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What do you do when the revenue you need today contradicts the business you want to build tomorrow?

I’m facing decisions where saying yes to short-term cash means saying no to the $10 million company I’m trying to create. And saying no to that revenue means I still have to cover payroll and expenses today.

In this episode, I’m sharing how I navigate building for the future while keeping the lights on now.

Key Takeaways:

• Why you have to play both the short game and the long game—how I balance immediate revenue needs with building the business I actually want to have in three years
• The resource allocation decisions that keep me up at night—the specific infrastructure changes I have to make to get to $10 million (even if they contradict what’s working right now)
• My process for making decisions when there’s no clear right answer—who I turn to for perspective and how I get clarity before taking action

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh: 

The way you built something and operated cannot be how you operate. To get to the next level, the short-term decision that you need to make might contradict the long-term decision that you need to make in decision, which is one of the most dangerous places to be. I do not wanna stay an indecision, but before I can make a decision, I need clarity.

What most entrepreneurs do is they constantly only focus on the short term. They want the quick wins. They want the overnight cash. They become desperate and they don’t play the long game. You gotta play both. Don’t just look at what you’re building this year. Think about the company in three years from now.

Embodied CEOs don’t chase trends. They pave the way they lead from within. Moved by purpose, unshaken by noise. When you are the source, you do not need permission. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. We are in September. I’m feeling so many things, and that’s partly what this episode’s gonna be about.

I think there’s like this energy right now when I talk to business owners of. Newness, like pivoting, making shifts, adapting. It’s just, it’s been like that for the last few years. And so I’m really excited about this episode because you guys love the real, real. I, I am literally basically in gym close.

I’m going to California next week to mix some business and fun. I’ve got a client there and we, she has a VIP day with me. And then my brother and my parents live in California, so I’m gonna do stay with them, do the VIP day. And so I have deadlines to get the podcast recorded before I’m outta the studio.

And my gym is right next to my CrossFit, or my studio is right next to my gym. And so I went to the gym and got my workout in. Now my kids are in CrossFit class and I’m like, I gotta run back to the studio and record my solo for next week. And so I texted my nanny and I was like, can you bring me my me cup bag?

Like I at least need to look presentable. After my workout in that way, but we could be in gym close. We’re good. So I feel like people, people always tell me they love that because that is really what my life is like. It’s like I have the things that are non-negotiables and things that I have to get done in the day.

Recording a podcast was a non-negotiable today ’cause I will not be in my studio next week. So therefore I had to fit it in like a game of Tetris. And there’s certain hours I have to get to my gym because I have to work out when they don’t have classes. Anyways, here we are. So this week has been a lot for me.

I have had a lot of fulfillment calls that have been amazing coaching calls, kicked off the embodied CEO Mastermind and everybody gets a one-on-one call with me. So been fulfilling those, been fulfilling some trainings for our expand members and also people who bought the next round of embodied Marketing live tickets.

So lots of coaching this week and I’m sitting with a lot of really big business decisions. Around the future. Ones that I’m not quite ready to share yet, but like I re I think that this next year is gonna be really massive and you’re gonna watch me do some pretty big pivots. And I’m excited about them, but it brings up this kind of theme that also was relevant in some of my coaching calls.

As you scale your business, you’ve got, you know, the business that you’ve built that got you to a certain level. And as that grows, you have a need that has to be met, right? A team that you have to pay expenses and costs that you have to cover and, and needs that have to be met, which is different than when you first start your business and it’s like there’s really not any cost.

There’s not really sales coming in. So you can make a lot of changes and you don’t have a lot to lose, quote unquote. As you build an infrastructure, like there’s a lot more that goes into decisions because of all the things that it’s gonna impact, and there’s the decisions that you have to make right now for the business and the, not just paying the bills, but being profitable right now, this quarter, this year, this month.

And then there’s also the decisions that you get to make for the business in a year from now, in three years from now, in 10 years from now. While you might not know exactly what those decisions are, I have found that there’s different phases of a business where you realize the way you built something and operated cannot be how you operate to get to the next level.

And I think that those, those levels are kind of around like two 50 KA year, 1 million. 3 million. Million and I would guess 10 million. But I think in order to make the jump from three to 10 million, which is where I am at, there’s a lot of changes that I have to make in terms of. Simplicity of delivery to be able to scale and the things that work to get to 3 million, but won’t work to get to 10 million.

