One Arm at a Time
Last week I had a call with Kasey Jones. Kasey is my coach and mentor, and she’s also one of my clients. She runs the Essentialist CEO Collective. We talked about where I want to take my business, and she told me how much she enjoys coaching me. She encouraged me to keep getting help from her. (You don’t have to ask me twice.)
Right at the end of the call, I told her I was proud of what I’d done this year. She already knew, and she just nodded along with me.
Early in 2026, I knew I wanted to make a change. At the end of the first quarter, I set an intention to stop doing one whole line of work in my business. It wasn’t just about money. I couldn’t shut that work off like a valve, so I made a plan. By the end of 2026, heading into 2027, I wouldn’t be doing that work anymore. Plenty of it was still on my plate this year, and I needed new offers and income to take its place.
Kasey, if you’re reading this, thank you. Your coaching got me up and going faster than I ever could have on my own.
That same week, an octopus showed up in my inbox. (Stay with me.) I read the 1440 Daily Digest, a quick daily email that rounds up the news. Last week they shared a new study on how octopuses squeeze through holes smaller than their own bodies. I read it twice.
They don’t just shove their way through. Researchers watched them go step by step. One arm goes first to feel out the other side, and a few more arms follow. Those arms grab onto the wall and use leverage to pull the rest of the body through. When the hole is extra tight, the octopus takes that last part in two moves: the rest of the arms first, then the body.
It got me to thinking. It’s just like this in our business.
How do you manage change in a small business?
You set the direction, then take one small step at a time to get there. Along the way, you find something to grab onto, like people, training or a simple system, so you aren’t pulling all the weight yourself. And you give it more time than you think it needs. (It always takes longer than we want it to.)
That’s how I made my own change this year. Here’s what it looked like.
Start with letting go
Before I could make room for new work, I had to let go of the old. That part is emotional, and it needs tending. The work I was releasing stopped fitting where I was headed. I could see other work coming in, and I had to make room for it.
When I start something like this, I ask myself four questions:
Where have I been?
What did I learn?
Where do I want to go?
What can I do to get there?
Sometimes the path isn’t super clear, and that’s okay. The other day I was out for a walk, and the path was covered in fall leaves. I couldn’t always see it, but I knew where I wanted to end up. So I kept going, one step at a time. Every so often I could see a few steps ahead, and that was good.
That’s how this change felt. I had a vision and a direction, even when the path looked fuzzy. From an ops standpoint, knowing your direction is one of the strongest moves you can make. (I don’t always take my own advice, but I did this time.)
Send one arm through
It’s tempting to try to build all of Rome at once. Someone in my space just had a huge launch with a bunch of offers, all neatly planned and bundled. I could look at that and think I need all of it right now. But Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’d rather slow down and ask what one small thing will move me closer.
My first arm through was AI. In 2025 I had a hunch about it, and I started the way most people do, popping prompts into a chat window. It didn’t get me very far and felt icky and sloppy.
Then I started working with Kasey in her program. Over the first half of the year, I worked through her steps, looking at my history, my skills and what I want for my future and my business. Kasey gives us prompts to help find the thread running through all of it. For me, that thread was operations. (Hi, I’m Michelle, and I love a good process.) I also realized I’d already been doing a lot of ops and ai ops work without calling it that. So over the summer and into the fall, I started adding the AI layer on top of the operations.
I’ve done this before. When I started VIP days back in 2020, I didn’t have a clue how they would go. I charged $600 for my first ones and built as I went. Now I charge $2,500. The money matters, but what I’m proud of is the process and systems I built along the way. They set every VIP day up to end in a win.
Sometimes you have to do a thing to see what feels good, what works and what gets traction.
Operations first, then AI
Kasey puts it this way: “You can’t automate something that isn’t a defined process first.” She also says, “You cannot improve a process that doesn’t exist.” If you do something different every time, it won’t get better. I agree. There has to be a way of doing the work first, even if it’s a little broken or half-cocked. I won’t build AI on top of nothing.
The way I like to say it: AI for the busywork, people for the heart part.
Find something to grab onto
The octopus doesn’t pull itself through with one arm. It grabs onto the wall and uses leverage. In business, leverage is anything that helps you do more without doing it all yourself.
