“You didn’t build this business to be its busiest employee. You built it to matter – to your clients, your people, and your life.” – Erick Stewart
Most entrepreneurs can tell you exactly what’s on their plate this week: their revenue goals, their team headaches, their next big client. What they’re less likely to be able to tell you, honestly, is what’s going on inside the person running it all.
That was the starting point for the May session of the Women’s Entrepreneurial Fellowship, led by Erick Stewart of LAGNIAPPE Strategic Consulting.
Leading Ourselves
The premise of the session was the realization that the way we lead our businesses is inseparable from the way we lead ourselves. Most of us, no matter how experienced, how successful, or how self-aware, are operating with some habits that are quietly working against us.
That’s not because we’re doing anything wrong, but rather, because some of the very patterns that helped us survive the hard early days of building a business can become the thing that keeps us from growing beyond them.
The session challenged the cohort to look at that honestly.
Hustle Isn’t a Business Model
There’s a version of entrepreneurship that looks like hustle from the outside and feels like exhaustion from the inside. It’s when you’re doing everything, and you’re needed everywhere. The business technically works, but it only works because you are constantly holding it together.
The session reframed that, not as a badge of honor, but as a design problem.
The question that kept coming up wasn’t: how do I do more? It was how do I build something that doesn’t require me to do everything? Underneath that, the question is: what’s stopping me from actually doing it?
Sometimes the answer is structural. Sometimes it’s about trust in your team, in your systems, in the information you’re getting. Sometimes, if we’re being really honest, the answer has more to do with us than we’d like to admit.
The Shift
Erick’s session challenged the women business owners to examine the relationship between our mindset, our daily behavior, and the bigger vision we have for what this business is supposed to give us.
The why ends up getting lost when we’re caught up in the how, and not the company’s mission statement why, but the personal one. What does success actually enable for you? What kind of life is this business supposed to support? Are the choices you’re making every day actually moving you toward that?
Those questions are harder than any operational problem, but they’re also the ones worth sitting with.
They also connect directly to the heart of what this Fellowship is built around: the 10-Year Shift. When you’re building for a decade from now and not just surviving this quarter, the way you spend your time, the decisions you delegate, and the systems you invest in all start to look different. This session gave us a framework for closing the gap between the business we’re running today and the one we’re actually trying to build.
The 10-Year Shift is about building something that can actually sustain you for the long haul. That’s what the fellowship is here for. Not just the tactics and the tools, but the deeper work of building a business and a life that’s actually worth it.
Applications are now open for the 2026-27 cohort, launching in October.
Erick Stewart of LAGNIAPPE Strategic Consulting was the speaker for the May 20 WEF session in Lansing. He presented a framework for entrepreneurial effectiveness, exploring the mindset and structure behind building a business that works for you, not the other way around. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.