If you’re anything like my entrepreneurial friends, colleagues, and clients, you may be asking yourself some essential questions right now.

Is there really a way to grow your business so it flourishes, fulfills its profound potentials, serves wholeheartedly – and supports your own undeniable longing for ease, spaciousness, room to breathe, feel, dream, live your life, and create what’s tugging at your heart?

Can you reshape the world of your business so it provides a home for your own genius and the gifts and genius of your team, and nurtures the gifts of your clients and customers as well? Can you make a world in your business that grows organically, without losing what you’ve worked so hard to build? Can you transform how you do business so you and your business grow in joy, prosperity, flow, and ease as well as in annual revenues and impeccable service?

Or is this a pipe dream, one that hovers on the horizon without ever drawing any nearer?

Think about something you’ve long wanted for your business, that hasn’t happened despite your most valiant efforts. A revenue goal that remains out of reach. A dream team that never quite seems to coalesce. Clients who are ready and eager to craft their businesses in alignment with their vision and values, but who don’t enroll in your masterminds, or don’t show up to do the necessary work. A framework, an offering, a signature program that hasn’t yet gelled into something tangible, useful and beautiful.

You’ve worked hard, with fierce commitment and enthusiasm, to get to where you are. You’ve given your business, your clients and customers, your family, your beloveds, the very best of yourself. Now, you’re asking yourself – is this all there is? Do I just keep doing more of this while the joy and dynamism, vision and desire that fueled my early days as an entrepreneur dissolve in overwhelm, in resentment at running on this hamster wheel that never stops and never really gets to where my heart wants to be?

The short answer, from my own experience and from working with thousands of clients and students over the years is – yes, and no. No, this is not a pipe dream. Yes, it is possible to make your business your art, to have it be your joy and freedom, your creative contribution to your world, and the foundation of your wealth, prosperity, and freedom.

I’ve been blessed with a long and always-interesting entrepreneurial life – forty-plus years of creating and serving, adapting to changing needs and landscapes, innovating in generative ways, embracing the gifts and challenges of leadership and business. Developing life-long friendships, and a body of work that continues to serve my community all these many years.

There is so much delight and creative freedom in being an entrepreneur. And there is also this – the tight-rope-without-a-net of bone-rattling risk, responsibility that can feel like a bear on your chest, digging deep for more courage, more faith, more trust in yourself, more strength and vulnerability and flexibility and heart than you ever thought you had in you.

That’s the thing about creating a business that’s bigger than yourself, one that may well outlive you. As you grow it, it grows you. You grow in power, in discernment, in focus, purpose, clarity and wisdom. In your willingness to do hard things, take bold risks, handle consequences with humour and grace, pivot when necessary, stay true to your vision through wild success, abject failure, and everyday service and devotion.

You can have a business that serves the wholeness in you, and in everyone who enters the world of your business. It’s the kind of world I’ve created in my business. It’s the kind of world many of my clients and students have created in their businesses too. You can craft such a world for yourself, for your community, for the future you want to shape for all you love.