But put me in this position of, okay, we have to make decisions that are good for right now and the health of the business, but we also have to be building and making decisions for the future. And sometimes those actually contradict each other. So that’s what I wanna talk about because I was coaching this week, one of the girls, and it’s like.

Sometimes these decisions, they’re not, they’re not black and white. And that’s where business, I think can be, feel very challenging and very lonely because you can sit and ruminate in your head around the different options. And there’s not this like one clear. Do this answer. And there it’s a lot of the gray.

It’s a lot of, you could go both ways and you don’t know the outcome of it, and you don’t know, you know, if that’s the quote right decision or the best decision. And I mean, I do believe that there is no right or wrong decision. I think every decision gets you where you’re supposed to go. But of course, as the CEO, you wanna make the best decision for the company.

You wanna make the best decision for the employees, for the clients, for you, for the growth, for the revenue, for the top line, for the bottom line, right? So. That often lives in the gray and there’s a lot to consider and it can feel really lonely. And I think one thing that I’m realizing is when you’re in this situation of the short-term decision that you need to make, might contradict the long-term decision that you need to make.

Meaning like, I’ll give you some, some context of what I’m looking at is, is. Saying no to certain things we’re doing right now to be able to expand other things we’re doing in the future that I believe will scale the business. But saying no to those things right now is gonna cost us short term revenue for the long term.

And you can only cost the short term revenue so much and keep the business going. Right. So you have to make, you have to be like, okay. I wanna be focused, but I also wanna build the future. And so this week let me just share literally what I have done this week to, to navigate this. First of all, I really believe in.

Speed of action. I think that the time between when you make a decision and when you start taking action, the shorter that time is, the more successful you’ll be. And I think that’s one of my greatest attributes is the moment I am clear on something, I take action. It’s in motion. It’s already going. It we’re, we’re doing it yesterday.

The key to that though is you have to be clear. When you are not clear as an entrepreneur and you are lacking clarity, and I see this frequently where entrepreneurs, they can’t even explain what it is they’re trying to do or where they’re trying to go or how they’re gonna get there. ’cause they are unclear.

When you lack clarity, how can you take action? How can you make those decisions? So this week there have been moments that I’ve lacked some clarity because there’s. It’s like a fork in the road. You know, there’s two really different paths I could choose to go in some of these decisions. So I’ve lacked clarity and I can’t move into speed of execution if I’m lacking clarity.

So in order to get that clarity, I need perspective. I need to get out of my own head. I need to talk with people that I trust. And so for me, talking and verbally processing things helps a lot. So the people that I turn to is my team, my leadership team, because they know the company. Just as what? As good as I do.

Right? And they know our clients. It’s amazing team to, to be able to talk to. If you don’t have that, it’s getting a mentor, somebody who’s maybe done what you’re trying to build before, has the perspective of like, this is what I would’ve told myself when I was in your shoes. That’s gold. To be able to have that perspective.

I talk to people close to me, even my husband who he knows my business pretty well, but even we went on date night this week and I was like. Look, I’m gonna hijacker a date and I, I just need to talk all this out. Like I just need to like vomit, word vomit on, on you and help me process this. And even just being able to talk it out and get his feedback.

He’s not necessarily you know, in business the way I am, but that alone just helped get the clarity. He knows me, he knows the business, he knows my clients like he’s been along the ride for the last 10 years. So I lean on the few people close to me. And I have some business friends. I’ve been voice messaging back and forth with my team.

I reached out to an individual who has a agency that’s at $5 million. Gotten, they got on, they were so generous to get on a call with me just to get perspective. So if I was putting this into steps where you are sitting with decisions you have to make about the future of your business, and the reason I wanted to record this episode is I think a lot of entrepreneurs are finding themselves in that situation right now, especially.

In any industry, right? There’s so much changing. There’s so much that has changed online. There’s so much that has changed with AI and is changing with ai. Consumer behavior and audience behavior has changed in most industries, you’re looking at, and that’s just business in general, right? You’re like, okay, for the next decade, for the next era, what do we need to do to stay ahead of the curve?