People
My leverage started with listening. (More on why I listen before I build.) My clients kept telling me they felt swamped trying to keep up with AI. There are a thousand ways to use it, and they couldn’t tell which ones fit them. People in my membership asked me the same questions over and over, and so did my clients. How are you using it? What are you doing with it?
I heard two very different stories. Some people spent more time fixing what AI gave them than the job would have taken in the first place, and they wondered if it was saving any time at all. Others were having great success using it to brainstorm, think through new ideas and process.
That showed me where I could help. AI doesn’t work for everybody or for everything. The right use fits who you are, how you help your clients and where you want to take your business. I look at how you’re operating now and where you want to go, then add the AI layer on top. (Here’s where I’d start with AI.)
Those talks also kept money coming in. Long before I stopped the old work, I was talking with people about what was going on in their business. Some of those talks turned into clients, and others were just great information gathering.
I also built a small first offer, the AI Quick-Start. It’s a low-cost, quick way to fix one small problem in a business. People get an easy way to start working with me, and they get a quick win.
Feed and fix, playbooks and training
Whatever we build operationally, I look at it through something I call feed and fix. Feed what’s working, make a big deal of it and look for ways to do more of it. Fix what isn’t, with a plan. It’s how I look at every business I work with now, operations first with AI on top.
Training gave me more ways to do that. I earned my certification through Rachel Woods’ AMP program at runonamp.com. Rachel teaches playbooking, and she gets full credit for it. A playbook is the steps for a job you do over and over, plus how you make the calls along the way. (My apple pie playbook story is here.)
For my certification project, I built a New Member Feed & Fix playbook for a membership owner’s first 30 days with a new member. Those first 30 days are a big deal. Is the member engaged? Are they doing the things the owner hoped they would? The playbook walks you through where each member is and what comes next. Some steps are automated, and others need a person to reach out. It’s feed and fix for new members.
A second project I started was a Montly Feed & Fix dashboard for a client’s evergreen course and the membership that comes after it. A lot of dashboards are just numbers, and then what? I wanted this one to show where the launch was working, where it wasn’t, and what to do about each.
Build and go
I could wake up today and think I have to fix my website, update my LinkedIn profile, line up all my offers, build portals, and create a workshops, a course and a membership before I take any of it to the world. (Oh my gosh.) That could take me a year or two…or longer. I’m not going to do that.
In my first year of business, I thought I had to. I couldn’t publish a website because my logo wasn’t perfect (and I built websites - my, that’s embarrassing!). Now I know better. Where I want to end up can’t stop me from doing what I need to do today. The smarter move is to build a little, go, and keep building as I go.
My website is a good example. It’s still catching up to my work, and I haven’t figured out exactly what everything will look like yet. I’m moving forward anyway. Kasey’s way of looking at it helps here: you can’t fix it all at once, so you get surgical about what you fix and how you fix it.
I’m getting going, even though I don’t know exactly where I’ll end up. After eight years in business, that’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned. Done is better than perfect.
What this means for your business
When you’re facing a big change, you don’t need it all worked out. I didn’t. I had a vision and people I could talk to about it, and I built and tweaked as I went.
Start with one small step and find something to grab onto. Then give it more time than you think it needs. If you want help figuring out your first step, let’s talk.
What’s one change you’ve been wanting to make in your business? Tell me in the comments.
Shell, Yes! Here’s to your success,
Michelle
FAQs
-
Start with the letting go, because that part is emotional and needs tending. Then set your direction by asking where you’ve been, what you learned, where you want to go and what you can do to get there. Take one small step at a time, and expect it to take longer than you’d like.
-
Usually it’s because you’re doing everything yourself. Write down the jobs you do over and over, then look for leverage: a playbook, a person, or AI for the busywork. Start with one job, not all of them.
-
Build leverage before you add more hours. Write playbooks so a person or AI can take on the repeat work, test a small offer before you build a big one, and stay in conversation with people in your network. Those conversations turn into clients and referrals.
-
Start with these four: Where have I been? What did I learn? Where do I want to go? What can I do to get there? Then ask one more: what one small thing can I do this week to move closer?