What It Takes to Be the Top 5%
What Actually Makes a Business Successful? It's Who You Decide to Be Before the Proof Shows Up.
Eight years and six figures later, I share what really built her business: who she decided to be before the proof arrived. Here's how to start.
You know that moment when you're scrolling at 10pm, supposedly winding down, and you land on yet another woman announcing her record-breaking month, complete with the screenshots, the gorgeous brand photos, and a caption that makes it sound effortless? And even though you've built something real, something that at one point you weren't sure you'd ever pull off, you still close the app feeling like you're somehow behind... like everyone else got a memo about success that you missed.
I want to offer you a different way to look at your own story, because I recently had to do this for myself, and it genuinely changed the way I show up.
The Kind of Success Nobody Screenshots
I've been in my business for eight years now. Last year I created six figures, and I'm on track to do it again this year. I replaced the paycheck I used to depend on, I have more freedom with my time, more choice over my work, and more presence with my family. I have a life that I can distinctly remember sitting at my old desk wondering if I'd ever get to have.
And here's what surprised me: when I finally sat down with the actual numbers on who stays in business and who reaches this level, I realized I was in a small minority of entrepreneurs. The number of people who start a business and don't make it past five years is staggering. I can think of several people I once put on a pedestal, the ones I was sure I needed to hire because they were the real deal, who were blazing hot for a season and then vanished.
Staying is a success in itself, and it makes you far more credible than you've been giving yourself credit for. The women we admire online aren't fundamentally different from you. They're simply owning who they are out loud. That's the energy, and it's available to you right now.
The Decisions Nobody Gives You a Standing Ovation For
If you'd asked me years ago what I needed to be successful, I would have handed you a tidy list of strategies: the right offer, better marketing, sharper sales skills, a smarter business model. I've learned plenty of all of that. But when I look back at what actually changed the trajectory of my business, it wasn't primarily strategy. It was who I was willing to become before I had enough evidence to prove it made sense.
The big moments get all the attention: leaving the job, signing the clients, hitting the number. But those moments sit on top of hundreds of tiny decisions that nobody sees. The Tuesday night when you're exhausted and you said you'd work on your business. The meeting request that lands right in the middle of the time you promised to protect. The post that gave you sweaty palms because it was a little edgy, a hill you'd die on, and then... crickets. The quiet sales week when someone else is celebrating another big launch and you start wondering if you should change your offer again or just wait one more year to leave your job.
Every one of those moments is asking you the same question: who are you right now? Your answer, repeated over months and years, is what builds a business that lasts.
When "Responsible" Finally Changed Meaning
For me, the shift showed up first in my calendar. I had to start saying no to things that were perfectly reasonable to say yes to, not because they were bad, but because I needed to become a woman who refused to give away the time she'd set aside for her own future. My job stopped getting the best hours of me, and people-pleasing stopped getting priority over my own path.
The moment it really clicked was on a call where we could all see the writing on the wall: major grant funding was going away, and nobody knew if my position would survive it. Half of my job was already finding the funding to pay for my own job, and I was exhausted from years of hoping it would stick around. Sitting in that conversation, I realized I'd been so focused on being responsible to an employer who was openly telling me the ground was shaky, when my real responsibility was to my family and to building an income that didn't hinge on someone else's budget.
That's when I stopped expecting my business to flourish in the scraps. The responsible thing wasn't staying small and safe. The responsible thing was taking my future seriously.
Success Is Getting to Say No to Money
One of my clients now makes around $170,000 a year doing the very specific work she loves. Recently, an opportunity came up that could have added another $40,000, and the first instinct was that obviously she had to take it, because more money is always better. But when we looked closer, the work attached to that money wasn't work she wanted. It would have meant quietly rebuilding the job she'd worked so hard to leave.
She said no, and to me that is what success looks like: not only earning more, but having a say in how you earn it, and trusting yourself enough to turn down money when it's attached to a life you've outgrown. She didn't become capable of that decision the day the $170,000 arrived. She became capable of it through every decision she made before it.
Who Are You in the Waiting?
I know identity work can sound abstract, like we're sitting around with affirmations hoping money falls from the sky. But your identity is the thing driving your behavior. It decides what you tolerate, what goes on your calendar, whether one slow week sends you into a spiral, and whether you market your offer long enough for people to realize you're actually selling it.
So here's the question I want you to carry with you this week: if your success were inevitable, who would you be in the waiting? If you knew the clients were coming and you could figure out the money, what would you stop making mean something about you? What decision would you finally let be decided? Whose work would get your most energized, creative hours? How would you introduce yourself at the next networking event, and would you still be afraid to sell?
And when you forget (because you will, I still do), the practice is returning. I've changed niches, invested in things that flopped, and once ran a masterclass where exactly one person showed up. What kept me here wasn't perfection. It was returning to the decision, to the vision, and to the woman I knew I was becoming.
If you're ready to go deeper on this, INEVITABLE is a two-week experience starting October 6th where we do this work together. Over three live days, we move through my Awareness, Acknowledgement, Decision Framework, using your calendar as a mirror, naming who's really been making your decisions, and deciding who you are now. Then short audio practices carry it into your actual week. Join INEVITABLE here
You don't become her at the finish line. You become her in the waiting, and the waiting is where the whole thing gets built.