And this is a theme that I’m seeing with entrepreneurs. I’m coaching. And so with that comes these decisions that we have to make. And so if you are lacking clarity on which direction to go, and what that does is when you lack clarity, you move into paralysis because then you go in cycles and circles and you’re like.

Ruminating, and I just did a podcast a bit ago about indecision, which is one of the most dangerous places to be. I do not wanna stay in indecision, but before I can make a decision, I need clarity. In order to get clarity, I need perspective. So when I’m in that situation where I’m ruminating and I’m thinking about, I could go this way, I could go this way, I could do this, we could put our focus here, because everything in business is a decision of resources.

When I choose for us to go one of these directions that I’m deciding, and even if it’s working on a project, right? It’s like where to put our time and energy as a business, our time, our money, and our energy. The decision of where to put that is so important and only the CEO can really make that where to allocate resources because that’s where the power comes in.

You put that in the right spot. You are able to massively leverage your resources into moving the needle of the business. So as, so first step is, okay, I’m, I’m ruminating, I’m thinking about all these things. I’m thinking about the different directions I could go, the different places that we could put priority.

That’s kind of where I’m at, is like, there’s so many options of things that we could put priority in, but I’m looking at my company going, cool, maybe that’ll get us, you know, one more million a year. But what about the $10 million company? What do we have to do to get to the $10 million company? And I need a perspective.

So that was my first step. Get perspective. I don’t move into speed of action until I have that clarity. Now, it shouldn’t take that long to get that clarity. I’m taking the actions to get the clarity. So I’m not sitting an indecision, I’m not doing nothing. I’m not doing the same thing that I was doing last month or the month before, the quarter before, the year before.

I’m not just repeating. I’m taking the actions to get the clarity. And then once I have the clarity. It’s history, right? Like the plan’s in place. So if you were in that situation, I also think there’s two pieces to the decision. There is the short term and the long term. And I just was coaching with one of the girls in the Mastermind today who is in a similar, at a different level of go.

She’s going from six figures to a million. We’re looking at her business going, these things and the way that they were have were built that got you to six figures. They can maybe get her like grind it out to seven figures, but they’re not getting her beyond that. There’s gotta be a change. And for her, it’s simplification of her offers.

It’s getting more specific with the niche. ’cause she’s helping a lot of people at once. It’s simplifying that so she can scale, but at the same time, she has a team, she has overhead. She’s gotta make decisions now to still bring in some clients and feed and serve the business. That’s today. There’s the short term, there’s the long term.

What most entrepreneurs do is they constantly only focus on the short term. They want the quick wins, they want the overnight cash. They become desperate and they don’t play the long game. You gotta play both. You gotta play the short term to stay alive. You gotta play the long game to scale. So you gotta decide.

And when I sat down with this client today, I was like, all right, immediately here’s our priority. And we came up with, for her a. Priority of where to focus her time and energy and her marketing to make the most cash right now in the easiest way possible with existing process and assets, existing warm audience, existing leads that she has.

And then I said, okay, now part B is we need to get clarity on the next one to two years and the way we’re gonna scale this business, which comes with some decisions of focusing and focusing. Or niching down or simplifying can sometimes feel scary because it’s like, well, am I gonna say no to this money over here to say yes to this?

So there’s the short term and the long term. The real legacy and, and business and impact and revenue growth comes from that long game. I, I saw this post and I loved this term. I saw it like two months ago that talked about that slow burn. How that just chip away, that slow burn, that process of the slow burn.

Right. It’s like you can, you can think about that in fitness too, where you’ve got a long, like when I’ve got a, you know, a five, six minute quick am wrap that I do as many rounds as possible. That is like a sprint. I’m like in it and I’m out of it. But when I’ve got a 30 minute conditioning cardio, I’ve got a pace.

I’ve gotta be smart. I have to stick with it. That slow burn. And in business, that’s where the real long-term wealth and legacy and impact comes from is the slow burn. Because when we look at the things that build the business, it’s the slow burn of the consistent content creation, the consistent.

Building of an audience, building of a list, staying relevant, becoming an industry leader, building relationships, building trust. So we’re doing that while also keeping the business healthy. So I really wanted to record this because I wanted to normalize the fact that if you’re feeling this, where you’re feeling a either contradiction in decisions or you are feeling.

