on there and where the opportunities were, what we found for her was that there was a place where people were really leaking out of her business. And that was at the point of her sales calls. She was getting a ton of people to show up to sign up for these sales calls, but they were not showing up to the call. And when we
Jessica Miller (09:36.877) decided that we were going to focus there, but we needed to untangle all of the other pieces in order to simplify that journey. That’s really, really where the real work was. So that’s what we did. We untangled all that stuff. We got clear on who is this person that is signing up? What do we need to be saying to them? Where are they hanging out? And what few channels are actually working here? And let’s focus on those, speak to them,
and actually get them to show up on this sales call. Because what we were finding was that around 50% of people — actually, I think it was even more than that. It was more like 50 to 70% of people were converting. So if we just doubled down on streamlining these efforts and getting those people who signed up to actually show up, we could double her revenue just with that. And to give you a sense of what this number was —
she had about 200 people signing up for a call, but only about like 95 of them were actually showing up. And out of that, she was converting, I think around 50. So she had about that 50% conversion times 5K apiece. When we streamlined all of that, not only did her expenses drop, because she’s not paying for like ManyChat and the text sequence and every SMS and all the — I mean, she had a huge email list as well, all those emails.
She wasn’t paying for all of those things. And when we got the 200 people that signed up for that call to actually show up on the call, and then she converted at 50%, instead of converting 50 of 92 people, she would convert a hundred of 200 people. Just do the math. And that’s without even touching her actual sales call and tightening that up, which we did as well. Blew her mind. And on the other side of that was a team
that actually was focused and on point. They were not frantic. They knew what their job was. They were making it happen. And she got to show up and be the talent. She did the webinar. She did the CTA to get on that call. She was fresh. She was amazing. She was exactly where she needed to be. And her income doubled. This is the power of simplicity. This is how this works, where we make it easier.
Jessica Miller (12:03.788) And honestly, I think things like this are one of the biggest reasons so many million-dollar-plus businesses suddenly start to feel harder because it is so complicated. And that is something I am going to unpack much more deeply in the episodes coming up. So stay tuned for all of these lessons here. They are super important. And I think they actually require a deeper conversation. So stay tuned. Coming up, TBD.
But it is really, really important that you keep it simple. You know what you need to do and what is the best way to do it, and you don’t need to be doing a million things. But this brings us to the second lesson, which is revenue does not automatically create wealth. It doesn’t automatically create wealth. There are many, many businesses generating impressive revenue out there while they are also
being stressed to the max — the owners are being stressed. Their margins are razor thin. Their payroll feels terrifying every two weeks or every month when it comes up. Can anyone relate to this? You know, you have people that are depending on you, and it’s a terrifying experience. Cash flow is constantly inconsistent. It comes in fits and spurts, and people are never quite sure how that is going. The owners aren’t paying themselves well. There’s no
actual real freedom in these businesses.
Revenue is vanity if it does not improve your life. If you are running a business that is making money, but it is similar to what I was just explaining to you about with Susie or the gentleman I talked to on the phone, where it is stealing all of your time, all of your joy — it is not true wealth. And some founders are running these multi-million dollar businesses and still feeling trapped every day.
Jessica Miller (14:01.526) More money moving through your business does not actually mean that your business is working the way that you want it to. And when we get into these places of, you know, more like low-margin scaling where you’re like pushing that rock uphill or you have bloated operations — so it is stealing so much of your time, your expenses are going through the roof — that complexity is very expensive because
when things are out of whack, you don’t have control over it, you don’t know where your money’s going. Side note, and I have been absolutely guilty of this, but now I am not because I am onto it — I mean, take a look at your software subscriptions. Take a look at the things that you are paying for, that you just do it one by one. Like somebody said it, okay, I’m gonna sign up for that thing. I’ve got three AI agents, you know, all that stuff, right? It’s super expensive.
When you’re not sure what’s working and what isn’t working. So you’re underpricing, or you’re bringing things on. There’s this unnecessary expansion that we think is necessary for growth. Or we’re just like growing unintentionally, right? It gets super messy. And we’ve been — many of us — in that messy, messy middle of growth. A lot of high-level founders are talking about this. You hear this in many places.
