Business Advice I’m Composting

There comes a point when the internal noise just gets too loud.

Not just the algorithms and strategies, but the quieter, more insistent voices inside that say: you should be doing more, showing up better, keeping up.

I’ve absorbed these voices in podcasts and industry banter, for a long time. Their instructions often don’t resonate with me, so it can be easy to feel somehow behind or deficient. But this past year, I’ve been getting really clear on something important:

They are not the voice of my work.

They are the voice of my fear.

So I’m choosing, again and again, to return.

1. Social media advice: “You should post xx times per week to stay visible.”

There’s a particular kind of anxiety that lives in this statement.  The belief that if I stop producing, I will disappear. Become irrelevant.

But creativity doesn’t respond well to pressure. It withers under obligation. What I know, deep in my body, is that my work has always been most alive when it emerges from a place of connection rather than compliance.

So I’ve been proceeding to the beat of a different rhythm.

One that asks:

• Am I rested / grounded?

• Am I present?

• Is there something true that is ready to come forth?

This means I may write less. Or more. But what I share will come from a place that feels inhabited, not rushed or manufactured.

Here’s my working hypothesis: visibility that is rooted in truth creates a different kind of staying power—one that doesn’t rely on constant output, but on resonance.

2. Instagram advice: “Capture reels of yourself throughout your day to use for marketing.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with this advice. But for me, it’s always been dead on arrival because it would create a subtle split.

A watching of myself.

A performing of my life, instead of living it.

And I’ve learned to pay attention to that feeling.

Because if I ever I began documenting for the sake of being seen, I lose contact with the very thing I most want to offer: presence.

I do very much enjoy sharing and collaborating, which social media facilitates. So I’m allowing my relationship with it to be more organic, more intuitive.

• If a moment genuinely wants to be shared, I trust I’ll feel it.

• If a picture of me is fitting, I’ll share it.

• If not, I let it go and instead post what inspires. Or nothing at all. Period.

This is also where I notice the broader cultural current. The quiet pressure to shape ourselves into something consumable.

To become productized, marketable, optimized.

And each time I feel that pull, I return to a simpler orientation:

• How can I create and share from love rather than fear?

• …From enoughness rather than lack?

3. Growth advice: “Make xx sales calls per day to scale.”

There is a certain urgency and rigidity in this advice.  A push toward more, faster, bigger.

But I’ve sat with clients long enough to see what happens to their gorgeous, life-giving visions and mission statements when they override their natural way of relating in order to meet a metric too rapidly.

Something essential gets lost.

Not always immediately. But gradually.

Fear and self-doubt creep in, like an intractable tide.

So I find myself asking a different set of questions:

• What is already alive in my community?

• Where are the genuine points of connection?

• What do people actually need, and how might I meet them there?

This kind of growth is quieter. Less dramatic.

Less “new client acquisition”, more trust. Less chasing, more tending.

I know I’m in flow when I feel more like a gardener than a machine.

And yes, it may take longer.

But we don’t see flowers rushing themselves open.

We don’t see roots competing for visibility.

In nature we see a steady unfolding, shaped by conditions that support life.

So I keep returning to shape and evolve my work in the same way.

When possible, alongside others who are aligned.

Not from urgency, but from relationship.

Not from extraction, but from care.

Not from fear of missing out, but from trusting in what is mine to offer—and when.

Perhaps this isn’t a rejection of business advice so much as a reorientation.

A remembering that there are many ways to grow something meaningful.

And that the most sustainable path, at least for me, begins by listening inward and having the courage to follow what I feel, hear, see, and know.