The beauty of a slow business in the fast-paced world chasing success

As artists and entrepreneurs, we live in a world that is constantly chasing that next big hit of success. 

Business coaches from left to right rave about how they have “quantum-leaped” and skyrocketed their income fast. Posting on social media has become all about getting that “viral hit” and “getting insane numbers.” Articles you see online talk about how to speed up this, speed up that. 

And this relentless, speed-chasing culture has left a lot of women with a sense of not going fast enough. 

There is an unspoken yet palpable void I have observed within the entrepreneurial and creative spheres, and that of my own heart (in the past), where women are perpetually dissatisfied and impatient around how fast they are moving in their business. 

There is an underlying shame and fear around “hitting a plateau” or taking your time to grow. In the inner mental worlds of feminine entrepreneurs, this looks like comparing our own journey with that of others or feeling constant pressure to conform to what everyone else is doing in their business. 

What I’ve come to understand is that all of that fixation, contortion, and internal pressure to “achieve things fast” only leads to depriving our spirits of the things that matter most.

We become short-sighted to the rigid frameworks of what we think will lead to our goals the fastest, only to discover later that by doing so, we miss out on the intricate charms of the slow, soft business. 

I’m embracing the beauty of a slow business myself as I build this blog and my coaching business, one day at a time, through my heart-felt writings. And through that, I’ve begun to soak in the wonderful delights that could not have been attained, had I been hurried. And I want to share them with you here in this post. 

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Quality over quantity

Creating lots and lots of one thing (whether it is art/content) can help create quality (I talked about in a previous blog post). However, when the focus is on creating a bunch, only because we want to go fast, we then miss out on creating depth+quality that lie deeper than the visceral surface of vanity metrics. 

In a business sense, this can look like striving only for the aim of a massive audience size without consideration of the quality of connection you have to your audience (and yourself).

This looks like trying to create any content that would sell fast, while losing touch with what you really believe in and what you are really about deep down.

This can also look like prioritizing sales so much that you don’t take time nurturing, educating, and providing value for long-term connection with your audience. 

There is nothing wrong with seeking numbers if that is your goal of course.

However, what I’ve learned is that…

For women who are soulfully deep and perceptive, there is an element of emotional resonance that’s usually missing within numeric-focused ways of growing a business.

To us, components like authenticity, connection, and inner harmony are just as important, if not even more important than metrics. Such as, how much you can freely express in your content, how much you can fully bring your whole heart to your audience etc. 

To that desire, something that has supported me (and relieved me) on the path of navigating the numeric-focused business world as a soulful, emotionally perceptive woman, is the belief that
you do not need big numbers to make a living. 

In fact, when your numbers are still yet small (or you perceive it to be so), you can experience even more room and freedom to express yourself! 

There is a gift to having a ‘tight community’ in a slow business. 

As your focus is now on the quality of people (rather than the number) you are also able to bring in more of your heart in the content you create/ value you provide / the stories you share. This then creates a stable foundation in how you express yourself when your audience gets larger later on… 

There is also a quiet confidence that comes from the belief that “what you have is already enough” (i.e. your audience is enough) and that belief in itself is magnetic. Imagine yourself as your audience– it’s like someone telling you that “you are already enough.” 

There is a gift of generosity, like a doorway to overflow, that opens up when you believe in enoughness. Your content/offers amplifies in value, your heart is more in what you share, and your audience can sense it. Growth, then naturally happens in organic means, such as through your audience spreading the word for you. 

Personally, that is one of the highest values and the virtues I set myself to live up to in my business, as in the quote: “to be so good they can’t ignore you”. I believe that when we focus on quality, quantity can’t help but unfold. 

And it’s not even because of the attachment to quantity that I strive for quality– it is that my feminine heart can’t settle for anything less than quality in terms of connection, value, and emotional resonance.

This is why I would rather have a few hundred women who resonate deeply with my work rather than hundreds of thousands of ‘followers’ who only know me due to surface level looks and achievements. Some may call this as stubborn but I believe it is the feminine integrity to our hearts that make us seek quality, first and foremost. 

Mindful mastery

With the overnight-success chasing culture on social media, something I’ve noticed is that it instills the lack mentality of “if only I find the right hack” then I can grow, among entrepreneurs. 

Such as, “if only I find the right copywriting tactic, then I can get customers.”
“If only I find the right (insert platform) strategy, then I can grow my audience”

“If only I find the right trending reel audio, then I will get leads” etc.  