I mean, it’s actually something I’ve heard messaged and echoed by people like Morgan Housel and even in conversations with creator-led businesses like Nathan Barry, when he talks about this idea that there is a huge difference between building revenue and building a business that actually creates freedom. And when I was on the Nathan Barry episode in the fall, this is something that we really leaned into. We lean into this idea of how do you build your business in a way
that is more profitable. It is more efficient. It is protecting your revenue in the sense that it’s not just about bringing money into the business. It’s about money that you bring in that you actually get to keep. And you do that by uncovering these hidden profit levers in your current business where the money is hiding. Like you’re working all the time, and there is money that is sitting in there that you are not uncovering. The simplicity is what drives that.
Jessica Miller (16:20.352) Understanding what is going on in your business and not having it be overly complicated is crucial. Building these profitable ecosystems — and we talked about that on Nathan’s call — it was really a masterclass in profitability in your business and uncovering hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been sitting there. I will tell you also as a side note, it doesn’t matter how big or small you are. Sometimes people will listen to these episodes and they’ll be like, man, I have to have a million dollars for this to really matter.
I want to caution you around that. That is absolutely not true. I actually did a class on a summit that I was on with the person that was running it. We actually did a webinar — I’m like, what is the word, Jess? A webinar. And this person’s business at the time was at around seven hundred thousand dollars. I uncovered four hundred thousand dollars of upside in his business on that call in an hour.
You are not immune to this. You are not immune to this. And it doesn’t need to be $400,000. It could be $25,000 and it is life-changing. So intentional growth, simplicity, that profitable ecosystem, understanding where your money is hiding — that is where it’s at. And revenue alone in isolation is actually not the cure-all for true wealth.
And I want to share with you an example of this with a client of mine. She owns a med spa and she was growing. She was making money. On paper, there was a lot of revenue coming in. Med spas also are a high-margin business. So there’s a lot of opportunity there. But what was happening is she was plateauing. She was exhausted. She was in all the operations. There were a million things going on. She was spending a lot of money.
She had a lot of staff. She was in some ways overstaffed because there wasn’t a clear path to how to optimally utilize that staff. She wasn’t really clear exactly where her money was coming from. And so in that place, it’s like being on a treadmill. You are doing all the things, you’re working all the hours, you’re putting all the time in, you’re bringing in all this money, but you’re not
Jessica Miller (18:43.904) actually getting out of it what you want. So once we started working together, we got really clear. What are people buying when they come in the door? What is the most profitable thing in that business? And what are people coming in for? And let me tell you, when we looked for that, and this is for all of you too, I bet you this is the case in your business. When you really start to look through that lens with a little scalpel and you’re like, where is it? It jumps out at you in two seconds.
Those line items on her P&L statement that were making her the money were clear. They were like two times or more what all the other line items were. When we started to get clear with that, we optimized her customer journey. We created packages that were specifically optimized for that buyer so that they could come in and move quickly to that sale. And then we understood where in that business model was she interfacing with those clients in the most powerful, simple way. And for her,
it was through her events. People loved to come in and see her. And when they did, and she was able to spend time with them, they bought a lot of solutions on the back end. So when we optimized that event and weaved in the client journey that worked and created packages, bespoke to those people based on the problem we were inviting them in for, she made tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of hours.
The last event she had, she brought in over 50K. So these small tweaks of really understanding how to build that business in the way that you want it, extract the results that you want and reverse engineer the business that you need to get there while preserving your revenue is actually where it’s at. Simplified delivery, optimized offer stacks, increased profitability, increased sanity,
improved owner quality of life. And by the way, it’s not even just about her. Although I’m happy to say that her life is completely different. Her business has doubled over the last year. But it’s her staff, it is her clients, it is her spouse, it is her kids. Everyone is feeling it. Everyone is feeling it. Because what I have eventually realized is that profitability is deeply connected to something else that nobody talks enough about. And that
Jessica Miller (21:07.448) thing is focus. That is focus. And it is not just revenue. Okay. It’s focus. And it’s focus for many of you that are running your business and are listening to this podcast. Which brings me to the next lesson, which is a really important one. And that is the most successful businesses that I’ve seen are relentlessly focused. They are relentlessly focused. Focus is a profit lever. Okay. Most businesses do not need more ideas, more opportunities, more offers.
A laundry list of things that most consultants will give them, that they need to find the time to do. They do not need all of that. What they actually need is clear execution, they need fewer priorities, and they need strategic consistency. They need to know exactly what they’re doing, what is moving the lever, and how to protect themselves from getting distracted away from those things. Okay. Distraction is incredibly expensive.
