I built a successful creator business… then everything stopped working. Here’s what I’m doing to fix my business in 2026 (Part 2).

I’m rebuilding my entire creator business. Not my content, niche, or mission, but the way my business runs behind the scenes. Follow along as I go from Content Creator to CEO.

Welcome back, this is part two. If you’d like to read (or watch) part one, click here.

Here’s a quick recap of what I shared in that last post:

• I noticed my revenue was going backward for the first time.
• Expenses were higher than ever.
• Funnels were converting at less than 1%.
• I was the bottleneck; my team couldn’t move forward on tasks without my approval first.

When I came back from maternity leave last year, I knew that I needed to create a game plan to fix my business and finally hit a seven-figure year. Today, I’m going to share with you what’s been going on behind the scenes for the last 60 days:

• Where I’ve seen progress
• Where we’ve stalled a little bit
• What’s working and what’s not working
• What I’m learning about what it means to go from being a content creator to stepping into that CEO position.

As always, if you’d prefer to watch instead of read, click the video below.

DISCLAIMER: Links included in this post might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you! Thank you for supporting me so I can continue to provide you with free content each week on my blog and on my YouTube channel!

Rebuilding My Creator Business: The Status Update

First, let’s take another quick look at some of the goals I had talked about in the last video:

• 12,500 qualified leads
• Raising funnel conversions to 5%

Funnels:

Redoing our funnels is taking longer than I had hoped. However, we just finalized our first three funnels at the end of last month. I am feeling extremely confident with the people we have working on this now, and I’m excited to continue building these out.

Fixing systems:

This is a part of my business that I have been self-sabotaging. It took me two months to decide what to do, but now that I’ve made a decision, it’s time to make serious progress here. We are currently working with a team that is completely restructuring our internal operations and systems.

This process will likely take up to four months, but again, I know we are headed in the right direction.

Transitioning from Content Creator to CEO:

This will always be the biggest work in progress. But what I want to talk to you about in this post are the four biggest things I’ve learned about making this shift from content creator to CEO.

LESSON 1: TRACTION + MAKING HARD DECISIONS

One of the first things that changed the trajectory of my business came from reading the book Traction. And not just reading it, but taking the time to work through it step by step. I could probably make an entire video about all of the revelations I had from reading this one book, but today I’m just going to focus on two of them.

Revisiting Your Core Values as a Business

The first revelation I had while reading Traction was that I needed to revisit my core values. This is something that you always hear people talk about, and it’s something that I did at a mastermind retreat in 2021. We picked core values, and then I never really thought about them ever again.

So when I was reading this book, and he said it was time to pick core values, I thought, “OK, if I’m going to take my business seriously, then let’s do this. I don’t know how core values are going to help me, but we’re going to do it anyway.”

The advice of picking core values felt like the advice to pick a niche. It’s something everyone tells you to do, but you ignore it because you think maybe it doesn’t apply to you. But when you apply it to yourself, that’s why you suddenly go viral and see your content take off.

Here’s the advice I got from Traction:

• Pick 3 key A-players on your team.
• Write down the characteristics that make them A-players.

And then I wrote down a list of things I felt were missing from my business.

Once I had this list, I separated it into themes and started cleaning up words that didn’t resonate or that were overly repeated. From those themes, I then picked my core pillars. At this point, I had 15-20 words, so I said those words out loud and picked the ones that sounded right to me.

Then you need to sit on those words for 30 days.

The core values I chose are:

• Excellence
• Above & Beyond
• Human First
• Data Driven
• Innovative
• Initiative
• Resourceful

Having these core values has been so powerful for my business. It’s allowed me to say no to things that don’t align and prioritize my tasks better. Overall, this process has given me so much clarity.

Setting Your 10-Year Vision

After that, the book talks about having a ten-year vision. This was super eye-opening for me, because I had never thought 10 years into the future before. I’d thought maybe 3-5 years into the future, but in my niche, it can be hard to think that far ahead. It’s impossible to predict what social media will look like 10 years from now. I have no idea what my job or business will look like.

