Ep. 368 Sustainable business growth: Redefining success on your terms

Are you ready to grow your business without sacrificing what matters most? In this episode, Anna Lundberg unpacks a radically different approach to success – one powered not just by financial gain, but by freedom, flexibility, and fulfilment. Whether you’re curious about four-hour days, want an ambitious yet sustainable path, or simply crave more time for family and personal priorities, Anna shares real-world strategies and thought-provoking questions to help you build a business that works for your life, not just your bank account.

Key moments:

[00:00] Introduction: Redefining success in business and life

[01:55] Sustainable working styles: From four-hour days to term-time schedules

[03:01] Addressing business growth without burnout and performing professionalism

[06:41] Building around your own rhythm, spotting patterns, and longer-term thinking

[08:01] The importance of vision: What does success look like for you now?

[11:19] Final details and invitation to join the Groundwork Sprint

Resources mentioned:

• Ready to reset before the year ends? Join Groundwork – a 10-day guided sprint to step back, get clear on what’s working, and make intentional decisions for 2026.
  Short daily videos, focused prompts, and the option to join a WhatsApp group and live coaching call. Sign up at onestepoutside.com/groundwork.
  We start Monday 17th November.

Sustainable business growth

This one is for you, as perhaps every episode is for you if you have started to think differently about success, not just in terms of income, but also in how your business actually fits into your life. So you want to keep growing, but you’re done doing it at the expense of your time, your energy, your family. If you’re building with term time schedules or four day weeks, or my newer concept of four hour days, even just long walks between client calls, listen up. This is for you. Welcome to Reimagining Success, the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert, one that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your host, Ellen Lundberg, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach and mum of two.

Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility and the fulfilment you’re looking for, ready to redefine success and build a business that you love. Let’s get started. Before I get into today’s episode, I do want to say that you have a final chance to join us in the groundwork sprints. This is my 10 day sprint starting today and we are helping you look back at the last year, but really also look underneath the surface of your business model. See what’s working, what’s draining you, what’s not working, where you want it to, and then looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, how you might want to think about tweaking. So we’re really laying the foundation for 2026 and beyond for this next level, next stage of your business and your success. So if you do want in, join me quickly at onestepoutside.com forward/, groundwork and I’ll make sure you get the first video and the first content today. But whether you’re in or not, this is a moment to pause.

We’re coming up to the end of the year and you know, I’ve been talking a lot about term time working and I and I very big summer break myself. I’ve talked about the four hour work day recently, which I know has both resonated with some people and also been quite provocative. I’ve always talked about reimagining what success looks like and how we can find a way to be ambitious and to in this case, grow our business while also protecting our time, our energy, our personal priorities and all that. So it’s not just about, you know, oh, it’s a new year and what are my goals and da da da da da. It’s really about how you want to grow from here because you know, the world I’m in and I think it’s a growing community, although sometimes posts on LinkedIn make me despair. But in the world I’m in, we, we don’t want to scale endlessly. We’re, we’re not looking to, oh, I hate calling someone else, I’m not going to. But there was a very, very prominent entrepreneur who’s been saying recently, now is not the time for work life balance because of AI disrupting everything and so on.

And it really get, because I, I hear that and of course if your whole livelihood is based on a business that’s going to be completely obsolete because of AI and tech and so on, then definitely that’s, that’s an important thing to consider. The truth is there’s a lot of uncertainty and we might not know yet how to evolve. But again, for most of us who are designing businesses around our lives, whether we’re parents of young children or empty nesters with new priorities, or we have a health condition, or we just don’t want to work all the time and we have a sort of a ceiling to how much we want to earn as well. We’re not looking to scale for the sake of it and we’re looking to create a business that again, I talk about freedom, flexibility, fulfilment. It lets me do meaningful work. I get financially rewarded for it. I get to take time off when I want to, you know, and there’s more choice really. So to be clear, it’s not six figures or seven figures or eight figures by any means.

It’s about, yes, substantial. I guess the word is income. I’m looking now for financial abundance, financial freedom, not just financial security, but it’s consistent, it feels feasible and also it’s anchored in our values. We’re not sort of, you know, of course, we’re not burning out to get there. Right. And we’re not doing things that feel icky to do as well. So it’s not 6, 7, 8 figures by any means. It’s not just this idea of freedom that was popular I guess in my digital nomad days.

The whole kind of sipping, in my case a pina colada on the beach. Although my favourite now is pisco sour or it was at least in the days that I still had cocktails. So not just freedom in terms of this kind of Tim Ferriss for our weeks, but I do think, you know, four day weeks in certain Companies are working really well, I know, not think four hour days are very feasible. Long summer off, just space for family logistics. Unfortunately, the corporate world isn’t for most parents working and for many others as well. And so for me, working for yourself gives you that kind of freedom and choice in how you work, really how, when, where you work. We’re also not talking about just performing professionalism, you know, having to pretend to be someone you’re not or this kind of in our world as well, chasing the LinkedIn algorithm and looking like, and this is what I find again, looking like you’re doing amazing. I talk to people again and again because of the work I do and because of the peers I work with and clients and they look like, wow, they’re on fire.