Incredibly expensive. It is expensive in time. It is expensive in energy. And it absolutely is expensive in financial terms because we take our eye off the ball of the thing that is actually the most important piece that we actually need to be focusing on in that moment. I’ve said this many times on the podcast, but one of the things that I think we do differently in my business, and the thing that I am most proud of, is we are not here to tell you all of the things that you need to do differently in your business.
Because there are a litany of those things, but all of those things are not created equal. I’m gonna say it again. Everything that quote unquote could happen in your business or could change in your business is not created equal. You want to focus on the most important next thing that is connected to the result you want. And in this corner of the universe, we’re talking about profits. We’re talking about the money that you are working hard for that we want you to keep and that we want you to be able to bring in
more easily. We need you to focus on that. And the relief that comes with our ability to help you do that is so much bigger than the profits. It’s the relief. It’s the assurance that you’re focusing in the right place. It is being able to connect the dots to the thing you want and be able to see it. Most businesses are not lacking in opportunity. They’re not lacking in the 45-point to-do list. They are drowning in it. They’re drowning in it.
Jessica Miller (23:33.825) And the focus is what creates the momentum, right? Like it’s like, what is that saying? Like, you know, stay calm and, you know, do the one thing or whatever it is. I can’t even think of it now. I wanna say it, but it’s like be calm and focus. And the focus creates the momentum. And every time you split that focus, you’re really diluting your power and you’re stunting your growth.
We see this lurking and sometimes it’s unnoticeable in our business, but we see it in a variety of places. We see it when we start chasing trends, we start chasing these shiny objects. We see it when we constantly switch gears. And I know I have been guilty of this and I get very, you know, sensitive about it, but that like reactive leadership — I used to be someone who kept switching gears because I’m a quick thinker and I like, you know, doing stuff. I like being in motion.
But that reactive, you know, task switching, leadership switching is really detrimental to a team and to growth. So too many initiatives, you know, scattered marketing all over the place, unfinished projects, those shifting priorities — like those are the things that really get us. And, you know, as many of you know, I’ve worked in Don Miller’s community. I coach there, you know. Don is someone who’s really taught me this idea about
clarity — about not confusing people, about staying focused. You know, you hear him say, confuse you lose — like all that lack of focus, the lack of simplification, the lack of clarity is really important. And he’s talked about this for years. And I think the clarity — often he’s talking about that in marketing. But I think that the clarity does not just apply in marketing. Of course, it absolutely applies there, but it applies to operations, leadership, your offers, and your strategy.
It applies to all of those things. And let me tell you what I mean by this. There’s a client of mine who is a shop owner in Virginia. She is brilliant. She is a quick thinker. She is jazzed about her business. She’s doing all the things. When she came to me, she came to me because she felt like she was in this place that she was constantly frantic about what to do in her business. And as a result, she was doing all the things.
Jessica Miller (26:01.91) She owns a Fair Trade Goods brick and mortar. It’s amazing. It has amazing materials in it, has amazing workshops. It’s got all the things. But she was in a state of constantly pivoting, right? Constantly putting out the marketing strategy. She had Facebook ads. She had all of the things, all the priorities. She was, you know, signing up for partnerships and putting her name in for all of these things and trying all these cool things.
And she was amazing. It wasn’t that what she was doing was not working. But unfortunately for her, the experience was I don’t know what’s coming next. I’m constantly in motion. It’s constantly on my mind. And because of this like lack of focus — or focus everywhere — you know, she had this experience. Like she’s like cruising down the highway with like the emergency brake pulled up. You know, there’s drag there.
