Hi {{first_name}},

Grassroots Content was making $15k a month.

Sometimes more. I was finally making proper money. 

After years of teaching English for peanuts, writing content for $8 per thousand words, working 60-hour weeks for $2,500 a month - I'd arrived.

So I celebrated. 

Bought a car. Played golf twice a week. Took expensive trips. Lived like someone who'd made it.

Meanwhile, the business was quietly dying.

I wasn't marketing. Wasn't building systems. Wasn't reinvesting a single dollar back into growth. 

The whole thing ran on existing relationships and word of mouth, which worked brilliantly until it didn't.

I was too busy enjoying my success to notice I was building absolutely nothing sustainable.

The revenue hid the truth. 

When you're making $15k monthly, it's easy to convince yourself everything's fine. 

The money keeps coming in, so clearly you're doing something right. You've earned the right to relax a bit, haven't you?

Turns out, no.

Success without foundations is just expensive procrastination.

I had no routine. No plan. No strategy beyond "keep doing what's working." 

Which would've been fine if what was working didn't depend entirely on a handful of relationships that could disappear overnight.

And they did. Slowly at first, then all at once.

Clients moved on. Projects ended. New competitors appeared. The market shifted. And I had built precisely nothing to replace what was leaving.

By the time I realised what was happening, I'd drunk and golfed my way through any buffer I might have had. The business that was making $15k monthly was suddenly making almost nothing.

I see coaches making the same mistake. They land a few clients, start making decent money, and immediately give themselves permission to ease off. They've been working so hard, they deserve to enjoy it, right?

Maybe. But what often happens is they mistake revenue for security. They confuse making money with building a business.

Making money is what happens when your current approach works. Building a business is what ensures your approach keeps working when circumstances change.

I thought I was being smart by enjoying my success. Actually, I was being lazy. The celebration felt like reward for hard work. It was really just avoidance of harder work.

The golf was lovely, by the way. Absolutely loved it. Just wish I'd done it after I'd built something that could survive me taking my foot off the gas, not before.

If you've had some wins recently and you're wondering whether to celebrate or reinvest, hit reply. 

I'm curious where you are in that tension and what you're telling yourself about it.

Jack