Get bigger

The world needs your art

The Sustainable Solopreneur is a weekly newsletter about seasonal, cyclical, supportive business strategy for solopreneurs and creative souls who want more out of life than the status quo, hosted by business coach and strategist Jenni Gritters. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while and you receive value from it, I’d encourage you to sign up for a paid subscription.

Starting in September, I’ll be featuring other entrepreneurs in this newsletter! If you’ve taken a “Third Door” approach to your life or career (or you’d like to nominate someone who has), I’d love to hear from you here.

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One of my long-time clients,

L'Oreal Thompson Payton

, came into my coaching room last January with big dreams about how to grow her business and her brand. I said to her, as I often say to my clients:

I believe that this can happen for you. I can see it. So let’s make a plan.

Part of L’Oreal’s big business dreams involved creating a new website for herself, but she had a hang-up about her name. She worried that people wouldn’t want to type her whole name into the URL box. Could www.lorealthompsonpayton.com work?

What I saw for L’Oreal — and what I see for many of the womxn and queer people I work with — was a tendency toward shrinking to stay safe and small. Worrying about her name being too long was actually an external symptom of the internal struggle with being “too much.”

When she asked about the website URL, she was really asking: Is it okay to get bigger? Is it okay to inconvenience people by making them type a longer URL? Is it okay to be bolder? Can I be safe while trying new things?

We spent the full hour talking through this concept. And, as she shared in her recent post about her website relaunch (it’s gorgeous and yes, it’s under the url of her full name!), I sent her away with a list of themes for the coming months:

GOOD ENOUGH. EXPERIMENTING. TAKING UP SPACE. SHOWING UP.

Taking up space. Whew! It’s hard, isn’t it? I have conversations weekly with clients who are afraid to be too big, too loud, too generous, too powerful. They worry about being mocked, about being seen trying “too hard.” They worry that they will intimidate the people who are close to them. They worry that they’ll lose friends.

And y’all, I’m here to tell you that it’s not about them. It’s about you. You cannot control them — their perceptions, their fears, their assessments of you. What you can control is how you show up. And when you know you’re bringing something important into the world — something audacious and big — it frankly feels a bit easier to tolerate people’s feedback.

As Mel Robbins says: “Let them.”

I deeply believe that the world also needs you to get bigger, especially right now. We need more connection, more purpose, more deep conversations, more impact. And when we talked, L’Oreal shared that she had some incredible programs dancing around her brain (communities, workshops, courses) that would help other people change the course of their careers. These programs would create books, launch partnerships and unlock new ways of looking at the world for hundreds of people. Without L’Oreal’s bravery to STEP UP and STEP IN, these connections — these ripple effects — wouldn’t happen.

She needed to say yes to getting bigger in her brand, her body, her energy, her expression. We ALL needed her to say yes.

And, I won’t lie to you: The scariest part of getting bigger is that you will outgrow old relationships and ways of being. You will need to step into something new and release what’s no longer serving you. I’ve experienced this first-hand; it’s not pretty, but it has been necessary for me to be more fully myself in the world, to help the people in my audience grow incredible businesses that change the course of history. (I really mean it when I say that: Y’all do work that changes the world, starts important conversations and helps people feel more connected. It matters!!)

Growth is messy.

Coloring outside the lines is brave.

Charting your own path requires courage.

And, if you want to be a fully expressed person in the world, I think growth is the only way to do that.

So today’s message is short but sweet: Get bigger. Say yes to the things that feel edgy. Choose a Third Way. Be bolder about what you want out of your life on a daily basis. And if other people feel uncomfortable as a result of your growth: Let them.

As Simone Grace Seol says, “They’re experiencing discomfort and putting your face on it.”

You were always meant to get bigger, friend.

The world needs more of you, not less.

xo,

Jenni

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Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach living in Central Oregon. My goal is to teach everyone who will listen that it’s possible to build a simple, stable, successful business that support your human needs first. Join my group coaching program, SUSTAIN, for more conversations like this (and a community of people who are all about the path less taken), and follow me on Twitter & Instagram.