Let’s talk about one of the biggest lies they sell to small business owners.
It’s the lie you see in stock photos: a smiling entrepreneur, casually holding a laptop on a pristine beach, one hand on their business, the other on a coconut drink. It’s the myth of “work-life balance.”
We’re told to strive for this perfect equilibrium. A little bit of marketing, a little bit of sales, a little bit of product development, a little bit of admin, and oh yeah, a little bit of family time, all in one neat, 8-hour day.
It sounds nice, right? Healthy. Sustainable.
But I’m here to tell you that for a small business owner, especially in the early stages, “balance” is a fantasy. Worse than that, it’s a trap. The relentless pursuit of balance is where good, promising businesses go to wither away quietly.
Why? Because balance is the enemy of breakthroughs.
Think about it. A laser is just light. But normal, “balanced” light—like from a lightbulb—illuminates a room. A laser, by focusing all its energy into one single, narrow beam, can cut through steel.
Your business needs to be a laser, not a lightbulb.
What if we stopped trying to balance everything and, instead, went all-in on the one or two things that actually make our business work? What if we embraced being temporarily unbalanced to achieve something extraordinary?
The “See-Saw” Struggle (And Why It’s Exhausting)
The problem with chasing balance is that it turns your workday into a frantic see-saw.
You spend 30 minutes on a marketing idea, then get pulled into answering 10 customer service emails. Just as you’re getting into a groove on a product design, you remember you have to do your bookkeeping. You’re constantly switching gears, constantly context-switching.
And every time you switch, your brain has to reboot. It’s like trying to drive from New York to California by going one mile north, then one mile south. You’re moving, but you’re not getting anywhere meaningful. You end the day feeling “busy” but not actually productive.
This “balanced” approach means you’re giving a little attention to everything, but master-level attention to nothing.
Your marketing is okay. Your product is okay. Your customer service is okay. But in a crowded world, “okay” is invisible. Customers don’t flock to the business that’s pretty good at a dozen things. They flock to the business that is absolutely, mind-blowingly great at the one thing they need.
Remember what Charlie Munger said? “Nobody wants to go to a doctor who is half proctologist and half dentist.”
They want a specialist. They want the best.
Your business becomes the best not by balancing its efforts, but by focusing them.
The “All-In” Mindset: From Scattered to Scorched Earth
So, what’s the alternative? It’s the “All-In” mindset. It’s about identifying the single most important thing that will drive your business forward right now, and then pouring all of your fuel onto that fire.
This isn’t about working 100-hour weeks until you burn out. That’s just being unbalanced in a different, equally destructive way.
This is about strategic focus. It’s about saying, “For the next 90 days, our entire company is going to be obsessed with one goal. Everything else becomes secondary.”
Let’s make this practical. How do you do it?
Step 1: Find Your “One Thing”
You can’t go all-in on everything. You have to choose. Ask yourself this brutal question:
If I could only achieve one business goal in the next quarter, what would have the biggest impact on my survival and growth?
The answer is almost never “get better at bookkeeping.” It’s usually one of these:
Acquire New Customers. (The lifeblood of any business.)
Increase the Average Value of a Sale. (Get your current customers to spend more.)
Launch a Specific New Product or Service. (Create a new revenue stream.)
Be specific. Don’t say “get better at marketing.” Say, “Increase our Instagram followers by 50% to drive more leads.” Or, “Launch our new ‘premium’ service package by June 1st.”
This is your One Thing.
Step 2: Ruthlessly Triage Everything Else
Once you know your One Thing, you have to clear the deck. This is the hard part. You must look at all the other “important” tasks and decide: Delegate, Delete, or Defer.
Delegate: Can someone else do this? Can you hire a virtual assistant for $15/hour to handle customer service emails? Can you outsource your bookkeeping to a freelancer? Your time is your most valuable asset. If a task is not in your “Zone of Genius” and not your “One Thing,” pay someone else to do it so you can buy back your focus.
