Entrepreneurship: Building a Business That Still Leaves Room for a Life

There is a curious thing that can happen when we become entrepreneurs.

We start a business because we want greater freedom, creativity or autonomy — and then gradually build something that gives us less freedom than the life we left behind.

The business becomes the first thought in the morning and the last one at night. There is always another email to answer, another idea to develop, another piece of content to create and another target to reach.

Somewhere amongst all that doing, it is surprisingly easy to forget why we started.

Throughout my working life, I have experienced very different worlds — business and financial services, hospitality, administration, care, wellbeing, education and entrepreneurship. If there is one thing that experience has taught me, it is that there is rarely one prescribed route to creating meaningful work.

And sometimes our clearest business thinking happens when we step away from business altogether.

Recently, I spent a weekend in London attending a meditation and Traditional Yoga retreat. I travelled lightly, stayed in a hostel, walked through the city, met people from different backgrounds and spent many hours doing something that appears, from the outside, to be the complete opposite of entrepreneurship.

I became still.

But stillness has a place in business.

When we are constantly consuming information, solving problems and responding to whatever demands our attention next, it becomes difficult to distinguish between what is genuinely important and what is simply urgent.

Creating space allows different questions to emerge.

Does my business still reflect what I value?

Am I building something I actually want to live with?

Which parts of my work give me energy, and which have simply become habits?

Am I pursuing this opportunity because it is right for me — or because somebody else has told me this is what success is supposed to look like?

And perhaps the biggest question:

Is my business supporting my life, or has my life started supporting my business?

Business consulting needs to begin with the entrepreneur

When we talk about business consulting, the conversation naturally turns towards strategy, revenue, marketing, systems, efficiency and growth.

All of those things matter.

But so does the person creating the business.

An entrepreneur’s values, creativity, energy, experience and vision are not separate from the business plan. They are part of it.

That is particularly true for small businesses, independent professionals and founders, where the distinction between the person and the business can become remarkably small.

Sometimes the right strategy is growth.

Sometimes it is diversification.

Sometimes it is simplification.

Sometimes an idea needs developing, connecting to the right people or looking at from an entirely different perspective.

And sometimes the most useful thing an entrepreneur can do is leave the laptop behind, go somewhere different and create enough space to hear their own thoughts again.

What does success look like to you?

Success doesn’t necessarily mean creating the biggest possible version of something.

It might mean creating a profitable, sustainable business that provides an excellent service while allowing you to travel.

It might mean having greater control over your time.

It might mean turning years of experience into something valuable for somebody else.

It might mean building connections, collaborating with other people or finally giving an idea that has been sitting quietly in the background the attention it deserves.

There isn’t one definition.

And that is one of the things I find most interesting about working with entrepreneurs: behind every business is a completely different human being, with a different collection of experiences, ideas, ambitions and possibilities.

At Cotswold Creative Connections, that is where I believe the conversation should begin.

Not simply:

“How can we make this business bigger?”

But:

“What are you actually trying to create?”

Because ultimately, we aren’t here simply to build businesses.

We’re building lives — and our businesses can become one of the ways we express them.

Julia Evans-Peers

Cotswold Creative Connections