Most entrepreneurs never stop to ask what they’re actually optimizing for. They simply follow the version of success they’ve inherited.
Lori challenges the assumption that bigger is always better and explores why many midlife business owners reach a point where freedom, flexibility, and purpose matter more than endless growth. Through personal experience and practical strategy, she shows how to recognize when your business no longer reflects the life you want and what to do about it.
What You’ll Learn
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How inherited definitions of success quietly shape your business decisions
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Why growth, visibility, and lifestyle can become hidden traps
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A practical framework to identify what you truly want your business to support
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CHAPTERS
0:00 What Are You Optimizing For?
2:48 Why I Left My Mastermind
5:54 The Question Nobody Asks: What Are You Optimizing For?
8:32 The Seven-Figure Trap
10:59 The Visibility Trap
12:19 The Lifestyle Trap
13:24 The Midlife Recalibration
18:34 The Ladder Against the Wrong Wall
21:46 Your Action Step: The Three Column Exercise
26:47 Closing Thoughts
TRANSCRIPT
0:00 What Are You Optimizing For?
What are you optimizing for? Because whether you realize it or not, your business is already answering that question. The only question is whether you’re going to like the answer.
Welcome to the Midlife Business Academy. I’m Lori Lyons, and if this is the first time you’re here, welcome. You’ve found the right place for midlife business owners today. Before I get into today’s episode, I want to give a quick shout out to those of you who reached out after the Building Your Business of Your Dreams Again series. That three-part series really hit a nerve. And honestly, I went back and I listened to them and thought, let’s do one more follow-up that ties it all together. So that’s what today’s episode is going to be.
If you haven’t listened to the series yet, go back and listen to it. It’s the last three episodes, episodes 338, 339, and 340. And then come back and listen here.
2:48 Why I Left My Mastermind
So a couple of months ago, I left a mastermind I’d been part of for about three years. I’ve talked about this before. I loved it from the start. The people were great. The conversations were great. The community was awesome. I’ve created some really good friends from this group. We’ve traveled together. We’ve been on cruises together. That whole community was just amazing. They were smart. They’re driven. They’re ambitious entrepreneurs. And being in that room made me better. And being at that table made me better. And for a long time, it was really what I needed.
At the beginning of this year, the group made a conscious decision to shift directions. They went away from general business solving problems and solutions, you know, building your e-mail list, all that. We were beyond that. We wanted CEO-level topics, things that seven-figure businesses and beyond CEOs would talk about. And, you know, I agreed with that. It made perfect sense where the group was headed. And I really thought that’s what I wanted to do. Because doesn’t every business owner want that? Isn’t that what success is supposed to look like? Huh.
But here’s what I wasn’t ready to admit yet. Seven figures was no longer my goal. But I did want to say that out loud. I wasn’t even sure I was allowed to feel that way. So instead of naming it, I just kept showing up and I was quiet. I didn’t talk a lot and I was feeling more and more like I was sitting at the wrong table.
But eventually I figured it out. What I wanted was freedom. I didn’t want to scale the seven figures. I didn’t want all the responsibility. I wanted freedom. I wanted flexibility. I want a business that worked for my life instead of consuming it. Does that sound familiar to any of you out there?
And once I named it, once I realized what was actually happening, it became obvious. I was working with business owners around this exact thing, you know, creating the business of your dreams to give yourself the life that you deserve and where you’ve grown to and you’re ready to take that next step. But I wasn’t doing it.
Nobody in that mastermind was wrong. I just want to be very clear about that. They were optimizing for growth and I was optimizing for freedom. We just weren’t solving the same problem anymore.
So I talked about that decision more in the previous episode series, 338, 339, and 340. I talked about it a couple of times throughout that. So I won’t go over the whole thing here. But I’m bringing it up today because it perfectly illustrates what this episode is really about. What are you optimizing for? And does your business actually reflect that answer?
5:54 The Question Nobody Asks: What Are You Optimizing For?
So here’s the thing, whether you thought about it consciously or not, every single decision you make in your business is optimizing for something. Every offer that you create, every client you take on, every hour you spend in your business, every boundary you set or don’t set, every time you say yes to something or no to something, all of that is optimizing for something. The question is whether it’s optimizing for what you actually want.
