🏔️ Essentialist CEO: Why staying busy keeps you stuck and broke (and how to build leverage instead)

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Every hour you spend on social media management, graphic design, or responding to DMs is an hour you're not closing deals, serving clients, or building the business you actually want.

You're the CEO. You shouldn't be the social media manager, video editor, and graphic designer too.

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Let me ask you something:

How long have you been doing work that was supposed to be temporary?

Six months? A year? Three years?

You tell yourself it's fine. You're making money. You're busy. You have clients. This is what building a business looks like, right?

Except…

Except you're not actually building anything.

You're working. A lot. You're stressed. You're inconsistent. You're doing work that's... fine. Not terrible. Not soul-crushing. Just... fine.

And somewhere in the back of your mind, there's this quiet voice that keeps asking: Is this it? Is this what I left my corporate job for? Is this really my business?

Here's what I need you to hear:

If the work you're doing right now isn't moving you closer to the business you actually want, you're not on a stepping stone. You're in a stuck pattern.

And the difference between those two things is everything.

We convince ourselves that we just need to get through this phase. That once we have enough clients, enough revenue, enough stability, then we'll have time to figure out what we actually want to do. Then we'll build the business we dreamed about.

But that's not how it works.

Because "enough" never comes. There's always another client, another deadline, another fire to put out. You stay busy. You stay stuck.

And the worst part? You're working hard. You're talented. You're doing good work.

But you're not building leverage. You're not clarifying your direction. You're not getting any closer to doing work you love with people you're honored to serve.

You're just... spinning.

A stepping stone isn't just work that's "not your dream yet."

It's work that is strategically designed to create leverage for what comes next.

That's the difference. Intention.

A stuck pattern keeps you busy. A stepping stone moves you forward.

And here's the thing—you DO NOT have to love the work you're doing right now. You don't have to want to do it forever.

But if it's going to be worth your time and energy, it needs to be doing more than just paying the bills.

It needs to be building something that you'll still have when this client is gone.

Here's what I've learned from working with hundreds of entrepreneurs: there's a specific place where your best work lives. I call it the Essentialist CEO Sweet Spot.

This is where the magic happens in your business. It's the intersection of two circles:

Circle One: You. What makes you authentically you. Your strengths, your interests, your values, your experiences, your perspective. The hard things you've been through. Your "wrong" opinions. What lights you up.

Circle Two: Your Ideal Client. What they care about. What they need. Their goals, their struggles, their values. What they're willing to invest in.

The intersection—the Essential CEO Sweet Spot—is where you get to make the most satisfying amount of money doing work you genuinely love.

But here's what nobody tells you: It takes time to get clarity on both of those circles.

When you're starting out, or when you've been stuck doing "fine" work for too long, you don't actually know what belongs in those circles yet.

And that's OKAY!

That's what stepping stones are for.

A real stepping stone helps you clarify one or both of those circles while creating leverage for your future business.

Let me show you what that actually looks like.

Most people treat every project like it's completely unique. They start from scratch every single time. No wonder they feel like they're spinning their wheels.

Here's what you should be building instead:

You know what's wild? You've probably solved the same core problem fifteen different times, but you keep acting like each client is a total mystery.

Stop that!

Every project is a chance to document what actually works.

I always say, you can’t improve a process that doesn’t exist. But once you’ve mapped out your process, it becomes infinitely easier to make it better.

So delivering better results in less time becomes almost guaranteed. That is leverage in action.

One of my clients figured this out. She's working with clients who aren't her dream fit, but she's getting smarter about it. Every single engagement, she's taking notes. What works? What doesn't? What do clients respond to?

She's building her signature methodology in real time. So when she lands her ideal clients? She won't be making it up as she goes.

This one's my favorite because you can see it immediately.

Every time you create something for a client (a process, a template, a framework, a workflow), you're creating it twice without realizing it.

Once for them. Once for you.

Here's what I mean: You build them a custom onboarding system. Great. But then you immediately strip out the client-specific details and create the reusable template version.

Two of my clients are doing this brilliantly. They're working with clients who pay well but aren't the long-term fit. Instead of just delivering and moving on, they're templatizing EVERYTHING.

Result? When they land their ideal clients, they're not reinventing the wheel. They have a library of assets that make delivery faster, better, and more profitable.

