Building a Business in a Season of Constraint (Without the Fake Motivational Platitudes)
I keep seeing the same quote recycled over and over again:
“Get out of your comfort zone.”
And largely, I agree with the spirit of it. Growth requires friction. Change requires discomfort. Expansion requires risk.
But here’s the part that makes me roll my eyes.
I am never in my comfort zone.
Not in business.
Not in content.
Not in revenue.
Not in public failure.
Not in parenting.
Not in leadership.
There is nothing comfortable about building businesses while raising small children. Good days are days I make money. I sell an office. I close a mail plan. Online orders come in. Packages go out. Revenue hits the account.
That is a good day.
Is it restful? No. It’s anxious. It’s energizing. It’s decision-heavy. It’s high-stakes. It’s visible. It’s public. It’s risky. But work is not supposed to be restful.
I didn’t build businesses so I could relax at work. I built businesses so that when my kid is sick, I don’t have to beg a boss. So I don’t have to apologize for leaving early. So my husband and I can decide who stays home. So we don’t have to ask permission to be parents.
That was the point.
I relax with my family. Not at networking events. Not at the office. Not in sales meetings. I love wine, but I want to drink it at happy hour with my husband — not with a room full of business people I don’t know.
There’s a difference between enjoyment and function.
Business is function.
Family is enjoyment.
And this is a season. A season of big growth. Professionally and personally. A character-building season. A learning season. A compression season.
We have sacrificed time for quality of life. One of us stays home with the twins. One goes to the office. Drop-off and pick-up times for the kindergartener create hard boundaries. The clock runs the show more than I do.
It would be nice to go into the office five days a week for nine uninterrupted hours. That is not the life I live.
And no, everyone does not have the same 24 hours in a day.
That phrase drives me insane.
Parents have the hours their children are asleep. Maybe. And yes, I could park my kids in front of a TV and try to grind through my to-do list. They would zombie for five minutes and then want mom. That’s not a complaint. That’s reality.
This is a very specific time in my life.
I am limited.
And I am choosing it.
That’s the nuance the internet leaves out.
We did not stumble into this limitation. We chose presence. We chose flexibility. We chose ownership over employment. We chose to trade uninterrupted time for autonomy.
This is not a comfort zone problem.
This is a season problem.
Take a normal day. I get to the office late because we had to deposit a check first. I swing by the PO box to grab bills and mail. I talk to my employee because culture matters and she is a human being, not a task. I unload packages. I print labels. I pack orders. A tour shows up. My husband and I do the tours because we close better. We sign paperwork. A long-time client stops by. I give him thirty minutes of marketing advice. I have a networking meeting. I call Grandpa to extend my office time by forty-five minutes. I sprint through admin. I leave with three trash bags of outgoing packages. I film a reel in traffic. I stop at the post office. I get home and no one is screaming.
Win.
Was it restful? No. Was it comfortable? No. Was it “optimized”? Definitely not.
But it was working.
I rarely get days that feel accomplished in the way I fantasize about. My fantasy day is twelve uninterrupted hours of organizing, writing, editing, scheduling, optimizing. Most moms fantasize about organizing their linen closet or finally deep cleaning something that’s been waiting for months. Not because we love cleaning. Because finishing deferred tasks feels like relief.
Admin relief feels like oxygen.
In business, that relief looks like editing blog drafts, scheduling social posts, optimizing website pages, cleaning up email, reorganizing content, fixing backend systems. Those things matter. They build long-term leverage. But in a compressed season, they are not king.
Revenue is king.
Shipping orders on time is king. Selling offices is king. Protecting cash flow is king.
Everything else waits.
And this is where “get out of your comfort zone” misses the point.
Discomfort is not proof that you need to do more. Sometimes discomfort is proof that you are already stretching.
Instead of telling me to get out of my comfort zone, tell me this:
Do you feel awkward? Do you feel embarrassed? Do you feel exposed? Do you feel behind? Do you feel like you’re doing everything halfway?
Good.
That means it’s working.
That means you are doing something different from your old crowd. That means your identity is expanding faster than your logistics. That means you are stretching into a new version of yourself.
This is what change feels like.
It is not aesthetic. It is not tidy. It is not symmetrical. It is not restful.
It is compressed. It is constrained. It is character-building.
And seasons end.
The kids will grow. The logistics will change. The hours will expand. The structure will shift. The admin backlog will get its day.
But this season — this season is teaching me discipline, prioritization, patience, and tolerance for unfinished work.
It is teaching me that discomfort is not danger.
It is teaching me that growth inside constraint is still growth.
So no, I don’t need to get out of my comfort zone.
I need to keep building inside my season.
And if you feel awkward, stretched, and slightly embarrassed while you’re trying to change your life?
Good.
That’s what change actually feels like.