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A Message For Everyone Who Wishes Their Business Was Growing Faster
This weekend I paddled in my first regatta in a C1 racing canoe.
I fell out twice just paddling to the start line.
Two times I had to drag myself back to the dock so that I could get back in my boat and start over. For a hot second I thought I was going to miss my race. By the time I got to the start line my back calf was bouncing wildly with nervous shakes, totally out of control.
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It took three seasons and hundreds of hours of practice just to stay upright and paddle straight in a boat that is 15 inches wide, has no rudder, and can only be paddled on one side. It’s like trying to surf on a blade of grass. My first two seasons I spent more time swimming than paddling.
Reaching the start line was already a huge win.
In business you get a lot of praise for doing things fast: Hitting the 6-figure mark in your first year. Getting to 200K followers on TikTok with one viral video. Most of the freebies and paid offers in my inbox use “fast” as a main promise, often using “this one weird trick.” (File that under red flags.)
I get it though.
People in pain want it to go away as fast as possible, so marketing like that works even when it’s obviously a pie-in-the-sky promise. And as someone who did grow their business very fast, that praise you get as an outwardly successful person feels awesome. It made me feel important and powerful.
But stories like mine are the exception to the rule, which is that building a business is often agonizingly slow. Things you think will work don’t, until occasionally some random moon shot actually does.
It’s a game of trying and failing and getting up and doing it again, over and over and over. Two steps forward one step back.
Taking up sprint canoe has been like that.
I’ve fallen out of my boat more times than you could count. Today I dragged my ass out the door to practice before the sun came up, knowing I’d be back home two hours later soaking wet with ears full of canal water and duck poop smeared on my legs.
It has been such a lesson in patience. I could never have done it without my teammates telling me from day one, “You’re a natural athlete!” and “We’re all rooting for you, Tarzan!” No one else in my division paddles a C1. Everyone is so proud of me, and counts my successes and failures as their own.
When I crossed the finish line in the 500m race on Saturday, it was a victory for all of us. I left my boat at the dock and walked back up to the sea-can where we hang out between races, looking for someone to help me hold all of my huge feelings.
I found my teammate Joan, who didn’t even see the race. I wrapped my arms around her and cried into her neck. (We never even hugged before this.)
“I did it, Joan,” I said. “I finished the race.”
That moment felt like a promise that everything I had worked for since separating from my husband was worth it. Not just the three seasons of paddling, but also the years of learning how to cook for myself and play with my kids, how to top up the oil in my lawn mower or jump my car, how to feel joy when everything around me was falling apart.
Sprint canoe was a divorce project so my success on the water is intimately connected to my success in life. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the rush of that feeling.
This email is dedicated to everyone building a business who feels like it’s not happening fast enough, like everyone else is bringing in the hay and you’re still wondering which seeds to plant.
It takes so much time.
More than you think it will.
Anyone who says it’s easy is probably trying to sell you something. (Another red flag.) Building and maintaining a successful business is much harder than I ever imagined it would be.
But if you can be patient and stick at it long enough, eventually something will probably work. Eventually all of those hard-won lessons will add up to something worthwhile, even if it looks different from what you originally set out to achieve.
Stay open to that.
It’s easy to miss opportunities because you’re myopically focused on building the perfect membership or webinar funnel. What if your thing is actually a paid newsletter and 1 client a month?
No one knows what’s waiting at the end of the rainbow (or, shall we say, what’s waiting when the shitstorm clears). Crossing that finish line this weekend was a welcome reminder of how good it feels when something you've worked your ass off to make happen actually happens.
There is no feeling in the world like it.
It’s why we set out to do hard things, knowing we might fail. Knowing the outcome might actually be impossible.
But maybe – just maybe – it might also be possible.
XOT
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Sights + Sounds I’m Obsessed With Right Now
A La Sala, the latest album by Kruangbin (on Spotify because my bestie has me on her family plan) and also Loom by Imagine Dragons, which my kids and I both love
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe—a great follow up to Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, which I’m still recovering from
Hacks, a show I’d previously abandoned after only a few episodes but I can’t remember why, plus House of the Dragons, which I find disgustingly patriarchal but also turns me on (Ew! What’s wrong with me?)
What’s in your eyes and ears this month?
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