Delete: Does this task really need to be done at all? Is that weekly report you generate actually being read? Is that social media platform you hate (but feel obligated to use) actually bringing in any customers? Be merciless. Stop doing things that don’t move the needle.
Defer: Is this important, but not important right now? Can it wait 90 days? Put it on a “Someday/Maybe” list. You can revisit it after your all-in sprint is over.
This process creates the space and mental energy you need to focus.
Step 3: Build “Focus Sprints”
You can’t be “all-in” forever. That’s a recipe for burnout. Instead, work in sprints.
Choose a 90-Day “One Thing” Goal. (e.g., “Land 10 new enterprise clients.”)
Block your calendar. Literally block out 3-4 hour chunks every single day to work only on tasks related to that goal. This is your “All-In” time. Treat it as sacred. No meetings, no emails, no interruptions.
Communicate with your team. Tell them, “For the next 90 days, my main focus is landing enterprise clients. I’ll be less available for day-to-day decisions. Here’s who to go to for that.”
At the end of 90 days, you stop. You review. You celebrate. And then you choose your next “One Thing” to go all-in on.
This rhythmic approach—90 days of intense focus, followed by a review—allows you to make massive progress in one area without letting the entire business fall apart.
What “All-In” Looks Like in Real Life
Let’s take a fictional example. Meet “Sarah’s Sweets,” a small bakery.
The “Balanced” Approach: Sarah tries to do it all. She spends a little time baking, a little time decorating, a little time managing her Instagram, a little time working the counter, and a little time trying to figure out her taxes. She’s okay at everything, but her business is stagnant.
The “All-In” Approach: Sarah decides her “One Thing” for Q1 is to launch a corporate catering program. This is her big bet.
She delegates the counter work to a part-time employee.
She defers a plan to redesign her logo.
She deletes her Pinterest account because it wasn’t driving sales.
For 90 days, her focus is only on: creating a catering menu, building a simple landing page on her website, and doing 5 sales calls a week with local offices.
She’s “unbalanced.” The front counter is fine, but not perfect. Her Instagram posts are less frequent. But at the end of 90 days, she’s landed 3 steady corporate clients, adding 30% to her monthly revenue.
By being temporarily unbalanced, she created a permanent step-change in her business.
The Objections (And Why They’re Wrong)
I can hear the objections already.
“But my business will fall apart if I’m not managing everything!” Will it? Or have you just not built systems and trusted your team? A business that relies entirely on you doing everything is a job, not a business. It’s a trap you’ve built for yourself.
“What about my family? This sounds like I’ll never see them!” This is the biggest misunderstanding. The “All-In” mindset is about focus at work, not about working all the time. When you are ruthlessly focused for 6-7 hours at work, you get more done than most people do in 12 hours of “balanced” multitasking. This means you can actually turn off your computer at 5 PM and be fully present with your family, with no guilt. You earn your balance by being unbalanced at work.
“What if I pick the wrong thing to focus on?” So what? You’ll find out in 90 days. A failed 90-day sprint where you learned something is infinitely more valuable than 90 days of “balanced” stagnation. You can always pivot and choose a new “One Thing.”
Your First Step
You don’t have to make a huge leap today. Just take one step.
This week, block out a single two-hour “Focus Block” on your calendar.
Turn off your phone notifications. Close your email. And for those two hours, work on the single most important task for your business. Not the most urgent. The most important.
See how it feels. See how much progress you make.
You might just discover that the path to a truly successful, sustainable business isn’t found on a balanced see-saw. It’s found by pointing your laser in one direction and firing with everything you’ve got.
Stop trying to balance. Start building.
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Hi, I’m Heather.
Let me help you scale your Utah $1M+ biz to $20M+
My credentials:
- Built & sold Queen of Wraps (yep, that’s my face on the side of I-15)
- Learned 1,769,230+ lessons so you skip trial-and-error
- Zero Ivy MBA (just pioneer grit + market-tested tactics)
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