And then I talk to them and it’s completely different behind the scenes. It’s messy, they’re concerned, they’re not clear, you know, so you’re not alone in feeling like this. If you think that everyone has it together just because you look at social and what people are saying, then I promise you it’s not the case. Not to sort of be cynical and negative because people are doing amazing things and you may well be too, but let’s just take that kind of shiny social stuff with a pinch of salt and again, not just making more money for the sake of it, but understanding that we’re making that money because that allows us to, you know, pay our bills and, and live the life we want and then choose which clients we work with, travel when we want to, you know, invest in things without having to go, oh, don’t have the money for this right now. And that’s the kind of freedom that comes with, with earning money, right? Excuse me. So if you’re, if you’re done with kind of constant output, and that’s the big thing I’m kind of fighting against in, in corporate as well, this focus on both input and then output. It’s just about that busyness, right? The kind of fake urgency as well. Got to reply to that client right away and I’ve got to that and, and post every day on LinkedIn and reply to all the comments, otherwise the algorithm will, will mess me up.

We’re rather building around our own rhythm and it might mean fewer calls, but you know, bigger margin. It might be me hopefully at this stage of a business, you know, trying to really spot the patterns and developing kind of core offers rather than making everything bespoke and everything kind of day to day juggling. And it probably also means thinking longer term Instead of just constantly reinventing the wheel and flying by the seat of your pants, wherever that express and just kind of reacting to what’s being thrown at you. Right, there’s a point now where we can go, okay, this is working. This is where I want to lean in and this is what I need to do. So again, the groundwork, which is starting today, you have a final chance to sneak in. I’ll check my emails, I’ll make sure that I can get you the access today. So onestepoutside.com groundwork and you have an option to do the core 10 day sprint.

You’ll have access for a month. Also you have an option to upgrade to join us in the WhatsApp community, which is already starting to bubble up and to a group coaching call at the end as well. So you get live feedback from me as well if you want to bring your particular questions. So pretty good. I say pretty good value for just a couple of weeks and not too much money. So I hope this is a good opportunity. So again, one step outside.com forward slash groundwork. 10 days of space and structure to actually ask what’s working, what’s costing too much, where do I want to be? And that’s a really important one.

Where do I want to be? What if? And that’s what we’re asking today. Sneak preview. Everything works out exactly as you want because if we don’t have that picture, we can’t possibly work towards it. I can’t give you the right strategies even if they exist because we don’t know where you’re trying to aim for. I think there’s a metaphor, there’s an expression that, you know, if you don’t know where you’re heading for, then no wind will be fair. Right? There’s no sort of luck. And whatever the other words would be, there’s, there’s no such thing as all the stars aligning if you don’t even know what you’re trying to align towards. So that’s really, really important to know.

What does it look like when everything’s working? And you might not know exactly. You know, when I first left my job and did my very first vision board, I sort of had logos of the companies I wanted to work with and it was all very tangible. And that could be your situation, but it’s not necessarily. And of course there could be things on there like, oh, I want to do a TED Talk or I want to do, you know, write my next book or whatever those things are, and they’re perfectly fine to be on there, but it’s much more about how you’re feel, feeling and the sense of freedom and flexibility that you have in your time and the income, but not just the money. It’s not. I mean, I remember actually foolishly, I had like 10, 000 followers on my list or something. Now I’ve got more than that on LinkedIn now, but I mean, really, that’s kind of an arbitrary goal that isn’t linked to anything meaningful apart from a bit of. A bit of ego.

And originally in social media, I suppose we thought that it was all about the followers, which it is not. So, look, hopefully you’re joining me. You’re already in the the groundwork sprint with me. Looking forward to working with you there. And for some of you that will be enough. Others it may well open up bigger questions because sometimes when we do these kind of resets and reviews, we go, oh, hang on a second, what about these offers? And actually my whole operating model, I kind of want to do a bit of a reset there. My role in the business or maybe I’m not actually that clear what I’m working towards. And that’s not a problem.

That’s a really exciting, pivotal moment. It just means that you’re kind of bubbling into this new season and that’s, yes, I always say scary and exciting come together, but it doesn’t mean that you have to rip everything up. And we can certainly build on what you already have. So, you know, if you start noticing what you want to shift, then really pay attention to that because it’s going to be the beginning of something new, something maybe a little scary, but also very exciting and above all more sustainable. And I have something coming actually in the new year, which I’ll start seeding soon as well, which may well be what you’re craving there as well. So I’m really excited to share more about that probably in the next few weeks. So if you have joined the Sprint, then welcome. I will see you over there working on your foundations, your groundwork for the new thing that you’re going to build.

I’m really glad that you’ve made that space. If not again, you’ve got the final chance to slip in one more time on stepoutside.com groundwork. And either way, I’d love for you to take a moment today, even if you’re not going to do like a full sprint with me, you’re not even going to sit down and do a strategy day. And maybe you’ve already done it for next week. You’ve got your plan for next week for next year. You’ve already got your plan for 2026. The question that I ask again and again is what does success look for me now? Who am I now? Who do I need to be? And where do I want to go in the coming year and beyond? Because that is what this next season is really all about. See you next week.

Groundwork, your 10-day business recalibration starts on Monday 17th November and you can still join us. It is a two-week business reset designed to help you step back, get clear on what’s working, and make intentional decisions about what’s next. You’ll get short daily videos, simple prompts, and a guided workbook with the option to upgrade for a WhatsApp group and a live coaching call the following week. Head to onestepoutside.com/groundwork to join and I would love to have you in there. That’s onestepoutside.com/groundwork.

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