And if you think about the most common things business owners say they want, they want more money, they want more time, they want more freedom, they want more recognition, they want more impact, they want more simplicity, they want more creative, they want more security. We all have different things that we want. And none of these are wrong. All of them are valid.
But here’s where it gets complicated. Most business owners are optimizing for goals that they never consciously chose. The goals that they inherited from the industry that they’re in, from coaches that they followed, from the culture that tells us that it’s always bigger is better, and more is always the answer. And so you build, and you push, and you grow, and you hustle, and you wonder why it’s still not enough. Because what they are solving for is not what you ever actually agreed to.
And here’s what I want you to think about. The challenge isn’t choosing what to optimize for. The challenge is being honest about what you’re optimizing for. And those are two very different things. I know. Ask me.
So why do we get stuck? If it’s as simple as just deciding what you want, why don’t more of us do it? Because it’s really not that simple. And honestly, for a lot of us midlife entrepreneurs, especially, there’s some very specific things, traps that stick us, that keep us stuck and from optimizing for the wrong things. So here’s a couple of them.
8:32 The Seven-Figure Trap
This is what I call the seven figure trap. And I want to be really clear here. I’m not against seven figures. If that’s what you want, go for it. Go get it. There’s a way to do it and still have the life and the freedom that you want. Ask me. But I want you to ask yourself the honest question. Do you really want a million dollar business? Or do you want what you think a million dollar business will give you? Because those are very different things. Freedom, validation, security, status, options, those are all real goals. The seven figures is just one possible path to them.
But here’s what I’m hearing more and more from the clients I work with. They don’t want to give up what they love. They love what they do. They love serving their clients. They love the work itself. What they don’t want anymore is the pressure, the pressure of feeling like they have to do this or they have to do that. You have to create the e-mail list, you have to do social media, blah, blah, blah, blah. The relentless push towards something that stopped feeling meaningful, if it ever did feel meaningful. They’re not burned out on their business. They’re burned out on the version of success that they were handed and that they never questioned.
I know. I had a coach who did that with me. I kept saying I wanted to go into business coaching, and she kept saying, oh, no, no, no, no, you have to keep doing website design. And because I was paying her a lot of money and because that made sense to me and because, well, she knows more than I know because she’s a seven-figure business owner, I just nodded. And I kept nodding all along and not really feeling it.
Now, yes. Did I make a lot of money? Yes. I did. Did I enjoy it? Yes. But I’ve reached the time of my life where that is not what’s important to me anymore. Oh, yeah. Hand me a million dollars. Hand me seven figures. Absolutely. But do I want to work that hard for it anymore? Not on your life. So I had to ask myself, what do I really want about this? Because isn’t that what you’re supposed to want? Seven figures?
10:59 The Visibility Trap
The second trap is what I’m going to call the visibility trap. So tell me if this one sounds familiar to you. You’ve been told you need a bigger audience. You’ve been told you need a stronger social media presence. I’ve said that myself to clients. You’ve been told you need a speaking reel. You’ve been told you need daily content. You’ve been told you need a video that goes viral.
But what if you don’t really want that? What if what you really want is enough? You want enough clients? You want enough steady referrals. You want enough meaningful work that doesn’t require you to perform for the internet every single day. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, a lot of midlife entrepreneurs, that’s exactly the right business for them. But if you’re spending your time and energy chasing visibility you don’t actually want, you’re optimizing for the wrong thing.
12:19 The Lifestyle Trap
And the third trap, and this one’s a little sneaky, I’m going to call it the lifestyle trap. This is when what you say and what you do doesn’t match. You say you want freedom, but you structure everything around growth. You say you want simplicity, but you keep adding offers. You say you want more time. But you keep filling your calendar. And a lot of times you’re filling your calendar with things that don’t mean a thing to your business or to you the lifestyle that you want.
The words and the actions are pointing in completely opposite directions. And the business that you’re building reflects your actions, not your words. I’m gonna repeat that. The business that you’re building reflects your actions, not your words, because that’s the trap. And the only way out of that is to be honest with yourself.