Sometimes the stepping stone isn't just about what you're building, but about what it's buying you. Let me tell you what this looked like for me.

Years ago, I was a growth strategy consultant for early-stage startups and nonprofits. Some months I'd make $25,000 or $30,000. Other months? Absolutely nothing. Maybe $3,000 if I was lucky.

The inconsistency was brutal. I'd land a big client and think, Finally, I've figured it out. Then the project would end, and I'd be right back where I started, overwhelmed and scrambling.

I wound up taking a day job because a company reached out, saying I could still be a consultant and they'd just provide the clients for me. It sounded perfect. It wasn't. It made me MISERABLE.

But it helped me hit the reset button.

When I came back to my business a year later, I knew I needed to do things differently. I just didn't know what that looked like yet.

So I started leading LinkedIn personal branding cohorts.

I enjoyed the work. It made me good money. But I knew, I absolutely knew at my core, that it wasn't what I wanted to do long-term. It felt surface-level compared to where I wanted to go, what I really wanted to help people with.

But I did it anyway. Intentionally. For two reasons:

First, it bought me time. It paid the bills consistently. It gave me the financial stability to actually think, to experiment, to figure out what I really wanted to build, without the panic of wondering where next month's mortgage was coming from.

Second, it gave me clarity. Those cohorts put me in a room with MY people. Entrepreneurs like me (and like you). The people I now serve in the Essentialist CEO Collective.

I got to spend time with them. Learn where they were struggling. Understand what they actually needed. Figure out how I could help them in a way that felt deeply satisfying and meaningful to me—not just surface-level tactics.

That clarity? That's what became Essentialist CEO.

The LinkedIn cohorts were never the dream. But they were a damn good stepping stone. They gave me leverage—both time and clarity—that I used to build what I actually wanted.

And that's the point.

You don't have to love the work you're doing right now. But if you're intentional about it? If you design it to create leverage? It can be exactly what gets you where you want to go.

Here's how you know you're in a stuck pattern instead:

A stepping stone moves you somewhere.

A stuck pattern just keeps you spinning.

If you're reading this and thinking, Oh shit, I'm in a stuck pattern, first of all, no shame. Most of us end up here at some point, often more than once. The business advice out there is terrible, and nobody teaches you how to think strategically about this phase.

But now that you see it, you CAN shift it.

You don't have to blow everything up. You don't have to quit all your clients tomorrow. You just have to change how you're using this time.

Start asking yourself:

If the answer to all of those questions is "no" or "I don't know,” then it's time to get intentional.

Because here's the truth: You're too talented and too experienced to be stuck in work that isn't building toward something.

You didn't leave your corporate job, or start this business, or take this risk just to recreate the same feeling of being stuck—just with more uncertainty and fewer benefits.

You're capable of more than this. You know you are.

And the work you're doing right now? It can either be a stepping stone that gets you there, or a stuck pattern that keeps you spinning.

The difference is entirely up to you.

This isn't one-and-done work.

When you have big dreams and goals—when you're the kind of person who's always growing, always building, always reaching for more—EVERYTHING becomes a stepping stone.

Not in a "I'm never satisfied" way. Not in a "I don't appreciate what I have" way.

But in a way that helps you continue to level up over time.

Once you learn how to think this way, once you learn how to design for leverage, to extract value, to build with intention, it becomes part of your operating system as an entrepreneur.

You stop feeling stuck. You stop spinning. You stop wondering if you're wasting your time.

Because you're not just working. You're building. Always.

And that changes everything.

This is the work I do with entrepreneurs inside the Essentialist CEO Collective.

We map out both circles of your Sweet Spot—what makes you authentically you AND what your ideal clients actually need—and then we design your business to get you there strategically.

Not someday. Not when everything is perfect. Now.

We figure out how to use the work you're doing today to build leverage for tomorrow. How to create assets, clarify your methodology, and design a business model that actually aligns with who you are and who you're meant to serve.

If you're tired of being stuck and ready to treat your current work as the strategic stepping stone it should be, join the waitlist here.

Doors reopen in a couple of weeks, and I'd love to work with you.

You didn't start this business to recreate corporate misery with more uncertainty and worse benefits. You're too smart for that. And you're definitely too talented to stay stuck in work that leads nowhere.

Let's build something that actually gets you where you want to go.

In love and growth,
Kasey