You Keep Coming Back to What’s Familiar. Even When It’s Not Working.
I’ve sat across from a lot of solopreneurs right before they said yes to working with me. Smart people. Capable people. People who already knew, somewhere, that the way they were running things wasn’t working anymore.
Here’s what years of this taught me: knowing your systems are broken and being ready to change them are two different things. One’s a thought. The other’s a commitment.
Psychologists actually have a name for that gap — readiness for change. It’s been studied for decades. Knowing you need to change and being ready to are measurably not the same thing.
So before you say yes — to me, or to anything that asks you to run your business differently — ask yourself these. Honestly. Out loud, if you have to.
The Follow-Through Truth
- Will you actually do the work between sessions, not just show up and nod along?
- When something new feels clunky the first time, will you try it again, or quietly go back to what you know?
The Comfort Check
- Can you sit with “unfamiliar” for a few weeks, even with the old way right there, ready to catch you the second it gets hard?
- Are you willing to feel a little behind before you feel ahead?
Researchers who study workplace change list comfort with the familiar as one of the top reasons people resist changes they already agree they need. Harvard Business Review has a good breakdown, if you want to see your own resistance mapped out in black and white.
The Honesty Check
- Are you doing this because you’re ready? Or because someone else thinks you should be?
- If it doesn’t stick, will you tell yourself it was the wrong tool, or admit you stopped using it?
The Commitment Question
- Can you protect this time, even on the weeks it’s inconvenient?
- Are you ready to be accountable to someone else for the habits you’ve been avoiding on your own?
If you read through these and felt a quiet yes — even if it wasn’t loud — that’s usually enough.
If you didn’t, that’s not a failure. It just means now isn’t the time. Better to know that here than three weeks into something you’re not ready to finish.
Here’s what change can look like on the other side of “yes.” Mornings that don’t start with a chaotic inbox. Nothing quietly slipping through the cracks. That low-grade hum of “what am I forgetting” finally going quiet.
That’s not a pitch. That’s just what it looks like when the system finally does its job.
Want a better sense of how I actually operate before you decide? Start here: I Cancelled ChatGPT. Here’s Why I’m Not Sorry. or The Carpet Lines.
If you want to talk it through before you decide, that’s what the Discovery Call is for.
