Honestly? This Is How I’m Really Doing After a Summer Off

I just hit CTRL + ALT + DELETE on an 850+ word newsletter I wrote yesterday.

I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop, sipping a 2% iced cappuccino with lots of cinnamon, writing what I thought would be most helpful to you: tips on getting back into the swing of things this month.

But that’s not what I actually wanted to write.

I texted my mindset coach, Jennifer Diaz, and told her I’d just written something I knew would do fine, but that felt totally boring to me.

What I really wanted to write about was how I took most of this summer off, and my business did better than ever. I thought I’d feel fresh as a daisy after all that downtime. Instead, I felt a real sense of dread coming back to work today.

“So then why not write about that?” she asked.

Because it’s unrelatable. Because it’s not helpful to anyone. Because it’s sticky and messy and I don’t have a tidy lesson to teach about it yet.

“For you to be fully you, you cannot hold everyone else,” Jen told me. And she put her finger on something I’m working on constantly: letting go of controlling how I’m perceived and how everyone else feels about everything.

I wrote about this in my book, but I wasn’t seen, heard, or paid attention to growing up. Quite the opposite. I had to be invisible, without needs, and perfect to survive. I was so attuned to my mom that I could tell, just by the click of her tongue, how many pills she’d taken that day, down to the brand.

It’s no surprise that 30-something years later, I write emails focused on making you happy, even when doing so hurts my own soul a little.

Even now, after so much business success for so long, I sometimes catch myself choosing to stay quiet about my own discontent so I don’t make anyone else unhappy or disappointed in me. In the past I’ve made that trade in small ways, like which topics I write about, and in big ways, like real estate decisions.

“Write what you’re excited about, what you’re inspired by. Write what you’re experiencing,” Jen told me.

So here’s what I’m experiencing right now.

I feel a little sad coming back to a successful business that seems to excite other people more than it excites me these days. I’m a little bored after doing the same thing for 10+ years. And honestly, I feel a bit ungrateful, like something must be wrong with me for not fully appreciating what I’ve built.

I’m beyond grateful for this business, for my customers, and most of all for my mighty little team of three who work alongside me every day.

But here’s what I want you to know: if you think building a successful online business is the finish line, or that you’ll never want anything different once you get there, think again. Building a successful business wasn’t the end of my story. Honestly, it feels more like I’m just getting started.

Nothing’s changing with my business. It feels more like a job these days, which, as I wrote in my book, I don’t actually think is a bad thing. I don’t take things as personally anymore, and I don’t tie its wins or losses to my worth as a person. I’m doing fewer, more impactful things in the business these days, and my sales are way up over last year.

Anyway. That’s my honest catch-up. That’s how I’m feeling on this first day of September.

Normally I’d end a post like this asking if it was helpful for you. This time, respectfully, the most important thing is that it was helpful for me to write.

Thanks for listening.

Before you go: I put together a free AI Cheat Sheet, no opt-in required, with an AI disclosure statement template, a checklist of AI clauses to watch for in contracts, and seven simple ways to protect your content from AI misuse.

Links You’ll Love

My favorite email list software team ft. my story! How Sam Vander Wielen built a multi-seven-figure business on two products and an email list ​Read it here →​

I chatted with my friend and the Founder of Kit, Nathan Barry, about how to ACTUALLY sell online courses in 2026 → Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Learn how to confidently setup your online business without worrying you’re making legal mistakes in my free legal class, 5 Steps to Legally Protect & Grow Your Online Business.

In my free legal class, you’ll learn:

• if the fear of doing something wrong is blocking your potential
• what your website needs to be legally sound
• which contracts you need that will totally save your (vegan) bacon
• how to form your business the right way to protect YOU
• the only way to keep copycats from stealing your content (it’s not what you think!)

Ready to breathe a gigantic sigh of relief?