The Myth of More (and why it keeps you stuck with less)

I've invested over $100,000 in business coaching programs over the years. Courses, masterminds, group programs, 1:1 coaching - you name it, I've probably tried it.

And every single one of them taught me the same thing. That growth comes from more.

More leads. More content. More outreach. More funnels. More calls. More clients. More, more, more.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that this advice wasn't just incomplete - it was actively working against everything I actually wanted from my business.

Here's what I want you to sit with for a minute:

Why did you start this business?

I'm guessing it wasn't because you dreamed of spending your days chasing leads, anxiously refreshing your inbox, and feeling like you're constantly one dry spell away from disaster. I'm guessing it wasn't because you wanted to trade one hamster wheel for another - except this time without the steady paycheck or the health insurance.

You probably started this business because you wanted freedom. Autonomy. The ability to do work you actually care about, with people you actually want to work with, in a way that gives you space to live your life.

And yet.

→ Look at how you're actually spending your time.
→ Look at where your mental energy goes.
→ Look at what keeps you up at night.

If you're like most of the entrepreneurs I work with (and how I used to be), you're exhausted. You're anxious about where the next client is coming from. You're constantly context-switching between creating content, doing outreach, delivering for current clients, and trying to figure out why none of it feels sustainable.

You left the corporate rat race and built yourself a new one. It's just lonelier, less predictable, and somehow even more demanding.

And the worst part? You think this is what entrepreneurship is supposed to feel like.

The "more is more" mindset isn't something you invented. You inherited it.

It was baked into every corporate environment you've ever worked in - the glorification of busy, the promotions that went to whoever was most visible, the unspoken rule that slowing down meant falling behind.

And then you left that world and invested in coaching programs that reinforced the exact same belief, just with different language.

Now instead of "hustle for the promotion," it's "hustle for the algorithm." Instead of "be visible to leadership," it's "be visible on LinkedIn." Instead of "outwork your colleagues," it's "outwork your competitors."

The tactics changed. The underlying belief didn't.

Growth comes from more. If you're not growing, you're dying. The person who does the most, wins.

But here's the thing about beliefs that feel this fundamental: they're almost impossible to see clearly, because they don't feel like beliefs. They feel like reality. They feel like the way things are.

So you never stop to question whether it's actually true.

Let me describe a pattern, and you can tell me if it sounds familiar:

You're stuck at inconsistent $5-15K months. You're convinced the problem is lead generation - you just need more people in the pipeline. So you invest in a program about lead gen, or you double down on content, or you add another marketing channel to the mix.

Maybe it works for a minute. A few new clients come in. Revenue bumps up.

But then those clients end, and there's no one behind them, so you go back to scrambling. More content. More outreach. More more more. The revenue goes up and down, up and down, and you never actually escape the cycle.

What you don't see - what the "more" mindset makes invisible - is that every client you land is a one-and-done.

So every single client you get is a dead end. The only path to growth is to find another one, from scratch, forever.

And you think the answer is more leads.

But more leads into a broken system just means more clients you can't retain, more projects that don't turn into referrals, more work that doesn't compound into anything.

The real cost of the Myth of More mindset isn't just inefficiency. It's that you stay trapped in a business model that will never give you what you actually wanted when you started.

Here's why this shift is so hard to make, and I need you to be really honest with yourself as you read this:

When you're deep in feast-or-famine mode - when you don't know where your next client is coming from and your income has been unpredictable for months or years - the idea of stepping back to "build systems" or "design a client experience" feels not just uncomfortable, but genuinely dangerous.

Like a luxury you can't afford. Like something people with stable businesses get to do, but not you. Not yet. Not until you've solved the revenue problem first.

So you tell yourself: I'll focus on delivery once I have consistent clients. I'll build systems once things stabilize. I'll slow down once I've earned the right to slow down.

(Kind of like the vacation you say you’ll take once you hit a certain revenue goal)

And that moment never comes. Because the hamster wheel doesn't have an exit built into it - you have to build one yourself, and you can't do that while you're running.

But there's another layer to this resistance, and it might be the most insidious one:

You're terrified of picking the wrong thing to focus on.

If you're going to slow down and go deep on something, what if you choose wrong? What if you invest all that time and energy into building a client experience or a system and it doesn't work?

At least when you're doing twenty things at once, you can tell yourself you're covering your bases. You're keeping your options open. You're not putting all your eggs in one basket.

But when you're doing twenty things at a surface level, none of them are actually working.