​And honestly, when I thought about my ten-year vision, my goal was to retire. I didn’t see my current business as realistic to maintain. That made me realize I hadn’t set up my business the way I had intended. I started realizing that if I continued down this path, I would soon hit burnout (again).

​So, I needed to quickly make some changes to prevent that from happening, because I want to continue doing this.

When I have clarity on the direction I want my business to go, and not only that, but also a specific lens through which to view it, it has forced me to make some really tough decisions.

I’ve let go of three people since my last post about rebuilding my creator business. Not because they were bad people, not because they didn’t try, but because once I defined our value pillars, I realized some roles didn’t align with where we were going.

I’ve had to let people go before, but this time was probably the hardest one for me. However, I’m trusting my intuition, and we’re currently hiring for two new positions that I’m very optimistic about.

LESSON 2: TIME AUDITS + BUYING BACK TIME

This leads me to the second thing that I’ve been doing since the last post. I have noticed how much Megan and I are involved in the daily business operations and doing random tasks, and so I had us both give ourselves time audits.

Megan is my digital business manager. She’s basically my right-hand woman. If I’m visionary, she’s the integrator. She’s been with me for five or six years now, so we’re definitely in this together.

Instead of hiring people to replace the people we let go, we’re decided tohire to buy back our own time. This is something that I’ve learned from the book “Buy Back Your Time” by Dan Martell.

Instead of hiring positions that are going to grow the business, hire people to buy back your time. Then you can reinvest that time into your business on things that will scale revenue and grow.

We tracked:

• What we touched daily
• Random tasks, recurring tasks, secret projects
• What only we could do (or so we thought only we could do)
• All the things we did in a day, week, and month

Then, with the results, we did a few things.

First, I plugged all of our tasks into ChatGPT and asked what could be delegated, automated, or deleted. We found that there were a lot of things on our plates that could be automated with AI, some that could be delegated to other team members, and even things we were both doing that simply didn’t need to be done.

This exercise led us to realize that we need to hire two new roles.

1. Brand Collaborations Producer. I already have my manager who handles my negotiations, but Megan and I were still spending 20+ hours a week on collaborations in the background. We realized that we needed someone on the team to take on that role.
2. A virtual assistant to work directly with Megan to take the random admin tasks off her plate.

Stepping into CEO mode, I have to become a better leader. Especially during the onboarding phase of new members. The goal is to train with these new team members and give them the playbooks, SOPs, and support they need to fully step into their roles.

Stepping into the CEO Role of Your Business

If you also feel like everything in your business still runs through you, then you don’t need to work harder. You just need a better structure.

A great place to start is the free HubSpot CEO Masterclass. It teaches four lessons that separate decent leaders from great ones, with practical frameworks you can apply to up-level your leadership skills and take your business to the next level.

These frameworks are taught by Sam and Shaan, who are co-hosts of the My First Million podcast. You can learn about setting company values, frameworks for having hard conversations, and delegation (my favorite section).  

This is where I learned about the ‘What, How, When’ motivation framework when onboarding a new team member.

• WHAT: Explain what you expect.
• HOW: Show them through training.
• WHEN: Set deadlines and schedule follow-ups.
• MOTIVATION: Keep them engaged.

This is the cycle that I intend to repeat when bringing on our Collaborations Producer.

This resource was made by HubSpot. I love that they make free resources like this for businesses; it’s completely in line with my own business core values. Thank you, HubSpot.

LESSON 3: WHY I HIRED A COACH (DAN MARTELL)

Speaking of hiring, in the last post, I mentioned hiring a business coach, and I wanted to talk a little bit more about that. Looking back at my career, I noticed every time my business up-leveled dramatically, it was because I had a coach. I knew that this was something that I needed, and I landed on working with Dan Martell.

​I’m now in Dan Martell’s group coaching program, Elite, for the next 12 months.

