For five years, my business made $1M every year. It did not change, and the reason was not another tactic I had failed to find.
When Growth Does Not Move
For five years, my business made $1M every year. It did not change.
At the time, I thought the answer was probably another tactic. Another book. A new campaign. A better process. That is where most of us look first.
But tactics sit on top of two earlier layers.
Identity Comes First
The first layer is identity: who am I as a person turning up to run this business?
I dreamed of having a million-dollar business when I was a kid. Then I got one. It created the safety I had been chasing, and my identity had settled around that level.
The business was not stuck because I had run out of ideas. I had built a ceiling that felt familiar.
The Questions Shape The Direction
The second layer is questions. What questions am I asking? Are they the questions that take the business where I want it to go?
More tactics can create more movement without creating a different result. The work is often to change the identity behind the business, then ask better questions about what comes next.
How to apply it
Write down the level your business has held for too long. Then ask: what identity am I protecting, and what question am I avoiding because it might require a different answer?
Key ideas
- Identity comes before business action.
- The questions a founder asks shape the direction the business takes.
- Tactics and processes work better when they sit on top of a changed identity and better questions.
Who this is for
Founders whose business has reached a level they once wanted, but has stayed there longer than expected despite more learning, planning and effort.
What it helps with
It gives a founder a way to look beneath the next tactic when growth has stalled. The useful question is whether their identity and the questions they ask are built for the business they want next.
Quotes
For five years of my business, I earned a million bucks every year and it did not change.
The first layer is identity. Who am I as a person turning up to run this business?
The second layer is questions. What questions am I asking?
I dreamed of having a million-dollar business as a kid. Then I got a million-dollar business. But that was my identity.
Transcript
Show transcript
For five years of my business, I earned a million bucks every year and it did not change. Here is why. Every single business, people think about tactics, tactics, tactics. A new book. I have read a new Hormozi book, love Hormozi, a new Patrick Bet-David, a new Dan Martell. Sweet, I am going to read them and implement the tactics.
The issue is that two other layers come before anything that we do in business. The first layer is identity. Who am I as a person turning up to run this business?
The second layer is questions. What questions am I asking? Am I asking the right questions to go in the right direction? What I found was that it was never about knowing more business things, more tactics, more new things to implement or new marketing campaigns.
For me, it was identity. I dreamed of having a million-dollar business as a kid. Then I got a million-dollar business. But that was my identity.
The second layer was whether I was asking the right questions to move the business forward. Was I asking the question that would create the business I wanted in six months' time? Get those two layers right first, and the business can change when tactics and processes sit on top.
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First shared April 27, 2026
What level has your business normalised, and what question would you need to ask to move beyond it?