→ You're not giving any single strategy enough time or depth to succeed.
→ You're not gathering the data that would tell you whether something has real potential or not.
→ You're moving so fast and staying so shallow that nothing you do ever gets a fair shot.

You think you're being strategic by keeping your options open. But what you're actually doing is guaranteeing that nothing works - and then using that failure as evidence that you need to try even more things.

The fear of picking wrong is keeping you in a pattern where you can't pick at all. And that's not safer. It's just a different way of staying stuck.

There's one more belief underneath all of this, and it's the hardest one to look at:

If I stop pushing, even for a moment, everything will fall apart.

Your business feels like a house of cards. You're holding it together through sheer force of will, and the idea of loosening your grip - even to do something strategic - feels like inviting disaster.

This fear makes sense. It's your nervous system trying to protect you from the uncertainty that comes with entrepreneurship. But I need you to see it for what it is: a trauma response masquerading as strategy.

Let’s get real, here.

You've been white-knuckling it for how long now? And has it actually gotten you to stability? Or are you still anxious, still scrambling, still stuck in the same feast-or-famine cycle you were in a year ago? Two years ago?

The constant pushing isn't keeping you safe. It's keeping you stuck.

And somewhere deep down, you know this. You know that what you've been doing isn't sustainable. You know that something has to change.

But acknowledging that means acknowledging that the thing you've been pouring all your energy into - the Myth of More strategy - hasn't actually been working. And that's a painful thing to sit with.

So you don't sit with it. You just keep pushing.

Here's the thing about right now, this moment, mid-December…

Business slows down for the next few weeks. It happens every year. Clients go quiet, prospects stop responding, everyone's focused on holidays and end-of-year chaos.

You can spend the next two weeks the way you've spent every other slow period - anxious, refreshing your inbox, trying to squeeze out a few more leads before the year ends, telling yourself January will be different.

Or you can recognize that this slowdown gives you permission to do the strategic work you've been telling yourself you can't afford to do.

Not because you've earned it. Not because your revenue is stable. But because the universe has handed you a natural pause, and you can either waste it on anxiety or use it to build something that will actually change next year.

What would it look like to spend the last two weeks of December mapping out the client experience you actually want to deliver? To think through what data you should be capturing, what your onboarding should feel like, how you want clients to feel at every stage of working with you?

What would it look like to stop treating your business like an emergency you're constantly reacting to, and start treating it like something you're intentionally building?

I know. That feels scary. It feels like a risk.

But staying on the hamster wheel isn't safe either. It's just a slower, more exhausting way to burn out.

What if the path to more revenue, more freedom, and more sustainability wasn't more at all?

This is the shift I've built my entire philosophy around, and it contradicts almost everything the business coaching industry teaches:

The goal is not to acquire as many clients as possible. The goal is to maximize the value of every client you do get.

→ That means focusing on results and retention before acquisition.

→ It means building an experience that earns referrals instead of constantly hunting for new leads.

→ It means capturing baseline data so you can prove your results instead of hoping clients remember how much you helped them.

→ It means creating systems that let you deliver better outcomes in less time, so you can serve more people without sacrificing your life.

Yes, the Essentialist CEO philosophy is an efficient strategy. But it’s more than that. It's a fundamentally different relationship with your business.

Because when your business is built on depth instead of breadth, something shifts.

You get the thing you actually wanted when you started this business. A life you don't need to escape from.

I'm not asking you to overhaul your entire business this week. But I am asking you to get honest with yourself about one thing:

Are you building a business that will eventually give you freedom, or have you just built a more stressful version of the job you left?

Because if everything you're doing requires you to keep doing it at the same intensity forever - if there's no leverage, no compounding, no systems that do some of the work for you - then you haven't built a business. You've built a treadmill.

And no amount of praying to the gods of "more" is going to get you off it.

On Thursday, I shared the Premium Onboarding Framework - a concrete system for creating client experiences that earn retention and referrals. If you haven't read it yet, start there.

But the framework only works if you actually believe that depth matters more than breadth. If you're still operating from the "more leads will save me" mindset, you'll read Thursday's newsletter and think "that's nice" and then go back to chasing leads.

The mindset has to shift first. The strategy follows.

I'm hosting my last live workshop of 2025 on Wednesday, December 17th at 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern. We're going deep on all 5 Elements of what it actually takes to build a business that creates wealth AND freedom - not just another rat race with your name on the door.

If you've been thinking about joining the Collective, this is the time. Pricing goes up in 2026.

REGISTER FOR THE FREE WORKSHOP →

In love, growth, and Essentialism,
Kasey