And so what we did was we looked into her business, started working together, identified and committed to one growth lever for her. One growth lever. And we said, we’re gonna start with this for the next 90 days, and then we’re gonna go to the next one. And for her, she was running a series of workshops that were really driving not only her business, but they were driving people coming into her physical shop. And so we focused on that offer, on that audience, on
the channel that was going to help support that workshop. And for her, it was a candle bar workshop. And we optimized that. And guess what happened? Not only did she start filling that workshop and selling it out weekend over weekend over weekend through her slow — quote unquote slow — seasons, but also what we found is that if we also took that entire client journey and pulled it through, we could help
pull through the sales into the store in a very powerful way. And that’s what we did. So she started selling out her candle bar workshops. She started bringing in new customers into the store. She started curating their experience for what they were going to buy when they came in. And the workshop sales went up and her retail sales shot up. And now she’s working on another opportunity related to that workshop that’s going to then
Jessica Miller (28:20.812) double her growth again. The other interesting thing is she now has an asset around that workshop that she can apply to other workshops that she also runs in her store. And because of that, the other workshops are now selling out. So that’s the power of focus and putting all of that energy into one thing — you start to do it really well. And not only do the businesses that do this well blow that out of the water, but then they create
the infrastructure and the framework in order to apply that to other things. So now it becomes a repeatable asset in their business, not just in the short term with what they’re doing, like for this particular client with their candle bar. But when she starts applying it to the other workshops, it’s going to then pay her on that until forever, right? For all the different things. It really becomes like an ATM machine. And even more important than that, she gets to take a deeper breath.
She has easier growth. She has increased conversions. She has clarity on where she needs to be putting her energy. And it trickles down to her team too. Because now all of her employees know exactly what’s going on. And it’s clear to them and they can do the thing. And this whole entire stress level goes down for everyone. You know, as leaders, as you’re listening to this podcast, as a leader, right? It’s not just about you. It’s about how you’re also
affecting all of the people around you. And what I’ve realized is that when the focus improves, something else really important changes too. And that is the emotional state of the founder. Right. And this goes to what I was just saying about the stress levels and about your experience, right? Wealth is more than just money. It is your experience. It’s your sanity. It’s your energy. Right. Which brings us to lesson number four.
Which is the emotional state of the founder shapes the entire business. This is so important. You are your most important asset in your business. As a CEO, as someone who is setting the vision and setting the tone, you matter hugely. Hugely, hugely, hugely. You are such an important asset in your business. And this relates to every piece of you, like your nervous system, like
Jessica Miller (30:40.782) how you’re able to react, or the reactivity that you have in different parts and in different cases of your business, whether or not you’re overwhelmed, whether or not you’re clear, like you have the time and the bandwidth and the space to get clear and have that confidence, that steadiness, that mind and groundedness that you send to your team and to the people around you. I like to refer to this as certainty. And this is really important.
Both for your team — like your people within your organization, they feel it. But the other place it’s really important is in sales conversations, in conversations like your marketing and when you’re talking to other people. And if you’re a business that runs a sales call, like that grounded certainty, the emotional temperature there is so important because people are buying that from you in those moments. Many times they’re trying to make a decision and they’re not exactly sure.
So they’re buying your certainty in that moment as they’re working through it. And when you have that steadiness, it’s really important. And then there’s that piece of emotional regulation, right? Your health is connected to your emotional well-being. And you being able to do that in a way that feels good for you is important for your health and for everything else outside of your business. You know, these things affect your team culture. They affect your decision making. It bleeds into the operations.
As I mentioned, your client experience — and that, you know, whether it’s on a sales call or just the tone that comes through when people hear you talking or they’re looking at your marketing — the quality of the growth that you have when you’re actually building your business, when you’re going after your dreams. Businesses absorb the emotional patterns of their leaders. And so that emotional state is really important. And calm leadership does scale differently.
It scales differently. The organization feels it, you feel it. And when you’re in reactive mode — and we’ve all been there, we have all probably had this experience — when you react, the business reacts. You know what I’m saying? And you feel that. So reactive founders create reactive businesses. And the businesses that I have found, you know, really feel the strongest internally often feel the calmest. They really do. We are surrounded
Jessica Miller (33:05.13) by these cultures of urgency. Really, we are. There is a propensity — when we listen to the words people use, the sound waves out there — there’s a propensity toward urgency, right? We have to do it now. We need to adopt the next thing. AI is coming and it’s taking over, right? Like there is so much urgency culture there. And there’s that kind of
what I like to call like an emotional contagion. You know, we pick it up, right? We’re in it and we pick it up. And it ends up seeping into our businesses, our day-to-day. We overextend. We kind of feel like we’re in that constant firefighting mode. And we develop this inability to think strategically because we are in this constant reactive, overhyped, over-emotional state.