​The main reason that I wanted to join his coaching program is that he is completely different than me, in the best ways. Everything that I’m lacking, he has. He has a personal brand, his coaching probably makes him multiple millions of dollars every year, and it only takes up 2 hours of his time every week.

He leverages AI strategically, he’s an investor in multiple businesses, he’s no fluff, and he’s not going to sugarcoat it. I felt like I needed someone who would be brutally honest with me and give me the kick in the butt I knew I needed.

And I am so glad I joined. I’m so excited to see how this program helps me go from Content Creator to CEO over the next year.

I knew I was in the right place when one of the very first lessons I watched in his coaching program said that his mission is to help us build an empire. And an empire is designed for a life of creative fulfillment you never have to retire from.

That mission blew my mind because, as I said earlier, I was feeling exhausted and knew I would need to retire from it. He’s shifted my mindset and helped me think about what would need to change so I could do this forever.

This is another thing I could talk about forever, but in the context of rebuilding my creator business, this is where I am.

LESSON 4: MY SELF-SABOTAGE (THE WAITING)

Now, the reason I waited so long to join a coaching program was actually one of my self-sabotaging behaviors, and this is another realization that I’ve had.

One of my biggest self-sabotaging behaviors is… waiting.

Waiting for the right time, for a sign, for someone to validate an idea, or to make the decision for me.

I saw this pattern come up A LOT:

• Waiting to update our ClickUp
• Start a podcast
• Change my content format.
• Hire positions I knew we needed
• Hire a coach
• Buy a car (yup, even this!)

There’s more I need to unpack here, but decisions feel identity-binding for me for some reason. It feels like every decision that I make is someone connected to who I am or what I choose. Internally, I feel like these decisions say something permanent about who I am; therefore, my brain treats them as threats rather than simple choices.

Even deciding what to eat is not about really deciding what to eat; it’s about the type of person that I am. If I let others decide, I can unintentionally shift the blame onto someone else. Or, if I wait to make a decision, it feels like I still have a sense of control.

Given all of this, I have some new rules.

First, I ask myself, “What am I waiting for?” Like, honestly, does this need to be waited on? Then I set decision ownership rules:

• If I haven’t decided by X date, I will decide yes.
• If this doesn’t scale revenue or protect my energy, it’s a no.
• Does this line align with my business values?

Once I realized that I was waiting on things and this indecision was actually coming back to bite me in the butt, I’ve been way more decisive.

I’ve decided to just go for things. Hiring new people, starting a podcast, buying a car, building a new business. Like, why not just go for it?

WHERE ARE WE GOING? WHAT’S NEXT?

So where are we going and what’s next?

• Continue working on funnels and systems.
• Update The BSP Model™
• Hire 2 new It’s Modern Millie team members and train them to buy back time so I can work on new things.
• New things: podcast and coaching
• Instead of scaling up, I want to scale with depth.

When I thought about scaling before, I was thinking about rapid growth, churning out content, getting email subscribers and sales, but that’s not the type of scaling that I’m striving for anymore.

I want my business to do what it already does, but better. Up leveling The BSP Model™. Spending more time with my students, creating depth in our students’ results, and I think that might naturally lead to more income down the line. This year, I want to focus on depth.

This season of my business feels different. It’s forcing me to literally think outside of my usual creator box. I don’t want to be the bottleneck anymore. I don’t want duct-taped systems that are “good enough”. And I don’t want to “feel busy” and go nowhere.

I want leverage. Clarity. Longevity. And a business I never have to retire from.

If you’ve been enjoying me documenting and sharing this journey in real time, let me know in the comments. This style of content feels so out of the norm for me to make, so I get a little self-conscious posting about things that aren’t my typical educational content.

I could use a little extra confirmation from all of you if this is even a post that’s being pointed in the right direction.

Thank you so much for being here. If you’d like to read part one, you can find it here.

I’ll see you in the next one, follow your joy!