Happy Tuesday, Reader!

The last year has been full of major transitions: our youngest shipping out to the Navy, a cross-country move, and the loss of my husband's mother. It’s been a year of transitions, celebrations, and separations.

Spending more time focused on life has taught me some important lessons about business. Here are two I want to share with you.

Business Lesson #1: The most important work gets done in 2-4 hours each day.

What happens in the rest of our work time is mostly noise. When I really focus on what has to move for 2-4 hours each day, most other things figure themselves out or can be left alone. It’s that amount of focus time that matters more than the actual production or to-do list.

This concept is talked about in many books, and perhaps the best known to me is from Cal Newport’s Deep Work. But I never experienced it so viscerally as I have over the last 12-months.

The realization that I could achieve nearly herculean strategic and creative outputs in just 2-4 hours has been transformational. It's changed how I work, how our team works, and how I think about my time in general.

Want to try it out? Do an experiment and block out your 2 most productive ours for focus work for 5 days. See what happens.

Business Lesson #2: Your team is not your family (and that’s just fine, perhaps even awesome).

I've long been allergic to referring to a company as a family (unless you’re working with your literal family). We don't generally quit our family or fire our family, and founders who use this language often treat their teams with too few boundaries and require too much emotional labor from their closest employees and collaborators.

That said, it’s extremely challenging not to feel a familial responsibility for those who work for you and with you. I’ve long understood that it's bad for employees when the founder treats them like family. But it was only this year that I realized it’s also bad for founders when we assume responsibility for our teams at the same level we would for our family.

Give yourself permission to prioritize differently.

Neither the dysfunction nor the patience of family ties is required here. Treat your team generously, but remember that it's okay to say, "This isn't working." It's actually awesome to ask for what you need and know that if someone can't deliver, you can choose someone else to step in.

This may sound cold, but it's ultimately freeing. It took me way too many years to lay down that misplaced responsibility and realize that in most small businesses, the only person who can't be replaced is the founder. Yes, many companies will and should grow past that phase. But many never will, and that's also just fine.

So, if your business is mostly you (as mine is and likely will be for a while yet), put your own oxygen mask on first, darling.

Until next time,

Renia C.

P.S. - These lessons didn't come easily. They came from wrestling with what it means to build a sustainable business while navigating real life. If you’re ready to explore what’s possible when you prioritize intentionally, we're booking mid-year strategy retreats for founders and their teams.​

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