13:24 The Midlife Recalibration
So this is where it gets kind of personal. And I think the reason this episode is really a life episode disguised as a business episode, because something happens when we reach midlife. And I don’t mean a midlife crisis. I don’t mean go buy a red Corvette crisis. I mean a recalibration, a shift in what matters to us and why. And if you’re in this community, you’ve probably already felt it.
When we were younger, achievement drove us. Proving ourselves drove us. We could be all of that. We could be the woman or the man who has everything. Growth drives us. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It was appropriate for that season of our life. You were building. You were establishing. You were figuring out who you were and what you were capable of.
But then life happened. Our parents age. Grandchildren arrive, or at least for some of us, health shifts, energy shifts, relationship shifts. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, your perspective shifted too.
For me, it got real pretty fast. My mother is 93 and she’s been living in assisted living for the last couple of years. And when I looked at my schedule, I realized I didn’t have room to spend time with her the way I wanted to, the way she deserved, and the way I, and that’s when I knew something needed to change. My son and my sister would go up and have lunch with her. They would go out with the, when they would go out to have lunch at restaurants, they’d go spend time with her. But unless I had a clear calendar for the next two or three weeks, and a lot of times they don’t work like that because things happen at the assisted living. They have to work around the residence schedule as well as not my schedule, certainly. So unless I had plenty of notice and could block it off, I didn’t get to go. And I was jealous about that. And that really made me stop and think.
My clients were paying me to be there for them, weren’t they? Didn’t I owe them my time above everything else? And that right there, that thought, is exactly what happens when you are optimizing for the wrong thing for too long. You start to believe that your business has more claim on your life than the people who matter most in it.
My mother’s 93. I don’t know how many more lunches we’re going to get to have. She’s in good health, thank goodness, but you just never know. So I started blocking time on my calendar. I started protecting it, and I’m not apologizing for it. My time for clients to schedule got much smaller. And you know what? The world didn’t end. My clients were fine because a lot of them are in the same place. But I got something back that I almost let slip away without even noticing it. That was my midlife shift.
You can stop asking, How much can I build? and start asking, How do I really want to spend my days? It’s not a step backward. It’s not giving up. It’s not settling. It’s being smart, and it’s taking advantage of all this wisdom that we’ve earned over all the years. It’s knowing yourself well enough to stop chasing someone else’s definition of success and start building around your own. Midlife has a way of forcing that decision because we suddenly understand in a way that we couldn’t at 30, that time isn’t unlimited and that changes everything about how we make decisions.
The title of my last episode was you don’t owe your younger self your future self. That means what you thought you had at 30 doesn’t mean that today at however, whatever midlife age you are, you still owe that 30 year old anything. No, you’re exactly where you need to be. And maybe you’re feeling that same thing that I felt right now. It’s not really burnout. It’s not failure. It’s just a quiet, persistent sense that the building you’ve built in business doesn’t quite fit the life you want anymore. That’s not a problem. That’s information. And it’s exactly what we’re going to work with today.
18:34 The Ladder Against the Wrong Wall
In Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he talks about a ladder leaning against a wall. Think about that. Think about picturing a ladder of four, you know, four walls to a room and a ladder leaning against one of them. I mean, you’re climbing that ladder. You’re working, you’re building, maybe you’re putting crown molding up, whatever, you’re painting, whatever. You’re making progress. But here’s the question that Stephen Covey asks. What if the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall? What if you’re putting crown molding on the wrong side of the house? What if you’re painting the wrong accent wall? I mean, stupid analogies, I know, but you can spend years, even decades, climbing effectively, working hard and doing everything right. And then one day you get to the top of that ladder and you realize the wall you’ve been climbing toward isn’t the one you actually wanted to reach.
That’s what happened to me a couple of months ago. I realized that my ladder was against the wrong wall. And the beauty? I could move the ladder. The ladder wasn’t permanent.
So it hit me very differently in midlife than it would when I was 30. Because I didn’t have the luxury of saying, I’ll just start over on a different wall. I have wisdom now, just like you do. You have clarity or you’re getting there. You have a much more honest relationship with time than you did when you were 30. We don’t have all day.
So here’s what I want you to take away. Is the wall your ladder is leaning against actually leading somewhere you want to go? Because I’ve watched smart, talented, hardworking entrepreneurs climb all the way to the top of that wall. And that gave them a bigger business and less freedom, more revenue and more stress, more clients and less joy, more visibility and less privacy. They optimized, they achieved, they got there, but there wasn’t where they wanted to be.