I wanna also say as a side note, and I’ve shared this on other podcasts — I think it’s important to talk about here. I think I shared with all of you that I bought myself an Oura Ring. This was my Christmas gift to myself. And I bought myself an Oura Ring because I wanted to actually track my sleep. And I felt like my sleep was off. And when we think about health and we think about all the things, sleep is like so, so, so, so crucial.
So I was like, I’m gonna get an Oura Ring and I am gonna track this sleep because I’m a data person and I wanted to see the data, like what is actually going on with my sleep. So I got the Oura app. And lo and behold, sleep was not exactly on point. But another piece of data that came out that was actually equally, if not more, important than the sleep was the part of the Oura Ring that tests your stress level. They call it your stress level.
And what they essentially do is they’re looking at like your heart rate, your heart rate variability, your temperature, your movement. There’s all sorts of different factors that they are tracking and they’re kind of collating all these things and putting them together and you get a stress score. And there are several different levels to these stress scores. So the lowest level is that you are restored. The second level up is that you’re relaxed. The third level up is that you’re engaged, and the fourth level is that you are what they call stressed.
Jessica Miller (35:22.668) And then they take all of your beautiful data and they plot it on a bar chart and they color code each one of these levels. So, you know, maybe like the lowest level of like restored is like purple and then, you know, relaxed is blue and then, you know, whatever — I think engaged is like amber and then pink is stressed. So you see this bar chart, and I open it up, and it is a sea of pink. Okay. And
it kind of caveats it by saying, not all stress is bad. However, what I took from this was not so much that I spend my time being stressed all the time, because I don’t, and I don’t feel stressed all the time. But what I did take it to mean was that I am in a state of over-engagement. I’m in a state of over-engagement. My body is operating
at this highest state. It is constantly sort of dialed in. And what do I think about that? What does that mean for me? Where is it showing up in my life? Where is it showing up in my business? What other things is it affecting? And it was really, really eye-opening. And did I want to change it? Yes, I think it is not healthy to be in an overengaged place — call it a stressed place — all of the time.
But more importantly, it allowed me to pause and decide what do I want to be doing? How do I want to be showing up in my life and in my business? In what ways is me showing up in this state emotionally and neurologically affecting my business? Like what does that look like? And do I want to choose it? And the ability to just actually have a device in this case provide that information, so I could just like take one step out — it was one step removed.
But I also could see it very clearly — was a game changer. And I’m here to tell you that it actually did and does matter very much to me. And I will make choices that affect my body and my experience in that place. And that was more of a short — like in the last year — kind of a data point that really helped me lean into this piece, which is that grounded emotional place, the place where we can
Jessica Miller (37:42.956) you know, avoid things like burnout and buck the system that we need to be in urgent mode all the time and regulate our system — our nervous system especially — and protect ourselves as the asset. This has been a really, really important thing for me. And I think it has been something that I’ve worked really hard to fine-tune in my own business. And it has actually affected so many things on a positive level because I think my
team feels it, I feel it, my clients feel it. I’m able to hold the space for them in a different way. And it’s sustainable. And my experience in my business on the day-to-day is also something that I have wanted and that I am choosing. I think sometimes we get into these places where we think, like, success and the business we want is somewhere out there in the future. And, you know, I’ll relax and take a deep breath when I get there. But the truth is, like, I get to be and have that business every single day right now.
I get to choose it. And I think as a founder and as a CEO, that is very, very important. And it is important for us. And it has been important. And I have seen it transpire in the most successful businesses. And it is not often the messaging that we’re getting from the outside world. It’s not what we’re observing when we’re sitting, you know, in the virtual room, like in our masterminds or with our peers, or what does that look like? That’s not always the signal. But I actually think
Jessica Miller (40:11.872) now — and this is the word from Jess — that we are entering into an era where calm is becoming a competitive advantage. And for all the reasons that I just mentioned, you know, it is very, very, very far reaching. And it is really a superpower and it is a super powerful lever in your business. One of my clients — who most recently, she is an executive coach — you know, she was sort of in this
place where she was overwhelmed. And it was one of the reasons we started working together. She’s like, I just want to grow my business easier. She was making a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars. But she was completely overwhelmed and she was anxious and she didn’t know where her money was coming from. And she kept telling herself that she didn’t have an offer. Like, I don’t know what my offers are. I’m like, well, you have offers because people are buying them and you’re selling them. But let’s talk about how this could look
if you weren’t in the state of overwhelm and it didn’t feel frantic and you weren’t like ping-ponging — it was very reactive. You know, she would be having conversations with people, and this was showing up in her business by, you know, kind of baking bread every time. She was creating offers and she was doing these one-offs. And bottom line is she was just really, really emotionally exhausted. And when we started working together and we simplified her business, we simplified her offers.