Such growth-hacking strategies may have served a few select individuals (or it seems so on the highlight reels we see on social media). However, to soulful, feminine beings, it creates an illusion that the answers are “out there” rather than inside of you (what’s within your own grasp). This outward-focused mentality then leads to not trusting ourselves/ our own path/ our own unique way of doing things (and therefore creatively innovating) among entrepreneurs. 

On top of that, chasing for the “right hacks” only leads to dabbling with ideas and scouring for quick fixes on a surface level. This is in contrast to slow, immersive business, where your attention is fixed on mastering and diving deep in a skill. 

Consider the skill of content writing. When you believe that there is only one “right” way of writing content that converts, you spend the majority of your time scrolling on the internet to find the “right” template/the “right” coach, rather than practicing, crafting, and experimenting your own unique method that works best for you.

It is a belief that there is a short-cut (i.e. one “right” way) that leads entrepreneurs to chase for cookie-cutter solutions, instead of taking time to truly master our skills. 

I’ve bought into the belief myself that there is only one “right” way of doing things (such as content writing) in the past. And what I’ve learned was that instead of being excited to write content, I become boxed into a writing style that (supposedly is thought to convert) but ended up sounding like every other coach on the internet trying to sell “making lots of money.”

Deep down, it did not lead to learning the skill of content writing myself, but rather a reliance on a one-size-fit all template/approach that ended up making me lose touch with my own intuitive way of writing (and therefore mastering the art of writing). 

The truth is, it is only when we give ourselves time to deepen into a craft, that we can really grow. Just like fruits, our souls/our creative expressions need time to ripen if we desire them to be as sweet as possible.

We can’t hijack growth on things that are most meaningful to us, unlike how the current fast-paced world functions, from fast-food chain to fast-fashion industry.

It’s actually almost as if our craft/ our strategies in business needs our love, care, and attention. For them to really blossom, it requires devoted time/ devoted space/ devoted thinking/ And we can’t speed up this act of devotion. 

Enhanced enjoyment

In a world that treats businesses like machines–with numbers, metrics, and optimizations to grow fast, it is easy to lose the sense of joy while building a business. 

That’s because when our focus is only on the numbers/ how fast we move, we no longer savor the beauty, the richness, the wonders that can only come from loving each and every second, moment by moment. We no longer pay attention to subtle details that enrich our path.

That’s because building a business is just like taking a walk out in nature.

When your only care is about how fast you get to your destination, you miss out on soaking in the charms of nature speaking to you– like how the wind brushes through flower petals as if they are delicate confessions whispered by fairies; like how the ponds sparkle with auroric lights everytime the sun beams with glory.

Our souls are hungry for these thick and rich wonders enfolded within the path, yet when we are rushing in a hurry, the wonders poof away and are forever lost. 

This is the reason why you may have heard of stories from entrepreneurs who feel lost after they have “made it to the top.”

Entrepreneurs whom after selling their businesses for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, no longer find meaning nor fulfillment. I personally have had a taste of it (although not quite the same) when I hit my long-awaited goal of having a 10k month earlier in my business, yet it no longer felt fulfilling because I became attached to hitting the goals fast. Truth is, the enjoyment is the deepest in the journey itself. 

In fact, even as I write I could write this article, I realized how I could have pumped out batches of blog posts with AI to be faster, but then without the slow, deep, introspective touch of my own human heart in these words, the creative essence felt through the human soul would evaporate.

I realized how much I desire to take time weaving the fine thread of our feminine feelings in my content; I realized how much I want to paint every word with buckets of emotions and present them like spoonfuls of gold for women who land on my website. If you are a deep, emotionally-attuned woman like me too, you will feel this artistic longing to dwell in the beauty and joy within the processes of your own business too.

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Oftentimes, whenever we are rushing to get somewhere, it stems from underlying fears and agitations– such as, the fear of being “left behind,” the fear of being seen as a failure, the fear of being unworthy etc.

And so when we do grow and build a “successful” business, it’s born out of a fear-based mechanism that may not well represent our true desires, our inner faith, and our spiritual fullness.

This is what makes women experience discontentment, impatience, and doubt in business.

For it is only when we relax into our natural pace, led by the organic unfolding in our hearts, that we can carve out the grand castle of a slow, impactful business.