What You Can Control
What You Can Control
And what you’re pretending you can’t.
You know the feeling.
You launch the offer.
Send the emails.
Post the thing.
Respond to the DMs.
Book the discovery calls.
Try, again, to hit your monthly goal.
Some months you hit it.
Some months you don’t.
And quietly, inside the rhythm of hustle, you start to wonder:
“Does it really have to be this hard forever?”
The answer is: no.
But the truth is: you’re going to have to give up control to get there.
Which is uncomfortable.
Because as a small business owner, you’ve built your entire identity on knowing how to handle it all.
But recurring revenue?
Memberships, subscriptions, retainers?
They require a different kind of leadership.
Not louder. Not bigger.
Just more honest.
You don’t need more hustle.
You need more rhythm.
Recurring revenue is not a magic pill.
It won’t fix your insecurities.
It won’t make every client stay forever.
It won’t turn chaos into peace overnight.
But it will do something better.
It will make your business boringly stable.
Predictable. Repeatable. Sustainable.
Which sounds beautiful, until you realize…
predictability requires trust.
And trust requires letting go.
Here’s what you can’t control:
What other people think of you
How quickly someone says yes
Whether your retention is perfect
Whether this month’s numbers match last month’s
Whether your first attempt works
But here’s what you can control:
The model you choose to build
The way you deliver your work
The energy you hold inside your systems
The words you say to yourself when something feels hard
The courage to shift out of the income roller coaster — even when it’s familiar
You can control your consistency.
Your clarity.
Your container.
Recurring revenue doesn’t just change your business.
It changes your mindset.
It teaches you to stop chasing.
To stop customizing for approval.
To stop building a new ladder every time you want to reach a new number.
It invites you to create something stable enough to hold your future self.
That’s the work.
Not reinventing.
Refining.
Not controlling the outcome.
Committing to the process.
Not performing value every month.
Delivering value every month — calmly, clearly, on purpose.
Yes, it will stretch you.
You’ll resist narrowing your niche.
You’ll question your pricing.
You’ll overthink your onboarding.
You’ll be tempted to start over — again.
But if you can stay through the discomfort?
On the other side is a business that feels like a gift, not a grind.
A model that makes room for rest.
Revenue that arrives when you're focused on delivery — not just promotion.
A way of working that doesn’t require your constant presence to be profitable.
Final thought
You don’t have to control everything.
You don’t have to fix every problem immediately.
You don’t have to keep earning love by rebuilding your business from scratch every 90 days.
You just have to shift.
Gently.
Bravely.
One aligned decision at a time.
Recurring revenue won’t make you invincible.
But it might finally give you the space to stop surviving — and start leading.
Let it.