We created boundaries around her day. Like, what do you need for your energy? What is the business that you want to be running? What does that look like as far as your revenue and your profitability and your hours every day and the type of work you’re doing? And we reversed all of those things. We cut out some of her commitments — like there were things that she was doing that she did not need to do. And we focused these operations. And we very simply went to her book of business and her clients who she loved.
And we were like, if we were to grow this business simply and we were really to set these boundaries and corral this in, how could we make more money that you could keep with your existing clients in a way that was easy? And we went through her top 20% and we had a plan for how she was going to engage with those people, what she was gonna offer them, what those offers looked like. She did not create anything new. She actually leaned into more of the things that she was doing that she really wanted to do.
And within the first 90 days of us working together, she landed a $125,000 contract. All while she was enjoying herself, all while she was, you know, at ease, confident in what she was doing, and out of that frantic overwhelm. In fact, the frantic overwhelm and that like spiral that was going on in her brain was actually part of the thing that was slowing her down with her growth. As soon as we cleared that clutter
and we, you know, just got her stuff in order — $125,000 in a quarter with one client. So business grew better, everything stabilized. Her sales improved and she was so much happier. And now she’s able to take a deep breath. She was able to ski every day during the winter. Life is good. And nothing makes me happier than watching somebody growing their business, killing it, being successful.
Jessica Miller (42:34.542) and having their life and their sanity back. And I see this with many, many successful businesses. The ones that do this well, they know what they want. They are managing their nervous system. They are managing themselves and they are making sure that they are taking care of that. And they are growing an intentional business with them at the epicenter of it and their experience. And that brings me to the last point and the last lesson, which is really around this idea that the best businesses are designed
to support your life and not consume all of it. They’re not consuming all of it. And as I mentioned, this has been really, really important for me. And this is probably the biggest thing that I have seen for the businesses that I admire, the ones that are doing this really well, the ones who have really built true success. You know, they’re in this place where they, you know, can really reap the rewards and not just in like
the sense of the like tangible things like money and things like that. But they can reap the rewards in the sense of knowing that they are creating their dream, that it actually is really happening. And it doesn’t mean that it is a cakewalk every day. I want to really emphasize this. I will say this for myself too. You know, I’ve really spent a lot of time, even with this podcast, like, what does success look like? What do I want this to be? It is not
easy every day. But there is a peace and a knowing that comes when you are clear about where you’re going and you have the certainty that what you’re doing right now is in service of that. And that you’re taking care of yourself. You’re taking care of your people. You’re taking care of your business. And you’re not getting to a place which many people have gotten to — and many of the people that I have worked with have come to — and that’s why we started working together, is that they feel like they’ve built a successful business.
Jessica Miller (45:01.44) But I’m not sure that I built the life that I really wanted. Like they’re standing in this place and they’re like, I got here. You know, I’m making more money. I’ve got the business that I want. I’ve never worked harder in my life for it. I’ve never sacrificed more of the things that I really have wanted — like the reasons that I’m growing this business. I’ve never sacrificed more of those things to get here than I have right now. But the truth is, it doesn’t have to be like that. Success does not have to be at the destruction of your life. You know, a business that is supposed to
support your life can be created and you don’t need to replace the life that you have or that you want now to get the business that you really desire. It can be both. And the goal is not just growth. It is a quality of life. And it is knowing what those things are. And true success I think comes from that. And the older that I get,
the more that I do think that the true success metric is actually freedom. And it’s freedom on how you define it, the freedom in the way that you want it. And that might look like freedom of owning your time. It might be freedom of your energy and being able to not be, you know, burning out and pushing that energy out all the time and not, you know, rejuvenating yourself.
It might look like really knowing what your boundaries are and actually living within them and not blowing through them, leaving your desk at four o’clock in the afternoon with the peace of knowing you did what you had to do and you can move on. And sometimes that means actually leaving before four o’clock because you have peace of mind and you know that. It could look like something like designing your business around your values. Like what do you really want to be doing? What do you really care about? And infusing every piece of it with joy, right?