Pressure to make a decision or you’re, or you find yourself unclear or like you need to pivot, but you don’t know where, and you’re, you’re dealing with the pressure of the now with also building of the future and it creates this overwhelm that’s normal. And to be honest, like the more you grow your business, the more that you’re going to feel that.

I think the bigger the decisions get, because that’s how I feel is like when I make a decision today, like some of the decisions I’m sitting with, there’s a much bigger impact than. When I started, when it was just me, because that didn’t impact very many people. And I’m not talking about like, oh, impact, you know, being able to pay my team.

No. I’m talking about the layers of process and systems and structural setup that we have in in the company that when we make a big change, it takes a while to steer the ship. One time someone told me, the bigger ship you have, the longer it takes to turn it. And I’m like, that’s so true. It’s why corporations.

Take forever to do something. As you build your business, you have to become, you have to balance that gray, the gray area of like it. It’s not black and white anymore. It’s like when it was just me, it was easy for it to be black and white. It was like, yeah, do that, do that. Nothing to lose. We’ll try that.

We’ll just follow what’s working. We’ll follow the momentum. Now I feel like there’s like so many directions I could gain momentum in, but what’s gonna actually scale us to the 10 million? Only I can make that decision and only I can drive my team to that. So in order to get there, first of all, I’ve normalized sitting in the gray.

I’ve normalized the fact that I’m not gonna get to a black or white decision. I fully accept and know that there is no bad decision. I trust myself to make the best decision for the company. I will not make a decision until I’m clear. And in order for me to get clear, I have to get perspective. I know myself and I get that perspective from the few people I trust.

Talking and processing and giving myself just a little bit, a few days of space to process, to not make, those are the things that I used to be like, we have to make this decision today. Sleeping on it one night or two nights goes a long way and allows your brain to like work through the scenarios and process those things.

And so that’s what I’ve been doing this week and I feel, I feel like I’m pretty clear, I feel pretty clear and I feel ready to move into action plan with my team. And from there it’s gonna be really fast. The other thing I’ll say with this is if you are in that place where you’re confused, you, you wanna limit the amount of noise.

That you are taking in because a mistake you can make is go, I’m confused, or I am, I’m feeling that like paralysis of, of a decision, whether it’s a product you offer, a direction, you go, a pivot in your business, whatever, like you’re, you’re faced with those things all the time. If you take in too much noise and you take in too many opinions, you are gonna be more confused.

So have your few trusted advisors, if you’ve got a team for sure. If you’ve got, you know, someone close to you who knows you, who can just help you process, you know, people who are really, like my husband is really good at listening and kind of challenging and questioning things. He’s great for me. And then business, business friends, business mentors, like this is why having a mentor is so important.

This is what I’m doing for the women in my mastermind, is sitting down and getting all this out of them and saying, okay, let’s create the priority list. Let’s get the clarity. ’cause once you have clarity, action’s so easy, an action is so important, but you can’t take an action. You can’t take action that’s gonna make an impact unless you’re clear.

And so many entrepreneurs are lacking clarity. But clarity does not come from ruminating and paralysis and not making a decision. There are actions you take to get the clarity and then layering in and understanding. There’s the short term and the long term. I say this all the time in my coaching, what do we need to do right now?

What do we need to prioritize right now in the decisions we need to make right now? And also, what are the long-term decisions? Because we’ve gotta take both into consideration. And I said something on the mastermind meeting this week that the girls loved, which was, don’t just look at what you’re building this year.

Think about the company in three years from now and make sure there’s alignment because. You’ve gotta step back and think about that CEO of the seven of the eight. Figure whatever that goal is for your company, and make sure you’re making the decisions that’s gonna lead to that and that they would make and that is aligned with that.

All right, everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. I’m so excited to share more. I really feel very excited like there is. There’s a lot, there’s a lot of cool things that I have, and I, as I get clear, you guys know me, I’ll share behind the scenes and I’ll share it all, but I’m grateful for my circle that has supported me through the many conversations this week, and I am more serious than ever.

About building my legacy, building the impact that I’m here to build and the $10 million company. All right, guys. Talk to you next time.