So before you take another step up that ladder, before you add another offer or program, another team member, stop and look at the wall, is that where you want to go? Because it’s a whole lot easier to redirect now that it is once you get to the top.
21:46 Your Action Step: The Three Column Exercise
All right. So let’s be practical here. Let’s work on your action steps because I don’t want you to finish this episode just nodding and saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. I’m listening. But then you go back and do what you’ve always done because that’s too easy and you’re too smart for that.
So here’s what I want you to actually think about. When it comes to what you’re optimizing for in your business, most people fall into these categories. And listen to this list, not with your head, but with your heart. Because your head is going to tell you, oh, that sounds right. But your heart is going to tell you what’s actually true.
Freedom, control of your schedule, your time, your life. Income, maximum revenue, financial security and abundance. Impact, reaching more people, helping more clients. Making a difference. Simplicity. Less complicated. Less noise. A business that doesn’t require a team of 10 to run. Flexibility. Working from anywhere, on your terms, on your timeline. Creativity. The space to teach, create, explore, innovate, have fun. Legacy. Building something meaningful that outlasts the day-to-day. Community, relationships, connection, being part of something bigger than yourself.
Now, here’s what I want you to notice. You probably value most of those things because they’re good things. Most of them, all of them, are good things. That’s normal. That’s because we’re human. But one of them is driving your decisions more than others. One of them is the thing you’d protect first if something had to give. One of them is the reason you started this business in the first place, even if you’ve lost sight of it somewhere along the way.
So whatever is showing up in your business right now, in your calendar and your offers and your revenue model and how you’re spending your time. That’s what you’re actually optimizing for, not what you say you want, what your business reflects. And those two things should match. But for a lot of us, they don’t, at least not yet.
So here’s your action step. What I want you to do before you do anything else this week, grab a piece of paper. Keep paper handy when you listen to my podcast. I know I do this a lot. Grab a piece of paper, open your notes app, whatever works for you. And I want you to draw three columns.
Column one, what am I currently optimizing for? Go back and listen to that list I just gave you and, you know, find something there if you can’t think of what you’re actually optimizing or you don’t have words for it. Not what you wish you were optimizing for, not what sounds good. You’re not turning this in for a homework grade. Look at your calendar, look at your offers, look at where your time actually goes. There’s your answer. Write it down. And if you have more than one, write down several. What are you actually optimizing for?
Then in column 2, I want you to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 means you’re ready to let it go. 10 means you’re protecting it no matter what. And then column 3, what would this look like if it reflected what I actually want?
So, for example, column one, client availability. Speaking from experience, column two, two out of ten. I really want to change this. I don’t need to be available 24/7. I need to set boundaries. So, column three, what am I doing about it? I created time blocks for clients, and I’m not apologizing for it.
That’s simple. That’s honest. And it probably is a little more revealing than you expect when you do this exercise, because here’s what it’s going to show you. The gap between what you’re currently optimizing for and what you really want, because that’s where the dream business you actually want is hiding. That’s where the disconnect lives. And that’s what’s making your business feel harder than it should.
And that gap, that’s exactly what we work on together. If you look at those three columns and find the gap, if you can see the distance between what you’re building and what you actually want, I want you to go to TalkWithLori.com and schedule a call with me because that call is where we figure out what you’ve been optimizing for and what’s getting in the way and what your business actually needs to look like to get you there. TalkWithLori.com and the link is in the show notes.
26:47 Closing Thoughts
So I want to come back to where we started today. A couple months ago, I left the mastermind I loved because I got honest with myself about what I was actually optimizing for, not what I thought I was supposed to want, not what the culture of entrepreneurship told me that success looked like, but what I really actually wanted.
And leaving wasn’t about rejecting growth. It was about recognizing that my definition of growth had changed. Maybe yours has too. Maybe growth for you isn’t a bigger business. Maybe it’s a better one. Because success isn’t about getting everything. It’s about getting more of what matters. And that starts the moment you decide what you’re actually optimizing for.
Because remember, it’s never too late to build the business of your dreams. I’ll see you next time.