Joy in your success, enjoying your job, enjoying what you’re doing. There are moments in my day, and this happens — it’s been happening actually almost every week — where I will end my day and I will have the experience that I am just so grateful for the people that I work with. I am so grateful. I am grateful for the people who have trusted me. I am grateful for the success that they’re having.
I am grateful for the human beings that they are. You know, it’s really that moment where, you know, you can feel it on such a deep level that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. And I think for me, over, you know, these four years of growing this business and recording this podcast, I really have leaned into like, what do I want? What makes me happy?
Jessica Miller (47:19.166) What do I need to tell myself in service of creating that business and that dream and that life that I want? How do I need to show up? The idea that I don’t need to do everything. Like I am thrilled. I am thrilled to say no to things. Let me tell you. It is awesome. But it’s coming from a place of deep knowing and bucking that like knee-jerk mental reflex of like, no, no, no, you gotta do all the things — of knowing I don’t have to do all of it. Right. There are
there’s clarity on the things that matter in growing my business. And I’m going to support myself in staying focused on those things and then also letting go of the things that are not important. I think it’s also around being able to own my time and to flex. When you know what you need to be focusing on and what you need to be doing in your business to get the things that you want, when life happens and you need that flex, and it’s
pulling you in certain directions because that’s what has to happen in that moment, you can shift in a very intentional way because you have white space in your life. And I’ve really come to value that white space. I used to think it was all the doing. It’s not the doing. It is the being. And it’s the white space that allows you to do that. You spend the time doing the things that you know will move the needle. And then you spend the other time doing all the other things and leaving that flex
room. I’m not chasing a revenue number anymore. That used to be a big thing. But revenue is not where it’s all at. I am not working to the wee hours all the time on the things I think I should be doing. Sometimes I work later on the things I know I should be doing, but it’s a choice. And I don’t have to do it. And I’m not blowing through my boundaries the way that I was. Taking care of my health. I really do believe that the people
in my business, in my life, my clients, my teammates, and myself are really what matters most. And they are the things that are going to help you build your dreams. And in the process of doing that, I’ve come to realize that you help them build their dreams too. And so all of those pieces kind of coming together in harmony, they really matter. And so this conversation, it
Jessica Miller (49:41.397) has become so much bigger than one episode, right? I mean, I could talk about these things all day long. And as I mentioned earlier in the episode, I honestly believe that each one of these lessons that I talked about deserves its own deeper conversation. And so over the next many episodes, I’m really going to unpack each one of these things more deeply. You know, why businesses feel harder at harder levels, how complexity like quietly can cap that growth.
Why more revenue doesn’t always create more freedom. Why actually, you know, sustainable momentum and freedom comes from certain things and not everything. And why I really believe that calm, focused businesses are going to outperform the chaotic ones — the ones that are running after all the shiny objects — in the years to come. Like I think, you know, calm is the new black. I really do. Calm and intention. So
250 episodes later, like here we are. And I think what I believe most now is really this: that the best businesses are not necessarily the loudest businesses, right? They’re not the biggest or the busiest businesses. They are the clearest. They are the most intentional. They are the most focused. They are the most aligned. And aligned especially to you. And the founders behind them
are usually not trying to do everything, right? They are protecting what matters most to them. They are simplifying, they are leading intentionally, they are building businesses that actually support the life that they want. Thank you so much for being part of these first 250 episodes. And I am so excited for where we’re going and for what is next. If this episode resonated with you, I would love for you to share it
with another business owner who is in this season right now. And you know who they are. Like they need to hear this message. Because I think a lot more people are feeling like this than we realize. And they are looking for that easier path to growth. They know that there is a lot at stake for them to figure this out. And they’re being called to it. And for me, that is my mission. Like I know growth and success does not have to be hard. It does not need to be a cakewalk. And it isn’t a cakewalk.
Jessica Miller (52:05.518) But it does not have to be hard. And you can do this simply. You could do it powerfully. You could do it protecting yourself. You could do it in a calm, aligned place. And that’s what really gets me to show up every week to this podcast and gave me the momentum to build my business. So if somebody else that you know needs to hear this, please share it with them. And thank you so much for being on this journey with me for these two hundred and fifty episodes. And I can’t wait for the next two fifty. Until next week, everyone, have an amazing week.
